Monthly Archives: August 2017

Multi-level thinking in science—the art of seeing systems

I’ve quickly read Michael Edgeworth McIntyre’s paper on multi-level thinking and find it provides fascinating insight and some good writing style (I’ve provided a few excerpts from the paper further down in the posting).

Here’s more about the paper from an Aug. 17, 2017 Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences press release on EurekAlert,

An unusual paper “On multi-level thinking and scientific understanding” appears in the October issue of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. The author is Professor Michael Edgeworth McIntyre from University of Cambridge, whose work in atmospheric dynamics is well known. He has also had longstanding interests in astrophysics, music, perception psychology, and biological evolution.

The paper touches on a range of deep questions within and outside the atmospheric sciences. They include insights into the nature of science itself, and of scientific understanding — what it means to understand a scientific problem in depth — and into the communication skills necessary to convey that understanding and to mediate collaboration across specialist disciplines.

The paper appears in a Special Issue arising from last year’s Symposium held in Nanjing to commemorate the life of Professor Duzheng YE, who was well known as a national and international scientific leader and for his own wide range of interests, within and outside the atmospheric sciences. The symposium was organized by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, where Prof. YE had worked nearly 70 years before he passed away. Upon the invitation of Prof. Jiang ZHU, the Director General of IAP, also the Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (AAS), Prof. McIntyre agreed to contribute a review paper to an AAS special issue commemorating the centenary of Duzheng YE’s birth. Prof. YE was also the founding Editor-in-Chief of this journal.

One of Professor McIntyre’s themes is that we all have unconscious mathematics, including Euclidean geometry and the calculus of variations. This is easy to demonstrate and is key to understanding not only how science works but also, for instance, how music works. Indeed, it reveals some of the deepest connections between music and mathematics, going beyond the usual remarks about number-patterns. All this revolves around the biological significance of what Professor McIntyre calls the “organic-change principle”.

Further themes include the scientific value of looking at a problem from more than one viewpoint, and the need to use more than one level of description. Many scientific and philosophical controversies stem from confusing one level of description with another, for instance applying arguments to one level that belong on another. This confusion can be especially troublesome when it comes to questions about human biology and human nature, and about what Professor YE called multi-level “orderly human activities”.

Related to all these points are the contrasting modes of perception and understanding offered by the brain’s left and right hemispheres. Our knowledge of their functioning has progressed far beyond the narrow clichés of popular culture, thanks to recent work in the neurosciences. The two hemispheres automatically give us different levels of description, and complementary views of a problem. Good science takes advantage of this. When the two hemispheres cooperate, with each playing to its own strengths, our problem-solving is at its most powerful.

The paper ends with three examples of unconscious assumptions that have impeded scientific progress in the past. Two of them are taken from Professor McIntyre’s main areas of research. A third is from biology.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

On multi-level thinking and scientific understanding by Michael Edgeworth McIntyre. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences October 2017, Volume 34, Issue 10, pp 1150–1158 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-017-6283-3

This paper is open access.

To give you a sense of his writing and imagination, I’ve excerpted a few paragraphs from p. 1153 but first you need to see this .gif (he provides a number of ways to watch the .gif in his text but I think it’s easier to watch the copy of the one he has on his website),

Now for the excerpt,

Here is an example to show what I mean. It is a classic in experimental psychology, from the work of Professor Gunnar JOHANSSON in the 1970s. …

As soon as the twelve dots start moving, everyone with normal vision sees a person walking. This immediately illustrates several things. First, it illustrates that we all make unconscious assumptions. Here, we unconsciously assume a particular kind of three-dimensional motion. In this case the unconscious assumption is completely involuntary. We cannot help seeing a person walking, despite knowing that it is only twelve moving dots.

The animation also shows that we have unconscious mathematics, Euclidean geometry in this case. In order to generate the percept of a person walking, your brain has to fit a mathematical model to the incoming visual data, in this case a mathematical model based on Euclidean geometry. (And the model-fitting process is an active, and highly complex, predictive process most of which is inaccessible to conscious introspection.)

This brings me to the most central point in our discussion. Science does essentially the same thing. It fits models to data. So science is, in the most fundamental possible sense, an extension of ordinary perception. That is a simple way of saying what was said many decades ago by great thinkers such as Professor Sir Karl POPPER….

I love that phase “unconscious mathematics” for the way it includes even those of us who would never dream of thinking we had any kind of mathematics. I encourage you to read his paper in its entirety, which does include a little technical language in a few spots but the overall thesis is clear and easily understood.

Nanomesh for hypoallergenic wearable electronics

It stands to reason that sensors and monitoring devices held against the skin (wearable electronics) for long periods of time could provoke an allergic reaction. Scientists at the University of Tokyo have devised a possible solution according to a July 17, 2017 news item on ScienceDaily,

A hypoallergenic electronic sensor can be worn on the skin continuously for a week without discomfort, and is so light and thin that users forget they even have it on, says a Japanese group of scientists. The elastic electrode constructed of breathable nanoscale meshes holds promise for the development of noninvasive e-skin devices that can monitor a person’s health continuously over a long period.

Here’s an image illustrating the hypoallergenic electronics,

Caption: The electric current from a flexible battery placed near the knuckle flows through the conductor and powers the LED just below the fingernail. Credit: 2017 Someya Laboratory.

