Aurelia Butler

Synecoculture is a new agricultural method advocated by Dr. Masatoshi Funabashi, senior researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. (Sony CSL), in which various kinds of plants are mixed and grown in high density, establishing rich biodiversity while benefiting from the self-organizing ability of the ecosystem. However, such dense vegetation requires frequent upkeep — seeds need to be sown, weeds need to be pruned, and crops need to be harvested. Synecoculture thus requires a high level of ecological literacy and complex decision-making. And while the operational issues present with Synecoculture can be addressed by using an agricultural robot, most existing robots can only automate one of the above three tasks in a simple farmland environment, thus falling short of the literacy and decision-making skills required of them to perform Synecoculture. Moreover, the robots may make unnecessary contact with the plants and damage them, affecting their growth and the harvest.
With the rising awareness of environmental issues, such a gap between the performance of humans versus that of conventional robots has spurred innovation to improve the latter. A group of researchers led by Takuya Otani, an Assistant Professor at Waseda University, in collaboration with Sustainergy Company and Sony CSL, have designed a new robot that can perform Synecoculture effectively. The robot is called SynRobo, with “syn” conveying the meaning of “together with” humans. It manages a variety of mixed plants grown in the shade of solar panels, an otherwise unutilized space. An article describing their research was published in Volume 13, Issue 1 of Agriculture, on 21 December 2022. This article has been co-authored by Professor Atsuo Takanishi, also from Waseda University, other researchers of Sony CSL, and students from Waseda University.
Otani briefly explains the novel robot’s design. “It has a four-wheel mechanism that enables movement on uneven land and a robotic arm that expands and contracts to help overcome obstacles. The robot can move on slopes and avoid small steps. The system also utilizes a 360o camera to recognize and maneuver its surroundings. In addition, it is loaded with various farming tools — anchors (for punching holes), pruning scissors, and harvesting setups. The robot adjusts its position using the robotic arm and an orthogonal axes table that can move horizontally.”
Besides these inherent features, the researchers also invented techniques for efficient seeding. They coated seeds from different plants with soil to make equally-sized balls. These made their shape and size consistent, so that the robot could easily sow seeds from multiple plants. Furthermore, an easy-to-use, human-controlled maneuvering system was developed to facilitate the robot’s functionality. The system helps it operate tools, implement automatic sowing, and switch tasks.
The new robot could successfully sow, prune, and harvest in dense vegetation, making minimal contact with the environment during the tasks because of its small and flexible body. In addition, the new maneuvering system enabled the robot to avoid obstacles 50% better while reducing its operating time by 49%, compared to a simple controller.
“This research has developed an agricultural robot that works in environments where multiple species of plants grow in dense mixtures,” Otani tells us. “It can be widely used in general agriculture as well as Synecoculture — only the tools need to be changed when working with different plants. This robot will contribute to improving the yield per unit area and increase farming efficiency. Moreover, its agricultural operation data will help automate the maneuvering system. As a result, robots could assist agriculture in a plethora of environments. In fact, Sustainergy Company is currently preparing to commercialize this innovation in abandoned fields in Japan and desertified areas in Kenya, among other places.”
Such advancements will promote Synecoculture farming, with the combination of renewable energy, and help solve various pressing problems, including climate change and the energy crisis. The present research is a crucial step toward achieving sustainable agriculture and carbon neutrality. Here’s hoping for a smart and skillful robot that efficiently supports large-scale Synecoculture! More

Integrating sensors into rotational mechanisms could make it possible for engineers to build smart hinges that know when a door has been opened, or gears inside a motor that tell a mechanic how fast they are rotating. MIT engineers have now developed a way to easily integrate sensors into these types of mechanisms, with 3D printing.
Even though advances in 3D printing enable rapid fabrication of rotational mechanisms, integrating sensors into the designs is still notoriously difficult. Due to the complexity of the rotating parts, sensors are typically embedded manually, after the device has already been produced.
However, manually integrating sensors is no easy task. Embed them inside a device and wires might get tangled in the rotating parts or obstruct their rotations, but mounting external sensors would increase the size of a mechanism and potentially limit its motion.
Instead, the new system the MIT researchers developed enables a maker to 3D print sensors directly into a mechanism’s moving parts using conductive 3D printing filament. This gives devices the ability to sense their angular position, rotation speed, and direction of rotation.
With their system, called MechSense, a maker can manufacture rotational mechanisms with integrated sensors in just one pass using a multi-material 3D printer. These types of printers utilize multiple materials at the same time to fabricate a device.
To streamline the fabrication process, the researchers built a plugin for the computer-aided design software SolidWorks that automatically integrates sensors into a model of the mechanism, which could then be sent directly to the 3D printer for fabrication.

