It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, January 19, 2023
UCF medievalist receives fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities
Assistant Professor of English Stephen Hopkins was selected for a highly competitive year-long, $60,000 fellowship in support of his book, The Infernal Laboratory: Vernacular Theology and Hell in the Medieval North Sea
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
By Madeleine Mulford | January 19, 2023
A stereotype about the Middle Ages is that medieval people were obsessed with hell: manuscript images are full of demons torturing naked souls, and visions, like Dante’s Inferno from the Divine Comedy, remain enduringly popular to this day. Why were medieval people so fixated on hell?
Stephen Hopkins, assistant professor of English, argues that it’s because hell was a laboratory of the imagination, a space where people could imagine the limits of salvation and could rewrite the rules of who belonged and who did not.
Based on his research, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) selected Hopkins to receive a year-long, $60,000 fellowship to finish his book, The Infernal Laboratory: Vernacular Theology and Hell in the Medieval North Sea.
The NEH awarded $28.1 million in grants for 204 humanities projects across the nation, the organization announced last week. The fellowship program supports advanced research in the humanities, and the recipients produce articles, books, digital materials or other scholarly resources.
According to the NEH website, the agency received an average of 1,100 applications per year for the past five rounds of competition. Hopkins is one of only 70 NEH fellowship recipients this year.
“I am honored to receive this fellowship from the NEH, and excited to be among a cohort of so many other captivating, ground-breaking and important humanities projects funded this year,” Hopkins says.
The Infernal Laboratory: Vernacular Theology and Hell in the Medieval North Sea, his current project funded by the NEH grant, investigates unusual local experiments with the concept of hell in vernacular texts over the course of the Middle Ages. This malleable idea of hell emerged naturally from translations and experimentation with biblical and apocryphal literature in early Medieval England, Iceland, Wales and Ireland.
“My book project begins with a crucial question: how did medieval writers develop their remarkably vivid conception of hell?” Hopkins says. “Not from the Bible; the New Testament has surprisingly little to say about hell. Yet by the 14th century, hell had become a codified, stratified and complex space, able to be mapped out with precision in Dante’s Divine Comedy. My book tells the story of how hell was used in the Middle Ages as an experimental space in which vernacular writers determined locally meaningful formulations of cultural and theological belonging.”
Before joining UCF in 2019, Hopkins received a bachelor’s in anthropology and linguistics from Miami University in Ohio and completed a master’s and doctorate in English literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. At UCF, Hopkins teaches courses ranging from linguistics, early medieval literature and mythology. As a medievalist, his work focuses on early English literature in its North Sea context.
Though he loves teaching, Hopkins looks forward to the concentrated research and writing time the fellowship will grant him to finish his first manuscript of the book.
“This time away from the classroom will enable me to inhabit this project deeply, which is important given the ambition of the work, spanning half a dozen languages and a thousand years of literary history,” Hopkins says. “In addition to the invaluable deep time I will devote to reading, thinking and writing, this grant will allow me to visit archives to consult medieval manuscripts and early print books that will benefit my work immensely.”
Innovate UK, the Urban Future Lab, and Greentown Labs bring innovative clean energy and climatetech startups to the U.S.
The Urban Future Lab at NYU Tandon and Greentown Labs collaborate to help climate technology businesses from the UK find a foothold in the U.S.
BROOKLYN, New York, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023 – Beginning in January, the Urban Future Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, in partnership with Greentown Labs, will provide a soft landing pad in the U.S. for the third cohort of Innovate UK’s Global Incubator Programme: Clean Growth edition, which is designed to cultivate and support the launch of innovative climatetech companies with a strong potential to scale internationally to new markets.
The program annually provides eight U.K.-based businesses with the opportunity to explore the potential of the U.S. market and access to world-class mentors. This third cohort will consist of businesses in electric vehicle (EV) charging, urban logistics, distributed energy, and other technologies focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions or addressing the effects of global warming.
Startups from both cohorts one and two have expanded operations into the United States. These cutting-edge companies leveraged the Global Incubator Programme’s strong mentorship opportunities, connections to potential customers, and tactical, focused cohort curriculum to build a presence in the New York and national markets.
This year’s selected companies are:
Dodona Analytics – an EV charging startup that helps companies in the e-mobility industry make informed decisions to identify where to deploy EV charging infrastructure and operate that infrastructure efficiently with its AI-powered software platform.