A University of Tokyo press release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

Wearable electronics that monitor heart rate and other vital health signals have made headway in recent years, with next-generation gadgets employing lightweight, highly elastic materials attached directly onto the skin for more sensitive, precise measurements. However, although the ultrathin films and rubber sheets used in these devices adhere and conform well to the skin, their lack of breathability is deemed unsafe for long-term use: dermatological tests show the fine, stretchable materials prevent sweating and block airflow around the skin, causing irritation and inflammation, which ultimately could lead to lasting physiological and psychological effects.

“We learned that devices that can be worn for a week or longer for continuous monitoring were needed for practical use in medical and sports applications,” says Professor Takao Someya at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering whose research group had previously developed an on-skin patch that measured oxygen in blood.

In the current research, the group developed an electrode constructed from nanoscale meshes containing a water-soluble polymer, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), and a gold layer–materials considered safe and biologically compatible with the body. The device can be applied by spraying a tiny amount of water, which dissolves the PVA nanofibers and allows it to stick easily to the skin–it conformed seamlessly to curvilinear surfaces of human skin, such as sweat pores and the ridges of an index finger’s fingerprint pattern.

The researchers next conducted a skin patch test on 20 subjects and detected no inflammation on the participants’ skin after they had worn the device for a week. The group also evaluated the permeability, with water vapor, of the nanomesh conductor–along with those of other substrates like ultrathin plastic foil and a thin rubber sheet–and found that its porous mesh structure exhibited superior gas permeability compared to that of the other materials.

Furthermore, the scientists proved the device’s mechanical durability through repeated bending and stretching, exceeding 10,000 times, of a conductor attached on the forefinger; they also established its reliability as an electrode for electromyogram recordings when its readings of the electrical activity of muscles were comparable to those obtained through conventional gel electrodes.

“It will become possible to monitor patients’ vital signs without causing any stress or discomfort,” says Someya about the future implications of the team’s research. In addition to nursing care and medical applications, the new device promises to enable continuous, precise monitoring of athletes’ physiological signals and bodily motion without impeding their training or performance.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Inflammation-free, gas-permeable, lightweight, stretchable on-skin electronics with nanomeshes by Akihito Miyamoto, Sungwon Lee, Nawalage Florence Cooray, Sunghoon Lee, Mami Mori, Naoji Matsuhisa, Hanbit Jin, Leona Yoda, Tomoyuki Yokota, Akira Itoh, Masaki Sekino, Hiroshi Kawasaki, Tamotsu Ebihara, Masayuki Amagai, & Takao Someya. Nature Nanotechnology (2017) doi:10.1038/nnano.2017.125 Published online 17 July 2017

This paper is behind a paywall.

London gets its first Chief Digital Officer (CDO)

A report commissioned from 2thinknow by Business Insider ranks the 25 most high-tech cities in the world (Vancouver, Canada rates as 14th on this list) is featured in an Aug. 25, 2017 news item on the Daily Hive; Vancouver,

The ranking was selected on 10 factors related to technological advancement, which included the number of patents filed per capita, startups, tech venture capitalists, ranking in other innovation datasets, and level of smartphone use.

Topping the list, which was released this month, is San Fransisco’s “Silicon Valley,” which “wins in just about every category.” New York comes in second place, followed by London [UK; emphasis mine], Los Angeles, and Seoul.

Intriguingly, London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a new Chief Digital Officer for the city just a few days later. From an August 29, 2017 news item by Michael Moore for Beta News,

Theo Blackwell, a former cabinet member at Camden Council, will take responsibility for helping London continue to be the technology powerhouse it has become over the past few years.

Mr Blackwell will work closely with the Mayor’s office, particularly the Smart London Board, to create a new “Smart London Plan” that looks to outline how the capital can benefit from embracing new technologies, with cybersecurity, open data and connectivity all at the forefront.

He will also look to build collaboration across London’s boroughs when it comes to public technology schemes, and encourage the digital transformation of public services.

“The new chief digital officer post is an amazing opportunity to make our capital even more open to innovation, support jobs and investment and make our public services more effective,” he said in a statement.

An August 25, 2017 Mayor of London press release, which originated the news item, provides a more detailed look at the position and the motives for creating it,

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has today (25 August [2017]) appointed Theo Blackwell as the capital’s first ever Chief Digital Officer (CDO).

As London’s first CDO, Theo will play a leading role in realising the Mayor’s ambition to make London the world’s smartest city, ensuring that the capital’s status as a global tech hub helps transform the way public services are designed and delivered, making them more accessible, efficient and responsive to the needs of Londoners. The appointment fulfils a key manifesto commitment made by the Mayor.

He joins the Mayor’s team following work at GovTech accelerator Public Group, advising start-ups on the growing market in local public services, and was previously Head of Policy & Public Affairs for the video games industry’s trade body, Ukie – where he ran a ‘Next Gen Skills’ campaign to get coding back on the curriculum.

Theo brings more than 20 years of experience in technology and digital transformation in both the public and private sector.  In his role as cabinet member for finance, technology and growth at Camden Council, Theo has established Camden as London’s leading digital borough through its use of public data – and this year they received national recognition as Digital Leaders ‘Council of the year’.

Theo also sits on the Advisory Board of Digital Leaders and is a director of Camden Town Unlimited, a Business Improvement District which pioneered new start-up incubation in ‘meanwhile’ space.

Theo will work closely with the Mayor’s Smart London Board to develop a new Smart London Plan, and will play a central role in building collaboration across London’s boroughs, and businesses, to drive the digital transformation of public services, as well as supporting the spread of innovation through common technology standards and better data-sharing.

Theo will also promote manifesto ambitions around pan-London collaboration on connectivity, digital inclusion, cyber-security and open data. He will also focus on scoping work for the London Office for Technology & Innovation that was announced by the Mayor at London Tech Week.

