Tag Archives: Northwestern University

Moving past xenobots (living robots based on frog stem cells)

Laura Tran’s June 14, 2024 article for The Scientist gives both a brief history of Michael Levin’s and his team’s work on developing living robots using stem cells from an African clawed frog (known as Xenopus laevis) and offers an update on the team’s work into synthetic lifeforms. First, the xenobots, Note 1: This could be difficult for people with issues regarding animal experimentation Note 1: Links have been removed,

Ibegan with little pieces of embryos scooting around in a dish. In 1998, these unassuming cells caught the attention of Michael Levin, then a postdoctoral researcher studying cell biology at Harvard University. He recalled simply recording a video before tucking the memory away. Nearly two decades later, Levin, now a developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University, experienced a sense of déjà vu. He observed that as a student transplanted tissues from one embryo to another, some loose cells swam free in the dish. 

Levin had a keen interest in the collective intelligence of cells, tissues, organs, and artificial constructs within regenerative medicine, and he wondered if he could explore the plasticity and harness the untapped capabilities of these swirling embryonic stem cells. “At that point, I started thinking that this is probably an amazing biorobotics platform,” recalled Levin. He rushed to describe this idea to Douglas Blackiston, a developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University who worked alongside Levin. 

At the time, Blackiston was conducting plasticity research to restore vision in blind African clawed frog tadpoles, Xenopus laevis, a model organism used to understand development. Blackiston transplanted the eyes to unusual places, such as the back of the head or even the tail, to test the integration of transplanted sensory organs.1 The eye axons extended to either the gut or spinal cord. In a display of dynamic plasticity, transplanted eyes on the tail that extended an optic nerve into the spinal cord restored the tadpoles’ vision.2 

In a similar vein, Josh Bongard, an evolutionary roboticist at the University of Vermont and Levin’s longtime colleague, pondered how robots could evolve like animals. He wanted to apply biological evolution to a machine by tinkering with the brains and bodies of robots and explored this idea with Sam Kriegman, then a graduate student in Bongard’s group and now an assistant professor at Northwestern University. Kriegman used evolutionary algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) to simulate biological evolution in a virtual creature before teaming up with engineers to construct a physical version. 

i have two stories about the Xenobots. I was a little late to the party, so, the June 21, 2021 posting is about xenobots 2.0 and their ability to move and the June 8, 2022 posting is about their ability to reproduce.

Tran’s June 14, 2024 article provides the latest update, Note: Links have been removed,

Evolving Beyond the Xenobot

“People thought this was a one-off froggy-specific result, but this is a very profound thing,” emphasized Levin. To demonstrate its translatability in a non-frog model, he wondered, “What’s the furthest from an embryonic frog? Well, that would be an adult human.”

He enlisted the help of Gizem Gumuskaya, a synthetic biologist with an architectural background in Levin’s group, to tackle this challenge of creating biological robots using human cells to create anthrobots.8 While Gumuskaya was not involved with the development of xenobots, she drew inspiration from their design. By using adult human tracheal cells, she found that adult cells still displayed morphologic plasticity.

There are several key differences between xenobots and anthrobots: species, cell source (embryonic or adult), and the anthrobots’ ability to self-assemble without manipulation. “When considering applications, as a rule of thumb, xenobots are better suited to the environment. They exhibit higher durability, require less maintenance, and can coexist within the environment,” said Gumuskaya.

Meanwhile, there is greater potential for the use of mammalian-derived biobots in biomedical applications. This could include localized drug delivery, deposition into the arteries to break up plaque buildup, or deploying anthrobots into tissue to act as biosensors. “[Anthrobots] are poised as a personalized agent with the same DNA but new functionality,” remarked Gumuskaya.

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

Motile Living Biobots Self-Construct from Adult Human Somatic Progenitor Seed Cells by Gizem Gumuskaya, Pranjal Srivastava, Ben G. Cooper, Hannah Lesser, Ben Semegran, Simon Garnier, Michael Levin. Advanced Science Volume 11, Issue 4 January 26, 2024 2303575 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202303575 First published: 30 November 2023

This paper is open access.

After sugar-free meals, soil bacteria respire more CO2

Scientists have found out more about how carbon cycles through the environment in a June 11, 2024 news item on ScienceDaily,

When soil microbes eat plant matter, the digested food follows one of two pathways. Either the microbe uses the food to build its own body, or it respires its meal as carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere.

Now, a Northwestern University [Illinois, US]-led research team has, for the first time, tracked the pathways of a mixture of plant waste as it moves through bacteria’s metabolism to contribute to atmospheric CO2. The researchers discovered that microbes respire three times as much CO2 from lignin carbons (non-sugar aromatic units) compared to cellulose carbons (glucose sugar units), which both add structure and support to plants’ cellular walls.

These findings help disentangle the role of microbes in soil carbon cycling — information that could help improve predictions of how carbon in soil will affect climate change.

Caption: Image of soil with a close-up of a bacterium and the cellular pathways involved in carbon dioxide productions. Available substrates from soil organic matter are processed through specific pathways with different amount of carbon dioxide output flux.. Credit: Aristilde Lab/Northwestern University

A June 11, 2024 Northwestern University news release (also received via email and on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, explains what this research means, Note: Links have been removed,

“The carbon pool that’s stored in soil is about 10 times the amount that’s in the atmosphere,” said Northwestern University’s Ludmilla Aristilde, who led the study. “What happens to this reservoir will have an enormous impact on the planet. Because microbes can unlock this carbon and turn it into atmospheric CO2, there is a huge interest in understanding how they metabolize plant waste. As temperatures rise, more organic matter of different types will become available in soil. That will affect the amount of CO2 that is emitted from microbial activities.”

An expert in the dynamics of organics in environmental processes, Aristilde is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and is a member of the Center for Synthetic Biology and of the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy. Caroll Mendonca, a former Ph.D. candidate in Aristilde’s laboratory, is the paper’s first author. The study includes collaborators from the University of Chicago.

‘Not all pathways are created equally’

The new study builds upon ongoing work in Aristilde’s laboratory to understand how soil stores — or releases — carbon. Although previous researchers typically tracked how broken-down compounds from plant matter move individually through bacteria, Aristilde’s team instead used a mixture of these compounds to represent what bacteria are exposed to in the natural environment. Then, to track how different plant derivatives moved through a bacterium’s metabolism, the researchers tagged individual carbon atoms with isotope labels.

“Isotope labeling allowed us to track carbon atoms specific to each compound type inside the cell,” Aristilde said. “By tracking the carbon routes, we were able to capture their paths in the metabolism. That is important because not all pathways are created equally in terms of producing carbon dioxide.”

Sugar carbons in cellulose, for example, traveled through glycolytic and pentose-phosphate pathways. These pathways lead to metabolic reactions that convert digested matter into carbons to make DNA and proteins, which build the microbe’s own biomass. But aromatic, non-sugar carbons from lignin traveled a different route — through the tricarboxylic acid cycle.

“The tricarboxylic acid cycle exists in all forms of life,” Aristilde said. “It exists in plants, microbes, animals and humans. While this cycle also produces precursors for proteins, it contains several reactions that produce CO2. Most of the CO2 that gets respired from metabolism comes from this pathway.”

Expanding the findings

After tracking the routes of metabolism, Aristilde and her team performed quantitative analysis to determine the amount of CO2 produced from different types of plant matter. After consuming a mixture of plant matter, microbes respired three times as much CO2 from carbons derived from lignin compared to carbons derived from cellulose.

“Even though microbes consume these carbons at the same time, the amount of CO2 generated from each carbon type is disproportionate,” Aristilde said. “That’s because the carbon is processed via two different metabolic pathways.”

In the initial experiments, Aristilde and her team used Pseudomonas putida, a common soil bacterium with a versatile metabolism. Curious to see if their findings applied to other bacteria, the researchers studied data from previous experiments in scientific literature. They found the same relationship they discovered among plant matter, metabolism and CO2 manifested in other soil bacteria.

“We propose a new metabolism-guided perspective for thinking about how different carbon structures accessible to soil microbes are processed,” Aristilde said. “That will be key in helping us predict what will happen with the soil carbon cycle with a changing climate.”

The study, “Disproportionate carbon dioxide efflux in bacterial metabolic pathways for different organic substrates leads to variable contribution to carbon use efficiency,” was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant numbers CBET-1653092 and CBET-2022854).

