MediterraneanGrocery Wholesalers in Wichita, KS

Wichita State University will lead a three-year project to assist NASA’s manufacturing paradigm shift from “factories on earth” to “factories in space.”

“This project will pioneer a new in-space manufacturing technology based on electrospinning,” said Dr. Wujun Si, assistant professor in WSU’s College of Engineering. “It will significantly overcome some fundamental challenges faced by the current ISM technology based on additive manufacturing.”

“Physics-Informed-AI Enabled Smart Electrospinning of Nanofiber Membranes Towards In-Space Manufacturing” is funded by a NASA grant of $750,000.

Project success will enable Wichita and Kansas to develop a new research enterprise directed toward long-term, self-sustaining, nationally competitive aerospace research capabilities on ISM, which contributes to Kansas’ aerospace economy, and expand the nation's base for aerospace research and development.

“Spirit AeroSystems will use its manufacturing expertise to support the development, characterization and enhancement of nanofiber electrospun membranes in collaboration with the project partners,” said Kim Caldwell, senior director, Spirit AeroSystems Global Research & Technology. “This research will make it more feasible to eventually fabricate parts on space factories enabling new scientific and economic missions.”

The proposed innovative system will facilitate a series of future complex and long duration deep space missions that are previously impossible. NASA’s launch of Artemis I in 2022 and subsequent Artemis missions demonstrate that In-Space Manufacturing is of immediate need and essential to enable flexible on-demand manufacturing and mission sustainability.

The ISM technology is in an early stage and mostly rooted in additive manufacturing. It is well known that the layer-by-layer printing process in additive manufacturing is significantly impacted by the gravity. However, in-space environments (such as zero/micro-gravity and vacuum) are quite different from the earth's conditions. This substantially limits the ISM capability of additive manufacturing.

The project proposes a new electrospinning-based ISM technique. Compared with additive manufacturing, this electrospinning-based manufacturing paradigm does not rely on gravity and fabricates nanostructured thin parts like functional membranes in space, which complements additive manufacturing that prints macroscale solid parts.

The project consists of multi-institutional partnerships among Wichita State University, Kansas State University and the University of Kansas.

The NASA Marshall Space Flight Center directly leads the national ISM program. The NASA Ames Research Center, and NASA Glenn Research Center) and two government agencies (Argonne National Laboratory, Applied Physics Laboratory) are involved, as are business/industry partners Spirit AeroSystems and HCI Energy.

Wichita has earned reputation as the “Air Capital of the World” since 1928 and has bases of multiple leading aircraft/aerospace industries.

A broad class of research-integrated educational initiatives with a wide range of dissemination and outreach activities will attract students to pursue data science and advanced manufacturing studies, research and careers, especially female and underrepresented minority groups.

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – An empty home was damaged by a fire on Thursday in south Wichita. When firefighters arrived, they found a homeless person in the cellar and a small warming fire in the house. It’s just one of many empty homes in south Wichita that have caught fire already this winter.

When winter rolls around, people living in neighborhoods with older vacant homes know what to expect.

According to City and neighborhood leaders, homeless people find an empty home to stay in and light fires to keep warm. Those fires are known to spread, lighting the entire home on fire.

Boarded-up homes are scattered across southwest Wichita.

President of the Southwest Neighborhood Association Joshua Blick said house fires are common on his side of town.

“We start seeing squatters that’ll come in, it’s getting cold during the wintertime, they’ll make a fire inside of the houses, or they’re just trying to keep warm,” Blick said.

He said windows boarded with plywood and “No Trespassing” signs are signals a home is abandoned.

“During the winter time, they’re trying to get out of the elements, and so that’s where they’re looking for these abandoned houses,” Blick said.

Council member Jeff Blubaugh represents southwest Wichita. During very cold spells, he said there’s usually at least one house fire every night.

“It’s an ongoing problem, and it’s a safety issue, not just for the people in the house, but the neighborhood, the houses next door,” Blubaugh said.

The City hasn’t taken any direct steps to prevent the fires from happening, according to Blubaugh. He wants to push something forward in the future.

The City can start by monitoring empty affordable housing units, according to Blick.

“One thing I’d like to see is the city really start reaching out to these HUD houses and making sure, checking on them, making sure there’s people not squatting in them,” Blick said.

The City has been in the process of selling many of its abandoned affordable housing units.

The Wichita Fire Department said they take precautions when putting out fires, even in homes that appear to be abandoned, making sure to check for people inside.

It’s been a few years since I last dropped by Ginger Asian Cuisine. The casual Chinese restaurant with some other Asian dishes in Goddard is a place I’ve only been to once and thoroughly enjoyed it. But because I rarely make it out that far west, that was the only time. Over the weekend, though, I was in the area and finally made it back for a revisited review.

============ 19894 W Kellogg Dr., Goddard, Kansas 67052 316-550-6338

Monday – Thursday: 11am – 9pm Friday: 11am – 9:30pm Saturday: 11am – 9pm Closed on Sunday

Cash/Card Accepted ============

Last time I was at Ginger Asian Cuisine, we did carryout. So I changed things up and stuck with dine-in. During my visit, there was just one other table of diners throughout my entire visit. And this was during what I would have thought was a busy lunch hour time.

To start things off, I went with a small bowl of hot & sour soup. Compared to others around town, this take on the dish was milder in flavor. I wouldn’t call it sour, and it certainly wasn’t hot by any stretch of the imagination in terms of spice level. But it was still a tasty take on a favorite dish of mine, and a good start for my day.

