As the world burns hotter and hotter, we are having to find new ways to deal with fire. I have two stories about fire and technology in the Northern Hemisphere. Perhaps later this year I will be able to round this out with stories about fire and technology from the Southern Hemisphere once the seasons shift. Although I world prefer that at least part of this planet has a quiet fire season.
Europe: France, Spain, and Portugal
John Laurenson wrote an August 4 (?), 2026 article for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news online about the technology being developed to fight fires
Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes across France, Spain and Portugal as wildfires tore through forests and countryside.
In France, four men have already lost their lives fighting the wildfires and another 150 have been injured.
But why are humans and 30-year old planes being used? Why can drones replace soldiers in Ukraine but not firefighters?
Chief sergeant Guillaume Millet, a firefighter of 24 years experience heads the Fire and Rescue Service branch of the CFDT union in the Gironde, the region worst hit by wildfires in France this summer.
He says that while the techniques for tackling fire have not changed much, technology in forest fire detection has.
“The big change, especially in my département, is that now we’ve got cameras assisted by artificial intelligence to watch the forest and see where fires are starting,” Millet says.
“In the Gironde, cameras have replaced the human look-outs we had in watch towers in every town throughout the summer months,” he says. Those lookouts were often students.
The switch has reduced false alarms, he says. “An AI-assisted camera can distinguish with almost total certainty between smoke and dust thrown up by a tractor in a field, for example.”
They have an impressive range as well, detecting fires up to 20km (12 miles) away.
In the Gironde, the system was installed by a company called Midgard. In other parts of France, it’s another French start-up called FireTracking.
“As soon as the system detects a fire, there’s an alert on the fire fighters’ telephones. They open the application and see what the camera is seeing with a x40 [40 times] zoom,” explains FireTracking’s CEO Jean-Simon Chaudier.
“Next to that real-time video there’s a map with the exact location of the fire, the position of any nearby houses and a simulation of how, given the weather, the level of humidity and so on, it is expected to spread from minute to minute,” he adds.
And every minute is vital. “For the past 10 days, for example, we have the feedback from a firefighter that our AI detected seven fires 15 minutes before the first phone call. If you can help a firefighter to save 15 minutes, it’s the difference between a catastrophe and a fire which can be limited to two or three hectares,” Chaudier says.
“After one minute you can put out a fire with a glass of water, after two you need a tank of water, after three minutes you need to send a Canadair,” Chaudier says, talking about the amphibious planes that scoop up water from rivers, lakes and the sea to dump it on the flames that are the spearhead of forest fire fighting here and around the world.
…
AI fire detection is going to get better over the coming years. The French civil protection service has a programme called Condor, for example, which is testing solar-powered drones that carry out continuous patrols with electro-optical cameras and AI.
There are also projects with sensors placed among the trees. Spain’s SenForFire, for example, which measures gases released before flames become visible.
…
TankerVision: AI-powered fire prediction (a Canadian initiative)
As wildfires grow larger, faster and impact more communities across Canada, researchers at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) are developing new technology that could give first responders a critical advantage: the ability to predict how a fire will evolve hours into the future.
Professor Steven Waslander (UTIAS) is working with researchers at Natural Resources Canada and Simon Fraser University on TankerVision — a project aimed at creating more accurate, AI-powered fire prediction models.
…
The team has partnered with government agencies and industry, including BC Wildfire, Alberta Wildfire, Canadian Forestry Services, aircraft operator Conair Aerial Firefighting, and Voxelis, a wildfire monitoring service provider.
“Wildfire growth is currently estimated using 15 to 20 prescribed burns from the 1980s, plus data on weather, wind and forest conditions, all fused with decades of human experience,” says Waslander.
“But this method hasn’t been adapted to current fire severity increases due to climate change and involved a great deal of extrapolation from a limited dataset.”
“Our big idea here is to use AI and computer vision to capture unprecedented numbers of fires from the air to build more sophisticated, data-driven wildfire prediction models.”
To do this, high‑resolution colour and infrared cameras and computers are installed inside the piloted aircraft that are currently used to monitor and fight fires.
In 2024, the team began collecting data onboard a bird-dog aircraft, which circles above wildfires to guide water bombers. These planes spend hours tracking the fire line, making them ideal for gathering continuous, high‑quality footage.
:All the storage is on board the aircraft so our partners can review the data before we start working on it to make sure we aren’t logging any confidential information.”
First, each image is segmented by AI to identify which pixels correspond to fire, smoke or ground. This is trickier than it sounds, as capturing the extent of smoke in an image can be difficult for modern segmentation techniques.
The task poses similar challenges to autonomous navigation in adverse weather conditions — variables Waslander is already familiar with as the lead investigator of the WinTOR all-weather driving program.
…
“Last season, we logged 50 fires, which is currently the highest number recorded in one season,” says Waslander.
“This year, we plan to expand the data collection efforts to three aircraft and hope to capture more than 100 wildfires, sufficient to start developing and validating our prediction models.”
The team is now preparing hardware for this fire season and hopes to expand partnerships across the country, including in Ontario, to help transform how Canada responds to wildfires.
The team’s first research paper, focused on segmentation, has been submitted, with a full-system paper and public dataset planned for release in fall 2026.
Waslander says the project resonates deeply with students and researchers who have witnessed the increase in severe fires firsthand.
“I think everyone involved in the project really feels passionately about the direction we’re going and see it as an opportunity to make a real impact on keeping us safe in the years to come as things get hotter,” says Waslander.
…
I can’t find anything more about TankerVision on the Natural Resources Canada or Simon Fraser University websites. Hopefully more information will become available.
Replacing firefighters?
The short answer is: not anytime soon. All these technology initiatives are aimed at improving our ability to find hot sports and fires and to respond quickly.
Tracking electrical resistance is essential to ensure the accuracy and reliability of electrical measurements worldwide. Since 2019, the units of measurement in the International System (SI) are no longer based on standard samples (kilogram, metre, etc.), but are derived from universal constants such as the speed of light. For electrical resistance, reference is therefore made to electrical conductance – which measures the ability of a material to conduct electricity – quantised (G₀) – a combination of Planck’s constant (h) and the elementary charge (e) – typically measured using the quantum Hall effect, a technique that provides accurate and reproducible values but requires expensive cryogenic systems and high-intensity magnetic fields available in only a few national metrology institutes (NMIs).
The study ‘Quantum resistance memristor for International System of Units intrinsically traceable standard’, co-authored by a group of researchers from Politecnico di Torino together with leading European metrology centres and published today in the prestigious journal Nature Nanotechnology, introduces a new standard for the traceability of electrical resistance: memristors, nanometric devices capable of modifying their conductivity in response to external stimuli. This is an innovative discovery: memristors can provide stable resistance values that are intrinsically correlated with the fundamental constants of nature, with the possibility of programming the resistance by modifying the silver nanofilaments that characterise them.
These changes can be adjusted at the atomic level even at room temperature, thus generating quantum leaps – fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics referring to the phenomenon whereby a quantum system passes from one energy level to another in a discontinuous manner, i.e. without passing through intermediate states, as happens with an electron in an atom – discrete, corresponding to G0 (or multiples) that can be measured with conventional reading systems. This approach paves the way for the concept of “NMI-on-a-chip”, i.e. the possibility of integrating the functions of an entire national metrology institute at the microchip level.
In the future, electrical measuring devices such as multimeters – among the most widely used instruments in the industry for measuring electrical quantities – could thus have a memristor as a reference for self-calibration, i.e. to automatically adjust their measurement or operating parameters so as to maintain the accuracy and correctness of results without external human intervention. This will enable the use of simplified calibration procedures in industry and in sectors where the portability of calibrated measurements is a necessity.
“The results obtained and published in the prestigious journal Nature Nanotechnology are the fruit of the European MEMQuD project, where fundamental research by academic institutions such as Politecnico di Torino and the Forschungszentrum Jülich on the phenomenon of “electrochemical polishing” (thanks to which nanofilaments can be “filed” at the atomic level) was coupled with the methodological rigour of the national metrology institutes of Italy, Turkey, Spain, Portugal and Germany”, comment the co-authors of the study Carlo Ricciardi and Fabio Michieletti, respectively professor and post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Applied Science and Technology-DISAT and members of the NaMeS group at Politecnico di Torino.
Microchips with a memristor could replace an entire electrical resistance calibration laboratory
An international research collaboration with the involvement of the UAB demonstrates for the first time that memristors, electronic devices at the nanoscale, can easily calibrate electrical resistance for certain applications without requiring large and complex laboratories working at extreme temperatures and very high magnetic fields. The work, published in Nature Nanotechnology, explores for the first time the metrological applications of these devices in calibration procedures of electronic systems.
Measuring electrical resistance with maximum precision to be used as a standard in metrology requires complex laboratories at temperatures close to the absolute zero and magnetic fields that are more intense than those used in clinical magnetic resonance imaging.
International research under the framework of the European project MEMQuD, which included the involvement of UAB Department of Electronic Engineering professors Enrique Miranda and Jordi Suñé, demonstrates that memristors can provide stable resistance values directly linked to fundamental constants of nature. Thus, they can become a new much simpler standard than current systems for calibrations of this magnitude.
Measurement standards based on constants of nature
Since 2019, all base units of the International System of Units (SI)—including the metre, second, and kilogram—have been based on fundamental natural constants. For example, the kilogram, which was once based on the “prototype kilogram,” is now linked to Planck’s constant h. A metre is defined with respect to the speed of light, and a second by the oscillation of the cesium atom.
Thanks to laser interferometers and atomic clocks, units of length and time can be verified relatively easily worldwide. The situation is quite different for physical quantities such as mass and electrical units. Their metrological traceability is so complex that the measurements are feasible only in a handful of national metrology institutes.
Until now, the quantum Hall effect has served as the standard for electrical resistance. While it provides highly precise and reproducible values, it requires extreme laboratory conditions, i.e. temperatures close to absolute zero and high magnetic fields. The measurements require sophisticated cryogenic systems and strictly controlled facilities.
Memristors as standard resistance measurement systems
Memristors offer a radically different approach. Originally developed as building blocks for novel computing architectures, such as non-volatile memories and neuromorphic circuits emulating computations in the brain, they exhibit a switching behavior that directly follows universal constants.
Functionally, they act as programmable resistors—essentially resistors with memory. This resistance can be changed by applying external voltages or currents. Conductive nanofilaments of individual silver atoms forms inside them. By applying electrical bias, these filaments can be adjusted with atomic precision so that their conductance changes not continuously, but in discrete quantum steps.
“We have confirmed that memristors can reliably generate discrete resistance states that are directly related to universal constants of nature. In 1998, our group already revealed these quantum effects for the first time in the dielectric breakdown of thin insulators. For certain applications, these devices can be used for calibration without the need of complex cooling systems or high magnetic fields”, says UAB professor Enrique Miranda.
A national metrology institute condensed into one microchip
This approach makes it possible to talk about a concept known as “NMI-in-a-chip”: the service of a national metrology institute condensed into a microchip. In the future, this could mean that a measuring device has its resistance reference built-in directly into the chip. Lengthy calibration chains—from measurements in metrology institutes, reference resistors and precision calibrators, to the calibration of end-user devices—would no longer be necessary. Instead of repeatedly sending a multimeter to the calibration laboratory, it could check itself internally, i.e. a built-in calibration standard.
Applications in research and industries
Applications range from simplified calibration procedures in industry to mobile measuring systems and portable standards for research in the field or in space. “We are at the beginning of a paradigm shift—moving away from complex large-scale facilities towards intrinsic, quantum-accurate standards that can be integrated into any chip”, says UAB professor Jordi Suñé.
Quantified electrical conductance
The foundation of this work is the quantized electrical conductance G₀, derived from Planck’s constant h and the elementary charge e. In the experiments, memristors were reproducibly programmed in air at room temperature into stable conductance states of exactly 1·G₀ and 2·G₀, maintained over extended periods of time. Measurements taken at participating research institutes in Italy, Germany, Spain, Turkey, and Portugal revealed a deviation of 3.8 percent for 1·G₀ and 0.6 percent for 2·G₀. The key lies in a process known as “electrochemical polishing”. In this process, unstable atoms are removed from the conducting filament until only a stable quantized conduction channel remains.
