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👉 to our tech newsletter, The Blueprint, which is your daily source of tech, science, and engineering innovation. Here you go:

A researcher at The University of Texas at Austin has developed a mug-sized device that can clean water using only a small jolt of electricity. The device could be used to help get drinking water to people left stranded by extreme weather events.

Dr. Donglei “Emma” Fan — an associate professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Cockrell School of Engineering — along with her research team, was able to create the device using a specially designed “branched” electrode, now patented.

The electrode, when electrified, created a field that E. coli and other bacterial cells are attracted to, causing them to “swim” into the electrode branches. In lab experiments, the device successfully removed 99.997% of E. coli bacteria from water samples in just 20 minutes.

Gas stoves emit nanocluster aerosol that may get deep into your respiratory system, study shows. Cooking on your gas stove can emit more nano-sized particles into the air than vehicles that run on gas or diesel, possibly increasing your risk of developing asthma or other respiratory illnesses, a new Purdue University study has found.

Combustion remains a source of air pollution across the world, both indoors and outdoors. We found that cooking on your gas stove produces large amounts of small nanoparticles that get into your respiratory system and deposit efficiently, said Brandon Boor, an associate professor in Purdue’s Lyles School of Civil Engineering, who led this research.

Based on these findings, the researchers would encourage turning on a kitchen exhaust fan while cooking on a gas stove.

Researchers observe the quantum coherence of a quintet state with four electron spins in molecular systems for the first time at room temperature.

In a study published in Science Advances, a group of researchers led by Associate Professor Nobuhiro Yanai from Kyushu University’s Faculty of Engineering, in collaboration with Associate Professor Kiyoshi Miyata from Kyushu University and Professor Yasuhiro Kobori of Kobe University, reports that they have achieved quantum coherence at room temperature: the ability of a quantum system to maintain a well-defined state over time without getting affected by surrounding disturbances.

This breakthrough was made possible by embedding a chromophore, a dye molecule that absorbs light and emits color, in a metal-organic framework, or MOF, a nanoporous crystalline material composed of metal ions and organic ligands.

The next generation of wireless communication not only requires greater bandwidth at higher frequencies – it also needs a little extra time.

Cornell researchers have developed a semiconductor chip that adds a necessary time delay so signals sent across multiple arrays can align at a single point in space, and without disintegrating. The approach will enable ever-smaller devices to operate at the higher frequencies needed for future 6G communication technology.

Continue reading “3D reflectors help boost data rate in wireless communications” »

Scientists from the University of Rochester have developed new electrochemical approaches to clean up pollution from “forever chemicals” found in clothing, food packaging, firefighting foams, and a wide array of other products. A new Journal of Catalysis study describes nanocatalysts developed to remediate per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances known as PFAS.

The researchers, led by assistant professor of chemical engineering Astrid Müller, focused on a specific type of PFAS called Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), which was once widely used for stain-resistant products but is now banned in much of the world for its harm to human and animal health. PFOS is still widespread and persistent in the environment despite being phased out by US manufacturers in the early 2000s, continuing to show up in water supplies.

Science: In future maybe wounds be cured and closed in seconds by 3D printing regeneration.

Fat tissue holds the key to 3D printing layered living skin and potentially hair follicles, according to researchers who recently harnessed fat cells and supporting structures from clinically procured human tissue to precisely correct injuries in rats. The advancement could have implications for reconstructive facial surgery and even hair growth treatments for humans.

The team’s findings were published March 1 in Bioactive Materials. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the team a patent in February for the bioprinting technology it developed and used in this study.

Continue reading “3D-printed skin closes wounds and contains hair follicle precursors” »

A team of researchers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has recently found an exception to the 200-year-old law, known as Fourier’s Law, that governs how heat diffuses through solid materials.

Though scientists have shown previously that there are exceptions to the law at the nanoscale, the research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to show that the law doesn’t always hold true at the macro scale, and that pure electromagnetic radiation is also at work in some common materials like plastics and glasses.

“This research began with a simple question,” says Steve Granick, Robert K. Barrett Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at UMass Amherst and the paper’s senior author. “What if heat could be transmitted by another pathway, not just the one that people had assumed?”

A recent study conducted at Tel Aviv University has devised a large mechanical system that operates under dynamical rules akin to those found in quantum systems. The dynamics of quantum systems, composed of microscopic particles like atoms or electrons, are notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to observe directly.

However, this new system allows researchers to visualize phenomena occurring in specialized “topological” materials through the movement of a system of coupled pendula.

The research is a collaboration between Dr. Izhar Neder of the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, Chaviva Sirote-Katz of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Dr. Meital Geva and Prof. Yair Shokef of the School of Mechanical Engineering, and Prof. Yoav Lahini and Prof. Roni Ilan of the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University and was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.