London already has more than 47,000 digital technology companies, employing approximately 240,000 people. It is forecast that the number of tech companies will increase by a third and a further 44,500 jobs will have been created by 2026.

The capital is also racing ahead with new technologies, using it for ticketing and contactless on the transport network, while the London Datastore is an open resource with vast amounts of data about all areas of the city, and tech start-ups have used this open data to create innovative new apps.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said:

I am determined to make London the world’s leading ‘smart city’ with digital technology and data at the heart of making our capital a better place to live, work and visit. We already lead in digital technology, data science and innovation and I want us to make full use of this in transforming our public services for Londoners and the millions of visitors to our great city.

I am delighted to appoint Theo Blackwell as London’s first Chief Digital Officer, and I know he will use his experience working in the technology sector and developing public services to improve the lives of all Londoners.

Theo Blackwell said:

The new Chief Digital Officer post is an amazing opportunity to make our capital even more open to innovation, support jobs and investment and make our public services more effective. The pace of change over the next decade requires public services to develop a stronger relationship with the tech sector.  Our purpose is to fully harness London’s world-class potential to make our public services faster and more reliable at doing things we expect online, but also adaptable enough to overcome the capital’s most complex challenges.

Antony Walker, Deputy CEO of techUK, said:

techUK has long argued that London needed a Chief Digital Officer to ensure that London makes the best possible use of new digital technologies. The appointment of Theo Blackwell is good news for Londoners. The smart use of new digital technologies can improve the lives of people living in or visiting London. Theo Blackwell brings a deep understanding of both the opportunities ahead and the challenges of implementing new digital technologies to address the city’s most pressing problems. This appointment is an important step forward to London being at the forefront of tech innovation to create smart places and communities where citizens want to live, work and thrive.

Councillor Claire Kober, Chair of London Councils, said:

The appointment of London’s first Chief Digital Officer fills an important role providing needed digital leadership for London’s public services.  Theo will bring his longstanding experience working with other borough leaders, which I think is critical as we develop new approaches to developing, procuring and scaling the best digital solutions across the capital.

Robin Knowles, Founder and CEO of Digital Leaders, said:

Theo Blackwell has huge experience and is a fabulous appointment as the capital’s first Chief Digital Officer.  He will do a great job for London.

Doteveryone founder, Baroness Martha Lane Fox, said:

Digital leadership is a major challenge for the public sector, as the new Chief Digital Officer for London Theo’s track-record delivering real change in local government and his work in the tech sector brings real experience to this role.

Mike Flowers, First Chief Analytics Officer for New York City and Chief Analytics Officer at Enigma Technologies, said:

Theo is a pragmatic visionary with that rare combination of tech savvy and human focus that the task ahead of him requires. I congratulate Mayor Khan on his decision to trust him with this critical role, and I’m very happy for the residents of London whose lives will be improved by the better use of data and technology by their government. Theo gets results.

It’s always possible that there’s a mastermind involved in the timing of these announcements but sometimes they’re just a reflection of a trend. Cities have their moments just like people do and it seems like London may be on an upswing. From an August 18 (?), 2017 opinion piece by Gavin Poole (Chief Executive Officer, Here East) for ITProPortal,

Recently released data from London & Partners indicates that record levels of venture capital investment are flooding into the London tech sector, with a record £1.1 billion pounds being invested since the start of the year. Strikingly, 2017 has seen a fourfold increase in investment compared with 2013. This indicates that, despite Brexit fears, London retains its crown as Europe’s number one tech hub for global investors but we must make sure that we keep that place by protecting access to the world’s best talent.

As the tech sector continues to outperform the rest of the UK economy, London’s place in it will become all the more important. When London does well, so too does the rest of the UK. Mega-deals from challenger brands like Monzo and Improbable, and the recent opening of Europe’s newest technology innovation destination, Plexal, at Here East have helped to cement the tech sector’s future in the medium-term. Government too has recognised the strength of the sector; earlier this month the Department for Culture, Media and Sport rebranded as the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. This name change, 25 years after the department’s creation, signifies how much things have developed. There is now also a Minister of State for Digital who covers everything from broadband and mobile connectivity to the creative industries. This visible commitment by the Government to put digital at the heart of its agenda should be welcomed.

There are lots of reasons for London’s tech success: start-ups and major corporates look to London for its digital and geographical connectivity, the entrepreneurialism of its tech talent and the vibrancy of its urban life. We continue to lead Europe on all of these fronts and Sadiq Khan’s #LondonIsOpen campaign has made clear that the city remains welcoming and accessible. In fact, there’s no shortage of start-ups proclaiming the great things about London. Melissa Morris, CEO and Founder, Lantum, a company that recently secured £5.3 in funding in London said “London is the world’s coolest city – it attracts some of the most interesting people from across the world… We’ve just closed a round of funding, and our plans are very much about growth”.

As for Vancouver, we don’t have any science officers or technology officers or anything of that ilk. Our current mayor, Gregor Robertson, who pledged to reduce homelessness almost 10 years ago has experienced a resounding failure with regard to that pledge but his greenest city pledge has enjoyed more success. As far as I’m aware the mayor and the current city council remain blissfully uninvolved in major initiatives to encourage science and technology efforts although there was a ‘sweetheart’ real estate deal for local technology company, Hootsuite. A Feb. 18, 2014 news item on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) website provides a written description of the deal but there is also this video,

Robertson went on to win his election despite the hint of financial misdoings in the video but there is another election* coming in 2018. The city official in the video, Penny Ballem was terminated in September 2015 *due to what seemed to be her attempts to implement policy at a pace some found disconcerting*. In the meantime, the Liberal party which made up our provincial government until recently (July 2017) was excoriated for its eagerness to accept political money and pledged to ‘change the rules’ as did the parties which were running in opposition. As far as I’m aware, there have been no changes that will impace provincial or municipal politicians in the near future.

