Rolls-Royce’s new 2.5-megawatt hybrid-electric propulsion system delivered more than a megawatt of power only a few weeks after its first tests, a press statement reveals.
The iconic British engineering firm is developing the Power Generation System 1 (PGS1) demonstrator powertrain to test the technology for clean aircraft of the future.
Imagine windows that can easily transform into mirrors, or super high-speed computers that run not on electrons but light. These are just some of the potential applications that could one day emerge from optical engineering, the practice of using lasers to rapidly and temporarily change the properties of materials.
“These tools could let you transform the electronic properties of materials at the flick of a light switch,” says Caltech Professor of Physics David Hsieh. “But the technologies have been limited by the problem of the lasers creating too much heat in the materials.”
In a new study in Nature, Hsieh and his team, including lead author and graduate student Junyi Shan, report success at using lasers to dramatically sculpt the properties of materials without the production of any excess damaging heat.
Formula 1 brakes are some of the most incredible pieces of tech on the planet. They’re able to haul a car doing over 200 mph down to walking speed in a matter of seconds, generating up to 5 g’s of force on deceleration. But how do they work? This video is a nifty explainer.
Scott Mansell of the Driver61 YouTube channel got his hands on a collection of brake system parts from an F1 car, and took the time to explain how each piece works. The first thing you’ll notice is that there’s not one, but two master cylinders. In F1 cars, there’s one for the front brakes, and one for the rear. They’re mounted on a pivoting fork that’s used to adjust brake bias, which is pretty genius.
The wild engineering behind this absurdly powerful braking system.
British engineering company White Motorcycle Concepts (WMC) has unveiled its revolutionary new electric hybrid scooter – the WMC300FR. The new hybrid three-wheeled scooter is designed especially for use as a fully operational first response vehicle that will help bring emergency services into line with new national objectives to combat the effects of climate change and cost reduction.
The electric scooter uses the same patented technology central to its all-electric WMC250EV high-speed demonstrator, with which it intends to break the world electric land speed record over the next 12 months. In the case of First Responder, however, the key objectives are not so much to achieve ultimate speed as to significantly increase range and viability while reducing CO2 footprint and running costs for emergency service fleets. It can reduce carbon emissions by up to 50% of that of comparable conventional motorcycles and scooters.
The WMC300FR scooter features WMC’s patented Venturi Duct, which reduces drag by pushing air through the vehicle rather than around it. This system is aided by aerodynamic front fenders, which funnel the air towards the venturi, reducing overall frontal resistance and meaning less energy is required to propel the vehicle forward.
Combining knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering, scientists from McGill University develop a biomaterial tough enough to repair the heart, muscles, and vocal cords, representing a major advance in regenerative medicine.
“People recovering from heart damage often face a long and tricky journey. Healing is challenging because of the constant movement tissues must withstand as the heart beats. The same is true for vocal cords. Until now there was no injectable material strong enough for the job,” says Guangyu Bao, a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University.
The team, led by Professor Luc Mongeau and Assistant Professor Jianyu Li, developed a new injectable hydrogel for wound repair. The hydrogel is a type of biomaterial that provides room for cells to live and grow. Once injected into the body, the biomaterial forms a stable, porous structure allowing live cells to grow or pass through to repair the injured organs.
Combining knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering, scientists from McGill University develop a biomaterial tough enough to repair the heart, muscles, and vocal cords, representing a major advance in regenerative medicine.
“People recovering from heart damage often face a long and tricky journey. Healing is challenging because of the constant movement tissues must withstand as the heart beats. The same is true for vocal cords. Until now there was no injectable material strong enough for the job,” says Guangyu Bao, a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University.
A common strategy to make vaccines more powerful is to deliver them along with an adjuvant — a compound that stimulates the immune system to produce a stronger response.
Researchers from MIT, the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, and other institutions have now designed a new nanoparticle adjuvant that may be more potent than others now in use. Studies in mice showed that it significantly improved antibody production following vaccination against HIV, diphtheria, and influenza.
“We started looking at this particular formulation and found that it was incredibly potent, better than almost anything else we had tried,” says Darrell Irvine, the Underwood-Prescott Professor with appointments in MIT’s departments of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering; an associate director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; and a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard.
Canada’s first commercial Small Modular Reactor (SMR)
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has selected the BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR) for the Darlington new nuclear site, and will work with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) to deploy the reactor. Canada’s first commercial, grid-scale, SMR could be completed as early as 2028.
OPG and GEH will collaborate on SMR engineering, design, planning, preparing licensing and permitting materials, and site preparation activities. Site preparation will begin in the spring of 2022, pending appropriate approvals, OPG said. It aims to apply to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for a construction licence by the end of next year.
Darlington is the only site in Canada currently licensed for new nuclear: OPG was granted a site preparation licence by the CNSC in 2012, after completion of an environmental assessment which included public involvement, but reductions in forecast electricity demand led to a decision to defer plans for new build. OPG last year announced it was resuming planning activities for additional nuclear power generation via an SMR at the site, rather than a large conventional reactor, as previously envisaged. The CNSC recently granted a 10-year renewal to the site preparation licence, which had been due to expire in August 2022.
This entrepreneurs immigrant parents instilled self-sufficiency. Now, he’s taking on tech giants like Apple and Microsoft by engineering a laptop anyone can build and repair on their own.
Wireless implantable devices and IoT could manipulate the brains of animals from anywhere around the world due to their minimalistic hardware, low setup cost, ease of use, and customizable versatility.
A new study shows that researchers can remotely control the brain circuits of numerous animals simultaneously and independently through the internet. The scientists believe this newly developed technology can speed up brain research and various neuroscience studies to uncover basic brain functions as well as the underpinnings of various neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders.
A multidisciplinary team of researchers at KAIST, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Colorado, Boulder, created a wireless ecosystem with its own wireless implantable devices and Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure to enable high-throughput neuroscience experiments over the internet. This innovative technology could enable scientists to manipulate the brains of animals from anywhere around the world. The study was published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering on November 25.