Show Notes 12 July 2024
Story 1: Bechtel breaks ground on $4B Bill Gates-backed nuclear reactor
[My add on based on a Co-Pilot query – First nuclear reactor in US to use sodium instead of water for cooling]
Source: ConstructionDive.com Story by Matthew Thibault
Link: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/bechtel-bill-gates-nuclear-reactor-natrium/719746/
See also: https://www.bechtel.com/projects/natrium-demonstration-project/
- Reston, Virginia-based Bechtel recently broke ground in Wyoming on an advanced nuclear reactor that uses sodium instead of water as a coolant.
- Bechtel is the engineering, procurement and construction partner on the job, known as the Natrium Demonstration Project, for Bellevue, Washington-based TerraPower. TerraPower, which is chaired by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, specializes in nuclear energy technology.
- The project is a part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.
- With a sodium fast reactor, featuring integrated energy storage and flexible power production, the Natrium Demonstration Project technology offers carbon-free energy at a competitive cost and is ready to integrate seamlessly into electric grids with high levels of renewables.
- Time out, what is a sodium-cooled fast reactor? A sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) is a type of nuclear reactor that uses molten sodium as the coolant. Here’s how it works:
- Sodium-cooled fast reactors utilize liquid sodium metal to carry heat from the reactor core.
- Sodium allows for high power density with a low coolant volume compared to water-cooled reactors.
- The Associated Press reported this year that the cost to build Natrium Demonstration Project would be up to $4 billion.
- Why use this approach vs. water-cooled reactors? TerraPower and Bechtel have characterized the technology as safer than traditional, water-cooled designs.
- With this system, Bechtel claims that the facility can provide clean, baseload operation at 345 megawatts with the capability to flex as high as 500 megawatts. This can generate enough energy to power 400,000 homes.
- Another sodium cooling reactor is from Kairos Power, a startup that is developing a molten salt-cooled reactor that uses a mixture of molten salt for cooling. See: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/01/17/1086736/how-hot-salt-could-transform-nuclear-power
Story 2: Researchers develop new training technique that aims to make AI systems less socially biased
Source: Oregon State University Newsroom
Eric Slyman
- Eric Slyman, an Oregon State University doctoral student, and researchers at Adobe have created a new, cost-effective training technique for artificial intelligence systems that aims to make them less socially biased.
- The researchers call the novel method FairDeDup, an abbreviation for fair deduplication. Deduplication means removing redundant information from the data used to train AI systems, which lowers the high computing costs of the training.
- Datasets gleaned from the internet often contain biases present in society, the researchers said. When those biases are codified in trained AI models, they can serve to perpetuate unfair ideas and behavior.
- By understanding how deduplication affects bias prevalence, it’s possible to mitigate negative effects – such as an AI system automatically serving up only photos of white men if asked to show a picture of a CEO, doctor, etc. when the intended use case is to show diverse representations of people.
- In addition to occupation, race and gender, other biases perpetuated during training can include those related to age, geography and culture.
- Slyman noted, “We named it FairDeDup as a play on words for an earlier cost-effective method, SemDeDup, which we improved upon by incorporating fairness considerations”.
- Slyman recently presented the FairDeDup algorithm in Seattle at the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.
- FairDeDup works by thinning the datasets of image captions collected from the web through a process known as pruning. Pruning refers to choosing a subset of the data that’s representative of the whole dataset, and if done in a content-aware manner, pruning allows for informed decisions about which parts of the data stay and which go.
- Slyman notes, “FairDeDup removes redundant data while incorporating controllable, human-defined dimensions of diversity to mitigate biases. Our approach enables AI training that is not only cost-effective and accurate but also more fair. By addressing biases during dataset pruning, we can create AI systems that are more socially just.”
Story 3: Changing a Single Gene Gave Mice Supercharged Hearing
Source: ScienceAlert.com Story by Tessa Koumoundouros
Link: https://www.sciencealert.com/changing-a-single-gene-gave-mice-supercharged-hearing
- In an effort to better understand hearing loss, University of Michigan scientists have created mice with supercharged listening abilities.
- The researchers achieved this by dialing up the test animals’ expression of a nerve growth gene called neurotrophin-3 (Ntf3).
- Side note – Neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) is a protein encoded by the NTF3 gene. It belongs to the NGF (Nerve Growth Factor) family of neurotrophins.
- Neurotrophins are a family of proteins that play essential roles in the survival, development, and function of neurons.
- The Michigan research lab previously showed increasing neurotrophin-3 expression can improve hearing in middle-aged mice. It can also help recover some hearing in mice with damaged inner ears.
- It does so by increasing the number of connections – called synapses – between hair cells in the ear’s cochlea and the brain. The hair cells react to sound vibrations and turn them into signals, which the synapses then convey to the brain’s neurons for interpretation.
- University of Michigan neurobiologist Gabriel Corfas noted, “We knew that providing neurotrophin-3 to the inner ear in young mice increased the number of synapses between inner hair cells and auditory neurons, but we did not know what having more synapses would do to hearing. We were surprised to find that when we increased the number of synapses, the brain was able to process the extra auditory information. And those subjects performed better than the control mice in the behavioral test.”
- Boosting neurotrophin-3 expression in the mice caused an increase in the density of their synapses, in turn improving their ability to process and therefore distinguish between sounds of different qualities.
- Increasing neurotrophin-3 expression has the potential to improve hearing in humans too, the researchers believe.
- “Some neurodegenerative disorders also start with loss of synapses in the brain. Therefore, the lessons from the studies in the inner ear could help in finding new therapies for some of these devastating diseases,” Corfas concludes.