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

Disproportionate Carbon Dioxide Efflux in Bacterial Metabolic Pathways for Different Organic Substrates Leads to Variable Contribution to Carbon-Use Efficiency by Caroll M. Mendonca, Lichun Zhang, Jacob R. Waldbauer, and Ludmilla Aristilde. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2024, 58, 25, 11041–11052 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c01328 Publication Date:June 11, 2024 Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.

This paper is open access and has a Creative Commons licence: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0..

New approach to cartilage regeneration

Not long after announcing their new work on cartilage and ‘dancing molecules’, Samuel I. Stupp and his team at Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois) have announced work with a new material that does not have dancing molecules in a study using animal models. It’s here in an August 5, 02024 Northwestern University news release (also on EurekAlert and on SciTechDaily and received by email) by Amanda Morris, Note: Links have been removed,

Northwestern University scientists have developed a new bioactive material that successfully regenerated high-quality cartilage in the knee joints of a large-animal model.

Although it looks like a rubbery goo, the material is actually a complex network of molecular components, which work together to mimic cartilage’s natural environment in the body. 

In the new study, the researchers applied the material to damaged cartilage in the animals’ knee joints. Within just six months, the researchers observed evidence of enhanced repair, including the growth of new cartilage containing the natural biopolymers (collagen II and proteoglycans), which enable pain-free mechanical resilience in joints.

With more work, the researchers say the new material someday could potentially be used to prevent full knee replacement surgeries, treat degenerative diseases like osteoarthritis and repair sports-related injuries like ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] tears.

The study will be published during the week of August 5 [2024] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Cartilage is a critical component in our joints,” said Northwestern’s Samuel I. Stupp, who led the study. “When cartilage becomes damaged or breaks down over time, it can have a great impact on people’s overall health and mobility. The problem is that, in adult humans, cartilage does not have an inherent ability to heal. Our new therapy can induce repair in a tissue that does not naturally regenerate. We think our treatment could help address a serious, unmet clinical need.”

A pioneer of regenerative nanomedicine, Stupp is Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern, where he is founding director of the Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology and its affiliated center, the Center for Regenerative Nanomedicine. Stupp has appointments in the McCormick School of Engineering, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and Feinberg School of Medicine. Jacob Lewis, a former Ph.D. student in Stupp’s laboratory, is the paper’s first author.

What’s in the material?

The new study follows recently published work from the Stupp laboratory, in which the team used “dancing molecules” to activate human cartilage cells to boost the production of proteins that build the tissue matrix. Instead of using dancing molecules, the new study evaluates a hybrid biomaterial also developed in Stupp’s lab. The new biomaterial comprises two components: a bioactive peptide that binds to transforming growth factor beta-1 (TGFb-1) — an essential protein for cartilage growth and maintenance — and modified hyaluronic acid, a natural polysaccharide present in cartilage and the lubricating synovial fluid in joints. 

“Many people are familiar with hyaluronic acid because it’s a popular ingredient in skincare products,” Stupp said. “It’s also naturally found in many tissues throughout the human body, including the joints and brain. We chose it because it resembles the natural polymers found in cartilage.”

Stupp’s team integrated the bioactive peptide and chemically modified hyaluronic acid particles to drive the self-organization of nanoscale fibers into bundles that mimic the natural architecture of cartilage. The goal was to create an attractive scaffold for the body’s own cells to regenerate cartilage tissue. Using bioactive signals in the nanoscale fibers, the material encourages cartilage repair by the cells, which populate the scaffold.

Clinically relevant to humans

To evaluate the material’s effectiveness in promoting cartilage growth, the researchers tested it in sheep with cartilage defects in the stifle joint, a complex joint in the hind limbs similar to the human knee. This work was carried out in the laboratory of Mark Markel in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 

According to Stupp, testing in a sheep model was vital. Much like humans, sheep cartilage is stubborn and incredibly difficult to regenerate. Sheep stifles and human knees also have similarities in weight bearing, size and mechanical loads.

“A study on a sheep model is more predictive of how the treatment will work in humans,” Stupp said. “In other smaller animals, cartilage regeneration occurs much more readily.”

In the study, researchers injected the thick, paste-like material into cartilage defects, where it transformed into a rubbery matrix. Not only did new cartilage grow to fill the defect as the scaffold degraded, but the repaired tissue was consistently higher quality compared to the control.

A lasting solution

In the future, Stupp imagines the new material could be applied to joints during open-joint or arthroscopic surgeries. The current standard of care is microfracture surgery, during which surgeons create tiny fractures in the underlying bone to induce new cartilage growth.

“The main issue with the microfracture approach is that it often results in the formation of fibrocartilage — the same cartilage in our ears — as opposed to hyaline cartilage, which is the one we need to have functional joints,” Stupp said. “By regenerating hyaline cartilage, our approach should be more resistant to wear and tear, fixing the problem of poor mobility and joint pain for the long term while also avoiding the need for joint reconstruction with large pieces of hardware.”

The study, “A bioactive supramolecular and covalent polymer scaffold for cartilage repair in a sheep model,” was supported by the Mike and Mary Sue Shannon Family Fund for Bio-Inspired and Bioactive Materials Systems for Musculoskeletal Regeneration.

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

A bioactive supramolecular and covalent polymer scaffold for cartilage repair in a sheep model by Jacob A. Lewis, Brett Nemke, Yan Lu, Nicholas A. Sather, Mark T. McClendon, Michael Mullen, Shelby C. Yuan, Sudheer K. Ravuri, Jason A. Bleedorn, Marc J. Philippon, Johnny Huard, Mark D. Markel, and Samuel I. Stupp. Proceedings ot the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 121 (33) e2405454121 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2405454121 August 6, 2024

This paper is behind a paywall.

Electricity (electrodeposition) could help fight coastal (beach) erosion

I live in a coastal region and a few months ago our local municipal voted down an initiative that included some mitigation for beach erosion. So, this research caught my eye.

Caption: An artistic impression of how electricity could be used to strengthen coastlines. Credit: Northwestern University

An August 22, 2024 news item on phys.org announces an unexpected approach to dealing with coastal erosion,

New research from Northwestern University has systematically proven that a mild zap of electricity can strengthen a marine coastline for generations—greatly reducing the threat of erosion in the face of climate change and rising sea levels.

An August 22, 2024 Northwestern University news release (received via email and also found on EurekAlert) by Amanda Morris, which originated the news item, delves further into the topic, Note: Links have been removed,

In the new study, researchers took inspiration from clams, mussels and other shell-dwelling sea life, which use dissolved minerals in seawater to build their shells.

Similarly, the researchers leveraged the same naturally occurring, dissolved minerals to form a natural cement between sea-soaked grains of sand. But, instead of using metabolic energy like mollusks do, the researchers used electrical energy to spur the chemical reaction.

In laboratory experiments, a mild electrical current instantaneously changed the structure of marine sand, transforming it into a rock-like, immoveable solid. The researchers are hopeful this strategy could offer a lasting, inexpensive and sustainable solution for strengthening global coastlines.

The study will be published on Thursday (Aug. 22 [2024]) in the journal Communications Earth and the Environment, a journal published by Nature Portfolio.

“Over 40% of the world’s population lives in coastal areas,” said Northwestern’s Alessandro Rotta Loria, who led the study. “Because of climate change and sea-level rise, erosion is an enormous threat to these communities. Through the disintegration of infrastructure and loss of land, erosion causes billions of dollars in damage per year worldwide. Current approaches to mitigate erosion involve building protection structures or injecting external binders into the subsurface.

“My aim was to develop an approach capable of changing the status quo in coastal protection — one that didn’t require the construction of protection structures and could cement marine substrates without using actual cement. By applying a mild electric stimulation to marine soils, we systematically and mechanistically proved that it is possible to cement them by turning naturally dissolved minerals in seawater into solid mineral binders — a natural cement.”

Rotta Loria is the Louis Berger Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. Andony Landivar Macias, a former Ph.D. candidate in Rotta Loria’s laboratory, is the paper’s first author. Steven Jacobsen, a mineralogist and professor of Earth and planetary sciences in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, also co-authored the study.

Sea walls, too, erode

From intensifying rainstorms to rising sea levels, climate change has created conditions that are gradually eroding coastlines. According to a 2020 study by the European commission’s Joint Research Centre, nearly 26% of the Earth’s beaches will be washed away by the end of this century.

