Future of Engineering

I read about an Italian Olivier Vietti-Teppa's daring experiment to prove Lenardo da Vinci right. In order to prove that Da Vinci’s parachute design actually does work, Vietti-Teppa plunged 2000 feet on a parachute design made by Da Vinci over 500 years ago. How’s that for guts?

Got me thinking more on this, and about Da Vinci's actual design.

Which led me to the following BBC article. Looks like the Italian was not exactly the first to prove it, at least not the basic design that Da Vinci had put down. This is what the June 2000 BBC article has to say:"More than 500 years after Leonardo da Vinci sketched his design, a Briton has proved that the renaissance genius was indeed the inventor of the first working parachute.

Adrian Nicholas, a 38-year-old skydiver from London, fulfilled his life's ambition to prove the aerodynamics experts wrong when he used a parachute based on Da Vinci's design to float almost one and a half miles down from a hot air balloon. Ignoring warnings that it would never work, he built the 187lb contraption of wooden poles, canvas and ropes from a simple sketch that Da Vinci had scribbled in a notebook in 1485."

Interesting.

Now, whether it was the Londonder who proved it eight years back or whether it is the Italian who has proved it now, one thing is clear: Da Vinci was a genius who thought far ahead of his time

While we celebrate Da Vinci’s genius we also have to remember the contribution of the rest of the world to the aviation industry.

Contribution of China

The history of the parachute dates back to the 12^th century. At that time in China, during court ceremonies jumping stunts were performed with devices that resembled a parachute. The primitive technology closely resembled the umbrella which is by the way a Chinese invention.

Bizarre happenings reported in Chinese parachuting history

• ca90BC a Chinaman escaped a fire in a tower by jumping with two conical straw-hats as a drag or descent-delay parachute
• ca290BC-AD250 numerous instances of "man-lifting" kites bearing an observer aloft for military surveillance; as derived from the 5th Century BC Chinese invention of the kite, called a "flying sail" ... greatly anticipating the modern invention of the airfoil glider and ascending parachute
• ca550-577 Chinese archives document winged-flight experiments imitative of birds ca1000 Chinese officials experimented with parachute designs by compelling condemned prisoners to jump from towers and cliffs, according to archives translated by the French monk Vasson
• 1192 a Chinese acrobat stole some of the gold ornamentation off the roof of the Islamic minaret in Canton, and escaped by jumping with double umbrellas as a parachute

Contribution of Islam

The Western world celebrates Da Vinci, Lilienthal, and the Wright Brothers while discussing the inventions of the aviation industry. Little is said about Abbas Ibn Firnas (Armen Firnas) a 9th century Islamic Spain, who invented a primitive version of the parachute.

John H. Lienhard described it in The Engines of Our Ingenuity as follows:
"In 852, a new Caliph and a bizarre experiment: A daredevil named Armen Firman decided to fly off a tower in Cordova. He glided back to earth, using a huge winglike cloak to break his fall. He survived with minor injuries, and the young Ibn Firnas was there to see it."

“In 875, at an age of 65 years, Ibn Firnas made the first attempt at controlled flight when he invented a hang glider with artificial wings as flight control surfaces, and launched himself from the Mount of the Bride (Jabal al-'arus) in the Rusafa Area, near Córdoba. He apparently managed to fly for quite some time, by some accounts as long as ten minutes. This was the first attempt at controlled flight, as he was able to alter his altitude and change his direction in order to return to where he flew from. The flight was largely successful, and was widely observed by a crowd that he had invited. However, after successfully returning to his starting point, the landing was bad and he eventually crashed to the ground. He injured his back, and left critics saying he hadn't taken proper account of the way birds pull up into a stall, and land on their tails. He'd provided neither a tail, nor means for such a maneuver, and he later said that the landing could have been improved by providing a tail apparatus.”

Source Wikipedia

These inventions simply prove that Human beings the masters of the universe were not contented in admiring the flight of the birds. They wanted to explore the skies above. And history shows that men and women separated by space and time embarked on a grand mission that might have appeared quite silly to the uninspired minds.

Labels: Physics, Sciences

Raydiance has demonstrated an ultrashort laser (USL) that generates 56 microjoules per pulse, with pulses lasting only 700 femtoseconds. The platform is the first compact, cost-effective, and fully software-controlled USL, and achieved the highest pulse energy in a fiber laser, at the eye-safe wavelength of 1552 nanometers. The laser, which can ablate (remove) even reflective or transparent material, generated a peak power of approximately 80 megawatts.

