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Copyright: © Richard Jacobs
Friction, forces, shears: the game changes when robots get tiny. Marc Miskin brings you to scale on these up-and-coming microrobots and nanorobots for biotechnology. Listen and learn
Marc Miskin is an assistant professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and works in a robotic systems lab. He's working on nano machines that may one day soon explore our bodies for medical purposes. The robots are so small that they aren't visible to the eye—think approximately hair width. This field has taken the advances in small computers to small robots, around 70 to 100 microns in size. The forces at this scale are different, of course, and bring in some interesting challenges. When they get tinier, friction, adhesion, and viscosity become the dominant effects and mass takes second stage. Those dominant traits become more important as the area-to-volume ratio becomes large. "It's like everything in your universe is flypaper," he says. What's really interesting is that the electrical aspects remain constant. The voltages and currents are still fixed and electrical interference isn't an issue.
The way they move, to swim or propel, also becomes very different than larger human-sized organisms—they can't rely on mass to keep the momentum going. They use silicon, wires, and metal so that, unlike with biological organisms, they can play around with such materials to address these challenges. However, he assures listeners, these materials fall under "generally recognized as safe," and are low toxicity. Elasticity is also an issue these materials hope to address. They need to create enough movement over a small size that can also be controlled by a signal with a specific voltage size, about 1. They came up with something they call "circuit electric chemical actuators," which basically chemically bonds through electron rearranging to create a force. He explains more interesting challenges in this tiny production model and addresses applications for these microbots in real life, though they are still in proof of concept. They imagine utilizing them when single-cell precision is desired, as with nerve work.
For more about this work, see his lab's website: seas.upenn.edu/~mmiskin. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0my
Another in the Finding Genius Podcast series on viruses, this captivating conversation with Yale University's Dr. Takyar explores interesting avenues of the virus-host relationship, offering listeners a glimpse into a top researcher's understandings of viral characteristics and behavior. Listeners will hear
Seyedtaghi "Shervin" Takyar, MD, PhD, is a Yale Medicine pulmonologist and an associate professor of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine. His work on disease research his given him an interesting perspective on virus-cell interaction and Richard brings him into this continuing look at viral behaviors. They begin by addressing if viruses are living or nonliving and this gives Dr. Takyar a chance to provide a rich answer in which he says, on the one hand, they are akin to a program in a computer if a computer were consider "life." On the other hand, he adds, nature doesn't have rigid lines, and he would say viruses are at the very least a footprint of life. He explains each of these analogies in more depth and ends his answer with, "it is more interesting to find their place in life," rather than label them as one or the other. The rest of the podcast examines this place.
The origin and evolution of viruses follows the pattern of life: virus evolution over time just means they've found those places that fit best. He explains various behavior with similar language. For example, a virus incubation period depends on their environment. They may not express parts of their genome until the right time comes. The right time inside the cell is dictated by a lot of actors—like aging, for example—the increased mortality in older folks with SARS CoV-2 is because those states are codes for the virus: certain parts of the process that it needs to grow are available and this triggers replication. He shares a brand new behavior confirmed by researchers next, that viruses use the factory inside cells to talk to each other. Scientists have shown that bacteriophages use the translation machinery inside the bacteria to translate their message to other viral particles. Dr. Takyar shares more of his thoughts with listeners on topics from quasi-species to speculations on viral epigenetics.
For more about Dr. Takyar and his research, start with his lab website: medicine.yale.edu/lab/takyar. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
An exciting step closer to a cure for diabetes starts with a bit of gastric tissue. Joe Zhou's lab works on tissue regeneration and repair and organ regeneration. In this podcast, he discusses a life-changing possibility alongside Richard's thoughtful questions. They take listeners across a new frontier of research, covering
Joe Zhou is a Professor of Regenerative Medicine at Cornell University. While the broad interest of his lab is tissue and organ regeneration in humans, he discusses an advancement in a specific cell generation, a cell important to the diabetes and insulin connection. Many important organs, he explains, don't have a robust ability to regenerate, including the pancreas. In type 1 diabetes, the insulin-producing beta cells have been attacked as if they were foreign invaders. Injecting insulin doesn't give these patients the fine tuning a working pancreas offers, and complications can be problematic and even severe. Dr. Zhou gives listeners a well-organized and listener-friendly review of different ways scientists have tried to reintroduce these cells in patients and sets up a helpful backdrop to his own research. He explains how his work may provide hope for both types of diabetes, addressing insulin resistance as well through introducing these healthy beta cells.
