Researchers harvest electricity from wood soaking in water

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KTH, ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: IN NATURE WHEN WOOD DRIES OUT FROM BEING SOAKED, IT GIVES OFF AN ELECTRICAL CHARGE. RESEARCHERS AT KTH IN SWEDEN SHOWED THAT IF THE WOOD'S COMPOSITION IS NANOENGINEERED THE RIGHT WAY, THE PHENOMENON CAN BE TURNED INTO A POWER SOURCE. view more 

CREDIT: DAVID CALLAHAN/KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Water and wood may one day be all that’s needed to provide electrical power for a household. At a time when energy is a critical issue for many millions of people worldwide, scientists in Sweden have managed to generate electricity with the help of these two renewable resources.

The method reported in the scientific journal Advanced Functional Materials by researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology focuses on what naturally happens after wood is placed in water, and the water evaporates. Transpiration, a process in which water moves through a plant, is constantly occurring in nature. And it produces small amounts of electricity, known as bioelectricity.

Yuanyuan Li, assistant professor at the Division of Biocomposites at KTH, says that with some nanoengineering of wood—and pH tuning—small but promising amounts of electricity can now be harvested.

"At the moment we can run small devices such as an LED lamp or a calculator,” Li says. “If we wanted to power a laptop, we would need about one square meter of wood about one centimeter thick, and about 2 liters of water.”

“For a normal household we’d need far more material and water than that, so more research is needed."

By altering the nanoscale composition of wood, the researchers improved its properties in terms of surface area, porosity (or density), surface charge, how readily water can pass through the material and the water solution itself—all of which are factors that influence electricity generation in wood.

"We compared the porous structure in regular wood with the material we improved with regard to surface, porosity, surface charge and water transportation. Our measurements showed electricity generation that’s 10 times higher than with natural wood," Li says.

She says that further tuning the pH difference between wood and water, due to an ion concentration gradient, achieves a potential of up to 1 volt and a remarkable power output of 1.35 microwatts per square centimeter.

Li says that to date, the wood manages to deliver high voltage for about 2-3 hours, before it begins to wane. So far the wood has managed 10 cycles with water, without a decline in the material’s performance, she says.

"The great advantage of this technology is that the wood can readily be used for other purposes once it’s depleted as an energy source, such as transparent paper, wood-based foam and different biocomposites."

Highly porous nanoengineered wood for hydroelectricity harvesting was prepared through a one-step chemical treatment by immersing native wood (NW) into a water/NaOH mixture for 48 h at −6 °C.

Schematic of the formation of wood power generators. The left-hand side depicts the natural water uptake and transpiration of wood and its hierarchical structure. From the native wood, the one-step treatment is shown, leading to wood with precipitated nanofibrillated networks within the lumen and its abundance of functional groups. The final hydrovoltaic energy harvester is shown under operation. Blue arrow refers to water uptake and red arrow represents water evaporation. Red dots represent water molecules.

CREDIT

Yuanyuan Li

JOURNAL

Advanced Functional Materials

DOI

10.1002/adfm.202208933 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

ARTICLE TITLE

Advancing Hydrovoltaic Energy Harvesting from Wood through Cell Wall Nanoengineering

Fjords, small in size and number, are significant carbon reservoirs

New study shows fjords are small-but-mighty planetary ‘thermostats’ that play an important role in the global carbon cycle

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

 

IMAGE: DOUBTFUL SOUND, NEW ZEALAND, WHICH XINGQIAN CUI VISITED IN 2016, WAS APPARENTLY SO-NAMED BECAUSE ITS DISCOVERER, CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, DECIDED IF HE AND THE CREW VENTURED INTO THE FJORD DURING A VOYAGE IN 1770, IT WOULD BE “DOUBTFUL” THAT THEY WOULD BE ABLE TO SAIL BACK OUT OF THE FJORD AGAINST THE WESTERLY WIND. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

TAMPA, Fla. (Dec. 8, 2022) – If you’re worried about escalating human-induced climate change, consider adding fjords to your thank-you list during this season of gratitude.

