Breakthroughs and trends in the world of technology
Sustainability
Spin Doctor
Eco-friendly electric vehicles (EVs) have a green-energy problem: their magnet-propelled motors need rare-earth elements that are not only expensive but also environmentally damaging to extract. Robert Sansone, a 17-year-old high school student and aspiring engineer from Fort Pierce, Florida, figured out a potential solution, reports Smithsonian magazine. Sansone, who has some 60 inventions to his credit, including a go-kart that can exceed speeds of 70 mph, designed an alternative power pack based on a synchronous reluctance motor. EV motor magnets are part of a system that uses electromagenetic fields to spin a rotor. Synchronous reluctance motors, which aren’t powerful enough to use in vehicles, don’t use magnets because their steel rotors are pitted with air gaps that align with a rotating electromagentic field produced by coils of copper wire. After 15 attempts, Sansone came up with a working prototype built from 3D-printed plastic, wires, and a steel rotor that doesn’t have air gaps. Early tests for torque and efficiency showed that his model was 37 percent more efficient than a standard synchronous reluctance motor at 750 rpm. The method he used to produce the magnetic field remains a trade secret, but his prototype earned Sansone the $75,000 first prize at this year’s Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest and most prestigious high school STEM competition. Sansone, who’s now working on a sturdier, faster version of his invention, knows many challenges lie ahead. A Tesla Model S motor, for example, whizzes at 18,000 rpm. And while materials are cheap, manufacturing costs for synchronous reluctance motors are high because they’re extremely complex machines. At 17, Sansone has time on his side. – Thomas K. Grose
© Society for Science
Quantum Computing
Locked and Encoded
In October, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three pioneers of quantum information science—American John F. Clauser, 79; France’s Alain Aspect, 75; and Austrian Anton Zeilinger, 77. Their work on entangled states, where two particles behave as one even when separated, paved the way for quantum computers. By some estimates, these superfast processors could hit the mainstream as soon as 2030, ushering in opportunities, particularly in areas like drug discovery, but also potential cybersecurity nightmares for banking and other industries whose standard data protections risk being cracked. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts and University of Texas at Austin may have just the safeguard: a 256-bit encryption key that could thwart even the fastest computers. Their invention uses a plastic-like material synthesized by a robot as the storage medium. This sequence-defined polymer is composed of a long chain of monomers concocted from commercially available amino acids. Each monomer corresponds to one of 16 symbols, enabling the team to encode the 256 bits of information so they could be read in correct order. To test their method, the researchers used the polymer to encrypt a copy of the 1900 children’s classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Texas team then mixed it into ink and wrote and mailed a letter to a colleague in Massachusetts. Using a liquid chromatography mass spectrometer to extract and analyze the polymer, the recipient was able to reveal the encryption key and decipher the book on the first try. The technology not only holds promise for keeping data safe but also for storing vast amounts in small spaces rather than huge, power-hungry data centers. Meanwhile, the National Institute of Standards and Technology recently selected four new encryption algorithms that will become part of the “post-quantum” cryptographic standards expected to be finalized within the next two years. – T. G.
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Electric Vehicles
Crossing Guards
Traffic delays at rail crossings can be annoying. They also can be deadly for people with medical emergencies if the ambulance or other first-responder vehicle gets held up. After seeing an ambulance blocked by a train, Yu Qian, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of South Carolina, was inspired to hunt for a way around the problem. His solution is a computer-vision system that monitors road traffic conditions and combines those data with schedules from rail operators to better estimate crossing times and when delays might occur. In the state capital of Columbia, 911 dispatchers now can use the system to save time on emergency calls by picking the best routes. Qian also has developed an artificial intelligence-guided computer-vision system to monitor rail crossings and train platforms to spot people with potentially suicidal intentions—information that can be forwarded to either hotlines or local police. He’s now working on a system that employs computer vision and drones to autonomously inspect tracks for such problems as missing or broken components. Railroads may seem like yesteryear’s technology, but as Qian, who has been fascinated by trains since childhood, points out, up to 40 percent of goods are transported across the United States by rail, making it a vital part of the economy. – T. G.
