Engineering
press releases.

Engineering7 Feb 2024

Rice’s James Tour named to National Academy of Engineering

HOUSTON – (Feb. 6, 2024) – Rice University chemist James Tour was named to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), one of the highest professional distinctions accorded “in recognition of distinguished contributions” to the field. Tour, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor, professor of chemistry and of materials science and nanoengineering and of computer science, was recognized for his research on the “synthesis, fabrication, properties, applications and commercialization of novel forms ...

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Engineering7 Feb 2024

Early drawing and building skills linked to enhanced education and behaviour in children

Fine motor skills in young children are linked to better GCSE scores and fewer behavioural problems in childhood and adolescence, according to a new study from the University of Surrey and Birkbeck, University of London. The authors suggest that preschool fine motor skills, including drawing, folding paper and block building, may play an important role in the pathway between infancy and later educational and behavioural outcomes in primary and secondary school. The study showed that fine motor skills ...

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Engineering6 Feb 2024

Structural isomerization of individual molecules using a scanning tunneling microscope probe

1. An international research team led by NIMS, the Osaka University Graduate School of Science and the Kanazawa University Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI) has succeeded for the first time in controlling the chirality of individual molecules through structural isomerization. The team also succeeded in synthesizing highly reactive diradicals with two unpaired electrons. These achievements were made using a scanning tunneling microscope probe at low temperatures. 2. It is usually quite challenging to control the chirality of individual molecular units and synthesize extremely reactive diradicals in organic chemistry, preventing ...

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Engineering5 Feb 2024

Magnesium protects tantalum, a promising material for making qubits

UPTON, NY—Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered that adding a layer of magnesium improves the properties of tantalum, a superconducting material that shows great promise for building qubits, the basis of quantum computers. As described in a paper just published in the journal Advanced Materials, a thin layer of magnesium keeps tantalum from oxidizing, improves its purity, and raises the temperature at which it operates as a superconductor. All three may increase tantalum’s ability ...

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Engineering1 Feb 2024

A positive spin—electrospinning and electrospraying synergism for the nanomaterials industry

Combining these two twins-tech, electrospinning and electrospraying, to fabricate novel nanomaterials is an urgent area of research for materials scientists and biomedical engineers, according to a new paper by Professor Hu Jinlian of City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) published in Matter, a highly respected monthly journal encompassing materials science, from nano to macro, and from fundamentals to application. The electrospinning and electrospraying synergism (ESS) can positively impact diverse sectors, from bioengineering and ...

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Engineering1 Feb 2024

Rice research unveils key dynamics of 2D nanomaterials with view to larger-scale production

HOUSTON – (Feb. 1, 2024) – A team of Rice University researchers mapped out how flecks of 2D materials move in liquid ⎯ knowledge that could help scientists assemble macroscopic-scale materials with the same useful properties as their 2D counterparts. “Two-dimensional nanomaterials are extremely thin ⎯ only several atoms thick ⎯ sheet-shaped materials,” said Utana Umezaki, a Rice graduate student who is a lead author on a study published in ACS Nano. “They behave very differently from materials we’re used to in daily life and can have really useful properties: They can withstand a lot of ...

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Engineering1 Feb 2024

Powering the future: New material developed for better supercapacitor applications

Supercapacitors, also known as ultracapacitors or electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs), are advanced energy storage devices with unique characteristics. Unlike traditional batteries, supercapacitors store energy through the electrostatic separation of charges at the interface between an electrolyte and a high-surface-area electrode. This mechanism allows for rapid energy storage and release, enabling supercapacitors to deliver high power bursts and exhibit exceptional cycle life. Supercapacitors play a pivotal role in the realm of renewable energy and environmental conservation. In the context of renewable energy, supercapacitors serve as crucial components ...

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Engineering31 Jan 2024

Engineers develop hack to make automotive radar hallucinate

DURHAM, N.C. – A black sedan cruises silently down a quiet suburban road, driver humming Christmas carols quietly while the car’s autopilot handles the driving. Suddenly, red flashing lights and audible warnings blare to life, snapping the driver from their peaceful reprieve. They look at the dashboard screen and see the outline of a car speeding toward them for a head-on collision, yet the headlights reveal nothing ahead through the windshield. Despite the incongruity, the car’s autopilot grabs control and swerves into a ditch. Exasperated, the driver looks around the vicinity, ...