- This research was published in PLOS Biology.
Story 4: Meet CARMEN, a Robot That Helps People with Mild Cognitive Impairment
Source: UC San Diego Today Story by Ioana Patringenaru
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGKA32TlVXM
- Mild Cognitive Impairment is an in-between stage between typical aging and dementia. It affects various areas of cognitive functioning, including memory, attention, and executive functioning. About 20% of individuals over 65 have the condition, with up to 15% transitioning to dementia each year. Existing pharmacological treatments have not been able to slow or prevent this evolution, but behavioral treatments can help.
- Researchers at the University of California, San Diego programmed their CARMEN small tabletop robot to deliver a series of simple cognitive training exercises. CARMEN stands for Cognitively Assistive Robot for Motivation and Neurorehabilitation.
- [My comments – it’s not a robot that moves around. But, instead, a screen-based desktop device that interacts and prompts patients with screen messages, etc.]
- To support cognitive training exercises the robot can teach participants to create routine places to leave important objects, such as keys; or learn note taking strategies to remember important things. CARMEN does this through interactive games and activities.
- To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, CARMEN is also the only robot that teaches compensatory cognitive strategies to help improve memory and executive function.
- The research team designed CARMEN with a clear set of criteria in mind. It is important that people can use the robot independently, without clinician or researcher supervision.
- For this reason, CARMEN had to be plug and play, without many moving parts that require maintenance. The robot also has to be able to function with limited access to the internet, as many people do not have access to reliable connectivity.
- CARMEN needs to be able to function over a long period of time. The robot also has to be able to communicate clearly with users; express compassion and empathy for a person’s situation; and provide breaks after challenging tasks to help sustain engagement.
- Researchers also plan to give CARMEN the ability to have conversations with users, with an emphasis on preserving privacy when these conversations happen.
- The University of California, San Diego team says the next steps include deploying the robot in a larger number of homes.
Honorable Mentions:
Story: Robots Get a Fleshy Face (and a Smile) in New Research
Source: New York Times Story by Emily Schmall
- Engineers in Japan are trying to get robots to imitate that particularly human expression — the smile.
- They have created a face mask from human skin cells and attached it to robots with a novel technique that conceals the binding and is flexible enough to turn down into a grimace or up into a squishy smile.
- The effect is something between Hannibal Lecter’s terrifying mask and the Claymation figure Gumby.
- But scientists say the prototypes pave the way for more sophisticated robots, with an outward layer both elastic and durable enough to protect the machine while making it appear more human.
- Beyond expressiveness, the “skin equivalent,” as the researchers call it, which is made from living skin cells in a lab, can scar and burn and also self-heal, according to a study published June 25 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.
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Story: Tiny algae-made robots treat inflammatory bowel disease without drug
Source: Interesting Engineering Story by Maria Mocerino
Link: https://interestingengineering.com/health/mini-robots-treat-bowel-disease
- In the latest study from UC San Diego, researchers treat irritable bowel disease (IBD) with a microrobot made from algae.
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Story: New Bionic Leg Can Be Controlled by the Wearer’s Brain
Source: Futurism.com Story by Victor Tangermann
Link: https://futurism.com/neoscope/brain-controlled-bionic-leg-makes-walking
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKdnu50Nx-8
- Researchers at MIT have developed a new prosthetic leg that can be controlled via brain signals, an achievement that could greatly enhance the experience of walking with a bionic limb for amputees.
- As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Medicine, the researchers found that their “neuroprosthetic” increased walking speed by a whopping 41 percent compared to a control group who received conventional prostheses, “enabling equivalent peak speeds to persons without leg amputation.”
- Better yet, such a device could adapt in real-time to a variety of environments such as “slopes, stairs and obstructed pathways,” the researchers argue.
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Story: Tech company unveils tiny spheres that outperform solar panels using both sun and artificial light — and the company says they could hit 60 times the current capacity
Source: The Cool Down Story by Rick Kazmer
See also: https://wavja.com/wavja#884251c4-7e5e-44d6-a895-f1e5fdf88e8d
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-8y8uG6Ojw
My comment – when you watch the video you will see viewer’s comments, some challenging the lack of independent party testing, etc. But, regardless, I felt the idea of a multi-faceted solar and artificial light capture system very interesting!
- Solar panels may be replaced by light-catching spheres if innovation company WAVJA’s ingenious contraptions fulfill their potential.
- That’s because the business, which has operations in New York City, says its experts have created tiny globes — from a little more than an inch to nearly 4 inches in size — that can harness both sunlight and artificial light to make electricity, according to the manufacturer.
- Called a Photon Energy System, the tech uses “multiple layers of cutting-edge materials in specialized spheres,” according to Executive President Shereen Chen, who outlined a list of performance metrics in a video. Each one has a specification that’s multiple times better than traditional panels.
- The spheres are 30 times smaller than solar panels, with 7.5 times the output. Astoundingly, she said they are more than 200 times more efficient.
- In the video clip, four spheres are shown sitting atop a square-shaped device, possibly a part of the system that converts light to electricity. Typically, there’s no external battery connection involved. Chen said the invention is a “separate battery system.”
- For the example scenario in the video, the spheres are shown powering a battery. Chen later notes that the power pack can be connected to the system “in various ways compared to solar panels.”
- Throughout the video, LED lights are used to energize the setup, which in turn charges tablets and phones. The vision gets fairly futuristic from there. Renderings shared by Chen show concept big rigs and flying machines powered by groups of spheres, all providing a 24-hour electricity supply regardless of the weather conditions.
- One concept closer to reality is a vehicle being tested to run on a package of 20 spheres, per Chen.