Feature Channels: Engineering

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Columbia engineers have developed a new approach, opposite to climate models, to correct inaccuracies using a high-resolution atmospheric model that more precisely resolves clouds and convection and parameterizes the feedback between convection and atmospheric circulation. The new simulation strategy paves the way for better understanding of the water and carbon cycles in the Amazon, enabling researchers to learn more about the role of deforestation and climate change on the forest.” (PNAS Online Early Edition 8/31)

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Scott Shim, associate professor of design at Ohio State, is working to make everyday objects easier to maintain so they last longer and don’t end up in a landfill. His first such creation is an easy-to-clean hairbrush.

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Turning carbon dioxide from certain power plants into a more valuable chemical would reduce emissions while creating a revenue return. Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh derived a metal-free catalyst that does the trick without the need for expensive, extreme conditions.

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Researchers at Penn State have developed the first nano/micro-textured highly slippery surfaces able to outperform lotus leaf-inspired liquid repellent coatings, particularly in situations where the water is in the form of vapor or tiny droplets.

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In mere seconds, a system can identify and characterize a solid or liquid sample.

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With the ongoing extreme drought in California posing a threat to the state’s levee systems, there is an urgent need to invest in research regarding the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure under extreme climatic events. Mississippi State University Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Farshid Vahedifard and his coauthors warn that current drought conditions pose “a great risk to an already endangered levee system” in a letter published Aug. 21 in Science magazine.

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A decade after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, experts say the flooding that caused over 1,800 deaths and billions of dollars in property damage could have been prevented had the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers retained an external review board to double-check its flood-wall designs.

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Engineers and physicians at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have developed a hand-held, battery-powered device that quickly picks up vital signs from a patient’s lips and fingertip.

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This summer, DOE’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship program paired Brandon Bozeat with Christopher Eng, an engineer at the National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Eng enlisted the student’s help in designing the magnet assemblies that comprise NSLS-II’s undulators—devices that wiggle the electron beam to emit brighter x-rays.

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Michigan Tech researchers have streamlined a method to improve the splitting water into hydrogen molecules using visible light. Their work paves the way for more sustainable hydrogen fuels.

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Using physical chemistry methods to look at biology at the nanoscale, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researcher has invented a new technology to image single molecules with unprecedented spectral and spatial resolution, thus leading to the first “true-color” super-resolution microscope.

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Another barrier to commercially viable biofuels from sources other than corn has fallen with the engineering of a microbe that improves isobutanol yields by a factor of 10.

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The use of solar energy in the U.S. is growing, but panels on rooftops are still a rare sight. They cost thousands of dollars, and homeowners don’t recoup costs for years. But scientists may have a solution. At the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, they report the development of a unique, “green” antenna that could potentially double efficiencies of certain solar cells and make them more affordable.

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Highly efficient, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) could slash the world’s electricity consumption. They are already sold in stores, but are expensive, and many of them give off “harsh” light. But researchers will report today that they have developed a less expensive, more sustainable white LED with a warm glow. The scientists will discuss their research at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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Sunlight can be brutal. It wears down even the strongest structures, including rooftops and naval ships, and it heats up metal slides and bleachers until they’re too hot to use. To fend off damage and heat, scientists have developed an environmentally friendly paint out of glass that bounces sunlight off metal surfaces — keeping them cool and durable. The researchers present their work at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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Cross contamination in commercial processing facilities that prepare spinach and other leafy greens for the market can make people sick. But researchers are reporting a new, easy-to-implement method that could eliminate or reduce such incidences. The scientists will present their work at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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A new scientific instrument at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory promises to capture some of nature’s speediest processes. It uses a method known as ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) and can reveal motions of electrons and atomic nuclei within molecules that take place in less than a tenth of a trillionth of a second – information that will benefit groundbreaking research in materials science, chemistry and biology.

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Intelligent agent-based software to be showcased at Smithsonian; Supercomputer speeding design, deployment of lightweight powertrain materials; ORNL process produces hydrogen from switchgrass; Sampling probe system identifies bioactive compounds in fungi; ORNL technique could accelerate advances in materials science

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After debuting the world’s first solar air battery last fall, researchers at The Ohio State University have now reached a new milestone. In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, they report that their patent-pending design—which combines a solar cell and a battery into a single device—now achieves a 20 percent energy savings over traditional lithium-iodine batteries.

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In an unprecedented effort to understand the connections between mountain water supply and urban demand, more than 50 researchers from 22 different lab groups and seven universities, including the University of Utah, gathered to study the Red Butte Creek watershed in a collaborative, three-day venture.

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There are plenty of engineering jobs in the Asia-Pacific, with a big push to diversification into design, manufacturing and developing a cybersecurity workforce in India.

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Researchers from Berkeley Lab and Columbia University have created the world’s highest-performance single-molecule diode. Development of a functional single-molecule diode is a major pursuit of the electronics industry.

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Carbon nanotube speakers play music using heat and two Michigan Tech graduate students received an award recently for their work improving the technology.

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NASA has awarded grants to a University of Arkansas-affiliated technology firm to design complex integrated circuits that can operate on the surface of Venus, where the temperature can reach 500 degrees Celsius.

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A team led by Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used the OLCF’s Titan to achieve a milestone in the field of biomolecular simulation, modeling a complete photosynthetic organelle of the bacteria Rhodobacter sphaeroides in atomic detail. The project, a 100-million atom spherical chromatophore, is the first of its kind, giving scientists a system-level understanding of a fundamental biological process based on all-atom precision.

