Breakthroughs and trends in the world of technology
Nuclear Energy
Sun Burns
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility is a $3.5 billion project the size of a football stadium. Inside the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory facility, 192 mammoth lasers aim at a small pellet of hydrogen to attempt to produce a sustained nuclear fusion reaction. When the facility opened in 1997, the stated goal was to create more energy than what was used to fire the lasers. This summer, it finally inched close to that target, generating 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for a fraction of a second—roughly 700 times the entire U.S. electric grid’s generating capacity, according to Nature. That experiment reached 70 percent of the facility’s goal, and, with continued tuning, physicists are now confident of success. Fusion, the same process that occurs in the sun, could provide cheap, reliable, and safe nuclear power. Unlike today’s fission plants, which split uranium atoms to generate power, fusion doesn’t create substantial amounts of toxic radioactive waste. Most of the efforts to generate electricity from fusion involve magnetic confinement, which subjects the atomic nuclei of light hydrogen atoms to tremendous heat and pressure within a large bagel-shaped vessel called a tokamak. An international effort is underway to build a huge tokamak reactor in France; it will begin operations in 2025 with a goal of running at full power by 2035. Several private companies are racing to commercialize a fusion reactor sooner. For example, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinoff, claims its compact tokamak reactor will achieve net energy gain by 2025. – Thomas K. Grose
© National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California
Academic Advising
Gallery View
Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering offers majors in 13 different engineering disciplines. And it’s common for first-year students to change their intended major once they’re on campus and learn about other disciplines. Ben Chambers, an associate professor of engineering education, is part of a faculty team investigating new ways to integrate advising and course goals to better inform freshmen of all available options. His idea: let them try out various disciplines within a virtual museum using the wildly popular video game Minecraft. Engineering faculty already use Minecraft, whose 140 million active players design and build anything from castles to entire towns, in a variety of ways, including for virtual learning and teaching programming. Chambers envisions the Minecraft Museum of Engineering to eventually house thirteen wings, one for each discipline—and each designed and built by students. A beta version of the museum opened earlier this year, with the first wing devoted to mining and minerals engineering. One hall, for example, features longwall mining, while another highlights equipment, such as the rigid frame off-road truck. Chambers has a “grand vision” of yearly design competitions that challenge undergraduates, graduate students, and even alumni to come up with new exhibits and wing designs. The first contest launched this summer, with winners announced this month. – T. G.
© Alfred Wegener Institute/Tim Kalvelage
Biomechanics
Water Wings
Goldfish are nimble swimmers, circling and diving with the flick of a fin—an appendage with no muscles. Mechanical engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered the secret behind their dexterity. Each fin is composed of 20 to 30 stiff rays that can move individually when the fish twitches muscles at the fin’s base. Using microscopes and computer simulations, the team found that rays are made of several segments of a hard, mineralized material called hemitrich surrounding an inner layer of spongy collagen. If the rays were soft, like collagen, they would bend too easily to give fish traction in water. Overly stiff rays would be too hard to maneuver. The researchers theorize that the key part of each ray is the segmentation of the hemitrich, which creates a series of tiny hinges. Press or pull on the bony outer layer and the ray remains extremely stiff, but easily deforms when bent. To prove their theory, the researchers 3D-printed model fins from plastic, some of which had hinged rays with a working balance of stiffness and flexibility. The insight could one day lead to novel robotic surgical tools and aircraft wings constructed of morphing material that can change shape to accommodate varying air currents. – T. G.
© University of Colorado
Quantum Physics
What’s the Matter?
Imagine placing an ice cube in water and seeing the liquid flow frictionlessly through it. That’s a supersolid, a cousin of superfluids, which Popular Science describes as materials that act like fluids but have no viscosity—they can slide effortlessly across a floor or crawl up a wall. They’re made by cooling helium to a temperature just shy of absolute zero. Supersolids are another spooky phenomenon—like entanglement—of quantum physics: a combination of solids and superfluids that have both spatial order and frictionless flow. As Nature explains, a supersolid’s particles are locked into a rigid structure while they’re simultaneously delocalized so they also behave like a wave. Their existence was first proposed in 1969, but it wasn’t until 2019 that a team at the University of Innsbruck and the Austrian Academy of Sciences was able to demonstrate supersolidity, creating a string of one-dimensional droplets by trapping clouds of highly magnetic atoms and chilling them to nearly absolute zero. That team has now refined the process to make two-dimensional sheets of supersolids. Scientists still find supersolids baffling. But the two-dimensional creations enable physicists to easily probe their mysteries and gain a greater understanding of the weird quantum forces that underlie the workings of atoms. – T. G.
© IQOQI Innsbruck/Harald Ritsch
Food Packaging
Spaghetti Ohs!
