Engineers at UMass Amherst harvest abundant clean energy from thin air, 24/7

Researchers describe the “generic Air-gen effect”—nearly any material can be engineered with nanopores to harvest, cost effective, scalable, interruption-free electricity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

 

IMAGE: NANOPORES ARE THE SECRET TO MAKING ELECTRICITY FROM THIN AIR. view more 

CREDIT: DEREK LOVLEY/ELLA MARU STUDIO

Researchers describe the “generic Air-gen effect”—nearly any material can be engineered with nanopores to harvest, cost effective, scalable, interruption-free electricity

AMHERST, Mass. – A team of engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has recently shown that nearly any material can be turned into a device that continuously harvests electricity from humidity in the air. The secret lies in being able to pepper the material with nanopores less than 100 nanometers in diameter. The research appeared in the journal Advanced Materials.

“This is very exciting,” says Xiaomeng Liu, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering in UMass Amherst’s College of Engineering and the paper’s lead author. “We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air.”

“The air contains an enormous amount of electricity,” says Jun Yao, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst, and the paper’s senior author. “Think of a cloud, which is nothing more than a mass of water droplets. Each of those droplets contains a charge, and when conditions are right, the cloud can produce a lightning bolt—but we don’t know how to reliably capture electricity from lightning. What we’ve done is to create a human-built, small-scale cloud that produces electricity for us predictably and continuously so that we can harvest it.”

The heart of the man-made cloud depends on what Yao and his colleagues call the “generic Air-gen effect,” and it builds on work that Yao and co-author Derek Lovley, Distinguished Professor of Microbiology at UMass Amherst, had previously completed in 2020 showing that electricity could be continuously harvested from the air using a specialized material made of protein nanowires grown from the bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens.

“What we realized after making the Geobacter discovery,” says Yao, “is that the ability to generate electricity from the air—what we then called the ‘Air-gen effect’—turns out to be generic: literally any kind of material can harvest electricity from air, as long as it has a certain property.”

That property? “It needs to have holes smaller than 100 nanometers (nm), or less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair.”

This is because of a parameter known as the “mean free path,” the distance a single molecule of a substance, in this case water in the air, travels before it bumps into another single molecule of the same substance. When water molecules are suspended in the air, their mean free path is about 100 nm.

Yao and his colleagues realized that they could design an electricity harvester based around this number. This harvester would be made from a thin layer of material filled with nanopores smaller than 100 nm that would let water molecules pass from the upper to the lower part of the material. But because each pore is so small, the water molecules would easily bump into the pore’s edge as they pass through the thin layer. This means that the upper part of the layer would be bombarded with many more charge-carrying water molecules than the lower part, creating a charge imbalance, like that in a cloud, as the upper part increased its charge relative to the lower part. This would effectually create a battery—one that runs as long as there is any humidity in the air.

“The idea is simple,” says Yao, “but it’s never been discovered before, and it opens all kinds of possibilities.” The harvester could be designed from literally all kinds of material, offering broad choices for cost-effective and environment-adaptable fabrications. “You could image harvesters made of one kind of material for rainforest environments, and another for more arid regions.”

And since humidity is ever-present, the harvester would run 24/7, rain or shine, at night and whether or not the wind blows, which solves one of the major problems of technologies like wind or solar, which only work under certain conditions.

Finally, because air humidity diffuses in three-dimensional space and the thickness of the Air-gen device is only a fraction of the width of a human hair, many thousands of them can be stacked on top of each other, efficiently scaling up the amount of energy without increasing the footprint of the device. Such an Air-gen device would be capable of delivering kilowatt-level power for general electrical utility usage. 

“Imagine a future world in which clean electricity is available anywhere you go,” says Yao. “The generic Air-gen effect means that this future world can become a reality.”

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Sony Group, Link Foundation, and the Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) at UMass Amherst, which combines deep and interdisciplinary expertise from 29 departments on the UMass Amherst campus to translate fundamental research into innovations that benefit human health and well-being.

