houck2040/tees huggingface dataset:
however oxidative reactions can be kept in control by the action of antioxidants these compounds readily combine with ambient oxygen or donate electrons to neutralize charged radicals of the many antioxidants a molecule found in red wine called tannic acid is particularly attractive because it is also antibacterial and antiviral the researchers said these remarkable properties are due to the presence of groupings of atoms called polyphenols within tannic acids molecular structure in past studies antioxidants were blended into synthetic mats made by mixing a polymer and antioxidants together then flattening them into a sheet but these mats have lower functionality because the surface area for antioxidant activity is limited to increase the surface area for antioxidant activity the researchers created an antioxidant mesh made with ultrafine fibers of polymer and tannic acid thus each strand of this mesh-like mat could contribute to antioxidant activity we have created antioxidant mats with a high surface area robust mechanical properties and the ability to provide long-term antioxidant protection said gaikwad also the release of tannic acid is on-demand the hydrogen bonds hold the antioxidants in the material until there is an external stimulus like ph these properties make our mats suitable for diverse applications from bandages for wound-healing to inner linings of containers for food storage this work is also supported by the national science foundation
a typical nuclear reactor uses only a small fraction of its fuel rod to produce power before the energy-generating reaction naturally terminates what is left behind is an assortment of radioactive elements including unused fuel that are disposed of as nuclear waste in the united states although certain elements recycled from waste can be used for powering newer generations of nuclear reactors extracting leftover fuel in a way that prevents possible misuse is an ongoing challenge texas a&m engineering researchers have devised a simple proliferation-resistant approach for separating out different components of nuclear waste the prescribed one-step chemical reaction described in the february issue of the journal industrial & engineering chemistry research resulted in the formation of crystals containing all of the leftover nuclear fuel elements distributed uniformly the simplicity of their recycling approach also makes the translation from lab bench to industry feasible
our recycling strategy can be easily integrated into a chemical flow sheet for industrial-scale implementation said dr jonathan burns research scientist in the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear engineering and science center in other words the reaction can be repeated multiple times to maximize fuel recovery yield and further reduce radioactive nuclear waste this simplified single-step process is also proliferation-resistant since plutonium is not isolated but incorporated within the uranium crystals in addition to addressing the fuel recycling problem and reducing proliferation risk said burns our strategy will drastically reduce nuclear waste to just the fission products whose radioactivity is hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands of years
the basis of energy production in nuclear reactors is thermonuclear fission in this reaction a heavy nucleus usually uranium when hit by subatomic particles called neutrons becomes unstable and tears apart into smaller lighter elements however uranium can absorb neutrons and get progressively heavier to form elements like neptunium plutonium and americium before once again splitting and releasing energy over time these fission reactions lead to a buildup of lighter elements in the nuclear reactor but roughly half of these fission products are deemed neutron poisonsthey also absorb neutrons just like used nuclear fuel leaving fewer for the fission reaction eventually bringing the energy production to a halt hence used fuel rods contain fission products leftover uranium and small quantities of plutonium neptunium and americium currently these items are collectively considered nuclear waste in the united states and are destined to be stowed away in underground repositories because of their high radioactivity
the texas a&m university system national laboratories office (nlo) and los alamos national laboratory have formed a collaborative research effort to make extremely large data sets indexable and more easily searchable we are excited to be partnering with our colleagues at texas a&m on this important and potentially game-changing research this collaboration leverages extreme strengths in data management research from both our organizations said gary grider division leader for high performance computing at los alamos fine-grain annotation of scientific data sets composed of trillions of mesh cells or particles is critical in making extremely large data sets indexable and more easily searchable typical multi-dimensional indexes analyze only the most interesting queries and typically require multiple passes over extremely large data sets and multiple days of dedicated processing time we expect this collaboration to lead to the development of novel storage systems that will address high performance computing needs at the national labs said narasimha reddy jw runyon professor in electrical and computer engineering in the college of engineering at texas a&m university an efficient and resilient key-value interface with hardware support to accelerate fundamental operations offers significant promise to make the enormous data sets generated by large-scale multi-physics simulations as well as machine learning model training and inferencing available for efficient analysis and provides scientists with powerful tools for both analyzing and understanding extreme-scale simulation data sets further it protects data for long-term storage