Mechanical Engineering

Vertical farms nailed tiny salads. Now they need to feed the world

Wired UK: Gartenfeld Island, in Berlin’s western suburb of Spandau, was once the bellows of Germany’s industrial revolution. It hosted Europe’s first high-rise factory and, until World War II, helped make Berlin, behind London and New York, the third-largest city on…

Digidog, a Robotic Dog Used by the Police, Stirs Privacy Concerns

New York Times: Two men were being held hostage in a Bronx apartment. They had been threatened at gunpoint, tied up and tortured for hours by two other men who pretended to be plumbers to get inside, the police said. One of…

Folding Drone Can Drop Into Inaccessible Mines

IEEE Spectrum: Inspecting old mines is a dangerous business. For humans, mines can be lethal: prone to rockfalls and filled with noxious gases. Robots can go where humans might suffocate, but even robots can only do so much when mines are…

Nanowire-filled film makes excellent electromagnetic shield

E&T Magazine: Researchers from the University of California-Riverside have demonstrated a flexible polymer film which combines electromagnetic shielding with electrical isolation. The University of California engineers developed a film which uses a quasi-one-dimensional nanomaterial filler. The result is an excellent electromagnetic…