News From U-M
Nanoparticles may help inhibit Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders
Nanoparticles of the right dimensions and shape may be the key in combating the plaque that destroys neurons and leads to symptoms associated with Alzheimer's disease, a new report shows.
U-M chemical engineering professor Nicholas Kotov says the nanotechnology means can attract and capture the longer fibrils that are known to form plaque related to neurodegenerative disorders. Read More
U-M International Center for Automotive Medicine enters new era
The University of Michigan International Center for Automotive medicine this week marked the beginning of new capabilities and new collaborative research combining trauma medicine, state-of-the-art computer analysis and automotive engineering.
“Our mission is to better understand, treat and prevent crash injuries. And to really understand injuries requires doctors and engineers working together in equal partnership,” says the center’s founder and director Stewart Wang, M.D., Ph.D. Read More
Toward efficient harvesting of solar energy
Conventional means of collecting solar energy, solar cells for example, have been notoriously inefficient. Now a team of chemical engineers at U-M is exploring new means of exploiting the abundant energy produced by Earth's nearest star. They have discovered a method for utilizing metal nano-particles, which act much like nanometer-sized light antennae, to help accelerate the production of renewable solar fuels and other chemicals. Read More
Two faculty named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
U-M professors Sharon Glotzer and Scott Page have been named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a prestigious society that recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in scholarly and professional fields. Glotzer, the Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering, conducts research in the areas of computational nanoscience and simulation of soft matter, self-assembly and materials design. Page, the Leonid Hurwicz Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems, Political Science, and Economics, is the principal investigator for the IDEAS IGERT grant, funded by the National Science Foundation. He studies the importance of diversity and complexity in social systems and is the author of more than 60 articles and four books including the recently released “Diversity and Complexity.” Read More
Researchers inject nanofiber spheres carrying cells into wounds to grow tissue
For the first time, scientists have made star-shaped, biodegradable polymers that can self-assemble into hollow, nanofiber spheres, and when the spheres are injected with cells into wounds, these spheres biodegrade, but the cells live on to form new tissue. Developing this nanofiber sphere as a cell carrier that simulates the natural growing environment of the cell is a very significant advance in tissue repair, says Peter Ma, professor at the UM School of Dentistry and lead author of a paper about the research scheduled for advanced online publication in Nature Materials. Co-authors are Xiaohua Liu and Xiaobing Jin. Read More
Solar power without solar cells: A hidden magnetic effect of light could make it possible
A dramatic and surprising magnetic effect of light discovered by UM researchers could lead to solar power without traditional semiconductor-based solar cells. The researchers found a way to make an “optical battery,” said Stephen Rand, a professor in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Physics and Applied Physics. In the process, they overturned a century-old tenet of physics. “You could stare at the equations of motion all day and you will not see this possibility. We’ve all been taught that this doesn’t happen,” said Rand, an author of a paper on the work published in the Journal of Applied Physics. “It’s a very odd interaction. That’s why it’s been overlooked for more than 100 years.” Read More
U-M creates state’s first disease-specific human embryonic stem cell lines
University of Michigan researchers have created the state's first human embryonic stem cell lines that carry the genes responsible for inherited disease. The achievement will enable scientists here to study the onset and progression of genetic disorders and to search for new treatments. With this accomplishment, the U-M joins a small handful of U.S. universities that are creating disease-specific human embryonic stem cell lines. "All our efforts are finally starting to bear fruit," said Gary Smith, co-director of the U-M Consortium for Stem Cell Therapies and leader of the cell-line derivation project. "Creating disease-specific human embryonic stem cell lines has been a central goal of the consortium since it was formed two years ago, and now we've passed that milestone." Read More
Fundamental discovery could lead to better memory chips
Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have found a way to improve the performance of ferroelectric materials, which have the potential to make memory devices with more storage capacity than magnetic hard drives and faster write speed and longer lifetimes than flash memory. With his colleagues at U-M and collaborators from Cornell University, Penn State University, and University of Wisconsin, Madison, Xiaoqing Pan, a professor in the U-M Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has designed a material system that spontaneously forms small nano-size spirals of the electric polarization at controllable intervals, which could provide natural budding sites for the polarization switching and thus reduce the power needed to flip each bit. Read More
New fluorescent OLEDs display greater efficiencies than believed possible
U-M engineering researchers have designed an exceptionally efficient fluorescent blue OLED, or organic light emitting diode. OLEDs are the next generation display technology. They are already used in televisions, cell phones and computers. John Kieffer and graduate student Changgua Zhen of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and collaborators have produced fluorescent OLEDs with close to 10 percent efficiency. "Our results clearly indicate that fluorescent material have a bright future for highly efficient and stable OLEDs for flat-panel display and lighting applications," Kieffer said. Read More