Contacts: Jun Yao, juny@umass.edu

                 Daegan Miller, drmiller@umass.edu

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JOURNAL

Advanced Materials

DOI

10.1002/adma.202300748 

ARTICLE TITLE

Generic Air-gen Effect in Nanoporous Materials for Sustainable Energy Harvesting from Air Humidity

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-May-2023

Small-scale proton exchange membrane fuel cells: A challenging but promising path toward clean energy

Researchers from Tianjin University offer a holistic insight into using proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) for small-scale applications

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CACTUS COMMUNICATIONS

 

IMAGE: A REVIEW BY TIANJIN UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS PROVIDES A HOLISTIC OVERVIEW OF THE APPLICATIONS OF SMALL-SCALE PEMFCS IN TRANSPORTATION, AND STATIONARY AND PORTABLE POWER GENERATION FIELDS, INCLUDING ESSENTIAL STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE THEIR EFFICIENCY AND MARKETABILITY view more 

CREDIT: KUI JIAO FROM TIANJIN UNIVERSITY IMAGE SOURCE LINK: HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.1016/J.ENREV.2023.100017

Increasing awareness of emerging environmental and climate change effects has expedited the global commercialization of clean energy. Naturally, the demand for powering up several small-scale and low power devices has increased. However, the small-scale storage of electricity has encountered bottlenecks, encouraging the possibility of generating electricity from hydrogen, using fuel cells.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are promising electrochemical cells that convert the chemical energy of fuel into electrical energy. PEMFCs are used for a range of applications, but their unique attributes, including high energy densities, low pollution emissions, and low operating temperatures, make them favorable for small-scale applications. In particular, the small-scale PEMFC (<10 kW) is appropriate for applications such as portable power generation, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), light-duty vehicles, and residential power supply. Notably, improvements in the specific power of small-scale PEMFC technology can improve this cell’s market uptake.

To understand the current trends in this field, Professor Kui Jiao and his team from Tianjin University, China, reviewed the advances and challenges in the applications of PEMFCs. Their findings were made available online on 18 April 2023, in Volume 2 of Energy Reviews. In the review article, the team discusses the operation and characteristics of PEMFCs for applications in the transportation, stationary, and portable power generator fields. In addition, they provide their perspectives on future strategies for small-scale high-specific-power PEMFC’ systems.

In transportation, the successful implementation of small-scale PEMFCs in UAVs, underwater vehicles, and light traction vehicles can make them an excellent alternative power source.

The team also added that higher power density, longer endurance, mild hybrid architecture, and PEMFC range extenders are more suitable for small transportation applications.

Small-scale PEMFCs are also used for stationary applications, such as powering up uninterrupted power supply and residential co-generation systems. The pre-requisites of these power systems include reliability, durability, and affordability. In this regard, the research team concluded that the PEMFC could be used as a renewable backup power source due to its high efficiency and low pollution emissions. They also addressed fuel flexibility and reliability issues.

One must note that although lithium (Li)-ion battery systems dominate the market in portable applications, small-scale PEMFCs have additional benefits. Portable (outdoor) power generation is best suited for small-scale PEMFCs due to their longer duration, high energy density, off-grid power generation, and adaptability.

“Although several pioneering studies have been conducted to promote the application of small PEMFCs, further advancements are essential to meet the requirements for practical applications,” adds Professor Jiao. Future challenges in the development of small-scale PEMFCs will primarily be associated with optimizing fuel cell materials and the system design to obtain a high-specific power fuel cell.

Lightweight components play a crucial role in achieving advanced, high-performance PEMFC technologies, by optimizing the structural material design for greater reliability. The response time of PEMFCs can be decreased by using lightweight hybrid power sources for instant power surge.

Furthermore, proper energy management strategies for hybrid power sources help improve their efficiency and dynamics. Professor Jiao further adds, “A hydrogen storage system with a high hydrogen storage density, quick hydrogen release and charge rates, strong reversibility, and improved safety is crucial for increasing the overall device-level energy density of small-scale PEMFC systems.”

Hence, a compressed gas storage tank of large volume would not be beneficial for small-scale PEMFC applications where space and weight are important parameters. “Conversely, a long-term hydrogen storage system for small-scale PEMFC applications may instead be based on materials such as complex hydrides and metal storage systems with high volumetric densities,” Professor Jiao concludes.

 

***

 

Reference

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enrev.2023.100017

 

Authors: Zixuan Wanga,b, Zhi Liuaa,b, Linhao Fana,b, Qing Dua,b, and Kui Jiaoa,b

 

Affiliations:

aState Key Laboratory of Engines, Tianjin University, 135 Yaguan Road, Tianjin, China

bNational Industry-Education Platform of Energy Storage, Tianjin University, 135 Yaguan Road, Tianjin, China

 

About Professor Kui Jiao from Tianjin University
Dr. Kui Jiao currently works as a professor in the State Key Laboratory of Engines at the Tianjin University, China. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2011 from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in mechanical engineering. His research interests include low and intermediate temperature fuel cells, hydrogen storage device, lithium-ion battery, thermoelectric generator, and turbocharger compressor. He has published over 200 international journal papers and several book chapters, with more than 11746 citations and an h-index of 62. He also received the National Science Fund for Outstanding Young Scholars in 2016.