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Engineering31 Jan 2024

Childhood vitamin D deficiency was likely prevalent during industrialization in England

Evidence from teeth reveals that vitamin D deficiency during childhood was likely a major issue in industrialized England, according to a study published January 31, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Anne Marie Snoddy of the University of Otago, New Zealand and colleagues. The 18th and 19th centuries AD were a period of industrialization and urbanization in England. This was also a time of increasing incidence of health issues like vitamin D deficiency (VDD) and associated conditions like rickets, potentially linked to changing social practices ...

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Engineering31 Jan 2024

Pedestrian injuries from falls versus motor vehicle collisions: are we lacking critical policy and interventions?

January 31, 2024—Using Emergency Medical Services (EMS) data, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health compared the national burden of pedestrian injuries from motor vehicles to that of pedestrian falls occurring on streets and sidewalks and found that the probability of a pedestrian suffering a severe injury is higher for motor vehicle collisions as compared to falls. Yet, the public health burden of the number of pedestrians injured from a fall – severe or otherwise - is significantly higher compared to the number of pedestrians injured by a motor ...

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Engineering31 Jan 2024

Innovation on the design, construction, and experiments of OMEGA-based SSPS prototype: The Sun-Chasing Project

Space solar power satellite (SSPS) is a tremendous energy system that collects and converts solar power to electric power in space, and then transmits the electric power to earth, spacecraft, or moving targets via microwave. It is regarded as one of the most potential ways to solve the problem of energy crisis. In 2022, a team of researchers from Xidian University in China has completed a full-link and full-system ground demonstration and verification system for an SSPS, named the Sun-Chasing Project. Their study, recently published in Engineering, introduces the design concept of OMEGA 2.0 SSPS, the related key technologies, and the development of ground demonstration ...

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Engineering30 Jan 2024

Structural color ink: Printable, non-iridescent and lightweight

A new way of creating color uses the scattering of light of specific wavelengths around tiny, almost perfectly round silicon crystals. This Kobe University development enables non-fading structural colors that do not depend on the viewing angle and can be printed. The material has a low environmental and biological impact and can be applied extremely thinly, promising significant weight improvements over conventional paints. An object has color when light of a specific wavelength is reflected. With traditional pigments, this happens by molecules absorbing other colors from white light, but over time this interaction makes the molecules degrade and the color fades. ...

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Engineering29 Jan 2024

Benchtop test quickly identifies extremely impact-resistant materials

CAMBRIDGE, MA – An intricate, honeycomb-like structure of struts and beams could withstand a supersonic impact better than a solid slab of the same material. What’s more, the specific structure matters, with some being more resilient to impacts than others. That’s what MIT engineers are finding in experiments with microscopic metamaterials — materials that are intentionally printed, assembled, or otherwise engineered with microscopic architectures that give the overall material exceptional properties. In a study appearing today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the engineers report on a new way ...

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Engineering29 Jan 2024

UChicago engineer driving key role in Great Lakes water transformation

The Chicago-based Great Lakes ReNEW coalition has been awarded one of the largest, if not the largest, climate awards in the city’s history – up to $160 million over 10 years as one of the inaugural U.S. National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines. Authorized in the “CHIPS and Science Act of 2022,” the NSF Engines program is designed to support the development of diverse regional coalitions of universities, local governments, the private sector and nonprofits to create solutions to today’s pressing issues. Selected from an initial pool of more ...

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Engineering27 Jan 2024

To stick or not to stick? Mixed sand columns illuminate design of better materials

Tokyo, Japan – Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have been studying the strength and toughness of sand columns made of a mixture of sticky and non-sticky grains. They have uncovered the mechanism behind how the strength changes as grains are mixed in different ratios, and how a mixture can help keep the column more resilient to deformation. Non-sticky grains are also easily replaceable with other materials, enabling the design of stronger, tougher, functional matter. Granular matter consists of vast numbers of small grains, like sand and powders. Such grains can be made to stick to each other, yielding strong materials ...

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Engineering25 Jan 2024

A building rising from the hilltop—Three topographical approaches to building in a landscape

This essay writes on a building project in the remote southwestern China that is built in uninhabited and is inspired and informed by its landscape context. The essay discusses how an extraordinary building project reacts to three different dimensions about landscape–architecture—a natural terrain being manipulated and recast. A small building needs to find its precise connecting point to a much larger historical and environmental context. A practical project needs to reach a balance between architectural pursuits and engineering concerns. Initially, artificial works might be isolated from and in conflict with the terrain, which requires architectural approaches ...