Getting back to government initiatives that encourage science and technology efforts in Vancouver, there is the Cascadia Innovation Corridor. Calling it governmental is a bit of a stretch as it seems to be a Microsoft initiative that found favour with the governments of Washington state and the province of British Columbia; Vancouver will be one of the happy recipients. See my Feb. 28, 2017 posting and August 28, 2017 posting for more details about the proposed Corridor.

In any event, I’d like to see a science policy and at this point I don’t care if it’s a city policy or a provincial policy.

*’elections’ corrected to ‘election’ and ‘due to what seemed to be her attempts to implement policy at a pace some found disconcerting’ added for clarity on August 31, 2017.

Gecko lets go!

After all these years of writing about geckos and their adhesive properties it seems that geckos sometimes slip or let go, theoretically. (BTW, there’s a Canadian connection’ one of  the researchers is at the University of Calgary in the province of Alberta.) From a July 19, 2017 Cornell University news release (also on EurekAlert),

Geckos climb vertically up trees, walls and even windows, thanks to pads on the digits of their feet that employ a huge number of tiny bristles and hooks.

Scientists have long marveled at the gecko’s adhesive capabilities, which have been described as 100 times more than what is needed to support their body weight or run quickly up a surface.

But a new theoretical study examines for the first time the limits of geckos’ gripping ability in natural contexts. The study, recently published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, reports there are circumstances – such as when geckos fear for their lives, leap into the air and are forced to grab on to a leaf below – when they need every bit of that fabled adhesive ability, and sometimes it’s not enough.

“Geckos are notoriously described as having incredible ability to adhere to a surface,” said Karl Niklas, professor of plant evolution at Cornell University and a co-author of the paper. The study’s lead authors, Timothy Higham at the University of California, Riverside, and Anthony Russell at the University of Calgary, Canada, both zoologists, brought Niklas into the project for his expertise on plant biomechanics.

“The paper shows that [adhesive capability] might be exaggerated, because geckos experience falls and a necessity to grip a surface like a leaf that requires a much more tenacious adhesion force; the paper shows that in some cases the adhesive ability can be exceeded,” Niklas said.

In the theoretical study, the researchers developed computer models to understand if there are common-place instances when the geckos’ ability to hold on to surfaces might be challenged, such as when canopy-dwelling geckos are being chased by a predator and are forced to leap from a tree, hoping to land on a leaf below. The researchers incorporated ecological observations, adhesive force measurements, and body size and shape measurements of museum specimens to conduct simulations. They also considered the biomechanics of the leaves, the size of the leaves and the angles on the surface that geckos might land on to determine impact forces. Calculations were also based on worst-case scenarios, where a gecko reaches a maximum speed when it is no longer accelerating, called “terminal settling velocity.”

“Leaves are cantilevered like diving boards and they go through harmonic motion [when struck], so you have to calculate the initial deflection and orientation, and then consider how does that leaf rebound and can the gecko still stay attached,” Niklas said.

The final result showed that in some cases geckos don’t have enough adhesion to save themselves, he added.

Higham and Russell are planning to travel to French Guiana to do empirical adhesive force studies on living geckos in native forests.

The basic research helps people better understand how geckos stick to surfaces, and has the potential for future applications that mimic such biological mechanisms.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Leaping lizards landing on leaves: escape-induced jumps in the rainforest canopy challenge the adhesive limits of geckos by Timothy E. Higham, Anthony P. Russell, Karl J. Niklas. Journal of the Royal Society Interface June 2017 Volume 14, issue 131 DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2017.0156 Published 28 June 2017

I think the authors had some fun with that title. In any event, the paper is behind a paywall.

Making spider silk stronger by feeding graphene and carbon nanotubes to spiders

Spider silk is already considered a strong and tough material but now scientists have found a way to enhance those properties. From an August 15, 2017 Institute of Physics Publishing press release (also on EurekAlert),

…  researchers in Italy and the UK have found a way to make Spidey’s silk a lot stronger, using various different spider species and carbon nanotubes or graphene.

The research team, led by Professor Nicola Pugno at the University of Trento, Italy, succeeded in having their spiders produce silk with up to three times the strength and ten times the toughness of the regular material.

Their discovery, published today in the journal 2D Materials, could pave the way for a new class of bionicomposites, with a wide variety of uses.

Professor Pugno said: “Humans have used silkworm silks widely for thousands of years, but recently research has focussed on spider silk, as it has extremely promising mechanical properties. It is among the best spun polymer fibres in terms of tensile strength, ultimate strain, and especially toughness, even when compared to synthetic fibres such as Kevlar.

“We already know that there are biominerals present in in the protein matrices and hard tissues of insects, which gives them high strength and hardness in their jaws, mandibles and teeth, for example. So our study looked at whether spider silk’s properties could be ‘enhanced’ by artificially incorporating various different nanomaterials into the silk’s biological protein structures.”

To do this, the team exposed three different spider species to water dispersions containing carbon nanotubes or graphene.

After collecting the spiders’ silk, the team tested its tensile strength and toughness.

