NEWS:

“Impossible” 2D material is light as plastic and stronger than steel | New Atlas (01:53)

• Engineers at MIT have developed a new ultrathin material that’s as light as plastic but stronger than steel. 
• Polymers are versatile materials, of which plastics are perhaps the most well known examples.
  • Under a microscope, polymers usually look like squiggly threads
  • Can be coaxed into three dimensional shapes through manufacturing methods
• However, getting polymers to bind together to form 2D sheets has been surprisingly difficult. 
  • Some teams have success, but the material loses strength or other desirable properties
• MIT scientists say they’ve developed a new production method that allows polymers to form 2D sheets while keeping their strength intact.
  • Started with a monomer (one-dimensional chains)
  • Placed in a solution exposed to the right conditions
  • Molecules then grow sideways into disk shapes
  • Then they stack on top of each other with hydrogen bonds holding the layers together.
• Michael Strano, senior author of the study, talks on the process: 
  • “Instead of making a spaghetti-like molecule, we can make a sheet-like molecular plane, where we get molecules to hook themselves together in two dimensions … This mechanism happens spontaneously in solution, and after we synthesize the material, we can easily spin-coat thin films that are extraordinarily strong.”
• The new material that came about, the team called 2DPA-1.
  • extremely thin and lightweight
  • yield strength that’s twice that of steel
  • takes up to six times more force to deform it than bulletproof glass
  • completely impermeable to gasses and liquids.
• With these kinds of abilities, 2DPA-1 could make for a lightweight, durable, watertight coating for vehicles, electronic devices like smartphones and the like, or even used as a construction material.
• The team says that the production method is easily scalable, and could be tweaked to make other types of materials.

Team develops new therapy using magnetic seeds to heat and kill cancer | MedicalXPress (9:09)

• Scientists at UCL, University College London, have developed a novel cancer therapy that uses an MRI scanner to guide a magnetic seed through the brain to heat and destroy tumors.
  • Demonstrated in mice
  • Called “minimally invasive image-guided ablation,” or MINIMA
• The therapy revolves around these magnetic seeds that navigate to a tumor using magnetic propulsion gradients generated by an MRI scanner, before being remotely heated to kill nearby cancer cells.
  • The magnetic seeds are technically called ferromagnetic thermoseeds, which are spherical in shape, 2 mm in size and are made of a metal alloy
• The therapy showcased the following 3 key components in the study: 
  • Precise seed imaging.
  • Navigation through brain tissue using a tailored MRI system, tracked to within 0.3 mm accuracy.
  • Eradicating the tumor by heating it in a mouse model.
• Senior author Professor Mark Lythgoe talks about the new therapy:
  •  “MINIMA is a new MRI-guided therapy that has the potential to avoid traditional side effects by precisely treating the tumor without harming healthy tissues. Because the heating seed is magnetic, the magnetic fields in the MRI scanner can be used to remotely steer the seed through tissue to the tumor. Once at the tumor, the seed can then be heated, destroying the cancer cells, while causing limited damage to surrounding healthy tissues.”
• MRI scanners are readily available in hospitals around the world and are pivotal in the diagnosis of diseases such as cancer. 
  • The MINIMA therapy shows the potential to elevate an MRI scanner from a diagnostic device to a therapeutic platform.
• The findings of the study establish a proof-of-concept for precise and effective treatment of hard-to-reach glioblastoma, along with other cancers such as prostate, that could benefit from less invasive therapies.
• Professor Mark Emberton, lead cancer clinician in the study, discusses the importance of precisions in cancer therapy:
  • “Improving the precision of our cancer treatments is arguably one of the greatest unmet needs we have today… One in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. While treatments such as radiotherapy and surgery can be effective, they often cause unwanted and debilitating side effects such as incontinence and impotence. MINIMA may allow us to precisely target and destroy prostate tumor tissue, reducing harm to normal cells.”

