Feature Channels: Engineering

• share
• favorite_border

A research professor gives a “shout out” to comedian Stephen Colbert. His motivation? Colbert previously referred to mathematical equations as the devil’s sentences and an unnatural commingling of letters and numbers – the worst being the quadratic equation – an infernal salad of numbers, letters and symbols. In response, the professor suggests that mathematics education needs to be enlivened so that students will recognize that this discipline is not merely a necessary evil, but a vibrant, exciting and fascinating subject.

• share
• favorite_border

Following a terrorist bombing, can the bomb maker be identified by skin proteins left on the bomb components they handled? To address this question, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) personnel from Weapons Complex Integration and Global Security Forensic Science and Biosecurity Centers subjected notional bomb components handled by LLNL volunteers to contained precision explosions. A small team of biology and explosives subject matter experts combined their knowledge and experience to successfully carry out a series of 26 confined detonations over a three-day period.

• share
• favorite_border

When NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover touches down on the surface of Mars on Feb. 18, a bit of New Mexico will land along with it, thanks to work done at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

• share
• favorite_border

Research into 3D bioprinting has grown rapidly in recent years as scientists seek to re-create the structure and function of complex biological systems from human tissues to entire organs. In APL Bioengineering, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University provide perspective on the Freefrom Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels 3D bioprinting approach, which solves the issue of gravity and distortion by printing within a yield-stress support bath that holds the bioinks in place until they are cured.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of researchers from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Case School of Engineering and Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center is developing a blood-test device as an early warning system to help prevent pressure injuries.

• share
• favorite_border

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a soft, stretchy skin patch that can be worn on the neck to continuously track blood pressure and heart rate while measuring the wearer’s levels of glucose as well as lactate, alcohol or caffeine. This one patch performs as well as commercial monitoring devices such as a blood pressure cuff, blood lactate meter, glucometer and breathalyzer.

• share
• favorite_border

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, doctors and researchers rushed to find effective treatments.

• share
• favorite_border

ORNL story tips: Modeling COVID, permafrost lost and taking the heat

• share
• favorite_border

As the COVID-19 death toll mounts and the world hangs its hopes on effective vaccines, what else can we do to save lives in this pandemic? In UniSA’s case, design world-first technology that combines engineering, drones, cameras, and artificial intelligence to monitor people’s vital health signs remotely. In 2020 the University of South Australia joined forces with the world’s oldest commercial drone manufacturer, Draganfly Inc, to develop technology which remotely detects the key symptoms of COVID-19 – breathing and heart rates, temperature, and blood oxygen levels. Within months, the technology had moved from drones to security cameras and kiosks, scanning vital health signs in 15 seconds and adding social distancing software to the mix. In September 2020, Alabama State University became the first higher education institution in the world to use the technology to spot COVID-19 symptoms in its staff and students and enforce social distancing, ensuring they had one of the l

• share
• favorite_border

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” relies on water, sand and other chemicals to clear the way for engineers to remove oil or gas from shale — porous rocks below the ground.Engineers know what they are pumping into the ground, but they haven’t understood why they have found certain highly dangerous compounds in flowback — the mixture of water, salt and other chemicals that flows back to the surface after being pumped through the shale.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have produced a groundbreaking new reference genome for the Asian malaria vector mosquito Anopheles stephensi. The achievement will help scientists engineer advanced forms of defense against malaria transmission, including targeted CRISPR and gene drive-based strategies.

• share
• favorite_border

Theodore (Ted) S. Rappaport, the David Lee/Ernst Weber Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the founding director of the research center was elected.

• share
• favorite_border

A holy grail for orthopedic research is a method for not only creating artificial bone tissue that precisely matches the real thing, but does so in such microscopic detail that it includes tiny structures potentially important for stem cell differentiation, which is key to bone regeneration.

• share
• favorite_border

Saint Louis University was awarded a $500,000 grant from the Clare Boothe Luce program of the Henry Luce Foundation to create a tenure-track assistant professor position in Robotics and Autonomous Systems for a new, early-career, female faculty member within Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology.

