Texas A&M AgriLife develops new bioremediation material to clean up ‘forever chemicals’
Sustainable, cheaper method has potential for commercial applications
Peer-Reviewed Publication
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Nature Communications
Sustainable environmental remediation via biomimetic multifunctional lignocellulosic nano-framework
An increase in oil prices may lead to a decrease in the development of green energy
The reason is that oil is needed to create clean facilities and infrastructure
Peer-Reviewed PublicationIMAGE: AS KAZI SOHAG NOTES, THE TRANSITION TO CLEAN ENERGY REQUIRES A LARGE AMOUNT OF MINERALS. view more
CREDIT: PRESS OFFICE URFU
An increase in oil prices may lead to a reduction in the development of green energy as it is also required in the transition to a carbon-free electricity supply. Precisely, oil is needed for deploying clean energy capacity or infrastructure. This relationship was revealed by an international team of scientists from Russia, Bangladesh and Malaysia using a сross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) method. The scientists obtained the data by analyzing the experience of nine leading mineral-importing countries. These included Russia, Australia, USA, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, and Ukraine. The results of the study are published in the international reputed journal Resources Policy.
"On the one hand, oil can be considered the substitute for mineral driven clean energy. For example, in the form of cheaper fuel for cars than the creation of electric lithium batteries for electric cars. and on the other hand, oil is used for transportation, maintenance of energy-intensive technologies for building equipment necessary for green energy. Making solar panels, for example, requires oil, battery production requires transportation of materials and equipment for extraction of minerals. Therefore, in the process of providing renewable electricity, non-renewable resources also incur serious financial costs," explains Kazi Sohag, Head of the Laboratory for International and Regional Economics, Senior Researcher and Associate Professor at the School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University.
In addition, the magnitude of demand for minerals depends on the countries' installed solar and wind capacity. For example, in producing solar energy the main tool is photovoltaic panels, films created from various fossil metals - copper, tellurium, cadmium, etc. Researchers predict that after 2022 the capacity of solar energy in electricity production will increase by 45% annually. Consequently, the demand for these and other minerals will increase because of the massive use of solar technology in the production process.
" It should be noted that this fact can be useful for Russia as a country - the main exporter of oil and at the same time a major importer of minerals. The Russian Federation imports copper needed for solar energy as well as lithium, chromium, cobalt, and nickel used for electric vehicle batteries. Given the potential growth in demand and rising prices for minerals, now the reallocation of oil revenues could increase the amount of imported metals and accelerate the transition to clean electricity," says Dr. Kazi Sohag.
Economists have calculated that the demand for imports of minerals used in different technologies and sectors of green energy depends on a few variable factors. The price of oil is one of the key. In addition, the demand for minerals depends on the average prices for metals, primarily copper and nickel, as well as on the exchange rate. Thus, fluctuations in prices for mineral resources and an unstable exchange rate limit the volume of imports of minerals.
"At the moment, the volume of consumption and production of renewable energy in Russia is very small, despite the large volume of imports of minerals. To increase the share of green energy in the country, more attention should be paid to the development of intra-regional cohesion to use renewable energy sources, creating solar and wind farms using imported minerals. This strategy will enable Russia to meet its 2030 Sustainable Development Goals," adds Dr. Kazi Sohag.
Reference
Renewable energy sources require more raw materials than traditional ones. For example, a photovoltaic solar power plant contains approximately 5.5 tons of copper per megawatt of electricity generation, while a conventional power plant needs only one ton. In addition to copper, solar panels require other minerals such as indium or tellurium, cadmium, and silver. Lithium is also used in electric vehicles, while cobalt or nickel is used to store energy in car batteries. Thus, the import of minerals has become a priority for those economies that intend to achieve their goal of producing renewable energy in line with the global clean energy agenda.
