Breakthroughs and trends in the world of technology.
Alternative Energy
Sunny Debut
Utility-scale solar power looked like the future in 2011, when BrightSource Energy and partners NRG and Google won a $1.6 billion Department of Energy loan guarantee and raised millions more from investors to build the world’s biggest solar plant. MIT’s Technology Review dubbed BrightSource one of the world’s 50 most innovative companies for its efficient solar thermal technology: Software-controlled mirrors reflect sunlight onto boilers atop 40-story towers, creating high-temperature steam that gets piped to an electricity-generating turbine. But when the $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station went online in California’s Mojave Desert in February, the buzz surrounding it was less about delivering clean power to 140,000 homes than about its cost (several times that of a natural gas-fired plant), sprawl (five square miles), and, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “growing evidence that the technology it uses is killing birds.” Development of similar plants, according to the Los Angeles Times, “has slowed to a crawl.” Still, that array of nearly 350,000 mirrors is an impressive sight. – Mark Matthews
© 2014 BrightSource Energy, Inc.
Medical Technology
Seizure Response
Barbara Kroner wished there were a way she could be alerted if her daughter – who has a rare, seizure-causing malady, Aicardi syndrome – had a seizure at night. So Kroner, a senior epidemiologist at the North Carolina research institute RTI International, is leading an effort there to develop a wearable device that would wirelessly notify care givers if someone is suffering from a seizure. Wearable sensor devices are available now, but they measure movement only, and patients sometimes have seizures that don’t produce pronounced physical movements. With a $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, Kroner’s group is working on an algorithm that would track respiration and heart rate. Once a seizure is detected, an alert would be sent to a smartphone or monitor. Epilepsy and other seizure disorders affect around 2 million Americans. — Thomas K. Grose
© RTI International
Orthopedics
Mighty BioPen
Biomedical engineers have made huge strides in bone repair in recent years, developing gels that can stimulate new growth. Now researchers at Australia’s Wollongong University have developed a tool to implant the growth material with precision. Called a BioPen, the hand held device slowly extrudes a biopolymer gel infused with cell material. Surgeons in effect can “draw” the gel on the damaged bone section. The pen emits a low-powered ultraviolet beam that solidifies the gel, allowing new layers to be applied in a manner similar to 3-D printing. “The most immediate application will be bone regeneration,” says research team leader Gordon Wallace, a physicist and chemist who directs the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute. His researchers recently succeeded in growing new knee cartilage. Human trials will be led by orthopedic surgeon Peter Choong, of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne. — Chris Pritchard
© BioPen
Sensors
Gleam in the Eye
Around one in 19 people worldwide has diabetes. And to keep tabs on their glucose levels, they have to prick their fingers as often as 10 times a day to draw blood. That’s a lifesaving but still unpleasant ritual. But Google’s X lab, birthplace of driverless cars and balloons that can wirelessly transmit Internet connections, may have a solution. It is testing a prototype smart contact lens that can measure glucose levels in tears. Layered within the lens are a tiny chip with tens of thousands of transistors, an ultrathin antenna, and a minuscule glucose sensor that takes a measurement per second. If it detects glucose levels that are too high or low, tiny LED lights would warn wearers. The device was unveiled on the company’s blog by the co-leaders of the project, Babak Parviz and Brian Otis, an associate professor of electrical engineering on leave from the University of Washington. The smart lenses will need to undergo at least five more years of robust testing, and it’s not yet clear how well glucose levels in tears correlate to blood sugar levels. But if the device works as promised, millions of diabetics could see brighter days ahead. — TG
Biomimicry
This Mite Work
Taking their cue from termites, the master builders of the bug world, engineers at Harvard have built small robots (6.8 inches long) that use a minimalist principle called “stigmergy.” Termites build mud mounds that are several feet tall, each bug depositing earth in a spot that’s still empty. The Harvard TERMES robots are programmed by an algorithm to do a similar simple task: Carry and deposit a small foam brick. If it gets to a spot where there’s already a brick, it moves on to the next empty spot and sets it down there. The TERMES can construct towers and pyramids using that basic strategy. The researchers say swarms of robots programmed like the TERMES might one day build temporary structures in disaster zones. And if a few of them are knocked out of commission, hey, no problem. Their surviving comrades will carry on without them to complete the task. — TG
© Eliza Grinnell, Harvard SEAS
Mechanical Engineering
Depth Finder
In his day job, Greg Bixler teaches first-year engineering at Ohio State. But he also co-founded and runs the nonprofit Design Outreach, which enlists engineers, faculty, and students as volunteers to solve developing-world problems. The group’s current venture: the LifePump, a rugged, crank-operated pump that can draw water from depths of up to 150 meters, three times the limit of typical devices, and tap into deep aquifers common in Africa. “The pump uses a progressive cavity pumping (PCP) element, which is commonly used in many industrial applications,” Bixler says, and acts as an Archimedes’ screw, believed to have originated in ancient Egypt. Other hand pumps “use either pistons or diaphragm displacement methods to pump – which are limited in depth due to physics, strength of components, and strength of users.” Design Outreach field-tested the LifePump in the Central African Republic and has since joined with the aid group World Vision to install pumps in two Malawi villages. Bixler is now raising money to provide 100 pumps elsewhere. Meanwhile, in Columbus, he’s incorporated the project into a humanitarian engineering course. – MM
