2011 was another busy year for engineers all over the world. From inventing a device that turns air into water to exploring the oceans in a tiny submarine, scientists and engineers are exploring uncharted territory.

Like last year, we at eGFI have chronicled the most awe-inspiring innovations and stories, so in case you missed one, we present:

The Most Popular, Interesting, Weird, or Just Plain Cool eGFI Blog Posts of 2011

	Turning Air into Water
	Jetman: Flying Soon to a Landmark Near You
	Vertical Forest Coming Soon to Milan
	And Now: Flavor-Shifting Ice Cream
	Solar Decathalon 2011 Powers Up
	The World’s Sweetest Printer
	Water Bottles to Illuminate a Million Homes
	Airbus Presents a Futuristic Vision of Air Travel
	Students Create an App to Diagnose Malaria
	Berkeley Engineers Help Student Walk
	Underwater Scooters are the New SCUBA
	Virgin Oceanic Goes Many Leagues Under the Sea
	Cynthia Breazeal Wants You to Make Friends with Robots
	New Shirt Measures Athletes’ Performances
	Watson vs. The World

In a world increasingly affected by climate change, unexpected droughts are a harsh reality for many farmers whose livelihoods depend on regular rainfall. That’s why Edward Linacre, an industrial design graduate student from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, decided to invent a device that can literally harvest water from thin air.

Airdrop, as it’s called, recently won the prestigious James Dyson Award, which grants Linacre over $14,000 to develop the product. It was selected from among 500 entries from 18 different countries for its simple design and revolutionary approach to irrigation.

The sleek, minimal design of Airdrop is in part inspired by the extraordinary water-gathering abilities of the Namib Desert Beetle, which survives in very arid climates by collecting moisture from the air with its wings. Linacre’s device uses a solar-powered turbine to collect the air and deliver it to an underground system of copper pipes, where it is cooled to the point of condensation. The resulting water is then stored in a sub-surface tank and delivered directly to the roots of crops in measured quantities.

Watch Linacre explain his ingenious invention in this video:

Airdrop is purposely designed to be an inexpensive, low-tech solution to drought that farmers can easily install and maintain. Linacre has tested his design extensively in his mother’s backyard, where he says it was able to provide up to 1 liter of water for her garden each day.

Top photo by Arsineh Houspian

This is no pie-in-the-sky urban farm design. Italian architect Stefano Boeri’s Bosco Verticale, or Vertical Forest, is actually being built, and will soon add a splash of green to the Milan skyline.

The design features two residential towers with staggered balconies that allow an array of trees and shrubbery to grow outside each abode.  Advantages of such a setup, beyond adding verdant beauty to a city, include shading inhabitants in the summer while permitting more sunlight in the winter, protection from noise pollution, and air purification.

The Bosco Verticale is now under construction in Milan, Italy

Called “the most exciting new tower in the world” by the Financial Times, Bosco Verticale will eventually grow the equivalent of over 100,000 square feet of woodland. FT also reports that the buildings are to be the first in a series of eco-friendly renovations planned for the city. Boeri has dubbed the project BioMilano, and his vision features more green housing, the restoration of abandoned farms on the city outskirts, urban gardens, and Metrobosco, a ring of trees to encircle Milan.

Images:
© Stephano Boeri

Like our new magazine cover? Snatch up the 44″ x 25″ poster

What do the blockbuster movie Avatar, high-performance sports gear, the Angry Birds phone app, and pollution-eating bacteria have in common? They are among a host of fascinating innovations developed by engineers and featured in the newest edition of the American Society for Engineering Education’s (ASEE) Engineering, Go For It magazine.

The publication is now available in our online store. You can find a free preview of the magazine here.

The kid-friendly magazine is part of ASEE’s campaign to inspire more K-12 students, particularly young women and underrepresented minorities, to pursue engineering careers. Illustrating how engineers make a difference in the world, the new edition includes:

• Stories featuring robots that imitate animals, Hollywood special effects, clean energy innovations, and technological advances giving athletes a winning edge.
• Engaging profiles on an array of engineering careers and disciplines.
• Fresh, cutting-edge examples of engineering innovations that are transforming fields from aerospace and medical care to architecture and materials science.
• Interviews with eight students currently participating in the Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship sponsored by the Department of Defense and administered by ASEE

In addition to producing a print magazine, eGFI blogs weekly for students and teachers, and can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Despite how annoying dandelions may be for homeowners who take pride in their lawns, the weed’s roots have shown potential in making a new, green source of rubber.

