Stories

With the age of the incandescent light bulb fading rapidly, the holy grail of the lighting industry is to develop a highly efficient form of solid-state lighting that produces high-quality white light. One of the few alternative technologies that produce pure white light is white-light quantum dots –...

Team CADET at Rice University have developed a slingshot-driven device that stops high-velocity projectiles without destroying them. Currently, the Air Force simulates deceleration by firing cannons into walls. The strategy is expensive and the sensor module and target are typically destroyed...

Wake Forest University physicists have developed a "Power Felt" fabric that doubles as a spare outlet. When used to line a shirt, for example, it converts subtle differences in temperature into electricity. The technology could be used to power up devices, including MP3 players and cell phone batteries. ...

Engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, sent a fleet of 100 smartphone-equipped floating robots down the Sacramento River to demonstrate the next generation of water monitoring technology, promising to transform the way government agencies monitor one of the state’s most...

As far as the design of the basic hand grenade goes, "The basic technology is almost 100 years old," said Richard Lauch, a Picatinny Arsenal engineer. Lauch, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, has been on a mission to modernize the hand grenade so that it is safer as well as easier to use and cheaper to...

Soldiers stationed in remote combat outposts face logistics and safety challenges to power their radios, laptops and GPS units. U.S. Army scientists are researching methods to harness the Sun and wind to ease the burdens associated with transporting fossil fuels to dangerous areas

Thanks to a group of University of Houston students, the hearing impaired may soon have an easier time communicating with those who do not understand sign language. During the past semester, students in UH’s engineering technology and industrial design programs teamed up to develop the concept and...

In my last blog entry, I told you about a unique promotional campaign Littelfuse initiated this year called “Speed2Design” that gives working engineers like you the chance to win the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not just attend one of four IndyCar races, but to go behind the scenes into the pits and garage area, meet the driver...

MotivePro, which has been dubbed the “Vibrating Suit,” has been developed by the Birmingham City University in the UK. The suit helps athletes and other users to improve their memory of physical technique. The device has been tested by Olympic hopeful Mimi Cesar, the UK’s third-ranking...

When Cornell University engineers developed a new type of robot hand that could pick up oddly shaped objects it presented a challenge: It was easy for a human operator to choose the best place to take hold of an object, but an autonomous robotwould need a new kind of programming. So they developed an...

University of Nevada, Reno computer science engineers have combined human-computer interaction and motion-planning research to build a low-cost, accessible navigation system for people with visual impairments. Called Navatar, the system can run on a standard smartphone.

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) made history last week when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle in history to successfully attach to the International Space Station. Although the spacecraft was unmanned, the capsule held about 1,000 pounds of...

A NASA flight test designed to demonstrate the feasibility of inflatable spacecraft technology is coming down to the wire. The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) is the third in a series of suborbital flight tests of this new technology. It is scheduled to launch from the Wallops Flight...

"Flying 3D eye-bots" can be deployed as additional surveillance resources during major events, or as high-resolution 3D street imaging systems. These unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are a kind of mini-helicopter, with a wingspan of around two meters. They have a propeller on each of their...

Last year, images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars — observations that challenged previously held beliefs that there was not a lot of movement on the...

A Georgia Tech research team has developed a novel technology that could change how industry designs and casts complex, costly metal parts. This new casting method makes possible faster prototype development times, as well as more efficient and cost-effective manufacturing procedures...

Researchers have shown how to create morphing mechanisms, robotic forms and shape-shifting sculptures from a single sheet of paper in a method reminiscent of origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.The new method, called Kaleidogami, uses computational algorithms and tools to create...

A host of companies, including Microsoft, have been working to create a new way of interacting with computers: motion sensing technology. With everyday movements like drawing, waving, and rotating, users can control functions on their computers. Many are entering the...

Most computer chips today have anywhere from four to 10 separate cores, which can work in parallel, increasing the chips’ efficiency. But the chips of the future are likely to have hundreds or even thousands of cores. For chip designers, predicting how these massively multicore chips will behave is no...

If a practical quantum computer is ever to be realized, conventional electronic devices will have to interface with the delicate quantum systems such as atoms or ions in traps or wisps of magnetism near superconducting sensors. A recent paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, written by...

University at Buffalo researchers are making significant progress on rust-proofing steel, using a graphene-based composite that could serve as a nontoxic alternative to coatings that contain hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen.In the scientists' first experiments, pieces of steel coated with...

In what will be the first of four high-altitude balloon flights to begin in the summer of 2013, technologists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., are preparing to test new deceleration devices. The devices could replace...

Rather than participate in fly-by suborbital flights, which are being offered by companies like Virgin Galactic, SpaceX Corp. has teamed up with Bigelow Aerospace to offer an experience in a microgravity living environment. The plan, laid out in a jointly issued news release, calls...

A team of biomedical engineers and hematologists at the University of Pennsylvania has made large-scale, patient-specific simulations of blood function under the flow conditions found in blood vessels, using robots to run hundreds of tests on human platelets responding to combinations of activating...

A new air defense radar system is undergoing testing on the White Sands Missile Range to prepare it for later integrated testing with the Navy this fall. The Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) is an advanced radar system intended for use by the Army,...