Engineering in the News June 2012

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.

MICROSCOPY
Phys Org.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 29) -- By combining a novel algorithm with a recently-developed add-on technique for commercial microscopes, researchers at Illinois have created a fast, non-invasive 3-D method for visualizing, quantifying, and studying cells without the use of fluorescence or contrast agents. Also: Nanowerk News (Honolulu, June 29), R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., June 29), e! Science News (Quebec City, June 30), Science Codex (San Jose, Calif., June 29).

(ALUMINUM) BAT MEETS BALL
MLB.com (June 29) -- Alan Nathan, an emeritus professor of physics at Illinois, operates a website called “The Physics of Baseball,” and spoke recently about what scientists have learned about bats in the last decade. His lecture explained the forces at work when a bat meets the ball, and he spoke in detail about how the NCAA has managed to redesign aluminum bats.

CEE AT ILLINOIS HELPS EVALUATE AIRPORT FOD SYSTEM
Airport World (June 28) -- The FAA has announced that a Foreign Object Debris (FOD) detection system manufactured by Xsight Systems meets its requirements. Its verdict is based on the results of tests carried out at Boston Logan International Airport and were conducted by the FAA, Williams J Hughes Technical Center, Aviation Research Division, Airport Technology Branch and the Center of Excellence for Airport Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

INTERNATIONAL INVENTORS
SmartPlanet.com (June 26) -- A new study reports that 76% of patents from America’s top 10 patent-generating universities in 2011 had a foreign-born inventor. A a new report, “Patent Pending: How Immigrants Are Reinventing The American Economy,” issued by the Partnership for a New American Economy, a bipartisan advocacy group,  is intended to highlight the value foreign-born graduates bring to the U.S. economy. The study reviewed 1,466 patents from the top ten patent-producing universities in 2011: the University of California system, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin, the University of Texas system, California Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois system, University of Michigan, Cornell University and Georgia Institute of Technology. Also: TechCrunch (June 10).

MEMORY CHIPS
Ars Technica (New York City, June 25) -- A new type of memory chip – phase-change memory – could one day replace flash memory in cellphones and possibly lead to computers that boot instantly. But, Eric Pop, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the U. of I., wonders if the extra power needed to maintain the low priming voltage would influence the speed and energy consumption of a chip containing many phase-change bits. Ultimately, consumer cost influences the commercial viability of PRAM chips, he says.

SUPERCONDUCTOR
e! Science News (Quebec City, June 25) -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory are using specialized techniques to help unravel the mysteries of a new type superconductor that was discovered in 2008. Ames Lab physicists were part of an international collaboration that also included scientists at Illinois, Kyoto University and the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom to study the materials. Also: Azom.com (Sydney, June 27).

GOING UNDERGROUND
Boston.com (June 24) -- Properly planned, the basement can become an integral part of a household, even a kind of engine that powers it from below.The same is true for the far larger basement that all of us share: that vast space that exists under our feet wherever we go, out of sight and out of mind. “As cities are built up, they’re getting congested, and going underground is the only way to build capacity,” said Youssef Hashash, a member of the National Research Council committee and a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Illinois. He added: “Many of the things we’ve built above ground can be pushed underground.”

STUDENT ENTREPRENEURS
The State Journal-Register (Springfield, Ill., June 24) -- A company created by U. of I. engineering students is working to create low-cost, easy-to-fit prosthetic limbs.

RE-SIZING CLOTHING
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (June 23) -- Erica Daly, an electrical engineering graduate student at the U. of I. is out to simplify the complex world of women’s clothing sizing. She said she can wear three different sizes depending on the brand – making it difficult to shop and buy online. Frustrated by having to go to stores to try clothes on, she started a site about a year ago called WhatFitsMe.com. She and her husband came up with an algorithm that suggests sizes to users based on three different sizes and brands they already wear and input into the system. The program then bases its recommendations on a database of information from other users.

‘SMART’ WINDOWS
Chemistry World (Cambridge, England, June 21) -- Scientists in China have developed a “smart” window that not only heats and cools a building, but can also act as an energy storage device to power electrical equipment within the building. John Rogers, a U. of I. professor of materials science and an expert in photonic devices, is cautiously optimistic about the work. ‘Such technologies, if they can be made cheaply and in forms that offer long-lived operation, could be valuable in contexts ranging from automotives to homes,’ he says.

