Impact Lab – Page 247 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Water-splitting device solves puzzle of producing hydrogen direct from seawater

December 17, 2022

A combined desalination–electrolysis system that can produce green hydrogen directly from seawater has been developed by a team in China. This integrated process uses a low-energy method to purify seawater, making it one of the first viable approaches to use salt water as a source of hydrogen. The purification step uses phase transitions to remove impurities and could have additional applications in wastewater treatment and resource recovery.

Splitting water with electricity has been experimented with for over 200 years and the reactions involved are well-understood: at the cathode, H+ ions gain electrons to form hydrogen gas whilst OH- loses electrons at the anode to form oxygen. But despite the simplicity of the underlying chemistry, effective electrolysis is a particularly complicated process. Water splitting is thermodynamically unfavourable and requires both specifically designed catalytic electrodes and a significant input of energy to drive the reaction. Even trace impurities can damage the delicate structure of the cell, leading to membrane pores becoming blocked, expensive electrodes corroded and unwanted byproducts formed.

Chloride ions in seawater are a particular problem and undergo competing oxidation at the anode to produce chlorine. Not only does this side reaction reduce the electrochemical efficiency of the cell, but chlorine is an extremely corrosive gas which rapidly degrades the electrodes and inactivates the cell. ‘Approaches to suppress corrosion by coating catalysts have had modest success,’ explains Heping Xie, an energy chemist at Shenzhen University in China. ‘But the composition of seawater changes [with] location, season [and] human behaviour so electrolysers can’t be universally compatible.’ With an average salt concentration of around 3.5%, the chloride content of seawater makes direct electrolysis unfeasible.

drones, Science & Technology News

Swoop Aero to create ‘world’s largest’ drone delivery network in Queensland

December 17, 2022

By Bruce Crumley

Melbourne-based international drone delivery company Swoop Aero is ending 2022 on a high note in its domestic market, receiving an Australian government grant to extend its operation in Southern Queensland into what the firm says will be the world’s largest aerial logistics network of its kind.

The development comes as part of a wider national government effort to improve various kinds of transport in Queensland, which features both traffic-clogged cities and smaller towns separated by what are often vast spaces. Officials are providing a total $1.8 million to help finance Swoop Aero extend its existing drone logistics and delivery activity into a network covering 175,000 square kilometers, and capable of spreading to a full 400,000 square kilometers.

The project is open to all kinds of partners – including commercial businesses – though the initial focus will primarily be on using Swoop Aero’s delivery drones to speed and improve healthcare services across Southern Queensland.

Continue reading…Swoop Aero to create ‘world’s largest’ drone delivery network in Queensland“

AI, Science & Technology News

AI learns to write computer code in ‘stunning’ advance

December 17, 2022

Snippets of code in white come from the AlphaCode artificial intelligence system, whereas the purple code snippets were written by humans trying to solve similar problems.

BY MATTHEW HUTSON

DeepMind’s AlphaCode outperforms many human programmers in tricky software challenges.

Software runs the world. It controls smartphones, nuclear weapons, and car engines. But there’s a global shortage of programmers. Wouldn’t it be nice if anyone could explain what they want a program to do, and a computer could translate that into lines of code?

A new artificial intelligence (AI) system called AlphaCode is bringing humanity one step closer to that vision, according to a new study. Researchers say the system—from the research lab DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet (Google’s parent company)—might one day assist experienced coders, but probably cannot replace them.

“It’s very impressive, the performance they’re able to achieve on some pretty challenging problems,” says Armando Solar-Lezama, head of the computer assisted programming group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

AlphaCode goes beyond the previous standard-bearer in AI code writing: Codex, a system released in 2021 by the nonprofit research lab OpenAI. The lab had already developed GPT-3, a “large language model” that is adept at imitating and interpreting human text after being trained on billions of words from digital books, Wikipedia articles, and other pages of internet text. By fine-tuning GPT-3 on more than 100 gigabytes of code from Github, an online software repository, OpenAI came up with Codex. The software can write code when prompted with an everyday description of what it’s supposed to do—for instance counting the vowels in a string of text. But it performs poorly when tasked with tricky problems.

Space

World’s first space rice seeds back from orbit

December 16, 2022

Feat will help scientists find sustainable food source for long-term exploration missions

Chinese astronauts of the Shenzhou XIV mission have returned with the world’s first rice seeds produced in orbit, a feat that will allow scientists to probe the effects of microgravity on rice growth and find a sustainable food source for long-term space explorations.

On Sunday night, astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

They were in orbit for 183 days, during which they monitored the completion of China’s Tiangong space station and several life science experiments.