MechSense could enable engineers to rapidly prototype devices with rotating parts, like turbines or motors, while incorporating sensing directly into the designs. It could be especially useful in creating tangible user interfaces for augmented reality environments, where sensing is critical for tracking a user’s movements and interaction with objects.
“A lot of the research that we do in our lab involves taking fabrication methods that factories or specialized institutions create and then making then accessible for people. 3D printing is a tool that a lot of people can afford to have in their homes. So how can we provide the average maker with the tools necessary to develop these types of interactive mechanisms? At the end of the day, this research all revolves around that goal,” says Marwa AlAlawi, a mechanical engineering graduate student and lead author of a paper on MechSense.
AlAlawi’s co-authors include Michael Wessely, a former postdoc in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) who is now an assistant professor at Aarhus University; and senior author Stefanie Mueller, an associate professor in the MIT departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, and a member CSAIL; as well as others at MIT and collaborators from Accenture Labs. The research will be presented at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Built-in sensing
To incorporate sensors into a rotational mechanism in a way that would not disrupt the device’s movement, the researchers leveraged capacitive sensing.

A capacitor consists of two plates of conductive material that have an insulating material sandwiched between them. If the overlapping area or distance between the conductive plates is changed, perhaps by rotating the mechanism, a capacitive sensor can detect resulting changes in the electric field between the plates. That information could then be used to calculate speed, for instance.
“In capacitive sensing, you don’t necessarily need to have contact between the two opposing conductive plates to monitor changes in that specific sensor. We took advantage of that for our sensor design,” AlAlawi says.
Rotational mechanisms typically consist of a rotational element located above, below, or next to a stationary element, like a gear spinning on a static shaft above a flat surface. The spinning gear is the rotational element and the flat surface beneath it is the stationary element.
The MechSense sensor includes three patches made from conductive material that are printed into the stationary plate, with each patch separated from its neighbors by nonconductive material. A fourth patch of conductive material, which has the same area as the other three patches, is printed into the rotating plate.
As the device spins, the patch on the rotating plate, called a floating capacitor, overlaps each of the patches on the stationary plate in turn. As the overlap between the rotating patch and each stationary patch changes (from completely covered, to half covered, to not covered at all), each patch individually detects the resulting change in capacitance.
The floating capacitor is not connected to any circuitry, so wires won’t get tangled with rotating components.
Rather, the stationary patches are wired to electronics that use software the researchers developed to convert raw sensor data into estimations of angular position, direction of rotation, and rotation speed.
Enabling rapid prototyping
To simplify the sensor integration process for a user, the researchers built a SolidWorks extension. A maker specifies the rotating and stationary parts of their mechanism, as well as the center of rotation, and then the system automatically adds sensor patches to the model.
“It doesn’t change the design at all. It just replaces part of the device with a different material, in this case conductive material,” AlAlawi says.
The researchers used their system to prototype several devices, including a smart desk lamp that changes the color and brightness of its light depending on how the user rotates the bottom or middle of the lamp. They also produced a planetary gearbox, like those that are used in robotic arms, and a wheel that measures distance as it rolls across a surface.
As they prototyped, the team also conducted technical experiments to fine-tune their sensor design. They found that, as they reduced the size of the patches, the amount of error in the sensor data increased.
“In an effort to generate electronic devices with very little e-waste, we want devices with smaller footprints that can still perform well. If we take our same approach and perhaps use a different material or manufacturing process, I think we can scale down while accumulating less error using the same geometry,” she says.
In addition to testing different materials, AlAlawi and her collaborators plan to explore how they could increase the robustness of their sensor design to external noise, and also develop printable sensors for other types of moving mechanisms.
This research was funded, in part, by Accenture Labs. More

A study in the Journal of The National Cancer Institute Cancer Spectrum looked at chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI), as they become popular resources for cancer information. They found these resources give accurate information when asked about common cancer myths and misconceptions. In the first study of its kind, Skyler Johnson, MD, physician-scientist at Huntsman Cancer Institute and assistant professor in the department of radiation oncology at the University of Utah (the U), evaluated the reliability and accuracy of ChatGPT’s cancer information.
Using the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) common myths and misconceptions about cancer, Johnson and his team found that 97% of the answers were correct. However, this finding comes with some important caveats, including a concern amongst the team that some of the ChatGPT answers could be interpreted incorrectly. “This could lead to some bad decisions by cancer patients. The team suggested caution when advising patients about whether they should use chatbots for information about cancer,” says Johnson.
The study found reviewers were blinded, meaning they didn’t know whether the answers came from the chatbot or the NCI. Though the answers were accurate, reviewers found ChatGPT’s language was indirect, vague, and in some cases, unclear.
“I recognize and understand how difficult it can feel for cancer patients and caregivers to access accurate information,” says Johnson. “These sources need to be studied so that we can help cancer patients navigate the murky waters that exist in the online information environment as they try to seek answers about their diagnoses.”
Incorrect information can harm cancer patients. In a previous study by Johnson and his team published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, they found that misinformation was common on social media and had the potential to harm cancer patients.
The next steps are to evaluate how often patients are using chatbots to seek out information about cancer, what questions they are asking, and whether AI chatbots provide accurate answers to uncommon or unusual questions about cancer.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute including P30 CA042014 and Huntsman Cancer Foundation. More