Professor Pugno said: “We found that the strongest silk the spiders spun had a fracture strength up to 5.4 gigapascals (GPa), and a toughness modulus up to 1,570 joules per gram (J/g). Normal spider silk, by comparison, has a fracture strength of around 1.5 GPa and a toughness modulus of around 150 J/g.

“This is the highest fibre toughness discovered to date, and a strength comparable to that of the strongest carbon fibres or limpet teeth. These are still early days, but our results are a proof of concept that paves the way to exploiting the naturally efficient spider spinning process to produce reinforced bionic silk fibres, thus further improving one of the most promising strong materials.

“These silks’ high toughness and resistance to ultimate strain could have applications such as parachutes.”

“Furthermore, this process of the natural integration of reinforcements in biological structural materials could also be applied to other animals and plants, leading to a new class of “bionicomposites” for innovative applications.”

Remember this? “You are what you eat.” If you’ve ever had doubts about that saying, these spiders should be laying them to rest.

Sadly, this news release doesn’t explain much about the decision to feed the spiders graphene or carbon nanotubes, which are identical other than in their respective shapes (sheet vs tube)  and whether those shapes did or did not affect the strength of the silk.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Spider silk reinforced by graphene or carbon nanotubes by Emiliano Lepore, Federico Bosia, Francesco Bonaccorso, Matteo Bruna, Simone Taioli, Giovanni Garberoglio, Andrea C Ferrari, and Nicola Maria Pugno. 2D Materials, Volume 4, Number 3 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/2053-1583/aa7cd3 Published 14 August 2017

© 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd

This paper is behind a paywall.

Pugno was most recently mentioned here in a May 29, 2015 posting where he was listed as an author for a paper on synthesizing spider silk. Prior to 2015 I was familiar with Pugno’s name due to his work on adhesiveness in geckos.

A candy cane supercapacitor?

Courtesy: Queen Mary University of London

It takes a lot more imagination than I have to describe the object on the right as resembling the  candy cane on the left, assuming that’s what was intended when it was used to illustrate the university’s press release. I like being pushed to see resemblances to things that are not immediately apparent to me. This may never look like a candy cane to me but I appreciate that someone finds it to be so. An August 16, 2017 news item on ScienceDaily announces the ‘candy cane’ supercapacitor,

Supercapacitors promise recharging of phones and other devices in seconds and minutes as opposed to hours for batteries. But current technologies are not usually flexible, have insufficient capacities, and for many their performance quickly degrades with charging cycles.

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the University of Cambridge have found a way to improve all three problems in one stroke.

Their prototyped polymer electrode, which resembles a candy cane usually hung on a Christmas tree, achieves energy storage close to the theoretical limit, but also demonstrates flexibility and resilience to charge/discharge cycling.

The technique could be applied to many types of materials for supercapacitors and enable fast charging of mobile phones, smart clothes and implantable devices.

The Aug. 16, 2017 Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides more detail about the technology,

Pseudocapacitance is a property of polymer and composite supercapacitors that allows ions to enter inside the material and thus pack much more charge than carbon ones that mostly store the charge as concentrated ions (in the so-called double layer) near the surface.

The problem with polymer supercapacitors, however, is that the ions necessary for these chemical reactions can only access the top few nanometers below the material surface, leaving the rest of the electrode as dead weight. Growing polymers as nano-structures is one way to increase the amount of accessible material near the surface, but this can be expensive, hard to scale up, and often results in poor mechanical stability.

The researchers, however, have developed a way to interweave nanostructures within a bulk material, thereby achieving the benefits of conventional nanostructuring without using complex synthesis methods or sacrificing material toughness.

Project leader, Stoyan Smoukov, explained: “Our supercapacitors can store a lot of charge very quickly, because the thin active material (the conductive polymer) is always in contact with a second polymer which contains ions, just like the red thin regions of a candy cane are always in close proximity to the white parts. But this is on a much smaller scale.

“This interpenetrating structure enables the material to bend more easily, as well as swell and shrink without cracking, leading to greater longevity. This one method is like killing not just two, but three birds with one stone.”

The outcomes

The Smoukov group had previously pioneered a combinatorial route to multifunctionality using interpenetrating polymer networks (IPN) in which each component would have its own function, rather than using trial-and-error chemistry to fit all functions in one molecule.

This time they applied the method to energy storage, specifically supercapacitors, because of the known problem of poor material utilization deep beneath the electrode surface.

This interpenetration technique drastically increases the material’s surface area, or more accurately the interfacial area between the different polymer components.

Interpenetration also happens to solve two other major problems in supercapacitors. It brings flexibility and toughness because the interfaces stop growth of any cracks that may form in the material. It also allows the thin regions to swell and shrink repeatedly without developing large stresses, so they are electrochemically resistant and maintain their performance over many charging cycles.

The researchers are currently rationally designing and evaluating a range of materials that can be adapted into the interpenetrating polymer system for even better supercapacitors.

In an upcoming review, accepted for publication in the journal Sustainable Energy and Fuels, they overview the different techniques people have used to improve the multiple parameters required for novel supercapacitors.

Such devices could be made in soft and flexible freestanding films, which could power electronics embedded in smart clothing, wearable and implantable devices, and soft robotics. The developers hope to make their contribution to provide ubiquitous power for the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which is still a significant challenge ahead.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Semi-Interpenetrating Polymer Networks for Enhanced Supercapacitor Electrodes by Kara D. Fong, Tiesheng Wang, Hyun-Kyung Kim, R. Vasant Kumar, and Stoyan K. Smoukov. ACS Energy Lett., 2017, 2, pp 2014–2020 DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.7b00466 Publication Date (Web): August 14, 2017

Copyright © 2017 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Organismic learning—learning to forget

This approach to mimicking the human brain differs from the memristor. (You can find several pieces about memrisors here including this August 24, 2017 post about a derivative, a neuristor).  This approach comes from scientists at Purdue University and employs a quantum material. From an Aug. 15, 2017 news item on phys.org,

A new computing technology called “organismoids” mimics some aspects of human thought by learning how to forget unimportant memories while retaining more vital ones.

