{"id":56556,"date":"2026-06-12T11:17:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T15:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine\/?p=56556"},"modified":"2026-06-12T11:17:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T15:17:54","slug":"is-power-the-thing-with-feathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine\/asked-answered\/is-power-the-thing-with-feathers\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Power the Thing With Feathers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn simulations, a three\u2011feather flapping wing produced up to twice the lift\u2011for\u2011energy efficiency of a single element\u2014so you get roughly double the lift output for the same power. The linked feathers achieve this by letting air slip through them on the upstroke and capturing that air to improve lift on the downstroke. That reduces wasted forces and boosts performance, which could benefit small drones, flapping robots, and turbines.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u00a0Rajat Mittal<\/a>,\u00a0professor of mechanical engineering<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Does your salad have a drug problem?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cAs farms turn to reclaimed wastewater, we wanted to determine how lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots absorb and chemically alter four psychoactive drugs. It turns out leafy greens held the highest concentrations, while tomato fruit and carrot root had about 220-fold and sevenfold lower levels, respectively. Plants transformed the drugs into multiple metabolites, and the variety of these breakdown products tracked with how much original drug was present\u2014not the plant species\u2014raising questions about food safety implications.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Carsten Prasse<\/a>, associate professor of environmental health and engineering<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Can we reveal the secret lives of cells?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust like tree rings that document climate changes from centuries ago, GEMINI, a genetically encoded intracellular recording platform, creates ring-like molecular records of cellular histories inside cells. By looking at GEMINI\u2019s cross sections under a microscope, we can read what individual cells have experienced via small, fluorescent \u2018rings.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Dingchang Lin<\/a>, assistant professor of materials science and engineering<\/a> and core researcher in the Institute for NanoBioTechnology<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Powerful wings, psychoactive salad, and secret cells<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":56571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"issue":[105],"class_list":["post-56556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asked-answered","issue-spring-2026"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIs Power the Thing With Feathers? - Johns Hopkins Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kind sharks, judgy tumors, and overweight AI\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine\/asked-answered\/is-power-the-thing-with-feathers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is Power the Thing With Feathers? 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