They’ve sent cockroaches into the upper atmosphere. They’ve flown balloons up to 85,000 ft (airplanes fly at 35,000 ft). Now a group of undergraduate UC San Diego students are heading out to the desert Wednesday, July 20, to launch a balloon up to 125,000 ft, their highest flight ever, they hope. They are all members of the UCSD Near-Space Balloon Team, which includes aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, math and visual arts students. Wednesday, they will leave the campus in the wee hours of the morning, and drive out to Brawley, just north of El Centro, for the launch. The balloons usually carry experiments designed by undergraduates and by high school students—hence the cockroaches. Since this is the team’s first flight at such a high altitude, this time, the payload will be lighter, including some sensors and a probably a camera. To learn more about the UCSD Near-Space Balloon Team, check out their website.
A new Wired.com story looks at the emerging trend of "immersive cinema." In the future, it won't be enough for images to pop out into the theater with you a la Avatar, movie and TV watchers will be able to smell, taste and feel what's on screen.
The article features our very own Sungho Jin, professor in the departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and NanoEngineering, and his research on odor-generating devices for television, movies and even cell phones. Caption: Professor Sungho Jin and grad students Calvin Gardner (seated, right of Sungho) and Hyunsu Kim (left of Sungho) measure the electrical properties of heater wire actuators while detecting the odor released.
Here's what Wired.com had to say about Jin's research:
University of California at San Diego researcher Sungho Jin takes a more high-tech approach to scent-driven storytelling with a home entertainment prototype that could one day overpower the fake buttery smell of microwave popcorn whipped up by pajama-clad movie watchers.
In partnership with Samsung’s home entertainment division, Jin and his team devised an aroma-release prototype that relies on electrical filaments to vaporize up to 10,000 scented fluids contained in tiny rubber tubes. In a phone interview, Jin, who spent two years developing the matrix-based control technology, offered an example of how his device might work.
“If you’ve got a scene coming up where the character eats pizza, maybe five seconds earlier — because it takes time for the odor to travel to the viewer –the computer program essentially says, ‘OK, hit it!’ and that particular odor will be released,” Jin said.
With the help of inspiring mentors and a six-week engineering workshop at the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), about two dozen girls from across San Diego are making race-inspired hats driven by gears and electronics for Opening Day at the Del Mar Race Track.
“The whole experience is designed to expose the girls to what an engineer does, in a fun and engaging way,” said Saura Naderi, director of Calit2’s MyLab @ Variability Expedition. Naderi, who earned a bachelor’s in engineering physics from UC San Diego in 2007, was inspired to create a workshop for girls to make their own mechanized hats after debuting one of her own creations at Opening Day last year.
The MyLab program at Calit2 launched in 2009 with the goal of bringing hands-on science and engineering experiences to the local community through outreach projects that typically blend art and technology. Ranging in age from 7 to 16, the girls are participating in the Girl’s Hat Day program, which is funded by a $15,000 grant from ViaSat (a producer of satellite and other digital communications). The girls are mentored by a dozen mostly women engineers from UCSD, ViaSat, Qualcomm and SPAWAR.
Saura Naderi, director of MyLab @ Variability Expedition's outreach program, discusses Girl's Hat Day project.
Naderi collaborated with Town and Country Village Learning Center to recruit many of the girls for the program, which will teach them the basics of electrical, computer, and mechanical engineering.
This year, 40,000 race fans are expected to attend Opening Day at Del Mar. Spectators have sported creative, glamorous hats since the race’s first Opening Day in 1937, and the more fashion-minded spectators participate in the ‘One and Only Truly Fabulous Hats Contest’. The Girl’s Hat Day girls, wearing matching blue dresses, will enter their hats in the ‘Funniest or Most Outrageous’ category.
Vote for UC San Diego Bioengineering's Jason Caffrey's device in the 2011 LabVIEW Student Design Competition! (Must vote by July 15th, and voting instructions are at the bottom of this blog post.)
UC San Diego bioengineering undergraduate Jason Caffrey created an amazing LABVIEW-interfaced device to semi-automatically tune a trumpet. Jason entered it for the annual contest by National Instruments, the vendor of LABVIEW. More detail is below. The punch line is that he needs your vote, now, if you think his design is worthy. (Bioengineering professor Gert Cauwenberghs served as the faculty advisor on the project.)
One part of the contest is a TECHNICAL COMPETITION. For this, Jason is in the finals as one of TWO U.S. entrants invited to NI headquarters and FOUR worldwide entrants being considered for an overall prize.
The other part of the contest is a POPULAR COMPETITION. For this, he is close to the top but needs your vote.
Please find below a 4-step process to view and then for Jason Caffrey's LabVIEW student design competition submission, a device to semi-automatically tune a trumpet. Attached also are two screen snapshot images to help.
2) Click the "Register" button near the top left of the screen and create an account (Image: Step 2). (This requires entering your email address, etc.)
3) Scroll down to the near the bottom of the page until you see the "Like" button and click it (Image: Step 3). The number next to it should increase by one.
4) Refresh the page (press F5) and then repeat step 3. (This is important to do, due to a glitch at the voting website.) Check that the "like" # has incremented !
The Saganites team: Mehria Sayad-Shah (bioengineering), Edward Grigoryan (physiology-neuroscience), Kevin Patterson (cardiovascular technology), Tom Hegstad (major: mechanical engineering), and J.R. Bachman (bioengineering).
Jacobs School of Engineering faculty, students and staff were well represented in the Art of Science show sponsored by UC San Diego's Science and Engineering Library. Engineering students Christopher Doran (Electrical and Computer Engineering) and Kim Wright (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) took two of the top three awards in the student category. Doran's piece, "A Tapestry in Silicon," took second place in the student show. It is described by the artist as:
Monocrystalline silicon flakes transferred to carbon adhesive. The silicon started as a uniform 300 nanometer-thick sheet, but later assumed the unique flake structure from the uneven mechanical forces originating from the textured tacky carbon surface. While crystalline silicon is hard and brittle in the macro-scale, when it is sufficiently thinned like can be seen here, it can become quite bendable. The distinct coloring originates from the differential interference contrast microscope that imaged the sample, which uses interference from split polarized light rays to enhance the visibility of thin layers that might otherwise be transparent.
All submissions are now on exhibit in the Science and Engineering Library, which is located within the Geisel Library. Or you can view them on the library's Flickr stream. The competition is designed to show that science is beautiful and the submissions did not disappoint, according to the library:
The images submitted ranged from nano corn fields, forests, and gardens to visual demonstrations of supersonic turbulence, fire whirls, and fans of flame. Also submitted were striking images of data simulating the evolution of galaxy clusters and the UCSD logo depicted using 1 million E. coli cells. One image (Nano Party) was created in celebration of UC San Diego’s 50th anniversary.