To mitigate this issue, communities have implemented two main approaches: building protection structures and barriers, such as sea walls, or injecting cement into the ground to strengthen marine substrates, widely consisting of sand. But multiple problems accompany these strategies. Not only are these conventional methods extremely expensive, they also do not last.

“Sea walls, too, suffer from erosion,” Rotta Loria said. “So, over time, the sand beneath these walls erodes, and the walls can eventually collapse. Oftentimes, protection structures are made of big stones, which cost millions of dollars per mile. However, the sand beneath them can essentially liquify because of a number of environmental stressors, and these big rocks are swallowed by the ground beneath them.

“Injecting cement and other binders into the ground has a number of irreversible environmental drawbacks. It also typically requires high pressures and significant interconnected amounts of energy.”

Turning ions into glue

To bypass these issues, Rotta Loria and his team developed a simpler technique, inspired by coral and mollusks. Seawater naturally contains a myriad of ions and dissolved minerals. When a mild electrical current (2 to 3 volts) is applied to the water, it triggers chemical reactions. This converts some of these constituents into solid calcium carbonate — the same mineral mollusks use to build their shells. Likewise, with a slightly higher voltage (4 volts), these constituents can be predominantly converted into magnesium hydroxide and hydromagnesite, a ubiquitous mineral found in various stones.

When these minerals coalesce in the presence of sand, they act like a glue, binding the sand particles together. In the laboratory, the process also worked with all types of sands — from common silica and calcareous sands to iron sands, which are often found near volcanoes.

“After being treated, the sand looks like a rock,” Rotta Loria said. “It is still and solid, instead of granular and incohesive. The minerals themselves are much stronger than concrete, so the resulting sand could become as strong and solid as a sea wall.”

While the minerals form instantaneously after the current is applied, longer electric stimulations garner more substantial results. “We have noticed remarkable outcomes from just a few days of stimulations,” Rotta Loria said. “Then, the treated sand should stay in place, without needing further interventions.”

Ecofriendly and reversible

Rotta Loria predicts the treated sand should keep its durability, protecting coastlines and property for decades.

Rotta Loria also says there is no need to worry negative effects on sea life. The voltages used in the process are too mild to feel. Other researchers have used similar processes to strengthen undersea structures or even restore coral reefs. In those scenarios, no sea critters were harmed.

And, if communities decide they no longer want the solidified sand, Rotta Loria has a solution for that, too, as the process is completely reversible. When the battery’s anode and cathode electrodes are switched, the electricity dissolves the minerals — effectively undoing the process.

“The minerals form because we are locally raising the pH of the seawater around cathodic interfaces,” Rotta Loria said. “If you switch the anode with the cathode, then localized reductions in pH are involved, which dissolve the previously precipitated minerals.”

Competitive cost, countless applications

The process offers an inexpensive alternative to conventional methods. After crunching the numbers, Rotta Loria’s team estimates that his process costs just $3 to $6 per cubic meter of electrically cemented ground. More established, comparable methods, which use binders to adhere and strengthen sand, cost up to $70 for the same unit volume.

Research in Rotta Loria’s lab shows this approach also can heal cracked structures made of reinforced concrete. Much of the existing shoreside infrastructure is made of reinforced concrete, which disintegrates due to complex effects caused by sea-level rise, erosion and extreme weather. And if these structures crack, the new approach bypasses the need to fully rebuild the infrastructure. Instead, one pulse of electricity can heal potentially destructive cracks.

“The applications of this approach are countless,” Rotta Loria said. “We can use it to strengthen the seabed beneath sea walls or stabilize sand dunes and retain unstable soil slopes. We could also use it to strengthen protection structures, marine foundations and so many other things. There are many ways to apply this to protect coastal areas.”

Next, Rotta Loria’s team plans to test the technique outside of the laboratory and on the beach.

The study, “Electrodeposition of calcareous cement from seawater in marine silica sands,” was supported by the Army Research Office (grant number W911NF2210291) and Northwestern’s Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience.

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

Electrodeposition of calcareous cement from seawater in marine silica sands by Andony Landivar Macias, Steven D. Jacobsen & Alessandro F. Rotta Loria. Communications Earth & Environment volume 5, Article number: 442 (2024) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01604-3 Published: 22 August 2024

This paper is open access.

2024 Kavli Prize Laureates: in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience

The Kavli Prize has yet to acquire the lustre of a Nobel Prize (first awarded in 1901 as per its Wikipedia entry). By comparison the Kavli Prize is relatively new (established in 2005 as per its Wikipedia entry) but it appears to be achieving big deal status in the US.

This year’s crop of prize winners was listed in a June 12, 2024 Kavli Foundation news release on EurekAlert,

Eight scientists from three countries are honored for their research that has broadened our understanding of the big, the small and the complex.

June 12, 2024 (Oslo, Norway) — The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters today announced the 2024 Kavli Prize Laureates in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience. Eight scientists from three countries are honored for their research that has broadened our understanding of the big, the small and the complex. The laureates in each field will share $1 million USD. 

The 2024 Kavli Prizes recognize groundbreaking science for the discovery and characterization of extra-solar planets and their atmospheres; foundational research integrating synthetic nanoscale materials for biomedical use; and the localization of areas in the brain specialized for face recognition and processing.  

The 2024 Kavli Prize Laureates are:  

  • Kavli Prize in Astrophysics: David Charbonneau (Canada/USA) and Sara Seager (Canada/USA) 
  • Kavli Prize in Nanoscience: Robert S. Langer (USA), Armand Paul Alivisatos (USA) and Chad A. Mirkin (USA) 
  • Kavli Prize in Neuroscience: Nancy Kanwisher (USA), Winrich Freiwald (Germany), and Doris Tsao (USA) 

“The Kavli Prize 2024 honors outstanding researchers doing fundamental science that moves the world forward. They are exploring planets outside our solar system; they have broadened the scientific field of nanoscience towards biomedicine; and they are adding to our understanding of the neurological basis of face recognition,” said Lise Øvreås, president at The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.  

Astrophysics: Searching for life beyond Earth  

The 2024 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics honors Sara Seager and David Charbonneau for discoveries of exoplanets and the characterization of their atmospheres. They pioneered methods for the detection of atomic species in planetary atmospheres and the measurement of their thermal infrared emission, setting the stage for finding the molecular fingerprints of atmospheres around both giant and rocky planets. Their contributions have been key to the enormous progress seen in the last 20 years in the exploration of myriad exo-planets.  

“Humans have always looked towards the stars for discoveries. The pivotal research conducted by Seager and Charbonneau has been an important first step towards finding new planets and strong evidence of life elsewhere in the universe,” remarked Viggo Hansteen, Chair of the Astrophysics Committee.  

David Charbonneau led the team that used the transit method to discover a giant exoplanet (HD 209458b). He pioneered the application of space-based observatories to perform the first studies of the atmosphere of giant extrasolar planets. This new method measures the tiny amount of light blocked by such a planet as it passes in front of its host star. Charbonneau has also used the transit method to study exoplanetary atmospheres, measuring molecular spectra using both filtered starlight and infrared emission from the planets themselves. He demonstrated these two approaches with observations from the Hubble Space Telescope in 2002 and the Spitzer Space Telescope three years later.  

Sara Seager pioneered the theoretical study of planetary atmospheres and predicted the presence of atomic and molecular species detectable by transit spectroscopy, most notably the alkali gases. She predicted how transits could be used to measure atomic and molecular characteristics in exoplanetary atmospheres, which is crucial for identifying biomarkers – signs of life. Seager made outstanding contributions to the understanding of planets with masses below that of Neptune. She also carried out extensive research on starshades – enormous petal-like structures designed to shield space observatories from the glare of a faraway Sun-like star – and was among the first to recognize their importance in detecting and characterizing the faint light from any Earth-like planet orbiting the star. 

Nanoscience: Integrating nanomaterials for biomedical advances 

The 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience honors Robert S. Langer, Armand Paul Alivisatos and Chad A. Mirkin who each revolutionized the field of nanomedicine by demonstrating how engineering nanoscale materials can advance biomedical research and application. Their discoveries contributed foundationally to the development of therapeutics, vaccines, bioimaging and diagnostics.   

“The three scientists, Langer, Alivisatos and Mirkin, have broadened the scientific field of nanoscience, building from fundamental research. By scientific curiosity they have become inventors for the future of nanoscience and biomedicine,” stated Bodil Holst, Chair of the Nanoscience Committee.  

