These researchers are combining fashion with scientific utility.
Published October 1, 2018
By Alan Dove, PhD
As space agencies consider sending astronauts on voyages that could last months or years, ordinary activities that we take for granted on Earth become major scientific and engineering challenges. Consider that most mundane of all human chores: laundry.
Aboard the International Space Station, astronauts receive regular deliveries of fresh clothing from Earth. They typically wear each outfit for several days before throwing it into the trash, which is then “de-orbited” to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. That approach is clearly unsustainable. If future space crews want to reach more distant destinations, they’ll need to move past incinerating their underwear.
Given the impracticality of planting acres of cotton on Mars or raising silkworms in microgravity, sustainable space clothing will require entirely new strategies for manufacturing and maintaining textiles. Fortunately, researchers working at the frontiers of fabric design are already exploring ideas that could make clothing more sustainable both in space and on Earth.
Sweat Equity
Many of the requirements for clothing a human body on Earth will be the same anywhere in the universe.
“One of the most important things is thermal comfort, when the weather gets cold you want to keep yourself warm, and when the weather is hot, how do you cool yourself down?” says Yi Cui, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He adds that “we [also] need to get the sweat out.”
Cui and his colleagues have developed several types of textiles that can help with those challenges. In one project, the researchers created a nanoporous metallic coating that can be embedded into cloth, causing it to reflect infrared radiation back towards the body. Another effort yielded a nanoporous polyethylene textile that allows infrared radiation to escape.
The two technologies can be combined in a single garment. “This bifunctional textile has two layers of coating … so you can wear it one way and this can keep your body warm, but if you wear it inside out … then you can cool your body down.”
Yi Cui
Climate-Controlled Clothing
Widespread use of such garments could save significant amounts of energy, either aboard space stations or inside office buildings.
“If you wear this in the indoor environment, then your air conditioning does not need to be so cool in the summer, and the set point can go up several degrees Celsius,” says Cui.
His calculations show that this change alone could decrease building energy consumption by 30 percent in a warm climate.
For space exploration, bifunctional outfits could help astronauts to adapt to enormous temperature changes from day to night on planets with thin or nonexistent atmospheres. Cui has also thought about the laundry problem.
“Would you be able to wash your clothing? Probably you would not have that much water [in space],” says Cui. Instead, he envisions self-cleaning clothing, perhaps using nanoengineered antibacterial coatings to inhibit odors and continuously sanitize the cloth.
Harvesting Energy From Clothing
Keeping an antibacterial coating active might require energy, but that could also come from the clothing itself. Cui explains that future textiles may incorporate photovoltaic systems to generate their own power supply from available light.
Harvesting energy from clothing is a high priority for textile engineers, as they already have plenty of ideas that will require power.
Alternatively, an outfit could exploit the temperature difference between the body and the environment to generate power, an approach that could work especially well when the garment is designed to cool the wearer. Instead of simply letting the excess heat escape, a power-generating garment would redirect it to generate electricity.
“Sensing body condition could become important, and … textiles could even do therapeutics, deliver drugs and things like that,” says Cui.
Clothing that senses and responds intelligently to the wearer’s condition and the environment would help long-distance space travelers cope with extreme conditions, while likely finding clinical uses on the ground as well.
Space outfits loaded with smart sensors, personal climate control, and energy collecting circuitry could have one major drawback, however: maintenance. When these complex systems inevitably break down, they’ll need to be fixed or rebuilt without support from Earth. Cui points out that the cooling fabric he developed, at least, is recyclable. Astronauts could theoretically melt it, extrude fresh fibers, and weave them into a new garment to replace the old one.
Score One For The Cows
Suzanne Lee
Other textile developers agree that recyclability will be critical for sustainable space travel.
“You can’t have things shipped to you, you need to be working with some sort of system … using your own waste stream as an input for anything that you need to consume,” says Suzanne Lee, Chief Creative Officer for Modern Meadow and founder of the Biofabricate Conference in New York City.
Modern Meadow’s approach to sustainability draws on the original closed-loop recycling system: biology. The company’s first product is a biofabricated leather produced by microbial fermentation.
“We actually start with collagen, which is the protein that makes up a material like leather, but we have it in a liquid form, and then we can do endless things with that protein in that form,” says Lee.
While the notion of omitting animals from leatherworking may appeal to vegans, Lee explains that the benefits of biosynthesis extend much further. Fermentation can be scaled to use far fewer resources than animal farming, and genetically engineered microbes can make collagen from a wide range of potential feed stocks, including waste that might be produced on a space voyage.
Biofabrication also shortens the path to the final product. Rather than being constrained by the shape and thickness of an animal hide, Modern Meadow’s leather can be sprayed, extruded and molded in whatever ways product developers need.
“You’re also able to form it potentially around a three-dimensional form, so then you get into reducing the numbers of processes that you might have in manufacturing, [negating] the need for a piece of equipment like a sewing machine,” says Lee.
Spiderman Was On To Something
While biofabrication could help produce a sustainable supply of ordinary clothing for astronauts, Lee cautions against trying to apply it too broadly.
“Let’s not underestimate the complexity of materials for space,” she says. For example, a space suit for extra-vehicular use is likely too complex to consider growing from scratch. Instead, multi-layered garments and spacecraft components with sophisticated life-support roles would likely be repaired rather than recycled on a long voyage.
That said, at least some of the components of future space fabrics may come from biofabrication. Lee points to spider silk, the strongest natural fiber, which several research teams and companies are now trying to manufacture at commercial scale. Clothing and even structures may soon incorporate spider silk, taking advantage of its extraordinary strength-to-weight ratio combined with its relatively low environmental impact.
Rather than pure spider silk bridge cables or textiles, Lee sees this and other biofabricated fibers being combined with more conventional materials.
“You might want the functionality of a biofabricated material, but combine it with an existing yarn or an existing textile structure,” says Lee.
Promising Prototypes
None of the new bio-materials have achieved the manufacturing scale needed to meet demands on Earth, and making these processes portable enough for space travel will require even more development. However, the field has produced some promising prototypes.
AMSilk, a Germany-based producer of silk biopolymers, collaborated with sportswear giant Adidas recently to produce a biodegradable athletic shoe. Another company, Bolt Threads of Emeryville, CA, produced a pilot batch of leather-like hats made with fungal mycelium.
Whether future astronauts actually end up recycling their clothing or growing new pairs of socks from their garbage, thinking about the constraints of space travel gives researchers a framework for improving sustainability closer to home.
“It’s an environment where you’re really trying to get the most out of the smallest amount of resources you have,” says Lee, adding that “as we think about a more populous Earth, then I’m sure it will have applications here too.”
It might even be the demise of the weekly laundry chore as we know it.
How scientists are approaching the critical need to minimize the creation of space debris, even as we expand space explorations.
Low Earth orbit is the region of space within 2,000 kilometers of the Earth’s surface. It is the most concentrated area for orbital debris.
Published October 1, 2018
By Robert Birchard
In 1957, the former Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik, into orbit. Not to be outdone, the United States responded with its first successful satellite, Explorer, in 1958. The Space Race was officially on.
