Breakthroughs and trends in the world of technology
Robotics
Head Crawler
Tiny robots have been used to help unclog heart arteries, but existing versions are still too large to help remove blockages and clots from the narrow, convoluted blood vessels in human brains. A minuscule robotic worm developed by engineers at MIT may have solved the problem. Created with a polymer packed with small magnetic particles and coated with a self-lubricating hydrogel, the worm—which looks more like a long piece of thread—is less than 0.6 millimeters in diameter. The technique brain surgeons now use to treat blood clots requires using a fluoroscope to carefully guide a thin wire through the arteries, followed by a catheter that either delivers a treatment or extracts the blockage. Though it’s a minimally invasive procedure, there is a risk of damaging an artery. Moreover, few surgeons are trained to do it. The micro-worm robot can be guided by a magnet held outside the head, thanks to the microparticles. Those magnetic microparticles also show up on X-rays, making it easier for a surgeon to navigate through the brain’s network of blood vessels. The worm’s hydrogel coating reduces friction and ensures it can safely squeeze through delicate vessels. The MIT team successfully tested the robot on a silicone model based on a human brain that contained a blood-mimicking liquid. Next, it hopes to test the worm ’bot on animals. – Thomas K. Grose
©MIT
Space Tourism
Room Service
The final frontier could see the world’s first orbiting hostelry open for business as soon as 2025. Gateway Foundation, the private company whose hotel will be a key part of its planned Von Braun Rotating Space Station, says the station will consist of two wheel-shaped structures, with the outer ring rotating around the inner one to create an artificial gravity similar to what one would experience on the moon. At 623 feet in diameter, the outer ring will feature 24 modules—some to be sold as permanent residences, others leased as labs to space agencies, and the rest available to space tourists. Named for legendary rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and based on his 1950s design, the station counts many on the executive team with backgrounds in science and engineering. In an interview with Dezeen magazine, senior designer Tim Alatorre says a sister company called Orbital Assembly is developing an in-space construction technology that will rely on autonomous and semiautonomous systems. To cover the station’s construction costs, which Gateway’s website puts at hundreds of billions of dollars, the company expects to set up regular fund-raising lotteries. The luxury hotel won’t have a pool, but planned amenities include a basketball court, trampolines, a rock-climbing wall, and several bars and restaurants. Gateway, which plans to welcome around 100 guests a week, doesn’t say how it plans to fly them there. Beam me up, concierge. – T. G.
©Gateway Foundation
Carbon Recycling
Cool Fuel
Why not reuse carbon dioxide already released into the atmosphere instead of extracting and burning fossil fuels, which produces even more of the greenhouse gas? That’s the premise of several existing technologies that suck CO₂ from the atmosphere and transform it into such useful products as fuels and plastics. As Science Daily reports, Carbon Engineering, a Canadian firm, has a pilot plant in British Columbia that forces air through an alkaline liquid solution, capturing and dissolving the carbon and creating carbonate. Treating the carbonate with chemicals and extreme heat then turns it back into CO₂ for use in products. The process requires a lot of energy, however, which makes it expensive. So researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a cheap electrochemical method to reuse atmospheric CO₂ that could make the capture and recycling more economical, the publication says. Toronto’s team uses an electrolyzer to create a chemical reaction, similar to how electrolysis can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and dissolve carbonate to CO₂ without all the costly heat. The technique produces syngas, a common feedstock for many products, including jet fuel and plastics. The team’s proof-of-concept demonstration converted 35 percent of carbonate to syngas, Science Daily reports. The Toronto team now is working to scale up the process to levels needed for industrial use. – T. G.
