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							<title>TryEngineering Today!</title>
							<link>http://www.tryengineering.org/today.php</link>
							<description>TryEngineering Today! provides readers with relevant information on engineers, inventions, and engineering news from around the world.</description>
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						 <title>Engineering Students Make Electric Car</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[Roger Dougal, a professor at the University of South Carolina’s College of Engineering has an interesting class project.  He owned a 1972 MGB red convertible that was collecting dust, and challenged his engineering students to transform it into an electric car. 

About 15 students have worked on the car since Dougal began the great experiment … and they succeeded!  The “Electric MG,” as it’s called, is a reality. “It can go really fast for short distances,” said Dougal, who estimates that about $10,000 has been spent in making the changes over a period of about 18 months. 

The original engine is in Dougal’s garage and has been replaced by an AC motor with a custom driveshaft. In its place is a bank of more than 100 supercapacitors, resembling soft drink cans that have been encased in a plastic box and loaded into the trunk for the power source. A lithium battery will be added later and coupled with the supercapacitor bank to improve range and efficiency. much of the student ingenuity and labor was volunteered. Some students have received course credit for their work.
 
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						 <title>Flexible Solar Strips Light Bus Shelter</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[There won’t be any more waiting in the dark at a McMaster campus bus shelter. flexible solar cell technology developed by a group of engineering researchers at McMaster University in Canada has been installed to power lighting for night-time transit users.The ability to bend the solar cells to fit the curved roof of the bus shelter is one of the main features of the technology.The flexibility is achieved by tiling a large number of small silicon elements into an array, mounting them onto a flexible sheet, and connecting them through a proprietary method. The two solar strips installed on the McMaster bus shelter are about 90 centimeters long and 12 centimeters wide.Each strip has 720 one-centimeter square solar cells and generates up to 4.5 Watts of power. The solar cells capture sunlight during the day and convert it to electricity to recharge batteries located in each lighting unit.The batteries can hold enough charge to light the shelter for the better part of a night. TryEngineering offers a related lesson plan called "Here Comes the Sun." Find out more at www.tryengineering.org.]]></description>
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						 <title>Measuring the Wind</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[Each issue, TryEngineering Today profiles one of the many lesson plans available on TryEngineering.org.  Each lesson plan is aligned with education standards to allow teachers and students to apply engineering principles in the classroom. 

As many businesses and homes seek green options for energy, wind power is increasing considered a viable option for options where the wind is consistent and strong enough to turn a turbine. A special device called an anemometer is used to test wind strength.
 
The "Measuring the Wind" lesson focuses on how anemometers are engineered to measure the speed of wind, and how designs have changed over time. Student teams design and build a working anemometer out of everyday products and learn about feasibility testing for locations considering harnessing energy from wind turbines. Student anemometers must be able to sustain the wind generated by a fan or hairdryer at varying speed and students must develop a way to measure and chart rotations at different wind speeds. Student teams also evaluate the effectiveness of their anemometer and those of other teams, and present their findings to the class.  
  
The lesson can be adapted for ages 8-18, and includes teacher and student handouts and worksheets.  Find this and many other engineering lessons at www.tryengineering.org/lesson.php.
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						 <title>Smoke Alarm System Wins Award</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[A life-saving student design that could replace the smoke alarm as the essential home gadget has won the international James Dyson Award, an international design award that celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers.  Automist can both detect fires and put them out by aerosolising the water from a standard kitchen tap. It fits directly onto a standard kitchen tap to create a domestic alternative to a sprinkler system. In the event of a fire, a wireless heat detector triggers the under-sink pump driving water through a nozzle -- quickly filling the kitchen with a fine mist to put out the blaze. The 2009 James Dyson Award goes to Yusuf Muhammed and Paul Thomas (students at London's Royal College of Art) for their design concept, the Automist. The winner and their design engineering department both receive 10,000 pounds cash. James Dyson appreciated the inventors' ingenuity, saying, "This simple but clever device should become a permanent safety feature in the home. Automist not only detects a fire but can put it out as well." The idea for the design came from a brainstorming session with a number of firemen at Chelsea Fire Brigade in London. The team worked on the design with trauma and stress experts, fire engineers, international sprinkler specialists and fire fighters. ]]></description>
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						 <title>Purdue to Lead US Earthquake Engineering Network</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[Advancing research and education to reduce the devastation and loss of human life from earthquakes and tsunamis is the goal of a new center at Purdue University. The National Science Foundation recently awarded $105 million to a Purdue-led team to spearhead a center that will serve as headquarters for the operations of the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, or NEES. Purdue will connect 14 NEES research equipment sites and the earthquake engineering community through groundbreaking cyberinfrastructure, education and outreach efforts. The center will help researchers share information and equipment to enable research and innovation in earthquake and tsunami loss reduction, and conduct broader outreach.