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Engineering24 Jan 2024

Researchers add a ‘twist’ to classical material design

Researchers with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University and the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) grew a twisted multilayer crystal structure for the first time and measured the structure’s key properties. The twisted structure could help researchers develop next-generation materials for solar cells, quantum computers, lasers and other devices. “This structure is something that we have not seen before – it was a huge surprise to me,” said Yi Cui, a professor at Stanford and SLAC and paper co-author. “A new quantum electronic property could appear ...

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Engineering24 Jan 2024

Off-road autonomy: U-M's Automotive Research Center funded with $100 million through 2028

Images The U.S. Army has extended its long-running relationship with the University of Michigan's Automotive Research Center, reaching a new five-year, agreement of up to $100 million to boost work on autonomous vehicle technologies. This potentially doubles the federal government's financial investment with ARC since the last agreement, reached in 2019. Following its 1994 launch, the ARC has served as a source of technology and first-in-class modeling and simulation for the Army's fleet of vehicles—the largest such fleet in the world. "We are driving the development of modern mobility systems with our advanced modeling ...

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Engineering24 Jan 2024

Chemistry professor R. Graham Cooks expands research of water droplet interfaces that offer the secret ingredient for building life

R. Graham Cooks, the Henry B. Hass Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, and his postdoctoral researcher Lingqi Qiu have experimental evidence that the key step in protein formation can occur in droplets of pure water, and have recently published these findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In this key step, amino acids are dehydrated (they lose water) even though they are in a water solution, a paradox that is resolved by the fact that these droplet surfaces are unusually dry and highly ...

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Engineering23 Jan 2024

Novel material facilitates measurement of concrete deterioration in buildings and other structures

Concrete is an essential material in the construction industry, where it is fundamental to the foundations and structures of dwellings and office buildings, as well as roads, dams and bridges, among many other infrastructure projects. However, the service life of concrete is limited, and it must be monitored in order to guarantee the safety of these structures. To facilitate fast, low-cost, in-situ analysis that dispenses with the need to take samples to a laboratory, researchers at the University of São Paulo’s Physics Institute (IF-USP) in Brazil, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Leuven in Belgium, have developed a luminescent material that reveals the presence ...

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Engineering23 Jan 2024

New research guides mathematical model-building for gene regulatory networks

AMES, Iowa — Over the last 20 years, researchers in biology and medicine have created Boolean network models to simulate complex systems and find solutions, including new treatments for colorectal cancer. “Boolean network models operate under the assumption that each gene in a regulatory network can have one of two states: on or off,” says Claus Kadelka, a systems biologist and associate professor of mathematics at Iowa State University. Kadelka and undergraduate student researchers recently published a study that ...

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Engineering19 Jan 2024

Professors Yoon-Kyoung Cho elected as Member of National Academy of Engineering of Korea!​

Professor Yoon-Kyoung Cho from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNIST has been elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK), the most prestigious organization in the field of engineering in Korea. On January 4, the National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK) announced the election of 50 new members, comprising 25 academic and 25 industrial figures, in recognition of their distinguished and ongoing achievements in original research. Membership in NAEK is considered one of the highest professional distinctions for engineers. Professor Cho’s name appeared ...

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Engineering18 Jan 2024

Shiyu discovery reveals East Asia’s advanced material culture by 45,000 years ago

A team of researchers from China, Australia, France, Spain, and Germany has revealed advanced material culture in East Asia by 45,000 years ago. The new study was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on Jan. 18. The researchers examined a previously excavated archaeological collection from the Shiyu site, located in Shanxi Province. "Our new study identified an Initial Upper Palaeolithic archaeological assemblage from the Shiyu site of North China dating to 45,000 years ago that includes blade technology, tanged and hafted projectile points, long-distance obsidian transfer, and the use of a perforated ...

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Engineering18 Jan 2024

National award goes to Sandia Labs engineer

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Tony Garcia often reflects on his grandfather’s words: “Work hard and be good to people, and you’ll end up happy.” This simple principle has been Garcia’s beacon throughout his academic and professional journeys, and now has led to his recognition with a prestigious 2023 Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers STAR of Today award for technical achievement. The STAR awards recognize individuals in STEM who are not only excelling in their fields but also making a significant impact through their work, research ...

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Engineering12 Jan 2024

Building trust and saving lives: A community approach to genetic education

Changes to DNA, known as mutations, can increase the likelihood of developing cancer. Specifically, people with mutations in their BRCA 1 and 2 genes are substantially more likely to develop hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. But how do people know if they have these mutations? Genetic testing. Genetic testing allows doctors to see these microscopic changes. Knowing these mutations exist, doctors will check for signs of breast and ovarian cancers more often. Yet minorities, especially Black women, are less likely to participate in genetic testing. ...

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