Aurelia Butler

Fireflies that light up dusky backyards on warm summer evenings use their luminescence for communication — to attract a mate, ward off predators, or lure prey.
These glimmering bugs also sparked the inspiration of scientists at MIT. Taking a cue from nature, they built electroluminescent soft artificial muscles for flying, insect-scale robots. The tiny artificial muscles that control the robots’ wings emit colored light during flight.
This electroluminescence could enable the robots to communicate with each other. If sent on a search-and-rescue mission into a collapsed building, for instance, a robot that finds survivors could use lights to signal others and call for help.
The ability to emit light also brings these microscale robots, which weigh barely more than a paper clip, one step closer to flying on their own outside the lab. These robots are so lightweight that they can’t carry sensors, so researchers must track them using bulky infrared cameras that don’t work well outdoors. Now, they’ve shown that they can track the robots precisely using the light they emit and just three smartphone cameras.
“If you think of large-scale robots, they can communicate using a lot of different tools — Bluetooth, wireless, all those sorts of things. But for a tiny, power-constrained robot, we are forced to think about new modes of communication. This is a major step toward flying these robots in outdoor environments where we don’t have a well-tuned, state-of-the-art motion tracking system,” says Kevin Chen, who is the D. Reid Weedon, Jr. Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), the head of the Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and the senior author of the paper.
He and his collaborators accomplished this by embedding miniscule electroluminescent particles into the artificial muscles. The process adds just 2.5 percent more weight without impacting the flight performance of the robot. More

A robot operating with a popular Internet-based artificial intelligence system consistently gravitates to men over women, white people over people of color, and jumps to conclusions about peoples’ jobs after a glance at their face.
The work, led by Johns Hopkins University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and University of Washington researchers, is believed to be the first to show that robots loaded with an accepted and widely-used model operate with significant gender and racial biases. The work is set to be presented and published this week at the 2022 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT).
“The robot has learned toxic stereotypes through these flawed neural network models,” said author Andrew Hundt, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech who co-conducted the work as a PhD student working in Johns Hopkins’ Computational Interaction and Robotics Laboratory. “We’re at risk of creating a generation of racist and sexist robots but people and organizations have decided it’s OK to create these products without addressing the issues.”
Those building artificial intelligence models to recognize humans and objects often turn to vast datasets available for free on the Internet. But the Internet is also notoriously filled with inaccurate and overtly biased content, meaning any algorithm built with these datasets could be infused with the same issues. Joy Buolamwini, Timinit Gebru, and Abeba Birhane demonstrated race and gender gaps in facial recognition products, as well as in a neural network that compares images to captions called CLIP.
Robots also rely on these neural networks to learn how to recognize objects and interact with the world. Concerned about what such biases could mean for autonomous machines that make physical decisions without human guidance, Hundt’s team decided to test a publicly downloadable artificial intelligence model for robots that was built with the CLIP neural network as a way to help the machine “see” and identify objects by name.
The robot was tasked to put objects in a box. Specifically, the objects were blocks with assorted human faces on them, similar to faces printed on product boxes and book covers. More

It’s a given that certain bacteria and viruses can cause illness and disease, but the real culprits are the sequences of concern that lie within the genomes of these microbes.
Calling them out is about to get easier.
Years of work by Rice University computer scientists and their colleagues have led to an improved platform for DNA screening and pathogenic sequence characterization, whether naturally occurring or synthetic, before they have the chance to impact public health.
Computer scientist Todd Treangen of Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and genomic specialist Krista Ternus of Signature Science LLC led the study that produced SeqScreen, a program to accurately characterize short DNA sequences, often called oligonucleotides.
Treangen said SeqScreen is intended to improve the detection and tracking of a wide range of pathogenic sequences.
“SeqScreen is the first open-source software toolkit that is available for synthetic DNA screening,” Treangen said. “Our program improves upon the previous state of the art for companies, individuals and government agencies for their DNA screening practices.”
The study, which began as high-risk, high-payoff research funded by the National Intelligence Agency’s IARPAprogram in 2017, appears in the journal Genome Biology. More