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Climate Change
Water Works
Agricultural communities in the high-mountain desert regions of India, Kyrgyzstan, and Chile historically have relied on nearby glaciers to irrigate spring plantings. But global warming is causing glaciers to disappear or retreat. In 2013, according to the BBC, Indian engineer Sonam Wangchuk came up with a novel solution called ice stupas—pillar-like artificial glaciers grafted from meltwater piped down to lower altitudes during the winter. At the stupa’s base is a vertical pipe. When temperatures fall below freezing at night, the water is pumped up the pipe and then sprinkles down onto a steel or wood structure, where it freezes, forming an icy stalagmite. Come spring, the stupa gradually melts, releasing its fresh water. It’s a simple, practical technology but inefficient, as ScienceNews explains. More than 70 percent of the drizzling water flows away without freezing on the stupa. But engineers from Switzerland’s University of Fribourg have developed a more efficient autonomous system. They built two stupas in Guttannen, Switzerland. One was a traditional, continuously spraying stupa. The other was outfitted with computers that accounted for changes in temperatures, wind speed, and humidity to automatically adjust the flow rate. After four months, the traditional stupa released about 1,100 cubic meters of water, built an ice tower containing 53 cubic meters of ice, and sustained one episode of frozen pipes. The computerized stupa only spewed 150 cubic meters of water but created 61 cubic meters of ice, and its pipes never froze. The Swiss team now hopes to simplify the autonomous stupa and make it affordable—in the range of $200 to $400—for high-mountain subsistence farmers, who don’t have a lot of cold, hard cash to spend. – T. G.
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Space Exploration
Moon Greens
Nearly 50 years after the last US astronauts left the moon, NASA is gearing up for another crewed mission—Artemis—to establish a permanent lunar base. Raising crops on-site could help solve the enormous challenge of sustaining the women and men who will work up there. And new research from the University of Florida indicates that moon farms might indeed be feasible. The experimental field was minuscule: investigators had just 12 grams of lunar soil, called regolith, that had been brought back during the Apollo missions. To stretch their precious asset, the researchers placed a gram of regolith in the thimble-size wells of plastic plates normally used to culture cells, then planted Arabidopsis seeds. This member of the mustard family is often used in plant science studies because its entire genetic code has been mapped. After receiving water, nutrients, and light, nearly all the seeds germinated. But there were signs, later confirmed by analyzing the plants’ gene expression patterns, that the sprouts had to work hard to cope with the structure and chemical composition of the lunar soil. The researchers hope to use that gene data to find ways to ameliorate plants’ stress responses to regolith so that crops can grow effortlessly on the moon. Lunar lettuce to go with that green cheese, anyone? – T. G.
© Tyler Jones, UF/IFAS
Sustainable Development
Life on the Line
Saudi Arabia generated headlines worldwide when it unveiled plans for a new “green” city in the kingdom’s northwest that would measure 105 miles long, 1,400 feet high (taller than the Empire State Building), and just 650 feet wide. The Line, as the project is known, would be enclosed on both sides by a mirrored facade. The walls would contain communities, offices, trees, and gardens, but no cars. Instead, high-speed rail would rush residents from end to end in just 20 minutes. Plans call for leveraging shade, sunlight, and ventilation to create a comfortable climate year-round, with all power coming from renewables. An estimated 1.5 million people are expected to live in the linear “smart” city by 2030 and increase to 9 million. The Line, which will cost the Saudi government hundreds of billions of dollars to build, is part of an effort by the country’s controversial leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to remake the kingdom and diversify its economy, NPR’s website reports. But news outlets note that The Line quickly attracted criticism. NPR quotes Carlos Felipe Pardo, a New Urban Mobility Alliance senior adviser, as saying that megacities created from scratch often go awry because in trying to solve existing urban problems they create new ones. Melissa Sterry, a sustainable city design expert, tells Metro, a British online publication, that despite its aim, The Line isn’t very eco-friendly. She says the wall could interrupt animal migration and pose a collision risk for birds, while filling it with non-native plants could introduce invasive species into the fragile desert region. – T. G.
