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34th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI): AI at the service of society (August 16 – 22, 2025) in Montréal (Canada)

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The International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) have been going since 1969 and this year, it’s being held in Montréal. Here’s more from an August 15, 2025 International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence news release on EurekAlert,

“AI at the service of society” is the guiding theme of the 34th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), taking place from August 16 to 22, 2025 in Montreal, Canada. Since its inception in 1969, IJCAI has played a pivotal role as a forum to showcase the frontiers of artificial intelligence research and applications and thus represents the oldest continuously running conference on artificial intelligence.

In 2025, the conference with more than 2000 attendees, has been brought to Canada by Gilles Pesant, the Local Arrangements Committee Chair, Professor in the Department of Computer and Software Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal and IVADO [Institut de valorisation des données] researcher. “What makes IJCAI special is that it brings together the latest research from many different areas of artificial intelligence. It’s a great opportunity for the Canadian AI community to showcase the world-class contributions and outstanding talent,` says the founder of the Quosséça research lab (QUebec Optimization and Satisfaction Strategies Exploiting Constraint Algorithms) and current President of the Association for Constraint Programming. Prof. Pesant is known for developing advanced algorithms for complex scheduling and planning problems. Among his current research interests are neuro-symbolic AI systems which combine machine learning and constraint programming.

Canada’s AI Leadership

This year marks the 30th anniversary of a breakthrough that transformed artificial intelligence by giving machines the ability to learn from and remember sequences such as speech, language, and time-series data – Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architecture. While not developed in Canada, the story of LSTM is intertwined with Canada’s leadership in artificial intelligence. During the “AI winter,” when much of the world abandoned neural networks, Canada became a refuge for pioneering AI research. Visionaries like Geoffrey Hinton, now a Nobel Prize winner, and Yoshua Bengio, among others, continued to advance deep learning despite widespread skepticism. Their perseverance and the resilience of the Canadian research community laid the foundation for the AI revolution that is transforming the world today. Canada continues to lead through such institutions as MILA, Vector Institute, AMII, IVADO, and the Canadian AI Safety Institute. 

The IJCAI 2025 program features a lineup of internationally recognised keynote speakers, covering the full spectrum of AI research, including:

Yoshua Bengio, a pioneer in representation learning and one of the godfathers of deep learning. He is a recipient of the 2018 Turing Award—often called the “Nobel Prize of Computing”—which he shares with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun for demonstrating how deep learning models can scale effectively with large datasets and computational power. Bengio is a professor at the Université de Montréal and the founder of Mila – Quebec AI Institute, one of the world’s largest academic labs dedicated to deep learning, which has helped establish Montreal as a global hub for AI research.

Every time someone uses a search engine or an AI-powered chatbot, they benefit from technologies that bridge the gap between human language and machine understanding — a challenge directly addressed by Heng Ji’s research. An invited IJCAI speaker, Ji is a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, renowned for her pioneering work on how AI systems extract and distill knowledge from vast amounts of unstructured data. Far from being confined to academia, she is also an active voice in AI policy, contributing her expertise to discussions on the ethical and responsible development of AI.

Luc De Raedt, professor of computer science at KU Leuven and director of Leuven.AI, is widely recognized for his pioneering contributions to integrating machine learning with symbolic reasoning. Beyond his research, he has played a significant leadership role in fostering public dialogue on responsible AI, spearheading initiatives and organizing debates on the societal impacts of AI to help shape conversations around ethical and trustworthy AI development. In his IJCAI2025 kenyote address he will talk about ‘Neurosymbolic AI : combining Data and Knowledge’.

In this effort, he is not alone. Bernhard Schölkopf, director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and co-founder of ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems), is another leading figure giving an invited talk on ‘From ML for science to causal digital twins’. In addition to his scientific contributions — particularly in kernel methods and causal inference — Schölkopf is a prominent advocate for ethical and trustworthy AI in Europe. He plays a key role in shaping AI research agendas and informing policy discussions around responsible AI.

