Engineering in the News April 2010

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

BLOOD RESEARCH
Nanowerk News (Honolulu, April 28) -- Thanks to an interdisciplinary team of researchers, scientists now have a more complete understanding of one of the human body’s most vital structures: the red blood cell. Led by electrical and computer engineering professor Gabriel Popescu, the team developed a model that could lead to breakthroughs in screening and treatment of blood-cell-morphology diseases, such as malaria and sickle-cell disease. Also: Softpedia (Bucharest, Romania, April 30), Drug Discovery & Development (Rockaway, N.J., April 29).

PETASCALE COMPUTING
One India (from Asian News International, New Delhi; Bangalore, India, April 28) -- The Blue Waters computing project, a joint effort of the U. of I., IBM and the Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation, is being created for open scientific research.

Related story: FOX News (April 28) -- Researchers at Iowa State University "are working to scale up their computational chemistry tools for the Blue Waters supercomputer being developed at the University of Illinois and its National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation is also involved in the effort.

SOLAR METAMATERIALS
Technology Review (April 29) -- "In an advance that could lead to solar cells that more fully utilize sunlight, researchers at Caltech have designed materials that can bend visible light at unusual but precise angles, no matter its polarization. The scientists hope the materials are a step toward perfectly transparent solar-cell coatings that would direct all the sun's rays into the active area to improve solar power output." MechSE professor Nicholas Fang said "the ability of the material to work with both polarizations of light is exciting," but added that "one of the major remaining challenges in engineering metamaterials is loss," in this case the loss of energy to heat.

BROADBAND ON TRAINS
Chicago Tribune (April 26) -- Ramavarapu Sreenivas, an associate professor of industrial and enterprise systems engineering at Illinois, oversaw an Illinois Department of Transportation study that estimated equipment costs for Amtrak and Metra, Chicago’s commuter rail agency, to make broadband Internet access available for its riders. Also:TMCNet (Norwalk, Conn., April 26).

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT SERVES THE DEAF
HPCwire (San Diego, April 20) -- Software developed by the theoretical and computational biophysics group at the U. of I. is being used by Harvard Medical School researchers to gain insight into deafness. Also: PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, April 26).

HONORS
R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., April 21) -- U. of I. professors Nigel Goldenfeld and Martin Gruebele are among 229 new members named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Also: WBBM-Channel 2 (from The Associated Press; CBS; Chicago, April 29), R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., April 30).

SECURING HEALTH RECORDS
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (April 20) -- Researchers from the U. of I. will lead a group that includes scientists at Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and Harvard to open access to electronic health records and protect patient privacy.

AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING
Wisconsin Ag Connection (Marshfield, Wis., April 20) -- The U. of I.’s graduate program in agricultural and biological engineering was co-ranked No. 1 in U.S. News & World Report’s 2010 ranking of best engineering schools in the United States.

ELECTRODE ARRAYS USE SILK FOR INTIMATE CONNECTIONS
FOX News (from Reuters, April 19) -- John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the U. of I., and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and Tufts University in Boston have devised electrode arrays using protein from silk and thin metal electrodes. Also: ABC Science (from Reuters; Sydney, April 19), AZoNano (Sydney, April 19), e! Science News (Quebec City, April 18),  Genetic Engineering News (New Rochelle, N.Y., April 18), Independent Online (from Reuters, Cape Town, South Africa, April 18), Indian Express (from Reuters; New Delhi, April 19), LiveScience (New York City, April 18), Macon Daily (from Reuters; Georgia, April 18), Medical News Today (Bexhill-on-Sea, England, April 19), MSNBC (from Reuters, April 18), Nanowerk News (Honolulu, April 18), National Post (from Reuters; Don Mills, Ontario, April 18), News24 (from Reuters; Johannesburg, South Africa, April 18), PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, April 18), RedOrbit (Dallas, April 18), Reuters (April 18), Reuters India (April 18), Science Centric (Sofia, Bulgaria, April 19), Science Daily (Chevy Chase, Md., April 18), Scientist Live (London, April 19), Wired UK (London, April 19), Zee News (Noida, India, April 19), United Press International (April 19), Post Chronicle (from UPI; Denville, N.J., April 19), R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., April 19), Scientific Computing (Rockaway, N.J., April 19), St. Louis Globe-Democrat (from UPI, April 19),The Epoch Times (New York City, April 24), Technology Review (April 26).

ABOUT CHEATING
PC World (San Francisco, April 18) -- “Cheating has gone up across many fields because it’s easier to find with the tools we have today,” says Lenny Pitt, the director of undergraduate programs in the U. of I. Department of Computer Science.

ULTIMATE RECYCLING...TURNING MANURE INTO ASPHALT
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, (April 15) -- With the help of U. of I. agricultural and biological engineering professor Yuanhui Zhang, Innoventor founder Kent Schien developed a process that converts animal waste into a bio-oil that is used in asphalt binder. Asphalt made from recycled swine manure was used to pave the outer road along Interstate 44 near Six Flags St. Louis (see video). Also: Columbia Missourian (from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 15), Water and Wastewater (Jacksonville Beach, Fla., April 15), WMAQ-Channel 5 (NBC; Chicago, April 16).