“The human brain is capable of continuous lifelong learning,” said Kaushik Roy, Purdue University’s Edward G. Tiedemann Jr. Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “And it does this partially by forgetting some information that is not critical. I learn slowly, but I keep forgetting other things along the way, so there is a graceful degradation in my accuracy of detecting things that are old. What we are trying to do is mimic that behavior of the brain to a certain extent, to create computers that not only learn new information but that also learn what to forget.”

The work was performed by researchers at Purdue, Rutgers University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.

Central to the research is a ceramic “quantum material” called samarium nickelate, which was used to create devices called organismoids, said Shriram Ramanathan, a Purdue professor of materials engineering.

A video describing the work has been produced,

An August 14, 2017 Purdue University news release by Emil Venere, which originated the news item,  details the work,

“These devices possess certain characteristics of living beings and enable us to advance new learning algorithms that mimic some aspects of the human brain,” Roy said. “The results have far reaching implications for the fields of quantum materials as well as brain-inspired computing.”

When exposed to hydrogen gas, the material undergoes a massive resistance change, as its crystal lattice is “doped” by hydrogen atoms. The material is said to breathe, expanding when hydrogen is added and contracting when the hydrogen is removed.

“The main thing about the material is that when this breathes in hydrogen there is a spectacular quantum mechanical effect that allows the resistance to change by orders of magnitude,” Ramanathan said. “This is very unusual, and the effect is reversible because this dopant can be weakly attached to the lattice, so if you remove the hydrogen from the environment you can change the electrical resistance.”

When hydrogen is exposed to the material, it splits into a proton and an electron, and the electron attaches to the nickel, temporarily causing the material to become an insulator.

“Then, when the hydrogen comes out, this material becomes conducting again,” Ramanathan said. “What we show in this paper is the extent of conduction and insulation can be very carefully tuned.”

This changing conductance and the “decay of that conductance over time” is similar to a key animal behavior called habituation.

“Many animals, even organisms that don’t have a brain, possess this fundamental survival skill,” Roy said. “And that’s why we call this organismic behavior. If I see certain information on a regular basis, I get habituated, retaining memory of it. But if I haven’t seen such information over a long time, then it slowly starts decaying. So, the behavior of conductance going up and down in exponential fashion can be used to create a new computing model that will incrementally learn and at same time forget things in a proper way.”

The researchers have developed a “neural learning model” they have termed adaptive synaptic plasticity.

“This could be really important because it’s one of the first examples of using quantum materials directly for solving a major problem in neural learning,” Ramanathan said.

The researchers used the organismoids to implement the new model for synaptic plasticity.

“Using this effect we are able to model something that is a real problem in neuromorphic computing,” Roy said. “For example, if I have learned your facial features I can still go out and learn someone else’s features without really forgetting yours. However, this is difficult for computing models to do. When learning your features, they can forget the features of the original person, a problem called catastrophic forgetting.”

Neuromorphic computing is not intended to replace conventional general-purpose computer hardware, based on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor transistors, or CMOS. Instead, it is expected to work in conjunction with CMOS-based computing. Whereas CMOS technology is especially adept at performing complex mathematical computations, neuromorphic computing might be able to perform roles such as facial recognition, reasoning and human-like decision making.

Roy’s team performed the research work on the plasticity model, and other collaborators concentrated on the physics of how to explain the process of doping-driven change in conductance central to the paper. The multidisciplinary team includes experts in materials, electrical engineering, physics, and algorithms.

“It’s not often that a materials science person can talk to a circuits person like professor Roy and come up with something meaningful,” Ramanathan said.

Organismoids might have applications in the emerging field of spintronics. Conventional computers use the presence and absence of an electric charge to represent ones and zeroes in a binary code needed to carry out computations. Spintronics, however, uses the “spin state” of electrons to represent ones and zeros.

It could bring circuits that resemble biological neurons and synapses in a compact design not possible with CMOS circuits. Whereas it would take many CMOS devices to mimic a neuron or synapse, it might take only a single spintronic device.

In future work, the researchers may demonstrate how to achieve habituation in an integrated circuit instead of exposing the material to hydrogen gas.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Habituation based synaptic plasticity and organismic learning in a quantum perovskite by Fan Zuo, Priyadarshini Panda, Michele Kotiuga, Jiarui Li, Mingu Kang, Claudio Mazzoli, Hua Zhou, Andi Barbour, Stuart Wilkins, Badri Narayanan, Mathew Cherukara, Zhen Zhang, Subramanian K. R. S. Sankaranarayanan, Riccardo Comin, Karin M. Rabe, Kaushik Roy, & Shriram Ramanathan. Nature Communications 8, Article number: 240 (2017) doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00248-6 Published online: 14 August 2017

This paper is open access.

