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LIFE WILL BE BETTER
WITHOUT POTHOLES
Why the roads have so many potholes. We demand
a lot of asphalt — the material found on more than
90 percent of the 2.7 million miles of US roads and
highways. Not only must it stand up to millions of
buses and semis hurtling over it daily, it also has to
withstand temperatures that climb past 100 degrees
and dip into double-digit negatives. And the weather
is unforgiving of even the tiniest flaws on the surface,
says research engineer Reyhaneh Rahbar-Rastegar.
“All potholes begin with small cracks in the asphalt,
which let in water from the rain and snow,” she says.
The water seeps beneath the pavement, and then it
freezes and expands. Once the ice melts, it leaves gaps
that weaken the pavement. Vehicles’ heavy weight,
salt, and the regular freeze-thaw cycles of spring and
fall speed the process.
It’s more than just a nuisance. According to data collected by AAA, all those pothole-caused tire punctures
and bent wheels cost drivers a cool $3 billion every single year. In some cases, the impact can be even more
serious, says Rahbar-Rastegar. “If drivers lose control
because of potholes, they could cause an accident
where someone is hurt or even killed.”
A cheaper, longer-lasting solution. To prevent the
cracking that leads to potholes, Rahbar-Rastegar
works on developing more flexible and durable asphalt
mixtures, using a combination of crushed rock, sand,
gravel, and a binder, which is the expensive material
that holds the aggregates together. Over time, she and
her team have been able to improve the performance
of these mixtures. They’ve also minimized the amount
of binder that is needed — even as traffic loads and
vehicle weights have skyrocketed. “Asphalt mixtures
are incredibly complicated, and improving them is an ongoing process,” she
says. “But hopefully someday we will
find the solution that will lead to no
potholes at all.”
48 PUR D U E A LUMNUS
LIFE WILL BE BETTER
WHEN ‘NOT ENOUGH
SPACE’ ON OUR
SMARTPHONES BECOMES
A THING OF THE PAST
It’s a now-familiar
fa c to i d t h at t he
phones in our pockets have more firepower than the computers
that guided Apollo 11 to the moon. But
for electrical and computer engineering
professor Saurabh Bagchi, “more” definitely doesn’t mean “enough.”
Many apps — like certain mobile
video games or software that can detect
diseases — require more storage space
than a phone might have. That was a
problem Bagchi thought that he and his
team could solve. “We wanted software
to be able to operate reliably even when
it’s running on a resource-constrained
device,” he says.
To address the issue, Bagchi and his
team of colleagues and students developed software that allows apps to be
streamed; it’s called AppStreamer. Think
of it like Netflix for your phone’s apps.
If commercialized, AppStreamer
would likely mean that you would
never have to worry about storage space
on your smartphone again. “This is
technology that can deliver content and
apps to a large part of the world without
them having to spend money on the
latest and greatest [phone upgrade].”
It also opens up new possibilities for
the future. For example, such software
might allow warehouse robots to work
more quickly and safely or provide support for a self-driving car to avoid a mishap by downloading necessary information “just in time.”
