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Tag: Engineering

  • Tech to absorb electromagnetic waves in the 6G band!

    Tech to absorb electromagnetic waves in the 6G band!

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    Newswise — A research team led by Dr. Youn-kyoung Baek and Dr. Jung-goo Lee succeeded in developing the world’s first technology to consecutively manufacture epsilon iron oxide that can absorb millimeter wave with a high coercive force equivalent to that of neodymium (Nd) magnets. The researchers are in the Department of Magnetic Materials in Powder Materials Division at the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS), a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT.

    Iron oxide material with a high-coercive epsilon crystal phase is almost the only magnetic material that absorbs ultra-high frequencies which is a potential 6G frequency band. Until now, it was only formed in a nano-sized particle of 50 nanometers or less. Japan succeeded to produce pure epsilon iron oxide through batch type wet process, but it involves time consuming multi-stage process, resulting in a low yield.

    The research team adopted the aerosol process to solve the low-yield problem and succeeded in producing a composite powder in which epsilon iron oxide nanoparticles are embedded in silica particles by spray-drying precursor solutions in a hot chamber. When the precursor material solution is continuously injected and the droplets are instantly dried, the iron precursor is trapped in the silica xerogel particles and limited to grow during heat treatment. Epsilon iron oxide nanoparticles could be continuously produced through a micrometer-sized powder manufacturing process, which is significant as it showed the possibility of commercialization of millimeter wave absorbing materials.

    While conventional metals that absorb electromagnetic waves have reduced absorption capacity in high-frequency bands or have limitations in controlling frequency bands, epsilon iron oxide has high potential as a material for future communication parts due to its absorption capacity in the ultra-high frequency (30-200GHz) band. Continuous manufacturing technology of epsilon iron oxide with millimeter wave absorption capability can be used for mm-wave 5G/6G wireless communication, radar sensors for driverless car, stealth and low-orbit satellite communication components. In addition, as it is a high-coercivity magnetic material, it can be used for electric motor parts for future mobility.

    Currently, no companies commercially produce products with applied magnetic materials capable of absorbing mm waves. Only two or three companies in the US, Japan, and Germany produce 5G band absorbing and shielding materials. The technology developed by researchers at KIMS is expected to be localized and exported to the global market in the future.

    Principal investigator Dr. Youn-kyoung Baek said, “The epsilon iron oxide can selectively absorb ultra-high frequencies in a wide band (30 to 200 GHz). The significance of the study is that it developed the first continuous manufacturing process of epsilon iron oxides. The technology is expected to accelerate the commercialization of wireless communication devices using millimeter waves, self-driving car radars, and absorber technology for space satellite communication in the future.”

    The research was carried out as a project to develop magnetic composite Materials with tunable magnetic performances of KIMS and funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT. In addition, the research was published in Chemical Communications, a renowned academic journal in materials science published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK on September 23rd. Currently, the research team is discussing technology transfer for mass production of iron oxide absorbing materials with many companies, and is conducting a follow-up study to improve wave absorption capacity to terahertz which is 100 gigahertz (GHz) or higher.

     

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    About Korea Institute of Materials Science(KIMS)

    KIMS is a non-profit government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT of the Republic of Korea. As the only institute specializing in comprehensive materials technologies in Korea, KIMS has contributed to Korean industry by carrying out a wide range of activities related to materials science including R&D, inspection, testing&evaluation, and technology support.

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    National Research Council of Science and Technology

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  • Researchers propose new structures to harvest untapped source of freshwater

    Researchers propose new structures to harvest untapped source of freshwater

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    Newswise — An almost limitless supply of fresh water exists in the form of water vapor above Earth’s oceans, yet remains untapped, researchers said. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the first to suggest an investment in new infrastructure capable of harvesting oceanic water vapor as a solution to limited supplies of fresh water in various locations around the world.

    The study, led by civil and environmental engineering professor and Prairie Research Institute executive director Praveen Kumar, evaluated 14 water-stressed locations across the globe for the feasibility of a hypothetical structure capable of capturing water vapor from above the ocean and condensing it into fresh water – and do so in a manner that will remain feasible in the face of continued climate change.

    Kumar, graduate student Afeefa Rahman and atmospheric sciences professor Francina Dominguez published their findings in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

    “Water scarcity is a global problem and hits close to home here in the U.S. regarding the sinking water levels in the Colorado River basin, which affects the whole Western U.S.,” Kumar said. “However, in subtropical regions, like the Western U.S., nearby oceans are continuously evaporating water because there is enough solar radiation due to the very little cloud coverage throughout the year.”

    Previous wastewater recycling, cloud seeding and desalination techniques have met only limited success, the researchers said. Though deployed in some areas across the globe, desalination plants face sustainability issues because of the brine and heavy metal-laden wastewater produced – so much so that California has recently rejected measures to add new desalination plants.

    “Eventually, we will need to find a way to increase the supply of fresh water as conservation and recycled water from existing sources, albeit essential, will not be sufficient to meet human needs. We think our newly proposed method can do that at large scales,” Kumar said.

    The researchers performed atmospheric and economic analyses of the placement of hypothetical offshore structures 210 meters in width and 100 meters in height.

    Through their analyses, the researchers concluded that capturing moisture over ocean surfaces is feasible for many water-stressed regions worldwide. The estimated water yield of the proposed structures could provide fresh water for large population centers in the subtropics.

    One of the more robust projections of climate change is that dry regions will get drier, and wet areas will get wetter. “The current regions experiencing water scarcity will likely be even drier in the future, exacerbating the problem,” Dominguez said. “And unfortunately, people continue moving to water-limited areas, like the Southwestern U.S.”

    However, this projection of increasingly arid conditions favors the new ocean vapor-harvesting technology.

    “The climate projections show that the oceanic vapor flux will only increase over time, providing even more fresh water supply,” Rahman said. “So, the idea we are proposing will be feasible under climate change. This provides a much needed and effective approach for adaptation to climate change, particularly to vulnerable populations living in arid and semi-arid regions of the world.”

    The researchers said one of the more elegant features of this proposed solution is that it works like the natural water cycle.

     “The difference is that we can guide where the evaporated water from the ocean goes,” Dominguez said. “When Praveen approached me with this idea, we both wondered why nobody had thought about it before because it seemed like such an obvious solution. But it hasn’t been done before, and I think it is because researchers are so focused on land-based solutions – but our study shows other options do, in fact, exist.”  

    The researchers said this study opens the door for novel infrastructure investments that can effectively address the increasing global scarcity of fresh water.

    The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Lovell Professorship in the department of civil and environmental engineering, The University Scholar Program and the National Science Foundation supported this research.

     

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    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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  • Checking blood pressure in a heartbeat, using artificial intelligence and a camera

    Checking blood pressure in a heartbeat, using artificial intelligence and a camera

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    Newswise — Australian and Iraqi engineers have designed a system to remotely measure blood pressure by filming a person’s forehead and extracting cardiac signals using artificial intelligence algorithms.

    Using the same remote-health technology they pioneered to monitor vital health signs from a distance, engineers from the University of South Australia and Baghdad’s Middle Technical University have designed a non-contact system to accurately measure systolic and diastolic pressure.

    It could replace the existing uncomfortable and cumbersome method of strapping an inflatable cuff to a patient’s arm or wrist, the researchers claim.

    In a new paper published in Inventions, the researchers describe the technique, which involves filming a person from a short distance for 10 seconds and extracting cardiac signals from two regions in the forehead, using artificial intelligence algorithms.

    The systolic and diastolic readings were around 90 per cent accurate, compared to the existing instrument (a digital sphygmomanometer) used to measure blood pressure, that is itself subject to errors.

    Experiments were performed on 25 people with different skin tones and under changing light conditions, overcoming the limitations reported in previous studies.

    “Monitoring blood pressure is essential to detect and manage cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of global mortality, responsible for almost 18 million deaths in 2019,” UniSA remote sensing engineer Professor Javaan Chahl says.

    “Furthermore, in the past 30 years, the number of adults with hypertension has risen from 650 million to 1.28 billion worldwide.

    “The health sector needs a system that can accurately measure blood pressure and assess cardiovascular risks when physical contact with patients is unsafe or difficult, such as during the recent COVID outbreak.

    “If we can perfect this technique, it will help manage one of the most serious health challenges facing the world today,” Prof Chahl says.

    The cutting-edge technology has come a long way since 2017, when the UniSA and Iraqi research team demonstrated image-processing algorithms that could extract a human’s heart rate from drone video.

    In the past five years the researchers have developed algorithms to measure other vital signs, including breathing rates from 50 metres away, oxygen saturation, temperature, and jaundice in newborns.

    Their non-contact technology was also deployed in the United States during the pandemic to monitor for signs of COVID-19 from a distance.