His lab has been regenerating islet beta cells from human gastric tissue. The goal is to reintroduce those cells into the same patient, precluding rejection issues other transplant plans have caused. Basically, they are able to take adult gastric cells and treat them in a way to convert them directly to beta cells without having to return them to a pluripotent stage and all the complications that causes. They use powerful genes called master regulators to do this. "If we start with a select set of these master regulator beta cells," he says, "and put in a different tissue, we can directly convert them from one tissue to another tissue." He continues by explaining why this is especially true for gastric cells, how they grow the cells with an ex-vivo approach and introduce the genes, and which processes they hope to refine in the future. He addresses other challenges and successes as well. So listen in for some good news in the field of diabetes research.
For more, see his lab's website: zhoulab.weill.cornell.edu. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
Independent consultant and researcher Marciel Maffini has made it her mission to change woefully outdated laws and scientific processes for assessing food safety. This podcast is an essential listen before you take another product off the grocery shelf. She describes
Maricel Maffini is an experienced researcher committed to public health advocacy through regulation and oversight of chemical exposure. She now works as an independent consultant and has a doctorate in the biological sciences. She has over 25-years research experience in the fields of carcinogenesis, reproduction biology, and endocrine disruption. The full focus of her current work involves food safety and chemical exposures, specifically on the manufacturing and packaging side. She tells listeners that many chemicals are added to foods by the manufacturer to make them last longer and be more palatable as well as to add more striking colors. In addition, part of the processing can expose food to chemicals that won't appear in the ingredients list. She adds that exposure to numerous chemicals and preservatives during pregnancy can be especially risky. In other words, a much better food safety regulation process is in order.
To help listeners understand what needs changing, she provides a helpful and clear explanation of how FDA regulations work, where the loopholes are, and what she is doing about it. For example, because of an allowance in the 1958 law allowing items "generally recognized as safe" to be exempt from detailed ingredient listings, numerous harmful items are able to sneak into food. She also explains the approval process companies have to use when putting a product on the market, and how a surprising amount of information and approval is voluntary. Furthermore, because many ingredients are harmful after cumulative exposure, certain harmful chemicals slip in as a series of small amounts while our comprehensive diet could potentially include harmful levels. Maricel Maffini is admirably tackling all these issues and is able to explain them in a way to help listeners do the same. Finally she gives some advice for home preparation to help against some of the potential manufacturing missteps.