and enables efficient queries for data analysis at scale fine-grained annotation of scientific data sets is critical to enabling scientists to extract insight and understanding from the massive simulations we perform at los alamos the key-value research we are engaged in with texas a&m is a major element in unlocking that insight and accelerating the pace of scientific discovery said brad settlemyer senior scientist in the high-performance computing design group at los alamos this collaboration focuses on exploiting potential upcoming key-value flash devices to enable much more rapid analysis and insights of large data sets it is based on recent work by texas a&m in the area of hardware-assisted erasure protection for key-value stores it is an excellent demonstration of utilization of processing power near/on storage devices to provide additional functionality and more powerful interfaces to applications this collaboration is jointly sponsored by the efficient mission centric computing consortium (emc3) and the nlo in this consortium high performance computing (hpc) consumer organizations researchers and system developers can collaborate together to attack this challenging problem of higher efficiency extreme scale mission-centric computing the hpc consumer base along with national and international hpc component and system developers are encouraged to join emc3 visit lanl's emc3 website for news and additional information about these efforts
dr le xie a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and assistant director of energy digitization at the texas a&m energy institute is working with his research team to collaborate on a project to release a first-of-its-kind cross-domain open-access data hub to track the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on electricity markets in the usthe coronavirus disease-electricity market data aggregation+ (covid-emda+) integrates cross domains of data including the electricity sector public health covid-19 case data weather data cellular phone location data and satellite imaging data into a compact format and is updated daily to capture the evolving dynamicsthis data hub provides a unique opportunity for a data-driven scientific approach to tracking and measuring the short-run impacts of covid-19 on the power sector and it also supports other interdisciplinary research xie saidthere is still uncertainty on how the gradual reopening of states will impact the electricity sector due to social distancing protocols and many americans working from home there has been a significant change in electricity consumption the covid-emda+ tool allows xie's research team to analyze the scope of this change and better assess how to move forwardthe goal of this research is to provide a timely open-access data resource accompanied by rigorous analysis to aid the power community in making scientifically informed decisions in the current moment
the texas a&m energy institute pursues and supports new approaches for multi-disciplinary energy research education and external partnerships these approaches cross departmental and college boundaries and address all facets of the energy landscape that naturally connect engineering sciences technologies economics law and policy decisions
the united states army research laboratory is lending support to a texas a&m university research project investigating potential improvement of ballistic performance of armor materials the project led by dr justin wilkerson assistant professor and james j cain 51 faculty fellow ii in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering focuses on identifying what damaging effects could be caused by particular flaws known as vacancies in the atomic structure of aluminum wilkersons research paper on the topic evolving structure-property relationships in metals with nonequilibrium concentrations of vacancies was recently featured on the cover of the journal of applied physics the paper was co-authored with wilkersons former postdoctoral advisee dr sara adibi although similar research has been conducted by dr celia reina and coworkers from the california institute of technology wilkersons study delves deeper into the subject by calculating the effect of changes due to vacancies over time on the materials mechanical properties mechanical behavior of these materials could not be understood via the lattice kinetic monte carlo simulations alone which was what had been done prior to this said wilkerson to take the next step forward we made use of supercomputing facilities to conduct a suite of large-scale molecular dynamics simulations
atoms are arranged in a highly ordered pattern referred to as a crystal lattice and if an atom is missing from a perfect lattice structure this defect is called a vacancy at high temperatures the vacancies can come together forming vacancy clusters wilkerson said a large concentration of vacancies in a material may be generated under shock loading which could impact ballistic performance metrics including spall strength the effect of vacancies on the mechanical behavior of materials on short timescales such as microseconds has remained largely unexplored said wilkerson even on such short timescales we find that vacancies may also play a significant role in the high-temperature failure of metals subject to very high tensile pressures a prospective idea from the findings is that it may be possible to use this knowledge to improve the ballistic performance of next-generation armors for the us army now that we better understand the importance of this mechanism to ballistic performance the next step is to develop material processing strategies that slow vacancy production rates in shocked materials said wilkerson
