Tag: Engineering

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Solid-oxide Fuel Cells: Using familiar fuel in a new way

by Michael R. Gerhardt Our climate is rapidly changing, and many countries are beginning to take action. In the United States, President Barack Obama has announced the Clean Power Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric power generation, while Chinese president Xi Jinping has announced economic incentives to reduce emissions [1,2]. Even oil companies have publicly acknowledged the challenges we face and have voiced … Continue reading Solid-oxide Fuel Cells: Using familiar fuel in a new way

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Art Gallery, Images

The Light of Elendil in Shelob’s Lair

By Andrew Wong, a second year graduate student in the Applied Physics program at Harvard University.       The increase in global energy demand and subsequent carbon dioxide emissions has driven advancements in renewable energy generation technologies such as wind turbines and solar cells. However, these technologies are inherently intermittent, and require robust energy storage devices. Inexpensive, large-scale energy storage systems such as aqueous … Continue reading The Light of Elendil in Shelob’s Lair

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Innovating in a New Market: Challenges for Cleantech

by Greg Silverberg figures by Kaitlyn Choi Cleantech is a troubled sector Scientists know from geological data that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have been below 300 parts per million for nearly 1 million years.  However, for about a century, carbon dioxide concentrations have been rising at a rate unprecedented in these data and are now approaching 400 parts per million.  Carbon dioxide acts … Continue reading Innovating in a New Market: Challenges for Cleantech

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Why the blue LED should light up your life (and won a Nobel Prize)

What do you think of when you hear the phrase ‘green technology’? Do solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars come to mind? What about light-emitting diodes (LEDs)? Unlike many costly green technologies, LEDs are accessible to the majority of Individuals who want to help the environment and save money. Using an LED for 50,000 hours of white-light home lighting (i.e. LED light bulbs for … Continue reading Why the blue LED should light up your life (and won a Nobel Prize)

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Removing Threat from Invasive Species with Genetic Engineering?

A recent publication from Harvard scientists outlines the potential of a cutting-edge technology, CRISPR, to improve on an old technology called Gene Drives in order to solve the enormous problems caused by invasive species. However, attempts to control harmful species with this technology may just be another way to introduce potentially destructive foreign elements into an ecosystem. Furthermore, relying on genetic sequences of wild organisms … Continue reading Removing Threat from Invasive Species with Genetic Engineering?

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Engineering a minimal yeast chromosome: a small, but significant step forward

How can we create a fully synthetic organism? One promising way to begin would be to take an existing organism and engineer a new set of chromosomes from that organism’s genome. Scientists at NYU have created a fully synthetic chromosome for Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, the yeast that’s used in bread and beer. By stripping out ‘junk DNA’ and adding in new genes that make future genome … Continue reading Engineering a minimal yeast chromosome: a small, but significant step forward

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Bees
Seminars

From Dancing Bees to RoboBees: How Honeybees Behave and Why Need Them

Presented by Elizabeth Petrik, Ryan Kuzmickas, and Kevin Ma Honeybees are creating a buzz in the media lately, particularly due to the large numbers of mysterious bee deaths attributed to Colony Collapse Disorder. This lecture will explore how these amazing creatures play an important role in our economy and inspire the future of robotics, as well as what we know about the threats to bee … Continue reading From Dancing Bees to RoboBees: How Honeybees Behave and Why Need Them

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The Voyager Probes: A 35 Year Galactic Road Trip

As our closest astronomical neighbors, the planets have been subjects of keen observation by astronomers for over three millennia. The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, built and launched in the 1970s, flew by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and provided a wealth of data and photographs in the 1980s. But far beyond even the most distant planet lies an invisible boundary at the edge … Continue reading The Voyager Probes: A 35 Year Galactic Road Trip

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Seminars

Living Factories: Engineering Cells to Manufacture Molecules

Presented by Kevin Bonham Single-celled microorganisms are everywhere, and are intimately linked to many aspects of our life. Some can cause disease, others decompose our waste, and many even help us digest our food – there are 10 times more bacteria cells in your body than human cells! But in the last few decades, scientists have been learning how to tinker with these tiny life … Continue reading Living Factories: Engineering Cells to Manufacture Molecules

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Bionic Senses: How Neuroprosthetics Restore Hearing and Sight

— Of the five senses, sight and hearing are often felt to be the most important. They allow us to interact with each other and our environment, and the loss of either sense can be devastating. Worldwide, an estimated 39 million people have severe vision loss and 360 million people have disabling hearing loss. Scientists have spent many decades studying the causes of vision and hearing loss, as well as working to understand how images and sounds are transmitted to and represented in the brain. After years of research, they are now creating technologies that can at least partially restore these senses. These technologies are called neuroprosthetics and take the form of devices that connect to brain cells to deliver information that the brain can no longer receive on its own, often due to injury or disease. Continue reading Bionic Senses: How Neuroprosthetics Restore Hearing and Sight

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