High speed rail link for Cascadia Innovation Corridor

In a Feb. 28, 2017 posting I featured an announcement about what I believe is the first  project from the British Columbia (province of Canada) and Washington State (US) government’s joint Cascadia Innovation Corridor initiative:  the Cascadia Analytics Cooperative, During the telephone press conference a couple of the participants joked about hyperloop (transportation pods in vacuum tubes) and  being able to travel between Vancouver (Canada) and Seattle (US) in minutes. It seems that might not have been quite the joke I assumed. Kenneth Chan in an Aug. 14, 2017 posting for the Daily Hive announced a high-speed rail feasibility study is underway (Note: Links have been removed),

According to KUOW public radio, the study began in late-July and will be conducted by a consultant at a cost of US$300,000 – down from the budgeted USD$1 million when the study was first announced earlier this year in Governor Jay Inslee’s proposed state budget. The budget bill proposed Washington State stations at locations such as Bellingham, Everett, SeaTac International Airport, Tacoma, Olympia, and Vancouver, Washington.

The idea has received the full backing of Washington State-based Microsoft, which supported the study with an additional $50,000 contribution. [emphasis mine] Engineering consultancy firm CH2M, which has offices in Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland, has been contracted to perform the study.

Interest in such a rail link is spurred from the Cascadia Innovation Corridor agreement signed by the government leaders of BC and Washington State last fall. The agreement committed both jurisdictions to growing the Vancouver-Seattle corridor into a tech corridor and innovation hub and improving transportation connections, such as high-speed rail.

“Why not a high speed train from Vancouver to Seattle to Portland? If we lived in Europe it would already be there,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer, at a recent Portland conference on regional policy. “We need to raise our sights and our ambition level as a region.”

Microsoft is very interested in facilitating greater ease of movement, a development which causes me to to feel some unease as mentioned in my February 28, 2017 posting,

I look forward to hearing more about the Cascadia Urban Analytics Cooperative and the Cascadia Innovation Corridor as they develop. This has the potential to be very exciting although I do have some concerns such as MIcrosoft and its agendas, both stated and unstated. After all, the Sept. 2016 meeting was convened by Microsoft and its public affairs/lobbying group and the topic was innovation, which is code for business and as hinted earlier, business is not synonymous with social good. Having said that I’m not about to demonize business either. I just think a healthy dose of skepticism is called for. Good things can happen but we need to ensure they do.

Since February 2017, the government in British Columbia has changed hands and is now led by James Horgan of the New Democratic Party. Like Christy Clark and the Liberals before them, this provincial government does not have any science policy, a ministry of science (senior or junior), or any evidence of independent science advice. There has been (and may still be, it’s hard to tell) a Premier’s Technology Council, a BC Innovation Council (formerly the Science Council of BC), and #BCTECH Strategy which hie more to business and applied science than an inclusive ‘science strategy’ with attendant government agencies.

Call for art (and possible donation) featuring amphibians for Precious Frogs Art Exhibit and fundraising effort

Thanks to the August 24, 2017 Opus Art Supplies newsletter (received via email), I got notice about this call for art (from the Opus Call for Submissions webpage),

Submission Deadline:

September 6, 2017

Date:  September 29, 2017December 15, 2017 [for Amphibian Art Exhibit at Science World in Vancouver, Canada]

Paint, draw, print, sculpt, design, photograph the province’s [British Columbia] frogs, toads and salamanders, and consider how art can combat threats to amphibian survival including habitat loss, pollution, invasive species, and disease. Because this is a fundraising event, we are hoping to engage artists to donate artwork for sale at the exhibition, with proceeds towards the long-term conservation of our native amphibians. However, you can choose to exhibit only. To submit, please download the call for artists for full details and instructions.

We encourage small pieces (for example: 5×7, 6×4, 8×8, 8×10 inches or other small size you enjoy working in) or small sculptures to ensure accessibility for all artists. We realize that artists are often asked to donate artwork for charity, and we respect and value the fact that artists have been very generous in supporting the causes they believe in. We hope you will consider ours.For more information and questions, contact us: info@preciousfrog.ca

Precious Frog, the organization (the exhibition is Precious Frogs) requesting the art has more detail in its (On the spot webpage) June 12, 2017 initial call for submissions,

Are you an artist? Are you passionate about art and conservation? Are you interested in creatively exploring how to celebrate British Columbia’s amphibians through art?

This is your opportunity to submit a piece of art for a three-month long art exhibition to be launched at Science World in Vancouver on September 29, 2017.

We are very excited to announce that we are partnering with TELUS World of Science to bring you the first art exhibition in Vancouver entirely dedicated to the amphibians of the province. The Precious Frogs Art Exhibition will integrate art and conservation by showcasing a variety of visual and media art pieces combined with scientific and educational information on the challenges faced by amphibians in our province.

Elsewhere in North America, artists have already demonstrated their creativity to raise awareness about the global decline of amphibians. In North Carolina, artist Terry Thirion has initiated the Disappearing Frogs Project, in 2013.

But this is a first in Vancouver, and with the Precious Frogs art exhibition, we hope to inspire artists to be a bridge between scientists and the broader public and to promote awareness and action for the long-term conservation of all of our precious amphibians. Additional film screenings, educational events, and art workshops will be presented at Science World in the fall as part of the art exhibition.

To us, amphibians are intriguing, beautiful, complex, inspiring, unusual, and more. What do you see?

Paint, draw, print, sculpt, design, photograph the province’s  frogs, toads and salamanders, and consider how art can combat threats to amphibian survival including habitat loss, pollution, invasive species, and disease. Submit your most convincing art piece. Your work will support the Oregon Spotted Frog Recovery Team’s efforts to conserve amphibians in British Columbia.

To submit, please download the call for artists for full details and instructions. The submission deadline is September 6, 2017. For more information and questions, contact us: info@preciousfrog.ca

And mark your calendar: the opening reception for the art exhibition will be on Tuesday, October 3 from 6 to 8 pm at Science World.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are you organizing this event?

