http://coe.berkeley.edu daily 1 2007-03-23T19:13:16Z http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/new-material-may-be-step-towards-3d-invisibility-cloak Jason Valentine, a graduate student in the nano-engineering lab at the University of California at Berkeley, says his lab has created the first 3D material able to bend light in the opposite direction to natural materials. No publisher susannas Students in the News 2008-05-13T19:56:50Z In The News http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/army-corps-says-condition-of-many-levees-a-mystery Across America, flood levees protect big cities and small towns, wealthy suburbs and rich farmland. But the Army Corps of Engineers lacks an inventory of thousands of them and has no idea of their condition. Critics are troubled that the government doesn't know. Robert Bea, a UC Berkeley levee expert, said many levees are old, with rusting infrastructure and built to protect against relatively common floods. ''Once they do get an inventory,'' Bea said, ''I think we're not going to like what we find.'' No publisher susannas Faculty in the News 2008-05-12T20:35:14Z In The News http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/a-southland-traffic-break Some quicker commutes are a silver lining to high gas prices and a weak economy. Pravin Varaiya, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley who helps oversee the Freeway Performance Measurement System database, comments on how a declining economy eases traffic. No publisher susannas Faculty in the News 2008-05-12T17:41:45Z In The News http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/berkeley-researchers-turn-cell-phones-into-medical-imagers Engineers at UC Berkeley have come up with an innovative new use for cell phones that may save countless lives. The hand held devices can now be turned into medical imaging devices. ”We took advantage of the fact that cellular phones are ubiquitous, everywhere you go,” said Cal Professor Boris Rubinski. No publisher !coe-denisen Faculty in the News 2008-05-12T21:23:17Z In The News http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/telemedicine-becoming-more-common-every-day Boris Rubinsky, a professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering at both Hebrew University in Jerusalem and UC Berkeley, has figured out that the most expensive and breakdown-prone parts of ultrasound machines, X-ray cameras, even magnetic resonance imagers, are the devices that process the raw data and convert it into images. No publisher susannas Faculty in the News 2008-05-12T17:44:51Z In The News http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/ip-standards-effort-rolls-for-wireless-sensor-nets David Culler, a sensor network pioneer who is co-founder and chief technology officer of startup Arch Rock and co-chairman of Roll as well a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, is part of a standards effort to provide one of the missing puzzle pieces for wireless sensor networks. No publisher susannas Faculty in the News 2008-05-13T20:19:36Z In The News http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/why-the-future-s-green-for-it The report being written for the Joint Information System Committee (Jisc) says green IT is best achieved through the collaboration of IT and estates management. It finds that increased energy and computing costs can be offset by technologies such as grid computing and virtualisation. The need to reduce carbon the footprint is behind a cull of wasteful IT practices. Dave Berry, technology lead of the knowledge transfer organisation Grid Computing Now, explains how grid computing and virtualisation work: "The most famous example of grid computing is Berkeley University's SETI @t Home project - the search for extraterrestrial life. Berkeley has taken a complex research project and broken it up into lots of little tasks run on people's home computers." No publisher !coe-denisen 2008-05-08T22:44:18Z In The News http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/the-microfueler-a-washing-machine-that-makes-diy-ethanol E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler, a device about the size of a stacking washer-dryer that uses sugar, yeast and water to make 100 percent ethanol at the push of a button. "You just open it like a washing machine and dump in your sugar, close the door and push one button," company founder Tom Quinn told us. "A few days later, you've got ethanol." Making ethanol at home is not as easy as Quinn might have you believe, says Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC-Berkeley. Making a lot of ethanol has generally required a lot of equipment, he told the New York Times, and quality control can be uneven. “There’s a lot of hurdles you have to overcome. It’s entirely possible that they’ve done it, but skepticism is a virtue,” Kammen says. No publisher !coe-denisen Faculty in the News 2008-05-08T22:36:12Z In The News http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/professor-rips-caltrans-over-maze-rebuild Caltrans should have been more concerned about public safety than public relations when it rebuilt the fire-blasted MacArthur Maze a year ago in an unfathomable 17 days, says UC Berkeley civil engineering professor Abolhassan Astaneh. No publisher !coe-denisen Faculty in the News 2008-05-08T22:29:48Z In The News http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/end-of-semiconductor-roadmap-ahead Eli Yablonovitch, professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, is the founding experimentalist in photonic band gap materials and known as the first person to design artificial crystal structures that manipulate light in a special and promising way. As the 2008 Western Institute for Nanomaterials Science Distinguished Lecturer, Yablonovitch provided a look back at the growth, refinement and impacts of integrated circuits via silicon technology, and offered predictions about where the technology is going. No publisher susannas Faculty in the News 2008-05-09T19:15:37Z In The News http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/press-releases/technology-biotech-ventures-tie-for-first-in-business-plan-competition New search technology provider Implicit Interfaces and biotech venture Titan Medical tied for first place at the 10th annual UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition, co-hosted by UC Berkeley's Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Haas School of Business, the College of Engineering, and the School of Information, as well as by UC San Francisco. No publisher susannas 2008-05-09T19:05:57Z Press Release http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/berkeley-engineering-in-the-news/is-u-s-innovation-headed-offshore Just as key manufacturing industries fled offshore in the 1970s and '80s, U.S. companies are now shifting more engineering and design work to low-cost nations such as China, India, and Russia. Surely, innovation itself must follow. Apparently not, according to a new study published by the National Academies, the Washington organization that advises the U.S. government on science and technology policy. The 371-page report titled Innovation in Global Industries argues that, in sectors from software and semiconductors to biotech and logistics, America's lead in creating new products and services has remained remarkably resilient over the past decade—even as more research and development by U.S. companies is done offshore. "This is a good sign," says Georgetown University Associate Strategy Professor Jeffrey T. Macher, who co-edited the study with David C. Mowery of the University of California at Berkeley. "It means most of the value added is going to U.S. firms, and they are able to reinvest those profits in innovation." No publisher !coe-denisen 2008-05-08T22:41:47Z In The News