    Notes for editors

    “Contactless blood pressure estimation system using a computer vision system” is published in Inventions. It is authored by Professor Javaan Chahl from the University of South Australia, and Dr Ali Al-Naji, Ahmed Bashar Fakhri and Mustafa F. Mahmood from Middle Technical University, Baghdad.

     

     

     

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    University of South Australia

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  • Palm e-tattoo can tell when you’re stressed out

    Palm e-tattoo can tell when you’re stressed out

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    Newswise — Our palms tell us a lot about our emotional state, tending to get wet when people are excited or nervous. This reaction is used to measure emotional stress and help people with mental health issues, but the devices to do it now are bulky, unreliable and can perpetuate social stigma by sticking very visible sensors on prominent parts of the body.

    Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have applied emerging electronic tattoo (e-tattoo) technology to this type of monitoring, known as electrodermal activity or EDA sensing. In a new paper published recently in Nature Communications, the researchers created a graphene-based e-tattoo that attaches to the palm, is nearly invisible and connects to a smart watch.

    “It’s so unobstructive that people sometimes forget they had them on, and it also reduces the social stigma of wearing these devices in such prominent places on the body,” said Nanshu Lu, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics and leader of the project.

    Lu and her collaborators have been advancing wearable e-tattoo technology for many years. Graphene has been a favorite material because of how thin it is and how well it measures electrical potential from human body, leading to very accurate readings.

    But, such ultra-thin materials can’t handle much, if any strain. So that makes applying them to parts of the body that include a lot of movement, such as the palm/wrist, challenging.

    The secret sauce of this discovery is how the e-tattoo on the palm is able to successfully transfer data to a rigid circuit – in this case a commercially available smart watch, in out-of-lab, ambulatory settings. They used a serpentine ribbon that has two layers of graphene and gold partially overlapped. By snaking the ribbon back and forth, it can handle the strain that comes with movements of the hand for everyday activities like holding the steering wheel while driving, opening doors, running etc.

    Current palm monitoring tech uses bulky electrodes that fall off and are very visible, or EDA sensors applied to other parts of the body, which gives a less accurate reading.

    Other researchers have tried similar methods using nanometer-thick straight-line ribbons to connect the tattoo to a reader, but they couldn’t handle the strain of constant movement.

    Lu said the researchers were inspired by virtual reality (VR), gaming and the incoming metaverse for this research. VR is used in some cases to treat mental illness; however, the human-aware capability in VR remains lacking in many ways.

    “You want to know whether people are responding to this treatment,” Lu said. “Is it helping them? Right now, that’s hard to tell.”

    Other members of the team include Hongwoo Jang and Eunbin Kim from the Texas Materials Institute; Sangjun Kim and Kyoung-Ho Ha from the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering; Xiangxing Yang from the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Kaan Sel and Roozbeh Jafari from Texas A&M’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

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    University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)

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  • The TuFF Age

    The TuFF Age

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    Newswise — TuFF — Tailored Universal Feedstock for Forming — is a strong, highly aligned, short-fiber composite material that can be made from many fiber and resin combinations. Created at the University of Delaware’s Center for Composite Materials (CCM), it can be stamped into complex shapes, just like sheet metal, and features high-performance and stretchability up to 40%.

    Since its introduction, CCM researchers have explored applications for TuFF, from materials for repairing our nation’s pipelines to uses in flying taxis of the future.

    Now, armed with $13.5 million in funding from the U.S. Air Force, UD mechanical engineers and co-principal investigators Suresh Advani and Erik Thostenson along with industry collaborators Composites Automation and Maher and Associates are working on ways to improve manufacturing methods for TuFF. 

    “I am really excited at the opportunity to mature the TuFF pre-pregging process and demonstrate high-throughput composite thermoforming for Air Force relevant components,” said David Simone of the U.S. Air Force.

    The goal is to enable lighter-weight composites to become cost-competitive with aluminum for creating small parts found in air vehicles.

    Advani explained that when it comes to making aircraft materials more cost-efficient, reducing a material’s weight even a mere kilogram, just 2.2. pounds, will reduce fuel consumption and emissions and can result in thousands of dollars in savings over time. 

    This is because aircraft are heavy. A Boeing 747, for example, weighs a whopping 404,600 pounds. A B2 Stealth Bomber in the U.S. Air Force, meanwhile, tips the scale at over 43,000 pounds.

    “In general, the aerospace industry wants to reduce weight and replace metals,” said Advani, George W. Laird Professor of Mechanical Engineering. TuFF is a good option because the material can achieve properties equivalent to the best continuous fiber composites used in aerospace applications. 

    Advancing TuFF thermosets

    Until now, most of the work around TuFF has focused on thermoplastic composite materials that melt when heated, becoming soft and pliable, which is useful for forming. By contrast, TuFF thermosets have a higher temperature threshold, making them useful for aerospace applications. But TuFF thermosets have manufacturing challenges, too, including the long manufacturing times necessary to make a part. 

    In this new project, Thostenson and Advani will work on ways to improve the viability of thermoset TuFF composites. To start, the researchers will characterize the starting materials’ mechanical properties to understand how to make TuFF thermosets reliably and consistently. The research team will explore whether they can make the material in a new way, using thin resin films and liquid resins. They will test the limits of how the material forms and behaves under pressure and temperature, too.

    “How does it stretch during forming in a mold? What shapes can we make? When does it tear or thin or develop voids that can compromise material integrity?” said Advani.

    Having a database for such properties and behaviors will be useful in understanding TuFF material capabilities and limits, and to inform efforts to model and design parts with TuFF.

    Thostenson, professor of mechanical engineering, is an expert in structural health monitoring of materials. He will advance ways to embed sensor technology into TuFF thermosets. This would allow the researchers to see from the inside how the material is forming and curing during its manufacture, in hopes of being able to gauge—and improve— the material’s damage tolerance. 

    It’s intricate work. To give an idea of scale, a single layer of TuFF material is approximately 100 microns thick, about the diameter of the average human hair. The carbon-nanotube sensors Thostenson plans to integrate into the material are smaller still—one billionth the width of a human hair. 

    “This would allow us to do health monitoring for the materials and parts during service life, but you could also imagine using sensor technology to detect a defect during manufacturing,” said Thostenson. 

    While it remains to be seen whether this is possible, Thostenson said having this ability could result in real cost savings for manufacturing methods, where real-time knowledge of how a material is curing could help the researchers speed up production. Additionally, if there is a material failure, such as a tear, the sensors could point the researchers where to look in the process.

    The research team also plans to develop a virtual modeling system to refine the material-forming process through computer simulation instead of by trial and error. In this way, the team will better understand each step in the material-forming process, enhancing the team’s ability to make TuFF materials consistently and reliably — a must for aerospace applications.

    “I am hoping this work will allow us finally to make composites cost competitive with the metal industry,” said Advani.

    In addition to Thostenson and Advani, the team includes, from CCM, Jack Gillespie, Dirk Heider, Shridhar Yarlagadda, Thomas Cender, John Tierney and Pavel Simacek, along with four to five graduate students.

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    University of Delaware

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  • Engineered proteins: A future treatment option for COVID-19

    Engineered proteins: A future treatment option for COVID-19

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    Newswise — COVID-19 has had a lasting global health impact that continues to challenge the health care system. As the coronavirus continues to mutate, the current COVID-19 prevention strategies are plagued with supply chain disruptions, high vaccine manufacturing costs and inconvenient vaccine administration methods. In a study published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, the lab of Zhilei Chen, PhD, at Texas A&M University School of Medicine engineered two small and specifically targeted proteins that could be administered as a nasal spray to protect against and treat COVID-19.

    The proteins were templated on the designed ankyrin repeat protein (DARPin), a synthetic scaffold inspired by a class of binding proteins commonly found in nature. Compared to conventional antibody-based drugs, DARPins are less prone to “go bad” during prolonged storage at moderate-to-high temperatures and can be made in large quantities at low cost, making DARPins potentially much more affordable. In addition, since DARPins are about one-eighth the size of an antibody, they have the capacity to access specific therapeutically important “hot spots” on a disease-related protein with greater precision.

    In this study, the researchers created two DARPin molecules that assemble in groups of three and block the interaction between the primary protein used by the COVID-19 virus to enter cells and its partner on host cells, thus stopping the virus in its tracks. When delivered into the nose of animal models with the COVID-causing virus, the DARPins reduced the amount of virus that accumulate in the airways by up to 100-fold and significantly reduced disease progression. What’s more, the DARPins were effective not only against the original variant, but also all of the newer COVID-causing variants, including the omicron strain. The researchers attribute the broad effectiveness of the DARPins to their engineering design, which resulted in DARPins able to mimic a key interface on the cellular receptor needed by the virus to enter cells.

    “This study offers the possibility of an on-demand nasal spray able to tackle COVID either before or after virus exposure,” Chen said. The team’s discovery provides another, potentially lower-cost therapeutic option for those who cannot receive traditional vaccines or are considered high risk.