 

About Energy Reviews
Energy Reviews is an international, interdisciplinary, high-quality, open-access academic journal in the field of energy, which is sponsored by Shenzhen University and published by the Elsevier publishing group. Energy Reviews invites high-quality reviews at the forefront of research in a broad range of topics covering not only materials, chemistry, and engineering, but also new energy devices, applications, methods, tools, theories, policy and management. The following areas will be prioritized, but not exclusively:

1, New theories, methods and technologies for energy research

2, Interdisciplinary research of materials, physics, chemistry and biology in energy

3, Low-carbon utilization of fossil fuel and CCUS

4, Advanced hydrogen, renewable energy and energy storage technologies

5, Exploration and applications of novel energy conversion

6, Applications of AI, big data in energy

Website: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/energy-reviews

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JOURNAL

Energy Reviews

DOI

10.1016/j.enrev.2023.100017 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Application Progress of Small-scale Proton exchange Membrane Fuel Cell

CHOP researchers comprehensively assess the safety of using your head in youth soccer

While a small number of relatively low impact soccer headers did not have detrimental effects, teen soccer players should still be trained to head the ball safely

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA

Philadelphia, May 24, 2023 – Repeatedly heading a soccer ball has been previously associated with negative long-term brain health for professional players. However, in a new study from researchers at the Minds Matter Concussion Program at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), a small number of repeated soccer headers equivalent to a throw-in did not cause immediate neurophysiological deficits for teens, suggesting that limited soccer heading exposure in youth sports may not result in irreversible harm if players are properly trained.

The findings, which represent the most comprehensive real-time study of soccer headers in adolescent athletes, were published in the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering.

For some professional athletes, repeated head loading in sports – using your head as part of the game – is associated with negative long-term brain health even when there are no initial clinical symptoms. Despite the awareness of long-term consequences, short-term neurophysiological issues after repeated head impacts like soccer heading are poorly understood in youth athletes. Some studies have identified potential issues across an entire sports season. This study examined the consequences of repeated head impacts shortly after the heading exposure with a battery of six different tests to examine a wider variety of potential clinical implications.

In 2015, the US Soccer Federation implemented limits on soccer headers for teens during practice – no more than 30 minutes of header practice time and no more than 15 to 20 headers per week. The English Premier League also passed guidelines restricting the number of high-force headers to 10 in a single practice per week. This lab-based study simulated these limits conducting 10 repeated soccer headers within a single session with experienced teenage players. Based on their findings, researchers determined that this practice did not result in acute neurophysiological issues, as assessed by a comprehensive exam. The study did not assess the safety of regular soccer headers over the course of a season or scholastic career.

“Soccer is a sport where intentionally using your head to hit the ball is an integral part of the game, and concern over its long-term effects has parents, caregivers and coaches understandably concerned,” said first study author Colin Huber, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at Emory University who conducted this research while with the Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) at CHOP. “We wanted to simulate these effects in a controlled laboratory setting and build upon the work of prior studies to quantitatively assess the neurophysiological effects of repeated soccer heading.”

In this study, 19 participants (17 male, 2 female) between 13 and 18 years old were assigned to either a frontal heading group (directing the ball back to where it came from), an oblique heading group (directing the ball to the right) or a kicking control group. These participants completed neurophysiological assessments immediately prior to, immediately after and approximately 24 hours after completing 10 headers or kicks. These assessments included multiple eye movement tracking, pupil response and balance tests.

The study ultimately found no neurophysiological issues in either group when compared with the kicking control group, even when taking the six different assessments into account. However, oblique headers resulted in higher levels of angular head motion.  Angular motion is associated with concussions and other brain injuries, suggesting that players should be properly trained to head the ball in a frontal fashion to reduce the risk of injury.

“This study represents the most comprehensive examination of the acute neurophysiological effects of soccer headers on youth to date, providing us with meaningful information regarding the safety of headers on the field,” said senior study author Kristy Arbogast, PhD, Co-Scientific Director at CIRP and research director of the Minds Matter Concussion Program at CHOP. “We need to be clear that there still may be long-term consequences for repeated soccer headers over the course of an athletic career, but it appears that a small number of headers in a given session does not pose an immediate risk to properly trained youth athletes.”

This study was supported by the National Institute of Neurologic Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health grant R01NS097549 and internal funds from CHOP.

Huber et al, “Neurophysiological Effects of Repeated Soccer Heading in Youth.” J Biomech Eng. Online May 22, 2023. DOI: 10.1115/1.4062423.

About Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: A non-profit, charitable organization, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation’s first pediatric hospital. Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care, training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals, and pioneering major research initiatives, the 595-bed hospital has fostered many discoveries that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is among the largest in the country. The institution has a well-established history of providing advanced pediatric care close to home through its CHOP Care Network, which includes more than 50 primary care practices, specialty care and surgical centers, urgent care centers, and community hospital alliances throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as an inpatient hospital with a dedicated pediatric emergency department in King of Prussia. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public service programs have brought Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recognition as a leading advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit https://www.chop.edu. 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Biomechanical Engineering

DOI

10.1115/1.4062423 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Neurophysiological Effects of Repeated Soccer Heading in Youth

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-May-2023

Where do our limbs come from?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS

For Immediate Release

Where Do Our Limbs Come From?

            AURORA, Colo. (May 24, 2023) – An international collaboration that includes scientists from the University of Colorado School of Medicine has uncovered new clues about the origin of paired appendages – a major evolutionary step that remains unresolved and highly debated.

The researchers describe their study in an article published today in the journal Nature.

“This has become a topic that comes with bit of controversy, but it’s really a very fundamental question in evolutionary biology: Where do our limbs come from?” says co-corresponding author Christian Mosimann, PhD, associate professor and Johnson Chair in the Department of Pediatrics, Section of Developmental Biology at CU School of Medicine.

That question – where do our limbs come from? – has been subject of debate for more than 100 years. In 1878, German scientist Carl Gegenbaur proposed that paired fins derived from a source called the gill arch, which are bony loops present in fish to support their gills. Other scientists favor the lateral fin fold hypothesis, concluding that lateral fins on the top and bottom of the fish are the source of paired fins.

“It is a highly active research topic because it’s been an intellectual challenge for such a long time,” Mosimann says. “Many big labs have studied the various aspects of how our limbs develop and have evolved.” Among those labs are Dr. Mosimann’s colleagues and co-authors, Tom Carney, PhD, and his team at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Chasing the odd cells

For Mosimann, the inquiry into where limbs come from is an offshoot of other research conducted by his laboratory on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus. In his laboratory, his team uses zebrafish as a model to understand the development from cells to organs. He and his team study how cells decide their fate, looking for explanations for how development can go awry leading to congenital anomalies, in particular cardiovascular and connective tissue diseases.

Along the way, Mosimann and his lab team observed how a peculiar cell type with features of connective tissue cells, so-called fibroblasts that share a developmental origin with the cardiovascular system, migrated into specific developing fins of the zebrafish. It turns out that these cells may support a connection between the competing theories of paired appendage evolution.

“We always knew these cells were odd,” he says. “There were these fibroblast-looking cells that went into the so-called ventral fin, the fin at the belly of the developing zebrafish. Similar fibroblast cells didn’t crawl into any other fin except the pectoral fin, which are the equivalent of our arms. So we kept noticing these peculiar fibroblasts, and we could never make sense of what these were for many years.”

The Mosimann lab has developed several techniques to track cell fates during development in pursuit of their main topic, which is an improved understanding of how the embryonic cell layer, called the lateral plate mesoderm, contributes to diverse organs. The lateral plate mesoderm is the developmental origin of the heart, blood vessels, kidneys, connective tissue, as well as major parts of limbs.

The paired fins that form the equivalent of our arms and legs are seeded by cells from the lateral plate mesoderm, while other fins are not. Understanding how these particular fins became more limb-like has been at the core of a long-standing debate.

Developing new theories

Hannah Moran, who is pursuing her PhD in the Cell Biology, Stem Cells and Development program in the Mosimann lab, adapted a method of tracking lateral plate mesoderm cells that contribute to heart development so that researchers could track the peculiar fibroblasts related to limb development.

“My primary research project focuses on the development of the heart rather than limb development,” Moran says, “but there was a genetic technique that I had adapted to map early heart cells, and so we were able to implement that into mapping where the mysterious cells of the ventral fin came from. And turns out, they are also from the lateral plate mesoderm.”

This crucial discovery provides a new puzzle piece to the big picture of how we evolved our arms and legs. Increasing evidence supports a hypothesis of paired appendage evolution called the dual origin theory.

“Our data fit nicely into this combined theory, but it can also stand on its own with the lateral fin theory,” says Robert Lalonde, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the Mosimann lab. “While paired appendages arise from the lateral plate mesoderm, that does not rule out an ancient connection to unpaired, lateral fins.”