The European project MEMQuD, funded by the European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research (EMPIR) of the EURAMET alliance of metrology organisations, is an international collaboration with the involvement of the UAB, the INRiM (Italy), the Forschungszentrum Jülich, Peter Grünberg Institute (Germany), the Politecnico di Torino (Italy), the IMDEA Nanociencia (Spain), the TUBITAK National Metrology Institute (Turkey), the TOBB University of Economics and Technology (Turkey), the Instituto Português da Qualidade (Portugal), and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Bulgaria).
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
A quantum resistance memristor for an intrinsically traceable International System of Units standard by Gianluca Milano, Xin Zheng, Fabio Michieletti, Giuseppe Leonetti, Gabriel Caballero, Ilker Oztoprak, Luca Boarino, Özgür Bozat, Luca Callegaro, Natascia De Leo, Isabel Godinho, Daniel Granados, Itir Koymen, Mariela Menghini, Enrique Miranda, Luís Ribeiro, Carlo Ricciardi, Jordi Suñe, Vitor Cabral & Ilia Valov. Nature Nanotechnology volume 20, pages 1884–1890 (2025) Published: 27 October 2025 Version of record: 27 October 2025 Issue date: December 2025 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-025-02037-5
Spinal cord injuries are currently incurable with devastating effects on people’s lives, but now a trial at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland offers hope for an effective treatment.
Spinal cord injuries shatter the signal between the brain and body, often resulting in a loss of function.”Unlike a cut on the skin, which typically heals on its own, the spinal cord does not regenerate effectively, making these injuries devastating and currently incurable,” says lead researcher Dr Bruce Harland, a senior research fellow in the School of Pharmacy at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland.
Before birth, and to a lesser extent afterwards, naturally occurring electric fields play a vital role in early nervous system development, encouraging and guiding the growth of nerve tissue along the spinal cord. Scientists are now harnessing this same electrical guidance system in the lab.An implantable electronic device has restored movement following spinal cord injury in an animal study, raising hopes for an effective treatment for humans and even their pets.
“We developed an ultra-thin implant designed to sit directly on the spinal cord, precisely positioned over the injury site in rats,” Dr Harland says.
The device delivers a carefully controlled electrical current across the injury site.
“The aim is to stimulate healing so people can recover functions lost through spinal-cord injury,” Professor Darren Svirskis, director of the CatWalk Cure Programme at the University’s School of Pharmacy says.
Unlike humans, rats have a greater capacity for spontaneous recovery after spinal cord injury, which allowed researchers to compare natural healing with healing supported by electrical stimulation.
After four weeks, animals that received daily electric field treatment showed improved movement compared with those who did not.
Throughout the 12-week study, they responded more quickly to gentle touch.
“This indicates that the treatment supported recovery of both movement and sensation,” Harland says.
“Just as importantly, our analysis confirmed that the treatment did not cause inflammation or other damage to the spinal cord, demonstrating that it was not only effective but also safe.”
This new study, published in a leading journal, has come out of a partnership between the University of Auckland and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. See Nature Communications.
“Long term, the goal is to transform this technology into a medical device that could benefit people living with these life-changing spinal-cord injuries,” says Professor Maria Asplund of Chalmers University of Technology.
“This study offers an exciting proof of concept showing that electric field treatment can support recovery after spinal cord injury,” says doctoral student Lukas Matter, also from Chalmers University.
The next step is to explore how different doses, including the strength, frequency, and duration of the treatment, affect recovery, to discover the most effective recipe for spinal-cord repair.
An international research team, including scientists from the Institut de Neurociències at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), has developed a new solution to reduce the immune response triggered by neural prosthetics used after limb amputations or severe nerve injuries. The approach consists of coating the electronic implants (which connect the prosthetic device to the patient’s nervous system) with a potent anti-inflammatory drug. This coating helps the body better tolerate the implant, improving its long-term performance and stability.
Neural electrode implants are commonly used in prosthetics to restore communication between the device and the nervous system. However, their long-term effectiveness can be compromised by the body’s natural immune reaction to foreign objects, which leads to the formation of scar tissue around the implant and can impair its function.
Now, a recent study published in Advanced Healthcare Materials by researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Università di Ferrara, the University of Freiburg, and Chalmers University of Technology, conducted as part of the European collaborative project BioFINE, reports a novel method to improve the biocompatibility and chronic stability of these electrodes.
The technique involves activating and modifying the surface of polyimide (a material commonly used for implanted electrodes) using a chemical strategy that enables the covalent binding of the anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone. This innovation allows the drug to be released at the implant site slowly over at least two months, a critical period when the immune system typically mounts its strongest response.
Biological tests showed that this approach reduces inflammation-related signals in immune cells, while maintaining the material’s biocompatibility and mechanical integrity. Animal testing further confirmed that the dexamethasone-releasing implants significantly reduce immune reactions and scar tissue formation around the device.
These findings suggest that the slow and localized release of dexamethasone from the implant surface could extend the functional lifespan of neural prostheses, offering a promising step forward in addressing the long-term challenges of implantable neurotechnology.
“This is a main step that has to be complemented by the demonstration in vivo that this coating improves the functional performance of chronically implanted electrodes in the peripheral nerves, for stimulating and recording nerve signals”, says Dr. Xavier Navarro, principal investigator of the UAB team in the BioFINE project.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Covalent Binding of Dexamethasone to Polyimide Improves Biocompatibility of Neural Implantable Devices by Giulia Turrin, Jose Crugeiras, Chiara Bisquoli, Davide Barboni, Martina Catani, Bruno Rodríguez-Meana, Rita Boaretto, Michele Albicini, Stefano Caramori, Claudio Trapella, Thomas Stieglitz, Yara Baslan, Hanna Karlsson-Fernberg, Fernanda L. Narvaez-Chicaiza, Edoardo Marchini, Alberto Cavazzini, Ruben López-Vales, Maria Asplund, Xavier Navarro, Stefano Carli. Advanced Healthcare Materials Volume 14, Issue 21 August 19, 2025 2405004 First published online: 17 June 2025 OI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adhm.202405004
Researchers from the Department of Physics [at the Autonomous University of Barcelona] have managed to experimentally develop a new magnetic state: a magneto-ionic vortex or “vortion.” The research, published in Nature Communications, allows for an unprecedented level of control of magnetic properties at the nanoscale and at room temperature, and opens new horizons for the development of advanced magnetic devices.
The use of Big Data has multiplied the energy demand in information technologies. Generally, to store information, systems utilize electric currents to write data, which dissipates power by heating the devices. Controlling magnetic memories with voltage, instead of electric currents, can minimise this energy expenditure. One way to achieve this is by using magneto-ionic materials, which allow for the manipulation of their magnetic properties by adding or removing ions through changes in the polarity of the applied voltage. So far, most studies in this area have focused on continuous films, rather than on controlling properties at the nanometric scale in discrete “bits”, essential for high-density data storage. Moreover, it is known that new magnetic phenomena can emerge at the sub-micrometre scale, that do not exist at the macroscopic level, such as magnetic vortices – small swirl-like magnetic structures. These vortices have applications in the way magnetic data are currently recorded and read, as well as in biomedicine. Nevertheless, changing the vortex state in already prepared materials is often impossible or requires large amounts of energy.
Researchers from the UAB Department of Physics, in collaboration with scientists from the ICMAB-CSIC, the ALBA Synchrotron and research institutions in Italy and the United States, propose a new solution that combines magneto-ionics and magnetic vortices. Researchers experimentally developed a new magnetic state that they have named magneto-ionic vortex, or “vortion”. This new object allows “on-demand” control of the magnetic properties of a nanodot (a dot of nanometric dimensions) with high precision. This is achieved by extracting nitrogen ions through the application of voltage, thus allowing for efficient control with very low energy consumption.
“This is a so far unexplored object at the nanoscale,” explains ICREA [Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies] researcher in the UAB Department of Physics Jordi Sort, director of the research. “There is a great demand for controlling magnetic states at the nanoscale but, surprisingly, most of the research in magneto-ionics has so far focused on the study of films of continuous materials. If we look at the effects of ion displacement in discrete structures of nanometre dimensions, the ‘nanodots’ we have analysed, we see that very interesting dynamically evolving spin configurations appear, which are unique to these types of structures”. These spin configurations and the magnetic properties of the vortices vary as a function of the duration of the applied voltage. Thus, different magnetic states (e.g., vortices with different properties or states with uniform magnetic orientation) can be generated from nanodots of an initially non-magnetic material by the gradual extraction of ions through the application of voltage.
“With the ‘vortions’ we developed, we can have unprecedented control of magnetic properties such as magnetisation, coercivity, remanence, anisotropy or the critical fields at which vortions are formed or annihilated. These are fundamental properties for storing information in magnetic memories, which we are now able to control and tune in an analogue and reversible manner by a voltage-activated process with very low energy consumption,” explains Irena Spasojević, postdoctoral researcher in the UAB Department of Physics and first author of the paper. “The voltage actuation procedure, instead of using electric current, prevents heating in devices such as laptops, servers and data centres, and it drastically reduces energy loss.”
Researchers have shown that by precisely controlling the thickness of the voltage-generated magnetic layer, the magnetic state of the material can be varied at will, in a controlled and reversible manner, between a non-magnetic state, a state with a uniform magnetic orientation (such as that found in a magnet), and the new magneto-ionic vortex state.
Ability to mimic the behaviour of neuronal synapses
This unprecedented level of control of magnetic properties at the nanoscale and at room temperature opens new horizons for the development of advanced magnetic devices with functionalities that can be tailored once the material has been synthesised. This provides greater flexibility which is needed to meet specific technological demands. “We envision, for example, the integration of reconfigurable magneto-ionic vortices in neural networks as dynamic synapses, capable of mimicking the behaviour of biological synapses”, says Jordi Sort. In the brain, the connections between neurons, the synapses, have different weights (intensities) that adapt dynamically according to the activity and learning process. Similarly, “vortions” could provide tuneable neuronal synaptic weights, reflected in reconfigurable magnetisation or anisotropy values, for neuromorphic (brain-inspired) spintronic devices. In fact, “the activity of biological neurons and synapses is also controlled by electrical signals and ion migration, analogous to our magneto-ionic units,” comments Irena Spasojević.
Researchers believe that, besides their impact in brain-inspired devices, analogue computing or multi-state data storage systems, vortions may have other potential applications, including medical therapy techniques such as theragnostics, data security, magnetic spin computing devices (spin logics), and the generation of spin waves (magnonics).
The research, led by ICREA professor of the UAB Department of Physics Jordi Sort, and postdoctoral researcher of the UAB Department of Physics Irena Spasojević as the first author of the publication, also included Zheng Ma, from the same department, Aleix Barrera and Anna Palau, from the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), and researchers from the ALBA Synchrotron, the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRiM) of Turin, Italy, and Colorado State University, USA. The study was published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Communications. This study was financed by the REMINDS project from the European Research Council.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Magneto-ionic vortices: voltage-reconfigurable swirling-spin analog-memory nanomagnets by Irena Spasojevic, Zheng Ma, Aleix Barrera, Federica Celegato, Alessandro Magni, Sandra Ruiz-Gómez, Michael Foerster, Anna Palau, Paola Tiberto, Kristen S. Buchanan & Jordi Sort. Nature Communications volume 16, Article number: 1990 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57321-8 Published: 26 February 2025
In addition to the competition to develop commercial quantum computing, there’s the competition to develop commercial nuclear fusion energy. I have four stories about nuclear fusion, one from Spain, one from Chine, one from the US, and one from Vancouver. There are also a couple of segues into history and the recently (April 2, 2025) announced US tariffs (chaos has since ensued as these have become ‘on again/off again’ tariffs) but the bulk of this posting is focused on the latest (January – early April 2025) in fusion energy.
Fission nuclear energy, where atoms are split, is better known; fusion nuclear energy is released when a star is formed. For anyone unfamiliar with the word tokamak as applied to nuclear fusion (which is mentioned in all the stories), you can find out more in the Tokamak Wikipedia entry.
In a pioneering approach to achieve fusion energy, the SMART device has successfully generated its first tokamak plasma. This step brings the international fusion community closer to achieving sustainable, clean, and virtually limitless energy through controlled fusion reactions.
