News from Engineering at Illinois September 2013

This monthly summary includes excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau and other media search tools. This collection of September stories focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world.

CS ALUMNUS
Jewish Business News (Tel Aviv, Israel, Sept. 30) -- Evernote, the “rapid note” software company founded by CS alumnus Phil Libbin, has taken a vast leap forward thanks to the launch of Evernote for Salesforce, an application that will allow Evernote users to instantly link to a vast pool of business users through Salesforce, a company that provides on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) software services

RAIL TRANSPORT
Peoria Journal Star (Peoria, Ill., Sept. 29) -- The U. of I. has been awarded $1.4 million in federal funding to support its rail transportation and engineering research center.

MRI SENSITIVITY ADVANCE
PhysOrg.com (Sept. 27) -- A team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University has devised a novel nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that delivers a roughly 10-nanometer spatial resolution. This represents a significant advance in MRI sensitivity—modern MRI techniques commonly used in medical imaging yield spatial resolutions on the millimeter length scale, with the highest-resolution experimental instruments giving spatial resolution of a few micrometers. Also: CNet (Sept. 27), ScienceBlog (Sept. 27), Nanotechnology Now (Sept. 28), R&D Magazine (Sept. 30), GMA News (Sept. 30), Metagaget.com (Sept. 30), Science Daily (Sept. 27).

ABOUT SMOKE DETECTORS
Science 360 (NSF, Sept. 27) -- In the featured video, ChemE professor Bill Hammack explains the innerworkings of a household smoke detector.

ILLINOIS TIES TO BRAINTREE ACQUISITION
Chicago Tribune (Sept. 26) -- Chicago-based mobile payments processor Braintree is getting scooped up by eBay's PayPal for about $800 million in cash, a deal that highlights the growing appetite for purchases made on smartphones and tablets. PayPal also has Chicago ties. The online payments pioneer was co-founded in Silicon Valley in 1998 by Max Levchin, a graduate of the University of Illinois' computer science program. Many of the company's founders and early employees were fellow U. of I. alumni that have gone on to start other tech firms such as YouTube and Yelp.

BLOOM ENERGY
Wired (Sept. 26) -- On Thursday, eBay, another giant of the web, told the world that its newest data center runs entirely on fuel cells fed with natural gas — technology that’s not only cleaner and more efficient than the aging power grid, but also more reliable. Built by a NASA-spinoff called Bloom Energy (founded by an Engineering at Illinois alumnus), the facility’s fuel cell units create electricity by mixing natural gas with oxygen and then running it through a patented chemical process. According to a study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, such a fuel cell setup is ten times less likely to fail than grid-powered alternatives.

NANOTUBE COMPUTER
Science World Report (New York City, Sept. 26) -- A team of Stanford engineers has developed a basic computer using carbon nanotubes. Naresh Shanbhag, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the U. of I., says the researchers’ work indicates the possibility of producing industrial scale carbon nanotube semiconductors.

ASTRONAUT ALUMNUS
USA Today (Sept. 25) -- Illinois alumnus Mike Hopkins is set to lift off to the International Space Station Wednesday with two cosmonauts. The three newcomers will stay aboard the International Space Station for nearly six months, eventually departing in mid-March. Also: ABC News (Chicago, Sept. 9), Space Ref (Aug. 30), Daily Star Journal (MO, Sept. 15), The News-Gazette (Sept. 25), San Francisco Chronicle (Sept. 26), KOLR 10 (MO., Sept. 25), USA Today (Sept. 25), St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Sept. 25), Florida Today (Sept. 24), Voices (Chicago Sun-Times; Sept. 25), Springfield Journal-Register (Sept. 26), Forbes (Sept. 26), ASEE FirstBell (Sept. 27).

Related story: Space Cost Daily. com (Sept. 2) -- In the video, NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins talks about how the one major component of being an astronaut is staying healthy and fit. 

HEALTH APPS
WIBW-Channel 13 (CBS; Topeka, Kan., Sept. 24) -- A device developed at the U. of I. uses lenses and filters on a cradle mirror to detect toxins, bacteria, spot water contamination and identify allergens. A smartphone then processes the information. The device contains about $200 of optical parts and may do tests as well as a $50,000 laboratory device can.

