Category Archives: Engineering

Handcrafted Chromosomes

Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms

Scientists in Maryland have already built the world’s first entirely handcrafted chromosome — a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.

In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell, where it is expected to “boot itself up,” like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding. And while the first synthetic chromosome is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others that code for life forms that have never existed before are already under construction.
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LS9 Inc., a company in San Carlos, Calif., is already using E. coli bacteria that have been reprogrammed with synthetic DNA to produce a fuel alternative from a diet of corn syrup and sugar cane. So efficient are the bugs’ synthetic metabolisms that LS9 predicts it will be able to sell the fuel for just $1.25 a gallon.

At a DuPont plant in Tennessee, other semi-synthetic bacteria are living on cornstarch and making the chemical 1,3 propanediol, or PDO. Millions of pounds of the stuff are being spun and woven into high-tech fabrics (DuPont’s chief executive wears a pinstripe suit made of it), putting the bug-begotten chemical on track to become the first $1 billion biotech product that is not a pharmaceutical.

Engineers at DuPont studied blueprints of E. coli’s metabolism and used synthetic DNA to help the bacteria make PDO far more efficiently than could have been done with ordinary genetic engineering.

Related: Life-patents – Open-Source Biotech

Strategic Research Plan for Nanotechnology

Productive Nanosystems report for the United States Department of Energy:

This Roadmap is a call to action that provides a vision for atomically precise manufacturing technologies and productive nanosystems. The United States nanotechnology advancement goal should be to lead the world towards the development of these revolutionary technologies in order to improve the human condition by addressing grand challenges in energy, health care, and other fields. The United States can accomplish this goal through accelerated global collaborations focused on two strategies that will offer ongoing and increasing benefits as the
technology base advances:

1. Develop atomically precise technologies that provide clean energy supplies and a cost-effective energy infrastructure.
2. Develop atomically precise technologies that produce new nanomedicines and multifunctional in vivo and in vitro therapeutic and diagnostic devices to improve human health.
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Close cooperation among scientific and engineering disciplines will be necessary because of the nature of the engineering problems involved. This cross-disciplinary collaboration will bring broad benefits through the cross-fertilization of ideas, instruments, and techniques that will result from developing the required technology base.

With international cooperation, the benefits of productive nanosystems will be delivered to the world faster. Coordinating a full international
effort is extremely desirable in order to minimize duplication of effort in smaller national programs conducted independently.

Engineering for a Changing World

This interesting and long report (I have not finished reading it yet – 120 pages) has been completed by the President Emeritus of at The University of Michigan (and current University Professor of Science and Engineering): Engineering for a Changing World by James J. Duderstadt.

The fundamental knowledge undergirding engineering practice increasingly requires research at the extremes, from the microscopic level of nanotechnology to the mega level of global systems such as civil infrastructure, energy, and climate change as well as the mastery of new tools such as cyberinfrastructure and quantum engineering. It also requires far greater attention by government and industry to the support of the long-term basic engineering research necessary to build the knowledge base key to addressing society’s needs.
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It is similarly essential to elevate the status of the engineering profession, providing it with the prestige and influence to play the role it must in an increasingly technology-driven world while creating sufficiently flexible and satisfying career paths to attract a diverse population of outstanding students. Of particular importance is greatly enhancing the role of engineers both in influencing policy and popular perceptions and as participants in leadership roles in government and business.
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The inability of engineering to attract the best and brightest, as it does in most other nations, is due in part to the way engineering is perceived by prospective students, teachers, parents, and society more broadly (NSB, 2007). Society at large simply does not have an accurate perception of the nature of engineering. While the public associates engineers with economic growth and national defense, they fail to recognize the role of engineering in improving health, the quality of life, and the environment. They are relegated to the role of technicians rather than given the respect of other learned professions such as medicine and law. In sharp contrast to most other nations, one rarely finds engineers in leadership roles in business or government and hence they have relatively inadequate impact on the key strategic issues facing our nation and world.

Turning Trash into Gas

Frank Pringle has found a way to squeeze oil and gas from just about anything

Everything that goes into Frank Pringle’s recycling machine—a piece of tire, a rock, a plastic cup—turns to oil and natural gas seconds later.
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The machine is a microwave emitter that extracts the petroleum and gas hidden inside everyday objects—or at least anything made with hydrocarbons, which, it turns out, is most of what’s around you. Every hour, the first commercial version will turn 10 tons of auto waste—tires, plastic, vinyl—into enough natural gas to produce 17 million BTUs of energy (it will use 956,000 of those BTUs to keep itself running).
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Or rather, he had extracted it. Petroleum is composed of strings of hydrocarbon molecules. When microwaves hit the tire, they crack the molecular chains and break it into its component parts: carbon black (an ash-like raw material) and hydrocarbon gases, which can be burned or condensed into liquid fuel. Pringle figured that some gases from his microwaved tire had lingered, and the cold air in the shop had condensed them into diesel. If the process worked on tires, he thought, it should work on anything with hydrocarbons. The trick was in finding the optimum microwave frequency for each material—out of 10 million possibilities.

Capture Wind Energy with a Tethered Turbine

magenn floating wind power (photo)

The technology looks interesting. The ability to deploy the turbine high in the air without expensive towers seems like a huge advantage (of course it will have to work in the practice which I imagine will be the most challenging part). The wind is much more consistent and stronger further off the ground. Many attempts at new energy solutions will help find the best solutions. for emergency use, fast deployment seems like another winning feature.

