This Perspective explores the potential of organic electrochemical neurons, which are based on organic electrochemical transistors, in the development of adaptable and biointegrable neuromorphic event-based sensing applications.
Category: chemistry – Page 118
Thomas Hartung and colleagues | The future of organoid intelligence | Frontiers Forum Deep Dive 2023
Eexxeccellent.
Human brains outperform computers in many forms of processing and are far more energy efficient. What if we could harness their power in a new form of biological computing?
In this Frontiers Forum Deep Dive session on 21 June 2023, Professor Thomas Hartung, Dr Lena Smirnova and other renowned researchers, explored the future of organoid intelligence and the scientific, technological and ethical steps required for realizing its full potential.
The session brought together the authors of the Frontiers in Science lead article ‘Organoid intelligence (OI): the new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence-in-a-dish’ which presents a roadmap for the strategic development of organoid intelligence as a scientific discipline. It was attended by hundreds of representatives from science, policy, and business across the world.
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New carbon storage technology is fastest of its kind
A new way to store carbon captured from the atmosphere, developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, works much faster than current methods without the harmful chemical accelerants they require.
In new research published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, the team developed a technique for ultrafast formation of carbon dioxide hydrates. These unique ice-like materials can bury carbon dioxide in the ocean, preventing it from being released into the atmosphere.
“We’re staring at a huge challenge—finding a way to safely remove gigatons of carbon from our atmosphere—and hydrates offer a universal solution for carbon storage. For them to be a major piece of the carbon storage pie, we need the technology to grow them rapidly and at scale,” said Vaibhav Bahadur, a professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering who led the research. “We’ve shown that we can quickly grow hydrates without using any chemicals that offset the environmental benefits of carbon capture.”
Sustaining wakefulness: Brainstem connectivity in human consciousness
Consciousness is comprised of arousal (i.e., wakefulness) and awareness. Substantial progress has been made in mapping the cortical networks that modulate awareness in the human brain, but knowledge about the subcortical networks that sustain arousal is lacking. We integrated data from ex vivo diffusion MRI, immunohistochemistry, and in vivo 7 Tesla functional MRI to map the connectivity of a subcortical arousal network that we postulate sustains wakefulness in the resting, conscious human brain, analogous to the cortical default mode network (DMN) that is believed to sustain self-awareness. We identified nodes of the proposed default ascending arousal network (dAAN) in the brainstem, hypothalamus, thalamus, and basal forebrain by correlating ex vivo diffusion MRI with immunohistochemistry in three human brain specimens from neurologically normal individuals scanned at 600–750 µm resolution. We performed deterministic and probabilistic tractography analyses of the diffusion MRI data to map dAAN intra-network connections and dAAN-DMN internetwork connections. Using a newly developed network-based autopsy of the human brain that integrates ex vivo MRI and histopathology, we identified projection, association, and commissural pathways linking dAAN nodes with one another and with cortical DMN nodes, providing a structural architecture for the integration of arousal and awareness in human consciousness. We release the ex vivo diffusion MRI data, corresponding immunohistochemistry data, network-based autopsy methods, and a new brainstem dAAN atlas to support efforts to map the connectivity of human consciousness.
One sentence summary We performed ex vivo diffusion MRI, immunohistochemistry, and in vivo 7 Tesla functional MRI to map brainstem connections that sustain wakefulness in human consciousness.
BF has a financial interest in CorticoMetrics, a company whose medical pursuits focus on brain imaging and measurement technologies. BF’s interests were reviewed and are managed by Massachusetts General Hospital and Mass General Brigham HealthCare in accordance with their conflict-of-interest policies.
Researchers Develop World’s First Anode-Free Sodium Solid-State Battery
UChicago Pritzker Molecular Engineering Prof. Y. Shirley Meng’s Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion has created the world’s first anode-free sodium solid-state battery.
