Meta’s sci-fi haptic glove prototype lets you feel VR objects using air pockets | The Verge (01:35)

• For seven years, Meta (formerly Facebook) has been quietly working on an ambitious project: a haptic glove that reproduces sensations like grasping an object or running your hand along a surface.
  • Discussed something along these line in a YouTube video
  • Researchers used air to “feel” holograms
• Meta’s haptics prototype glove:
  • Lined with around 15 rigid and inflatable plastic pads known as actuators.
  • The back features small white markers that let cameras track how the fingers move through space
  • There are internal sensors that capture how the wearer’s fingers are bending.
• With all the sensors being utilized it will monitor if you touch a virtual object, and the actuators will inflate creating pressure on the hand simulating how the object would feel.
• These sensations work alongside visual and audio cues to produce the illusion of physical touch.
• Meta is poised to mass-market haptic gloves, since they produce a consumer oriented product, the  Quest VR system.
  • Additionally they are putting billions of dollars toward building a “metaverse” that integrates VR and AR.
• Reality Labs imagines gloves being one of multiple controller methods for the future
  • Other possible controllers: smart glasses and headsets, alongside more lightweight solutions built on electromyography or EMG.
• Reality Labs head Michael Abrash, discusses how there needs to be a new shift in interacting with the digital world with AR.
  • “AR glasses are going to require that to happen. You’re not going to walk around with a keyboard and mouse. You’re not going to be taking out your phone to interact with it.”
• There are a lot of factors Meta needs to work before this glove every comes to market:
  • Improve the form factor for individuals
  • Increase the number of actuators to improve fine level of sensations
  • Reduce the size/bulkiness of the glove

A New Membrane Can Substantially Upgrade Wearable Energy Generators  | Interesting Engineering (10:23)

• Scientists have created a novel membrane — or triboelectric fabric — capable of generating power from body motion while maintaining the flexibility and breathability of modern clothing.
  • Can only power LED lights and calculators
• The new technology behind this advancement is triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), however the normal obstacle faced is the discomfort of the wearable charging devices.
  • These scientists have developed a way to overcome that obstacle
• Scientists from China and Japan successfully developed a new multilayered TENG, leveraging the unique properties of electrospun fibers.
  • They also inserted nanowires and a polystyrene charge storage layer, to resist power dissipation. 
  • Offers higher electrical performance and improved wearability
• Triboelectric effect: when two dissimilar materials are moved away from one another after making contact.
  • TENG use this affect to convert mechanical motion into electrical power
• In a press release shared with Interesting Engineering:
  • “The compactness of TENGs allows them to be used as wearable devices that can harness the motion of the body to power electronics … Being wearables, the emphasis is placed on the fabric properties (such as the comfort of the material) and the charge-carrying capacity of the nanogenerators … This device shows great potential in harvesting the static electricity from our clothes.”
• For now, low-powered devices like LEDs will max out such devices. 
  • Still represents a substantial step toward the future of wearable applications, which could eventually power something far more complex.

Research reveals how to design a better next-generation lithium-ion battery | TechXplore (15:23)

• The newest generation of lithium-ion batteries now under development
  • Featuring all solid-state, nonflammable components, the new batteries are lighter, hold their charge longer, recharge faster and are safer to use than conventional lithium-ion batteries
• However, like all batteries, solid-state lithium-ion batteries have a drawback.
  • Due to electro-chemical interactions, impedance can build up within the batteries, limiting the flow of electric current. 
• Researchers at  the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have found the location of that build up. Now that they know the location they offered a “simple redesign” to dramatically limit the buildup of impedance.
  • This would enable the batteries to fulfill their role as the next-generation power source.
• A lithium-ion battery consists of two sheetlike terminals, the anode (negative terminal) and the cathode (positive terminal), separated by an ion-conducting medium called the electrolyte.
  • Electrolyte is gel in ordinary lithium-ion batteries
  • Solid in the solid-state version
• Through two different measurement methods, the researchers found that the main site for impedance occurred at the boundary between the electrolyte and the anode.
• In analyzing their findings, the scientists concluded that the impedance they found at the interface could be significantly reduced if layers of other material were added in between the anode and the electrolyte.