For more about her work, follow her on twitter as @mvmaffini and search for her on PubMed. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
Imagine scientists designing technology based on the double-helix DNA structure in our cells: well, it's happened and this podcast takes you on a futuristic journey into an exciting technology. Richard talks with a researcher working on this technology and the two speculate on exciting possibilities. So hold on tight, and learn about
Great leaps often come from an inventor's effort to imitate nature and this is one such move. A researcher shares his exciting work on creating double-helix antennas with different sizes and capabilities. He explains the basics of antennas, but also opens up listener's appreciation for how many natural antennas exist in our bodies and world. He reminds us that antennae have always been inspired by nature, and, for example, are on the head of insects to detect chemical and mechanical signals in their environment. Therefore he and his colleagues looked inward and designed antenna inspired by DNA structure—a design structure modeling the double helix with base pairs that determine the antenna function. Because they've made these base pairs easy to switch, the function can be adjusted very easily and this makes them useful for the multiple applications that exist in today's multi-tech environment. He says that the three kinds of base pairs they use include those that work by capacitor, resistor, or conductor capabilities. He and Richard are able to explore numerous exciting potentials that different sizes, frequencies, and wavelengths make possible, from the importance of medical imaging to the convenience of wearable technology use. They even discuss how our own cells could be used as antenna, and explore how DNA's copy mechanisms might inform further developments. Modern materials such as the uses of photonic crystals and coherent optics keep those possibilities wide open. So listen in for more about cutting edge antenna technology. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
This is a story about how studying a buried city in the jungle led to an urgent call to utilize a new technology to map our earth. Archaeologist Christopher Fisher was astounded by LiDAR technology when he used it to map an ancient city covered by sense forest canopy in Honduras. This podcast explores what happened next. Listen and learn
Christopher Fisher is an archaeologist and professor of anthropology at the Colorado State University. He's also the director of The Earth Archive, a group working for our future human society and environment by scanning and curating LiDAR data of planet Earth. After seeing its potential in archaeological discoveries, he says it "really opened my eyes to see how we could use this to map our earth, to create a 3D digital twin of the planet that we can study today and curate for future generations." It has several other applications scientists can now use, from cultural anthropology to biology and geography, but he's looking to the future. His enthusiasm lead him to create a nonprofit to engineer just that, and tells listeners about his efforts to move forward.
He describes how helpful archeologists have found it, but his long-term perspective into the past gives him a similar long-term perspective towards mapping information for future generations. Because of climate change, future human societies and environments may benefit from views of what our earth looks like right now. He says there's a limited time we have to scan the earth and map what it looks like to pass this information to our grandchildren, to help them reconstruct the earth and address the changes. He explains how the technology itself works: basically, from some sort of airborne platform, they fire down a very dense grid of infrared beams. When one strikes an object, it returns to the aircraft and provides a measure of distance. A cloud of points provides a 3D map. He says their first goal is to map the entire amazon basin starting in the spring of 2021. Interested listeners can sign up for their newsletter and find more information on their website: The Earth Archive. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
Ready to explore energy sources and supercapacitor applications you can build with? The time is now for energy storage advances and this podcast explores an exciting structural possibility. To learn more about this advancement in energy, listen and hear
Julio D'Arcy is an assistant professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. He brings listeners along in the search for supercapacitors as energy storage system. He discovered that rust—which is iron corrosion—is a fascinating material, abundant in both nature and in synthetic conditions like construction. He started working with rust in his lab, demonstrating how they could change its properties at a chemical level and make it serve as an oxidant of chemical energy, which is a means to store energy. Under careful syntheses, they turned bricks blue and changed their structure and coated them with special nanofibers. These nanofibers move like a sponge throughout all the pores, covering every surface, yet allowing the fusion of gases and ions through the still-open pores.
He explains how these nanofibers are semiconductors made from PEDOT, which is a conducting polymer. This plastic can conduct electricity, store energy, and grow from the hematite in the bricks. The vision for these bricks is to eventually produce supercapacitors to replace batteries and be used as a dependable load-bearing energy source. The trick, he says, is to make sure the structure and chemical properties don't change over time and this has nanofiber alignment implications. He tells listeners about their work with magnetic nanofibers toward that end. He also talks about the limits from the much lower energy density these bricks have than batteries and how they are working on that limitation. This progresses into an exciting conversation about possible solutions and ways this technology can only improve. He adds that while they are about five years from load-bearing commercial applications, current uses include smaller-scale applications like power emergency lighting in the house or powering small electronics embedded in the house. This polymer has exciting potential for other applications like its ability to sense changes in PH, humidity, and temperature: the sensor capability for at-home use is boundless.
For more, see his lab's website: sites.wustl.edu/darcylab/.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
Derek Abbott opens up a decades-long mystery for listeners in this exploration of biomedical engineering technology applied to an unidentified dead man found on a beach in 1948.
Listen and learn
Derek Abbott is a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia. He has a physics and electrical engineering background and explains his field as bridging electrical engineering, medicine, and biology. Therefore, he can tackle tricky problems by utilizing biology and engineering.