Resources Policy
Mineral import demand and clean energy transitions in the top mineral-importing countries
Listening to the people results in a more sustainable future energy system
Energy plan for 2050 based on consumer preferences and future demographics of the US population includes 50% more electricity derived from renewable sources than current projections
Peer-Reviewed PublicationIMAGE: THIS GRAPHIC SHOWS THE FRACTION OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF ELECTRICITY SOURCES IN THE US IN 2050 BASED ON AN ENERGY MIX PLAN THAT TAKES INTO ACCOUNT THE PREFERENCES AND DEMOGRAPHICS OF VARIOUS RACIAL GROUPS, WITH PROJECTIONS BY THE US ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION BASED ON CURRENT PLANS AND POLICIES FOR COMPARISON (VALUES IN GRAY). DEVELOPED BY A RESEARCH TEAM LED BY KYUSHU UNIVERSITY BASED ON A 2020 SURVEY OF 3,000 PEOPLE IN THE US, THE PREFERENCE-BASED PLAN INCLUDES 50% MORE ENERGY FROM RENEWABLE SOURCES THAN CURRENT PROJECTIONS. ALLOWING SUCH BOTTOM-UP APPROACHES THAT CONSIDER THE PREFERENCES OF THE POPULATION TO INFLUENCE POLICYMAKING COULD HELP TO REALIZE EMISSION AND CLIMATE GOALS IN THE FUTURE. view more
CREDIT: KYUSHU UNIVERSITY
As policymakers around the world aim to cut carbon emissions and meet climate goals, new research points to a critical group whose opinions could help to shape energy planning for the better: the consumers.
By taking into account the demographics and preferences of US racial groups, clarified through a nationally representative survey of 3,000 US residents, researchers led by Kyushu University created a ‘desirable’ electricity generation mix for 2050 that includes 50% more energy from renewable sources than projections based on current plans and policies.
“In the US, consumers are being given more and more ways to choose their energy provider, so listening to and understanding these voices is crucial,” says Andrew Chapman, associate professor at Kyushu University’s International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Research (I2CNER) and leader of the study.
“In light of this, we set out to develop an energy plan that incorporates the broad range of voices and the rapidly shifting demographics of the US and then compared it with the current top-down plan in which energy goals are set by policymakers.”
To develop their energy plan, the international team of researchers from Kyushu University, Nagasaki University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign surveyed 3,000 people in the US in 2020 on their preferences, awareness, priorities, and other opinions regarding energy technologies, policies, and issues.
Considering only future construction projects needed to replace power plants at the end of their life and to meet predicted growth in energy consumption, they allocated roughly 2.4 billion kWh of electricity generating capacity out to the year 2050 based on the preferences of each racial group and the predicted future racial demographics of the country.
The resultant energy mix includes nearly 61% renewable-based electricity compared to 42% envisaged under the projected 2050 energy mix according to the US Energy Information Administration based on current plans and policies.
On the other hand, nuclear power is reduced by over half and coal-based generation by over three quarters in the researchers’ plan compared to the projections. Natural gas is similar in both cases, indicating that consumers are aware of the practical need for a stable energy supply.
“There appears to be strong support for a further emphasis on technologies that will help to achieve emission and climate goals when planning the future energy system, as indicated by a strong desire to move away from fossil and nuclear toward renewables,” notes Chapman.
“Though each racial group prefers different sources in the future energy mix, all groups recognize the need for a stable energy supply, combining natural gas with their preference for renewables, led by solar and wind.”
Differences in regional preferences also emerged. For example, along the west coast, there was significantly higher importance placed on dealing with climate change and realizing an equitable energy system. In the future, such input could be used to shape energy plans that leverage divisions among power grids across the US.
The researchers note that their plan’s allotment of hydroelectric and geothermal generation could be unrealistic because of how long such projects take to plan and implement. Furthermore, respondents consistently indicated a healthy economy as one of their priorities, so balancing costs and employment opportunities must also be considered in energy system design.
“In addition to consumer preferences seeming to support more renewables than current plans, we also found that preferences were linked to awareness, which is likewise strongly linked to education,” comments Chapman. “Thus, energy education is likely to be another important aspect for achieving carbon reduction goals and encouraging participatory energy system design.”