Research using a quantum computer as the physical platform for quantum experiments has found a way to design and characterize tailor-made magnetic objects using quantum bits, or qubits. That opens up a new approach to develop new materials and robust quantum computing.
“With the help of a quantum annealer, we demonstrated a new way to pattern magnetic states,” said Alejandro Lopez-Bezanilla, a virtual experimentalist in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lopez-Bezanilla is the corresponding author of a paper about the research in Science Advances.
“We showed that a magnetic quasicrystal lattice can host states that go beyond the zero and one bit states of classical information technology,” Lopez-Bezanilla said. “By applying a magnetic field to a finite set of spins, we can morph the magnetic landscape of a quasicrystal object.”
“A quasicrystal is a structure composed by the repetition of some basic shapes following rules different to those of regular crystals,” he said.
For this work with Cristiano Nisoli, a theoretical physicist also at Los Alamos, a D-Wave quantum annealing computer served as the platform to conduct actual physical experiments on quasicrystals, rather than modeling them. This approach “lets matter talk to you,” Lopez-Bezanilla said, “because instead of running computer codes, we go straight to the quantum platform and set all the physical interactions at will.”
The ups and downs of qubits
Lopez-Bezanilla selected 201 qubits on the D-Wave computer and coupled them to each other to reproduce the shape of a Penrose quasicrystal.

Since Roger Penrose in the 1970s conceived the aperiodic structures named after him, no one had put a spin on each of their nodes to observe their behavior under the action of a magnetic field.
“I connected the qubits so all together they reproduced the geometry of one of his quasicrystals, the so-called P3,” Lopez-Bezanilla said. “To my surprise, I observed that applying specific external magnetic fields on the structure made some qubits exhibit both up and down orientations with the same probability, which leads the P3 quasicrystal to adopt a rich variety of magnetic shapes.”
Manipulating the interaction strength between qubits and the qubits with the external field causes the quasicrystals to settle into different magnetic arrangements, offering the prospect of encoding more than one bit of information in a single object.
Some of these configurations exhibit no precise ordering of the qubits’ orientation.
“This can play in our favor,” Lopez-Bezanilla said, “because they could potentially host a quantum quasiparticle of interest for information science.” A spin quasiparticle is able to carry information immune to external noise.
A quasiparticle is a convenient way to describe the collective behavior of a group of basic elements. Properties such as mass and charge can be ascribed to several spins moving as if they were one. More

Researchers have shown how energy disappears in quantum turbulence, paving the way for a better understanding of turbulence in scales ranging from the microscopic to the planetary.
Dr Samuli Autti from Lancaster University is one of the authors of a new study of quantum wave turbulence together with researchers at Aalto University.
The team’s findings, published in Nature Physics, demonstrate a new understanding of how wave-like motion transfers energy from macroscopic to microscopic length scales, and their results confirm a theoretical prediction about how the energy is dissipated at small scales.
Dr Autti said: “This discovery will become a cornerstone of the physics of large quantum systems.”
Quantum turbulence at large scales — such as turbulence around moving aeroplanes or ships — is difficult to simulate. At small scales, quantum turbulence is different from classical turbulence because the turbulent flow of a quantum fluid is confined around line-like flow centres called vortices and can only take certain, quantised values.
This granularity makes quantum turbulence significantly easier to capture in a theory, and it is generally believed that mastering quantum turbulence will help physicists understand classical turbulence too.