Robert S. Langer was the first to develop nano-engineered materials that enabled the controlled release, or regular flow, of drug molecules. This capability has had an immense impact for the treatment of a range of diseases, such as aggressive brain cancer, prostate cancer and schizophrenia. His work also showed that tiny particles, containing protein antigens, can be used in vaccination, and was instrumental in the development of the delivery of mRNA vaccines. 

Armand Paul Alivisatos demonstrated that semiconductor nanocrystals, or quantum dots (nanoparticles that possess bright, size-dependent light-emitting properties), can be used as multicolor probes in bioimaging. Essential to this achievement was the synthesis of biocompatible nanocrystals. Semiconductor nanocrystals became the basis for the widely used research and diagnostic tools such as live cell tracking, labelling and in vivo imaging. 

Chad A. Mirkin engineered spherical nucleic acids (SNA) using a gold nanoparticle as the core, and a cloud of radially distributed DNA or RNA strands as the shell. He was then able to show how SNAs can be combined to create larger structures and how they can be used in biodiagnostics. His discovery led to the development of fast, automated point-of-care medical diagnostic systems.  

Neuroscience: Understanding recognition of faces 

The 2024 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience honors Nancy Kanwisher, Doris Tsao and Winrich Freiwald for the discovery of a specialized system within the brain to recognize faces. Their discoveries have provided basic principles of neural organization and made the starting point for further research on how the processing of visual information is integrated with other cognitive functions.  

“Kanwisher, Freiwald and Tsao together discovered a localized and specialized neocortical system for face recognition. Their outstanding research will ultimately further our understanding of recognition not only of faces, but objects and scenes,” commented Kristine Walhovd, Chair of the Neuroscience Committee.  

Nancy Kanwisher was the first to prove that a specific area in the human neocortex is dedicated to recognizing faces, now called the fusiform face area. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) she found individual differences in the location of this area and devised an analysis technique to effectively localize specialized functional regions in the brain. This technique is now widely used and applied to domains beyond the face recognition system.  

Elaborating on Kanwisher’s findings, Winrich Freiwald and Doris Tsao studied macaques and mapped out six distinct brain regions, known as the face patch system, including these regions’ functional specialization and how they are connected. By recording the activity of individual brain cells, they revealed how cells in some face patches specialize in faces with particular views.  

Tsao proceeded to identify how the face patches work together to identify a face, through a specific code that enables single cells to identify faces by assembling information of facial features. For example, some cells respond to the presence of hair, others to the distance between the eyes. 

Freiwald uncovered that a separate brain region, called the temporal pole, accelerates our recognition of familiar faces, and that some cells are selectively responsive to familiar faces. 

There’s a video of the official 2024 Kavli Prize announcement which despite the Kavli Foundation being headquartered in California, US, was held (as noted in the news release) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters where the organization’s president, Lise Øvreås, revealed the 2024 Kavli Prize laureates..(I’ll get back to that choice of location.)

The 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience

There are many posts here featuring work from Robert S. Langer (or Robert Langer), Armand Paul Alivisatos (or Paul Alivisatos or A. Paul Alivisatos) and Chad A. Mirkin (or Chad Mirkin).

Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois) issued a June 12, 2024 news release (also received via email) by Maria Paul that provides a few more details about the nanoscience winners (main focus: Chad Mirkin), the prize, and the Kavli Foundation. Note: A link has been removed,

Northwestern University nanoscientist Chad Mirkin has been awarded The 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience by The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Mirkin is the first Northwestern scientist to receive the prestigious award.

Mirkin is recognized for his discovery of spherical nucleic acids (SNAs), nanostructures comprised of a nanoparticle core and a shell of radially distributed DNA or RNA strands. These globular forms of nucleic acids have become the cornerstones of the burgeoning fields of nanomedicine and colloidal crystal engineering with DNA. They allow scientists to construct new forms of matter using particle “atoms” as the basic building blocks and DNA “bonds” as particle interconnects, and they are the basis for powerful tools that allow researchers and clinicians to track and treat disease in new ways. In particular, SNAs have led to the development of fast, automated point-of-care medical diagnostic systems and new experimental drugs for treating many forms of cancer, neurological disorders, and diseases of the skin.

Mirkin is one of three laureates in nanoscience recognized by The Norwegian Academy for revolutionizing the field of nanomedicine by demonstrating how engineering nanoscale structures can advance biomedical research and application. The other two are Robert Langer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Paul Alivisatos of the University of Chicago [emphasis mine]. The scientists’ discoveries “contributed foundationally to the development of therapeutics, vaccines, bioimaging and diagnostics,” The Norwegian Academy said in a release. They will share the $1 million award.

“When I first found out I won The Kavli Prize, there was both excitement but also relief, because I consider Northwestern to be the ultimate center for nanotechnology research,” Mirkin said. “To be recognized with this award, along with my incredible co-awardees, was great validation of what we’ve been trying to do at Northwestern. While I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, the best is yet to come.”

The laureates will be awarded the prize on Sept. 3 during a ceremony in Oslo, Norway, presided over the by The Royal Family. The Kavli Prizes thus far have honored 65 scientists from 13 countries. Ten laureates received the Nobel Prize after receiving The Kavli Prize. [emphasis mine]

“I am thrilled for Chad, for the International Institute for Nanotechnology and for Northwestern,” Northwestern President Michael Schill said. “Chad has earned this prestigious and influential award in a pathbreaking area of science that is aligned with two of the University’s key priorities — to lead in decarbonization, renewable energy and sustainability, and innovating in the biosciences to help prolong lives and make the world a healthier place.

“Through groundbreaking research and hard work, Chad and his team have made Northwestern a leading center for nanotechnology research and investment. The fact that he is sharing this award with President Alivisatos at U of C further emphasizes how the Chicago area has become an international hub for nano research.”

The vision for The Kavli Prize comes from Fred Kavli, a Norwegian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist [emphasis mine] who turned his lifelong fascination with science into a lasting legacy for recognizing scientific breakthroughs and supporting basic research.

Since the first awards in 2008, The Kavli Prize has recognized innovative scientific research — from the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 to the detection of gravitational waves — transforming our understanding of the big, the small and the complex.

Mirkin’s discovery of SNAs has far-reaching implications for biology and medicine. SNAs, which have no known natural equivalents, interact uniquely with living systems compared to nucleic acids of other forms. Mirkin was the first to synthesize SNAs and elucidate the distinctive chemical and physical properties that underpin their use in transformative techniques and technologies in medicine and the life sciences. This work has led to the development of the first commercialized molecular medical diagnostic systems of the modern nanotechnology era, such as the Food and Drug Administration-cleared Verigene System, used in over half of the world’s top hospitals to detect diseases with high sensitivity and selectivity.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker praised Mirkin for his extraordinary contributions to the field of nanotechnology and how his innovations have helped find solutions to some of society’s biggest challenges.

“Academic institutions in Chicago and across Illinois have become the biggest drivers in nanoscience and technology over the last three decades,” Pritzker said. “Chad Mirkin and his Northwestern colleagues have made outstanding scientific discoveries that change how we view the world around us.”

In 1996, Mirkin created the first SNAs with DNA shells on gold nanoparticle cores. Over the years, he has developed numerous other types of SNAs with other shells and cores, including proteins, liposomes and FDA-approved materials, as well as core-less, hollow structures composed entirely of nucleic acids. These cores impart unique properties to the SNAs, such as optical and magnetic characteristics, while also serving as scaffolds to densely arrange the oligonucleotides, which participate in binding. This dense arrangement gives rise to the novel functional properties that differentiate SNAs from the natural linear and two-dimensional nucleic acids and make them particularly effective in interacting with certain biological structures within cells and tissues. SNAs, unlike conventional DNA and RNA, are naturally taken up by cells without the need for toxic, positively charged co-carriers, making them highly effective in RNA interference (RNAi), antisense gene regulation, and gene editing pathways.