The Montreal program also features invited talks by IJCAI 2025 awardees: Aditya Grover (UCLA and Inception Labs), recipient of the IJCAI-25 Computers and Thought Award; Rina Dechter (University of California, Irvine), recipient of the IJCAI-25 Award for Research Excellence; and Cynthia Rudin (Duke Univeristy), recipient of the IJCAI-25 John McCarthy Award.

The IJCAI 2025 scientific program highlights how AI is shaping both cutting-edge research and real-world impact. The AI, Arts & Creativity track explores AI’s growing role in generating and supporting creative work—from music and design to storytelling and architecture. The Human-Centred AI track addresses the challenges of building AI systems aligned with human values, integrating technical, cognitive, ethical, and societal perspectives. The AI for Social Good track focuses on AI-driven solutions for pressing global challenges, encouraging collaborations with governments, NGOs, and researchers to support initiatives like the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Meanwhile, the AI4Tech track showcases how AI is driving breakthroughs in critical technologies across sectors such as health, finance, mobility, and smart cities. Complementing these thematic tracks, IJCAI 2025 includes as well a set of impactful competitions and challenges to push the boundaries of applied AI, including the Challenge on Deepfake Detection and Localization, the AI for Drinking Water Chlorination Challenge, and the Pulmonary Fibrosis Segmentation Challenge. Together, these elements reflect the pulse of AI today—advancing science while addressing the needs of society. IJCAI 2025 also presents an AI Art Gallery featuring works that examine how machines balance agency and vulnerability, and how their interactions with humans and the environment shape future possibilities. These artworks engage with these questions through AI, robotics, AR, VR, and other emerging technologies.

The program also includes the AI Lounge: Between Wonder and Caution – Insights from Three Experts, an admission-free public discussion featuring science communication journalist in debate with three community representatives: Heng Ji (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Kate Larson (University of Waterloo), and Cynthia Rudin (Duke University).

To support authors who may experience difficulties obtaining Canadian visas, a satellite event will be hosted in Guangzhou, China, from August 29 to August 31, 2025. 

The IJCAI 2025 conference is supported by its sponsors, including the Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ) and Palais des Congrès de Montréal (Diamond Sponsor), GMI Cloud, FinVolution Group, and Baidu and Ant Research as Silver Sponsors. 

Full Program

See full program at https://2025.ijcai.org/ 

Organizers and Institutional Support

Conference Chair: Shlomo Zilberstein University of Massachusetts, Amherst / USA

Program Chair: James Kwok, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology / China

Local Arrangements Committee Chair: Gilles Pesant, Polytechnique Montréal / Canada

Local Publicity chair:  Lina Marsso, Assistant Professor, Polytechnique Montréal / MiLA / Canada

Sponsorship / Exhibit / Industry Day Chair: Nancy Laramée, IVADO, Canada

Lead student journalist on social media: Liliane-Caroline Demers, Polytechnique Montreal

Webmaster: Mehil Shah, Dalhousie University, Canada

More information on the IJCAI’s website: https://2025.ijcai.org

Should you be interested in the parent organization, which began life in California, US, you can find out more here.

Effects of soil contamination could be blunted with nanonutrients

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An October 15, 2024 news item on phys.org highlights research into soil remediation, Note: A link has been removed,

One of the pressing problems that the world faces in the era of climate change is how to grow enough healthy food to meet the increasing global population, even as soil contamination rises. Research recently published in Nature Food by an international team of scientists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Guangdong University of Technology, and Central South University of Forestry and Technology, has shown that nutrients on the nanometer scale can not only blunt some of the worst effects of heavy metal and metalloid contamination, but increase crop yields and nutrient content.

