“It’s a form of standoff detection, for when you can’t physically search every person."

Lalendran worked to create about 20 wireless units with the ability to scan for “unusual contents in metals.” The units, which would be placed about 10 feet apart from one another when in use, could then process the information in real time to detect these suspect values in metals.

The sensors are not only cost-effective, Lalendran says, but also small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, and therefore possible to hide within ordinary items like traffic cones. Officials could easily hide the units to remain undetected by would-be bombers.

The sensors could potentially play a significant role in security forces and have even been considered for use in military defense. Lalendran offered the example of placing sensors in polling stations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to help prevent suicide bomb attacks.

“The IED problem is a really big issue,” he said. “We are losing a lot of men and women because we can’t detect IEDs, and I feel that this technology could help out with this specific issue.”

VEHICLE-TO-GRID

Automobiles serve as means of transportation from point A to point B. But is that all they can be used for?

“If you could use a car for something more than just getting to work or going on a family vacation, it would be a whole different way to think about a vehicle,” Engineering professor Jeff Stein wrote in a press release.

Stein serves as project director of a team of 10 other University professors who are collaborating on a four-year mission — with funding awarded from the National Science Foundation — to reinvent the way we think about the automobile.

“We’re trying to develop mathematical-based tools that will help people be able to design the future vehicles so that they get good mileage, get good range, make good use of the electricity…and try to reduce the amount of pollution that is produced,” he said.

One of Stein’s research projects is a concept called vehicle-to-grid integration. Stein’s team is looking at tapping into a vehicle’s potential to store and feed electricity back into the grid even while the vehicle sits idle in the garage.

Right now, the electrical grid — what we plug everything from a microwave to a laptop into — operates in an “on demand” system. That is, the electricity utilities only create the exact amount of energy needed at the time they are being used. However, if there are a lot of vehicles that are sitting in garages, all with large batteries that store electrical energy, Stein believes they could temporarily store energy to be used at a later time to power other types of electricity.

Stein labels unpredictable energy, like wind and solar energy, “intermittent energy” because it occurs sporadically in large spurts. Stein thinks energy created during these spurts could be transferred to and stored in large car batteries to be used later, rather than simply going to waste since it is not needed at that specific time. It could then be transferred to the electrical grid to power microwaves and laptops.

“The vehicles we have now provide freedom and meet the needs of individuals,” Stein said in the press release. “(Hybrid and electric vehicles) can be a completely different way of using a car, to be something that is defined as being a part of the greater good in concert with others. It has fascinating possibilities.”

AUTOMOBILE NETWORKING

In an age of social networking, there are numerous ways to satisfy a Facebook or Twitter fix on the go. From laptops, to cell phones, to iPads, it’s nearly impossible not to be connected. And with the help of a team of past and present University students, social networking may soon be extended to the automobile.