Michigan wants to develop a wireless EV-charging road by next year | Teslarati (15:33)

• Michigan is planning to develop a wireless, in-road, electric vehicle charging road by next year.
• Electreon, a company from Israel, won the project’s rights to build an electric road system (ERS) in Detroit as part of the Inductive Vehicle Charging Pilot Program.
  • According to a press release, the program is a “partnership between the Michigan Department of Transportation and the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification that will deploy an electrified roadway system that allows electric buses, shuttles and vehicles to charge while driving, enabling electric vehicles to operate continuously without stopping to charge,”
• Electreon will design, evaluate, iterate, test, and implement the program, aiming for its first projects to be completed by 2023.
  • Additionally it will collaborate with NextEnergy and Jacobs Engineering Group to develop a one-mile-long stretch of dynamic and stationary wireless EV charging in Detroit. 
• The new technology, dubbed inductive charging, will charge electric vehicles whether they’re in motion or standing still. 
  • Transferring a magnetic frequency from metal coils that are buried underneath the road to some special receivers featured on the lower part of the EVs.
• It is a cool idea, and I respect trying to innovate and create a unique solution to the problem of EV charging, but I feel like you may end up spending a lot more power to charge a vehicle.
  • Mainly due to the efficiency problems with charging through induction.

Tesla Model S Goes 752 Miles on Startup’s Battery Swap | The Drive (19:44)

• Michigan battery startup Our Next Energy (ONE), squeezed 752 miles from a single charge without stopping to recharge.
  • If the transition to EVs is going to have mass adoption, driving range is key!
  • Little bit longer of a range than the Vision EQXX Concept with a 620 miles of range tested in a Mercedes. 
• According to ONE, it swapped a Tesla Model S’s battery for one of its own design—a patented technology called Gemini—then it ran a bunch of tests to prove the range possible.
  • Tesla Model S wasn’t modified and wasn’t exactly made more efficient for ONE’s test. It was simply given a new battery.
• ONE’s founder and CEO, Mujeeb Ijaz, discussed the company’s finding:
  • “We conducted two tests, the first on public roads in a trip that spanned Detroit Michigan to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and back … We recorded 752.2 miles one this run at an average speed of 55 mph and in average ambient temperature conditions below freezing. The second test was conducted indoors on a vehicle dynamometer at 23 C (73.4 F) temperature at 55 mph and we achieved 882 miles during this test.”
• Worth noting that Mercedes was also using F1-grade materials in a concept car, whereas ONE’s Gemini battery is in a “proof of concept” stage.
  • It gets the performance and energy density needed but maybe not the exact packaging 
  • Whereas the EQXX is ready to be prototyped into production use.
• The biggest takeaway is that things are clearly at a tipping point where high-mileage EV batteries will start surfacing over the next year or two. 

New ‘game-changing’ technology removes 99% of carbon dioxide from the air | Interesting Engineering (25:36)

• Engineers from the University of Delaware developed a method for effectively capturing 99 percent of carbon dioxide from the air using an electrochemical system powered by hydrogen
  • Could also enable the commercial production of more sustainable fuel cells.
• The team discovered this technology through a setback in another research project.
  • Originally working on hydroxide exchange membrane (HEM) fuel cells
  • HEM fuel cells, they found, are very sensitive to carbon dioxide in the air, making it hard for the batteries to function properly. 
• Brian Setzler, a co-author on the paper, stated: “Once we dug into the mechanism, we realized the fuel cells were capturing just about every bit of carbon dioxide that came into them, and they were really good at separating it to the other side.”
• The team leveraged the built-in “self-purging” process seen in HEM fuel cells to create a carbon dioxide separator that could be placed upstream from their fuel cell stacks.
• According to the researchers, their soda can-sized early prototype device is capable of filtering roughly 10 liters of air per minute and of removing about 98 percent of CO2. 
• Additionally the researchers found that a smaller electrochemical cell measuring 2” by 2” could be used to continuously remove roughly 99 percent of CO2 found in the air flowing at a rate of approximately two liters per minute.
• The team’s prototype is designed to scrub CO2 out of a vehicle’s exhaust, though it could also be used for a number of other applications, including aircraft, spacecraft, and submarines.
• Here is a line of thinking that I hate mentioned in the IE article:
  • Scientists from the U.S. Center for International Environmental Law went as far as writing that carbon capture was a “dangerous distraction” that could be used as an excuse to slow the transition away from fossil fuel consumption.