Tag Archives: University of Utah

Merry 2025 Christmas: sea slugs, the Nicholas Brothers, ethnomathematics, three new frogs (hidden gems), gifted dogs, and more

What you’re looking at is a sea slug:

Anatomy of the sacoglossan mollusc Elysia chlorotica. Sea slug consuming its obligate algal food Vaucheria litorea. Small, punctate green circles are the plastids located within the extensive digestive diverticula of the animal. By Karen N. Pelletreau et al. – http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0097477, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38619279 [[image downloaded from the *Elysia chlorotica* Wikipedia entry]

This is one of my favourite stories. From a November 27, 2025 article “A rare photosynthesizing sea slug has been found off N.S. Here’s why scientists are excited” by Frances Willick for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news online website,

When she made the discovery that would thrill her fellow snorkellers and excite researchers across North America, she didn’t think much of it at first.

“I just thought, oh, that’s a rotten leaf, keep going,” says Elli Ofthenorth.

The avid snorkeller passed by this “black gunk” once, twice, but it wasn’t until her third pass that something caught her eye enough to take a closer look, and she realized it was a living creature.

“I just started yelling, there’s a sea slug here!”

Ofthenorth’s mother, who was on the shore at Rainbow Haven Provincial Park near Dartmouth, N.S., lit up the snorkel group chat, and within minutes, members identified it as Elysia chlorotica, or Eastern emerald elysia.

…

This unassuming creature could almost pass for your garden-variety slug — the kind that decimates your lettuce every summer. That is, until its crinkly-looking back unfurls a stunning, emerald green “leaf,” complete with pale “veins” branching outward from the centre.

It’s this “leaf,” and what it does for the sea slug, that holds so much promise for research in medicine, clean energy and other fields.

But it’s so elusive that researchers are having a hard time studying it.

E. chlorotica can photosynthesize, stealing the chloroplasts — the photosynthesizing organs — of the algae it eats, keeping them alive in its body, and using them to get energy from the sun. The sea slugs can then subsist for months at a time without consuming food.

“It’s like if I ate a whole bunch of spinach and then I just woke up this morning and I just sunbathed for an hour and then I wouldn’t need to eat for the rest of the week,” says Hunter Stevens, a biologist with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s Nova Scotia chapter. “These slugs are essentially doing the same thing.”

…

Elusive and ephemeral

However, this coveted slug excels at eluding researchers.

Historically, known populations have existed in the Minas Basin area of Nova Scotia and in Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts — and theoretically their habitat exists all along the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. — but recent efforts to find them have been unsuccessful.

“For so long it just seemed like nobody had seen them,” says Krug [Patrick Krug, a professor of biological sciences at California State University, Los Angeles]. “It was such a shot in the dark, it wasn’t even worth going to look.”

…

Dylan Gagler, a PhD student at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, has searched the slug’s favoured habitat off Martha’s Vineyard repeatedly this year, but without luck so far.

When Stevens’s Instagram post about the Rainbow Haven discovery popped up in Gagler’s feed, he says he was “having like a freak-out, FOMO [fear of missing out] moment of, like, I got to get up to Nova Scotia. Like, this is clearly where all the action is.”

Gagler contacted Stevens to get information about the conditions at the Rainbow Haven location, such as the air and water temperature and the depth they were found at, in order to fine-tune his own searches. He’s also exploring the permitting process to collect specimens from Nova Scotia to raise in a lab.

Though E. chlorotica has been hard to find, Krug says there have been a few sightings in recent months, including the one in Nova Scotia, as well as in the Carolinas and in Tampa Bay, Fla.

He says the populations are “ephemeral,” seeming to go through cycles of boom and bust — sometimes abundant, but then vanishing suddenly.

…

The fact that the recent discovery of this thriving population was made within the bounds of a provincial park in Nova Scotia underscores how important protected areas are to biodiversity, Stevens says.

“As coastal development proliferates and continues to advance, some of these populations, we may not even know about them, and they’ll disappear,” he says. “And so these slugs will probably get rarer as time goes on.”

Stevens says Ofthenorth’s discovery highlights the importance of citizen science.

“It just shows the power of curiosity and how anybody here can go into the water and there’s still that potential to find this really scientifically significant observation.”

…

If you have the time, Willick’s November 27, 2025 article “A rare photosynthesizing sea slug has been found off N.S. Here’s why scientists are excited” includes pictures and a video.

Introduction

I always look forward to this Christmas posting as it’s an opportunity to publish some stories that wouldn’t ordinarily be featured here like the sea slug/leaf that opened this post.The focus will be (mostly) on animals. Note: I will not be removing links from the news/press releases nor will I be providing separate citations and links.

On to the rest of the programme, there should always be a little dance in one’s life.

Nicholas Brothers

[downloaded from https://mymodernmet.com/cab-calloway-jumpin-jive-nicholas-brothers/]

Watch their feet. There’s a reason dancers still talk about those two; the synchronization is something. There was link to the Nicholas Brothers’ routine in Stormy Weather (1943 film) was in my December 24, 2025 posting but …

Given the past year, I think it’s time to revisit the brothers and Emma Taggart’s October 4, 2019 article on My Modern Met (scroll down to see Cab Calloway and his band performing ‘Jumpin Jive’ as an introduction to what is one of the most lauded tap routines ever recorded on film).

What makes it jaw-dropping is that it was done in one take and with no rehearsal .Do read Taggart’s October 4, 2019 article for a detail I found a little mystifying (what was the director thinking?).

I have a little more about ‘Stormy Weather’ and the dance. Nick Castle was the dance director (uncredited) for the movie and the Nicholas Brothers’ routine was something he worked out with the brothers..I found that bit of information in “C’mon, Get Happy; the Making of Summer Stock,” a 2023 book by David Frantle and Tom Johnson. The book has a number of dancers and choreographers commenting on the movie’s (Summer Stock) dance routines (Gene Kelly was in the movie) in detail. Castle was the ‘dance stager’ for “Summer Stock,” which is why the routine and the Nicholas Brothers are mentioned.

8,000 years ago, before numbers existed, art demonstrated early mathematical thinking (ethnomathematics)

A December 16, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily makes an extraordinary statement about art, mathematics, and prehistoric civilization,

A study published in the Journal of World Prehistory suggests that some of the earliest known images of plants created by humans served a deeper purpose than decoration. According to the researchers, these ancient designs also reveal early mathematical thinking.

By closely examining prehistoric pottery, Prof. Yosef Garfinkel and Sarah Krulwich of the Hebrew University traced the oldest consistent use of plant imagery in human art to more than 8,000 years ago. The pottery comes from the Halafian culture of northern Mesopotamia (c. 6200-5500 BCE). Their findings show that early farming communities carefully painted flowers, shrubs, branches, and trees, arranging them in ways that reflect deliberate geometric structure and numerical order.

…

A meticulously executed drawing of a single large flower, depicted in a symmetrical arrangement with 16 or 32 petals, and a bowl with 64 (+ 12) flowers Courtesy Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This undated news release on the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem website provides more detail about the work, Note: There are lots of images accompanying this story that are not included here,

A new study reveals that the Halafian culture of northern Mesopotamia (c. 6200–5500 BCE) produced the earliest systematic plant imagery in prehistoric art, flowers, shrubs, branches, and trees painted on fine pottery, arranged with precise symmetry and numerical sequences, especially petal and flower counts of 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64. This suggests that early farming villages in the Near East already possessed sophisticated, practical mathematical thinking about dividing space and quantities, likely tied to everyday needs such as fairly sharing crops from collectively worked fields, long before writing or formal number systems existed.

A new study published in the Journal of World Prehistory reveals that some of humanity’s earliest artistic representations of botanical figures were far more than decorative, they were mathematical.

…

In an extensive analysis of ancient pottery, Prof. Yosef Garfinkel and Sarah Krulwich of the Hebrew University have identified the earliest systematic depictions of vegetal motifs in human history, dating back over 8,000 years to the Halafian culture of northern Mesopotamia (c. 6200–5500 BCE). Their research shows that these early agricultural communities painted flowers, shrubs, branches, and trees with remarkable care, and embedded within them evidence of complex geometric and arithmetic thinking.

A New Understanding of Prehistoric Art

Earlier prehistoric art focused primarily on humans and animals. Halafian pottery, however, marks the moment when the plant world entered human artistic expression in a systematic and visually sophisticated way.

Across 29 archaeological sites, Garfinkel and Krulwich documented hundreds of carefully rendered vegetal motifs, some naturalistic, others abstract, all reflecting conscious artistic choice.

…

“These vessels represent the first moment in history when people chose to portray the botanical world as a subject worthy of artistic attention,” the authors note. “It reflects a cognitive shift tied to village life and a growing awareness of symmetry and aesthetics.”

Among the study’s most striking insights is the precise numerical patterning in Halafian floral designs. Many bowls feature flowers with petal counts that follow geometric progression: 4, 8, 16, 32, and even arrangements of 64 flowers.

…

These sequences, the researchers argue, are intentional and demonstrate a sophisticated grasp of spatial division long before the appearance of written numbers.

“The ability to divide space evenly, reflected in these floral motifs, likely had practical roots in daily life, such as sharing harvests or allocating communal fields,” Garfinkel explains.

This work contributes to the field of ethnomathematics, which identifies mathematical knowledge embedded in cultural expression.

…

The motifs documented span the full botanical spectrum:

Flowers with meticulously balanced petals

Seedlings and shrubs, rendered with botanical clarity

Branches, arranged in rhythmic, repeating bands

Tall, imposing trees, sometimes shown alongside animals or architecture

Notably, none of the images depict edible crops, suggesting that the purpose was aesthetic rather than agricultural or ritualistic. Flowers, the authors note, are associated with positive emotional responses, which may explain their prominence.

Revising the History of Mathematics

While written mathematical texts appear millennia later in Sumer, Halafian pottery reveals an earlier, intuitive form of mathematical reasoning, rooted in symmetry, repetition, and geometric organization.

“These patterns show that mathematical thinking began long before writing,” Krulwich says. “People visualized divisions, sequences, and balance through their art.”

…

By cataloguing these vegetal motifs and revealing their mathematical foundations, the study offers a new perspective on how early communities understood the natural world, organized their environments, and expressed cognitive complexity.

The research paper titled “The Earliest Vegetal Motifs in Prehistoric Art: Painted Halafian Pottery of Mesopotamia and Prehistoric Mathematical Thinking” is now available in Journal of World Prehistory and can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-025-09200-9

And now, back to the animal stories

Frogs! There must always be at least one story here at Christmas about these critters.

