The inviting smell of a freshly baked cookie immediately triggers a motor response to search for the source of that smell. Often the cookie can be easily found. This everyday event that we perform without a thought is an amazing feat that combines our superior ability to smell the cookie and computational prowess to determine […]
Everyone has scents that naturally appeal to them, such as vanilla or coffee, and scents that don’t appeal. What makes some smells appealing and others not? Barani Raman, PhD, a professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and Rishabh Chandak, who earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral […]
Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have pioneered a new technique that will enable higher-resolution imaging of very small objects like neurons. The technique, which improves on an existing method called expansion microscopy, is described in a new paper published in the journal Nano Letters. Srikanth Singamaneni, PhD and Barani […]
Smell a cup of coffee. Smell it inside or outside; summer or winter; in a coffee shop with a scone; in a pizza parlor with pepperoni — even at a pizza parlor with a scone! — coffee smells like coffee. Why don’t other smells or different environmental factors “get in the way,” so to speak, […]
Brains have evolved to do more with less. Take a tiny insect brain, which has less than a million neurons but shows a diversity of behaviors and is more energy efficient than current AI systems. These tiny brains serve as models for computing systems that are becoming more sophisticated as billions of silicon neurons can […]
Nanomaterials have been used in a variety of emerging applications, such as in targeted pharmaceuticals or to bolster other materials and products such as sensors and energy harvesting and storage devices. A team in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis is using nanoparticles as heaters to manipulate the electrical activity […]
The Office of Naval Research has awarded Barani Raman, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, an $851,320 grant for research to determine just how sensitive locusts’ noses are when it comes to explosives — and how well researchers can interpret what the insects are […]
If you want to enhance a locust to be used as a bomb-sniffing bug, there are a few technical challenges that need solving before sending it into the field. Is there some way to direct the locust — to tell it where to go to do its sniffing? And because the locusts can’t speak (yet), […]
How does the brain detect smells? To find out, you could rely on biological sciences, using high tech imaging methods, or studying anatomical diagrams. You could even get philosophical and ask, “What is smell, anyway?” Or, you could turn to engineering. Ching That’s what ShiNung Ching, an associate professor in the McKelvey School of Engineering at […]
Bomb-sniffing cyborg grasshoppers have been created by scientists to detect explosives such as TNT. Academics at Washington University in Missouri tapped into the insects’ minds to monitor whether they were smelling explosives, and if so, what kind they were detecting. Or as the researchers put it, the “bio-hacked” grasshoppers play a similar role to a “canary […]
Three faculty members in the McKelvey School of Engineering will be able to purchase important equipment needed for their research through grants awarded by the Department of Defense. The faculty are Tae Seok Moon, associate professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering; Barani Raman, associate professor of biomedical engineering; and Vijay Ramani, the Roma B. […]
The neurons in our brains are its basic computational units analogous to a computer transistor. They process information and send and receive messages to and from the rest of our bodies. Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis want to know if they can control certain neurons using nanotechnology to better understand behavior and disease. […]
Computational logic can describe how locusts recognize smells in a dynamic environment From the WashU Newsroom… Understanding how a sensory input becomes an experience — how molecules released by a blooming flower, for instance, become the internal experience of smelling a rose — has for millennia been a central question of philosophy. In more recent […]
Launched in 2013, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is designed to fund research that will ultimately revolutionize the understanding of the human brain, from individual cells to complex neural circuits. From the WashU School of Engineering Newsroom… The National Institutes of Health recently awarded a two-year, BRAIN Initiative grant to engineers at […]