• share
• favorite_border

The center will build on UCLA’s efforts in precision health to leverage large data sets and genomic technologies such as CRISPR engineering and develop individually targeted treatments for genetic disorders such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson's and autism.

• share
• favorite_border

Case Western Reserve University chemical engineer and researcher Rohan Akolkar has been elected as a Senior Member of The National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Michigan Tech engineers look into the untapped potential of parking lots in a study that investigates the energy-related benefits of developing charging stations powered with solar canopies built into the parking infrastructure of large-scale retailers like Walmart.

• share
• favorite_border

Jonathan Dordick, the Howard P. Isermann ’42 Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), for his “contributions to methods for rapidly screening drug efficacy and toxicity, and biocatalytic technologies for improving human health.”

• share
• favorite_border

New piezoelectric material is effective at elevated temperatures, along with demonstrating a surprisingly high level of electric production. This holds promise for a range of new uses including space exploration.

• share
• favorite_border

Individually, California blackworms live an unremarkable life eating microorganisms in ponds and serving as tropical fish food for aquarium enthusiasts. But together, tens, hundreds, or thousands of the centimeter-long creatures can collaborate to form a “worm blob,” a shape-shifting living liquid that collectively protects its members from drying out and helps them escape threats such as excessive heat.

• share
• favorite_border

The Electrochemical Society fosters full and equal access to, and participation in, science for women and girls. To mark February 11—designated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science by the United Nations—the Society salutes women’s critical role in advancing electrochemistry and solid state science and related technologies—and the Society.

• share
• favorite_border

Engineers and technicians in the UK have started production of key piece of equipment for a major international science experiment. The UK government has invested £65million in the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. As part of the investment, the UK is delivering a series of vital detector components built at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Daresbury Laboratory.

• share
• favorite_border

Advances in the fields of biomaterials and nanotechnology could lead to big breakthroughs in the fight against dangerous viruses like the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. In APL Bioengineering, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science describe possibilities being explored by scientists, combining biomaterials and nanotechnology, to make vaccines more effective and build surfaces that could fight and kill viruses on their own.

• share
• favorite_border

With COVID-19 vaccines in reach, city officials, business administrators, and high-rise building managers are planning how to safely open offices as people come back to work. Columbia engineers have been exploring solutions to this problem, with real-world data and context provided by the Office of the Mayor of New York City. They used mathematical modeling and epidemiological principles to design interventions for queuing safely in elevators during a pandemic, without having to program any elevators.

• share
• favorite_border

Six groups that included seventeen scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory were recent recipients of the DOE’s 2020 Secretary of Energy’s Honor Awards.

• share
• favorite_border

ATPESC provides in-depth training on using supercomputers, including next-generation exascale systems, to facilitate breakthrough science and engineering.

• share
• favorite_border

Cornell University researchers have created a low-cost method for soft, deformable robots to detect a range of physical interactions, from pats to punches to hugs, without relying on touch at all. Instead, a USB camera located inside the robot captures the shadow movements of hand gestures on the robot’s skin and classifies them with machine-learning software.

• share
• favorite_border

Systems designed to detect deepfakes --videos that manipulate real-life footage via artificial intelligence--can be deceived, computer scientists showed for the first time at the WACV 2021 conference which took place online Jan. 5 to 9, 2021.

• share
• favorite_border

We've all felt stressed at some point, whether in our personal or professional lives or in response to exceptional circumstances like the COVID-19 pandemic.

• share
• favorite_border

Thirty funded postdoctoral scholarships announced by Queen’s University Belfast are set to provide a unique opportunity to explore the challenges of Artificial intelligence (AI) for every area of science and society.

• share
• favorite_border

New research carried out by City data scientist, Dr Andrea Baronchelli, and colleagues, into the dark web marketplace (DWM) trade in products related to COVID-19, has revealed the need for the continuous monitoring of dark web marketplaces (DWMs), especially in light of the current shortage and availability of coronavirus vaccines.