"Purdue's depth of knowledge in earthquake engineering, innovative high-performance computing experts, education professionals and outstanding interdisciplinary research abilities allow the university to make great contributions to this area," said Purdue President France A. Córdova. 

In the past decade, 124 major earthquakes have occurred throughout the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Major earthquakes are generally accepted to register a magnitude in excess of 7 on the Richter scale and inflict serious damage, including the collapse of buildings and bridges, over a large area. The organization estimates that earthquakes were responsible for 463,959 deaths in the past decade. TryEngineering offers a related lesson plan called "Shake it up with Seismographs." Find out more at www.tryengineering.org.
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						 <title>Try the "Build a Lifeboat" Game</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[TryEngineering links to a wide range of online activities and games to encourage students to try out engineering.  In each issue we spotlight a game -- this time an interactive game which challenges players to engineer a lifeboat by selecting the appropriate material for each component. "Build a Lifeboat" was developed by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in Poole, England.  By playing the game you learn not only about materials engineering by selecting which materials to use to build components of the lifeboat, but also experience first hand how engineers design and redesign products until they achieve an optimal design.  As you build your life boat, you may have to  try and try again too! You'll launch each boat you design to see whether it passes the test! 
For the link to "Build a Lifeboat" visit www.tryengineering.org/play.php.  And also click on lessons to try your hand at building a working model of a boat with the "Hull Engineering" lesson too! Find this and many other engineering lessons at www.tryengineering.org/lesson.php.
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						 <title>Technology Spots Stolen Cars in Traffic</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[A computer program that may enable moving police cars to automatically detect stolen or unregistered cars in surrounding traffic has been developed by researchers at the University of Technology, Sidney (UTS), Australia. The program uses new techniques based on hexagonal pixels, rather than the conventional square pixels, to enable a computer linked to a camera to accurately identify and read number plates in real-time -- so the number can be checked immediately against databases.  Other applications being investigated include using the program to manage evasion of car parking fees, and as a real-time warning system for oversize and overweight trucks. Project leader Professor Xiangjian (Sean) He said hexagonal pixels gave much smoother edges in images than square pixels, which tend to look like jagged steps when the image is highly magnified. Hexagonal pixels can provide equivalent picture quality using 13 percent fewer pixels. “It’s not a new idea, but what our team has done is to use hexagonal pixels to develop much better methods of curve detection than is possible with square pixels, and this has opened the way for much quicker and more accurate shape identification," Professor He said.  "The potential is enormous -- it could provide improved resolution for still and moving digital cameras and could find many applications improving the object recognition capabilities of robots."]]></description>
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						 <title>Students Win Wind Energy Challenge</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[Students from around the world recently converged on Australia's Monash University as part of the International Future Energy Challenge. Seven finalist student teams battled it out in the "Wind Turbine Power Maximiser" part of the challenge, which aims to promote student interest in power electronic converters, wind, and power engineering. The three day competition was the culmination of 18 months of work to design and build an electronic circuit that maximizes the power from a wind turbine. The teams' designs were tested in the Monash wind tunnel to ascertain their ability to function well. 

Research fellow Dr. Freere noted that in the process the students learn how to evaluate and improve on technology. "It helps turn them into engineers," he says. The International Future Energy Challenge is a student competition run biannually by the IEEE Power Electronics Society and the Power Sources Manufacturers Association. Overall First Prize for the competition went to the team from the University of Central
Florida, in the U.S. TryEngineering offers a new lesson in which students design their own wind turbine. Explore this and other lessons at www.tryengineering.org. ]]></description>
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						 <title>Virtually Engineering a Power Plant</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[Photovoltaic and wind energy plants, hydroelectric power stations, and biogas plants supply energy without polluting the environment. However, they are complex to design and maintain. But now, virtual reality makes planning and operation easier. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Germany have developed a method that visualizes the processes inside energy conversion plants. "A special software tool has enabled us to visualize all the motion sequences for the first time ever – at just the push of a button," explains Dr. Matthias Gohla, Manager of the Process and Plant Engineering Business Unit. Arrows that move through the virtual model show engineers the direction in which and speed at which fluids and gases flow through a plant. Colored markings indicate potential weak points such as areas where critical temperatures, deposits or erosions could occur. Plus, personnel can be trained to handle a plant before it is operational, and even critical situations can be simulated without endangering employees.
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						 <title>Ship the Chip!</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[Each issue, TryEngineering Today profiles one of the many lesson plans available on TryEngineering.org.  Each lesson plan is aligned with education standards to allow teachers and students to apply engineering principles in the classroom. 

