From The School of Engineering and Applied Science At Yale University: “Very small pores make a big difference in filtering technology”

2.6.24

Nanoporous membranes have been shown to be valuable tools for filtering out impurities from water and numerous other applications. However, there’s still much work to be done in perfecting their designs. Recently, the lab of Prof. Amir Haji-Akbari has demonstrated that exactly where the nanosized holes are placed on the membrane can make a big difference. The results are in ACS Nano.

In recent years, nanoporous membranes made from graphene, polymers, silicon and other materials have been used successfully for separating gas, desalinating water, virus filtration, power generation, gas storage, and drug delivery. However, creating membranes that let all the right molecules pass through while keeping the undesired ones out has proven tricky.

For desalinating water, for instance, it’s crucial that the membrane has a high permeability for water while sufficiently blocking small ionic and molecular solutes, and other impurities. But researchers have found that enhancing the permeability of a membrane often compromises its selectivity, and vice versa.

One promising approach is to optimize the chemistry and geometry of isolated nanopores to achieve the desired permeability and selectivity, and place as many of those pores as possible within a nanoporous membrane. Exactly how neighboring pores affect each other, though, is unclear. At the nanoscale, molecules interacting with pore walls can exhibit behaviors that defy conventional theories. The Haji-Akbari lab explored whether they could design innovative membrane systems with increased precision and efficiency by fine-tuning the nanopores.

Hexagonal lattice. Yale SEAS.

Honeycomb lattice. Yale SEAS.

With computer simulations, Haji-Akbari’s research team found that nanoscale proximity between pores can detrimentally affect water permeability and salt rejection. Specifically, they created simulations of membranes with varying patterns of pore placement, including a hexagonal lattice and a honeycomb lattice. What they found was that the hexagonal pattern, which allowed for more distance between pores, had a greater permeability/selectivity performance than the membrane with the honeycomb pattern.

[Looking at both images, one can see hexagon formations in both images, so the hexagonal lattice needs to be renamed.]

These effects deviate from established theories, Haji-Akbari said.

“This assumption that the pore resistance is independent of the proximity of the pore is not correct,” said Haji-Akbari, assistant professor of chemical & environmental engineering. “Clearly, it depends on proximity.”

Their findings shed insight on how these effects accelerate the movements of certain ions through membranes while causing other ions to decelerate. Further, it can inform better designs of nanoporous membranes for enhanced separation processes such as water desalination and other applications.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply” at the bottom of the post.

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Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science Daniel L Malone Engineering Center.

The School of Engineering & Applied Science is the engineering school of Yale University. When the first professor of civil engineering was hired in 1852, a Yale School of Engineering was established within the Yale Scientific School, and in 1932 the engineering faculty organized as a separate, constituent school of the university. The school currently offers undergraduate and graduate classes and degrees in electrical engineering, chemical engineering, computer science, applied physics, environmental engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical engineering and materials science.

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The Collegiate School was renamed Yale College in 1718 to honor the school’s largest private benefactor for the first century of its existence, Elihu Yale. Yale University is consistently ranked as one of the top universities and is considered one of the most prestigious in the nation.

Chartered by Connecticut Colony, the Collegiate School was established in 1701 by clergy to educate Congregational ministers before moving to New Haven in 1716. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale’s faculty and student populations grew after 1890 with rapid expansion of the physical campus and scientific research.

Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and twelve professional schools. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school’s faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, Connecticut, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Students compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League.

A number of Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, Abel Prize laureates, and Turing award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including U.S. Presidents, U.S. Supreme Court Justices, a number of living billionaires, and many heads of state. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, many MacArthur Fellows, Rhodes Scholars, Marshall Scholars, and Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university.

Research

Yale is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”.

Yale’s faculty include a number of members of the National Academy of Sciences , the National Academy of Engineering and members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League.

Yale’s English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the Department of Comparative Literature from the late seventies to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called “Yale School”. These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale’s history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C. Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale’s Music School and Department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th century. The Journal of Music Theory was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.

In addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of a large number of postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.