While this seems a bit unconventional I think some of the ideas that seem crazy are going to be important sources of energy in the future. It will be interesting to see if it can catch on. Some interesting details from Mangenn’s web site:

Magenn Power is currently in the prototype phase of our Magenn Air Rotor System (MARS). Magenn Power plans to ship our first official product, a 10 kW version in 2008. A 4 kW version may also be available in 2008.
Magenn assumes a depreciable life span of at least 15 years before major refits are required.
The Magenn Air Rotor System is a closed inflatable structural design with inherent integrity, stability, and low cost. Furthermore, MARS is a buoyant system that only requires a low cost tensioning cable to secure it and transfer energy to the ground.
MARS units will be deployed for disaster relief, to third world communities with limited or no infrastructure, for various military applications, to remote locations, and in harsh climates.
The MARS 10 kW unit will be approximately 25′ x 65′ when inflated, it will come standard with a 400 foot tether; this configuration will have a shipping weight under 500 lbs.
Magenn Air Rotors can be raised to higher altitudes, thus capitalizing on higher winds aloft. Altitudes from 400-ft to 1,000-ft above ground level are possible, without having to build an expensive tower, or use a crane to perform maintenance.
Final pricing is yet to be determined on the 10kW MARS unit: target list price will be between $3 dollars to $5 dollars per watt. (Please Note: This price is subject to change).
MARS will be deployed up to 1,000-ft altitude at this time. The benefits of higher altitudes are being investigated. Future MARS units may be deployed at altitudes far beyond 1,000-ft.

Robot Water Striders

Scientists crack how insect bounces on water:

Walking on water may seem like a miracle to humans. But it is a humdrum achievement for the little water strider, which is able to bounce up and down on water too. Scientists have already solved the mystery of how their six slender, stilt-like legs evenly distribute their scant body weight over a relatively large area so that the “skin” formed by the surface tension of the water supports them, so four millimetre across dimples form under each foot as they skim about.

But scientists remained puzzled by how they could jump up and down upon the surface of water. Now a team in South Korea is about to report that it has at last explained the water strider’s baffling ability to leap onto water without sinking, in a forthcoming issue of the journal Langmuir, an achievement that could help further develop robots that can move about on lakes and reservoirs to monitor water quality, spy or explore.

Roachbot: Cockroach Controlled Robot

“Roaches are gross. Robots are good. But — cockroach-controlled robots?” Nice quote 🙂 The video shows roboticist Garnet Hertz’s large robot moved by a cockroach on a pingpong ball (a cockroach trackball).

Nanotube-producing Bacteria Show Manufacturing Promise

Genus Shewanella

Nanotube-producing Bacteria Show Manufacturing Promise:

The photoactive arsenic-sulfide nanotubes produced by the bacteria behave as metals with electrical and photoconductive properties. The researchers report that these properties may also provide novel functionality for the next generation of semiconductors in nano- and opto-electronic devices.

In a process that is not yet fully understood, the Shewanella bacterium secretes polysacarides that seem to produce the template for the arsenic sulfide nanotubes, Myung explained. The practical significance of this technique would be much greater if a bacterial species were identified that could produce nanotubes of cadmium sulfide or other superior semiconductor materials, he added.

“This is just a first step that points the way to future investigation,” he said. “Each species of Shewanella might have individual implications for manufacturing properties.”

Robo-One Grand Championship in Tokyo

Two-legged robots battle for supremacy at the the Robo-One Convention in Tokyo. Very fun video. The robots has to be built from scratch by amateurs. Also see ROBO-ONE: Grand Championship Competition @ IREX (with full video of final match).

Science and Engineering in Politics

Politics of engineering by Patrick Mannion, EE Times:

Engineering interests historically haven’t been at the forefront of the political debate, at least not compared with those of, say, farming, law or health care. But given the importance of the technological advances that engineers help effect and the need to maintain our competitive edge in a rapidly changing global environment, that situation needs to change, and fast.
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Then came word of the $25 billion being handed to farmers in yet another subsidy, loudly denounced by some as welfare for the wealthy. I’m not going to get into the right or wrong of the subsidies–but I am amazed at the ability of agribusiness to get them at all. It shows the power of the farm lobby. Ditto for pharmaceuticals, HMOs, lawyers, “big oil” and so on. It underscores the relative political weakness of the engineering community.

If the science and engineering community are not well represented to our representatives the interests of the science and engineering community will get short changed. Especially since so few politicians in the USA have even a basic understanding of science and the scientific method. And a very small percentage have any advanced degrees in science and engineering fields or work experience in them. That being said the political arena is much like a tar pit: that is it is difficult to interact with without becoming entangled in a big mess. And it is not as though the scientific and engineering community are even close to unified but still the impact of political decisions is very significant and science and engineering leaders need to be heard.

China’s Economic Science Experiment – China’s 9 most senior government official are all engineers (in 2006 – I am not sure now):

When China’s leaders meet with Hu each week in Beijing’s government district, Zhongnanhai, they could spend hours discussing cables, switches, tool-making machines and control devices. That’s because every one of them has a degree in engineering. The president himself, the son of a tea merchant from Jiangsu Province, trained to build hydroelectric power stations, while the others hold degrees in electrical engineering, metallurgy and geology.