Osaka Metropolitan University researchers observed unprecedented collective resonance motion in chiral helimagnets that allow a boost in current frequency bands.
When will 6G be a reality? The race to realize sixth generation (6G) wireless communication systems requires the development of suitable magnetic materials. Scientists from Osaka Metropolitan University and their colleagues detected an unprecedented collective resonance at high frequencies in a magnetic superstructure called a chiral spin soliton lattice (CSL), revealing CSL-hosting chiral helimagnets as a promising material for 6G technology. The study was published in Physical Review Letters.
Future communication technologies require expanding the frequency band from the current few Gigahertz (GHz) to over 100 GHz. Such high frequencies are not yet possible given that existing magnetic materials used in communication equipment can only resonate and absorb microwaves up to approximately 70 GHz with a practical-strength magnetic field. Addressing this gap in knowledge and technology, the research team led by Professor Yoshihiko Togawa from Osaka Metropolitan University delved into the helicoidal spin superstructure CSL. “CSL has a tunable structure in periodicity, meaning it can be continuously modulated by changing the external magnetic field strength,” explained Professor Togawa. “The CSL phonon mode, or collective resonance mode ― when the CSL’s kinks oscillate collectively around their equilibrium position ― allows frequency ranges broader than those for conventional ferromagnetic materials.” This CSL phonon mode has been understood theoretically, but never observed in experiments.
Seeking the CSL phonon mode, the team experimented on CrNb3S6, a typical chiral magnetic crystal that hosts CSL. They first generated CSL in CrNb3S6 and then observed its resonance behavior under changing external magnetic field strengths. A specially designed microwave circuit was used to detect the magnetic resonance signals.
The researchers observed resonance in three modes, namely the “Kittel mode,” the “asymmetric mode,” and the “multiple resonance mode.” In the Kittel mode, similar to what is observed in conventional ferromagnetic materials, the resonance frequency increases only if the magnetic field strength increases, meaning that creating the high frequencies needed for 6G would require an impractically strong magnetic field. The CSL phonon was not found in the asymmetric mode, either.
In the multiple resonance mode, the CSL phonon was detected; in contrast to what is observed with magnetic materials currently in use, the frequency spontaneously increases when the magnetic field strength decreases. This is an unprecedented phenomenon that will possibly enable a boost to over 100 GHz with a relatively weak magnetic field — this boost is a much-needed mechanism for achieving 6G operability.
“We succeeded in observing this resonance motion for the first time,” noted first author Dr. Yusuke Shimamoto. “Due to its excellent structural controllability, the resonance frequency can be controlled over a wide band up to the sub-terahertz band. This wideband and variable frequency characteristic exceeds 5G and is expected to be utilized in research and development of next-generation communication technologies.”
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So far, science has described more than 2 million species, and millions more await discovery. While species have value in themselves, many also deliver important ecosystem services to humanity, such as insects that pollinate our crops.
Meanwhile, as we lack a standardized system to quantify the value of different species, it is too easy to jump to the conclusion that they are practically worthless. As a result, humanity has been quick to justify actions that diminish populations and even imperil biodiversity at large.
In a study, published in the scholarly open-science journal Research Ideas and Outcomes, a team of Estonian and Swedish scientists propose to formalize the value of all species through a conceptual species ‘stock market’ (SSM). Much like the regular stock market, the SSM is to act as a unified basis for instantaneous valuation of all items in its holdings.
However, other aspects of the SSM would be starkly different from the regular stock market. Ownership, transactions, and trading will take new forms. Indeed, species have no owners, and ‘trade’ would not be about transfer of ownership rights among shareholders. Instead, the concept of ‘selling’ would comprise processes that erase species from some specific area — such as war, deforestation, or pollution.
“The SSM would be able to put a price tag on such transactions, and the price could be thought of as an invoice that the seller needs to settle in some way that benefits global biodiversity,” explains the study’s lead author Prof. Urmas Kõljalg (University of Tartu, Estonia).
Conversely, taking some action that benefits biodiversity — as estimated through individuals of species — would be akin to buying on the species stock market. Buying, too, has a price tag on it, but this price should probably be thought of in goodwill terms. Here, ‘money’ represents an investment towards increased biodiversity.
“By rooting such actions in a unified valuation system it is hoped that goodwill actions will become increasingly difficult to dodge and dismiss,” adds Kõljalg.
Interestingly, the SSM revolves around the notion of digital species. These are representations of described and undescribed species concluded to exist based on DNA sequences and elaborated by including all we know about their habitat, ecology, distribution, interactions with other species, and functional traits.
For the SSM to function as described, those DNA sequences and metadata need to be sourced from global scientific and societal resources, including natural history collections, sequence databases, and life science data portals. Digital species might be managed further by incorporating data records of non-sequenced individuals, notably observations, older material in collections, and data from publications.
The study proposes that the SSM is orchestrated by the international associations of taxonomists and economists.
“Non-trivial complications are foreseen when implementing the SSM in practice, but we argue that the most realistic and tangible way out of the looming biodiversity crisis is to put a price tag on species and thereby a cost to actions that compromise them,” says Kõljalg.
“No human being will make direct monetary profit out of the SSM, and yet it’s all Earth’s inhabitants — including humans — that could benefit from its pointers.”
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Researchers used mice to develop a mathematical model of a myocardial infarction, popularly known as a heart attack.
The new model predicts several useful new drug combinations that may one day help treat heart attacks, according to researchers at The Ohio State University.
Typically caused by blockages in the coronary arteries — or the vessels that supply blood to the heart — these cardiovascular events are experienced by more than 800,000 Americans every year, and about 30% end up dying. But even for those who survive, the damage these attacks inflict on the muscles of the heart is permanent and can lead to dangerous inflammation in the affected areas of the heart.
Treatment to restore blood flow to these blocked passages of the heart often includes surgery and drugs, or what’s known as reperfusion therapy. Nicolae Moise, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in biomedical engineering at Ohio State, said the study uses mathematical algorithms to assess the efficacy of the drugs used to combat the potentially lethal inflammation many patients experience in the aftermath of an attack.
“Biology and medicine are starting to become more mathematical,” Moise said. “There’s so much data that you need to start integrating it into some kind of framework.” While Moise has worked on other mathematical models of animal hearts, he said that the framework detailed in the current paper is the most detailed schematic of myocardial infarctions in mice ever made.
The research is published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.
Represented by a series of differential equations, the model Moise’s team created was made using data from previous animal studies. In medicine, differential equations are often used to monitor the growth of diseases in graph form. More