Notable alumni

Over its history, Yale has produced many distinguished alumni in a variety of fields, ranging from the public to private sector. Around 71% of undergraduates join the workforce, while the next largest majority of 16.6% go on to attend graduate or professional schools. Yale graduates have been recipients of Rhodes Scholarships, Marshall Scholarships, Truman Scholarships, Churchill Scholarships, and Mitchell Scholarships. The university is also a large producer of Fulbright Scholars, and has produced many MacArthur Fellows. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ranked Yale highly among research institutions producing the most Fulbright Scholars.

At Yale, one of the most popular undergraduate majors among Juniors and Seniors is political science, with many students going on to serve careers in government and politics. Former presidents who attended Yale for undergrad include William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush while former presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton attended Yale Law School. Former vice-president and influential antebellum era politician John C. Calhoun also graduated from Yale. Former world leaders include Italian prime minister Mario Monti, Turkish prime minister Tansu Çiller, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president José Paciano Laurel, Latvian president Valdis Zatlers, Taiwanese premier Jiang Yi-huah, and Malawian president Peter Mutharika, among others. Prominent royals who graduated are Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, and Olympia Bonaparte, Princess Napoléon.

Yale alumni have had considerable presence in U.S. government in all three branches. On the U.S. Supreme Court, a number of justices have been Yale alumni, including Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Numerous Yale alumni have been U.S. Senators, including current Senators Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Ben Sasse, and Sheldon Whitehouse. Current and former cabinet members include Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin, Nicholas F. Brady, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen; U.S. Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach, John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi; and many others. Peace Corps founder and American diplomat Sargent Shriver and public official and urban planner Robert Moses are Yale alumni.

Yale has produced numerous award-winning authors and influential writers, like Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Sinclair Lewis and Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Vincent Benét, Thornton Wilder, Doug Wright, and David McCullough. Academy Award winning actors, actresses, and directors include Jodie Foster, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Lupita Nyong’o, Oliver Stone, and Frances McDormand. Alumni from Yale have also made notable contributions to both music and the arts. Leading American composer from the 20th century Charles Ives, Broadway composer Cole Porter, Grammy award winner David Lang, and award-winning jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer all hail from Yale. Hugo Boss Prize winner Matthew Barney, famed American sculptor Richard Serra, President Barack Obama presidential portrait painter Kehinde Wiley, MacArthur Fellow and contemporary artist Sarah Sze, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and National Medal of Arts photorealist painter Chuck Close all graduated from Yale. Additional alumni include architect and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Maya Lin, Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster, and Gateway Arch designer Eero Saarinen. Journalists and pundits include Dick Cavett, Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Fareed Zakaria.

In business, Yale has had numerous alumni and former students go on to become founders of influential business, like William Boeing (Boeing, United Airlines), Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (Time Magazine), Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone Group), Frederick W. Smith (FedEx), Juan Trippe (Pan Am), Harold Stanley (Morgan Stanley), Bing Gordon (Electronic Arts), and Ben Silbermann (Pinterest). Other business people from Yale include former chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings Edward Lampert, former Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes, former PepsiCo chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi, sports agent Donald Dell, and investor/philanthropist Sir John Templeton,

Yale alumni distinguished in academia include literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates, economists Irving Fischer, Mahbub ul Haq, and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Ernest Lawrence and Murray Gell-Mann; Fields Medalist John G. Thompson; Human Genome Project leader and National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins; brain surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing; pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper; influential mathematician and chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs; National Women’s Hall of Fame inductee and biochemist Florence B. Seibert; Turing Award recipient Ron Rivest; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate John B. Goodenough; lexicographer Noah Webster; and theologians Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold Niebuhr.

In the sporting arena, Yale alumni include baseball players Ron Darling and Craig Breslow and baseball executives Theo Epstein and George Weiss; football players Calvin Hill, Gary Fenick, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and “the Father of American Football” Walter Camp; ice hockey players Chris Higgins and Olympian Helen Resor; Olympic figure skaters Sarah Hughes and Nathan Chen; nine-time U.S. Squash men’s champion Julian Illingworth; Olympic swimmer Don Schollander; Olympic rowers Josh West and Rusty Wailes; Olympic sailor Stuart McNay; Olympic runner Frank Shorter; and others.

