Geotechnical Engineer Available to Comment on Earthquake in Nepal
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Transportation accidents, such as trucks crashing on a highway or rockets failing on a launch pad, can create catastrophic fires. Sandia National Laboratories researchers have developed 3-D measurement techniques based on digital in-line holography because it’s important to understand how burning droplets of fuel are generated and behave in such extreme cases.
Columbia Engineering Professor James Hone led a team in 2013 that dramatically improved the performance of graphene by encapsulating it in boron nitride. They’ve now shown they can similarly improve the performance of another 2D material, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2. Their findings provide a demonstration of how to study all 2D materials and hold great promise for a broad range of applications including high-performance electronics, detection and emission of light, and chemical/bio-sensing. Nature Nanotechnology , week of April 27, 2015
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A Johns Hopkins engineer, supported by a major NIH grant, is leading a multi-institution team that wants to keep bacterial infections from dodging the dwindling arsenal of drugs that destroy the deadly microbes.
An experiment at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has revealed in atomic detail how a hypertension drug binds to a cellular receptor that plays a key role in regulating blood pressure. The results could help scientists design new drugs that better control blood pressure while limiting side effects.
As computers continue to shrink—moving from desks and laps to hands and wrists—memory has to become smaller, stable and more energy conscious. A group of researchers from Drexel University’s College of Engineering is trying to do just that with help from a new class of materials, whose magnetism can essentially be controlled by the flick of a switch.
Thanks to a collaboration with the Balgrist University Hospital and University of Pittsburgh, Empa is beginning to decode the mechanics of the lower vertebrae. Researchers would like be able to reveal how wear and tear comes about on vertebral bodies and spinal disks. This would also make choosing the appropriate therapy much easier.
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Scientists today demonstrated the potential for softwoods to process more easily into pulp and paper if engineered to incorporate a key feature of hardwoods. The finding, published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could improve the economics of the pulp, paper and biofuels industries and reduce those industries’ environmental impact.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have taken a significant step toward the development of a battery that could outperform the lithium-ion technology used in electric cars such as the Chevy Volt.
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The key to better cell phones and other rechargeable electronics may be in tiny "sandwiches" made of nanosheets, according to mechanical engineering research from Kansas State University.
By combining biocompatible light-capturing nanowire arrays with select bacterial populations, a potentially game-changing new artificial photosynthesis system offers a win/win situation for the environment: solar-powered green chemistry using sequestered carbon dioxide.
A team led by Shree K. Nayar, Computer Science Professor at Columbia Engineering, has invented a prototype video camera that is the first to be fully self-powered—it can produce an image each second, indefinitely, of a well-lit indoor scene. They designed a pixel that can not only measure incident light but also convert the incident light into electric power. The work will be presented at the International Conference on Computational Photography in Houston, 4/24-26
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A big barrier to building useful electronics with carbon nanotubes has always been the fact that when they're arrayed into films, a certain portion of them will act more like metals than semiconductors. But now a team of researchers have shown how to strip out the metallic carbon nanotubes from arrays using a relatively simple, scalable procedure that does not require expensive equipment. Their work is described this week in the Journal of Applied Physics.
Steven Keating's curiosity led to the detection of a baseball-sized brain tumor and sparked an interest into the potential of open health data to help himself and others.
Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: neurology, concussions, STEM jobs, Medical licensing, gun safety and youth, research ethics, and sleep apnea and blood pressure.
When football helmets collide, they produce an unmistakable sound. College student Brandon McChristian hopes his research of those sound waves produces a better understanding of the forces involved in those collisions and, perhaps one day, inexpensive sensing methods for a safer game.
Computational framework for optimizing traffic flow could be the beginning of a road revolution.
In much the same way that glucometers and pregnancy tests have revolutionized in-home diagnostic testing, researchers have identified a new biosensing platform that could be used to remotely detect and determine treatment options for HIV, E-coli, Staphylococcus aureas and other bacteria. Using this technology, they also have developed a phone app that could detect bacteria and disease in the blood using images from a cellphone that could easily be analyzed from anywhere in the world.
Argentina might seem a long way to go for an environmental engineer seeking to better understand land use in Wisconsin. But there are some surprising parallels between the two countries' histories of land use and ecohydrology that could help farmers and officials make better groundwater decisions.
Virginia Tech and Austral de Chile researchers will study the vibrations of wind turbines at a large Chilean wind farm along with health impacts on nearby residents. The goal is to make wind turbines more acceptable.
In the first study of its kind, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory quantitatively show that electric vehicles (EVs) will meet the daily travel needs of drivers longer than commonly assumed. They found that batteries that have lost 20 percent of their originally rated energy storage capacity can still meet the daily travel needs of more than 85 percent of U.S. drivers.
Computer scientists at Washington University in St. Louis tackled some big data about an important protein and discovered its connection in human history as well as clues about its role in complex neurological diseases.
Researchers at UT Dallas have created materials that exploit the electromechanical properties of specific nanofibers to stretch to up to seven times their length, while remaining tougher than Kevlar.