Fjords are long, deep arms of the sea carved by glaciers that are surrounded by breathtaking cliffs. More than just a pretty face on the planet, fjords comprise a mere 0.1 percent of the surface area of the ocean yet store a whopping 11-12 percent of the carbon stored in the ocean. In other words, they sock away 18 million tons of carbon during interglacial periods, like the one we’re in now, even though they take up the space equivalent of a speck of zest on an orange.

“Fjords punch far above their weight in their ability to pull out a lot of carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the mud,” said Brad Rosenheim, geological oceanography professor and paleoclimate expert at the USF College of Marine Science, who explained that scientists only learned of this small-but-mighty role recently.

In 2015, an ocean geochemist and professor at the University of Florida, Thomas Bianchi, pioneered a Nature Geosciences study, with his graduate student at the time, Richard Smith (now at Global Aquatic Research LLC), that first opened scientists’ eyes to the powerful role that fjords play in global carbon storage, he said.

But nothing stays the same forever. A vexing question became an itch that marine scientists couldn’t scratch for years after Bianchi’s seminal study:

Are fjords the carbon storage gift that keeps on giving, or is their ability to store carbon-rich sediments deep in their bellies temporary? What will happen during the next glacial period to that locked-away warehouse of carbon when it is again exposed to oxygen as the ice returns and the waters recede?

Answering the question would require an understanding of how reactive the carbon in fjord sediments is compared to the carbon buried in other ocean reservoirs, such as at the bottom of the middle of the ocean far away from the coast, Rosenheim said. It turns out that a unique instrument Rosenheim developed, the Ramped Pyrox C-14 System, which he affectionately calls the “dirt burner,” was instrumental in solving the mystery.

The work, published recently in Science Advances, unearths a new understanding of the role of fjords in the global carbon cycle. The bottom line: they act as both carbon sink and source.

The research, which included Rosenheim and Bianchi as coauthors, was led by Xingqian Cui, now a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. Cui had visited Rosenheim’s lab several years ago when he was a doctoral student at the University of Florida working under the tutelage of Bianchi.

“In this study we showed that the carbon buried in fjords is more thermally labile than that in global sediments,” Cui said.

The team collected sediment samples from 25 fjords around the world, placed them in Rosenheim’s dirt burner, gradually increased the temperature, recorded when and how fast the organic matter broke down, and turned that into a “reaction energy” equivalent. In short, the fjord sediments were highly reactive.

What that reactivity means is that the rock-star ability of fjords to sock away the carbon is transitory, not permanent. Fjords are carbon sinks during interglacial periods and become carbon sources during glacial periods.

Akin to the thermostat in your home, fjords help regulate temperature. They counterbalance the cooling of the planet in glacial periods by adding roughly 50 parts per million of carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere, said Cui.

One key takeaway from this work is the need to focus on these smaller parts of the carbon cycle system, such as mangroves, which also store a lot of carbon, said Rosenheim.

“Fjords take up a small amount of space, but they play a significant role in modulating temperature swings from glacial to interglacial periods,” said Rosenheim. “Human-caused warming of the planet interrupts this heartbeat of natural glacial-interglacial cycles whereby our understanding of fjords and other hot spots of carbon storage becomes critical.”

For a long time, fjords were overlooked merely because of their size relative to the vast ocean basin, he said – proving once again that size doesn’t matter.

