Cool STEM News:

Researchers have used light to decode brain signals and identify what image a person sees. | Futurity (2:41)

• Reported in the journal NeuroImage:
  • Researchers use LED light beamed from the outside of the head inward to detect activity in the area of the brain responsible for visual processing.
    • 3 main Areas of the brain involved in visual function:
      • Lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), the Striate cortex (SC) and the extrastriate cortex (ESC). Latter 2 are also known as the visual cortex
  • Then decode brain signals to determine what the person sees.

• Accomplishing this feat required the development of neuroimaging tools and analysis techniques

• What Technology did they utilize?

• • High-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT): a noninvasive, wearable, light-based brain imaging technology, which has demonstrated capabilities for mapping human cortical brain function. 
• • With this HD-DOT reading the brain signals, senior author of the study, Joseph P. Culver, states that they were able to with 90% accuracy decode some brain signals. 

• How does the HD-DOT image the brain? 
  • Whenever there is activity in your brain (e.g. neurons firing off), blood rushes to that area. The HD-DOT utilizes light that is transmitted through the head to detect changes in color of the brain tissue which indicates where the blood is flowing to. 

• Neuroscientists long ago created a detailed map of the visual part of the brain by showing participants flashing checkerboard patterns on a screen and identifying the 3D units, known as voxels, that were indicating brain activity. 

• They basically worked backwards from there. Now knowing what regions (e.g. voxels) are activated they can try to deduce which checkerboard pattern triggered that pattern of brain activity.

• How did the experiment work?

• • Recruited 5 participants 
  • Shown a checkerboard pattern on either the left or the right side of the visual field for a few seconds at a time, interspersed with breaks during which no image was shown.
  • Multiple runs of this which lasted about for 5 to 10 minutes
  • Using a previous run as a template, researchers analyzed the data from a new run to determine when the checkerboard was on which side of the screen.
  • Able to determine which side of the screen the checkerboard was on with a 75% to 98% accuracy. 

• Researchers believe that this is the first step toward the ultimate goal of facilitating communication for people who struggle to express themselves because of cerebral palsy, stroke, or other conditions that result in locked-in syndrome.

Antibiotic Game-Changer: Phages Can Anticipate Bacteria’s Location and Destroy Them Before They Cause an Infection | SciTechDaily (12:53)

• Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and other institutions have identified a novel strategy that can eliminate bacteria in a specific location before they cause an infection.

• The strategy uses a phage, a virus that infects and destroys bacteria by lysis (bacteria ruptures), that can specifically locate where the bacteria live in the gastrointestinal tract. 

• “Phages are very specific in their ability to infect and destroy certain species or strains of bacteria and not others, such as good bacteria. In the U.S., phage therapy is increasingly becoming an available option to treat antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, a serious health concern,” said first author Dr. Sabrina Green, director of research and development for TAILΦR labs at Baylor.

• The Gut is the issue:

• • Many phages have a hard time fighting bacteria in the gut. 
  • Mammals have a factor in their intestines (mucin) that prevent phages from destroying the bacteria. 
  • Mucin: sticky proteins that form a layer between intestinal cells and the layer of microorganisms.
• These researchers found a novel phage called ES17 that “binds to mucins, and this property seemed to enhance its ability to infect bacteria in mucin-rich environments, such as the gut,” according to corresponding author Dr. Anthony Maresso.

• Dr. Anthony discusses the possible benefits for the future development of this phage therapy strategy: ““We foresee the possibility that positional targeting will be the way smart drugs work in the future. Drugs won’t be just distributed all through the body in the hopes that some of it will end in the right spot. The drugs of the future will go only precisely where they are supposed to work.”

• Learn more about Phage Therapy here!

Powerpaste packs clean hydrogen energy in a safe, convenient gray goop | New Atlas (20:22)

• Researchers from Fraunhofer IFAM (Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials), located in Dresden Germany, have developed a magnesium-based ‘Powerpaste’ that stores hydrogen energy at 10 times the density of a lithium battery.

• Offering hydrogen fuel cell vehicles the ability to travel further than gasoline-powered ones, and refuel in minutes.

