Lei Pan's team of chemical engineering students had worked long and hard on their research project, and they were happy just to be showing their results at the People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) competition last April in Washington, DC. What they didn't expect was to be mobbed by enthusiastic onlookers. "We got a lot of 'oh wow!' responses, from eight-year-olds wanting to know how it worked to EPA officials wondering why no one had done ...

Whether caused by an undetected birth defect or by a heart attack (myocardial infarction), when a heart sustains damage, it can be difficult to repair. 2.5 billion. That’s approximately the number of times the human heart beats in 70 years. And sometimes during the course of its unrelenting contractions and relaxations, the heart muscle can no longer bear the strain. If heart muscle cells—cardiomyocytes—could be repair...

Cheap, plastic toys - no manufacturer necessary. The 2020 toy and game market is projected to be $135 billion, and 3D printing brings those profits home. People have scoffed that 3D printers are simply toys themselves. But they probably didn't realise how much money is made off playthings. Do-it-yourself (DIY) manufacturing - making goods at home with a 3D printer using open source designs from a free online repository - has a mult...

Interested in making an investment that promises a 100 percent return on your money, and then some? Buy a low-cost, open-source 3D printer, plug it in and print household items. In a recent study published in Technologies, Michigan Technological University Associate Professor Joshua Pearce set out to determine how practical and cost effective at-home 3D printing is for the average consumer.

A little sodium goes a long way. At least that's the case in carbon-based energy technology. Specifically, embedding sodium in carbon materials can tremendously improve electrodes. A research team led by Yun Hang Hu, the Charles and Carroll McArthur Professor of materials science and engineering at Michigan Tech, created a brand-new way to synthesise sodium-embedded carbon nanowalls. Previously, the material was only theoretical and the jour...

Metamaterials made from metal elements initially proposed for constructing invisibility cloaks, did not solve some important cloaking problems. There are three challenges remaining. The first is controlling anisotropy -- the variable behavior of propagating waves in different directions of the cloak medium. It's also important to make sure that the cloak materials can operate at microwave and optical wave frequencies. Finally, researchers ha...

Michigan Technological University scientists have developed a process that could lead to stickier—and better—gene therapy drugs. The drugs, called antisense DNA, are made from short, single strands of synthetic DNA. They work by blocking cells from making harmful proteins, which can cause maladies ranging from cancer to Ebola to HIV-AIDS. Only a couple of these synthetic DNA drugs are on the market, but a number are in clinical t...

Past research has shown heterogeneous silicon-germanium nanowires to be better transistors than their pure silicon counterparts. A team from Michigan Technological University has figured out the most likely reason why. The study, published recently in Nano Letters, focuses on the quantum mechanics in a core-shell nanowire structure. Having a better understanding of the underlying physics could improve efficiency in electronic devices that maximiz...

The world is run by catalysts. They clean up after cars, help make fertilizers, and could be the key to better hydrogen fuel. Now, a team of chemists, led by Xiaohu Xia from Michigan Technological University, has found a better way to make metal catalysts. Last week, Nano Letters published the team's study, which covers how the researchers made a catalyst for the first time out of the metal ruthenium. The break-through is not limit...

In January 2015, a Washington, DC, hobbiest accidentally flew his DJI Phantom quadcopter drone over the White House fence and crashed it on the lawn. Two years earlier, a prankster sent his drone toward German prime minister Angela Merkel during a campaign rally.