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Document ActionsBreakthroughs: Berkeley research at the engineering forefrontTelepollutingTurns out working from home isn’t all that green. It does cut down on emissions from driving to and from the office, but the extra electricity used in home offices translates into more nitrous oxide and methane, 300 times and 23 times worse for the environment, respectively, than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. The findings, from civil and environmental engineering associate professor Arpad Horvath, were published in Environmental Science & Technology and recently reported in Forbes. http://www.forbes.com Spiderman reduxMiniature, insect-inspired robots could be deployed on the battlefield in place of soldiers, thanks to the new Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) Collaborative Technology Alliance, a coalition of several universities and BAE Systems, funded with $38 million from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Among UC Berkeley faculty researchers involved is Professor Ron Fearing of electrical engineering and computer sciences, who’s working on robot bugs that can traverse dirt, rocks and leaves in zones deemed too dangerous for humans to tread. He’s also helping design tiny wings and diminutive, legged vehicles that will run and fly. http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm?Action=93&Page=332 Old mouse, new tricksAlas. Elderly mice, like elderly humans, lose the ability to repair their damaged muscles. But Berkeley bioengineers reversed the decline by identifying—and successfully manipulating—key regulatory pathways that control how adult stem cells heal tissue. By tweaking the molecular paths, the scientists coerced muscle tissue into rejuvenating itself, much as it would in a teenager. The research, led by bioengineering assistant professor Irina Conboy and conducted by researchers Morgan Carlson and Michael Hsu, was published in June by Nature. The finding brings hope of new treatments for age-related diseases in humans and eliminates the ethical concerns associated with embryonic stem cells. http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/06/16_stemcell.shtml The better to see you, my dearPeek-a-boo, I see you. That’s right, even with your eyes covered, a new facial-recognition system developed by research engineer Allen Yang of electrical engineering and computer sciences could still pick out your visage. Current methods of face recognition, which use algorithms that analyze specific features and require high-resolution pictures, can be fooled by disguises and are successful 65 percent of the time at best. Yang’s new algorithm uses a mathematical technique called sparse representation to match randomly selected pixels from anywhere on the image, and it boasts an accuracy rate of 90 to 95 percent. News of Yang’s software was announced in Wired magazine. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/new_face_recognition The InvisiblesInvisibility cloaks might not be pure magic after all. For such a garment to work, a material would need to shield what’s inside by making light flow around it. Now, in papers published online in Nature and Science, mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang and team describe two different “metamaterials” they built that do just that. The materials are fabricated from a fishnet-like film woven from 21 alternating layers of silver and magnesium fluoride and an embedded aluminum oxide sheet with 60-nanometer-thick silver wires. Both metals bend light in the opposite direction by interacting with its electric and magnetic fields. http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/08/11_light.shtml Smile! You're on candid cameraGreen jays and other subtropical birds straying well north of their natural breeding range best learn to say “cheese.” Scientists at the Welder Wildlife Refuge in southern Texas, where the jays recently showed up, have teamed with Professor Ken Goldberg on the CONE (Collaborative Observatory for Natural Environments)-Welder project, a Web-accessible robotic camera positioned on refuge feeding stations that lets ornithologists and Internet users study and snap photos of feathered visitors. The data will help scientists determine whether out-of-the-ordinary sightings are proof of climate change. Goldberg, of industrial engineering and operations research and electrical engineering and computer sciences, developed a similar robotic camera in 2006 with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to hunt for the ivory-billed woodpecker in eastern Arkansas. http://cone.berkeley.edu Contents |