Sixty plus years later, Earth’s orbit is no longer the exclusive realm of Cold War superpowers. Today satellites are ubiquitous, launched by operators from the public and private sectors, touching all aspects of the economy and modern life. When Sputnik first left Earth’s orbit this frontier seemed limitless, but it has become more crowded with over half a century of satellite launches.
Mostly concerned with getting satellites into orbit, few scientist and engineers bothered about what happened once they got there, until NASA scientist Donald Kessler posited what is known as the “Kessler Syndrome.” This nightmare scenario envisioned a point where the density of objects in orbit would be such that a collision would generate enough space debris to increase the likelihood of further collisions, eventually rendering Earth’s orbit unusable for any satellites.
What is Space Debris?
Space debris refers to the manmade objects that still orbit the Earth, but no longer serve any purpose. This includes anything from derelict satellites and their abandoned orbital launchers, to tools lost by astronauts on spacewalks, to specks of paint chipped off the exterior of a satellite. It is estimated that Earth’s orbit contains 21,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters (cm), 500,000 objects from 1-10 cm in diameter, and over 100 million objects smaller than one cm.
Juan Carlos Dolado-Perez
According to Juan Carlos Dolado-Pérez, PhD, Head of the Space Debris Modelling and Risk Assessment Office, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (the French Space Agency), the increase in catalogued space debris followed a rather linear increase of nearly 200 objects per year from 1957-2007. Recent catastrophic events have demonstrated the resulting risk and the difficulties in navigating an increasingly crowded orbit.
The Chinese Fengyun satellite was destroyed in 2007 during an anti-satellite test adding over 3,000 catalogued debris fragments to orbit. Then a 2009 collision between the active Iridium-33 and out-of-service Cosmos-2251 satellites created over 2,000 catalogued debris fragments.
Not If, but When
“The real question is not if, but under which conditions, exponential growth of space debris will create more serious problems for space activities,” said Dolado-Pérez. “We study this question with space debris evolutionary models. Such models don’t predict the future, they allow space debris experts to study the most likely future. This is a very complicated task with many uncertainties, which need to be taken into account during calculations.”
“In many models future launch traffic is defined based on past activity, but with the emergence of the commercial space sector, aspects of these models have to be updated and take into account the uncertainty of how space will be used in the coming decades,” he says. “Moreover, the quality of debris mitigation efforts and levels of compliance will have a major impact on the size of the debris population.”
Factors Outside of Human Control
Besides variables like the increasing rate of satellite launches, there are factors outside of human control affecting space debris in orbit.
“The solar activity affects orbital drag, which can make it easier or more difficult for space debris to drop out of its orbit, and unfortunately our capability for properly predicting future solar activity is limited,” Dolado-Pérez explained. “Also the increase of gases like carbon-dioxide, (due to human activity), will have an effect on the Earth’s upper atmospheric density, which will affect the time it takes for space debris to fall out of orbit.”
James Ryan
Sir Isaac Newton is credited with the adage that “what goes up must come down,” but when referring to Earth’s orbit, the rate at which items can fall to Earth, varies.
“Low Earth orbit is heavily populated with satellites. Everything sent there will come down eventually,” said James Ryan, PhD, a professor in the Department of Physics and Space Science Center at the University of New Hampshire. “The other extreme is geosynchronous orbit where the orbital lifetime is practically unlimited. But mid-level orbit may be the most problematic. The orbital lifetimes there are extremely long. Junk will accumulate over hundreds of years.”
These timeframes are too long to rely on natural forces to clear Earth’s orbit. Human efforts to remove debris requires overcoming several hurdles and there is no curb-side pick-up in space.
“Manually removing debris from any orbit is awkward, inefficient, expensive and energy consuming,” Ryan explained. “One has to sidle up to the errant object, and either move it to a lower orbit, capture it or boost it to an out of the way orbit. This takes energy and is basically a one-by-one process on thousands of objects.”
“An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure”
Ryan would prefer to focus on preventing the buildup of space debris in the first place.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” he said. “The design of satellites must include policies and procedures for carrying out easy deorbiting. Recycling boosters like those used by SpaceX solves a lot of problems, and shows promise. Piece-by-piece removal is impractical, except for very specific circumstances, such as a large spacecraft with no means to remove itself from orbit.”
Nikolai Khlystov
“We should not only design resilient satellites, we also need to operate them responsibly … and ensure we minimize the creation of new debris as we expand orbital operations,” said Nikolai Khlystov, Lead for the Aerospace Industry at the World Economic Forum. “The key challenge with the current regime is that current international guidelines are not enforceable.”
Khlystov suggests that a framework called the Space Sustainability Rating (SSR) could help minimize the creation of new space debris. The SSR was developed by the Global Future Council on Space Technologies, a multi-stakeholder group of international space experts and passed on to the Forum for actual development.
The SSR would provide a single, simple and transparent system to identify debris mitigation compliance in satellite design, launch and operation, thereby limiting confusion caused by overlapping and non-binding regulations put forth by various government space agencies. Private companies would benefit by “showcasing and advertising their rating without disclosing any sensitive details, as the rating would be published by a neutral third party,” he said.
More Transparency and Public Input
The SSR would provide transparency and allow the public to identify the responsible actors in the space sector.
“The fact that private actors have been entering the space sector in large numbers is a good thing. Their entrance brings innovation, new ideas, increased funding and lots of other benefits. We need to work together in a public-private partnership way to solve this particular challenge,” he added.
“Beyond SSR, one could imagine in the future a sort of consortia of public-private stakeholders — space agencies, satellite operators, launch providers, insurance companies and even investors — who come together and pool resources to solve the common problem of space debris. Of course, this kind of set-up would need careful planning and agreement,” Khlystov explained. “In principle all these actors are interested in maintaining the sustainability of orbits as they all have resources and interests that are at stake.”
Although space is infinite, Earth’s orbit is not. Its harshness belies its fragility.
“Our society is extremely reliant on space activities. Digital TV and radio broadcast, weather reporting, GPS, bank transactions and the internet all require satellites to function,” said Dolado-Pérez. “When we launch new satellites, it has to be done in a manner that keeps space sustainable. Earth’s orbit needs to be cherished because it is unique.”
Imagine an “Intellicity,” where neural networks ensure everything works together.
Published May 1, 2018
By Lori Greene
Today’s students will be the inhabitants of tomorrow’s cities, so they want more sustainable ways of living and working in urban ecosystems.
That was the premise behind United Technologies’ Future of Buildings Innovation Challenge. This event was created by The New York Academy of Sciences and launched in September 2017.
Fifty-two teams of students 13 to 18 years old from across the globe competed. Their goal: to conceive the most inventive green building solution.
Imagining an “Intellicity,” was the creation of one team. Here, neural networks run a building’s systems to ensure people, machines and the environment work in concert to adroitly use and conserve resources.
