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Category: engineering – Page 3

NASA just rolled a 3,100-ton machine 4 miles to the launch pad at less than 1 mph, the heaviest self-powered vehicle on Earth, carrying a Moon rocket that weighs less than the machine hauling it

When NASA sent four astronauts toward the Moon this spring, the cameras did what cameras always do at a launch. They pointed at the rocket. Artemis II was the first crew to fly around the Moon in more than 50 years, a 322-foot stack throwing fire over the Florida coast on April 1, and it earned every second of airtime it got.

But the rocket didn’t get itself to the launch pad. The machine that did is older than all four astronauts who flew the mission, weighs more than the rocket it carried, and moves so slowly you could lap it on foot without breaking a sweat. It is NASA’s Crawler-Transporter 2, and Guinness World Records lists it as the heaviest self-powered vehicle on the planet. While everyone watched the thing going up, the real engineering marvel spent the better part of a day going sideways at less than a mile an hour.

Start with the number that got it into the record books. Crawler-Transporter 2 weighs 6.65 million pounds, or about 3,106 metric tons. Guinness World Records made it official back in 2023 at a ceremony at Kennedy Space Center, handing NASA a certificate for the heaviest self-powered vehicle ever built. For scale, that is roughly the weight of 1,000 pickup trucks stacked on top of each other.

Copper thin films reveal ballistic electron transport that could reshape future chip wiring

A joint research team has experimentally observed ballistic transport in single-crystalline copper thin films, demonstrating that ballistic transport is achievable in an industry-standard metal at interconnect-relevant dimensions. The study, titled “Ballistic transport in nanodevices based on single-crystalline Cu thin films,” was published in Nature Communications.

Ballistic transport refers to a phenomenon in which electrons travel along straight trajectories without scattering. Until now, this behavior has mainly been observed in special quantum materials such as graphene or semiconductor nanostructures. In copper, where electron scattering is pronounced, realizing ballistic transport has been considered practically impossible.

In this study, the team led by Professor Gil-Ho Lee of the Department of Physics at POSTECH, Professor Emeritus Se-Young Jeong of the School of Transdisciplinary Engineering at Pusan National University and Professor Seong-Gon Kim of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Mississippi State University, experimentally demonstrated that ballistic transport can occur in structures with a thickness of 80 nm and a linewidth of 150 nm, dimensions comparable to those used in semiconductor interconnects.

Ink-based thermoelectric technology could be solution for replacing problematic refrigerants

Today’s refrigerants, which are specialized working fluids used in air conditioners, refrigerators and heat pumps, come with a host of issues, including leakage, emissions concerns, flammability and limited reclamation of used refrigerants. However, a recent study by University of Notre Dame researchers published in Materials Horizons describes a promising alternative for next-generation cooling using thermoelectric technology, which has no moving parts and no gaseous refrigerants, allowing for zero leaks.

“By making thermoelectric devices a competitive and commercially viable technology, it can transform the way we cool things,” said Yanliang Zhang, Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Collegiate Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at Notre Dame. “We can make the cooling process become very environmentally friendly.”

In the past, widespread adoption of thermoelectrics has been challenging because of the high costs associated with traditional manufacturing processes. However, the research team led by Zhang has developed an innovative ink-based printing strategy that enables scalable manufacturing of low-cost, high-performance thermoelectric materials and devices.

3D photothermal design unlocks 8.5-fold higher solar evaporation for desalination and crop irrigation

The global shortage of freshwater has become a critical challenge. Conventional water treatment relies heavily on fossil fuels and associated infrastructure, which can make it unsuitable for remote and harsh regions. In contrast, solar thermal evaporation is a promising alternative, but its application is limited by material performance and production constraints.

Now, researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shenzhen University have developed a new three-dimensional (3D) photothermal structure that greatly improves solar evaporation efficiency.

The new structure tightly integrates polymer chains with hollow multishelled structures (HoMS), yielding a record evaporation rate of 38.14 kg m-2 h-1 —a figure 8.5 times higher than rates previously reported for two-dimensional membrane systems.

Jumping the clock: Engineering ageing in biomedicine

Engineering the age(ing) of tissues in vitro could lead to more representative and predictive models for the ageing population. This forum introduces methodological approaches for ‘age engineering’ (‘ageneering’) and further discusses future applications of age-matched cells, matrices, and microtissues in predictive disease modelling, biomarker discovery, and age-specific pharmacotoxicology.

Red Mars to Green — Giving the Planet a Touch of Terraforming

GOLDEN, Colorado – Scientists are engaged in research with an eye toward transforming the cold climes of Mars into a far more humane place for Earthlings in the future.

One notion proposed is dispersion of an aerosol meant to motivate the warming of Mars’s atmosphere. The idea is projected to be a first step toward terraforming the Red Planet.

Emerging recently as a new field of study is “applied astrobiology” – to appraise what would be needed to create sustainable habitats and biospheres beyond Earth.

A renewable cell source for cancer immunotherapy could make off-the-shelf treatments possible

In a paper published in Cell, a USC Stem Cell-led team reports a new way of generating a renewable and expandable supply of the progenitor cells that give rise to macrophages. These immune cells help drive the body’s response against pathogens, and they hold strong promise as the basis for immunotherapies against cancer and other diseases.

The paper, “Expansion and CAR Engineering of Granulocyte-Monocyte Progenitors for Cellular Immunotherapy,” demonstrates that progenitor cells known as granulocyte-monocyte progenitors (GMPs), which give rise to macrophages and other immune cells, can be extensively expanded in the laboratory and engineered both to target specific cancer markers and to help stimulate broader immune responses.

“The study establishes a scalable and engineerable GMP platform for cellular immunotherapy and introduces concepts that we believe could have broad implications for both cancer immunotherapy and stem cell biology,” said the paper’s corresponding author Qi-Long Ying, MD, Ph.D., professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Engineering RH

Engineering Riemann Hypothesis

This morning, I revisited the Riemann Hypothesis from a zero–pole perspective 🧮✨ and introduced a new reciprocal formulation called the Srichan Teza Function. https://lnkd.in/gkFRTfX3 The idea is simple 🔄: Start from the completed zeta function ξ(s) = 1/2 · s(s − 1)π⁻ˢᐟ² Γ(s/2)ζ(s) and define T_S(s) = 1/ξ(s) Then every zero of ξ(s) becomes a pole of T_S(s): ξ(ρ) = 0 ⇔ T_S(s) has a pole at s = ρ So RH can be reframed as a pole-localization problem 🕳️📍: All poles of T_S(s) in the critical strip must lie on Re(s) = 1/2 Using the argument principle 🔁, P_T(D) = 1/(2πi) ∮∂D ξ′(s)/ξ(s) ds counts the number of Teza poles inside a domain D. Geometrically, this is the winding number of the curve ξ(∂D) around the origin 📐🌀

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