Caption: Pristimantis chinguelas. Credit: Germán Chávez

According to a June 25, 2025 Pensoft (publisher) news release on EurekAlert, three new species have been round in Northern Peru, Note: The link to the study has been retained while one other link has been removed,

High in the cloud-wrapped peaks of the Cordillera de Huancabamba, where the Andes dip and twist into isolated ridges, a team of Peruvian scientists has brought three secretive frogs out of obscurity and into the scientific record. The study [appears to be open access], led by herpetologist Germán Chávez and published in Evolutionary Systematics, describes Pristimantis chinguelas, P. nunezcortezi, and P. yonke—three new species discovered in the rugged, misty highlands of northwestern Peru.

“They’re small and unassuming,” Chávez says, “but these frogs are powerful reminders of how much we still don’t know about the Andes.”

Between 2021 and 2024, the team carried out a series of tough expeditions, hiking steep trails and combing mossy forests and wet páramo for signs of amphibian life. It was in this setting—both harsh and enchanting—that they encountered the new species.

Each frog tells a different story:

P. chinguelas, discovered on a cliffside of Cerro Chinguelas, has a body dotted with prominent large tubercles on both sides. Its high-pitched “peep” can be heard on humid nights.

P. nunezcortezi lives near a cool mountain stream in a regenerating forest. With large black blotches on axillae and groins, it was named in honour of ornithologist Elio Nuñez-Cortez, a conservation trailblazer in the region.

P. yonke, the smallest of the three, was found nestled in bromeliads at nearly 3,000 meters. Its name nods to “yonque,” a sugarcane spirit consumed by locals to brave the highland chill.

“Exploring this area is more than fieldwork—it’s an immersion into wilderness, culture, and resilience,” says co-author Karen Victoriano-Cigüeñas.

“Many of these mountain ridges are isolated, with no roads and extreme terrain,” adds Ivan Wong. “The weather shifts within minutes, and the steep cliffs make every step a challenge. It’s no wonder so few scientists have worked here before. But that’s exactly why there’s still so much to find.”

Despite the thrill of discovery, the frogs’ future is uncertain. The team observed signs of habitat degradation, fire damage, and expanding farmland. For now, the species are listed as Data Deficient under IUCN criteria, but the call to action is clear.

“The Cordillera de Huancabamba is not just a remote range—it’s a living archive of biodiversity and cultural legacy,” says co-author Wilmar Aznaran. “And we’ve barely scratched the surface.”

…

Caption: A new study publishing in Current Biology on September 18 reveals that dogs with a vocabulary of toy names—known as Gifted Word Learners—can extend learned labels to entirely new objects, not because the objects look similar, but because they are used in the same way. Credit: Department of Ethology / Eötvös Loránd University

Hungarian scientists have furthered the research into dogs and learning. From a September 18, 2025 Eötvös Loránd University press release (also on EurekAlert),

BUDAPEST, Hungary — A new study publishing in Current Biology on September 18 by the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University reveals that dogs with a vocabulary of toy names—known as Gifted Word Learners—can extend learned labels to entirely new objects, not because the objects look similar, but because they are used in the same way.

In humans, “label extension” is a cornerstone of early language development. In non-humans, until now, it had only been documented in few so-called language-trained individual animals, after years of intensive training in captivity.

But learning to extend labels to objects that share the same function, rather than visual similarities, is considered an even more complex skill. A toddler learns that the word “cup” can apply to mugs, tumblers, and sippy cups, or that both a spoon and a ladle are “for scooping.” While individuals of many animal species can group items by appearance, extending a learned label to a functionally similar but visually different object has long been considered an advanced skill.

Video abstract at this link: https://youtu.be/8_NbCYAWSfU

The time and efforts needed to train animals in captivity to learn verbal labels, as well as the very limited number of subjects that successfully acquired such vocabulary, have until now limited the feasibility of this type of research.

But here comes the twist! “Gifted Word Learner dogs offer a unique possibility to study this phenomenon because they rapidly learn verbal labels – the names of toys – during natural interactions in their human families” said Dr. Claudia Fugazza, lead author of the study.

“Our results show that these dogs do not just memorize object names,” continues Dr. Fugazza. “They understand the meaning behind those labels well enough to apply them to new, very different-looking toys— by recognizing what the toys were for.”

Link to the social media of the Gifted Word Learner dogs project: https://linktr.ee/geniusdogchallenge

A Play-Based Experiment

Researchers of the Department of Ethology, at Eötvös Lorand University tested 7 Gifted Word Learner dogs—(six Border collies and a Blue heeler)—known for their unusual ability to learn the names of dozens of toys naturally, through everyday play.

The experiment had four stages, all of them conducted in a natural setup, at the house of each dog owner, during playful interactions:

Fist, in the Learning Phase, Dogs learned two new labels, such as “Pull” and “Fetch,” each referring not to a single item, but to a group of toys that looked completely different but were used in the same way during play (tug or retrieve).

Second, during a formal Assessment, the dogs showed that they had successfully learned those labels and could appropriately choose the “Pulls” and “Fetches” when asked.

The crucial part of the experiment was carried out after this Assessment: in the Generalization Phase, the dogs were introduced to new toys, also with diverse physical features, and the owner played in the same two ways as before, but this time saying no labels.

Test – When asked for a “Pull” or “Fetch,” the dogs selected the correct unlabelled toy significantly above chance, indicating they had generalized the labels to a functional category.

Why This Matters

The study provides the first evidence that dogs can generalize verbal labels to functional categories during natural-like playful interactions in their human families—mirroring, in functional terms, the natural context of human language development.

“This ability shows that classification linked to verbal labels can emerge in non-human, non-linguistic species living in natural settings,” said Dr. Adam Miklosi, coauthor of the study. “It opens exciting new avenues for studying how language-related skills may evolve and function beyond our own species.”

Key Points

Dogs extended verbal labels to objects that shared only functional properties, not appearance.

The skill emerged naturally through play with owners—no formal training required.

While the mechanisms of such learning are not known, the context in which it happens present a striking parallel with that of human infants: daily life in a human family.

The study of these skills in a non-human species in its natural environment paves the way for understanding the how language-related skills evolved and function.

Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2025.08.013

Article Title

Dogs extend verbal labels for functional classification of objects

Caption: Red-cheeked Cordonbleu. Credit: Çağan Şekercioğlu, University of Utah

A September 30, 2025 University of Utah news release (also on EurekAlert) announced the BIRDBASE dataset has tracked (and continues to track) ecological traits for over 11,000 birds,

Çağan Şekercioğlu was an ambitious, but perhaps naive graduate student when, 26 years ago, he embarked on a simple data-compilation project that would soon evolve into a massive career-defining achievement.

With the help of countless students and volunteers, the University of Utah conservation biologist has finally released BIRDBASE, an encyclopedic dataset of traits covering all the bird species recognized by the world’s four major avian taxonomies.

Described this week in a study published in the journal Scientific Data, the dataset covers 78 ecological traits, including conservation status, for 11,589 species of birds in 254 families. The main trait categories tracked are body mass; habitat; diet; nest type; clutch size; life history; elevational range; and movement strategy, that is whether and how they migrate.

While some little-known species still have incomplete data, the dataset provides a foundation for ornithologists around the world to conduct new global analyses in ornithology, conservation biology and macroecology, including the links between bird species’ ecological traits and their risk of extinction, according to Şekercioğlu, a professor in the university’s School of Biological Sciences. He also hopes BIRDBASE will help other biologists win support for studying avian conservation.

“To get funding you have to have a big question, but without data, how are you going to answer those big questions?” Şekercioğlu posed. “It also shows we still have ways to go. Birds are the best-known class of organism, but even though they are the best known, we still have big data gaps.”

BIRDBASE’s public launch coincides with the release of the first unified global checklist for birds, known as AviList, a grand taxonomy under one cover.

The BIRDBASE project started in 1999 when Şekercioğlu was a graduate student at Stanford University, spending field seasons in Costa Rica. While writing the first chapter of his Ph.D. thesis, he needed to know the percentage of tropical forest understory bug-eating birds, technically known as insectivores, that are threatened with extinction. He was perplexed to discover that information had yet to be determined.

“I realized that statistic doesn’t exist because nobody had analyzed all the birds of the world and their threat status based on diet,” he said. “I’m like, this is unbelievable. There’s no global database on birds. I’m lucky that I was in grad school because I was naive and I love birds.”

In other words, he set out to figure it out himself. That meant gathering and organizing life history traits for all such bird species, including their diets, habitats and conservation status. For a keen birder like Şekercioğlu, it seemed like a simple task that would be fun, compiling data found on thousands of bird species published in huge beautifully illustrated volumes. It turned out to be tedious and seriously time consuming, but worthwhile.

Thanks to a cadre of volunteers in the Stanford Volunteer Program and undergraduates, whose labors were compensated by the Stanford Center for Conservation Biology, Şekercioğlu answered his question within a couple years. Twenty-seven percent of tropical understory insectivores were threatened or near threatened with extinction. This finding wound up not supporting the hypothesis of his research, but that’s science.

Yet the dataset was so helpful that he labored on with the data-compiling project to eventually cover all bird species and expanded the number of traits included. “What started as this little specialized question turned into this global database, the first of its kind” he said.

BIRDBASE has proven a boon to many other avian researchers who have tapped it to support dozens of papers, most of them listing Şekercioğlu as co-author. The tally of Şekercioğlu’s papers that have used BIRDBASE currently stands at 98, accounting for 14,000 of Şekercioğlu’s 24,000-plus citations.

Among the conclusions the dataset has enabled is that a majority of the world’s bird species, or 54%, are insectivores, and many species in this group are under pressure.

“Most of them are tropical forest species. It is a very important group and they’re declining,” he said. “They’re sensitive even though they’re not hunted. They are small, so they don’t need a big area. You wouldn’t expect them to be the most sensitive group to habitat fragmentation but they are highly specialized.”

The dataset also showed that fish-eating seabirds are at elevated risk of extinction as well, and fruit-eating birds are vital to the survival of tropical rain forests.

“The most important seed dispersers in the tropics are frugivorous birds,” Şekercioğlu said. “In some tropical forests, over 90% of all woody plants’ seeds are dispersed by fruit-eating birds who eat them and then defecate the seeds somewhere else and they germinate.”