Ford and Ohio State researchers are using the milky-white goo that seeps from dandelion roots to make a type of rubber that could be used in the plastics of cup holders, floor mats, and interior trim of cars.

The dandelions (a specific Russian kind called Taraxacum kok-saghyz, or TKS) are carefully harvested to ensure that the roots remain intact. The roots are ground to extract the milky-white latex and then vulcanized (a chemical process to link the latex polymers more strongly), adding durability and creating a rubber substance from the milky-white liquid.

Meanwhile, researchers  at Eastern BioPlastics have discovered that a substance in chicken feathers may be able to replace oil in the production of plastic products.

Keratin, a tough protein fiber found in fingernails, hair, and horns, can be removed from the feathers of chickens and replace petroleum in some cases, resulting in biodegradable flower pots and office furniture.

Each year, poultry producers are left with 3 billion pounds of leftover chicken feathers (which end up either in landfills or converted to – believe it or not – animal feed), and this could be a sustainable way to cut down on the 18.7 million barrels of oil that the United States consumes each day.

In addition, Brazilian researchers are looking to make a more eco-friendly plastic out of bananas and pineapples, and Toyota hopes to one day build a bioplastic car body out of seaweed.

Images:

tibchris/Flickr
Just chaos/Flickr

Is your lunch fresh enough to eat? Now the plastic wrap can tell you

Consumers often throw away perfectly edible food because they think it has “gone bad.” As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that food scraps constitute 12 percent of municipal landfills, making food the single largest component of the country’s waste stream.

To help prevent consumers from prematurely throwing away food, researchers are developing a plastic wrap that will change colors when the food is no longer safe to eat.

Made from “intelligent plastics,” the wrap will alert consumers when food is about to lose its freshness because it has broken or damaged packaging, has exceeded its “best before” date or has been poorly refrigerated.

An inexpensive wrap would be much more cost-effective than current technology that inserts freshness indicators inside the labels or food-industry packaging.

Not only would this color-changing wrap cut down on waste, but it would help save lives as well, as an estimated 76 million Americans contract food poisoning every year.

The researchers at Scotland’s Strathclyde University have received over $500,000 in funding form Scottish Enterprise, a government board. Hopefully soon they’ll be able to say, “that’s a wrap!”

Image: dvs/Flickr

Aquaculture, which relies on a balanced ecosystem of fish and plants, could be the future of urban farming

One of the biggest challenges to conquering world hunger is the shrinking availability of farmland. That is why farms of the future need to occupy less space, rely on fewer pesticides, and produce food that travels blocks, not miles, to combat climbing fuel costs.

The solution may be aquaponic farming, a revolutionary system of mini vertical farms where fish and plants live symbiotically.

The ecosystems of flora and fauna are linked by tubes – microorganisms eat the (filtered) waste produced by the fish, convert that it into fertilizer, and fertilize the lettuce, kale, wheatgrass, or other crops growing in a shallow pool of water nearby.

Aquaponic farming minimizes the use of water while allowing year-round harvests. It also completely eliminates harmful waste products that would otherwise end up in landfills. Says Miles Harston of Aquaranch, an aquaponic farm in Illinois, “In nature, there is no ‘waste.’ Every waste product becomes a benefit for another [natural] event.”

Instead of building elaborate high-rises or funky winged structures which would incur steep infrastructure costs, many aquaponic farmers are turning to large, unused buildings such as former truck depots or meatpacking plants.

Without the costs of building an entirely new structure, these indoor farms can be both sustainable and profitable, while helping to feed more mouths.

Here’s a great video explaining the advantages of urban aquaponics:

Images:
Social Earth
OrganicNation / flickr

New genetically engineered salmon grows twice as fast as its traditional counterpart (fish above are the same age)

The idea of genetically modified food may give some of us the creeps. But humans have been genetically modifying crops and livestock for thousands of years through selective cultivation and breeding. So, chances are that most of the food you eat has been engineered in some way. And now, for the first time, a fish whose DNA has been altered might be swimming into your local grocery store.

AquAdvantage is a new type of transgenic Atlantic Salmon that has been modified with growth genes from two other fish – the Chinook salmon and the eel-like Ocean pout. Produced by bioengineering company AquaBounty Technologies, it promises to be cheaper and more readily available than conventional salmon.

While non-transgenic Atlantic salmon can take up to 5 years to mature fully , the new fish grow twice as quickly. That’s because their DNA is spliced with the genes of fish that mature all year, as opposed to only during warmer seasons. Here’s a graph that compares the growth rates:

The news of  ”super salmon” has not come without controversy, however. Critics have dubbed it “Frankenfish” and question its safety for human consumption. After extensive testing, the FDA has yet to find any negative health impact, so the worries may be unfounded.