Amphibians serve an important role in ecosystems and are particularly sensitive to changes in the environment that ultimately affect us all. This volunteer-run project aims to promote awareness and raise funds for the long-term conservation of our native amphibians.

Why are you asking artists to donate artwork?

Because this is a fundraising event, we are hoping to engage artists to donate artwork for sale at the exhibition, with proceeds towards the long-term conservation of our native amphibians.  We encourage small pieces (for example: 5×7, 6×4, 8×8, 8×10 inches or other small size you enjoy working in) or small sculptures to ensure accessibility for all artists. We realize that artists are often asked to donate artwork for charity, and we respect and value the fact that artists have been very generous in supporting the causes they believe in. We hope you will consider ours.

I don’t want to donate my artwork. Can I still participate?

Yes absolutely! You can choose to have your artwork on display at the exhibition and marked “Not For Sale.” The artwork will be returned to you at the end of the exhibition, and you are then free to sell your piece as you wish. We encourage artists to consider a donation to the Precious Frogs Project on subsequent sales of amphibian-related artwork. The gesture will always be appreciated.

How much will the artwork be sold for?

Artwork will be sold at accessible, standardized prices ($20 – $50) for small works. Larger pieces will be sold at prices recommended by the artist.

Why should I participate?

We feel passionate about the conservation of amphibians, and we hope you will too. This project is part of a series of exhibits such as the Disappearing Frogs Project in the United States. If you participate in our project, you will become part of a larger context. Ultimately, this project is about opening people’s eyes on amphibian extinction, and artists have the capacity to express themselves and help change the views of people on these very important issues. Additionally, the publicity about the event and the public exposure artists will receive during the three-month long exhibition are factors that we hope artists will value, in addition to becoming active contributors to the long-term conservation of amphibians.

How do I find out more information about amphibians at risk in BC?

A good starting point is our Frog guide on our website, which lists all BC’s native amphibians — frogs, toads, and salamanders. If you would like to learn more or have specific questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at: info@preciousfrog.ca

Do you accept volunteers?

Yes! Volunteers are welcome to help us with the different dimensions of this project and the events that we are planning during the three-month exhibition. Please check out our current volunteer position posting and contact us for additional opportunities.

Text: Isabelle Groc

Here’s a sample of what’s on preciousfrog.ca’s call for submission webpage,

Artwork: Lord Byng Secondary School, Grade 10 Honours art class

I wish Precious Frog good luck with its fundraising efforts and greater exposure for any artists who participate.

Droplets take the stairs

Stair climbing is not an activity usually associated with water droplets but that’s how the activity is described in a July 11, 2017 American Institute of Physics news release (titled: Even Droplets Sometimes Take the Stairs; h/t July 11, 2017 news item on Nanowerk) about research  addressing ‘wettability’,

Sometimes, liquid drops don’t drop. Instead, they climb. Using computer simulations, researchers have now shown how to induce droplets to climb stairs all by themselves.

This stair-climbing behavior could be useful in everything from water treatment and new lab-on-a-chip microfluidic devices, to biochemical processing and medical diagnostic tools. The researchers, from the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee, India, and York University in Toronto, describe their findings this week in the journal Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing.

To get the droplets to climb, this new research reveals you need a staircase whose surface adheres to each droplet more readily with each step. A surface on which a droplet sticks easily has what’s called a high wettability, causing the droplet to spread out and flatten. On a low-wettability surface, however, the droplet would stay more spherical, like raindrops beading up on a waterproof jacket.

The researchers have previously used a gradient of increasing wettability to coax droplets to move across a flat surface and even to go up a slope. A water droplet, for example, is more attracted to a hydrophilic surface with its greater wettability, so an incline featuring an increasing hydrophilic surface as it rises can “pull” a droplet uphill.

Real surfaces are never perfectly smooth, however; at small-enough scales, a surface eventually appears rough. A slope at these scales is actually a microscopic staircase. “Most surfaces are textured, and mobility of a droplet over such surfaces require climbing stairs,” said Arup Kumar Das of IIT Roorkee.

To explore how a droplet could climb steps — and thus if this technique can work on more real-world surface applications — the researchers simulated the physics of microliter-sized droplets on staircases with a wettability gradient.

These droplets are wider than the length of each step, so their leading side is on a higher step with a more wettable surface, than the trailing side. The front part of the droplet thus spreads more, forming a smaller, flatter angle with the surface.

The difference in angles between the front and back of the climbing droplets causes the liquid inside the droplet to circulate. When the leading edge of the droplet reaches the next step, the circulation drives the droplet forward, spilling over onto the next higher step, and the process repeats itself.

Whether the droplet has enough force to overcome gravity depends on the size of the droplet, the steepness of the steps and the differences in wettability. In general, a bigger droplet is better at climbing stairs, and for steeper steps, there needs to be a higher wettability gradient.

The researchers are now working on experiments to confirm the simulation results.

Many other methods to control droplets rely on external forces such as temperature variations, and electric and magnetic fields. But, Das explained, those methods are often challenging and complex. The new study shows that passive approaches like wettability could be more efficient. “Passive means [we] can manipulate a droplet to even climb stairs sustainably without using an external force,” he said. 

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Proposition of stair climb of a drop using chemical wettability gradient by Prabh P. S. Seerha, Parmod Kumar, Arup K. Das, and Sushanta K. Mitra. Physics of Fluids 29, 072103 (2017); doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4985213 Volume 29, Issue 7

This paper is behind a paywall.