Engineering in the News December 2009

Excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau. This collection of December excerpts focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world.

AVIATION SECURITY
Keene Sentinel (from McClatchy News Service; New Hampshire, Dec. 31) -- Sheldon Jacobson, a U of I computer science professor who specializes in aviation security modeling and risk management, said racial profiling itself is ineffective. “The fact of the matter is, we’re dealing with a moving target,” he said. “If we keep chasing the risks that we’ve already seen, we will ultimately miss the risk that is going to be coming toward us.”

PLAN FOR REUSE, RECYCLE, OR DISPOSAL
Chicago Tribune (Dec. 28) -- The BlackBerries, iPhones and cell phones given this Christmas undoubtedly will consign many older models to the landfill. What would it take to put more of those – or at least pieces of them -- back to work in the next generation of electronic gadgets? Harrison Kim, a professor in the U of I Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, has studied the question and found that the time to think about such “end of life” issues is before the small electronics are even designed. Also: The Times Leader (from the Chicago Tribune; Wilkes Barre, Pa., Dec. 28), ASEE FirstBell (Dec.29).

TODAY IN HISTORY: THE TRANSISTOR
Wired Magazine (Dec. 23) -- On this day in technology history – John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, with support from colleague William Shockley, demonstrated the transistor at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. It’s been called the most important invention of the 20th century. The transistor is a semiconductor device that can amplify or switch electrical signals. It was developed to replace vacuum tubes. Bardeen, who won the Nobel Prize twice, became a faculty member at Illinois.

ROOT HARVESTER
Science Centric (Sofia, Bulgaria, Dec. 23) -- A new miscanthus rhizome root harvester and planter will be unveiled at the seventh annual Bioenergy Feedstocks Symposium Jan. 11-12 at Illinois. In collaboration with the U of I, the European bioenergy developer Tomax Ltd. and an Oklahoma machinery manufacturer, Bermuda King, will explain how the Rizomgen Harvester /Planter package can save 50% on existing rhizome harvesting and planting costs.

DIGITAL QUANTUM BATTERY
Electronic Engineering Times (London, Dec. 23) -- Ideas of how to exploit miniaturized vacuum tubes have emerged regularly and without much success, since the glass-envelope valve was replaced for most applications by the transistor. However, U of I researchers Alfred Hubler and Onyeama Osuagwu think the vacuum tube could be basis of a high energy density battery, or a non-volatile memory. Also: PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, Dec. 22).

SELF-HEALING MATERIALS MIMIC NATURE
Chemistry World (Cambridge, England, Dec. 22) -- A new method to make complex microvascular networks could revolutionize tissue engineering, U.S. scientists say. Nature is full of examples of vascular networks, such as blood vessels in the human body and veins in leaves that transport fluid or other substances to promote growth and healing. U of I materials science and engineering professor Jennifer Lewis and colleagues have developed a technique to mimic these networks on a polymer matrix. The polymer system makes it capable of self healing, allowing any cracks or tears to be healed making it stronger and more durable than previous attempts.

YOUTUBE
Chicago Tribune (Dec. 21) -- It seems inevitable and permanent now, as much a fixture in the American mind as McDonald’s or Time magazine. But YouTube, it is easy to forget, did not exist when the current decade opened. Not until “Me at the zoo,” a video of co-founder and U. of I. alumnus Jawed Karim standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo, was posted in April 2005, was there, really, a YouTube. Yet despite being around for fewer than half of the last 10 years, the video-sharing service is the decade’s most influential popular-culture force on the Internet. Karim and co-founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley had met while working at PayPal, the Web-based money-transfer service. Chen was a graduate of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in the western suburb of Aurora, and, like Karim, studied computer science at Illinois. Also: CIO Today (Calabasas, Calif., Dec. 24).

BATTERY DESIGN
Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 21) -- A “digital quantum battery” concept proposed by a physicist at Illinois could provide a dramatic boost in energy storage capacity – if it meets its theoretical potential once built. The concept calls for billions of nanoscale capacitors and would rely on quantum effects – the weird phenomena that occur at atomic size scales – to increase energy storage. “People didn’t realize that a large electric field means a large energy density, and could be used for energy storage that would far surpass anything we have today,” says Alfred Hubler, the Illinois physicist and lead author of a paper outlining the concept, to be published in the journal Complexity. Also: EE Times Asia (Dec. 29).

EXPOSING DIPLOMA MILLS
Wired Magazine (Dec. 21) -- U of I physics professor George Gollin exposes bogus universities offering diplomas.

NANOTECHNOLOGY
Nanotechwire (Philadelphia, Dec. 19) -- Scientists at Georgia Tech have developed a nanolithographic technique that can produce high-resolution patterns of at least three different chemicals on a single chip at writing speeds of up to one millimeter per second. The research is enabled by heated probe tips that can create a hot spot as small as a few nanometers in diameter. Such tips are designed and fabricated by collaborator William King, an engineering professor at Illinois. “The heated tip allows one to direct nano-scale chemical reactions,” King said. Also: Scientific Computing (Rockaway, N.J., Dec. 18).

