Engineering
press releases.

Engineering22 Jun 2023

Surprise! Weaker bonds can make polymers stronger

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A team of chemists from MIT and Duke University has discovered a counterintuitive way to make polymers stronger: introduce a few weaker bonds into the material. Working with a type of polymer known as polyacrylate elastomers, the researchers found that they could increase the materials’ resistance to tearing up to tenfold, simply by using a weaker type of crosslinker to join some of the polymer building blocks. These rubber-like polymers are commonly used in car parts, and they are also often used as the “ink” for ...

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Engineering22 Jun 2023

Stronger tape engineered through the art of cutting

Adhesive tape fulfills many purposes, from quickly fixing household appliances to ensuring a reliable seal on a mailed package. When using tape with a strong bond, removing it may only be possible by scraping and prying at the tape's corners, hoping desperately that surface pieces don’t tear away with the tape. But what if you could make adhesives both strong and easily removable? This seemingly paradoxical combination of properties could dramatically change applications in robotic grasping, wearables ...

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Engineering21 Jun 2023

Engineers “strike gold” with innovation that recovers heavy metals from biosolids

Engineers in Melbourne have developed a cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to remove heavy metals, including copper and zinc, from biosolids. The team’s work, led by RMIT University in collaboration with South East Water and Manipal University in India, advances other methods for heavy-metal removal by recycling the acidic liquid waste that is produced during the recovery phase, instead of throwing it away. Lead senior researcher Professor Kalpit Shah from RMIT said the heavy metals found in biosolids ...

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Engineering20 Jun 2023

Alissa Park appointed Dean of UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science

Ah-Hyung “Alissa” Park has been appointed the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, effective September 1. One of the nation’s leading experts on carbon capture and conversion technology, Park is currently the Lenfest Earth Institute Professor of Climate Change and chair of the department of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University, where she has been a faculty member since 2007. She also is director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, an executive committee ...

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Engineering20 Jun 2023

Novel way to manipulate exotic materials

An advance in a topological insulator material — whose interior behaves like an electrical insulator but whose surface behaves like a conductor — could revolutionize the fields of next-generation electronics and quantum computing, according to scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Discovered in the 1980s, a topological material is a new phase of material whose discoverers received a Nobel Prize in 2016. Using only an electric field, ORNL researchers have transformed a normal insulator into a magnetic topological insulator. This exotic material allows electricity ...

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Engineering20 Jun 2023

Modeling human behavior for autonomous vehicles

A model of human psychology could help self-driving cars interact with human drivers on the road, according to a study. Gustav Markkula and colleagues combined several computational psychological models into one master-model to simulate pedestrians attempting to cross a busy road and the human drivers on that road. The goal of the model was to capture the underlying cognitive mechanisms responsible for observed behavior. Computational models of Bayesian perception, theory of mind, behavioral game theory, long-term valuation of ...

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Engineering15 Jun 2023

To boost supply chains, scientists are looking at ways to recover valuable materials from water

For many materials critical to supply chains that will help enable America’s decarbonization transition, resources are limited. Traditional mining is fraught with challenges, so advancing clean energy depends on finding new ways to reliably access critical materials. Promoting national security and economic competitiveness will require America’s researchers to find new ways to obtain the materials that we need for many technologies. These include batteries, magnets in electric motors, catalysts, nuclear reactors ...

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Engineering15 Jun 2023

FAMU-FSU College of Engineering researchers want drivers to see clearly on the road

Every year, sun glare contributes to around 3,000 crashes in the United States. FAMU-FSU College of Engineering researchers are helping to mitigate this problem by examining what drivers are likely to do when faced with sun glare. Their work was published in Transportation Research Record. “We want drivers to be safer on the road,” said study co-author Eren Ozguven, director of the Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response Center. “At certain times of day, the sun can be blinding, so as scientists and engineers, we want to find solutions.” The first step is to understand where problems are most likely to occur. ...

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Engineering14 Jun 2023

When materials discovery glitters

By Rebekah Orton Thomas Edison famously tried hundreds of materials and failed thousands of times before discovering that carbonized cotton thread burned long and bright in an incandescent light bulb. Experiments are often time consuming (Edison’s team spent 14 months) and expensive (the winning combination cost about $850,000 in today’s money). Expenses and time increase exponentially when developing the quantum materials that will revolutionize modern electronics and computing. To make quantum material discovery possible, researchers turn to detailed databases as their virtual laboratory. A new database of understudied quantum materials ...

