Engineering in the News June 2011

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

TECH BUSINESS RANKING
USA Today (June 29) -- Illinois gained eight spots (moving from No. 14 to No. 6) from last year in the Technology and Innovation category of CNBC’s Top States for Business 2011. Illinois’ improvement is the result of the amount of scientific grant money awarded to the state – $185 million to be exact – from the National Science Foundation to the U. of I.

CONDUCTIVE INK
MSNBC (June 28) -- Two U. of I. professors, one in materials science, the other in electrical engineering, have combined their talents to take the idea of printing circuits onto non-standard materials one step further by developing a conductive ink that can be used in a traditional rollerball ink pen to draw circuits by hand onto paper and other porous materials. Also: Daily India.com (Jacksonville, Fla., June 29), e! Science News (Quebec City, June 28), Gizmag (June 29), News Track India (New Delhi, June 29), PC Pro (London, June 29), PhysOrg.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 28), R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., June 28), Science Daily (Chevy Chase, Md., June 28), Smart Planet (CBS, June 29), TG Daily (Batavia, Ill., June 29), United Press International (June 28), New Scientist (Cambridge, England, June 29), AZoNano (Warriewood, Australia, June 30), Discover Magazine (June 29), Engadget (June 29), Gizmodo.com (Australia, June 30), OptoIQ (June 30), PC Authority (June 30), PC World (June 29), The Register (London, June 29), Wired (New York City, June 29), Discovery News (June 30).

CORKED BATS - CHEATING IN BASEBALL
The Smithsonian (Washington, D.C., June 27) -- Does a corked bat make the ball fly farther? That’s the question that intrigued Alan Nathan, a professor emeritus of physics at Illinois. “There was some anecdotal information from players that there’s something like a ‘trampoline effect’ when the ball bounces off a corked bat,” Nathan says. Also: PhysOrg.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 28), e! Science News (Quebec City, June 28), United Press International (June 28), Baseball Nation (June 29).

HIGH TECH INVESTMENT
Mass High Tech (Boston, June 28) -- MC10 Inc. has raised $12.5 million in capital as a result of new investment by Braemar Energy Ventures as the lead investor. MC10 was co-founded by U. of I. engineering professor John Rogers and George Whitesides, of Harvard University.

GENE SEQUENCING
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (New Rochelle, N.Y., June 28) -- 454 Life Sciences, a Roche company, said Tuesday that the new GS FLX+ System, an instrument capable of generating extra-long gene sequencing. “We are thrilled with the performance of the GS FLX+ System in our laboratory,” said Chris Wright, assistant director of the biotechnology center at Illinois. Also: News-Medical.net (Sydney, June 28).

NANOTECHNOLOGY
Nanowerk News (Honolulu, June 27) -- One enabling technology for printed and flexible electronics devices is the use of a special silver nanoparticle ink that allow the patterning of silver microelectrodes by omnidirectional printing. Researchers at Illinois used this ink for the conformal printing of 3D electrically small antennas. Also: Chemistry World (Cambridge, England, June 27)

TRANSFER PRINTING CIRCUITS
Electronic Component News (Elk Grove Village, Ill., June 24) -- Transfer printing is a new technique, first developed by U. of I. engineering professor John Rogers’ group, which enables the massively parallel assembly of high performance semiconductor devices onto virtually any substrate material.

JOB CREATION
Newsweek (June 27 issue) -- Cited in a group of four “foreign-born job creators,” Indian-born K.R. Sridhar of Bloom Energy, is described as having “embraced the green-technology boom early.” Bloom Energy, based in Silicon Valley in California, uses fuel-cell technology to develop various forms of renewable and affordable energy, Newsweek says. Sridhar came to the U.S. to pursue a doctorate at Illinois.
Editor’s note: The news item is not available online.

MAGNETIC FIELD
Wired (London, June 22) -- The ability to see Earth’s magnetic field, thought to be restricted to sea turtles and swallows and other long-distance animal navigators, may also reside in human eyes, according to a study by University of Massachusetts neuroscientist Steven Reppert. “This is a very exciting paper,” says Klaus Schulten, a U. of I. biophysicist not involved in the new study. Also:
New Scientist (Cambridge, England, June 21).

BEESPACE
Phys Org.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 21) -- With the BeeSpace Navigator, U. of I. researchers have created a curation tool for genetic biologists and an approach to searching for information. Also: Bioscience Technology (Rockaway, N.J., June 22), e! Science News (Quebec City, June 21), Science Daily (Chevy Chase, Md., June 21), TG Daily (Batavia, Ill., June 22), Red Orbit.com (Dallas, June 22).