Mirkin’s pioneering work on SNAs has also advanced the development of immunotherapeutics, structures capable of stimulating a patient’s immune response to fight both infectious diseases and certain forms of cancer. Using SNAs, Mirkin has pioneered the concept of rational vaccinology, where he demonstrated that the structure of a vaccine, rather than the components alone, is crucial for dictating its therapeutic effectiveness. This insight and these “structural nanomedicines” have opened new possibilities for developing curative treatments by rearranging known components into more effective structures at the nanoscale. Mirkin founded Flashpoint Therapeutics to commercialize these innovations, focusing on nucleic acid-based nanostructure cancer vaccines. Mirkin also invented the first SNA-based antiviral vaccine, using COVID-19 as a model. These SNAs, featuring the spike protein’s RBD subunit in the core, achieved a 100% survival rate in humanized mice challenged with the live virus. These structures and concepts for designing such vaccines are poised to move vaccine development beyond the current mRNA vaccines.

In addition, Mirkin invented dip-pen nanolithography, initially a technique for molecular writing with nanometer-scale precision that has evolved into a powerful platform for tip-based materials synthesis that, when combined with artificial intelligence, is revolutionizing how materials important for many sectors, especially clean energy, are discovered. Dip-pen nanolithography, which has spurred subsequent techniques that now use tens of millions of tiny tips to rapidly synthesize materials to be explored for such purposes, was recognized by National Geographic as one of the “top 100 scientific discoveries that changed the world.” These innovations are being commercialized by Mattiq, Inc., another venture-backed company Mirkin cofounded. Mirkin and his students also invented high-area rapid printing, an additive manufacturing technology, that is being commercialized by Azul 3D and being used to disrupt the microelectronics and optical lens industries.

Mirkin’s research has progressed SNA drugs through seven human clinical trials so far for treating various cancers, including glioblastoma multiforme and Merkel cell carcinoma. One SNA drug has shown remarkable potential in stimulating the immune system, proving effective in models of breast, colorectal and bladder cancers, lymphoma and melanoma. This drug has achieved complete tumor elimination in a subset of patients with Merkel cell carcinoma during Phase 1b/2 clinical trials, earning FDA fast-track and orphan drug status. It was recently licensed to Bluejay Therapeutics to treat hepatitis.

In 2000, Mirkin founded the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN) at Northwestern University, which he also directs. Research at the IIN has led to over 2,000 new commercial products sold globally and the creation of more than 40 startup companies. The IIN has collectively brought together over $1.2 billion to support research, education and infrastructure at Northwestern since its inception.

Mirkin is the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry and a professor of medicine, chemical and biological engineering, biomedical engineering, and materials science and engineering at Northwestern. He is among an elite group of scientists elected to all three branches of the U.S. National Academies — the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mirkin served on President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology for eight years.

Congratulations to all of the winners in all of the categories!

As for the Norway announcement, it makes a bit of sense given that Fred Kavli was a Norwegian American. However, it’s a little hard to avoid the suspicion that there might be some regional and prize rivalry between Norway with its Kavli and Sweden its Nobel..

Brainlike transistor and human intelligence

This brainlike transistor (not a memristor) is important because it functions at room temperature as opposed to others, which require cryogenic temperatures.

A December 20, 2023 Northwestern University news release (received via email; also on EurekAlert) fills in the details,

  • Researchers develop transistor that simultaneously processes and stores information like the human brain
  • Transistor goes beyond categorization tasks to perform associative learning
  • Transistor identified similar patterns, even when given imperfect input
  • Previous similar devices could only operate at cryogenic temperatures; new transistor operates at room temperature, making it more practical

EVANSTON, Ill. — Taking inspiration from the human brain, researchers have developed a new synaptic transistor capable of higher-level thinking.

Designed by researchers at Northwestern University, Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the device simultaneously processes and stores information just like the human brain. In new experiments, the researchers demonstrated that the transistor goes beyond simple machine-learning tasks to categorize data and is capable of performing associative learning.

Although previous studies have leveraged similar strategies to develop brain-like computing devices, those transistors cannot function outside cryogenic temperatures. The new device, by contrast, is stable at room temperatures. It also operates at fast speeds, consumes very little energy and retains stored information even when power is removed, making it ideal for real-world applications.

The study was published today (Dec. 20 [2023]) in the journal Nature.

“The brain has a fundamentally different architecture than a digital computer,” said Northwestern’s Mark C. Hersam, who co-led the research. “In a digital computer, data move back and forth between a microprocessor and memory, which consumes a lot of energy and creates a bottleneck when attempting to perform multiple tasks at the same time. On the other hand, in the brain, memory and information processing are co-located and fully integrated, resulting in orders of magnitude higher energy efficiency. Our synaptic transistor similarly achieves concurrent memory and information processing functionality to more faithfully mimic the brain.”

Hersam is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. He also is chair of the department of materials science and engineering, director of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and member of the International Institute for Nanotechnology. Hersam co-led the research with Qiong Ma of Boston College and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero of MIT.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have motivated researchers to develop computers that operate more like the human brain. Conventional, digital computing systems have separate processing and storage units, causing data-intensive tasks to devour large amounts of energy. With smart devices continuously collecting vast quantities of data, researchers are scrambling to uncover new ways to process it all without consuming an increasing amount of power. Currently, the memory resistor, or “memristor,” is the most well-developed technology that can perform combined processing and memory function. But memristors still suffer from energy costly switching.

“For several decades, the paradigm in electronics has been to build everything out of transistors and use the same silicon architecture,” Hersam said. “Significant progress has been made by simply packing more and more transistors into integrated circuits. You cannot deny the success of that strategy, but it comes at the cost of high power consumption, especially in the current era of big data where digital computing is on track to overwhelm the grid. We have to rethink computing hardware, especially for AI and machine-learning tasks.”

To rethink this paradigm, Hersam and his team explored new advances in the physics of moiré patterns, a type of geometrical design that arises when two patterns are layered on top of one another. When two-dimensional materials are stacked, new properties emerge that do not exist in one layer alone. And when those layers are twisted to form a moiré pattern, unprecedented tunability of electronic properties becomes possible.

For the new device, the researchers combined two different types of atomically thin materials: bilayer graphene and hexagonal boron nitride. When stacked and purposefully twisted, the materials formed a moiré pattern. By rotating one layer relative to the other, the researchers could achieve different electronic properties in each graphene layer even though they are separated by only atomic-scale dimensions. With the right choice of twist, researchers harnessed moiré physics for neuromorphic functionality at room temperature.

“With twist as a new design parameter, the number of permutations is vast,” Hersam said. “Graphene and hexagonal boron nitride are very similar structurally but just different enough that you get exceptionally strong moiré effects.”

To test the transistor, Hersam and his team trained it to recognize similar — but not identical — patterns. Just earlier this month, Hersam introduced a new nanoelectronic device capable of analyzing and categorizing data in an energy-efficient manner, but his new synaptic transistor takes machine learning and AI one leap further.

“If AI is meant to mimic human thought, one of the lowest-level tasks would be to classify data, which is simply sorting into bins,” Hersam said. “Our goal is to advance AI technology in the direction of higher-level thinking. Real-world conditions are often more complicated than current AI algorithms can handle, so we tested our new devices under more complicated conditions to verify their advanced capabilities.”

First the researchers showed the device one pattern: 000 (three zeros in a row). Then, they asked the AI to identify similar patterns, such as 111 or 101. “If we trained it to detect 000 and then gave it 111 and 101, it knows 111 is more similar to 000 than 101,” Hersam explained. “000 and 111 are not exactly the same, but both are three digits in a row. Recognizing that similarity is a higher-level form of cognition known as associative learning.”

In experiments, the new synaptic transistor successfully recognized similar patterns, displaying its associative memory. Even when the researchers threw curveballs — like giving it incomplete patterns — it still successfully demonstrated associative learning.

“Current AI can be easy to confuse, which can cause major problems in certain contexts,” Hersam said. “Imagine if you are using a self-driving vehicle, and the weather conditions deteriorate. The vehicle might not be able to interpret the more complicated sensor data as well as a human driver could. But even when we gave our transistor imperfect input, it could still identify the correct response.”

The study, “Moiré synaptic transistor with room-temperature neuromorphic functionality,” was primarily supported by the National Science Foundation.

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

Moiré synaptic transistor with room-temperature neuromorphic functionality by Xiaodong Yan, Zhiren Zheng, Vinod K. Sangwan, Justin H. Qian, Xueqiao Wang, Stephanie E. Liu, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Su-Yang Xu, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, Qiong Ma & Mark C. Hersam. Nature volume 624, pages 551–556 (2023) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06791-1 Published online: 20 December 2023 Issue Date: 21 December 2023

This paper is behind a paywall.