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Engineering14 Jun 2023

Conflict in marriage less harmful for kids when dad keeps it constructive

URBANA, Ill. — Conflict is unavoidable in all marriages. When it erupts in families with children, stressed or angry parents may take their pain out on the kids, projecting their anger or withdrawing emotionally or physically. In the worst cases, children’s socioemotional development can suffer. But the way parents, especially fathers, deal with marital conflict can make a difference to kids, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “In the past, marital conflict ...

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Engineering14 Jun 2023

Metamaterials with built-in frustration have mechanical memory

Researchers from the UvA Institute of Physics and ENS de Lyon have discovered how to design materials that necessarily have a point or line where the material doesn’t deform under stress, and that even remember how they have been poked or squeezed in the past. These results could be used in robotics and mechanical computers, while similar design principles could be used in quantum computers. The outcome is a breakthrough in the field of metamaterials: designer materials whose responses are determined by their structure rather than their chemical composition. To construct a metamaterial with mechanical memory, physicists ...

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Engineering14 Jun 2023

A growing number of producers and industries interested in precision livestock farming

Some of the world’s best minds that are focused on profitable and sustainable livestock production attended and presented at the recent Second U.S. Precision Livestock Farming Conference. Hosted by University of Tennessee AgResearch, the May 21-24 event at the UT Conference Center in Knoxville attracted 219 attendees representing 22 countries and 32 U.S. states. Participants included academics, representatives of government agencies and allied industries as well as producers. The conference had a central theme of “Field Application of PLF Technologies” and academic presentations along with two industry and producer panels included interactive dialogues among the attendees ...

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Engineering13 Jun 2023

PFAS, PFAS everywhere: how pristine are laboratory materials?

How do you study the effects of exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), when it is in everything?! To study the effect of a chemical, toxicologists typically expose animals to various doses of the chemical over a period of time so that they could then study the dose versus effect relationship. Such toxicology studies often employee several types of “blanks” for quality control. Blanks are experiments where the test animals are not given any dose of the chemical being studied (sort of like a placebo in human drug ...

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Engineering9 Jun 2023

The future of industrial chemicals: OU engineers seek more efficient processes

A study by a team of University of Oklahoma researchers has been featured in Cell Reports Physical Science, an open-access journal highlighting cutting-edge research in the physical sciences. The study, “Cooperative roles of water and metal-support interfaces in the selective hydrogenation of cinnamaldehyde over cobalt boride catalysts,” explores the role of water in the selective hydrogenation of carbonyl over alkene bonds. Utilizing cobalt and cobalt boride catalysts, OU researchers analyzed the hydrogenation ...

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Engineering7 Jun 2023

Using genomics to unlock the full potential of industrial hemp

Plant biologist Alex Harkess, PhD, and his lab at HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology are on a mission to change the future of food and fiber crops, one flowering plant species at a time. Much of plant breeding and global food production relies on the pollination of flowers to produce fruits that are eaten and used to produce further progeny. This process might sound straightforward, but it is actually complicated by the fact that some flowers contain only male or female reproductive organs, others contain both (hermaphrodites), and some can even switch sexes. How flowers become male, ...

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Engineering2 Jun 2023

Buckle up! A new class of materials is here

Usually, the two characterizations of a material are mutually exclusive: something is either stiff, or it can absorb vibrations well – but rarely both. However, if we could make materials that are both stiff and good at absorbing vibrations, there would be a whole host of potential applications, from design at the nano-scale to aerospace engineering. Buckling does the trick A team of researchers from the University of Amsterdam has now found a way to create materials that are stiff, but still good at absorbing vibrations – and equally importantly, that can be kept very light-weight. David Dykstra, lead author of the ...

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Engineering1 Jun 2023

Industrially applied and relevant transformations of 1,3-butadiene using homogeneous catalysts

The use of 1,3-butadiene as a cheap and abundant raw material for new applications has attracted more interest in recent decades, specifically in the chemical industry. The review covers several important homogeneously catalyzed processes and technologies that are currently used or have the potential to produce fine and bulk chemicals from 1,3-butadiene. This article focuses specifically on the application of homogeneous catalysts and presents representative examples for the readers. For example, palladium-catalyzed telomerization of 1,3-butadiene offers versatile platform chemicals for ...