©Marit Mitchell
Energy Storage
New Flow, More Go
Battery technology has come a long way, but today’s cheaper, more powerful lithium-ion batteries aren’t problem free. The constant discharging and charging of batteries wears them out after a few years. And charging can still take a fair amount of time. That’s why researchers continue to work with supercapacitors, which use a static charge to store energy, allowing them to discharge and recharge within a split second. But that makes them much less energy-dense than batteries. In the European Union, where new cars must come equipped with fuel-saving start-stop systems that turn engines off and on during longer stops, supercapacitors handle the chore because they recharge so quickly. But now researchers at Cornell University and MIT have discovered that a new class of electrolytes composed of an ionic liquid—salts that remain liquid at room temperature—can boost the storage capacity of supercapacitors to that of lithium-ion batteries, the New York Times reports. When the team first tested the ionic liquids, the results were tepid. But when heated to 130º C to make the liquids less viscous, energy density soared. The process creates a high concentration of positively charged ions on the supercapacitor’s electrode, allowing it to hold much more energy in a small amount of space, the paper says. Another big plus: Ionic materials are really cheap and already in wide use in products ranging from detergents to laxatives. – T. G.
©Xianwen Mao/MIT
Brain Replication
Catch the Wave
Organoids are miniature 3-D replicas of human organs grown from stem cells. They’re not fully functional organs, but researchers use them to try to figure out how they become diseased and to test drugs. While scientists have created brainlike organoids using neurons, none has actually shown any sign of brain activity—until now. A team at the University of California–San Diego has grown a pea-size clump of neurons that emit the most basic of brain waves, not unlike those made by a preterm baby. According to Scientific American, the team transformed human pluripotent stem cells into neurons using a solution containing a mix of molecules that regulate fetal development. The mixture enabled the cortical organoids to develop for a longer time than previous creations; some remained viable for nearly a year. After two months, the researchers monitored scattered, single-frequency brain-wave activity from the cells, and by 10 months the waves had become more regular and used a range of frequencies. That implied the organoids had developed functioning synapses, the cellular connections that allow neurons to communicate and eventually generate movement, sensation, and thought, the magazine says. The researchers hope that the cortical organoids can be used to learn more about illnesses caused by faulty neural wiring, including autism, epilepsy, and schizophrenia. The breakthrough also raises ethical concerns. These clusters of cells can’t sense pain or grow any larger because they don’t have a vascular network, but it’s possible that bioengineers will eventually be able to grow larger brains in the lab that might be somewhat self-aware. That’s troubling, Christof Koch, head of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, tells the New York Times. “The closer we come to [that] goal, the more likely we will get a brain that is capable of sentience and of feeling pain, agony, and distress.” – T. G.
©Muotri Lab/UC San Diego
Assistive Technology
Bright Eyes
Almost 1 in 30 Americans suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited degenerative disease that decreases peripheral vision. Patients with the disorder have a hard time seeing in low light, reducing their ability to move around easily or grasp objects. The ailment cannot be fixed with glasses, contact lenses, or drugs. But, Science Daily reports, researchers at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine have devised augmented-reality (AR) glasses that initial tests show can increase mobility by 50 percent and boost grasp performance by 70 percent. The technology works to enhance, not replace, natural senses by projecting bright colors onto patients’ retinas that correspond to nearby objects and obstacles. The device uses an off-the-shelf AR headset that also has depth-sensing cameras. The researchers then invented a type of simultaneous location-and-mapping software that creates what patients see as a colored wire-frame grid overlaying their surroundings. In the grid, objects appear in one of four colors, depending on how far they are from the cameras. The researchers say that major cost and technical issues remain to be solved. But they’re confident that the assistive technology could become ready for everyday use within a few years. – T. G.
©Getty Images
Sustainable Steel
Light Up
Globally, nearly 9 percent of carbon dioxide emissions come from steel production, largely because the industry still relies on a 150-year-old method that smelts iron ore with carbon-heavy coking coal in a blast furnace. A somewhat cleaner method, called direct reduced iron (DRI), uses natural gas instead of coal as a reduction agent, so no blast furnace is necessary. Around 6 percent of steel production worldwide uses DRI. Though cleaner, natural gas is still a fossil fuel. But a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BloombergNEF) estimates that the industry could soon adopt hydrogen for DRI, processing from 10 percent to 50 percent of steel output if the price of renewable hydrogen falls. The industry’s top producer, ArcelorMittal, and Germany’s Thyssenkrupp are both experimenting with hydrogen. And BloombergNEF notes that the switch requires no big research-and-development breakthroughs. Most hydrogen is produced using natural gas. A cleaner method, if the electricity is generated by renewable fuels, uses electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Right now, green hydrogen is an expensive gas. But BloombergNEF says its price could fall to less than $2.20 per kilogram by 2030. If coking coal remains priced at $310 a ton, renewable hydrogen would become cost-competitive. That could spell the demise of the coking-coal industry, whose product primarily feeds blast furnaces. – T. G.