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Caption: Nanomaterials can enter plants through above-ground tissues and root tissues. Soil rhizosphere microorganisms, soil particles, organic matter and rhizosphere deposits can also influence NM uptake in plants. Credit: 10.1038/s43016-024-01063-1 Courtesy of University of Massachusetts Amherst

An October 15, 2024 University of Massachusetts Amherst news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes the problem and the proposed solution, Note: Links have been removed,

“Much of the world’s arable soil is contaminated by heavy metals, like cadmium, lead and mercury, as well as metalloids, like arsenic and selenium,” says Baoshan Xing, University Distinguished Professor and director of the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at UMass Amherst. Xing, who is also the paper’s senior author, notes that such contamination puts severe stress on the ability to grow staple crops, which also affects the nutritional value of the crops that manage to survive. “We need to come up with solutions to reduce the heavy metals that wind up in our food,” says Xing, and one approach that has shown promise is the use of nutrients at nanoscale, or what he calls a “nano-enabled” agriculture.


The bulk fertilizers that you may be more familiar with are made up of large particles, which aren’t as readily absorbed by the crop. This means that farmers need to apply more, which then increases the levels of fertilizer runoff into streams, lakes and the ocean. However, crop nutrients at the nanometer scale can be specifically designed and mixed for particular crops, growing conditions and application methods, and engineered so that the target plant can most efficiently absorb the nutrients into its system, cutting down on the amount of fertilizer needed, keeping costs down and limiting runoff.

Though nanomaterials are already available on the agricultural market and have plenty of peer-reviewed science looking at their effect on the soil and crop growth, Xing and his colleagues’ research is the first comprehensive account of the effectiveness of nanomaterials as a class, with results that offer practical insights to help steer sustainable agriculture and global food safety.

“We collected data from 170 previous publications on the effectiveness of nanoparticles in reducing heavy metal and metalloid uptake,” says Chuanxin Ma, the paper’s co-lead author who completed his doctoral training at UMass Amherst’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture and is now a professor at China’s Guangdong University of Technology. “From those 170 papers, we collected 8,585 experimental observations of how plants respond to nanomaterials.”

The team then conducted a meta-analysis on this enormous trove of data, running it through a series of machine-learning models to quantify the effect of nanomaterials on crop growth and metal and metalloid uptake, before finally testing a flexible quantitative approach, known as the “IVIF-TOPSIS-EW method,” that can illuminate how to choose different types of nanomaterials according to a range of realistic agricultural scenarios.

The results show that nanomaterials are more effective than conventional fertilizers at mitigating the harmful effects of polluted soil (by 38.3%), can enhance crop yields (by 22.8%) and the nutritional value of those crops (by 30%), as well as combat plant stress (by 21.6%) due to metal and metalloid pollution. Nanomaterials also help increase soil enzymes and organic carbon, both of which help drive soil fertility.

“Of course, nanomaterials are not a silver bullet,” explains Xing. “They need to be applied in distinct ways based on the individual crop and soil.” Which is where the team’s IVIF-TOPSIS-EW method comes into play. “Our method can help policy makers choose the best course of action for their particular situation,” says Ma.

Yini Cao from Central South University of Forestry and Technology also contributed greatly to collecting and analyzing the data in this work.

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the United States National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA).

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

Engineered nanomaterials reduce metal(loid) accumulation and enhance staple food production for sustainable agriculture by Yini Cao, Chuanxin Ma, Jason C. White, Yuchi Cao, Fan Zhang, Ran Tong, Hao Yu, Yi Hao, Wende Yan, Melanie Kah & Baoshan Xing. Nature Food volume 5, pages 951–962 (2024) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-01063-1 Published: 11 October 2024 Issue Date: November 2024

This paper is behind a paywall.

Tissue-like bioelectronic mesh system capable of growing with cardiac tissues

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Graphene, heralded for its biocompatibility, features in a March 22, 2024 news item on ScienceDaily about research about biosensing and a mesh system that can grow,

A team of engineers has recently built a tissue-like bioelectronic mesh system integrated with an array of atom-thin graphene sensors that can simultaneously measure both the electrical signal and the physical movement of cells in lab-grown human cardiac tissue. This tissue-like mesh can grow along with the cardiac cells, allowing researchers to observe how the heart’s mechanical and electrical functions change during the developmental process. The new device is a boon for those studying cardiac disease as well as those studying the potentially toxic side-effects of many common drug therapies.