INGENIOUS TESTER
Nanowerk News (Honolulu, June 21) -- Complex laboratory investigations do produce reliable results, but they are not useful for point-of-care diagnostics. This is especially true in developing countries, which must rely on simple, inexpensive test methods that do not require a power source. Biosensors based on paper are an interesting alternative. U. of I. chemistry professor Yi Lu and Yu Xiang a postdoctoral researcher, with colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin, introduced a particularly clever concept: print on one side of the paper, fold it up origami-style, laminate it, and the test is ready. Test evaluation requires only a voltmeter. Also: Phys Org.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 21).

PHYSICS
Nature (London, June 21) -- Over the past 50 years, the Aspen Center for Physics, in a beautiful valley in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, has provided a serene environment during the summer months for 10,000 theoretical physicists, including 53 Nobel laureates, from 65 countries. Among many milestones, the center can lay claim to setting the agenda for condensed-matter physics. And, David Pines, an emeritus professor of physics at the U. of I., played a critical role in that achievement.

TATTOO MONITOR FOR INFANTS
Health Canal.com (June 20) -- A stamp-sized wearable patch of tiny circuits, sensors, and wireless transmitters that sticks to the skin like a temporary tattoo could replace bulky wires currently used to monitor infants in the NICU. The tattoo electronic device was developed by Todd Coleman, a bioengineering professor at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, in collaboration with John Rogers, a materials science and engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Also: Medicalxpress.com (June 20).

HEAD TRAUMA
Big Ten Network (June 20) -- A former Illinois football player-turned-scientist is working to reduce head trauma in his old sport. Former Illinois running back Kevin Jackson (1991-94) routinely took ice baths after games and practice. “As a player, we’d do whole body icing in the ice tubs,” he said. “We never iced anything above our necks. We’d get to our neck and stop.” Jackson, now a senior research scientist at the Beckman Institute at the U. of I., is determined to change that routine. He and his team are designing a post-practice head-and-neck cooling helmet that reduces secondary effects and improves the long-term outlook of head trauma victims through repetitive cooling and lowering of brain temperature.

NANOTECHNOLOGY'S POTENTIAL
Focus 580 WILL-AM (Champaign-Urbana, Ill., June 20) -- Radio interview with Irfan Ahmad, associate director of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and Yi Lu, professor of chemistry at Illinois discussed nanotechnolgy developments at the University of Illinois. Many scientists believe that nanotechnology, a field that involves engineering on a very small scale, has great potential to change both our economy and the way we live. At the nanoscale, materials we know well can have very different properties, making them valuable for a wide range of products.

COMPUTER MUSIC
Huffington Post (June 20) -- Can A Computer Write A Song That Moves You? The Metacreation project is aimed at determining if, given enough data, a computer can write music that can evoke an emotional response. The question isn't new. In 1987, a computer affectionately named "Emmy," and its first songs debuted to the public at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. According to Pacific Standard, Emmy played a few pieces that could have been mistaken for Bach chorales, and "they were met with stunned silence" from audiences and critics alike. People were almost angry, as they couldn't tell which pieces were real Bach and which were composed by the computer.  

KNUCKLEBALL PHYSICS
Chicago Magazine (June 19) -- After New York Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey pitched his second one-hitter in a row – the first time it’s been done in 23 years – it’s hard to argue anyone is pitching better than him. What’s his secret? Alan Nathan, a professor emeritus of physics at Illinois, studied Dickey and found that the speed of his knuckleball correlates with its accuracy. Nathan says the data also show that the deflection of a knuckleball from a straight-line trajectory is essentially random in both magnitude and direction. Dickey, in throwing the knuckleball harder across a wider range of velocity, seems to have traded some of the unpredictability of movement for the unpredictability of speed, while improving his control – whether as a result of experience or the physics of dialing up the pitch. The results are amazing, and even amaze Dickey himself. Also: Reuters TV (June 23; see video), KVAL-Channel 13 (CBS; Seattle, June 30).