©Getty Images
Biomedical Engineering
Electrifying Sight
Four years ago, Prism wrote about a burgeoning therapy called electroceuticals, or the use of electricity to treat diseases by modulating nerve signals. Now preliminary research at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Italy’s Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna shows it may be possible to use intraneural electrodes to stimulate the optic nerve and provide some limited vision to the blind, according to Science Daily. Around 39 million people worldwide are blind, and efforts to help them regain sight have mostly proven risky or of limited use. Back in the 1990s, researchers attempted to stimulate the optic nerve by placing a cuff of electrodes around it. The device performed poorly because it moved around a lot. stimulating nerve fibers superficial to sight. By contrast, the EPFL team’s OpticSELINE is an array of 12 electrodes that provides stability by piercing the nerve. Moreover, it can pinpoint which fibers to stimulate. Researchers tested the device on rabbits, measuring the brain activity in the visual cortex and devising an algorithm to translate the cortical signals. They found each electrode produced a specific and unique pattern of cortical activity, which suggests the device was sending useful information to the animals’ brains. Human clinical trials are now being readied that will use OpticSELINE arrays of between 48 to 60 electrodes. That’s not enough to fully restore someone’s sight, but it could give some blind people partial vision. – T. G.
©Alain Herzog/ EPFL
Autonomous Vehicles
Nosy Parkers
DARPA, the Pentagon’s advanced-research agency, loves innovation competitions. And they pay off. Its Urban Challenge back in 2007, for example, propelled self-driving vehicles to the forefront of the auto industry. DARPA’s latest venture, the Subterranean or “Sub-T” Challenge, is a two-year, $4.5 million, four-event contest to invent land-based or aerial vehicles that can navigate caves, tunnels, and other underground locales. Subterranean combat has been a threat for decades. The Vietcong used tunnels during the Vietnam War, and so have Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Military planners believe future battles may be waged in urban areas where combatants make use of sewers and train tunnels, while caves and mines can pose problems for rescue crews like those who extracted the Thai youth soccer team trapped by rising waters last year. Sub-T’s first event took place in August in a government-run research coal mine outside Pittsburgh. Eleven teams from eight countries competed in the eight-day event to navigate the mine and search for simulated artifacts. Together the teams amassed a field of 20 drones, 64 ground robots, and one robotic blimp. The first-round winner was Team Explorer, a collaboration of Carnegie Mellon and Oregon State Universities, which found 25 of 40 artifacts—14 more than the runner-up. Sub-T’s next round is set for February. – T. G.
©DARPA
Cancer Research
Weightless Weapon
Researchers at Australia’s University of Technology Sydney have discovered something remarkable about the effects of near-zero gravity on cancer cells. It kills most of them. The team, led by Joshua Chou, a senior lecturer in space medicine, used a microgravity simulator to subject four types of cancer cells that tend to be particularly difficult to kill—ovarian, breast, nose, and lung—to near weightlessness. Within 24 hours, 80 percent to 90 percent of the cells died with no other treatment. To understand why, Chou’s team has designed a microgravity experiment for Australia’s first mission to the International Space Station next year, when a device smaller than a shoe box containing the cancer cells will be sent aloft. It’s been a challenging effort, Chou tells Australian Broadcasting’s 7.30 news show, because the technology needed for the experiment had to be miniaturized to fit the ISS’s limited space. Chou’s working theory is that cancer cells cannot communicate with one another in microgravity because of a condition called mechanical unloading, when cells feel a lack of force. It may be that once cancer cells can no longer sense their surroundings, they “go into a state of apoptosis, or cell death,” he says. Even if the ISS experiments replicate what happened in his lab, Chou says he doubts near-zero gravity is a “golden bullet to cure cancer.” It may, however, help augment and supercharge existing drug therapies. – T. G.