Reducing Waste
In the “Intellicity” paradigm, little is wasted. Solar panels and wind turbines create an on-going source of clean, abundant, renewable energy. Rainwater collected from the roofs of buildings provide water for indoor plumbing and hydroponic systems. Once inside, hydroponic walls can repurpose rainwater for food growth. Intellicity’s student founders want to ensure that people are harnessing energy generated by city activity and putting it to use.
Floor tiles in larger structures convert footsteps into electrical energy, and waste is turned into fertilizer. Solar panels on windows maximize sunlight and capture the energy to help run a building’s lighting and temperature systems. Revolving doors connected to electric generators can be used to capture energy as people walk in and out. This creates another source to power the structure’s electricity, heating and cooling needs.
The Applications of Artificial Intelligence
Using artificial intelligence (AI), energy is redistributed to increase the comfort and productivity of building occupants. The AI system that would run the integrated interior and exterior building networks “learns” from several inputs and the resulting outputs. For example, during high usage times, the power could go towards controlling lighting as well as heating and cooling rooms. Over time, the network records occupant preferences and automatically adjusts the room, heat and light depending on who enters and leaves.
Similarly, the team sought to give people an opportunity to interact with their building using a “neural network.” This computer system was developed around the human nervous system. It aims to allow the building to communicate back through an app detailing the energy being collected, used and wasted in the structure.
Retrofitting Existing Infrastructure
With the flexibility of AI, the team theorizes that this can also be implemented in a variety of structures. This includes transportation hubs such as airports as well as offices and apartment buildings. According to the plan, each section of the building could provide sustainable energy with minimal impact to the environment around it. Rather than redesigning structures, the team suggests using sensors in every room. They also suggested monitoring software that can help devise a customized solution to precisely redistribute energy.
Integrating neural networks into buildings to create an energy efficient sustainable future is Intellicity’s ultimate goal.
Check: nyas.org/challenges for information about the UTC Future Buildings and Cities Challenge winners.
Sergey Levine, PhD, discusses the latest advances in robotic learning, how his approach differs from his contemporaries, and why he is optimistic about the future of robots.
Published February 13, 2018
By Andre Legaspi
While the 20th century was defined by machines programmed by people to perform specific, repetitive tasks, Sergey Levine, PhD, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering at UC Berkeley wants the 21st century to be defined by robots capable of learning from their own past experience and performing multifaceted tasks. A researcher in the field of machine learning, he hopes to use algorithms and other learning techniques to teach robots to acquire greater autonomy that allows them to develop complex behavioral skills.
Research from Dr. Levine’s lab and other institutions has shown that robots can learn to successfully perform tasks like grasping objects through a system of trial and error or visualization of the task being performed. “A major goal of reinforcement learning and robotic learning research is to enable robots to autonomously learn how to perform a task. Someone still needs to program (or specify, or show) what the task actually is,” he explained. “In a sense, robots can already learn like humans because they can improve with experience. My research is concerned with making this a practical tool approach, improving how fast robots can learn, and proficiency at various tasks through autonomous learning.”
A Different Approach
Dr. Levine’s approach to robotic learning differs from other successful machine learning strategies. “Many of the successes of machine learning in recent years use what is called supervised learning: a setting where the machine is provided with example inputs (e.g., images of objects) and their true labels (e.g., the category of the object),” he explained. Robotic learning is different. “The outputs are typically abstract and hard for people to specify manually, like joint angles or motor voltages, and the robots have to explore various options themselves to find the correct one. The level of supervision is much weaker, and active exploration of the environment is typically needed.”
Sergey Levine, PhD
This type of learning is not without its challenges. It is very difficult for a robot to visualize the world around them because “the physical world is highly varied and often unpredictable,” said Dr. Levine. “The difficulty really comes from the diversity and breadth of the real world and the range of different tasks that a truly ‘generalist’ robot would need to accomplish.” He acknowledged that, “what makes human learning so incredibly powerful is not that humans are particularly excellent at any one thing, but that they are so adaptable as to be able to do pretty much anything, if given enough practice.”
Reason for Optimism
Yet Dr. Levine is optimistic that these challenges will be overcome and that researchers are on the cusp of making breakthroughs in the service or industrial sector that will positively impact people. He anticipates that in the next five years, robotics potential will be able to automate a wide range of physical tasks that right now are routinely the province of humans, such as eldercare or care for people with disabilities.
This optimism is belied by a popular culture that sees the rise of robots as an alarming development. In particular Dr. Levine is encouraged by more recent positive portrayals of machines and robots in media. “Big Hero 6 is an excellent example that I like very much – an illustration of how technology, artificial intelligence, and the scientists who work on it can help make the world a better place,” he said.
“I do however think that there is also cause for caution when it comes to robotics and artificial intelligence, in the same way as we should be cautious about any powerful new technology. We should be cognizant of the dangers and make sure that we as a society use technology responsibly and ethically.”
As the Academy approaches its third century, we asked our members about the scientific discoveries they think might be made in the next 100 years.
Published October 1, 2017
By Marie Gentile and Robert Birchard
As The New York Academy of Sciences approaches its third century, we started thinking about the scientific discoveries that might be made in the next 100 years.
So, we invited some of our most extraordinary young and senior scientist members, to offer their thoughts about what they believe could be the next generation of discoveries or the greatest challenge that science or technology must solve in the decades to come. The following is a selection of the many responses we received. They have been edited to fit space restrictions. All opinions cited are those of the authors named and do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial or scientific staff of The New York Academy of Sciences. We thank all those who contributed content and hope you enjoy reading these “imaginings.”
Cures, Holograms and World Peace
I imagine we will find vaccines to prevent the onset of diseases, allowing us to extend the average human lifespan by at least 20 years. We will be able to reverse global warming and secure the future of the planet. New modes of terrestrial transportation will be invented that will allow us to travel many times the speeds we are currently accustomed to.
People and companies will produce their own electricity using reusable energy sources, making power plants and the use of fossil fuels obsolete. Space travel will become a common mode of transport, allowing us to travel to places such as colonies on solar planets, and planetary moons. Quantum computing will make computers so powerful and network connectivity so fast that a small data center will be enough to serve the needs of all humanity. Television and phones will become obsolete and holography will replace them. Sense of touch and smell will further complement this technology, making it as real as the physical world.
“Lyf-Fi”
We can’t imagine being without “Wi-Fi connectivity” — our need for information, communication and entertainment makes us dependent on the internet and the technology to access it. We also need plants to promote life. Imagine how incredibly accessible and lush our world would be if we could manage to genetically engineer each of the millions of plant species to give off Wi-Fi. The economic and technological advancements would be huge. Regardless of the scientific credibility of this idea, I strongly believe that our future generations will embrace this innovation.
A Physical Internet and the Fifth Mode of Transport
Pipenet is a project started 15 years ago by researchers at CIRIAF-University of Perugia (Italy) proposing an innovative vision of a new transportation system. It consists of a low-cost, environmentally sustainable network of pipes with linear electrical frictionless engines powered by renewable energy sources where encapsulated goods are transported at a velocity >1500 km/h with a transportation capability equal to 1 ton/sec (see ciriaf.it/pipenet). This creates a physical internet consisting of a real network where products can be quickly transported from one location to another in real time. The last km of delivery can be implemented by drones.