Continuous wave lasers generate heat when they are used for ablation, making them undesirable for engineering purposes, and dangerous for medical operations. Ultrashort lasers emit photons in pulses measured in femtoseconds, (one billionth of one millionth of a second), a timespan too short to generate heat in surrounding material.The pulses are precise enough to create a Coulomb explosion in atoms, stripping them of electrons and turning them into a plasma or gas, without damaging surrounding material.

The sensitivity of the laser opens the door for a wide variety of medical applications, including cancer cell removal, tattoo removal, eye surgery, and cosmetic treatments

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Labels: Physics

Now comes word of a ham operator using his radio skills and radio waves to kill cancer! Furthermore, this invention seems to kill only cancer cells, sparing surrounding normal tissues. John Kanzius (known as K3TUP to his ham buddies the world over) retired from his job as a radio engineer and moved to Florida. His life of leisure was soon jeopardized by a leukemia diagnosis.

One night John, whose special interest in ham radio is the design of directional antennas to highly focus his radio signals in the direction of parts of the world with which he wishes to communicate, awakened thinking that radio waves could be directed into the body to heat and possibly destroy tumor cells. He began to refine his idea immediately. Eventually he was placed in contact with a medical researcher. Subsequent experimental models have shown that the radio waves heat the nanoparticles which cook and destroy the tumor cells while surrounding tissues are spared.

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Keywords: Ham radio waves, cancer cells, Dan Gold, radio spectrum, John Kanzius, K3TUP, leukemia, American Radio Relay League, Dr. Steven Curley

Labels: Bio-engineering, Physics

Ninety-two-year-old Peter Davey of New Zealand says he invented a unique water boiling gadget 30 years ago. He claims it uses sound waves, not a heating element, to boil water in seconds. Davey noticed as he played the saxophone at home that everything resonated at a different frequency.

"The glasses will tinkle on one note. Knives and forks in the drawer will tinkle on another note and I realised that everything has its point of vibration," he said. "In the same way, a component in the ball is tuned to a certain frequency."

A retired engineering professor, Arthur Williamson, was invited to look at the boiler in action. He said:

"I don't know enough about sound to know whether you can transfer that amount of energy via soundwaves. I doubt it," said Williamson. He did remember an alternative kettle years ago that had two perforated metal plates inside. The power ran between the plates, through the water. "The resistance through the water provided the load. I wonder if it isn't working like that? Without taking it to bits, you can't tell."

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Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering, Physics, Sciences

A year of adding polymers to nanoparticles and testing their opacity left chemistry Ph.D. student Lindsay Bombalski frustrated. Although she was using a standard procedure to test the particles and characterize them by how much light they scatter, two samples were not giving her any signal at all, as though they had no opacity.“At no point did we think we were looking at something interesting,” said Michael Bockstaller, assistant professor of materials science and engineering who worked with Bombalski and chemistry professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski on the project. As it turns out, they discovered that that “something” could be used to improve product packaging, windshields, and sunblock.

Particle additives such as polymers are often added to particles in other materials to increase heat resistance or mechanical strength of materials. However, the problem with this technique is that the reinforced particles scatter, altering the particles’ original appearance and making them virtually unusable for any matter that requires light to pass through.This scattering is caused by the change in the particles’ refractive index — an assessment of how fast light travels within a material — when the inorganic particles are added to an organic solution. The researchers found that by planning a target refractive index, they could eliminate the scattering of particles.

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Labels: Physics

Nuclear plants can fail when the heat from the reactor is not removed quickly enough from the core. This can happen in pressurised water nuclear reactors if the water in the cooling system boils, because steam is a much poorer conductor of heat than liquid water.These reactors have a primary water cooling system that directly takes heat away from the reactor. It is sealed under huge pressure to prevent it boiling and conducts heat to a secondary water cooling system that is not sealed.But this secondary system is also at risk of boiling. If that happens, heat builds up in the primary cooling system, which can lead to meltdown. Ronald Baney and colleagues at the University of Florida in Gainesville, think they can tackle this problem by turning to diamond – one of the best heat conductors known to science.

