Stanford Engineering Library Blog

MIT engineers have improved the power output of one type of fuel cell by more than 50 percent through technology that could help these environmentally friendly energy storage devices find a much broader market, particularly in portable electronics. More

CIO's Paul Horowitz advises companies not to cut IT costs to try to improve bottom-line revenue. CIOs need to actually spend money in the short term in order to simplify their IT environments and to position their organizations for long-term cost reduction. More

Researchers at Davidson College have created a living computer. Researchers bred the computer from e-coli rather than using stamped silica and used it to solve a mathematical puzzle known as the Burnt Pancake Problem.

"In a biology-based computer, each bacterium becomes a single computer that runs a different part of the problem simultaneously. Since a million bacteria-based computers can fit into a single drop of water, all of them working together could speed up the calculations dramatically."

More from Discovery news:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/05/28/bacteria-computer.html

Researchers at the University of Washington have created a computer game called Foldit, that simulates protein structures using protein sequence-design algorithms. Players create protein structures, the more chemically stable the protein the more points the player earns.

The project is the latest innovation of the Rosetta@Home project that uses screen savers and computer downtime to work out how proteins fold.

"Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins."

More from Fold It!
http://fold.it/portal/adobe_main/

Rosetta@home
http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Researchers at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Mitsubishi, and Tokki Corp have designed a thin-film solar cell disguised as a leaves on a plant. They plan to develop these thin-film solar cells for use in architecture as well as other everyday uses like toys, household items, clothes etc.

Complete article:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080527/152443/

Researchers at Duke University have created microscopic robots able to dance on an object smaller than the head of a pin. "Each microrobot is shaped something like a spatula but with dimensions measuring just microns, or millionths of a meter. They are almost 100 times smaller than any previous robotic designs of their kind and weigh even less."

An upcoming paper on the robots will be published in the Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems.

Complete article:
http://news.duke.edu/2008/06/microrobots.html

Japanese manufacturer Shinoda Plasma Co. will demonstrate for the first time in the U.S. next week its 125-inch, curved-screen "Shipla Wall" television. The superslim TV uses plasma tube arrays, allowing for a superior picture and a tenth of the weight of a regular plasma TV. Read more at Electronic House.

The company best known for producing high-end audio and video cables may have to change its name to Monster Cable & Wireless. The company today unveiled a pair of boxes -- a transmitter and a receiver -- that allow HD video signals to travel wirelessly up to 30 feet between the devices via ultrawideband technology. Read more at USA Today.

Using carbon nanotubes, MIT chemical engineers have built the most sensitive electronic detector yet for sensing deadly gases such as the nerve agent sarin. The tiny super-sensitive detectors use very little power. More

Nerdy engineers. Beautiful women. Mutually exclusive groups of people? Not necessarily! Read about how some smart, creative, fun and very attractive women engineers are making their mark on technology. More

Sheila Kennedy, at MIT, creates designs for flexible photovoltaic materials that may change the way buildings receive and distribute energy. Kennedy uses 3-D modeling software to design with solar textiles, generating membrane-like surfaces that can become energy-efficient cladding for roofs or walls. Solar textiles may also be draped like curtains. A recent project, "Soft House," exhibited at the Vitra Design Museum in Essen, Germany, illustrates what Kennedy means when she says the boundaries between walls and utilities are changing.
Read more at MIT News

For more than 50 years most scientists have tried to understand just what glass is. Dr Paddy Royall from the University of Bristol, with colleagues in Canberra and Tokyo, have revealed in an article in the June 22, issue of Nature Materials, that glass 'fails' to be a solid due to the special atomic structures that form in a glass when it cools. Knowing the structure formed by atoms as a glass cools represents a major breakthrough in our understanding of meta-stable materials and will allow further development of new materials such as metallic glasses which could be suitable for a whole range of products that need to be flexible such as aircraft wings, golf clubs and engine parts. Read more at Bristol University News

In the new study, Pulickel M. Ajayan and colleagues in Texas point out that rice grain sized nanoassemblies are a step toward the development of futuristic nanomachines with practical applications in delivering medicines to patients, labs-on-a-chip, and other products. The study, scheduled for the July 9 issue of ACS's Nano Letters, describes the development of a hybrid nanowire consisting of segments with water-repelling carbon nanotubes on one end and water-attracting metal nanowires on the other. Read more at ASAP Nano Letters

In Britain, a forward-thinking consultant has proposed installing generators under the stairs of a harbor viewing platform. The generators would collect the energy from heel strikes made on the stairs by those ascending to and descending from the platform to create electric power. If the idea works, it's off to other public places such as shopping centers and rail stations. The full story is here.

In this manifesto from Change This about applying performance improvisation skills in the business world, author Randy Sabourin incorporates short commentaries from the music and sports worlds among others to support his assertion that improvisation is a cutting edge competitive advantage in business. Business Improvisation: The Diving Catch of the Corporate World