    The DARPin molecules were engineered by Vikas Chonira, PhD, with assistance from Rudo Simeon, PhD, both postdoctoral fellows in the Chen lab. This research is part of a larger collaborative effort that included Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, from Washington University; Peter D. Kwong, PhD, from the National Institutes of Health; and Zhiqiang An, PhD, from University of Texas Health Houston. Funding for the Chen lab is provided by the NIH New Innovator Award.

    Karuppiah Chockalingam, PhD, Research Assistant Professor at the School of Medicine contributed to this article.

     

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    Texas A&M University

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  • Chris Heckle named manufacturing director at Argonne National Laboratory

    Chris Heckle named manufacturing director at Argonne National Laboratory

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    Newswise — Heckle’s deep technical knowledge and record of innovation to help advance U.S. technological leadership in materials manufacturing at a critical time.

    Globally recognized research and development leader Chris Heckle has been appointed as the first director of the Materials Manufacturing Innovation Center (MMIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. 

    Argonne established the MMIC with the goal of bringing advanced materials and chemical manufacturing technologies — including energy storage and others essential for the clean energy transition — to market faster, by cultivating and sustaining partnerships between the laboratory and the private sector, DOE, universities and other stakeholders.  

    “I’m thrilled for this opportunity to support materials and chemical processing companies by connecting stakeholders and Argonne’s impressive variety of capabilities and people.” — Chris Heckle, incoming director of Argonne’s Materials Manufacturing Innovation Center 

    Heckle most recently served as research director for Inorganic Materials Research and Asia Research Labs for Corning Incorporated. She is a materials informatics champion who over a 25-year career has facilitated technology innovation across business units for multiple industries, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. She brings to Argonne experience in creating a manufacturing platform that opened new market opportunities for Corning in energy storage, as well as a demonstrated record of translating megatrends into technical thrusts and accelerating product timelines through introduction and adoption of new tools. 

    “I’m thrilled for this opportunity to support materials and chemical processing companies by connecting stakeholders and Argonne’s impressive variety of capabilities and people,” Heckle said. ​“And I’m passionate about people development, which is essential to prepare a new generation of technology and manufacturing leaders for our nation.” 

    To help partners commercialize new materials, Argonne manufacturing experts leverage a one-of-a-kind combination of facilities — including the Materials Engineering Research Facility, Advanced Photon Source and Argonne Leadership Computing Facility — to rapidly develop and scale up materials discovered at the laboratory bench (gram-scale) to commercially relevant quantities (hundreds of kilograms) produced using cost-effective, scalable processes. 

    “We are pleased that Chris has chosen to join our team,” said Megan Clifford, associate laboratory director for Science and Technology Partnerships and Outreach at Argonne. ​“Her deep technical knowledge and record of innovation and motivational leadership will guide the laboratory in making meaningful and long-lasting partner connections, to fulfill the MMIC mission of advancing U.S. technological leadership in materials manufacturing at a critical time.”   

    Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

    The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

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    Argonne National Laboratory

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  • Consumers could pay price if railroads, unions can’t agree

    Consumers could pay price if railroads, unions can’t agree

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    OMAHA, Neb. — Consumers could see higher gas prices and shortages of some of their favorite groceries during the winter holiday season if railroads and all of their unions can’t agree on new contracts by an early-December deadline that had already been pushed back.

    The likelihood of a strike that would paralyze the nation’s rail traffic grew on Monday when the largest of the 12 rail unions, which represents mostly conductors, rejected management’s latest offering that included 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses. With four of the 12 unions that represent half of the 115,000 rail workers holding out for a better deal, it might fall to Congress to impose one to protect the U.S. economy.

    The Retail Industry Leaders Association said a rail strike “would cause enormous disruption” although retail stores are well stocked for the crucial holiday shopping season. It’s not clear what a strike would mean for packages because FedEx and UPS, which both rely on rail to some degree, haven’t commented in detail.

    “Fortunately, this year’s holiday gifts have already landed on store shelves. But an interruption to rail transportation does pose a significant challenge to getting items like perishable food products and e-commerce shipments delivered on time, and it will undoubtedly add to the inflationary pressures already hitting the U.S. economy,” said Jess Dankert with the group that represents more than 200 major retailers.

    Even getting close to the deadline could cause problems because railroads will freeze shipments of dangerous chemicals and perishable goods ahead of time. And commuters could be stranded if there is a strike because so many passenger railroads operate on tracks owned by the freight railroads.

    Just about every industry could be affected because so many businesses need railroads to deliver their raw materials and completed products, and there aren’t enough trucks to pick up the slack.

    Tom Madrecki with the Consumer Brands Association said a rail strike “would effectively bring hundreds of America’s largest food, beverage, household and personal care manufacturing operations to a halt in a matter of days as inputs and ingredients run out. On-shelf availability and accessibility will quickly drop, compounded by almost inevitable panic buying.”

    There’s no immediate threat of a strike even though four unions have rejected deals the Biden administration helped broker before the original strike deadline in September. Those unions agreed to try to hash out a contract before a new Dec. 5 strike deadline. But those talks have deadlocked because the railroads refuse to add paid sick time to what they’ve already offered.

    Railroad engineers voted Monday to join seven smaller unions in approving the deal, but conductors’ union rejected its contract, joining three unions that previously voted no.

    It appears increasingly likely that Congress will have to settle the dispute. Lawmakers have the power to impose contract terms, and hundreds of business groups have urged Congress and President Joe Biden to be ready to intervene.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated to reporters on Monday that Biden believes “a shutdown is unacceptable” but that “the best option is still for the parties to resolve this themselves.”

    Workers frustrated with the demanding schedules and deep job cuts in the industry pushed to reject these contracts because they wouldn’t do enough to resolve their quality-of-life concerns. The deals for the engineers and conductors did include a promise to improve the scheduling of regular days off and negotiate the details of those schedules further at each railroad. Those two unions also received three unpaid days off a year to tend to medical needs as long they were scheduled at least 30 days in advance and the railroads said they wouldn’t penalize workers who were hospitalized.

    The railroads also lost out on their bid to cut crew sizes to one person as part of the negotiations. But the conductors in the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers union still narrowly rejected the deal. A small division of the SMART-TD union did approve it.

    “The ball is now in the railroads’ court. Let’s see what they do. They can settle this at the bargaining table,” SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson said. “But, the railroad executives who constantly complain about government interference and regularly bad-mouth regulators and Congress now want Congress to do the bargaining for them.”

    Dennis Pierce, the president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union, said the deal engineers ratified should help improve working conditions somewhat, but that the railroads must address workers’ frustrations, especially after they cut nearly one-third of their jobs over the past six years as they overhauled their operations.

    “When you’ve got to offer $20,000 to get somebody to go to work for the railroad in Lincoln, Nebraska, you’ve got a problem. People used to stand in line there,” Pierce said. “The reason for that is the word is out that if you go to work here, you’re not going to ever see your family.”

    The railroads maintain that the deals with the unions should closely follow the recommendations made this summer by a special panel of arbitrators Biden appointed. That’s part of the reason why they don’t want to offer paid sick time. Plus, the railroads say the unions have agreed over the years to forgo paid sick time in favor of higher pay and strong short-term disability benefits.

    The unions say it is long overdue for the railroads to offer paid sick time and that the pandemic highlighted the need for it.

    The group that negotiates on behalf of the railroads that include Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, BNSF, Kansas City Southern and CSX said Monday that the unions that rejected their deals shouldn’t expect to receive more than the Presidential Emergency Board of arbitrators recommended.

    It’s unclear what Congress might do given the deep political divisions in Washington D.C. and a single lawmaker could hold up a resolution. But the head of the Association of American Railroads trade group, Ian Jefferies, said “if the remaining unions do not accept an agreement, Congress should be prepared to act and avoid a disastrous $2 billion a day hit to our economy.”

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  • Soft skills: Researchers invent robotic droplet manipulators for hazardous liquid cleanup

    Soft skills: Researchers invent robotic droplet manipulators for hazardous liquid cleanup

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    Newswise — CSU researchers have created the first successful soft robotic gripper capable of manipulating individual droplets of liquid, according to a recent article in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Materials Horizons.

    The breakthrough is the product of a collaboration between two different laboratories in CSU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. It was accomplished by combining two applied technologies, soft robotics and super-omniphobic coatings.

    The soft robotic manipulator is made of inexpensive materials like nylon fibers and adhesive tape. It’s powered by an electrically activated artificial muscle. The combination can be used to produce lightweight, inexpensive grippers capable of delicate work, yet 100x stronger than human muscle for the same weight.

    The result is something that flies in the face of our cultural concept of what a robot is, and what it can do.

    Conventional robots are made of components that are heavy, rigid, and expensive. That makes them poorly suited for some tasks.

    Soft robots, on the other hand, can be lightweight and provide a gentle touch that’s difficult to achieve with conventional robots. They are far lighter and can be produced at a a fraction of the cost of their rigid cousins.

