Imagine materials used in spacecraft and other applications that could repair themselves similarly to the way cuts heal on a sugar maple tree or on a skateboarder's knobby knees, except more quickly. Or change shape somewhat without the great weight that hydraulic systems add.

Science fiction? So far yes, but scientists and officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) believe such near miracles one day will become reality. To spur their development, NASA has awarded a consortium of research institutions, including Carolina, grants that should total $30 million within 10 years to create new materials that might revolutionize civil aviation and space travel.

The award will establish an Institute for Biologically Inspired Materials (IBIM) to investigate and design functional ways of simulating repair mechanisms used by plants, animals and other organisms.

Other participating institutions are the University of California at Santa Barbara, Princeton and Northwestern universities and ICASE, a research institute operated at the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia.

"Achieving such results will require expertise from many specialties," said Edward Samulski, Boshamer and distinguished professor of chemistry and leader of Carolina's part in the effort. "Each institution brings a strong background in different aspects of the project, which spans several disciplines.

"It's a rather ambitious thing to design materials that can not only recognize when they've been damaged but can indicate the exact site and take steps to repair it," Samulski said. "In a sense, it's at the fringes of science fiction. These so-called `self-healing' materials could be critical to space exploration, because a meteor particle even as small as a grain of sand could puncture the hull of existing space vehicles."

Besides conducting research and developing technology, the institute will begin an education and training program along with the N.C. Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro.

Representatives gathered for their first workshop and planning session Sept. 25 on the Princeton University campus. The institute's mission is to boost understanding of natural phenomena and translate its findings into new materials that mimic the extraordinary structural and self-repairing properties of such substances as bone or seashells, Samulski said. These biologically inspired materials could adapt to changing conditions and are expected to help make air- and spacecraft lighter, stronger and more reliable.

"Our goal is to bring more `smart' functions into spacecraft materials," said Ilhan Aksay, a Princeton professor of chemical engineering who leads the institute. "Some of these functions already exist in biology."

Researchers also expect to develop partnerships with businesses that will translate laboratory discoveries into products for U.S. industry.

NASA selected the consortium's proposal from among more than 100 submissions, Aksay said.

The program in bio-inspired materials is part of a broader NASA effort to expand its ties to academia by establishing seven university-based institutes, each of which will develop an area of technology of "long-term strategic interest to the agency and the nation." While two of the institutes will focus on bio-inspired materials, the other five will work on propulsion, reusable launch vehicles and other challenges.

New composites of organic and inorganic compounds will get special attention through the IBIM institute.

"This is very exciting since it started with a group of us sitting around up at NASA contemplating and discussing the exquisite beauty nature uses in making materials that can repair themselves," Samulski said. "NASA is convinced that by brainstorming with top universities and front-line researchers in material sciences that it can come up with new concepts that will enable the next generation of space generation.

"It also is exciting for us here at Carolina since it recognizes the fact that UNC faculty are world leaders in some important areas of chemistry and physics," he said.

Other participating researchers at the University in theory and mathematical modeling are Michael Rubinstein, professor of chemistry, and M. Gregory Forest, professor of mathematics and applied math, who will work on impacts and polymer self-healing. In synthesis, Royce W. Murray, Kenan professor of chemistry, and Samulski will investigate sensors, non-carbon nanotubes and "smart" composites. Eugene A. Irene, professor of chemistry; Richard Superfine and Yue Wu, associate professors of physics and astronomy; and Otto Z. Zhou, associate professor of materials science, will focus on characterization of conducting polymers, "smarter" nanotubes and composites.

Traditional study of proteins
no longer holds water

In findings they believe are fundamentally important to both biology and medicine, Carolina chemists have shown experimentally for the first time that proteins can

behave differently inside cells than when taken out of those cells and studied in test tubes.

"For 40 years, we thought we could learn most everything about proteins by studying them in water, but this work shows we are missing important observations by looking at them just in water or other solutions," said Gary Pielak, professor of chemistry and lead author of the study. "Our work demonstrates that we need to study them under the conditions they are found in inside the cell."

The research is relevant to medicine because the protein is related to proteins associated with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases and cancer, the scientists say.

"Proteins are the robots of the cell in that they perform countless functions including allowing cells to grow and reproduce," Pielak said. "Almost everything we know about them comes from research done in test tubes in water solutions. But inside cells, where proteins work, there are no dilute solutions because the interior is crowded with proteins, which take up about 40 percent of the volume."

Working under Pielak's supervision, Matthew Dedmon of Gastonia used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to examine what effects the crowded environment had on protein shape because the shape of a protein determines its function. The team found that a so-called "intrinsically unstructured" protein, which in water appears to have no fixed structure, shows a definite folded-up shape when inside cells.

Among other things, the experiments involved measuring the proteins with a nucleus of nitrogen known as N-15 and then recording and comparing their NMR spectrum both inside cells and outside cells under artificially crowded conditions. A report on the findings appeared online Sept. 13 in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

A senior when he conducted the experiments last year, Dedmon is now on a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship at England's University of Cambridge. Other authors are Chetan N. Patel, a doctoral student in chemistry, and Gregory B. Young, manager of the Carolina's Biomolecular NMR Facility.

"Scientists had theorized for many years that solutions crowded with molecules would tend to favor molecular shapes that had the smallest surface areas," Pielak said. "In some ways, the explanation of our observation has been around for two centuries -- since the time of LeChatelier," he said. "In the past, however, it has been so difficult to do these experiments that few have even tried."