The SMART tokamak, a state-of-the-art experimental fusion device designed, constructed and operated by the Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Laboratory of the University of Seville, is a worldwide unique spherical tokamak due to its flexible shaping capabilities. SMART has been designed to demonstrate the unique physics and engineering properties of Negative Triangularity shaped plasmas towards compact fusion power plants based on Spherical Tokamaks.
Prof. Manuel García Muñoz, Principal Investigator of the SMART tokamak, stated: “This is an important achievement for the entire team as we are now entering the operational phase of SMART. The SMART approach is a potential game changer with attractive fusion performance and power handling for future compact fusion reactors. We have exciting times ahead! Prof. Eleonora Viezzer, co-PI of the SMART project, adds: “We were all very excited to see the first magnetically confined plasma and are looking forward to exploiting the capabilities of the SMART device together with the international scientific community. SMART has awoken great interest worldwide.
When negative becomes positive and compact
The triangularity describes the shape of the plasma. Most tokamaks operate with positive triangularity, meaning that the plasma shape looks like a D. When the D is mirrored (as shown in the figure on the right), the plasma has negative triangularity.
Negative triangularity plasma shapes feature enhanced performance as it suppresses instabilities that expel particles and energy from the plasma, preventing severe damage to the tokamak wall. Besides offering high fusion performance, negative triangularity also feature attractive power handling solutions, given that it covers a larger divertor area for distributing the heat exhaust. This also facilitates the engineering design for future compact fusion power plants.
Fusion2Grid aimed at developing the foundation for the most compact fusion power plant
SMART is the first step in the Fusion2Grid strategy led by the PSFT team and, in collaboration with the international fusion community, is aimed at the most compact and most efficient magnetically confined fusion power plant based on Negative Triangularity shaped Spherical Tokamaks.
SMART will be the first compact spherical tokamak operating at fusion temperatures with negative triangularity shaped plasmas.
The objective of SMART is to provide the physics and engineering basis for the most compact design of a fusion power plant based on high-field Spherical Tokamaks combined with Negative Triangularity. The solenoid-driven plasma represents a major achievement in the timeline of getting SMART online and advancing towards the most compact fusion device.
The Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Lab of the University of Seville hosts the SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak (SMART) and leads several worldwide efforts on energetic particles and plasma transport and stability towards the development of magnetically confined fusion energy.
Caption: The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak achieved a remarkable scientific milestone by maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for an impressive 1,066 seconds. Credit: Image by HFIPS ( Hefei Institutes of Physical Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences)
China has made a business announcement and there is no academic paper mentioned in their January 21, 2025 press release on EurekAlert (also available on phys.org as a January 21, 2025 news item), Note: A link has been removed,
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), commonly known as China’s “artificial sun,” has achieved a remarkable scientific milestone by maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for an impressive 1,066 seconds. This accomplishment, reached on Monday, sets a new world record and marks a significant breakthrough in the pursuit of fusion power generation.
The duration of 1,066 seconds is a critical advancement in fusion research. This milestone, achieved by the Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) at Hefei Institutes of Physical Scienece [sic] (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, far surpasses the previous world record of 403 seconds, also set by EAST in 2023.
The ultimate goal of developing an artificial sun is to replicate the nuclear fusion processes that occurr [sci] in the sun, providing humanity with a limitless and clean energy source, and enabling exploration beyond our solar system.
Scientists worldwide have dedicated over 70 years to this ambitious goal. However, generating electricity from a nuclear fusion device involves overcoming key challenges, including reaching temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius, maintaining stable long-term operation, and ensuring precise control of the fusion process.
“A fusion device must achieve stable operation at high efficiency for thousands of seconds to enable the self-sustaining circulation of plasma, which is essential for the continuous power generation of future fusion plants,” said SONG Yuntao, ASIPP director and also vice president of HFIPS. He said that the recent record is monumental, marking a critical step toward realizing a functional fusion reactor.
According to GONG Xianzu, head of the EAST Physics and Experimental Operations division, several systems of the EAST device have been upgraded since the last round of experiments. For example, the heating system, which previously operated at the equivalent power of nearly 70,000 household microwave ovens, has now doubled its power output while maintaining stability and continuity.
Since its inception in 2006, EAST has served as an open testing platform for both Chinese and international scientists to conduct fusion-related experiments and research.
China officially joined the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program in 2006 as its seventh member. Under the agreement, China is responsible for approximately 9 percent of the project’s construction and operation, with ASIPP serving as the primary institution for the Chinese mission.
ITER, currently under construction in southern France, is set to become the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment and the largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor upon completion.
In recent years, EAST has consistently achieved groundbreaking advancements in high-confinement mode, a fundamental operational mode for experimental fusion reactors like ITER and the future China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR). These accomplishments provide invaluable insights and references for the global development of fusion reactors.
“We hope to expand international collaboration via EAST and bring fusion energy into practical use for humanity,” said SONG.
In Hefei, Anhui Province, China, where EAST is loacated [sic], a new generation of experimental fusion research facilities is currently under construction. These facilities aim to further accelerate the development and application of fusion energy.
I always feel a little less confident about the information when there are mistakes. Three typos in the same press release? Maybe someone forgot to give it a final once over?
Successfully harnessing the power of fusion energy could lead to cleaner and safer energy for all – and contribute substantially to combatting [UK spelling] the climate crisis. Towards this goal, Type One Energy has published a comprehensive, self-consistent, and robust physics basis for a practical fusion pilot power plant.
This groundbreaking research is presented in a series of six peer-reviewed scientific papers in a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP), published by Cambridge University Press.
The articles serve as the foundation for the company’s first fusion power plant project, which Type One Energy is developing with the Tennessee Valley Authority utility in the United States.
Alex Schekochihin, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and Editor of the JPP, spoke with enthusiasm about this development:
“JPP is very proud to provide a platform for rigorous peer review and publication of the papers presenting the physics basis of the Infinity Two stellarator — an innovative and ground-breaking addition to the expanding family of proposed fusion power plant designs.
“Fusion science and technology are experiencing a period of very rapid development, driven by both public and private enthusiasm for fusion power. In this environment of creative and entrepreneurial ferment, it is crucial that new ideas and designs are both publicly shared and thoroughly scrutinised by the scientific community — Type One Energy and JPP are setting the gold standard for how this is done (as we did with Commonwealth Fusion Systems 5 years ago for their SPARC physics basis).”
The new physics design basis for the pilot power plant is a robust effort to consider realistically the complex relationship between challenging, competing requirements that all need to function together for fusion energy to be possible.
This new physics solution also builds on the operating characteristics of high-performing stellarator fusion technology – a stellarator being a machine that uses complex, helical magnetic fields to confine the plasma, thereby enabling scientists to control it and create suitable conditions for fusion. This technology is already being used with success on the world’s largest research stellarator, the Wendelstein 7-X, located in Germany, but the challenge embraced by Type One Energy’s new design is how to scale it up to a pilot plant.
Building the future of energy
Functional fusion technology could offer limitless clean energy. As global energy demands increase and energy security is front of mind, too, this new physics design basis comes at an excellent time.
Christofer Mowry, CEO of Type One Energy, is cognisant of the landmark nature of his company’s achievement and proud of its strong, real-world foundations.
“The physics basis for our new fusion power plant is grounded in Type One Energy’s expert knowledge about reliable, economic, electrical generation for the power grid. We have an organisation that understands this isn’t only about designing a science project.”
This research was developed collaboratively between Type One Energy and a broad coalition of scientists from national laboratories and universities around the world. Collaborating organisations included the US Department of Energy, for using their supercomputers, such as the exascale Frontier machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to perform its physics simulations.
While commercial fusion energy has yet to move from theory into practice, this new research marks an important and promising milestone. Clean and abundant energy may yet become reality.
This is not directly related to fusion energy, so, you might want to skip this section.
Caption: Type One Energy employees at the Bull Run [emphasis mine] Fossil Plant, soon to be home to the prototype Infinity One. Credit: Type One Energy
I wonder if anyone argued for a change of name given how charged the US history associated with ‘Bull Run’ is, from the the First Battle of Bull Run Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
The First Battle of Bull Run, called the Battle of First Manassas[1] by Confederate forces, was the first major battle of the American Civil War. The battle was fought on July 21, 1861, in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of what is now the city of Manassas and about thirty miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C. The Union Army was slow in positioning themselves, allowing Confederate reinforcements time to arrive by rail. Each side had about 18,000 poorly trained and poorly led troops. The battle was a Confederate victory and was followed by a disorganized post-battle retreat of the Union forces.
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A Confederate victory the first time and the second time (Second Battle of Bull Run Wikipedia entry)? For anyone unfamiliar with the history, the US Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 between Union and Confederate forces. The Confederate states had seceded from the union (US) and were fighting to retain their slavery-based economy and they lost the war.
Had anyone consulted me I would have advised changing the name from Bull Run to some thing less charged (pun noted) to host your prototype fusion energy pilot plant.
Back to the usual programme.
Type One Energy
Type One Energy issued a March 27, 2025 news release about the special issue of the Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP), Note 1: Some of this redundant; Note 2: Links have been removed,
Type One Energy announced today publication of the world’s first comprehensive, self-consistent, and robust physics basis, with conservative design margins, for a practical fusion pilot power plant. This physics basis is presented in a series of seven peer-reviewed scientific papers in a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP). They serve as the foundation for the company’s first Infinity Two stellarator fusion power plant project, which Type One Energy is developing for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) utility in the U.S.
The Infinity Two fusion pilot power plant physics design basis realistically considers, for the first time, the complex relationship between competing requirements for plasma performance, power plant startup, construction logistics, reliability, and economics utilizing actual power plant operating experience. This Infinity Two baseline physics solution makes use of the inherently favorable operating characteristics of highly optimized stellarator fusion technology using modular superconducting magnets, as was so successfully proven on the W7-X science machine in Germany.
“Why are we the first private fusion company with an agreement to develop a potential fusion power plant project for an energy utility? Because we have a design anchored in reality,” said Christofer Mowry, CEO of Type One Energy. “The physics basis for Infinity Two is grounded in the knowledge of what is required for application to, and performance in, the demanding environment of reliable electrical generation for the power grid. We have an organization that understands this isn’t about designing a science project.”
Led by Chris Hegna, widely recognized as a leading theorist in modern stellarators, Type One Energy performed high-fidelity computational plasma physics analyses to substantially reduce the risk of meeting Infinity Two power plant functional and performance requirements. This unique and transformational achievement is the result of a global development program led by the Type One Energy plasma physics and stellarator engineering organization, with significant contributions from a broad coalition of scientists from national laboratories and universities around the world. The company made use of a spectrum of high-performance computing facilities, including access to the highest-performance U.S. Department of Energy supercomputers such as the exascale Frontier machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to perform its stellarator physics simulations.
“We committed to this ambitious fusion commercialization milestone two years ago and today we delivered,” said John Canik, Chief Science and Engineering Officer for Type One Energy. “The team was able to efficiently develop deep plasma physics insights to inform the design of our Infinity Two stellarator, by taking advantage of our access to high performance computing resources. This enabled the Type One Energy team to demonstrate a realistic, integrated stellarator design that moves far beyond conventional thinking and concepts derived from more limited modeling capabilities.”
The consistent and robust physics solution for Infinity Two results in a deuterium-tritium (D-T) fueled, burning plasma stellarator with 800 MW of fusion power and delivers a nominal 350 MWe to the power grid. It is characterized by fusion plasma with resilient and stable behavior across a broad range of operating conditions, very low heat loss due to turbulent transport, as well as tolerable direct energy losses to the stellarator first wall. The Infinity Two stellarator has sufficient room for both adequately sized island divertors to exhaust helium ash and a blanket which provides appropriate shielding and tritium breeding. Type One Energy has high confidence that this essential physics solution provides a good baseline stellarator configuration for the Infinity Two fusion pilot power plant.
“The articles in this issue [of JPP] represent an important step towards a fusion reactor based on the stellarator concept. Thanks to decades of experiments and theoretical research, much of the latter published in JPP, it has become possible to lay out the physics basis for a stellarator power plant in considerable detail,” said Per Helander, head of Stellarator Theory Division at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. “JPP is very happy to publish this series of papers from Type One Energy, where this has been accomplished in a way that sets new standards for the fidelity and confidence level in this context.”