Related story: Today's Medical Developments (Richfield, Ohio, Sept. 30) -- A new optical device developed by a team of electrical and computer engineering students at the U. of I., led by Brian T. Cunningham, the interim director of the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, can identify the contents of the fluid in an intravenous line in real-time, offering a promising way to improve the safety of IV drug delivery. Also: IEEE Spectrum (Sept. 25), Medical Developments (Sept. 30), Phys.Org (Sept. 19), AzoNano (Sept. 20).

IR ANTENNA
R&D Magazine (Sept. 24) --  U. of I. researchers have developed arrays of tiny nano-antennas that can enable sensing of molecules that resonate in the infrared spectrum. “The identification of molecules by sensing their unique absorption resonances is very important for environmental monitoring, industrial process control and military applications,” says team leader Daniel Wasserman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. Also: Phys Org.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, Sept. 24), Nanowerk (Sept. 24), ScienceBlog (Sept. 24), The Engineer (UK, Sept. 26), Science Codex (San Jose, Calif., Sept. 25), AZoNano (Warriewood, New South Wales, Sept. 26), Opli Magazine (Sede-Ilan, Israel, Sept. 23), R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., Sept. 24), Red Orbit.com (Dallas, Sept. 25), Science 360 (Washington, D.C., Sept. 26; article is second item under “latest news”) .

NEW YORK MTA SAFETY REVIEW
Railway Age (Sept. 23) -- New York's Metropolitan Transporation Authority has appointed six people to a Blue Ribbon Panel to study the causes of rail accidents and incidents, including the major derailment last May on Metro-North's New Haven Line and several train-car accidents on the Long Island Rail Road. Panel members include: Louis Cerny, former executive director of the American Railway Engineering Association; Mortimer Downey, former MTA executive director and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Transportation; former House Rep. Jack Quinn (R-N.Y.); University of Illinois senior research engineer Conrad Ruppert Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater; and former Union Pacific Railroad executive William Van Trump. Also: Times Herald-Record (NY, Sept. 24), Westfaire Online (Sept. 23), EmpireStateNews.net (Sept. 23).

FARM SAFETY
The State Journal-Register (Springfield, Ill., Sept. 23) -- Illinois farmers experienced the safest season on record last year, but experts worry conditions are ripe for the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction this harvest. U. of I.  agricultural engineering professor Bob Aherin says last year’s drought minimized all areas of farming risks with smaller crops, less harvest activity, less farm equipment on the roadways and drier grain in the bins. “We’re concerned with crops going in late and (being harvested) not as dry as we’d like it,” he says. “We think this year will be a much bigger crop and the risk will be greater. I know farmers are pretty antsy to get out into the fields. We’re concerned they will push themselves.” Also: Telegraph Herald (from The Associated Press; Dubuque, Iowa, Sept. 24).

QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY
The Economist (London, Sept. 21) -- Quantum cryptography has yet to deliver a truly unbreakable way of sending messages. Quantum entanglement may change that. A team led by U. of I. physics professor Paul Kwiat attempts this by entangling photons in a slightly different, weaker way.

AIRPORT SAFETY
The Washington Post (Sept. 19) -- “Sea-Tac (the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport) has one of the longest histories of wildlife management,” says Ed Herricks, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at the U. of I. Herricks leads a pilot project using radar to detect birds at a few airports including Sea-Tac, chosen in part because of its detailed wildlife-management records.

SAFER IV DRUG DELIVERY
Phys Org.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, Sept. 19) -- A new optical device developed by a team of electrical and computer engineering students at Illinois can identify the contents of the fluid in an intravenous line in real-time, offering a promising way to improve the safety of IV drug delivery. The team, led by Brian T. Cunningham, the interim director of the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory at the U. of I., will present its work at the annual meeting of the Optical Society of America in Orlando, Fla., in early October. Also: Science Daily (Sept. 19).

ALUMNI MAKE FORTUNE LIST
IEEE Spectrum (New York City, Sept. 19) -- Fortune Magazine’s 40 under 40 list includes U. of I. alumni Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp and Max Levchin of PayPal.

COMPUTING
Scientific Computing (Rockaway, N.J., Sept. 19) -- Australian anthropologist Genevieve Bell is to deliver the keynote talk at SC13 in November in Denver. SC is an international conference for high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. “Supercomputing as a discipline is uniquely valuable in our society,” says William Gropp, the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in Computer Science at Illinois. He is the general chair of SC13.

