Category Archives: Engineering

Bringing Eye Care to Thousands in India

New wireless networking system brings eye care to thousands in India

With high-speed links to the hospital, three of the clinics, also known as vision centers, screen about 1,500 patients each month. (Numbers are not yet available for the two other centers, which came online in May 2006.) Centers are run by a nurse trained in eye care. Patients first see the nurse, then spend about five minutes on a web camera consulting with an Aravind doctor. If the doctor determines that a closer examination or an operation is necessary, the patient is given a hospital appointment.

Another great example of applying technology to improve people’s lives. More on appropriate technology projects. It is great to see the focus on improving people’s lives, and using technology to do so.

Millennium Technology Prize to Dr. Shuji Nakamura

Photo of Dr. Shuji Nakamura (from UC Santa Barbara)

The Millennium Technology Prize is a bi-annual award recognizing technology innovators created by a public private partnership in Finland. Finland understands the importance of technology advances for economic gains. Winners receive 1 million Euros. Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the web, received the first prize in 2004. The 2006 prize was awarded to Dr. Shuji Nakamura:

According to Professor Nakamura, we have only just begun to explore the vast number of opportunities presented by applications using LEDs and lasers. ”I hope the award of this prize will help people to understand that this invention makes it possible to improve quality of life for many millions of people. This is not just a source of light that makes enormous energy savings possible, it is also an innovation that can be used in the sterilisation of drinking water and for storing data in much more efficient ways.”

As LEDs can be powered by solar panels, lighting can be provided in remote areas of developing countries. In his speech, Professor Nakamura said that he will be donating part of the prize money to organizations that promote the use of LED lighting in such locations.

Bacteria Power Tiny Motor

Wheel of Life: Bacteria provide horsepower for tiny motor by Peter Weiss:

To make the motors, Hiratsuka’s team, led by Taro Q.P. Uyeda of the National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, borrowed fabrication techniques from the microelectronics industry.

The machinery of each motor consists of two parts: a ring-shaped groove etched into a silicon surface, and a star-shaped, six-armed rotor fabricated from silicon dioxide that’s placed on top of the circular groove. Tabs beneath the rotor arms fit loosely into the groove.

To prepare the bacterial-propulsion units, the team used a strain of the fast-crawling bacterium Mycoplasma mobile that was genetically engineered to crawl only on a carpet of certain proteins, including one called fetuin. The researchers laid down fetuin within the circular groove and coated the rotor with a protein called streptavidin.

Student Design and Engineering Web Community

Autodesk has launched the Student Design and Engineering Community for architecture, design, civil and mechanical engineering university students. Students will be able to learn, collaborate and communicate with their peers on campuses around the world.

Students and educators from accredited colleges and universities can download free student editions of professional Autodesk software, discuss projects, ask and answer questions about projects, share work, find jobs, network with personal profiles, learn from experts and use tutorials.

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Young Innovators Under 35

2006 – 35 Young Innovators Under 35 from MIT’s Technology Review:

Includes: Apostolos Argyris, disguising data as noise; Jeffrey Bode, Peptide “Legos” to make new drugs; Christopher Voigt, A vision in bacteria; Michael Wong, Cleaning up with nanoparticles

With some 300,000 hazardous-waste sites scattered across the United States, cleaning up contaminated soil and groundwater is a daunting challenge. Chemical engineer Michael Wong is taking on toxic waste with tiny particles that can break down organic pollutants more quickly, and perhaps less expensively, than existing technologies.

Wind-Powered Water Heater

University Students Build Wind-Powered Water Heater by Gregg Kleiner:

A team of engineering students from Oregon State University, inspired by a late professor’s rudimentary sketches, has designed a working prototype of a hot water heating system powered solely by the wind.

The students believe the technology, which uses magnets, a copper plate and plenty of ingenuity, has the potential to birth a new company and ultimately make an impact on the way the world heats water, especially in developing countries.
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The prototype was the team’s senior design project, a year-long, hands-on engineering course at OSU that all senior engineering students must participate in, choosing an idea or basic design and developing it to the prototype stage. Despite having no funding, the students say the concept has now been proven to work, and several team members considered spinning off a nonprofit company that would bring the technology to developing countries.

Nanoscientists Create Biological Switch

Nanoscientists Create Biological Switch From Spinach Molecule:

The scientists used a scanning tunneling microscope to image chlorophyll-a and then injected it with a single electron to manipulate the molecule into four positions, ranging from straight to curved, at varying speeds. Though the Ohio University team and others have created two-step molecule switches using scanning tunneling microscope manipulation in the past, the new experiment yields a more complex multi-step switch on the largest organic molecule to date.

The work has immediate implications for basic science research, as the configuration of molecules and proteins impacts biological functions. The study also suggests a novel route for creating nanoscale logic circuits or mechanical switches for future medical, computer technology or green energy applications, said Hla, an associate professor of physics.

Great Nanotechnology Overview

Reporting Risk Assessment of Nanotechnology: A reporter’s guide to sources and research issues (pdf) by Trudy E. Bell:

The article discusses how reporters should investigate the risks with nanotechnology, and in doing so provides a good introduction to concepts in nanotechnology:

If engineered nanomaterials have physical properties different from their bulk counterparts, might they also pose new risks to human health in their manufacture, use, and disposal?

As yet, no one knows. Current data basically suggest “it depends.” But researchers both in government and private
industry are keen to find out.

The potential for nanotechnology is amazing but as we have said before the risks presented by nanotechnology also need careful study.

At the nanoscale, fundamental mechanical, electronic, optical, chemical, biological, and other properties may differ significantly from properties of micrometer-sized particles or bulk materials.

One reason is surface area. Surface area counts because most chemical reactions involving solids happen at the surfaces, where chemical bonds are incomplete. The surface area of a cubic centimeter of a solid material is 6 square centimeters—about the same as one side of half a stick of gum. But the surface area of a cubic centimeter of 1-nm particles in an ultrafine powder is 6,000 square meters—literally a third larger than a football field.

Engineering Student Contest Winners Design Artificial Limb

St. Joseph's College of Engineering students

St. Joseph’s engineering college students win design contest, India:

Three students of St. Joseph’s College of Engineering received a cash award of Rs.50,000 for their prototype of an artificial limb, presented in the `National Level Engineering Students Design Contest’.

The contest, organised by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), was aimed at encouraging engineering students to design innovative products.

Organising secretary K. Chandrasekaran said the event was held to address the gap between education and industry, promoting design education and take students to the logical end of working prototypes.

Electrical Engineering Future

The future of electrical engineering

The article discusses many of the explanations for the lack of growth in engineering graduates in the USA and reasons for studying engineering. Some related posts from our blog: Top degree for S&P 500 CEOs? Engineering – Lucrative college degrees – USA Engineering Jobs – Global Share of Engineering Work – Engineers in the Workplace

Indeed, a degree in electrical engineering can open many doors, in part because electrical engineering is so broad. Electrical engineers have taken on many tasks that you might expect people with other technical degrees to do. Semiconductor processing, for example, is highly populated by electrical engineers, but its basis is in physics and chemistry. Other areas include optics (as applied to communications), aerospace engineering, and even life sciences. “A lot of people don’t realize that a lot of biomedical devices are actually electrical devices,” noted Georgia Tech’s May.