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Category: engineering – Page 137

McMaster researchers have developed a new form of cultivated meat using a method that promises more natural flavor and texture than other alternatives to traditional meat from animals.

Researchers Ravi Selvaganapathy and Alireza Shahin-Shamsabadi, both of the university’s School of Biomedical Engineering, have devised a way to make by stacking of cultivated muscle and grown together in a lab setting. The technique is adapted from a method used to grow tissue for human transplants.

The sheets of living cells, each about the thickness of a sheet of printer paper, are first grown in culture and then concentrated on growth plates before being peeled off and stacked or folded together. The sheets naturally bond to one another before the cells die.

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Researchers develop the first nanomaterial that demonstrates “photon avalanching;” finding could lead to new applications in sensing, imaging, and light detection.

Researchers at Columbia Engineering report today that they have developed the first nanomaterial that demonstrates “photon avalanching,” a process that is unrivaled in its combination of extreme nonlinear optical behavior and efficiency. The realization of photon avalanching in nanoparticle form opens up a host of sought-after applications, from real-time super-resolution optical microscopy, precise temperature and environmental sensing, and infrared light detection, to optical analog-to-digital conversion and quantum sensing.

“Nobody has seen avalanching behavior like this in nanomaterials before,” said James Schuck, associate professor of mechanical engineering, who led the study published today (January 132021) by Nature. “We studied these new nanoparticles at the single-nanoparticle level, allowing us to prove that avalanching behavior can occur in nanomaterials. This exquisite sensitivity could be incredibly transformative. For instance, imagine if we could sense changes in our chemical surroundings, like variations in or the actual presence of molecular species. We might even be able to detect coronavirus and other diseases.”

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Researchers at Columbia Engineering report today that they have developed the first nanomaterial that demonstrates “photon avalanching,” a process that is unrivaled in its combination of extreme nonlinear optical behavior and efficiency. The realization of photon avalanching in nanoparticle form opens up a host of sought-after applications, from real-time super-resolution optical microscopy, precise temperature and environmental sensing, and infrared light detection, to optical analog-to-digital conversion and quantum sensing.

“Nobody has seen avalanching behavior like this in nanomaterials before,” said James Schuck, associate professor of mechanical engineering, who led the study published today by Nature. “We studied these new nanoparticles at the single-nanoparticle level, allowing us to prove that avalanching behavior can occur in nanomaterials. This exquisite sensitivity could be incredibly transformative. For instance, imagine if we could sense changes in our chemical surroundings, like variations in or the actual presence of molecular species. We might even be able to detect coronavirus and other diseases.”

Avalanching processes—where a cascade of events is triggered by series of small perturbations—are found in a wide range of phenomena beyond snow slides, including the popping of champagne bubbles, nuclear explosions, lasing, neuronal networking, and even financial crises. Avalanching is an extreme example of a nonlinear process, in which a change in input or excitation leads to a disproportionate—often disproportionately large—change in output signal. Large volumes of material are usually required for the efficient generation of nonlinear optical signals, and this had also been the case for avalanching, until now.

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Working with theorists in the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, researchers in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have achieved a scientific control that is a first of its kind. They demonstrated a novel approach that allows real-time control of the interactions between microwave photons and magnons, potentially leading to advances in electronic devices and quantum signal processing.

Microwave photons are forming the that we use for wireless communications. On the other hand, magnons are the elementary particles forming what scientists call “spin waves”—wave-like disturbances in an ordered array of microscopic aligned spins that can occur in certain magnetic materials.

Microwave photon-magnon interaction has emerged in recent years as a promising platform for both classical and processing. Yet, this interaction had proved impossible to manipulate in real time, until now.

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Researchers have found a simple way to eliminate almost all sequencing errors produced by a widely used portable DNA sequencer, potentially enabling scientists working outside the lab to study and track microorganisms like the SARS-CoV-2 virus more efficiently.

Using special molecular tags, the team was able to reduce the five-to-15 percent error rate of Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ MinION device to less than 0.005 percent—even when sequencing many long stretches of DNA at a time.

“The MinION has revolutionized the field of genomics by freeing DNA sequencing from the confines of large laboratories,” says Ryan Ziels, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of British Columbia and the co-lead author of the study, which was published this week in Nature Methods. “But until now, researchers haven’t been able to rely on the device in many settings because of its fairly high out-of-the-box error rate.”

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Atmospheric Water Extraction (AWE) performers aim to meet clean water needs of deployed troops, even in austere environments.

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DARPA recently awarded five contracts and selected one Government partner to develop technology to capture potable water from the air in quantities sufficient to meet critical DoD needs, even in extremely dry climates. GE Research, Physical Sciences Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin, and U.S. Naval Research Laboratory were chosen to develop next-generation, scalable sorbent materials and prototypes under DARPA’s Atmospheric Water Extraction (AWE) program.

The goal of the AWE program is to provide fresh water for a range of military, stabilization, and humanitarian needs through the development of small, lightweight, low-powered, distributable systems that extract moisture from the atmosphere. DARPA is open to various approaches, with an emphasis on advanced sorbents that can rapidly extract water from ambient air and release it quickly with minimal energy inputs. These sorbent materials offer potential solutions to the AWE challenge, provided they can be produced at the necessary scale and remain stable over thousands of extraction cycles. In addition to developing new sorbents, AWE researchers will need to engineer systems to optimize their suitability for highly mobile forces by substantially reducing the size, weight, and power requirements compared to existing technologies.

“Access to clean water is of critical importance to the warfighter, and current water distribution operations incur numerous financial, maintenance, and logistical challenges,” noted Dr. Seth Cohen, AWE program manager. “The selected AWE program performers are being asked to leverage advanced modeling, innovative engineering, and additive manufacturing methods to support the program, which in turn will help maintain combat readiness, reduce casualties and cost due to water transportation, and enhance humanitarian and disaster relief efforts.”

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Methylation and demethylation of DNA, RNA and proteins has emerged as a major regulatory mechanism. Studying the function of these modifications would benefit from tools for their site‐specific inhibition and timed removal. S ‐Adenosyl‐L‐methionine (AdoMet) analogs in combination with methyltransferases (MTases) have proven useful to map or block and release MTase target sites, however their enzymatic generation has been limited to aliphatic groups at the sulfur atom. We engineered a SAM synthetase from Cryptosporidium hominis (PC‐ChMAT) for efficient generation of AdoMet analogs with photocaging groups that are not accepted by any WT MAT reported to date. The crystal structure of PC‐ChMAT at 1.87 Å revealed how the photocaged AdoMet analog is accommodated and guided engineering of a thermostable MAT from Methanocaldococcus jannaschii. PC‐MATs were compatible with DNA‐ and RNA‐MTases, enabling sequence‐specific modification (“writing”) of plasmid DNA and light‐triggered removal (“erasing”).

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