A critical instrument on a mission to the sun is being tested after development by a partnership between The University of Alabama in Huntsville, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO).
Cornell bioengineers and physicians have created an artificial ear – using 3-D printing and injectable molds – that looks and acts like a natural ear, giving new hope to thousands of children born with a congenital deformity called microtia.
The National Science Foundation has a Physics of Living program that funds research projects at the interface of biology, mathematical modeling, physics, and engineering. NSF has awarded Sunghwan Jung, principal investigator, along with Jake Socha, both assistant professors of engineering science and mechanics, and Pavlos Vlachos, professor of mechanical engineering, a little over a half a million dollars to investigate the water entry and exit problems that are apparent in engineering mechanics based on a better understanding of biology. The darting ability of lizards and frogs in water as well as dogs lapping the liquid will be among the animals studied.
University of Utah engineers demonstrated it is feasible to build the first organic materials that conduct electricity on their edges, but act as an insulator inside. These materials, called organic topological insulators, could shuttle information at the speed of light in quantum computers and other high-speed electronic devices.
A new platform to support and extend the viability of proteins for scientific study has been developed through work done as part of the doctoral studies of a recent University of Alabama in Huntsville doctoral graduate.
"While the finding that safety benefits from roadway lighting are highly related to the visibility improvements lighting provides is not novel nor unexpected, evidence for this direct link has been scarce in the literature," said Rea. "Our models provide a tool that transportation agencies can begin using now to not only allocate lighting more efficiently, but to design lighting more effectively."
In New Jersey, along Hurricane Sandy's path of destruction, Drexel engineers are using infrared and ultraviolet imaging technology and acoustic emission testing combined with low-altitude aircraft photography to generate detailed maps for recovery workers to triage their efforts.
Surrounded by mining, the mountainous region of Potosi, Bolivia is plagued by extensive environmental contamination from past and current mining operations.
Researchers have discovered a technique to remove pollutants from water that requires minimal labor costs and is powered by nature itself.
By simulating 25,000 generations of evolution within computers, Cornell University engineering and robotics researchers have discovered why biological networks tend to be organized as modules – a finding that will lead to a deeper understanding of the evolution of complexity.
Scientists at ASU are celebrating their recent success on the path to understanding what makes the fiber that spiders spin – weight for weight – at least five times as strong as piano wire.
A new way of making crystalline silicon, developed by U-M researchers, could make this crucial ingredient of computers and solar cells much cheaper and greener.
It weighs half as much as a sports car, and turns on a dime—so its no surprise that the electric car being developed at Ohio State University needs an exceptional traction and motion control system to keep it on the road.
A nanoscale coating that's at least 95 percent air repels the broadest range of liquids of any material in its class, causing them to bounce off the treated surface, according to the University of Michigan engineering researchers who developed it.
Engineers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are developing an airborne testing capability for sensors, communications devices and other payloads. Their aerial test bed is known as the GTRI Airborne Unmanned Sensor System (GAUSS).
In a small study, researchers reported increased healthy tissue growth after surgical repair of damaged cartilage if they put a “hydrogel” scaffolding into the wound to support and nourish the healing process. The squishy hydrogel material was implanted in 15 patients during standard microfracture surgery, in which tiny holes are punched in a bone near the injured cartilage. The holes stimulate patients’ own specialized stem cells to emerge from bone marrow and grow new cartilage atop the bone.
Iowa State computer and electrical engineers are developing computing tools to help biologists analyze all the data produced by today's research instruments.
Researchers at the universities of Chicago and Wisconsin-Madison raise the possibility of designing ultrastable glasses at the molecular level via a vapor-deposition process. Such glasses could find potential applications in the production of stronger metals and in faster-acting pharmaceuticals.
Columbia Engineering researchers have found vulnerabilities in Cisco VoIP telephones, recently demonstrating how they can insert malicious code into a Cisco VoIP phone (any of the 14 Cisco Unified IP Phone models) and start eavesdropping on private conversations—not just on the phone but also in the phone’s surroundings—from anywhere in the world.
A carbon-nanotube-coated lens that converts light to sound can focus high-pressure sound waves to finer points than ever before. The University of Michigan engineering researchers who developed the new therapeutic ultrasound approach say it could lead to an invisible knife for noninvasive surgery.
Iowa State University's Hui Hu is using wind tunnel and imaging tests to learn the aerodynamics that allow dragonflies and bats to get off the ground in the slow-speed, high-drag conditions of small-scale flight.
Students in, of all things, a robotics class use engineering skills and advice from a chef to rig up devices to more accurately control cooking temperatures.