One such experiment involved reproducing the entire life cycle of rice for the first time in space, which begins with a seed germinating into a seedling and ends with a mature plant producing new seeds. The experiment began on July 29, and after 120 days in orbit, rice grains were successfully produced.

The new seeds, along with other biosamples, have been delivered to the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. They will be transferred to labs in Shanghai for further research.

Medical Breakthrough

Replicating Myocardial Infarction: Scientists Engineered ‘Heart Attack on a Chip’ Microscale Model for America’s Known Killer

December 16, 2022

Microscale model developed by USC researchers Megan Mccain and Megan Rexius that can replicate key aspects of myocardial infarction and might one day serve as a testbed for new personalized heart drugs.

By Joshua Stan

Scientists at the University of Southern California have developed a “heart attack on a chip” microscale model that can replicate key aspects of myocardial infarction. This device has the potential to serve as a testbed for developing new heart drugs and personalized medicines in the future. USC researchers Megan McCain and postdoc Megan Rexius-Hall engineered the “heart attack on a chip” at the University of Southern California’s Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering.

The device, developed by the researchers, can be used to clearly understand how the heart is changing after a heart attack, allowing for the development and testing of drugs that can limit the further degradation of heart tissue that can occur after a heart attack.

The microscale model can replicate some key features of a heart attack in a simple and easy-to-use system. Megan McCain, a cardiac tissue engineer whose work includes co-developing a heart on a chip, and Rexius-Hall have published their findings in the journal Science Advances in an article titled “A Myocardial Infarct Border-Zone-On-A-Chip Demonstrates Distinct Regulation of Cardiac Tissue Function by an Oxygen Gradient.”

Cancer

How AI found the words to kill cancer cells

December 16, 2022

Scanning electron micrograph of a human T lymphocyte (also called a T cell) from the immune system of a healthy donor.

Using new machine learning techniques, researchers at UC San Francisco (UCSF), in collaboration with a team at IBM Research, have developed a virtual molecular library of thousands of “command sentences” for cells, based on combinations of “words” that guided engineered immune cells to seek out and tirelessly kill cancer cells.

The work, published online Dec. 8, 2022, in Science, represents the first time such sophisticated computational approaches have been applied to a field that until now has progressed largely through ad hoc tinkering and engineering cells with existing—rather than synthesized—molecules.

The advance allows scientists to predict which elements—natural or synthesized—they should include in a cell to give it the precise behaviors required to respond effectively to complex diseases.

“This is a vital shift for the field,” said Wendell Lim, Ph.D., the Byers Distinguished Professor of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, who directs the UCSF Cell Design Institute and led the study. “Only by having that power of prediction can we get to a place where we can rapidly design new cellular therapies that carry out the desired activities.”

Robots

Magnetic microrobots could zap the bacteria out of your cold glass of Milk

December 15, 2022

By Sierra Mitchell

A perfect mix of chemistry and engineering has produced microscopic robots that function like specialized immune cells—capable of pursuing pathogenic culprits with a specific mugshot.

The pathogen in question is Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), which can impact dairy cows’ milk production. These bacteria also make toxins that cause food poisoning and gastrointestinal illnesses in humans (that includes the usual trifecta of diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and nausea).

Removing the toxins from dairy products is not easy to do. The toxins tend to be stable and can’t be eradicated by common hygienic practices in food production, like pasteurization and heat sterilization. However, an international group of researchers led by a team from the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague may have come up with another way to get rid of these pesky pathogens: with a tiny army of magnetic microrobots. Plus, each “MagRobot” is equipped with an antibody that specifically targets a protein on the S. aureus bacteria, like a lock-and-key mechanism.

In a small proof-of-concept study published in the journal Small, the team detailed how these MagRobots could bind and isolate S. aureus from milk without affecting other microbes that may naturally occur.

Food

A meat company is building the world’s largest facility in the US

December 15, 2022

“We are on the path to creating the change we seek.”

By Nergis Firtina

The company’s first U.S. commercial-scale production facility is planned at 200,000 square feet, with possible expansion in the future.

Israeli-based company Believer Meats is commencing its first U.S. commercial facility in North Carolina. Located in Wilson, the company’s new spurt will be the biggest and largest cultivated production facility established so far, covering a site of 200,000-square-foot (18580,608 m²).

Believer Meats is one of the largest companies producing lab-grown meat with non-GMO animal cells. The company is cruelty-free and very respectful of the ecological environment. With the 10,000 metric tons of cultivated meat capacity, Believer Meats seems to be about to change the industry.