Now for the first time BIRDBASE is publicly available to all researchers online, “no strings attached.” It can be found as an Excel spreadsheet on a site hosted by Figshare, with separate worksheet tabs for trait values, trait definitions, nest details and data sources, packaged on one row per species.

Şekercioğlu emphasized that BIRDBASE remains a work in progress that will be continuously updated. Kind of like a medieval cathedral that is open for worship, but never really finished. He estimated that nearly 30 person-years of labor have gone into the project, work that entails entering data collected from various authoritative sources, such as BirdLife International, Birds of the World, hundreds of bird books and ornithological papers, and Şekercioğlu’s field observations of more than 9,400 bird species.

“Thanks to my being naïve, something that started with just a little question in grad school led to the foundation of my career. Right now, if one of my students came to me and said, ‘Hey, as part of my PhD I want to enter the world’s birds into a dataset,’ I’m like, ‘No, you’re not doing that. You’ll never finish your Ph.D.’ Fortunately I finished my Ph.D., but think about it, 1999 is when I had the idea and we are still putting finishing touches in 2025.”

downloaded from bumblebeeconservation.org

Bumlebees can read Morse code? Apparently, the answer is yes. From a November 13, 2025 Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) press release (also on EurekAlert but published on November 12, 2025),

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have shown for the first time that an insect – the bumblebee Bombus terrestris – can decide where to forage for food based on different durations of visual cues.

In Morse code, a short duration flash or ‘dot’ denotes a letter ‘E’ and a long duration flash, or ‘dash’, means letter ‘T’. Until now, the ability to discriminate between ‘dot’ and ‘dash’ has been seen only in humans and other vertebrates such as macaques or pigeons.

PhD student Alex Davidson and his supervisor Dr Elisabetta Versace, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Queen Mary, led a team that studied this ability in bees. They built a special maze to train individual bees to find a sugar reward at one of two flashing circles, shown with either a long or short flash duration. For instance, when the short flash, or ‘dot’, was associated with sugar, then the long flash, or ‘dash’, was instead associated with a bitter substance that bees dislike.

At each room in the maze, the position of the ‘dot’ and ‘dash’ stimulus was changed, so that bees could not rely on spatial cues to orient their choices. After bees learned to go straight to the flashing circle paired with the sugar, they were tested with flashing lights but no sugar present, to check whether bees’ choices were driven by the flashing light, rather than by olfactory or visual cues present in the sugar.

It was clear the bees had learnt to tell the light apart based on their duration, as most of them went straight to the ‘correct’ flashing light duration previously associated with sugar, irrespective of spatial location of the stimulus.

Alex Davidson said: “We wanted to find out if bumblebees could learn to the difference between these different durations, and it was so exciting to see them do it”.

“Since bees don’t encounter flashing stimuli in their natural environment, it’s remarkable that they could succeed at this task. The fact that they could track the duration of visual stimuli might suggest an extension of a time processing capacity that has evolved for different purposes, such as keeping track of movement in space or communication”.

“Alternatively, this surprising ability to encode and process time duration might be a fundamental component of the nervous system that is intrinsic in the properties of neurons. Only further research will be able to address this issue.”

The neural mechanisms involved in the ability to keep track of time for these durations remain mostly unknown, as the mechanisms discovered for entraining with the daylight cycle (circadian rhythms) and seasonal changes are too slow to explain the ability to differentiate between a ‘dash’ and a ‘dot’ with different duration.

Various theories have been put forward, suggesting the presence of a single or multiple internal clocks. Now that the ability to differentiate between durations of flashing lights has been discovered in insects, researchers will be able to test different models in these ‘miniature brains’ smaller than one cubic millimetre.

Elisabetta Versace continued: “Many complex animal behaviours, such as navigation and communication, depend on time processing abilities. It will be important to use a broad comparative approach across different species, including insects, to shed light on the evolution of those abilities. Processing durations in insects is evidence of a complex task solution using minimal neural substrate. This has implications for complex cognitive-like traits in artificial neural networks, which should seek to be as efficient as possible to be scalable, taking inspiration from biological intelligence.”

Journal

Biology Letters

DOI

10.1098/rsbl.2025.0440

Article Title

Duration discrimination in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris

The bumblebee image at the start of this news bit is from Bumblebee Conservation Trust in the UK; their website can be found here.

Joyeux Noël!

We live in such an extraordinary world: able to watch the Nicholas Brothers give a performance that is decades old, observe a leaf that’s really a sea slug, discover that bumblebees can learn Morse code, etc.

I’m ‘wrapping’ this up with two more items.

The mathematics of gift wrapping

Credit: Krysten Casumpang. Courtesy: University of British Columbia (UBC)

A December 18, 2025 University of British Columbia (UBC) Question & Answer (Q&A) interview (also received via email) features mathematician Adam Martens,

UBC Mathematics postdoctoral fellow Adam Martens talks about the geometry of gift wrapping—and why you can’t wrap a ball perfectly (so don’t even bother!).

From Christmas to Hanukkah to Kwanzaa, the gift-giving season is upon us. After we track down the perfect items for our favourite people, another task awaits us: gift wrapping. It’s not just an art—it’s math in disguise.

We spoke to Dr. Adam Martens, UBC mathematics postdoctoral fellow and differential geometer about the best shapes to reduce waste—and why a donut-shaped object can be wrapped perfectly, but only if you work in four dimensions.

What is a differential geometer?

A geometer is a specialist in geometry, or the study of points, lines, angles, surfaces, and solids. A differential mathematician studies smooth objects called ‘manifolds’, for example, a flat piece of paper or the surface of a ball. We also think about higher-dimensional objects, like the space-time of the universe.

What is the easiest shape to wrap?

No surprises here, but a box. The nice thing about wrapping a box is that each side is flat, and the flat edges meet at simple creases. Wrapping paper can be easily folded over the edges—mathematicians call this a manifold with corners.

Wrapping paper is inherently flat and rigid. It can be folded, but from a mathematical point of view, it cannot be warped so that it lies flat on a curved surface.

This means it’s mathematically impossible to wrap a sphere perfectly i.e. without any creases or folds. The only way to effectively wrap a ball is to put the ball in a box.
A closely related theorem in calculus is the “hairy ball theorem,” which says you can’t comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick or hair swirl.

What is the most difficult shape to wrap?

Technically, any shape that is not flat is equally difficult because they are all impossible. You cannot bend the wrapping paper to fit non-flat shapes. You could work around this by cutting and taping, but if any point is not flat, it’s impossible – at least not without creasing the wrapping paper.

That being said, there are shapes that seem impossible to wrap but are actually technically doable. Take a donut shape, what we call a “torus” in math. This object sits inside four-dimensional space where, if you were a 4D creature, you could make a torus flat and wrap it— so potentially not very helpful for your holiday shopping since we’re 3D beings and can’t visualize what is going on.

We can see this by taking a flat piece of paper. If you glued the long sides together, you would get a cylinder. You can’t do this in 3D because the paper would crinkle, but if you bend the paper and glue the short ends together, you’re able to take a flat piece of paper and bend it into a torus.

What gift-container shape minimizes the amount of wrapping needed?

In geometry, the isoperimetric inequality is a principle that tells us that a sphere is the most efficient shape for enclosing an item. An example of this is when we blow bubbles in a glass of water—the bubbles form as spheres because the air inside of them wants to take up as little space as possible due to the air pressure they face on the outside. In this sense, a sphere would be your most optimal shape for minimizing wrapping, except it wouldn’t really because, as we know, you can’t really wrap a sphere very well.

The next best option would be a cube—not an arbitrary rectangular box—where all sides are equal in length. For a fixed volume, a cube minimizes the surface area that needs to be covered in wrapping paper.

How about gift bags?

It’s not always about optimization. As human beings, we tend to find things aesthetically pleasing when they’re not square. Gift bags, for example, are elongated in one direction. We like the look of this. A lot of it has to do with the golden ratio—1.618, also known as Phi—which we can find in nature, including in the radial spiral of pinecones or sunflower seeds, in art in the proportions of the Mona Lisa’s face and torso, and architecture, in the proportions of the Parthenon. I even have it tattooed on my arm. Many people think that some of these appearances in nature are just a coincidence or selection bias, but something about this ratio is very pleasing to the eye.

3D Printed Ice Christmas Tree Image: University of Amsterdam [downloaded from https://www.homecrux.com/3d-printed-ice-christmas-tree/353009/]

A tree made entirely of ice with not a freezer nor piece of refrigeration equipment nor chainsaw and ice block in sight. You might call if a physics miracle.

A thank you to Nanowerk where I found the December 17, 2025 news item.

You can also read more about the icy Christmas tree in a December 17, 2025 University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) press release or in a December 19, 2025 article by Happy Jasta for homecrux.com

I wish you all the best of celebrations.

Smart contact lenses harvest energy from tears

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After posting about a bioenergy harvesting battery for implants such as pacemakers and deep brain stimulators (see my May 17, 2024 posting), it seems like a good time to highlight another such device, in this case, contact lenses.

From an April 1, 2024 article by Julianne Pepitone for IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Spectrum,

The potential use cases for smart contacts are compelling and varied. Pop a lens on your eye and monitor health metrics like glucose levels; receive targeted drug delivery for ocular diseases; experience augmented reality and read news updates with displays of information literally in your face.

But the eye is quite a challenge for electronics design: With one of the highest nerve densities of any human tissue, the cornea is 300 to 600 times as sensitive as our skin. Researchers have developed small, flexible chips, but power sources have proved more difficult, as big batteries and wires clearly won’t do here. Existing applications offer less-than-ideal solutions like overnight induction charging and other designs that rely on some type of external battery.

Now, a team from the University of Utah says they’ve developed a better solution: an all-in-one hybrid energy-generation unit specifically designed for eye-based tech.

In a paper published in the journal Small on 13 March [2024], the researchers describe how they built the device, combining a flexible silicon solar cell with a new device that converts tears to energy. The system can reliably supply enough electricity to operate smart contacts and other ocular devices.This is a major improvement over wireless power transfer from separate batteries, says Erfan Pourshaban, who worked on the system while a doctoral student at University of Utah.

…

Researchers tested a contact-lens power system on a fake eye. ERFAN POURSHABAN [downloaded from https://spectrum.ieee.org/power-smart-contact-lenses]

Here’s an excerpt from the explanation for how this system works, from the April 1, 2024 article,

To create the power pack, Pourshaban and his colleagues fabricated custom pieces. The first step was miniaturized, flexible silicon solar cells that can capture light from the sun as well as from artificial sources like lamps. The team connected eight tiny (1.5 by 1.5 by 0.1 millimeters) rigid crystalline cells and encapsulated them in a polymer to make a flexible photovoltaic system.