By observing the mechanisms of embryonic development and comparing the anatomy of existing species, research groups like Mosimann’s can develop theories on how embryonic structures may have evolved or have been modified over time.  

“The embryo has features that are still ancient remnants that they have not lost yet, which provides insight into how animals have evolved,” Mosimann says. “We can use the embryo to learn more about features that just persist today, allowing us to kind of travel back in time,” Mosimann says. “We see that the body has a fundamental, inherent propensity to form bilateral, two-sided structures. Our study provides a molecular and genetic puzzle piece to resolve how we came to have limbs. It adds to this 100-plus year discussion, but now we have molecular insights.”

International collaboration

Collaborations with colleagues in laboratories across the country and around the world are another important part of the study. Those scientists bring additional specializations and contribute data from other models, including paddlefish, African clawed frogs, and a variant of split-tail goldfish called Ranchu, to study embryonic development.

“There are labs on this on this paper that work on musculoskeletal diseases, toxicology, fibrosis. We work on cardiovascular, congenital anomalies, cardiopulmonary anomalies, limb development, all related to our interest on the lateral plate mesoderm,” says Mosimann. “And then together, you get to make such fundamental discoveries. And that's where team science enables us to do something that is more than just the sum of the parts.”

For all the considerable work and significance of the study, the Mosimann team recognizes that it is a key step, but not the end of the journey in the debate about paired appendages.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve solved the question, or even disproven either existing theory,” says Lalonde. “Rather, we’ve contributed meaningful data towards answering a major evolutionary question.”

 

About the University of Colorado School of Medicine

 

Faculty at the University of Colorado School of Medicine work to advance science and improve care. These faculty members include physicians, educators and scientists at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, Children’s Hospital Colorado, Denver Health, National Jewish Health, and the Veterans Affairs Eastern Colorado Health Care System. The school is located on the Anschutz Medical Campus, one of four campuses in the University of Colorado system.

 

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-023-06100-w 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

A median fin derived from the lateral plate mesoderm and the origin of paired fins

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-May-2023

Designing a next generation hypersonic demonstrator

Exploring the boundaries of hypersonic missile system performance

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON

 

IMAGE: BERND CHUDOBA view more 

CREDIT: UT ARLINGTON

Today, large commercial jets fly around 580 mph. The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird introduced in 1966 is the fastest supersonic jet vehicle in the world, reaching speeds of more than 2,200 mph, nearly four times faster than a commercial jet.

The fastest rocket-powered hypersonic vehicle developed in the late 1960s carrying a human has been the North American X-15, reaching a top speed of 4,520 mph, twice that of the SR-71.

Recently, the U.S. Air Force has awarded a contract to engineer Project Mayhem with the goal to reach 4,603 mph. Now, imagine a vehicle that could fly much faster, maybe even above 6,905 mph, which is beyond nine times the speed of sound.

The University of Texas at Arlington’s Aerospace Vehicle Design (AVD) Laboratory has a team of graduate aerospace engineering researchers that has been tasked to design a military hypersonic missile system to fly at speeds previously only encountered by NASA’s X-43A, Hyper-X. This system would fly faster and further than any other air-breathing vehicle in history. The development of the conceptual design of this hypersonic missile at UTA will showcase how every university should approach hypersonic vehicle design and forecasting.

Bernd Chudoba, UTA aerospace engineering professor and director/founder of the AVD Laboratory 20 years ago, is leading the high-pressure five-month project through a grant from Parallax Advanced Research. The title of the project is “Solution Space Screening for Leap Forward Initiative for Hypersonic Vehicle Conceptual Analysis, Design, and Technology Forecasting.”

“This is a monumental opportunity for UT Arlington,” Chudoba said. “Parallax is pursuing a novel high-speed concept that will offer the warfighter a new capability to meet mission objectives. Overall, we will determine and validate the most promising concepts and the current technology needed for the next generation of hypersonic missile systems to fly.”

The AVD Laboratory is the only place in the United States to accomplish this task, said officials with Boeing, NASA and the USAF. It offers an impressive history of aerospace vehicle design research experience addressing innovative methods and processes focusing on forecasting hypersonic vehicles.

Chudoba has worked with the industry Future Project Offices of EADS Airbus GmbH, Airbus UK (British Aerospace), Airbus France (Aérospatiale Aéronautique), Airbus Industrie and Fairchild Dornier in Europe. The AVD Laboratory was founded in 2002 with the sole goal of advancing the stagnant industry Future Project Office capabilities worldwide. This focus is not typically found in a university environment. As such, customers and partners rely on the trailblazing research environment the AVD Laboratory delivers.