Electric Miles – a B2B2C SaaS platform for SMART EV charge management, with both Android and iOS apps. Electric Miles’ software suite delivers "the right charge, at the right time and the right costs" with an awareness of driver plans and adherence to market regulations. Electric Miles’ algorithms favor renewable energy and work with the grid to balance supply and demand for grid stability and energy security.
Grid Smarter Cities – a platform to help enable a connected urban ecosystem to effect positive change for urban spaces in the UK and around the world. Grid's main product is Kerb. Kerb manages city curb space at a hyper-local level, enabling advanced bookable loading slots that give drivers more delivery certainty while reducing idling pollution.
H2GO Power – an award-winning startup specializing in safe, efficient, and smart hydrogen storage. Its hardware and software solutions are dedicated to providing clean and reliable power from renewable sources, combining technology and expertise towards a net-zero future.
ISB Global – ISB Global develops and implements software, Waste & Recycling One (WR1), that integrates, automates, and simplifies to drive greater operational efficiency and profitability for organizations that operate in the waste, recycling, clean energy, and environmental sector. ISB is committed to making a significant difference globally in how the world deals with waste and recyclable materials.
Smart Power Networks (SMPnet) – a UK-based technology company offering an advanced suite of smart solutions to support efficient energy transition and flexible control of energy systems. SMPnet helps clients (utilities, energy service companies, and asset owners) deliver effective, sustainable, and profitable asset management essential to energy integration and development of future energy distribution. Using SMPnet’s patented Omega technology, clients can monitor, optimize, and control multiple network assets in real time and ensure secure and resilient operation.
Sylvera – the leading carbon intelligence company. Companies with net-zero targets rely on Sylvera’s carbon credit ratings to ensure that the offsets they invest in are legitimate and impactful. Sylvera’s team of experts leverages proprietary data and machine learning (ML) technology to produce the most comprehensive and accessible insights on carbon projects, allowing its customers to act confidently in the voluntary carbon markets and ensure they deliver on their climate commitments.
Teknobuilt – its innovative digital platform connects and guides whole project delivery to boost productivity and real-time visibility with machine learning. Its PACE OS platform enables unified progress tracking, faster payments, carbon tracking, and comprehensive safety management. Teknobuilt brings to clients a measurably safe and accountabledata-integrated control tower that creates a responsive and faster work process with no disruptions to business as usual.
This transnational program is specifically designed to support early-stage climate-focused technologies from the UK to accelerate the path of market entry in the United States, paving the way for groundbreaking clean energy companies to attract local funding, partnerships, and customers.
Programs like this are critical to grow the clean economy and spur international collaboration in addressing climate change, all while encouraging local job creation in New York City. The selected businesses will be working with mentors and advisors over a six-month period, in preparation of establishing a formal presence in the region.
The program will conclude in June 2023 with a high-profile showcase of UK-based energy innovation in NYC designed to highlight the companies involved and focus the attention of local industry leaders, key customers, and investors. This event also provides a special opportunity to announce partnerships, highlight the regional ecosystem, and stimulate interest from entrepreneurs to engage in future programs.
With over a decade of experience supporting cleantech startups, the Urban Future Lab (UFL) scales market-ready solutions to climate challenges. It aligns with Tandon’s Sustainable Engineering Initiative, which shares UFL’s mission of tackling climate change. The Urban Future Lab’s track record includes a portfolio of 69 startups in its ACRE incubator that have raised over $1.3 billion in capital since joining the program. UFL is also home to several multi-year, sector-specific accelerators designed to catalyze the climatetech ecosystem in New York.
Greentown Labs, the largest climatetech startup incubator in North America, offers more than 200 startups the resources, knowledge, connections, community, and equipment they need to thrive. With locations in Somerville, Mass. and Houston, Texas, Greentown Labs brings together startups, corporates, investors, policymakers, and many others with a focus on scaling climate solutions.
“We are thrilled to welcome the third cohort of our Innovate UK Global Incubator Program to New York,” said Pat Sapinsley, managing director of Cleantech initiatives at the Urban Future Lab. “This program fosters international collaboration, drives innovation, and helps grow solutions that will reduce our reliance on polluting fossil fuels and mitigate the deleterious effects of climate change. With landmark federal climate legislation passed last year, the tailwinds in the climate technology space are many, and the companies in this cohort focus squarely on key legislative priorities. They will help build on the exciting momentum in this country and in New York State to create a thriving, equitable, and prosperous green economy."