Have you ever wondered about the engineering behind product packaging? Almost everything you buy must be safely encased in packaging in order to be shipped from where it is made to where it is used. 

The "Ship the Chip" lesson focuses on engineering package designs that meet the needs of safely shipping a product. Students work in teams of "engineers" to design a package using standard materials that will safely ship a single potato chip through the mail to the school address.  They'll use a variety of everyday items from string to tape to foil to paperclips to create their package design. The lesson not only explores how engineers develop packaging design requirements, but also evaluates the external stresses that engineers must consider when developing a package or product design.

The lesson can be adapted for ages 8-18, and includes teacher and student handouts and worksheets. It can also be adapted to work without shipping by having students drop their packages from a height such as the top of a ladder or out of a first floor window.

Find this and many other engineering lessons at <a href="http://www.tryengineering.org/lesson.php">www.tryengineering.org/lesson.php</a>.]]></description>
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						 <title>Astronaut Glove Competition</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[In the pressure suits that astronauts must wear while performing a spacewalk, one of the toughest parts to design are the gloves. Like an inflated balloon, the fingers of the gloves resist the effort to bend them. Astronauts must fight that pressure with every movement of their hand, which is exhausting and sometimes results in injury. Furthermore, the joints of the glove are subject to wear that can lead to life-threatening leaks. This November, NASA is again sponsoring the Astronaut Glove Challenge that seeks improvements to glove design that reduce the effort needed to perform tasks in space and improve the durability of the glove. In the challenge, competitors demonstrate their glove design by performing a range of tasks with the glove in an evacuated chamber. The gloves are also tested to ensure that they do not leak. The challenge is part of NASA's Centennial Challenges which have been established to encourage the participation of independent teams, individual inventors, student groups and private companies of all sizes in aerospace research and development. In 2007, Peter Homer, a Maine engineer won the prize of $200,000 and started his own company to produce spacesuit gloves. More details are at <a href="http://astronaut-glove.tripod.com">http://astronaut-glove.tripod.com</a>.]]></description>
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						 <title>Carbon Nanotube Detects all Colors of the Rainbow</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have created the first carbon nanotube device that can detect the entire visible spectrum of light, a feat that could soon allow scientists to probe single molecule transformations, study how those molecules respond to light, observe how the molecules change shapes, and understand other fundamental interactions between molecules and nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are long thin cylinders composed entirely of carbon atoms. While their diameters are in the nanometer range (1-10), they can be very long, up to centimeters in length.  
The carbon-carbon bond is very strong, making carbon nanotubes very robust and resistant to any kind of deformation. To construct a nanoscale color detector, Sandia researchers took inspiration from the human eye.

The idea of carbon nanotubes being light sensitive has been around for a long time, but earlier efforts using an individual nanotube were only able to detect light in narrow wavelength ranges at laser intensities. The Sandia team found that their nanodetector was orders of magnitude more sensitive, down to about 40 W/m2—about 3 percent of the density of sunshine reaching the ground.  

This research eventually could be used for a number of exciting applications, such as an optical detector with nanometer scale resolution, ultra-tiny digital cameras, solar cells with more light absorption capability, or even genome sequencing. The near-term purpose, however, is basic science. 

Find out more about nanotechnology at <a href="http://www.trynano.org">www.trynano.org</a>.]]></description>
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						 <title>How Energy Flows</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[TryEngineering links to a wide range of online activities and games to encourage students to try out engineering.  

In each issue we spotlight a game — this time a fun activity that traces how energy flows from a source (such as the sun) to a machine (such as a stereo system).  You’ll need to select and connect components such as solar panels, wires, and other materials to allow the energy to flow correctly to reach your goal. In part of the challenge, you’ll select components to allow energy to flow from a river with a goal of producing cool air.  In another challenge, try tracing the flow of energy from the sun to power a car.  This one is a little tricky in that it doesn’t incorporate the use of solar panels!   
There are many other games on TryEngineering.org too — including those that explore how an MRI works, to others in which you design and test a roller coaster.  