Several Possible Futures
George Church
Humans are possibly the only species that can comprehend events 13.8 billion years ago and 100 trillion years from now — and successfully execute multi-century plans. Since my group works on transformative technologies (genome reading and writing, aging reversal, mirror life, molecular computing, synthetic neurobiology and immunology), we might be able to see possible futures (emphatically plural) a bit earlier than most people — and hence have a responsibility to discuss, far in advance, potential extreme outcomes (mixtures of positive and negative).
Next-generation sequencing arrived in six years, not the Moore’s law estimate of six decades. If all transtechs above are similarly super-exponential, and if trends toward non-violence and caring continue, then we may see an end to poverty, physical and mental disease and significantly augmented thought and compassion. Like our recently vast spectrum of physical and cultural artifacts, neural diversity may expand — de-pathologized and embraced — far exceeding current imagination. If the universe beyond earth seems uninhabited, we may seek sufficient practical understanding of our divergent goals, dignities and ethics, that we can send these as compact physical packages at relativistic speeds to other star systems (and capable of replication and phoning home).
This may be our Darwinian response to existence crises that could destroy all life on earth. We may experiment with small, intentionally isolated and self-sufficient colonies on earth — in stark contrast to our growing economic and cultural interdependence. Instead of issues of population explosion or excess-leisure, we may be collectively tackling the greatest challenge ever — survival — at a cosmic scale of time and space.
Creating Yonger Versions of Ourselves
William Haseltine
Our lives began with the first living form that arose 4 billion years ago, a single celled microorganism that appeared when our planet was still being shaped by bombardment from the heavens. Inheritance is a fundamental characteristic of life. The DNA molecule in that primordial organism has been replicating itself with variation for more than 3.5 billion years. As we look to the future, a central question persists: can we tie the transient existence of our individual lives to the immortality of the DNA molecule that defines us?
The promise of regenerative medicine is developing more slowly than I had hoped 18 years ago when I first coined the term. We know there are substances in a fertilized egg that can turn back the genetic clock. Additionally, we know how to take newly created embryo like cells and develop them into adult tissues.
We are close to producing cells that can restore muscle function to damaged hearts and create neurons that can replace parts of the brain. What we lack is the medical science that allows these fresh cells to be systematically implanted into our tissues. An enormous amount of work remains to be done to understand the signals that direct a specific tissue to become what it is. In this we are underinvested.
The most powerful medicine is a younger form of oneself. Any country could become a world leader in this field, with proper investment in the fusion of cell biology and transplantation medicine. Whether it happens in my lifetime, or my children’s lifetime, or my grandchildren’s lifetime, this is a promise science can fulfill. When it does, it will be a gift to the future of mankind.
Space Elevators, Thought to Text and Energy-based Paint
With recent interest in space tourism, I think it’s worth speculating about the creation of “space elevators” — structures that will allow rockets to launch at the edge of the atmosphere, rather than from the surface. While the concept may seem far-fetched, rapid developments in space-based civil and mechanical engineering, have sparked numerous innovations.
I’m also excited about brain-computer interfacing, especially noninvasive devices that allow users to accurately detect activity within their brain. Companies like Neurolink and Facebook have been investing in research to enhance the speed of translating thought to text, and while the technology is developing, research is already being done such as OpenBCI’s open-sourced toolkit and the Muse headband.
Finally, the development of new renewable energy sources — from paint-on solar cells to microgrids — are soon going to provide a democratization of energy to all corners of the world. It’s incredibly exciting to be living in a generation where we’ll have the opportunity to contribute to such innovative research!
Shaking Hands Across a Virtual Divide
Humfrey Kimanya
In the next century there will be unimaginable advancements in communication to link people all over the world. For example, video conferences where we can actually communicate tangibly. A person in Tanzania in an online meeting will be able to shake hands with another person in Belgium!
Now, the questions are: “Is it really possible? How does this happen? Won’t that violate the laws of physics and nature?” Currently by wearing special gadgets we can simulate the feeling of shaking hands with another person through a computer, much like video game technology.
But in the future, people will be able to put their hands through the computer screen to shake hands with someone. This will mean that the relativity theory of Einstein, and others, will have to be rephrased or at least obeyed in the technological sense. It is also possible that, by then, people will not only physically communicate with each other using computers but also travel in computers! In simple terms, teleportation, a puzzle that researchers can surely solve in this century.
Greater Human Collaboration with Other Species
Forecasting across 100 years becomes more manageable when seen in stages of successive possibilities. I imagine three such stages of development:
By 2050: Each person will be able to scientifically understand himself/herself from a unique attribute mix point of view. Individuals will use available analytical tools and personal knowledge, to determine the meaning of their respective combinations of facts. Data used in determining this meaning will include the personal genome (a recent entity), the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI, a 100-year-old instrument based on a theory of Carl Jung), and unlimited other measures. People will also sometimes interpret data for their dependents to help make needed decisions in health and other fields.
By 2085: This Personal Science-based information and activities opens the door for individuals to begin to understand members of other species in terms of their own defining attributes and to move toward collaborative behavior where appropriate. This will be the Age of Interspecies Personal Encounter and will engender greater compassion toward other species. We don’t need aliens arriving or communicating with us in order to experience a interspecies moment.
By 2120: This experience will lead researchers to raise a fundamental question — can the chemistry and behavior of animals in the wild be altered so that animals will not eat other animals and yet thrive and reach their Aristotelian actualization? Experiments will be done on a small scale and begin to influence general thinking.
Early Mars Settlers May Not Necessarily Be Human
Sir Martin Rees
Robotic and AI advances are eroding the need for humans to venture into space. Nonetheless, I hope people will follow the robots, though it will be as risk-seeking adventurers rather than for practical goals. The most promising developments are spearheaded by private companies: they can tolerate higher risks than a western government could impose on publicly-funded civilian astronauts, at a lower cost than NASA or ESA.
By 2100 thrill-seekers in the mold of (say) Felix Baumgartner, who broke the sound barrier in free fall from a high-altitude balloon, may establish “bases” on Mars, or maybe on asteroids. Elon Musk of Space-X has said he wants to die on Mars, but not on impact. But don’t expect a mass emigration from Earth. It’s a delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s problems. Nowhere in our Solar System offers an environment even as clement as the Antarctic or the top of Everest. There’s no “Planet B” for ordinary risk-averse people.
But we (and our terrestrial progeny) should cheer on the brave space adventurers. Precisely because space is an inherently hostile environment for humans, these pioneers will have far more incentive than us on Earth to re-design themselves. They’ll harness the super-powerful genetic and cyborg technology that will be developed in coming decades. These techniques will be heavily regulated on Earth, but the Martians will be far beyond the clutches of the regulators.
So it’s these robotic spacefarers, not those of us comfortably adapted to life on Earth, who will spearhead the post-human era. Moreover, if post-humans make the transition to fully inorganic intelligences, they won’t need an atmosphere. And they may prefer zero g — especially for constructing massive artifacts. So it’s in deep space that non-biological “brains” may develop powers that humans can’t even imagine.
