Breakthroughs and trends in the world of technology.
Construction Engineering
American Roots
A stone’s throw from the Washington Monument, the $540 million National Museum of African American History and Culture—opening this month—promises to rival the iconic obelisk in scale and impact. Adorned with a corona, or scrim, of 3,600 bronze-colored cast-aluminum panels that glow at night from the light within, the distinctive exterior evokes “ornate 19th-century ironwork created by enslaved craftsmen in New Orleans,” the museum says. Inside, visitors will ride an elevator 40 feet underground for a tour of the African American experience by way of artifacts ranging from the iron ballasts of a 1790s slave ship to the 1990s Parliament Funkadelic Mothership, a 1,200-pound metal stage prop used at musician George Clinton’s concerts. To accommodate five floors below grade, the foundation sinks so deep into the capital’s once swampy National Mall that builders had to pump out 85 gallons of water per minute during construction. A second challenge was the installation of two vivid representations from America’s nine decades of racial segregation: a 77-ton, 80-foot-long railway car divided into separate seating for white and “colored” passengers and a 21-foot cast-concrete guard tower from the Angola prison in Louisiana, where the mostly black inmates were subject to a penal labor practice that let private individuals lease prisoners. So big that they couldn’t be installed once the museum was completed, the exhibits arrived in a seven-truck convoy in 2013, then were lowered into place in what the museum called “one of the most complex artifact-delivery operations in Smithsonian history,” lasting five hours. Construction then proceeded around them. – Mark Matthews
©Alan Karchmer/NMAAHC
Recycling
Good as Gold
Americans discard some 150 million cellphones annually, the Environmental Protection Agency calculates. But estimates suggest only about 12 percent are sold to recycling companies or given to charities for fundraising. The rest? No one knows for sure, but it’s believed that $33 billion-worth gather dust in cupboards and drawers. One engineer aims to change this, inventing “mini-factories” in which robots separate printed circuit boards from outdated cellphones and precisely controlled high-temperature reactions turn their valuable metals into copper- and tin-based alloys while simultaneously destroying toxins. Small businesses and local governments are target markets. “Mining waste makes sense for the economy and environment,” says Veena Sahajwalla, head of the Center for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. The metallurgical engineer has commercialized other technological breakthroughs, including one that uses old tires to power steel-making furnaces. Her university now is negotiating with companies seeking to commercialize her cellphone technology. Sahajwalla also has developed a drone programmed to pinpoint discarded cellphones for retrieval from the trash. – Chris Pritchard
©Thinkstock
Airbag Technology
Soft Landing
Falls are a major health problem for the elderly. Each year, some 250,000 Americans ages 65 or older are hospitalized with hip fractures, all but 5 percent of them caused by falls. Women, who comprise three quarters of hip-fracture patients, face much higher risks of dying—not because of the actual break but from complications it can aggravate in underlying health problems, such as diabetes or heart disease. But now Wolk, a Dutch start-up spun out of the Delft University of Technology, is close to bringing to market a “fall airbag” that can protect the hips of elderly persons much as car airbags help limit injuries to passengers during collisions. Worn around the waist beneath clothing, the Wolk device is a relatively thin belt containing an accelerometer and gyroscope that feed data to an algorithm capable of predicting when someone is about to fall. It then activates one of three small air-filled plastic pillows—one on each side and one at the rear. The original design came from Heike Vallery, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. Wolk expects to start selling the device early next year for around $470—a small price to protect aging bones and save lives. – Thomas K. Grose
©Thinkstock
Bioelectronics
Nervous Energy
Last October, Prism took an in-depth look at research and development of “electroceuticals,” electrical implants to modulate nerve signals and treat a variety of ailments, including diabetes, heart disease, and even some cancers. Many diseases are caused by pathogens that interrupt a nerve’s electrical signals. Now GlaxoSmithKline, the multinational British pharmaceutical company, is teaming up with Verily, a Google-connected company, to create a new enterprise called Galvani Bioelectronics. Named after the 18th century Italian biologist who first discovered the electrical nature of nerve impulses, the company will focus initially on developing electroceuticals aimed at inflammatory diseases such as arthritis, metabolic diseases like asthma, and disorders of the endocrine system—diabetes, for instance. Verily—the sciences division of Google parent company Alphabet—and GSK are investing around $700 million over the next seven years to develop minuscule implants that would be attached to individual fibers in the nerves that lead to major organs. They would monitor a fiber’s impulses, interpret them, and stimulate the fiber, when necessary, to keep organs functioning properly. GSK brings life-sciences expertise to the partnership; Verily contributes know-how on electronic-device design and production, data analytics, and software. Galvani will be headquartered in England and maintain a research hub in San Francisco. – T.G.
