science wire

Engineers create wireless, self-propelled medical device
For 50 years, scientists searched for the secret to making tiny implantable devices that could travel through the bloodstream.

Researchers Build First Physical "Metatronic" Circuit
The technological world of the 21 st century owes a tremendous amount to advances in electrical engineering, specifically, the ability to finely control the flow of electrical charges using increasingly small and complicated circuits.

Donhee Ham named an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer

Rocket launched into northern lights to reveal GPS effects
As the brilliant colors of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, delights skygazers, Cornell researchers are discovering how their physics affects satellite signals here on Earth.

Carnegie Mellon University and Penn Engineering Receive $3.5 Million for Innovative Transportation Research
PITTSBURGH - The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering and the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science a $3.5 mi

In new mass-production technique, robotic insects spring to life
Production method inspired by children's pop-up books enables rapid fabrication of tiny, complex devices : Caroline Perry , (617) 496-1351 - A new technique inspired by elegant pop-up books and origami will soon allow clones of robotic insects to be mass-produced by the sheet.

Plasmas Torn Apart
January saw the biggest solar storm since 2005, generating some of the most dazzling northern lights in recent memory. The source of that storm—and others like it—was the sun's magnetic field, described by invisible field lines that protrude from and loop back into the burning ball of gas.

Electrical Engineers Build "No-Waste" Laser
A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, "thresholdless" laser that funnels all its photons into lasing, without any waste. The two new lasers require very low power to operate, an important breakthrough since lasers usually require greater and greater "pump power" to begin lasing as they shrink to nano sizes.

First materials developed for new high-speed-electronic optical fibers
For the first time, a group of chemists, physicists and engineers has developed crystalline materials that allow an optical fiber to have integrated, high-speed electronic functions. The potential applications of such optical fibers include improved tele and other hybrid optical and electronic technologies, improved laser technology, and more-accurate remote-sensing devices.

Wireless power could revolutionize highway transportation, Stanford researchers say
Stanford researchers have designed a new technology that could lead to wireless charging of electric vehicles while they cruise down the highway.

LED lights point shoppers in the right direction
SAN FRANCISCO - Looking for an item in a large department store or mall can be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but that could change thanks to a hybrid location-identification system that

RF MEMS and Phased Array Pioneer Gabriel Rebeiz Appointed to UC San Diego Endowed Chair
Gabriel Rebeiz, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, has been appointed to the Wireless Industry Endowed Chair at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Surgical robots to provide open-source platform for medical robotics research
The Biorobotics Lab will show the robots at an open house. WHEN: Friday, Jan. 13, 11 - 3 WHERE: Paul Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering In a basement on the University of Washington campus perch seven identical robots.

Particle-free silver ink prints small, high-performance electronics
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - University of Illinois materials scientists have developed a new reactive silver ink for printing high-performance electronics on ubiquitous, low-cost materials such as flexible plastic, paper or fabric substrates.

Choreographing dance of electrons offers promise in pursuit of quantum computers
by John Sullivan In the basement of Hoyt Laboratory at Princeton University, Alexei Tyryshkin clicked a computer mouse and sent a burst of microwaves washing across a silicon crystal suspended in a frozen cylinder of stainless steel. The waves pulsed like distant music across the crystal and deep within its heart, billions of electrons started spinning to their beat.

LectureTools: U-M tech startup featured at Las Vegas show
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - A University of Michigan educational technology that aims to make large lecture classes feel smaller and more interactive is on display this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Leaping lizards and dinosaurs inspire robot design
An African Agama lizard swings its tail upward to prevent pitching forward after a slip during take-off.

Happy Holidays from SEAS

Self-healing electronics could work longer and reduce waste
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - When one tiny circuit within an integrated chip cracks or fails, the whole chip - or even the whole device - is a loss.

Center for Computer Music: 60 Years of Revolutionary Sound
Sixty years ago, music professor Vladimir Ussachevsky received a large package at his office with revolutionary new technology: a reel-to-reel Ampex tape recorder.