Their idea is to add diamond nanoparticles to the water of the secondary cooling system to dramatically improve its ability to transfer heat.Baney and colleagues say such nanoparticles are chemically inert and radiation resistant, so are unlikely to clump together in a way that could block the cooling system. However, they don't say how much a diamond-based heat transfer fluid might cost.Read the full diamond-cooled nuclear reactor patent application.

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Labels: Material-Sciences, Physics

Micro-electromechanical gyroscopes are widely used to in devices as diverse as game controllers and weapons guidance systems. They work by vibrating a tiny mass and then measuring how it is pushed around by Coriolis forces during rotation. But they have a number of drawbacks; say Lisa Lust and Dan Youngner from the aerospace equipment company Honeywell International in Morristown, New Jersey, US.

Lust and Youngner have come up with a new type of gyroscope that avoids these problems. It is essentially a cavity containing a mixture of rubidium and xenon atoms that can be controlled using two lasers. They say the device is low powered, physically small and robust since it has no moving or vibrating parts. They suggest it could be used to help uncrewed vehicles and robots navigate. Or it could aid personal navigational when GPS is not available – for example, inside a cave or large building.

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Keywords: Gaseous Gyroscope, Personal Navigation, GPS, Polarisation, Xenon Atoms, Lust and Youngner, Rubidium, Micro-electromechanical Gyroscopes.

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Labels: Mechanical-Engineering, Physics

This idea has definitely been around the block a time or two, but Eureka Aerospace is doing a whole lot more than just envisioning yet another concept. Its 200-pound, 5-foot long prototype has recently undergone testing, and reportedly, it's been able to completely and utterly incapacitate any vehicle that dared roll in its path. The device has been used to shut down four whips thus far, each from a distance of 10 to 50-feet, and all it took was a microwave pulse lasting some 50-nanoseconds to do it. According to James Tatoian, the outfit's CEO, a version that weighs just 50-pounds and can disable rebel rides from 600-feet away is only a couple of years from reality, but it's highly doubtful that these will be available to the general public.

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Keywords: Microwave beam car, eureka aerospace

Labels: Physics, Safety

In an ultrahigh-vacuum chamber at Swinburne University of Technology, a million ultracold rubidium-87 atoms hover just beneath the surface of a silicon chip coated with a thin magneto-optical film.

Tailored to create a shaped, perpendicular magnetic field, the magnetic film confines and shepherds the rubidium atoms on the chip, in much the same way as electrons are guided along conducting wires on an electronic microchip.

Cooled to a temperature of a few billionths of a degree Kelvin, just above absolute zero (minus 273˚C), and confined by a magnetic microtrap on the chip, the ultracold atoms fall into the lowest energy state of the trap and no longer jostle for room – they exhibit almost no random thermal motion.

The atoms condense to a state where they behave as a single super-atom of rubidium-87 and exhibit coherent, wave-like properties – rather like the coherent light from a laser. For several seconds, the chip holds the atoms in an exotic, fifth state of matter called a Bose–Einstein condensate.

If all this sounds ‘sci-fi’ it’s because in many ways it is. Bose–Einstein condensate is a new frontier whose boundaries have yet to be measured, but are more than likely to take humankind to new realms of technological and industrial capability.

Just as the first lasers mystified scientists as to their possible applications, so too now with Bose–Einstein condensate. In theory, they could at the very least be the basis for quantum computing – that is, computers able to use atoms to store data and complete in seconds computations that would take today’s most powerful supercomputers years.

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Labels: Computer-Science, Physics

Today's aviation, vetronics, and other applications in mil-aero require more power, but have less space—this contributes to higher thermal loads and less opportunity to drive the heat out.

The thermal-management options available to the mil-aero industry include those such as conduction cooling and liquid flow-through cooling—as well as presented specifics about VITA circuit cards, ANSI/VITA documents, and other thermal-management information.

Interest in and use of directed energy weapons and electric aircraft are growing, and these innovations require ultra-efficient energy systems. Some technologies that Boeing is investigating are lightweight carbon thermal-management systems, as well as fuel cells, CNT thermal interface, and spray cooling.

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Labels: Aerospace-Engineering, Physics

Research results from University of Maryland physicists show that graphene, a new material that combines aspects of semiconductors and metals, could be a leading candidate to replace silicon in applications ranging from high-speed computer chips to biochemical sensors.
The research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnolgy, reveals that graphene conducts electricity at room temperature with less intrinsic resistance than any other known material.