“We are excited to collaborate with the Urban Future Lab and Innovate UK on this important program,” said Kevin T. Taylor, Interim Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer at Greentown Labs. “Addressing climate change is a worldwide challenge, one that requires international collaborations like those being fostered by the Global Incubator Programme. Greentown looks forward to supporting this year's exceptional cohort and seeing its startups bring their solutions to the U.S. market.”
“We are delighted to continue our collaboration with the Urban Future Lab and are excited by the new partnership with Greentown Labs to further enhance the programme and provide increased opportunity for UK organisations selected as part of Innovate UK’s Global Incubator Programme,” said Jon Hazell, Partnership Manager - North America and Global Incubator at Innovate UK.
About Innovate UK
Innovate UK is the UK’s national innovation agency. We support business-led innovation in all sectors, technologies and UK regions. We help businesses grow through the development and commercialisation of new products, processes, and services, supported by an outstanding innovation ecosystem that is agile, inclusive, and easy to navigate. For further information, visit:https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/innovate-uk
About the Urban Future Lab
The Urban Future Lab (UFL) at NYU Tandon School of Engineering is New York City’s premier innovation hub for smart cities, the smart grid, and clean energy. As an integral part of Tandon’sSustainable Engineering Initiative andNYU Tandon Future Labs network, the UFL is home to programs focused on policy, education, and market solutions for the green economy. Due to generous funding from our sponsors, UFL provides unmatched access to industry stakeholders, strategic advice, marketing and branding support, investor networks, and a community of like-minded founders. Our portfolio includes industry-leading startups in the areas of renewable energy, smart buildings, transportation and resource-efficiency. The Urban Future Lab is leading the way to a more sustainable world by connecting people, capital, and purpose to advance market-ready solutions to address climate change. For more information about UFL, visitufl.nyc and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. For more information about NYU Tandon, visitengineering.nyu.edu.
About Greentown Labs
Greentown Labs is a community of climate action pioneers working to design a more sustainable world. As the largest climatetech startup incubator in North America, Greentown Labs brings together startups, corporates, investors, policymakers, and many others with a focus on scaling climate solutions. Driven by the mission of providing startups the resources, knowledge, connections, and equipment they need to thrive, Greentown Labs offers lab space, shared office space, a machine shop, an electronics lab, software and business resources, and a large network of corporate customers, investors, and more. With incubators in Somerville, Mass. and Houston, Texas, Greentown Labs is home to more than 200 startups and has supported more than 500 since the incubator’s founding in 2011. These startups have collectively created more than 9,000 jobs and have raised more than $4 billion in funding. For more information, please visit www.greentownlabs.com or Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Screen-printing method can make wearable electronics less expensive
IMAGE: A SET OF SCREEN-PRINTED ELECTRODESview more
CREDIT: WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
VANCOUVER, Wash. – The glittering, serpentine structures that power wearable electronics can be created with the same technology used to print rock concert t-shirts, new research shows.
The study, led by Washington State University researchers, demonstrates that electrodes can be made using just screen printing, creating a stretchable, durable circuit pattern that can be transferred to fabric and worn directly on human skin. Such wearable electronics can be used for health monitoring in hospitals or at home.
“We wanted to make flexible, wearable electronics in a way that is much easier, more convenient and lower cost,” said corresponding author Jong-Hoon Kim, associate professor at the WSU Vancouver’s School of Engineering and Computer Science. “That’s why we focused on screen printing: it's easy to use. It has a simple setup, and it is suitable for mass production.”
Current commercial manufacturing of wearable electronics requires expensive processes involving clean rooms. While some use screen printing for parts of the process, this new method relies wholly on screen printing, which has advantages for manufacturers and ultimately, consumers.
In the study, published in the ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces journal, Kim and his colleagues detail the electrode screen-printing process and demonstrate how the resulting electrodes can be used for electrocardiogram monitoring, also known as ECG.
They used a multi-step process to layer polymer and metal inks to create snake-like structures of the electrode. While the resulting thin pattern appears delicate, the electrodes are not fragile. The study showed they could be stretched by 30% and bend to 180 degrees.
Multiple electrodes are printed onto a pre-treated glass slide, which allows them to be easily peeled off and transferred onto fabric or other material. After printing the electrodes, the researchers transferred them onto an adhesive fabric that was then worn directly on the skin by volunteers. The wireless electrodes accurately recorded heart and respiratory rates, sending the data to a mobile phone.
