Show Notes 8 September 2023
Story 1: NASA revealed on August 24 the first Images of U.S. air quality and pollution generated by its pioneering air pollution sensor
Source: WonderfulEngineering.com Story by Jannat Un Nisa
See NASA’s August 24 announcement: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-shares-first-images-from-us-pollution-monitoring-instrument Be sure to click on the video.
And here is the link to the TEMPO site: https://tempo.si.edu/
- On August 24 NASA’s pioneering air pollution sensor, the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO), unveiled its first images, illuminating the dynamic fluctuations of toxic pollutants across the United States.
- Positioned within the geostationary orbit atop the Intelsat 40e satellite, TEMPO’s operational vantage point resides at 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. TEMPO is now measuring hourly daytime air pollution over greater North America.
Intelsat 40e satellite
- These revealing images, taken during the testing phase from July 31 to Aug. 2, document the fluctuating concentrations of nitrogen oxide, a harmful byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, across major North American cities.
- With the potential to inflict respiratory harm and contribute to asthma, nitrogen oxide warrants meticulous observation to safeguard public health.
- TEMPO’s observational prowess hinges on its capacity to measure the sunlight reflected off Earth’s surface, atmosphere, and clouds. By analyzing the distinctive wavelengths of absorbed light, TEMPO deciphers the composition of the air and quantifies the concentrations of various chemical constituents.
- This precision empowers scientists to glean invaluable insights into the complex interplay of pollutants and atmospheric elements.
- Launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in April, TEMPO underwent meticulous positioning to align with its intended trajectory.
- Now operational and validated, TEMPO is the premier satellite to furnish real-time air pollution measurements across North America.
Story 2: AI helps robots manipulate objects with their whole bodies
Source: MIT News Story by Adam Zewe
Link: https://news.mit.edu/2023/ai-technique-robots-manipulate-objects-whole-bodies-0824
See video embedded in the article.
- Imagine you want to carry a large, heavy box up a flight of stairs. You might spread your fingers out and lift that box with both hands, then hold it on top of your forearms and balance it against your chest, using your whole body to manipulate the box.
- Humans are generally good at whole-body manipulation, but robots struggle with such tasks. To the robot, each spot where the box could touch any point on the carrier’s fingers, arms, and torso represents a contact event that it must reason about [or another way of putting it, process each contact point/event]. With billions of potential contact events, planning for this task quickly becomes problematic.
- Now MIT researchers have found a way to simplify this process, known as contact-rich manipulation planning. They use an AI technique called smoothing, which summarizes many contact events into a smaller number of decisions, to enable even a simple algorithm to quickly identify an effective manipulation plan for the robot.
- The role of reinforcement learning:
- A generic definition of reinforcement learning is a machine-learning technique where an agent, like a robot, learns to complete a task through trial and error with a reward for getting closer to a goal.
- Researchers say this type of learning takes a black-box approach because the system must learn everything about the world through trial and error.
- Reinforcement learning has been used effectively for contact-rich manipulation planning, where the robot seeks to learn the best way to move an object in a specified manner.
- But because there may be billions of potential contact points that a robot must reason about when determining how to use its fingers, hands, arms, and body to interact with an object, this trial-and-error approach requires a great deal of computation.
- Even though smoothing greatly simplifies the decisions, searching through the remaining decisions can still be a difficult problem. So, the MIT researchers combined their model with an algorithm that can rapidly and efficiently search through all possible decisions the robot could make.
- With this combination, the computation time was cut down to about a minute on a standard laptop.
- While still in its early days, this AI-based smoothing method technique could potentially enable factories to use smaller, mobile robots that can manipulate objects with their entire arms or bodies, rather than large robotic arms that can only grasp using fingertips.
- This technique could be useful in robots sent on exploration missions to Mars or other solar system bodies, since they could adapt to the environment quickly using only an onboard computer.
Story 3: Dallas-based JetWind Power Corp. wants to install turbines at airports to collect the powerful wind from jet engines
Source: The Dallas Morning News Story by Kyle Arnold
See also JetWind Power Corp home page: http://www.jetwindpower.com/
And an in-depth presentation video here: https://vimeo.com/252579790
- The Dallas Love Field airport [now the busiest medium-sized airport in the USA] is testing JetWind Power Corp. “energy pods,” which use the wind generated by jet engines as they depart gates to spin turbines and make electricity.
- It’s the first full-fledged trial for the Dallas-based technology firm founded by Dallas-based orthopedic surgeon T.O. Souryal.
- JetWind and the Dallas Love Field management plan to test the three-turbine pod during the remainder of 2023 to see if it holds up to the heat, cold and high winds at the airport.