©Thinkstock
Art History
Beam Her Up
Portrait of a Woman, a painting by French impressionist Edgar Degas from the late 19th century, has since 1922 been marred by an odd dark stain that has spread across the subject’s face. As the oil paints Degas used began to fade, it became clear that an earlier painting lay hidden beneath the portrait, which hangs in the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia. It was not uncommon for artists of that era to recycle canvases and paint over incomplete or imperfect work. Efforts to find out what Degas first painted using X-ray and infrared technologies didn’t reveal much. But now researchers at the Australian Synchrotron, a type of particle accelerator, have used the machine to scan the painting—minute point by minute point—with a super-intense X-ray that focuses light a million times brighter than the sun into a beam one-tenth the diameter of a human hair. The method, called X-ray fluorescence, uses a special detector that picks up the unique chemical signatures of the different paints. After 30 hours, a basic black-and-white map of the older portrait emerged along with a terabyte of X-ray data, allowing the researchers to reconstruct the older painting using what were likely its original colors. Beyond discovering the visage of Emma Dobigny, a model Degas used regularly from 1869 to 1870, the scans revealed a great deal about the artist’s working techniques—insights that could one day help detect forgeries. – T.G.
©National Gallery Of Victoria/Aust Synchrotron
Structural Engineering
Watch Your Step
A glass skywalk that clings to the side of China’s Tianmen Mountain in the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in the southern province of Hunan opened to the public last month. And it’s an impressive feat of engineering. Nearly a mile above ground, the Coiling Dragon Cliff pathway is slightly more than 5 feet wide and clings to the curvy, rocky side of the mountain for 110 yards, providing vertigo-inducing views of the twisting Tongtian Avenue that snakes up to the summit. The skywalk will soon be joined by another engineering marvel in the park: the world’s longest glass-bottom bridge, which arcs 984 feet over a gorge for 470 yards. To prove that the skywalk was as robust as it was exciting, officials at the opening ceremony walloped it with a sledgehammer and drove a car along it. It passed the tests. – T.G.
©Shao Ying/Featurechina/Newscom
Materials
Organic Power
The quest to improve lithium ion batteries has spawned several recent breakthroughs. Researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a prototype that’s similar to lithium ions, but whose positive electrode, the cathode, is derived from flavin, a substance found in riboflavin, or vitamin B2. While many foods, from liver to green vegetables, are rich in riboflavin, the Toronto team extracted flavin from genetically modified fungi. The organic material is inexpensive and, unlike many of the elements in lithium ion batteries, won’t harm the environment. Meanwhile, a team at MIT may finally have found a way to make a workable lithium-air battery. In theory, this type of battery should be much more energy dense than lithium ions, but because it requires oxygen from the air to work, it cannot be sealed. The new MIT version avoids that problem by using a form of solid oxygen: nanoparticles made from oxygen and lithium that are embedded in a cobalt oxide matrix to form the cathode. Whereas traditional lithium-air batteries lose 30 percent of their energy to heat, MIT’s version reduces that loss to 8 percent, making it very efficient and able to handle fast charges. Moreover, since the battery doesn’t draw air from outside, it’s not susceptible to rapid degradation. The new version could store twice as much energy as a traditional lithium ion battery, and with refinements, perhaps up to four times as much. Air power, indeed! – T.G.
©Diana Tyszko/University Of Toronto
Artifical Intelligence
Legal Machinery
BakerHostetler, a Cleveland-based law firm with 900 lawyers on its roster, made a big, new hire last May: ROSS, the world’s first artificially intelligent paralegal. Based on IBM’s Watson cognitive computer technology, ROSS was developed three years ago by University of Toronto students. After placing second in an IBM competition to come up with commercial applications for the Watson platform, the Toronto team eventually created a company, ROSS Intelligence, and relocated to San Francisco. Since signing BakerHostetler as its first big client, it has added several other major firms, including Dentons and Latham & Watkins. At BakerHostetler, ROSS is working with the firm’s 50-person bankruptcy team. Lawyers ask ROSS questions using natural English, whereupon the machine rapidly reads through an entire body of case law and spits out—again in plain English—only the most relevant answers. It can also monitor current litigation and keep its human colleagues up to date with recent court decisions. Moreover, ROSS is a self-learning AI system, so it gains know-how and speed the more it’s used. Will it put paralegals and attorneys out of work? BakerHostetler tells the Washington Post that ROSS isn’t replacing anyone; it’s just a tool that helps human legal eagles “move faster, learn faster, and continually improve.” – T.G.
