Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Introduction

Racial disparities, the result of structural and interpersonal racism, represent a complex phenomenon present in all domains of health care.¹^,2 Although techniques to measure the quantitative impact of structural racism on racial disparities exist, the measurement of interpersonal racism is limited in health care because of its subjective nature. The inability to measure interpersonal racism at the local level has limited the ability to improve racist patient experiences within health care. Prior work has demonstrated consumer reviews’ unique ability to highlight novel concepts not captured in traditional performance metrics and to impact consumer hospital selection.³ Consumer reviews offer an opportunity to understand subjective perceptions of racism in health care in an unstructured and anonymous format. To demonstrate the potential role of consumer reviews in studying interpersonal racism in health care, we explored reviews of hospitals to better understand how consumers perceive and report racism.

Methods

This qualitative study was deemed exempt by the University of Pennsylvania institutional review board and informed consent was not required because of the public and retrospective nature of the consumer reviews. This study followed the Strengthening the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) reporting guideline.

A study of Yelp consumer reviews on United States hospitals published between January 2010 to January 2020 was performed. Yelp was selected because it is the most widely used referral website in the world, is frequently updated, and screens out potentially falsified reviews to prevent skewed ratings.⁴ Natural language processing was used to identify all reviews containing the terms “racist” or “racism.” All collected data were publicly available and no attempts at contacting reviewers or ascertaining reviewer gender, race, or ethnicity were made. Prior work has offered a conceptual framework delineating racism into distinct levels including institutional, interpersonal, and internalized.⁵ A random sample of reviews were analyzed to understand the content, followed by a formal qualitative content analysis to code recurrent themes and unique levels of racism. Episodes of racism were further classified into clinical and nonclinical environments. Content code queries were used to better understand the associations between identified codes.

Results

During the study period, 90 786 online consumer reviews of US hospitals were obtained. Reviewer demographics were intentionally left anonymous for the purposes of this study. Of all reviews obtained, 260 reviews explicitly cited racism in 190 hospitals spread across 33 states. See sample reviews in Table 1. Among these, 179 reviews cited individual perpetrators of interpersonal racism, of which physicians (31% [56 of 179]) and nurses (53% [94 of 179]) were mentioned most. Interpersonal racism was associated with recurring themes including disrespect and unprofessionalism, incompetence, and acts of commission or omission. The most common themes included disrespect and unprofessionalism and acts of omission. See Table 2 for relative frequency of themes associated with each perpetrator category. There were 68 mentions of institutional racism, which were most frequently described as omitting standard care (26%; 18 of 68) and disrespectful (24%; 16 of 68). Episodes of racism were 2.5 times more frequently associated with clinical encounters (143 of 260) compared with nonclinical environments (58 of 260). Racism within nonclinical spaces occurred most commonly during interactions with receptionists and security guards. Nine reviews demonstrated internalized racist behavior by the consumer, primarily directed at nurses.

Discussion

This qualitative study found that (1) it is feasible to identify acts of interpersonal racism in health care using qualitative methods on consumer reviews, (2) racism in health care can involve critical organization personnel outside of the clinical staff, and (3) racism can be bidirectional, affecting both patients and hospital employees. These detailed reviews likely represent the tip of the iceberg, and future efforts to supplement this data with existing hospital-based reporting measures, such as human resources reports, may help to further explore concepts such as patient-to-employee racism. Additionally, experiences of interpersonal racism are just one aspect of racism in health care, and future work is needed to couple the subjective measures of interpersonal racism with objective measures of structural racism to establish a hospital quality composite metric of racism. This study’s findings are limited by the low frequency of reviews citing racism, limited information on reviewer race, and additional context about reported experiences.

Article Information

Accepted for Publication: July 19, 2021.

Published: September 22, 2021. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.26118

Corresponding Author: Jason Tong, MD, National Clinician Scholars, Corporal Michael J. Crescenz Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 3400 Spruce St, 4 Maloney, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (jason.tong@pennmedicine.upenn.edu).

Author Contributions: Dr Tong had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Concept and design: All authors.

Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data: Tong, Andy, Merchant.

Drafting of the manuscript: Tong, Andy, Merchant.

Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Tong, Merchant, Kelz.

Statistical analysis: Tong, Andy.

Supervision: Merchant, Kelz.

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

References

Moy E, Dayton E, Clancy CM. Compiling the evidence: the National Healthcare Disparities Reports. Health Aff (Millwood). 2005;24(2):376-387. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.24.2.376 PubMed Google Scholar Crossref

Adkins-Jackson PB, Legha RK, Jones KA. How to measure racism in academic health centers. AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(2):E140-E145. doi:10.1001/amajethics.2021.140
Article PubMed Google Scholar

Ranard BL, Werner RM, Antanavicius T, et al. Yelp reviews of hospital care can supplement and inform traditional surveys of the patient experience of care. Health Aff (Millwood). 2016;35(4):697-705. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2015.1030 PubMed Google Scholar Crossref

Ryskina KL, Andy AU, Manges KA, Foley KA, Werner RM, Merchant RM. Association of online consumer reviews of skilled nursing facilities with patient rehospitalization rates. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(5):e204682. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.4682
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Jones CP. Levels of racism: a theoretic framework and a gardener’s tale. Am J Public Health. 2000;90(8):1212-1215. doi:10.2105/AJPH.90.8.1212 PubMed Google Scholar

THEY SAID YOU SHOULD GET A HOBBY SO I DID

Blowing up medieval gunpowder recipes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Blowing up medieval gunpowder recipes — IMAGE: RESEARCHERS TESTED MEDIEVAL GUNPOWDER RECIPES IN THIS REPLICA OF AN EARLY 15TH-CENTURY STONE-THROWING CANNON. view more
CREDIT: ADAPTED FROM ACS OMEGA 2021, DOI: 10.1021/ACSOMEGA.1C03380

First used for battle in China in about 900 A.D., gunpowder spread throughout Eurasia by the end of the 13th century, eventually revolutionizing warfare as a propellant in firearms and artillery. Meanwhile, master gunners tinkered with gunpowder formulas, trying to find the ideal concoction. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Omega have recreated medieval gunpowder recipes and analyzed the energies released during combustion, revealing that the evolution of the perfect powder was a slow, trial-and-error process.

Although largely obsolete in modern weaponry, gunpowder, also known as black powder, is still used in historical weapons, fireworks and pyrotechnics. The explosive is a combination of varying ratios of potassium nitrate (or “saltpeter”), sulfur and charcoal. Medieval recipes sometimes included interesting additives, such as camphor, varnish or brandy, with obscure purposes. Dawn Riegner, Cliff Rogers and their team of chemists and historians wanted to analyze the energetics of medieval gunpowder recipes to help understand the intent of master gunners in creating these formulas, as well as to provide important technical information about early gunpowder manufacturing.

To do this, the researchers identified over 20 gunpowder recipes from medieval texts dated 1336 to 1449 A.D. They prepared the powders and measured the energies released just before and during combustion using differential scanning calorimetry and bomb calorimetry. They also tested a few of the recipes at a West Point firing range using a replica of an early 15th-century stone-throwing cannon.

In general, in the period 1338–1400 A.D., the percentage of saltpeter increased and charcoal decreased, causing lower heats of combustion, which could have produced safer recipes for medieval gunners. After 1400 A.D., the percentage of saltpeter (the most expensive ingredient) decreased slightly, while sulfur and charcoal increased, raising the heat of combustion, although not as high as for the earliest recipes. Certain additives, such as the combination of camphor and ammonium chloride, appeared to make gunpowder stronger, whereas others, such as water or brandy, did not show energetic advantages, but might have served other purposes. For example, they might have made the material more stable during transport or storage. Although the researchers have characterized the gunpowders in the lab and in limited experiments on the firing range, more field work must be done to evaluate which formulation would perform the best in historical contexts, they say.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Stevens Institute of Technology’s Pinnacle Scholars Program and The Omar N. Bradley Historical Research Fellowship | United States Military Academy West Point.

