Engineering in the News October 2010

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

STOCHASTIC PROCESSING DISCUSSED
IEEE Spectrum (New York City, Oct. 29) -- Naresh Shanbhag, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois, refers to error-resilient computing (also called probabilistic computing) by the more formal name of stochastic processing. Whatever the name, the approach, Shanbhag says, is not to automatically circle back and correct errors once they are identified, because that consumes power. “If the application is such that small errors can be tolerated, we let them happen,” he says.

HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
CNET News (San Francisco, Oct. 29) -- Thom Dunning, the director of NCSA at Illinois, says high-performance computing will begin to move toward graphics processing units.

RESEARCHER EARNS AWARD TO STNETWORK FORENSICS
PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, Oct. 29) -- The Air Force Office of Scientific Research announced it will award $16.5 million in grants to 43 scientists and engineers who submitted winning research proposals through the Air Force’s Young Investigator Research Program. Negar Kiyavash, a professor in the U. of I. Coordinated Science Laboratory, will investigate information-theoretic approaches to network forensics.

MARKET PERFORMANCE AND PUBLIC MOOD
SmartMoney (New York City, Oct. 28) -- Social media is providing a new barometer for linking market performance and public mood. Earlier this year, researchers Eric Gilbert and Karrie Karahalios, of the Department of Computer Science, ran a similar experiment with posts on blogging platform LiveJournal, on which users can tag their posts with different emotions. They scanned posts for indications of anxiety and found a similar correlation to stock market performance; in virtual tests their model performed a bit better than passive index investing.

HIGH-SPEED RAIL
Forbes (New York, N.Y., Oct. 26) -- Chris Barkan, director of the Railroad Engineering Program at Illinois, said he was highly impressed after recently touring bullet trains facilities in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. "They are doing highly sophisticated work on infrastructure, on rails and design of track structure," he said. Some in the industry have expressed doubts about the degree to which China is justified in claiming the latest high speed rail technology as its own. Also: MSNMoney (Oct. 26), Ventura County Star (Camarillo, Calif., Oct. 26), Victoria Advocate (Victoria, Texas, Oct. 26), Sify News (Chennai, India, Oct. 27), BusinessWeek (from The Associated Press, Oct. 26).

NANOPHOTONICS
Nature.com (New York, N.Y., Oct. 24) -- Nicholas Fang, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at Illinois, says the invention at Nanjing University of an acoustic rectifier that converts a sound input to a new frequency and allows this frequency to move through the device while preventing the original frequency from moving in the opposite direction is as important to the field as the invention of the electronic diode was. "It's definitely a great inspiration for people like me working in this field," he said.

U of I EDUCATION AGREEMENT WITH CHINESE UNIVERSITY
Chicago Tribune (from The Associated Press, Oct. 21) -- The U. of I. will soon sign a deal to bring students from a Chinese university to study at Illinois. The agreement with Zhejiang University, establishes a cooperative education program in the fields of agricultural and biological engineering, and food sciences and human nutrition. Also: ASEE FirstBell (Oct. 22).

BIOPHOTONICS
Photonics (Pittsfield, Mass., Oct. 20) -- The DTU Fotonik Department of Photonics Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark and the U. of I. are working together to develop a multicolor femtosecond all-fiber laser for biophotonics applications. Stephen Boppart, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and head of the Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory (BIL) at Illinois, and BIL researcher Haohua Tu are participating in the project.

I’VE GOT HEW UNDER MY SKIN
PCWorld (San Francisco, Oct. 18) -- An international team of researchers has developed flexible sheets of tiny light emitting diodes that could be implanted under the skin like glowing tattoos and used in a range of biomedical applications. U. of I. materials scientist John Rogers worked with researchers in the U.S., Korea, China and Singapore to build on his previous work on flexible circuits and ultra-thin LEDs. Also: CNET News (Oct. 19), Live Science (New York City, Oct. 18), Medindia (Chennai, India, Oct. 18), MSNBC (Oct. 18), Network World (Framingham, Mass., Oct. 18), Physicsworld (Bristol, England, Oct. 19), Popular Science (New York City, Oct. 19), International Business Times (New York City, Oct. 20), Gizmag.com (Oct. 22), LEDs Magazine (Tulsa, Okla.,Oct. 26).

Related article: Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass, Oct. 19) -- Diagnostics for All is collaborating with Cambridge, Mass., electronics startup MC10 and researchers at Illinois to build sophisticated electronics including light sensors, transistors, and microscale LEDs on the surface of paper tests. Also: ASEE FirstBell (Oct. 19).

WATER PURIFICATION
Newsweek (Oct. 18) -- U. of I. mechanical science and engineering professor Mark Shannon is working on a device that can take human sewage and turn it into fresh water, methane, and minerals that could be sold on the open market.

PROTEIN FOLDING
Science (Washington, D.C., Oct. 18) -- Klaus Schulten, a molecular simulations expert at Illinois, calls a new paper describing an advance in using supercomputers to simulate protein folding “very important.”

FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS IN BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS
Royal Society of Chemistry (London, Oct. 17) -- An international team of researchers has developed flexible sheets of tiny light emitting diodes that could be implanted under the skin like glowing tattoos and used in a range of biomedical applications. U. of I. materials scientist John Rogers worked with researchers in the U.S., Korea, China and Singapore to build on his previous work on flexible circuits and ultra-thin LEDs. Also: Nature (London, Oct. 17), OneIndia (Bangalore, Oct. 18), PhysOrg.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, Oct. 18), Scientific American (New York, N.Y., Oct. 17), Thaindian News (Bangkok, Oct. 18), Zee News (Noida, India, Oct. 18).

PHYSICIST HONORED
Nanotechnology Now (Banks, Ore., Oct. 16) -- U. of I. physics professor Benjamin Lev has been named a Packard Fellow in science and engineering.

UNDERSTANDING BIOMOLECULE BEHAVIOR
Chemical & Engineering News (Washington, D.C., Oct. 14) -- Klaus J. Schulten, the director of the theoretical and computational biophysics group at the U. of I., cautions that an intimate understanding of biomolecule behavior is still a ways off.

NIH GRANT
PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, Oct. 14) -- A $10 million National Institutes of Health grant was awarded to a team of researchers, including people at the U. of I. Also: First Science News (London, Oct. 14).

BASEBALL
USA Today (Oct. 13) -- A recent study finds that the more you keep the ball in focus, the better off you’ll be when trying to hit a curve ball. U. of I. physicist Alan Nathan says, “They might have an interesting explanation for the effect, but I don’t see how this will help batters.”

NEW PARALLEL COMPUTING LANGUAGE
EE Times (Makati City, Philippines, Oct. 12) -- The Universal Parallel Computing Research Center at the U. of I. has issued a first release of a computer programming language that it is claimed can provide enhanced support for parallelism on multicore processors while at the same time supporting popular programming styles such as objected-orientation. Also:
HPCwire (San Diego, Oct. 11).

GENOMIC BIOLOGY
New-Medical Net (Sydney, Oct. 8) -- Researchers at the Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois have developed a way to harness the prodigious quantities of both genomic and metabolic data being generated with high-throughput genomics and other techniques. The model, called probabilistic regulation of metabolism, “provides a platform for studying the behavior of networks in a wide range of different conditions,” says Nathan Price, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois. Also: RedOrbit (Dallas, Oct. 8), VaccineNewsDaily (Chicago, Oct.8), MedIndia (Chennai, India, Oct. 9), Medical News Today (Bexhill-on-Sea, England, Oct. 11), OneIndia (Bangalore, Oct. 9).

CORN MILLING
Prairie Farmer (Decatur, Ill., Oct. 8) -- Researchers at Illinois have teamed with two USDA laboratories to fine tune their research in the corn wet-milling process, using small, single-owner plants in other countries. Vijay Singh, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering, has led the field in the development of a process called enzymatic corn wet milling.

BASEBALL
The Philadelphia Inquirer (Oct. 6) -- Since 2007, all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums have been outfitted with PITCHf/x, a camera-based system that tracks the speed of pitches. The system appears to be more reliable than conventional radar guns, though it can vary up to 1 mph from ballpark to ballpark, said Alan Nathan, a professor emeritus of physics at Illinois.

INTERNET
New Design World (London, Oct. 5) -- The National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering has awarded a team of researchers led by UCLA $7.9 million to develop a more efficient and robust Internet that can meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. Partner institutions include the U. of I.

COMPUTING
The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 4) -- Fujitsu’s competitors are working to break the 10 quadrillion calculations per second, or 10 petaflops, barrier. IBM is building a system that aims to achieve such speeds for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at Illinois.

MOTION CAPTURE
The New York Times (Oct 3) -- A technique called motion capture records the human gestures at the core of three-dimensional animations like “Avatar” with advanced sensors, biomechanics and orthopedic research on the most powerful and least damaging ways to hurl a ball, swing a bat or simply run like the wind. Peter Bajcsy, a research scientist at the U. of I.’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications, said that whatever its other uses, the technology offered an unparalleled medium for capturing great athletic performances. Also: CNBC (Oct. 3), WVIT-Channel 30 (NBC; New Britain, Conn., Oct. 3).

NANONEEDLE DELIVERS MOLECULES
United Press International (Oct 1) -- Researchers at Illinois led by Min-Feng Yu, a professor of mechanical science and engineering, have developed a nanoneedle for the delivery of one or more molecules into the cytoplasm or the nucleus of living cells.

CORN-BASED BUILDING MATERIAL
AZom (Warriewood, Australia, Oct. 1) -- The U. of I. and Corn Board Manufacturing Inc. have entered into a license agreement under which CBMI will utilize a corn-based structural composite technology initially developed by U. of I. engineering professors Nancy Sottos, Scott White and Thomas Mackin. Also: Reuters (Oct. 8).
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Contact: Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, editor.