Can we engineer an artificial “homing pigeon” — that is, create a small aircraft that can perform a task for us, pilot itself, and travel for a long time over great distances? Uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs), which have been developed mainly for military applications, are still remotely controlled, and some tasks, such as flying in [...]
Sandia National Laboratories scientists have developed tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used. The tiny cells could turn a person into a walking solar battery charger if they were fastened to flexible substrates molded around unusual shapes, such as clothing. The solar particles, fabricated of crystalline silicon, [...]
Not all nuclear reactors are built alike. Power plant designs can vary in their fuels, coolants, and configurations, a fact beautifully illustrated by a series of reactor wall charts originally published in issues of Nuclear Engineering International during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, the charts have been collected by Ronald Knief, a nuclear engineer [...]
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Attention cyborg wonks and lazy people: Japanese scientists at Tsukuba University have created a motorized knee that you can attach to your leg to increase your muscle power and running speed. The 11-pound kit’s weight is shared by an exoskeleton-like attachment for your leg and a power source that’s carried in a small backpack. But [...]
Wheelchair users will be rowing their way around the trails at Michigan Technological University, thanks to a team of senior engineering students. For $3,000, the five built a prototype Human-Powered Off-Road Wheelchair. The operator pulls back on the handlebars in a rowing motion to propel it at up to 4 miles per hour. [ChicagoTribune.com, 19 [...]
Two years ago, George Wolf was injured in a hang-gliding accident. His left leg was amputated below the knee. He now has an artificial limb, but he longs to walk with fluid movement. When he heard that fellow Arizona State University professor Thomas Sugar was looking for candidates to test a new spring-loaded robotic ankle [...]
Three-dimensional (3D), multi-transistor-layer, integrated circuits represent an important technological pursuit promising advantages in integration density, operation speed, and power consumption compared with 2D circuits. We report fully functional, 3D integrated complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) circuits based on separate interconnected layers of high-mobility n-type indium arsenide (n-InAs) and p-type germanium/silicon core/shell (p-Ge/Si) nanowire (NW) field-effect transistors (FETs). [...]
Metallic nanoscale structures are capable of supporting surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), propagating collective electron oscillations with tight spatial confinement at the metal surface. SPPs represent one of the most promising structures to beat the diffraction limit imposed by conventional dielectric optics. Ag nano wires have drawn increasing research attention due to 2D sub-100 nm mode [...]
A geothermal power plant in California will soon be producing more than just electricity. The valuable metal lithium could be extracted from its hot waste water. Lithium is usually extracted from soil, in a process that consumes a lot of water, or from brine dried in large salt ponds. The geothermal waters at the Salton [...]