While this study focused on ECG monitoring, the screen-printing process can be used to create electrodes for a range of uses, including those that serve similar functions to smart watches or fitness trackers, Kim said.
Kim’s lab is currently working on expanding this technology to print different electrodes as well as entire electronic chips and even potentially whole circuit boards.
In addition to Kim, co-authors on the study includes researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Pukyong National University in South Korea as well as others from WSU Vancouver. This research received support from the National Science Foundation.
RETURN TO ISSUEPREVAPPLICATIONS OF POLY...NEXT Fully Screen-Printed PI/PEG Blends Enabled Patternable Electrodes for Scalable Manufacturing of Skin-Conformal, Stretchable, Wearable Electronics
All in the planning: State policies working to fix Gulf nutrient pollution
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, CONSUMER AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
URBANA, Ill. – Tackling nutrient pollution in the Gulf of Mexico is a big job, requiring coordination between dozens of states whose waters flow into the Mississippi. Although a 2011 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency memo set a framework for each state to reduce its nutrient load, it was up to the states to set their own policies in motion.
More than a decade on, critics have questioned the effectiveness of state nutrient reduction strategies, noting the still-massive hypoxic dead zones in the Gulf. In a new University of Illinois-led study, social scientists looked at the process states took to develop and implement their strategies, identifying key strengths and challenges that can inform other large-scale cooperative efforts.
Interviewing personnel involved in the planning and execution of nutrient reduction strategies in seven upper Mississippi River Basin states, the research team found the EPA memo spurred initial energy.
“States really took advantage of the policy window opened by the EPA memo and its directive to create nutrient reduction strategies at the state level. After 2011, when groups started meeting, there was a lot of energy across the region to bring people together and try to come up with innovative new solutions. Ten years later, that energy is more dispersed. So, utilizing that policy window is a key lesson for other multi-state planning processes,” says Chloe Wardropper, assistant professor of natural resource policy in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at U of I and lead author on the study.
Wardropper adds that the initial planning process was crucial in terms of inclusivity, bringing together stakeholders with many different perspectives. She says, “Planning processes might seem boring, but they are one of the most important ways that democracy functions and they can significantly impact policies that are developed.”
The researchers also identified a trend across states: Framing nutrient reduction in terms of its effects on local water bodies was more motivating than talking about effects in the far-away Gulf of Mexico.
“Roughly 40% of the land area in the continental United States drains to the Mississippi River. It is a huge watershed and hard for people to connect their actions in the Upper Midwest to negative impacts far away in the Gulf of Mexico,” notes Ken Genskow, a professor of environmental planning and policy at the University of Wisconsin Madison and one of the article’s co-authors.
While important to keep that distant goal in mind, the authors add that emphasizing impacts on local lakes and streams is an important strategy for catalyzing action. For example, Wardropper says Ohioans are more aware of and concerned about harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie than about hypoxic zones in the Gulf of Mexico. And across the region, stakeholders were more motivated by similar local concerns.
States faced common challenges in implementing nutrient reduction strategies, specifically the voluntary nature of most programs and the sheer scale of implementation needed to achieve significant results. Wardropper says that scale is one significant reason why nutrient loads continue to exceed ideal limits heading into the Gulf.
“It's going to take a really long time to see big changes because of the biophysical dynamics of such a huge watershed,” she says.
Although water quality improvement in the Gulf of Mexico remains difficult to measure, the researchers conclude that the approach – leveraging federal influence to drive policy discussions and engagement across a region – achieved a measure of success and can be used as a model for coordinated action on environmental issues across states.
The article, “Policy process and problem framing for state Nutrient Reduction Strategies in the US Upper Mississippi River Basin,” is published in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation [DOI: 10.2489/jswc.2023.00025]. The research was supported by a USDA Hatch Multistate Research Project, a USDA McIntire-Stennis award, and a National Science Foundation award.