© Design Outreach LifePump
Public Health
Re-engineered Sheath
Modern latex condoms work pretty much as advertised in preventing unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease. They’re cheap and relatively strong (breakage rates are around 1 to 2 percent). They’re also awkward to use, can slip off, and are not all that thin, so there’s a diminished sensation for men. With an eye on reducing the 86 million unintended pregnancies and 2.7 million new cases of HIV worldwide each year, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is awarding teams of researchers $100,000 each to build a better sheath. Researchers at the University of Manchester, where graphene – the thinnest, lightest, strongest material there is – was first isolated in 2005, are developing a condom that reinforces latex with graphene to make it super strong, but also superthin. A Northwestern University team says it’s using polymers that, as The Economist delicately put it, “mimic the feel of the mucosal tissue encountered during unprotected intercourse.” And University of Oregon researchers are working with a polymer that reacts at body temperature to provide a bespoke fit via “shape memory.” — TG
© Thinkstock
Performance Clothing
Well-suited
U.S. speedskaters have a history of winning at the Winter Olympics. But at this year’s games in Sochi, Russia, the U.S. team was shut out. No skater finished higher than seventh. Some skaters and experts were quick to blame a special skintight aerodynamic suit developed by Under Armour, the team sponsor, with the help of Lockheed Martin engineers. The Mach 39 suit, made of five fabrics, has an air vent on its back to release body heat, but there were fears the vent was letting air in and slowing the skaters down. Midway through the events, the team switched to its old Nike suits. But the losing streak continued. That took the focus off the suits, and the team quickly renewed its partnership with Under Armour for an additional eight years.
If a suit affects an athlete’s speed, it can mean basic maneuverability and survival for an astronaut. The extravehicular mobility units (EMUs) astronauts currently wear are pumped up with gas, like big balloons, to maintain body pressure in near-zero gravity. But they’re heavy (300 pounds) and hard to move around in. Dava Newman, an MIT professor of aeronautics and engineering systems, has used new materials and 3-D printing to create a suit that should work without gas. Designed with a mission to Mars in mind, it is skintight, and flexible, and uses math-devised mechanical structures in a criss-cross pattern to maintain pressure. The suit’s made of polymer and stretchable elastics, but it’s shrink-wrapped to the body via ribbing made from high-tech active materials like nickel titanium. The BioSuit is a work of love for Newman, who hasn’t had any NASA funding since 2005; she’s kept working on it using undergraduate researchers. — TG
© Professor Dava
Genetic Engineering
Natural Glow
The world’s first light-producing plant is more a conversation piece than a useful source of lighting. Place the Starlight Avatar plant in a dark room, and, sure enough, its leaves glow without the need of electricity, but not brightly enough to read by. Developed by St. Louis start-up Bioglow, the bioluminescent plant is a marvel of genetic engineering. Molecular biologist Alex Krichevsky modified the Nicotiana alata plant with the “light-emitting pathway from marine bacteria.” Approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the plant is now on sale from the company’s website. It will glow for three months before losing its luminescence. The company, however, believes that future generations of its plants will shine much brighter, and it envisions a day when plants will line driveways and highways to provide clean, electricity-free lighting. Let’s hope they use evergreens. — TG
©BioGlow Starlight Avatar
Electrical Engineering
The Right Touch
Advances in prosthetics are bringing them ever closer to having human capabilities. At the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, for instance, researchers showed that by attaching electrodes to a volunteer amputee’s wrist nerves, they could get him not only to adjust the grip of his robotic hand but “feel” and distinguish shapes among objects the hand was grasping, IEEE Spectrum reports. Robotic hands developed for industry don’t need to imitate nature. Cornell University spinoff Empire Robotics has developed a “jamming gripper” called Versaball, which is not unlike a beanbag: It’s made from a balloon like membrane filled with granules. Once it’s pressed up against an object, all air is vacuumed from the bag, allowing it to grasp the object tightly. It can lift up to 20 pounds. Priced at $4,000, it’s marketed to small to medium-sized manufacturers that need robots for a variety of chores. — TG
© Empirer Robotics
3-D Printing
Flying High
Three-dimensional printing is taking off – literally. Recently, a Royal Air Force Tornado fighter jet fitted with a part made by a 3-D printer – a metal camera bracket – took to the air over Lancashire, England, in a test flight. Defense contractor BAE Systems says the technology is being used to make other plastic parts for Britain’s four squadrons of Tornado aircraft, including protective covers for cockpit radios and support struts for air intake doors. Relatively cheap, the printed parts have so far saved U.K. taxpayers £300,000 ($501,000), and BAE expects them to shave costs by £1.2 million ($2 million) over the next four years. The RAF isn’t the only institution taking 3-D printing to the skies. Last fall, NASA announced plans for later this year to send a specially made 3-D printer (capable of working in near-zero gravity) to the International Space Station (ISS). The space agency thinks that it can save money by making spare parts and tools in situ on the ISS when they’re needed. — TG
© Made In Space, Inc.