Show Notes 23 August 2024
Story 1: These New Powered Pants by Google’s X Labs Will Allow You to Skip Up Mountains
Source: Wonderful Engineering Story by Taimur
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKdbyWbbxkc
See also video loop on the company’s website – https://www.skipwithjoy.com/
- Skip Innovations Inc., an offshoot from Google X Labs, has developed an innovative exoskeleton known as the MO/GO pants. These advanced “powered pants” are designed to enhance leg strength by up to 40%, or make the wearer feel approximately 30 pounds lighter, significantly reducing the physical exertion required during outdoor activities.
- The MO/GO, short for “MOuntain/GOat,” features a hybrid soft/rigid exoskeleton integrated into rugged outdoor trousers. It uses knee joint servo motors to assist the quadriceps and hamstrings, providing a substantial power boost during walking or hiking.
- It is powered by a battery that provides over three hours of assistance, using regenerative mechanisms to recharge while moving downhill, similar to regenerative braking in electric vehicles.
- Optional time out – how does regenerative braking create electricity?
- Regenerative braking is a clever system that recaptures energy during braking and converts it into electricity. Here’s how it works:
- Electric Motor in Reverse: When you step on the brake pedal in an electric or hybrid vehicle, regenerative brakes put the electric motor into reverse mode. This causes the motor to run backward, slowing down the car’s wheels.
- Electricity Generation: While running backward, the motor also acts as an electric generator. It produces electricity, which is then fed back into the vehicle’s batteries. This process captures the kinetic energy that would otherwise be lost as heat during braking.
- Stored Energy: The electricity produced is stored in the vehicle’s high-power battery. It’s ready for use the next time you press the accelerator, making regenerative braking an efficient way to recharge the battery.
- The MO/GO pants have already demonstrated significant benefits, enabling people with mobility issues to perform activities they previously couldn’t.
- While not classified as a medical device, the MO/GO aims to alleviate muscle and joint strain, potentially offering relief to individuals with conditions like Parkinson’s disease. However, obtaining medical device classification and insurance coverage could take years.
- For now, Skip offers the MO/GO pants for rental in the western United States and Canada, with plans to sell the product at $2,250 per leg later this year. Although this price point is high, rental options at $80 make the technology more accessible.
Story 2: Retinal images could predict future risk of heart or lung disease
Source: NewScientist.com Story by Timmy Broderick
See also: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.adg4517
- Want to know more about your future risk of developing heart or lung problems? Your retinal thickness might hold important clues.
- Researchers have previously established links between the thickness of the retina and whole-body health, but a new study provides more detail about its potential for predicting future risks.
- Using data from 44,828 participants, a research team of scientists [including researchers from Harvard Medical School and MIT] found that having thinner retinas was correlated with an increased risk of ocular, neurological and cardiovascular diseases.
- Most notably, this is the first study to find that a thinner retina increases someone’s risk of developing a lung condition like bronchitis or emphysema later in life.
- The data came from the UK Biobank, an enormous medical database that contains anonymous details about the health and genetics of around half a million people in the UK.
- The retinal images included in the data were captured using a non-invasive procedure called optical coherence tomography. The procedure uses light waves to take cross-section pictures of the retina.
- Ophthalmologists routinely use this technique to determine a patient’s risk for various eye conditions, including macular degeneration and glaucoma.
- The procedure captures information about the retina – which is usually 0.5 millimeters thick – and its internal layers.
- One of the study authors from the Harvard Medical School hopes the study will eventually expand how optical coherence tomography is used. Beyond simply giving details about the eyes, the researchers would like to see it become a tool for providing future health information about the whole body.
- While exciting, this technology is still “a long way off” from immediate clinical application.
- Researchers are still unsure why retinal biology might correspond to systemic health, or what kind of mechanism might be driving the associations seen in this study and others.
- What’s more, the researchers point out in their paper that a lack of genetic diversity within the UK Biobank sample limits the universal applicability of their conclusions: 94 per cent of the people who contributed their data to the database have white European ancestry.
Story 3: MIT spinout Arnasi begins applying LiquiGlide no-stick technology to help patients – The company that brought you no-stick toothpaste is moving into the medical space, with a lubricant for ostomy pouches and other products that could improve millions of lives.
Source: MIT News Story by Zach Winn
Link: https://news.mit.edu/2024/mit-spinout-arnasi-begins-applying-liquiglide-to-help-patients-0730
- A no-stick technology invented by two MIT Professors, initially commercialized as LiquiGlide in 2012, went viral for its uncanny ability to make materials that stick to their containers — think ketchup, cosmetics, and toothpaste — slide out with ease.
- Now, the company that brought you Colgate no-stick toothpaste is moving into the medical space, and the applications could improve millions of lives.
- The company, which recently rebranded as the Arnasi Group, has developed an ambitious plan to launch three new biomedical products over the next four years.
- The first of those products, called Revel, is a deodorizing lubricant designed for ostomy pouches, which are used by individuals to collect bodily waste after digestive system surgeries.
- Side note, more on ostomy pouches – An ostomy pouch, also known as an ostomy bag, serves a crucial purpose for individuals who have undergone ostomy surgery.
- The ostomy bag is a plastic pouch that attaches to a stoma (the surgically created opening). It has an adhesive around the opening, securing it to the skin.
- The bag collects urine or stool naturally, without the need for manual force.
- It’s odor-resistant and leak-proof.