Evolution of uniquely human DNA was a balancing act, study concludes
Many changes to the genomes of early humans had opposing effects from each other, possibly because of a delicate balance between improved cognition and psychiatric disease risk
IMAGE: SEAN WHALEN (LEFT), KATIE POLLARD (RIGHT), AND THEIR COLLEAGUES AT GLADSTONE INSTITUTES DISCOVER THAT MANY CHANGES TO THE GENOMES OF EARLY HUMANS HAD OPPOSING EFFECTS FROM EACH OTHER, POSSIBLY BECAUSE OF A DELICATE BALANCE BETWEEN IMPROVED COGNITION AND PSYCHIATRIC DISEASE RISK.view more
CREDIT: PHOTO: MICHAEL SHORT/GLADSTONE INSTITUTES
SAN FRANCISCO, CA—January 13, 2023—Humans and chimpanzees differ in only one percent of their DNA. Human accelerated regions (HARs) are parts of the genome with an unexpected amount of these differences. HARs were stable in mammals for millennia but quickly changed in early humans. Scientists have long wondered why these bits of DNA changed so much, and how the variations set humans apart from other primates.
Now, researchers at Gladstone Institutes have analyzed thousands of human and chimpanzee HARs and discovered that many of the changes that accumulated during human evolution had opposing effects from each other.
“This helps answer a longstanding question about why HARs evolved so quickly after being frozen for millions of years,” says Katie Pollard, PhD, director of the Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology and lead author of the new study published today in Neuron. “An initial variation in a HAR might have turned up its activity too much, and then it needed to be turned down.”
The findings, she says, have implications for understanding human evolution. In addition—because she and her team discovered that many HARs play roles in brain development—the study suggests that variations in human HARs could predispose people to psychiatric disease.
“These results required cutting-edge machine learning tools to integrate dozens of novel datasets generated by our team, providing a new lens to examine the evolution of HAR variants,” says Sean Whalen, PhD, first author of the study and senior staff research scientist in Pollard’s lab.
Enabled by Machine Learning
Pollard discovered HARs in 2006 when comparing the human and chimpanzee genomes. While these stretches of DNA are nearly identical among all humans, they differ between humans and other mammals. Pollard’s lab went on to show that the vast majority of HARs are not genes, but enhancers— regulatory regions of the genome that control the activity of genes.
More recently, Pollard’s group wanted to study how human HARs differ from chimpanzee HARs in their enhancer function. In the past, this would have required testing HARs one at a time in mice, using a system that stains tissues when a HAR is active.
Instead, Whalen input hundreds of known human brain enhancers, and hundreds of other non-enhancer sequences, into a computer program so that it could identify patterns that predicted whether any given stretch of DNA was an enhancer. Then he used the model to predict that a third of HARs control brain development.
“Basically, the computer was able to learn the signatures of brain enhancers,” says Whalen.
Knowing that each HAR has multiple differences between humans and chimpanzees, Pollard and her team questioned how individual variants in a HAR impacted its enhancer strength. For instance, if eight nucleotides of DNA differed between a chimpanzee and human HAR, did all eight have the same effect, either making the enhancer stronger or weaker?
“We’ve wondered for a long time if all the variants in HARs were required for it to function differently in humans, or if some changes were just hitchhiking along for the ride with more important ones,” says Pollard, who is also chief of the division of bioinformatics in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UC San Francisco (UCSF), as well as a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator.
To test this, Whalen applied a second machine learning model, which was originally designed to determine if DNA differences from person to person affect enhancer activity. The computer predicted that 43 percent of HARs contain two or more variants with large opposing effects: some variants in a given HAR made it a stronger enhancer, while other changes made the HAR a weaker enhancer.
This result surprised the team, who had expected that all changes would push the enhancer in the same direction, or that some “hitchhiker” changes would have no impact on the enhancer at all.
Measuring HAR Strength
To validate this compelling prediction, Pollard collaborated with the laboratories of Nadav Ahituv, PhD, and Alex Pollen, PhD, at UCSF. The researchers fused each HAR to a small DNA barcode. Each time a HAR was active, enhancing the expression of a gene, the barcode was transcribed into a piece of RNA. Then, the researchers used RNA sequencing technology to analyze how much of that barcode was present in any cell—indicating how active the HAR had been in that cell.
“This method is much more quantitative because we have exact barcode counts instead of microscopy images,” says Ahituv. “It’s also much higher throughput; we can look at hundreds of HARs in a single experiment.”
When the group carried out their lab experiments on over 700 HARs in precursors to human and chimpanzee brain cells, the data mimicked what the machine learning algorithms had predicted.
“We might not have discovered human HAR variants with opposing effects at all if the machine learning model hadn’t produced these startling predictions,” said Pollard.
Implications for Understanding Psychiatric Disease
The idea that HAR variants played tug-of-war over enhancer levels fits in well with a theory that has already been proposed about human evolution: that the advanced cognition in our species is also what has given us psychiatric diseases.
