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Category: 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 to sense biochemicals, without disrupting their functionality altogether.

Researchers at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have developed a new strategy to overcome that limitation. Called “click-to-polymer” or CLIP, this approach uses a chemical reaction to attach new functional units onto .

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Bio-Digital Twins, Quantum Computing, And Precision Medicine — Mr. Kazuhiro Gomi, President and CEO, and Dr. Joe Alexander, MD, Ph.D., Director, Medical and Health Informatics (MEI) Lab, NTT Research.

Mr. Kazuhiro Gomi, is President and CEO of NTT Research (https://ntt-research.com/), a division of The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, commonly known as NTT (https://www.global.ntt/), a Japanese telecommunications company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Mr. Gomi has been at NTT for more than 30 years and was involved in product management/product development activities at the beginning of his tenure. In September of 2009, Mr. Gomi was first named to the Global Telecoms Business Power100 — a list of the 100 most powerful and influential people in the telecoms industry. He was the CEO of NTT America Inc. from 2010 to 2019 and also served on the Board of Directors at NTT Communications from 2012 to 2019. Mr. Gomi received a Masters of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Keio University, Tokyo. Mr. Gomi is a member of the board at US Japan Council, a non-profit organization aimed at fostering a better relationship between the US and Japan.

Dr. Joe Alexander, is Director of the Medical and Health Informatics (MEI) Lab at NTT Research, where he oversees the MEI Lab research in multi-scale Precision Cardiology platforms such as the cardiovascular bio-digital twin, as well as heart-on-a-chip technology, specifically aimed at developing the infrastructure for a digital replica of an individual’s heart. In addition, the MEI Lab is working on nano-and micro-scale sensors and electrodes, other organ-on-a-chip micro-fluidics technologies, as well as wearable and remote sensing to support future bio-digital twin applications.

Before coming to NTT Research, Dr. Alexander spent 18 years at Pfizer, Inc., where he had most recently served as Senior Medical Director, Global Medical Affairs, working in cardiovascular medicine, worldwide clinical imaging and measurement technologies, medical devices and pulmonary hypertension, and regularly conducting modeling and simulation research in many of these areas. He previously worked for two years at Merck, Inc. and spent eight years at Vanderbilt University, where he completed a two-year residency in internal medicine and served as a professor of medicine and biomedical engineering. Dr. Alexander obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. (in biomedical engineering) degrees at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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Nanoracks has hired a former NASA official most recently involved with planning for Artemis to lead its efforts to develop commercial space stations.

WASHINGTON — Commercial space services company Nanoracks has hired a former NASA official most recently involved with planning for the Artemis program to lead its efforts to develop commercial space stations.

Nanoracks announced Aug. 2 it hired Marshall Smith to be its senior vice president of commercial space stations. Smith retired from NASA at the end of July after more than 35 years at the agency, most recently as deputy associate administrator for systems engineering and integration in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

In his new role, Smith will oversee the company’s Outpost program, which seeks to convert upper stages of launch vehicles into modules that can be used for in-space manufacturing or habitats, as well as plans to develop free-flyer commercial space stations. Smith will run the company’s new office in Huntsville, Alabama.

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Daniel Korsun’s undergraduate career at MIT

MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances.

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Thrilled to see Paradromics’ $20M fund raise lead by the talented Dr. Amy Kruse! Paradromics is building a brain computer interface supported by DARPA’s Biologi… See More.

The investment demonstrates confidence in Paradromics as a well-positioned player in the $200 billion BCI therapy market. Last year, Paradromics successfully completed testing of its platform, demonstrating the largest ever electrical recording of cortical activity that exceeded more than 30000 electrode channels in sheep cortex. This recording allowed researchers to observe the brain activity of sheep in response to sound stimuli with high fidelity.

“We are combining the best of neural science and medical device engineering to create a robust and reliable platform for new clinical therapies,” said Paradromics CEO Matt Angle. “This funding round is a validation of both our technology and strategic vision in leading this important developing market.”

The current funding round follows $10M in early stage private funding as well as $15M of public funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense (DARPA).

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The Koenigsegg Gemera is a four-seat hypercar that can do 0–62 mph in a claimed 1.9 seconds, but perhaps the most remarkable thing about this Swedish rocket ship is its 2.0-liter twin-turbocharged inline-3, which makes a staggering 600 horsepower (plus 443 pound-feet of torque).

Jason Fenske at Engineering Explained has the details on how Koenigsegg extracted so much power from such a small engine. It starts with the cylinders. There may not be many of them, but they are pretty big. They’re actually larger than the cylinders in Koenigsegg’s 5.0-liter V8, Fenske noted.

Koenigsegg’s new Gemera makes over 1700 horsepower, with close to a third of that figure coming from a 3-cylinder engine.

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CHINA’S NEW THORIUM-BASED NUCLEAR REACTOR is well situated for being adopted for Space applications.

China is slowly but steadily positioning itself to leap ahead of the US Space program. It is doing this without pomp and fanfare, and without the idea of a “space race,” simply based upon what it requires for its future.

1) Recent noteworthy progress on molten salt thorium reactors could be a key component of future Chinese space-worthiness. Originally designed by the USA’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960’s, they were planned to be used for nuclear powered strategic bomber planes, before the nuclear submarine concept became adopted as more feasible. They were chosen because they can be miniaturized to the size of an aircraft. By the same token, they could conceivably be used in advanced atmospheric or space propulsion.