Psychedelics show promise in treating mental illness | MedicalXPress (20:52)

•  One in five U.S. adults will experience a mental illness in their lifetime, according to the National Alliance of Mental Health. 
• A Virginia Tech researcher is searching for a way to provide better acting treatments with no side effects, which took him to look at a long-banned class of drugs, psychedelics.
  • So far, in mice, it seems to have achieved long-lasting results
• If you are iffy about psychedelics, I can’t blame you since there has been a lot of negative info about these drugs for at least my life time probably longer. 
  • However check out this conversation on the Huberman Lab Podcast, where Dr. Matthew Johnson discusses his work with psychedelics.
  • Dr. Johnson is studying psychedelics as a treatment for depression, addiction, trauma, eating disorders, ADHD, and other disorders.
• In this research case they are not trying to tackle the “if this works” but “how it works”. 
• Looking at molecular changes in animal models, such as the brains of mice, allows scientists to peer into the “black box of neuroscience” to understand the biological processes at work.
• After one dose of DOI, a drug similar to LSD, they discovered that the mice that had reacted to fear triggers no longer responded to them with anxious behaviors.
  • Their brains also showed effects, even after the substance was no longer detectable in the tissues
• Research on psychedelics is still in its early stages, and there’s much work to be done before treatments derived from them could be widely available.

Weird quantum effect that can turn matter invisible finally demonstrated | LiveScience (26:48)

• A quantum effect predicted decades ago, called Pauli blocking, has finally been demonstrated by scientists at MIT.
  • Pauli blocking comes from the Pauli exclusion principle, first formulated by the famed Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1925.
    • Exclusion principle: particles such as protons, neutrons and electrons with the same quantum state as each other cannot exist in the same space.
• The prediction was that if you make a cloud of gas cold and dense enough, you can make it invisible.
  • MIT scientists used lasers to squeeze and cool lithium gas to densities and temperatures low enough that it scattered less light.
  • If they can cool the cloud closer to absolute zero, they say it will become invisible.
• Normally, when you send a light particle (photon) into a warm gas cloud it will interact with the atoms in the cloud, recoiling to a different energy level, and scatter away. 
• But if you cool a gas down, the atoms in the cloud due to energy levels are stacked together. Think of seated concertgoers in a sold out arena and have nowhere to go if hit, the researchers explained.
  • The particles are so tight they no longer interact with light so it will just pass through.
• Senior author Wolfgang Ketterle, a professor of physics at MIT, explains how this works with the concertgoer analogy:
  • “An atom can only scatter a photon if it can absorb the force of its kick, by moving to another chair … If all other chairs are occupied, it no longer has the ability to absorb the kick and scatter the photon. So, the atom becomes transparent.”
• The researchers froze their lithium cloud to 20 microkelvins, which is just above absolute zero and then used a tightly focused laser to squeeze the atoms to a record density of roughly 1 quadrillion (1 followed by 15 zeros) atoms per cubic centimeter. 
• Measuring the amount of light being scattered they saw, as the theory predicted, their cooled and squeezed atoms scattered 38% less light than those at room temperature.
• Now that researchers have finally demonstrated the Pauli blocking effect, they could eventually use it to develop materials that suppress light.
  • Useful for improving the efficiency of quantum computers, which are currently hindered by quantum decoherence.
    • The loss of quantum information (carried by light) to a computer’s surroundings.
• Ketterle discusses how this could improve quantum computing:
  • “Whenever we control the quantum world, like in quantum computers, light scattering is a problem and means that information is leaking out of your quantum computer … This is one way to suppress light scattering, and we are contributing to the general theme of controlling the atomic world.”