Engineering
press releases.

Engineering11 Jan 2024

Molecularly designing polymer networks to control sound damping

The world is filled with a myriad of sounds and vibrations—the gentle tones of a piano drifting down the hall, the relaxing purr of a cat laying on your chest, the annoying hum of the office lights. Imagine being able to selectively tune out noises of a certain frequency. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have synthesized polymer networks with two distinct architectures and crosslink points capable of dynamically exchanging polymer strands to understand how the network connectivity and bond exchange mechanisms govern the overall damping behavior of the network. The incorporation of dynamic bonds into the polymer network demonstrates ...

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Engineering11 Jan 2024

Toward efficient spintronic materials

Controlling the direction of magnetization using low electric field is necessary for developing efficient spintronic devices. In spintronics, properties of an electron’s spin or magnetic moment are used to store information. The electron spins can be manipulated by straining orbital magnetic moments to create a high-performance magnetoelectric effect. Japanese researchers, including Jun Okabayashi from the University of Tokyo, revealed a strain-induced orbital control mechanism in interfacial multiferroics. In multiferroic material, the magnetic property ...

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Engineering10 Jan 2024

University of North Texas nanoporous materials researcher Shengqian Ma, Ph.D., recognized for innovative work in the field of decontamination

A worldwide leader in nanoporous materials research, Shengqian Ma, Ph.D., Professor and Welch Chair in Chemistry, the University of North Texas, is the recipient of the 2024 Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Physical Sciences from TAMEST (Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology). He was chosen for his innovative work in the field of decontamination. View a video on Dr. Ma's groundbreaking research here. In a time of growing concern for the Earth and humanity’s ecosystem, Dr. Ma’s work could have an incredibly important impact on environmental and energy sustainability. His research was primarily ...

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Engineering8 Jan 2024

Researchers engineer in vivo delivery system for prime editing, partially restoring vision in mice

Prime editing, a versatile form of gene editing that can correct most known disease-causing genetic mutations, now has a new vehicle to deliver its machinery into cells in living animals. A team of researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has engineered virus-like particles to deliver prime editors to cells in mice at a high enough efficiency to rescue a genetic disorder. In the new work published today in Nature Biotechnology, the team adapted engineered virus-like particles (eVLPs) that they had previously designed to carry base editors — ...

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Engineering5 Jan 2024

Monitoring the well-being of reservoir water through an uncrewed surface vehicle

In a recent tragic incident, approximately 100 elephants in Africa perished due to inadequate access to water. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issues a warning that around 2.5 billion people worldwide could face water scarcity by 2025. In the face of water shortages affecting not only human society but also the entire ecological community due to the climate crisis, it becomes crucial to adopt comprehensive measures for managing water quality and quantity to avert such pressing challenges. A research team led by Professor Jonghun Kam and PhD candidate Kwang-Hun Lee from the Division of Environmental Science and ...

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Engineering5 Jan 2024

Using berry phase monopole engineering for high-temperature spintronic devices

Spintronic devices are electronic devices that utilize the spin of electrons (an intrinsic form of angular momentum possessed by the electron) to achieve high-speed processing and low-cost data storage. In this regard, spin-transfer torque is a key phenomenon that enables ultrafast and low-power spintronic devices. Recently, however, spin-orbit torque (SOT) has emerged as a promising alternative to spin-transfer torque. Many studies have investigated the origin of SOT, showing that in non-magnetic materials, a phenomenon called the spin Hall effect (SHE) is key to achieving SOT. In these materials, the existence of a “Dirac band” ...

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Engineering20 Dec 2023

Want to keep Gen-Z off vaping? Teach them about the industry’s marketing tactics, Drexel study says

Young adults who are more familiar with e-cigarette marketing practices are more likely to have attitudes against vaping than those unaware of the industry’s marketing, according to a study led by Drexel University public health researchers published this month in the BMJ journal Tobacco Control. Expanding on ways cigarettes were marketed in the 1970s, such as using models and hosting smoking events, e-cigarette marketing includes more modern tactics, like paying social media influencers to promote vaping. The findings, from researchers at Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health and The National Institute ...

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Engineering19 Dec 2023

American University receives $5.7 million from NSF to bridge research and policy, address real-world challenges

American University won a $5.7 million cooperative research agreement from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Accelerating Research Translation program. The award will help AU foster greater use of evidence in the public and private sectors by producing new knowledge on best practices in research translation, training scholars in the effective conduct of research translation, and supporting the dissemination of research findings that have the potential to benefit society. The ART program ...