Here’s a news story covering the debate:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As strange as it may seem to dine on a fish that would not exist without human intervention, AquAdvantage could cut production costs and lessen the environmental impact of everyone’s favorite seafood.

Images courtesy AquaBounty Technologies

As you probably know already, today (Thursday, April 22) is Earth Day, which means it’s time to celebrate the achievements of environmental engineers everywhere.  So here’s a collection of news items highlighting the efforts of engineers to improve the state of our home planet. For more information about Earth Day events in your area, check the official Earth Day Network site.

Road Hogs

Farm power is back, and this time the pigs are on duty. Innoventor, a design and engineering firm, has teamed with researchers at the University of Illinois to develop a special reaction process that turns pig manure into biofuel. The swine fuel is being tested as a low-grade asphalt binder, and has been used to pave a stretch of highway  in St. Louis.

Students Design Eco-topia

Back in November, we blogged about the Future City design competition, and now the results are in. Congrats to the team from North Carolina’s Davidson IB Middle School, whose model for a self-sustaining city in Madagascar beat out over 1,000 entries, nabbing first prize. View more details of this amazing futuristic green city in the video above.

Ocean Update

Recently, there’s been a slew of exciting news in the field of ocean engineering. Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have created a new acoustic imaging system to allow scientists to view the ocean floor in high definition. Meanwhile, California has opened a large desalination plant that will soon make it possible for residents to drink water from the Pacific Ocean, and the Navy is testing a submarine engine that runs solely on power derived from ocean currents.

Earth to NASA

This year, NASA’s Earth Day gift might be the best of all: NASA Earth Exchange (or NEX, for short) is a colossal, 128-screen data-crunching monster, set to revolutionize our understanding of global climate change. Already, NEX has been able to “cobble together half-trillion-pixel snapshots of global vegetation change over the past 30 years in just ten hours,” reports PopSci, a task that would have usually taken months to compute.

Extra

We close with some stunning images of the recent volcanic explosion in Iceland – reminder of the awe-inspiring, often unpredictable forces of Planet Earth, and science’s ongoing efforts to understand and track them.

Pig Image: The Pug Father/Flickr

When it comes to helping the global community recover from natural disasters, engineers are at a distinct advantage. Not only can they build survivor-seeking robots and provide food and clean water for those affected, but they also have the ability to analyze the aftermath of a storm or a quake and help communities be better prepared for such events. Engineering students and professionals across the country are now using their skills to help rebuild the countries of Haiti and Chile after their recent devastating earthquakes.

More than half of Haitians do not have access to clean drinking water, so students have been working to bring in new water filtration systems. Partnering with the organization Engineers Without Borders, students from the University of Central Florida had installed five water filtration systems before the earthquake struck. Uncertain about the extent of damage these systems may have suffered recently, the Florida group plans to return to repair them, as well as to install twenty-five more.

UW-Madison Engineers Without Borders students help Haitians repair a
water pipe. Image courtesy of Eyeleen Chou and Wisonsin Builder magazine

Engineering students from the University of Wisconsin–Madison felt the tremors of the Haiti quake firsthand, although at 70 miles north of Port-au-Prince, the village where they were working was largely unscathed. The students left soon after the quake as they did not want to become more mouths to  feed. But now they’re eager to return to rebuild critical waterlines and bridges.  The experience has deeply affected all those involved. Senior Tyler Lark is quoted in the Wisconsin Builder as saying, “Working in Haiti has given meaning to my undergraduate career.”

Meanwhile, engineers from the University of California-Berkeley are gearing up to help the victims of a more recent earthquake – the massive 8.8 magnitude tremor that shook Chile last week. A 16-member team from the Geo-engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association is being deployed to work alongside Chilean engineers, to study the damage patterns to learn more about how buildings and infrastructure react to seismic stress.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti. January 20th, 2010

While it may take years for Chile, and possibly decades for Haiti, to fully recover from these earthquakes, engineers also have the opportunity to rebuild the affected cities to be better, faster, stronger, and more resilient.

Learn more:
- Listen to Alex Moseson talk about his experience with Engineers Without Borders.
- See a group of students discuss their water project in Cameroon.
- And meet Regina Clewlow who started Engineers for a Sustainable World.

Images:
DVIDSHUB/Flickr
Eyeleen Chou/Wisconsin Builder
newbeatphoto/Flickr