Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Engineering

Engineering Two men stand in a lab

Genetic base editing treats Huntington’s disease in mice

A new gene editing tool to treat Huntington’s disease was successfully demonstrated in mice.

Engineering This image exhibits an a array of 3D thermal cloaking prototype designs created using 3D-printed aluminum and molded rubber.

New 3D thermal cloak hides objects from heat in any direction

U. of I. engineers introduce a three-dimensional thermal cloak. Instead of blocking heat, it carefully guides it around the object being hidden.

Engineering

Scrubbing bubbles: Microparticles clean wounds, surgical instruments with tiny bubbles

Illinois researchers developed bubble-generating microparticles to clean tenacious biofilms from surgical instruments and infected wounds.

Earth and Environmental Sciences Portrait of researchers in a laboratory

New electrochemical device targets climate change by sucking CO2 out of air

Engineers developed a device that pulls CO2 from the air using a process similar to charging and discharging a battery.

Earth and Environmental Sciences A satellite image of the Po River Delta in Italy.

New study provides rule of thumb to estimate land sustainability in river deltas

A new study finds that the well-established Hack’s law may help engineers control water flow and reduce flood risks along river deltas.

Engineering A colorized microscope image

More structural protein can make tumors softer, the inverse of how lab tumors are made, study finds

Higher levels of the structural proteins collagen and fibrin around a tumor counterintuitively make the tissue softer — the opposite of conventional thinking.

Engineering Six people stand in front of red MRI machines

New MRI technology provides a comprehensive view of the human brain

New MRI technology can map multiple biomarkers with one scan, giving a more complete picture of the brain and disease.

Engineering Photo from the lab of four containers. 1) a plastic bottle, 2) a beaker with shredded plastic, 3) a capped bottle with pyruvate and 4) a flask with blue dye.

Microbial assembly line makes plastic upcycling programmable

Scientists have built a microbe-driven upcycling pipeline that converts plastic waste into a variety of useful products.

Agriculture Photo of a cornfield alongside solar arrays.

Illinois team tests the costs, benefits of agrivoltaics across the Midwest

A new study examines the agricultural and economic trade-offs that come with installing solar arrays on working farms across the Midwest.

Agriculture Photo of researchers seated next to kiln and multiple buckets of pelletized biochar.

New water-treatment system removes nitrogen, phosphorus from farm tile drainage

Scientists have developed a system to reduce levels of nitrogen and phosphorus that flow through farm tile drains and pollute the environment.

Engineering Life Sciences Photo of three grasshoppers with wings outstretched.

Grasshopper wing structure inspires design of gliding robot wings

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A collaboration between Princeton University engineers and entomologists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign began with the researchers chasing grasshoppers in a hot parking lot. Their eventual focus on the hindwings of one species of grasshopper, Schistocerca americana, the American grasshopper, is inspiring a new approach to untethered gliding flight. The scientists […]

Engineering Diwakar Shukla standing in front of a white board showing hand-written THC molecule diagrams.

New computer simulation could light the way to safer cannabinoid-based pharmaceuticals

New psychoactive substances, originally developed as potential analgesics but abandoned due to adverse side effects, may still have pharmaceutical value if researchers could nail down the causes of those side effects. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign used deep learning and large-scale computer simulations to identify structural differences in synthetic cannabinoid molecules that cause them to bind to human brain receptors differently from classical cannabinoids.

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