Noodles come in oodles of shapes, from conch shell conchiglie to bow-tie farfalle and corkscrew fusilli. Some foodies, notes Lining Yao, an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, “are very picky about the shapes of pasta and how they pair with different sauces.” But certain pasta shapes require excessive amounts of packaging and cost more to ship. More than 60 percent of the packaging for many varieties of curly pasta holds just air. Yao and her team came up with a process for an easily packaged flat pasta that morphs into different shapes—from tubes to spirals—when cooked. One side of the flat pasta is imprinted with specially designed sets of grooves. When the noodles absorb water as they boil, the liquid cannot fully penetrate the pasta on the grooved side, causing that side to swell less and curve. The final shapes are controlled by changing the arrangement of the grooves. Mamma Mia, what a tasty idea! – T. G.
© Morphing Matter Lab, Carnegie Mellon University
Renewable Energy
Charging Stations
Concrete is the go-to building material for architects because it is functional, strong, and versatile. Its ubiquity makes it second only to water as the most-consumed material in the world. The idea of turning concrete buildings into giant rechargeable batteries to store solar, wind, or other intermittent sources of energy has intrigued researchers for years, but efforts so far have sputtered. A team at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, inspired by the nickel-iron Edison battery, a long-lasting, robust power-storage device, has developed a prototype that manifests a 900 percent increase in stored charge compared with previous concrete batteries, Scientific American reports. In the Chalmers version, ions within an electrolyte solution bounce back and forth between positively and negatively charged nickel plates. To create the electrolyte, the researchers mixed conductive carbon fibers into the cement used to make the concrete. Then they embedded layers of carbon-fiber mesh coated in either nickel or steel to fabricate the plates. Despite the breakthrough, the concrete battery, which is 200 square meters in size, produces only milliamps of power and provides a few hours of charge. Over time—think decades—the technology could evolve to become efficient and useful. As one researcher understates: “We’re playing the long game with it.” – T. G.
© Getty Images
Marine Pollution
Fatal Attraction
The World Economic Forum has warned that by 2050 the seas will hold more plastic than fish if something isn’t done to reduce the estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic that end up in oceans each year. In the water, most of the plastic disintegrates into microparticles and can get consumed by marine life. A new study by the University of Hull in Britain reports finding oleamide, a common plastics additive, in 40 hermit crabs examined off the coast of Yorkshire. Researchers also found evidence the chemical was “sexually exciting” the crustaceans. Even at low concentrations, the oleamide—which is similar to the oleic acid arthropods release when they decompose, and is a food source for crabs and other critters—increased the hermit crabs’ respiration, an indication they were aroused. “Additive leaching may play a significant role in the attraction of marine life to plastic,” the study warns. Microplastics are hard to track since currents can carry the specks thousands of miles. The main source of data comes from trawlers whose nets scoop up microplastics along with plankton. But University of Michigan researchers have found a way to use NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS)—a group of eight small satellites that measure wind speeds, waves, and other phenomena—to keep better track of microplastic clusters from space. It turns out that ocean areas with lots of debris are typically smoother than expected, given wind conditions. That’s exciting fodder for marine environmentalists. – T. G.
© Getty Images
Artificial Intelligence
Animal Rescue League
There are thirty wildlife rehabilitation centers scattered across California, but real-time communications between them is often lacking. Last spring, for instance, one facility began seeing increased numbers of brown pelicans and red-throated loons turning up with signs of domoic acid poisoning from toxic algal blooms. However, most of the other centers didn’t find out about the problem quickly enough to tackle it. That may soon change. University of California Davis researchers have successfully tested an artificial intelligence-infused early warning system to alert wildlife agencies and researchers when marine birds and other animals are in distress, reports Wired. The AI algorithm scans intake reports produced by the thirty centers, picking up such information as species, reason for admission, and diagnosis. The system also uses five years of data from more than 200,000 records to set a baseline on the frequency of these conditions, alerting wildlife experts when an anomaly is detected. The researchers liken their system to syndromic surveillance that scans electronic health records to highlight potential public health risks, such as flu outbreaks, opioid overdoses, and COVID-19 infection patterns. The UC Davis team is now working to improve the alert system by increasing the amount of data crunched by the algorithm’s machine-learning software. The newer version will be tested by the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. – T. G.
© Getty Images
Cancer Treatment
Custom Compounds
Glioblastoma is a common and aggressive form of brain cancer with low survival rates. Researchers in Israel have come up with a novel way to test the efficacy of possible drug therapies before prescribing them. The Tel Aviv University team used a glioblastoma patient’s own cancer cells to formulate an “ink” that was used in a 3D bioprinter to make an exact copy of the tumor, the news agency Reuters reports. MRI scans of the actual malignancy were used to create a blueprint for the model. The printed tumor was embedded with a complex system of channels that mimic blood vessels through which the researchers could pump blood taken from the patient as well as potential therapies. The model gives doctors two weeks to test different compounds to see which treatments work best. The most promising drugs either shrink a tumor or lower metabolic activity against control groups. A researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is involved in similar work, tells Reuters that harvesting cancerous cells from patients to build 3D models of their tumors is potentially a “game-changer in the field of personalized medicine.” – T. G.
