Feature Channels: Engineering

• share
• favorite_border

Argonne hosted an Education Outreach Day to reach middle school students from predominantly Hispanic and Latino neighborhoods and taught them about science-related careers. The goal was to strengthen and diversify the nation’s laboratories and research institutions with greater representation.

• share
• favorite_border

A Tulane team will work with New Orleans-based glass recycling center Glass Half Full to develop a plan to divert glass from landfills and turn it into glass sand products to restore coastal communities.

• share
• favorite_border

Tulane professor Henry "Hank" Bart is teaming up with researchers across the country as part of a $15 million NSF initiative to establish the inaugural Imageomics Institute.

• share
• favorite_border

An engineering researcher at the University of Oklahoma is part of a National Science Foundation project addressing the logistical challenges of maintaining cryogenic temperatures for Messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules, a molecule that allows human cells to recognize and protect against infectious diseases. Dimitrios Papavassiliou, Ph.D., in the Gallogly College of Engineering, is investigating Distributed Ribonucleic Acid Manufacturing – DReAM – that would create a manufacturing technique to produce mRNA sequences on demand and on-site. The research is funded by the NSF through a four-year, $2 million grant from its Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program.

• share
• favorite_border

Working to solve a problem, supercomputing researchers may encounter incomplete data or flawed programs.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah mechanical engineering researchers have developed a lightweight powered exoskeleton that allows lower-limb amputees to walk with much less effort. The device uses motors, microprocessors and advanced algorithms to aid the user in walking much like an e-bike helps riders pedal up a hill.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of scientists and doctors from the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine has developed a capability to detect airborne SARS-CoV-2 RNA – the nucleic acid coding for the virus that causes COVID-19 – indoors through air sampling.

• share
• favorite_border

This award recognizes postdoctoral researchers for their intellectual merit, the impact of their research and scholarship, and their interest in science writing and communication. MRS Bulletin acknowledges the Jiang Family Foundation for its generous contribution to support this Prize.

• share
• favorite_border

A Q&A with Berkeley Lab scientists on how hydrogen can help achieve net-zero emissions. Adam Weber is Berkeley Lab's Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Program Manager and leads Berkeley Lab’s Energy Conversion Group (ECG), and Ahmet Kusoglu is a staff scientist in the ECG, a multidisciplinary team of electrochemists, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, theorists, and material scientists with active collaborations across industry, academia, and national laboratories.

• share
• favorite_border

PNNL has developed seaweed-based inks and materials for 2-D and 3-D printing that can be used for a multitude of applications in the art, medical, STEM, and other fields.

• share
• favorite_border

Four Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers will be honored with the Laboratory’s Fellows Prizes at a ceremony Oct. 6. Bill Daughton, Andrew Gaunt and Cristiano Nisoli will receive the Fellows Prize for Research, and Eva Birnbaum will receive the Fellows Prize for Leadership.

• share
• favorite_border

Flavio Esposito, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science at Saint Louis University (SLU), is an expert in computer networking. Esposito can explain the protocol failure that triggered outages on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp and why we need geospatial research to prevent its occurrence in the future.

• share
• favorite_border

Lithium-ion batteries are common but can pose safety problems. Solid-state batteries are smaller, safer and store more energy. Scientists at Argonne are accelerating a new generation of better batteries.

• share
• favorite_border

The National Academies’ Gulf Research Program (GRP) has selected Tulane University to join the newly launched Gulf Scholars Program (GSP), a five-year, $12.7 million pilot program that prepares graduates to address the most pressing environmental, health, energy and infrastructure challenges in the Gulf of Mexico region.

• share
• favorite_border

Awards draw on Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) expertise across advanced, high-temperature materials science and aerospace and mechanical engineering research — areas critical for future advances of hypersonic vehicles.

• share
• favorite_border

A public/private collaboration led by researchers at UT Austin has resulted in a new mathematical modeling technique that can accurately predict the response of tumors in breast cancer patients to treatments such as chemotherapy soon after treatment initiation. This is a major improvement on current methods that can determine the efficacy of first-line therapies only after the patient has already received several treatment cycles.

• share
• favorite_border

The Ohio State University has been awarded a $15 million grant from the National Science Foundation to lead the creation of a new, interdisciplinary institute and establish a new field of study that has the potential to transform biomedical, agricultural and basic biological sciences.

• share
• favorite_border

Two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory took top prizes in a national competition for developing algorithms to help improve the resiliency and efficiency of the electrical grid.

• share
• favorite_border

A new $15.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will produce a detailed design for the world’s most powerful superconducting magnet at the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. While the National MagLab is already home to more than a dozen world-record magnets used by researchers from around the world, the future 40-tesla magnet will advance the study of quantum matter with its low-noise environment that surpasses present-day resistive and hybrid magnets.

• share
• favorite_border

Story tips: Carbon goes to space, cybersecurity put to the test, fusion’s power trip, cost-cutting controls and fungal infusion

• share
• favorite_border

The color in a diamond comes from a defect, or “vacancy,” where there is a missing carbon atom in the crystal lattice.