In the future, an improved understanding of turbulence beginning on the quantum level could allow for improved engineering in domains where the flow and behaviour of fluids and gases like water and air is a key question.
Lead author Dr Jere Mäkinen from Aalto University said: “Our research with the basic building blocks of turbulence might help point the way to a better understanding of interactions between different length scales in turbulence.
“Understanding that in classical fluids will help us do things like improve the aerodynamics of vehicles, predict the weather with better accuracy, or control water flow in pipes. There is a huge number of potential real-world uses for understanding macroscopic turbulence.”
Dr Autti said quantum turbulence was a challenging problem for scientists.
“In experiments, the formation of quantum turbulence around a single vortex has remained elusive for decades despite an entire field of physicists working on quantum turbulence trying to find it. This includes people working on superfluids and quantum gases such as atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates (BEC). The theorised mechanism behind this process is known as the Kelvin wave cascade.
“In the present manuscript we show that this mechanism exists and works as theoretically anticipated. This discovery will become a cornerstone of the physics or large quantum systems.”
The team of researchers, led by Senior Scientist Vladimir Eltsov, studied turbulence in the Helium-3 isotope in a unique, rotating ultra-low temperature refrigerator in the Low Temperature Laboratory at Aalto. They found that at microscopic scales so-called Kelvin waves act on individual vortices by continually pushing energy to smaller and smaller scales — ultimately leading to the scale at which dissipation of energy takes place.
Dr Jere Mäkinen from Aalto University said: “The question of how energy disappears from quantized vortices at ultra-low temperatures has been crucial in the study of quantum turbulence. Our experimental set-up is the first time that the theoretical model of Kelvin waves transferring energy to the dissipative length scales has been demonstrated in the real world.”
The team’s next challenge is to manipulate a single quantized vortex using nano-scale devices submerged in superfluids. More

In organic solar cells, carbon-based polymers convert light into charges that are passed to an acceptor. This type of material has great potential, but to unlock this, a better understanding is needed of the way in which charges are produced and transported along the polymers. Scientists from the University of Groningen have now calculated how this happens by combining molecular dynamics simulations with quantum calculations and have provided theoretical insights to interpret experimental data. The results were published on 15 March in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
Organic solar cells are thinner than classic silicon-based cells and they are flexible and probably easier to manufacture. To improve their efficiency, it is important to understand how charges travel through the polymer film. ‘These films are made up of an electron donor and an electron acceptor,’ explains Elisa Palacino-González, a postdoctoral researcher in the Theory of Condensed Matter group at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen (the Netherlands). ‘The charges are delocalized along the entangled polymer chains and transferred from donor to acceptor on a sub-100 femtosecond timescale. So, we need theoretical studies and simulations to understand this process.’
Charge transfer
The system that Palacino-González studied is made up of the plastic semiconductor P3HT as the donor and PCBM, a polymer with a C60 ‘buckyball’, as the acceptor. ‘We wanted to know how charges are conducted through the material to understand how this material captures and transports energy. For if we understand this, it may be possible to control it.’ Experimental studies of the material provide some information, but only on bulk processes. ‘Therefore, we combined molecular dynamics simulations to determine the motion of the molecules in the material with quantum chemistry calculations to atomistically model the donor polymer, using time-dependent density functional theory.’
These theoretical studies were carried out using a donor polymer that was made up of twelve monomers. ‘We focused mainly on the donor to study how the excitations in the material occur.’ The molecular dynamics simulations show the movement in the ground state due to thermal effects. Palacino-González calculated this for a period of 12.5 picoseconds, which sufficed to study the femtosecond charge transfer.
Experiments
‘And the next step was to superimpose the quantum world onto these molecules,’ continues Palacino-González. To do this, she started with dimers. ‘Two monomers next to each other in the polymer chain will interact, they ‘talk’ to each other. This causes a split in the energy levels of the duo,’ Palacino-González explains. She created a ‘fingerprint’ of the dimer’s energy in the shape of a Hamiltonian, a matrix that contains all the information about a molecular system. ‘When two monomers are aligned in a parallel fashion, the two are coupled and talk to each other. But when they are at 90-degree angles, the interaction is minimal.’
Such an angle forms a kink in the molecule, which hampers energy transfer along the polymer chain. ‘A statistical analysis of the simulated material, made up of 845 polymers, shows that around half of them are perfectly aligned, while the other half have mostly one or two kinks,’ says Palacino-González. From dimers, she calculated the Hamiltonian of 12-mers (made up of 6 dimers). Her calculations included a varying number of kinks in the 12-mer donor polymers. ‘These studies show the energy distribution along the polymers and provide us with a realistic model to characterize the effect of the environment created by the materials on the spectral signals of the acceptor polymer blends, which is directly comparable with current experiments on these materials.’
Realistic description
Although the model is limited, since it only allows monomers to interact with their direct neighbour, the results provide important insights into experimental results. ‘Our calculations are from first principles and this is the first time that such an analysis, including the realistic description of the blend environment, was made for this material. This means that we can now help to explain the spectra generated from experimental studies with P3HT/PCBM mixtures. For example, we can show how size distribution changes the spectra that are generated by laser light excitation,’ says Palacino-González. ‘We are now able to look at the ultrafast charge transfer process, from donor to acceptor. This will inspire theoretical studies on organic photovoltaics and help experimentalists to understand their results.’ More