Intrinsic resistance results from the unavoidable lattice vibrations in a material when the temperature is greater than absolute zero. The intrinsic resistance determines a material's mobility, or the speed at which an electrons move when an electric field is applied to the material. The very high mobility of graphene makes it promising for applications in which transistors must switch extremely fast, such as in the processing of extremely high frequency signals

Graphene is also a very promising material for chemical and biochemical sensing applications in which an electrical signal from, for instance, a molecule adsorbed on the sensing device, is translated into an electrical signal by changing the conductivity of the device

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Labels: Material-Sciences, Physics

A team of physicists and engineers has demonstrated exquisite control of single particles of light -- photons -- on a silicon chip to make a major advance towards the long sought after goal of a super-powerful quantum computer.

Dr Jeremy O'Brien, his PhD student Alberto Politi, and their colleagues at Bristol University have demonstrated the world's smallest optical controlled-NOT gate -- the building block of a quantum computer.

The team were able to fabricate their controlled-NOT gate from silica wave-guides on a silicon chip, resulting in a miniaturised device and high-performance operation.

"This is a crucial step towards a future optical quantum computer, as well as other quantum technologies based on photons," said Dr O'Brien

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Labels: Computer-Science, Physics

In the future, due to recent efforts by a joint research team from Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the exhaust might be used to power your car's battery

In more technical terms, these researchers have demonstrated a huge increase in thermoelectric efficiency - effectively introducing a new standard for the creation and use of heating, cooling, and power. Though the technology has been around for years, this specific advancement is important because it has paved the way for commercial application - ranging from refrigerators and air conditioners to solar technology to automobiles to semiconductors. The primary ramifications are that the products will be cleaner and will run more efficiently.

The research is based on the thermoelectric effect, which is the conversion of temperature differences into electric voltage and electric voltage into temperature differences.

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Labels: Physics

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Labels: Computer-Science, Physics

This is the idea behind quantum imaging: create an entangled pair of photons and send one towards the object you want to image and hang on to the other.

If ever a field needed an injection of common sense, this is it. Step forward quantum theorist and all round bright spark Seth Lloyd from MIT. He’s taken the thinkin’ and given it a thorough shakin’ by the scruff of its neck.

Lloyd doesn’t give any credence to the ideas of reflection-free imaging but he’s found something almost as good. Lloyd has calculated that illuminating an object with entangled photons can reduce increase the signal to noise ratio of the reflected signal by a factor of 2^e, where e is the number of bits of entanglement. That’s an exponential improvement.

What’s more, the improvement occurs even if the entanglement is completely destroyed during the process of reflection. So quantum illumination could help image anything that is currently hard to distinguish because of noise.

That’s impressive but Lloyd’s ideas raise quite a few questions.

So although a clever piece of work, it could be a while before we’re posing for quantum snapshots from Kodak.



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Labels: Physics

Superconductors to provide new levels of stability and control in large structures and satellite formations in space

By taking advantage of the surprising physics of magnetic flux pinning, spacecraft components could hover a fraction of an inch to several feet apart without electrical power. Flux-pinning superconductor materials resist movement within magnetic fields, and flux pinning can be turned on or off simply by cooling or heating the superconductors. As a result, modules consisting of magnets and flux-pinning superconductors can maintain the position and orientation of spacecraft components. Furthermore, flux-pinned connections are stable without active feedback control, which typically requires on-board computers and power.

Dr. Mason Peck from the Cornell University College of Engineering is continuing his research begun in 2005 with recent funding from F6 contractor Northrop Grumman Corporation, where magnetic flux pinning holds special promise for eliminating the complexity of mechanical connectors currently designed into space systems for docking, attaching, and configuring components. F6 (Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft United by Information eXchange) is a new spacecraft design strategy being studied by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DOD).

