Recently, Devin, Carol, and I helped with the UNH KEEPERS Camp “Biomedical Engineering” Day. The children were able to have tours of Professor Wayne Smith’s lab, build simple parallel and series circuits, and create their own “Operation”-style board games. The picture below is of me and a student displaying his “Operation” game. It was great witnessing children being exposed to the fields of eletrical and biomedical engineering at such a young age, and they all seemed very interested and intrigued by the science behind the technology they use in their day-to-day lives. I hope every participant will further their understanding of engineering and pursue an education in the field.

-Erika Swanson

Project54 assisted with two sections of KEEPERS summer camp. It turned out to be a great way for the second to fifth grade students to explore electrical and computer engineering. Mark gave tours to groups of the students of a Project54 lab and a police cruiser. While he did that, Erika, Devin and I helped the other students build simple parallel and series circuits that lit a light bulb. It was eye opening to see how fast they caught on to the general ideas of circuiting, even to the point where Devin started to explain Ohm’s Law to them. With knowledge of this they created their own Operation game shown in the pictures below. Both groups of eager students seemed to finish the half day with more knowledge and inquiry of engineering than they started with. I am grateful to have taken part in that.

Carol Perkins

Laster Technologies, a French company, has developed a new set of glasses that allows users to view data in a heads up display type of configuration. These glasses appear to be just as normal as most correctional lenses, with the exception of a projection system. A projector is attached to the glasses on either side, just in front of where the glasses touch the ear of the user.

Not only do these glasses display information, but they also read the displayed data through cameras and send it back to the host computer. These glasses give the user the ability to display any information the user needs, less than an inch away. This technology could prove useful for situations ranging from reading a book, to viewing schematics or instructions when working on a project.

Devin Mullen

Last week, undergraduates from the Project54 lab visited the KEEPERS camp. KEEPERS stands for Kids Eager for Engineering Program with Elementary Research-based Science. The purpose of the camp is to get young children interested in engineering. One of the tours that the camp went on was a trip to Professor Wayne Smith’s Biomedical Engineering lab, where campers learned about how electrical engineers design prosthetic limbs that react to signals from the brain. Chris Bancroft, a recent graduate of the UNH ECE masters program, gave a demonstration to the campers of how the technology works. He attached electrical leads to his arm and explained to the campers that when a person with a prosthetic limb moves their arm, the brain sends signals to the muscle. That is where the leads pick up the signals and send it to a microcontroller. In the demonstration in the lab, Chris had the microcontroller attached to pneumatic pumps that forced air into a muscle-like air bladder. He explained that when the signals from the brain are picked up by the muscle, they are amplified and then sent to the microcontroller which decides which pumps to turn on and move the muscle, lifting a wooden arm.

Devin Mullen

Below: A pico projector made by the Microvision company

In the near future we could see a revolution in mobile display technology. Miniaturized projectors called pico projectors will replace current projector models and will make displaying media from mobile devices much easier. With this advance in technology, our mobile media will no longer be limited to a two inch screen. Instead, we will have the capability to increase the display size of a mobile device to about eight feet. These projectors will give mobile phone users the ability to display content such as movies or photos on a screen larger than most televisions. Currently most pico projectors are standalone units that connect to mobile devices via a cable. In a couple of years we could see built-in pico projectors in a variety of devices, ranging from mobile phones to mp3 players.

Below: A visual representation of Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS) Technology

There are currently three different types of technology that are used in these mini-projectors: liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS), scanning mirror, and digital-light processing. Liquid crystal on silicon technology uses liquid crystals that sit on top of a chip, where the top of the chip is coated with material that makes it act like a mirror. The liquid crystals change their orientation based on an electric field, which in turn changes the polarization of the light that shines through the crystals and reflects off of the chip. In scanning mirror technology, three laser diodes direct light through a lens to a set of microelectromechanical mirrors mounted on silicon. These mirrors move horizontally and vertically to direct the light and create a picture. In digital-light processing technology, there is a chip that contains millions of microscopic mirrors that tilt to create pixels. Red, blue, and green light is reflected onto the microscopic mirrors, and then by tilting each mirror toward or away from the light source the pixel can be turned on or off respectively.

Below: Depiction of Scanning Mirror Technology

Take a look at the original article from the IEEE here.

Devin Mullen

On May 10th 2010 Marcelo Gleiser gave a very inspiring talk at the University of New Hampshire. The lecture’s title was: A Tear at the Edge of Creation, which is also the title of professor Gleiser’s new book. The lecture was part of the CEPS Frontiers Lecture Series.

Marcelo Gleiser is a distinguished physicist and astronomer. He holds the Appleton Professorship of Natural Philosophy at Dartmouth College. In his career so far he authored more than eighty peer reviewed publications as well as three books in popular science. He is the recipient of many awards.

