Archive for the ‘engineering’ category: Page 79
Oct 8, 2021
Hydrogel Tablet Can Purify a Liter of River Water in an Hour
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: engineering, sustainability
AUSTIN, Texas — As much as a third of the world’s population does not have access to clean drinking water, according to some estimates, and half of the population could live in water-stressed areas by 2025. Finding a solution to this problem could save and improve lives for millions of people, and it is a high priority among scientists and engineers around the globe.
Scientists and engineers at The University of Texas at Austin have created a hydrogel tablet that can rapidly purify contaminated water. One tablet can disinfect a liter of river water and make it suitable for drinking in an hour or less.
“Our multifunctional hydrogel can make a big difference in mitigating global water scarcity because it is easy to use, highly efficient and potentially scalable up to mass production,” said Guihua Yu, an associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and Texas Materials Institute.
Oct 5, 2021
‘How did Tesla find chips?’ Morgan Stanley breaks down impressive Q3 delivery performance
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: computing, engineering, sustainability, transportation
Tesla’s impressive third-quarter delivery performance overshadowed the automotive industry’s ongoing struggle with the semiconductor chip shortage. Among all of the world’s automakers, Tesla has been basically the only car company to avert the crisis as it has not had any overwhelmingly public stoppages in vehicle production. Morgan Stanley’s new investor note, drafted by lead analyst Adam Jonas, examines Tesla’s ability to avoid detrimental production stoppages, which effectively helped the company capture its best quarter in company history.
Jonas titles Morgan Stanley’s most recent investor note, “How Did Tesla Find Chips?” In all honesty, this riddle was solved during the Q2 2021 Earnings Call, where Tesla stated in its Shareholder Deck that it used a combination of in-house microcontrollers to avoid any major catastrophes in the manufacturing of its vehicles. The company wrote:
“Our team has demonstrated an unparalleled ability to react quickly and mitigate disruptions to manufacturing caused by semiconductor shortages. Our electrical and firmware engineering teams remain hard at work designing, developing and validating 19 new variants of controllers in response to ongoing semiconductor shortages.”
Oct 5, 2021
Combustion creates Braille display for electronics
Posted by Jose Ruben Rodriguez Fuentes in categories: electronics, engineering
Imagine an iPad or a Kindle for the blind, with inflatable Braille that changes shape under a user’s touch. A Cornell-led collaboration has made a crucial component for such a technology: A haptic array of densely packed actuators that cause silicone membrane “dots” to pop up when triggered by combustion.
The team’s paper, “Valveless Microliter Combustion for Densely Packed Arrays of Powerful Soft Actuators,” published Sept. 28 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The lead author is doctoral student Ronald Heisser.
One of the major hurdles for designing a dynamic Braille display for electronics is figuring out how to apply the necessary amount of force for each dot. Previous attempts have usually involved motors, hydraulics or tethered pumps, all of which are cumbersome, complex and expensive, according to Rob Shepherd, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the College of Engineering and the paper’s senior author.
Oct 2, 2021
A Biological ‘Time Machine’ With Human Cells Can Help Reverse Cancer
Posted by Gemechu Taye in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, genetics, time travel
And, depending on how further studies progress, it could be implemented via gene therapy.
Early-stage pancreatic cancer has a ‘reset button’
Continue reading “A Biological ‘Time Machine’ With Human Cells Can Help Reverse Cancer” »
Oct 2, 2021
Jet Engine Powered Trucks Easily Clock Over 350 MPH
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: energy, engineering, military
What is this world with a simple idea and lots of engineering? Father-son duo power regular trucks with military jet engines and almost make them fly.
Sep 29, 2021
Liquid metal coating creates effective antiviral, antimicrobial fabric
Posted by Jason Blain in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, engineering
An international team of researchers has used liquid gallium to create an antiviral and antimicrobial coating and tested it on a range of fabrics, including facemasks. The coating adhered more strongly to fabric than some conventional metal coatings, and eradicated 99% of several common pathogens within five minutes.
“Microbes can survive on the fabrics hospitals use for bedding, clothing and face masks for a long time,” says Michael Dickey, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and Camille & Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University. “Metallic surface coatings such as copper or silver are an effective way to eradicate these pathogens, but many metal particle coating technologies have issues such as non-uniformity, processing complexity, or poor adhesion.”
Dickey and colleagues from NC State, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Korea and RMIT University in Australia set out to develop a simple, cost-effective way to deposit metal coatings on fabric.
Sep 28, 2021
SpaceX to launch world’s first geostationary propellant depot around the Moon
Posted by Alberto Lao in categories: engineering, space travel
As part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch that will send a commercial Moon lander on its way to Earth’s nearest neighbor, rideshare organizer Spaceflight Inc and propellant depot startup OrbitFab have revealed plans for the first high Earth orbit propellant depot.
Known as “Tanker-002,” the co-developed spacecraft will technically be the first propellant depot – essentially a gas station in space – to reach a geostationary orbit ~36,000 km (~22,300 mi) above the Earth’s surface. Based around a variant of Spaceflight’s brand new Sherpa OTV space tug vehicles, OrbitFab hasn’t disclosed the planned capacity of its unique GEO depot but the public specifications of Sherpa suggest that the company will be able to deliver a few hundred kilograms (300−800 lb) of hydrazine accessible via several tiny docking ports.
However, Tanker-002 isn’t interesting solely for its unique position as a tanker in GEO. How Spaceflight and OrbitFab plan to get the small spacecraft into position will be a feat of engineering and trajectory design in its own right.
Sep 28, 2021
Consciousness & Information | Part II of the Documentary Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind
Posted by Alex Vikoulov in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, computing, education, engineering, information science, neuroscience, quantum physics
Quantum physics is directly linked to consciousness: Observations not just change what is measured, they create it… Here’s the next episode of my new documentary Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind (2021), Part II: CONSCIOUSNESS & INFORMATION
*Subscribe to our YT channel to watch the rest of documentary (to be released in parts): https://youtube.com/c/EcstadelicMedia.