At Drexel University in Philadelphia, students and faculty advisors are trying to develop sustainable innovations that improve quality of life, push the envelope in terms of what’s already out there and offer innovations that are commercially viable and also acceptable to the public. They’re doing it through a living laboratory called the Drexel Smart House.

See the complete article at: A Smart House at Drexel University in Philadelphia Is a Living Laboratory of Sustainability in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) blog published by Forbes.

See also:

• Library Resources for Drexel Smart House Project
• Website: Drexel Smart House
• Blog: Drexel Smart House Blog

Urweb is the home of the Cyberpitch(TM) ground breaking innovations
from emerging companies, Universities and Government Laboratories
packaged in an easy to understand rich media format.

See:

Plug and Play Satellites
A modular nanosatellite approach to form simple, but functional spacecraft.
AFRL/RV

Fiber Optics Sensor
A sensor capable of measuring stresses in materials at centimeter intervals while in operation.
This sensor will greatly enhance the ability of engineers and designers to make better bridges, buildings and transportation.

Medical Tube Securing Device
A bite block that greatly reduces skin damage and improves oral hygiene maintenance with long term intubated patients.

Cryogenics Laboratory
The Cryogenics Test Laboratory houses one-of-a kind capabilities for research, development, and application of crosscutting technologies to meet the needs of a wide variety of customers.

Nanotubes
JPL and City of Hope have combined to use NASA made nanotubes as vectors for therapeutics to combat brain tumors.

In partnership with the private sector, state and local governments, national laboratories, and universities, the Building Technologies Program works to improve the efficiency of buildings and the equipment, components, and systems within them. The program supports research and development (R&D) activities and provides tools, guidelines, training, and access to technical and financial resources. The United States has many opportunities for energy and cost savings in its buildings. BTP is leading the way with advanced technologies for new and existing buildings.

For more information:  Building Technologies Program

See also: Building Technologies Program Information Resources and Program Areas

The Building Technologies Program offers a large collection of resources designed to deliver current, relevant information about energy efficiency for residential and commercial buildings. This page provides links to newsletters, publications, Webinars, training opportunities, software tools, and disaster recovery information.

Publications

Find publications on commercial and residential energy efficiency technologies and best practices on the Building Technologies Program’s publications Web page. See also Browse by Topic to find articles on relevant subject areas such as Biomass Program, Fuel Cells Technologies Program, and Vehicle Technologies Programs. etc.

Building E2 Newsletter

Read the Building Technologies Program quarterly online newsletter, Building E2 News, to stay informed about commercial and residential activities, technologies, events, and much more.

The American Society for Engineering Education with additional support from the U.S. National Science Foundation has been engaged in an extended conversation on creating a more vibrant U.S. engineering academic culture through scholarly and systematic innovation in engineering education.

Their recommendations and suggested actions are contained in the report, “Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systematic Innovation in Engineering Education (PDF: 6.91MB).” This report was subsequently shared with a broad and representative sample of U.S. engineering programs in the spring 2010 for their review and comment.  An analysis and synthesis of that feedback is now underway and a second and final report will be issued in late 2010 incorporating the results of this extended dialogue.

Please return to this site later this fall to learn more about making our already world-class engineering programs even better.

Knovel provides electronic access to leading engineering reference handbooks, databases, and conference proceedings.

To access knovel from the Library’s web site, go to Electronic Databases and then click on Knovel:Engineering & Scientific Online Reference.

knovel
Dates vary

Click on ‘Data Search’.

Data Search retrieves numeric and other tabular data contained in Knovel’s interactive graphs, equations and tables. Click in the Field box to display the available search fields. When you begin typing, the list is filtered.

Watch:  Knovel’s Interactive Tools Video

This video teaches you how Knovel’s data analysis tools ensure you not only find the information hidden in complex graphs, equations and tables quickly, but also analyze and manipulate data as easily as sorting a spreadsheet.