New Path to Flex and Stretch Electronics
Imprinting electronic circuitry on backplanes that are both flexible and stretchable promises to revolutionize a number of industries and make "smart devices" nearly ubiquitous.

Research may yield more compact antennas for military use
While tall, bulky antennas seem like relics in an era of sleek, modern smartphones, they're still an unfortunate necessity for American soldiers.

Engineering alumni join forces with FIRST

A novel way to concentrate sun’s heat
MIT researchers find a way to generate power without the usual mirror arrays. — Most technologies for harnessing the sun’s energy capture the light itself, which is turned into electricity using photovoltaic materials.

A smarter way to make ultraviolet light beams
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Existing coherent ultraviolet light sources are power hungry, bulky and expensive. University of Michigan researchers have found a better way to build compact ultraviolet sources with low power consumption that could improve information storage, microscopy and chemical analysis. A paper on the research is newly published in Optics Express.

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a…House?
A scene right out of the "Wizard of Oz," with a few modern twists, took place Nov. 15 at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Nanoparticle electrode for batteries could make large-scale power storage on the energy grid feasible, say Stanford researchers
Stanford researchers have used nanoparticles of a copper compound to develop a high-power battery electrode that is so inexpensive to make, so efficient and so durable that it could be used to build b

All-optical silicon chips enabling faster computing
There has been enormous progress in recent years toward the development of photonic chips - devices that use light beams instead of electrons to carry out their computational tasks. Now, researchers at MIT have filled in a crucial piece of the puzzle that could enable the creation of photonic chips on the standard silicon material that forms the basis for most of today's electronics.

Structured English brings robots closer to everyday users
Move over, Jetsons. A humanoid robot named Mae is traipsing around Cornell's Autonomous Systems Lab, guided by plain-English instructions and sometimes even appearing to get frustrated. Mae understands and executes English commands, thanks to algorithms and a software toolkit called Linear Temporal Logic Mission Planning (LTLMoP) being developed in the lab of Hadas Kress-Gazit, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Kilobots are leaving the nest
Swarm of tiny, collaborative robots will be made available to researchers, educators, and enthusiasts : Michael Patrick Rutter , (617) 496-3815 Photo courtesy of Michael Rubenstein. The Kilobots are coming. Computer scientists and engineers at Harvard University have developed and licensed technology that will make it easy to test collective algorithms on hundreds, or even thousands, of tiny robots.

Nanowires could be solution for high- performance solar cells
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Tiny wires could help engineers realize high-performance solar cells and other electronics, according to University of Illinois researchers. The research group, led by electrical and computer engineering professor Xiuling Li, developed a technique to integrate compound semiconductor nanowires on silicon wafers, overcoming key challenges in device production.

Research Sparks Record-Breaking Solar Cell Performances
Theoretical research by scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has led to record-breaking sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiencies in solar cells. The researchers showed that, contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, the key to boosting solar cell efficiency is not absorbing more photons but emitting more photons.

Engineers open new field of inquiry in bioelectronics
A device created by Yale University engineers could open a new field of inquiry in bioelectronics, or the merging of biological and electronic systems.

Graphene grows better on certain copper crystals
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - New observations could improve industrial production of high-quality graphene, hastening the era of graphene-based consumer electronics, thanks to University of Illinois engineers. By combining data from several imaging techniques, the team found that the quality of graphene depends on the crystal structure of the copper substrate it grows on.

Researchers create transistors from natural cotton fibers
Smarter, more functional clothing incorporating electronics may be possible in the near future, according to a study co-authored by Cornell fiber scientist Juan Hinestroza. Hinestroza, associate professor of fiber science, was part of an international team that developed transistors using natural cotton fibers.

Robotic roach gets wings, sheds light on evolution of flight
When engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, outfitted a six-legged robotic bug with wings in an effort to improve its mobility, they unexpectedly shed some light on the evolution of flight.

