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Category: engineering

Lightning strikes 12 times per minute on fusion engineering test platform

Zap Energy has advanced its Century fusion engineering test platform to operate for more than one hundred plasma shots at 0.2 Hz, or one shot every five seconds, with the resulting heat captured by surfaces coated with circulating liquid metal.

Concentrated inside a about the size of a hot water heater, each plasma carried up to 500 kA of current—about 20 times stronger than a bolt of lightning—discharged into a vessel lined with flowing liquid bismuth. During the record run, Century’s total input power was 57 kilowatts, with 39 kilowatts delivered directly to the cables leading to the .

Compared with Century’s commissioning milestone in 2024, this achievement represents an increase of 20 times in sustained average power and is a major step toward developing commercial power plants using repetitive pulsed power and .

Time-released gel packs a one-two punch against aggressive brain tumors

High-grade gliomas are aggressive brain tumors with poor prognosis, largely because even after surgical removal, infiltrative residual tumor cells often regrow during the latency before radiotherapy, leading to recurrence. The standard chemoradiotherapy only modestly improves survival. A crucial window of vulnerability arises post-surgery, before radiotherapy begins, where residual tumor cells are not well addressed by systemic chemotherapy.

Prof. Feng-Huei Lin and Dr. Jason Lin from National Taiwan University have designed a local post-surgical gel packing with sequential delivery of platinum agents that could maintain therapeutic drug concentrations intracranially and synergize with subsequent radiotherapy to eliminate tissue. Their study is published in the Chemical Engineering Journal.

The cutting-edge drug-delivery gel can be directly injected into the surgical cavity following tumor resection. This gel provides sustained local delivery of platinum-based anticancer agents, ensuring effective eradication for residual glioma tissue that remain after surgery. The gel is designed to maximize the therapeutic impact while minimizing systemic exposure.

Thinking outside the box to fabricate customized 3D neural chips

Cultured neural tissues have been widely used as a simplified experimental model for brain research. However, existing devices for growing and recording neural tissues, which are manufactured using semiconductor processes, have limitations in terms of shape modification and the implementation of three-dimensional (3D) structures.

By thinking outside the box, a KAIST research team has successfully created a customized 3D neural chip. They first used a 3D printer to fabricate a hollow channel structure, then used to automatically fill the channels with conductive ink, creating the electrodes and wiring. This achievement is expected to significantly increase the design freedom and versatility of brain science and brain engineering research platforms. The paper is published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

A research team led by Professor Yoonkey Nam from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering has successfully developed a platform technology that overcomes the limitations of traditional semiconductor-based manufacturing. This technology allows for the precise fabrication of a 3D microelectrode array (neural interfaces with multiple microelectrodes arranged in a 3D space to measure and stimulate the electrophysiological signal of neurons) in various customized forms for in vitro culture chips.

Wade Demmer — VP, R&D, Medtronic — The Future Of Pacemaker Technologies

The future of pacemaker technologies — wade demmer — VP, R&D, medtronic.

Wade Demmer is Vice President of Research & Development at Medtronic where he is responsible for the development of new generations of pacemakers (https://www.medtronic.com/en-us/l/patients/treatments-therap…ers.html). With extensive expertise in medical technology and innovation, he leads the company’s R&D efforts to develop cutting-edge healthcare solutions and is dedicated to advancing medical advancements that improve patient outcomes and transform healthcare delivery.

Wade began his career at Intel, where he gained valuable experience in technology development and engineering. Building on his technical expertise, he transitioned into the medical device industry, bringing a strong innovation-driven mindset to healthcare solutions.

Wade is best known for his pioneering work on pacemakers, where he contributed to the design and development of advanced cardiac pacing technologies. His innovative approaches have helped improve the reliability, longevity, and patient comfort of pacemaker devices, significantly impacting the field of cardiac care.