a team of researchers led by the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is looking to help scientists combat the secondary effects of covid-19 using artificial intelligence (ai) by participating in an open challenge called ai cures the team is led by dr shuiwang ji principal investigator and associate professor in the department and includes students lei cai meng liu and limei wang hosted by the abdul latif jameel clinic for machine learning at the massachusetts institute of technology ai cures aims to contribute to the development of new antibiotics to fight emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria through machine learning in a recent study published in the lancet scientists observed that a large number of nonsurviving adult patients who were severely ill with covid-19 developed a secondary bacterial pneumonia infection due to significantly depleted lung function new antibiotics are desperately needed to fight the emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria that causes bacterial pneumonia but developing them can take several years and cost more than $1 billion the participating teams have been tasked with developing an ai model that can predict if a molecule will be positive or negative for bacterial pneumonia and then be used to identify new antibiotics jis team proposes using advanced deep learning and machine learning methods for graph neural networks to achieve this covid-19 is one of the most contagious pandemics weve experienced and it has resulted in a great loss of human life said ji developing new drugs can be an effective way to control the virus and researchers from all over the world have gotten involved to achieve this ai cures provides a platform that brings researchers together to develop ai tools for drug discovery and as computer scientists it is our honor to contribute to the development of a new drug our lab has accumulated many technologies to analyze the properties of molecules which can be helpful to this project
while data specific to covid-19 is still limited today the abdul latif jameel clinic for machine learning has released a new screening dataset and is reporting current results the ai cures challenge started in march and dr shuiwang ji's research team began work on the project in may their results are currently ranked first on the leaderboard
the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) is a first-of-its-kind multi-disciplinary workforce education institution and biopharmaceutical manufacturing center located at texas a&m university in college station texas the nctms workforce development mission is to provide education training and outreach programs to produce a highly skilled workforce for the vital us and global pharmaceutical industry
the federal government has reserved a high-tech biomanufacturing facility here for mass production of a covid-19 vaccine as part of a program discussed monday by president donald trump the new federal task order is reserving production capacity at one of the college station facilities to mass manufacture vaccines through the end of 2021 the order which supports operation warp speed is between the federal government and the texas a&m university systems center for innovation in advanced development and manufacturing (ciadm) the ciadm was developed in response to the h1n1 influenza pandemic as a subcontractor to the texas a&m system fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies texas (fdb) owns and operates three facilities built through the ciadm program they can be tapped for emergency use by the federal government fdb is slated to use the reserved capacity at one of the fdb facilities for the covid-19 vaccine candidate of novavax inc nvx-cov2373 valued at about $265 million the task order also will accelerate a planned expansion at the fdb facility by helping fund new equipment for use in the current pandemic and in future emergencies the texas a&m system is ready to save lives and help protect the country said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system this whole project is a triple win its a win for the texas a&m system its a win for fdb its a win for the nation
operation warp speed aims to begin delivering millions of doses of covid-19 vaccines by the end of the year if the us food and drug administration determines candidates are safe and effective novavax is being funded by the government to complete late-stage clinical development including a pivotal phase 3 clinical trial; establish large-scale manufacturing; and deliver 100 million doses of nvx‑cov2373 novavaxs covid-19 vaccine candidate the fdb plant in north carolina where president trump visited monday is already producing the novavax vaccine candidate for its clinical trials fdb is slated to transfer the manufacturing process to college station in late 2020 and start bulk production in early 2021 fdbs facilities and workforce in texas can accommodate multiple vaccine technologies and help expedite the governments large-scale manufacturing efforts the manufacturing preparation is being done in parallel with ongoing clinical trials and the fdas safety and effectiveness approval process fdb calls the facility reserved for novavax vaccine production its flexible biomanufacturing facility fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies is committed to be a partner for life and deliver these much-needed covid-19 vaccine doses said dr gerry farrell chief operating officer of fdb in texas we are ready to move swiftly to deliver on multiple vaccine candidates as directed by the us government the texas a&m systems ciadm was one of three centers developed in the us in response to the h1n1 influenza pandemic by the biomedical advanced research and development agency (barda) part of the office of the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the us department of health and human services the task order is an amendment to the ciadm contract between the system and barda this validates why the ciadm program was established said dr w jay treat texas a&ms chief manufacturing officer for the ciadm we have state-of-the-art facilities ready to make millions doses of vaccines to meet the critical needs of our citizens