Chudoba’s research focuses on the multi-disciplinary and multi-fidelity aerospace science and engineering domains, which are targeting professional applications. The focus within the vehicle design process surrounds the conceptual design phase and transition into the preliminary design phase.

The team’s motivation is the advancement of the unique “digital engineering” synthesis methodology and AI software AVDS (Aerospace Vehicle Design Synthesis), developed by the AVD Laboratory during the past 20 years.

In collaboration with NASA, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and others, the AVD Laboratory focuses on the verification, application and advancement of AVDS. These collaborations have produced the most advanced hypersonic vehicle design framework in the United States, enabling unrivaled design-to-mission capabilities.

“What the United States is trying to do is not only protect its homeland but also get ahead and beyond America’s rivals in this field,” Chudoba said. “The Parallax-UTA Partnership is structured to design, build and fly an experimental hypersonic missile faster and further than anyone else, not just put it in a hypersonic wind tunnel.”

Erian Armanios, professor, and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, said Chudoba’s project has the opportunity to be expanded in the future.

“‘Think hypersonic’; that’s our adage as we equip our students to compete and win this race,” Armanios said.

NASA data could lead to more accurate weather forecasts

UTA project uses existing NASA data to make better predictions about extreme weather

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON

 

IMAGE: YU ZHANG view more 

CREDIT: UT ARLINGTON

A University of Texas at Arlington civil engineering researcher will use a NASA grant to help forecasters better predict extreme weather events using a variety of existing NASA data sources.

Yu Zhang, associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, said the $638,000 grant will use ocean circulation data, atmospheric conditions and current weather information to make longer-range forecasting more reliable. Having a more accurate forecast could help officials make better decisions about the state’s water resources—for example, knowing when to release water from reservoirs.

“Using NASA data, we want to increase the accuracy of forecasts for extreme wet and dry conditions,” Zhang said. “It takes two to three weeks for water released from reservoirs to travel from North Texas to the coast. Reservoir operators have to take that into account when releasing water up here because it has an impact south of us. We will determine if the data we have available can help us predict those events. We have to have a better forecast lead time.”

The project is titled “Improving Subseasonal to Seasonal (S2S) Hydrometeorological Predictions for the State of Texas Through Synergistic Infusion of Remotely Sensed SST (Simulation and Software Technology) and Land Surface Variables to a Coupled Modeling System.”

S2S refers to a range of forecast lead times associated with weather and climate forecasts. Currently, there is a gap in the capabilities of operational forecast systems that limits the accuracy of forecasts at the S2S range. A consortium of federal agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has empowered NASA to place a high priority on improving S2S forecasts to address existing and emerging needs in various economic sectors, including water supply. 

Typical weather forecasting spans 14-15 days, while climate forecasting generally is for the next three to six months under average conditions. Existing NASA data could help improve S2S forecasts.

“NASA wants to see how the data collected through existing missions can be used to improve forecasts to guide their future missions,” Zhang said.

He believes the new information his project produces could help determine the potential impacts of land surface temperature and soil moisture in the spring on the emergence and intensity of summertime droughts.

“Over the last 10 years, we’ve had more extreme weather events, and so we should be able to harness all that data to understand the contributions from land and ocean to the occurrence of these events,” Zhang said.

Melanie Sattler, interim chair and professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, said Zhang’s work is needed in Texas because the state’s weather is so varied.

“Finding out how NASA data can be used to improve forecasts will inform the development of future weather models whose forecasts will contribute to saving lives and property,” she said.

New method predicts extreme events more accurately

Columbia Engineers develop machine-learning algorithm to better understand and mitigate the impact of extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent in our warming climate.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE

 

IMAGE: A MASSIVE, DARK RAIN CLOUD APPROACHING A RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD view more 

CREDIT: BROKENTACO/FLICKR (HTTPS://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/BROKENTACO/2781330996/IN/PHOTOSTREAM/)

New York, NY—May 23, 2023—With the rise of extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent in our warming climate, accurate predictions are becoming more critical for all of us, from farmers to city-dwellers to businesses around the world. To date, climate models have failed to accurately predict precipitation intensity, particularly extremes. While in nature, precipitation can be very varied, with many extremes of precipitation, climate models predict a smaller variance in precipitation with a bias toward light rain.