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Engineering1 Jun 2023

Producing large, clean 2D materials made easy: just KISS

Ever since the discovery of the two-dimensional form of graphite (called graphene) almost twenty years ago, interest in 2D materials with their special physical properties has skyrocketed. Famously, graphene was produced by exfoliating bulk graphite using sticky tape. Although it was good enough for a Nobel Prize, this method has its drawbacks. An international team of surface scientists has now developed a simple method to produce large and very clean 2D samples from a range of materials using three different substrates. Their method, kinetic in situ single-layer synthesis (KISS) ...

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Engineering31 May 2023

New ‘designer’ titanium alloys made using 3D printing

A team of researchers has created a new class of titanium alloys that are strong and not brittle under tension, by integrating alloy and 3D-printing process designs. The breakthrough, published in the top journal Nature, could help extend the applications of titanium alloys, improve sustainability and drive innovative alloy design. Their discovery holds promise for a new class of more sustainable high-performance titanium alloys for applications in aerospace, biomedical, chemical engineering, space and energy technologies. RMIT University and the University of Sydney led the innovation, in collaboration with Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the company Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence ...

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Engineering30 May 2023

Deconstructing the role of MALAT1 in MAPK-Signaling in melanoma

“In this study, we present novel transcriptional dependencies between MALAT1 and MAPK-pathway-associated genes in melanoma.” BUFFALO, NY- May 30, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on May 26, 2023, entitled, “Deconstructing the role of MALAT1 in MAPK-signaling in melanoma: insights from antisense oligonucleotide treatment.” The long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) MALAT1 is a regulator of oncogenesis and cancer progression. MAPK-pathway upregulation is the main event in the development and progression of human cancer, including melanoma and recent studies have shown that MALAT1 has a significant impact on the ...

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Engineering29 May 2023

Vehicle stop study illuminates importance of officer's first words

Eugenia Rho believes in the importance of first impressions, especially during vehicle stops. An assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, Rho is the lead author of a new research paper that illustrates how a law enforcement officer’s first 45 words during a vehicle stop with a Black driver can often indicate how the stop will end. “We found that there’s a key difference in how officers talk to Black drivers during the first moments of stops that end in an arrest, handcuffing, or search versus those that don’t end in such outcomes,” said Rho, who leads the Society, AI, and Language (SAIL) ...

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Engineering25 May 2023

Material design by means of defect engineering: German Research Foundation approves new Collaborative Research Center at Mainz University

When we talk about defects, we generally think of flaws or impairments. However, as far as materials science is concerned, defects represent windows of opportunity. A new Collaborative Research Center (CRC) in the field of soft matter based at and administered by Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) will explore these opportunities. The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved CRC 1552 "Defects and Defect Engineering in Soft Matter" and will be providing funding of some EUR 8 million over the next four years. Also participating are the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and the Fraunhofer Institute for Microengineering and Microsystems ...

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Engineering23 May 2023

Recent papers in ACS Engineering Au

ACS Engineering Au is a member of the ACS Au family of journals. These publications are open access, and each one focuses on a specific field relevant to chemistry. Here, we take a look at a few recent papers from ACS Engineering Au, which publishes a broad scope of research from both academic and industrial settings. The journal welcomes papers on topics such as process design, product research, energy and fuels, and measurement techniques. Reporters can request free access to these papers by emailing newsroom@acs.org. "Heat ...

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Engineering23 May 2023

Modular builds may help construction industry weather a perfect storm

Rising material prices, labour shortages, interest rate hikes and rainy weather have created a perfect storm for the construction industry in the past 12 months, sending many builders to the wall. Of all these factors, weather is the one that most people would cite as being beyond human control. However, a new study out of the UK and Australia suggests this may not be the case. Engineers from Aston University, Birmingham, and the University of South Australia (UniSA) have calculated the potential cost savings for ...

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Engineering22 May 2023

ETRI lays the groundwork for convenient and safe drone flight

The lack of a single communication standard among drone makers has made it difficult for information to be shared between drones, but a Korean research team has found a solution. The Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced that four contributions related to the ‘Unmanned Aircraft Area Network’ were established as international standards at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO*) meeting in Vienna, Austria. * ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6(communication and information exchange between systems) The technology ...

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