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Category: engineering

Ultrasound-based approach may reduce harmful inflammation and support joint healing

As an aging population experiences joint pain and inflammation at an all-time high, researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, have published new findings suggesting continuous low-intensity ultrasound may help shift the body’s immune response from prolonged inflammation toward tissue repair, a discovery that could eventually contribute to novel treatments for joint injuries and post-traumatic osteoarthritis.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of UAH researchers under the leadership of Dr. Anuradha Subramanian, a professor of chemical and materials engineering.

The work brought together biological experimentation conducted by Dr. Shahid Khan as part of his doctoral work with computational and statistical methods developed by Dr. Satyaki Roy, a professor of mathematical sciences, along with additional contributions from graduate student Owen Trippany.

Wet coffee grounds turned into high-grade solid fuel in just 90 seconds

A research team at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) has developed a technology that converts wet spent coffee grounds directly into high-quality biochar in just 90 seconds, with no drying or oil removal required. The breakthrough offers a fast, energy-efficient path to turning high-moisture organic waste into valuable fuel and carbon materials. The study, led by Dr. Taejun Park in collaboration with GodTech Co., Ltd., was published in the Chemical Engineering Journal, one of the world’s leading journals in chemical engineering.

Addressing a growing waste challenge Every year, global coffee consumption generates more than 10 million tons of spent coffee grounds, most of which end up in landfills or are incinerated, releasing greenhouse gases and polluting the environment.

Spent coffee grounds hold real energy potential, but their high moisture content has long been a barrier. Converting them into fuel or carbon products typically requires energy-intensive predrying, making large-scale resource recovery economically impractical.

Unlocking the ‘black box’ of carbon materials: Study reveals origins of defect peaks

Carbon materials, such as carbon fibers and activated carbons, are essential across a wide variety of fields, encompassing everything from aerospace engineering to fuel cells and thermal insulation. For decades, Raman, infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) have been the primary tools used to analyze carbon materials. However, because of their diverse structural conditions and inconsistencies in their interpretation, researchers have found it challenging to assign specific spectral peaks to exact, localized chemical structures.

The detailed origin and nature of these peaks, and their exact effect on important material characteristics, have often remained unclear.

To tackle this issue, a research team led by Associate Professor Yasuhiro Yamada from the Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, Japan, used isotropic pitch-based carbon fiber—a cost-effective material widely used for high-temperature thermal insulation—as a general model to analyze carbon materials prepared at high temperatures of 1,473 K (1,200 °C) or higher.

A fully built

NASA announced on June 30, 2026, that it is considering sending PROMISE, an engineering test rover built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a stand-in for the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers, to the lunar surface. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, announcing the concept alongside a batch of new lunar lander contracts, framed the pitch as a matter of hardware already paid for. “We’ve had years now of experience operating the two rovers on the surface of Mars, and we’ve got this hardware that the taxpayers have invested a lot in,” Isaacman said, according to Space.com. “So the question was posed: what if we send it to the moon?” He introduced the idea with a line borrowed from Yoda: “There is another.”

Lab-grown retinal cells show promise for new eye therapies

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to grow specialized blood vessel cells critical to retinal health for the first time. When injected into mouse models of retinal disease, these “retinal endothelial cells” integrated into the damaged tissue to regenerate blood vessels and restore retinal function. Researchers also demonstrated the cells’ ability to form functional retinal vascular tissue in a lab-grown environment, providing a pathway to model and research various eye diseases.

The results, published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, point toward the potential of using these retinal cells and models to develop new methods for treating vision loss and researching eye disorders.

“Retinal vascular diseases affect millions of people in the US, but our understanding remains limited, hindering our ability to discover and develop new therapeutics,” said Sharon Gerecht, the Paul M. Gross Distinguished Professor and chair of biomedical engineering at Duke. “Using human stem cells, we generated the cells found in retinal blood vessels, paving the way for new therapeutic approaches.”

Wireless biodegradable sensor could help injured knees heal without dangerous overloading

A biodegradable pressure sensor could help people with knee injuries exercise and heal faster, University of Connecticut researchers report in Science Advances. The knee can take a great deal of abuse, thanks to the cartilage that cushions it. But if it’s not moved and exercised enough, the knee stiffens and has poor blood flow. The cartilage can degrade or tear, worsening any injury already there. So people with injured knees have to move in order to heal. The challenge is knowing how much exercise or movement is too much.

