• Smog-eating concrete for Missouri highways

    Missouri highway is paved with smog-eating concrete; the concrete contains an active ingredient that captures pollution and UV light from the sun breaks it down into harmless chemicals

  • New technology weighs trucks while trucks are in motion

    Israeli researchers develop a method to detect overloaded trucks quickly and efficiently — while the trucks are in motion; the system, which has potential for use in law enforcement, infrastructure maintenance monitoring, and road and bridge design and planning

  • U.K. railways threatened by changes in rainfall patterns

    Some of the U.K.’s railway infrastructure was built in the nineteenth century on unprepared foundations, before engineers understood soil mechanics; rail embankments are structures made of soil and rock, which are always be affected by climate — particularly rainfall patterns

  • High performance materials for the tunnel of the century

    On 15 October Swiss engineers finished their work on the Gotthard Tunnel — longest rail tunnel in the world; the 57-km (35.4-mile) high-speed rail link, which will open in 2017, will form the lynchpin of a new rail network between northern and southeastern Europe and help ease congestion and pollution in the Swiss Alps

    • view counter

  • America's latest wonder: Hoover Dam companion bridge

    After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. feared a terrorist with a truck bomb could attack the Hoover Dam, potentially flooding vast areas and disrupting water and power supplies to several states; semi-trucks were banned from bridge, forced to take route to Las Vegas that is more than forty miles longer; new 1,900-foot-long structure will reroutes traffic off of the two-lane road atop the dam, will improve traffic in the region, and help protect the dam from terrorist threats; it is the seventh highest bridge in the world and it is held up by the longest arch in the Western Hemisphere

  • NIST data enabling evacuation planning of high-rise buildings

    NIST researchers made video recordings of evacuation drills in stairwells at nine buildings ranging in height from six to sixty-two stories tall; the drills are part of a wide-ranging study to track the movement of people on stairs during high-rise building evacuation; the data sets created will ensure that architects, engineers, emergency planners, and others involved in building design have a strong technical basis for safer, more cost-effective building evacuations

    • view counter

  • Curved escalators can follow any path upward

    A retired British mechanical engineering professor designed an escalator, or conveyance — dubbed the Levytator — that can be designed into any shape, so architects can incorporate escalators that follow curves rather than travel in straight lines; the Levytator moves a continuous loop of curved steps, which can follow any path upwards, flatten, and straighten, and descend again with passengers onboard

  • Bridge column withstands 6.9 quake in tests

    Engineers in California test a bridge column design capable of withstanding a 6.9 quake; nearly all of California’s 2,194 state-owned bridges have been retrofitted better to withstand tremors; local cities and counties across California own 1,193 with work done on 729 of them

  • Using bacteria to create self-healing concrete

    Cement production has an impact on the environment as it is very energy intensive, accounting for about 7 percent of the total anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 emissions; in addition to the energy consumption from production and transportation, air pollution, as well as land use and impacts on the landscape from related mining activities are also matters of concern; means of increasing the service life of concrete structures would make the material not only more durable, but also more sustainable — and researchers find that embedding certain bacteria in the concrete promises to do just that

  • The world's longest tunnel to open 15 October

    At 57 kilometers, the Gotthard tunnel, connecting Zurich and Milan, will be the world’s longest tunnel; constructing the tunnel, which opens on 15 October, required the excavation of m an estimated 24 million tons of rock at a cost of $9.5 billion

  • New cement absorbs CO2

    Concrete — the essential material used by the world’s $3.8 trillion construction industry — accounts for 5 percent of the world’s man-made carbon dioxide emissions; each ton of cement emits about 800 kg (1,763 lb.) of CO2 during manufacture — and every year, some 3 billion tons of cement turn into nearly 30 billion tons of concrete, a British start-up has devised a new cement — based on magnesium silicates rather than limestone — that absorbs and stores CO2 when it is produced

  • Water-proofing cities by using buildings for flood protection

    Buildings, car parks, and roads can be designed in such a way that they can protect the urban area behind them from flooding, alongside their regular urban functions; these innovative construction techniques can also be adapted to the circumstances in the long term, enabling flood protection systems to take account of external influences such as climate change and economic development

  • New Florida museum is glass-covered hurricane-proof fortress

    The new Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg is designed to withstand category 5 hurricanes; the roof is 12-inch thick solid concrete; the walls are even thicker, at eighteen inches; the glass, which makes up big sections of the outside of the museum, can hold up to a category 3 hurricane; if that glass breaks, letting rain, wind, and debris into the facility, the art will still be safe: storm doors will shield the galleries on the third floor, and the vault, which is on the second floor (all of the art is placed on the second and third floors, above the 30-foot storm surge of a category 5 storm)

  • China's Three Gorges Dam's showing cracks

    The Three Gorges Dam is China’s largest construction project since the Great Wall; the dam was hailed as an engineering feat that could withstand the worst flood in 100 years, but this year’s torrential rains have severely tested its capacity to control the surging Yangtze

  • China, Pakistan floods; Haiti earthquake: not merely "natural" disasters

    The recent disasters in Pakistan, China, and Haiti have done more than kill thousands and displace millions: they have raised questions about whether the modifier “natural” — as in “natural disaster” — is accurate in describing the sources and scope of the catastrophes; these and other recent disasters, in other words, raise questions about how much of the damage caused comes from the forces of nature and how much is the result of human activity; experts say that a major contributing factor to the scope of these disasters are development decisions which are too often controlled by wealthy and corrupt elites who have no interest in protecting people who have been marginalized by poverty