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Tag: RMIT University

  • Air taxi future jeopardized by urban buildings

    Air taxi future jeopardized by urban buildings

    Newswise — The air taxi market is almost ready for take off, with companies such as Boeing, Hyundai, Airbus and Toyota building fleets to have commuters flitting through the sky. Europe and the US have both drafted new rules to pave the way for air taxis to begin operations within the decade, with Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) to follow suit.

    Increasingly sophisticated studies over recent years, including a recent paper by RMIT University’s Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) Research Team, have measured how sudden wind gusts form around city buildings and destabilise aircraft.

    Lead researcher and aerospace engineer, Dr Abdulghani Mohamed, who’s studied wind gust dynamics for over a decade, says this aspect needs to be adequately addressed by regulation in Australia and overseas before we fill our city skies with air taxis and other drones.

    Strong wind gusts form around city buildings

    Low-flying aircraft are at risk from wind gusts because they land and take off at low speed, explained Mohamed, with the RMIT research revealing sudden wind gusts can pose significant safety challenges for air taxis and drones in under a second.

    As a result, air taxis and drones will need more power for landing or taking off in cities compared with an airport or an open space, he explained.

    “These aircraft need powerful motors that can rapidly change the thrust generated by the propellers to rapidly force the vehicle back on-course, a process which requires more energy,” said Mohamed, from the School of Engineering.

    Making our city skies safe

    Regulations for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) aircraft, such as future air taxis, are being compiled around the world, including the US and Europe. The RMIT team emphasises that weather frameworks are needed to ensure this new technology is safe and reliable.

    “Regulations and certification need to specifically address safe operation when traversing building flow fields,” Mohamed said.

    He argues that site-specific wind simulations and measurements are essential to identify hazardous regions.

    “As we determine the location of vertiports – where these vehicles will take off and land – we also need to determine hazardous regions to avoid. This will enhance safety and reduce interruption of a fleet due to wind conditions,” Mohamed said.

    “In Australia, it is not clear yet whether this falls under CASA’s jurisdiction or the Bureau of Meteorology, however, air taxis will need to be provided with weather information at much higher resolution and faster rates than currently possible. This is important for flight planning.

    “The margin of error will be much lower than at airports, where large aircraft can tolerate much stronger gusts. We won’t have that flexibility with air taxis in cities.”

    Next steps  

    “Purpose-built vertiports mean we could integrate geometric design features to reduce hazardous flow conditions from occurring, and we are exploring this in our current research,” Mohamed said.

    “Existing buildings can also be repurposed as vertiports but may require modifications to improve the aerodynamics near the landing pads. The effectiveness of such design features can be assessed through either scaled experiments in wind tunnels or through full-scale measurements.

    “Extensive wind flow mapping at full-scale will no longer be daunting in the future. We are continuing to develop our wind sensing drones – a swarm of drones instrumented with wind anemometers – to very accurately map around large infrastructure.”

    ‘Gusts Encountered by Flying Vehicles in Proximity to Buildings’ is published in MDPI’s Drones (DOI: 10.3390/drones7010022). The recommendations could help shape the regulation of vertiports, flight paths and air taxi requirements in Australia and potentially globally.

    The researchers are continuing research into wind gusts around buildings, with further exploration of different building shapes that may minimise adverse effects. They are also continuing to study the sensitivity of vehicles to gusts and turbulence, as well as flight-stability technologies.

    This research was conducted in collaboration with the University of Maryland and Lehigh University, and was funded by the US Airforce Office for Scientific Research and DSI Group.

    RMIT University

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  • Capsule Wonder Drug Could Replace Insulin Injections for Diabetics

    Capsule Wonder Drug Could Replace Insulin Injections for Diabetics

    Newswise — Scientists in Melbourne have designed a new type of oral capsule that could mean pain-free delivery of insulin and other protein drugs.

    Co-lead researcher Professor Charlotte Conn, a biophysical chemist from RMIT University, said protein drugs had proven challenging to deliver orally as the drugs degrade very quickly in the stomach – until now.