The second half is an eye-blinking-activated system that functions like a metal-air battery. The wearer’s natural tears—more specifically the electrolytes within them—serve as a biofuel to generate power.

…

The harvesting occurs literally in the blink of an eye: When the eye is completely open, the harvester is off. Then when the eye starts to blink, the tear electrolytes meet the magnesium anode, causing an oxidation reaction and the generation of electrons. …

Applications for the technology were also discussed, from the April 1, 2024 article,

“The reliable power output from this device can fuel a broad spectrum of applications, including wearable biosensors and electrically responsive drug-delivery systems, directly within the eye’s environment,” Gao adds.[Wei Gao, a biosensors expert and assistant professor of medical engineering at Caltech, who was not involved in the research.

…

Pourshaban agrees, adding that there are obvious consumer applications, such as lenses that display to a runner the heart rate, pace, and calorie burn during a workout. Retailers could glean valuable insights from tracking how a shopper scans shelves and selects items. [emphases mine] Commercialization potential is significant and varied, he says.

However, Pourshaban is perhaps most excited about potential applications in monitoring eye health, from prosaic conditions like presbyopia—age-related farsightedness, which can begin in the mid-40s—to more insidious diseases including glaucoma.

…

If you have the time, Pepitone’s April 1, 2024 article is an engaging and accessible read.

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

Power Scavenging Microsystem for Smart Contact Lenses by Erfan Pourshaban, Mohit U. Karkhanis, Adwait Deshpande, Aishwaryadev Banerjee, Md Rabiul Hasan, Amirali Nikeghbal, Chayanjit Ghosh, Hanseup Kim, Carlos H. Mastrangelo. Small DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202401068 First published: 13 March 2024

This paper is open access.

Touchy robots and prosthetics

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I have briefly speculated about the importance of touch elsewhere (see my July 19, 2019 posting regarding BlocKit and blockchain; scroll down about 50% of the way) but this upcoming news bit and the one following it put a different spin on the importance of touch.

Exceptional sense of touch

Robots need a sense of touch to perform their tasks and a July 18, 2019 National University of Singapore press release (also on EurekAlert) announces work on an improved sense of touch,

Robots and prosthetic devices may soon have a sense of touch equivalent to, or better than, the human skin with the Asynchronous Coded Electronic Skin (ACES), an artificial nervous system developed by a team of researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
The new electronic skin system achieved ultra-high responsiveness and robustness to damage, and can be paired with any kind of sensor skin layers to function effectively as an electronic skin.
The innovation, achieved by Assistant Professor Benjamin Tee and his team from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the NUS Faculty of Engineering, was first reported in prestigious scientific journal Science Robotics on 18 July 2019.
Faster than the human sensory nervous system
“Humans use our sense of touch to accomplish almost every daily task, such as picking up a cup of coffee or making a handshake. Without it, we will even lose our sense of balance when walking. Similarly, robots need to have a sense of touch in order to interact better with humans, but robots today still cannot feel objects very well,” explained Asst Prof Tee, who has been working on electronic skin technologies for over a decade in hope of giving robots and prosthetic devices a better sense of touch.
Drawing inspiration from the human sensory nervous system, the NUS team spent a year and a half developing a sensor system that could potentially perform better. While the ACES electronic nervous system detects signals like the human sensor nervous system, it is made up of a network of sensors connected via a single electrical conductor, unlike the nerve bundles in the human skin. It is also unlike existing electronic skins which have interlinked wiring systems that can make them sensitive to damage and difficult to scale up.
Elaborating on the inspiration, Asst Prof Tee, who also holds appointments in the NUS Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthTech), N.1 Institute for Health and the Hybrid Integrated Flexible Electronic Systems (HiFES) programme, said, “The human sensory nervous system is extremely efficient, and it works all the time to the extent that we often take it for granted. It is also very robust to damage. Our sense of touch, for example, does not get affected when we suffer a cut. If we can mimic how our biological system works and make it even better, we can bring about tremendous advancements in the field of robotics where electronic skins are predominantly applied.”
ACES can detect touches more than 1,000 times faster than the human sensory nervous system. For example, it is capable of differentiating physical contacts between different sensors in less than 60 nanoseconds – the fastest ever achieved for an electronic skin technology – even with large numbers of sensors. ACES-enabled skin can also accurately identify the shape, texture and hardness of objects within 10 milliseconds, ten times faster than the blinking of an eye. This is enabled by the high fidelity and capture speed of the ACES system.
The ACES platform can also be designed to achieve high robustness to physical damage, an important property for electronic skins because they come into the frequent physical contact with the environment. Unlike the current system used to interconnect sensors in existing electronic skins, all the sensors in ACES can be connected to a common electrical conductor with each sensor operating independently. This allows ACES-enabled electronic skins to continue functioning as long as there is one connection between the sensor and the conductor, making them less vulnerable to damage.
Smart electronic skins for robots and prosthetics
ACES’ simple wiring system and remarkable responsiveness even with increasing numbers of sensors are key characteristics that will facilitate the scale-up of intelligent electronic skins for Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in robots, prosthetic devices and other human machine interfaces.
“Scalability is a critical consideration as big pieces of high performing electronic skins are required to cover the relatively large surface areas of robots and prosthetic devices,” explained Asst Prof Tee. “ACES can be easily paired with any kind of sensor skin layers, for example, those designed to sense temperatures and humidity, to create high performance ACES-enabled electronic skin with an exceptional sense of touch that can be used for a wide range of purposes,” he added.
For instance, pairing ACES with the transparent, self-healing and water-resistant sensor skin layer also recently developed by Asst Prof Tee’s team, creates an electronic skin that can self-repair, like the human skin. This type of electronic skin can be used to develop more realistic prosthetic limbs that will help disabled individuals restore their sense of touch.
Other potential applications include developing more intelligent robots that can perform disaster recovery tasks or take over mundane operations such as packing of items in warehouses. The NUS team is therefore looking to further apply the ACES platform on advanced robots and prosthetic devices in the next phase of their research.

For those who like videos, the researchers have prepared this,

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

A neuro-inspired artificial peripheral nervous system for scalable electronic skins by Wang Wei Lee, Yu Jun Tan, Haicheng Yao, Si Li, Hian Hian See, Matthew Hon, Kian Ann Ng, Betty Xiong, John S. Ho and Benjamin C. K. Tee. Science Robotics Vol 4, Issue 32 31 July 2019 eaax2198 DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aax2198 Published online first: 17 Jul 2019:

This paper is behind a paywall.

Picking up a grape and holding his wife’s hand

This story comes from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio with a six minute story embedded in the text, from a July 25, 2019 CBC Radio ‘As It Happens’ article by Sheena Goodyear,

…
The West Valley City, Utah, real estate agent [Keven Walgamott] lost his left hand in an electrical accident 17 years ago. Since then, he’s tried out a few different prosthetic limbs, but always found them too clunky and uncomfortable.
Then he decided to work with the University of Utah in 2016 to test out new prosthetic technology that mimics the sensation of human touch, allowing Walgamott to perform delicate tasks with precision — including shaking his wife’s hand.
“I extended my left hand, she came and extended hers, and we were able to feel each other with the left hand for the first time in 13 years, and it was just a marvellous and wonderful experience,” Walgamott told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams.
Walgamott, one of seven participants in the University of Utah study, was able to use an advanced prosthetic hand called the LUKE Arm to pick up an egg without cracking it, pluck a single grape from a bunch, hammer a nail, take a ring on and off his finger, fit a pillowcase over a pillow and more.
…
While performing the tasks, Walgamott was able to actually feel the items he was holding and correctly gauge the amount of pressure he needed to exert — mimicking a process the human brain does automatically.
“I was able to feel something in each of my fingers,” he said. “What I feel, I guess the easiest way to explain it, is little electrical shocks.”
Those shocks — which he describes as a kind of a tingling sensation — intensify as he tightens his grip.
“Different variations of the intensity of the electricity as I move my fingers around and as I touch things,” he said.
…
To make that [sense of touch] happen, the researchers implanted electrodes into the nerves on Walgamott’s forearm, allowing his brain to communicate with his prosthetic through a computer outside his body. That means he can move the hand just by thinking about it.
But those signals also work in reverse.
The team attached sensors to the hand of a LUKE Arm. Those sensors detect touch and positioning, and send that information to the electrodes so it can be interpreted by the brain.
…
For Walgamott, performing a series of menial tasks as a team of scientists recorded his progress was “fun to do.”
“I’d forgotten how well two hands work,” he said. “That was pretty cool.”
But it was also a huge relief from the phantom limb pain he has experienced since the accident, which he describes as a “burning sensation” in the place where his hand used to be.
…

A July 24, 2019 University of Utah news release (also on EurekAlert) provides more detail about the research,