Uncovering the Depths of Earth’s Final Frontier
Emily Lau
Humankind has traveled through treacherous currents, the driest deserts, howling winds and precarious storms to explore our world. However, there is one significant portion yet to be fully explored — the deep sea. The oceans house mystically magical organisms: bioluminescent organisms, venomous snails, shocking jellyfish, brilliantly colored fish, large mammals and clever cephalopods to name a few.
Organisms in the depths of the ocean are subjected to extreme conditions such as intense pressure and frigid temperatures. Deep sea ecological research explains how organisms have adapted to these extremes and has many implications in the improvement of conservation biology and the understanding of evolutionary biology.
Current scientific advancements and production of deep-sea vessels have allowed for limited deep sea exploration. It would be wonderful, in the upcoming years, for both scientists and the public to gain knowledge about the biodiversity housed thousands of meters below the Earth’s surface. The advancement of deep sea exploration relays the passion and natural curiosity of humans in the preservation of our wondrous planet.
More Women in STEM
Sarah Olson
At this year’s New York Academy of Sciences’ Global STEM Alliance Summit 2017, attendees witnessed the future STEM workforce — bright young women working with their peers to engineer solutions for some of the world’s biggest problems, including clean water and sustainable energy. These young women are part of the next generation of scientists, who will change the world with their research.
Developments in technology are enabling us to make discoveries in previously inaccessible places, from the depths of the ocean to the furthest reaches of space. While we cannot predict that we will find life on other planets or how many species are still left to discover, there is one thing that we do know: that women in STEM will continue to change the world through their research.
Broccoli by Bach, Melons by Mozart, and Apricots by Abba
How and why plants communicate bio-acoustically is not well understood nor documented, however it is known that they do so to relay information about the conditions of their environment (such as drought and predator threat) to each other. My work utilizes the research of evolutionary biologist Monica Gagliano, at the University of Western Australia, who studies their communication and records and analyzes both the sounds they make and their responses to sounds they hear or feel through vibrations. Scientific studies have documented that plants grow and bend specifically toward 220 hz sound, which can also be used in agriculture as a virtual fertilizer.
I plan to create a 3D animated interactive art installation incorporating holographic flower imagery, a bio-acoustic soundscape (using a laser doppler vibrometer or acoustic camera) and dancers (who become the flowers and ‘vibrate’ in tune with each other), with enhanced viewing via Microsoft’s wearable holographic headsets. I imagine that this blending of music and the arts with botanical science will enable greater yields of food sources that we will need to feed a hungry world as well as creating a whole new art form!
The Coming Revolution in Smart Electric Power
Yu Zhang
The way we generate and consume electricity in the early 22nd century will look a lot different than the way we do it in the early 21st century. Advanced sensor capabilities and smart internet-capable devices along with high-penetration renewable energy will transform the nation’s aging power infrastructure. This is starting to happen with power companies hooking up their networks to the burgeoning “internet of things.”
But that is just a precursor to a vastly more energy-efficient smart grid, where it will be common to find homes that generate much of their own power. Individual houses will have photovoltaic devices and small storage units so every home becomes an energy “prosumer,” producing electricity and selling it back to the grid. Those carbon-free and zero-energy homes will form networked microgrids, which feature a higher level of resilience if there’s ever a blackout in the main grid, they’ll be unaffected.
Power systems will be interconnected via the internet to allow consumers to optimize their electricity consumption. Dishwashers, refrigerators and electric vehicles will be automatically adjusted to real-time pricing signals. This will not only reduce energy bills, but also will significantly improve the efficiency and reliability of the whole grid.
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From interconnected devices like cars and thermostats, to better detection and treatment for everything from Alzheimer’s to Hepatitis, new-age science technologies hold massive potential in improving our daily lives.
When The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) marked its centennial in 1917, just eight percent of homes had landline telephones, and it took a full five days to travel from New York to London.
Albert Einstein would introduce the idea of stimulated radiation emission that year with the publication of On the Quantum Theory of Radiation. However, it wasn’t until mid-century that researchers were able to apply his insights to build the maser, and then the laser.
In a speech he gave in 1917, inventor and Academy Honorary Member, Alexander Graham Bell offered several prescient predictions about things like industrialization and the prospects for commercial aviation 100 years later. Yet even the most clairvoyant observers at the time would not have foreseen the transformations wrought by science and technology in the world of 2017. But what about 2117? What can we expect in the coming century given our understanding of the trajectory of scientific and technological advances? We put that question to Academy Members in a number of different disciplines, and here’s what they said.
No Knowledge Ever Gets Left Behind Again
Ryan Rose, Customer Experience and Product Design Cisco Systems.
A century into the future, predictive analytics and machine learning systems will be in a position to anticipate what human beings need to know, according to Ryan Rose, who leads Customer Experience and Product Design for a new social learning platform at Cisco.
“Right now, we’re just trying to leverage data to give us better ideas,” said Rose. “But if we project 100 years ahead, computer systems won’t just be making recommendations to people, they will make the decisions. Machine learning won’t be just about finding a way to get that information to a human. It will make the leap in logic to actually say, ‘This customer needs this system to be this way’ and then make that happen.”
With machines poring through disparate bits of information, systems will be able to connect the dots to register what Rose describes as “instant adaptation.”
“That’s going to be huge. You will see innovation occurring as quickly as the machine thinks it and asks, ‘Why don’t we try this?’ You can still have all of the human touch points, but the speed at which this happens will be much faster simply because we will not be waiting on someone to say, ‘I think that these things are related.’”
More Digitalization
Rose also expects a future in which no knowledge gets left behind as information is captured and retained digitally.
“Now, when we want to review knowledge from yesteryear, it’s archived in a movie or maybe some type of audio recording that we cannot interact with. But think about a society with access to the great experts or just the everyday experiences of people from any time. We’ll have all this information about individuals, their knowledge and expertise, and it will be stored so that someone in the future can ‘speak’ with any individual. Your descendants will be able to get a better understanding, even if it is just a digital understanding, of what you felt or thought.”
“The interaction could be something as simple as a 3D projector or augmented reality, but you’ll be able to talk back and forth through natural language processing. I think there is a great future where the wealth of information about humanity is preserved and being able to interact with those moments in perpetuity.”
Imagining a Pain-Free World
Left: William K. Schmidt, PhD, President, NorthStar Consulting, LLC. Right: Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at the University of California, Berkley. From left: Jan Buellesbach, Maria Tonione, Kelsey Scheckel, John Lau, Elizabeth I. Cash, Rebecca Sandidge, Brian Whyte, Jenna Florio, Neil Tsutsui (Principal Investigator) and Joshua D. Gibson. Photo credit: Elizabeth I. Cash.
William Schmidt, a pharmacologist and the President of North-Star Consulting, LLC, is optimistic that pain treatments in the next century will no longer carry high risks of addictive side effects.