    “These types of drugs are typically administered with an injection – thousands of diabetics in Australia need insulin injections up to several times a day, which can be unpleasant for the patient and results in high healthcare costs,” said Conn, from RMIT’s School of Science.

    She said the new technology could also be used to deliver other protein drugs orally – including a new type of oral antibiotic developed by the RMIT team that can avoid resistance by dangerous superbugs.

    “Other protein drugs such as monoclonal antibodies have been developed to treat inflammatory conditions, cancer and other diseases with a projected market value of about $400 billion by 2030,” Conn said.

    An international patent application has been filed for RMIT’s technology.

    Strong pre-clinical results provide optimism for a new way to deliver insulin

    The team has tested the new oral capsule with insulin in a pre-clinical study and the results have been published in the international journal Biomaterials Advances.

    “We think the results are really exciting, and we’re doing a suite of pre-clinical testing so we can move to clinical trials as soon as possible,” Conn said.

    The research paper assessed the performance of the oral capsules with both fast-acting and slow-acting insulin.

    “When controlling the blood-sugar, you need a very fast response if you’re eating a meal. That’s known as fast-acting insulin,” Conn said.

    A slow-acting form acts over a much longer timeframe – up to a day or so – to keep the insulin in the body steady. Most diabetics take a combination of both types of insulin.

    “We had excellent absorption results for the slow-acting form – about 50% better than injection delivery for the same quantity of insulin,” Conn said.

    The capsule achieved good absorption results for fast-acting insulin, but the significant lag in the insulin taking effect compared with injection delivery would likely make it less practical.

    “Our results show there is real promise for using these oral capsules for slow-acting insulin, which diabetics could one day take in addition to having fast-acting insulin injections,” Conn said.

    “The oral capsules could potentially be designed to allow dosing over specific time periods, similar to injection delivery. We need to investigate this further, develop a way of doing so and undergo rigorous testing as part of future human trials.” 

    How does the team’s drug capsule work?

    Dr Jamie Strachan, the first author on the paper, said the capsule protected the drug inside so that it passed safely through the stomach to the small intestine.

    “The capsule has a special coating designed to not breakdown in the low pH environment of the stomach, before the higher pH levels in the small intestine trigger the capsule to dissolve,” said Strachan, from RMIT’s School of Science.

    “We package the insulin inside a fatty nanomaterial within the capsule that helps camouflage the insulin so that it can cross the intestinal walls.

    “It’s actually similar to how the Pfizer and the Moderna COVID vaccines work where the mRNA in those vaccines is also packaged within fats, helping to keep the drugs active and safe during delivery in the body.”

    These vaccines contain mRNA, which is similar to DNA, to safely carry the instructions for making a viral protein within the body, activating our immune system.

    A cheaper and more efficient way to deliver protein drugs

    Dr Céline Valéry, a pharmaceutical scientist from RMIT and study co-author, said they used the same amount of insulin in the oral capsules and in the injection delivery.

    “For many pre-clinical trials the oral formulations by necessity contain much higher levels of insulin to achieve the same response as the injection delivery. This is not a very cost-effective way to deliver protein drugs which tend to be expensive,” said Valéry, from RMIT’s School of Health and Biomedical Sciences.

    “It’s a great starting point but we need to do further trials to develop an alternative, pain-free method for the delivery of insulin and other protein drugs.”  

    ‘A promising new oral delivery mode for insulin using lipid-filled enteric-coated capsules,’ is published in Biomaterials Advances (DOI: 10.1016/j.bioadv.2023.213368).

    Jamie Strachan, Brendan Dyett, Stanley Chan, Brody McDonald, Ross Vlahos, Céline Valéry and Charlotte Conn are co-authors.

    MULTIMEDIA FOR MEDIA USE

    Here’s a link to images related to the story: https://cloudstor.aarnet.edu.au/plus/s/4gw6HYR8NokqnAL.

    There are photos of the oral capsule, along with a visual explanation from the scientists of what’s in the capsule and how it is prepared.

    RMIT University

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