From The School of Engineering and Applied Science At Yale University: “Shaping the Urban Landscape – New Course Drives the Future of Smart City Innovation”

Yale SEAS

From The School of Engineering and Applied Science

Yale University

1.9.24

Credit: Yale SEAS.

The Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science has launched a new, forward-looking course, Smart City Engineering with IoT (ENAS 800), in response to the burgeoning urbanization trends in the United States and around the globe. With the urban population in the U.S. projected to reach 89% by 2050 and urban areas contributing significantly to the national GDP, the course aims to provide students with an understanding of the technological advancements driving the evolution of ‘smart cities.’

The course is the creation of Andrei Khurshudov, mechanical engineering & materials science lecturer and Director, IoT Analytics and Artificial Intelligence at Caterpillar Inc., and focuses on how smart cities use technology for data collection from various sources, including people, devices, and infrastructure, to facilitate informed decision-making and control. It offers a comprehensive study of the technologies shaping modern and future smart cities, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, Cloud and Edge computing, sensors, and interconnected IoT devices.

A unique aspect of this course is the requirement for students to write a thesis titled ‘Smart City New Haven 2034.’ This project encourages students to apply their knowledge and creativity to propose innovative solutions in key areas such as smart roads, intelligent traffic control, effective parking management, environmental sensors, e-governance, smart medicine, surveillance and safety, and privacy and data collection.

The course is designed for both graduate and undergraduate students, providing an overview of the smart city concept, its strengths, weaknesses, and its impact on society, including personal privacy concerns.

With ‘Smart City New Haven 2034,’ Yale Engineering continues its tradition of pioneering education that responds to and shapes the world’s evolving challenges and opportunities.

The student-composed thesis will be presented to the City of New Haven Mayor’s Office at the end of the semester. This result is expected to provide valuable insights and forward-looking recommendations, showcasing the potential contributions of Yale students in shaping and impacting the future of urban living.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply” at the bottom of the post.

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science is the engineering school of Yale University. When the first professor of civil engineering was hired in 1852, a Yale School of Engineering was established within the Yale Scientific School, and in 1932 the engineering faculty organized as a separate, constituent school of the university. The school currently offers undergraduate and graduate classes and degrees in electrical engineering, chemical engineering, computer science, applied physics, environmental engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical engineering and materials science.

Research

Yale is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”.

Notable alumni

From The School of Engineering and Applied Science At Yale University: “Upending a decades-long theory of reverse osmosis water desalination”

Yale SEAS

From The School of Engineering and Applied Science

Yale University

4.14.23

The process of reverse osmosis has proven to be the state-of-the-art method for removing salt from seawater and increasing access to clean water. Other applications include wastewater treatment and energy production.

Now a team of researchers reveal in a new study that the standard explanation for how reverse osmosis works — one that has been accepted for more than five decades — is fundamentally wrong. In the process, the researchers offer an alternate theory. Besides correcting the record, these insights could lead to more effective uses of reverse osmosis. The results of the study, led by the lab of Prof. Menachem Elimelech, are published in Science Advances [below].

Fig. 1. MD simulation of water transport through a polyamide membrane.
(A) Setup of molecular simulation for water transport through a polyamide membrane. The polyamide membrane (purple) with a thickness of 10 nm is placed between two graphene sheet pistons (orange). The water molecules are visualized as a light blue transparent surface. Hydraulic pressure (P1) is applied to the left graphene sheet during the simulation, and a standard atmospheric pressure (P2) is applied on the right graphene sheet, resulting in a pressure difference ΔP = P1 − P2. (B) Mean squared displacement of water molecules inside the hydrated polyamide membrane (red line) compared with bulk diffusion (blue line). (C) Water flux through the polyamide membrane as a function of applied pressure. The dashed red line is calculated on the basis of the SD model (details are provided in the Supplementary Materials). (D) Pressure distribution, (E) number of water molecules, and (F) pore volume along z-direction through the polyamide membrane under two pressure differences across the membrane (300 and 600 bar).