COMPUTER SIMULATION
CNBC (June 19)-- A NASA computer animation produced in part by the U. of I. National Center for Supercomputing Applications is one of two scientific visualizations chosen to be shown during a meeting of the Association for Computer Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, widely considered the most prestigious forum of its kind. Also: PhysOrg.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 20), The Sacramento Bee (California, June 20),
 
3D MODEL DESCRIBES PROTEIN
Science Codex (San Jose, Calif., June 19) -- A moving 3-D model of a key human protein may be a powerful tool in battling cancer. It was developed using freely available simulation software developed by researchers at the U. of I., the National Institutes of Health and the Scripps Research Institute.

NEW MICROSCOPY TECHNIQUE
Nanowerk News (Honolulu, June 14) -- Experienced anglers know that choppy waters make for difficult fishing, so they try not to rock the boat. Thanks to a new microscopy technique, cell biology researchers can heed that same advice. U. of I. researchers developed a method they call “trolling AFM,” which allows them to study soft biological samples in liquid with high resolution and high quality. Led by mechanical science and engineering professor Min-Feng Yu, the group published its findings in the journal Nanotechnology. Also: Domain-B.com (Mumbai, India, June 15), R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., June 14), Azonano.com (June 15), Imaging & Microscopy (Weinheim, Germany, June 1), Phys Org.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 14), “Science 360” (National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C., June 18).

UIUC TO HOST SUMMER MULTICORE PROGRAMMING SCHOOL
HPC Wire (June 12) -- Software engineering practitioners and researchers with little or no exposure to parallelism will have an opportunity to learn about multicore programming at the Illinois-Intel Parallelism Center Summer School on Multicore Programming hosted at U of I, July 9-13.

GENE SEQUENCING
PhysOrg.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 11) -- The sequencing of the human genome has provided a wealth of genetic information, yet the goal of understanding the function of every gene remains. New research led by U. of I. bioengineering professor Sheng Zhong suggests determining the purpose of genes through a new method called “comparative epigenomics.” “Comparative epigenomics is to use interspecies comparison of DNA and histone modifications – as an approach for annotation of the regulatory genome,” Zhong said. Also: Science Codex (San Jose, Calif., June 11).

FACULTY HONOR
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (June 11) -- The IEEE Computer Society will honor 14 prominent technologists at its annual awards dinner June 13 in Seattle, including Klara Nahrstedt, a U. of I. computer science professor.

PHYSICS
PhysOrg.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 11) -- Tony Leggett, a U. of I. physics professor and Nobel Laureate, comments on new work by two California physicists that allows the consistent prediction of behaviors of superfluids under certain conditions. Also: R&D Daily (June 11), e! Science News (Quebec City, June 11).

FACULTY
Scientific American (Urban Scientist Blog, June 10) -- Dr. Princess Imoukhuede, an assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois, was included on a list of African American Scientists, Engineers & Innovators considered to be "under the radar" in their fields. Imoukhuede, who joined the Illinois faculty in 2012, studies clinically relevant questions in cancer and cardiovascular disease. You can learn more about her research at her department profile page.

ALUMNUS ENTREPRENEUR & VC LEADER
Outlook India (June 9) -- Subrata Mitra, an engineer from IIT (Kanpur) with a computer science doctorate from the University of Illinois, heads the India operations of Accel Partners, the venture capital company that has been furiously funding internet, software and technology related companies for the past few years.

FLUID MECHANICS
Physics (Washington, D.C., June 8) -- Stalactites grow from cave ceilings not as dull cones but often sporting elegant corrugations. In Physical Review Letters, two Italian researchers now explain these mysterious, wavy patterns using standard fluid mechanics. Their theory shows that the horizontal ripples form because spatially periodic patterns arise in the rate of mineral deposits from the water flowing down the stalactite. Researchers have built models in which they imposed perturbations on the smooth surface of the stalactite and watched the deposition patterns change over time. But in previous attempts, such as one by Nigel Goldenfeld, of the U. of I., and his student Patrick Chan, the system spontaneously tended to drift back to a “flat” state, one without waves.

SELF-HEALING PLASTICS
Canada Free Press (Toronto, June 7) -- A new American Chemical Society video explores materials that mimic the human skin’s ability to heal scratches and cuts in the latest episode of its award-winning Bytesize Science series. The video takes viewers on a tour of the lab of U. of I. materials science and engineering professor Nancy Sottos. Also: FuelFix (blog, ‎June 7), Science Codex (June 7), Geek.com (New York City, June 16).

