2022 Media Watch Archives
The Mystery of the Indestructible Beetle
Lit Hub -
Jesus Rivera liked to scan Craigslist for crashed motorcycles. The first one he ever took home was a totaled green Suzuki GSX-R. It took him about a year, tinkering with wires, cutting metal, and forging new parts in the subterranean machine shop of the engineering building at UC Irvine, but he and a small group of fellow grad students in the materials science program eventually turned the motorcycle into a Formula One–style race car. … The first eerie thing Rivera read about the diabolical ironclad beetle, or Phloeodes diabolicus, was the pushpin thing. … As a guy interested in strength, in toughness, in building machines that could withstand high-impact crashes, Rivera was sold. He wanted to look deeper into the beetle, into the structures that made up its armor, to understand it. He looked up where the beetle lived, and was delighted to discover that, apparently, it resided alongside him on UCI’s campus! Read More
A better way to quantify radiation damage in materials
Phys.org -
The technique provides a way to directly measure this damage through the way it changes with temperature. And it could be used to measure samples from the currently operating fleet of nuclear reactors, potentially enabling the continued safe operation of plants far beyond their presently licensed lifetimes. … The research team included Fredric Granberg and Kai Nordlund at the University of Helsinki in Finland; Boopathy Kombaiah and Scott Middlemas at Idaho National Laboratory; and [assistant professor of mechanical & aerospace engineering] Penghui Cao at the University of California at Irvine. Read More
A better way to quantify radiation damage in materials
Science Daily -
A tiny titanium nut that had been removed from inside the reactor was just the kind of material needed to prove that this new technique, developed at MIT and at other institutions, provides a way to probe defects created inside materials, including those that have been exposed to radiation, with five times greater sensitivity than existing methods. … The research team included Fredric Granberg and Kai Nordlund at the University of Helsinki in Finland; Boopathy Kombaiah and Scott Middlemas at Idaho National Laboratory; and [assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering] Penghui Cao at the University of California at Irvine. Read More
The next extreme floods could be even worse, a new study shows. But there's a way to prevent that
CNN -
Amir AghaKouchak, a co-author, [professor] and civil engineer at the University of California, Irvine, told CNN that many parts of the country — including the St. Louis area and eastern Kentucky — are particularly vulnerable and need to make a lot of improvements to adapt to the rapidly changing climate. "In the US, in many of our cases, we are seeing that more extreme events are happening, which is an important factor that we need to consider," AghaKouchak said. "Our exposure has increased almost everywhere, because there's more development, more industries, buildings, people from all aspects, so our exposure has increased." Read More
UC Irvine using NASA technology to study shoreline erosion
Irvine Weekly -
“It’s not just a California problem, it’s a global problem,” Brett Sanders, Ph.D., professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Irvine, explained to Irvine Weekly. Now, thanks to a $675,000 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Sanders and his team of researchers in Irvine and Houston are remotely monitoring the volume of sand on beaches and coastal dunes via satellites. Read More
Researchers identify effects of heat in materials with atomic resolution
ASM International -
A team of researchers at the University of California, Irvine, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other institutions used cutting-edge electron microscopes and novel techniques, to discover a way to map phonons—vibrations in crystal lattices—in atomic resolution, enabling deeper understanding of the way heat travels through quantum dots, engineered nanostructures in electronic components. … “We developed a novel technique to differentially map phonon momenta with atomic resolution, which enables us to observe nonequilibrium phonons that only exist near the interface,” said co-author Xiaoqing Pan, UCI professor of materials science and engineering and physics, Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in Engineering, and IMRI director. Read More
NIH announces prize winners of maternal health diagnostics challenge
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering -
The National Institutes of Health today announced the winners of its NIH Technology Accelerator Challenge (NTAC) for Maternal Health, a prize competition for developers of diagnostic technologies to help improve maternal health around the world. Pregnancy and childbirth complications are a major global health problem. … The winning technologies are as follows: … Second place and a $300,000 prize. University of California, Irvine. Maternal obstetrics monitoring sock (MOMS). The hemodynamic monitoring sock is a low-cost, portable, point-of-care system to monitor pregnant women for preeclampsia, anemia, and hemorrhage. It continuously tracks blood pressure and heart rate and monitors blood flow; it can be used during and after delivery in low-resource settings. Read More
EPA Announces Winners of the Environmental Justice Video Challenge for Students
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) -
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and cosponsors announced the Phase 1 winners of the Environmental Justice Video Challenge for Students. The winning teams of college students created videos identifying and characterizing an environmental justice issue important to a local community. … First Place ($20,000): Unearthing Lead: The Power of Historical Maps - University of California, Irvine – Tim Schütz, David Banuelas, Annika Hjelmstad, Ariane Jong, Ashley Green, Javier Garibay, Alexis Guerra, and Irene Martinez. Read More
These MIT Researchers Have Developed Silk Capsules To Replace Microplastics
Wonderful Engineering -
The researchers state that the new process can make use of the low-grade silk that is normally wasted because it has no applications. “This elegant and clever study describes a sustainable and biodegradable silk-based replacement for microplastic encapsulants, which are a pressing environmental challenge,” says Alon Gorodetsky, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California at Irvine, who was not associated with this research. Read More
Silk offers an alternative to some microplastics
MIT News -
"This elegant and clever study describes a sustainable and biodegradable silk-based replacement for microplastic encapsulants, which are a pressing environmental challenge,” says Alon Gorodetsky, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California at Irvine, who was not associated with this research. “The modularity of the described materials and the scalability of the manufacturing processes are key advantages that portend well for translation to real-world applications.” Read More