2021 Media Watch Archives

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WIRED

The Mantis Shrimp Inspires a New Material—Made by Bacteria

Wired -
So when a mantis shrimp’s hammer smashes into a thumb or a clam or a crab’s face, any crack in its structure will propagate in a twist pattern, dissipating the energy throughout the material. … Neat, said engineers at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Irvine, who’ve invented a clever kind of material based on the mantis shrimp’s clobber-sticks. … It’s a twist within a twist: They’ve been able to get minerals to grow within a 3D-printed shrimp-inspired Bouligand structure with the help of bacteria, of all things. Read More
The San Diego Union-Tribune

Why all the hoopla about hydrogen?

The San Diego Union-Tribune -
San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas have partnered with the National Fuel Cell Research Center at UC Irvine on a blending program in which hydrogen will be injected into plastic pipes to see how it performs. The initial blend level will be 1 percent and may increase to 20 percent. Read More
San Francisco Chronicle

California wastes its extra solar, wind energy. Could hydrogen be the storage key?

San Francisco Chronicle -
Jack Brouwer, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Irvine and director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center, said hydrogen is more effective for longer storage because it doesn’t lose energy over time and can be stored underground easily and cheaply. [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.] Read More
Outside Logo

Is This Winter’s Sketchy Snowpack the New Normal?

Outside -
You might imagine droughts as long periods without rain, but they can also be caused by warm winters and a lack of water in the snowpack—referred to as snow drought—in places that depend on mountain runoff for their water supply and storage. One study from University of California at Irvine, led by [engineering] assistant researcher, Laurie Huning, looked at snow-water equivalent (the amount of water contained in snowpack), precipitation, and temperature to quantify snow drought and track it globally. It found that from 1980 to 2018, the western U.S. experienced a 28 percent increase in the duration of its snow droughts, the most severe in the world. Read More
Forbes

Big Tech Looks To Hydrogen For Backup Generation At Data Centers

Forbes -
While Google has announced its plans to test batteries for backup, the key draw of hydrogen is its cost-effectiveness at longer durations. When comparing levelized costs for a completely resilient, 100% renewable data center with zero emissions, hydrogen is $119/MWh, while batteries could be over $4,000/MWh to ensure 48 hours of backup power. This finding comes from Jack Brouwer, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Read More
Los Angeles Times

California’s aging dams face new perils, 50 years after Sylmar quake crisis

Los Angeles Times -
“Emerging data of massive simulations of flooding suggest that existing flood control systems are a ticking time bomb,” said Brett Sanders, a professor of civil engineering at UC Irvine. “Southern California, in particular, is completely unprepared to deal with the consequences.” “Once the water goes outside of the structures intended to rein it in, it will go everywhere,” he said, “and there will be little time to get out of its way. … We ought to start spending more time studying the potential catastrophic risks to working-class communities in the floodplains.” [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.] Read More
The Revelator

The Western United States Is a Hotspot for Snow Droughts

The Revelator -
“The common ways to measure droughts are through precipitation, soil moisture and runoff,” says Laurie S. Huning, an environmental engineer at the University of California, Irvine. Her most recent work adds another dimension to that by looking at water stored in snowpack. Huning is the co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with UC Irvine colleague [Professor] Amir AghaKouchak, which developed a new framework for characterizing “snow droughts.” These can occur when there’s an abnormally low snowpack, which may be triggered by low precipitation, warm temperatures or both. Their research is timely. Read More
Allure

How Living in Space Will Change the Way We Age

Allure -
Indeed, cosmic radiation is perhaps the biggest worry for the body in space. To give context to how bad it will be on the Red Planet: Ronke Mojoyinola Olabisi, an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine, who is working on the interdisciplinary human interstellar initiative, 100 Year Starship points out that on the ISS, [International Space Station], astronauts receive about 1,000 times the average yearly sea level dose of cosmic radiation. But once you head out farther, it's estimated to shoot up to 500,000 times. That in itself may end up speeding aging overall. Read More
Bloomberg Law

Green Hydrogen Backers See Big Chance for Sector Development

Bloomberg Law -
A third lever Biden could pull would be to create infrastructure that can move hydrogen, perhaps by repurposing the existing natural gas system, said Jack Brouwer, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. “This is what the federal government should be responsible for doing,” Brouwer said. “This is a shared infrastructure. It enables long-duration storage, it lets you transmit it across mountains—it’s got a lot of features that we like.” Read More
IEEE Spectrum

Find Out Who Received a 2021 IEEE Major Award

IEEE News -
Chin C. Lee, [Professor Emeritus, engineering], University of California, Irvine, “For contributions to new silver alloys, new bonding methods, flip-chip interconnect, and education for electronics packaging.” Read More

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