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The Faculty of Engineering at National University of Singapore (NUS Engineering), in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), has launched the Centre for Next Generation Logistics today. The virtual Centre will work closely with government agencies and the industry to perform cutting-edge research in logistics and supply chain systems for translation into innovations and commercialisation to achieve transformative economic and societal impact.

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A Vanderbilt research team has successfully created a mechanical wrist less than 1/16th of an inch thick -- small enough to use in needlescopic surgery, the least invasive form of minimally invasive surgery.

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A new fabrication technique that produces platinum hollow nanocages with ultra-thin walls could dramatically reduce the amount of the costly metal needed to provide catalytic activity in such applications as fuel cells.

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A 3D printed aircraft has successfully launched off the front of a Royal Navy warship and landed safely on a Dorset beach.

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For the first time, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have produced arrays of semiconductor junctions in arbitrary patterns within a single, nanometer-thick semiconductor crystal.

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Graphene has been studied intensively for its unique properties, and now researchers have developed a microelectronics-compatible method to grow it and have synthesized wafer-scale, high-quality graphene on silicon substrates. The method is based on an ion implantation technique, a process in which ions are accelerated under an electrical field and smashed into a semiconductor. In Applied Physics Letters, the researchers describe their work, which takes graphene a step closer to commercial applications in silicon microelectronics.

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Other topics include genetics to predict prostate cancer, Facebook and body image, bioengineered immune cell response, and more...

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Twelve finalists have been picked to invent the heir to Angus MacGyver — the 1980s television hero who inspired a generation of engineers by foiling criminals with household items like cooking oil, a shop vac or a tube sock. Only this time the engineering heroine will be a woman.

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A research team out of Michigan Tech has found a way to solve one of the biggest challenges of making metamaterials. Their optical work is a big step towards creating a "perfect lens".

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A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health has generated a novel system for growing cardiac tissue from undifferentiated stem cells on a culture plate. This heart on a chip is a miniature physiologic system that could be used to model early heart development and screen drugs prescribed during pregnancy. Researchers from the University of California (UC) Berkeley; the Gladstone Institutes, in San Francisco; and UC San Francisco, reported their work in the July 14, 2015, online issue of Nature Communications.

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ORNL study demonstrates economic value of variable flow heat pumps; New catalyst provides potential solution to meet emissions challenges; ORNL, UK researchers working to develop cleaner crude oil; New climate data easily accessed at Data.gov

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A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has found that blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) have strong antibacterial effect on major foodborne pathogens, and are most effective when in cold temperatures (between 4°C and 15°C) and mildly acidic conditions of around pH 4.5. This opens up novel possibilities of using blue LEDs as a chemical-free food preservation method.

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North Carolina State University researchers have developed an effective and environmentally benign method to combat bacteria by engineering nanoscale particles that add the antimicrobial potency of silver to a core of lignin, a ubiquitous substance found in all plant cells. The findings introduce ideas for better, greener and safer nanotechnology and could lead to enhanced efficiency of antimicrobial products used in agriculture and personal care.

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A new material design tested in experiments at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory could make low-cost solar panels far more efficient by greatly enhancing their ability to collect the sun’s energy and release it as electricity.

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Future distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment levels are highly sensitive to retail electricity rate design, according to a newly released report by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The study also explores the feedback effects between retail electricity rates and PV deployment, and suggests that increased solar deployment can lead to changes in PV compensation levels that either accelerate or dampen further deployment.

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Hybrid rocket fuel research by a University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) mechanical engineering doctoral student could hasten the day when a simpler, safer hybrid engine propels space missions.

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When electrons move in a phosphorus transistor, they do so only in two dimensions, according to a study published in Nature Communications . The finding suggests that black phosphorus could help engineers surmount one of the big challenges for future electronics: designing energy-efficient transistors.

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Imagine a fleet of driverless taxis roaming your city, ready to pick you up and take you to your destination at a moment’s notice. While this may seem fantastical, it may be only a matter of time before it becomes reality. And according to a new study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, such a system would both be cost-effective and greatly reduce per-mile emissions of greenhouse gases.

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A new type of sensor, that is much faster than competing technologies used to detect and identify hidden objects, has been developed by scientists at the University of Warwick.

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Engineers and imagers from the University of Warwick’s Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) and anatomists from Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick are helping Art historians from the University of Cambridge have been working together to try to understand how the two mysterious Renaissance bronzes were made and why they look the way they do by making accurate replicas of the originals. The latest technology-neutron imaging, XRF analysis, 360 degree laser scanning, 3D printing, and real-time x-ray videography - has been involved in this Renaissance ‘whodunnit’.

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Other topics include memories and protein, physics and gas mileage, agriculture and food safety, vaccine for Dengue, retinoblastoma proteins in cancer progression, and more.

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The next big thing in wearable technology may show up right inside your mouth.

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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory advanced ngle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to help study the electronic properties of new materials.

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Researchers at the University of Georgia College of Engineering are helping NASA determine if a key rocket component can withstand the rigors of the next generation of space flight. The parts in question—bellows expansion joints—serve several functions in rocket propulsion system.

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A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers and a collaborator from China have developed a nanogenerator that harvests energy from a car's rolling tire friction.