Lifeboat Foundation

A paper, “The potential science and engineering value of samples delivered to Earth by Mars sample return,” authored by 71 scientists is available. According to the summary at Science Daily.

Returning samples from the surface of Mars has been a high-priority goal of the international Mars exploration community for many years. Although randomly collected samples would be potentially interesting, they would not be sufficient to answer the big questions that have motivated Mars exploration for decades. A new paper published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science describes the results of a major collaboration among 71 scientists from throughout the international science community to define specific scientific objectives for a Mars Sample Return campaign, to describe the critical measurements that would need to be done on returned samples to address the objectives, and to identify the kinds of samples that would be most likely to carry the key information.

(3D-printed heart scaffold)

As the head of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s innovative Cancer Center, Bhargava has been plugging away at injecting more advanced engineering solutions into medical problems. The freeform 3D printer is one of the first futuristic achievements of that effort.

But Bhargava’s project is just one of a wave of technologies that stand to transform medicine and healthcare as we know it; to make them faster, more accurate, and hopefully, drastically more affordable. Microneedle patches, handheld diagnostic machines, and better sensing capabilities, as well as 3D bioprinting, are just a few of the technologies coming to a doctor’s office near you—or maybe even into your home—in the next decade.

Continue reading “5 Amazing Projects That Will Change the Future of Healthcare” »

Finding the best light-harvesting chemicals for use in solar cells can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Over the years, researchers have developed and tested thousands of different dyes and pigments to see how they absorb sunlight and convert it to electricity. Sorting through all of them requires an innovative approach.

Now, thanks to a study that combines the power of supercomputing with data science and experimental methods, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Cambridge in England have developed a novel “design to device” approach to identify promising materials for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). DSSCs can be manufactured with low-cost, scalable techniques, allowing them to reach competitive performance-to-price ratios.

The team, led by Argonne materials scientist Jacqueline Cole, who is also head of the Molecular Engineering group at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, used the Theta supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) to pinpoint five high-performing, low-cost dye materials from a pool of nearly 10,000 candidates for fabrication and device testing. The ALCF is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

Continue reading “Scientists use machine learning to identify high-performing solar materials” »

A protein has been identified that once neutralized can see the activation of dormant stem cells.

Center for Nanoscale Materials researchers present a quantum model for achieving ground-state cooling in low frequency mechanical resonators and show how cooperativity and entanglement are key factors to enhance the cooling figure of merit.

A resonator with near-zero thermal noise has better performance characteristics in nanoscale sensing, quantum memories, and quantum information processing applications. Passive cryogenic cooling techniques, such as dilution refrigerators, have successfully cooled high-frequency resonators but are not sufficient for lower frequency systems. The optomechanical effect has been applied successfully to cool low-frequency systems after an initial cooling stage. This method parametrically couples a mechanical resonator to a driven optical cavity, and, through careful tuning of the drive frequency, achieves the desired cooling effect. The optomechanical effect is expanded to an alternative approach for ground-state cooling based on embedded solid-state defects. Engineering the atom-resonator coupling parameters is proposed, using the strain profile of the mechanical resonator allowing cooling to proceed through the dark entangled states of the two-level system ensemble.

Michelle Khine is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Nine months ago, her newborn son was hospitalized for complications during childbirth and was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). While in the NICU, her son was connected to several machines that were supplying oxygen and monitoring his breathing.

A biomedical engineering research team from the University of California has developed a new wearable respiratory sensor to monitor children with chronic pulmonary conditions. The design was built with inspiration from a favorite childhood toy, Shrinky Dinks.

In an interview newly published by Popular Mechanics, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared his thoughts on colonizing Mars — from how the first settlers will grow food to the friendly vibe he envisions at the first base on the Red Planet.

“For having an outdoorsy, fun atmosphere, you’d probably want to have some faceted glass dome, with a park, so you can walk around without a suit,” Musk told the magazine. “Eventually if you terraform the planet, then you can walk around without a suit. But for say, the next 100-plus years, you’ll have to have a giant pressurized glass dome.”

However, a shortage of hi-tech research capacity in the region is turning into a hindrance, according to analysts, with most of China’s top-notch science and engineering schools located in the northern and eastern provinces. Although Hong Kong has several universities in the world’s top 100, only a few of them have a science and technology focus.

China’s ‘Greater Bay Area’ plan aims to erase barriers between cities in the region in terms of policy, financing, logistics and talent.

Researchers from Texas A&M University, led by Dr. Akhilesh K. Gaharwar, have developed a new way to deliver treatment for cartilage regeneration.

Gaharwar, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M, said the nanoclay-based platform for sustained and prolonged delivery of protein therapeutics has the potential to impact treating osteoarthritis, a degenerative disease that affects nearly 27 million Americans and is caused by breakdown of cartilage that can lead to damage of the underlying bone.

As America’s population ages, the number of osteoarthritis incidences is likely to increase. One of the greatest challenges with treating osteoarthritis and subsequent joint damage is repairing the damaged tissue, especially as cartilage tissue is difficult to regenerate.

Continue reading “Researchers develop new therapeutic approach to treating osteoarthritis” »