We learn in school that matter comes in three states: solid, liquid and gas. A bored and clever student (we’ve all met one) then sometimes asks whether glass is a solid or a liquid. The student has a point. Glasses are weird “solid liquids” that are cooled so fast their atoms or molecules jammed before…
Engineers to Use Cyborg Insects as Biorobotic Sensing Machines
A team of engineers from Washington University in St. Louis is looking to capitalize on the sense of smell in locusts to create new biorobotic sensing systems that could be used in homeland security applications. Baranidharan Raman, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, has received a three-year, $750,000…
What Happens When You Steam a Planet?
The media often imply that the goal of the hunt for extrasolar planets is to find a rocky planet about the size of Earth orbiting a star like the sun at a distance that would allow liquid water to persist on its surface. In other words, the goal is to find Earth 2.0. But there…
Microscopic ‘Clocks’ Time Distance to Source of Galactic Cosmic Rays
Most of the cosmic rays arriving at Earth from our galaxy come from nearby clusters of massive stars, according to new observations from the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS), an instrument aboard NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft. The distance between the galactic cosmic rays’ point of origin and Earth is limited by the survival…
Chinese Rover Analyzes Moon Rocks: First New ‘Ground Truth’ In 40 years
In 2013, Chang’e-3, an unmanned lunar mission, touched down on the northern part of the Imbrium basin, one of the most prominent of the lava-filled impact basins visible from Earth. It was a beautiful landing site, said Bradley L. Jolliff, PhD, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St.…
New Sensor Detects Tiny Individual Nanoparticles
Nanoparticles, engineered materials about a billionth of a meter in size, are around us every day. Although they are tiny, they can benefit human health, as in some innovative early cancer treatments, but they can also interfere with it through viruses, air pollution, traffic emissions, cosmetics, sunscreen and electronics. A team of researchers at Washington…
3-D Printer Creates Transformative Device for Heart Treatment
Using an inexpensive 3-D printer, biomedical engineers have developed a custom-fitted, implantable device with embedded sensors that could transform treatment and prediction of cardiac disorders. Igor Efimov, PhD, at the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis and an international team of biomedical engineers and materials scientists have created a…