Illinois professor to be inducted into Engineering and Science Hall of Fame
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Nick Holonyak Jr., a renowned innovator of semiconductor devices, has joined the elite ranks of scientists and inventors inducted into the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame.

Laser pioneer Anthony Siegman dies at 79
One of the great innovators of laser science wrote the classic reference text on the subject, yet he is as renowned for his eminent students as for his own achievements.

Sulfur in hollow nanofibers overcomes challenges of lithium-ion battery design
Yi Cui and his students have used sulfur-coated hollow carbon nanofibers and an electrolyte additive to fabricate a superior rechargeable lithium battery cathode.

New ‘microgrid’ test beds will foster state industry opportunities
Partner universities in the new Center for Renewable Energy Systems (CRES) are developing complementary facilities in Milwaukee and Madison to help corporate partners explore applications in the fast-growing microgrid industry, CRES leaders announced today (Oct.

The arXiv at 20: a global resource
As the e-print arXiv of scientific publications celebrates its 20th anniversary, what started as an effort to "level the playing field" for researchers has created a whole new playing field on which the white lines are still not clearly drawn.

New online learning module gives children of domestic violence a voice
Media Note: For the Honor Our Voices electronic press kit, see www.honorourvoices.org/press.html. MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (09/27/2011) —Over half of the residents of battered women's shelters in the United States are children (National Network to End Domestic Violence, 2010).

"Next-generation" optical tweezers trap tightly without overheating
Improved device eliminates a barrier to handling nanoscale particles The optical table in the Crozier lab at Harvard SEAS.

NSF-funded project to test cloud computing for smart grid
A Cornell research team has received a four-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a system for computation and information sharing when designing a "smart" electrical grid.

Plasmonics intensifies a novel nanoscale light source, Stanford engineers find
By harnessing plasmonics to intensify light, engineers at Stanford have created an ultra-compact, nanoscale light source with research implications ranging from data to a better understanding of fundamental science. Not long after the development of the first laser in 1960, scientists discovered that shining a beam through certain crystals produced light of a different color; more specifically, it produced light of exactly twice the frequency of the original.

Better Lithium-Ion Batteries Are On The Way From Berkeley Lab
Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, in smart phones, laptops, an array of other consumer electronics, and the newest electric cars. Good as they are, they could be much better, especially when it comes to lowering the cost and extending the range of electric cars. To do that, batteries need to store a lot more energy.

Smarter robot arms
A combination of two algorithms developed at MIT allows autonomous robots to execute tasks much more efficiently - and move more predictably.

An Electronic Bucket Brigade Could Boost Solar Cell Voltages
If solar cells could generate higher voltages when sunlight falls on them, they'd produce more electrical power more efficiently.

Ferroelectrics could pave way for ultra-low power computing
Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have shown that it is possible to reduce the minimum voltage necessary to store charge in a capacitor, an achievement that could reduce the power draw and heat generation of today's electronics. “Just like a Formula One car, the faster you run your computer, the hotter it gets.

UC-developed technology saving consumers trillions of watt-hours, millions of dollars
A University of California technology that significantly reduces the amount of energy wasted by chips in computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices has recently passed the trillion watt-hour milestone in energy savings, according to the technology's current licensee, Tela Innovations.

Tiny bits of debris are a big problem in space, says Stanford professor in report on ’space junk’
Tiny meteoroids damage more spacecraft than all the human-made debris orbiting the Earth, says Stanford Professor Sigrid Close.

A Whole New Light on Graphene Metamaterials
Long-wavelength terahertz light is invisible - it's at the farthest end of the far infrared - but it's useful for everything from detecting explosives at the airport to designing drugs to diagnosing skin cancer. Now, for the first time, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have demonstrated a microscale device made of graphene - the remarkable form of carbon that's only one atom thick - whose strong response to light at terahertz frequencies can be tuned with exquisite precision.

MIT announces new Center for Graphene Devices and Systems
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced the creation of the MIT/MTL Center for Graphene Devices and Systems (MIT-CG) .