    “A single gripper as large as my finger is one or two grams, including the artificial muscle embedded. And it’s inexpensive – just one or two dollars,” said Jiefeng Sun, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Adaptive Robotics Laboratory and co-first author on the paper.

    The soft robotic grippers are treated with a novel superomniphobic coating that makes the droplet manipulator possible. The superomniphobic coating resists wetting by nearly all types of liquids, even in dynamic situations where the contact surfaces are tilting or moving. When applied to the soft robotic manipulator, the coating enables it to interact with droplets without breaking their surface tension, so that it can grasp, transport, and release individual droplets as if they were flexible solids.

    The superomniphobic coatings employed in the droplet manipulator were developed at CSU by associate professor Arun Kota (now at North Carolina State University) and postdoctoral fellow Wei Wang (now an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee). Wang and Kota also contributed to the article.

    “It’s a very nice synergy between these two kinds of research. Dr. Kota was working on this very good coating, and we were working on this soft robot, to manipulate droplets, so we figured out this might be a good combination,” said co-author Jianguo Zhao, associate professor of mechanical engineering at CSU and director of the Adaptive Robotics Laboratory.

    In the early stages of their research, the team had difficulty attracting the attention of journal editors. The COVID-19 pandemic presented an opportunity to point out the potential of their invention.

    “Because of the pandemic, handling dangerous infective materials is a hot topic. So we added a blood manipulation experiment after the first revision,” said Sun. “That kind of helped us to get through the review process.”

    The combination of inexpensive materials and innovative capabilities has exciting applications. In many liquid spill scenarios, human cleanup can be dangerous due to toxicity, risk of contagion, or other hazards in the surroundings. These droplet manipulators are inexpensive enough to be disposable, but capable enough to do precise, lossless liquid cleanup work no other robot has ever done.

    “It’s a first, but it’s also a very unusual example of a high tech product that is not terribly expensive,” said Zhao.

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    Colorado State University

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  • Looking at oxygen storage dynamics in three-way catalysts

    Looking at oxygen storage dynamics in three-way catalysts

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    Newswise — In light of vehicular pollutants contributing to decreasing air quality, governments across the globe are posing stricter emission regulations for automobiles. This calls for the development of more efficient exhaust gas after-treatment systems (i.e., systems to “clean” exhaust gas before it is released into the atmosphere). The most common mode for treating exhaust emissions of gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines are three-way catalysts (TWCs) or catalytic converters. TWCs often comprise active metals such as platinum (Pt) and palladium (Pd) nanoparticles and oxygen storage materials with a high specific surface area, such as a solid solution of CeO2-ZrO2(CZ). These components can catalyze multiple oxidation and reduction reactions that can convert harmful exhaust from vehicular engines to harmless gases.

    The durability, precision, and performance of a TWC is dependent on factors like the oxygen stored or removed from the bulk and surface of the oxygen storage materials. So, clearly understanding the oxygen transport and dynamics of the storage material is necessary to improve its efficiency. Unfortunately, there is a lack of techniques that can enable direct tracking of the oxygen storage process in TWCs.

    In a recent breakthrough published in Chemical Engineering Journal, however, a team of researchers led by Assistant Professor Tsuyoshi Nagasawa of Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) presented a solution to the problem. The team developed a novel technique for direct visualization of the oxygen storage process in Pd/CZ TWCs using the isotope quenching technique. Prof Nagasawa explains: “It is difficult to get clarity on the dynamic interactions—such as oxygen adsorption/desorption and surface/bulk diffusion—occuring on TWC surfaces, because they can only be estimated indirectly from the valence change of cerium in CZ, or the oxidation state of the noble metal. However, our method surpasses these problems by incorporating isotope labeling with reaction quenching, which allows us to investigate the oxygen storage processes by tracking the 18O isotope involved in these interactions.”

    How was this isotope quenching technique carried out? The team prepared a model TWC consisting of a precious metal, Pd, and a dense CZ substrate, stored 18O2 in it at 600 °C, and then quenched the catalyst using two helium gas nozzles covered in a water cooling jacket. They then used high-resolution secondary-ion mass spectrometry to analyze the 18O distribution on the surface and bulk of Pd/CZ.

    The results indicated that Pd improves the diffusion depth of 18O into CZ bulk, as well as its surface concentration. It further revealed that 18O was preferentially adsorbed at the Pd/CZ interface as compared to the Pd center, where its concentration was lower. Density functional theory calculations also agreed with these observations.

    Finally, the team calculated the local oxygen release/storage rates by comparing 18O distribution and an oxygen release/storage simulation using a diffusion equation. They found that the local rates were comparable and consistent with conventional oxygen storage capacity measurements.

    This new visualization process provides useful insights into the oxygen storage and release mechanisms in metal/oxygen materials systems and can be used to further investigate and improve the performance and efficiency of TWCs used for automobile exhaust treatment. “The volatile organic compounds and oxides of nitrogen and carbon commonly produced by combustion engines, if released without treatment, can not only cause breathing-related health issues but can also indirectly impact the acceleration of global warming. With our study, we wanted to contribute towards the world’s mission to achieve better emission practices,” concludes Prof. Nagasawa.

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  • Missouri S&T CO2 research is rock solid

    Missouri S&T CO2 research is rock solid

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    Newswise — As climate change accelerates, scientists are investigating ways to lower carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. At Missouri University of Science and Technology, researchers are developing solutions by turning CO2 into rock, including massive rocks for permanent carbon storage, and concrete, the manmade rock that supports modern civilization.

    “CO2 concentration in our atmosphere is now 420 parts per million, the highest in human history,” says Dr. Hongyan Ma, an associate professor of civil engineering at Missouri S&T. “We need ways to not only reduce CO2 emission but also to remove CO2 from the air and utilize or permanently store the removed CO2 at a scale large enough to combat climate change.”

    Ma and a team of researchers in materials science and engineering, chemical engineering, mining, economics, and other disciplines at Missouri S&T are forcing CO2 to react with silicate rocks and industrial wastes generated from power plants, cement plants, concrete recycling facilities, and steel mills to form carbonate minerals. Such reactions happen in nature over millions of years to create natural limestone and dolomite formations that stores trillions of tons of carbon, but they are too slow to address the climate change challenge.

    Ma and his team use innovative technologies to speed up the process. Their manmade rocks are intended for gigaton-scale permanent carbon storage or production of carbon-negative cement materials for making concrete. Traditional cement production emits a metric ton of CO2 for every metric ton of cement produced, and Ma says the innovations will potentially reduce over 2 billion metric tons of CO2 every year.

    Ma’s CO2 conversion and utilization work has garnered more than $2 million in grants for Missouri S&T from the National Science Foundation and other organizations such as the Environmental Research & Education Foundation and the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. These research projects focus on processing various solid wastes using captured CO2 or CO2-rich flue gases to make carbon-negative cement materials and manmade rock for permanent carbon storage.  Ma is seeking follow-up grant funding and investment to scale up these innovations and accelerate commercialization.

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  • Argonne wins 3 HPCwire awards

    Argonne wins 3 HPCwire awards

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    Newswise — The awards recognize collaborative science using high performance computing.

    The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has been recognized with three awards from HPCwire, a leading website covering the high performance computing industry. The awards were announced Nov. 14 at SC22, the annual supercomputing conference in Dallas, Texas.

    The awards recognize Argonne’s leadership in high performance computing, including collaborations with industry. Today’s scientific advances often depend on the ability to solve large complex problems relatively quickly with powerful computers and algorithms. Argonne has been using high performance computing for goals ranging from more efficient engines to exploring the cosmos.

    “These awards recognize projects that are quite distinct in their own ways, but they share a common theme: collaboration.” — Rick Stevens, Argonne associate laboratory director for the Computing, Environment and Life Sciences division and an Argonne Distinguished Fellow

    In addition to world-leading computer science expertise, the Lab is home to the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a DOE Office of Science user facility. HPCwire honored Argonne with several awards last year.

    Improving artificial intelligence tools

    Work led by Argonne to broaden usability for artificial intelligence (AI) models won a Readers’ Choice Award in the Best Use of High Performance Data Analytics & Artificial Intelligence category.

    The research aims to make data science more easily reproducible through a set of principles known as FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. The team included scientists from Argonne, The University of Chicago, National Center for Supercomputing Applications and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They created a computational framework that enables artificial intelligence models to run seamlessly across various types of hardware and software platforms and yield the same results.

    The research was funded by DOE’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Science Foundation and Argonne Laboratory Directed Research and Development grants. To perform the computations, the team used the ALCF AI Testbed’s SambaNova system and the Theta supercomputer’s NVIDIA graphics processing units. The data for the study was acquired at the Advanced Photon Source, also a DOE Office of Science user facility.