high blood pressure is the single biggest risk factor for heart disease stroke and other health problems the only way to know if youre at risk is to have it checked often while one in three american adults has high blood pressure about 20% of people are unaware that they have it because it is largely symptomless researchers at texas a&m university hope to help remedy this with a wrist-worn system that monitors blood pressure during sleepdr roozbeh jafari a professor in the biomedical engineering computer science and engineering and electrical and computer engineering departments and his team have received a $36 million grant from the national institutes of health (nih) to create a system a user can wear all night while they sleep for constant readings blood pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of arteries as the heart pumps blood high blood pressure also referred to as hypertension is when that force is too high and begins harming the body if left untreated it will eventually cause damage to the heart and blood vessels regular blood pressure monitoring systems use a mercury-based (or the digital equivalent) inflatable cuff-based sphygmomanometer many factors can affect blood pressure readings like caffeine stress and exertion and most people do not have theirs checked outside a doctors officethere is a significant need to understand how blood pressure fluctuates throughout the day and night said jafari nobody knows that and there's really no technology that can capture this continuouslyjafari said there is a value to measuring blood pressure continuously in the natural context of the users environment especially during sleep without being disturbed by the instrument but the nature of the current cuff device allows for only infrequent measurements and its somewhat invasive nature and associated discomfort prohibits additional nocturnal measurements the objective of this research a collaborative project with the yale school of medicine is to create an unobtrusive wrist-worn cuffless blood pressure monitor for measurement and identification of nocturnal nondipping hypertension (when theres a smaller decrease in nocturnal arterial blood pressure) the research which began initially about three years ago includes extensive validation with state-of-the-art ambulatory blood pressure monitors at nighttime in the presence of varied treatment models the research team's proposed technology will be able to provide a wealth of information to physicians help identify certain short-term dynamics and variations of blood pressure and allow effective monitoring of response to medication among other things
nighttime blood pressure is actually a really good indicator for the health of the cardiovascular system jafari said at nighttime typically the body itself shows its true behavior you and i can get stressed out we can have a relaxing time and you could be very active physically right all those specific stimuli will impact the blood pressure but at nighttime you don't have that so you're sort of having a baseline another significance of nighttime blood pressure is that you don't have a lot of movement the movements themselves introduce a significant amount of noise and challenges with respect to capturing clean signals jafari said nocturnal measurements would obviously provide additional prognostic value in identifying risks but despite these benefits no wearable noninvasive device for continuous blood pressure monitoring exists on the market simply because none have been reliable enough to be considered clinical gradethe researchers set about developing a robust and reliable blood pressure monitor that uses bioimpedance sensors (a measure of how well the body impedes electric current flow) and for the first time demonstrates clinical-grade reliability they use sensors that measure pulse-wave velocity (pwv) along with several other derivatives for cardiovascular parameters including heart rate and blood volume changes in arteries which correlate with the blood pressurethe system will incorporate a hardware design to localize the underlying vascular system of the body and focus on arterial sites for enhanced accuracy the device will include a motion sensor to take into account the users movements and the contact quality and reliability of the measurements advanced machine learning techniques leveraging both general and personalized models will be developed to convert bioimpedance measurements to blood pressureresearchers hope to validate the system and analytics in both a healthy patient cohort and a hypertensive cohort learning the impact that nocturnal nondipping hypertension and anti-hypertensive treatments have on pwv and other correlated cardiovascular and blood pressure estimatesother collaborators on the project include dr harlan krumholz and dr erica spatz yale school of medicine; dr melissa grunlan department of biomedical engineering; dr tom ferris department of industrial and systems engineering; and dr bobak mortazavi department of computer science and engineering
while jafari and his research team have been working on their device for the past three years with a previous nih grant with the new funding they will begin two new phases of the project at texas a&m where they will create novel techniques and methods will refine their prototype design and continue testing itthe next version will be fully wearable and effectively would look like a smartwatch jafari said once we have that we are going to start the evaluation of that technology on a cohort of human subjectsthe last phase of the project will be at the yale school of medicine where they will do extensive testing on hypertension patients who are on different medications eventually their hope is that after decades of relying on the inflatable cuff-based technique this new system could represent a significant change in how blood pressure is measuredwe still have more battles to fight but i think the likelihood of success at this point is very high jafari said our objective actually is to build a system that can work for anyone even somebody who has absolutely no problem with blood pressure but the ultimate objective is to enable anybody and everybody to have this kind of technology at their disposal