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Caption: A bioelectronic mesh, studded with graphene sensors (red), can measure the electrical signal and movement of cardiac tissue (purple and green) at the same time. Credit: Gao et al., 10.1038/s41467-024-46636-7

A March 21, 2024 University of Massachusetts at Amherst news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, delves further into the topics of heart disease and biosensor implants, Note: Links have been removed,

Cardiac disease is the leading cause of human morbidity and mortality across the world. The heart is also very sensitive to therapeutic drugs, and the pharmaceutical industry spends millions of dollars in testing to make sure that its products are safe. However, ways to effectively monitor living cardiac tissue are extremely limited.

In part, this is because it is very risky to implant sensors in a living heart, but also because the heart is a complex kind of muscle with more than one thing that needs monitoring. “Cardiac tissue is very special,” says Jun Yao, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in UMass Amherst’s College of Engineering and the paper’s senior author. “It has a mechanical activity—the contractions and relaxations that pump blood through our body—coupled to an electrical signal that controls that activity.”

But today’s sensors can typically only measure one characteristic at a time, and a two-sensor device that could measure both charge and movement would be so bulky as to impede the cardiac tissue’s function. Until now, there was no single sensor capable of measuring the heart’s dual properties without interfering with its functioning.

The new device is built of two critical components, explains lead author Hongyan Gao, who is pursuing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UMass Amherst. The first is a three-dimensional cardiac microtissue (CMT), grown in a lab from human stem cells under the guidance of co-author Yubing Sun, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass Amherst. CMT has become the preferred model for in vitro testing because it is the closest analog yet to a full-size, living human heart. However, because CMT is grown in a test tube, it has to mature, a process that takes time and can be easily disrupted by a clumsy sensor.

The second critical component involves graphene—a pure-carbon substance only one atom thick. Graphene has a few surprising quirks to its nature that make it perfect for a cardiac sensor. Graphene is electrically conductive, and so it can sense the electrical charges shooting through cardiac tissue. It is also piezoresistive, which means that as it is stretched—say, by the beating of a heart—its electrical resistance increases. And because graphene is impossibly thin, it can register even the tiniest flutter of muscle contraction or relaxation and can do so without impeding the heart’s function, all through the maturation process. Co-author Jing Kong, professor of electrical engineering at MIT, and her group supplied this critical graphene material.

“Although there have already been many applications for graphene, it is wonderful to see that it can be used in this critical need, which takes advantage of graphene’s different characteristics,” says Kong.

Gao, Yao and their colleagues then embedded a series of graphene sensors in a soft, stretchable porous mesh scaffold they developed that has close structural and mechanical properties to human tissue and which can be applied non-invasively to cardiac tissue.

“No one has ever done this before,” says Gao. “Graphene can survive in a biological environment without degrading for a very long time and not lose its conductivity, so we can monitor the CMT across its entire maturation process.”

“This is crucial for a number of reasons,” adds Yao. “Our sensor can give real-time feedback to scientists and drug researchers, and it can do so in a cost-effective way. We take pride in using the insights of electrical engineering to help build tools that can be useful to a wide range of researchers.”

In the future, Gao says, he hopes to be able to adapt his sensor to grander scales, even to in vivo monitoring, which would provide the best-possible data to help solve cardiac disease.

This research was supported by the Army Research Office, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, and the Link Foundation, as well as the Institute for Applied Life Sciences at UMass Amherst.

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

Graphene-integrated mesh electronics with converged multifunctionality for tracking multimodal excitation-contraction dynamics in cardiac microtissues by Hongyan Gao, Zhien Wang, Feiyu Yang, Xiaoyu Wang, Siqi Wang, Quan Zhang, Xiaomeng Liu, Yubing Sun, Jing Kong & Jun Yao. Nature Communications volume 15, Article number: 2321 (2024) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46636-7 Published: 14 March 2024

This paper is open access.

