News from Engineering at Illinois May 2010

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

EFFECTIVENES OF CELL PHONE BANS CONSIDERED
News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Ill., May 31) -- Driver distraction is thought to be the cause of nearly 80 percent of automobile accidents in the U.S., resulting in about 2,600 deaths, 330,000 injuries and 1.5 million instances of property damage annually, according to a published study by Sheldon H. Jacobson, a UI computer science professor who has researched the impact of cell phone legislation on driving safety.

NUCLEAR POWER AND ENERGY POLICY
C-SPAN (video; May 28) -- Clifford Singer, a professor of nuclear, plasma, and radiological engineering at Illinois talked about nuclear power production and energy policy at an AAAS luncheon. Among the topics he addressed were the cost of nuclear power, environmental concerns and disposal of spent fuel material, the future need for alternatives to fossil fuels, and how to shape energy policy.

BLUE WATERS WARM-UP ACT
Salon (May 25) -- Columnist: “I do want to point out the most random and incredibly sincere unboxing video I’ve come across – that of high-performance computing gear from IBM, which is acting as the warm-up system for the coming Blue Waters petaflop supercomputer at the National Petascale Computing Facility at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign (hat tip Inside HPC). The video isn’t a play-by-play unboxing because that would take too long, but is a lovingly shot homage to their new gear that I figured fellow geeks might appreciate.”

COMPUTER SECURITY
Discovery News (Silver Spring, Md., May 26) -- Carl Gunter, a computer science professor at the U. of I., is leading a $15-million initiative to improve the security of electronic medical records.

SAFE DRINKING WATER
Science News (Washington, D.C., May 25) -- Researchers at the U. of I. and at the University of Wisconsin at Madison are collaborating in the development of tiny sensors that could detect bacteria in drinking water.

COMPUTER CHIPS
BBC News (London, May 25) -- U. of I. electrical and computer engineering professor Rakesh Kumar said variations in manufacturing, environment, and workload can conspire to make a silicon chip prone to errors. Also: Daily News & Analysis (from Asian News International, New Delhi; Mumbai, India, May 26), Birmingham Star (from ANI, New Delhi; Sydney, May 26), Malaysia Sun (from ANI, New Delhi; Kuala Lumpur, May 26), PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, May 26).

SEMICONDUCTOR FABRICATION
Physics World (Bristol, England, May 19) -- U. of I. materials science and engineering professor John Rogers and colleagues at Illinois and a related company have designed an assembly technique for compound semiconductors, which they say could produce these materials en masse and integrate them into devices with relative ease (original article in Nature: Yoon, J. et al. Nature 465, 329-333, 2010). Also:, e! Science News (Quebec City, May 20), Nanowerk News (Honolulu, May 20), PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, May 20), Semiconductor Today (Cheltenham, England, May 19), Yonhap News Agency (Seoul, South Korea, May 20) NatureNews (May 21), Science 360 (May 21), Technology Review (May 21), ASEE FirstBell (May 21), AZoOptics (Sydney, May 21), AZoNano (Sydney, May 21), The Inquirer (London, May 21), IEEE Spectrum (New York City, May 21), AZom (Sydney, May 24), Compound Semiconductor (Coventry, England, May 24), EE Times Europe (Brussels, May 21), Electronics Weekly (Sutton, England, May 24), Laboratory Equipment (Smithtown, N.Y., May 20), Network World (from PC World; San Francisco, May 23), Photonics Online (Pittsfield, Mass., May 21), Photonics Spectra (Pittsfield, Mass., May 20), R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., May 20), Science Centric (Sofia, Bulgaria, May 20), EE Times India (Hong Kong, May 25), Printed Electronics World (Cambridge, England, May 25), Renewable Energy Magazine (Madrid, May 28).

STUDENT TEAM IN DISNEY DESIGN FINALS
Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, Ill., May 20) -- A "TRON"-based thrill ride concept created by four U. of I. students is one of six finalists in a Disney competition to create the next great theme park attraction.