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Engineering19 Dec 2023

3D material found to break down antidepressant that contaminates water bodies worldwide

An article published in the Chemical Engineering Journal describes a strategy to produce a material based on zinc oxide (ZnO) capable of degrading sertraline, an antidepressant that has been detected, like other drugs, in groundwater worldwide and is considered an emerging pollutant. This kind of substance has certain physicochemical properties that hinder removal by conventional wastewater treatment methods. The research was supported by FAPESP and conducted in Brazil by scientists at the Center for Development of Functional Materials (CDMF), the Brazilian ...

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Engineering19 Dec 2023

Unveiling molecular origami: A breakthrough in dynamic materials

Origami, traditionally associated with paper folding, has transcended its craft origins to influence a diverse range of fields, including art, science, engineering, and architecture. Recently, origami principles have extended to technology, with applications spanning solar cells to biomedical devices. While origami-inspired materials have been explored at various scales, the challenge of creating molecular materials based on origami tessellations has remained. Addressing this challenge, a team of researchers, led by Professor Wonyoung Choe in the ...

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Engineering15 Dec 2023

Responsible stewardship over ultrathin materials research

To an everyday consumer, the best gadgets on the market have the highest speed, the largest memory, and the longest battery life. Chasing this demand, the forefront of research often only considers these tangible performance metrics when innovating and designing next-generation electronics. In the wake of this technological stampede, the long-term environmental impacts lie obscured and neglected under the dust. Researchers at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) hope to be the catalyst for sustainability-driven science. Assistant Professor Ang Yee Sin from the Science, Mathematics ...

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Engineering14 Dec 2023

Drones capture new clues about how water shapes mountain ranges over time

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Drones flying along miles of rivers in the steep, mountainous terrain of central Taiwan and mapping the rock properties have revealed new clues about how water helps shape mountains over geological time, according to a team led by Penn State scientists. The researchers found a link between the size of boulders in the rivers and the steepness of the rivers. The link shows how rock properties can influence the relationship between tectonic processes happening deep underground and how mountainous landscapes ...

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Engineering14 Dec 2023

Bats declined as Britain felled trees for colonial shipbuilding

Bat numbers declined as Britain’s trees were felled for shipbuilding in the early colonial period, new research shows. The study, by the University of Exeter and the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT), found Britain’s Western barbastelle bat populations have dropped by 99% over several hundred years. Animals’ DNA can be analysed to discover a “signature” of the past, including periods when populations declined, leading to more inbreeding and less genetic diversity. Scientists used this method to discover the historic decline ...

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Engineering13 Dec 2023

Nourishing communities: neighborhood restaurants as social infrastructure

Studies on sustainability inevitably touch on food-related topics like food security, culinary heritage, and the sustenance of vulnerable people. Social sustainability is one of the three pillars of sustainability, alongside environmental and economic sustainability, and has become a pivotal topic in various research fields. It includes concerns about social justice, resource distribution and recognition, and political participation of marginalized groups at the local community level. Very few studies of social sustainability have looked at urban foodways in terms of social and cultural infrastructure. More often than not, scholars in Japan have ...

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Engineering12 Dec 2023

Civilian attacks and Ukrainian resistance

During the all-out invasion of Ukraine, Russia has deliberately chosen civilian targets, such as apartment buildings, presumably with the goal of deterring Ukrainian resistance. But does such terror deter or, in contrast, motivate resistance among ordinary Ukrainians? Henrikas Bartusevičius and colleagues conducted two-wave probability surveys in Ukraine in March and April 2022, with approximately 1,000 and 800 respondents in the first and second waves, respectively. Surveys were conducted online by a local survey agency, Info Sapiens. Respondents reported the frequency of ...

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Engineering11 Dec 2023

Scientists 3D print self-heating microfluidic devices

MIT researchers have used 3D printing to produce self-heating microfluidic devices, demonstrating a technique which could someday be used to rapidly create cheap, yet accurate, tools to detect a host of diseases. Microfluidics, miniaturized machines that manipulate fluids and facilitate chemical reactions, can be used to detect disease in tiny samples of blood or fluids. At-home test kits for Covid-19, for example, incorporate a simple type of microfluidic. But many microfluidic applications require chemical reactions that must be performed at specific temperatures. These more complex microfluidic devices, which are typically manufactured in a clean ...