    Collaborating with industry for real-world solutions

    Argonne received another Readers’ Choice Award in the Best Use of HPC in Industry (Automotive, Aerospace, Manufacturing, Chemical) category. Together with the Raytheon Technologies Research Center, Argonne developed machine learning models for designing and optimizing high-efficiency gas turbines in aircraft. The machine learning models were trained on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of gas turbine film cooling performed on DOE supercomputers. CFD simulations approximate how fluids like air or fuel move, and they are key to enhancing efficiency in machines of all kinds. The researchers’ framework can extend fuel efficiency and durability of aircraft engines while slashing design times and costs. The work is funded by DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office via the HPC4EnergyInnovation program.

    In the same industry category, Argonne also won an Editors’ Choice Award for its work with Aramco Americas and Convergent Science focused on high fidelity CFD simulations of hydrogen engines using resources at ALCF and Argonne’s Laboratory Computing Resource Center. The work will help expedite the adoption of clean, highly efficient hydrogen propulsion systems for the transportation sector, facilitating an accelerated transition to low-carbon energy.

    “These awards recognize projects that are quite distinct in their own ways, but they share a common theme: collaboration,” said Rick Stevens, Argonne associate laboratory director for the Computing, Environment and Life Sciences division and an Argonne Distinguished Fellow. ​“We are pushing to move scientific insights from supercomputing into real-world solutions.”

    The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility provides supercomputing capabilities to the scientific and engineering community to advance fundamental discovery and understanding in a broad range of disciplines. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, the ALCF is one of two DOE Leadership Computing Facilities in the nation dedicated to open science.

    About the Advanced Photon Source

    The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

    This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

    Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

    The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

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  • Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories collaborate with Wabtec on hydrogen-powered trains to decarbonize rail industry

    Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories collaborate with Wabtec on hydrogen-powered trains to decarbonize rail industry

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    Newswise — Hydrogen-powered trains on track to decarbonize the rail industry.

    As the United States shifts away from fossil fuel burning cars and trucks, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are exploring options for another form of transportation: trains. The research focuses on zero carbon hydrogen and other low-carbon fuels as viable alternatives to diesel for the rail industry.

    Both laboratories have entered into cooperative research and development agreements with Wabtec, a leading manufacturer of freight locomotives. The Argonne and Wabtec agreement also includes Convergent Science, a software developer. The project will run for four years.

    Researchers from the multidisciplinary team kicked off the project and celebrated the installation of rail technology company Wabtec’s single cylinder dual-fuel locomotive engine in the National Transportation Research Center, a DOE-designated user facility located at ORNL, during a Nov. 9 event.

    “While hydrogen has been used in light-duty combustion engines, it is still a very new area of research in railway applications.” — Muhsin Ameen, Argonne senior research scientist

    Hydrogen as fuel has many advantages, but locomotive engines must be modified to ensure safe, efficient and clean operation. The team will develop hardware and control strategies for the engine, which will run on hydrogen and diesel fuel to demonstrate the viability of using alternative fuels.

    “We are excited to be a part of this collaboration because it addresses the need to decarbonize the rail industry by advancing hydrogen engine technology for both current and future locomotives,” said Josh Pihl, an ORNL distinguished researcher and group leader for applied catalysis and emissions research. ​“It is also a perfect example of how a DOE-funded collaboration between industry and national laboratories can accelerate the development and commercialization of technologies to help reduce carbon emissions from transportation.”

    Pihl said the project aligns with the goals of DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office to use low-carbon fuels in hard-to-electrify transportation sectors. While electrifying vehicles is an effective strategy in reducing carbon emissions from  some parts of the transportation sector, railways are considered more difficult because of the high cost of building a single coordinated electrified rail system across North America. Each year, the North American rail fleet emits approximately 87.6 billion pounds of carbon dioxide, a major driver of climate change.

    Researchers are exploring the potential of hydrogen combustion engine technology in the rail industry, said Muhsin Ameen, Argonne senior research scientist. Hydrogen is an energy carrier that can be produced from clean energy sources such as solar and wind power. Scientists have studied hydrogen-powered vehicles for decades.

    “To reduce carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050, we must make dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and emissions in the overall transportation system, including railways,” said Ameen. ​“Hydrogen has been used in light-duty combustion engines. However, hydrogen is a newer area of research in railway applications.”

    The research team is developing combustion technology to power the next generation of trains with up to 100% hydrogen and other low-carbon fuels. The team’s goal is to design train engines that will deliver the same power, range and cost-effectiveness as current diesel technology.

    “This collaboration with Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories with DOE support will advance the development of hydrogen technology within Wabtec’s existing industry-leading platforms for medium-speed engines. Railroads will be able to greatly reduce emissions and operating costs while maintaining commonality within their current fleet of trains,” said James Gamble, vice president of Engine & Power Solutions Technology at Wabtec.

    In the project’s first phase, the ORNL team will work on hardware changes for retrofitting locomotives. Their goal is to reduce CO2 emissions from the roughly 25,000 locomotives already in use in North America. Locomotives have a service life of more than 30 years, so replacing the entire fleet would take decades.

    During the second phase of the project, Argonne will leverage more than a decade of experience in modeling hydrogen injection and combustion to create a modeling framework to study combustion and emission control technologies used in hydrogen combustion engines. Experts in fuel injection, kinetics and combustion modeling, design optimization, high performance computing and machine learning will take the project from start to finish.

    At the same time, ORNL and Wabtec will continue to alter the engine hardware to increase the amount of hydrogen that can be used. The team aims to completely replace diesel with hydrogen or low-carbon fuels in new locomotives.

    Scientists are using Argonne’s high performance computers to develop simulation software. This tool will help predict the behavior of combustion engines as operating conditions change and hardware is modified. Simulations help researchers understand the combustion process, which drives engine efficiency and reduces emissions.

    Each diesel-powered locomotive that is converted to a zero- or low-carbon energy source is anticipated to save up to 5.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide per year.

    Along with Ameen, the Argonne team includes group leader and principal research scientist Riccardo Scarcelli, postdoctoral fellow Samuel Kamouz and principal engine research scientist Christopher Powell.

    In addition to Pihl, the ORNL team includes research engineers Dean Edwards and Eric Nafziger and research mechanic Steve Whitted.

    The project is funded by the Vehicle Technologies Office under DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Wabtec. In-kind contributions are provided by Wabtec and Convergent Science. The U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Railroad Administration is also funding related research on safe use of hydrogen in locomotive engines.

    Wabtec Corporation (NYSE: WAB) is focused on creating transportation solutions that move and improve the world. The company is a leading global provider of equipment, systems, digital solutions and value-added services for the freight and transit rail industries, as well as the mining, marine and industrial markets. Wabtec has been a leader in the rail industry for over 150 years and has a vision to achieve a zero-emission rail system in the U.S. and worldwide. Visit Wabtec’s website at: www​.wabtec​corp​.com.

    UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

    Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

    The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

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  • Researchers cook up a new way to remove microplastics from water

    Researchers cook up a new way to remove microplastics from water

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    Newswise — Researchers at Princeton Engineering have found a way to turn your breakfast food into a new material that can cheaply remove salt and microplastics from seawater.

    The researchers used egg whites to create an aerogel, a lightweight and porous material that can be used in many types of applications, including water filtration, energy storage, and sound and thermal insulation. Craig Arnold, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and vice dean of innovation at Princeton, works with his lab to create new materials, including aerogels, for engineering applications.

    One day, sitting in a faculty meeting, he had an idea.

    “I was sitting there, staring at the bread in my sandwich,” said Arnold. “And I thought to myself, this is exactly the kind of structure that we need.” So he asked his lab group to make different bread recipes mixed with carbon to see if they could recreate the aerogel structure he was looking for. None of them worked quite right initially, so the team kept eliminating ingredients as they tested, until eventually only egg whites remained.

    “We started with a more complex system,” Arnold said, “and we just kept reducing, reducing, reducing, until we got down to the core of what it was. It was the proteins in the egg whites that were leading to the structures that we needed.”

    Egg whites are a complex system of almost pure protein that — when freeze-dried and heated to 900 degrees Celsius in an environment without oxygen — create a structure of interconnected strands of carbon fibers and sheets of graphene. In a paper published Aug. 24 in Materials Today, Arnold and his coauthors showed that the resulting material can remove salt and microplastics from seawater with 98% and 99% efficiency, respectively.

    “The egg whites even worked if they were fried on the stove first, or whipped,” said Sehmus Ozden, first author on the paper. Ozden is a former postdoctoral research associate at the Princeton Center for Complex Materials and now a scientist at Aramco Research Center. While regular store-bought egg whites were used in initial tests, Ozden said, other similar commercially available proteins produced the same results.

    “Eggs are cool because we can all connect to them and they are easy to get, but you want to be careful about competing against the food cycle,” said Arnold. Because other proteins also worked, the material can potentially be produced in large quantities relatively cheaply and without impacting the food supply. One next step for the researchers, Ozden noted, is refining the fabrication process so it can be used in water purification on a larger scale.

