South Korea plans to host world’s first floating city by 2025 | Global Construction Review (01:50)

• On November 18th, The Busan Metropolitan City of the Republic of Korea, UN-Habitat and OCEANIX signed an agreement to build the world’s first prototype sustainable floating city.
  • OCEANIX is a blue tech company founded in 2018 with a mission to design and build self-sustaining floating cities.
  • Busan is a city of 3.4 million residents located on the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula
  • UN-Habitat, the United Nations Programme for Human Settlements, works towards a better urban future.
• Plan is to build a city from hexagonal floating modules by 2025, reports Business Insider
  • Goal is to be stable enough to resist a category five hurricane (the highest category hurricane, winds are 157 mph or higher). 
  • Hexagons are considered among the most efficient architectural shapes: allowing builders to conserve both space and material.
  • Platforms bolstered by limestone coating (2-3x as hard as concrete)
  • Oceanix will collaborate with local designers to tailor the prototype to the local environment. 
• Size of the city’s first iteration is unknown as of now, but the cost is expected to be around $200m.
• According to media reports, the plan is to assemble the city over 75ha (~185 acres) with an initial population of 10,000. 
• This may not be the only floating city because OCEANIX is in talks with at least 10 other governments about building more floating cities.

Safely delivering radiation to cancer patients in a ‘FLASH’ | Phys.org (09:26)

• Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed a way to deliver effective, targeted doses of “FLASH” radiation to cancer patients. 
  • Using linear induction accelerators (LIAs), which are capable of accelerating high beam currents (>1000 A) in a single short pulse.
• Because radiation treatment for cancer is harmful to all healthy cells in the patient, for decades treatment has meant low-dose radiation. 
  • What if you can control the delivery? You can deliver high, targeted dose of therapy radiation, or FLASH radiotherapy (FLASH-RT)
  • According to the article, evidence is mounting that a higher instantaneous dose rate is even more effective, while keeping the patient’s time under radiation as low as possible.
• FLASH-RT requires large, complex machines the size of gymnasiums and have so far proven impractical for clinical use.
• However, reported in the Scientific Reports paper, researchers note that LIAs powerful enough to deliver the necessary dose rate to cancer cells can be built only 3 meters long.
• The researcher’s approach:
  • LIA that produces four beamlets placed symmetrically around the patient.
  • Controlling magnets, the researchers can focus a steerable FLASH-RT beam allowing you to direct the high radiation dose
• Their approach creates a dose high enough to kill cancer cells but short enough to avoid damaging healthy cells

Bionic Eye Study Paves the Way Toward Human Trials | Neuroscience News (13:21)

• Biomedical researchers at the University of Sydney and UNSW have developed a bionic eye, which has been shown to be safe and stable for long-term implantation.
  • Pave the way towards human trials
• The system developed is called, “The Phoenix99 Bionic Eye.” 
  • Designed to restore a form of vision to patients living with severe vision impairment and blindness caused by degenerative diseases.
  • Two Implanted Components: (1) Stimulator attached to the eye, and (2) Communication module under the skin behind the ear
• The study used a sheep model to observe how the body responds and heals when implanted with the device, with the results allowing for further refinement of the surgical procedure.
• How the bionic eye works:
  • Implant both components
  • A very small camera attached to glasses captures the visual scene in front of the wearer. The images are processed into a set of stimulation instructions.
  • The instructions are sent wirelessly through the skin to the communication module.
  • The communication module decodes the signal and transfers the stimulation instructions to the stimulation module. 
  • The stimulation module then provides electrical impulses, delivered in patterns matching the camera images, to the remaining healthy neurons of the retina.
  • The triggered neurons forward the messages to the brain, where the signals are interpreted as a vision of the scene.
• Mr Samuel Eggenberger, an author on the study, discusses how the team is feeling and what is next:
  • “Our team is thrilled by this extraordinary result, which gives us confidence to push on towards human trials of the device. We hope that through this technology, people living with profound vision loss from degenerative retinal disorders may be able to regain a useful sense of vision.”
• The team will now apply for ethics approval to perform clinical trials in human patients.

Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords | McGill Newsroom (20:01)

• Scientists from McGill University develop a biomaterial tough enough to repair the heart, muscles, and vocal cords.
• The team developed a new injectable hydrogel for wound repair. 
• Once injected into the body, the biomaterial forms a stable, porous structure allowing live cells to grow or pass through to repair the injured organs.
• How could this be applicable to the medical field? Guangyu Bao, a PhD candidate at  McGill University, provides context:
  • “People recovering from heart damage often face a long and tricky journey. Healing is challenging because of the constant movement tissues must withstand as the heart beats. The same is true for vocal cords. Until now there was no injectable material strong enough for the job.”
• To test the gel they simulated it in an extreme biomechanical environment of the vocal cords:
  • Vibrating at 120 times a second for over 6 million cycles
  • Gel remained intact while other standard hydrogels fractured into pieces.
• Let’s end off with a quote from Professor Jianyu Li:
  • “Our work highlights the synergy of materials science, mechanical engineering and bioengineering in creating novel biomaterials with unprecedented performance. We are looking forward to translating them into the clinic.” 

Rocket Lab moves to challenge SpaceX and Starship head-on with Neutron | CNET (25:45)

• On Thursday (Dec 2nd), Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck provided an update on his startup’s plans for its upcoming Neutron rocket.
• Beck walked through the some of the design features of the rocket which included:
  • a “wide static base” instead of deployable landing legs
  • use lightweight carbon composite materials 
  • Retractable nose cone, to reveal the payload without detaching
  • Powered by seven of Rocket Lab’s new Archimedes engines
    • Will be test-fired for the first time in 2022
• Additionally, Rocket Lab is using a process called “automated fiber placement,” which is similar to 3D printing, for its materials. 
• Rocket Lab has only launched its smaller Electron rocket, which is designed for lifting smaller satellites.
  • Not much of a competitor with SpaceX as of yet.
• The Neutron rocket would give the company the ability to launch more and bigger satellites, and to start to approach human spaceflight and even interplanetary missions.
• There were some shots at the king (SpaceX), with Beck noting that Neutron will be designed to return for a landing at its launch site rather than landing on “a barge.”
• Beck didn’t provide an updated timeline for the first Neutron launch, but in the past the target has been set at 2024.