Reverse osmosis — a technology first put to use in the 1960s — removes salt and impurities from water by passing the water through a semipermeable membrane, which allows the water to go through while blocking the contaminants. To explain exactly how it works, researchers have used the theory of solution-diffusion. This theory assumes that the water molecules dissolve and diffuse through the membrane by way of their concentration gradient — that is, the molecules move from areas of high concentration to wherever there are fewer molecules. Although this theory has been widely accepted for more than 50 years and is even taught in textbooks, Elimelech said he has long had questions about it.

“Some of the assumptions do not make any sense,” said Elimelech, the Sterling Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. For instance, he said, the theory is based in part on the idea that pressure across the membrane is constant. “Whenever you have water flow through any porous material, there is always a pressure drop.”

To get a better sense of the physics involved, the research team — which included scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Texas Tech University — did a combination of experiments and computer simulations. Specifically, they used simulations of the molecules’ movements, which revealed that water transport is driven by changes in pressure within the membranes. They further show that water molecules travel as clusters through a network of pores in the membrane. This contrasts with the conventional theory based on the solution-diffusion model, which assumes that the water molecules separate from each other in the membranes. Supplementing the computer simulations, the scientists performed experiments that allowed them to observe water passing through membranes. The results showed that the way that water permeates the membrane depends on the membrane pore size, the size of the water molecules, and viscosity of the water. This was also inconsistent with the solution-diffusion model.

Overall, the simulations and experiments demonstrated that, rather than being driven by the concentration of molecules, reverse osmosis is driven by pressure changes within the membrane.

Because previous measurements related to reverse osmosis were based on a faulty understanding of it on a molecular level, Elimelech said, many attempts to advance the field have met a dead end. Having a more accurate theory to explain reverse osmosis, he said, could open the way toward developing more effective materials and techniques to improve the process.

Other authors of the study include Li Wang, Mohammad Heiranian, Hanqing Fan (all from Yale); Jinlong He and Ying Li from University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Lianfa Song from Texas Tech University.

This work was supported by the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Advanced Manufacturing Office, under Funding Opportunity Announcement Number DE-FOA-0001905 through a subcontract to Yale University and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Science Advances

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science Daniel L Malone Engineering Center
The Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science is the engineering school of Yale University. When the first professor of civil engineering was hired in 1852, a Yale School of Engineering was established within the Yale Scientific School, and in 1932 the engineering faculty organized as a separate, constituent school of the university. The school currently offers undergraduate and graduate classes and degrees in electrical engineering, chemical engineering, computer science, applied physics, environmental engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical engineering and materials science.

Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and twelve professional schools. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school’s faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, Connecticut, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of June 2020, the university’s endowment was valued at $31.1 billion, the second largest of any educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Students compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League.

As of October 2020, 65 Nobel laureates, five Fields Medalists, four Abel Prize laureates, and three Turing award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires, and many heads of state. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 78 MacArthur Fellows, 252 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, and nine Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university.

Research

Yale is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. According to the National Science Foundation, Yale spent $990 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 15th in the nation.

Yale’s faculty include 61 members of the National Academy of Sciences , 7 members of the National Academy of Engineering and 49 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League.

In addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of roughly 1200 Postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.

Notable alumni

Over its history, Yale has produced many distinguished alumni in a variety of fields, ranging from the public to private sector. According to 2020 data, around 71% of undergraduates join the workforce, while the next largest majority of 16.6% go on to attend graduate or professional schools. Yale graduates have been recipients of 252 Rhodes Scholarships, 123 Marshall Scholarships, 67 Truman Scholarships, 21 Churchill Scholarships, and 9 Mitchell Scholarships. The university is also the second largest producer of Fulbright Scholars, with a total of 1,199 in its history and has produced 89 MacArthur Fellows. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ranked Yale fifth among research institutions producing the most 2020–2021 Fulbright Scholars. Additionally, 31 living billionaires are Yale alumni.

Yale alumni have had considerable presence in U.S. government in all three branches. On the U.S. Supreme Court, 19 justices have been Yale alumni, including current Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Numerous Yale alumni have been U.S. Senators, including current Senators Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Ben Sasse, and Sheldon Whitehouse. Current and former cabinet members include Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin, Nicholas F. Brady, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen; U.S. Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach, John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi; and many others. Peace Corps founder and American diplomat Sargent Shriver and public official and urban planner Robert Moses are Yale alumni.