About the University of South Florida

The University of South Florida, a high-impact global research university dedicated to student success, generates an annual economic impact of more than $6 billion. Over the past 10 years, no other public university in the country has risen faster in U.S. News and World Report’s national university rankings than USF. Serving more than 50,000 students on campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee, USF is designated as a Preeminent State Research University by the Florida Board of Governors, placing it in the most elite category among the state’s 12 public universities. USF has earned widespread national recognition for its success graduating under-represented minority and limited-income students at rates equal to or higher than white and higher income students. USF is a member of the American Athletic Conference. Learn more at www.usf.edu.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Global fjords as transitory reservoirs of labile organic carbon modulated by organo-mineral interactions

Arsenic-contaminated water associated with antibiotic resistance in children, study finds

In rural Bangladesh, areas with high levels of arsenic contamination in drinking water have a higher prevalence of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: WOMAN AND CHILDREN IN BANGLADESH ARE COLLECTING WATER FROM AN ARSENIC CONTAMINATED TUBE WELL FOR DRINKING AND OTHER HOUSEHOLD PURPOSES. view more 

CREDIT: GOLAM MOSTAFA QUADREY (CC-BY 4.0, HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

In rural Bangladesh, areas with high levels of arsenic contamination in drinking water, compared to areas with less contamination, have a higher prevalence of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli in both water and child stool samples, according to a new study publishing December 8, 2022 in PLOS Pathogens by Mohammad Aminul Islam of Washington State University, and colleagues.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the leading causes of death and hospitalization worldwide. While the major drivers of antibiotic resistance are the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, natural elements such as heavy metals can also promote antibiotic resistance.

In the new study, researchers collected water and stool samples from both mothers and young children of 100 families in two rural subdistricts in Bangladesh. Families in the Hajiganj subdistrict use drinking water from shallow tube wells, which have a high concentration of arsenic, while Matlab families collect their drinking water from arsenic-free deep tube wells.  

The median arsenic concentration in the 50 water samples from Hajiganj was 481 μg/L while the median arsenic concentration in the 50 water samples from Matlab was 0 μg/L. Overall, 84% of all water and stool samples across both sites were found to be positive for E. coli. Prevalence of antibiotic resistant E. coli was significantly higher in water in Hajiganj (48%) compared to water in Matlab (22%, p<0.05) and among children in Hajiganj (94%) compared to children in Matlab (76%, p<0.05), but not among mothers. Moreover, a higher proportion of E. coli from Hajiganj were resistant to multiple antibiotics, including penicillin, cephalosporin, and chloramphenicol.

“The positive association detected between arsenic exposure and antibiotic resistance carriage among children in arsenic-affected areas in Bangladesh is an important public health concern that warrants redoubling efforts to reduce arsenic exposure,” the authors say.

Dr. Islam adds, “Heavy metals such as arsenic are more stable than antibiotics in the environment, and they continue to exert selective pressure on bacteria over a more extended period driving the evolution and expansion of antimicrobial resistance in the community. The extent to which this phenomenon drives the observed higher rates of antimicrobial resistance, as opposed to other confounders, would benefit from further study; nevertheless, it is critical to contain this environmental driver of antimicrobial resistance along with responsible antimicrobial usage in medicine and agriculture.”

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In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Pathogens: http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1010952

Citation: Amin MB, Talukdar PK, Asaduzzaman M, Roy S, Flatgard BM, Islam MR, et al. (2022) Effects of chronic exposure to arsenic on the fecal carriage of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli among people in rural Bangladesh. PLoS Pathog 18(12): e1010952. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1010952

Author Countries: Bangladesh, Norway, Switzerland, USA

Funding: The study was supported by a REACH catalyst grant, United Kingdom to icddr,b (icddr,b Grant No. GR-01507) in which MAI was the Project Lead, and Paul G. Allen School for Global Health, Washington State University (Startup grant: PG00005723 to MAI). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS Pathogens

DOI

10.1371/journal.ppat.1010952 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Effects of chronic exposure to arsenic on the fecal carriage of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli among people in rural Bangladesh

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Dec-2022

Deepmind’s AlphaCode AI system performs competitively in programming competitions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