A team of chemists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has set the stage for more efficient and sturdier portable electronic devices and possibly a new generation of solar cells based on organic materials.
Gyroscopes are rarely found in nature, and scientists know of just one group of insects that have gyroscope-like sensors. But two University of Washington researchers have discovered that insect wings may act as gyroscopes, enabling insects to perform aerial acrobatics and maintain stability and direction.
The honeycomb structure of pristine graphene is beautiful, but a national group of researchers has discovered that if the graphene naturally has a few tiny holes in it, you have a proton-selective membrane that could lead to improved fuel cells.
Wei Tang, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at New Mexico State University, is taking a cue from nature to devise the next generation of integrated low-power, wearable micro-devices.
An atomically thin membrane with microscopically small holes may prove to be the basis for future hydrogen fuel cell, water filtering and desalination membranes, according to a group of 15 theorists and experimentalists, including three theoretical researchers from Penn State.
Drexel University researchers, along with colleagues at Aix-Marseille University in France, have discovered a high performance cathode material with great promise for use in next generation lithium-sulfur batteries that could one day be used to power mobile devices and electric cars.
In a scant five years of development, hybrid perovskite solar cells have attained power conversion efficiencies that took decades to achieve with the top-performing conventional materials, but scientists have lacked a clear understanding of the precise goings on at the molecular level. New findings by University of Utah physicists help fill that void.
Columbia engineers have invented a technology—full-duplex radio integrated circuits—that can be implemented in nanoscale CMOS to enable simultaneous transmission and reception at the same frequency in a wireless radio. Up to now, this has been thought to be impossible: transmitters and receivers either work at different times or at the same time but at different frequencies. Electrical Engineering Professor Harish Krishnaswamy’s team is the first to demonstrate an IC that can accomplish this.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientists have simplified the chemical synthesis of small molecules, eliminating a major bottleneck that limits the exploration of a class of compounds offering tremendous potential for medicine and technology.
Construction crews may someday use a plant molecule called lignin in their asphalt and sealant mixtures to help roads and roofs hold up better under various weather conditions and make them more environmentally friendly. The research will be presented today at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
Chlorine, a disinfectant used in most wastewater treatment plants, may be failing to eliminate pharmaceuticals from wastes. As a result, trace levels get discharged from the treatment plants into waterways. Now, scientists are reporting that chlorine treatment may encourage the formation of new, unknown antibiotics that could enter the environment, potentially contributing to the problem of antibiotic resistance. They will present the research at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
One person’s trash literally could become another’s high-tech treasure, according to researchers who have developed a way to turn discarded packing peanuts into components for rechargeable batteries that could outperform the ones we use currently. They will report on the process for the first time today at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
A plastic used in filters and tubing has an unusual trait: It can produce electricity when pulled or pressed. This ability has been used in small ways, but now researchers are coaxing fibers of it to make even more electricity for a wider range of applications from green energy to “artificial muscles.” They will report progress on a novel form of this plastic at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
Squid are the ultimate camouflage artists, blending almost flawlessly with their backgrounds so that unsuspecting prey can’t detect them. Using a protein that’s key to this process, scientists have designed “invisibility stickers” that could one day help soldiers disguise themselves, even when sought by enemies with tough-to-fool infrared cameras.
Increasing natural gas production could provide a bridge to a lower carbon future. However, methane that is leaked into the atmosphere from this process could speed global warming and climate change. And there is controversy over just how much methane is lost. Researchers today will present new methods to determine methane’s leakage rate and problems inherent in discovering and assessing leakage at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
The sweet taste and smell of antifreeze tempts children and animals to drink the poisonous substance, resulting in thousands of accidental poisonings in the United States every year. But today researchers will describe a new, nontoxic product based on a common food additive that could address this health issue and help the environment at the same time.
Iowa State University aerospace engineers are developing dual-rotor technology to improve the energy harvest of wind turbines.
Jim Edgar, university distinguished professor of chemical engineering, has received a patent for his process that can build better semiconductors and improve electronic devices.
In collaboration with Australian researchers, Argonne National Laboratory’s scientists are using decades of experience analyzing vehicle fuel injectors to study medical inhalers, hoping to unlock the secrets of the devices that are so well known to asthma sufferers everywhere.
Researchers in the Texas Analog Center of Excellence (TxACE) in the University’s Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science created an electronic device using CMOS technology that detects electromagnetic waves to create images at nearly 10 terahertz, which is the highest frequency for electronic devices. The device could make night vision and heat-based imaging affordable.
Iowa State University researchers are developing technologies – including heated pavements, electrically conductive concrete and nanostructured superhydrophobic coatings – to quickly and economically clear snow and ice from airport runways.
A team of Vanderbilt engineers is using magnetic force to design new and improved instruments for minimally invasive surgery. The use of magnetic actuation allows them to create tools that are more flexible and more powerful than conventional designs, which place the instruments on the end of long sticks.