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Bioagronomy
Microbial Mop Brigades
The foul muck at the bottom of oceans, lakes, and other bodies of water could spawn an environmentally friendly method for cleaning up oil spills and curbing methane emissions. Cable bacteria are wiry, electricity-conducting organisms that live in these shallow sediments, where they dig just deep enough to reach sulfide-rich layers to suck up and convey electrons toward the surface, according to ScienceNews. The process gives the bacteria energy while turning toxic sulfides into more benign sulfates, which researchers believe helps fend off euxinia, a lethal phenomenon caused by sewage and fertilizer runoff that ultimately depletes oxygen, killing fish and other aquatic life. Researchers who study cable bacteria to gauge the health of bays and estuaries now hope that microbes may have other beneficial uses, including helping to clean up seabeds contaminated by oil spills. Some soil-dwelling bacteria ingest hydrocarbons, but their waste product is sulfides, which eventually kill the bacteria. Cable bacteria could eradicate the sulfides, allowing the oil consumers to continue working. Cable bacteria also might help ease the problem of methane emanating from rice paddies, which account for some 11 percent of methane emissions caused by humans. Paddies are flooded to contain pests and weeds, but the flood waters contain methane-releasing microbes. One study found that adding cable bacteria to rice soil could cut those emissions by 93 percent by outcompeting the methane generators for hydrogen, acetate, and other nutrients. – T. G.
© Nils Risgaard-Petersen & Lars Peter Nielsen
Bio-Inspired Design
Morbid Curiosity
Mechanical engineering researchers at Rice University have found a novel use for dead spiders: turning their lifeless bodies into delicate grippers that could be used in microelectronics assembly. As Ars Technica explains, the project began when graduate student Faye Yap noticed a dead spider in the hallway and wondered why it had curled up. Turns out, arachnid legs have flexor muscles that curl in and out using hydraulic pressure. Dead spiders can’t pressurize their bodies, so their legs remain curled. Yap wondered if it might be possible to pump air into a spider’s hydraulic chamber to gain control of its legs. The researchers inserted a needle into the prosoma of a dead wolf spider, affixed it with superglue, then puffed air into the chambers. It worked. The inflow caused the legs to open; letting out the air relaxed them into gripping position. To release an object, the researchers just pumped air back in. The spider’s legs could lift objects more than 1.3 times its body weight and opened and closed a thousand times before the joints succumbed to wear and tear, probably caused by dehydration. A coating of beeswax eased the problem. The team used their eight-legged gripper to remove a jumper wire on a breadboard to disconnect the LED and even pick up another dead spider. The team also coined a term for the creepy new field: necrobotics. – T. G.
© Te Faye Yap and coauthors
Imaging
Hues Clues
In nature, the iridescent colors of butterfly wings, mollusk shells, and other creatures often are the result of a material’s nanostructure rather than dyes or pigments. Mechanical engineering researchers at MIT have discovered a way to synthesize those nanostructures on a color-shifting elasticized film by combining 21st-century holographic materials with an antiquated technique to make color photographs. Gabriel Lippmann, a 1908 Nobel laureate in physics, created color prints by placing a mirror behind a thin, transparent emulsion of light-sensitive grains, then exposing the setup to a beam of light. The technique projected images of structurally colored flowers and other objects onto the emulsions. MIT’s researchers took thin films of holographic materials, placed them on polished aluminum, and zapped them with a projector’s light, forming nanoscale structures within the film. They then bonded the film to elastic. An image of flowers changed from warmer to cooler hues when stretched. When they pressed strawberry seeds and fingerprints onto red film, the imprints came out green, while a penny’s coppery-orange image turned blue. The film already has been used to create compression bandages that change color to indicate how much pressure is being applied. Other potential future uses, the researchers say, include robotic skins that have a sense of touch, or touch-sensitive devices that can enhance virtual- or augmented reality systems, particularly those used for medical training. – T. G.