AlphaCode – a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) system for developing computer code developed by DeepMind – can achieve average human-level performance in solving programming contests, researchers report. The development of an AI-assisted coding platform capable of creating coding programs in response to a high-level description of the problem the code needs to solve could significantly impact programmers’ productivity; it could even change the culture of programming by shifting human work to formulating problems for the AI to solve. To date, humans have been required to code solutions to novel programming problems. Although some recent neural network models have shown impressive code-generation abilities, they still perform poorly on more complex programming tasks that require critical thinking and problem-solving skills, such as the competitive programming challenges human programmers often take part in. Here, researchers from DeepMind present AlphaCode, an AI-assisted coding system that can achieve approximately human-level performance when solving problems from the Codeforces platform, which regularly hosts international coding competitions. Using self-supervised learning and an encoder-decoder transformer architecture, AlphaCode solved previously unseen, natural language problems by iteratively predicting segments of code based on the previous segment and generating millions of potential candidate solutions. These candidate solutions were then filtered and clustered by validating that they functionally passed simple test cases, resulting in a maximum of 10 possible solutions, all generated without any built-in knowledge about the structure of computer code. AlphaCode performed roughly at the level of a median human competitor when evaluated using Codeforces’ problems. It achieved an overall average ranking within the top 54.3% of human participants when limited to 10 submitted solutions per problem, although 66% of solved problems were solved with the first submission. “Ultimately, AlphaCode performs remarkably well on previously unseen coding challenges, regardless of the degree to which it ‘truly’ understands the task,” writes J. Zico Kolter in a Perspective that highlights the strengths and weaknesses of AlphaCode.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abq1158 

ARTICLE TITLE

Competition-level code generation with AlphaCode

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Dec-2022

Thank you, Tony!

An interview with Anthony Fauci

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

“You don’t want to be being disparaging of anyone, but you’ve got to come back and push back against things that are not true.” This is the approach of Anthony Fauci, who helped lead the United States’ COVID-19 response. Fauci recently announced that he would end his time in the federal government in December 2022. Before that, he sat down with Holden Thorp, Editor-in-Chief of the Science Family of Journals, to talk about science denialism, misinformation that comes from within the scientific community, and the importance of communicating science as a process. The editorial highlighting this interview also touches on Fauci’s plans for the future and the two efforts he wants to use the benefit of his experience to do, going forward. The full transcript of the interview, which is filled with valuable insights into science policy and communication, will be posted on the Science Editor’s Blog at embargo-lift time: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/physician-makes-his-final-rounds-public-servant. A PDF version of the blog is also available.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adg0283 

ARTICLE TITLE

Thank you, Tony!

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Dec-2022

Strengthen oversight of risky research on pathogens

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

A recent guidance framework by the World Health Organization “reminds us of the continued lack of awareness and governance structures in many countries for life sciences research that may cause harm through accident or misapplication,” say Jaspreet Pannu and colleagues in this Policy Forum.

 Pannu and colleagues are specifically referring to “dual use research of concern” (DURC), which outlines life sciences research that may be misapplied to pose a substantial biosecurity threat, and work proposing to enhance potential pandemic pathogens (ePPPs). The authors identify substantial gaps in biosecurity policies around DURC and ePPP studies and suggest approaches to address these gaps, including expanding the scope of pathogens to be governed by ePPP review to even those with modest virulence (like the virus that caused COVID-19 is) and making assessments of risks and benefits of DURC and ePPP work available to the public. “It is vital to get these policies right,” say the authors, “not only for the US, but to inspire policy development in other countries with growing life science and biotechnology sectors.”

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adf6020 

ARTICLE TITLE

Strengthen oversight of risky research on pathogens

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Dec-2022

Study reveals strong uplift of northeastern Tibet Plateau in late Miocene

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

 

IMAGE: NORTHEASTERN TIBET PLATEAU UPLIFT AND IMPACT ON PRECIPITATION view more 

CREDIT: MIAO YUNFA

The uplift of the Tibet Plateau is considered to be the main driving force behind evolution of the Asian monsoon-arid climate as well as biodiversity in the region. Surface elevation is the intuitive expression of tectonic uplift, but quantitative reconstruction has always been a difficult problem.

