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Category: engineering

Surface design transforms thermal management and enables frictionless systems

A research team led by Professor Steven Wang, Associate Vice President (Resources Planning) and Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and School of Energy and Environment, has designed a revolutionary capillary structure that can trigger the Leidenfrost effect, offering a practical solution for the temperature-regulated Leidenfrost effect without requiring complex surface engineering.

The study, titled “Capillary Leidenfrost Effect”, was recently published in the journal Nature Physics.

The Leidenfrost effect is a physical phenomenon discovered in 1756. It occurs when a liquid droplet touches a surface much hotter than its boiling point, forming a vapor layer that makes it levitate and hover, slowing down evaporation. A simple example is water on a very hot pan: the drops sizzle and disappear quickly, but once it reaches the Leidenfrost point, they bead up, skate and dance around on a steam barrier, and last much longer before evaporating. This effect is ubiquitous in a wide range of laboratory and industrial applications.

Collective vibrations unlock fast ion flow in superionic crystals

In the race to develop safer, faster-charging solid-state batteries and more efficient thermoelectric conversion technologies, engineers and scientists have long faced a fundamental challenge: how to ensure ions move through hard, solid materials as quickly as they do in liquids?

A team led by Prof. Zhou Yanguang, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), discovered a novel mechanism for rapid ion transport in solids, opening new avenues for materials design.

The study shows that the ionic transport is governed by collective dynamics. The results were published in the journal Physical Review Letters, titled “Fast Ionic Transport Governed by Collective Vibrational Dynamics.”

Capsida’s Trailblazing Moment: What the Field Owes the Next BBB Program

An insightful perspective on what biological factors may have been the cause of a patient’s death after receiving a blood-brain-barrier crossing AAV treatment. It’s crucial for the field to think about this carefully as we move forward.

TheBioMLClinic

Brief disclosure: I am a named inventor on patents and author on publications related to AAV capsid engineering and CNS gene delivery, developed during my time at the Broad Institute. I now operate independently. This post does not represent any prior employer, current advisory client, or collaborator. The mechanistic analysis presented here is my own scientific interpretation of publicly available data. Full disclosures at the bottom.

‘Designer’ superconducting diamond: Researchers uncover path to multi-modality quantum chips

Diamond is extremely valuable to science and technology not for its sparkle but for its extreme hardness, high thermal conductivity, transparency to a large fraction of the light spectrum, and a host of other exceptional properties. Two decades ago, scientists discovered another advantage: under the right conditions, diamond can become a superconductor—allowing electricity to flow through it with zero resistance.

Until recently, though, they knew little about how that happens, limiting its use in high-tech applications.

Now researchers from the Pennsylvania State University, the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME), and the U.S. Department of Energy National Quantum Information Science Research Center Q-NEXT, led by Argonne National Laboratory, have uncovered new insights into the physics behind the phenomenon by carefully creating high-quality diamond, isolating electronic signatures from material noise, and revealing the fundamental mechanisms that had long remained hidden.

The Scientist Who Plans To End Aging Forever — Aubrey de Grey

Aubrey de Grey believes aging isn’t inevitable — it’s a solvable engineering problem. In this conversation, we explore why society treats aging as untouchable, how “longevity escape velocity” could allow us to live indefinitely, and why reversing damage—not slowing it—is the future of medicine. He breaks down how our medical system profits from sickness, and how progress is slowed by fear and outdated norms. The end of aging as we know it is coming and it’s happening faster than you think. #preventativehealth #preventativecare #aging #health #medicine.

Connect With Me: / tim.doy1e.

Timestamps:
00:00 How We Understand Aging.
06:01 How Aubrey Found His Work.
10:42 Longevity Escape Velocity.
12:45 Not Being Controlled.
15:11 Investor-Humanitarian Structure.
16:51 Balancing Work With Publicity.
17:26 Aubrey’s Current Work.
27:36 Getting Pushback & The Medical System.
33:11 Shifting To Preventative Care.
36:14 What Has & Hasn’t Changed.
41:52 Consciousness & Aging.
46:00 How To Popularize Ideas.
48:10 The Future Of Aubrey’s Work.
50:58 Connect With Aubrey de Grey.

Piezoelectric effect in diamond membranes challenges century-old scientific dogma

A research team in China has reported a significant piezoelectric effect in ultrathin and ultra-flexible polycrystalline diamond membranes. This pioneering discovery challenges a century-long scientific dogma that diamonds are strictly non-piezoelectric.

The team was led by Professor Zhiqin Chu, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Professor Yuan Lin, Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Their study is published in Science Advances.

Since the 1900s, diamonds have been classified globally as non-piezoelectric material. Consequently, despite being a strong, hard and inert material with exceptionally high acoustic velocity, thermal conductivity, dielectric breakdown strength and ultrawide bandgap, diamond has only been used as a mechanical substrate supporting other piezoelectric material layers in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Indeed, the very idea of “generating electricity from diamonds” was initially deemed impractical by many.

Better helium reporting to improve fission and fusion materials modeling

Standardizing calculations of the helium byproducts generated in advanced fission and fusion energy system materials can increase reactor safety and longevity, according to a study led by University of Michigan Engineering with collaborators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and its management contractor UT-Battelle.

Through a series of simulations, the researchers found that modeling assumptions and key alloy elements—like carbon, nitrogen and nickel—significantly influence helium generation predictions. If left unaddressed, excess helium in real-world reactors could lead to faster component failure as materials swell and become brittle.

“If used, our reporting methods will improve the experimental and modeling fidelity of the nuclear materials databases being generated both domestically and internationally, driving the rapid deployment of advanced nuclear,” said Kevin Field, a professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences at U-M and corresponding author of the study published in the Journal of Physics: Energy.

Biodegradable sensors attached to plants detect pesticides in 3 minutes

Researchers at the São Carlos Institute of Physics at the University of São Paulo (IFSC-USP) in Brazil, led by Paulo Augusto Raymundo-Pereira, have created biodegradable, “wearable” sensors for plants to monitor their health, including the presence of pesticides. The sensors are made from carbon ink and are screen-printed onto transparent cellulose acetate bioplastics.

The study was published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X. The World Economic Forum selected wearable sensor engineering as one of the top ten emerging technologies of 2023 for its potential to improve plant health and increase agricultural productivity.

However, most wearable devices today are made from nonrenewable plastic polymers derived from petroleum and have poor adhesion to uneven, wavy, and curved surfaces.

Discovery and engineering of retrons for precise genome editing

An extremely interesting new technology which combines bacterial retrons with CRISPR-Cas for localized generation of single-stranded DNA inserts and subsequent targeted genome editing. I remember reading about retrons as an obscure biological phenomenon years ago in a monograph called Mobile DNA III, so it’s awesome to see them leveraged in this way!

A metagenomic screen identifies retron reverse transcriptases for precise genome-editing applications.

SpaceX is skipping the booster catch on Starship V3’s debut flight — and the reason quietly reveals which milestone Musk actually cares about hitting before Artemis

SpaceX will not attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster on Starship V3’s debut flight. The booster will steer itself to a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico instead of returning to the launch tower’s mechanical arms — the maneuver that became the defining image of the program on multiple V2 flights. For a company that has made spectacle a core part of its engineering culture, skipping the catch is a tell. It signals what Elon Musk and his engineers actually care about getting right on this flight, and it isn’t the part that makes for a good replay.

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