PORTLAND, OREGON (May 20, 2009) -- It is easy to understand how explosions involving shrapnel – such as those caused by improvised explosive devices in Iraq – could cause brain damage. But what about such injuries that seem to be caused by blasts themselves, rather than from being thrown or hit by shrapnel?

Researchers have a few ideas, but one scientist has used some of the world’s most powerful computers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to get a better answer. Willy Moss and colleague Michael King used available data on blast waves from explosions and the physical properties of the human skull, brain and cerebrospinal fluid to craft a three-dimensional simulation of a soldier standing less than 15 feet from an explosion of 5 lbs. of C4. (See image to the right.)

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Designing green buildings sounds like a great idea. But the reality is that energy-efficient buildings often sound downright crummy to the people inside them.

Surveys of occupants generally find that buildings meeting the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, the benchmarks for greenness, score higher on all measures except one: acoustics. “It’s not a happy story,” Kevin Powell, research director for the U.S. General Services Administration, told the audience on the opening day of the meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Portland, Oregon.

The GSA houses more than one million government workers in about 8,500 buildings across the nation. In post-occupancy surveys, acoustics often received poor marks. And while federal LEED-rated buildings scored a bit better than non-LEED buildings, on a separate survey commercial LEED-rated buildings scored worse than non-LEED buildings when it comes to noise, he said.

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