© Getty Images
Biomedical Engineering
Mosquito Bytes
There’s a new wrinkle—fold, actually—in the fight against malaria, the mosquito-borne scourge that infects more than 228 million people annually and kills more than 400,000. Bioengineers at Scotland’s University of Glasgow, working with colleagues at Uganda’s Ministry of Health, have developed an inexpensive, reliable, and easy-to-use diagnostic test by combining origami, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology. The current gold-standard test uses a polymerase chain reaction process and requires sending blood samples to a lab for analysis—an impractical solution for outbreaks in isolated African communities. Portable lateral-flow tests have become available in recent years but are not terribly accurate. The new test uses sheets of wax paper folded to create a channel that collects blood taken from a finger prick. The paper is again folded, pushing the blood into three smaller chambers that use a malaria-detection process called LAMP (loop-mediated isothermal amplification). The origami test is placed on a stand made with a 3D printer that has a heating element to make the LAMP process work and is linked to a smartphone app. Results are sent to a cloud-based machine that uses AI to ensure an accurate diagnosis, and then stored in a blockchain-secured ledger for patient privacy. Anonymized results can be shared with health authorities to keep tabs on and react to outbreaks. So far, the technology has been 98 percent accurate in field tests. – T. G.
© University of Glasgow
Robotics
Bench Strength
Lab work can be a labor-intensive, time-consuming drudge. Drug-discovery experiments, for example, may require putting thousands of samples into test tubes. Similarly tedious chores can increase the risk of mistakes. Industrial cloud-based, fully robotic labs have been around for a few years. Now, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) plans to open the world’s first fully roboticized university lab, a $40 million project it expects to complete by next summer, the Wall Street Journal reports. CMU is working with San Francisco start-up Emerald Cloud Lab Inc. to design and build Cloud Lab, which will enable researchers to use software to design experiments that can be carried out remotely by around 200 different robotic machines. Cloud Lab will make use of a network of sensors that gather data from its instruments as well as machine-learning algorithms that run analyses. Initially, Carnegie Mellon researchers will have the run of Cloud Lab, but the university says it will eventually offer remote access to investigators at other schools and to Pittsburgh-area life-sciences start-ups. Given the benefits of remote labs, it’s likely other deep-pocketed schools will soon follow CMU’s lead. While automated lab chores reduce the likelihood of human error in experiments, their main selling point is speed. One graduate student used Emerald’s lab to reproduce three years’ worth of his research on synthetic biology in just three weeks. – T. G.
© Emerald Cloud Lab
Forensics
Male Markers
When authorities investigate allegations of sexual assault, a key piece of evidence is often samples of what might be semen found on clothes or collected on swabs from victims. The samples are examined under a microscope to determine if they contain sperm cells. Forensic labs use different colored dyes to make sperm cells easier to see, but they’re still hard to detect—particularly if the samples are old or degraded, which makes the process complex and time-consuming. However, researchers at King’s College London and the University of Warwick are developing a promising new DNA-based tagging technique that would make detection easier. The team looked to find and optimize aptamers, single-stranded DNA molecules that are capable of selectively binding to a given target—in this case, human sperm cells. The researchers recently reported finding several good aptamer candidates and were able to demonstrate their ability to bind to sperm cells but no other types of cells. It’s hoped that the addition of a fluorescent tag to the aptamers will result in a highly specific and sensitive method of detecting sperm cells in forensic samples by making them “light up” under a microscope. The team is now working to further optimize the aptamer sequences before the technology undergoes a tough validation procedure that would allow it to be used by forensic investigators. – T. G.
© Getty Images
Civil Engineering
Pipe Protection
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill has generated much buzz about upgrading roads, bridges, dams, and the electrical grid. Ailing sewer systems? Not so much. That’s surprising, given how quickly concrete conduits deteriorate and the high cost of repairing them—about $300 billion, engineers told a Senate hearing almost a decade ago. Sewers are harsh environments, where gases and bacteria generate sulphuric acid that quickly corrodes concrete pipes and any reinforcing steel much faster than in most above-ground structures. Coatings could extend the pipes’ lives, but traditional materials often contain carbon-rich substances like Portland cement, which accounts for almost 8 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Moreover, the coatings typically begin to deteriorate within months. Researchers led by civil engineering professor Nemy Banthia at Canada’s University of British Columbia have developed a spray-on, nano-modified coating that could make sewers last decades longer and even restore old corroded pipes to near-new condition. According to Banthia, the material is made from industrial byproducts such as steel slag and fly ash from coal-burning power plants combined with bacteria-killing biocides. The team is also developing a robotic application system. Banthia sees widespread use of his eco-friendly coating beyond North America: “India alone is spending $3 trillion on infrastructure repair over the next years—a big market for technologies like this.” – Pierre Home-Douglas
© Getty Images