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For more information about this research, see “Cultural and demographic energy system awareness and preference: Implications for future energy system design in the United States,” Andrew Chapman, Yosuke Shigetomi, Shamal Chandra Karmaker, Bidyut Saha, and Caleb Brooks, Energy Economics (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2022.106141
About Kyushu University
Kyushu University is one of Japan’s leading research-oriented institutes of higher education since its founding in 1911. Home to around 19,000 students and 8,000 faculty and staff, Kyushu U's world-class research centers cover a wide range of study areas and research fields, from the humanities and arts to engineering and medical sciences. Its multiple campuses—including the largest in Japan—are located around Fukuoka City, a coastal metropolis on the southwestern Japanese island of Kyushu that is frequently ranked among the world’s most livable cities and historically known as a gateway to Asia. The International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research (I2CNER) within Kyushu University is focused on developing carbon-reducing energy technologies and energy analysis of the future ‘carbon neutral’ energy system.
Energy Economics
Survey
Not applicable
Cultural and demographic energy system awareness and preference: Implications for future energy system design in the United States
NORMAN, OKLA. – There are plenty of novelties cities will proudly claim – ever heard the road trip trope of visiting the biggest ball of yarn? But it has historically been much harder for local communities to take pride in being hosts for critical energy facilities, particularly those that involve the management of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.
On March 26, 1999, on the outskirts of Carlsbad, New Mexico, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant received its first shipment of nuclear waste. Congress authorized the construction of the WIPP in 1979 due to its unique geology, a 2,000-foot-thick salt bed resulting from the evaporation of the ancient Permian Sea more than 250 million years ago. Additionally beneficial is its proximity to Los Alamos National Laboratory and the support of key local officials, making the WIPP the first U.S. underground nuclear waste repository to safely store decades of nuclear detritus resulting from Cold War-era bomb making and nuclear research. Since its establishment, however, finding a safe and accepted approach for managing the growing stock of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants has proven to be elusive, drawing opposition from potential host states and advocacy groups.
Now, the Department of Energy is reviewing the process for managing spent nuclear fuel. The Nuclear Energy University Program of the DOE has awarded nearly $3 million to a research team led by the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis with collaborators at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, New Mexico State University and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to develop a new approach to “consent-based siting” of storage facilities that brings the questions, concerns and interests of community members to the forefront of the engineering and planning process for future storage sites.
Engaging Community Stakeholders
“As energy security and climate change have become a bigger and bigger problem, nuclear energy is very promising because it provides reliable domestic energy and doesn't emit carbon in the process of producing energy, but it's blocked by the failure to find a reasonable way to handle spent nuclear fuel,” said Hank Jenkins-Smith, co-director of OU’s Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis. “This proposal is using what we've learned from decades of work and focusing it on the problem of how to safely sequester spent nuclear fuel for between 50 and 100 years until it can be managed in a permanent way.”
The researchers contend that an essential missing element of past efforts to develop nuclear waste storage and disposal facilities in the United States is that those who want to build the sites have not provided the potential sites’ community members opportunities to meaningfully shape what it is they are being asked to host. By failing to provide the necessary ways to match the designs of the facilities to the aspirations of communities, those proposing the sites erode a community’s perception of self-determination that shapes its identity and values.
“Going back multiple decades, all of the efforts of consent-based siting for spent nuclear fuel have been haphazard, not consistent, not systematic, and happening after facilities have already been designed,” said Kuhika Gupta, associate research director for IPPRA and the project lead investigator.
“We have this spent fuel, it’s already there. We can’t wish it away, and it has to go someplace safe, but the way that these projects were being approached by government agencies and the engineers from the national labs and so forth was almost designed to generate conflict,” Jenkins-Smith said. “The engineers came up with what they thought was an optimal design by assuring safety and keeping costs down. They would approach a community and say, ‘We’d like to put this here,’ and because of the imagery of nuclear issues and radiation and so forth, that evoked an almost knee-jerk anti-siting response.”
Instead, the research team – which includes nuclear engineers, physical scientists and social scientists – has adopted a “community-first approach,” Gupta said. Their project will simulate the process of how to engage a community in the design and construction of a nuclear waste storage facility.