With the new information pouring in from the Human Genome Project and other efforts to identify genes, scientists hope to create models of cellular metabolism, which would advance understanding of health and illness, Pielak said.

"But to make a model of cellular metabolism that would run in a computer, you need to know how tightly these proteins bind to one another and how fast they bind," he said. "All those data so far are from solutions that were mainly water. If there are differences between what we measure in dilute solutions and what occurs in cells, no one will ever be able to model metabolism. That means we need to look more thoroughly at the conditions found inside cells and measure them."

"What impresses me the most about this discovery is the clear demonstration that the environment of proteins in real life situations -- the proximity of billions of other molecules such as lipids, sugars, salts and water, for example -- has a profound influence on their three-dimensional structure," said Edward T. Samulski, Boshamer and distinguished professor of chemistry. "Everyone knows that this 3-D structure is essential in biology, but very few investigators have had the courage to look at proteins in the complex soup they actually live in."

The National Science Foundation, the Petroleum Research Fund and the Smallwood Foundation supported the study, said Pielak, also a member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the School of Medicine.

Haggis leads team
that discovers lost city

Through painstaking excavations in sweltering heat this summer, researchers led by Donald C. Haggis, associate professor of classics, have discovered a lost city near the northeast coast of Crete that dates back to the 6th century B.C.

Crete is the largest Greek island and one of the largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Digging took place on scrubby, rocky land about a half mile southeast of the modern village of Kavousi.

The long-abandoned settlement, which might be one the ancient geographer Strabo called Larisa, should prove invaluable in helping scholars uncover details about a relatively unknown period of Greek and Cretan history -- just before and during the emergence of classical Greek cities, Haggis said. The National Geographic Society funded part of the project.

"This undisturbed area, which we call Azoria, was near the sites of other settlements that had been previously excavated," he said. "We chose to examine it because surface surveys we conducted and remains of pottery we found led us to suspect that it might be later than some early Iron Age settlements nearby. The remains are very exciting since they are in nearly pristine condition for archaeology."

Artifacts recovered so far include terracotta loom weights and spindle whorls, glass and gold beads, bronze pins, bronze nails, lead weights, bronze and iron tools, ceremonial stands, pithos jars and other decorated pottery. Also found were grains -- probably wheat and barley -- as well as legumes, olive pits and grape seeds.

One especially notable find was a fragment of a bronze helmet crest decorated with lotus flowers and chain and wave patterns, the scientist said. It is unusual because it is one of only two surviving examples of that type of archaic Greek helmet, which was worn by the aristocracy and military elite. The other example is in a Hamburg, Germany, museum.

"Fire seems to have destroyed the city catastrophically sometime around the end of the 6th century B.C., and then it was reoccupied afterwards on a smaller scale with a number of buildings abandoned," Haggis said. "An earthquake appears to have finished off the city

after the final Archaic-period abandonment in the early 5th century B.C."

Evidence so far uncovered shows centralized storage and industrial areas, domestic food processing and storage and part of an elite dining area, possibly a shrine, he said. Walls excavated were sophisticated architecturally, consisting of parts of concentric "spine" sections that served as retaining walls to help support houses and other structures.

"Everything went remarkably smoothly," Haggis said. "Our day began at 6 a.m. when we all gathered in Kavousi village, having transported students from the nearby village of Pacheia Ammos. Typically, some 34 people participated -- 16 workmen, six graduate student trench masters, eight undergraduate assistants, a biological anthropologist, the science director, the field director and me."

The group boarded three pickup trucks and Haggis' 1972 Volkswagen van and drove a half mile into the mountains where they began climbing to the summit of Azoria, he said. They dug until 10:30 a.m., took a half-hour lunch break and then continued digging until 2 p.m. At 2:30, the group transported the finds to the Institute of Aegean Prehistory Study Center for East Crete, where they were washed, sorted and studied.

"Students stopped around 5:30," Haggis said. "Directors and conservators usually continued working until evening when various staff members gathered along beachfront taverns in Pacheia Ammos or in various cafes in Kavousi village for their evening meals."

The team excavated more than 1,300 square meters, he said, but far more remains undisturbed. Overall, the site is believed to be about 15 hectares, or 150,000 square meters. They also sifted through some 64 tons of soil to recover fish and animal bones and shells.

"What's so exciting about this is that it offers us an opportunity to look at an early city just at the point of its becoming a city and during a time historians have called a period of silence," Haggis said. "Because it was abandoned, we won't be burdened with much later remains from the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods like archaeologists have been in Athens and other sites.

Whether it turns out to be Larissa or some other small independent city-state, the site presents a valuable archaeological window for other reasons as well, he said. Among them is that it will shed new light on early trade and agriculture around the eastern Mediterranean.

Azoria Project excavations, which will continue for at least another four years, were conducted with the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and with permission from the Greek Ministry of Culture under the auspices of the Archaeological Service of Eastern Crete. Haggis is excavation director. Margaret S. Mook, associate professor of classical studies at Iowa State University, and Lynn Snyder, research associate in anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, are field director and science director, respectively. Fifty-three people participated in the project.

Other sponsors providing funds include the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; Carolina's College of Arts and Sciences, classics department and Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies; the Institute for Aegean Prehistory; the INSTAP Study Center for East Crete; and the Azoria Project Fund.