• share
• favorite_border

A University of Washington team created Audeo, a system that can generate music using only visual cues of someone playing the piano.

• share
• favorite_border

Case Western Reserve University researchers who developed a portable sensor to assess the clotting ability of a person’s blood are working with the U.S. Navy to develop a rugged version of the device to detect problems with blood coagulation in cases of traumatic injury and preserve critical blood supplies.

• share
• favorite_border

The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation today announced 48 finalists for the 2021 Hertz Fellowship in applied science, mathematics, and engineering.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Missouri S&T are working to make telemedicine more successful by creating an oxygen-sensing patch printed on a flexible, disposable bandage. It could enable remote monitoring for the early detection of illnesses such as pressure ulcers, allowing for immediate treatment.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from Cornell and Northwestern University have devised a new method of using extracts derived from bioengineered bacteria to create vaccines that protect against life-threatening infections caused by pathogenic bacteria.

• share
• favorite_border

Wind energy scientists at Cornell University have released a new global wind atlas – a digital compendium filled with documented extreme wind speeds for all parts of the world – to help engineers select the turbines in any given region and accelerate the development of sustainable energy.

• share
• favorite_border

Wearable athletic performance-analysis technology developed by a Cornell University engineering startup has won the sixth annual NFL 1st & Future competition, sponsored by the National Football League.

• share
• favorite_border

A new, free, online course, AI Ethics: Global Perspectives, which started this week, designed for a global audience, seeks to bring together diverse perspectives from the field of ethical AI, to raise awareness and help institutions work towards more responsible use.

• share
• favorite_border

Home owners, especially those staying in noisy districts, can look forward to greater living comfort with a new invention by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) School of Design and Environment (SDE) that reduces outdoor noise and improves indoor ventilation. Called the Acoustic Friendly Ventilation Window (AFVW), this novel system cuts environment noise levels by 26 decibels (dB), which is approximately more than a fourfold reduction in terms of a human’s perception of loudness. It can also achieve four times better ventilation than an open conventional window.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have developed a prototype backpack that makes loads feel about 20% lighter and harvests energy from human movement to power small electronics.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have discovered that a standard water treatment technique, called iron (III) coagulation, and its electrically driven counterpart, iron (0) electrocoagulation, can efficiently remove and inactivate a model enveloped virus.

• share
• favorite_border

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have developed a new method for 3D printing living microbes in controlled patterns, expanding the potential for using engineered bacteria to recover rare-earth metals, clean wastewater, detect uranium and more.

• share
• favorite_border

Argonne scientists have hit upon fluorescence as a way to shed light on what's happening with flow batteries as they operate.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists are hoping advances in cancer research could lead to a day when a patient's own immune system could be used to fight and destroy a wide range of tumors. Cancer immunotherapy has some remarkable successes, but its effectiveness has been limited to a relatively small handful of cancers. In APL Bioengineering, researchers describe how advances in engineering models of tumors can greatly expand cancer immunotherapy's effectiveness to a wider range of cancers.

• share
• favorite_border

The Electrochemical Society (ECS) is proud to congratulate the 2021 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering winners, Isamu Akasaki, Shuji Nakamura, Nick Holonyak, Jr., M. George Craford, and Russell Dupuis. The 2021 prize acknowledges their contributions from the initial creation and development of LED lighting its applications.

• share
• favorite_border

The success of NASA’s future plans to explore and inhabit the moon may depend in part on research by university students, including a team of seven from Missouri University of Science and Technology who have won a grant from the space agency to develop a way to remove lunar dust from power-producing solar cells.The Missouri S&T team is one of seven university-affiliated groups to be selected for funding through NASA’s Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge.

• share
• favorite_border

The honor of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to those who developed lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.

• share
• favorite_border

Anup Singh has been selected as associate director for Engineering at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Director Bill Goldstein announced the selection Feb. 1.