Important to successful fusion power plant commercialization, this stellarator configuration has enabled Type One Energy to architect a maintenance solution which supports good power plant Capacity Factors (CF) and associated Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). It also supports favorable regulatory requirements for component manufacturing and power plant construction methods essential to achieving a reasonable Over-Night Cost (ONC) for Infinity Two.
About Type One Energy
Type One Energy Group is mission-driven to provide sustainable, affordable fusion power to the world. Established in 2019 and venture-backed in 2023, the company is led by a team of globally recognized fusion scientists with a strong track record of building state-of-the-art stellarator fusion machines, together with veteran business leaders experienced in scaling companies and commercializing energy technologies. Type One Energy applies proven advanced manufacturing methods, modern computational physics and high-field superconducting magnets to develop its optimized stellarator fusion energy system. Its FusionDirect development program pursues the lowest-risk, shortest-schedule path to a fusion power plant over the coming decade, using a partner-intensive and capital-efficient strategy. Type One Energy is committed to community engagement in the development and deployment of its clean energy technology. For more information, visit www.typeoneenergy.com or follow us on LinkedIn.
While the company is currently headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, it was originally a spinoff company from the University of Wisconsin-Madison according to a March 30, 2023 posting on the university’s College of Engineering website,
Type One Energy, a Middleton, Wisconsin-based fusion energy company with roots in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Engineering, recently announced its first round of seed funding, raising $29 million from investors. The company has also onboarded a new, highly experienced CEO [Christofer Mowry].
Type One, founded in 2019 by a team of globally recognized fusion scientists and business leaders, is hoping to commercialize stellarator technology over the next decade. Stellarators are a type of fusion reactor that uses powerful magnets to confine ultra-hot streams of plasma in order to create the conditions for fusion reactions. Energy from fusion promises to be clean, safe, renewable power. The company is using advanced manufacturing methods, modern computational physics and high-field superconducting magnets to develop its stellarator through an initiative called FusionDirect.
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According to the Type One Energy’s About page, there are four offices with the headquarters in Tennessee,
Madison 316 W Washington Ave. Suite 300 Madison, WI 53703
Boston 299 Washington St. Suites C & E Woburn, MA 01801
Vancouver 1140 West Pender St. Vancouver, BC V6E 4G1
The mention of an office in Vancouver, Canada piqued my curiosity but before getting to that, I’m going to include some informative excerpts about nuclear energy (both fission and fusion) from this August 31, 2023 article written by Tina Tosukhowong on behalf of TDK Ventures, which was posted on Medium,
Fusion power is the key to the energy transformation that humanity needs to drive decarbonization, clean, and baseload energy production that is inherently fail-safe, with no risk of long-lived radioactive waste, while also delivering on ever-growing energy-consumption demands at the global scale. Fusion is hard and requires exceptional conditions for sustained reaction (which is part of what makes it so safe), which has long served as a deterrent for technical maturation and industrial viability. …
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The current reality of our world is monumental fossil-fuel dependence. This, coupled with unprecedented levels of energy demand has resulted in the over 136,700 TWh (that’s 10¹²) of energy consumed via fossil fuels annually [1]. Chief repercussion among the many consequences of this dependence is the now very looming threat of climate catastrophe, which will soon be irreversible if global temperature rise is not abated and held to within 1.5 °C of pre-industrial levels. To do so, the nearly 40 gigatons of CO2 emissions generated each year must be steadily reduced and eventually mitigated entirely [2]. A fundamental shift in how power is generated globally is the only way forward. Humanity needs an energy transformation — the right energy transformation.
Alternative energy-generation techniques, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric approaches have all made excellent strides, and indeed in just the United States electricity generated by renewable methods doubled from 10 to 20% of total between 2010 and 2020 [3–4]. These numbers are incredibly encouraging and give significant credence in the journey to net-zero emission energy generation. However, while these standard renewable approaches should be championed, wind and solar are intermittent and require a large amount of land to deploy, while geothermal and hydroelectric are not available in every geography.
By far the most viable candidates for continuous clean energy generation to replace coal-fired power plants are nuclear-driven technologies, i.e. nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. Nuclear fission has been a proven effective method ever since it was first demonstrated almost 80 years ago underneath the University of Chicago football Stadium by Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi [5]. Heavier atomic elements, in most cases Uranium-235, are exposed to and bombarded by neutrons. This causes the Uranium to split resulting in two slightly less-heavy elements (like Barium and Krypton). This in turn causes energy to be released and more neutrons to be ejected and bombard other nearby Uranium-235, at which point the process cascades into a chain reaction. The released energy (heat) is utilized in the same way coal is burned in a traditional power plant, being subsequently used to generate electricity usually via the creation of steam to drive a turbine [6]. While already having reached viable commercial maturity, fission carries inherent and nontrivial safety concerns. An unhampered chain reaction can quickly lead to meltdown with disastrous consequences, and, even when properly managed, the end reaction does generate radioactive waste whose half-life can last hundreds of thousands of years.
Figure 1. Breakdown of a nuclear fission reaction [6]. Incident neutron bombards a fissile heavy element, splitting it and release energy and more nuclei setting off a chain reaction.
Especially given modernization efforts and meteoric gains in safety (thanks to advents in material science like ceramic coatings), fission will continue to be a critical piece to better, greener energy transformation. However, in extending our vision to an even brighter future with no such concerns — carbon emissions or safety — nuclear fusion is humanity’s silver bullet. Instead of breaking down atoms leading to a chain reaction, fusion is the combining of atoms (usually isotopes of Hydrogen) into heavier elements which also results in energy release / heat generation [7]. Like fission, fusion can be designed to be a continuous energy source that can serve as a permanent backbone to the power grid. It is extremely energy dense, with 1 kg of fusion fuel producing the same amount of energy as 1,000,000 kg of coal, and it is inherently fail-safe with no long-term radioactive waste.
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As a concept, if fusion is a silver bullet to answer humanity’s energy transformation needs, then why haven’t we done so already? The appeal seems so obvious, what’s the hold up? Simply put, nuclear fusion is hard for the very same reason the process is inherently safe. Atoms in the process must have enough energy to overcome electrostatic repulsive forces between the two positive charges of their nuclei to fuse. The key figure of merit to evaluate fusion is the so-called “Lawson Triple Product.” Essentially, this means in order to generate energy by fusion more than the rate of energy oss to the environment, the nuclei must be very close together (as represented by n — the plasma density), kept at a high enough temperature (as represented by T — temperature), and for long enough time to sustain fusion (as represented by τ — the confinement time). The triple product required to achieve fusion “ignition” (the state where the rate of energy production is higher than the rate of loss) depends on the fuel type and occurs within a plasma state. A deuterium and tritium (D-T) system has the lowest Lawson Triple product requirement, where fusion can achieve a viable threshold for ignition when the density of the fuel atoms, n, multiplied by the fuel temperature, T, multiplied by the confinement time, τ, is greater than 5×10²¹ (nTτ > 5×10²¹ keV-s/m³) [8–9]. For context, the temperature alone in this scenario must be higher than 100-million degrees Celsius.
Figure 2. (Left) Conceptual illustration of a fusion reaction with Deuterium (²H) and Tritium (³H) forming an Alpha particle (⁴He) and free neutron along with energy released as heat (Right). To initiate fusion, repelling electrostatic charge must be overcome via conditions meeting the minimum Lawson Triple Product threshold
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Tosukhowong’s August 31, 2023 article provides a good overview keeping in mind that it is slanted to justify TDK’s investment in Type One Energy.
Why a Vancouver, Canada office?
As for Type One Energy’s Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) connection, I was reminded of General Fusion, a local fusion energy company while speculating about the connection. First speculative question: could Type One Energy’s presence in Canada allow it to access Canadian government funds for its research? Second speculative question: do they want to have access to people who might hesitate to move to the US or might want to move out of the US but would move to Canada?
The US is currently in an unstable state as suggested in this April 3, 2025 opinion piece by Les Leyne for vancouverisawsome.com
Les Leyne: Trump’s incoherence makes responding to tariff wall tricky
Trump’s announcement was so incoherent that much of the rest of the world had to scramble to grasp even the basic details
B.C. officials were guarded Wednesday [April 2, 2025] about the impact on Canada of the tariff wall U.S. President Donald Trump erected around the U.S., but it appears it could have been worse.
Trump’s announcement was so incoherent that much of the rest of the world had to scramble to grasp even the basic details. So cabinet ministers begged for more time to check the impacts.
“It’s still very uncertain,” said Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon, who chairs the “war room” committee responsible for countering tariff threats. “It’s hard to make sense from President Trump’s speech.” [emphasis mine]
Kahlon said the challenge is that tariff policies change hour by hour, “and anything can happen.”
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On April 2, 2025 US President Donald Trump announced tariffs (then paused some of the tariffs on April 9, 2025) and some of the targets seemed a bit odd, from an April 2, 2025 article by Alex Galbraith for salon.com, Note: Links have been removed,
“Trade war with penguins”: Trump places 10% tariff on uninhabited Antarctic islands
Planned tariffs shared by the White House included a 10% duty on imports from the barren Heard and McDonald Islands
For once in his life, Donald Trump underpromised and over-delivered.
The president announced a 10% duty on all imports on Wednesday [April 2, 2025], along with a raft of reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners. An extensive graphic released by the White House showed how far Trump was willing to take his tit-for-tat trade war, including a shocking levy of 10% on all imports from the Heard and McDonald Islands.
If you haven’t heard of this powerhouse of global trade and territory of Australia, you aren’t alone. Few have outside of Antarctic researchers and seals. These extremely remote islands about 1,000 miles north of Antarctica consist mostly of barren tundra. They’re also entirely uninhabited.
The news that we were starting a trade war with penguins spread quickly after Trump’s announcement. …
U.S. stock futures crumbled following the news of Trump’s widespread tariffs. Dow futures fell by nearly 1,000 points while NASDAQ and S&P futures fell by 3 to 4%. American companies’ stock values rapidly tumbled after the announcement, with large retail importers seeing significant losses. …
No word from the penguins about the ‘pause’. I’m assuming Donald Trump’s next book will be titled, “The art of negotiating trade deals with penguins.” Can’t wait to read it.
(Perhaps someone should tell him there are no penguins in the Arctic so he can’t bypass Canadians or Greenlanders to make a deal.)
Now for the local story.
General Fusion
There’ve been two recent developments at General Fusion. Most recently, an April 2, 2025 General Fusion news release announces a new hire, Note: Links have been removed,
Bob Smith is joining General Fusion as a strategic advisor. Smith brings more than 35 years of experience developing, scaling, and launching world-changing technologies, including spearheading new products and innovation in the aerospace industry at United Space Alliance, Sandia Labs, and Honeywell before serving as CEO of Blue Origin. He joins General Fusion as the company’s Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) fusion demonstration begins operations and progresses toward transformative technical milestones on the path to commercialization.
“I’ve been watching the fusion energy industry closely for my entire career. Fusion is the last energy source humanity will ever need, and I believe its impact as a zero-carbon energy source will transform the global energy supply at the time needed to fight the worst consequences of climate change,” said Smith. “I am thrilled to work with General Fusion. Their novel approach has inherent and distinctive benefits for the generation of commercially competitive fusion power. It’s exciting to join at a time when the team is about to demonstrate the fundamental physics behind their system and move to scaling up to a pilot plant.”
The LM26 program marks a significant step towards commercialization, as the company’s unique Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) approach makes the path to powering the grid with fusion energy more straightforward than other technologies—because it practically addresses barriers to fusion commercialization, such as neutron material degradation, sustainable fuel production, and efficient energy extraction. As a strategic advisor, Smith will leverage his experience advancing game-changing technologies to help guide General Fusion’s technology development and strategic growth.
“Bob’s insights and experience will be invaluable as we execute the LM26 program and look beyond it to propel our practical technology to powering the grid by the mid-2030s,” said Greg Twinney, CEO, General Fusion. “We are grateful for his commitment of his in-demand time and expertise to our mission and look forward to working together to make fusion power a reality!”
About Bob Smith:
Bob is an experienced business leader in the aerospace and defense industry with extensive technical and operational expertise across the sector. He worked at and managed federal labs, led developments at a large government contractor, grew businesses at a Fortune 100 multinational, and scaled up a launch and space systems startup. Bob also has extensive international experience and has worked with suppliers and OEMs in all the major aerospace regions, including establishing new sites and factories in Europe, India, China, and Puerto Rico.