“Within the next 100 years, we will have additional analgesics to prescribe along with opioids so that we can use lower dosages, replace opioids altogether, or (perhaps) have safer opioid analgesics that are less likely to show an addictive profile,” he said.
That would be a welcome development. An epidemic of opioid abuse has led to one of the worst drug crises in American history. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control estimates that 91 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.
Genetic Mechanisms for Controlling Pain
Schmidt, one of the world’s leading researchers into the discovery and development of novel analgesic and narcotic antagonist drugs, also expects developmental breakthroughs in the products that doctors can prescribe to deal with pain.
“I expect we will have analgesic products that are unlikely to cause respiratory depression, either acutely or chronically, were someone to take a higher dose. I also expect we will also have—not only medicines to treat inflammation and pain directly—but genetic mechanisms for controlling some types of pain or pain signaling pathways that we can exploit to reduce the impact of pain within the body,” he said. “We are already finding that we are able to treat things like rheumatoid arthritis in ways that are far more effective than what I learned when I was taking pharmacology in medical training.”
It also would mark a veritable revolution in pain treatment, a field whose limitations Schmidt learned about through personal experience as a five-year-old when he broke his arm. Back then, doctors were afraid to use opioids to relieve his excruciating pain. “I now recognize the medication they used hadn’t a chance of working because they were afraid to use more effective medications in children,” Schmidt recalled. “But that was the best that doctors knew how to do back then.” A century from now, Schmidt says, no one may ever have to suffer that sort of trauma.
The Countdown to a Big Bio-Ethics Debate
When evolutionary biologists like UC Berkeley’s Jan Buellesbachlook at the trajectory of recent advances in genetics and molecular biology, they see a future laden with untold scientific potential. “The field is developing so quickl —especially in genomics,” said Buellesbach. “It’s unbelievable when you think how expensive and cumbersome it used to be to sequence a genome. Now, they almost come at a rate of a dime a dozen…and we’re just scratching the surface.”
One example of that new technical prowess is CRISPR, a gene editing technology that scientists are now using to develop treatment therapies for a range of diseases, including cancer. Researchers have already successfully used gene editing to repair a disease-causing mutation in a human embryo.
But access to that kind of capability has also fueled debate about the ethics of using technology to alter human genes. In the world of 2117, Buellesbach expects genomics breakthroughs will give society the theoretical ability to selectively eradicate the genetic conditions that lead to diseases, or any traits that might be considered detrimental. It also means society will need to navigate an ethical minefield where so-called designer babies are no longer a theoretical possibility.
No Longer a Sci-Fi Scenario
“With computational power getting exponentially faster and cheaper all the time, it’s not such a sci-fi scenario anymore,” he said. “I think we are likely heading towards a future where there will be research on how to perfect Homo sapiens in certain ways, especially if we start to manipulate our own genomes.”
Before then, he noted that more cautious naturalists who don’t believe we should interfere with human nature are likely to argue that just because science can do something doesn’t mean it’s wise to put theory into practice.
“What would be considered genetic perfection?” pondered Buellesbach. “I would find that very troubling. Who is to say what trait can be considered universally negative? Even 100 years from now, I don’t think we’ll have a unified view about that. There’s no question that this would entail too much power. We know from history that this…can be very dangerous, and decisions about that shouldn’t be left in the hands of the few people in positions of authority.
Genomics Will Revolutionize Medicine
Above: Subhro Das, PhD, Research Scientist, Computational Health Behavior and Decision Sciences IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Below: RIGHT: Laboratory technician culturing cell specimens from precision-designed mouse models for experimental analysis at the UC Davis Mouse Biology Program.
Doctors nowadays choose among myriad treatments to help patients suffering from heart disease and other ailments. By the time 2117 rolls around, however, trial-and-error will have been relegated to the history books. Genomics advances will pave the way for the right treatments for the right diseases for the right patients and at the right times, according to Kent Lloyd, a professor in the Department of Surgery at UC Davis.
In the future, Lloyd says doctors will have the kinds of drugs that don’t just target the protein product—the end result of genes gone bad—but actually fixes them without needing to worry about having the drug go after the protein product.
“Also, if we have enough knowledge and can predict with great certainty that someone will develop a disease—why not try to prevent the disease from progressing or even starting?” he said. “That’s where the future is—not only more precise treatments for diseases when they happen, but further down the road, more precise preventive measures for individuals you can predict are highly likely to contract the disease,” he added.
These breakthroughs are predicated on research now underway to uncover deeper understanding of basic gene functions and how they impact human health.
A Huge Impact Around the World
“When we scan a person’s genome, we might find a variant in gene X, another variant in gene Y, and another variant in gene Z. If we didn’t know what those genes do, we wouldn’t know which of those are more related to the cardiovascular disease that a patient might have,” he said.
“We can test therapies in mice with that mutated gene to assess whether that therapy might be good or bad, what the effect might be and whether it might cause other things that we wouldn’t want it to cause,” Lloyd said. “This new knowledge will greatly catalyze and accelerate the implementation and practice of precision medicine. I think this will have a huge impact on health…around the world.”
Lloyd also sees potential in harnessing new genome editing technologies. In the future, he expects doctors to be able to change gene variants that create mutant proteins. The patient’s system would then produce the normal protein, potentially reducing symptoms or relieving prospective diseases.
“We definitely need to improve on extant technologies and develop newer and more precise (or targeted) ones than today, no question about that,” Lloyd said. “And we have the scientific power to be able to do it. If we put a little bit of effort in now…the return on investment will be enormous.”
Engineering a Stress-Free Life
Ongoing advances in engineering and computer science are transforming the global healthcare system, raising the prospect of breakthroughs in various areas of personal health, according to Subhro Das, a computer engineering researcher at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center.
“Life expectancy will go beyond what we might imagine,” said Das, part of an interdisciplinary team at IBM working on developing new computational approaches for improving health behaviors. “We might be able to find cures for diseases like cancer, and to find more effective ways of preventing things like type 2 diabetes.”
That’s the long-term view. More short-term, Das also expects intelligent systems will be able to analyze real-time data collected from body sensors and other mobile technologies that trigger commands to other connected devices to address signs of stress, including elevated blood pressure or cortisol levels.
“For instance, I might be having a hard day at work. But my laptop, my phone, my house thermostat and my car—they are all going to be connected and sharing data among themselves,” he said. “My car would get a signal from my laptop and put it in a mode so that when I’m driving home, soothing music would come on. Also, my house thermostat now knows that I was having a bad day at the office, so it will be able to adjust the temperature of my house to make me feel more comfortable.”
More broadly, Das said that the continuing improvement in machine learning and data mining will enable more “smart buildings” to be equipped with sensors that can alert medical teams when somebody needs assistance. If there are people living inside who have medical conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, or suffer a fall, those sensors are going to be communicating among themselves and will be able to get help quickly.
Winning the Battle to Beat Brain Pathologies
Above: Dr. Björn LDM Brücher, Professor of Surgery and a Distinguished Fellow New Westminster College, British Columbia. Below: Ijaz S. Jamall, PhD, DABT, President & Principal Scientist Risk-Based Decisions, Inc.