PRINTING AND FOLDING MATERIALS
Popular Science (April 14) -- Researchers at Illinois led by materials science and engineering professor Jennifer Lewis are developing new printing and wet-folding origami techniques for microelectronics and biocompatible devices. Also: AZoNano (Sydney, April 14), e! Science News (Quebec City, April 14), Nanowerk News (Honolulu, April 14), PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, April 14), Science Centric (Sofia, Bulgaria, April 14), Science Daily (Chevy Chase, Md., April 14), RedOrbit (Dallas, April 14), Medical News Today (Bexhill-on-Sea, England, April 15), Technology Review (April 15).

FLEXIBLE SOLAR POWER CONTINUES MAKING ADVANCES
New Scientist (April 13) -- Reports on the ongoing development of thin, flexible solar cells that "consume just a fraction of the materials -- and costs -- of a traditional photovoltaic device." Achieving low production costs along with efficiency "requires thinking outside the box," according to the article, which then profiles how a number of efforts -- including those at UC-Berkeley, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign -- have approached the issue. Also: ASEE FirstBell (April 13).

COMPUTING
VizWorld (Cullowhee, N.C., April 13) -- The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the U. of I. is collaborating on a new endeavor to provide remote visualization, image generation, statistical analysis, and a variety of other services to users.

BUILDING MATERIALS
Construction Digital (Beverly, Mass., April 7) -- Researchers at Illinois have tested a composite plastic material developed by Axion International that is expected to be used for building materials.

ROBOTIC STUDIES
Discovery News (New York City, April 6) -- U. of I. electrical and computer engineering professor Steve Levinson and colleagues are conducting studies with a robot called the iCub.

AWARD-WINNING PAPER
Gulf Times (Doha, Qatar, April 7) -- A research team from Qatar University and the U. of I. has won the 2009 Best Journal Paper Award from the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management.

WATER DESALINATION
Physics World (Bristol, England, April 5) -- Mark Shannon, a U. of I. professor of mechanical science and engineering, sees great potential in a portable desalination device developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Also: Environmental Research Web (Bristol, England, April 7).

YOUNG INVESTIGATOR
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (New Rochelle, N.Y., April 5) -- Eric Pop, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois, is one of 17 researchers chosen for the Office of Naval Research’s 2010 Young Investigator Program, which invests in academic scientists and engineers who show exceptional promise for creative study.

CONTROLLING LIQUIDS
Nanotechwire (Philadelphia, April 3) -- Mark Shannon, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at the U. of I., says that a new approach developed by mechanical engineers at MIT controlling the way liquids spread across a surface might be further developed for a variety of applications.

GRANTS FUND HEALTH IT PROJECTS
Healthcare IT News (Pownal, Maine, April 2) -- The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has awarded $60 million in research grants through the Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects program to the U. of I., Mayo Clinic of Medicine, Harvard University and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. ONC chief David Blumenthal, M.D., announced the awards on April 2 in an e-mail. Also: Modern Healthcare (Chicago, April 2), News-Medical (Sydney, April 8).

Related story: InformationWeek (Manhasset, N.Y., April 6) -- The U. of I. has received a grant to develop the technologies necessary to build and preserve the public trust as health information technology systems gain widespread use. Also: News-Medical (Sydney, April 6), WREX-Channel 13 (from The Associated Press; NBC; Rockford, Ill., April 8), The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Ill., April 8), Fox 2 Now (from AP, St. Louis, April 9). AP dispatch appeared in numerous publications around the state.

HOW LIQUIDS SPREAD
Nanotechwire (Philadelphia, April 3) -- Mark Shannon, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at the U. of I., says that a new approach developed by mechanical engineers at MIT controlling the way liquids spread across a surface might be further developed for a variety of applications.

PHYSICS OF BASEBALL
PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, April 1) -- Alan Nathan, a nuclear physicist at the U. of I., has written scientific papers about the physics of baseball and takes massive amounts of dry data and turns them into fascinating observations.

Related story: USA Today (April 10) -- U. of I. physics professor Alan Nathan and Washington State University engineering professor Lloyd C. Smith have been asked to be involved when a Major League player attempts to break the Guinness World Record of longest batted ball. Also: Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash., April 14) .

TOURNAMENT SEEDINGS
The New York Times (April 1) -- Sheldon Jacobson, a computer science professor at the U. of I. and a co-author of the paper “Seeding in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament: When Is a Higher Seed Better?” published in the Journal of Gambling Business and Economics, says seedings are valuable, but they have their limitations.

VACCINE DEVELOPMENT
Bioscience Technology (Rockaway, N.J., April 1) -- U. of I. computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson is a member of a panel asked by the National Science Foundation to determine why China and Australia were able to develop and produce swine-flu vaccine months before North America and Europe. Also: FirstScience (London, April 1), News-Medical (Sydney, April 1), PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, April 1).

TEACHING CORN ABOUT NITROGEN
AgWeb (St. Charles, Ill., April 1) -- The Holy Grail for the corn industry is a hybrid that would fix its own nitrogen. U. of I. agricultural engineer Kaustubh Bhalerao, an agricultural and biological engineering professor at the U. of I., believes research in synthetic biology may be the key to “teaching” corn to do just that.
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Contact: Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, editor.