Keven Walgamott had a good “feeling” about picking up the egg without crushing it.
What seems simple for nearly everyone else can be more of a Herculean task for Walgamott, who lost his left hand and part of his arm in an electrical accident 17 years ago. But he was testing out the prototype of a high-tech prosthetic arm with fingers that not only can move, they can move with his thoughts. And thanks to a biomedical engineering team at the University of Utah, he “felt” the egg well enough so his brain could tell the prosthetic hand not to squeeze too hard.
That’s because the team, led by U biomedical engineering associate professor Gregory Clark, has developed a way for the “LUKE Arm” (so named after the robotic hand that Luke Skywalker got in “The Empire Strikes Back”) to mimic the way a human hand feels objects by sending the appropriate signals to the brain. Their findings were published in a new paper co-authored by U biomedical engineering doctoral student Jacob George, former doctoral student David Kluger, Clark and other colleagues in the latest edition of the journal Science Robotics. A copy of the paper may be obtained by emailing robopak@aaas.org.
“We changed the way we are sending that information to the brain so that it matches the human body. And by matching the human body, we were able to see improved benefits,” George says. “We’re making more biologically realistic signals.”
That means an amputee wearing the prosthetic arm can sense the touch of something soft or hard, understand better how to pick it up and perform delicate tasks that would otherwise be impossible with a standard prosthetic with metal hooks or claws for hands.
“It almost put me to tears,” Walgamott says about using the LUKE Arm for the first time during clinical tests in 2017. “It was really amazing. I never thought I would be able to feel in that hand again.”
Walgamott, a real estate agent from West Valley City, Utah, and one of seven test subjects at the U, was able to pluck grapes without crushing them, pick up an egg without cracking it and hold his wife’s hand with a sensation in the fingers similar to that of an able-bodied person.
“One of the first things he wanted to do was put on his wedding ring. That’s hard to do with one hand,” says Clark. “It was very moving.”
Those things are accomplished through a complex series of mathematical calculations and modeling.
The LUKE Arm
The LUKE Arm has been in development for some 15 years. The arm itself is made of mostly metal motors and parts with a clear silicon “skin” over the hand. It is powered by an external battery and wired to a computer. It was developed by DEKA Research & Development Corp., a New Hampshire-based company founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen.
Meanwhile, the U’s team has been developing a system that allows the prosthetic arm to tap into the wearer’s nerves, which are like biological wires that send signals to the arm to move. It does that thanks to an invention by U biomedical engineering Emeritus Distinguished Professor Richard A. Normann called the Utah Slanted Electrode Array. The array is a bundle of 100 microelectrodes and wires that are implanted into the amputee’s nerves in the forearm and connected to a computer outside the body. The array interprets the signals from the still-remaining arm nerves, and the computer translates them to digital signals that tell the arm to move.
But it also works the other way. To perform tasks such as picking up objects requires more than just the brain telling the hand to move. The prosthetic hand must also learn how to “feel” the object in order to know how much pressure to exert because you can’t figure that out just by looking at it.
First, the prosthetic arm has sensors in its hand that send signals to the nerves via the array to mimic the feeling the hand gets upon grabbing something. But equally important is how those signals are sent. It involves understanding how your brain deals with transitions in information when it first touches something. Upon first contact of an object, a burst of impulses runs up the nerves to the brain and then tapers off. Recreating this was a big step.
“Just providing sensation is a big deal, but the way you send that information is also critically important, and if you make it more biologically realistic, the brain will understand it better and the performance of this sensation will also be better,” says Clark.
To achieve that, Clark’s team used mathematical calculations along with recorded impulses from a primate’s arm to create an approximate model of how humans receive these different signal patterns. That model was then implemented into the LUKE Arm system.
Future research
In addition to creating a prototype of the LUKE Arm with a sense of touch, the overall team is already developing a version that is completely portable and does not need to be wired to a computer outside the body. Instead, everything would be connected wirelessly, giving the wearer complete freedom.
Clark says the Utah Slanted Electrode Array is also capable of sending signals to the brain for more than just the sense of touch, such as pain and temperature, though the paper primarily addresses touch. And while their work currently has only involved amputees who lost their extremities below the elbow, where the muscles to move the hand are located, Clark says their research could also be applied to those who lost their arms above the elbow.
Clark hopes that in 2020 or 2021, three test subjects will be able to take the arm home to use, pending federal regulatory approval.
The research involves a number of institutions including the U’s Department of Neurosurgery, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Department of Orthopedics, the University of Chicago’s Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, the Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and Utah neurotechnology companies Ripple Neuro LLC and Blackrock Microsystems. The project is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.
“This is an incredible interdisciplinary effort,” says Clark. “We could not have done this without the substantial efforts of everybody on that team.”

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

Biomimetic sensory feedback through peripheral nerve stimulation improves dexterous use of a bionic hand by J. A. George, D. T. Kluger, T. S. Davis, S. M. Wendelken, E. V. Okorokova, Q. He, C. C. Duncan, D. T. Hutchinson, Z. C. Thumser, D. T. Beckler, P. D. Marasco, S. J. Bensmaia and G. A. Clark. Science Robotics Vol. 4, Issue 32, eaax2352 31 July 2019 DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aax2352 Published online first: 24 Jul 2019

This paper is definitely behind a paywall.

The University of Utah researchers have produced a video highlighting their work,

The (science) ambassador approach

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This piece of research reminds me of being in a mall explaining data communications to people who’d come to shop. We were part of a nationwide, annual Canadian federal government science promotion effort and the Vancouver region contractor had decided to put science and technology in the malls.

It was very well received and we were busy answering questions throughout the day,, surprising the engineers I worked with. They hadn’t thought anyone would be interested.

We never went back to the mall as things changed a year or two later and the federal government took a more traditional approach to science outreach. I still mourn the loss of an exciting and engaging science promotion initiative.

A March 27, 2019 University of Utah news release (also on EurekAlert) brought the memories tumbling back,

Bring science to people where they are. That’s the driving philosophy that propels U biology professor Nalini Nadkarni to stretch the possibilities of science communication and bring the beauty of science to people and places that others have overlooked.
Building public trust in science is about more than just providing information and improving science literacy, she says. It’s about building relationships between scientists and communities that are founded on shared values. It’s called the “Ambassador Model”, and Nadkarni now has the data to say that the approach works, at relatively low cost and with high effectiveness.
In two recent studies, one published today in BioScience and another published in 2018 in Science Communication, Nadkarni and her colleagues present evidence-based conclusions about the effectiveness of science engagement in two programs: The INSPIRE program, which brings science lectures to prisons, and the STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] Ambassador Program, which trains scientists to engage members of the public in discussions about science.
“Our goal is to help people realize that all citizens are interested in, capable of understanding and full of wonder at science, if it is presented in places and ways that are accessible to them,” Nadkarni says.
A corps of science ambassadors
In the past, the thought went that science and society could be bridged by researchers simply conveying facts to improve science literacy, a one-way communication approach termed the “deficit model”. Communication researchers theorize that a better approach is to consider how people build relationships and enter into productive dialogues. Nadkarni’s STEM Ambassador Program puts these ideas into practice by training scientists to both present the processes of science and to facilitate activities that promote the two-way exchange of ideas, perspectives and experiences with members of the public.
“Just as the U.S. Foreign Service trains ambassadors to represent their home country and build positive relationships abroad,” the STEM Ambassadors homepage says, “scientists can represent their ‘home country’ of science to engage as ‘STEM Ambassadors.'”
Watch STEM Ambassadors talk about their experiences: https://youtu.be/Mzucr_khNow
Find photos of STEM Ambassadors at work here and here.
Launched in 2016, the STEM Ambassador Program (STEMAP) is funded with a $1.3 million grant by the National Science Foundation. Each year, STEMAP, based at the U with Nadkarni as its director, trains cohorts of scientists in the Ambassador Model and helps them develop and implement public engagement of science activities. Since the program began, STEMAP has trained more than 65 scientists in the Ambassador Model. Here’s how it works, step by step:
Scientists first take a close look at themselves and distill their research, personal interests, hobbies and experiences to brainstorm novel connections with a particular community or “focal group”. They learn about the focal group and build relationships by carrying out an “immersion event”. in which they visit group gathering spaces and meet with group representatives. They then apply what they learn to design engagement activities that align with the group’s shared interests, values and practices. They present activities for feedback and ultimately carry out the activities in the focal group’s venue. Finally, scientists reflect on their efforts and evaluate outcomes.
Engagement activities have been as varied as the scientists and focal groups who’ve participated in the program. One ambassador, a microbiologist with an interest in fermentation, served as a co-chef at a local fermentation cooking class and showed participants the microscopic organisms responsible for turning cabbage into sauerkraut. A hydrologist turned her field expedition to Greenland into a book for the children of Kulusuk, a Greenlandic village near her field site. An engineer shared his research to develop more efficient air quality monitoring devices with citizens at a community council meeting and invited them to participate in an air-quality monitoring project [this activity is also known as citizen science]. A mathematician accompanied a group of at-risk youth on a ski trip, and explained the geometry of moving skis to maximize friction.
The assessment of STEMAP’s effectiveness shows strong results. Ninety-seven percent of ambassadors highly valued their participation in the program. More than half went on to plan and carry out additional engagement activities.
The effect on activity participants was also dramatic. Eighty percent said they’d engage in similar events in the future. Seventy-six percent said they were more interested in seeking out scientific information after meeting with an ambassador. And two-thirds said they more strongly considered themselves as someone who can understand and do science.
INSPIRE-ing the incarcerated
Since 2003, Nadkarni has applied the principles of the Ambassador Model in multifaceted efforts to bring the power of science into the lives of the incarcerated. In 2013, she launched the Initiative to Bring Science Programs to the Incarcerated program, or INSPIRE, in which University of Utah faculty and graduate students present monthly lectures to inmates at the Utah State Prison, the Salt Lake County Jail and five juvenile detention centers in Salt Lake Valley. Topics have ranged from the genetics of pigeon feathers to mathematical modeling of the common cold.
“Our premise is that all people have interest in science, and incarcerated adults and juveniles would probably be no different,” Nadkarni says. And interest has been high–inmates have requested additional lectures, Nadkarni says, and researchers have mentioned feeling that their participation has real impact. But to expand such an approach around the country and catch the attention of correctional institutions and researchers alike, Nadkarni and colleagues would need to publish evidence-based results of INSPIRE’s impact in the scientific literature. And for that, they would need data.
“Without evaluation, we could not publish our findings in the peer-reviewed literature,” she says, “which is necessary if we are to have this work accepted as evidence-based and therefore of interest to other scientists and other corrections institutions.”
With the cooperation of prison staff, Nadkarni and colleague Jeremy Morris surveyed inmates before and after they attended monthly science lectures to assess their knowledge of the science topic as well as their attitudes toward science and math. They also surveyed jail and prison staff and general inmate populations to compare inmates’ attitudes toward science with the general population.
The results offered a surprising glimpse into the science-readiness of inmates. For Nadkarni and her fellow INSPIRE presenters, it was no surprise that inmates displayed a high interest in science (up to 92 percent expressed interest) and an eagerness to learn–even higher than prison and jail staff, who were considered a proxy for the general population.
“They are also interested in meeting with and talking to scientists, and do so with respect,” Nadkarni says. “Their comments and questions indicate that even though many of them have poor formal educational background in science, many have been able to gain knowledge of science and maintain a curiosity about science from other sources.”
The positive impacts of the lecture series–greater science content knowledge, improved attitudes about science and scientists, and increased likelihood of communicating science they have learned with others–were similar to those of formal prison education programs, but required much less of the scientist-instructors.
Based on this past success, INSPIRE is now providing lectures and workshops at youth detention centers as well. Other studies have shown that prison education programs can lower inmates’ chances of returning after release and raise their chances of gaining employment. It’s a model worth sharing.
“We can now bring this to academic and corrections administrators as ‘evidence-based best practices’ with far greater impact than we have been able to muster with only anecdotal or subjective information,” Nadkarni says.
Continuing engagement
Both studies show that achieving the goals of science communication–increased positive views of science, content knowledge and a desire to share with others–are attainable at relatively low cost and in populations that are much more receptive and interested than many might have thought.
And by reaching out to such a wide diversity of groups, both the STEMAP and INSPIRE programs have shown that no one need be considered unreachable by and unengageable with science. After all, Nadkarni writes, there are 6.5 million scientists among the 325 million people in the United States. If every scientist talked about science with just one new person every week, they could reach every single American–in just one year.

