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Princeton Engineering researchers have developed a cost-effective way to use breakfast foods to create a material that can remove salt and microplastics from seawater.

The researchers used egg whites to create an aerogel, a versatile material known for its light weight and porosity. It has a range of uses, including water filtration, energy storage, and sound and thermal insulation. Craig Arnold, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and vice dean of innovation at Princeton, leads a lab that focuses on creating new materials, including aerogels, for engineering purposes.

One day, sitting in a faculty meeting, he had an idea.

Heparin has long been used as a blood thinner, or anticoagulant, for patients with blood clotting disorders or after surgery to prevent complications. But the medication remains difficult to dose correctly, potentially leading to overdosing or underdosing.

A team of Penn State researchers combined with a , peptide, to slow down the release of the drug and convey the directly to the site of a clot. They published their findings in the journal Small.

“We wanted to develop a material that can gradually deliver heparin over time rather than the current iteration that gets cleared from the body in a couple of hours,” said corresponding author Scott Medina, Penn State associate professor of biomedical engineering. “We also wanted to deliver the drug through the skin instead of through an IV.”

An exploration of Ten astro engineering projects we may some day try, or that someone else in the universe may already have built.

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“Five strangers were pulled together” in an engineering challenge to find a solution to a real-world problem.

Engineering researchers of an innovative academy program have designed a Submersible Remotely Operated Vehicle (SROV) in a span of six weeks after accepting the U.K. Navy’s challenge.

“I was skeptical at first that we could pull off such an ambitious project within the timeframe,” said Dylan Brennan, project team lead, a nuclear graduate working for Jacobs.


Co.lab.engineering.

The five young engineers, who were part of the first cohort of the newly launched Co-Lab Engineering Academy, presented a concept design of their “ScrubMarine,” a submersible cleaning drone.

Earthquakes are almost impossible to predict. Luckily, engineers have come up with some amazing ways to protect people the next time one might strike.

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Illinois Institute of Technology Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering Mohammad Asadi has developed solutions to two major problems facing lithium-air batteries. Lithium-air batteries hold more energy in a smaller battery size than their more common counterpart, the lithium-ion battery, but until now, lithium-air batteries have been overlooked in commercial applications because lithium-air batteries tended to die after fewer recharges and require a lot more energy to charge than can be generated by the battery later.

After almost a decade working in the oil and gas industry, Asadi turned his focus to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, particularly caused by the transportation industry, which consumes around 38 to 40 percent of the world’s energy. “With more widespread use of electric vehicles, you can drastically reduce transportation-based carbon emissions,” says Asadi. “But to put more electric vehicles on the road, we’ll need batteries—lots of them.”

Currently, lithium-air batteries are seen as less commercially viable than their counterpart, the lithium-ion battery. However, using lithium-air batteries in electric vehicles has some huge advantages.

In theory, it could mitigate the effects of global warming; but experts are wary.

Make Sunsets, a California-based startup, released weather balloons that carried sulfur particles into the stratosphere which possibly burst there, releasing the chemical, MIT Technology Review.


Da-kuk/iStock.

Founded by Luke Iseman, previous director of hardware at Y Combinator, the attempts by the startup fall into the controversial area of solar geoengineering where particles are released into the atmosphere with an aim to reflect sunlight back into space to ease global warming. The field has largely been a thought experiment with no real consensus if the technology can help us fight climate change.

Recently, a start-up company called Make Sunsets has begun releasing chemicals into the stratosphere as a form of geoengineering that is intended to help climate change. However, many are very hesitant about the startup and the result of what they are doing.

For perspective, geoengineering is when chemical particles are released into the stratosphere to manipulate the weather or climate. The theory is that when sulfur is released into the atmosphere that it mimics a natural process that occurs after volcanoes and that by doing this intentionally, we could ease global warming.

While it isn’t difficult to do this, it is very controversial. The reason for this is that it could potentially have dangerous side effects. Additionally, because some regions could endure worse side effects, it could cause issues across international lines.