John E. Taylor, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, directs the Network Dynamics Lab that investigates the impact of globalization dynamics on design and construction project performance.
Tufts University School of Engineering researchers have demonstrated silk-based implantable optics that offer significant improvement in tissue imaging while simultaneously enabling photo thermal therapy, administering drugs and monitoring drug delivery. The devices also lend themselves to a variety of other biomedical functions.
To help planes fly safely through cold, wet, and icy conditions, a team of Japanese scientists has developed a new super water-repellent surface that can prevent ice from forming in these harsh atmospheric conditions. Unlike current inflight anti-icing techniques, the researchers envision applying this new anti-icing method to an entire aircraft like a coat of paint.
University of Utah electrical engineering professor Florian Solzbacher is developing products from technologies that assist in finding new approaches for treating nervous system disorders such as blindness, deafness, Parkinson’s and epilepsy, while another set of clients is using them to control prosthetic limbs. Florian's startup companies Blackrock Microsystems and Blackrock NeuroMed moving into New $11 million facility in the University of Utah's Research Park.
A technology using a waste product from the coconut processing industry, called cocopeat, improves wastewater treatment in poor countries, according to testing conducted by researchers at RTI International.
It looks like Mother Nature was wasting her time with a multimillion-year process to produce crude oil. Michigan Engineering researchers can "pressure-cook" algae for as little as a minute and transform an unprecedented 65 percent of the green slime into biocrude.
University of Delaware joins research team teaching robots to respond in disaster emergencies, funded by U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. UD's group will teach a robot to get into a vehicle and drive it.
Tufts engineer participate in a study to assess how buildings made with reinforced concrete frames and masonry infill walls hold up during an earthquake. Such buildings are vulnerable to serious damage.
Students at The University of Alabama in Huntsville have designed a tool that could revolutionize new ways of using electronic devices with just one hand. It’s called a Gauntlet Keyboard, a glove device that functions as a wireless keyboard.
System biologists have teamed up with mechanical engineers from UT Dallas to conduct cell research that provides information that may one day be used to engineer organs.
Engineers at the University of Texas at Dallas have used advanced techniques to make the material graphene small enough to read DNA. Shrinking the size of the graphene pore to less than one nanometer opens the possibility of graphene as a low-cost tool to sequence DNA.
Transportation practices tend to be more environmentally friendly in wealthier metropolitan areas located within states that mandate comprehensive planning, new research suggests.
Virginia Tech researchers extracted 1,396 incidents of rear-end collisions from a national database and looked at them on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the intelligent vehicle systems being studied would have been called into play and, if so, how they would have helped. The research showed that 7.7 percent of crashes would be prevented by use of all three systems – warning, assisted braking, and autonomous braking.
Lightweight and stiff as a board, a plastic foam material is being used to protect Utah’s natural gas pipelines from rupturing during earthquakes, thanks to help from a University of Utah engineer.
The explosive PETN has been around for a century and is used by everyone from miners to the military, but it took new research by Sandia National Laboratories to begin to discover key mechanisms behind what causes it to fail at small scales.
As demand increases for lithium, the essential element in batteries for everything from cameras to automobiles, a researcher at Missouri University of Science and Technology is studying potential disruptions to the long-term supply chain the world’s lightest metal.
In many of the nation’s traffic lights, light-emitting diodes or LEDs with their brighter light and longer life have replaced standard bulbs. But knowing when to replace the signal heads has remained a guessing game, says Dr. Suzanna Long, assistant professor of engineering management and systems engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology. That’s because LED traffic lights don’t burn out – they just lose brightness over time.
Civil engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute were part of an international research team that collapsed a full-scale dike this week in the Netherlands. The test dike was embedded with advanced sensors and traditional measurement instruments, and results of the study are expected to help validate powerful new technologies for monitoring the health of aging flood-control infrastructure.
Jason Martin, Brad Chassee and Tony Rainoldi, the founders of ArchPatent and graduates of The University of Alabama in Huntsville, have found an easy, low-cost way to navigate the enormous database of patent information or be confident that you were identifying the most important results.
In August 2007, the I-35W Bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The collapse was attributed to a design deficiency that resulted in a gusset plate failing during ongoing construction work.
Now, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Delaware is developing a novel structural health monitoring system that could avert such disasters in the future.
Can a device formerly used to test nuclear weapons effects find a new life in rocket propulsion research? That is the question in which a graduate student at The University of Alabama in Huntsville seeks an answer.
A research team at the University of Iowa has engineered a better design for hip implants for obese patients. The team learned that thigh size is a reason why hip implants fail, and why it contributes to an increased rate of failure for the morbidly obese. Results are published in the journal Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research.