COMPUTING NETWORK FUNDED
CIO (Framingham, Mass., Dec. 17) -- Research teams from the U of I, the Renaissance Computing Institute, Duke University, the University of California at Davis, Ohio State and the University of Washington are among those being awarded money from the National Science Foundation to design the Global Environment for Network Innovations.

COMPUTER SYSTEMS RESEARCH
PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, Dec. 16) -- U of I electrical and computer engineering professor Douglas Jones will lead small-scale systems research at the Multi-Scale Systems Center, which is charged with finding ways to improve the design of computing systems.

STUDENT HONOR
FirstScience (London, Dec. 26) -- U. of I. biophysics student Markita Landry is the recipient of a Biophysical Society’s 2010 Minority Travel Award and will be honored at a reception Feb. 20 at the Society’s 54th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

NANOLITHOGRAPHY
Nanowerk News (Honolulu, Dec. 15) -- William King, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at the U. of I., collaborated with scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology in the development of a nanolithography technique that allows multiple chemicals on a single chip. Also: AZoNano (Sydney, Australia, Dec. 15), e! Science News (Quebec City, Dec. 16), Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (New Rochelle, N.Y., Dec. 16), Materials Views (Weinheim, Germany, Dec. 16), PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, Dec. 16), R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., Dec. 16), Science Centric (Sofia, Bulgaria, Dec. 16), Scientist Live (London, Dec. 16), Science Daily (Chevy Chase, Md., Dec. 16), Product Design & Development (Rockaway, N.J., Dec. 16), Chemistry (Berlin, Dec. 18).

WATER RECYCLING
CBS News (Dec. 14) -- Despite the economic calamity, the greentech industry didn’t do badly in 2009 and some interesting trends and surprises emerged along the way. Among the best: Water is the new weather: Everyone talks about it but no one does anything about it. The hopeful sign is there are a lot of great ideas out there – like Statkraft’s plan to turn seawater into energy and the proposal from engineering professor Mark Shannon at the U of I to recycle toilet water.

COMMERCIALIZING STRETCHABLE ELECTRONICS
Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology (Boston, Mass., Dec. 10) -- Waltham startup MC10 Inc. markets stretchable electronics technology intended for industrial and healthcare applications and developed at the U of I. A deal between the university and the startup enables MC10 to access stretchable silicon technology established under patents with a lab run by professor John Rogers.

HONORS
HPC Wire (San Diego, Dec. 10) -- U of I computer science professor Bill Gropp and computer science affiliate professor Nitin Vaidya have been named IEEE Fellows for the class of 2010.

GRASSY TESTBED
Prairie Farmer (St. Charles, Ill., Dec. 10) -- A new 300-foot long and 13-foot high berm will be the test bed for multiple grass varieties at the U. of I. It will provide a multitude of research and training opportunities in erosion control and storm-water management, says Prasanta Kalita, an agricultural engineer at Illinois.

BIOCOMPATIBLE CIRCUIT MATERIALS
InTech (Research Triangle Park, N.C., Dec. 2009) -- A research group, which includes researchers from the U of I and from University of Pennsylvania, has made electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body by building thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates. Last year, John Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois, developed flexible, stretchable silicon circuits whose performance matches that of their rigid counterparts. To make these devices biocompatible, Rogers’s lab collaborated with researchers at Tufts University who last year reported making nanopatterned optical devices from silkworm-cocoon proteins.

LIGHTING
CBS News (Dec. 7) -- Researchers from the U of I have started a company called Eden Park Illumination that makes a flat, energy-efficient and completely recyclable bulb.

BLUE WATERS
Genome Web Daily News (New York City, Dec. 7) -- The U of I’s Eric Jakobsson and Thom Dunning will appear, along with representatives from the National Science Foundation, in a virtual workshop hosted by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The 120-minute video will cover the various application areas and research possibilities for the Blue Waters supercomputer system under construction at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Related articles: HPC Wire (San Diego, Dec. 9) -- The “Blue Waters” supercomputer should be operating at the U of I in 2011. Data Center Journal (Roswell, Ga., Dec. 14), Data Center Knowledge (Lawrenceville, N.J., Dec. 17).

TECHNOLOGY COMBINATION
Scientific American (Dec. 7) -- U of I materials science and engineering professor  John Rogers says Stanford University researchers’ work towards devising batteries made of paper and ink loaded with carbon nanotubes, “provides a nice example of the combination of high tech with low tech.”

SOLAR LANTERNS BRING LIGHT TO RURAL INDIA
The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 7) -- Sunset used to be bedtime for 10-year-old Ankash Govind. This village, three hours from the bright lights of Mumbai, has not had electricity for the last eight years. Now, he spends his nights reading to his siblings by the light of a solar-powered lantern called the “Sun King.” They were sold last year to about 400 subsistence farmers in the village, converting them from smoky, expensive kerosene lighting to a cleaner and cheaper alternative. The solar lamps were provided by Greenlight Planet, a for-profit enterprise, based in the U.S. It was started by one Indian and two American college students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign last year. See video at  Wall Street Journal.com (Dec. 4).

