Photos and Video: NanoEngineers Print and Test Chemical Sensors on Elastic Waistbands of Underwear

Here are three photos tied to the story "NanoEngineers Print and Test Chemical Sensors on Elastic Waistbands of Underwear".

There is a YouTube video of one a UC San Diego chemcial engineering undergraduate who worked on printing the electrodes onto underwear waistbands.

Jeff Mounzer on KSDT in 15 minutes

Jacobs School alumnus (current PhD student at Stanford studying electrical engineering) and fabled TESC President Jeff Mounzer just stopped in my office...but just for a moment because he was off to be interviewed on the UCSD campus radio station:
http://scw.ucsd.edu/

Jeff Mounzer is going to be interviewed at 4 PM on Friday June 11 (15 minutes from now). Check it out at: http://scw.ucsd.edu/ and click on listen

Joseph Wang Textile-Based Sensors in the News

"Textile-based sensors" or "smart underpants"? Both....and two different ways to think about the same research project led by NanoEngineering professor Joseph Wang from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Reuters recently filed a story taking the smart underpants angle...which is true...but there is more. The story was triggered by a peer-reviewed paper in the British journal, Analyst. Also, here is the Reuters story with a funnier headline.

The paper investigates the viability biological sensors printed on the inside of the elastic waistband of underwear, where there is constant close contact with skin and sweat. These sensors could eventually be used as early warning sensors on the battlefiled, telling doctors that something is going wrong with someone out in the field, based on biomarkers recorded in the sweat. The U.S. Office of Naval Research is funding this research. It's part of the "field hospital on a chip" grant that I wrote about in 2008.

I'm working on a story with more details of the new paper. Thick-film textile-based amperometric sensors and biosensors. Stay tuned.

Update: Yahoo!News also picked up the Reuters story.

NSF Reviews CIAN's Efforts to Create Transformative Optical Technologies

"CIAN is focused on the innovations that are necessary to reframe the problems of access networks and determine if there's a common protocol for optics,” explained CIAN Deputy Director Shaya Fainman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego. “Our vision is to develop novel optical networking architectures, create low-cost optoelectronic technologies, test them through our unique testbed infrastructure, prove their relevance and commercialize them through entrepreneurs and industrial partners."

Read the latest on CIAN in a story by Calit2's Tiffany Fox.

CSE168: Rending Algorithms First, Second and Honorable Menions...Grand Prize Winner to Come

Update July 2: here is the grand prize image for CSE168. The 2010 CSE 168 Rendering Algorithms press release is here. The first, second and some of the honorable mention images are below. These are all images that computer science students created using rendering algorithms and C++ (not photoshop/illustrator/etc)

(Photos from the competiton are here.)

Update Friday June 11: last two images are new.

First Place: William George and Robert Gross




Second Place: Jason Obenberger




Honorable Mention: Jennifer Chandler



Honorable Mention: Steven Upham



Honorable Mention: Tim Etler



Honorable Mention: Oleg Bisker




Update Friday June 11: Two new honorable mention images below.

Honorable Mention: Joel Chelliah





Honorable Mention: Sid Vijay

200 fly or rendering algorithms of water?

Is it harder to swim 200 fly or write the C++ code to render algorithms for swimming pool water? That's the question I hope to get answered tomorrow by a computer science senior on the UCSD women's swim team. I'm waiting on the winning images from the CSE 168 rendering algorithms competition for spring 2010.

Laser Looks for Rail Line Cracks

Structural engineering professor Francesco Lanza di Scalea is in the news today. He is leading a project to use lasers and microphones to detect cracks in railroad tracks. Gary Robbins from the San Diego Union Tribune covered the story. Check it out here.

The crack-detecting prototype is out at the UC San Diego Englekirk Structural Engineering Center.