My main entrée was the Mongolian steak. It was a grilled steak quickly stir-fried in a wok, sweet Mongolian sauce and served on a sizzling plate.

This hit the spot on every level. The sizzling plate was a great experience; just hearing the sizzle was like music to any food lover’s ears. Once the piping hot plate cooled down, I took my first bite, and thanked God for this meal’s existence in our world. There were thick tender pieces of covered in onions and the sweet Mongolian sauce, which, by the way, is heaven. It was thick, a bit sweet and salty, but just an outstanding complimentary piece to the meal that greatly enhanced it.

Seriously, it may be the best Mongolian steak dish I’ve had… at least in recent memory.

My server did an excellent job, and it really was the icing on the cake for my experience.

Wichita and the surrounding area is filled with many quick – service Chinese places in town. This was a nice change of pace to sit down, have the meal served to you, take a pause in the day to enjoy it and have a delicious meal. Check it out, Ginger Asian Cuisine.

Here’s the menu:

Happy Dining, Eddy

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The coffee shop space at 2615 W. 13th St. has been vacant since June, when its most recent owners shut it down.

But starting this week, the shop is once again serving the coffee drinks and bierocks it’s been known for off and on since 2018.

Want Bierock founders Jim and Lori Want are back in the building serving bierocks, coffee drinks and breakfast to-go from their drive-through window. That’s all they’ll do for now, though they plan to reopen the dining room as well.

For now, the drive-through hours will be 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. In addition to espresso drinks and several types of bierocks, the Wants also will be serving a breakfast menu that includes sausage kolache, pastries and “biscuit-and-gravy bombs,” which feature bierock dough stuffed with sausage gravy.

The Wants originally opened their business in April of 2018, taking over a building formerly occupied by a coffee shop called Twisted Java. At first, they called it Want Coffee, but Lori’s homemade bierocks sold so well at the shop that a year later, they added a food trailer designed to take her creations all over town.

In 2020, the couple changed the name of their business to Want Bierock Co. and Coffee House. The Wants sold the cafe portion of the business to Gabriel and Kari Nicholson in February 2021 but kept the food trailer. They added a second trailer earlier this year and continued to use the building on 13th Street as a home base for their bakery.

The Nicholsons decided to close the cafe in June, citing the challenges of running a small business. But the Wants still had the lease on the space.

“We were out on our food trucks all summer and built that business amazingly,” Lori said. “And when the other people moved out of here, we decided that we were going to finish out our food truck season and then reopen.”

Over the last several months, they’ve expanded the footprint of the bakery, Lori Want said, and they also plan a remodel of the dining room. The building, a former McDonald’s, still has the uncomfortable, outdated bench seating that McDonald’s used years ago.

Once they get that remodel done, they’ll also likely expand the hours, Lori Want said. It likely will be at least February or March before that happens.

Since late last month, the Wants have had one of their two bierock trucks set up at the Illuminations event at Botanica, where they’ve seen old customers and gained new ones.

“We have had such a great response from so many people who are excited we are opening up again,” Lori said.

When they sold the cafe back in 2021, their plan was to retire and use the food truck to generate some “fluff money,” she said.

But as it turns out, the couple missed their work.

“Jim and I just love what we do, and we really do miss all of the people that came into the coffee shop cafe,” she said. “We’re excited to reconnect with them.”

This story was originally published December 11, 2023, 12:05 PM.

Wichita has a whole lot of Scooter’s Coffee shops. At least seven of the drive-through coffee kiosks have popped up in the city limits of Wichita over the last 16 years, and most of the smaller towns surrounding Wichita have at least one as well.

Now, a new Scooter’s is on the verge of opening, and this one might be the happiest Scooter’s in town.

On Monday, franchisees Ryan and Sarah Kromer will open Wichita’s newest Scooter’s in the District 96 development, which is near the Aloft Hotel. It faces Oliver and sits right next door to the new QuikTrip at 3520 N. Oliver.

What makes this Scooter’s different? Though the menu and the service will be the same as what Wichita has become accustomed to, this shop will feature the chain’s latest building design, which includes a big yellow happy face looking very content as he (or she) holds his cup of Scooter’s coffee.

The happy face is also featured on little stickers that most Scooter’s locations put on the top of customer’s coffee cups, and soon, it will appear on all of Scooter’s buildings, Ryan Kromer said.

“That’s the new signage,” Kromer said. “It’s supposed to embody kindness within a cup of coffee.”

Speaking of kindness, the Kromers plan to donate 100% of their opening-day proceeds to two local charities: Down Syndrome Society of Wichita and Rainbows United. The charities are both important to the Kromers, who have a 4-year-old nephew and 7-year-old neighbor with Down Syndrome.

The Kromers have five other Scooter’s stores in Kansas. Their territory includes small towns around Wichita, and they opened their first in Valley Center in July 2021. They then acquired an already existing Scooter’s in Augusta in April of last year and in October opened one in Winfield. They just opened their Arkansas City store three weeks ago.

Bel Aire was also part of the Kromers’ territory, and they were able to get it expanded a bit to include the K-96 and Oliver spot. This will be their only Wichita store. (Franchisee Mackenzie Burnett owns the majority of the other Wichita-area Scooter’s.)

Starting Monday, the new Scooter’s will be open from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.