The paper is freely available as an ACS AuthorChoice article here.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

JOURNAL

ACS Omega

DOI

10.1021/acsomega.1c03380

ARTICLE TITLE

Evolution of Medieval Gunpowder: Thermodynamic and Combustion Analysis

Earless worms 'listen' through their skin

Common model species can sense sound waves without ears, providing a new tool for studying auditory sensation

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

A species of roundworm that is widely used in biological research can sense and respond to sound, despite having no ear-like organs, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute.

The findings, scheduled to publish Sept. 22 in the journal Neuron, offer a new biological tool for studying the genetic mechanisms underlying the sense of hearing.

Researchers in the lab of Shawn Xu at the Life Sciences Institute have been using Caenorhabditis elegans to study sensory biology for more than 15 years. When his lab began this work, these millimeter-long worms were thought to have only three main senses: touch, smell and taste.

Xu's lab has since established that worms have the ability to sense light, despite having no eyes, as well as the ability to sense their own body posture during movement (also known as the sense of proprioception).

"There was just one more primary sense missing—auditory sensation, or hearing," said Xu, LSI research professor and the study's senior author. "But hearing is unlike other senses, which are found widely across other animal phyla. It's really only been discovered in vertebrates and some arthropods. And the vast majority of invertebrate species are thus believed to be sound insensitive."

The scientists discovered, however, that worms responded to airborne sounds in the range of 100 hertz to 5 kilohertz—a range broader than some vertebrates can sense. When a tone in that range was played, worms quickly moved away from the source of the sound, demonstrating that they not only hear the tone but sense where it's coming from.

The researchers conducted several experiments to ensure the worms were responding to airborne sound waves, and not vibrations on the surface worms were resting on. Rather than 'feeling' the vibrations through the sense of touch, Xu believes the worms sense these tones by acting as a sort of whole-body cochlea, the spiraled, fluid-filled cavity in the inner ear of vertebrates.

The worms have two types of auditory sensory neurons that are tightly connected to the worms' skin. When sound waves bump into the worms' skin, they vibrate the skin, which in turn may cause the fluid inside the worm to vibrate in the same way that fluid vibrates in a cochlea. These vibrations activate the auditory neurons bound to the worms' skin, which then translate the vibrations into nerve impulses.

And because the two neuron types are localized in different parts of the worm's body, the worm can detect the sound source based on which neurons are activated. This sense may help worms to detect and evade their predators, many of which generate audible sounds when hunting.

The research raises the possibility that other earless animals with a soft body like the roundworm C. elegans—such as flatworms, earthworms and mollusks—might also be able to sense sound.

"Our study shows that we cannot just assume that organisms that lack ears cannot sense sound," said Xu, who is also a professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the U-M Medical School.

While the worms' auditory sense does bear some similarities to how the auditory system works in vertebrates, this new research reveals important differences from how either vertebrates or arthropods sense sound.

"Based on these differences, which exist down to the molecular level, we believe the sense of hearing has probably evolved independently, multiple times across different animal phyla," Xu said. "We knew that hearing looks very different between vertebrates and arthropods.

"Now, with C. elegans, we have found yet another different pathway for this sensory function, indicating convergent evolution. This stands in sharp contrast to the evolution of vision, which, as proposed by Charles Darwin, occurred quite early and probably only once with a common ancestor."

Now that all major senses have been observed in C. elegans, Xu and colleagues plan to delve further into the genetic mechanisms and neurobiology that drive these sensations.

"This opens a whole new field for studying auditory sensation, and mechanosensation as a whole," he said. "With this new addition of auditory sensation, we have now fully established that all primary senses are found in C. elegans, making them an exceptional model system for studying sensory biology."

Study authors are: Adam Iliff, Can Wang, Elizabeth Ronan, Alison Hake, Yuling Guo, Xia Li, Xinxing Zhang, Maohua Zheng, Karl Grosh, R. Keith Duncan and X.Z. Shawn Xu of U-M ; and Jianfeng Liu of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China.

The Neuron paper is titled "The nematode C. elegans senses airborne sound," DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.08.035

Image

JOURNAL

Neuron

Improving control for users of robotic prosthetics

Advanced peripheral nervous system decreases abnormal sensations

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

A University of Houston biomedical engineer has been awarded $2.8 million by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to improve the control of robotic limbs and provide natural sensory feedback from robotic prosthetics to amputees. Mario Ignacio Romero-Ortega, Cullen Endowed Professor of biomolecular engineering, will accomplish this by creating next-generation advanced peripheral nervous system (PNS) interface electrodes.

