NEWS

Stanford engineers invent a solar panel that generates electricity at night | Interesting Engineer (01:08)

• Solar panels at night can freely radiate infrared light out into space.
  • Solar panels — like everything warmer than absolute zero — emit infrared radiation. 
  • Cloudless nights being optimal, because no clouds equals less reflection of the infrared light onto the ground.
    • Radiative cooling (surface is cooler than air) phenomenon that only happens when skies are clear. 
• That flow of energy enables the device Stanford University researchers created — an ordinary solar panel outfitted with a thermoelectric generator — to generate a small amount of electricity from the slight difference in temperature between the ambient air and the surface of a solar panel pointed deep into space. 
• Lead researcher,  Sid Assawaworrarit, states:
  • “There’s actually light going out [from the solar panel], and we use that to generate electricity at night. The photons going out into the night sky actually cool down the solar cell.”
• Photons leave the sky facing surface of the solar panel, and they carry heat with them. 
  • The surface of a solar panel will be a few degrees cooler than the air around it. 
  • A device called a thermoelectric generator can capture some of the heat flowing from the warmer air to the cooler solar panel and convert it into electricity.
• On a clear night, the device tested on the Stanford rooftop generates roughly fifty milliwatts for every square meter of solar panel (50 mW/m2). 
  • They believe the “theoretical limit is probably about one or two watts per square meter”
  • Not a huge number but some SMALL applications could use this power
    • Night Light
    • Home phone
• Unlike batteries that degrade substantially after a few thousand charge cycles, the kind of thermoelectric generators used in these solar panels are solid state, so according to Sid, the lifetime is “pretty much forever”.
• Another possible use for the technology is powering the immense network of environmental sensors
  • Used to keep tabs on everything from weather conditions to invasive species in far-flung corners of the globe.

Rocket Lab prepares its chopper to catch a returning booster in midair | New Atlas (07:28)

• Recycling has quickly become the name of the game in the world of commercial spaceflight.
  • SpaceX & Blue Origin with reusable rockets
• Rocket Lab has plans on recycling their first stage of its Electron booster, but they plan on getting it back in a different way.
  • The plan will soon achieve a key milestone by collecting the first stage in midair with a customized Sikorsky S-92 helicopter.
• Their reusability goal has been laid out since 2019, where their initial plans were to have the stage land in the water where a recovery vessel could go retrieve it.
  • Accomplished this back in 2020
• In parallel, it has been gathering data and fine-tuning the descent process with a view to recovering the rocket in a more audacious way. 
  • In 2020, they succeeded in using a helicopter to catch a replica of its Electron first-stage over the open ocean in New Zealand
• Now they plan on trying to catch the real thing. 
  • Later this month, the Electron rocket will carry out its 26th launch, taking off from New Zealand to deliver 34 small satellites to orbit.
  • Before lift-off, a modified Sikorsky S-92 will move into the “capture zone” around 150 nautical miles (277 km) offshore.
  • It will wait for the first stage to hurtle back toward Earth at up to 8,300 km/h (5,150 mph).
  • At an altitude of 13 km (8.3 miles), Electron will deploy a smaller drogue parachute before deploying a main parachute at around 6 km (3.7 miles). 
  • This will slow the first stage to speeds of just 10 meters a second (22.3 mph), enabling the chopper to hook the parachute line.
• This first attempt at mid-air recovery will take place in late April, with the 14-day launch window scheduled to open on the 19th.

Looking Through Mojo Vision’s Newest AR Contact Lens |  IEEE Spectrum (12:17)

• This article is the author’s (Tekla S. Perry) account of getting to Mojo Vision’s AR contact lens. 
  • Note: It is still a prototype, and still needs clinical testing and further development ahead before it can apply for FDA approval.
• She was given a demo. The contact lens wasn’t actually placed in her eye because that would require an eye exam but she held a lens very close to one eye and peeked through.
  • That means that the lens would not be able to track eye movements since it is not on the eyeball. 
  • Additionally since it was one lens the images appear 2D but with 2 contacts in it would appear 3D in the final product.
• Several apps were utilized in the demo:
  • One being a simple app that would tag compass headings as she turned to face different directions. 
  • A teleprompter app that naturally scrolled up and down to move through the text
  • A video stream
  • Possible travel tool apps,
    • High-resolution monochrome image of an incoming Uber driver
    • Biking app that called up heart rate and other training information
• Image sensors—a feature of earlier demos that showed off edge detection in low light and other vision enhancements—have yet to be built into the current prototype, but they are in the works according to the company.
• Here is Steve Sinclair, Mojo senior vice president of product and marketing giving more information about the battery on the lens:
  • “The battery is in the outer ring, embedded in the lens. We are partnering with a medical-grade battery company that makes implantable microbatteries for things like pacemakers, to design something safe to wear”
• The company is looking to help people with low vision issues.
  • Low vision is a vision problem that makes it hard to do everyday activities. It can’t be fixed with glasses, contact lenses, or other standard treatments like medicine or surgery. 
• Steve continues talking about developing tools to help people with low vision issues, “We’ve been using mainly low-vision capabilities built into smartphones right now to take pictures of things and bring them up to your eye for zooming in and out; we’ll add in the imager and test those capabilities out next.”
• What is next for the company?
  • They want to start testing the complete prototype on-eye, and see how well it works in different situations.
• According to Steve, the first test subjects will be Drew Perkins, the CEO and probably Mike Wiemer, the CTO.