All will give you chance to test out engineering principles online and have fun with engineering too!  Find out more at <a href="http://www.tryengineering.org/play.php">http://www.tryengineering.org/play.php</a>!]]></description>
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						 <title>Seismic Test of Seven-Story Building</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[A destructive earthquake recently struck a wooden condominium in Japan -- but it was planned by engineers to help improve earthquake resistant designs.  It was the largest earthquake simulation ever attempted on a wooden structure. The multi-university team, led by Colorado State University, a seven-story building loaded with sensing equipment and video cameras on a massive shake table, and then exposed the building to the force of an earthquake that hits once every 2,500 years.

As the ground shakes, the energy that goes into a building needs to flow somewhere. Typically, a large portion of this energy is spent moving — and damaging — the building. There are proven engineering techniques for absorbing or displacing some of this energy in order to minimize damage, but the technology for doing so has not yet been thoroughly evaluated for wooden structures. The test shake should produce sufficient data to allow the research team to develop accurate computer models of mid-rise wood buildings, which can subsequently be used to advance and validate some of these seismic protection techniques. 

Seismometers are instruments that measure and record motions of the ground. A new lesson plan about seismometers and sensing motions of the earth is at <a href="http://www.tryengineering.org">www.tryengineering.org</a>.]]></description>
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						 <title>Physical Therapists Test Mechanical Arm</title>
						 <link>www.utsouthwestern.edu</link>
						 <description><![CDATA[Physical therapists at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in the U.S. are evaluating a new mechanical arm that allows people recovering from neurological injuries such as strokes and traumatic brain injury to enter a virtual world where they can repeatedly practice movements needed to regain arm strength and movement. Other sites are also testing how the Armeo device, with its virtual environment and weight support system for the arm, stacks up against traditional therapies in which individuals physically pick up objects. 

Studies have demonstrated that repetition is key to quicker recovery from neurological injuries, and researchers hope that Armeo's ability to counter gravitational forces will allow patients to perform the required tasks more often than when they are aided by therapists. Armeo's weight support system allows an individual to master a wide range of movements and complete a highly repetitive number of tasks, even with limited function in the affected arm. 

More information is at <a href="http://www.utsouthwestern.edu">www.utsouthwestern.edu</a>.

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						 <title>Nanoparticles That Carry Multiple Drugs
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						 <description><![CDATA[Using tiny gold particles and infrared light, MIT researchers have developed a drug-delivery system that allows multiple drugs to be released in a controlled fashion. Such a system could one day be used to provide more control when battling diseases commonly treated with more than one drug, according to the researchers. Delivery devices already exist that can release two drugs, but the timing of the release must be built into the device -- it cannot be controlled from outside the body. 

The new system is controlled externally and theoretically could deliver up to three or four drugs. The new technique takes advantage of the fact that when gold nanoparticles are exposed to infrared light, they melt and release drug payloads attached to their surfaces. Nanoparticles of different shapes respond to different infrared wavelengths, so "just by controlling the infrared wavelength, we can choose the release time" for each drug, said Andy Wijaya, graduate student in chemical engineering and lead author of the paper.
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						 <title>Filtration Investigation</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[Each issue, TryEngineering Today profiles one of the many lesson plans available on TryEngineering.org.  Each lesson plan is aligned with education standards to allow teachers and students to apply engineering principles in the classroom. The provision of a safe, sustainable supply of water has been a challenge for millennia. It remains the most pressing environmental problem in much of the developing world, and is increasingly difficult even in the developed world.

The "Filtration Investigation" lesson focuses on how filtration systems solve many problems throughout the world such as improving drinking water. Through this lesson, students work in teams to design and build a filtration system to remove dirt from water out of everyday items. It explores how gravity can help with filtration and explores the many materials can be used for making a filter, including  cotton balls, sand, rocks, cornmeal, flour, grass, and charcoal. 

Students select from everyday items to build their filter, test the resulting system evaluate the effectiveness of their filters and those of other teams, and present their findings to the class. The lesson can be adapted for ages 8-18, and includes teacher and student handouts and worksheets. It also is aligned to a variety of standards.

