The photovoltaic industry routinely uses infrared furnaces to make solar cells from a thin wafer of silicon.  Although modern furnaces can handle high throughput, they are typically not energy efficient.  Generally, they produce a uniform energy flux over the wafers, but the wafer edges radiate more heat than their centers, and so the resulting temperature [...]

We introduce a class of continuum shell structures, the Buckliball, which undergoes a structural transformation induced by buckling under pressure loading.  The geometry of the Buckliball comprises a spherical shell patterned with a regular array of circular voids.  In order for the pattern transformation to be induced by buckling, the possible number and arrangement of [...]

Honda Motor announced the development of the world’s first technology to detect the potential for traffic congestion and determine whether the driving pattern of the vehicle is likely to create traffic jams.  Honda developed this technology while recognizing that the acceleration and deceleration behavior of one vehicle influences the traffic pattern of trailing vehicles and [...]

Mechanical energy is all around us, whether in the form of a vehicle’s vibrations, ocean waves, or vibrating train tracks.  However, much of this energy is irregular and oscillatory — for example, road bumps cause a vehicle to move up and down at random intervals — but energy harvesting works best with regular, unidirectional motion.  [...]

The new bridge over the Iowa River near downtown Iowa Falls is a major upgrade over the 1928 concrete arch structure it replaced last fall, once the longest arch span bridge in the state.  The new U.S. Highway 65/Oak Street bridge is stronger.  Its foundation is more secure.  Its roadway is 18 feet wider.  The [...]

A vibrating steering wheel is an effective way to keep a driver’s eyes safely on the road by providing an additional means to convey directions from a car’s navigation system, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and AT&T Labs have shown.  The study, one of the first to evaluate combinations of audio, visual, and haptic feedback [...]

I’m in a lab in downtown Tokyo full of grinning engineering students, who are peering past PC monitors and half-completed gadgets to watch me try and lift 40 kilograms of rice.  No mean feat, but luckily I am about to be given a power boost.  I shuffle between some boxes and squat down as instructed [...]

Organic and printed electronics technologies require conductors with a work function that is sufficiently low to facilitate the transport of electrons in and out of various optoelectronic devices.  We show that surface modifiers based on polymers containing simple aliphatic amine groups substantially reduce the work function of conductors including metals, transparent conductive metal oxides, conducting [...]

The National Science Foundation (NSF), through its Divisions of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF) and Electrical, Communications, and Cyber Systems (ECCS), has established a partnership with the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), through its Computer-Aided Design and Test Sciences (CADTS) and Integrated Circuits and Systems Sciences (ICSS) areas, to jointly support innovative research activities focused on [...]

Swiss engineers have developed a new imaging technique that lets them see the insides of massive concrete bridges.  Much like a sonogram, this technique provides quick, easy-to-interpret images, so that the health of these expensive structures can be assessed and monitored.  [PhysOrg.com, 18 Apr 2012]