Scientists led by Nobel Laureate Stefan Hell at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg have developed a super-resolution microscope with a spatio-temporal precision of one nanometer per millisecond. An improved version of their recently introduced MINFLUX super-resolution microscopy allowed tiny movements of single proteins to be observed at an unprecedented level of detail: the stepping motion of the motor protein kinesin-1 as it walks along microtubules while consuming ATP. The work highlights the power of MINFLUX as a revolutionary new tool for observing nanometer-sized conformational changes in proteins.
Unraveling the inner workings of a cell requires knowledge of the biochemistry of individual proteins. Measuring tiny changes in their position and shape is the central challenge here. Fluorescence microscopy, in particular super-resolution microscopy (i.e. nanoscopy) has become indispensable in this emerging field. MINFLUX, the recently introduced fluorescence nanoscopy system, has already attained a spatial resolution of one to a few nanometers: the size of small organic molecules. But taking our understanding of molecular cell physiology to the next level requires observations at even higher spatio-temporal resolution.
When Stefan Hell’s group first presented MINFLUX in 2016, it had been used to track fluorescently labeled proteins in cells. However, these movements were random, and the tracking had precisions of the order of tens of nanometers. Their study is the first to apply the resolving power of MINFLUX to conformational changes of proteins, specifically the motor protein kinesin-1. To do this, the researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research developed a new MINFLUX version for tracking single fluorescent molecules.
All established methods for measuring protein dynamics have severe limitations, hampering their ability to address the critically important (sub)nanometer / (sub)millisecond range. Some provide a high spatial resolution, down to a few nanometers, but cannot track changes fast enough. Others have a high temporal resolution but require labeling with beads that are 2 to 3 orders of magnitude larger than the protein being studied. Since the functioning of the protein is likely to be compromised by a bead of this size, studies using beads leave open questions.
Fluorescence from a single molecule
MINFLUX, however, requires only a standard 1-nm sized fluorescence molecule as a label attached to the protein, and therefore can provide both the resolution and the minimal invasiveness that are needed in studying native protein dynamics. “One challenge lies in building a MINFLUX microscope that works close to the theoretical limit and is shielded against environmental noise,” says Otto Wolff, PhD student in the group. “Designing probes that do not affect the protein function, but still reveal the biological mechanism, is another,” adds his colleague Lukas Scheiderer.
The MINFLUX microscope which the researchers now introduce can record protein movements with a spatiotemporal precision of up to 1.7 nanometers per millisecond. It requires the detection of only about 20 photons emitted by the fluorescent molecule. “I think we are opening a new chapter in the study of the dynamics of individual proteins and how they change shape during their functioning,” says Stefan Hell. “The combination of high spatial and temporal resolution provided by MINFLUX will allow researchers to study biomolecules as never before.”
Resolving the stepping motion of kinesin-1 with ATP under physiological conditions
Kinesin-1 is a key player in transporting cargo throughout our cells, and mutations of the protein are at the heart of several diseases. Kinesin-1 actually ‘walks’ along filaments (the microtubules) that span our cells like a network of streets. One can imagine the motion as literally ‘stepping’, since the protein has two ‘heads’ that alternately change their location on the microtubule. This movement occurs usually along one of the 13 protofilaments forming the microtubule, and is fueled by splitting of the cell’s principal energy supplier ATP (adenosine triphosphate).
Using only a single fluorophore for labeling the kinesin-1, the scientists recorded the regular 16 nm. steps of individual heads as well as 8 nm substeps, with nanometer/millisecond spatiotemporal resolution. Their results proved that ATP is taken up while a single head is bound to the microtubule, but that ATP hydrolysis occurs when both heads are bound. It also revealed that the stepping involves a rotation of the protein ‘stalk’, the part of the kinesin molecule that holds the cargo. The spatiotemporal resolution of MINFLUX also revealed a rotation of the head in the initial phase of each step. Significantly, these findings were made using physiological concentrations of ATP, as was hitherto not possible with tiny fluorescence labels.
Future potential in exploring protein dynamics
“I’m excited so see where MINFLUX will take us. It adds another dimension to the study of how proteins work. This can help us to understand the mechanisms behind many diseases and ultimately contribute to the development of therapies,” adds Jessica Matthias, a postdoctoral scientist formerly in Hell’s group who is now exploring the applications of MINFLUX to a variety of biological questions. More