as the coronavirus pandemic continues to surge worldwide there is an urgent need for anything that can bring us closer to a vaccine or treatment that will protect people from future infections sars-cov-2 (also known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) is the virus that infects cells and causes the coronavirus disease in humans researchers could theoretically eliminate the threat of the coronavirus if they can discover how to prevent this virus from binding to cells in the first place preventing this binding is easier said than done but the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) has received funding from the national institute for innovation in manufacturing biopharmaceuticals (niimbl) to help find a way to do just that nctm is producing spike proteins to identify antibodies that can attach to the sars-cov-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain and prevent the virus from binding to key sites thus obstructing the virus from entering and infecting human cells there are hundreds of virus-fighting antibodies in plasma and using recombinant spike proteins is the fastest way to detect the correct ones we need to fight covid-19 said dr zivko nikolov professor in the department of biological and agricultural engineering at texas a&m university and director of nctm
nctms strategy is derived from what happened with dr kent brantly who survived ebola then donated his plasma to help others recover as well doctors and scientists identified antibodies in his blood that could recognize the ebola virus and prevent it from multiplying further in patients similarly nctm researchers are making versions of covid-19 spike proteins that can be used to measure antibody responses to the sars-cov-2 virus spike proteins in order to aid in the recombinant development of these antibodies in the future nctms spike proteins will also be useful once a covid-19 vaccination is available beyond screening convalescent plasma the spike proteins will be needed to determine if protective responses are being generated in response to the vaccination how long responses persist and if having antibodies to the spike protein provides a person with immunity such that they can safely return to the workplace without fear of reinfection said tees research scientist dr susan woodard nctm is collaborating with the army research lab (arl) whose research affiliates have been studying coronavirus spike proteins since 2013 the most promising constructs designed by arl partners have been shared with nctm to produce more proteins the proteins that nctm makes in cell culture will be provided to arl and they will work with houston methodist hospital to use the purified material in serology assays to screen donors for convalescent plasma therapy arl will also use nctms proteins to screen monoclonal antibodies that neutralize the virus the purified spike proteins are important for determining the strength of antibodies present in recovered covid-19 patients and antibodies made against the spike proteins are expected to prevent the virus from binding to and infecting human cells i am excited to scale up the effort to produce spike proteins and to deliver hundreds of milligrams of purified proteins to collaborators at the arl houston methodist hospital the us department of commerces national institute of standards and technology and niimbl nikolov added i truly believe nctm is uniquely qualified to respond to the education training and applied research needs of texas a&m university and the broader community this work was performed under financial assistance award 70nanb20h037 from the u s department of commerce national institute of standards and technology
the national center for therapeutics manufacturing is a first-of-its-kind multi-disciplinary workforce education institution and biopharmaceutical manufacturing center located at texas a&m university in college station texas the nctms workforce development mission is to provide education training and outreach programs to produce a highly skilled workforce for the vital us and global pharmaceutical industry
dr amir asadi and his team have developed a new manufacturing process for hybrid polymer composites – a vital component in the aerospace automotive marine and defense industries this new process will produce super-strong composites to be used in load-bearing mechanical components in various industry sectors across the nationasadi is an assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university and his project is funded by the national science foundationmy research is like tailoring asadi said you put fabrics together and sew them to make something out of it with the desired properties and level of performance in your mind these nanomaterials are the nanothreadscarbon fiber reinforced polymer (cfrp) composites the most commonly used in the aerospace industry are able to withstand the highest load-to-weight ratio which makes them highly desirable for aerospace and defense applications
unfortunately the current cfrps are expensive – both in carbon production cost and time needed to manufacture them – and have reached a plateau in their strength capabilities additionally while studies suggest that integrating carbon nanotubes into cfrps can overcome these strength limitations the process includes invasive treatment that leads to uneven distribution of the nanotubes and damaging carbon fibers that can actually counterproductively weaken the final productin response to this asadi and his team have established a new method of manufacturing that utilizes cellulose nanocrystals in place of chemicals time- and cost-ineffective processesthe new process enables the production of nanostructured hybrid cfrp composites at a large scale with desired structure and performance with fewer processing steps asadi said