VISIBLE LIGHT AS DISINFECTANT
The Future of Things (U.S.-based online magazine) (May 18) -- Researchers at the U. of I. led by materials science and engineering professor Jian-Ku Shang along with scientists at the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Sciences in China have developed a catalyst that uses visible light as a disinfectant.

RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR
EE Times (Manhasset, N.Y., May 17) -- Researchers at Illinois have crafted a truly random number generation algorithm that is fast to execute. "Our method is 10-times faster than any other quantum random number generator reported so far,” said Paul Kwiat, a professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering. Kwiat, who performed the work with electrical engineering doctoral candidate Michael Wayne, said the new algorithm is compatible with a variety of applications, including data encryption, statistical analysis, and advanced numerical simulations.

COMPUTING
InformationWeek (Manhasset, N.Y., May 17) -- Many universities, including the U. of I., Cornell and the University of Texas at Austin, have built a supercomputer from a cluster of small machines.

RE-WRITING A PHYSICAL LAW
Nanowerk News (Honolulu, May 12) -- A major current law of physics has been rewritten thanks to the three-port transistor laser, developed by Milton Feng and Nick Holonyak Jr., professors of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois. Also: AZoNano (Sydney, May 13), RedOrbit (Dallas, May 13), Science Centric (Sofia, Bulgaria, May 13), Electronic Engineering Times (Manhasset, N.Y., May 13), Photonics Online (Pittsfield, Mass., May 14).

UNCOVERING DIPLOMA MILLS
Capital Times (Madison, Wis., May 13) -- U. of I. physics professor George Gollin was instrumental in taking down Saint Regis and affiliated fake institutions that sold more than 10,000 fake diplomas in about five years.

COMPUTER PROCESSORS
HPC Wire (San Diego, May 11) -- Although it sounds counter-intuitive, developing processors that are naturally error-prone is exactly what one team of researchers from the U. of I. and the University of California at San Diego has set out to do.

‘BLUE WATERS’
The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 11) -- A new supercomputer under construction at the U. of I., called Blue Waters, is expected to set a new speed record and reign as the world’s biggest and fastest computer. But at a conference at the university this week, some researchers expressed concern that software is not keeping pace, meaning that scholars may not be able to take full advantage of the mammoth machine when it opens for operation next year. “These new machines are going to force parallel programming on folks who just are not quite ready,” said Merle Giles, the director of the private-sector program at the university’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

SUCCESSFUL FLIGHT TEST
Aero-News (May 10) -- The first successful flight of the L1 adaptive controller on NASA's GTM is the result of work by Professor Naira Hovakimyan and PhD student Enric Xargay at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Professor Chengyu Cao, currently at University of Connecticut.

TRANSFERRING NANOSTRUCTURES
New Scientist (Philadelphia, May 6) -- Researchers experimented in the late 1990s with “lift off, float on” approaches to transferring nanostructures from where they are grown to their destination, but the technique never became widely used. John Rogers, a U. of I. professor of materials science and engineering, speculates that might be because the alignment process would be difficult to automate.

GENOME MINING
Genome Web Daily News (New York City, May 3) -- Illinois researchers Huimin Zhao, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Zengyi Shao, a postdoctoral research associate in the Institute for Genomic Biology, will use a $100,000 grant for a research program focused on genome mining of natural products using synthetic biology.

SMART GRID
Connected Planet Online (Chicago, May 4) -- In late 2009 a university consortium led by the U. of I. was funded by U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to focus on the security of the smart grid.

PURE WATER IN A BOX
GreenTech Media (San Francisco, May 3) -- Mark Shannon, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at the U. of I., is developing a box that can take sewage streams and turn them into clean, drinkable water, methane, and minerals.

TECHNOLOGY INCUBATOR
St. Louis Business Journal (May 3) -- The U. of I. ranks 13th on the list for its technology incubator, the Technology Entrepreneur Center.
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PLEASE NOTE: Some web links are short-lived by design of the publisher. In most cases, articles are archived on the publisher's website and can be retrieved electronically. Some articles may be archived on sites that are fee-based, and some may have re-distribution restrictions.

Contact: Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, editor.