Plants are the primary producers in the surface ecosystem and their distribution is predominantly controlled by climate and topography. Pollen, i.e., reproductive cells retrieved from plants, have the advantage of large yield, easy preservation and good continuity, which is the "key" to discovering the past.

Now, a joint research team led by Prof. FANG Xiaomin from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Prof. MIAO Yunfa from the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources of CAS and Prof. HUANG Kangyou from Sun Yat-sen University and Prof. HUANG Kangyou from Sun Yat-sen University has exploited the potential of pollen in paleoelevation reconstruction.

The researchers constructed a new paleoaltimetry based on four montane conifers (Tsuga, Podocarpus, Abies and Picea), thus allowing them to reconstruct the mid-range paleoelevation sequences of the northeastern Tibet Plateau since the middle Miocene. Their research reveals that the region experienced strong uplift about 11 to 7 Ma (million years ago) that exerted strong environmental effects.

The study, "A new biologic paleoaltimetry indicating Late Miocene rapid uplift of northern Tibet Plateau," was published in Science on Dec. 8.

The researchers used a total of 3,088 surface pollen samples to create a quantitative formula that converted the ratios of Tsuga, Podocarpus, Abies and Picea into elevation values.

After passing a reliability test in five Quaternary and six Miocene sites in the Tibet Plateau, as well as one near sea level in Japan, this formula was applied to the northeastern Tibet Plateau. The researchers looked at data beginning 16 Ma in two parallel series. The results showed elevations of ~1.3 km and ~0.4 km 16–14 Ma. Elevations rose rapidly to ~2.9 km and ~2.7 km 13–10 Ma, and to ~3.6 km at 8–7 Ma, respectively.

"The basin was ~1.1 km at 16–14 Ma and uplifted to 2.4 km at 12–10 Ma according to the newly discovered plant fossils based on the Climate-Leaf Analysis Multivariate Program," said Prof. MIAO.

Moreover, the researchers used the regional climate model RegCM 4.6 to quantitatively assess the influence of altitude on precipitation. They found that when the northeastern Tibet Plateau was reduced to one-third of its current elevation, annual precipitation in this region was reduced by more than 50%, while precipitation in the Himalayas in the south and Hengduan Mountains in the southeast would increase by 50% and 150%, respectively. This precipitation eventually supported the rich biodiversity in this region.

This study shows that climate effects produced by the uplift of the northeastern Tibet Plateau have affected the climate and biological evolution of the region.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abo2475 

ARTICLE TITLE

A new biologic paleoaltimetry indicating Late Miocene rapid uplift of northern Tibet Plateau

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Dec-2022

Story tips from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, December 2022

Naturally derived materials fit for 3D printing; Next-gen hydropower starts with testing; Long-haul trucking meets megawatt-scale charging; New insights advance atomic-scale manufacturing

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS FOUND THAT MODERATE LEVELS OF ASH — SOMETIMES FOUND AS SPHERES IN BIOMASS — DO NOT SIGNIFICANTLY AFFECT THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF BIOCOMPOSITES MADE UP OF CORN STOVER, SWITCHGRASS AND PLA THERMOPLASTIC. view more 

CREDIT: ANDY SPROLES/ORNL, U.S. DEPT. OF ENERGY

Naturally derived materials fit for 3D printing

Biocomposites comprising corn stover, switchgrass prove their mettle

The presence of minerals called ash in plants makes little difference to the fitness of new naturally derived compound materials designed for additive manufacturing, an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led team found.

When mixed with polylactic acid, fibers sourced from corn stover and switchgrass yielded biocomposites with satisfactory properties for 3D printing. In fact, the presence of ash spheres appeared to improve the flow of material for extrusion printing, said ORNL’s Xianhui Zhao.