Find this and other lessons at <a href="http://www.tryengineering.org/lesson.php">www.tryengineering.org/lesson.php</a>.

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						 <title>Magnetic Refrigeration Technique</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[A refrigerator’s humming, electricity-guzzling cooling system could soon be a lot smaller, quieter and more economical thanks to an exotic metal alloy discovered by an international collaboration between the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Beijing University of Technology, Princeton University, and McGill University. The alloy may prove to be a long-sought material that will permit magnetic cooling instead of the gas-compression systems used for home refrigeration and air conditioning. The magnetic cooling technique, though used for decades in science and industry, has yet to find application in the home because of technical and environmental hurdles -- but the NIST collaboration may have overcome them. Magnetic cooling relies on materials called magnetocalorics, which heat up when exposed to a powerful magnetic field. After they cool off by radiating this heat away, the magnetic field is removed, and their temperature drops again, this time dramatically. The effect can be used in a classic refrigeration cycle, and scientists have attained temperatures of nearly absolute zero this way.  The team used NIST’s neutron diffraction equipment for research.]]></description>
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						 <title>Hybrid Foams for Lightweight Construction</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology is looking into how hybrid foams can result in major benefits to construction projects. A special process will make it possible to improve the mechanical, thermal, and acoustic properties of foams in the future. This will be of particular benefit to lightweight construction. 

Mother nature is a smart builder. The cell structure of bones and honeycombs, for example, is particularly resilient and gets by with extremely little material. The process by which these lightweight structures form is just as suitable for foaming metals, plastics and ceramics. These foams have specific properties depending on the material they are made of. While plastic foams are light and flexible but cannot withstand high temperatures, metal foams are extremely tough but are heavy and not very flexible. Ceramic foams are quite stiff and can resist even very high temperatures, but are rather difficult to shape.

In the automotive and aerospace industries, it would be more effective and resource-saving to combine the flexibility of plastic with the resilience of metal to create a material with entirely new properties. This is exactly what the Fraunhofer researchers are striving to do by developing hybrid foams. What is special about these materials is that they have the potential to acquire completely new characteristics, while at the same time eliminating the specific weaknesses of each constituent, such as the heavy weight of the metal foam. Find out more at <a href="http://www.fraunhofer.de">www.fraunhofer.de</a>.
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						 <title>Computing on a Grid</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[Many engineering research projects are so large or complicated that they need hundreds or even thousands of computers to work together to solve a problem. When computers coordinate their efforts, the work is called grid computing. Through the process, software will divide up the work to be done by each machine. To find out more and explore this process on your own, TryEngineering.org links to an interactive game called "Grid Computing" which was developed by "Try Science." The game challenges you to create a computer grid system to model the volcanic activity of Mt. Vesuvius without taking power from other computing jobs. Site visitors act at the "grid master" and have to divide out the grid's power to each project based on its urgency and impact on humanity. The goal is to balance the volcano research project with other high-priority grid problems. There are also several offline activities regarding grid computing to try out! For the link to "Grid Computing" and other engineering games, click on "<a href="http://www.tryengineering.org/play.php">Play Games!</a>" at www.tryengineering.org.]]></description>
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						 <title>Clean Water for a Crowded World</title>
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						 <description><![CDATA[More than 1 billion people worldwide lack access to clean water and, in developing countries, more than 2 million people a year die from water-related problems, with the numbers growing. In some areas, demand for potable water exceeds available resources. This worldwide water crisis is made worse by aging infrastructure, growing population, contamination and high demand for water in energy-generating processes. To help address these issues, the Center of Advanced Materials for Purification of Water with Systems at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S., is developing sensors with specially designed and synthesized DNA to detect trace amounts of lead, mercury, arsenic and other contaminants. The sensors can be produced in the form of sophisticated testing instruments suitable for use by metropolitan water districts or in the form of test strips similar to those used in home pregnancy tests for households and other limited water users. The center's research efforts are now able to detect specific contaminants in the parts per trillion range, where only parts per million was previously possible. The ability to detect toxic compounds at these levels will allow research to be conducted on health impacts of certain contaminants at these lower levels. The technologies also allow for real-time detection and reduction of contaminants. Real-time instantaneous contaminant detection and online catalytic reduction systems could save lives and increase end-user health.  TryEngineering offers a lesson plan about water filtration at www.tryengineering.org.]]></description>
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