ADAPTIVE BICYCLING
KSDK-Channel 5 (NBC; St. Louis, June 6) -- At the bike camp at South Technical High School in St. Louis, the campers, most with Down syndrome, some with autism, and other disabilities, are allowed to experience the joy of bike riding, a priceless feeling for a parent. Richard Klein, a retired U. of I. mechanical engineering professor, says he builds each of the bicycles by hand. The project was an outgrowth of an assignment he had given to his students, he says.

RESEARCH PARK TENANT SOLD
News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, June 6) -- Bytemobile, which has an office in the University of Illinois Research Park, has agreed to be acquired by Citrix Systems. Bytemobile helps mobile networks operate faster and more efficiently. UI Professor Constantine Polychronopoulos helped develop the technology that led to the formation of the company in 2000.

CLIMATE CHANGE
Chicago Tribune (June 6) -- Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences and of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois, and a colleague at Northwestern University write about climate change and what can be done to mitigate it. Also: Planetsave (June 11).

Related article:The Indianapolis Star (June 17) -- Opinion: There is a strong probability that climate change is influencing certain extreme weather events, according to a group of Big Ten climate scientists, including U. of I. atmospheric sciences professor Don Wuebbles. Also: Omaha World-Herald (Nebraska, June 21).

HIRING AT NATIONAL LABS
Knox News (Knoxville, TN, June 6) -- In his blog, Frank Munger noted that national labs tend to recruit on a local and regional basis, although all of them attract scientists from around the nation and the globe. At Argonne National Laboratory, which is in the Chicago area, Northwestern University headed the lab's PhD-producing institutions, followed by the University of Illinois. If there was a bucking of the trend, it was at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the lab's list of PhD providers was topped by the University of Illinois.

SPACE TOYS IN SPACE
Discovery News (June 5) -- Lifelong Star Trek fan Logan Kugler raised over $6000 for the mission via Kickstarter, enough to partner with Spencer Gore, an engineering student at Illinois who founded a company called Space for All, specializing in using high-altitude balloons to launch payloads into the stratosphere. Their first payload: action figures of Jean Luc Picard, Riker, Data, and custom-made figures of two producers behind the 2009 Star Trek film, J.J. Abrams and Roberto Orci, plus six HD cameras to record the whole thing.

PARTICLE DECAY PROCESS
Science Daily (June 4) -- In the biggest result of its kind in more than ten years, physicists have made the most sensitive measurements yet in a decades-long hunt for a hypothetical and rare process involving the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. The experiment, the Enriched Xenon Observatory 200 (EXO-200), is an international collaboration that includethat involves scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford, the University of Alabama, Universität Bern, Caltech, Carleton University, Colorado State University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Indiana University, UC Irvine, ITEP (Moscow), Laurentian University, the University of Maryland, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Seoul and the Technische Universität München.

HOME RUNS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Baseball Prospectus (Holbrook, N.Y., June 5) -- U. of I. physics professor Alan Nathan, an expert on the physics of baseball, writes about whether there’s a connection between climate change and an increasing number of home runs.

Related article: The Dispatch (Columbus, Miss., June 4) -- Alan Nathan was a member of the NCAA Baseball Research Panel, a group of scientists that advises the NCAA on issues regarding bat performance. Nathan led the group to get the NCAA to go to the new BBCOR bats. "In the nearly 40 years since they were first introduced, (metal bats) had evolved into superb hitting instruments that, left unregulated, could significantly outperform wood bats," Nathan said. "More importantly, they had the potential of upsetting the delicate balance between pitcher and batter that is at the heart of the game." 

MEDICAL DIAGNOSTICS
Scientific American (June 4) -- Doctors can now get a peek behind the eardrum to better diagnose and treat chronic ear infections, thanks to a new medical imaging device invented by a U. of I. research team led by electrical and computer engineering professor Stephen Boppart. Also: Vision Systems Imaging (Nashua, N.H., June 4), The Costa Rica Star (Santa Ana, June 3), Huffington Post (June 5), News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, June 10). St. Louis Post-Dispatch (June 21).
 