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Engineering8 Dec 2023

Researchers safely integrate fragile 2D materials into devices

Two-dimensional materials, which are only a few atoms thick, can exhibit some incredible properties, such as the ability to carry electric charge extremely efficiently, which could boost the performance of next-generation electronic devices. But integrating 2D materials into devices and systems like computer chips is notoriously difficult. These ultrathin structures can be damaged by conventional fabrication techniques, which often rely on the use of chemicals, high temperatures, or destructive processes like etching. To overcome this challenge, researchers from MIT and elsewhere have developed a new technique to integrate 2D materials into devices in a single ...

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Engineering7 Dec 2023

MIT engineers develop a way to determine how the surfaces of materials behave

Designing new compounds or alloys whose surfaces can be used as catalysts in chemical reactions can be a complex process relying heavily on the intuition of experienced chemists. A team of researchers at MIT has devised a new approach using machine learning, that removes the need for intuition and provides more detailed information than conventional methods can practically achieve. For example, applying the new system to a material that has already been studied for 30 years by conventional means, the team found the compound’s surface could form two new atomic configurations that had not previously been identified, and that one other configuration ...

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Engineering6 Dec 2023

Bowtie resonators that build themselves bridge the gap between nanoscopic and macroscopic

A central goal in quantum optics and photonics is to increase the strength of the interaction between light and matter to produce, e.g., better photodetectors or quantum light sources. The best way to do that is to use optical resonators that store light for a long time, making it interact more strongly with matter. If the resonator is also very small, such that light is squeezed into a tiny region of space, the interaction is enhanced even further. The ideal resonator would store light for a long time in a region at the size of a single atom. Physicists and engineers have struggled for decades with how ...

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Engineering6 Dec 2023

Morressier and senior leaders from academic publishing form Strategic Advisory Board to stimulate positive change in scholarly communications industry

Berlin, Germany, and Washington, D.C., December 6, 2023 – Morressier, the company transforming scholarly communications, today announced the formation of a new Strategic Advisory Board composed of the most senior leaders from across the scholarly communications community. The Board, which is facilitated and supported by Morressier, will act as a lively, critical, and direct forum, stimulating innovation and collaboration across the industry on crucial issues such as research integrity and publishing workflows. The ...

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Engineering5 Dec 2023

Services across England now lag far behind East Germany, as experts call for ‘universal basic infrastructure’ in UK

A new report outlines the dismal state of England’s physical and “social” infrastructure – from public services in health and education to the parks, cinemas and train stations that prop up communities – when compared to similar regions in what was once East Germany. The report’s authors call for a “universal basic infrastructure” (UBI) if the UK is to ‘level up’ its regions and lift itself out of “flatlining” productivity rates. This UBI would see a minimum ...

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Engineering4 Dec 2023

ORNL engineer Karen White honored with Lifetime Achievement Award

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Karen White, who works in ORNL’s Neutron Science Directorate, has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. White, who manages the section that provides the machine controls,, computing infrastructure, and protection systems across all neutron science technical areas, received the award during the biennial International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems, held October 7-13, 2013, in Cape Town, South Africa. The award by ICALEPCS honors and celebrates an individual or individuals ...

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Engineering4 Dec 2023

Unveiling a new era of imaging: Boston University engineers lead breakthrough microscopy techniques

When microscopes struggle to pick up faint signals, it’s like trying to spot subtle details in a painting or photograph without your glasses. For researchers, this makes it difficult to catch the small things happening in cells or other materials. In new research, Boston University Moustakas Chair Professor in Photonics and Optoelectronics, Dr. Ji-Xin Cheng and collaborators are creating more advanced techniques to make microscopes better at seeing tiny sample details, without needing special dyes. Their results, published in Nature Communications and Science Advances respectively, are helping scientists visualize and understand their samples in an easier ...

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Engineering4 Dec 2023

Rice engineers tackle hard-to-map class of materials

HOUSTON – (Dec. 4th, 2023) – The properties that make materials like semiconductors so sought after result from the way their atoms are connected, and insight into these atomic configurations can help scientists design new materials or use existing materials in new, unforeseen ways. Rice University materials scientist Yimo Han and collaborators mapped out the structural features of a 2D ferroelectric material made of tin and selenium atoms, showing how domains ⎯ areas of the ...

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Engineering1 Dec 2023

Keeping Texas bridges ‘safe and usable for years to come’

Texas has the second-most bridges in the United States after California, 30% of which do not have sufficient height, width or capacity to handle the increasing volume and type of traffic using them. Nur Yazdani, a civil engineering professor at The University of Texas at Arlington, has received a three-year, $997,275 grant from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to evaluate the performance of selected deteriorating and aging highway bridges. His approach includes non-destructive evaluation (NDE), on-site load testing and computer simulation to help engineers determine the current condition of bridges ...

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