    If this challenge can be solved, the material has significant benefits because it is inexpensive to produce, energy-efficient to use and highly effective. “Activated carbon is one of the cheapest materials used for water purification. We compared our results with activated carbon, and it’s much better,” said Ozden. Compared with reverse osmosis, which requires significant energy input and excess water for operation, this filtration process requires only gravity to operate and wastes no water.

    While Arnold sees water purity as a “major grand challenge,” that is not the only potential application for this material. He is also exploring other uses related to energy storage and insulation.

    The research included contributions from the departments of chemical and biological engineering and geosciences at Princeton and elsewhere. “It’s one thing to make something in the lab,” said Arnold, “and it’s another thing to understand why and how.” Collaborators who helped answer the why and how questions included professors Rodney Priestley and A. James Link from chemical and biological engineering, who helped identify the transformation mechanism of the egg white proteins at the molecular level. Princeton colleagues in geosciences assisted with measurements of water filtration.

    Susanna Monti of the Institute for Chemistry of Organometallic Compounds and Valentina Tozzi from Instituto Nanoscienze and NEST-Scuola Normale Superiore created the theoretical simulations that revealed the transformation of egg white proteins into the aerogel.

    The article, “Egg protein derived ultralightweight hybrid monolithic aerogel for water purification,” was published in the journal Materials Today. Besides Arnold, Monti, Ozden, Priestley, Link and Tozzi, authors include Nikita Dutta, a former graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering who is now at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Stefania Gill, John Higgins and Nick Caggiano of Princeton University; and Nicola Pugno of the University of Trento and Queen Mary University of London. Support was provided in part by the Princeton Center for Complex Materials and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

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  • The transformation between different topological spin textures

    The transformation between different topological spin textures

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    Newswise — SHINSHU UNIVERSITY, Japan– Skyrmions and bimerons are fundamental topological spin textures in magnetic thin films with asymmetric exchange interactions and they can be used as information carrier for next generation low energy consumption memory, advanced neuromorphic computing, and advanced quantum computing as they have multiple degrees of freedom that can carry information. The transformation between isolated skyrmions and bimerons will be an essential operation for future computing architecture based on multiple different topological bits. Therefore, it is important for the community to find effective ways to realize the creation, transformation, and manipulation of skyrmions and bimerons in magnetic materials.

    In a recent study published in Nano Letters, the group led by Xiaoxi Liu, Professor  in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Shinshu University in Japan and their international collaborators demonstrate in experiments and simulations that the creation of isolated skyrmions and their subsequent transformation to bimerons are possible in a magnetic disk surrounded by a current-carrying and omega-shaped microcoil, where the electric current-induced Oersted field and temperature-induced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy variation play important roles in the transformation between skyrmions and bimerons.  Researchers find that the current injected into the microcoil can generate an Oersted field to switch the magnetization of the magnetic disk in the out-of-plane directions. Meanwhile, the current injected into the microcoil can heat the magnetic disk and results in the increase of the device temperature. As a result, a temperature-induced decrease of magnetic anisotropy is realized in the magnetic disk, which leads to the magnetization reorientation from the out-of-plane direction to the in-plane direction and thus, fosters the transformation from skyrmions to bimerons. Researchers also find deformed skyrmion bubbles and chiral labyrinth domains during the transformation between skyrmions and bimerons.

    The researchers’ results demonstrate the possibility that two different types of topological spin textures can be hosted by a same magnetic film with asymmetric exchange interactions, which may provide guidelines for building novel spintronic applications based on different types of topological spin textures.

    “Our experiment clarified for the first time the transformation between different topological spin textures,” explains  Liu. He also mentions, “Skyrmions and bimerons are two most important information carriers for next generation memory and advanced computing architectures. Our research has fundamental physical interest. It is also important for future data storage and computing community”.

    Researchers will try to study magnetic and spintronic device applications based on the transformation of different types of topological spin textures. An example is the voltage-gated spintronic devices based on skyrmions and bimerons. “Our ultimate goal is the application of topological spin textures for low energy consumption, high density memory and advanced neuromorphic computing.” says Liu.

     

                                                ###

     

    This research was mainly supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Nos. JP20F20363, JP21H01364, JP21K18872, and JP22F22061).

     

    Publication:

     Title: Reversible Transformation between Isolated Skyrmions and Bimerons

    Authors: Kentaro Ohara, Xichao Zhang, Yinling Chen, Satoshi Kato, Jing Xia, Motohiko Ezawa, Oleg A. Tretiakov, Zhipeng Hou, Yan Zhou, Guoping Zhao, Jinbo Yang, and Xiaoxi Liu

    Journal: Nano Lett. 2022, 22, 21, 8559–8566

    DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c03106

     

    About Shinshu University:

    Shinshu University is a national university founded in 1949 located nestling under the Japanese Alps in Nagano known for its stunning natural landscapes. Our motto, “Powered by Nature – strengthening our network with society and applying nature to create innovative solutions for a better tomorrow” reflects the mission of fostering promising creative professionals and deepening the collaborative relationship with local communities, which leads up to our contribution to regional development by innovation in various fields. We’re working on providing solutions for building sustainable society through interdisciplinary research fields: material science (carbon, fiber and composites), biomedical science (for intractable diseases and preventive medicine) and mountain science, and aiming to boost research and innovation capability through collaborative projects with distinguished researchers from the world. For more information visit　https://www.shinshu-u.ac.jp/english/ or follow us on Twitter @ShinshuUni for our latest news.

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  • Growing pure nanotubes is a stretch, but possible

    Growing pure nanotubes is a stretch, but possible

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    Newswise — HOUSTON – (Nov. 9, 2022) – Like a giraffe stretching for leaves on a tall tree, making carbon nanotubes reach for food as they grow may lead to a long-sought breakthrough.

    Materials theorists Boris Yakobson and Ksenia Bets at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering show how putting constraints on growing nanotubes could facilitate a “holy grail” of growing batches with a single desired chirality.

    Their paper in Science Advances describes a strategy by which constraining the carbon feedstock in a furnace would help control the “kite” growth of nanotubes. In this method, the nanotube begins to form at the metal catalyst on a substrate, but lifts the catalyst as it grows, resembling a kite on a string.

    Carbon nanotube walls are basically graphene, its hexagonal lattice of atoms rolled into a tube. Chirality refers to how the hexagons are angled within the lattice, between 0 and 30 degrees. That determines whether the nanotubes are metallic or semiconductors. The ability to grow long nanotubes in a single chirality could, for instance, enable the manufacture of highly conductive nanotube fibers or semiconductor channels of transistors.

    Normally, nanotubes grow in random fashion with single and multiple walls and various chiralities. That’s fine for some applications, but many need “purified” batches that require centrifugation or other costly strategies to separate the nanotubes.

    The researchers suggested hot carbon feedstock gas fed through moving nozzles could effectively lead nanotubes to grow for as long as the catalyst remains active. Because tubes with different chiralities grow at different speeds, they could then be separated by length, and slower-growing types could be completely eliminated.

    One additional step that involves etching away some of the nanotubes could then allow specific chiralities to be harvested, they determined.

    The lab’s work to define the mechanisms of nanotube growth led them to think about whether the speed of growth as a function of individual tubes’ chirality could be useful. The angle of “kinks” in the growing nanotubes’ edges determines how energetically amenable they are to adding new carbon atoms.

    “The catalyst particles are moving as the nanotubes grow, and that’s principally important,” said lead author Bets, a researcher in Yakobson’s group. “If your feedstock keeps moving away, you get a moving window where you’re feeding some tubes and not the others.”

    The paper’s reference to Lamarck giraffes — a 19th-century theory of how they evolved such long necks — isn’t entirely out of left field, Bets said.  

    “It works as a metaphor because you move your ‘leaves’ away and the tubes that can reach it continue growing fast, and those that cannot just die out,” she said. “Eventually, all the nanotubes that are just a tiny bit slow will ‘die.’”

    Speed is only part of the strategy. In fact, they suggest nanotubes that are a little slower should be the target to assure a harvest of single chiralities.

    Because nanotubes of different chiralities grow at their own rates, a batch would likely exhibit tiers. Chemically etching the longest nanotubes would degrade them, preserving the next level of tubes. Restoring the feedstock could then allow the second-tier nanotubes to continue growing until they are ready to be culled, Bets said.

    “There are three or four laboratory studies that show nanotube growth can be reversed, and we also know it can be restarted after etching,” she said. “So all the parts of our idea already exist, even if some of them are tricky. Close to equilibrium, you will have the same proportionality between growth and etching speeds for the same tubes. If it’s all nice and clean, then you can absolutely, precisely pick the tubes you target.”

    The Yakobson lab won’t make them, as it focuses on theory, not experimentation. But other labs have turned past Rice theories into products like boron buckyballs.