“We went as high as 12% ash content on our corn stover biocomposite and found mechanical properties like stress and strain tolerance and tensile strength to be acceptable,” Zhao said.

The research enables a use for high-ash biomass residue from biorefining that could lower the overall cost of producing sustainable fuels and materials.

Next steps include exploring more biomass materials and testing the composites in a large-volume printer at ORNL. — Stephanie Seay

Technology to retrofit nonpowered dams such as the Lake Sequoyah Dam in North Carolina could be tested before deployment to ensure performance and reliability.

CREDIT

Scott DeNeale/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Next-gen hydropower starts with testing

National full-scale test facilities could spur adoption of new clean energy technologies

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have identified a key need for future hydropower innovations – full-scale testing – to better inform developers and operators before making major investments.

In a new report, ORNL outlines the benefits of establishing a network of national hydropower testing facilities to demonstrate new clean energy technologies and encourage early adoption.

To meet the growing demand for sustainable and renewable energy, existing hydropower facilities are investing in more flexible powertrains, expanding storage capabilities and improving their environmental footprint. New small hydropower development, such as retrofits of nonpowered dams, also aims to reduce costs through advanced manufacturing methods and innovative designs. These new technologies must be proven to first adopters, and testing at relevant scale is a critical step.

“Accessible testing would encourage operators to deploy water power technologies and fuel new research,” said ORNL’s Mirko Musa. “A national testing facility can provide validation or a safe place to fail, accelerating innovation and adoption.” — Mimi McHale

CAPTION

A multiport design allows a utility to easily interface with an EV truck stop to provide fast charging at megawatt scale.

CREDIT

Andy Sproles/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Long-haul trucking meets megawatt-scale charging

Future EV truck stop designed to smooth high demand on electric grid

Transitioning long-haul trucks from diesel to electric power will require convenient ways to rapidly recharge electric vehicle batteries at power-plant scale. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed architecture, software and control strategies for a futuristic EV truck stop that can draw megawatts of power and reduce carbon emissions.

The station’s design uses solar arrays and batteries, which generate and store enough power to handle the unpredictable load swings from recharging these large power plants on wheels. The software manages the system to draw a steady, predictable flow of power from the grid. The team fine-tuned the complex control hierarchy using real-time simulation, then verified those results with electronics in the lab.

“The next phase is looking at how to coordinate multiple stations in a network along the interstate,” said ORNL’s Radha Krishna Moorthy. Paired with advances in low- and zero-carbon fuels, electrification can help reduce the trucking industry’s carbon footprint.

When an electron beam drills holes in heated graphene, single-atom vacancies, shown in purple, diffuse until they join with other vacancies to form stationary structures and chains, shown in blue.

CREDIT

Ondrej Dyck/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

New insights advance atomic-scale manufacturing

Graphene’s unexpected resilience at higher temperatures results when single-atom vacancies roam

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers serendipitously discovered when they automated the beam of an electron microscope to precisely drill holes in the atomically thin lattice of graphene, the drilled holes closed up. They expected the heat to make atoms easier to remove, but they saw the opposite effect.

“Graphene appeared impervious to the electron beam,” said Ondrej Dyck, who co-led the study with Stephen Jesse at ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences. Jesse added, “It heals locally, like the (fictitious) liquid-metal T-1000 in the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

Theory-based computations performed on the lab’s Summit supercomputer, led by ORNL’s Mina Yoon, explained the quasi-metal’s healing ability: Single atomic vacancies zip through the heated graphene until they meet up with other vacancies and become immobilized.

“Similar processes are likely to extend to other 2D materials,” Dyck said.

“Controlling such processes could help us realize graphene’s promise for quantum information science,” said Jesse.

The researchers are applying this new knowledge to guide creation of atomic-scale devices.