Scientists claim off-the-shelf, power-generating clothes almost here

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PEDOT-coated yarns act as “normal” wires to transmit electricity from a wall outlet to an incandescent lightbulb. Materials scientist Trisha Andrew at UMass Amherst and colleagues outline in a new paper how they have invented a way to apply breathable, pliable, metal-free electrodes to fabric and off-the-shelf clothing so it feels good to the touch and also transports electricity to power small electronics. Harvesting body motion energy generates the power. Courtesy: UMass Amherst

I’m not quite as optimistic (it’s a long way from the lab to the marketplace) as the scientists do eventually note but this does seem promising (from a May 23, 2017 news item on Nanowerk),

A lightweight, comfortable jacket that can generate the power to light up a jogger at night may sound futuristic, but materials scientist Trisha Andrew at the University of Massachusetts Amherst could make one today.

In a new paper this month, she and colleagues outline how they have invented a way to apply breathable, pliable, metal-free electrodes to fabric and off-the-shelf clothing so it feels good to the touch and also transports enough electricity to power small electronics.

A May 23, 2017 University of Massachusetts Amherst news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item,

She says, “Our lab works on textile electronics. We aim to build up the materials science so you can give us any garment you want, any fabric, any weave type, and turn it into a conductor. Such conducting textiles can then be built up into sophisticated electronics. One such application is to harvest body motion energy and convert it into electricity in such a way that every time you move, it generates power.” Powering advanced fabrics that can monitor health data remotely are important to the military and increasingly valued by the health care industry, she notes.

Generating small electric currents through relative movement of layers is called triboelectric charging, explains Andrew, who trained as a polymer chemist and electrical engineer. Materials can become electrically charged as they create friction by moving against a different material, like rubbing a comb on a sweater. “By sandwiching layers of differently materials between two conducting electrodes, a few microwatts of power can be generated when we move,” she adds.

In the current early online edition of Advanced Functional Materials, she and postdoctoral researcher Lu Shuai Zhang in her lab describe the vapor deposition method they use to coat fabrics with a conducting polymer, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxytiophene) also known as PEDOT, to make plain-woven, conducting fabrics that are resistant to stretching and wear and remain stable after washing and ironing. The thickest coating they put down is about 500 nanometers, or about 1/10 the diameter of a human hair, which retains a fabric’s hand feel.

The authors report results of testing electrical conductivity, fabric stability, chemical and mechanical stability of PEDOT films and textile parameter effects on conductivity for 14 fabrics, including five cottons with different weaves, linen and silk from a craft store.

“Our article describes the materials science needed to make these robust conductors,” Andrew says. “We show them to be stable to washing, rubbing, human sweat and a lot of wear and tear.” PEDOT coating did not change the feel of any fabric as determined by touch with bare hands before and after coating. Coating did not increase fabric weight by more than 2 percent. The work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Until recently, she and Zhang point out, textile scientists have tended not to use vapor deposition because of technical difficulties and high cost of scaling up from the laboratory. But over the last 10 years, industries such as carpet manufacturers and mechanical component makers have shown that the technology can be scaled up and remain cost-effective. The researchers say their invention also overcomes the obstacle of power-generating electronics mounted on plastic or cladded, veneer-like fibers that make garments heavier and/or less flexible than off-the-shelf clothing “no matter how thin or flexible these device arrays are.”

“There is strong motivation to use something that is already familiar, such as cotton/silk thread, fabrics and clothes, and imperceptibly adapting it to a new technological application.” Andrew adds, “This is a huge leap for consumer products, if you don’t have to convince people to wear something different than what they are already wearing.”

