Discovery: Research at Princeton University, produced by the Office of the Dean for Research in collaboration with the Office of Communications, reports on significant research endeavors and discoveries, faculty honors, notable awards, recent books and the University’s research administration. The latest edition, published in 2011, is now available.
Research Briefs
Archive – March 2011
There are few studies of how motion of the surrounding fluid affects biofilms -- sticky aggregations of microorganisms that grow on wet surfaces ranging from riverbeds to sewer pipes to human teeth. Using a combination of approaches, we found that that string-like filaments called streamers that are formed by biofilms may be much more common than previously believed and that their presence can have a major impact on various flow processes, such as how biomass accumulates in filters.
Alireza Shabani, a postdoctoral research associate in chemistry at Princeton University, and an international team of scientists have removed a major obstacle in the quest to engineer quantum systems that will play a major role in the computers, communication networks and biomedical devices of the future.
Princeton researchers have developed a new method to better understand how an embryo's basic molecular makeup helps ensure that the embryo's development occurs reliably every time.
A team led by Thomas Gregor, an assistant professor of physics and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, and Shawn Little, a visiting postdoctoral research associate in the laboratory of Professor Eric Wieschaus in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton, has pu