While the study of the brain presents dauntingly complex challenges, Dr. Marcie Zinn, a cognitive neuroscientist at DePaul University believes medical practitioners will one day be able to reverse the process of brain degeneration.
One hundred years from now, Zinn expects new technologies will transform our understanding of the functioning of the central nervous system. Armed with new tools, future researchers will be equipped to gain new insights into brain pathologies and uncover more effective ways to diagnose, treat, prevent, and even cure disorders.
“There has been a lot of excellent research telling us why brain degeneration occurs. Take, for example, ALS (a progressive neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system.) Currently, there is no cure for ALS. The degeneration takes place rather quickly without impediment. I think the first thing that anyone wants is to figure out how to slow down the process.”
The brain poses obvious challenges for cognitive neuroscientists because it is continually changing itself on a millisecond basis. But the study of neurologically impaired people has been aided by recent imaging advances, such as visualization tools, which allow researchers to more accurately understand neural networks.
Looking over the horizon, though, Zinn expects more breakthroughs thanks to the increasing intersection of biochemistry and technology that might lead to new treatments for many neurological impairments, including the regrowth of brain cells.
“Formerly, science thought that new brain cells did not grow or regrow throughout the lifespan,” she said, “but we now know that brain cells do regenerate under the right conditions.”
Slow But Steady: Closing in on a World Without Cancer
Roughly $300 billion has been spent since 1971, when President Nixon declared the nation’s “war on cancer” but as new technologies give researchers deeper understandings of genes and molecular pathways, it’s also possible to imagine a future world free of cancer. Just don’t bet on bolt-from-the-blue breakthrough announcements.
To be sure, the history of medicine is replete with serendipitous, sometimes world-changing observations, such as the 1928 discovery of penicillin by bacteriologist Alexander Fleming. That discovery resulted in the development of antibiotics that have saved millions of lives. In contrast, the field of cancer treatment has been marked by steady improvements in technology and better patient care.
Indeed, Academy Members Ijaz S. Jamall, a toxicologist and Principal Scientist with the biomedical consultancy, Risk-Based Decisions Inc., working in conjunction with Dr. Björn LDM Brücher, a surgical oncologist in Germany, noted that while cancer biology “has increased by leaps and bounds during the last 50 years,” it’s wise not to get too carried away.
“We should try to avoid using terms such as landmark, hallmark, breakthroughs or war against cancer, etc.,” he said. “Such terms imply a lot more than can be delivered.”
Still, slow but steady advances offer encouragement about the future. Jamall pointed to the deployment of new immunotherapy and nanotechnology techniques that help doctors diagnose and treat cancers earlier than ever before. Also, researchers now benefit from increased computer and data processing power as well as more precise 3D imaging tools. In addition, Jamall said, some vaccines are proving effective in preventing cancers caused by pathogens like HPV (human papillomavirus), HCV (the Hepatitis C virus), and HBV (the Hepatitis B virus), a development that he predicted will influence future therapies worldwide.
Diseases of Inconvenience
Even more progress is possible in the future with the development of nanobots and nano-drug delivery tools that improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancers by targeting features specific to cancer cells or malignant tissue without damaging nearby healthy cells and tissues.
Jamall said that nanotechnology can further improve the earlier detection of cancers by homing in on particular features of early cancers such as inflammation that currently slip below the radar of existing imaging and blood tests (biomarkers) of cancer. In the meantime, he said, science is on the right path with the development of more effective vaccines and immunotherapies that will become better over time. But just as critical to the future, said Jamall, is a re-thinking of diseases and their treatments with an eye toward developing new and relevant approaches.
“One goal is interdicting the multi-sequence steps leading up to carcinogenesis,” he said. “This would be a giant leap forward in cancer prevention.” In conjunction with early screening and more effective treatments, he said science would advance closer toward the goal of making the majority of cancers (approximately 80 percent) “diseases of inconvenience” such as diabetes or arthritis.
With the help of PowerBridgeNY, the HIGHEST Transformers company aims for cleaner, safer electrical technology that could save billions of dollars a year.
Published March 29, 2017
By Marie Gentile and Robert Birchard
What if one component of the electrical grid could be redesigned to be safer and more environmentally-friendly, plus save the United States billions of dollars each year?
Engineers-turned-entrepreneurs Saeed Jazebi, PhD, and Francisco de Leon, PhD, from the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, are bringing their clean-tech to the marketplace to accomplish exactly this task. The product, HIGH Efficiency Shielded Toroidal (HIGHEST) Transformers, is designed to be a reliable and cost-efficient clean-energy alternative to traditional transformers for use by electric utilities. With new energy efficiency standards from the U.S. Department of Energy that went into effect in January 2016, the timing is deal for HIGHEST Transformers to enter the field of electrical engineering with a unique green technology.
Jazebi and de Leon honed their product and started their company as part of a proof-of-concept center program called PowerBridgeNY, which provides early-stage investments and services to help inventors and scientists turn their high-tech, clean-energy ideas into successful businesses. The POCC, for which the Academy serves in an advisory capacity, is funded through a grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
Typically, transformers transfer electrical energy between two or more circuits via electromagnetic induction; because it’s not efficient to transmit electricity at a low voltage across long distances, transformers increase or decrease the alternating voltages in electric power applications. Ideally these transformers would operate at 100% efficiency, but energy losses linked to transformer inefficiencies are estimated at 60-80 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), carrying a cost of approximately $4 billion per year.
In addition, the coils of toroidal transformers are often insulated and cooled with mineral oil that can have a risk of leaking, or even exploding. As part of their work with PowerBridgeNY, Jazebi and de Leon set out to develop a more reliable dry (non-oil) toroidal transformer that is environmentally friendly and has a lower risk of explosions.
With the technology developed during their participation in the POCC program, HIGHEST Transformers are capable of significantly reducing energy losses and thus cutting energy costs.
“HIGHEST Transformers are comprised of a continuous steel strip that is wound into a doughnut shape (toroidal iron core) and then wrapped entirely in coils. The core has a gapless construction with extremely low no-load losses,” Jazebi explains.
A specialty designed electrostatic shield, new winding strategy, and amorphous iron cores allow the smaller transformers to be comparable in price and efficiency to larger transformers that use oil.
Built with Business Expertise
PowerBridgeNY also helped to provide HIGHEST Transformers with the business expertise and knowledge that is extremely beneficial-but not always accessible-to startups.
“The resources that they provide such as workshops and hourly meetings with lawyers and accountants are invaluable for startup companies,” Jazebi emphasized. “The conferences and networking events assisted us in connecting with national labs, large manufacturing companies, and electric utilities to test the product as well as understand the market.”
With this aid, HIGHEST Transformers achieved two extremely valuable milestones: the company became an incorporated business, and received a National Science Foundation Small Business Technology Transfer Research grant to further develop their ideas and research.