Test results were sometimes a surprise, Andrew notes. “You’d be amazed how much stress your clothes go through until you try to make a coating that will survive a shirt being pulled over the head. The stress can be huge, up to a thousand newtons of force. For comparison, one footstep is equal to about 10 newtons, so it’s yanking hard. If your coating is not stable, a single pull like that will flake it all off. That’s why we had to show that we could bend it, rub it and torture it. That is a very powerful requirement to move forward.”

Andrew is director of wearable electronics at the Center for Personalized Health Monitoring in UMass Amherst’s Institute of Applied Life Sciences (IALS). Since the basic work reported this month was completed, her lab has also made a wearable heart rate monitor with an off-the-shelf fitness bra to which they added eight monitoring electrodes. They will soon test it with volunteers on a treadmill at the IALS human movement facility.

She explains that a hospital heart rate monitor has 12 electrodes, while the wrist-worn fitness devices popular today have one, which makes them prone to false positives. They will be testing a bra with eight electrodes, alone and worn with leggings that add four more, against a control to see if sensors can match the accuracy and sensitivity of what a hospital can do. As the authors note in their paper, flexible, body-worn electronics represent a frontier of human interface devices that make advanced physiological and performance monitoring possible.

For the future, Andrew says, “We’re working on taking any garment you give us and turning it into a solar cell so that as you are walking around the sunlight that hits your clothes can be stored in a battery or be plugged in to power a small electronic device.”

Zhang and Andrew believe their vapor coating is able to stick to fabrics by a process called surface grafting, which takes advantage of free bonds dangling on the surface chemically bonding to one end of the polymer coating, but they have yet to investigate this fully.

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

Rugged Textile Electrodes for Wearable Devices Obtained by Vapor Coating Off-the-Shelf, Plain-Woven Fabrics by Lushuai Zhang, Marianne Fairbanks, and Trisha L. Andrew. Advanced Functional Materials DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201700415 Version of Record online: 2 MAY 2017

© 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

Smart suits for US soldiers—an update of sorts from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

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The US military has funded a program named: ‘Dynamic Multifunctional Material for a Second Skin Program’ through its Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) Chemical and Biological Technologies Department and Sharon Gaudin’s Feb. 20,  2014 article for Computer World offers a bit of an update on this project,which was first reported in 2012,

A U.S. soldier is on patrol with his squad when he kneels to check something out, unknowingly putting his knee into a puddle of contaminants.

The soldier isn’t harmed, though, because he or she is wearing a smart suit that immediately senses the threat and transforms the material covering his knee into a protective state that repels the potential deadly bacteria.

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a federal government research facility in Livermore, Calif., are using nanotechnology to create clothing designed to protect U.S. soldiers from chemical and biological attacks.

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“The threat is nanoscale so we need to work in the nano realm, which helps to keep it light and breathable,” said Francesco Fornasiero, a staff scientist at the lab. “If you have a nano-size threat, you need a nano-sized defense.”

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Fornasiero said the task is a difficult one, and the suits may not be ready for the field for another 10 to 20 years. [emphasis mine]
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One option is to use carbon nanotubes in a layer of the suit’s fabric. Sweat and air would be able to easily move through the nanotubes. However, the diameter of the nanotubes is smaller than the diameter of bacteria and viruses. That means they would not be able to pass through the tubes and reach the person wearing the suit.

However, chemicals that might be used in a chemical attack are small enough to fit through the nanotubes. To block them, researchers are adding a layer of polymer threads that extend up from the top of the nanotubes, like stalks of grass coming up from the ground.

The threads are designed to recognize the presence of chemical agents. When that happens, they swell and collapse on top of the nanotubes, blocking anything from entering them.

A second option that the Lawrence Livermore scientists are working on involves similar carbon nanotubes but with catalytic components in a polymer mesh that sits on top of the nanotubes. The components would destroy any chemical agents they come in contact with. After the chemicals are destroyed, they are shed off, enabling the suit to handle multiple attacks.