Tables and charts found in Knovel’s online reference collection deliver the data that users can extract it for further analysis.

Knovel search widget allows you to access Knovel from almost anywhere on the web- email it to colleagues, embed it in your personal homepages (like iGoogle, MyYahoo or Live.com), post it to your blog, add it to dozens of other social platforms.

Knovel also provides RSS feeds of new content added, instructional tips and other announcements. Click

ebooks include:

Engineering Materials for Biomedical Applications
Sax’s Dangerous Properties of Industrial Materials
Guidelines for Engineering Design for Process Safety
Guidelines for Safe Warehousing of Chemicals
Standard Handbook of Biomedical Engineering and Design

See  New Titles for all recently added titles in Knovel.

See also: New Video tutorials from Knovel

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) is an Institute within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) devoted to merging the physical and biological sciences to develop new technologies that improve health. Their goal is to accelerate the pace of discovery and speed the development of biomedical technologies that prevent illnesses or treat them when they do strike.

It also provides access to e-Advances linking NIBIB supported research to improvements in health.

Research stories  include:

A Nanoengineered Patch for the Damaged Heart
Thanks to bioinspired engineering work of a Johns Hopkins University research team, doctors may one day use a nanoengineered platform to grow and transplant cells to repair damaged heart tissue.

Powered Robotic Legs – Leaping Toward the Future: March 31, 2010
Using robotics technology, Vanderbilt University researchers have constructed and developed a powered lower leg prosthesis that has both brains and brawn.

NIBIB also provides access to web resources such as:

• NIBIB Research
• Biotechnology Resource Centers
• NIH Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Information
• Resources for Researchers

The Billion Gallon Challenge: Advanced biofuels from diverse sources such as grasses and agricultural waste hold the promise of sustainably reducing U.S. oil dependence and global warming emissions. Unfortunately the advanced biofuels industry not been able to meet the demand as set out in the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

The Billion Gallon Challenge is an effort to build the support and policies needed to bring the fledgling advanced biofuels industry to maturity.  It also seeks to ensure that the biofuels market maximizes taxpayer investment and helps to strengthen U.S. energy and environmental security.

Recent studies have concluded that avoiding dangerous climate change will require the United States and other industrialized countries to reduce their global warming emissions approximately 80 percent below 2000 levels by mid-century. This goal is attainable, but only if we act immediately, and on multiple fronts. One major part of the climate solutions equation is a shift to renewable energy resources such as wind, solar, and bioenergy.

See: Smart Bioenergy: Guiding Sustainable Bio-based Energy and Fuels Development

Scirus is a comprehensive science and engineering specific search engine that searches open-access websites as well as peer-reviewed content from publisher sites.  With over 450 million scientific items indexed at last count, it allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists’ homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information.

Scirus is also linked from Databases/Article indexes for Engineering or it can be found by searching on our Library’s online catalog in the ‘Title’ field.

To link to Drexel full text from Scirus, first add Drexel University in the Library Partner Links within Scirus Preferences

Searching for Nanotechnology Patents:

Using Advanced Searching,  select ‘Patents’ as  one of the ‘Information Types’ and use ‘Nanotechnlogy’  as keywords.

See: Nanotechnology patents

Some nanotechnology related electronic Journals available through our Library website:

• Nanoscale research letters
• Nano today
• Photonics and nanostructures
• Nano letters
• Nanomedicine
• Nanostructured materials

Comprehensive list of Nanotechnology Publications can be accessed through the link:

• Nanotechnology Journals and Magazines

AAAS Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment

Signal transduction is the study of how cells control their own and each others’ behaviors through chemical signals. Signal transduction research is an intensely active field of biomedical research and is of interest to a broad array of scientists. Science’s STKE should be useful to the scientists who specialize in signal transduction, as well as the many scientists who need to follow and apply the current findings of this field even though their primary interest may not be in signal transduction mechanisms themselves.

Access the current issue at: STKE Current

Access previous issues at: STKE archive