“Part of the problem with previous efforts was that the community was brought in a little too late, so we decided the first phase is going to be community elicitation before anything else,” Gupta said. “We would essentially start with a blank slate, asking the community when thinking about such a facility what are the types of things that come to their mind to try to elicit some of their wishes and needs and vision for such a facility for their community long-term.”
Project collaborators from the Center for Socially Engaged Design at the University of Michigan are helping develop the community engagement assessments. Starting first with a one- to two-day workshop, the researchers will develop tactics to recruit participation in a listening session as well as the questions and mechanisms that could be used to gauge community sentiment. Those “local” data points would then be paired with a national survey to draw out broader themes and gauge public views at both a local and national scale.
“We would take the responses from the community and bring that to engineers and scientists in phases two and three of the project to get them to think about ‘here's what the community wants, now how do we work with this?’” Gupta said. “I think what is truly innovative about this project is that we are flipping that process, going into the community first and then having the scientists grapple with community requests at the outset … then the final phase is bringing them together for a co-design – bringing them together in the same room to come up with broad features of a facility that matches the vision of the community, but also the physical and scientific attributes that the facility needs to have.”
Bridging the Engineering/Social Science Divide
The thread of collaboration and training runs throughout the project, structured in a way that senior scientists on the team would mentor early career scientists. Simultaneously, the team of engineers, physical scientists and social scientists will work together on nearly all phases of the project. The benefits of this are twofold, Gupta said. The collaborative structure provides training for the next generation of experts who would support this work into the future, and cross-training for social scientists and engineers to better understand the throughlines between the fields.
“Finding a long-term, sustainable solution to this problem requires both an understanding of the technical decisions as well as the social and political requirements,” she said. “The project aims to train experts who have an ability to recognize and engage along all of these dimensions.”
“When we started this work decades ago, the idea that social science would have a significant role other than as a critic of technology was really far-fetched,” said Jenkins-Smith. “We’ve lived that friction from the very beginning, and this whole project is designed to reverse that – to have the engineers engage with representatives and leaders of communities in ways that reduce that friction, to engage across the social science/engineering divide. Social scientists need to know what these engineering problems are and how they can be addressed, just as the engineers need to understand how their potential solutions are affecting the perceptions and identity and potential futures of these communities.”
Building for the Future
The materials in spent nuclear fuel have a half-life that can span many thousands of years, making the need for a long-term commitment from a host community central to the project’s success. The interim storage of these wastes – ranging from 50-100 years – will enable the country to develop and implement permanent disposal options.
For Carlsbad and the WIPP, Jenkins-Smith said the success of that site is due in part to “core community leaders, residents and others who were serious about making this work.”
“The community envisioned what they wanted their future to look like, and what kind of a role the relationship with the national labs and technical capabilities would mean for their community,” he said. “The Carlsbad case is often seen as an anomaly, but from our perspective it has these fundamental characteristics that show how socio-technical collaboration can work to address a problem, to deal with really important social issues that are beneficial to all of us in spite of a lot of built-in opposition to those programs.”
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About the Project
The project, “Integrating socially led co-design into consent-based siting of interim storage facilities,” is funded by the Department of Energy, Nuclear Energy Program, DE-FOA-0002516 IRP-MS-2.
About the University of Oklahoma Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships
The University of Oklahoma is a leading research university classified by the Carnegie Foundation in the highest tier of research universities in the nation. Faculty, staff and students at OU are tackling global challenges and accelerating the delivery of practical solutions that impact society in direct and tangible ways through research and creative activities. OU researchers expand foundational knowledge while moving beyond traditional academic boundaries, collaborating across disciplines and globally with other research institutions as well as decision makers and practitioners from industry, government and civil society to create and apply solutions for a better world. Find out more at ou.edu/research.
About the University of Oklahoma
Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. OU serves the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation. For more information visit www.ou.edu.