An October 6, 2012 (NR-12-10-06) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) news release details the -project and the proponents,

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and collaborators are developing a new military uniform material that repels chemical and biological agents using a novel carbon nanotube fabric.

The material will be designed to undergo a rapid transition from a breathable state to a protective state. The highly breathable membranes would have pores made of a few-nanometer-wide vertically aligned carbon nanotubes that are surface modified with a chemical warfare agent-responsive functional layer. Response to the threat would be triggered by direct chemical warfare agent attack to the membrane surface, at which time the fabric would switch to a protective state by closing the CNT pore entrance or by shedding the contaminated surface layer.

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High breathability is a critical requirement for protective clothing to prevent heat-stress and exhaustion when military personnel are engaged in missions in contaminated environments. Current protective military uniforms are based on heavyweight full-barrier protection or permeable adsorptive protective overgarments that cannot meet the critical demand of simultaneous high comfort and protection, and provide a passive rather than active response to an environmental threat.

To provide high breathability, the new composite material will take advantage of the unique transport properties of carbon nanotube pores, which have two orders of magnitude faster gas transport rates when compared with any other pore of similar size.

“We have demonstrated that our small-size prototype carbon nanotube membranes can provide outstanding breathability in spite of the very small pore sizes and porosity,” said Sangil Kim, another LLNL scientist in the Biosciences and Biotechnology Division. “With our collaborators, we will develop large area functionalized CNT membranes.”

Biological agents, such as bacteria or viruses, are close to 10 nanometers in size. Because the membrane pores on the uniform are only a few nanometers wide, these membranes will easily block biological agents.

However, chemical agents are much smaller in size and require the membrane pores to be able to react to block the threat. To create a multifunctional membrane, the team will surface modify the original prototype carbon nanotube membranes with chemical threat responsive functional groups. The functional groups on the membrane will sense and block the threat like gatekeepers on entrance. A second response scheme also will be developed: Similar to how a living skin peels off when challenged with dangerous external factors, the fabric will exfoliate upon reaction with the chemical agent. In this way, the fabric will be able to block chemical agents such as sulfur mustard (blister agent), GD and VX nerve agents, toxins such as staphylococcal enterotoxin and biological spores such as anthrax.

The project is funded for $13 million over five years with LLNL as the lead institution. The Livermore team is made up of Fornasiero [Francesco Fornasiero], Kim and Kuang Jen Wu. Other collaborators and institutions involved in the project include Timothy Swager at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jerry Shan at Rutgers University, Ken Carter, James Watkins, and Jeffrey Morse at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Heidi Schreuder-Gibson at Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center, and Robert Praino at Chasm Technologies Inc.

“Development of chemical threat responsive carbon nanotube membranes is a great example of novel material’s potential to provide innovative solutions for the Department of Defense CB needs,” said Tracee Harris, the DTRA science and technology manager for the Dynamic Multifunctional Material for a Second Skin Program. “This futuristic uniform would allow our military forces to operate safely for extended time periods and successfully complete their missions in environments contaminated with chemical and biological warfare agents.”

The Laboratory has a history in developing carbon nanotubes for a wide range of applications including desalination. “We have an advanced carbon nanotube platform to build and expand to make advancements in the protective fabric material for this new project,” Wu said.

The new uniforms could be deployed in the field in less than 10 years. [emphasis mine]

Since Gaudin’s 2014 article quotes one of the LLNL’s scientists, Francesco Fornasiero, with an estimate for the suit’s deployment into the field as 10 – 20 years as opposed to the “less than 10 years” estimated in the news release, I’m guessing the problem has proved more complex than was first anticipated.