“What this kind of pattern indicates is something called compensatory evolution,” says Pollard. “A large change was made in an enhancer, but maybe it was too much and led to harmful side effects, so the change was tuned back down over time—that’s why we see opposing effects.”
If initial changes to HARs led to increased cognition, perhaps subsequent compensatory changes helped tune back down the risk of psychiatric diseases, Pollard speculates. Her data, she adds, can’t directly prove or disprove that idea. But in the future, a better understanding of how HARs contribute to psychiatric disease could not only shed light on evolution, but on new treatments for these diseases.
“We can never wind the clock back and know exactly what happened in evolution,” says Pollard. “But we can use all these scientific techniques to simulate what might have happened and identify which DNA changes are most likely to explain unique aspects of the human brain, including its propensity for psychiatric disease.”
Other authors are Kathleen Keough, Alex Williams, Md. Abu Hassan Samee, and Sean Thomas of Gladstone; Fumitaka Inoue, Hane Ryu, Tyler Fair, Eirene Markenscoff-Papadimitrious, Beatriz Alvarado, Orry Elor, Dianne Laboy Cintron, Erik Ullian, Arnold Kriegstein, and John Rubenstein of UC San Francisco; Martin Kircher, Beth Martin, and Jay Shendure of University of Washington; and Robert Krencik of Houston Methodist Research Institute.
The work was supported by the Schmidt Futures Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (DP2MH122400-01, R35NS097305, FHG011569A, R01MH109907, U01MH116438, UM1HG009408, UM1HG011966, 2R01NS099099).
About Gladstone Institutes
To ensure our work does the greatest good, Gladstone Institutes focuses on conditions with profound medical, economic, and social impact—unsolved diseases. Gladstone is an independent, nonprofit life science research organization that uses visionary science and technology to overcome disease. It has an academic affiliation with the University of California, San Francisco.
IMAGE: PLASMOID BEHAVIOR OF PURE HYDROGEN AND HYDROGEN MIXED WITH 5 % NEON. IN THIS EXPERIMENT, A NEW THOMSON SCATTERING (TS) DIAGNOSTIC SYSTEM OPERATING AT (AN UNPRECEDENTED RATE OF) 20 KHZ WAS USED TO (I) MEASURE THE DENSITY OF THE PLASMOID AT THE MOMENT IT PASSED THROUGH THE OBSERVATION REGION, AND (II) IDENTIFY ITS POSITION, WHICH VERIFIED THE THEORETICAL PREDICTIONS.view more
CREDIT: NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR FUSION SCIENCE
At ITER – the world’s largest experimental fusion reactor, currently under construction in France through international cooperation – the abrupt termination of magnetic confinement of a high temperature plasma through a so-called “disruption” poses a major open issue. As a countermeasure, disruption mitigation techniques, which allow to forcibly cool the plasma when signs of plasma instabilities are detected, are a subject of intensive research worldwide. Now, a team of Japanese researchers from National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) and National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) of National Institute of National Sciences (NINS) found that by adding approximately 5% neon to a hydrogen ice pellet, it is possible to cool the plasma more deeply below its surface and hence more effectively than when pure hydrogen ice pellets are injected. Using theoretical models and experimental measurements with advanced diagnostics at Large Helical Device owned by NIFS, the researchers clarified the dynamics of the dense plasmoid that forms around the ice pellet and identified the physical mechanisms responsible for the successful enhancement of the performance of the forced cooling system, which is indispensable for carrying out the experiments at ITER. These results will contribute to the establishment of plasma control technologies for future fusion reactors. The team’s report was made available online in Physical Review Letters.
The construction of the world’s largest experimental fusion reactor, ITER, is underway in France through international cooperation. At ITER, experiments will be conducted to generate 500 MW fusion energy by maintaining the ‘burning state’ of the hydrogen isotope plasma at more than 100 million degrees. One of the major obstacles to the success of those experiments is a phenomenon called “disruption” during which the magnetic field configuration used to confine the plasma collapses due to magnetohydrodynamic instabilities. Disruption causes the high-temperature plasma to flow into the inner surface of the containing vessel, resulting in structural damage that, in turn, may cause delays in the experimental schedule and higher cost. Although the machine and the operating conditions of ITER have been carefully designed to avoid disruption, uncertainties remain and for a number of experiments so that a dedicated machine protection strategy is required as a safeguard.