Wade received his Bachelor of Engineering (BEng), with a focus on Computer Engineering, from Iowa State University, and his MBA from University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

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Advanced sensors peer inside the ‘black box’ of metal 3D printing

With the ability to print metal structures with complex shapes and unique mechanical properties, metal additive manufacturing (AM) could be revolutionary. However, without a better understanding of how metal AM structures behave as they are 3D printed, the technology remains too unreliable for widespread adoption in manufacturing and part quality remains a challenge.

Researchers in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)’s nondestructive evaluation (NDE) group are tackling this challenge by developing first-of-their-kind approaches to look at how materials and structures evolve inside a AM structure during printing. These NDE techniques can become enabling technologies for metal AM, giving manufacturers the data they need to develop better simulations, processing parameters and predictive controls to ensure part quality and consistency.

“If you want people to use metal AM components out in the world, you need NDE,” said David Stobbe, group leader for NDE ultrasonics and sensors in the Materials Engineering Division (MED). “If we can prove that AM-produced parts behave as designed, it will allow them to proliferate, be used in safety-critical components in aerospace, energy and other sectors and hopefully open a new paradigm in manufacturing.”

Next-generation nanoengineered switches can cut heat loss in electronics

Electronic devices lose energy as heat due to the movement of electrons. Now, a breakthrough in nanoengineering has produced a new kind of switch that matches the performance of the best traditional designs while pushing beyond the power-consumption limits of modern electronics.

Researchers from the University of Michigan have achieved what scientists have been trying to execute for a long time: designing electronics that harness excitons—pairs of an electron and a corresponding hole (a missing electron) bound together forming a charge-neutral particle—instead of electrons.

The newly designed nanoengineered optoexcitonics (NEO) device featured a tungsten diselenide (WSe2) monolayer on a tapered silicon dioxide (SiO2) nanoridge. The switch achieved a 66% reduction in losses compared to traditional switches while surpassing an on–off ratio of 19 dB at room temperature, a performance that rivals the best electronic switches available on the market.

Clever device drastically reduces the vibration from rotating parts

An EPFL Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering has developed a device that significantly dampens the flow-induced vibration caused by rotating parts, such as those in boat propellers, turbines and hydraulic pumps. His device can be produced with a 3D printer and has recently been patented.

It’s a classic case of beginner’s luck. Thomas Berger had just started his Ph.D. in at EPFL’s School of Engineering when he made his now-patented discovery, which is published in Scientific Reports.

His thesis built on work he had started as a master’s student, but with the help of a 3D printer. This led to the promising technology that’s now attracting interest from investors.

Sodium-based battery design maintains performance at room and subzero temperatures

All-solid-state batteries are safe, powerful ways to power EVs and electronics and store electricity from the energy grid, but the lithium used to build them is rare, expensive and can be environmentally devastating to extract.

Sodium is an inexpensive, plentiful, less-destructive alternative, but the all-solid-state batteries they create currently don’t work as well at room temperature.

“It’s not a matter of sodium versus lithium. We need both. When we think about tomorrow’s solutions, we should imagine the same gigafactory can produce products based on both lithium and sodium chemistries,” said Y. Shirley Meng, Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering at the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME). “This new research gets us closer to that ultimate goal while advancing basic science along the way.”

Scattered Spider Resurfaces With Financial Sector Attacks Despite Retirement Claims

Cybersecurity researchers have tied a fresh round of cyber attacks targeting financial services to the notorious cybercrime group known as Scattered Spider, casting doubt on their claims of going “dark.”

Threat intelligence firm ReliaQuest said it has observed indications that the threat actor has shifted their focus to the financial sector. This is supported by an increase in lookalike domains potentially linked to the group that are geared towards the industry vertical, as well as a recently identified targeted intrusion against an unnamed U.S. banking organization.

“Scattered Spider gained initial access by socially engineering an executive’s account and resetting their password via Azure Active Directory Self-Service Password Management,” the company said.

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