For anyone who’s interested in more details about  US soldiers and nanotechnology,

  • May 1, 2013 article by Max Cacas for Signal Online provides more details about the overall Smart Skin programme and its goals.
  • Nov. 15, 2013 article by Kris Walker for Azonano.com describes the Smart Skin project along with others including the intriguingly titled: ‘Warrior Web’.
  • website for MIT’s (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies Note: The MIT researcher mentioned in the LLNL news release is a faculty member of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.
  • website for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Biochemical fate of nanoemulsion-based food delivery systems in the gastrointestinal tract

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This is a story about nutraceuticals or, more specifically, about nanotechnology and food according to a Jan. 20, 2014 news item on Azonano,

Food scientist Hang Xiao of the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently received a four-year, $491,220 grant to study the biochemical fate of nanoemulsion-based food delivery systems in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, hoping to re-shape them and enhance the absorption of beneficial food components encapsulated in delivery systems.

Food biochemists like Xiao believe that if taken up in appropriate amounts and forms, certain food components known as nutraceuticals might benefit human health by providing anti-inflammatory or anti-cancer effects. Nutraceuticals include flavonoids and carotenoids in fruits and vegetables, for example.

This project, supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, will focus on manipulating the structure and composition of nano-emulsion delivery systems to modify the fate of encapsulated nutraceuticals in the GI tract to enhance their bioavailability.

A Jan. 17, 2014 news release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, explains further,

“In the last decade, knowledge has been advancing about how to effectively deliver beneficial components in food. This research will allow us to direct the assembly of nano-emulsion droplets to create characteristics that will dictate how they are digested and absorbed,” Xiao explains. “This would be a model for nutraceutical delivery in a wide range of food products. Someday prepared foods may help lower our risk of cancer, for example.”

Specifically, using both cell culture and animal models, Xiao and colleagues will design lipid nanoparticles at three stages: From nano-emulsion droplets containing nutraceuticals, to mixed micelles and finally to chylomicrons. To start this process, digestion physiochemically disassembles nano-emulsion droplets. The resulting chemical components are then assembled into mixed micelles in the small intestine, where epithelial cells called enterocytes take them up. There they are reassembled into chylomicrons and absorbed into blood circulation through the lymph system.

The scientists want to influence the size and composition of chylomicrons, because these characteristics dictate the fate of nutraceuticals encapsulated in the chylomicrons. Certain sizes and compositions are better able to deliver nutraceuticals to the lymph system, which protects nutraceuticals from being cleared by the liver. This will enhance bioavailability of flavonoids and other beneficial compounds to the body, potentially offering health benefits.

“We’re basically utilizing what already happens in our bodies all the time, but introducing food-grade nano-emulsion systems that can influence the nature of mixed micelles as well as chylomicrons,” says Xiao. “It’s safe, it’s all digested and simply delivers beneficial food components to a greater extent than if the system was left alone.”

Given that this falls under my nanotechnology and food classification, I was reminded of a recent panel discussion on the topic held by the UK’s Guardian newspaper, from my Oct. 29, 2013 posting,

There’s no indication as to what the 25 audience members thought about the session although Hilary Sutcliffe of Matter was quoted,

Audience member Hilary Sutcliffe, director of the Matter think tank on responsible innovation, was keen to emphasise the limits of nanotechnology in food. “If we’re really lucky, we might get nanosalt and a couple of nano-encapsulated vitamins that go in products,” she told the panel, describing her disappointment in the progress of nanotechnology in food to date.

Sutcliffe explained that these limited applications are expensive and not that useful: manufacturers would rather just reduce salt content than pay for nanosalt, and vitamins and flavourings do not need to be nano-encapsulated because they can be added to foods at the microscale, rather than at the nano-level, which is one thousand times smaller.

She also suggested that, so far, the possible uses of nanotechnology have only been in Western diets and that people should be realistic about its use for tackling the impending global food crisis. “Nothing about nanotechnology is in relation to anything except Western, expensive foods that are slightly gratuitous and not particularly necessary,” she said, before adding that it is not currently helping to feed the world. “If you are going to talk about feeding the world, be brave, take on GM, let’s have that discussion.”

I was not able to find notice of any US public engagement sessions on the topic of ‘nano and food’. If you know of any such sessions, please do share in the comments section.