BATTERIES
Nanowerk News (Honolulu, June 21) -- At Argonne’s Center for Electrical Energy Storage, U. of I. researchers and researchers from Argonne and Northwestern University are working to better understand lithium battery systems. Also: WebWire (Atlanta, June 21).

LED LIGHTING
Photonics Online (Erie, Pa., June 21) -- A recent study co-written by U. of I. engineering professor John Rogers and scientists from the University of Miami focused on improving certain features of LEDs, such as size, flexibility and temperature.

COMPUTING
The Wall Street Journal (June 20) -- Supercomputers at the U. of I.’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications and in California have been running 24 hours a day to finish updating the oldest planetarium in the nation. The $14 million renovation of Chicago’s Adler Planetarium is bringing cutting-edge technology to virtual space exploration.
 
FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTER
The New York Times (June 19) -- In the rankings of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, a Japanese machine has earned the top spot with a performance that essentially laps the competition. Jack Dongarra , a professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, said Blue Waters, being developed at Illinois, may rival K in speed. Also: EE Times-Asia (Makati City, Philippines, June 20), International Business Times (New York City, June 20), The Economic Times (Gurgaon, India, June 20), ASEE FirstBell (June 20).

SOLVING BIG PROBLEMS WITH HPC
Data Center Knowledge (Lawrenceville, N.J., June 17) -- U. of I. computer science professor Bill Gropp talks about how high-performance computing seeks to assist scientists and engineers addressing some of the most challenging questions facing society.

RESEARCH FUNDING   
Science magazine (Washington, D.C., June 16) -- Legislators want officials in the Office of Science’s largest research program to save $25 million by canceling the projects that aren’t meeting their research goals. But insisting that results immediately match expectations isn’t necessarily appropriate in basic research, in which scientists don’t always know what they’ll find, says Laura Greene, a professor of physics at Illinois.

ULTRATHIN ELECTRONICS
The Wall Street Journal (June 15) -- A video on work being done by U. of I. engineering professor John Rogers to develop thin, bendable electronics.
 
Related video:
The Wall Street Journal (June 15) -- Video about MC10, a company founded by U. of I. engineering professor John Rogers. The company is creating ultrathin electronics. Editor’s note: The segment on the company begins about 19 minutes from the beginning of the video.

COMPUTER RECORDS
Miller-McCune Magazine (Santa Barbara, Calif., June 16) -- “Few fields could benefit more from computer use than this field (medical recordkeeping),” says Carl Gunter, a U. of I. professor of computer science. “You could ask: ‘What patients are similar to this? What was their treatment? What was the outcome of their treatment?’ and have a computerized system tell you that rather than relying on your personal connections or memories of patients or the research literature, which might be limited.”

DRIVING AND OBESITY
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (June 16) -- Editorial: U. of I. computer science professor Sheldon H. Jacobson told the U. of I.’s News Bureau that the surge in car usage in the United States between the 1950s and today may be associated with surging levels of obesity.

PRIZE RECIPIENT
The Boston Globe (June 13) -- John Rogers, a materials scientist and physicist at Illinois, is working with his colleagues to develop thin, stretchable, and flexible “biointegrated electronics,’’ which could line the walls of failing hearts or the bumpy surfaces of the brain. Rogers this week will receive a $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize for his work in biointegrated electronics and other fields, such as solar power. Also: Boston Herald (June 13), ASEE FirstBell (June 14), MSNBC (June 14), First Science News (London, June 14), Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (New Rochelle, N.Y., June 14), Nanowerk News (Honolulu, June 14), Phys Org.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 14), Solar Novus Today (Fort Collins, Colo., June 14), Special Broadcasting Service Corp. (Sydney, June 15), The Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington, D.C., June 14), Nanotechnology Now (Banks, Ore., June 15), The Herald-Sun (Durham, N.C., June 16), SPIE (Bellingham, Wash., June 16), MIT News (Cambridge, Mass., June 16), Network World (Framingham, Mass., June 17), Science (Washington, D.C., June 24), Semiconductor Today (Cheltenham, England, June 28).

ILLINOIS ON "MOST PATENTS" LIST
New York Times (June 14) -- The University of Illinois (at #262) was one of 14 universities included among the top 300 listing of most patents granted in 2010. Also: Chronicle of Higher Education (June 14).

SEMICONDUCTOR RESEARCH
e! Science News (Quebec City, June 14) -- Using high-resolution imaging technology, University of Illinois researchers have answered a question that had confounded semiconductor researchers: Is amorphous silicon a glass? The answer? Yes – until hydrogen is added; results published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Also: Nanowerk News (Honolulu, June 14), PhysOrg.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 14), Science Daily (Chevy Chase, Md., June 14), Red Orbit.com (Dallas, June 16).

