If a lover breaks your heart, tissue engineers can’t fix it. But if sticks and stones break your bones, scientists may be able to grow custom-size replacements. Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, has solved one of many problems on the way to successful bone implants: how to grow new bones [...]
Finding large-scale sources of kinetic energy to turn turbines isn’t easy. But while there are only so many roaring rivers and flat, windy plains from which to harvest nature’s natural motions, there’s no shortage of tiny, random vibrations all around us. Now researchers at the University of Michigan have developed mini-generators that harness these. Miniature [...]
Purdue University is teaming up with PBS to educate elementary school teachers on how to teach engineering concepts to young students. The new course for preK-6 teachers is a joint effort of PBS TeacherLine, an online professional development program for educators, and Purdue’s Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning within the School of Engineering [...]
Light-colored roofs that help reflect sunlight may only work in the summer, but a new smart roof made from waste cooking oil can automatically switch between reflecting or absorbing solar heat. Scientists turned the cooking oil from fast food restaurants into a liquid polymer that hardened into plastic after coating any surface. The plastic material [...]
Although remarkable success has been achieved to mimic the mechanically excellent structure of nacre in laboratory-scale models, it remains difficult to foresee mainstream applications due to time-consuming sequential depositions or energy-intensive processes. Here, we introduce a surprisingly simple and rapid methodology for large-area, lightweight, and thick nacre-mimetic films and laminates with superior material properties. Nanoclay [...]
General Motors has been fiddling around with head-up displays for 22 years now, and there was a time when you could get Buicks with speedometers that projected your speed right there on the windshield. Cool, if limited in its usefulness. But the General is back at it with a system it says will make driving [...]
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released research detailing how molecules in chips can self-assemble, potentially reducing manufacturing costs. The researchers have developed a technique in which polymers automatically fall into place to create an integrated circuit, said Caroline Ross, professor of materials science and engineering at MIT and a researcher behind the technology. [...]
Hundreds of students from more than 10 Central Alabama elementary, middle, and high schools participated in the 21st Annual Brent Newman Egg Drop Competition. The students dropped eggs protected by personally-designed contraptions three stories from the roof of the UAB Business-Engineering Complex. The goal was to prevent the egg from breaking after the three-story drop. [...]
Understanding energy dissipation and transport in nanoscale structures is of great importance for the design of energy-efficient circuits and energy-conversion systems. This is also a rich domain for fundamental discoveries at the intersection of electron, lattice (phonon), and optical (photon) interactions. This review presents recent progress in understanding and manipulation of energy dissipation and transport [...]
The Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (TUES) program seeks to improve the quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education for all undergraduate students. This solicitation especially encourages projects that have the potential to transform undergraduate STEM education, for example, by bringing about widespread adoption of classroom practices that embody [...]