In addition to providing vitamin D, helping flowers grow and creating the perfect excuse to head to the beach, sunlight also helps break down chemicals in streams, lakes and rivers. Researchers from Michigan Technological University have developed a singlet oxygen model to calculate how particular chemicals break down in surface water.  While swimming pools use … Continue reading MTU Engineers Clean Up Water Pollution With Sunlight (Engineering) →

Polymer semiconductors — materials that have been made soft and stretchy but still able to conduct electricity — hold promise for future electronics that can be integrated within the body, including disease detectors and health monitors. Yet until now, scientists and engineers have been unable to give these polymers certain advanced features, like the ability … Continue reading Researchers Discover New Strategy For Developing Human-integrated Electronics (Engineering) →

An Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher has invented a version of an isotope-separating device that can withstand extreme environments, including radiation and chemical solvents. ORNL’s Kevin Gaddis designed the automated high pressure ion chromatography, or HPIC, system to improve purification of actinium-225, an isotope used in cancer treatments, from thorium targets that have been irradiated in a … Continue reading Researchers Invented New Isotope-separating Device That Can Withstand Extreme Environments (Engineering) →

Climate change is causing a persistent increase in the number of hot summer days. Offices and homes are getting hotter, and the nights bring little respite from the heat. Against this backdrop, a significant increase in new cooling systems installations is anticipated, which in turn will give rise to increased energy consumption. One potential cost-effective … Continue reading Using Heating To Cool Rooms (Engineering) →

As alternative energy sources have become necessary to decrease global carbon emissions and meet growing energy demands, researchers at West Virginia University had ideas that came bubbling to the top—literally.  As part of the American-Made Geothermal Manufacturing Prize competition, a challenge designed to spur innovation and address manufacturing challenges in geothermal environments, associate professor Terence Musho and Berry Chair Emeritus Nigel Clark in … Continue reading WVU Engineers Develop New Geothermal Energy Technology (Engineering) →

THE IDEA Led by Justus Ndukaife, assistant professor of electrical engineering, Vanderbilt researchers are the first to introduce an approach for trapping and moving a nanomaterial known as a single colloidal nanodiamond with nitrogen-vacancy center using low power laser beam. The width of a single human hair is approximately 90,000 nanometers; nanodiamonds are less than 100 … Continue reading Vanderbilt Engineer the First To Introduce Low-power Dynamic Manipulation of Single Nanoscale Quantum Objects (Engineering) →

Scientists have developed a means to create a new type of memory, marking a notable breakthrough in the increasingly sophisticated field of artificial intelligence. Advance Holds Promise for Artificial Intelligence A team of scientists has developed a means to create a new type of memory, marking a notable breakthrough in the increasingly sophisticated field of … Continue reading Scientists Invent a New Information Storage and Processing Device (Engineering) →