©Thinkstock
Nanotechnology
Chilling Effect
Computers and other electronic devices generate a lot of heat, so researchers are always searching for new and novel ways to dissipate it. Baratunde Cola, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, thinks sand might work. Not the kind found on beaches, but silicon dioxide nanoparticles he’s devised that are specially coated with a polymer that would normally act as an insulator. At the nanoscale level, the surface properties of the packed particles conduct heat much more efficiently than existing heat-sink materials. The nanoparticles acting together create an electromagnetic field on each one’s surface. When they are jammed together, just heating them activates that effect, says Cola, who plans to scale up his research to see if the heat can be transferred longer distances in larger pieces of the material. – T.G.
©Rob Felt, Georgia Tech
Firefightning
Not So Wild
Prescribed fires, controlled burns of sections of grasslands and forest, can help contain active wildfires and rid areas of invasive species of trees and grasses. Small planes or helicopters are often used to start prescribed fires, but it’s a dangerous business for pilots. The aircraft have to keep close to the ground and fly at low speeds while dropping pellets the size of table tennis balls loaded with chemicals that burst into flames. In the past decade, 41 wildland firefighters have been killed in air crashes while starting prescribed fires. So researchers at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, are working to take humans out of the equation. Sebastian Elbaum, a professor of computer science and engineering, and Carrick Detweiler, an assistant professor, have devised several prototypes of an unmanned aerial system that can fire off the chemical balls that ignite controlled fires. Their micro-drone—which measures about a foot across—is also programmable, so it can drop the fireballs precisely where they are needed. And using drones would be a cheaper option, since piloted aircraft can cost $2000-$5000 a day to be on site, plus an equal amount for each hour they’re in the air. – T.G.
©Craig Chandler/University Communications
Biomedical Engineering
Bone Loss
Facial reconstruction to fix deformities caused by birth defects or injuries is difficult because the replacement bones must perfectly fit the person’s face. The jaw, which must withstand the forces of chewing, is among the most challenging to replace. Moreover, the method that most reduces the chance of rejection—using bone from another part of the patient’s body—requires making a second wound, and it’s not always easy to find a large enough piece with which to work. Now researchers at Columbia University have devised a technique that uses a cow-bone matrix, which is the material remaining after the removal of resident cells. Six matrixes were carved into scaffolds using precise imaging technology and tested on pig jaws, because of their similarity to human jaws. The perfect-fitting matrixes then were covered in stem cells harvested from the pigs’ fat and placed in a bioreactor for three weeks before being implanted. After six months, the bioengineered implants grew and easily integrated into the pigs’ jaws, prompted new bone growth, and tolerated chewing. The researchers now hope to try the procedure in human clinical trials. Meanwhile, researchers from the University of Minnesota recently sent an experiment to the International Space Station to grow bone cells in microgravity. They hope to better understand why bone loss is a common problem for fit astronauts in space and bed-ridden patients on Earth, and perhaps devise some remedies. The team will simultaneously grow bone cells in the lab, simulating a microgravity environment with a high magnetic field, and see how closely the results compare once their space-station test returns to campus early next year. – T.G.
©Columbia University
Intellectual Property
Hot Seats
The European Union is cracking down on cheap knockoffs of classic furniture — facsimiles largely made in Chinese factories with 3D-printed components. Licensed producer Vitra, for example, sells mid-20th-century Charles Eames chairs for around $8,860. But online and in some stores buyers can pick up Chinese copies for around $520. New E.U. regulations extend the copyright on furniture to 70 years after the death of a designer; it had been 25 years. The change has drawn mixed reactions from the Maker movement. Some members claim the regulations would prevent people from building replica furniture for personal use. But the website 3ders.org isn’t impressed with that argument. The law, it says, should encourage the Maker community “to innovate rather than replicate.” – T.G.
©Emfurn.com
Cancer Screening
Less Pain, Early Gain
Victims of oral cancer—the sixth most common form of the disease—have an 80 percent survival rate if it is detected early. All too often, visible symptoms don’t appear until it’s too late for effective treatment. Early detection typically requires a painful biopsy–sometimes more than one–which may deter patients from getting checked. As a result, for the past 40 years, the overall five-year survival rate for mouth cancer has remained around 50 percent. A new invention, however, could help boost early detection—and survival rates—by making biopsies unnecessary. Researchers at the Biophotonics Research Group at King’s College London’s Dental Institute have created what they call a Microvascular Scope, a simple, portable device that can detect mouth cancers non-invasively and at low cost. The prototype has been able to find cancers as small as a millimeter in diameter—so small they can be removed via minimally invasive surgery. The device produces very high-resolution images of a host tissue’s first response to a tumor: new blood vessel growth. Oral cancer was for many years primarily a disease of older people, particularly heavy drinkers and smokers. But in recent years, the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus has also become a major cause. And that’s led to an increase in the disease among younger patients. – T.G.
©Biophotonics Research Group at King’s College London’s Dental Institute