ALUMNUS ON FORBES 400
Forbes (Sept. 18) -- Shahid Khan, the CEO of the auto parts manufacturer Flex-N-Gate and owner of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, came to the U.S. to study engineering at age 16 with $500 his father gave to him. He worked for $1.20 an hour as a dishwasher while studying at the U. of I.

INK-JET PRINT NANOSTRUCTURES
Nanowerk News (Honolulu, Sept. 16) -- A multi-institutional team of engineers including materails scientist John Rogers and other researchers from the U. of I. has developed a new approach to the fabrication of nanostructures for the semiconductor and magnetic storage industries. Also: Phys Org.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, Sept. 16), Red Orbit.com (Dallas, Sept. 17), Science 360 (NSF, Sept. 18), ScienceBlog (Sept. 18), TG Daily (Sept. 18), IEEE Spectrum (Sept. 17), Lab Manager (Sept. 23).

Related story: Forbes (Sept. 24) -- Imagine if the batteries you used to power your appliances were the size of a grain of sand. On its face, it sounds like science fiction at best and functionally ridiculous at worst.  But thanks to researchers at Illinois and at Harvard – and a custom-made 3-D printer – such batteries exist.

WEARABLE THERMOMETER
Chemistry World (London, Sept. 15) -- U. of I. materials science professor John Rogers and his team have just published their latest advance – creating a flexible wearable thermometer. While the device might not replace the thermometers in our medicine cabinets at home, it could be very useful in a clinical setting where precise measurements are needed to monitor blood flow. Also: Nature Materials (original article, Sept. 15), The Verge (New York City, Sept. 15), WTVY-Channel 4 (CBS; Dothan, Ala., Sept. 16), LiveScience (Sept. 16), MobiHealth News (Sept. 15), DVice (Sept. 16), The Verge.com (Sept. 15), LiveScience (Sept. 16), Mashable.com (Sept. 17), Ubergizmo (Sept. 17), Decoded Science (Sept. 17), Discovery News (Sept. 17), Medgadget (El Granada, Calif., Sept. 18), Discovery News (Sept. 24), Nanotechweb.org (Bristol, England, Sept. 26).

Related story: Medindia.com (Chennai, India, Sept. 16) -- U. of I. materials science professor John Rogers says the materials, design and manufacturing systems are now available to allow for effective flexible electronics matched to the surfaces of major organs of the body, including the skin, the heart and the brain. Also: News Track India (from Asian News International, Washington, D.C.; New Delhi, Sept. 16).

CELL MEMBRANE
Science 360 (Washington, D.C., Sept. 16) -- Picture of the Day: Using a completely new approach to imaging cell membranes, researchers found that a class of molecules called sphingolipids' congregate in large patches in the cell membrane. The study, that revealed some surprising relationships among molecules within cell membranes, was led by Mary Kraft, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois, and conducted by researchers from the University of Illinois, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the National Institutes of Health.

CLEANER JET FUEL
Environmental Leader (Estes Park, Colo., Sept. 16) -- The Federal Aviation Administration has selected a team of universities, including the U. of I., to lead a new Air Transportation Center of Excellence that aims to benefit airlines by developing cleaner jet fuels and exploring other ways to meet next-generation air transportation environmental and energy goals.

JUMPING JELLO (Sept. 10) -- The amazing physics of this fruity desert come from its chemical make up. When the gelatin is heated up with water, sugar, and flavorings, it protein loses its shape and dissolves into the liquids. But, as it cools down, the protein falls out of solution and solidifies into a matrix of strands of protein and which trap the liquids into a solid-looking shape called a colloidal gel, according to a post from the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

BIG DATA & ETHICS
SmartPlanet (Sept. 10) -- As new academic programs catch up with the use of big data in the real world, many also are grappling with how to teach ethics. Karrie Karahalios, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that she teaches her students how to sample data ethically and protect subjects in academic studies. “If you do these large social network studies, you don’t have what they call participant-informed consent...there are a lot of things you can do with big data that don’t involve talking with people.”