Pinpointing consciousness in animal brain using mouse ‘brain map’
New study identifies network cores of the brain with strong bidirectional connections
Peer-Reviewed PublicationIMAGE: IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED THAT THE PART OF THE BRAIN NETWORK SUPPORTING CONSCIOUSNESS BRAIN REGIONS SHOULD BE BIDIRECTIONALLY CONNECTED BECAUSE BOTH FEED-FORWARD AND FEEDBACK PROCESSES ARE NECESSARY FOR CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE. FOR EXAMPLE, PREVIOUS STUDIES EXAMINING VISUAL PERCEPTION HAVE SHOWN THAT CONSCIOUS PERCEPTION DOES NOT ARISE WHEN THERE IS ONLY FEED-FORWARD PROCESSING, WHEREAS IT ARISES WHEN THERE IS FEEDBACK AS WELL AS FEED-FORWARD PROCESSING. view more
CREDIT: ©2022 JUN KITAZONO
Science may be one step closer to understanding where consciousness resides in the brain. A new study shows the importance of certain types of neural connections in identifying consciousness.
The research, published in Cerebral Cortex, was led by Jun Kitazono, a corresponding author and a project researcher in the Department of General Systems Studies at the University of Tokyo.
“Where in the brain consciousness resides has been one of the biggest questions in science,” said Associate Professor Masafumi Oizumi, corresponding author and head of the lab conducting the study. “Although we have not reached a conclusive answer, much empirical evidence has been accumulated in the course of searching for the minimal mechanisms sufficient for conscious experience, or the neural correlates of consciousness.”
For this study, the team took a step toward identifying the minimally sufficient subnetworks in the brain that support conscious experience.
To identify the areas of the brain where consciousness resides, the researchers looked for one specific hallmark of consciousness within the neural networks of the brain: bidirectional pathways. When we see something or experience a sensation, our brains take in information. This is called a feed-forward signal, but receiving such feed-forward signals is not enough for consciousness. Our brains also need to send information back, in what is called feedback. Not every part of the brain can both receive feed-forward and return feedback information. Researchers hypothesized that these bidirectional connections are an essential hallmark of the parts of the brain responsible for consciousness.
“Feed-forward processing alone is insufficient for subjects to consciously perceive stimuli; rather, feedback is also necessary, indicating the need for bidirectional processing. The feedback component disappears not only during the loss of specific contents of consciousness in awake states, but also during unconscious states where conscious experiences are generally lost, such as general anesthesia, sleep and vegetative states,” said Kitazono. He also explained that it does not matter if you are looking at a human, monkey, mouse, bird or fly; the bidirectionality of processing remains essential.
The proposed algorithm can decompose the entire network hierarchically, into the network part with the strongest bidirectional connections, the part with the second strongest, and so on down the line.
©2022 Jun Kitazono
Researchers used a mouse connectome and computational techniques to test their idea. A connectome is a detailed map of the connections in the brain. First, they developed an efficient algorithm to extract the parts of the brain with strong bidirectional connections, called complexes. Then, they applied the algorithm to the mouse connectome.
“We found that the extracted complexes with the most bidirectionality were not evenly distributed among all major regions, but rather are concentrated in the cortical regions and thalamic regions,” said Kitazono. “On the other hand, regions in the other major regions have low bidirectionality. In particular, regions in the cerebellum have much lower bidirectionality.”
These findings align with where scientists have long thought consciousness resides in the brain. The cerebral cortex, located on the surface of the brain, contains sensory areas, motor areas and association areas that are thought to be essential to consciousness experience. The thalamus, located in the middle of the brain, has likewise been thought to be related to consciousness, and in particular, the interaction between the thalamus and cortical regions, called the thalamo-cortical loop, is considered important for consciousness. These results support the idea that the bidirectionality in the brain network is a key to identifying the place of consciousness.
Researchers emphasized that they are still working toward identifying the place of consciousness.
“This study focuses only on ‘static’ anatomical connections between neurons or brain areas. However, consciousness is ‘dynamic,’ changing from moment to moment depending on neural activity,” said Oizumi. “Although anatomical connections tell us how neural activity would propagate and how brain areas would interact, we need to directly investigate the dynamics of neural activity to identify the place of consciousness at any given moment.”
As a next step, he said the team is currently analyzing activity-based networks of the brain in various types of neural recordings.