Professor Gleiser’s talk focused on the significance of asymmetries in our universe that made our lives possible. In the first part of his lecture, he gave a brief historical overview of the research of the “heavens”. He argues that everyone so far has been looking for a unified explanation of the universe and it’s laws, starting with the ancient Egyptians, Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, Kepler, Newton and all the way to Einstein. In Gleiser’s opinion, this might not be the right way of thinking, especially if one accepts that our universe is based on fundamental imperfections and asymmetries. He then goes on to explain how time, matter and life are all asymmetric. Time can expand only in one direction, because it is very improbable that things would go “backward”, towards less entropy. Secondly, the universe which we can observe is full of matter and lacking anti-matter. This seems to be a physical necessity, which also creates asymmetry. Finally life on Earth is also asymmetric. For example amino acids in the DNA are “left-handed” while “right-handed” amino acids can be fatal for humans.

Gleiser hypothesizes that self-aware intelligent life in the universe is very improbable and this is why in his opinion it is very unlikely that we will get in contact with other intelligent life forms. Because of this, we should cherish life on our planet and be “humancentrists”.

Professor Gleiser’s lecture was very interesting and witty at the same time. His clever remarks kept a constant smile on many faces. His great way of presenting keeps the audience’s attention easily on topic. I would suggest the book to everyone interested in knowing more about the nature of the universe and life in it.

You can follow up on this and similar topics on the 13.7 blog site, where professor Gleiser is one of the four contributors.

Oszkar

Last week Dennis O’Brien the Chief Electronics Engineer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) gave a very interesting talk in the CEPS Frontiers lecture series. LLNL is one of the premier applied physics laboratories in the world. Together with Los Alamos, it is in charge of managing the US nuclear stockpile. It also runs a host of projects in the fields of national security and energy research.

Mr. O’Brien is a distinguished alumnus of UNH CEPS. He earned his BSc and MSc at our university in ‘75 and ‘77 respectively. Since then he was working at LLNL on various projects and at many positions. Currently he is the Chief Electronics Engineer of LLNL in charge of workforce planning and development for over 1300 engineers and other personnel.

At the beginning of the talk, Mr. O’Brien gave a quick overview of LLNL and its stunning achievements. He then spent the rest of the lecture introducing the National Ignition Facility, one of their most interesting and most expensive projects. It is essentially a huge laser (500 terawatt!) covering the area of three football fields. Its purpose is to generate enough energy to start nuclear fusion, with hydrogen as fuel, in a confined place. The idea is to generate more energy with fusion than it took to produce the laser beams. If this process of ‘ignition’ succeeds it could be the basic principle of future fusion powered power plants.

It was great to have such an accomplished alumnus give a talk at UNH. I think current students and faculty were very much inspired by the example of Mr. O’Brien’s great career and accomplishments.

Oszkar

This article from CNN describes how researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a way to produce a new type of battery. Angela Belcher, professor of materials science and engineering at MIT, has developed a way to create batteries from an M13 bacteriophage virus. This virus is common and does not pose a health risk to humans. In the process of creating the battery, the virus becomes covered in iron phosphate and then connects to carbon nanotubes. A carbon nanotube is an extremely strong network of interconnected carbon atoms. When these virus-nanotube structures are added up in large numbers, they produce a battery.  Professor Belcher has said that about ten grams of the virus-nanotube material has enough energy to power a small device for around 40 hours. One of the greater benefits of this type of battery is that no waste is created during production. Also, toxic materials that are used in normal batteries (such as lead and acid in a car battery) are not used in this type of battery. 

Devin Mullen

Cell phones are one of the most widely used technology on this planet today. Most people in the world access the internet right on their cell phone, rather than on a computer. But the question still echos, are cell phones safe, even today? The answer is not clear. Research has been going on for more than a decade, but the results are still being interpreted. Many experts in the fields of cancer research, epidemiology, electrical and computer engineering and electromagnetic radiation see cause for concern, but many others don’t. Supposedly, the radiation emitted from cell phones is at a low enough frequency that it would not damage cells, but this is still being disputed.

We still don’t know to what extent it affects humans. The trend may be scary in the future though, take cigarettes for example, it took 30 to 40 years after they were mass produced for a noticeable change in lung cancer to be noticed. More explaining is done in this article from CNET.

Mike Litchfield

Both Rohm and NEC are focused on unveiling new chip designs for integrated circuits that would consume no standby power. Integrated circuits are briefly inactive in between cycles on chips, and the new chip designs take into account that not all parts of the circuit require constantly receiving full power. In an attempt to curtail this leakage power that is consumed by an IC,  the companies have implemented “power gating” in the new designs. “Power gating” is a method of turning off individual circuits on a chip that do not need power. NEC plans to release a prototype by the end of 2009, but Rohm, Inc. hopes its chip will be in consumer products within the same time frame. Popular Science Magazine writes, “The new chip designs differ [from current IC chips] in that they don’t require the inactive portions of the circuit to receive full power at all times, allowing for more efficiency both during use and in a traditional ’standby mode’.” It is predicted that the new designs’ efficient energy usage will help decrease overall power consumption and could improve efficiency  within a device.

From Tech On!:

Erika Swanson