Missing piece in current algorithms: cloud organization

Researchers have been working to develop algorithms that will improve prediction accuracy but, as Columbia Engineering climate scientists report, there has been a missing piece of information in traditional climate model parameterizations--a way to describe cloud structure and organization that is so fine-scale it is not captured on the computational grid being used. These organization measurements affect predictions of both precipitation intensity and its stochasticity, the variability of random fluctuations in precipitation intensity. Up to now, there has not been an effective, accurate way to measure cloud structure and quantify its impact.

A new study from a team led by Pierre Gentine, director of the Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP) Center, used global storm-resolving simulations and machine learning to create an algorithm that can deal separately with two different scales of cloud organization: those resolved by a climate model, and those that cannot be resolved as they are too small. This new approach addresses the missing piece of information in traditional climate model parameterizations and provides a way to predict precipitation intensity and variability more precisely.

“Our findings are especially exciting because, for many years, the scientific community has debated whether to include cloud organization in climate models,” said Gentine, Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics in the Departments of Earth and Environmental Engineering and Earth Environmental Sciences and a member of the Data Science Institute. “Our work provides an answer to the debate and a novel solution for including organization, showing that including this information can significantly improve our prediction of precipitation intensity and variability.”

Using AI to design neural network algorithm

Sarah Shamekh, a PhD student working with Gentine, developed a neural network algorithm that learns the relevant information about the role of fine-scale cloud organization (unresolved scales) on precipitation. Because Shamekh did not define a metric or formula in advance, the model learns implicitly--on its own--how to measure the clustering of clouds, a metric of organization, and then uses this metric to improve the prediction of precipitation. Shamekh trained the algorithm on a high-resolution moisture field, encoding the degree of small-scale organization. 

“We discovered that our organization metric explains precipitation variability almost entirely and could replace a stochastic parameterization in climate models,” said Shamekh, lead author of the study, published May 8, 2023, by PNAS. “Including this information significantly improved precipitation prediction at the scale relevant to climate models, accurately predicting precipitation extremes and spatial variability.”

Machine-learning algorithm will improve future projections

The researchers are now using their machine-learning approach, which implicitly learns the sub-grid cloud organization metric, in climate models. This should significantly improve the prediction of precipitation intensity and variability, including extreme precipitation events, and enable scientists to better project future changes in the water cycle and extreme weather patterns in a warming climate. 

Future work

This research also opens up new avenues for investigation, such as exploring the possibility of precipitation creating memory, where the atmosphere retains information about recent weather conditions, which in turn influences atmospheric conditions later on, in the climate system. This new approach could have wide-ranging applications beyond just precipitation modeling, including better modeling of the ice sheet and ocean surface.

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About the Study

The study is titled  “Implicit learning of convective organization explains precipitation stochasticity.”

Authors are: Sara Shamekh, Kara Lamb, Yu Huang, Pierre Gentine

Department of Earth of Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

The study was supported by: SS and PG acknowledge funding from European Research Council grant USMILE, from Schmidt Future project M2LiNES and from the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center (STC) Learning the Earth with Artificial intelligence and Physics (LEAP), Award  2019625 - STC. KDL acknowledges support from LEAP and DOE Grant DE-SC0022323 ``Discovering Physically Meaningful Structures from Climate Extreme Data."

The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interest.

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LINKS:

Paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216158120 

DOI:  10.1073/pnas.2216158120

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2216158120 

ARTICLE TITLE

Implicit learning of convective organization explains precipitation stochasticity

Lost since 1362: Researchers discover the church of a sunken medieval trading place

Joint scientific project locates the sunken church of Rungholt in the North Frisian Wadden Sea in Germany

Business Announcement

JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ

 

IMAGE: A LIGHTWEIGHT SURVEY VEHICLE PROVIDES LARGE-SCALE MAGNETIC MAPPING OF CULTURAL TRACES HIDDEN BENEATH THE PRESENT-DAY TIDAL FLAT SURFACE. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO/©: DIRK BIENEN-SCHOLT

-- JOINT PRESS RELEASE OF THE STATE ARCHAEOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN, THE CENTER FOR BALTIC AND SCANDINAVIAN ARCHAEOLOGY, KIEL UNIVERSITY, AND JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITY MAINZ --

The medieval trading center of Rungholt, which is today located in the UNESCO Wadden Sea World Heritage Site and currently the focus of interdisciplinary research, drowned in a storm surge in 1362. Using a combination of geoscientific and archaeological methods, researchers from Kiel University (CAU), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA), and the State Archaeology Department Schleswig-Holstein (ALSH), both in Schleswig, have now succeeded in locating the site of the Rungholt church. Thus, they can now finally clarify a much-discussed research question that has been going on for over 100 years.