“The ultimate goal of our lab is to find the mathematical relationship between consciousness and the brain,” said Oizumi. “In this study, we have attempted to relate the network properties of the brain to the place of consciousness. We will further investigate the relationship between consciousness and the brain, toward what is our ultimate goal.”
Conventional neuroscience has studied the relationship of what kind of brain activity r occurs in response to an external stimulus s (e.g., an image of an apple). If we write this relationship using the function f as r=f(s), we can say that clarifying the function f is the main research that conventional neuroscience has been doing. Such research has revealed much about the mechanism of information processing, that is, how the brain processes information from external stimuli. On the other hand, our brain not only processes information from the external world, but also produces the subjective experience of “seeing an apple.” The ultimate goal of the Oizumi Lab is to theoretically understand the subjective experience and consciousness produced by the brain: that is, to clarify the function g that connects brain activity r and consciousness C, where C is the consciousness produced from brain activity r (C=g(r)).
©2022 Masafumi Oizumi
Journal article
Jun Kitazono, Yuma Aoki, Masafumi Oizumi, “Bidirectionally connected cores in a mouse connectome: towards extracting the brain subnetworks essential for consciousness,” Cerebral Cortex: July 21, 2022, DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac143
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac143
Funding
Japan Science and Technology Agency ACT-X (Grant Number JPMJAX20A6), Japan Science and Technology Agency CREST (Grant Numbers JPMJCR1864 and JPMJCR15E2), AIP challenge program, Japan Science and Technology Agency Moonshot R&D (Grant Number JPMJMS2012), and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI (Grant Numbers 18H02713 and 20H05712) supported this research.
Related links
Oizumi Lab: https://sites.google.com/a/g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/oizumi-lab/english
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: https://www.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/eng_site/
About the University of Tokyo
The University of Tokyo is Japan's leading university and one of the world's top research universities. The vast research output of some 6,000 researchers is published in the world's top journals across the arts and sciences. Our vibrant student body of around 15,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students includes over 4,000 international students. Find out more at www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on Twitter at @UTokyo_News_en.
Cerebral Cortex
Bidirectionally connected cores in a mouse connectome: towards extracting the brain subnetworks essential for consciousness
21-Jul-2022
Researchers develop new breath-driven concept set to transform access to hand prosthetics
IMAGE: TESTING DURING THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS – GATHERING FEEDBACK FROM USERS. view more
CREDIT: CREDIT: MOBILITY INDIA
The new air-powered hand provides a lightweight, low-maintenance and easy-to-use body-powered prosthetic option particularly well suited for children and those in low and middle-income countries.
A revolutionary new hand prosthesis powered and controlled by the user’s breathing has been developed by researchers at the University of Oxford.
The simple lightweight device offers an alternative to Bowden cable-driven body-powered prosthetics initially developed in the early 19th century – particularly for those too young or anatomically unsuited to an uncomfortable harness and cable system.
Senior author Professor Jeroen Bergmann, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford said: ‘Our breathing-powered device provides a novel prosthetic option that can be used without limiting any of the user’s body movements. It is one of the first truly new design approaches for power and control of a body-powered prosthetic since the emergence of the cable-driven system over two centuries ago.’
Although several different prosthetic options exist (suitability dependent on the level of upper limb difference amongst other factors) little progress has been made in developing new approaches to power and control of body-powered devices compared to sophisticated externally powered prosthetics.
The most widely used functional upper-limb prosthesis remains the cable-driven body-powered system – which can be prohibitively expensive to own and maintain in low-resource settings because of the costs associated with the necessary professional fitting and maintenance.
The new approach, published in the journal Prosthesis, provides an alternative body-powered device for users in situations where cost, maintenance, comfort and ease of use are primary considerations.
By regulating their breathing, users power a small purpose-built Tesla turbine that can accurately control the prosthetic finger movements. The volume of air needed to power the unit can be achieved by young children and the gearing in the unit determines the speed of the grasping action.
Cable and harness free, the device is lightweight and suitable for children and adolescents who are still growing. Minimal maintenance and training are needed for ease of use in comparison to other prosthetic options.
The researchers have been working with LimbBo, a leading UK-based charity for children with limb differences, to develop and refine the device.