BENDABLE ELECTRONICS
Nanowerk News (Honolulu, Dec. 7) -- “All existing forms of electronics are built on the two-dimensional, planar surfaces of either semiconductor wafers or plates of glass,” says John Rogers, a U of I professor of materials science and engineering. Rogers and collaborators have discovered that it is possible to wrap silicon electronics around objects with arbitrary curvilinear shapes – something that is impossible with wafer-based technologies.

FASTEST COMPUTER CHIP FOR "BLUE WATERS"
CNET News (San Francisco, Dec. 7) -- IBM will release a new computer chip next year that will go into a U of I supercomputer in a quest to build what may become the world’s fastest supercomputer.

PHOTOCATALYST THAT CONTINUES TO WORK WITH THE LIGHTS GO OUT
Highlights in Chemical Science (Dec. 4) -- An efficient titania photocatalyst that continues to work when the lights go out gives continuous protection against bacteria, says Jian-Ku Shang, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois.

CLOUD COMPUTING
IT News Online (Mumbai, India, Dec. 2) -- “The upcoming Single-chip Cloud Computer is of great interested to application developers and tools researchers,” says Wen-Mei Hwu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering professor and co-director of the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center at Illinois. 

Related articles:
Financial Times (London, Dec. 2) -- Intel and Microsoft set up two parallel computing research centers at Illinois and at the University of California at Berkeley last year. Also: PC Magazine (New York City, Dec. 2), EE Times (Manhasset, N.Y., Dec. 2).

WHEELCHAIR TECHNOLOGY
WBBM-Channel 2 (from The Associated Press; CBS; Chicago, Dec. 1) -- Scott Daigle, a graduate research assistant at Illinois, has designed a continuous variable transmission for wheelchairs. Daigle first worked on the project last spring in a technology entrepreneurship class taught by Brian Lilly, a professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering. His co-advisers in the graduate program, mechanical engineering professor Elizabeth Hsiao-Wecksler and kinesiology professor Jacob Sosnoff, worked with him to apply for grants for the project. Also: Belleville News-Democrat (from AP; Illinois, Dec. 1), WREX-Channel 13 (from AP; NBC; Rockford, Ill., Dec. 1), St. Augustine Record (from AP, Florida, Dec. 2).

IESE ALUMNUS PROFILED
The Daily Illini (Dec. 2) -- As the manager of supply chain consulting services at Capgemini, a global consulting firm, IESE alumnus Luke Schenk allocates resources from city to city across the nation, helping various brands and companies manage their supply chain.

BIOMECHANICAL SIGNALS ARE FAST
The Scientist (Philadelphia, December issue) -- Signals induced by physical forces acting in and around cells, appropriately dubbed biomechanical signals, are the champions of the cellular world. “If you look at this mechanical signaling, it’s about 30 meters per second – that’s very fast,” says bioengineer Ning Wang, of the University of Illinois.

HOLONYAK'S CAREER CHRONICLED
electronic design (Dec. 1) -- “I don’t think I’ve seen anything bigger or better than what we’re working on now,” explained Nick Holonyak Jr., inventor of the first practical LED, the first visible semiconductor laser, and the first electronics to use III-V compound semiconductor alloys. He was part of the Bell Labs J.L. Moll group, which made the first diffused silicon transistors and switches as well as the first metallized silicon. He also was a leader in the early semiconductor technology that led to Silicon Valley.

ALUMNUS ARNOLD BECKMAN...CHANGING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
electronic design (Dec. 1) --In 1909, nine-year-old Arnold Beckman was scrounging around his parent's attic and discovered an old chemistry textbook, complete with details on performing experiments. In no time, he was performing the experiments it described. Seeing his son's enthusiasm, his blacksmith father encouraged this experimentation and suggested their tool shed be converted into a laboratory. So began a lifelong interest in chemistry that initially led to the pH meter and ultimately gave us numerous devices to revolutionize the study and understanding of human biology, made measuring easier and more accurate, and spurred the creation of Silicon Valley.

STRUCTURE FABRICATION
The Money Times (from United Press International; Mumbai, India, Dec. 1) -- Researchers at the U of I have developed a technique for fabricating three-dimensional, single-crystalline silicon structures from thin films by coupling photolithography and a self-folding process driven by capillary interactions. “This is a completely different approach to making three-dimensional structures,” said Ralph G. Nuzzo, the G. L. Clark Professor of Chemistry at Illinois. Also involved in the research were U. of I. mechanical science and engineering professor K. Jimmy Hsia and Jennifer A. Lewis, the Thurnauer Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and the director of the university’s Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory.
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Contact: Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, editor.