With this research, the LESC – a collaboration between the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the University of California San Diego’s Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering – has brought the reality of inexpensive, fast-charging, high-capacity batteries for electric vehicles and grid storage closer than ever.
“Although there have been previous sodium, solid-state, and anode-free batteries, no one has been able to successfully combine these three ideas until now,” said UC San Diego PhD candidate Grayson Deysher, first author of a new paper outlining the team’s work.
New material paves the way to on-chip energy harvesting
Researchers from Germany, Italy, and the UK have achieved a major advance in the development of materials suitable for on-chip energy harvesting. By composing an alloy made of silicon, germanium and tin, they were able to create a thermoelectric material, promising to transform the waste heat of computer processors back into electricity.
With all elements coming from the 4th main group of the periodic table, these new semiconductor alloy can be easily integrated into the CMOS process of chip production. The research findings are published in ACS Applied Energy Materials.
The increasing use of electronic devices in all aspects of our lives is driving up energy consumption. Most of this energy is dissipated into the environment in the form of heat.
NASA seeks industry support in GLIMR concept study
WASHINGTON — The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced that the agency is seeking assistance from industry as it begins a study into its Geostationary Littoral Imaging and Monitoring Radiometer (GLIMR) Access to Space (ATS) approach.
The GLIMR mission aims to provide transformative rapid observations of dynamic coastal zone ecosystems throughout the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and coastal continental U.S. (CONUS). Its goal is to observe and monitor ocean biology, chemistry, and ecology to help protect ecosystem sustainability, improve resource management, and enhance economic activity. This includes identifying and tracking harmful algal blooms and oil spills, while also observing, quantifying, and understanding processes associated with rapid changes in phytoplankton growth.
The GLIMR ATS scope is expected to include several key components and activities: the spacecraft itself, the launch vehicle, the integration and testing of the GLIMR payload with the spacecraft, and the integration of the spacecraft with the launch vehicle and subsequent launch. It will also cover the command uplink from the industry-provided Mission Operations Center (MOC), the downlink of GLIMR engineering and science telemetry to industry-allocated ground stations, and the delivery of error-checked GLIMR data to various mission partners. Additionally, it encompasses all related tasks and support required during the planned GLIMR Mission, such as pre-launch planning, launch support, in-orbit check-out, and operations.
Researchers pioneer new methods in ultrafast science for sharper molecular movies
Imagine being able to watch the inner workings of a chemical reaction or a material as it changes and reacts to its environment—that’s the sort of thing researchers can do with a high-speed “electron camera” called the Megaelectronvolt Ultrafast Electron Diffraction (MeV-UED) instrument at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Now, in two new studies, researchers from SLAC, Stanford and other institutions have figured out how to capture those tiny, ultrafast details with more accuracy and efficiency.
In the first study, recently published in Structural Dynamics, one team invented a technique to improve time resolution for the electron camera.
Researchers discover photo-induced charge-transfer complex between amine and imide
A research team led by Prof. Zhang Guoqing from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has discovered a highly reactive photo-induced charge-transfer complex (PCTC) between amine and imide. Their findings are published in the journal Chem.
Charge transfer between molecules, a critical process in both natural and synthetic systems, plays a fundamental role in photosynthesis, respiration, and various organic synthesis and energy conversion applications.
Despite extensive research, creating stable, light-responsive charge-transfer complexes in artificial systems remains challenging. The discovery of PCTCs addresses this challenge, offering new insights into complex photochemical processes.
An inexpensive, easy-to-use method to create solid-state nanopores
SMU and the University of Rhode Island have patented an inexpensive, easy-to-use method to create solid-state nanopores (SSNs), while also making it possible to self-clean blocked nanopores.
The technique called chemically-tuned controlled dielectric breakdown (CT-CDB) addresses two key problems that have kept solid-state nanopores – which are too tiny for the human eye to see – from being used more often to build biosensors that can measure biological and chemical reactions of a given sample.
Biosensors have widespread medical applications, enabling rapid, early and effective disease diagnosis and monitoring.