The peripheral nervous system consists of all neurons that exist outside the brain and spinal cord and connects the central nervous system to the rest of the body. After amputation, peripheral nerves remain active and can be connected to electrodes and used to record the movement intent from the user and provide feedback sensation from it.

“Our study will use an innovative regenerative multi-electrode interface with ultra-small recording sites using our recently developed ultra-thin multielectrode array and incorporate molecular guidance cues to influence the type of sensory neurons at the neural interface,” said Romero-Ortega. “This Regenerative Ultramicro Multielectrode Array (RUMA) is designed to discriminate between motor and cutaneous neural interfacing by combining it with molecular guidance to biologically engineer the content of sensory-motor axons at the electrode interface.”

With profound consequences, approximately four million amputees globally live with limb loss. Those fortunate enough use the electrically-powered prostheses guided by surface electromyographic signals from intact muscles in the residual limb for movement. But arm amputees often discontinue use due to the lack of sensation from the prosthetic hand, which makes it difficult to operate. Also, current prosthetic devices use electrodes implanted directly into the residual nerve, for sensory feel and prosthetic control. The method has its drawbacks including electrode failure, signal deterioration over time, and eliciting abnormal signals such as “stings or tingles” in users that discourage their use.

In collaboration with Stuart Cogan from University of Texas at Dallas and Joseph Francis at UH, this study will demonstrate the benefit of using RUMA for selective recording from motor axons. According to Romero-Ortego, this method will improve the control of robotic prosthetics by stimulating sensory axons selectively to provide a more natural control and sensation from bionic limbs.

“This advancement in peripheral neural interfaces for amputees will reduce the cognitive burden for users of robotic prosthetics and decrease the abnormal sensations associated with electrical stimulation in the PNS,” said Romero-Ortega.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute Of Neurological Disorders And Stroke of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01NS124222. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hande) 1924 / Wiene/BW/SILENT

Watch these tube-shaped robots roll up stairs, carry carts, and race one another

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

Soft robot carries cart — VIDEO: THIS VIDEO SHOWS A 4D-PRINTED SOFT ROBOT THAT SELF-ASSEMBLES WHEN HEATED CARRYING A LOAD IN A SMALL CART. view more
CREDIT: ZHAI ET AL./MATTER

Researchers have designed a 4D-printed soft robot that self-assembles when heated and can take on challenging tasks like rolling uphill and navigating a bumpy and unpredictable landscape. The prototype, which is tube-shaped, appears September 22nd in the journal Matter.

“Like an insect with antennae, the robot can surmount a small obstacle. But when the obstacle is too high, it will turn back,” says senior author Wei Feng, a materials scientist at Tianjin University in China. “The whole process is spontaneous without human interference or control.”

The robot starts off as a flat, rectangular sheet of a 3D-printed liquid crystal elastomer, a type of stretchy plastic material. When the surface beneath it is heated, the robot spontaneously twists up to form a tubule resembling a spring. The change in shape under external stimulation adds time as a fourth dimension to the printing process, making it 4D.

Once the robot forms a tubule, the contact from the hot surface induces a strain in the material, which causes it to roll in one direction. The driving force behind this motion is so strong that the robot can climb up a 20° incline or even carry a load 40 times its own weight. The length of the robot affects its velocity, with longer robots rolling faster than their shorter counterparts.

The researchers captured videos showing off the robot’s skills, including a race between differently sized robots and another robot carrying a cart. The videos also show how its behavior changes based on its surroundings, with the robot either climbing up a step or changing directions when encountering an insurmountable obstacle.

For Feng, the behavior of the robot came as a surprise. “We processed the liquid crystal elastomers into samples of various shapes through 4D printing and stimulated these samples with light, heat, and electricity to observe their response,” he says. “We found many interesting driving phenomena besides deformation.”

In the future, these soft robots may be used to perform work in small, confined places like in a pipe or under extreme conditions like a 200℃ surface. “We hope that soft robots will no longer be limited to simple actuators, which can only change shape in a fixed position,” says Feng.