- If it produces enough power and weathers the elements, Souryal thinks it could help power every airport in the country, and maybe the world.
- Souryal noted, “The idea came to me maybe 15 or 20 years ago when I was flying. We were about to take off and I looked out the window and there was stuff flying everywhere.”
- The jet blast from a commercial airplane can produce hurricane-force winds of up to 150 mph as far away as 200 feet away from engines, according to jet manufacturer Boeing.
- Putting a wind turbine at an airport seemed a no-brainer to Souryal, but the idea is easier than its execution.
- For one, airline runways need to be relatively free of debris and obstacles to allow planes to navigate. The devices also need to be able to withstand weather and the extreme winds from jet engines.
- At Love Field, the JetWind energy pod is positioned just in front of the wind deflectors near the airport’s air traffic control tower. Batteries are stored in a trailer behind the wind deflector. That gives the turbines, housed in a 6-foot tall box, access to the jet blast from planes pulling out of gates 5, 7 and 9.
- For now, the batteries are used to charge electric vehicles at the Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control tower next to the airport terminal.
- It’s unclear exactly how much energy the turbine generators will be able to produce. Where it’s positioned, the energy pod only gets a few dozen jet blasts a day. To produce a significant amount of energy, many more will need to be placed all over the airport.
- Isaac Ellison, Love Field’s interim environmental manager noted, “We would want to be the first airport to implement a technology like this”.
Story 4: 3D Printed heart muscle beats – The ink helps heart muscle cells align so that they can contract in coordination
Source: Medgadget.com Story by Conn Hastings
Link: https://www.medgadget.com/2023/08/3d-printed-heart-muscle-beats.html
See also a feature from the Harvard researchers: https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2023/07/fiber-infused-ink-enables-3d-printed-heart-muscle-beat
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne64U6Z1Ai0
- Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a technique that allows them to 3D print a heart ventricle, that can then go on to beat rhythmically.
- The technology could allow researchers to create heart models to test new cardiac drugs and may even pave the way for fully implantable cardiac components.
- The method involves using rotary spinning to create small fibers that are then infused into a printable hydrogel ink. When 3D printed, this ink retains its printed structure, and cardiomyocytes within it align along the direction of the included fibers.
- Side note, what are cardiomyocytes? From the perspective of cardiology, a cardiomyocyte is the cell responsible for the contraction of the heart – utilizing an intricate network of contractile proteins and ion transporters for this work – with the main purpose of effectively executing the contraction-relaxation cycle. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6911029/
- The approach developed by the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences team first involves using rotary spinning to create thin gelatin fibers, which is somewhat akin to the way that cotton candy is created.
- Luke MacQueen, a postdoctoral researcher involved in the project, had the idea that infusing such fibers into a printable hydrogel ink could help it to maintain its shape after printing.
- When stimulated using electricity, the structure beats along the orientation of the fibers, giving the researchers plenty of control over its behavior.
- Once printed, cardiomyocytes within the gel align along the fibers and will beat in that orientation once stimulated using electricity.
- The technique could unlock more advanced cardiac models for drug testing and could also permit personalized medicine for cardiac patients.
Honorable Mentions:
3D-printed toilet is so slippery that nothing can leave a mark
Source: NewScientist Story by Alex Wilkins
- There are many kinds of slippery toilet surfaces, like Teflon-coated bowls, but they all suffer from a lack of durability. The more they are used, the less slippery they become, so the coating or toilet needs to be replaced for it to remain effective.
- Now, Yike Li at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and his colleagues have developed a toilet that is extremely slippery and remains so in the face of abrasion.
- Li and his team made a model of the toilet, around 10 times smaller than a full-sized version, by 3D printing a mixture of plastic and hydrophobic sand grains, using a laser to fuse the particles together and create a complex structure. They then lubricated the surface with a kind of silicon oil, which also penetrated below the surface because of the toilet’s material structure.
Mozart Can Act as a Painkiller For Newborns, First-of-Its-Kind Trial Suggests
Source: ScienceAlert Story by Carly Cassella
- Babies that are about to get poked by doctors may benefit from the lullabies of Mozart.
- A recent randomized, blinded control trial has found that calming background music during minor medical procedures can somewhat alleviate signs of pain in newborns.
- The trial is the first of its kind according to a team from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, who worked with doctors to conduct the research among 100 infants at a community hospital in the Bronx, New York.
Check out this remarkable solar panel[s] “flower” solution that unfolds and moves to follow sun light! Called the “Smartflower”. See: https://smartflower.com/
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SqdssSINiM