Simple delivery method enhances a promising cancer treatment | MedicalXPress (20:11) 

• One cutting-edge cancer treatment exciting researchers today involves collecting and reprogramming a patient’s T cells and then putting them back into the body ready to detect and destroy cancerous cells.
  • Works great for widespread blood cancers like leukemia, but not so much for solid tumors. Because they are dense, exist in specific locations and have defenses to hide from and fend off immune cells.
• Maybe that will change with a new delivery technique developed by Stanford University engineers, which enhances the “attack power” of the modified immune cells.
  • Called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells
• The researchers add CAR-T cells and specialized signaling proteins to a hydrogel—a water-filled gel that has characteristics in common with biological tissues—and inject the substance next to a tumor. 
  • Protein is called cytokines, which tell the engineered immune cells to rapidly replicate and prepare to destroy a tumor.
  • With the normal IV approach the amount of cytokines needed to activate the T-cells to destroy a solid tumor would be toxic to the body.
• The gel gives a temporary environment for the immune cells to multiply and activate in preparation to fight cancerous cells. 
• Additionally, the gell acts like a leaky holding pen that pumps out activated CAR-T cells to continuously attack the tumor over time.
• Eric Appel, senior author on the paper talks on how this research is focusing on area not thought about:
  • “A lot of the CAR-T cell field is focusing on how to make better cells themselves, but there is much less focus on how to make the cells more effective once in the body …  So what we’re doing is totally complementary to all of the efforts to engineer better cells.”
• Now to see if it works on mice models:
  • The researchers found that all experimental animals injected with gel containing both CAR-T cells and cytokines became cancer-free after 12 days.
  • Also tried delivering just CAR-T cells in the gel, but the tumors disappeared more slowly or not at all in some mice.
  • Additionally, the gel did not induce adverse inflammatory reactions in the mice, and it fully degraded within the body in a few weeks.
• Appel says his lab’s next set of experiments will further explore the gel delivery method’s ability to treat faraway tumors.
• This research proposes a simple and effective way to improve a promising cancer treatment.

Israeli bee tech startup Beewise pulls in $80m investment for robotic beehives | Times of Israel (27:19)

• We have a problem with the honeybee population. In the US alone, beekeepers lost an estimated 45% of their managed honeybee colonies between April 2020 and April 2021, marking the second-highest annual loss on record.
• This could be a result of a “perfect storm” of multiple issues happening at once. 
  • Climate issues, habitat loss, excessive use of agricultural chemicals, parasitic mites, and various pathogens.
• A new startup that recently received an $80m investment, Beewise, is looking at ways to combat this growing problem globally. 
• They developed the “Beehome.”
  • A solar-powered, converted container that brings together robotics, artificial intelligence, imaging, a software platform, and a mobile application to monitor and care for honeybees around the clock. 
  • The device can house up to 24 bee colonies 
  • Automatically controls for climate and humidity conditions, 
  • Detects and eliminates pests and parasites, 
  • Identifies when a colony is preparing to swarm, sends alerts when human intervention is needed
  • Even harvests the honey the bees produce.
• CEO Saar Safra, discusses the benefits of robot bee keeping:
  • “Treating and caring for living biological beings in real-time helps keep them strong and healthy. A robot can do this all day long; it doesn’t get tired. Humans can’t treat bees in real-time. If there’s a problem, you don’t know about it until you get to the hives. They [beekeepers] need to drive into the field — if they have 1,000 boxes scattered around, they need to look into them to see what’s happening, and often it’s too late as the colony has collapsed.”
• According to the company’s initial internal findings, colony collapse with the Beehome is reduced to about 10 percent. A step in the right direction, hopefully they can boost that number higher.
• In addition to more investments, Beewise also announced a lighter-weight version of the Beehome with a more effective feeding system and stronger solar panels.
• Beewise is fulfilling thousands of orders in the US and, with the funding, “will be able to meet incredible market demand through increased manufacturing, develop additional product iterations, and further improve pollination,” according to the CEO.