BIOFUELS
Biofuels Digest (Miami, June 14) -- The Center for Advanced BioEnergy Research at the U. of I. has opened a laboratory that will focus on increasing efficiencies in current biofuel technologies, and developing biofuel and biochemical technologies.

POWER GRID SECURITY
Scientific American (June 21 issue) -- U. of I. electrical and computer engineering professor David Nicol writes about how computer viruses may pose a risk for disabling the power grid.

COMPUTER SECURITY
Scientific American (June 11) -- “If your network is under attack and you’re trying to find out who’s doing it, purely technical means are insufficient for that,” says U. of I. computer and electrical engineering professor David Nicol. “The way that we assemble complicated networks of computers until recently hasn’t been done at all with security in mind except in a cursory way, and that’s the fundamental problem.”
 
CYBER WARFARE
Scientific American (June 13) -- Cyber warfare is more likely to reflect the wars fought against shadowy terrorist networks such as al-Qaida as opposed to conflicts between uniformed national military forces. “One thing about war is that historically the lines have been drawn and there is an understanding of who the enemy is,” says U. of I. computer and electrical engineering professor David Nicol. “When a cyber attack occurs against a sovereign state, who do you declare war on?”

BASEBALL
Cincinnati.com (June 11) -- Alan M. Nathan, a professor emeritus of physics at Illinois, has studied ballpark effects and has rated Great American Ballpark among the highest in “normalized carry” of baseballs.
 
METAMATERIALS
Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass., June 10) -- A new printing method makes it possible to produce large sheets of metamaterials, a class of materials designed to interact with light in ways no natural materials can. “Everyone has, perhaps conveniently, been in the position of not being able to make enough (metamaterial) to do anything with it,” says John Rogers, the engineering professor at Illinois who developed the new printing method. Also: Nanotechweb.org (Bristol, England; June 10), Phys Org . com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 15), AZoNano (Warriewood, Australia, June 18).

BALLOON ELECTRONICS & THE HEART
Livescience (National Science Foundation, June 9) -- Covered in integrated arrays of multifunctional sensors and ablation electrodes, a new balloon device under development by MatSE professor John Rogers could provide more sophisticated and efficient diagnosis and treatment of cardiac arrhythmias. Also: Science 360 News ("Picture of the Day," June 9).

INTRACELLULAR DYNAMICS
News-Medical (Sydney, June 8) -- In work published in the June 2011 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, a multidisciplinary team at the Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois discuss transferring the concept of redox-sensitive green fluorescent proteins to a quantitative F-rster resonance energy transfer imaging platform. Also: e! Science News (Quebec City, June 7), Nanowerk News (Honolulu, June 8), Red Orbit.com (Dallas, June 8).

SECURE COMPUTING
EE Times (Makati City, Philippines, June 8) -- Intel Corp. said Tuesday that the second Intel Science and Technology Center – part of a commitment by the company to pump $100 million into U.S. university research over the next five years – will focus on secure computing and will be hosted at the University of California at Berkeley in collaboration with several other universities, including Illinois. Also: iStockAnalyst (Salem, Ore., June 7),.

HIGH-SPEED RAIL
Chicago Tribune (June 2) -- The U. of I. will lead a study examining the options to build tracks exclusively for 220 mph bullet trains operating initially between Chicago and Urbana-Champaign and eventually carrying passengers the length of the state in about two hours. The study, led by U. of I. railroad engineering professor Christopher Barkan with help from Steve Schlickman, director of the Urban Transportation Center at UIC, is expected to be completed in late 2012. Also: Forbes (New York City, June 3), Carmi Times (Illinois, June 3), FOX News (Chicago, June 2), Belleville News-Democrat (Illinois, June 2).

GOING GREEN
Green Technology World (June 1) -- A Green GPS (global positioning system), developed by computer scientists at Illinois, has calculated the most fuel-efficient routes for a road trip -- saving as much as 13 percent over other routes in initial tests.

AUTOS & OBESITY
KDKA-AM (CBS; Pittsburgh, Pa., June 1) -- Sheldon Jacobson, a professor in computer science at Illinois, has found that our sedentary lifestyle made possible by the automobile could be why were getting fat.

ALUMNA AND NOBEL LAUREATE DIES
New York Times (June 1) -- Rosalyn S. Yalow (MS 1942, PhD 1945, Physics), a medical physicist who persisted in entering a field largely reserved for men to become only the second woman to earn a Nobel Prize in Medicine, died on May 30 at age 89. She became the first woman to join the Illinois College of Engineerings faculty in 24 years when she was awarded a teaching assistantship during World War II. In 1977, Yalow shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for the discovery and development of radioimmunoassay, a technique that employs radioactive isotopes to detect and measure the levels of insulin and hormones in the blood and in body tissues.
___________________

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.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.