Media contact: Dawn Levy, 865.202.9465, levyd@ornl.gov

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JOURNAL

Composites

SFI Press publishes "Ex Machina: Coevolving Machines & the Origins of the Social Universe”

Book Announcement

SANTA FE INSTITUTE

 

IMAGE: IN “EX MACHINA: COEVOLVING MACHINES & THE ORIGINS OF THE SOCIAL UNIVERSE,” SFI EXTERNAL PROFESSOR JOHN H. MILLER MELDS IDEAS FROM THE STUDY OF GAMES, THE FUNDAMENTALS OF COMPUTATION, AND DARWIN'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION TO LOOK AT DYNAMIC SOCIAL SYSTEMS THROUGH A COMPUTATIONAL LENS. view more 

CREDIT: SANTA FE INSTITUTE PRESS

Earth is full of examples of social behavior. When individual bacteria, insects, primates, and even self-driving cars make productive choices about their interactions with other individuals, that’s sociality. We can trace social behavior back to the unicellular organisms that became the building blocks for life on our planet. And humans, by becoming social, gained a great advantage in the evolutionary race for survival. If we could rewind Earth’s clock, would social behavior emerge yet again, and could we expect to find it elsewhere in the Universe? “Probably yes,” concludes a new book from SFI Press. 

In “Ex Machina: Coevolving Machines & the Origins of the Social Universe,” Santa Fe Institute's External Professor John H. Miller (Carnegie Mellon University) melds ideas from the study of games, the fundamentals of computation, and Darwin's theory of evolution to look at dynamic social systems through a computational lens. This novel approach, he writes, is like a time machine that allows us to observe and analyze the advent of social behavior — a question that cannot be answered using knowledge from one field alone.   

“This work, at its core, embraces SFI’s way of doing science,” says Miller, who is an economist and social scientist. “The most interesting and important scientific questions are often found in between traditional fields.” 

But when working across disciplines, even seemingly simple things — like defining social behavior — can be challenging, says Miller.  “Different scholars have very different notions about whether it can occur across species, if it requires special forms of intelligence, and so on.” His ultimate definition was fairly general — “a relief to dog owners everywhere,” he says — and it allows the possibility that social behavior could have emerged early in the history of life on Earth.

To answer questions about the emergence of sociality, Miller uses finite automata, which are simple computing machines that can respond to the inputs produced by other automata and evolve inside of a computer. The computations captured by the finite automata illustrate how much interaction and “thought” it takes for a system to become social, providing rich insights into the complex and multifaceted nature of social behavior. Miller began working on the core ideas presented in the book at SFI when he was a postdoc — the Institute’s first — more than thirty years ago. But only recently, aided by dramatic advances in computer power, could he realize the project.

The book became his path to discovery: a way for Miller to explore and understand, with a deeper vision, what it takes to make a system social. It also provided an opportunity to answer questions about the origins of social behavior, which Miller had raised in his 2007 book with Scott Page, “Complex Adaptive Systems.” 

This new project offers readers unique and technical insights into the emergence of social behavior in a system. His work reveals that systems can change from asocial to social, or vice versa, as they cross certain thresholds. “If agents are very limited in their ability to process information — to make choices or be ‘thoughtful’ — or in how much they interact with one another, the system falls into asocial outcomes,” says Miller. “Surprisingly, even though these systems are driven by small evolutionary changes, the movement from asocial to social (and back again) can happen very quickly — revolutions by evolution.” 

Understanding these thresholds of social behavior might not only explain how social life came to be, but also give us insights into social upheavals such as political movements and revolutions, the rapid acceptance of new social norms, and even the emergence or collapse of an entire social order. Such events can lead to profound and rapid transitions that ultimately define our collective future.

Book Details

Book: Ex Machina: Coevolving Machines and the Origins of the Social Universe
Written by John H. Miller
$9.99 (Paperback); free PDF
Publisher and imprint: The SFI Press Scholars Series
410 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1947864429
DOI: 10.37911/9781947864429
Publication Date: December 6, 2022
Available on Amazon.com