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

Beyond the Deficit Model: The Ambassador Approach to Public Engagement by Nalini M Nadkarni, Caitlin Q Weber, Shelley V Goldman, Dennis L Schatz, Sue Allen, Rebecca Menlove. BioScience, biz018, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz018 Published: 29 March 2019

This paper appears to be open access.

Here’s a link to and a citation for Nadkarni’s 2018 paper about science outreach and prison populations,

Baseline Attitudes and Impacts of Informal Science Education Lectures on Content Knowledge and Value of Science Among Incarcerated Populations by Nalini M. Nadkarni and Jeremy S. Morris. Science Communication, Volume: 40 issue: 6, page(s): 718-748 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547018806909 Article first published online: October 17, 2018; Issue published: December 1, 2018

This paper is behind a paywall.

For the interested, Dr. Nadkarni has her own website where she has organized and made her academic research and interests, her public engagement work, and her work with incarcerated population accessible.

Quadriplegic man reanimates a limb with implanted brain-recording and muscle-stimulating systems

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It took me a few minutes to figure out why this item about a quadriplegic (also known as, tetraplegic) man is news. After all, I have a May 17, 2012 posting which features a video and information about a quadri(tetra)plegic woman who was drinking her first cup of coffee, independently, in many years. The difference is that she was using an external robotic arm and this man is using *his own arm*,

This Case Western Reserve University (CRWU) video accompanies a March 28, 2017 CRWU news release, (h/t ScienceDaily March 28, 2017 news item)

Bill Kochevar grabbed a mug of water, drew it to his lips and drank through the straw.

His motions were slow and deliberate, but then Kochevar hadn’t moved his right arm or hand for eight years.

And it took some practice to reach and grasp just by thinking about it.

Kochevar, who was paralyzed below his shoulders in a bicycling accident, is believed to be the first person with quadriplegia in the world to have arm and hand movements restored with the help of two temporarily implanted technologies.

A brain-computer interface with recording electrodes under his skull, and a functional electrical stimulation (FES) system* activating his arm and hand, reconnect his brain to paralyzed muscles.

Holding a makeshift handle pierced through a dry sponge, Kochevar scratched the side of his nose with the sponge. He scooped forkfuls of mashed potatoes from a bowl—perhaps his top goal—and savored each mouthful.

“For somebody who’s been injured eight years and couldn’t move, being able to move just that little bit is awesome to me,” said Kochevar, 56, of Cleveland. “It’s better than I thought it would be.”

Kochevar is the focal point of research led by Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Center at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center (UH). A study of the work was published in the The Lancet March 28 [2017] at 6:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern time.

“He’s really breaking ground for the spinal cord injury community,” said Bob Kirsch, chair of Case Western Reserve’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, executive director of the FES Center and principal investigator (PI) and senior author of the research. “This is a major step toward restoring some independence.”

When asked, people with quadriplegia say their first priority is to scratch an itch, feed themselves or perform other simple functions with their arm and hand, instead of relying on caregivers.

“By taking the brain signals generated when Bill attempts to move, and using them to control the stimulation of his arm and hand, he was able to perform personal functions that were important to him,” said Bolu Ajiboye, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and lead study author.

Technology and training

The research with Kochevar is part of the ongoing BrainGate2* pilot clinical trial being conducted by a consortium of academic and VA institutions assessing the safety and feasibility of the implanted brain-computer interface (BCI) system in people with paralysis. Other investigational BrainGate research has shown that people with paralysis can control a cursor on a computer screen or a robotic arm (braingate.org).

“Every day, most of us take for granted that when we will to move, we can move any part of our body with precision and control in multiple directions and those with traumatic spinal cord injury or any other form of paralysis cannot,” said Benjamin Walter, associate professor of neurology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, clinical PI of the Cleveland BrainGate2 trial and medical director of the Deep Brain Stimulation Program at UH Cleveland Medical Center.

“The ultimate hope of any of these individuals is to restore this function,” Walter said. “By restoring the communication of the will to move from the brain directly to the body this work will hopefully begin to restore the hope of millions of paralyzed individuals that someday they will be able to move freely again.”

Jonathan Miller, assistant professor of neurosurgery at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of the Functional and Restorative Neurosurgery Center at UH, led a team of surgeons who implanted two 96-channel electrode arrays—each about the size of a baby aspirin—in Kochevar’s motor cortex, on the surface of the brain.

The arrays record brain signals created when Kochevar imagines movement of his own arm and hand. The brain-computer interface extracts information from the brain signals about what movements he intends to make, then passes the information to command the electrical stimulation system.

To prepare him to use his arm again, Kochevar first learned how to use his brain signals to move a virtual-reality arm on a computer screen.

“He was able to do it within a few minutes,” Kirsch said. “The code was still in his brain.”

As Kochevar’s ability to move the virtual arm improved through four months of training, the researchers believed he would be capable of controlling his own arm and hand.

Miller then led a team that implanted the FES systems’ 36 electrodes that animate muscles in the upper and lower arm.

The BCI decodes the recorded brain signals into the intended movement command, which is then converted by the FES system into patterns of electrical pulses.

The pulses sent through the FES electrodes trigger the muscles controlling Kochevar’s hand, wrist, arm, elbow and shoulder. To overcome gravity that would otherwise prevent him from raising his arm and reaching, Kochevar uses a mobile arm support, which is also under his brain’s control.

New Capabilities

Eight years of muscle atrophy required rehabilitation. The researchers exercised Kochevar’s arm and hand with cyclical electrical stimulation patterns. Over 45 weeks, his strength, range of motion and endurance improved. As he practiced movements, the researchers adjusted stimulation patterns to further his abilities.

Kochevar can make each joint in his right arm move individually. Or, just by thinking about a task such as feeding himself or getting a drink, the muscles are activated in a coordinated fashion.

When asked to describe how he commanded the arm movements, Kochevar told investigators, “I’m making it move without having to really concentrate hard at it…I just think ‘out’…and it goes.”

Kocehvar is fitted with temporarily implanted FES technology that has a track record of reliable use in people. The BCI and FES system together represent early feasibility that gives the research team insights into the potential future benefit of the combined system.

Advances needed to make the combined technology usable outside of a lab are not far from reality, the researchers say. Work is underway to make the brain implant wireless, and the investigators are improving decoding and stimulation patterns needed to make movements more precise. Fully implantable FES systems have already been developed and are also being tested in separate clinical research.

Kochevar welcomes new technology—even if it requires more surgery—that will enable him to move better. “This won’t replace caregivers,” he said. “But, in the long term, people will be able, in a limited way, to do more for themselves.”

There is more about the research in a March 29, 2017 article by Sarah Boseley for The Guardian,

Bill Kochevar, 53, has had electrical implants in the motor cortex of his brain and sensors inserted in his forearm, which allow the muscles of his arm and hand to be stimulated in response to signals from his brain, decoded by computer. After eight years, he is able to drink and feed himself without assistance.

“I think about what I want to do and the system does it for me,” Kochevar told the Guardian. “It’s not a lot of thinking about it. When I want to do something, my brain does what it does.”

The experimental technology, pioneered by the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is the first in the world to restore brain-controlled reaching and grasping in a person with complete paralysis.

For now, the process is relatively slow, but the scientists behind the breakthrough say this is proof of concept and that they hope to streamline the technology until it becomes a routine treatment for people with paralysis. In the future, they say, it will also be wireless and the electrical arrays and sensors will all be implanted under the skin and invisible.

A March 28, 2017 Lancet news release on EurekAlert provides a little more technical insight into the research and Kochevar’s efforts,

Although only tested with one participant, the study is a major advance and the first to restore brain-controlled reaching and grasping in a person with complete paralysis. The technology, which is only for experimental use in the USA, circumvents rather than repairs spinal injuries, meaning the participant relies on the device being implanted and switched on to move.

“Our research is at an early stage, but we believe that this neuro-prosthesis could offer individuals with paralysis the possibility of regaining arm and hand functions to perform day-to-day activities, offering them greater independence,” said lead author Dr Bolu Ajiboye, Case Western Reserve University, USA. “So far it has helped a man with tetraplegia to reach and grasp, meaning he could feed himself and drink. With further development, we believe the technology could give more accurate control, allowing a wider range of actions, which could begin to transform the lives of people living with paralysis.” [1]

…

Previous research has used similar elements of the neuro-prosthesis. For example, a brain-computer interface linked to electrodes on the skin has helped a person with less severe paralysis open and close his hand, while other studies have allowed participants to control a robotic arm using their brain signals. However, this is the first to restore reaching and grasping via the system in a person with a chronic spinal cord injury.

In this study, a 53 year-old man who had been paralysed below the shoulders for eight years underwent surgery to have the neuro-prosthesis fitted.

This involved brain surgery to place sensors in the motor cortex area of his brain responsible for hand movement – creating a brain-computer interface that learnt which movements his brain signals were instructing for. This initial stage took four months and included training using a virtual reality arm.

He then underwent another procedure placing 36 muscle stimulating electrodes into his upper and lower arm, including four that helped restore finger and thumb, wrist, elbow and shoulder movements. These were switched on 17 days after the procedure, and began stimulating the muscles for eight hours a week over 18 weeks to improve strength, movement and reduce muscle fatigue.

The researchers then wired the brain-computer interface to the electrical stimulators in his arm, using a decoder (mathematical algorithm) to translate his brain signals into commands for the electrodes in his arm. The electrodes stimulated the muscles to produce contractions, helping the participant intuitively complete the movements he was thinking of. The system also involved an arm support to stop gravity simply pulling his arm down.

During his training, the participant described how he controlled the neuro-prosthesis: “It’s probably a good thing that I’m making it move without having to really concentrate hard at it. I just think ‘out’ and it just goes.”