2) Recently, China announced successful tests on a new type of aircraft that takes in air from the surrounding atmosphere, ionizes it with electricity, and expels it as exhaust. The only thing needed would be a strong enough on-board electrical supply to supply the huge amount of power required. Only a nuclear power plant could supply that power unless it were to be beamed from ground stations. Such a plane would require no fuel for its entire lifetime. It could also function in any atmosphere, not only Earth’s atmosphere, since it is not based on burning fuel chemically, which requires oxygen. Versions of such air-plasma-breathing thrust could be used as part of the boosting phase of a rocket launch system.

3) A few days ago, China tested part of its fully reusable space plane, which is a vastly superior system to SpaceX’s “Starship” rocket. While Starship uses old-fashioned ballistic rocket technology, the Chinese spaceplane, according to reports that have come out, involves something similar to the Sanger space plane design. An early version of the Space Shuttle design also had this configuration. Instead of the Space Shuttle’s dangerous solid rocket boosters on the side, and its external fuel tank, which is dumped once the fuel is used up, such systems have a second “booster aircraft” which glides to a runway after boosting the upper stage orbiter into its atmospheric launch position. So, there are two vehicles which land on a runway, with only the orbiter going into space. In addition to this, the Chinese are adding “combined cycle” technologies, where more than one type of propulsion is being used on the aircraft. So, perhaps turbojets, and scramjets, and rocket engines will be used as one example of such a configuration.

The new molten salt reactors, part of a program developed under the leadership of former Chinese President Zemin’s son, and with collaboration from the US’s Oakridge National Laboratory, is now close to implementation stage. Such reactors could be integrated into a space plane, allowing “single-stage-to-orbit” concepts to become within reach. Such systems would not need a booster phase, but would use a combination of air-plasma-breathing and rocket engines to get to orbit with only a single vehicle, while landing like the Space Shuttle did or perhaps landing with powered flight instead of gliding without fuel as did the Shuttle.

All of this makes China’s plan for “nuclear-powered space shuttles” in the 2040’s very possible. If fusion power is obtained before then, this will all proceed even faster, and all the technical and engineering skills will be immediately brought to bear.

The thorium-powered reactors do not need water as a coolant, meaning they can be built in remote deserts alongside wind and solar power plants.

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Plastic waste, a material that can take centuries or more to disappear, is causing irreparable damage to the planet. At least 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year. In many cases, specifically in more developed countries, plastic waste is disposed of responsibly and sent to facilities to be sorted, recycled, or recovered. However, plastic waste generated in developing countries typically ends up in dumps or open, uncontrolled landfills — most of which eventually enter the ocean either through transport by wind or tides or through waterways such as rivers or wastewater. Now, many companies are recycling this waste into useful products, such as sportswear, affordable homes, electric cars, roads, etc. One of them is Gjenge Makers Ltd, a sustainable, alternative, affordable building products manufacturing company that transforms plastic waste into durable building materials. These include paving blocks, paving tiles, and manhole covers.

Nzambi Matee has used her engineering skills to develop the process that involved mixing recycled waste plastic and sand. Matee gets the wasted plastic from packaging factories for free, although she pays for the plastic she gets from other recyclers. The company workers take plastic waste, mix it with sand, and heat it up, with the resulting brick being five to seven times stronger than concrete.

Matee’s team uses the type of plastic waste that can’t be processed anymore; that cannot be recycled. Since plastic is fibrous in nature, it makes the brick an extremely strong and durable material. Besides, compared with regular bricks, Gjenge Makers’ ones are lighter, so transportation and installation are achieved at faster rates.

Gjenge Makers produces between 1000 to 1500 paving bricks every day in different sizes and colors. The bricks are usually made using high-density polyethylene, used in milk and shampoo bottles; low-density polyethylene, often used for bags for cereals or sandwiches; and polypropylene, used for ropes, flip-top lids, and buckets. However, it does not use polyethylene terephthalate or PET, which are commonly used in plastic bottles.

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Most of the tests that doctors use to diagnose cancer — such as mammography, colonoscopy, and CT scans — are based on imaging. More recently, researchers have also developed molecular diagnostics that can detect specific cancer-associated molecules that circulate in bodily fluids like blood or urine.

MIT engineers have now created a new diagnostic nanoparticle that combines both of these features: It can reveal the presence of cancerous proteins through a urine test, and it functions as an imaging agent, pinpointing the tumor location. In principle, this diagnostic could be used to detect cancer anywhere in the body, including tumors that have metastasized from their original locations.

“This is a really broad sensor intended to respond to both primary tumors and their metastases. It can trigger a urinary signal and also allow us to visualize where the tumors are,” says Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

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Researchers at ETH Zurich have trapped a tiny sphere measuring a hundred nanometres using laser light and slowed down its motion to the lowest quantum mechanical state. This technique could help researchers to study quantum effects in macroscopic objects and build extremely sensitive sensors.

Why can atoms or elementary particles behave like waves according to , which allows them to be in several places at the same time? And why does everything we see around us obviously obey the laws of classical physics, where such a phenomenon is impossible? In recent years, researchers have coaxed larger and larger objects into behaving quantum mechanically. One consequence of this is that, when passing through a double slit, these objects form an that is characteristic of waves.

Up to now, this could be achieved with molecules consisting of a few thousand atoms. However, physicists hope one day to be able to observe such quantum effects with properly . Lukas Novotny, professor of photonics, and his collaborators at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich have now made a crucial step in that direction. Their results were recently published in the scientific journal Nature.

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