DNA SEQUENCING
GenomeWeb Daily News (New York City, Sept. 9) -- The National Human Genome Research Institute has awarded about $17 million under its Advanced DNA Sequencing Technology program to eight research teams developing technology aimed at driving down the cost of DNA sequencing. U. of I. physics professor Oleksii Aksimentiev at the U. of I. was awarded $2.47 million over four years to develop a system that combines synthetic nanopores with light-based technique to control the flow of DNA molecules. Also: National Institutes of Health (Washington, D.C., press release, Sept. 9), Nanowerk News (Honolulu, Sept. 12).

ANHEUSER-BUSCH RESEARCH CENTER
State Journal-Register (Sept. 4) -- The world's largest brewer is setting up shop at the University of Illinois. Anheuser-Busch InBev is opening a data analytics center called "Bud Lab" at the University of Illinois Research Park in Champaign. In a statement, the company says the lab will study "assortment optimization" along with social media and market trends and other "large-scale data initiatives." Also: Fox2 Now (Sept. 4), The Republic (from The Associated Press, Sept. 4), KWQC 6 (from AP, Sept. 4), News-Gazette (Sept. 4), Chicago Tribune (Sept. 4), ABC News 7 (Chicago, Sept. 4), St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Aug. 30), KMOX (CBS, St. Louis, Sept.4), Chicago Sun-Times (Sept. 4), Advertising Age (Sept. 4), The Consumerist (Sept. 3), Crain's Chicago Business (Sept. 3), Computerworld (Sept. 5).

DARK ENERGY SURVEY BEGINS
Batavia Patch (Sept. 3) -- On Aug. 31, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) officially began. Scientists on the survey team will systematically map one-eighth of the sky in unprecedented detail. The start of the survey is the culmination of 10 years of planning, building and testing by scientists from 25 institutions in six countries. Data acquisition electronics and control software for the giant camera was designed and constructed at the Loomis Laboratory, home of the Department of Physics at Illinois by a team of particle physicists under the direction of Professor Jon Thaler. Also: Symmetry (Fermlab, Sept. 3), Texas A&M Science (webstory, Sept. 3), Optics.org (Sept. 3), ScienceBlog (Sept. 3), Interactions.org (Sept. 3), Science 360 (video, NSF, Sept. 4), International Business Times (Sept. 4), Nature.com (blog, Sept. 3), Penn News (Sept. 3), Lukor (in Spanish, Sept. 3), Noticias de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (in Spanish, Sept. 4), The News-Gazette (Sept. 4), San Francisco Chronicle (from The Associated Press, Sept. 4), Science Recorder (Sept. 4), Huffington Post (Sept. 19), NBC News (Sept. 19), Space Exploration Network (Sept. 20), Extreme Tech (Sept. 10).

AVIATION SAFETY
The Seattle Times (Sept. 3) -- Sea-Tac was the first airport to hire a wildlife biologist, in the 1970s. “Sea-Tac has one of the longest histories of wildlife management,” says Ed Herricks, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at Illinois. Herricks leads a pilot project using radar to detect birds at a few airports including Sea-Tac, chosen in part because of its detailed wildlife-management records.

MOSAIC
U.S. News & World Report (Sept. 3) -- U. of I. alumnus Marc Andreessen is credited as a co-creator of Mosaic, the first popular Web browser.

MUSCLE MUSIC
Boston Globe (Sept. 2) -- Harvard University scientists have built a clear, artificial “muscle” in the laboratory and controlled its rapid vibrations with such precision that it can be turned into a sophisticated speaker. In an accompanying commentary, John A. Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois, called the work “promising and remarkably simple,” with potential applications for surgical tools, sensors that can wrap around curvy, soft structures in the body, and implants. Also: Fox News (Aug. 30).

MOOC STRATEGY
News-Gazette (Sept.1) -- The University of Illinois is working on a “strategy for offering massive, open online courses,” but has not yet “made any decisions.” The university has a committee examining the questions that must be answered before it can begin to offer for-credit courses in this way. Also: ASEE FirstBell (Sept. 5).

CYBERSECURITY
News-Gazette  (Sept. 1) -- The National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.6 million grant to the University of Illinois’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the University of California, Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute to develop strategies for protecting the nation’s power grid and other utilities from cyber attacks. Initially, the three-year grant “will fund researchers studying industrial control systems and later running computer models to determine if X type of attack happens, then these are the different responses the company can take.” Also: ASEE FirstBell (Sept. 4), HPC wire (San Diego, Sept. 4).
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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.