“Our facility propels Belieber forward as a leader in the cultivated meat industry,” says Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, CEO of Believer Meats, in the press release.

“Our brand has continually proven our commitment to scale production technology and capacity, and with our new U.S. production center, we are one step closer to commercialization. Believer Meats is setting the standard globally to make it possible for future generations to eat and enjoy meat.”

Space

The new space race will drive innovation. Here’s where it goes next

December 15, 2022

Sixty years after JFK declared the US would go to the moon, America’s bold ambitions for space are back.

By Stephanie Condon

By 1962, the first space race was already underway. The Soviet Union had sent the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into outer space. America’s Alan Shepard followed soon after into suborbital space.

Then, with instantly iconic remarks, President John F. Kennedy upped the ante: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”.

Batteries

European scientists are developing nuclear waste batteries for use in space

December 13, 2022

The ESA’s found a way to get around using Russian fuel to power its ambitions in space

BY Tristan Greene

Ministers at the European Space Agency (ESA) recently approved funding for a special project to build nuclear waste-powered batteries for use in space exploration. If successful, the new tech would make it possible to conduct operations in areas where access to solar energy is degraded or absent, such as on the dark side of the moon.

Researchers working with the ESA believe they can use americium, a radioactive element derived from plutonium decay, to generate sufficient heat to both warm equipment and generate electricity to power functionality. This would represent the first time americium has been used in this manner, but the innovation comes at a necessary time for the European space program.

Current batteries rely on plutonium-238, an element that’s challenging and expensive to produce. The US and Russia house the lion’s share of the world’s supply and, unfortunately, NASA barely has enough to power its own ambitions. The only option, at this point, is for the ESA to find an alternative.

Robotics

The Smallest Robotic Arm You Can Imagine Is Controlled By Artificial Intelligence

December 13, 2022

By Amelia Podder

Researchers used deep reinforcement learning to steer atoms into a lattice shape, with a view to building new materials or nanodevices.

In a very cold vacuum chamber, single atoms of silver form a star-like lattice. The precise formation is not accidental, and it wasn’t constructed directly by human hands either. Researchers used a kind of artificial intelligence called deep reinforcement learning to steer the atoms, each a fraction of a nanometer in size, into the lattice shape. The process is similar to moving marbles around a Chinese checkers board, but with very tiny tweezers grabbing and dragging each atom into place.

The main application for deep reinforcement learning is in robotics, says postdoctoral researcher I-Ju Chen. “We’re also building robotic arms with deep learning, but for moving atoms,” she explains. “Reinforcement learning is successful in things like playing chess or video games, but we’ve applied it to solve technical problems at the nanoscale.”

So why are scientists interested in precisely moving atoms? Making very small devices based on single atoms is important for nanodevices like transistors or memory. Testing how and whether these devices work at their absolute limits is one application for this kind of atomic manipulation, says Chen. Building new materials atom-by-atom, rather than through traditional chemical techniques, may also reveal interesting properties related to superconductivity or quantum states.

Driverless vehicles

Einride announces $500M for autonomous, electric vehicle development

December 13, 2022

Einride has raised $500 million through a combination of equity and debt financing, giving it more funding to accelerate deployment of its autonomous and electric vehicles.

By Brian Straight

FreightTech startup Einride announced Wednesday it had raised $500 million in financing through a combination of a Series C equity raise and a debt facility.

The Sweden-based company raised $200 million in the Series C with the Swedish pension fund AMF, EQT Ventures, Northzone, Polar Structure, Norrsken VC and Temasek, among others participating in the round. In addition, Einride said it secured a $300 million debt facility led by Barclays Europe.

“The time is now to act on not only developing but accelerating the implementation of technology that will create a cleaner, safer and more efficient way to move goods,” said Robert Falck, founder and CEO at Einride. “We’ve created the Einride ecosystem to provide the most resilient and future-proof approach to electrifying freight today. With the support from our investors and shared belief in this mission, we’ll continue to drive disruptive change to global freight at scale.”

The debt facility includes an initial rollout of $150 million in January, the company said, and will be used to support the growing Einride fleet in the U.S. and Europe and for future planned expansions. Einride is currently operational in the U.S., Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Norway.

“This landmark debt facility represents a key milestone in the financing of heavy-duty electric vehicles,” said Gordon Beck, director of securitized products solutions at Barclays. “The innovative asset-backed structure complements Einride’s unique ecosystem offering and is a continued demonstration of how Barclays is using our financial and capital markets expertise to support clients in driving the transition to net-zero.”