©Joshua Chou
Artificial Intelligence
Winning Streak
As the song says, when it comes to poker, you’ve got to know when to fold them. Seems it’s time for human players to read ’em and weep, and acknowledge they’ve been bested by artificial intelligence. A computer program designed by Tuomas Sandholm, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, and grad student Noam Brown taught itself to play no-limit Texas Hold’em, then went on to beat five elite professional players over the course of a 12-day marathon of 10,000 hands of poker. The program, dubbed Pluribus, pocketed a virtual $48,000, according to their paper published this summer in Science. Two years ago, an earlier version of the program called Libratus beat several leading pro players, but that was playing one on one. Winning six-player games was a much more difficult effort. Computers have already shown they can beat humans in games like chess and Go. But in those games, as the Guardian points out, no information is hidden from the players. Texas Hold’em poker is tougher for AI to figure out because only limited information is shared and players can win by bluffing. Pluribus won using radical strategies that would never occur to humans, including placing a range of differing bet sizes, the paper says. Sandholm and Brown’s algorithm has potential applications far beyond the poker table, including investment banking, war-gaming, and devising media-spending strategies for political candidates. – T. G.
©Getty Images
Bio-Inspired Design
Phantom Limb
Many vertebrates, including monkeys, cats, dogs, and kangaroos, use their tails to give them more balance and agility. So researchers at Japan’s Keio University have come up with the Arque, an artificial, strap-on tail for humans that can move and curl in any direction. Inspired by the shape of a seahorse tail, it is made from plastic vertebrae that can be adjusted in length to accommodate the wearer. Counterbalancing weights also adjust to the user’s size. Four bladders act as muscles, which an external air compressor inflates or deflates to maneuver the appendage. Since the air tank limits the device’s mobility, the Keio team hopes to eventually develop battery-powered artificial muscles. The Arque tail’s most immediate use would be to assist workers who must lift and carry heavy objects. Because the tail serves as a counterbalance, they would use less force to hoist things. Another possible use is in gaming. The tail gives a wearer full-body haptic feedback, so it could alter a gamer’s balance and feeling of movement when venturing into a virtual world and make the experience more realistic. Or as realistic as possible for someone wearing a strap-on tail. – T. G.
©Junichi Nabeshima, Kouta Minamizawa, MHD Yamen Saraiji/Keio University Graduate School of Media Design
Translation App
Helping Hands
Google has published algorithms that could eventually enable smartphones to understand sign language. By making them publicly available, the tech titan says it expects developers will use and build on the software to come up with their own apps. Advocates for the hearing-impaired welcome the move but question whether the technology could fully grasp all signed conversation. An app that focuses on hand signals to produce audio, they tell the BBC, would miss facial expressions and the speed of signing—additional signals that help convey meaning. The app may also miss the regionalisms that exist in sign language. A Google spokesperson says the company will continue its research in the hope of making its software more robust and to increase the number of gestures it can accurately detect. Early versions of sign-language software became confused when trying to track hand signals because wrist flicks and the bending of fingers often hid other parts of the hand, the BBC says. To overcome that, Google’s software creates a graph of 21 points across the fingers, palm, and back of the hand, making it easier for the camera to interpret each hand signal, no matter how much a hand twists or two fingers touch. The online news service notes that other inventors and companies are also working on ways to translate sign language to smartphones or PCs. Roy Allela, a 25-year-old developer in Kenya, constructed a set of haptic gloves that translate sign language to an Android app that reads it aloud. The invention, which Allela came up with to aid his hearing-impaired niece, recently won an award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. – T. G.
©Toni Rigolosi