More than 48 million Americans each year fall ill from foodborne illnesses like Salmonella and E. coli. Those illnesses – according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – cost the U.S. more than $77 billion per year. The sheer volume of food imported or produced in the U.S. makes the problem terrifically complex. [...]

Sensors developed by food safety engineer Bryan Chin are revolutionizing the way inspectors test food for biological pathogens that sicken about one in six Americans each year. A 2011 outbreak of Listeria claimed 16 lives in Colorado. Salmonella contamination of eggs, tomatoes, jalapenos and peanut butter from 2008 to 2010 infected thousands of people and [...]

…like the famed iceberg that slew the Titanic, the majority of the danger from this plant lies underground. It’s got an incredibly dense root system—as much as 80% of the mass of the plant—and it sends out specialized root systems, called rhizomes, to choke the life out of everything around it for meters.

Small microparticles trapped in plasmas have strange and wonderful properties because sometimes they behave like fluids and sometimes like gases. On small scales, these particles can be used to improve the properties of things like solar panels. On very large scales, these particles give you the spectacular patterns in Saturn’s rings.

When it comes to innovation, the most basic approach is often the most successful. Ask and listen. That’s how faculty and students in Auburn’s School of Building Science and Department of Industrial & Graphic Design are helping one of the nation’s biggest industries — construction — improve productivity, working conditions and safety. They start by [...]

Salmonella in peanut butter. E. coli in beef. Listeria in lettuce. Each year a surprising number – one in six – of Americans get sick from tainted food. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that more than 3,000 of those people die. Part of the problem is the global supply chain. Those peanuts may come [...]

More than one out of every four deaths in the United States is caused by heart disease, making it the leading cause of death for men and women every year.
Cardiac regeneration scientist Elizabeth Lipke sees a solution. […]

Auburn engineers and scientists are one step closer to replacing coal with waste as the primary energy source in portland cement production. It might not sound like a big deal, but the use of waste materials, such as poultry litter or old tires, will have tremendous environmental and cost-saving benefits. Coal is a non-renewable resource and makes up 40 [...]

MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging, is fairly common these days. The scanners allow physicians a non-invasive, pain free look inside a patient’s body. But Auburn University’s newly-built MRI Center will take medical imaging and imaging research to a new level. The facility currently houses an open-bore, 3 Tesla scanner – one of a very few in the [...]

Auburn researchers last year set university records for the number of U.S. patents and license and option agreements in fields as diverse as advanced materials, biotechnology and environmental sciences. The Auburn Research Park also grew, adding a new MRI Research Center with one of the most powerful diagnostic tools available.