###

This work was supported by the State Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key R&D Program of China, and National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Matter, Zhai et al.: “4D-printed untethered self-propelling soft robot with tactile perception: Rolling, racing, and exploring” https://www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(21)00408-2

Matter (@Matter_CP), published by Cell Press, is a new journal for multi-disciplinary, transformative materials science research. Papers explore scientific advancements across the spectrum of materials development—from fundamentals to application, from nano to macro. Visit: https://www.cell.com/matter. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

VIDEO

Soft robot rolls uphill [VIDEO] | EurekAlert! Science News Releases

Heating soft robot [VIDEO] | EurekAlert! Science News Releases

JOURNAL

Matter

DOI

10.1016/j.matt.2021.08.014

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

4D-printed untethered self-propelling soft robot with tactile perception: Rolling, racing, and exploring

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Sep-2021

Winged microchip is smallest-ever human-made flying structure

The size of a grain of sand, dispersed microfliers could monitor air pollution, airborne disease and environmental contamination

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Northwestern University engineers have added a new capability to electronic microchips: flight.

About the size of a grain of sand, the new flying microchip (or “microflier”) does not have a motor or engine. Instead, it catches flight on the wind — much like a maple tree’s propeller seed — and spins like a helicopter through the air toward the ground.

By studying maple trees and other types of wind-dispersed seeds, the engineers optimized the microflier’s aerodynamics to ensure that it — when dropped at a high elevation — falls at a slow velocity in a controlled manner. This behavior stabilizes its flight, ensures dispersal over a broad area and increases the amount of time it interacts with the air, making it ideal for monitoring air pollution and airborne disease.

As the smallest-ever human-made flying structures, these microfliers also can be packed with ultra-miniaturized technology, including sensors, power sources, antennas for wireless communication and embedded memory to store data.

The research is featured on the cover of the Sept. 23 issue of Nature.

“Our goal was to add winged flight to small-scale electronic systems, with the idea that these capabilities would allow us to distribute highly functional, miniaturized electronic devices to sense the environment for contamination monitoring, population surveillance or disease tracking,” said Northwestern’s John A. Rogers, who led the device’s development. “We were able to do that using ideas inspired by the biological world. Over the course of billions of years, nature has designed seeds with very sophisticated aerodynamics. We borrowed those design concepts, adapted them and applied them to electronic circuit platforms.”

A pioneer in bioelectronics, Rogers is the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery in the McCormick School of Engineeringand Feinberg School of Medicineand director of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics. Yonggang Huang, the Jan and Marcia Achenbach Professor of Mechanical Engineering at McCormick, led the study’s theoretical work.

‘We think we that beat nature’

Most people have watched a maple leaf’s whirling propeller seed spin through the air and gently land on the sidewalk. This is just one example of how nature has evolved clever, sophisticated methods to increase the survival of various plants. By ensuring that seeds are widely dispersed, otherwise sedentary plants and trees can propagate their species over vast distances to populate broad areas.

“Evolution was likely the driving force for the sophisticated aerodynamic properties exhibited by many classes of seeds,” Rogers said. “These biological structures are designed to fall slowly and in a controlled manner, so they can interact with wind patterns for the longest-possible period of time. This feature maximizes lateral distribution via purely passive, airborne mechanisms.”

To design the microfliers, the Northwestern team studied the aerodynamics of a number of plants’ seeds, drawing its most direct inspiration from the tristellateia plant, a flowering vine with star-shaped seeds. Tristellateia seeds have bladed wings that catch the wind to fall with a slow, rotating spin.

Rogers and his team designed and built many different types of microfliers, including one with three wings, optimized to similar shapes and angles as the wings on a tristellateia seed. To pinpoint the most ideal structure, Huang led full-scale computational modeling of how the air flows around the device to mimic the tristellateia seed’s slow, controlled rotation.

Based on this modeling, Rogers’ group then built and tested structures in the lab, using advanced methods for imaging and quantifying patterns of flow in collaborations with Leonardo Chamorro, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The resulting structures can be formed across a wide variety of sizes and shapes, some with properties that can give nature a run for its money.

