If you want an astronaut to run your experiment alongside their many other responsibilities, keeping it simple is the key. On 25 July, an experiment that Charles Cockell had spent years planning blasted into space. A SpaceX rocket blasted off from Florida, heading to the International Space Station (ISS). It carried 18 bioreactors, each the […]
engineering
Can We Hold Back the Glaciers?
Massive geoengineering projects to hold back glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica could slow sea level rise. A major threat from climate change is rising sea levels, and much of that threat comes from glaciers melting into the oceans. By the end of the century, sea levels are predicted to be a meter higher, causing frequent […]
Kinetica Dynamics: Skyscraper stabilizer
Kinetica Dynamics may be a young start-up, but its approach to stabilizing tall buildings is based on a well-established idea.“It’s a reinvigoration of an old vibration damping technology,” says Michael Montgomery, an engineer and the company’s co-founder and chief executive. The technology, a polymer that diminishes vibration and shock, is bonded tightly to the structure […]
What can ‘frugal innovation’ do for development?
Last summer, Jessica VanderGiessen did something unusual. The bioengineering student from Santa Clara University in California, United States, spent two days travelling the rough dirt roads of West Bengal state in India, testing the drinking water in rural villages for arsenic contamination. But instead of taking water samples back to a distant lab for analysis, VanderGiessen simply put […]