Why Putting Solar Canopies on Parking Lots Is a Smart Green Move A typical Walmart supercenter, for instance, has a five-acre parking lot, and it’s a wasteland, especially if you have to sweat your way across it under an asphalt-bubbling sun. Put a canopy over it, though, and it could support a three-megawatt solar array… the canopy would [also] shade customers… If Walmart did that at all 3,571 of its U.S. super centers, the total capacity would be 11.1 gigawatts of solar power — roughly equivalent to a dozen large coal-fired power plants. Solar panels atop the upper parking lot at Lafayette ..read more

A lab-stage mRNA vaccine targeting ticks may offer protection against Lyme and other tick-borne diseases A new laboratory-stage mRNA vaccine that teaches the immune system to recognize the saliva from tick bites could prevent these bugs from feeding on and transmitting tick-borne diseases to people … What’s unique about the 19ISP mRNA vaccine is that instead of directly targeting the pathogen that causes the disease like traditional vaccines, 19ISP was able to stimulate resistance to the carrier of the disease, ticks, and prevent them from transmitting the pathogen in the first place. Our stud ..read more

I am curious, even skeptical, about the potential for hydrogen fuel cell versus battery passenger cars. I do respect Toyota and so am wondering if they do indeed see something that most others are missing. The current production Toyota Mirai has a range of 650 km. I do think hydrogen fuel cells may provide a better option for larger vehicles (maybe even shipping), but I have done next to no research on this so I may be wrong. It seem unlikely to me that hydrogen fuel cell passenger cars are going to make it but I would be happy to be wrong. Perhaps the advantages will overcome what seem to me ..read more

This is an interesting explanation of a the physics involved with vehicle propulsion. And it is a great video showing the scientific method at work. They only touch on it a little bit but the need for creating 4 versions of the small treadmill device to illustrate the principles in action is a great example of how science inquiry and engineering work. There are often many failed attempts before an engineering solution to the issue involved can be properly created (video on Xyla Foxlin’s efforts: Building the Vehicle Physicists Called Impossible). Enjoy the videos. Veritasium is also offering ..read more

This webcasts provides a good, very simple, overview of proteins. Learn more about proteins: How Lysozyme Protein in Our Tear-Drops Kill Bacteria – Molecular Motor Proteins – Fold.it, the Protein Folding Game ..read more

The Biden administration has proposed greatly increasing USA government spending on science and engineering. They are proposing levels last seen in the 1960s when the USA was most committed to science and engineering spending (as most visibly seen in support for NASA). Advance U.S. leadership in critical technologies and upgrade America’s research infrastructure. U.S. leadership in new technologies—from artificial intelligence to biotechnology to computing—is critical to both our future economic competitiveness and our national security. Based on bipartisan proposals, President Biden is callin ..read more

Chemical engineering and bioengineering, also called biomedical engineering, overlap in some areas because they both create new technology and innovations for the healthcare industry. However, the two disciplines are very different. Here is a comparison of the two careers to help you choose the one that would be best for you. What Does a Chemical Engineer Do? A chemical engineer uses science to find solutions to problems, such as manufacturing issues for a food company. They can also work for pharmaceutical, chemical, science, petroleum, coal, oil, gas, trade, manufacturing and other companies ..read more

Nzambi Matee is a materials engineer and head of Gjenge Makers (in Kenya), which produces sustainable low-cost construction materials made of recycled plastic waste and sand. For her work, Nzambi Matee was recently named a Young Champions of the Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme. Building blocks for a greener Nairobi Through trial and error, she and her team learned that some plastics bind together better than others. Her project was given a boost when Matee won a scholarship to attend a social entrepreneurship training programme in the United States of America. With her paver ..read more

Guest post by Michael Betancourt. I just finished Box, Hunter, and Hunter (Statistics for Experimenters) and I cannot praise it enough. There were multiple passages where I literally giggled. In fact I may have been a bit too enthusiastic about tagging quotes beyond “all models are wrong but some are useful” that I can’t share them all. I wish someone had shared this with me when I was first learning statistics instead of the usual statistics textbooks that treat model development as an irrelevant detail. So many of the elements that make this book are extremely relevant to statistics today ..read more

These were the most popular (by number of page views) posts on our blog in the last decade. Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel (2008) NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover (2011) Science Toys You Can Make With Your Kids (2005) Backyard Wildlife: Red-tailed Hawk (2018) Home Engineering (Halloween edition): Gaping Hole Costume (2010) Ranking Countries by Scientific Publication Citations: USA, UK, Germany… (2015) Neil Degrasse Tyson: Scientifically Literate See a Different World (2009) 500 Year Floods (2008) Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe Hybrid Image (2009) Why is it Colder at Higher Eleva ..read more