along with reducing the time and expense associated with making composites asadi's process opens the door for more customizable materialsright now we have very large and bulky materials and we start to cut them and make something out of them " said asadi "if we achieve this process successfully we can start to build complex structures from the nanoscale we would be able to engineer structures from the bottom to the top so this is exciting for me because first of all you are mimicking nature and second of all you can create structures with desired properties without wasting any material
in 2020 global research and development (r&d) investment reached $24 trillion and a significant part of that r&d is performed in the academic laboratories in universities and research centers the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) with its international partners is launching a webinar series to bring together stakeholders from different regions of the world to address the challenges and opportunities involved in the commercialization of deep technology ideas the first workshop of the deep tech talk webinar series will be presented on july 13 at 8 am (north american central standard time) this webinar series will present and discuss experiences from around the world about the path for commercialization of deep technologies that advance scientific frontiers registration is free for all participants including faculty researchers and graduate students interested in moving ideas to the marketplace deep technologies address the biggest societal and environmental challenges and shape the way we solve the most pressing global issues in diverse industries such as agriculture health care energy and transportation examples of deep technologies include advanced materials artificial intelligence blockchain biotechnology drones and robotics photonics and electronics and quantum computing advancing innovations from research labs to the marketplace in the deep technology space is very challenging said dr saurabh biswas chairperson of the webinar series and executive director of tees commercialization and entrepreneurship our deep tech talk webinar series is a global platform where faculty executives entrepreneurs and investors will be sharing their key learning and strategies to transition great ideas toward commercial viability the webinar series will focus on attributes of deep technologies collaborations and roles of universities in the ecosystem and opportunities and challenges in the development of disruptive technologies speakers will have significant expertise in the transfer of technologies from a university setting to the marketplace the integration of technologies into corporations and acceleration of the transfer of products to the marketplace through startup companies and agencies that support the transmission of research outcomes to the marketplace arnaud de la tour ceo of hello tomorrow will deliver the keynote presentation the path for commercialization of deep technologies dr blake teipel from essentium inc cosimi corleto from stil marposs and dr sam saltiel from beta cae systems will offer company perspectives view the july workshop schedule for more details this webinar series is an international partnership with texas a&m university at qatar aristotle university of thessaloniki in greece and arts et métier in france and the advisory board represents different geographic regions organizations universities and industries
the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic has led to such a stark shortage of personal protective equipment (ppe) that health care professionals have resorted to wearing trash bags as makeshift gowns in hopes of mitigating these obstacles texas a&m university researchers dr david staack and dr matt pharr from the college of engineering and dr suresh pillai from the college of agriculture and life sciences began studying ways to recycle ppe through radiationprior to covid-19 a large portion of staacks research already focused on medical device sterilization and decontamination staack pillai and pharr were working on a similar medical device sterilization project funded by the department of energy that identified how polymers and plastics are changed when directly exposed to electron beams or gamma rays when the pandemic struck it wasnt difficult for the research team to shift their focus to begin sterilizing and recycling ppe like surgical masks gowns face shields and most importantly n95 respirators there are two components of an n95 mask that determine its functionality: filtration and fit the n95 mask is composed of microscopic pores meant to filter out contaminants such as dust and fumes down to about 03 microns combined with an electrostatic charge on the non-woven polypropylene fiber for nanoscale particle trapping the mask is capable of filtering 95% of particles 300 nanometers in size if worn properly designed to fit snuggly around the nose face and chin the mask can prevent germs from escaping through the sides of the mask when speaking or breathingas part of their research staack and his team sent brand new n95 masks and other ppe through their radiation recycling process at the electron beam facility while they found that the mechanical properties of the equipment were not damaged the n95 mask no longer filtered 95% of particles