To answer that question, UConn College of Engineering professor Thanh Nguyen, along with Ph.D. student Jinyoung Park and other colleagues, developed a pressure sensor that can be placed inside the knee joint and then degrade harmlessly in the body when no longer needed.

“Overloading destroys the cartilage. But if you don’t move and exercise, if you don’t run, walk, jump, you have a very stiff joint with little blood flowing to it,” says Nguyen, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, which is a joint effort by the College of Engineering, School of Medicine and School of Dental Medicine. “My lab developed a sensor that can monitor the force in real time.”

Disorder creates direction-dependent optics in compound semiconductors

An international research team has demonstrated that the intrinsic disorder of the compound semiconductor CuInSnS₄ can be exploited to influence its optical properties. While the atomic vibrations also sense the local disorder, their response is averaged over many different local environments and therefore appears isotropic, as expected for a cubic crystal.

In contrast, the optical excitations, known as excitons, are much more sensitive to the local arrangement of atoms. Surprisingly, they show a direction-dependent optical response even though the average crystal structure is cubic. These findings shed new light on the relationship between disorder and material properties, opening new options for targeted “disorder engineering” in optoelectronic and photocatalytic devices.

Crystals are typically characterized by a periodic arrangement of atoms, in which each element occupies well-defined crystallographic sites throughout the structure. In compound semiconductors such as CuInSnS₄, a member of the adamantine chalcogenide family, the cations are ideally distributed over specific positions in the crystal structure.

Nanopattern method unlocks precise control of disorder for wave-guiding devices

A research team has developed a methodology to precisely design and control the “degree of disorder” in nanopattern arrays using metal-infiltrated block copolymer (BCP) thin films. The work was led by Professor So Youn Kim of the Seoul National University College of Engineering Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, in collaboration with Professor Su-Mi Hur’s team at DGIST and Professor S. Joon Kwon’s team at Sungkyunkwan University. The paper is published in the journal Nature Communications. The study was selected as an Editors’ Highlight in materials science and chemistry.

This disordered nanopattern fabrication technology is regarded as an innovative approach that enables precise control of nanoscale disorder structures—previously difficult to regulate—thereby opening new possibilities in the design of nano-optical and nanoelectronic devices.

In ordered structures, waves propagate over long distances, whereas in disordered structures, repeated scattering can lead to localization, where waves remain confined within a specific region. Such disordered structures exhibit unique functionalities that can induce localization phenomena for various types of waves, including light, sound and heat.

Defect detection automated in diamond, other advanced semiconductors

Materials scientists at Rice University have developed a new workflow methodology for measuring microscopic defects in diamond and other advanced semiconductor materials. By making it easier to spot flaws that can undermine performance, the approach could accelerate the development of more reliable electronic and quantum devices.

The research team developed a custom Python-based software tool to rapidly analyze data from high-resolution X-ray diffraction, a technique that uses X-rays to probe a material’s internal crystal structure. The software analyzes the resulting diffraction patterns, picks up on dislocations and irregularities in the atomic lattice, and calculates their density in a given material.

“Dislocations can disrupt how charge and heat move through the material, which impacts how efficient and reliable a device is and how easy it is to manufacture at scale,” said Xiang Zhang, assistant research professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice and a corresponding author on the study published in Advanced Materials.

Artificial ‘leaf’ powers wireless biomedical device

Plants convert light into energy efficiently through photosynthesis—an ability that scientists and engineers still struggle to match with electronic devices. Recently, researchers have looked beyond traditional semiconductor materials to create devices using a promising class of materials called nanoplasmonics. These tiny metal structures can absorb and concentrate optical energy and generate energetic charge carriers.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) and Department of Chemistry developed a nanoplasmonic “leaf,” a wireless bioelectronic device they used to stimulate nerves and pace heartbeats in an animal model.

The team also showed that their material could be used as a computer-like sensing platform, where users can interact with the screen using invisible light—a potentially secure way to transmit information.

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