WIND POWER
TG Daily (Batavia, Ill., June 4) -- Inconsistency of supply is one of the biggest drawbacks of renewables such as wind and solar. Put simply: the wind doesn’t blow all day, and the sun doesn’t shine at night. Now scientists are saying that the sporadic supply of renewables coupled with an inefficient power grid means that carbon emissions, in real terms, are not completely eliminated by wind power. Lauren Valentino, a U. of I. civil and environmental engineering student and author of a recent report on the subject, said: “Turning these large plants on and off is inefficient. A certain percentage of the energy goes into just heating up the boilers again.”

INSTITUTIONAL COOPERATION
The News International (Karachi, Pakistan, June 4) -- U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter has commended COMSATS for building strong institutional linkages with American universities, including the U. of I. and North Dakota State University. He made his remarks during his visit to the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, which is in Pakistan.

PREGNANCY MONITOR
The Guardian (University of California, San Diego, June 3) -- The Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, has received a grant funded by the Gates Foundation for its “pregnancy tattoo” device used to monitor premature pregnancies. The grant will provide $100,000 to the project’s first phase. The project, called “Epidermal Electronics for Continuous Pregnancy Monitoring,” is led by bioengineering professor Todd Coleman and U. of I. materials science and engineering professor John Rogers.

ROBOTIC BIRD CAN PERCH
AVweb.com (June 3) -- By the virtue of their size and speed, birds are uniquely capable of efficient flight while flapping their wings and while gliding. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have duplicated the control functions that allow birds to successfully perform a soft landing—in this case, perching on a human hand (see video).

Related article: Red Orbit (June 5) -- One of the smallest robotic flying machines ever was just unveiled by engineers at the University of Illinois. Weighing 1.5 ounces, and having the size of a small bird, the MAV replicates the natural flight of a bird or bat by flapping its wings. An onboard microcontroller even performs the complex mathematical operations necessary for the “craft” to swoop in and perch on a human hand.

STUDENT RESEARCHERS
Daily Mail (London, June 3) -- They may have spent decades in space on a television set but “Star Trek” captains Jean-Luc Picard and James T. Kirk visited the stratosphere for real last month – well their action figures did, at least. A team of engineering students from the U. of I., led by “Star Trek” fans Logan Kugler and Shannon Downey, sent the characters toward the heavens in an impressive high-altitude balloon launch.

AVIATION SAFETY
Aviation International News (Midland Park, N.J., June 2) -- Steve Osmek, wildlife biology manager at Seattle’s SeaTac International Airport, has been keeping birds and terrestrial animals away from aircraft at the airport for the past 12 years. He is the wildlife specialist member of a team that includes members from the U. of I. and a radar manufacturer developing a radar-based, bird-strike risk-prediction program. The U. of I. is home to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Center of Excellence for Airport Technology led by Edwin Herricks, an emeritus professor of civil and environmental engineering.
 
HEALTH MONITORING TATTOO
Chemistry World (Cambridge, England, June 1) -- John Rogers, a U. of I. materials science professor, says a new flexible, electrochemical sensor developed by California scientists “... is a very nice piece of work that exploits electrochemical sensor materials in skin-mounted “epidermal” formats. Also: Medical Xpress.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 20), Health Canal (Melbourne, Australia, June 19).

SOLAR FLARES
Inside Science (June 1) -- In an online video, Jonathan Makela, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, explains how solar flares can disrupt communications.

TIME TRAVEL
io9 (San Francisco, June 1) -- Jon Thaler, a physics professor at Illinois, says: “The problem is that we don’t know how to construct a theory that permits time travel. Without a theory, it is difficult to know what phenomena to look for.” Thaler says the Theory of Relativity might permit “closed timelike curves” that allow time travel – but the famous “grandfather paradox” proves the whole thing is impossible.

COOK STOVE EMISSIONS VARY WIDELY
Science Blog (June 1) -- The way families in developing countries use their cook stoves has a huge impact on emissions from them, and laboratory emission tests don't precisely reflect real-world operations, according to a study led by Tami Bond, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Illinois.

ABOUT SERIAL INNOVATORS
Fast Company (June 1) -- Serial innovators are not looking for opportunities. They look for concrete problems that cause potential customers significant pain--problems with solutions for which customers would be willing to pay. Article was excerpted from the book Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create And Deliver Breakthrough Innovations In Mature Firms co-authored by Raymond Price and Bruce Vojak, both administrators at the College of Engineering at Illinois. Also: Threejoy Assoc. (blog, June 7).
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