Bob’s prior leadership roles include Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Origin, President of Mechanical Systems & Components at Honeywell Aerospace, Chief Technology Officer at Honeywell Aerospace, Chairman of NTESS (Sandia Labs), and Executive Director of Space Shuttle Upgrades at United Space Alliance.
Bob holds a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M, a Master of Science degree in engineering/applied mathematics from Brown University, a doctorate from the University of Texas in aerospace engineering, and a business degree from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Bob is also a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and an Academician in the International Academy of Astronautics.
Quick Facts:
Fusion energy is the ultimate clean energy solution—it is the energy source that powers the sun and stars. Fusion is the process by which two light nuclei merge to form a heavier one, producing a massive amount of energy.
General Fusion’s Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology is designed to scale for cost-efficient power plants. It uses mechanical compression to create fusion conditions in short pulses, eliminating the need for expensive lasers or superconducting magnets. An MTF power plant is designed to produce its own fuel and inherently includes a method to extract the energy and put it to work.
Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) is a world-first Magnetized Target Fusion demonstration. Launched, designed, and assembled in just 16 months, the machine is now forming magnetized plasmas regularly at 50 per cent commercial scale. It is advancing towards a series of results that will demonstrate MTF in a commercially relevant way: 10 million degrees Celsius (1 keV), 100 million degrees Celsius (10 keV), and scientific breakeven equivalent (100% Lawson).
About General Fusion General Fusion is pursuing a fast and practical approach to commercial fusion energy and is headquartered in Richmond, Canada. The company was established in 2002 and is funded by a global syndicate of leading energy venture capital firms, industry leaders, and technology pioneers. Learn more at www.generalfusion.com.
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Bob Smith and Blue Origin: things did not go well
Sometimes you end up in a job and things do not work out well and that seems to have been the case at Blue Origin according to a September 25, 2023 article by Eric Berger for Ars Tecnica,
After six years of running Blue Origin, Bob Smith announced in a company-wide email on Monday that he will be “stepping aside” as chief executive of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos.
“It has been my privilege to be part of this great team, and I am confident that Blue Origin’s greatest achievements are still ahead of us,” Smith wrote in an email. “We’ve rapidly scaled this company from its prototyping and research roots to a large, prominent space business.”
Shortly after Smith’s email, a Blue Origin spokesperson said the company’s new chief executive will be Dave Limp, who stepped down as Amazon’s vice president of devices and services last month.
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To put things politely, Smith has had a rocky tenure as Blue Origin’s chief executive. After being personally vetted and hired by Bezos, Smith took over from Rob Meyerson in 2017. The Honeywell engineer was given a mandate to transform Blue Origin into a large and profitable space business.
He did succeed in growing Blue Origin. The company had about 1,500 employees when Smith arrived, and the company now employs nearly 11,000 people. But he has been significantly late on a number of key programs, including the BE-4 rocket engine and the New Glenn rocket.
As a space reporter, I have spoken with dozens of current and former Blue Origin employees, and virtually none of them have had anything positive to say about Smith’s tenure as chief executive. I asked one current employee about the hiring of Limp on Monday afternoon, and their response was, “Anything is better than Bob.”
Although it is very far from an exact barometer, Smith has received consistently low ratings on Glassdoor for his performance as chief executive of Blue Origin. And two years ago, a group of current and former Blue Origin employees wrote a blistering letter about the company under Smith. “In our experience, Blue Origin’s culture sits on a foundation that ignores the plight of our planet, turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns, and silences those who seek to correct wrongs,” the essay authors wrote.
With any corporate culture, there will be growing pains, of course. But Smith brought a traditional aerospace mindset into a company that had hitherto been guided by a new space vision, leading to a high turnover rate. And Blue Origin remains significantly underwater, financially. It is likely that Bezos is still providing about $2 billion a year to support the company’s cash needs.
Crucially, as Blue Origin meandered under Smith’s tenure, SpaceX soared, launching hundreds of rockets and thousands of satellites. Smith, clearly, was not the leader Blue Origin needed to make the company more competitive with SpaceX in launch and other spaceflight activities. It became something of a parlor game in the space industry to guess when Bezos would finally get around to firing Smith.
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On the technical front, a March 27, 2025 General Fusion news release announces “Peer-reviewed publication confirms General Fusion achieved plasma energy confinement time required for its LM26 large-scale fusion machine,” Note: Links have been removed,
New results published in Nuclear Fusionconfirm General Fusion successfully created magnetized plasmas that achieved energy confinement times exceeding 10 milliseconds. The published energy confinement time results were achieved on General Fusion’s PI3 plasma injector — the world’s largest and most powerful plasma injector of its kind. Commissioned in 2017, PI3 formed approximately 20,000 plasmas in a machine of 50 per cent commercial scale. The plasma injector is now integrated into General Fusion’s Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) — a world-first Magnetized Target Fusion demonstration tracking toward game-changing technical milestones that will advance the company’s ultimate mission: generating zero-carbon fusion energy for the grid in the next decade.
The 10-millisecond energy confinement time is the duration required to compress plasmas in LM26 to achieve key temperature thresholds of 1 keV, 10 keV, and, ultimately, scientific breakeven equivalent (100% Lawson). These results were imperative to de-risking LM26. The demonstration machine is now forming plasmas regularly, and the company is optimizing its plasma performance in preparation for compressing plasmas to create fusion and heating from compression.
Key Findings:
The plasma injector now integrated into General Fusion’s LM26 achieved energy confinement times exceeding 10 milliseconds, the pre-compression confinement time required for LM26’s targeted technical milestones. These results were achieved without requiring active magnetic stabilization or auxiliary heating. This means the results were achieved without superconducting magnets, demonstrating the company’s cost-effective approach.
The plasma’s energy confinement time improved when the plasma injector vessel was coated with natural lithium. A key differentiator in General Fusion’s commercial approach is its use of a liquid lithium wall to compress plasmas during compression. In addition to the confinement time advantages shown in this paper, the liquid lithium wall will also protect a commercial MTF machine from neutron damage, enable the machine to breed its own fuel, and provide an efficient method for extracting energy from the machine.
The maximum energy confinement time achieved by PI3 was approximately 12 milliseconds. The machine’s maximum plasma density was approximately 6×1019 m-3, and maximum plasma temperatures exceeded 400 eV. These strong pre-compression results support LM26’s transformative targets.
Quotes:
“LM26 is designed to achieve a series of results that will demonstrate MTF in a commercially relevant way. Following LM26’s results, our unique approach makes the path to powering the grid with fusion energy more straightforward than other technologies because we have front-loaded the work to address the barriers to commercialization.”
Dr. Michel Laberge Founder and Chief Science Officer
“For over 16 years, I have worked hand in hand with Michel to advance General Fusion’s practical technology. This company is entrepreneurial at its core. We pride ourselves on building real machines that get results that matter, and I’m thrilled to have the achievements recognized in Nuclear Fusion.”
Mike Donaldson Senior Vice President, Technology Development
For anyone curious about General Fusion, I have a brief overview and history of the company and their particular approach to fusion energy in my February 6, 2024 posting (scroll down to ‘The Canadians’).
I’m glad to see this follow up to a post (my June 7, 2011 posting) which featured research on using bacteria to benefit art restoration in Spain. Maria Mocerino’s September 30, 2024 article for Interesting Engineering provides the update,
A mother [Pilar Roig] and daughter have teamed up to restore frescos in Valencia’s Santos Juanes church using bacteria.
When her mother ran into trouble with a restoration project in Spain, Pilar Bosch, her daughter, a microbiologist, found an old paper on the application of bacteria in art restoration.
As a microbiologist, she was only searching for a subject for PhD, but her mother’s troubles restoring 18th-century paintings in Santos Juanes church made her take a closer look.
The restoration project in Valencia faced particular challenges. A botched effort in the 1960s damaged the priceless artwork even further, leaving behind a layer of glue made of animal collagen, according to the Beijing Times.
Having found a lead that could benefit her mother’s work and a historical and cultural landmark, science and art joined forces in a 4-million-euro initiative to apply this technique. And it worked.
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Here’s more about the project along with some technical details, from my June 7, 2011 posting,
Here’s the background on the problem the art restorers were trying to fix (from the news item),
The project came about when the IRP [Institute of Heritage Restoration] was in the process of restoring the murals of the Church of Santos Juanes that were virtually destroyed after a fire in 1936 and were improperly restored in the 1960s. The researchers tested new techniques for filling with transferred printed digital images in spaces without painting, but had great difficulty dealing with salt efflorescence, the white scabs caused by the build up of crystallized salts and the enormous amount of gelatine glue remaining on the pulled-off murals.
With the problem defined, the researchers then investigated a technique developed in Italy that looked promising (from the news item),
Therefore, Rosa María Montes and Pilar Bosch travelled to Italy to learn from the authors about the pioneering studies that used bacteria to remove hardened glue that was very difficult to treat with conventional methods.
The restoration of the Campo Santo di Pisa wall paintings was performed under the direction of Gianluiggi Colalucci, restorer of the Sistine Chapel, and his colleagues Donatella Zari and Carlo Giantomassi who applied the technique developed by microbiologist Giancarlo Ranalli. The researcher had also been testing with black crusts that appear on sculptures and artistic monuments.
The team returned to Spain to practice the technique and add some refinements (from the news item),
Back in Valencia, the multidisciplinary team perfected this method and trained the most suitable strain of Pseudomonas bacteria to literally eat the saline efflorescence found in the lunettes of the vault behind which pigeons nest.
“By the action of gravity and evaporation, the salts of organic matter in decomposition migrate to the paintings and produce a white crust hiding the work of art and sometimes can also cause the loose of the painting layer” says Pilar Bosch.
These scientists have managed to reduce the application time, and have also innovated in the way of extending the bacteria. According to Dr. Bosch: “In Italy they use cotton wool to apply the micro-organisms. We, however, have developed a gel that acts on the surface, which prevents moisture from penetrating deep into the material and causing new problems.
“After an hour and a half, we remove the gel with the bacteria. The surface is then cleaned and dried.” Without a wet environment, the remaining bacteria die.
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13 years! Brava to the two Pilars!
A Reuters article (September 27, 2024 by Horaci Garcia and Eva Manez) was the basis for most of the other articles about the two Pilars and their project that you’ll find on an internet search; you can find the Reuters article here.
A July 23, 2024 University of Southampton (UK) press release (also on EurekAlert but published July 22, 2024) describes the emerging science/technology of bio-hybrid robotics and a recent study about the ethical issues raised, Note 1: bio-hybrid may also be written as biohybrid; Note 2: Links have been removed,
Development of ‘living robots’ needs regulation and public debate
Researchers are calling for regulation to guide the responsible and ethical development of bio-hybrid robotics – a ground-breaking science which fuses artificial components with living tissue and cells.
In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [PNAS] a multidisciplinary team from the University of Southampton and universities in the US and Spain set out the unique ethical issues this technology presents and the need for proper governance.
Combining living materials and organisms with synthetic robotic components might sound like something out of science fiction, but this emerging field is advancing rapidly. Bio-hybrid robots using living muscles can crawl, swim, grip, pump, and sense their surroundings. Sensors made from sensory cells or insect antennae have improved chemical sensing. Living neurons have even been used to control mobile robots.
Dr Rafael Mestre from the University of Southampton, who specialises in emergent technologies and is co-lead author of the paper, said: “The challenges in overseeing bio-hybrid robotics are not dissimilar to those encountered in the regulation of biomedical devices, stem cells and other disruptive technologies. But unlike purely mechanical or digital technologies, bio-hybrid robots blend biological and synthetic components in unprecedented ways. This presents unique possible benefits but also potential dangers.”
Research publications relating to bio-hybrid robotics have increased continuously over the last decade. But the authors found that of the more than 1,500 publications on the subject at the time, only five considered its ethical implications in depth.
The paper’s authors identified three areas where bio-hybrid robotics present unique ethical issues: Interactivity – how bio-robots interact with humans and the environment, Integrability – how and whether humans might assimilate bio-robots (such as bio-robotic organs or limbs), and Moral status.
In a series of thought experiments, they describe how a bio-robot for cleaning our oceans could disrupt the food chain, how a bio-hybrid robotic arm might exacerbate inequalities [emphasis mine], and how increasing sophisticated bio-hybrid assistants could raise questions about sentience and moral value.