After 12 months of having the neuro-prosthesis fitted, the participant was asked to complete day-to-day tasks, including drinking a cup of coffee and feeding himself. First of all, he observed while his arm completed the action under computer control. During this, he thought about making the same movement so that the system could recognise the corresponding brain signals. The two systems were then linked and he was able to use it to drink a coffee and feed himself.

He successfully drank in 11 out of 12 attempts, and it took him roughly 20-40 seconds to complete the task. When feeding himself, he did so multiple times – scooping forkfuls of food and navigating his hand to his mouth to take several bites.

“Although similar systems have been used before, none of them have been as easy to adopt for day-to-day use and they have not been able to restore both reaching and grasping actions,” said Dr Ajiboye. “Our system builds on muscle stimulating electrode technology that is already available and will continue to improve with the development of new fully implanted and wireless brain-computer interface systems. This could lead to enhanced performance of the neuro-prosthesis with better speed, precision and control.” [1]

At the time of the study, the participant had had the neuro-prosthesis implanted for almost two years (717 days) and in this time experienced four minor, non-serious adverse events which were treated and resolved.

Despite its achievements, the neuro-prosthesis still had some limitations, including that movements made using it were slower and less accurate than those made using the virtual reality arm the participant used for training. When using the technology, the participant also needed to watch his arm as he lost his sense of proprioception – the ability to intuitively sense the position and movement of limbs – as a result of the paralysis.

Writing in a linked Comment, Dr Steve Perlmutter, University of Washington, USA, said: “The goal is futuristic: a paralysed individual thinks about moving her arm as if her brain and muscles were not disconnected, and implanted technology seamlessly executes the desired movement… This study is groundbreaking as the first report of a person executing functional, multi-joint movements of a paralysed limb with a motor neuro-prosthesis. However, this treatment is not nearly ready for use outside the lab. The movements were rough and slow and required continuous visual feedback, as is the case for most available brain-machine interfaces, and had restricted range due to the use of a motorised device to assist shoulder movements… Thus, the study is a proof-of-principle demonstration of what is possible, rather than a fundamental advance in neuro-prosthetic concepts or technology. But it is an exciting demonstration nonetheless, and the future of motor neuro-prosthetics to overcome paralysis is brighter.”

…

[1] Quote direct from author and cannot be found in the text of the Article.

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

Restoration of reaching and grasping movements through brain-controlled muscle stimulation in a person with tetraplegia: a proof-of-concept demonstration by A Bolu Ajiboye, Francis R Willett, Daniel R Young, William D Memberg, Brian A Murphy, Jonathan P Miller, Benjamin L Walter, Jennifer A Sweet, Harry A Hoyen, Michael W Keith, Prof P Hunter Peckham, John D Simeral, Prof John P Donoghue, Prof Leigh R Hochberg, Prof Robert F Kirsch. The Lancet DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)30601-3 Published: 28 March 2017 [online?]

This paper is behind a paywall.

For anyone who’s interested, you can find the BrainGate website here.

*I initially misidentified the nature of the achievement and stated that Kochevar used a “robotic arm, which is attached to his body” when it was his own reanimated arm. Corrected on April 25, 2017.

Sensing fuel leaks and fuel-based explosives with a nanofibril composite

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A March 28, 2016 news item on Nanowerk highlights some research from the University of Utah (US),

Alkane fuel is a key ingredient in combustible material such as gasoline, airplane fuel, oil — even a homemade bomb. Yet it’s difficult to detect and there are no portable scanners available that can sniff out the odorless and colorless vapor.

But University of Utah engineers have developed a new type of fiber material for a handheld scanner that can detect small traces of alkane fuel vapor, a valuable advancement that could be an early-warning signal for leaks in an oil pipeline, an airliner, or for locating a terrorist’s explosive.

A March 25, 2016 University of Utah news release, which originated the news item, provides a little more detail,

Currently, there are no small, portable chemical sensors to detect alkane fuel vapor because it is not chemically reactive. The conventional way to detect it is with a large oven-sized instrument in a lab.

“It’s not mobile and very heavy,” Zang [Ling Zang, University of Utah materials science and engineering professor] says of the larger instrument. “There’s no way it can be used in the field. Imagine trying to detect the leak from a gas valve or on the pipelines. You ought to have something portable.”

So Zang’s team developed a type of fiber composite that involves two nanofibers transferring electrons from one to the other.

That kind of interaction would then signal the detector that the alkane vapor is present. Vaporsens, a University of Utah spinoff company, has designed a prototype of the handheld detector with an array of 16 sensor materials that will be able to identify a broad range of chemicals including explosives. This new composite material will be incorporated into the sensor array to include the detection of alkanes. Vaporsens plans to introduce the device on the market in about a year and a half, says Zang, who is the company’s chief science officer.

Such a small sensor device that can detect alkane vapor will benefit three main categories:

Oil pipelines. If leaks from pipelines are not detected early enough, the resulting leaked oil could contaminate the local environment and water sources. Typically, only large leaks in pipelines can be detected if there is a drop in pressure. Zang’s portable sensor — when placed along the pipeline — could detect much smaller leaks before they become bigger.

Airplane fuel tanks. Fuel for aircraft is stored in removable “bladders” made of flexible fabric. The only way a leak can be detected is by seeing the dyed fuel seeping from the plane and then removing the bladder to inspect it. Zang’s sensors could be placed around the bladder to warn a pilot if a leak is occurring in real time and where it is located.

Security. The scanner will be designed to locate the presence of explosives such as bombs at airports or in other buildings. Many explosives, such as the bomb used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, use fuel oils like diesel as one of its major components. These fuel oils are forms of alkane.

The research was funded by the Department of Homeland Security, National Science Foundation and NASA. The lead author of the paper is University of Utah materials science and engineering doctoral student Chen Wang, and [Benjamin] Bunes is the co-author.

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

Interfacial Donor–Acceptor Nanofibril Composites for Selective Alkane Vapor Detection by Chen Wang, Benjamin R. Bunes, Miao Xu, Na Wu, Xiaomei Yang, Dustin E. Gross, and Ling Zang. ACS Sens DOI: 10.1021/acssensors.6b00018 Publication Date (Web): March 09, 2016

Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Bomb-sniffing and other sniffing possibilities from Utah (US state)

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A Nov. 4, 2014 news item on Phys.org features some research in Utah on the use of carbon nanotubes for sensing devices,

University of Utah engineers have developed a new type of carbon nanotube material for handheld sensors that will be quicker and better at sniffing out explosives, deadly gases and illegal drugs.

A carbon nanotube is a cylindrical material that is a hexagonal or six-sided array of carbon atoms rolled up into a tube. Carbon nanotubes are known for their strength and high electrical conductivity and are used in products from baseball bats and other sports equipment to lithium-ion batteries and touchscreen computer displays.

Vaporsens, a university spin-off company, plans to build a prototype handheld sensor by year’s end and produce the first commercial scanners early next year, says co-founder Ling Zang, a professor of materials science and engineering and senior author of a study of the technology published online Nov. 4 [2014] in the journal Advanced Materials.

The new kind of nanotubes also could lead to flexible solar panels that can be rolled up and stored or even “painted” on clothing such as a jacket, he adds.

Here’s Ling Zang holding a prototype of the device,

Ling Zang, a University of Utah professor of materials science and engineering, holds a prototype detector that uses a new type of carbon nanotube material for use in handheld scanners to detect explosives, toxic chemicals and illegal drugs. Zang and colleagues developed the new material, which will make such scanners quicker and more sensitive than today’s standard detection devices. Ling’s spinoff company, Vaporsens, plans to produce commercial versions of the new kind of scanner early next year. Courtesy: University of Utah

A Nov. 4, 2014 University of Utah news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides more detail about the research,

Zang and his team found a way to break up bundles of the carbon nanotubes with a polymer and then deposit a microscopic amount on electrodes in a prototype handheld scanner that can detect toxic gases such as sarin or chlorine, or explosives such as TNT.

When the sensor detects molecules from an explosive, deadly gas or drugs such as methamphetamine, they alter the electrical current through the nanotube materials, signaling the presence of any of those substances, Zang says.

“You can apply voltage between the electrodes and monitor the current through the nanotube,” says Zang, a professor with USTAR, the Utah Science Technology and Research economic development initiative. “If you have explosives or toxic chemicals caught by the nanotube, you will see an increase or decrease in the current.”

By modifying the surface of the nanotubes with a polymer, the material can be tuned to detect any of more than a dozen explosives, including homemade bombs, and about two-dozen different toxic gases, says Zang. The technology also can be applied to existing detectors or airport scanners used to sense explosives or chemical threats.

Zang says scanners with the new technology “could be used by the military, police, first responders and private industry focused on public safety.”

Unlike the today’s detectors, which analyze the spectra of ionized molecules of explosives and chemicals, the Utah carbon-nanotube technology has four advantages:

• It is more sensitive because all the carbon atoms in the nanotube are exposed to air, “so every part is susceptible to whatever it is detecting,” says study co-author Ben Bunes, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering.

• It is more accurate and generates fewer false positives, according to lab tests.

• It has a faster response time. While current detectors might find an explosive or gas in minutes, this type of device could do it in seconds, the tests showed.

• It is cost-effective because the total amount of the material used is microscopic.

This study was funded by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation and NASA. …

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

Photodoping and Enhanced Visible Light Absorption in Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Functionalized with a Wide Band Gap Oligomer by Benjamin R. Bunes, Miao Xu, Yaqiong Zhang, Dustin E. Gross, Avishek Saha, Daniel L. Jacobs, Xiaomei Yang, Jeffrey S. Moore, and Ling Zang. Advanced Materials DOI: 10.1002/adma.201404112 Article first published online: 4 NOV 2014

© 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

For anyone curious about Vaporsens, you can find more here.

Quantum dots and graphene; a mini roundup

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I’ve done very little writing about quantum dots (so much nano, so little time) but there’s been a fair amount of activity lately which has piqued my interest. In the last few days researchers at Kansas State University have been getting noticed for being able to control the size and shape of the graphene quantum dots they produce. This one has gotten extensive coverage online including this May 17, 2012 news item on physorg.com,

Vikas Berry, William H. Honstead professor of chemical engineering, has developed a novel process that uses a diamond knife to cleave graphite into graphite nanoblocks, which are precursors for graphene quantum dots. These nanoblocks are then exfoliated to produce ultrasmall sheets of carbon atoms of controlled shape and size.

By controlling the size and shape, the researchers can control graphene’s properties over a wide range for varied applications, such as solar cells, electronics, optical dyes, biomarkers, composites and particulate systems. Their work has been published in Nature Communications and supports the university’s vision to become a top 50 public research university by 2025. The article is available online.