- Up to 1 million people rely on such pouches in the United States. Ostomy pouches must be emptied multiple times per day, and issues resulting from sticking or clogging can cause embarrassing, time-consuming situations for the people relying on them.
- Arnasi’s deodorizing lubricant can prevent clogging and simplify the ostomy pouch cleaning process. Unlike other options available, one application of its lubricant works for the entire day, the Arnasi team says, and they designed a single unit dose that fits in your pocket for added convenience.
- Revel, Arnasi’s FDA-registered product, officially launched last month in July, and it has already received promising feedback from nurses and patients.
Story 4: A Band-Aid for the heart? New 3D printing method makes this, and much more, possible
Source: University of Colorado, Boulder Story by Lisa Marshall and Nicholas Goda
See also https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn6925
- In the quest to develop life-like materials to replace and repair human body parts, scientists face a formidable challenge: Real tissues are often both strong and stretchable and vary in shape and size.
- A team of researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, has taken a critical step toward cracking that code. They’ve developed a new way to 3D print material that is at once elastic enough to withstand a heart’s persistent beating, tough enough to endure the crushing load placed on joints, and easily shapable to fit a patient’s unique defects.
- Better yet, it sticks easily to wet tissue.
- Their breakthrough, described in the Aug. 2 edition of the journal Science, helps pave the way toward a new generation of biomaterials, from internal bandages that deliver drugs directly to the heart to cartilage patches and needle-free sutures.
- One specific material, known as a hydrogel (the stuff that contact lenses are made of), has been a favorite prospect for fabricating artificial tissues, organs and implants.
- But getting these from the lab to the clinic has been tough because traditional 3D-printed hydrogels tend to either break when stretched, crack under pressure or are too stiff to mold around tissues
- To achieve both strength and elasticity within 3D printed hydrogels, the Colorado University research team took a cue from worms, which repeatedly tangle and untangle themselves around one another in three-dimensional “worm blobs” that have both solid and liquid-like properties. Previous research has shown that incorporating similarly intertwined chains of molecules, known as “entanglements,” can make them tougher.
- Their new printing method, known as CLEAR (for Continuous-curing after Light Exposure Aided by Redox initiation), follows a series of steps to entangle long molecules inside 3D-printed materials much like those intertwined worms.
- When the team stretched and weight-loaded those materials in the lab (one researcher even ran over a sample with her bike) they found them to be exponentially tougher than materials printed with a standard method of 3D printing known as Digital Light Processing (DLP). Better yet: They also conformed and stuck to animal tissues and organs.
- Co-first author Matt Davidson, a research associate noted, “We can now 3D print adhesive materials that are strong enough to mechanically support tissue. We have never been able to do that before.”
Honorable Mentions:
Story: This Bill Gates-Backed Startup Is Making ‘Butter’ From CO2 Instead of Cows
Source: Inc. Magazine Story by Chloe Aiello
- Dairy is one of life’s great pleasures–science even says so. But the cows that make butter also produce a tremendous amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Now, a Bill Gates-backed startup is developing “butter” without the environmental footprint.
- San Jose, California-based startup Savor uses a thermochemical process to create a fatty rich spread similar to butter, using just carbon dioxide, heat, hydrogen, and oxygen. The company pulls CO2 from air and hydrogen from water, then heats and oxidizes them to form fat. The creation is earning a lot of attention, especially from Gates, a self-identified animal fat aficionado.
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Story: Giant AI robot doubles solar panel installation speed, cuts cost in half – Maximo uses AI-powered computer vision to precisely place solar panels.
Source: Interesting Engineering Story by Aman Tripathi
- AES has recently introduced Maximo, an AI-powered robot specifically designed to streamline and accelerate the solar panel installation process. It boasts a 50% reduction in both time and cost compared to traditional methods.
- This groundbreaking AI-powered robot is transforming the construction of solar farms, signaling a new era of automation in the renewable energy sector.
- “Maximo is the first proven solar installation robot on the market,” said Andrés Gluski, AES President and CEO.
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Story: Mercury has a layer of diamond 10 miles thick, NASA spacecraft finds
Source: Space.com Story by Robert Lea
Link: https://www.space.com/mercury-diamond-layer-10-miles-thick-nasa-messenger
- NASA’s MESSENGER mission has revealed that Mercury, the solar system’s tiniest planet and the closest to the sun, hides a big secret.
- The solar system’s tiniest planet may be hiding a big secret. Using data from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, scientists have determined that a 10-mile-thick diamond mantle may lie beneath the crust of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.
- Mercury has long puzzled scientists as it possesses many qualities that aren’t common to other solar system planets. These include its very dark surface, remarkably dense core, and the premature end of Mercury’s volcanic era.
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Story: Plants May Soon Provide Essential Nutrients Found in Breast Milk
Source: SciTechDaily Story by Kara Manke
Link: https://scitechdaily.com/plants-may-soon-provide-essential-nutrients-found-in-breast-milk/
- Approximately 75% of babies drink infant formula during their first six months, either exclusively or as a supplement to breastfeeding. While these formulas provide essential nutrients, they lack the roughly 200 prebiotic sugar molecules found in human breast milk, which are key to preventing diseases and fostering healthy gut bacteria. Since most of these sugars are difficult to synthesize, current formulas fail to replicate breast milk’s complete nutritional profile.
- Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Davis have made significant progress in bridging this gap by genetically engineering plants to produce these crucial sugars, known as human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs). Their study, recently published in the journal Nature Food, could help create a healthier, more affordable infant formula.