Innovation for the Next Generation
Next steps for HIGHEST Transformers include manufacturing up to five prototypes to be tested according to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association standard test codes and then implement pilot programs with utility companies and work with large transformer manufacturers or venture capitalists. Because of the new energy efficiency standards are poised to save 3.63 quadrillion BTUs of energy for equipment sold over the next 30 years, it is an ideal time for HIGHEST Transformers to enter the marketplace since there will be a greater demand than ever for this cleantech.
More than anything, the potential impact of this technology drives the research and development of HIGHEST Transformers.
“We owe the environment to future generations; we have to maintain it. This is the prime factor of our progress,” stated Jazebi. “Providing U.S. residents a better place to live with innovative engineering and design motivates us to innovate on this path.”
Learn more about NYSERDA‘s energy-focused Proof of Concept Centers in thispodcast from the Academy.
Thomas Edison struggled with creating an electric car battery that would provide energy over time. With assistance from PowerBridgeNY, a startup may have solved this dilemma.
Published July 14, 2016
By Diana Friedman
We may think of the technology behind electric cars as a relatively new innovation, but at the turn of the 20th century battery-powered vehicles accounted for approximately one in every three automobiles on the road.
Luminaries like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were keen on improving electric cars and car batteries, but encountered setbacks still seen today-namely, how to design a battery that can provide more energy over longer periods of time, and at a lower cost. Ford and Edison weren’t able to solve this problem, but with assistance from PowerBridgeNY, a proof-of-concept center funded by The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the startup company Lionano is working to improve lithium-ion batteries and pave the way for greener electric cars.
The Challenge of Energy Density
According to Lionano co-founder Alex Yu, PhD, a significant problem with implementing lithium-ion battery technology in electric cars is due to the energy density necessary to power a vehicle over longer distances.
“The current Chevy Volt can only run about 53 miles on a battery alone, while the Nissan Leaf is up to 107 miles on a battery alone,” Yu explained. “This may not be enough energy to power a vehicle for commuters who travel longer distances to work.”
Newer automotive manufacturers like Tesla Motors have greater efficiency when it comes to mileage range on a single battery charge, but cost significantly more than other makes and models. There is also the issue of the life cycle of lithium-ion batteries for use in cars, which degrade over time.
“Think about your cell phone-if you charge it every single day, it will last through about 1,000 charging cycles or three years. At that point, you’re likely to buy a new phone. That’s fine for cell phones, but most people don’t buy a new car every three years,” Yu noted.
A Boot Camp for Clean Energy Technology
While completing his doctoral studies in chemistry at Cornell University, Yu learned about the PowerBridgeNY program that functions as a boot camp of sorts to help scientists and researchers transition their clean technology innovations from the laboratory to the marketplace.
In 2014 Yu and his team, including members Siyu Huang and Héctor D. Abruña, were awarded a Cycle One grant from the proof-of-concept center to validate and market lithium-ion batteries that were more efficient and longer-lasting than other models available in consumer and commercial products. The end result is a proprietary nano-engineered material for lithium-ion batteries with twice the energy density and 2-3 times the cycle life of comparable batteries, at half the cost.
According to Yu, the support that PowerBridgeNY provided to the Lionano team by connecting them to customers for feedback on the industry overall and the specific product was particularly illuminating and invaluable to the process. Thanks to this funding and guidance, Lionano has passed both the technology validation and prototype stages, and is actively seeking investment capital and licensing agreements to increase production.
Going forward, Yu believes that transportation will becoming truly “electrified” as the technology becomes more viable for a wider audience.
“Because of environmental issues like congestion and pollution, electric transportation (as cleantech) is likely to be hugely popular,” he stated. “I believe that this car is the future.”
The term “bioelectronic medicine” may seem to be more science fiction than medical reality, but this field of science has recently made significant strides in translating research from the lab to the clinic with promising results. From implantable devices to treat autoimmune diseases without medication to microchips to help quadriplegics regain movement, bioelectronic medicine is quickly moving into the forefront of scientific applications.
The premise of bioelectronic medicine is that nearly all cells in the human body are in some way regulated via information communicated from electrical signals from the nervous system. Similar to how implantable artificial pacemakers emit electrical impulses to regulate a heartbeat, various technologies have been developed to block, stimulate, or regulate the body’s neural signals to control the underlying molecular targets of many diseases.
Bioelectronic Medicine: A Viable Therapeutic Field
Bioelectronic medicine would not have emerged as a viable therapeutic field without the work of Kevin J. Tracey, MD, President and CEO of The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research-specifically, a key discovery in May of 1998. At the time it was believed that there was no communication between the nervous system and the immune system, but Tracey devised an experiment to test his own hypothesis on a link between the two systems.
Kevin J. Tracey, MD
Tracey predicted that stimulation of the vagus nerve with electrical impulses would reduce production of tumor necrosis factor (TNF), a cell signaling protein linked to inflammation. Electrical impulses were delivered to an exposed vagus nerve in a rat and after the cut was closed, Tracey administered endotoxin to trigger inflammation.
Seventy-five percent of TNF production was blocked, through activation of what Tracey coined as “the inflammatory reflex.” Since these research findings were published in Nature in 2000, Tracey has co-founded SetPoint Medical to develop an implantable device to stimulate the vagus nerve as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) that is intended to last for 10 years. Results from a pilot study reported that patients with this implant experienced symptom improvements comparable to those taking medications for RA and a long-term study is currently underway.
A Chip Implanted in the Brain
Chad Bouton, also from The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, was recently the lead author in a landmark study appearing in Nature on a neuroprosthetic device that, for the first time in a 24-year-old man with quadriplegia, allowed a paralyzed man to move his hand using only his brain. First, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of Ian Burkhart’s brain were taken while he attempted to complete a range of hand movements; once Bouton and his team identified from the fMRI the areas of the motor cortex associated with the movement attempts, a chip was implanted in Burkhart’s brain.
This chip is designed to note the electrical activity from the motor cortex that is linked to movement and to transmit this information to a computer, which eventually translates these signals and sends them to a flexible sleeve on Burkhart’s arm. The result? Burkhart’s muscles were stimulated, and over time with training he has been able to make isolated finger movements and complete six different wrist and hand motions. There are limitations to the technology, as it can currently only be used in a laboratory for a limited amount of time and requires recalibration before each use.
Regardless, Burkhart sees great value in bioelectronic medicine. “Even if it’s something that I can never take home in my lifetime, I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to take part in this study. I’ve had lots of fun with it. I know that I’ve done a lot of work to help other people as well,” Burkhart told Nature.
Patients with life-threatening illnesses face challenges in accessing potential therapies at the cutting-edge of research and development, which have not yet been proven in a clinical trial. Some pharmaceutical companies produce and provide medicines on a case-by-case basis through expanded access or “compassionate use” programs. The tension among principles of fairness, equity, and compassion are explored in this podcast through a case study about a social media campaign led to an expedited clinical trial for an investigative antiviral medicine. Guests will explore the provocative and emotional stories of patients, family members, advocates, researchers, physicians, and the regulators charged with keeping medicines in the marketplace safe and effective.
This podcast was a collaboration between The Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine and The New York Academy of Sciences.