the radiated masks ended up going from filtering 95% of particles 300 nanometers in size to only filtering between 50% and 60% of particles a few hundred nanometers in size said staack the sallie and don davis 61 career development professor in mechanical engineering thats still a lot better than a homemade mask made from a t-shirt for perspective a strand of human hair is approximately 80 000 to 100 000 nanometers in diameteradditionally some of the electrostatic filtration of the n95 mask is lost from a day of wear hence the disposable nature and while the first option is to immediately reach for a brand-new mask each day pandemics like ones caused by covid-19 can quickly lead to a stark shortage in ppe for health care professionals so what's the best backup strategyelectron beam irradiation is a common proven and fda-approved method of medical device sterilization irradiation by electron beam gamma and x-ray methods account for approximately 50% of the market of all medical devices sterilized worldwide the electron beam facility is already equipped for industrial use and based on staacks research is able to process and recycle 10 000 masks an hourtheres still some logistical issues were working through said staack can we do it safely can masks be distributed to someone other than the original user these are the questions were researching now so that if something happens in the short term like another wave of covid-19 were ready and if something happens in the long term were more knowledgeable about itthere are approximately 50 to 100 electron beam facilities in the united states alone staacks goal is to be able to share the teams results and distribute this critical information around the world so that everyone is better equipped to tackle a global pandemic
staack pharr and pillai teamed up using the food technology facility for electron beam and space food research and the plasma engineering and non-equilibrium processing laboratory on the texas a&m campus they also referenced research from dr mike moreno dr john criscione and dr sarah brooks at texas a&m showing that t-shirt masks only filter about 10% of particles and don't conform well to the face leaving germs and contaminants likely to enter and escape thus making recycled ppe a viable second-place strategy
col rosendo ross guieb has been named as the first executive director of the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) effective today guieb moves from the senior staff of army futures command (afc) to the new role of managing the bcdc a complex being built on the 2 000-acre rellis campus in bryan texas to help accelerate military innovation who better to lead this critical national defense initiative said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system ross understands the challenges of modernization inside and out he will be instrumental as we assist the army with next-generation battlefield readiness guieb will report to dr m katherine banks vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories for the texas a&m system ross will be integral to our program and will keep serving our country in this new role banks said his experience will help ensure that the strategic partnership between afc and the texas a&m system remains perfectly aligned guieb will manage the vision goals and execution strategies of the bcdc while working to expand relationships with other key stakeholders in national defense innovation he will work alongside dr john e hurtado deputy director and chief technology officer of bcdc
to learn more about guieb and his new role with the bush combat development complex see the announcement about guieb's appointment as executive director and the story of his background on the bcdc website
if you look at the flood monitoring system of harris county it can show you if a channel is overflowing now but theyre not able to predict anything about the next four hours or next eight hours also the existing flood monitoring systems provide limited information about the propagation of flooding in road networks and the impacts on urban mobility but our models and this specific model for the road networks is robust at predicting the future spread of flooding he said in addition to flood prediction in urban networks the findings of this study provide very important insights about the universality of the network spread processes across various social natural physical and engineered systems; this is significant for better modeling and managing cities as complex systems the only limitation to this flood prediction model is that it cannot identify where the initial flooding will begin but mostafavi said there are other mechanisms in place such as sensors on flood gauges that can address thisas soon as flooding is reported in these areas we can use our model which is very simple compared to hydraulic and hydrologic models to predict the flood propagation in future hours the forecast of road inundations and mobility disruptions is critical to inform residents to avoid high-risk roadways and to enable emergency managers and responders to optimize relief and rescue in impacted areas based on predicted information about road access and mobility this forecast could be the difference between life and death during crisis response he saidcivil engineering doctoral student and graduate research assistant chao fan led the analysis and modeling of the hurricane harvey data along with xiangqi (alex) jiang a graduate student in computer science who works in mostafavis urbanresilienceai labby doing this research i realize the power of mathematical models in addressing engineering problems and real-world challenges this research expands my research capabilities and will have a long-term impact on my career fan said in addition i am also very excited that my research can contribute to reducing the negative impacts of natural disasters on infrastructure servicesthis research is funded by the national science foundations crisp 20 type 2 project in which mostafavi is the lead principal investigator
