Media Watch

Distributed power production could also reduce the need for transmission lines in high risk areas allow “local production of renewable electricity, for example distributed solar and battery energy storage. Those are also very important technologies for avoiding wildfires,” said Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor at the University of California, Irvine. The director of the university’s National Fuel Cell Research Center, Brouwer says new fuel cell technology, similar to that being introduced in cars, can create more local generation. The university’s medical center gets 30 percent of its power from fuel cells.

“This method is an advancement in electron microscopy—from detecting atoms to imaging electrons—that could help us engineer new materials with desired properties and functionalities for devices used in data storage, energy conversion and quantum computing,” stated team leader Xiaoqing Pan, UCI’s Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in Engineering and a professor of both Materials Science & Engineering and Physics & Astronomy.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine are leading a new project with three other UC campuses to study the impact of coastal flooding on disadvantaged communities in California. … “Coastal flooding poses major challenges worldwide that are worsening with climate change and the continued expansion of coastal cities,” said co-investigator Brett Sanders, UCI professor of civil & environmental engineering. “Over just the past few years, the U.S. has suffered hundreds of billions of dollars in losses from flooding disasters linked to hurricanes and intense rainfall, and both the delta and L.A. metro regions are vulnerable to flooding disasters.”

3-D printing offers a way to build ceramics without those fatal flaws, says Lorenzo Valdevit at the University of California, Irvine. He and his team used a commercially available technique called two-photon polymerization direct laser writing to build silicon oxycarbide structures that could withstand up to 7 GPa of pressure before breaking apart. That’s more pressure than high-strength steel can endure before it breaks, Valdevit says.