“Bio-hybrid robots create unique ethical dilemmas,” says Aníbal M. Astobiza, an ethicist from the University of the Basque Country in Spain and co-lead author of the paper. “The living tissue used in their fabrication, potential for sentience, distinct environmental impact, unusual moral status, and capacity for biological evolution or adaptation create unique ethical dilemmas that extend beyond those of wholly artificial or biological technologies.”
The paper is the first from the Biohybrid Futures project led by Dr Rafael Mestre, in collaboration with the Rebooting Democracy project. Biohybrid Futures is setting out to develop a framework for the responsible research, application, and governance of bio-hybrid robotics.
The paper proposes several requirements for such a framework, including risk assessments, consideration of social implications, and increasing public awareness and understanding.
Dr Matt Ryan, a political scientist from the University of Southampton and a co-author on the paper, said: “If debates around embryonic stem cells, human cloning or artificial intelligence have taught us something, it is that humans rarely agree on the correct resolution of the moral dilemmas of emergent technologies.
“Compared to related technologies such as embryonic stem cells or artificial intelligence, bio-hybrid robotics has developed relatively unattended by the media, the public and policymakers, but it is no less significant. We want the public to be included in this conversation to ensure a democratic approach to the development and ethical evaluation of this technology.”
In addition to the need for a governance framework, the authors set out actions that the research community can take now to guide their research.
“Taking these steps should not be seen as prescriptive in any way, but as an opportunity to share responsibility, taking a heavy weight away from the researcher’s shoulders,” says Dr Victoria Webster-Wood, a biomechanical engineer from Carnegie Mellon University in the US and co-author on the paper.
“Research in bio-hybrid robotics has evolved in various directions. We need to align our efforts to fully unlock its potential.”
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Ethics and responsibility in biohybrid robotics research by Rafael Mestre, Aníbal M. Astobiza, Victoria A. Webster-Wood, Matt Ryan, and M. Taher A. Saif. PNAS 121 (31) e2310458121 July 23, 2024 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2310458121
This paper is open access.
Cyborg or biohybrid robot?
Earlier, I highlighted “… how a bio-hybrid robotic arm might exacerbate inequalities …” because it suggests cyborgs, which are not mentioned in the press release or in the paper, This seems like an odd omission but, over the years, terminology does change although it’s not clear that’s the situation here.
I have two ‘definitions’, the first is from an October 21, 2019 article by Javier Yanes for OpenMind BBVA, Note: More about BBVA later,
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The fusion between living organisms and artificial devices has become familiar to us through the concept of the cyborg (cybernetic organism). This approach consists of restoring or improving the capacities of the organic being, usually a human being, by means of technological devices. On the other hand, biohybrid robots are in some ways the opposite idea: using living tissues or cells to provide the machine with functions that would be difficult to achieve otherwise. The idea is that if soft robots seek to achieve this through synthetic materials, why not do so directly with living materials?
Another approach to building biohybrid robots is the artificial enhancement of animals or using an entire animal body as a scaffold to manipulate robotically. The locomotion of these augmented animals can then be externally controlled, spanning three modes of locomotion: walking/running, flying, and swimming. Notably, these capabilities have been demonstrated in jellyfish (figure 4(A)) [139, 140], clams (figure 4(B)) [141], turtles (figure 4(C)) [142, 143], and insects, including locusts (figure 4(D)) [27, 144], beetles (figure 4(E)) [28, 145–158], cockroaches (figure 4(F)) [159–165], and moths [166–170].
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The advantages of using entire animals as cyborgs are multifold. For robotics, augmented animals possess inherent features that address some of the long-standing challenges within the field, including power consumption and damage tolerance, by taking advantage of animal metabolism [172], tissue healing, and other adaptive behaviors. In particular, biohybrid robotic jellyfish, composed of a self-contained microelectronic swim controller embedded into live Aurelia aurita moon jellyfish, consumed one to three orders of magnitude less power per mass than existing swimming robots [172], and cyborg insects can make use of the insect’s hemolymph directly as a fuel source [173].
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So, sometimes there’s a distinction and sometimes there’s not. I take this to mean that the field is still emerging and that’s reflected in evolving terminology.
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈbaŋko βilˈβao βiθˈkaʝa aɾxenˈtaɾja]), better known by its initialism BBVA, is a Spanish multinational financial services company based in Madrid and Bilbao, Spain. It is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and is present mainly in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, South America, Turkey, Italy and Romania.[2]
OpenMind is a non-profit project run by BBVA that aims to contribute to the generation and dissemination of knowledge about fundamental issues of our time, in an open and free way. The project is materialized in an online dissemination community.
“Sharing knowledge for a better future“.
At OpenMind we want to help people understand the main phenomena affecting our lives; the opportunities and challenges that we face in areas such as science, technology, humanities or economics. Analyzing the impact of scientific and technological advances on the future of the economy, society and our daily lives is the project’s main objective, which always starts on the premise that a broader and greater quality knowledge will help us to make better individual and collective decisions.
Finally, you can find more on these stories (science/technology announcements and/or ethics research/issues) here by searching for ‘robots’ (tag and category), ‘cyborgs’ (tag), ‘machine/flesh’ (tag), ‘neuroprosthetic’ (tag), and human enhancement (category).
First, here’s some of the latest research and if by ‘non-invasive,’ you mean that electrodes are not being planted in your brain, then this December 12, 2023 University of Technology Sydney (UTS) press release (also on EurekAlert) highlights non-invasive mind-reading AI via a brain-computer interface (BCI), Note: Links have been removed,
In a world-first, researchers from the GrapheneX-UTS Human-centric Artificial Intelligence Centre at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have developed a portable, non-invasive system that can decode silent thoughts and turn them into text.
The technology could aid communication for people who are unable to speak due to illness or injury, including stroke or paralysis. It could also enable seamless communication between humans and machines, such as the operation of a bionic arm or robot.
The study has been selected as the spotlight paper at the NeurIPS conference, a top-tier annual meeting that showcases world-leading research on artificial intelligence and machine learning, held in New Orleans on 12 December 2023.
The research was led by Distinguished Professor CT Lin, Director of the GrapheneX-UTS HAI Centre, together with first author Yiqun Duan and fellow PhD candidate Jinzhou Zhou from the UTS Faculty of Engineering and IT.
In the study participants silently read passages of text while wearing a cap that recorded electrical brain activity through their scalp using an electroencephalogram (EEG). A demonstration of the technology can be seen in this video [See UTS press release].
The EEG wave is segmented into distinct units that capture specific characteristics and patterns from the human brain. This is done by an AI model called DeWave developed by the researchers. DeWave translates EEG signals into words and sentences by learning from large quantities of EEG data.
“This research represents a pioneering effort in translating raw EEG waves directly into language, marking a significant breakthrough in the field,” said Distinguished Professor Lin.
“It is the first to incorporate discrete encoding techniques in the brain-to-text translation process, introducing an innovative approach to neural decoding. The integration with large language models is also opening new frontiers in neuroscience and AI,” he said.
Previous technology to translate brain signals to language has either required surgery to implant electrodes in the brain, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink [emphasis mine], or scanning in an MRI machine, which is large, expensive, and difficult to use in daily life.
These methods also struggle to transform brain signals into word level segments without additional aids such as eye-tracking, which restrict the practical application of these systems. The new technology is able to be used either with or without eye-tracking.
The UTS research was carried out with 29 participants. This means it is likely to be more robust and adaptable than previous decoding technology that has only been tested on one or two individuals, because EEG waves differ between individuals.
The use of EEG signals received through a cap, rather than from electrodes implanted in the brain, means that the signal is noisier. In terms of EEG translation however, the study reported state-of the art performance, surpassing previous benchmarks.
“The model is more adept at matching verbs than nouns. However, when it comes to nouns, we saw a tendency towards synonymous pairs rather than precise translations, such as ‘the man’ instead of ‘the author’,” said Duan. [emphases mine; synonymous, eh? what about ‘woman’ or ‘child’ instead of the ‘man’?]
“We think this is because when the brain processes these words, semantically similar words might produce similar brain wave patterns. Despite the challenges, our model yields meaningful results, aligning keywords and forming similar sentence structures,” he said.
The translation accuracy score is currently around 40% on BLEU-1. The BLEU score is a number between zero and one that measures the similarity of the machine-translated text to a set of high-quality reference translations. The researchers hope to see this improve to a level that is comparable to traditional language translation or speech recognition programs, which is closer to 90%.
The research follows on from previous brain-computer interface technology developed by UTS in association with the Australian Defence Force [ADF] that uses brainwaves to command a quadruped robot, which is demonstrated in this ADF video [See my June 13, 2023 posting, “Mind-controlled robots based on graphene: an Australian research story” for the story and embedded video].
About one month after the research announcement regarding the University of Technology Sydney’s ‘non-invasive’ brain-computer interface (BCI), I stumbled across an in-depth piece about the field of ‘non-invasive’ mind-reading research.
Neurotechnology and neurorights
Fletcher Reveley’s January 18, 2024 article on salon.com (originally published January 3, 2024 on Undark) shows how quickly the field is developing and raises concerns, Note: Links have been removed,
One afternoon in May 2020, Jerry Tang, a Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, sat staring at a cryptic string of words scrawled across his computer screen:
“I am not finished yet to start my career at twenty without having gotten my license I never have to pull out and run back to my parents to take me home.”
The sentence was jumbled and agrammatical. But to Tang, it represented a remarkable feat: A computer pulling a thought, however disjointed, from a person’s mind.
For weeks, ever since the pandemic had shuttered his university and forced his lab work online, Tang had been at home tweaking a semantic decoder — a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that generates text from brain scans. Prior to the university’s closure, study participants had been providing data to train the decoder for months, listening to hours of storytelling podcasts while a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine logged their brain responses. Then, the participants had listened to a new story — one that had not been used to train the algorithm — and those fMRI scans were fed into the decoder, which used GPT1, a predecessor to the ubiquitous AI chatbot ChatGPT, to spit out a text prediction of what it thought the participant had heard. For this snippet, Tang compared it to the original story:
“Although I’m twenty-three years old I don’t have my driver’s license yet and I just jumped out right when I needed to and she says well why don’t you come back to my house and I’ll give you a ride.”
The decoder was not only capturing the gist of the original, but also producing exact matches of specific words — twenty, license. When Tang shared the results with his adviser, a UT Austin neuroscientist named Alexander Huth who had been working towards building such a decoder for nearly a decade, Huth was floored. “Holy shit,” Huth recalled saying. “This is actually working.” By the fall of 2021, the scientists were testing the device with no external stimuli at all — participants simply imagined a story and the decoder spat out a recognizable, albeit somewhat hazy, description of it. “What both of those experiments kind of point to,” said Huth, “is the fact that what we’re able to read out here was really like the thoughts, like the idea.”
The scientists brimmed with excitement over the potentially life-altering medical applications of such a device — restoring communication to people with locked-in syndrome, for instance, whose near full-body paralysis made talking impossible. But just as the potential benefits of the decoder snapped into focus, so too did the thorny ethical questions posed by its use. Huth himself had been one of the three primary test subjects in the experiments, and the privacy implications of the device now seemed visceral: “Oh my god,” he recalled thinking. “We can look inside my brain.”
Huth’s reaction mirrored a longstanding concern in neuroscience and beyond: that machines might someday read people’s minds. And as BCI technology advances at a dizzying clip, that possibility and others like it — that computers of the future could alter human identities, for example, or hinder free will — have begun to seem less remote. “The loss of mental privacy, this is a fight we have to fight today,” said Rafael Yuste, a Columbia University neuroscientist. “That could be irreversible. If we lose our mental privacy, what else is there to lose? That’s it, we lose the essence of who we are.”
Spurred by these concerns, Yuste and several colleagues have launched an international movement advocating for “neurorights” — a set of five principles Yuste argues should be enshrined in law as a bulwark against potential misuse and abuse of neurotechnology. But he may be running out of time.
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Reveley’s January 18, 2024 article provides fascinating context and is well worth reading if you have the time.