A scientist from the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences at the University of Tsukuba developed a method for producing electrically conductive polymers that assume a helical configuration. By using a liquid crystal as a template, he was able to produce optically active polymers that can convert light into a circular polarization. This approach may help lower the cost of smart displays.
Walking into an electronic store these days can be an overwhelming experience if you happen to wander into the television aisle. The sizes of TVs have significantly expanded in recent years, while the prices have dropped. This is mainly due to the adoption of organic light emitting devices (OLEDs), which are carbon-based polymers that can glow at tunable optical wavelengths. These conjugated polymers, which have alternating single and double bonds, are both electrically conductive, and have colors that can be controlled by chemical doping with other molecules. Their oxidation state can also be rapidly switched using an electric voltage, which affects their coloration. However, future advancement may require new materials that can take advantage of other kinds of optical properties, such as circular polarization.
Now, a researcher from the University of Tsukuba has introduced a technique for creating polymers locked into a helical configuration, using a sacrificial liquid crystal template. “Polymers that both have optical activity and luminescent function can emit circularly polarized light,” author Professor Hiromasa Goto says. For this process, the liquid crystal molecules were originally in a straight configuration. The addition of monomer molecules caused the liquid crystals to twist into a helical configuration. This imprints a “chirality” or handedness to the structure, making it oriented either clockwise or counterclockwise. An electric voltage was applied, which triggered polymerization of the monomers. The liquid crystal template was then removed, leaving a polymer frozen in a helical shape. By breaking the mirror symmetry, the polymer has the ability to convert linearly polarized light into a circular polarization. The furan rings in the polymer not only contribute to the electrical conductivity, they also help stabilize the helical structure. “The pi-stacking interactions between the rings allows the polymer to aggregate into a highly ordered chiral system,” Professor Goto says. The resulting polymer was tested using circular dichroism absorption spectroscopy and was found to have strong optical activity at visible wavelengths. Future applications of this process may include cheaper and more energy efficient electronic displays.
This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Magnetic Properties of Magneto-Optically Active Helical Polymers, No. 20K05626).
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Medical devices, cars, and many advanced technologies contain innumerable delicate components that are held together by electrically conductive polymers, such as polyaniline. For several decades, synthesis of polyaniline for industrial electronics applications has faced a major limitation: what solvent best facilitates synthesis? This abstract question is important for minimizing the cost and complexity of polyaniline production and facilitating useful properties such as shaping. The ability to use a range of cheap, low-boiling-point solvents would greatly assist versatile polymer processing modes such as inkjet printing, but had remained elusive until now.
In a study recently published in Polymer-Plastics Technology and Materials, researchers from the University of Tsukuba and collaborating partners have synthesized polyaniline in various common solvents. This improved ability to synthesize and process polyaniline will greatly simplify production and lower manufacturing costs.
“Polyaniline is an extremely versatile polymer in routine and advanced technologies, but restrictions on which solvents can be used for synthesis have long hindered this versatility,” explains Professor Hiromasa Goto, senior author. “Our discovery of how to facilitate polymerization in diverse solvents will be useful in basic research and industrial applications.”
The researchers produced polyaniline from aniline sulfate in a single step when they added a small quantity of iodine to the reaction mixture. Many solvents were compatible with this procedure, including nontoxic ethanol as well as dichloromethane. Extensive instrumental characterizations demonstrated that the polyaniline produced by this method exhibited the crystallinity and electrical properties as if it had been prepared by conventional methods.
“A particularly exciting result is the ease of preparing industrially useful polymer alloys, such as blends with polystyrene or cellulose derivatives,” says Professor Goto. “Electrically conductive paint, advanced rubber blends, and other materials are now straightforward to prepare, which we expect will facilitate product development in diverse fields.”
What is it about the added iodine that facilitates polyaniline production? The researchers propose that iodine is an electron-acceptor dopant that facilitates production of localized polarons, which is critical to the subsequent polymerization by radical chain reactions.
The results of this study will help make polyaniline more compatible with inkjet printing and other useful processing technologies, and thus simplify production of printed circuit boards and other common components of modern electronics. By focusing on the rather abstract topic of solvent compatibility, many routine and advanced technologies will be easier to make at lower cost.
This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) [20K05626].
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