He believes in the importance of his academic role: "We work on difficult problems in a multidisciplinary manner," he says. "The problem isn't the goal," he adds; rather, "the tools and techniques we pick up on the way will serve society as a whole." This podcast takes an in-depth look at some of these techniques and tools regarding a curious mystery of our time.
Professor Abbot has been working on human identification, and particularly on the curious case of the Somerton Man. He tells listeners how his field informs this work by taking us through the most interesting puzzles and solutions. A mysterious figure was found dead on a beach in Australia in 1948. There wasn't a scratch on him and no one knows how he died. This complete mystery has engaged the world and Derek Abbott is on the case. He describes some biomedical engineering techniques he has used as well as plain old detective work to decipher the significance of the note in the man's pocket, how his tie fabric was cut, and what could the women's phone number on the back of his copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
He describes some amazing bioinspired engineering techniques including their attempts at mitochondrial work and other DNA workarounds, and explains the significance of the "graceful degradation of information." Listen in for a fascinating mystery and one man's dedication to following it to its end.
For more about his work see his website: adelaide.edu.au/directory/derek.abbott
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK and find Derek on Twitter at @derek_abbott60.
Upgrading isn't just for phone systems. Quantum information science tackles the upgrade of old existing technologies, which run by classical physics laws, to those that function in the quantum realm. It's as easy as it sounds: Vlatko Vederal tells listeners what this entails and what possibilities researchers like him are working toward. Listen and learn
Vlatko Vedral is a professor at University of Oxford in Quantum Information Science. He explains his field in helpful terms, comparing classical technologies with quantum technologies like quantum computing applications. His useful analogies give listeners a comprehensive picture of what this will look like and he provides a specific timeline. First, he says, quantum cryptography will take more of a center stage because it's the simplest one to begin with. Then there will be a shift towards implementing quantum memory, and finally, in the next ten years or so, we will see upgrades to large scale quantum computers.
His explanation about how quantum cryptography helps elucidate the challenges for all quantum applications. Basically, if two people are trying to communicate using quantum bits, anyone eavesdropping is forced to a take measurement and collapse the communication to classical properties. This makes their listening-in detectable because that action will emit a lower fidelity, giving them away. He and Richard then discuss more fascinating potentials and the challenges they present, which tend to center on the error rate and physical necessities. For example, they must cool an atom to an extremely low temperature. As more cubits are added, the system gets hotter and noisier. Their only current solution is to do error correction, but researchers like Vedral are working towards better techniques. So listen in for these exciting possibilities.
For more, see his website: quantumlah.org/research/group/vlatko. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
Valkyrie has brought together some of the best minds to utilize artificial intelligence in operations management. This podcast presents a fascinating conversation on the latest ways artificial intelligence can impact decision making. Plug in, listen, and hear
Charlie Burgoyne, Valkyrie's CEO, educates listeners on the phenomenal potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare, financial services, government applications, and even the entertainment and transportation space. He tells listeners to think of his firm as a modern-day Bell Labs, basically a research institute turned industrial team. Valkyrie employs biologists, chemists, and physicists to work on different verticals, deploying algorithms and machine learning techniques to dramatically improve operational efficiencies and customer retention. He adds that while they do a degree of consulting, they're predominately scientists solving industrial problems.
He shares some of these challenges that AI easily meets, such as helping the largest ambulance company in the world develop COVID modeling predication tools and resource allocation plans. For example, they can predict what counties are likely to have an outbreak of disease and why, and inform them how to best provide and allocate PPE accordingly. He adds that their most impactful projects live in the defense sector, identifying different types of behavior that help complex data systems adjust new data and develop supporting algorithms. But a nice vacation is also on their list of services, and they've recently helped a large cruise line identify which systems are creating failures, what can be optimized, and how they can develop operational capabilities to keep the ocean clean and still expand their operation. He finishes with an interesting discussion of their approach to financial services and where they go against the grain by embracing quantum-driven hedge fund models. Listen in to learn more about how Valkyrie deploys AI for a better future.
For information about the company, see their website at valkyrie.ai. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
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