    “I’m pretty sure every single one of our reviewers were experimentalists, and they didn’t see any contradictions to it working,” Bets said. “Their only complaint, of course, was that they would like experimental results right now, but that’s not what we do.”

    She hopes more than a few labs will pick up the challenge. “In terms of science, it’s usually more beneficial to give ideas to the crowd,” Bets said. “That way, those who have interest can do it in 100 different variations and see which one works. One guy trying it might take 100 years.”

    Yakobson added, “We don’t want to be that ‘guy.’ We don’t have that much time.”

    Yakobson is the Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Engineering and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry.

    The National Science Foundation (1605848) and the Robert Welch Foundation (C-1490) supported the research.

    -30-

     

    Related stories:

    Oddball edge wins nanotube faceoff – July 29, 2019
    https://news2.rice.edu/2019/07/29/oddball-edge-wins-nanotube-faceoff-2/

    Two-faced edge makes nanotubes obey – July 26, 2018 https://news2.rice.edu/2018/07/26/two-faced-edge-makes-nanotubes-obey-2/

    Graphene grows stronger against the wind – March 12, 2018 https://news2.rice.edu/2018/03/12/graphene-grows-stronger-against-the-wind-2/

     

    Links:

    Dislocation theory of chirality-controlled nanotube growth: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0811946106

    Yakobson Research Group: biygroup.blogs.rice.edu

    Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering: msne.rice.edu

    George R. Brown School of Engineering: engineering.rice.edu

    This release can be found online at https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/growing-pure-nanotubes-stretch-possible.

    Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

    Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,240 undergraduates and 3,972 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

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  • Corps finds no radioactive contamination at Missouri school

    Corps finds no radioactive contamination at Missouri school

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    FLORISSANT, Mo. — Testing by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found no radioactive contamination at a Missouri school that was shut down last month amid fears that nuclear material from a contaminated creek nearby had made its way into the school, Corps officials said Wednesday.

    Teams from the Corps’ St. Louis office began testing the interior of Jana Elementary School in Florissant, Missouri, and the soil around it in late October, days after the school board closed the school. The closure followed testing by a private firm that found levels of radioactive isotope lead-210 that were 22 times the expected level on the kindergarten playground, as well as concerning levels of polonium, radium and other materials inside the building.

    The Corps said preliminary results found no evidence of radioactive material above what would be naturally occurring.

    “From a radiological standpoint, the school is safe,” Col. Kevin Golinghorst, St. Louis District commander for the Corps of Engineers, said in a news release. “We owe it to the public and the parents and children of Jana Elementary School to make informed decisions focused on the safety of the community, and we will continue to take effective actions using accurate data.”

    Corps officials tested inside the school and took samples from 53 locations in the soil on the school grounds. Overall, Golinghorst said, nearly 1,000 samples were taken.

    The Corps said a public event will be held Nov. 16 to discuss the findings with the community.

    A spokeswoman for the Hazelwood School District said officials were in a meeting Wednesday morning but would comment later.

    The school, with about 400 students, sits along Coldwater Creek, a 19-mile (31-kilometer) waterway contaminated decades ago with Manhattan Project atomic waste. The Corps used radiation detection instruments to scan surfaces inside the school, and dug holes up to 28 feet (8.5 meters) deep in the soil.

    Students are taking virtual classes for the next month, then will be reassigned to other schools. It hasn’t been determined when Jana Elementary will reopen.

    Coldwater Creek was contaminated in the 1940s and 1950s when waste from atomic bomb material manufactured in St. Louis got into the waterway near Lambert Airport, where the waste was stored. The result was an environmental mess that resulted in a Superfund declaration in 1989.

    The site near the airport has largely been cleaned up but remediation of the creek itself won’t be finished until 2038, Corps officials have said.

    Children have often played in the creek, and a 2019 federal report determined that those exposed to the waterway from the 1960s to the 1990s may have an increased risk of bone cancer, lung cancer and leukemia. Environmentalists and area residents have cited several instances of extremely rare cancers that have sickened and killed people.

    The Corps of Engineers earlier found contamination in a wooded area near the school, but hadn’t previously tested the school or its grounds. This summer, lawyers involved in a class-action lawsuit representing local residents seeking compensation for illnesses and deaths received permission from the Hazelwood School District to perform testing.

    Results from testing done by Boston Chemical Data Corp. were released in October, prompting the decision to shut down the school. Phone and email messages seeking comment from the law firm that funded the testing weren’t immediately returned on Tuesday.

    It’s unclear exactly what any cleanup would involve, how long it would take or who would pay for it.

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  • Researchers develop superfast new method to manufacture high-performance thermoelectric devices

    Researchers develop superfast new method to manufacture high-performance thermoelectric devices

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    Newswise — Yanliang Zhang, associate professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Notre Dame, and collaborators Alexander Dowling and Tengfei Luo have developed a machine-learning assisted superfast new way to create high-performance, energy-saving thermoelectric devices.

    The novel process uses intense pulsed light to sinter thermoelectric material in less than a second (conventional sintering in thermal ovens can take hours). The team sped up this method of turning nanoparticle inks into flexible devices by using machine learning to determine the optimum conditions for the ultrafast but complex sintering process.

    The achievement was just published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science.

    Flexible thermoelectric devices offer great opportunities for direct conversion of waste heat into electricity as well as solid-state refrigeration, Zhang said. They have additional benefits as power sources and cooling devices — they don’t emit greenhouse gases, and they are durable and quiet since they don’t have moving parts.

    Despite their potential broad impact in energy and environmental sustainability, thermoelectric devices have not achieved large-scale application because of the lack of a method for fast and cost-effective automated manufacturing. Machine-learning-assisted ultrafast flash sintering now will make it possible to produce high-performance, eco-friendly devices much faster and at far lower cost.

    “The results can be applied to powering everything from wearable personal devices, to sensors and electronics, to industry Internet of Things,” Zhang said.

    “The successful integration of photonic flash processing and machine learning can be generalized to highly scalable and low-cost manufacturing of a broad range of energy and electronic materials.”

    Zhang is principal investigator of the Advanced Manufacturing and Energy Lab at Notre Dame. Dowling, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Luo, the Dorini Family Professor for Energy Studies — both experts in machine learning — contributed to this research, along with doctoral student Mortaza Saeidi-Javash (now assistant professor at California State Long Beach), doctoral student Ke Wang and postdoctoral associate Minxiang Zeng (now assistant professor at Texas Tech University).

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  • Conducting sample collection and diagnosis together in public health and medical settings through non-face-to-face methods

    Conducting sample collection and diagnosis together in public health and medical settings through non-face-to-face methods

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    Newswise — A system has been developed that can quickly and precisely perform sample collection and diagnosis in public health and medical settings in light of new and variant infectious diseases, such as COVID-19.

    The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, an institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science and ICT (President Sang Jin Park, hereafter referred to KIMM), has developed the first integrated system in Korea that can collect specimens at the medical sites using a specimen collection robot in a non-face-to-face manner to prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, and can automatically complete high-speed molecular diagnosis in 40 minutes. This newly developed system is expected to lay the foundation for preventing the spread of new and variant infectious diseases in advance and strengthening the competitiveness of K-Bio diagnostics technology.

    To develop this system, the KIMM research team led by Dr. Dongkyu Lee, a principal researcher from the Department of Medical Devices at the Daegu Research Center for Medical Devices and Green Energy, and Dr. Joonho Seo, head of the Department of Medical Robotics (of the same Center), improved upon the sample collection technology of non-face-to-face samplings robot previously developed by KIMM. In addition to the existing sampling robot, by integrating rapid molecular diagnostic equipment, sample preparation technology of collected samples, and fast real-time PCR technology based on the rapid thermocycles, this system can now quickly and precisely conduct non-face-to-face procedures from sample collection to molecular diagnosis on site.

    The whole world experienced the collapse of the medical system due to the continuous outbreak of new and variant infectious diseases, such as monkeypox and COVID-19, over the past three years. In order to respond to new and variant infectious diseases that are highly contagious, rapid and precise molecular diagnosis is required in public health and medical settings. However, through traditional methods, it takes approximately 6 to 12 hours to complete the process of face-to-face sample collection, transfer, and molecular diagnosis.

    One problem with traditional molecular diagnostic equipment is that it takes 1 to 2 hours or more to obtain analysis results. To solve this problem, attempts have been made to utilize photothermal-based and microfluidics-based rapid thermocycle technology*. However, it is difficult to manufacture at low cost and quantitatively analyze in real time, thus limiting their on-site applications.

    * Rapid thermocycle technology: a technology that rapidly performs repeated heating and cooling cycles

    On the other hand, the KIMM research team’s newly developed rapid, automatic molecular diagnostic system, integrated with a sample collection robot, can obtain real-time PCR analysis results within 9 to 20 minutes at a speed 4.2 times faster than existing molecular diagnostic equipment. This is achieved by using a customized thermocycler that uses preset heating and cooling blocks in turn.