Everlasting dirt-powered sensors for agriculture?

Caption: The fuel cell’s 3D printed cap peeks above the ground. The cap keeps debris out of the device while enabling air flow. Credit: Bill Yen/Northwestern University

A January 12, 2024 Northwestern University news release (also received via email and also on EurekAlert both published January 15, 2024) describes this dirt-powered research from the US, Note: Links have been removed,

*New fuel cell harnesses naturally occurring microbes to generate electricity

*Soil-powered sensors to successfully monitor soil moisture and detect touch

*New tech was robust enough to withstand drier soil conditions and flooding

*Fuel cell could replace batteries in sensors used for precision agriculture

EVANSTON, Ill. — A Northwestern University-led team of researchers has developed a new fuel cell that harvests energy from microbes living in dirt. 

About the size of a standard paperback book, the completely soil-powered technology could fuel underground sensors used in precision agriculture and green infrastructure. This potentially could offer a sustainable, renewable alternative to batteries, which hold toxic, flammable chemicals that leach into the ground, are fraught with conflict-filled supply chains and contribute to the ever-growing problem of electronic waste.

To test the new fuel cell, the researchers used it to power sensors measuring soil moisture and detecting touch, a capability that could be valuable for tracking passing animals. To enable wireless communications, the researchers also equipped the soil-powered sensor with a tiny antenna to transmit data to a neighboring base station by reflecting existing radio frequency signals.

Not only did the fuel cell work in both wet and dry conditions, but its power also outlasted similar technologies by 120%.

The research will be published today (Jan. 12 [2024]) in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. The study authors also are releasing all designs, tutorials and simulation tools to the public, so others may use and build upon the research.

“The number of devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) is constantly growing,” said Northwestern alumnus Bill Yen, who led the work. “If we imagine a future with trillions of these devices, we cannot build every one of them out of lithium, heavy metals and toxins that are dangerous to the environment. We need to find alternatives that can provide low amounts of energy to power a decentralized network of devices. In a search for solutions, we looked to soil microbial fuel cells, which use special microbes to break down soil and use that low amount of energy to power sensors. As long as there is organic carbon in the soil for the microbes to break down, the fuel cell can potentially last forever.”

“These microbes are ubiquitous; they already live in soil everywhere,” said Northwestern’s George Wells, a senior author on the study. “We can use very simple engineered systems to capture their electricity. We’re not going to power entire cities with this energy. But we can capture minute amounts of energy to fuel practical, low-power applications.”

Wells is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. Now a Ph.D. student at Stanford University, Yen started this project when he was an undergraduate researcher in Wells’ laboratory.

Solutions for a dirty job

In recent years, farmers worldwide increasingly have adopted precision agriculture as a strategy to improve crop yields. The tech-driven approach relies on measuring precise levels of moisture, nutrients and contaminants in soil to make decisions that enhance crop health. This requires a widespread, dispersed network of electronic devices to continuously collect environmental data.

“If you want to put a sensor out in the wild, in a farm or in a wetland, you are constrained to putting a battery in it or harvesting solar energy,” Yen said. “Solar panels don’t work well in dirty environments because they get covered with dirt, do not work when the sun isn’t out and take up a lot of space. Batteries also are challenging because they run out of power. Farmers are not going to go around a 100-acre farm to regularly swap out batteries or dust off solar panels.”

To overcome these challenges, Wells, Yen and their collaborators wondered if they could instead harvest energy from the existing environment. “We could harvest energy from the soil that farmers are monitoring anyway,” Yen said.

‘Stymied efforts’

Making their first appearance in 1911, soil-based microbial fuel cells (MFCs) operate like a battery — with an anode, cathode and electrolyte. But instead of using chemicals to generate electricity, MFCs harvest electricity from bacteria that naturally donate electrons to nearby conductors. When these electrons flow from the anode to the cathode, it creates an electric circuit.

But in order for microbial fuel cells to operate without disruption, they need to stay hydrated and oxygenated — which is tricky when buried underground within dry dirt.

“Although MFCs have existed as a concept for more than a century, their unreliable performance and low output power have stymied efforts to make practical use of them, especially in low-moisture conditions,” Yen said.

Winning geometry

With these challenges in mind, Yen and his team embarked on a two-year journey to develop a practical, reliable soil-based MFC. His expedition included creating — and comparing — four different versions. First, the researchers collected a combined nine months of data on the performance of each design. Then, they tested their final version in an outdoor garden.

The best-performing prototype worked well in dry conditions as well as within a water-logged environment. The secret behind its success: Its geometry. Instead of using a traditional design, in which the anode and cathode are parallel to one another, the winning fuel cell leveraged a perpendicular design.

Made of carbon felt (an inexpensive, abundant conductor to capture the microbes’ electrons), the anode is horizontal to the ground’s surface. Made of an inert, conductive metal, the cathode sits vertically atop the anode. 

Although the entire device is buried, the vertical design ensures that the top end is flush with the ground’s surface. A 3D-printed cap rests on top of the device to prevent debris from falling inside. And a hole on top and an empty air chamber running alongside the cathode enable consistent airflow.  

The lower end of the cathode remains nestled deep beneath the surface, ensuring that it stays hydrated from the moist, surrounding soil — even when the surface soil dries out in the sunlight. The researchers also coated part of the cathode with waterproofing material to allow it to breathe during a flood. And, after a potential flood, the vertical design enables the cathode to dry out gradually rather than all at once.

On average, the resulting fuel cell generated 68 times more power than needed to operate its sensors. It also was robust enough to withstand large changes in soil moisture — from somewhat dry (41% water by volume) to completely underwater.

Making computing accessible

The researchers say all components for their soil-based MFC can be purchased at a local hardware store. Next, they plan to develop a soil-based MFC made from fully biodegradable materials. Both designs bypass complicated supply chains and avoid using conflict minerals.

“With the COVID-19 pandemic, we all became familiar with how a crisis can disrupt the global supply chain for electronics,” said study co-author Josiah Hester, a former Northwestern faculty member who is now at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “We want to build devices that use local supply chains and low-cost materials so that computing is accessible for all communities.”

The study, “Soil-powered computing: The engineer’s guide to practical soil microbial fuel cell design,” was supported by the National Science Foundation (award number CNS-2038853), the Agricultural and Food Research Initiative (award number 2023-67021-40628) from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, VMware Research and 3M.

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

Soil-Powered Computing: The Engineer’s Guide to Practical Soil Microbial Fuel Cell Design by Bill Yen, Laura Jaliff, Louis Gutierrez, Philothei Sahinidis, Sadie Bernstein, John Madden, Stephen Taylor, Colleen Josephson, Pat Pannuto, Weitao Shuai, George Wells, Nivedita Arora, Josiah Hester. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies Volume 7 Issue 4 Article No.: 196 pp 1–40 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3631410 Published: 12 January 2024

This paper is open access.

Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Authorization of the US 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act

The US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) was signed into existence by then US President Bill Clinton in 2000 (one of his last official acts while still in office) but it was then US President George W. Bush who signed the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act in 2003. My understanding is the act gave the NNI a more permanent status.

In any event it’s the 20th anniversary of the 2003 signing of the act as noted in a December 6, 2023 posting by : Lynn L. Bergeson and Carla N. Hutton on the National Law Review blog, Note: A link has been removed,

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO) announced on December 4, 2023, a series of events to drive U.S. leadership in nanotechnology, in celebration of the 20-year anniversary of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act. The announcement notes that for the past two decades, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) “has worked with more than 20 departments and agencies to advance a vision to understand and control matter at the nanoscale, for the benefit of society.” …

A December 4, 2023 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) news release announced the 20th anniversary and celebrations, Note: Links have been removed,

In celebration of the 20-year anniversary of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO) are announcing a series of events to drive U.S. leadership in nanotechnology.

For the past two decades, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) has worked with more than 20 departments and agencies to advance a vision to understand and control matter at the nanoscale, for the benefit of society. Coordination across the government has allowed Americans to safely enjoy the benefits of nanotechnology, which has led to revolutions in technology and industry, including faster microchips, powerful mRNA vaccines, and clean energy technologies. Meanwhile, carbon nanotubes have improved the power and lifecycle of batteries; quantum dots make flat screen TVs more vibrant; and nanoparticles allow for faster medical diagnostics.