© Courtesy of the researchers
Green Energy
Old-School Fuel
Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) have developed a method to make solar kerosene. If the technique can be improved, it could help the airline industry meet its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Working at a pilot solar-tower plant in Spain, the ETH researchers used concentrated solar energy to concoct kerosene from water vapor and carbon dioxide taken from the air, according to IEEE Spectrum. The resulting product can be mixed with fossil-derived jet fuels, so its initial use will be as a drop-in alternative, and the technique only produces as much CO₂ as has been removed from the air. The team’s solar-driven thermochemical method splits water and CO₂ to produce synthetic gas (syngas). The plant uses mirrors that rotate to follow the sun to concentrate solar radiation into a reactor at the top of the tower, creating temperatures inside of around 1,500ºC. The syngas produced in the reactor is then processed to kerosene. Only 4.1 percent of the solar energy is changed into fuel—too low a figure for commercial uses—because more than half of the solar energy is lost to heat. But the team’s confident it can design 3D-printed ceramic reactor liners to recover some of that heat and boost the process’s energy efficiency to 20 percent or higher. If it works, the researchers say, the solar kerosene would at first be mixed in with fossil-based kerosene, accounting for only 1 to 2 percent of the total. Rising quotas and investments, coupled with falling costs, could eventually increase the amount to 10 or 15 percent. A spin-off company, Synhelion, plans to commission the first industrial-scale solar fuel plant next year. – T. G.
© IMDEA Energy
Robotics
Saved by the Buzzer
Honeybees perform what’s called a “waggle dance” to signal where hive-mates can find nectar-rich flowers. The direction their backsides waggle and how long the dance lasts convey the location and time it will take to reach the buds. Engineering researchers at the Indian Institute of Science and the University of Maryland have borrowed those moves to teach teams of robots to communicate with each other in disaster zones or other areas where digital networks are unavailable. As explained in a paper published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, the researchers came up with a test using a simple task: where to move a package inside a warehouse. First a human uses hand gestures to tell a “messenger robot” where the package belongs. The messenger interprets the gestures using its onboard camera and skeletal tracking-system algorithms. To relay the information to a “handling robot,” the messenger traces a shape on the ground whose orientation indicates which direction the handler must take to reach the location. The time the messenger takes to complete the trace indicates the destination’s distance. So far, the method has worked between 90 and 93.3 percent of the time in simulations and tests with humans and robots. – T. G.
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Biomedical Engineering
Optical Solutions
Scientists have long known that tears, like saliva and urine, contain exosomes, which are microscopic sacs with molecular information. Analyzing these sacs could give doctors a new way to ascertain a patient’s health. But as ScienceNews explains, while our bodies produce relatively large volumes of saliva and urine, they shed only small amounts of tears, making it hard to isolate enough exosomes to be useful. Biomedical engineers at China’s Wenzhou Medical University have now used nanotechnology to come up with a rapid-isolation system that can easily capture the microscopic sacs. The researchers mix tears into a solution that’s poured into a device—they call it an iTEARS—with two nanoporous membranes. When vibrated, the membranes filter the solution, removing small molecules and leaving behind enough exosomes for analysis. Researchers investigating the sacs discovered evidence of several eye diseases and a way to possibly monitor how a patient’s diabetes was progressing. Ultimately, the researchers are confident iTEARS can be used to spot ocular disorders, systemic and numerous neurodegenerative diseases, and cancers. – T. G.
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Science Denial
Inconvenient Truths
Call it the blowhard effect. A multi-university study of science denial reveals that people who reject expert consensus on a range of topics—including climate change, vaccine efficacy, and the Big Bang origin of the universe—have a poor understanding of science but tend to overestimate their knowledge. In a survey of thousands of Americans, researchers from Brown and Portland State Universities and the University of Colorado Boulder asked about respondents’ general knowledge of science and then solicited their opinions on eight topics, such as COVID-19 vaccines. Those who answered more factual questions correctly were also more likely to accept the scientific consensus on each topic, while the opposite held true for those with more incorrect answers. Many respondents who in July 2020 declared they would “definitely not get the vaccine” gave wrong answers to questions about how vaccines work and how viruses spread, but also claimed to have a “thorough understanding” of those subjects. The researchers say the findings show that disregard for scientific consensus depends not just on someone’s actual grasp of science but also on perceptions of their own knowledge. The results explain why some people can reject evidence-based expert opinion while embracing unsubstantiated beliefs of those around them. The findings also suggest why it’s often futile to try and persuade doubters with facts. As one researcher put it: “If people think they know a lot, they have minimal motivation to learn more.” – T. G.
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