• Producing the paste:
  • Magnesium is combined with hydrogen at around 350 °C (662 °F) and at 5 to 6 times atmospheric pressure to form magnesium hydride. 
  • An ester and a metal salt are added to complete the process and form a viscous gray goop that can be loaded into cartridges.
    • Ester: a class of organic compounds that react with water to produce alcohols and acids.

• Specs of the Powerpaste:
  • Stable at temperatures up to 250 °C (482 °F)
  • 10x the energy of a similar weight in lithium batteries
  • More energy than what a H2 tank (700-bar) of would produce at the same weight. 
  • Vehicles running on this Powerpaste should expect comparable to or greater than gasoline vehicles.

• How would this work in a vehicle?

1. 1. Plunger mechanism extrudes the paste into a chamber
   2. Reacts with water to release hydrogen at a controlled rate
   3. Release H2 feeds a fuel cell to create electric power that would run the EV powertrain

• Refueling:
  • Pulling an empty cartridge and replacing it with a full one at a service station. 
  • Utilizing standard filling tubes (e.g. gas pumps) and just pump it into a tank. 
• There are still a lot of questions about how efficient this process would it be, how much water is used up in the process, how cost effective could the process become, what would production look like, etc.

• Hydrogen power always sounded like a good idea, but it never seemed feasible to me if a large liquid/gas H2 tank needs to be lugged around. Could this change things?

Musical Training Gives the Brain a Crucial Advantage—Especially at an Early Age, Says New Study | Good News Network (32:25) 

• They found that both perfect pitch—the ability to identify a note simply by the sound—and musical training in general led to greater functional connectivity between the regions of the brain.

• Using state-of-the-art methods of assessing the synchronized activity between brain hemispheres and regions, researchers found “robust effects of musicianship in inter-and intrahemispheric connectivity in both structural and functional networks.”

• Trial participants:
  • 153 female and male participants; 
  • 52 perfect pitch musicians, 
  • 51 non-perfect pitch musicians, 
  • 50 non-musicians.

• They also found that musical training at a young age produces stronger structural connections—as in, connections that help distinct areas of the brain work together to perform complex cognitive tasks—which has important implications outside of musical education.

Welcome to Mars! UAE’s Hope probe enters orbit around the Red Planet. | Space.com (37:27)

• United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) first-ever interplanetary mission has successfully reached orbit around Mars.

• The Hope spacecraft, launched July 19, 2020, spent 7 months sailing to the Red Planet, and on Feb. 9th they made it to the orbit 
  • Had to fire their thrusters for 27 minutes straight to slow down from 75,000 mph to 11,000 mph
• With the successful Mars orbit insertion, the UAE becomes the fifth entity to reach the Red Planet, joining NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and India.

• The $200 million Hope spacecraft is on the bright side of grim Mars mission statistics. 
  • About half of flights to the Red Planet fail.

• Mission Specs:
  • Scheduled to last for a full Martian year (687 Earth days)
  • 3 instruments that will allow scientists to study the weather near the surface of Mars, the connections between different layers of the atmosphere, and how Mars loses atmosphere to space.

China’s first Mars mission, Tianwen-1, successfully enters orbit around Red Planet | Space.com (43:05)

• Tianwen-1, arrived in orbit around the Red Planet on Feb. 10th, according to Chinese media reports.

• The milestone makes China the sixth entity to get a probe to Mars. (Mentioned the other five above)

• Sets the stage for the touchdown of Tianwen-1’s lander-rover pair on a large plain in Mars’ northern hemisphere called Utopia Planitia, which is expected to take place this May. 

• The orbiter will study the planet from above using a high-resolution camera, a spectrometer, a magnetometer and an ice-mapping radar instrument.

• The Rover that is due to touch down in the coming months will include cameras, climate and geology instruments and ground-penetrating radar
  • Hunting for pockets of water beneath Mars’ red dirt.

• Why the Rover would be a huge accomplishment for China:
  • China will become just the second nation, after the United States, to operate a spacecraft successfully on the Red Planet’s surface.

• If all goes according to plan, pristine samples of Martian material will be hauled back to Earth by 2030 to be examined in detail for potential signs of life and clues about Mars’ long-ago transition from a relatively warm and wet planet to the cold desert world it is today.

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