A promising solution to this problem is a technique called “disruption mitigation,” which forcibly cools the plasma at the stage where first signs of instabilities that may cause a disruption are detected, thereby preventing damage to plasma-facing material components. As a baseline strategy, researchers are developing a method using ice pellets of hydrogen frozen at temperatures below 10 Kelvin and injecting it into a high-temperature plasma. The injected ice melts from the surface and evaporates and ionizes owing to heating by the ambient high-temperature plasma, forming a layer of low-temperature, high-density plasma (hereafter referred to as a “plasmoid”) around the ice. Such a low-temperature, high-density plasmoid mixes with the main plasma, whose temperature is reduced in the process. However, in recent experiments, it has become clear that when pure hydrogen ice is used, the plasmoid is ejected before it can mix with the target plasma, making it ineffective for cooling the high-temperature plasma deeper below the surface.
This ejection was attributed to the high pressure of the plasmoid. Qualitatively, a plasma confined in a donut-shaped magnetic field tends to expand outward in proportion to the pressure. Plasmoids, which are formed by the melting and the ionization of hydrogen ice, are cold but very dense. Because temperature equilibration is much faster than density equilibration, the plasmoid pressure rises above that of the hot target plasma. The consequence is that the plasmoid becomes polarized and experiences drift motion across the magnetic field, so that it propagates outward before being able to fully mix with the hot target plasma.
A solution to this problem was proposed from theoretical analysis: model calculations predicted that by mixing a small amount of neon into hydrogen, the pressure of the plasmoid could be reduced. Neon freezes at a temperature of approximately 20 Kelvin and produces strong line radiation in the plasmoid. Therefore, if the neon is mixed with hydrogen ice before injection, part of the heating energy can be emitted as photon energy.
To demonstrate such a beneficial effect of using a hydrogen-neon mixture, a series of experiments was conducted in the Large Helical Device (LHD) located in Toki, Japan. For many years, the LHD has operated a device called the “solid hydrogen pellet injector” with high reliability, which injects ice pellets with a diameter of approximately 3 mm at the speed of 1100 m/s. Owing to the system’s high reliability, it is possible to inject hydrogen ice into the plasma with a temporal precision of 1 ms, which allows measurement of the plasma temperature and density just after the injected ice melts. Recently, the world’s highest time resolution for Thomson Scattering (TS) of 20 kHz was achieved in the LHD system using new laser technology. Using this system, the research team has captured the evolution of plasmoids. They found that, as predicted by theoretical calculations, plasmoid ejection was suppressed when hydrogen ice was doped with approximately 5 % neon, in stark contrast to the case where pure hydrogen ice was injected. In addition, the experiments confirmed that the neon plays a useful role in the effective cooling of the plasma.
The results of this study show for the first time that the injection of hydrogen ice pellets doped with a small amount of neon into a high-temperature plasma is useful to effectively cool the deep core region of the plasma by suppressing plasmoid ejection. This effect of neon doping is not only interesting as a new experimental phenomenon, but also supports the development of the baseline strategy of disruption mitigation in ITER. The design review of the ITER disruption mitigation system is scheduled for 2023, and the present results will help improve the performance of the system.
ARC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR TRANSFORMATIVE META-OPTICAL SYSTEMS
A new miniscule nitrogen dioxide sensor could help protect the environment from vehicle pollutants that cause lung disease and acid rain.
Researchers from TMOS, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems have developed a sensor made from an array of nanowires, in a square one fifth of a millimetre per side, which means it could be easily incorporated into a silicon chip.
In research published in the latest issue of Advanced Materials, PhD scholar at the Centre’s Australian National University team and lead author Shiyu Wei describes the sensor as requiring no power source, as it runs on its own solar powered generator.
Wei says, “As we integrate devices like this into the sensor network for the Internet of Things technology, having low power consumption is a huge benefit in terms of system size and costs. The sensor could be installed in your car with an alarm sounding and alerts sent to your phone if it detects dangerous levels of nitrogen dioxide emitted from the exhaust.”
Co-lead author Dr. Zhe Li says “This device is just the beginning. It could also be adapted to detect other gases, such as acetone, which could be used as a non-invasive breath test of ketosis including diabetic ketosis, which could save countless lives.
Existing gas detectors are bulky and slow, and require a trained operator. In contrast, the new device can quickly and easily measure less than 1 part per billion, and the TMOS prototype used a USB interface to connect to a computer.