For my purposes, I’m focusing on ethics, Note: Links have been removed,
… as these and other advances propelled the field forward, and as his own research revealed the discomfiting vulnerability of the brain to external manipulation, Yuste found himself increasingly concerned by the scarce attention being paid to the ethics of these technologies. Even Obama’s multi-billion-dollar BRAIN Initiative, a government program designed to advance brain research, which Yuste had helped launch in 2013 and supported heartily, seemed to mostly ignore the ethical and societal consequences of the research it funded. “There was zero effort on the ethical side,” Yuste recalled.
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Yuste was appointed to the rotating advisory group of the BRAIN Initiative in 2015, where he began to voice his concerns. That fall, he joined an informal working group to consider the issue. “We started to meet, and it became very evident to me that the situation was a complete disaster,” Yuste said. “There was no guidelines, no work done.” Yuste said he tried to get the group to generate a set of ethical guidelines for novel BCI technologies, but the effort soon became bogged down in bureaucracy. Frustrated, he stepped down from the committee and, together with a University of Washington bioethicist named Sara Goering, decided to independently pursue the issue. “Our aim here is not to contribute to or feed fear for doomsday scenarios,” the pair wrote in a 2016 article in Cell, “but to ensure that we are reflective and intentional as we prepare ourselves for the neurotechnological future.”
In the fall of 2017, Yuste and Goering called a meeting at the Morningside Campus of Columbia, inviting nearly 30 experts from all over the world in such fields as neurotechnology, artificial intelligence, medical ethics, and the law. By then, several other countries had launched their own versions of the BRAIN Initiative, and representatives from Australia, Canada [emphasis mine], China, Europe, Israel, South Korea, and Japan joined the Morningside gathering, along with veteran neuroethicists and prominent researchers. “We holed ourselves up for three days to study the ethical and societal consequences of neurotechnology,” Yuste said. “And we came to the conclusion that this is a human rights issue. These methods are going to be so powerful, that enable to access and manipulate mental activity, and they have to be regulated from the angle of human rights. That’s when we coined the term ‘neurorights.’”
The Morningside group, as it became known, identified four principal ethical priorities, which were later expanded by Yuste into five clearly defined neurorights: The right to mental privacy, which would ensure that brain data would be kept private and its use, sale, and commercial transfer would be strictly regulated; the right to personal identity, which would set boundaries on technologies that could disrupt one’s sense of self; the right to fair access to mental augmentation, which would ensure equality of access to mental enhancement neurotechnologies; the right of protection from bias in the development of neurotechnology algorithms; and the right to free will, which would protect an individual’s agency from manipulation by external neurotechnologies. The group published their findings in an often-cited paper in Nature.
But while Yuste and the others were focused on the ethical implications of these emerging technologies, the technologies themselves continued to barrel ahead at a feverish speed. In 2014, the first kick of the World Cup was made by a paraplegic man using a mind-controlled robotic exoskeleton. In 2016, a man fist bumped Obama using a robotic arm that allowed him to “feel” the gesture. The following year, scientists showed that electrical stimulation of the hippocampus could improve memory, paving the way for cognitive augmentation technologies. The military, long interested in BCI technologies, built a system that allowed operators to pilot three drones simultaneously, partially with their minds. Meanwhile, a confusing maelstrom of science, science-fiction, hype, innovation, and speculation swept the private sector. By 2020, over $33 billion had been invested in hundreds of neurotech companies — about seven times what the NIH [US National Institutes of Health] had envisioned for the 12-year span of the BRAIN Initiative itself.
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Now back to Tang and Huth (from Reveley’s January 18, 2024 article), Note: Links have been removed,
Central to the ethical questions Huth and Tang grappled with was the fact that their decoder, unlike other language decoders developed around the same time, was non-invasive — it didn’t require its users to undergo surgery. Because of that, their technology was free from the strict regulatory oversight that governs the medical domain. (Yuste, for his part, said he believes non-invasive BCIs pose a far greater ethical challenge than invasive systems: “The non-invasive, the commercial, that’s where the battle is going to get fought.”) Huth and Tang’s decoder faced other hurdles to widespread use — namely that fMRI machines are enormous, expensive, and stationary. But perhaps, the researchers thought, there was a way to overcome that hurdle too.
The information measured by fMRI machines — blood oxygenation levels, which indicate where blood is flowing in the brain — can also be measured with another technology, functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy, or fNIRS. Although lower resolution than fMRI, several expensive, research-grade, wearable fNIRS headsets do approach the resolution required to work with Huth and Tang’s decoder. In fact, the scientists were able to test whether their decoder would work with such devices by simply blurring their fMRI data to simulate the resolution of research-grade fNIRS. The decoded result “doesn’t get that much worse,” Huth said.
And while such research-grade devices are currently cost-prohibitive for the average consumer, more rudimentary fNIRS headsets have already hit the market. Although these devices provide far lower resolution than would be required for Huth and Tang’s decoder to work effectively, the technology is continually improving, and Huth believes it is likely that an affordable, wearable fNIRS device will someday provide high enough resolution to be used with the decoder. In fact, he is currently teaming up with scientists at Washington University to research the development of such a device.
Even comparatively primitive BCI headsets can raise pointed ethical questions when released to the public. Devices that rely on electroencephalography, or EEG, a commonplace method of measuring brain activity by detecting electrical signals, have now become widely available — and in some cases have raised alarm. In 2019, a school in Jinhua, China, drew criticism after trialing EEG headbands that monitored the concentration levels of its pupils. (The students were encouraged to compete to see who concentrated most effectively, and reports were sent to their parents.) Similarly, in 2018 the South China Morning Post reported that dozens of factories and businesses had begun using “brain surveillance devices” to monitor workers’ emotions, in the hopes of increasing productivity and improving safety. The devices “caused some discomfort and resistance in the beginning,” Jin Jia, then a brain scientist at Ningbo University, told the reporter. “After a while, they got used to the device.”
But the primary problem with even low-resolution devices is that scientists are only just beginning to understand how information is actually encoded in brain data. In the future, powerful new decoding algorithms could discover that even raw, low-resolution EEG data contains a wealth of information about a person’s mental state at the time of collection. Consequently, nobody can definitively know what they are giving away when they allow companies to collect information from their brains.
Huth and Tang concluded that brain data, therefore, should be closely guarded, especially in the realm of consumer products. In an article on Medium from last April, Tang wrote that “decoding technology is continually improving, and the information that could be decoded from a brain scan a year from now may be very different from what can be decoded today. It is crucial that companies are transparent about what they intend to do with brain data and take measures to ensure that brain data is carefully protected.” (Yuste said the Neurorights Foundation recently surveyed the user agreements of 30 neurotech companies and found that all of them claim ownership of users’ brain data — and most assert the right to sell that data to third parties. [emphases mine]) Despite these concerns, however, Huth and Tang maintained that the potential benefits of these technologies outweighed their risks, provided the proper guardrails [emphasis mine] were put in place.
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It would seem the first guardrails are being set up in South America (from Reveley’s January 18, 2024 article), Note: Links have been removed,
On a hot summer night in 2019, Yuste sat in the courtyard of an adobe hotel in the north of Chile with his close friend, the prominent Chilean doctor and then-senator Guido Girardi, observing the vast, luminous skies of the Atacama Desert and discussing, as they often did, the world of tomorrow. Girardi, who every year organizes the Congreso Futuro, Latin America’s preeminent science and technology event, had long been intrigued by the accelerating advance of technology and its paradigm-shifting impact on society — “living in the world at the speed of light,” as he called it. Yuste had been a frequent speaker at the conference, and the two men shared a conviction that scientists were birthing technologies powerful enough to disrupt the very notion of what it meant to be human.
Around midnight, as Yuste finished his pisco sour, Girardi made an intriguing proposal: What if they worked together to pass an amendment to Chile’s constitution, one that would enshrine protections for mental privacy as an inviolable right of every Chilean? It was an ambitious idea, but Girardi had experience moving bold pieces of legislation through the senate; years earlier he had spearheaded Chile’s famous Food Labeling and Advertising Law, which required companies to affix health warning labels on junk food. (The law has since inspired dozens of countries to pursue similar legislation.) With BCI, here was another chance to be a trailblazer. “I said to Rafael, ‘Well, why don’t we create the first neuro data protection law?’” Girardi recalled. Yuste readily agreed.
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… Girardi led the political push, promoting a piece of legislation that would amend Chile’s constitution to protect mental privacy. The effort found surprising purchase across the political spectrum, a remarkable feat in a country famous for its political polarization. In 2021, Chile’s congress unanimously passed the constitutional amendment, which Piñera [Sebastián Piñera] swiftly signed into law. (A second piece of legislation, which would establish a regulatory framework for neurotechnology, is currently under consideration by Chile’s congress.) “There was no divide between the left or right,” recalled Girardi. “This was maybe the only law in Chile that was approved by unanimous vote.” Chile, then, had become the first country in the world to enshrine “neurorights” in its legal code.
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Even before the passage of the Chilean constitutional amendment, Yuste had begun meeting regularly with Jared Genser, an international human rights lawyer who had represented such high-profile clients as Desmond Tutu, Liu Xiaobo, and Aung San Suu Kyi. (The New York Times Magazine once referred to Genser as “the extractor” for his work with political prisoners.) Yuste was seeking guidance on how to develop an international legal framework to protect neurorights, and Genser, though he had just a cursory knowledge of neurotechnology, was immediately captivated by the topic. “It’s fair to say he blew my mind in the first hour of discussion,” recalled Genser. Soon thereafter, Yuste, Genser, and a private-sector entrepreneur named Jamie Daves launched the Neurorights Foundation, a nonprofit whose first goal, according to its website, is “to protect the human rights of all people from the potential misuse or abuse of neurotechnology.”
To accomplish this, the organization has sought to engage all levels of society, from the United Nations and regional governing bodies like the Organization of American States, down to national governments, the tech industry, scientists, and the public at large. Such a wide-ranging approach, said Genser, “is perhaps insanity on our part, or grandiosity. But nonetheless, you know, it’s definitely the Wild West as it comes to talking about these issues globally, because so few people know about where things are, where they’re heading, and what is necessary.”
This general lack of knowledge about neurotech, in all strata of society, has largely placed Yuste in the role of global educator — he has met several times with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, for example, to discuss the potential dangers of emerging neurotech. And these efforts are starting to yield results. Guterres’s 2021 report, “Our Common Agenda,” which sets forth goals for future international cooperation, urges “updating or clarifying our application of human rights frameworks and standards to address frontier issues,” such as “neuro-technology.” Genser attributes the inclusion of this language in the report to Yuste’s advocacy efforts.
But updating international human rights law is difficult, and even within the Neurorights Foundation there are differences of opinion regarding the most effective approach. For Yuste, the ideal solution would be the creation of a new international agency, akin to the International Atomic Energy Agency — but for neurorights. “My dream would be to have an international convention about neurotechnology, just like we had one about atomic energy and about certain things, with its own treaty,” he said. “And maybe an agency that would essentially supervise the world’s efforts in neurotechnology.”
Genser, however, believes that a new treaty is unnecessary, and that neurorights can be codified most effectively by extending interpretation of existing international human rights law to include them. The International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, for example, already ensures the general right to privacy, and an updated interpretation of the law could conceivably clarify that that clause extends to mental privacy as well.
… while Yuste and the others continue to grapple with the complexities of international and national law, Huth and Tang have found that, for their decoder at least, the greatest privacy guardrails come not from external institutions but rather from something much closer to home — the human mind itself. Following the initial success of their decoder, as the pair read widely about the ethical implications of such a technology, they began to think of ways to assess the boundaries of the decoder’s capabilities. “We wanted to test a couple kind of principles of mental privacy,” said Huth. Simply put, they wanted to know if the decoder could be resisted.
In late 2021, the scientists began to run new experiments. First, they were curious if an algorithm trained on one person could be used on another. They found that it could not — the decoder’s efficacy depended on many hours of individualized training. Next, they tested whether the decoder could be thrown off simply by refusing to cooperate with it. Instead of focusing on the story that was playing through their headphones while inside the fMRI machine, participants were asked to complete other mental tasks, such as naming random animals, or telling a different story in their head. “Both of those rendered it completely unusable,” Huth said. “We didn’t decode the story they were listening to, and we couldn’t decode anything about what they were thinking either.”