Here’s an image of graphene being cut by a diamond knife from the May 16, 2012 posting by jtorline on the K-State News blog,

Molecular dynamics snapshot of stretched graphene being nanotomed via a diamond knife.

Here’s why standardizing the size is so important,

While other researchers have been able to make quantum dots, Berry’s research team can make quantum dots with a controlled structure in large quantities, which may allow these optically active quantum dots to be used in solar cell and other optoelectronic applications. [emphasis mine]

While all this is happening in Kansas, the Econ0mist magazine published a May 12, 2012 article about some important quantum dot optoelectronic developments in Spain (an excellent description for relative beginners is given and, if this area interests you, I’d suggest reading it in full),

Actually converting the wonders of graphene into products has been tough. But Frank Koppens and his colleagues at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona think they have found a way to do so. As they describe in Nature Nanotechnology, they believe graphene can be used to make ultra-sensitive, low-cost photodetectors.

…

A typical photodetector is made of a silicon chip a few millimetres across onto which light is focused by a small lens. Light striking the chip knocks electrons free from some of the silicon atoms, producing a signal that the chip’s electronics convert into a picture or other useful information. …

Silicon photodetectors suffer, though, from a handicap: they are inflexible. Nor are they particularly cheap. And they are not that sensitive. They absorb only 10-20% of the light that falls on to them. For years, therefore, engineers have been on the lookout for a cheap, bendable, sensitive photodetector. …

By itself, graphene is worse than silicon at absorbing light. According to Dr Koppens only 2.7% of the photons falling on it are captured. But he and his colleague Gerasimos Konstantatos have managed to increase this to more than 50% by spraying tiny crystals of lead sulphide onto the surface of the material.

So combining the ability to size quantum dots uniformly with this discovery on how to make graphene more sensitive (and more useful in potential products) with quantum dots suggests some very exciting possibilities including this one mentioned by Dexter Johnson (who’s living in Spain these days) in his May 16, 2012 posting on Nanoclast (on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers [IEEE] website),

The researchers offer a range of applications for the graphene-and-quantum-dot combination, including digital cameras and sensors. [emphasis mine] But it seems the researchers seem particularly excited about one application in particular. They expect the material will be used for night-vision technologies in automobiles—an application I have never heard trotted out before in relation to nanotech.

You can get more insights, more precise descriptions if you want to follow up from the Econ0mist article, and Dexter’s links to more information about the research in his posting.

In my final roundup piece, I received a news release (dated April 24, 2012) about a quantum dot commercialization project at the University of Utah,

One of the biggest challenges for advancing quantum dots is the manufacturing process. Conventional processes are expensive, require high temperatures and produce low yields. However, researchers at the University of Utah believe they have a solution. They recently formed a startup company called Navillum Nanotechnologies, and their efforts are gaining national attention with help from a team of M.B.A. students from the David Eccles School of Business.
The students recently won first place and $100,000 at the regional CU Cleantech New Venture Challenge. The student competition concluded at the University of Colorado in Boulder on Friday, April 20. The student team advances to the national championship, which will be held in June in Washington, D.C. Student teams from six regions will compete for additional prizes and recognition at the prestigious event. Other regional competitions were held at MIT, Cal Tech, the University of Maryland, Clean Energy Trust (Chicago) and Rice University. All the competitions are financed by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The students will be competing in the national Clean Energy Business Plan Competition taking place June 12-13, 2012 in Washington, D.C. Here are a few more details from the national competition webpage,

Winners of the six regional competitions will represent their home universities and regions as they vie for the honor of presenting the best clean energy business plan before a distinguished panel of expert judges and invited guests from federal agencies, industry, national labs and the venture capital community.

Confirmed Attendees include:

The Honorable Steven Chu
Energy Secretary [US federal government]

Dr. David Danielson
Assistant Secretary, EERE [US Dept. of Energy, energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies)

Dr. Karina Edmonds
Technology Transfer Coordinator [US Dept. of Energy]

Mr. Todd Park
Chief Technology Officer, White House

Good luck to the students!

US soldiers get batteries woven into their clothes

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Last time I wrote about soldiers, equipment, and energy-efficiency (April 5, 2012 posting) the soldiers in question were British. Today’s posting focuses on US soldiers. From the May 7, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

U.S. soldiers are increasingly weighed down by batteries to power weapons, detection devices and communications equipment. So the Army Research Laboratory has awarded a University of Utah-led consortium almost $15 million to use computer simulations to help design materials for lighter-weight, energy efficient devices and batteries.

“We want to help the Army make advances in fundamental research that will lead to better materials to help our soldiers in the field,” says computing Professor Martin Berzins, principal investigator among five University of Utah faculty members who will work on the project. “One of Utah’s main contributions will be the batteries.”

Of the five-year Army grant of $14,898,000, the University of Utah will retain $4.2 million for research plus additional administrative costs. The remainder will go to members of the consortium led by the University of Utah, including Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Pennsylvania State University, Harvard University, Brown University, the University of California, Davis, and the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy.

…

The new research effort is based on the idea that by using powerful computers to simulate the behavior of materials on multiple scales – from the atomic and molecular nanoscale to the large or “bulk” scale – new, lighter, more energy efficient power supplies and materials can be designed and developed. Improving existing materials also is a goal.

“We want to model everything from the nanoscale to the soldier scale,” Berzins says. “It’s virtual design, in some sense.”

“Today’s soldier enters the battle space with an amazing array of advanced electronic materials devices and systems,” the University of Utah said in its grant proposal. “The soldier of the future will rely even more heavily on electronic weaponry, detection devices, advanced communications systems and protection systems. Currently, a typical infantry soldier might carry up to 35 pounds of batteries in order to power these systems, and it is clear that the energy and power requirements for future soldiers will be much greater.” [emphasis mine]

“These requirements have a dramatic adverse effect on the survivability and lethality of the soldier by reducing mobility as well as the amount of weaponry, sensors, communication equipment and armor that the soldier can carry. Hence, the Army’s desire for greater lethality and survivability of its men and women in the field is fundamentally tied to the development of devices and systems with increased energy efficiency as well as dramatic improvement in the energy and power density of [battery] storage and delivery systems.”

Up to 35 lbs. of batteries? I’m trying to imagine what the rest of the equipment would weigh. In any event, they seem to be more interested in adding to the weaponry than reducing weight. At least, that’s how I understand “greater *lethality.” Nice of them to mention greater survivability too.

The British project is more modest, they are weaving e-textiles that harvest energy allowing British soldiers to carry fewer batteries. I believe field trials were scheduled for May 2012.

* Correction: leathility changed to lethality on July 31, 2013.

Nanotechnology and HIV prevention; flying frogs; nanotech regulation conference

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It seems to me that whenever researchers announce a nanotechnology application they always estimate that it will take five years before reaching the commercial market. Well, the researchers at the University at Utah are estimating five to seven years before their gel-based anti-HIV condom for women comes to market. From the media release on Azonano,

University of Utah bioengineer Patrick Kiser analyzes polymers used to develop a new kind of AIDS-preventing vaginal gel for eventual use by women in Africa and other impoverished areas. The newly invented gel would be inserted a few hours before sex. During intercourse, polymers — long, chain-like molecules — within the gel become “crosslinked,” forming a microscopic mesh that, in lab experiments, physically trapped HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) particles.

…

The crosslinked polymers form a mesh that is smaller than microscopic, and instead is nanoscopic – on the scale of atoms and molecules – with a mesh size of a mere 30 to 50 nanometers – or 30 to 50 billionths of a meter. (A meter is about 39 inches.)

By comparison, an HIV particle is about 100 nanometers wide, sperm measure about 5 to 10 microns (5,000 to 10,000 nanometers) in cross section, and the width of a human hair is roughly 100 microns (100,000 nanometers)

I’m not sure why there is such an emphasis on women in the continent of Africa as I’m sure if this product is successful, it could be used in many environments and by many women regardless of their geography.

From 1998 to 2008, researchers found a flying frog in the Eastern Himalayas along with 350 other new species, according to the World Wildlife Federation. From the media release on Physorg.com,

A decade of research carried out by scientists in remote mountain areas endangered by rising global temperatures brought exciting discoveries such as a bright green frog that uses its red and long webbed feet to glide in the air.

A frog that flies -- new species found in Eastern Himalayas

More details can be found in the media release.

In September, there will be two meetings, one held in London and another in Washington, DC, to discuss a collaborative research project, Regulating Nanotechnologies in the EU and US. I mentioned the meetings and registration information in an earlier posting here and there’s more information on Nanowerk News here.

I mentioned an event that Raincoaster was organizing, a 3-day novel workshop on the upcoming Labour Day weekend. Unfortunately, it’s been canceled due to one of the downsides of being a freelancer (when you get sick there’s nobody to fill in for you) and arrangements for the lodge/resort couldn’t be finalized in time.

FrogHeart

Commentary about nanotech, science policy and communication, society, and the arts

Tag Archives: University of Utah

Merry 2025 Christmas: sea slugs, the Nicholas Brothers, ethnomathematics, three new frogs (hidden gems), gifted dogs, and more

Elusive and ephemeral

Introduction

Nicholas Brothers

8,000 years ago, before numbers existed, art demonstrated early mathematical thinking (ethnomathematics)

A New Understanding of Prehistoric Art

Revising the History of Mathematics

And now, back to the animal stories

Journal

DOI

Article Title

Journal

DOI

Article Title

Joyeux Noël!

The mathematics of gift wrapping

UBC Mathematics postdoctoral fellow Adam Martens talks about the geometry of gift wrapping—and why you can’t wrap a ball perfectly (so don’t even bother!).

What is a differential geometer?

What is the easiest shape to wrap?

What is the most difficult shape to wrap?

What gift-container shape minimizes the amount of wrapping needed?

How about gift bags?

Smart contact lenses harvest energy from tears

Touchy robots and prosthetics

Exceptional sense of touch

Picking up a grape and holding his wife’s hand

The (science) ambassador approach

Quadriplegic man reanimates a limb with implanted brain-recording and muscle-stimulating systems

Sensing fuel leaks and fuel-based explosives with a nanofibril composite

Bomb-sniffing and other sniffing possibilities from Utah (US state)

Quantum dots and graphene; a mini roundup

US soldiers get batteries woven into their clothes

Nanotechnology and HIV prevention; flying frogs; nanotech regulation conference