“Over the years, the NNI has dynamically and responsibly responded to the needs of the country,” said Dr. Branden Brough, Director of NNCO, which coordinates the NNI. “The initiative is a model for collaborative and thoughtful technology development, while supporting the rapid development of other emerging fields by creating the infrastructure and workforce development programs that bolster these growing industries.”

The NNI community will host a symposium on March 5, 2024 [emphasis mine] at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, D.C., to recognize the impact of research and development at the nanoscale and plan the NNI’s promising future. The event is open to the public. …

This week, as we celebrate the Act’s signing, the NNCO will release a series of reports and stories that illustrate the impact of the NNI. This includes readouts from the Nano4EARTH roundtable discussions [emphasis mine] about applying nanotechnology solutions to address climate change, such as surface technologies, new batteries and energy storage solutions, and greenhouse gas capture approaches. Also, the NNCO will highlight a new independent study [emphasis mine] about how the U.S. nanotechnology community contributes tens of billions of dollars—and potentially hundreds of billions of dollars—to the economy each year. And, to highlight the importance of this growing field, NNCO will feature the stories of early-career scientists who represent the promising future of nanotechnology.

Additional events will be held during the coming months, including science cafes across the country, activities at local museums, and podcasts and articles in the media. For more information about these activities, visit the NNI website.

The report/study

The independent study (Economic Impact Analysis: 20 Years of Nanotechnology Investments, 2002 – 2022) mentioned in the OSTP news release was launched on December 5, 2023 and highlighted here in a January 2, 2024 posting.

The symposium

Here’s a poster of the March 5, 2024 symposium celebrating the 20th anniversary of the act,

There’s a registration page where you can register for the in-person symposium and find more information about the speakers. I thought introduction and agenda from the registration page might be of interest, Note: A link has been removed,

Scientists and engineers across many fields and disciplines are united by their work at the nanoscale. Their diverse efforts have helped produce everything from faster microchips to powerful mRNA vaccines. The transformative impact of this work has been spurred by the coordination and focus on U.S. nanotechnology established by the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act in 2003. Celebrating such a broad impact and envisioning the future can be quite challenging, but this event will bring together voices from across the emerging technology landscape. There will be experts who can speak on the importance of nanotechnology in quantum engineering, optics, EHS, plastics, DEIA, microelectronics, medicine, education, manufacturing, and more. We can’t predict what will emerge from this lively discussion between researchers, policymakers, members of industry, educators, and the public, but the conversation can only benefit from including more diverse perspectives – especially yours.

AGENDA

8:30-9:00   Coffee and refreshments

9:00-9:05   Welcome and Introduction

9:05-9:30   Policy Perspectives #1

9:30-10:15  Morning Keynote

10:15-10:45  Coffee Break

10:45-11:30  Panel: Responsible Development

11:30-12:15  Panel: Fundamental Research

12:15-1:15  Lunch, Poster Session, and Networking

1:15-1:45  Policy Perspectives #2

1:45-2:30  Keynote Panel: The Future of Nanotechnology

2:30-3:15  Panel: Workforce Development

3:15-3:45  Break

3:45-4:30  Panel: Infrastructure

4:30-5:15  Panel: Commercialization

5:15-6:00  Closing Keynote

6:00-7:00  Reception Sponsored by the Kavli Foundation

No details about exactly what is being discussed but it certainly seems like it will be a busy day.

Nano4EARTH

I found the OSTP news release a little confusing with regard to the “readouts from the Nano4EARTH roundtable discussions” but here’s how the Nano4EARTH (Climate Change National Nanotechnology Challenge) webpage describes its upcoming workshop and roundtables,

Nano4EARTH Kick-off Workshop

Click here for information about the Nano4EARTH Kick-off hybrid workshop, to be held in Washington, DC and online on Jan. 24–25, 2023.

Nano4EARTH Roundtable Discussions

The Nano4EARTH roundtable discussions aim to identify fundamental knowledge gaps, needs, and opportunities to advance current energy efficiency, sustainable development, and climate change goals. By convening stakeholders from different sectors, backgrounds, and expertise, the goals of these roundtables are to identify applicable lessons across the spectrum of technologies, discuss system-specific needs, scalability and commercialization challenges, and potential paths forward.

The topics of the roundtables were identified at the Nano4EARTH Kick-off Workshop as particularly promising areas that could have an impact in a short time frame (four years or less). 

Roundtables:

Coatings, Lubricants, Membranes, and Other Interface Technologies

Roundtable Information, Discussion Summary

Batteries and Energy Storage

Roundtable Information, Discussion Summary

Capture, Storage, and Use of Greenhouse Gases

Roundtable Information, Discussion Summary

Nano4EARTH Roundtable Discussion on Catalysts (January 24, 2024)

Roundtable Information

Other celebrations around the country

There’s this December 11, 2023 notice from the “Celebrating nanotechnology around the country” webpage on the NNI website,

In celebration of the 20-year anniversary of the signing of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which codified the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office is showing its appreciation for the many organizations across the country that have put together engagement events with the general public to raise awareness about nanotechnology.

Such events (compiled by the National Informal STEM Education (NISE) Network) include:

Nanotechnology Day Activities in Arizona

Family Science Nights in Greensboro, NC

Celebrating 45 Years of Nanoscale Research at the Cornell Nanoscale Science and Technology Facility

Twenty Years of Nanotechnology! Opportunity to engage your community with NanoDays activities

The end

Chad Mirkin at Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois, US) who’s a pretty big deal in the nanomedicine field wrote an October 29, 2021 introductory essay for Scientific American,

A Big Bet on Nanotechnology Has Paid Off

The National Nanotechnology Initiative promised a lot. It has delivered more

We’re now more than two decades out from the initial announcement of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a federal program from President Bill Clinton founded in 2000 to support nanotechnology research and development in universities, government agencies and industry laboratories across the United States. It was a significant financial bet on a field that was better known among the general public for science fiction than scientific achievement. Today it’s clear that the NNI did more than influence the direction of research in the U.S. It catalyzed a worldwide effort and spurred an explosion of creativity in the scientific community. And we’re reaping the rewards not just in medicine, but also clean energy, environmental remediation and beyond.

Before the NNI, there were people who thought nanotechnology was a gimmick. I began my research career in chemistry, but it seemed to me that nanotechnology was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the opening of a new field that crossed scientific disciplines. In the wake of the NNI, my university, Northwestern University, made the strategic decision to establish the International Institute for Nanotechnology, which now represents more than $1 billion in pure nanotechnology research, educational programs and supporting infrastructure. Other universities across the U.S. made similar investments, creating new institutes and interdisciplinary partnerships.

He’s a little euphoric but his perspective and the information he offers is worth knowing about.

Nanoscientists speculate that artificial life forms could be medicine of the future

Even after all these years, my jaw is still capable of dropping but then I read the details. This looks a lot like ‘medical nanobots’ which researchers have been talking about for a long time. Nice twist on a familiar theme. From an October 5, 2023 news item on ScienceDaily,

Imagine a life form that doesn’t resemble any of the organisms found on the tree of life. One that has its own unique control system, and that a doctor would want to send into your body. It sounds like a science fiction movie, but according to nanoscientists, it can—and should—happen in the future.

Creating artificial life is a recurring theme in both science and popular literature, where it conjures images of creeping slime creatures with malevolent intentions or super-cute designer pets. At the same time, the question arises: What role should artificial life play in our environment here on Earth, where all life forms are created by nature and have their own place and purpose?

Associate professor Chenguang Lou from the Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Pharmacy, University of Southern Denmark, together with Professor Hanbin Mao from Kent State University, is the parent of a special artificial hybrid molecule that could lead to the creation of artificial life forms. They have now published a review in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science on the state of research in the field behind their creation. The field is called “hybrid peptide-DNA nanostructures,” and it is an emerging field, less than ten years old.

An October 5, 2023 University of Southern Denmark press release (also on EurekAlert) by Birgitte Svennevig, which originated the news item, shares the researcher’s (Chenguang Lou) vision for the research and more technical details about “hybrid peptide-DNA nanostructures” along with other international research efforts,

Lou’s vision is to create viral vaccines (modified and weakened versions of a virus) and artificial life forms that can be used for diagnosing and treating diseases.

“In nature, most organisms have natural enemies, but some do not. For example, some disease-causing viruses have no natural enemy. It would be a logical step to create an artificial life form that could become an enemy to them,” he says.