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Given how quickly this field of research is progressing, it seems like a good idea to increase efforts to establish neurorights (from Reveley’s January 18, 2024 article),
For Yuste, however, technologies like Huth and Tang’s decoder may only mark the beginning of a mind-boggling new chapter in human history, one in which the line between human brains and computers will be radically redrawn — or erased completely. A future is conceivable, he said, where humans and computers fuse permanently, leading to the emergence of technologically augmented cyborgs. “When this tsunami hits us I would say it’s not likely it’s for sure that humans will end up transforming themselves — ourselves — into maybe a hybrid species,” Yuste said. He is now focused on preparing for this future.
In the last several years, Yuste has traveled to multiple countries, meeting with a wide assortment of politicians, supreme court justices, U.N. committee members, and heads of state. And his advocacy is beginning to yield results. In August, Mexico began considering a constitutional reform that would establish the right to mental privacy. Brazil is currently considering a similar proposal, while Spain, Argentina, and Uruguay have also expressed interest, as has the European Union. In September [2023], neurorights were officially incorporated into Mexico’s digital rights charter, while in Chile, a landmark Supreme Court ruling found that Emotiv Inc, a company that makes a wearable EEG headset, violated Chile’s newly minted mental privacy law. That suit was brought by Yuste’s friend and collaborator, Guido Girardi.
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“This is something that we should take seriously,” he [Huth] said. “Because even if it’s rudimentary right now, where is that going to be in five years? What was possible five years ago? What’s possible now? Where’s it gonna be in five years? Where’s it gonna be in 10 years? I think the range of reasonable possibilities includes things that are — I don’t want to say like scary enough — but like dystopian enough that I think it’s certainly a time for us to think about this.”
While there’s a January 10, 2022 news item on Nanowerk, the research being announced was made available online in the Fall of 2021 and is now available in print,
Gold nanoclusters are groups of a few gold atoms with interesting photoluminescent properties. The features of gold nanoclusters depend not only on their structure, but their size and also by the ligands coordinated to them. These inorganic nanomaterials have been used in sensing, biomedicine and optics and their coordination with biomolecules can endow multiple capabilities in biological media.
A research collaboration between the groups of Dr. Juan Cabanillas, Research Professor at IMDEA Nanociencia and Dr. Aitziber L. Cortajarena, Ikerbasque Professor and Principal Investigator at CIC biomaGUNE have explored the use of natural proteins to grow gold nanoclusters, resulting in hybrid bionanomaterials with tunable photoluminescent properties and with a plethora of potential applications.
The nanoclusters –with less than 2 nm in size- differentiate from larger nanoparticles (plasmonic) since they present discrete energy levels coupled optically. The groups of amino acids within the proteins coordinate the gold atoms and allow the groups to be arranged around the gold nanocluster, facilitating the stabilization and adding an extra level of tailoring. These nanoclusters have interesting energy harvesting features. Since the discrete energy levels are optically coupled, the absorption of a photon leads to promotion of an electron to higher levels, which can trigger a photophysical process or a photochemical reaction.
The results by Cabanillas and Cortajarena groups, published in Advanced Optical Materials and Nano Letters, explore the origin of the photoluminescence in protein-designed gold nanoclusters and shed light into the strong influence of environmental conditions on the nature of luminescence. Nanocluster capping by two types of amino acids (histidine and cysteine) allow for changing the emission spectral range from blue to red, paving the way to tune the optical properties by an appropriate ligand choice. The nature of emission is also changed with capping, from fluorescence to phosphorescence, respectively. The synergistic protein-nanocluster effects on emission are still not clear, and the groups at IMDEA Nanociencia and CIC biomaGUNE are working to elucidate the mechanisms behind. There are potential applications for the aforementioned nanoclusters, in solid state as active medium in laser cavities. Optical gain properties from these nanoclusters are yet to be demonstrated, which could pave the way to a new generation of potentially interesting laser devices. As the combination of gold plus proteins is potentially biocompatible, many potential applications in biomedicine can also be envisaged.
A related publication of the groups in Nano Letters demonstrates that the insertion of tryptophans, amino acids with high electron density, in the vicinity of the nanocluster boosts its photoluminescence quantum efficiency up to 40% in some cases, values relevant for solid state light emission applications. Researchers also observed an antenna effect: the tryptophans can absorb light in a discrete manner and transfer the energy to the cluster. This effect has interest for energy harvesting and for sensing purposes as well.
The proteins through the biocapping enable the synthesis of the nanoclusters and largely improve their quantum efficiency. “The photoluminescence quantum efficiency is largely improved when using the biocapping” Dr. Cabanillas says. He believes this research work means “a new field opening for the tuning of optical properties of nanoclusters through protein engineering, and much work is ahead for the understanding of the amplification mechanism”. Dr. Cortajarena emphasizes “we have already demonstrated the great potential of engineered photoluminescent protein-nanocluster in biomedical and technological fields, and understanding the fundamental emission mechanisms is pivotal for future applications“. A variety of further applications include biosensors, as the protein admits functionalization with recognition molecules, energy harvesting, imaging and photodynamic therapies. Further work is ahead this opening avenue for photophysics research.
This research is a collaboration led by Dr. Juan Cabanillas and Dr. Aitziber L. Cortajarena research groups at IMDEA Nanociencia and CIC biomaGUNE, with contributions from researchers at the Diamond Light Source Ltd. [synchrotron] and DIPC. It has been cofounded by the projects AMAPOLA, NMAT2D, FULMATEN, Atracción de Talento from Comunidad de Madrid and the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence award to IMDEA Nanociencia. CIC biomaGUNE acknowledges support by the projects ERC-ProNANO, ERC-NIMM, ProTOOLs and the Maria de Maeztu Units of Excellence Programme.
Here are links to and citations for the papers,
Tuning the Optical Properties of Au Nanoclusters by Designed Proteins by Elena Lopez-Martinez, Diego Gianolio, Saül Garcia-Orrit, Victor Vega-Mayoral, Juan Cabanillas-Gonzalez, Carlos Sanchez-Cano, Aitziber L. Cortajarena. Advanced Optical Materials Volume 10, Issue 1 January 4, 2022 2101332 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adom.202101332 First published: 31 October 2021
Not being familiar with either of the two research institutions mentioned in the press release, I did a little digging.
Here’s a little information about IMDEA Nanociencia (IMDEA Nanoscience Institute), from its Wikipedia entry, Note: All links have been removed,
IMDEA Nanoscience Institute is a private non-profit foundation within the IMDEA Institutes network, created in 2006-2007 as a result of collaboration agreement between the Community of Madrid and Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. The foundation manages IMDEA-Nanoscience Institute,[1] a scientific centre dedicated to front-line research in nanoscience, nanotechnology and molecular design and aiming at transferable innovations and close contact with industries. IMDEA Nanoscience is a member of the Campus of International excellence, a consortium of research institutes promoted by the Autonomous University of Madrid and Spanish National Research Council (UAM/CSIC).[2]
As for CIC biomaGUNE, here’s more from its institutional profile on the science.eus website,
The Centre for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials-CIC biomaGUNE, located in San Sebastian (Spain), was officially opened in December 2006. CIC biomaGUNE is a non-profit research organization created to promote scientific research and technological innovation at the highest levels in the Basque Country following the BioBasque policy in order to create a new business sector based on biosciences. Established by the Department of Industry, Technology & Innovation of the Government of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, CIC biomaGUNE constitutes one of the Centres of the CIC network, the largest Basque Country research network on specific strategic areas, having the mission to contribute to the economical and social development of the country through the generation of knowledge and speeding up the process that leads to technological innovation.
I gather they’re sticking to 2022 as the year for the second race as first mentioned in my December 18, 2020 posting “Next-gen Rice University nanocars for Second international Nanocar Race (it’s been bumped to 2022).”
A November 17, 2021 news item on Nanowerk announces the inclusion of a team called NANOHISPA from IMDEA Nanociencia (Institute of Advanced Studies in Nanoscience, a private non-profit foundation initiated by the regional government of the community of Madrid [Spain]),
The nanomechanics at IMDEA Nanociencia are getting ready their engines for the international Nanocar Race II. The research groups led by David Écija and Emilio M. Pérez at IMDEA Nanociencia (Madrid) will participate in the second edition in Toulouse, March 2022.
The Nanocar Race is the world’s smallest car race covering the longest distance possible on a gold track for 24 hours, where the vehicles are molecules driven by the interaction with the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM).
The overarching goal of the competition is to advance the development of nanomachines capable of real work, like carrying molecular-scale cargo and facilitating nano-fabrication.
Not everyone can join this competition. After pre-registration, two years are given to each team to consolidate their molecular designs. Nanocar drivers use the tip of a STM microscope to help jolt their molecules along, typically by just a few nanometers each time, so that the nanocar race takes place on a very small scale. Touching however is forbidden. The vehicles must be drivable without mechanical push from the tip. The propulsion mechanism can be either inelastic (related to the excitation of vibrational modes or to current-induced structural changes) or dipolar, resulting from the repulsion or attraction between the nanocar and the STM tip. In the Nanocar Race II two sessions will happen, depending on the “weather” conditions: ambient or ultra-high vacuum.
With a lateral size of a few nanometers, a nanocar is a molecule with a distinguishable front and rear. Its chemical structure allows the nanocar to move on a surface when a STM tip is approached. The IMDEA Nanociencia’s NANOHISPA team joins the international group of certified teams in the ultra-high vacuum nanocar racing with their molecule “SPARC”, consisting on 70 well placed atoms. With rear wheels of toluene and front wheels of benzene, built on an anthracene chassis, the minimalistic hydrocarbon nanoarchitectonics of SPARC should help them navigate the speedway in a solid manner. This molecular design includes a permanent dipole moment “motor”: permanent dipoles make the car susceptible to electric field gradients, and can be used to propel and maneuver them. The small anthracene chassis keeps the weight at minimum, while its polyaromatic nature ensures sufficient downforce for fast cornering. Meanwhile, the benzene derivatives at the wheels allow little interaction with the gold track, promoting acceleration and top speed on the straights.
The nanocar SPARC will be driven by the NANOHISPA team with members of the research group of Prof. David Écija at IMDEA Nanociencia. The team of drivers, with Dr. Koen Lauwaet, Dr. Ana Sánchez, Dr. Ignacio Urgel and Dr. Ana Barragán, all led by Prof. David Écija, will go helmets on and fire the engines for the most exciting 24 hours in the nanoracing panorama. “The team has great expertise in molecular synthesis and scanning tunneling microscope manipulations” Prof. Rodolfo Miranda, director of IMDEA Nanociencia, says. The team is sponsored by the Specialised Group in Nanoscience and Molecular Materials (GENAM) from the Spanish Royal Society of Physics (RSEF) and the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ), and by the company Scienta Omicron. The NANOHISPA team passed their rookie tests last October in an online meeting with the organizers in France.
The Écija’s and Perez’s groups will team up and travel to Toulouse for the race presentation during the C’NANO Conference 2021, on the 23rd of November 2021. The event occurs in the year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the STM microscope invention. All the Nanocar Race II teams officially registered will present their first molecule-car prototype to the public during the MEMO satellite workshop “Single molecule mechanics on a surface: gears, motors and cars”.
The 2nd international Nanocar Race [sic; Note: This appears to be a link to the first international Nanocar Race website; link to 2nd race after this excerpt] is organized on the framework of the European FET OPEN project MEMO (Mechanics with Molecules). The competition will be broadcasted live from Toulouse in March, 2022. The First Nanocar Race was held in Toulouse in April 2017, and was followed live by more than 100.000 people on the NanoCarRace Youtube channel. On this occasion, a greater attention to this event is expected. All teams will compete at the same time in the same room in Toulouse, controlling their nanocars remotely.
8 drivers. 24 hours. Don’t miss out another incredible edition of the Nanocar Race.
As mentioned in the press release, the 2nd international Nanocar race is being organized by the European FET [Future and Emerging Technologies] OPEN project MEMO (Mechanics with Molecules) funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 joint funding programme.
For information about the Nanocar Race II, also known as, the 2nd international Nanocar Race, see this webpage on the MEMO website. You can find the NanoCarRace Youtube channel here.
The NANOHISPA team has made an animation of their nanocar SPARC,
As mentioned in the press release, the 2nd international Nanocar race is being organized by the European FET [Future and Emerging Technologies] OPEN project MEMO (Mechanics with Molecules) funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 joint funding programme.