as new infectious diseases emerge and spread one of the best shots against novel pathogens is finding new medicines or vaccines but before drugs can be used as potential cures they have to be painstakingly screened for composition safety and purity among other things thus there is an increasing demand for technologies that can characterize chemical compounds quickly and in real time addressing this unmet need researchers at texas a&m university have now invented a new technology that can drastically downsize the apparatus used for raman spectroscopy a well-known technique that uses light to identify the molecular makeup of compounds raman benchtop setups can be up to a meter long depending on the level of spectroscopic resolution needed said dr pao-tai lin assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and the department of materials science and engineering we have designed a system that can potentially replace these bulky benchtops with a tiny photonic chip that can snugly fit within the tip of a finger in addition lin said that their innovative photonic device is also capable of high-throughput real-time chemical characterization and despite its size is at least 10 times more sensitive than conventional benchtop raman spectroscopy systems a description of their study is in the may issue of the journal analytical chemistry the basis of raman spectroscopy is the scattering of light by molecules when hit by light of a certain frequency molecules perform a dance rotating and vibrating upon absorbing the energy from the incident beam when they lose their excess energy molecules emit a lower-energy light which is characteristic of their shape and size this scattered light known as the raman spectra contains the fingerprints of the molecules within a sample
typical benchtops for raman spectroscopy contain an assortment of optical instruments including lenses and gratings for manipulating light these free-space optical components take a lot of space and are a barrier for many applications where chemical sensing is required within tiny spaces or locations that are hard to reach also benchtops can be prohibitive for real-time chemical characterizationas an alternative to traditional lab-based benchtop systems lin and his team turned to tube-like conduits called waveguides that can transport light with very little loss of energy while many materials can be used to make ultrathin waveguides the researchers chose a material called aluminum nitride since it produces a low raman background signal and is less likely to interfere with the raman signal coming from a test sample of interest to create the optical waveguide the researchers employed a technique used by industry for drawing circuit patterns on silicon wafers first using ultraviolet light they spun a light-sensitive material called nr9 onto a surface made of silica next by using ionized gas molecules they bombarded and coated aluminum nitride along the pattern formed by the nr9 finally they washed the assembly with acetone leaving behind an aluminum waveguide that was just tens of microns in diameter for testing the optical waveguide as a raman sensor the research team transported a laser beam through the aluminum nitride waveguide and illuminated a test sample containing a mixture of organic molecules upon examining the scattered light the researchers found that they could discern each type of molecule within the sample based on the raman spectra and with a sensitivity of at least 10 times more than traditional raman benchtops
to create the optical waveguide the researchers employed a technique used by industry for drawing circuit patterns on silicon wafers first using ultraviolet light they spun a light-sensitive material called nr9 onto a surface made of silica next by using ionized gas molecules they bombarded and coated aluminum nitride along the pattern formed by the nr9 finally they washed the assembly with acetone leaving behind an aluminum waveguide that was just tens of microns in diameter for testing the optical waveguide as a raman sensor the research team transported a laser beam through the aluminum nitride waveguide and illuminated a test sample containing a mixture of organic molecules upon examining the scattered light the researchers found that they could discern each type of molecule within the sample based on the raman spectra and with a sensitivity of at least 10 times more than traditional raman benchtops
lin noted since their optical waveguides have very fine width many of them can be loaded onto a single photonic chip this architecture he said is very conducive to high-throughput real-time chemical sensing needed for drug development our optical waveguide design provides a novel platform for monitoring the chemical composition of compounds quickly reliably and continuously also these waveguides can be easily manufactured at an industrial scale by leveraging the already existing techniques to make semiconductor devices said lin this technology we believe has a direct benefit for not just pharmaceutical industries but even for other industries like petroleum where our sensors can be put along underground pipes to monitor the composition of hydrocarbons other contributors to this research are megan makela from the department of materials science and engineering; and paul gordon dandan tu cyril soliman dr gerard coté and dr kristen maitland from the department of biomedical engineering this research is funded by the national science foundation precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) engineering research center
the precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) engineering research center was funded by the national science foundation in 2017 paths-up aims to change the paradigm for the health of underserved populations by developing revolutionary and cost-effective technologies and systems at the point-of-care the initial paths-up technologies and systems are designed to help with chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease which are leading causes of morbidity and mortality world-wide