Engineering in the News April 2011

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.

BIOFUELS
Prairie Farmer (Decatur Ill., April 28) -- Research at Illinois to convert swine manure into oil has expanded to include more efficient technologies that use a variety of materials to produce hydrocarbon fuels, says Yuanhui Zhang, a U. of I. professor of agricultural and biological engineering.

FACULTY HONOR
Semiconductor Today (Cheltenham, England, April 27) -- James J. Coleman, an engineering professor at Illinois, has received the SPIE Technology Achievement award in recognition of his “seminal contributions to the methods, designs, and demonstrations of selectivity grown discrete and monolithically integrated compound semiconductor lasers and photonic devices”.

FARM SAFETY
The Associated Press (April 25) -- In a rural health educator’s dream vision for farm country, the flat fertile landscape will be dotted with little black plastic tubes strapped to power poles at each farmstead. The sealed cylinders look fairly innocuous, but the contents inside are like gold for emergency responders – detailed computer-generated maps of each farm, specifying precise locations for flammable chemicals and fuels, power turnoff switches, grain bins, water supplies and precious livestock. Illinois averages about 32 farm-related deaths each year and close to 5,000 serious farm-related injuries, said Robert Aherin, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Illinois. Also: Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff, April 25), Belleville News-Democrat (Illinois, April 25), San Francisco Examiner (April 25), The Pantagraph (Bloomington, Ill., April 25), The Washington Examiner (Washington, D.C., April 25), The Washington Post (April 25).

SELF-HEALING POLYMERS
News24 South Africa (Cape Town, April 21) -- “Healable polymers offer an alternative to the damage-and-discard cycle, and represent a first step in the development of polymeric materials that have much greater life spans than currently available,” wrote Nancy Sottos, a professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois, and Jeffrey Moore, a professor of chemistry at Illinois. Also: The West Australian (Perth, April 21), Zee News (Noida, India, April 21), The China Post (Taipei, Taiwan, April 22), Discover magazine (New York City, April 21), Discovery News (New York City, April 21), The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia, April 21).

POWER GRID
Phys Org (Douglas Isle of Man, April 20) -- The Power Systems Energy Research Center has been awarded a $5.5 million grant from the Department of Energy to investigate requirements for a systematic transformation of today’s electric grid. The U. of I. is among the university partners in the project.

CELLULAR RESEARCH
AZoNano (Warriewood, Australia, April 19) -- Two studies were conducted that explain the chemical and mechanical communications that enable the ribosome, which builds the cell’s protein, to integrate a growing protein inside the cellular membrane. To capture an image of the ribosome’s reaction with the membrane, the group used nano-disks of membrane bound together with strips of constructed lipoproteins. U. of I. biochemistry professor Stephen Sligar designed the nano-disks. Cryo-EM pictures and structural data were used to create an atom-by-atom prototype of the system and insert the proteins into the images provided by the electron microscope, according to U. of I. physics professor Klaus Schulten, who led the Illinois analysis with postdoctoral student James Gumbart.

NUCLEAR DISASTER
“Nightly News” (NBC, April 12) -- James F. Stubbins, professor and head of the department of nuclear, plasma, and radiological engineering at Illinois, was interviewed about the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Editor’s note: Stubbins is interviewed about halfway into the segment titled “Japan’s nuclear crisis on par with Chernobyl.” Stubbins also was interviewed by MSNBC Monday and Tuesday.

MORE EFFICIENT CHIPS DRAW LESS POWER
Christian Science Monitor (April 12) -- If less energy-hungry chips are developed, cellphones could fully replace laptop computers. It could allow users to charge those cellphones once a month on a saucer-sized solar panel. “Reducing the power by a factor of 100 to 1,000 is not impossible,” says Eric Pop, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois. Also: ASEE FirstBell (April 13). 

NANOTECHNOLOGY
Cattle Network (Platte City, Mo., April 11) -- “Nanotechnology has already found applications in pharmaceutical delivery systems and building better IT chips,” says Josef Kokini, associate dean of research in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois. Kokini announced the establishment of the Center for Agricultural, Biomedical, and Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology (CABPN)--a collaborative effort between the College of Engineering and the College of ACES. Also: Corn and Soybean Digest (Minneapolis, April 13).

QUICK-CHARGE BATTERIES
MIT Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass., April 11) -- U. of I. materials science and engineering professor Paul Braun and his team have developed a prototype battery that can recharge much more quickly than conventional mobile-device batteries. Researchers have been trying to use nanostructured materials to improve the process, but there's usually a trade-off between total energy storage capacity (which determines how long a battery can run before needing a recharge) and charge rates.

SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
Science Magazine (Washington, D.C., April 8) -- The concept of “spontaneous symmetry breaking” now undergirds theory in many fields, especially particle physics. “It was not a way that people were thinking, certainly not in elementary particle physics,” says Gordon Baym, a theorist at Illinois. Superconductivity, he says, “changed the way people thought in different fields.”                  

SUPERCONDUCTOR Q & A
MySciNet (April 7, 2011) -- Q&A: Philip Phillips: A Roundabout Approach to Superconductivity. Phillips, a theoretical condensed matter physicist, and his colleagues at Illinois recently tweaked the model for understanding high-temperature superconductors, with interesting results.

STRETCHABLE ELECTRONICS
Live Science (New York City, April 7) -- Covered with stretchable sensors, an innovative surgical tool has been devised to map electrical inconsistencies in the heart within minutes. The stretchable silicon electronics were developed by John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois.

TECHNOLOGY COMMERCIALIZATION
The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss., April 5) -- The U. of I. has begun a program to support commercialization of high-potential, nascent technologies from the university’s Institute for Genomic Biology.

"COOL" MATERIAL
PC Pro (London, April 4) -- Computers built around chips made of graphene – a wonder material touted as a replacement for silicon – could run without fans, according to U. of I. researchers. “In silicon and most materials, the electronic heating is much larger than the self-cooling,” says mechanical science and engineering professor William King. Also: DailyTech (Chicago, April 4), ASEE FirstBell (April 5), International Business Times (New York City, April 5), Electronics News (Sydney, April 5), AzoNano (Warriewood, New South Wales, April 7), eWeek Europe (London, April 6).

COMPUTING
High Performance Computing (San Diego, April 4) -- The U. of I. Coordinated Science Laboratory has started an interdisciplinary institute to provide the resources to enable breakthroughs in parallel computing. Also: Scientific Computing (Rockaway, N.J., April 5). Also: Campus Technology (Chatsworth, Calif., April 14).

FAST COMPUTING
The Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington, D.C., April 3) -- The warehouse-sized supercomputer under construction at Illinois will cost nearly half a billion dollars, making it one of the most expensive supercomputers ever devoted to academic research. And yet, when engineers turn on the machine this year, it very likely won’t be the fastest computer in the world. However, flat-out speed as a measure of performance may be going out of style. A recent report from an influential federal panel recommended more emphasis on software and alternative designs rather than computational Ferraris.
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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, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; 217/244-7716, editor.