Jane Hewitt, Trustee of LimbBo, said: ‘One of our aims at The LimbBo Foundation is to ensure that all our children have access to any devices which will aid their day-to-day lives. No two limb differences are the same and what will help one child will not be suitable for another. Currently, there is some choice available regarding prosthetics but there are still children who need a completely different approach. For many, their lack of an elbow joint severely limits their access to prosthetic devices and so we welcomed the chance to be involved with Professor Jeroen Bergmann to look at different approaches. This is an exciting development for many of our children.’
She added: ‘We welcome this research as a completely different approach to enabling our children to have the help that a prosthetic such as this would give them. The element of choice is important, and we would fully support any research and development plans that enable this. We feel that by including us in discussions the team in Oxford really do want the best for our children.’
A spokesperson from Mobility India, an NGO based in Bengaluru, India working with the researchers on user testing said: ‘The breathing-powered prosthetic (Airbender) has the potential to broaden prosthetic options for children and adolescents, especially in India and other developing countries that lack appropriate technology.’
First author Dr Vikranth H. Nagaraja, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford said: ‘Over 40 million individuals worldwide are estimated to have limb differences – most with no access to any form of prosthetic care. Besides, upper-limb prosthetics currently available to patients are often neither affordable nor appropriate, especially in low-resource settings. We hope our research represents a step-change in making prosthetics more widely accessible and helping overcome challenges with current options.’
The full paper, ‘Reimagining prosthetic control: A novel body-powered prosthetic system for simultaneous control and actuation,’ is available in the journal Prosthesis.
ENDS
Testing during the development process – gathering feedback from users.
Credit: Mobility India
Testing during the development process – gathering feedback from users.
Credit: Mobility India
New breath-driven hand prosthetic holding a pen
Credit: University of Oxford
Prosthesis
Experimental study
Not applicable
Researchers develop new breath-driven concept set to transform access to hand prosthetics
29-Jul-2022
BU researchers find interplay of ancestry and sexual dimorphism significantly affect growth patterns in frontal sinuses
Sinus shape is like fingerprint used by forensic anthropologists in identifying human remains.
Peer-Reviewed Publication(Boston) – Located between and above your eyebrows, the frontal sinuses develop in shapes that are as unique to each person as a fingerprint. Since 1925, they’ve been used by forensic anthropologists to help identify human remains when dental or other medical records were missing.
Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers have found the development of the frontal sinus was affected more by sexual dimorphism than the ancestry of the individual and that it was the interplay between those two factors that produced the most significant variation.
“It is a common drive of people to be curious about ourselves, our backgrounds and our bodies. This study takes a fascinating structure that is as unique to an individual as their fingerprint and starts to shed light on what causes this feature to be so special to each person,” said corresponding author Sean Tallman, PhD, assistant professor of anatomy & neurobiology. Former graduate student Austin Shamlou, MS, now a research technician at Massachusetts General Hospital, is a co-author in the study.
The researchers analyzed computed tomography (CT) images of more than 300 individuals designated as assigned male or assigned female at birth. Individuals also were classified by ancestral backgrounds of African-derived, Asian-derived, European-derived, or Latin American-derived. The authors used Photoshop to create an outline of the frontal sinus layer-by-layer and took measurements of maximum height, width and depth. These frontal sinus outlines were categorized into three groups and compared against variables. The study concluded that when considered separately neither assigned sex nor ancestry significantly affected sinus shape, but there was significant variation in maximum height and maximum depth when the two factors were looked at together.
“Interestingly, the interactive effects of sexual dimorphism and adaptive population histories influence the dimensions of the frontal sinus,” said Tallman, who added that a clear pattern had not yet been found.
Tallman said further research was needed to address the question of why the frontal sinus forms unique structures for every individual. He cautioned that in the U.S. sinus variation did not fall along ancestral lines, suggesting that there was significant overlap in ancestral climates or that climate adaptations no longer impacted variation in the U.S.
These findings appear online in the journal Biology.
Biology
Imaging analysis
People
Frontal Sinus Morphological and Dimensional Variation as Seen on Computed Tomography Scans
29-Jul-2022