Interdisciplinary cooperation as the key to success

Within the framework of two interdisciplinary projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), i.e., the RUNGHOLT project and the Wadden Sea project in the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence, research has been conducted for several years on the medieval cultural landscape disappeared in the Wadden Sea. Well known for its mythically exaggerated destruction and an archaeological find situation unique in Europe, Rungholt is a prominent example of the effects of massive human intervention in the northern German coastal region that continue to this day.

The key to the success of the work lies in a close interdisciplinary collaboration. "Settlement remains hidden under the mudflats are first localized and mapped over a wide area using various geophysical methods such as magnetic gradiometry, electromagnetic induction, and seismics," explained Dr. Dennis Wilken, geophysicist at Kiel University. And Dr. Hanna Hadler from the Institute of Geography at Mainz University, added: "Based on this prospection, we selectively take sediment cores that not only allow us to make statements about spatial and temporal relationships of settlement structures, but also about landscape development." Archaeological investigations at selected sites provide unique insights into the life of the North Frisian settlers and repeatedly bring to light significant new finds from the tidal flats.

First large-scale reconstruction of Rungholt's drowned cultural landscape with a central church

In May 2023, a previously unknown two kilometer long chain of medieval terps, which are artificial settlement mounds, was recorded by geophysical prospection near Hallig Südfall. One of these terps shows structures that can undoubtedly be interpreted as the foundations of a church 40 meters to 15 meters in size. First corings and excavations have provided initial insights into the structure and foundations of the sacred building.

"The find thus joins the ranks of the large churches of North Frisia," stated Dr. Bente Sven Majchczack, archaeologist in the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence at Kiel University. Dr Ruth Blankenfeldt, archaeologist at ZBSA, added: "The special feature of the find lies in the significance of the church as the center of a settlement structure, which in its size must be interpreted as a parish with superordinate function."

So far, the finds in the area investigated, which covers more than ten square kilometers, include 54 terps, systematic drainage systems, a sea dike with a tidal gate harbor as well as two sites of smaller churches – and now also a large main church. The settlement area found must therefore be regarded as one of the historically reported main sites of the medieval administrative district of Edomsharde.

Erosion threatens cultural remains

In addition to the unique archival character that the mudflats have for the reconstruction of Rungholt's cultural landscape, the project results of recent years also show the extreme endangerment of the cultural traces that are over 600 years old. "Around Hallig Südfall and in other mudflats, the medieval settlement remains are already heavily eroded and often only detectable as negative imprints. This is also very evident around the church's location, so we urgently need to intensify research here", emphasized Dr. Hanna Hadler.

Research projects in the North Frisian Wadden Sea

The research within the framework of the DFG-funded project "RUNGHOLT – Combined geophysical, geoarchaeological, and archaeological investigations in the North Frisian Wadden Sea in the vicinity of the medieval trading centre of Rungholt" is a joint effort of Dr. Hanna Hadler and Professor Andreas Vött of the Natural Hazard Research and Geoarchaeology group at Mainz University, Dr. Dennis Wilken of the Applied Geophysis group at Kiel University as well as Dr. Ruth Blankenfeldt of the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology in Schleswig and Dr. Stefanie Klooß and Dr. UIf Ickerodt of the State Archaeology Department Schleswig-Holstein. Furthermore, Dr. Bente Sven Majchczack und Professor Wolfgang Rabbel cooperated within the project "Socio-environmental Interactions on the North Frisian Wadden Sea Coast" in the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence of Kiel University.

The researchers use sediment cores to record settlement remains and to reconstruct landscape evolution at selected sites on the tidal flats.

CREDIT

photo/©: Justus Lemm

A special metal frame allows archaeological excavations of one square meter in the tidal flats. The finds are excavated and documented during low tide.

CREDIT  photo/©: Ruth Blankenfeldts:

• https://www.appliedgeophysics.ifg.uni-kiel.de/de – Applied Geophysics group at Kiel University
• https://www.geomorphologie.uni-mainz.de/ – Geomorphology group at the JGU Institute of Geography
• https://www.cluster-roots.uni-kiel.de/en/research-projects/projects-roots-of-socio-environmental-hazards/socio-environmental-interactions-on-the-north-frisian-wadden-sea-coast – Research project "Socio-environmental Interactions on the North Frisian Wadden Sea Coast" of the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence at Kiel University
• https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/442822276?language=en – DFG-funded project "RUNGHOLT – Combined geophysical, geoarchaeological and archaeological investigations in the Wadden Sea of North Frisia (Schleswig-Holstein, Germany) in the environs of the medieval trade centre Rungholt"