    The KIMM research team performed validation tests using this new system by conducting diagnosis of pathogenic bacteria and infectious coronavirus. From sample collection to molecular diagnosis, bacterial DNA analysis was completed within 25 minutes and coronavirus RNA within 40 minutes. The molecular diagnosis results obtained using this new system were similar to those obtained when using commercial molecular diagnosis equipment.

    KIMM’s newly developed system is a non-face-to-face system that applies automatic diagnostic technology throughout the entire process of sample dispensing, sample preparation processing, and rapid molecular diagnostics after sample collection, so that even unskilled users can quickly conduct diagnostics on site. When used in public health and medical settings such as screening clinics, airports, and emergency environments, the spread of new and variant infectious diseases can be quickly and accurately prevented in advance.

    Dr. Dongkyu Lee said, “The rapid, automatic molecular diagnosis system integrated with a non-face-to-face sample collection robot will prevent the continuous spread of new and mutated infectious diseases, while also protecting medical staff and the health of the general public.” He added, “KIMM will work with medical institutions and industries to globalize K-Bio technology, prevent the spread of new and mutated infectious diseases, and strive for R&D efforts with the goal of protecting the healthy lives of everyone in Korea.”

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    The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) is a non-profit government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT. Since its foundation in 1976, KIMM is contributing to economic growth of the nation by performing R&D on key technologies in machinery and materials, conducting reliability test evaluation, and commercializing the developed products and technologies.

    These research efforts were carried out by KIMM and Biot Korea, Inc., with the support of the Korean Health Industry Development Institute as part of the “Development of a rapid, automatic molecular diagnostic field-type system and POC (proof-of concept) verification with a sample collection robot” project.

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  • Bacterial Sensors Send a Jolt of Electricity When Triggered

    Bacterial Sensors Send a Jolt of Electricity When Triggered

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    Newswise — HOUSTON – (Nov. 2, 2022) – When you hit your finger with a hammer, you feel the pain immediately. And you react immediately.

    But what if the pain comes 20 minutes after the hit? By then, the injury might be harder to heal. 

    Scientists and engineers at Rice University say the same is true for the environment. If a chemical spill in a river goes unnoticed for 20 minutes, it might be too late to remediate.

    Their living bioelectronic sensors can help. A team led by Rice synthetic biologists Caroline Ajo-Franklin and Jonathan (Joff) Silberg and lead authors Josh Atkinson and Lin Su, both Rice alumni, have engineered bacteria to quickly sense and report on the presence of a variety of contaminants. 

    Their study in Nature shows the cells can be programmed to identify chemical invaders and report within minutes by releasing a detectable electrical current. 

    Such “smart” devices could power themselves by scavenging energy in the environment as they monitor conditions in settings like rivers, farms, industry and wastewater treatment plants and to ensure water security, according to the researchers.

    The environmental information communicated by these self-replicating bacteria can be customized by replacing a single protein in the eight-component, synthetic electron transport chain that gives rise to the sensor signal.

    “I think it’s the most complex protein pathway for real-time signaling that has been built to date,” said Silberg, director of Rice’s Systems, Synthetic and Physical Biology Ph.D. Program. “To put it simply, imagine a wire that directs electrons to flow from a cellular chemical to an electrode, but we’ve broken the wire in the middle. When the target molecule hits, it reconnects and electrifies the full pathway.”

    “It’s literally a miniature electrical switch,” Ajo-Franklin said. 

    “You put the probes into the water and measure the current,” she said. “It’s that simple. Our devices are different because the microbes are encapsulated. We’re not releasing them into the environment.” 

    The researchers’ proof-of-concept bacteria was Escherichia coli, and their first target was thiosulfate, a dichlorination agent used in water treatment that can cause algae blooms. And there were convenient sources of water to test: Galveston Beach and Houston’s Brays and Buffalo bayous.

    They collected water from each. At first, they attached their E. coli to electrodes, but the microbes refused to stay put. “They don’t naturally stick to an electrode,” Ajo-Franklin said. “We’re using strains that don’t form biofilms, so when we added water, they’d fall off.”

    When that happened, the electrodes delivered more noise than signal. 

    Enlisting co-author Xu Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher in Ajo-Franklin’s lab, they encapsulated sensors into agarosein the shape of a lollipop that allowed contaminants in but held the sensors in place, reducing the noise. 

    “Xu’s background is in environmental engineering,” Ajo-Franklin said. “She didn’t come in and say, ‘Oh, we have to fix the biology.’ She said, ‘What can we do with the materials?’ It took great, innovative work on the materials side to make the synthetic biology shine.”

    With the physical constraints in place, the labs first encoded E. coli to express a synthetic pathway that only generates current when it encounters thiosulfate. This living sensor was able to sense this chemical at levels less than 0.25 millimoles per liter, far lower than levels toxic to fish.

    In another experiment, E. coli was recoded to sense an endocrine disruptor. This also worked well, and the signals were greatly enhanced when conductive nanoparticles custom-synthesized by Su were encapsulated with the cells in the agarose lollipop. The researchers reported these encapsulated sensors detect this contaminant up to 10 times faster than the previous state-of-the-art devices. 

    The study began by chance when Atkinson and Moshe Baruch of Ajo-Franklin’s group at Berkeley Lawrence National Laboratory set up next to each other at a 2015 synthetic biology conference in Chicago, with posters they quickly realized outlined different aspects of the same idea.

    “We had neighboring posters because of our last names,” said Atkinson. “We spent most of the poster session chatting about each other’s projects and how there were clear synergies in our interests in interfacing cells with electrodes and electrons as an information carrier.” 

    “Josh’s poster had our first module: how to take chemical information and turn it into biochemical information,” Ajo-Franklin recalled. “Moshe had the third module: How to take biochemical information and turn it into an electrical signal.

    “The catch was how to link these together,” she said. “The biochemical signals were a little different.”

    “We said, ‘We need to get together and talk about this!’” Silberg recalled. Within six months, the new collaborators won seed funding from the Office of Naval Research, followed by a grant, to develop the idea.

    “Joff’s group brought in the protein engineering and half of the electron transfer pathway,” Ajo-Franklin said. “My group brought the other half of the electron transport pathway and some of the materials efforts.” The collaboration ultimately brought Ajo-Franklin herself to Rice in 2019 as a CPRIT Scholar.

    “We have to give so much credit to Lin and Josh,” she said. “They never gave up on this project, and it was incredibly synergistic. They would bounce ideas back and forth and through that interchange solved a lot of problems.” 

    “Each of which another student could spend years on,” Silberg added.

    “Both Josh and I spent several years of our Ph.D.s working on this, with the pressure of graduating and moving on to the next stage of our careers,” said Su, a visiting graduate student in Ajo-Franklin’s lab after graduating from Southeast University in China. “I had to extend my visa multiple times to stay and finish the research.”

    Silberg said the design’s complexity goes far beyond the signaling pathway. “The chain has eight components that control electron flow, but there are other components that build the wires that go into the molecules,” he said. “There are a dozen-and-a-half components with almost 30 metal or organic cofactors. This thing’s massive compared to something like our mitochondrial respiratory chains.” 

    All credited the invaluable assistance of co-author George Bennett, Rice’s E. Dell Butcher Professor Emeritus and a research professor in biosciences, in making the necessary connections.

    Silberg said he sees engineered microbes performing many tasks in the future, from monitoring the gut microbiome to sensing contaminants like viruses, improving upon the successful strategy of testing wastewater plants for SARS-CoV-19 during the pandemic.

    “Real-time monitoring becomes pretty important with those transient pulses,” he said. “And because we grow these sensors, they’re potentially pretty cheap to make.” 

    To that end, the team is collaborating with Rafael Verduzco, a Rice professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of materials science and nanoengineering who leads a recent $2 million National Science Foundation grant with Ajo-Franklin, Silberg, bioscientist Kirstin Matthews and civil and environmental engineer Lauren Stadler to develop real-time wastewater monitoring.

    “The type of materials we can make with Raphael takes this to a whole new level,” Ajo-Franklin said. 

    Silberg said the Rice labs are working on design rules to develop a library of modular sensors. “I hope that when people read this, they recognize the opportunities,” he said.

    Silberg is the Stewart Memorial Professor of BioSciences and a professor of bioengineering at Rice. Ajo-Franklin is a professor of biosciences. Atkinson is a visiting National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Aarhus University, Denmark, and has an affiliation with the University of Southern California. Su is a postdoctoral research associate and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

    The research was supported by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-SC0014462), the Office of Naval Research (0001418IP00037, N00014-17-1-2639, N00014-20-1-2274), the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (RR190063), the National Science Foundation (1843556), the Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program (DE SC0014664), the Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship and the China Scholarship Council Fellowship (CSC-201606090098).

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