Similarly, he envisions such artificial life forms can act as vaccines against viral infection and can be used as nanorobots [also known as nanobots] or nanomachines loaded with medication or diagnostic elements and sent into a patient’s body.

“An artificial viral vaccine may be about 10 years away. An artificial cell, on the other hand, is on the horizon because it consists of many elements that need to be controlled before we can start building with them. But with the knowledge we have, there is, in principle, no hindrance to produce artificial cellular organisms in the future,” he says.

What are the building blocks that Lou and his colleagues in this field will use to create viral vaccines and artificial life? DNA and peptides are some of the most important biomolecules in nature, making DNA technology and peptide technology the two most powerful molecular tools in the nanotechnological toolkit today. DNA technology provides precise control over programming, from the atomic level to the macro level, but it can only provide limited chemical functions since it only has four bases: A, C, G, and T. Peptide technology, on the other hand, can provide sufficient chemical functions on a large scale, as there are 20 amino acids to work with. Nature uses both DNA and peptides to build various protein factories found in cells, allowing them to evolve into organisms.

Recently, Hanbin Mao and Chenguang Lou have succeeded in linking designed three-stranded DNA structures with three-stranded peptide structures, thus creating an artificial hybrid molecule that combines the strengths of both. This work was published in Nature Communications in 2022. (read the article here “Chirality transmission in macromolecular domains” and the press release at https://www.sdu.dk/en/om_sdu/fakulteterne/naturvidenskab/nyheder-2022/supermolekyle)

Elsewhere in the world, other researchers are also working on connecting DNA and peptides because this connection forms a strong foundation for the development of more advanced biological entities and life forms.

At Oxford University, researchers have succeeded in building a nanomachine made of DNA and peptides that can drill through a cell membrane, creating an artificial membrane channel through which small molecules can pass. (Spruijt et al., Nat. Nanotechnol. 2018, 13, 739-745)

At Arizona State University, Nicholas Stephanopoulos and colleagues have enabled DNA and peptides to self-assemble into 2D and 3D structures. (Buchberger et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2020, 142, 1406-1416)

At Northwest University [Northwestern University?], researchers have shown that microfibers can form in conjunction with DNA and peptides self-assembling. DNA and peptides operate at the nano level, so when considering the size differences, microfibers are huge. (Freeman et al., Science, 2018, 362, 808-813)

At Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, scientists have used hybrid molecules to create an onion-like spherical structure containing cancer medication, which holds promise to be used in the body to target cancerous tumors. (Chotera et al., Chem. Eur. J., 2018, 24, 10128-10135)

“In my view, the overall value of all these efforts is that they can be used to improve society’s ability to diagnose and treat sick people. Looking forward, I will not be surprised that one day we can arbitrarily create hybrid nanomachines, viral vaccines and even artificial life forms from these building blocks to help the society to combat those difficult-to-cure diseases. It would be a revolution in healthcare,” says Chenguang Lou.

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

Peptide-DNA conjugates as building blocks for de novo design of hybrid nanostructures by Mathias Bogetoft Danielsen, Hanbin Mao, Chenguang Lou. Cell Reports Physical Science Volume 4, Issue 10, 18 October 2023, 101620 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2023.101620

This paper is open access.

The sounds of recent (December 2023) seismic activity in Iceland

On the heels of yesterday’s When the rocks sing “I got rhythm” (my December 18, 2023 posting), I received (via email) a media notice/reminder/update about a Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois, US) app that allows you to listen,

From the original November 16, 2023 Northwestern University news release by Amanda Morris (also published as a November 16, 2023 news item on phys.org),

As seismic activity intensifies ahead of an impending eruption of a fissure near Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano, the island’s Reykjanes Peninsula is experiencing hundreds of earthquakes per day.

Now, listeners can follow along through Northwestern University’s Earthtunes app. Developed in 2019, the app transforms seismic frequencies into audible pitches. Whereas a classic seismometer records motions in the Earth’s surface as squiggly lines scratched across a page, Earthtunes enables users to hear, rather than see, activity.

So far, Iceland’s recent, ongoing seismic activity sounds like a jarring symphony of doors slamming, hail pelting against a tin roof or window and people cracking trays of ice cubes.

By listening to activities recorded by the Global Seismographic Network station (named BORG), located to the north-northeast of Reykjavik, people can hear how the seismic activity has changed around the Fagradalsfjall area.

In this audio clip, listeners can hear 24 hours of activity recorded from Friday, Nov. 10, into Saturday, Nov. 11. Peppered with a cacophony of sharp knocking noises, it sounds like someone is insistently banging on a door.

“The activity is formidable, exciting and scary,” said Northwestern seismologist Suzan van der Lee, who co-developed Earthtunes. “Iceland did the right thing by evacuating residents in nearby Grindavik and the nearby Svartsengi geothermal power plant, one of the world’s oldest geothermal power plants, which was the first to combine electricity generation with hot water for heating in the region.”

Van der Lee is the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. In her research, she applies data science to millions of records of seismic waves in order to decode seismic signals, which harbor valuable information about the Earth’s interior dynamics.

As hundreds of earthquakes shake the ground, Van der Lee says the impending eruption is reminiscent of the 1973 eruption of Heimaey on Iceland’s Vestmannaeyjar archipelago.

“This level of danger is unprecedented for this area of Iceland, but not for Iceland as a whole,” said van der Lee, who hiked Fagradalsfjall in June. “While most Icelandic volcanoes erupt away from towns and other infrastructure, Icelanders share the terrible memory of an eruption 50 years ago on the island Vestmannaeyjar, during which lava covered part of that island’s town, Heimaey. The residents felt very vulnerable, as the evacuated people of Grindavik feel now. In a few days or weeks, they might no longer have their jobs, homes and most possessions, while still having to feed their families and pay their mortgages. However, partially resulting from that eruption on Vestmannaeyjar, Icelanders are well prepared for the current situation in the Fagradallsfjall-Svartsengi-Grindavik area.” 

Accelerated audio

This audio clip presents the same data, with the pitch increased by 10 octaves. Listeners will hear a long, low rumbling sound, punctuated by an occasional slamming door.

“What you’re hearing is 24 hours of seismic data — filled with earthquake signals,” van der Lee said. “The vast majority of these quakes are associated with the magma intrusion into the crust of the Fagradallsfjall-Svartsengi-Grindavik area of the Reykjanes Peninsula. Seismic data are not audible; their frequencies are too low. So, the 24 hours of data are compressed into approximately 1.5 minutes of audio data. You can hear an unprecedented intensity of earthquakes during the night from last Friday into Saturday and related to a new magma intrusion into the crust area.”

In a third audio clip, the same data is less compressed, with the pitch increased by just seven octaves

“One can hear frequent earthquakes happening at this point,” van der Lee said. “Icelandic seismologists have been monitoring these quakes and their increasing vigor and changing patterns. They recognized similar patterns to earthquake swarms that preceded the 2021-2023 eruptions of the adjacent Fagradallsfjall volcano.”

Earthtunes is supported by the American Geophysical Union and Northwestern’s department of Earth and planetary sciences. Seismic data is obtained from the Earthscope Consortium. The app was designed and developed by van der Lee, Helio Tejedor, Melanie Marzen, Igor Eufrasio, Josephine Anderson, Liam Toney, Cooper Barth, Michael Ji and Leonicio Cabrera.

Jennifer Ouellette’s November 16, 2023 article for Ars Tecnica draws heavily from the news release while delving into the topic of data sonification (making sounds from data), Note: Links have been removed,

….

Sonification of scientific data is an area of growing interest in many different fields. For instance, several years ago, a project called LHCSound built a library of the “sounds” of a top quark jet and the Higgs boson, among others. The project hoped to develop sonification as a technique for analyzing the data from particle collisions so that physicists could “detect” subatomic particles by ear. Other scientists have mapped the molecular structure of proteins in spider silk threads onto musical theory to produce the “sound” of silk in hopes of establishing a radical new way to create designer proteins. And there’s a free app for Android called the Amino Acid Synthesizer that enables users to create their own protein “compositions” from the sounds of amino acids.

The December 19, 2023 Northwestern University media update points to the latest audio file of the eruption of the svartsengi-grindavik fissure in Iceland: 24 hours as of Monday, December 18, 2023 14:00:00 UTC.

Enjoy!

One last thing, there are a number of postings about data sonification here; many but not all scientists and/or communication practitioners think to include audio files.