From UC Riverside (US) : “Electromagnetic levitation whips nanomaterials into shape”

From UC Riverside (US)

May 10, 2021
Holly Ober
Senior Public Information Officer
(951) 827-5893
holly.ober@ucr.edu

Image showing the stringlike particles formed by iron and nickel and the more globular clusters formed by copper. Credit: Abbaschian, Zachariah, et. al. 2021.

In order for metal nanomaterials to deliver on their promise to energy and electronics, they need to shape up — literally.

To deliver reliable mechanical and electric properties, nanomaterials must have consistent, predictable shapes and surfaces, as well as scalable production techniques. UC Riverside engineers are solving this problem by vaporizing metals within a magnetic field to direct the reassembly of metal atoms into predictable shapes. The research is published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

Nanomaterials, which are made of particles measuring 1-100 nanometers, are typically created within a liquid matrix, which is expensive for bulk production applications, and in many cases cannot make pure metals, such as aluminum or magnesium. More economical production techniques typically involve vapor phase approaches to create a cloud of particles condensing from the vapor. These suffer from a lack of control.

Reza Abbaschian, a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering; and Michael Zachariah, a distinguished professor of chemical and environmental engineering at UC Riverside’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering; joined forces to create nanomaterials from iron, copper, and nickel in a gas phase. They placed solid metal within a powerful electromagnetic levitation coil to heat the metal beyond its melting point, vaporizing it. The metal droplets levitated in the gas within the coil and moved in directions determined by their inherent reactions to magnetic forces. When the droplets bonded, they did so in an orderly fashion that the researchers learned they could predict based on the type of metal and how and where they applied the magnetic fields.

Iron and nickel nanoparticles formed string-like aggregates while copper nanoparticles formed globular clusters. When deposited on a carbon film, iron and nickel aggregates gave the film a porous surface, while carbon aggregates gave it a more compact, solid surface. The qualities of the materials on the carbon film mirrored at larger scale the properties of each type of nanoparticle.

Because the field can be thought of as an “add-on,” this approach could be applied to any vapor-phase nanoparticle generation source where the structure is important, such as fillers used in polymer composites for magnetic shielding, or to improve electrical or mechanical properties.

“This ‘field directed’ approach enables one to manipulate the assembly process and change the architecture of the resulting particles from high fractal dimension objects to lower dimension string-like structures. The field strength can be used to manipulate the extent of this arrangement,” Zachariah said.

Abbaschian and Zachariah were joined in the research by Pankaj Ghildiyal, Prithwish Biswas, Steven Herrera, George W. Mulholland, and Yong Yang.

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of California, Riverside (US) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the 10 campuses of the University of California (US) system. The main campus sits on 1,900 acres (769 ha) in a suburban district of Riverside with a branch campus of 20 acres (8 ha) in Palm Desert. In 1907, the predecessor to UC Riverside was founded as the UC Citrus Experiment Station, Riverside which pioneered research in biological pest control and the use of growth regulators responsible for extending the citrus growing season in California from four to nine months. Some of the world’s most important research collections on citrus diversity and entomology, as well as science fiction and photography, are located at Riverside.

UC Riverside’s undergraduate College of Letters and Science opened in 1954. The Regents of the University of California declared UC Riverside a general campus of the system in 1959, and graduate students were admitted in 1961. To accommodate an enrollment of 21,000 students by 2015, more than $730 million has been invested in new construction projects since 1999. Preliminary accreditation of the UC Riverside School of Medicine was granted in October 2012 and the first class of 50 students was enrolled in August 2013. It is the first new research-based public medical school in 40 years.