“We think that we beat nature,” Rogers said. “At least in the narrow sense that we have been able to build structures that fall with more stable trajectories and at slower terminal velocities than equivalent seeds that you would see from plants or trees. We also were able to build these helicopter flying structures at sizes much smaller than those found in nature. That’s important because device miniaturization represents the dominating development trajectory in the electronics industry, where sensors, radios, batteries and other components can be constructed in ever smaller dimensions.”

From plants to pop-up books

To manufacture the devices, Rogers’ team drew inspiration from another familiar novelty: a child’s pop-up book.

His team first fabricated precursors to flying structures in flat, planar geometries. Then, they bonded these precursors onto a slightly stretched rubber substrate. When the stretched substrate is relaxed, a controlled buckling process occurs that causes the wings to “pop up” into precisely defined three-dimensional forms.

“This strategy of building 3D structures from 2D precursors is powerful because all existing semiconductor devices are built in planar layouts,” Rogers said. “We can thus exploit the most advanced materials and manufacturing methods used by the consumer electronics industry to make completely standard, flat, chip-like designs. Then, we just transform them into 3D flying shapes by principles that are similar to those of a pop-up book.”

Packed with promise

The microfliers comprise two parts: millimeter-sized electronic functional components and their wings. As the microflier falls through the air, its wings interact with the air to create a slow, stable rotational motion. The weight of the electronics is distributed low in the center of the microflier to prevent it from losing control and chaotically tumbling to the ground.

In demonstrated examples, Rogers’ team included sensors, a power source that can harvest ambient energy, memory storage and an antenna that can wirelessly transfer data to a smart phone, tablet or computer.

In the lab, Rogers’ group outfitted one device with all of these elements to detect particulates in the air. In another example, they incorporated pH sensors that could be used to monitor water quality and photodetectors to measure sun exposure at different wavelengths.

Rogers imagines that large numbers of devices could be dropped from a plane or building and broadly dispersed to monitor environmental remediation efforts after a chemical spill or to track levels of air pollution at various altitudes.

“Most monitoring technologies involve bulk instrumentation designed to collect data locally at a small number of locations across a spatial area of interest,” Rogers said. “We envision a large multiplicity of miniaturized sensors that can be distributed at a high spatial density over large areas, to form a wireless network.”

Disappearing act

But what about all the electronic litter? Rogers has a plan for that. His lab alreadydevelops transient electronicsthat can harmlessly dissolve in water after they are no longer needed — as demonstrated in recent work on bioresorbable pacemakers.Now his team is using the same materials and techniques to build microfliers that naturally degrade and disappear in ground water over time.

“We fabricate such physically transient electronics systems using degradable polymers, compostable conductors and dissolvable integrated circuit chips that naturally vanish into environmentally benign end products when exposed to water,” Roger said. “We recognize that recovery of large collections of microfliers might be difficult. To address this concern, these environmentally resorbable versions dissolve naturally and harmlessly.”

The study, “Three-dimensional electronic microfliers inspired by wind-dispersed seeds,” was supported by the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics at Northwestern University. In addition to Rogers and Huang, co-corresponding authors include Leonardo Chamorro of the University of Illinois and Yihui Zhang of Tsinghua University in China. The paper’s first authors are Bong Hoon Kim of Soongsil University in Korea, Kan Li of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China and Jin-Tae Kim and Yoonseok Park, both in Rogers’ lab at Northwestern.

CAPTION

A close-up of a 3D microflier, outfitted with a coil antenna and UV sensors.

CREDIT

Northwestern University

JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-021-03847-y

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Three-dimensional electronic microfliers inspired by wind-dispersed seeds

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Sep-2021

VIDEOS

Tristellateia seed and microfl [VIDEO] | EurekAlert! Science News Releases

Microfliers [VIDEO] | EurekAlert! Science News Releases

Dissolving microflier [VIDEO] | EurekAlert! Science News Releases

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Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Evaluation of Online Consumer Reviews of Hospitals and Experiences of Racism Using Qualitative Methods

Blowing up medieval gunpowder recipes

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DOI

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Earless worms 'listen' through their skin

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Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hande) 1924 / Wiene/BW/SILENT

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CREDIT

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