Peck's use of magnetic flux pinning complements a related technology, EMFF (electromagnetic formation flight), by providing passive stability for formations of spacecraft in close proximity (less than 1 meter). It also eliminates power, software, and electronics hardware as single points of failure for controlling the positions of nearby components. Electromagnetic actuation can provide coarse or fine control of the formation. In addition, the technology provides a passive bumper that can guarantee no contact while components are maneuvering in space

Full report from here

Labels: Aerospace-Engineering, Electrical-Engineering, Material-Sciences, Physics

Sun Microsystems, Inc. has been awarded $44.29 million funding for a five and a half-year research project focused on microchip interconnectivity via on-chip optical networks enabled by Silicon photonics and proximity communication. Part of DARPA's Ultraperformance Nanophotonic Intrachip Communication program, the project commences with an incremental delivery of $8.1 million to Sun Microsystems' Microelectronics and Laboratories divisions

Building on research done under DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems program, Sun's new project will accelerate the development of lower cost, high performance and high productivity systems. The project presents a unique opportunity to develop supercomputers through interconnecting an array of low-cost chips, with the potential to overcome the fundamental cost and performance limits of scaling up today's large computer systems

"DARPA's UNIC (Ultraperformance Nanophotonic Intrachip Communications) program will demonstrate high performance photonic technology for high bandwidth, on-chip, photonic communications networks for advanced (≥ 10 trillion operations/second) microprocessors. By restoring the balance between computation and communications, the program will significantly enhance DoD's capabilities for applications such as Image Processing, Autonomous Operations, Synthetic Aperture Radar, as well as supercomputing," said Dr. Jag Shah, program manager in DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office.

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Labels: Computer-Science, Electronics-Communications-Engineering, Physics

A new superconducting material fabricated by a Canadian-German team has been fabricated out of a silicon-hydrogen compound [after supercompression, 96-120GPa] and does not require cooling. They had to keep the material under pressure (100GPa) in order to get it to superconduct.

The press release talked about not using refrigerant and EEtimes said room temperature superconductor. They believe that the new silane / hydrogen compounds could reach room temperature superconducting levels. The temperature at which superconductivity occurs exhibits some interesting behavior. It hangs around 5-10K for most of the pressure range (50-200GPa), but in a small range between 100-125GPa, it increases quite sharply. Although the researchers only have five data points in the range and never observed a critical temperature higher than 20K, the shape of the curve indicates that, for some small range of pressures, a very high critical temperature might be achieved. So they still have to investigate the critical pressure range and possibly other compounds and still get them to work after pressure is removed. The other unpressurized material which could be superconducting at 185K are closer to being possible improved application, but they need some more independent confirmations.

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Labels: Material-Sciences, Physics

Bob Cernik likes using x-rays to probe the nature of materials. The Manchester University professor has been working at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron in Oxfordshire to develop a prototype 3D colour x-ray system to detect hidden explosives, drugs, or even cancer. But wait a moment ... x-rays, in colour and three dimensions?

How does a hospital x-ray CAT scanner produce colourful 3D body images? It's a process called "false colour", where shades of grey are converted to a corresponding colour in the normal spectrum. This gives you a high spatial resolution density contrast image that is often false coloured to aid diagnosis. But it is a false colouration.

There are other x-ray techniques, including diffraction, that allow scientists to identify materials.

All these current imaging systems do not however use all the information contained in the x-ray beam. This extra information can be used to fingerprint the material present at each point in a 3D image.

To do this with x-rays, Cernik's system uses "tomographic energy dispersive diffraction imaging" - or TEDDI. He works with "voxels" (volumetric pixels) which represent points in three-dimensional space. TEDDI measures voxels throughout a sample so that each contains an x-ray diffraction pattern - the key to identifying a material's atomic structure and chemistry.

Many experts think TEDDI is excellent work which produces very accurate results.

Some related work is going on to develop the world's first "scatter-enhanced" 3D x-ray security scanner. This method also uses x-ray diffraction but concentrates on the high-speed identification of substances in cluttered scenes - like the insides of suitcases.

Typically, X-rays pass through and are scattered by the contents but, compared with the primary beam, the scattered signals are extremely weak. These new techniques to produce 3D x-ray images with materials to quickly identity information in them.

Read more about these new techniques from here

Labels: Physics

Most intense laser beam in the universe created

February 16th, 2008

Scientists at the University of Michigan say that they have devised a way to produce a laser beam about as intense as a concentrated ray of the entire sunlight shining towards Earth would be if it were focussed onto one grain of sand.

The pulsed laser beam lasts just 30 femtoseconds (a millionth of a billionth of a second). The Michigan team believes that such intense lasers may be helpful in developing better proton and electron beams for radiation treatment of cancer, among other applications

Full story here

Labels: Physics, Sciences