UC Riverside is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity.” The 2019 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings places UC Riverside tied for 35th among top public universities and ranks 85th nationwide. Over 27 of UC Riverside’s academic programs, including the Graduate School of Education and the Bourns College of Engineering, are highly ranked nationally based on peer assessment, student selectivity, financial resources, and other factors. Washington Monthly ranked UC Riverside 2nd in the United States in terms of social mobility, research and community service, while U.S. News ranks UC Riverside as the fifth most ethnically diverse and, by the number of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants (42 percent), the 15th most economically diverse student body in the nation. Over 70% of all UC Riverside students graduate within six years without regard to economic disparity. UC Riverside’s extensive outreach and retention programs have contributed to its reputation as a “university of choice” for minority students. In 2005, UCR became the first public university campus in the nation to offer a gender-neutral housing option.UC Riverside’s sports teams are known as the Highlanders and play in the Big West Conference of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Their nickname was inspired by the high altitude of the campus, which lies on the foothills of Box Springs Mountain. The UC Riverside women’s basketball team won back-to-back Big West championships in 2006 and 2007. In 2007, the men’s baseball team won its first conference championship and advanced to the regionals for the second time since the university moved to Division I in 2001.

History

At the turn of the 20th century, Southern California was a major producer of citrus, the region’s primary agricultural export. The industry developed from the country’s first navel orange trees, planted in Riverside in 1873. Lobbied by the citrus industry, the UC Regents established the UC Citrus Experiment Station (CES) on February 14, 1907, on 23 acres (9 ha) of land on the east slope of Mount Rubidoux in Riverside. The station conducted experiments in fertilization, irrigation and crop improvement. In 1917, the station was moved to a larger site, 475 acres (192 ha) near Box Springs Mountain.

The 1944 passage of the GI Bill during World War II set in motion a rise in college enrollments that necessitated an expansion of the state university system in California. A local group of citrus growers and civic leaders, including many UC Berkeley(US) alumni, lobbied aggressively for a UC-administered liberal arts college next to the CES. State Senator Nelson S. Dilworth authored Senate Bill 512 (1949) which former Assemblyman Philip L. Boyd and Assemblyman John Babbage (both of Riverside) were instrumental in shepherding through the State Legislature. Governor Earl Warren signed the bill in 1949, allocating $2 million for initial campus construction.

Gordon S. Watkins, dean of the College of Letters and Science at University of California at Los Angeles(US), became the first provost of the new college at Riverside. Initially conceived of as a small college devoted to the liberal arts, he ordered the campus built for a maximum of 1,500 students and recruited many young junior faculty to fill teaching positions. He presided at its opening with 65 faculty and 127 students on February 14, 1954, remarking, “Never have so few been taught by so many.”

UC Riverside’s enrollment exceeded 1,000 students by the time Clark Kerr became president of the University of California(US) system in 1958. Anticipating a “tidal wave” in enrollment growth required by the baby boom generation, Kerr developed the California Master Plan for Higher Education and the Regents designated Riverside a general university campus in 1959. UC Riverside’s first chancellor, Herman Theodore Spieth, oversaw the beginnings of the school’s transition to a full university and its expansion to a capacity of 5,000 students. UC Riverside’s second chancellor, Ivan Hinderaker led the campus through the era of the free speech movement and kept student protests peaceful in Riverside. According to a 1998 interview with Hinderaker, the city of Riverside received negative press coverage for smog after the mayor asked Governor Ronald Reagan to declare the South Coast Air Basin a disaster area in 1971; subsequent student enrollment declined by up to 25% through 1979. Hinderaker’s development of innovative programs in business administration and biomedical sciences created incentive for enough students to enroll at Riverside to keep the campus open.

In the 1990s, the UC Riverside experienced a new surge of enrollment applications, now known as “Tidal Wave II”. The Regents targeted UC Riverside for an annual growth rate of 6.3%, the fastest in the UC system, and anticipated 19,900 students at UC Riverside by 2010. By 1995, African American, American Indian, and Latino student enrollments accounted for 30% of the UC Riverside student body, the highest proportion of any UC campus at the time. The 1997 implementation of Proposition 209—which banned the use of affirmative action by state agencies—reduced the ethnic diversity at the more selective UC campuses but further increased it at UC Riverside.