• share
• favorite_border

Four researchers have been named 2021 Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellows: Baolian Cheng, Elizabeth Hunke, David A. Smith and Blas Uberuaga.

• share
• favorite_border

“Throw me the idol; I’ll throw you the whip!” - From Raiders of the Lost Ark

• share
• favorite_border

Traditional gold production typically involves a famous toxin, cyanide, which has been banned for industrial use in several countries. The wait for a scalable non-toxic alternative may now be over as a research team from Aalto University in Finland has successfully replaced cyanide in a key part of gold extraction from ore.

• share
• favorite_border

Vulnerabilities in Apple Pay and Visa could enable hackers to bypass an iPhone’s Apple Pay lock screen and perform contactless payments, according to research by the University of Birmingham and University of Surrey.

• share
• favorite_border

Russia has great potential for using renewable resources because they are almost evenly distributed throughout the country, scientists say.

• share
• favorite_border

Somewhere among the glitter of the night sky is a small satellite powered by innovative, next-generation solar cell technology developed at Sandia National Laboratories. mPower Technology’s DragonSCALES, consist of small, highly interconnected photovoltaic cells formerly known as solar glitter at Sandia. They are orbiting Earth for the first time on a satellite.

• share
• favorite_border

The largest missile ever to launch from Sandia National Laboratories' Kauai Test Facility in Hawaii has shown the storied test range is still growing to meet the testing needs of advanced weapons systems.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the nation’s first advanced battery recycling research and development center have made a pivotal discovery that removes one of the biggest hurdles standing in the way of making recycling lithium-ion batteries economically viable.

• share
• favorite_border

Georgia Tech researchers have recently discovered a new side channel attack that is effective on a wide range of low-end phones. All that's needed for the attack to work is to place a sensor close to the phone, for example, under the coffee table where the phone is sitting. If the sensor bears witness to a single secure transaction, like a bank login, then the attacker can immediately break the user's encryption and forge their digital signature.

• share
• favorite_border

FAU's College of Engineering and Computer Science’s Matthew Maggio is one of five undergraduate national finalists of the “2021 Collegiate Inventors Competition®,” a program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame®.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Emily A. Carter, former dean of the Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science, and most recently executive vice chancellor and provost at UCLA, has been named Senior Strategic Advisor for Sustainability Science at PPPL.

• share
• favorite_border

The Advanced Power Systems Research Center (APS LABS) partnered with Strange Development to test the REVolution engine, which uses a rotary exhaust valve to clean up what were previously some of the dirtiest engines on the market like drones and powersport vehicles.

• share
• favorite_border

A new, 3D-printable polymer nanocomposite ink has incredible properties — and many applications in aerospace, medicine and electronics.

• share
• favorite_border

A research team led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has completed a first-ever global population estimate of Weddell seals in Antarctica, showing that there are significantly fewer seals than previously thought. Documenting the seals’ population trends over time will help scientists better understand the effects of climate change and commercial fishing.

• share
• favorite_border

Engineers created a new type of battery that weaves two promising battery sub-fields into a single battery. The battery uses both a solid state electrolyte and an all-silicon anode, making it a silicon all-solid-state battery. The initial rounds of tests show that the new battery is safe, long lasting, and energy dense. It holds promise for a wide range of applications from grid storage to electric vehicles.

• share
• favorite_border

A creative idea to fill canisters with melted ice water and then use a railgun to launch them 2 miles into a net has propelled SDSU's Space Trajectory to Phase II of a NASA design competition.

• share
• favorite_border

Bioengineers are using focused ultrasound to modulate motor activity in the brain without surgical device implantation, a first step toward non-invasive brain stimulation therapies.

• share
• favorite_border

Fluid Metering Inc. a microfluidic solutions provider is pleased to introduce the FVD series of variable dispense pumps (patent pending).

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Aalto University have found a way to mimic the natural processes that create complex shapes and landscapes with the help of a vibrating plate and resulting energy fields. The results are published on 22 September 2021 in Science Advances.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists seeking to unravel the details of how plants produce and accumulate oil have identified a new essential component of the assembly line--a particular sterol that plays a key role in the formation of oil droplets. The findings may suggest new ways to engineer the oil content of a variety of plant tissues for potential applications in bioenergy, chemical engineering, and nutrition.

• share
• favorite_border

Argonne and Parallel Works, Inc., won the Federal Laboratory Consortium’s Midwest Regional Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer for bringing Argonne’s Machine Learning-Genetic Algorithm (ML-GA) design optimization software to commercialization.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory have new insight about the formation of vortices in a type of quantum fluid, work that could help our comprehension of the physics mystery of how vortex clusters form and provide valuable understanding into the atmospheric swirling motion on planets such as Earth and Jupiter.

• share
• favorite_border

Michael J. Moore, a professor of biomedical engineering at Tulane University School of Science and Engineering, is part of a national study that aims to turn around the statistics on opioid addiction.