Nitrogen dioxide is one of the NOx category of pollutants. As well as contributing to acid rain, it is dangerous to humans even in small concentrations. It is a common pollutant from cars, and also is created indoors by gas stoves.
The key to the device is a PN junction – the engine of a solar cell – in the shape of a nanowire (a small hexagonal pillar with diameter about 100 nanometres, height 3 to 4 microns) sitting on a base. An ordered array of thousands of nanowire solar cells, spaced about 600 nanometres apart formed the sensor.
The whole device was made from indium phosphide, with the base doped with zinc to form the P part, and the N section at the tip of the nanowires, doped with silicon. The middle part of each nanowire was undoped (the intrinsic section, I) separating the P and N sections.
Light falling on the device causes a small current to flow between the N and P sections. However, if the intrinsic middle section of the PN junction is touched by any nitrogen dioxide, which is a strong oxidiser that sucks away electrons, this will cause a dip in the current.
The size of the dip allows the concentration of the nitrogen dioxide in the air to be calculated. Numerical modelling by Dr Zhe Li, a postdoctoral fellow in EME, showed that the PN junction’s design and fabrication are crucial to maximising the signal.
The characteristics of nitrogen dioxide – strong adsorption, strong oxidisation – make it easy for indium phosphide to distinguish it from other gases. The sensor could also be optimised to detect other gases by functionalising the indium phosphide nanowire surface.
TMOS Chief Investigator Professor Lan Fu, leader of the research group says “The ultimate aim is to sense multiple gases on the one small chip. As well as environmental pollutants, these sensors could be deployed for healthcare, for example, for breath tests for biomarkers of disease.
“The tiny gas sensor is easily integratable and scalable. This, combined with meta-optics, promises to achieve multiplexing sensors with high performance and multiple functionalities, which will enable them to fit into smart sensing networks. TMOS is a network of research groups across Australia dedicated to progressing this field.
“The technologies we develop will transform our life and society in the coming years, with large‐scale implementation of Internet of Things technology for real‐time data collection and autonomous response in applications such as air pollution monitoring, industrial chemical hazard detection, smart cities, and personal healthcare.”
For more information about this research, please contact connect@tmos.org.au
HEFEI INSTITUTES OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
IMAGE: FIGURE 1. THE SCHEMATIC ILLUSTRATION OF THE EPITAXIAL SPINEL STABILIZER AND S-DOPING MECHANISM.view more
CREDIT: LI WANYUN
In recent years, lithium ion batteries have been widely used in many fields. Compared with traditional lithium ion battery cathode materials, more lithium ions in lithium rich manganese based cathode materials of unit mass participate in energy storage. However, in the process of battery reaction, stress accumulation and lattice oxygen loss will cause some microcracks in lithium rich manganese based materials. The migration of transition metal ions will lead to phase transition of materials and other harmful side reactions, making the actual battery performance less than ideal.
How to effectively avoid these adverse effects during the battery cycle is the key to improve the material performance and make the material truly practical in the future.
According to a paper recently published in Chemical Engineering Journal, researchers from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully prepared a high-performance cathode material for lithium rich manganese based lithium ion batteries.
The team led by Prof. ZHAO Bangchuan carried out sulfur doping and in-situ growth of coherent spinel phase synchronously on the surface of lithium rich manganese based materials combining with oxygen vacancy optimization strategies.
The epitaxial spinel coating layer cohered with the inner layer phase can effectively avoid the direct contact between the electrolyte and the active material during the battery reaction and provide a three-dimensional channel for the diffusion of lithium ions.
In addition, S doping can expand the crystal plane spacing of surface layered phase materials, reduce the energy barrier of charge transfer in the materials, and the chemical bond formed between sulfur and transition metal elements can also adjust the irreversible anion redox and stabilize the structure of materials.
At the same time, the oxygen vacancy induced by sulfur doping can also inhibit the loss of surface active oxygen and protect the integrity of the bulk phase structure.
With the multifunctional modification of the surface layer, this lithium rich manganese based material has very excellent performance, especially the cycling performance: after 600 cycles, the capacity retention rate of coin battery can reach 82.1%, the energy density of the packed full battery assembled with commercial graphite anode can reach 604 Wh kg-1, and the capacity retention rate is 81.7% after 140 cycles.
The work provided reference for further modification of lithium rich manganese based materials.
The electrochemical performance of coin cells and pouch-type full cells.