With UC Riverside scheduled for dramatic population growth, efforts have been made to increase its popular and academic recognition. The students voted for a fee increase to move UC Riverside athletics into NCAA Division I standing in 1998. In the 1990s, proposals were made to establish a law school, a medical school, and a school of public policy at UC Riverside, with the UC Riverside School of Medicine and the School of Public Policy becoming reality in 2012. In June 2006, UC Riverside received its largest gift, 15.5 million from two local couples, in trust towards building its medical school. The Regents formally approved UC Riverside’s medical school proposal in 2006. Upon its completion in 2013, it was the first new medical school built in California in 40 years.

Academics

As a campus of the University of California(US) system, UC Riverside is governed by a Board of Regents and administered by a president. The current president is Michael V. Drake, and the current chancellor of the university is Kim A. Wilcox. UC Riverside’s academic policies are set by its Academic Senate, a legislative body composed of all UC Riverside faculty members.

UC Riverside is organized into three academic colleges, two professional schools, and two graduate schools. UC Riverside’s liberal arts college, the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, was founded in 1954, and began accepting graduate students in 1960. The College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, founded in 1960, incorporated the CES as part of the first research-oriented institution at UC Riverside; it eventually also incorporated the natural science departments formerly associated with the liberal arts college to form its present structure in 1974. UC Riverside’s newest academic unit, the Bourns College of Engineering, was founded in 1989. Comprising the professional schools are the Graduate School of Education, founded in 1968, and the UCR School of Business, founded in 1970. These units collectively provide 81 majors and 52 minors, 48 master’s degree programs, and 42 Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programs. UC Riverside is the only UC campus to offer undergraduate degrees in creative writing and public policy and one of three UCs (along with Berkeley and Irvine) to offer an undergraduate degree in business administration. Through its Division of Biomedical Sciences, founded in 1974, UC Riverside offers the Thomas Haider medical degree program in collaboration with UCLA.[29] UC Riverside’s doctoral program in the emerging field of dance theory, founded in 1992, was the first program of its kind in the United States, and UC Riverside’s minor in lesbian, gay and bisexual studies, established in 1996, was the first undergraduate program of its kind in the UC system. A new BA program in bagpipes was inaugurated in 2007.

Research and economic impact

UC Riverside operated under a $727 million budget in fiscal year 2014–15. The state government provided $214 million, student fees accounted for $224 million and $100 million came from contracts and grants. Private support and other sources accounted for the remaining $189 million. Overall, monies spent at UC Riverside have an economic impact of nearly $1 billion in California. UC Riverside research expenditure in FY 2018 totaled $167.8 million. Total research expenditures at UC Riverside are significantly concentrated in agricultural science, accounting for 53% of total research expenditures spent by the university in 2002. Top research centers by expenditure, as measured in 2002, include the Agricultural Experiment Station; the Center for Environmental Research and Technology; the Center for Bibliographical Studies; the Air Pollution Research Center; and the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.

Throughout UC Riverside’s history, researchers have developed more than 40 new citrus varieties and invented new techniques to help the $960 million-a-year California citrus industry fight pests and diseases. In 1927, entomologists at the CES introduced two wasps from Australia as natural enemies of a major citrus pest, the citrophilus mealybug, saving growers in Orange County $1 million in annual losses. This event was pivotal in establishing biological control as a practical means of reducing pest populations. In 1963, plant physiologist Charles Coggins proved that application of gibberellic acid allows fruit to remain on citrus trees for extended periods. The ultimate result of his work, which continued through the 1980s, was the extension of the citrus-growing season in California from four to nine months. In 1980, UC Riverside released the Oroblanco grapefruit, its first patented citrus variety. Since then, the citrus breeding program has released other varieties such as the Melogold grapefruit, the Gold Nugget mandarin (or tangerine), and others that have yet to be given trademark names.

To assist entrepreneurs in developing new products, UC Riverside is a primary partner in the Riverside Regional Technology Park, which includes the City of Riverside and the County of Riverside. It also administers six reserves of the University of California Natural Reserve System. UC Riverside recently announced a partnership with China Agricultural University[中国农业大学](CN) to launch a new center in Beijing, which will study ways to respond to the country’s growing environmental issues. UC Riverside can also boast the birthplace of two name reactions in organic chemistry, the Castro-Stephens coupling and the Midland Alpine Borane Reduction..