"There is an urgent need to find an alternative robust and accurate navigation system to GPS," says Zak Kassas, an associate professor [of engineering and ICS] at University of California, Irvine, and Director of US Department Transportation Center for Automated Vehicles Research with Multimodal AssurEd Navigation (CARMEN). "We are over-relying on these systems, despite their known limitations." Fortunately, Kassas and his colleagues have devised a novel substitute for GPS. Read More

The 1980 flood in the Tijuana River Valley was one of its worst. Rains filled nearby reservoirs so much that water had to be released into the already-raging Tijuana River. If a wall stood in the river then, like the one Customs and Border Protection is building right now, it would be met with water speeds and force equivalent to 175 fully-loaded shipping containers hitting the barrier every second, according to Jochen Schubert, [specialist, civil & environmental engineering], a flood risk expert at University of California, Irvine.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) and Columbia University have developed a new sensor implant that uses soft, conformable materials embedded with transistors to monitor neurological functions. This biocompatible device adapts to a patient’s physiological changes over time, making it particularly useful for pediatric applications. Read More