Angel Wing: Hubble Inspects a Vast Set of Galactic Wings

By ESA/HUBBLE APRIL 17, 2022

Hubble Space Telescope image of two merging galaxies in the VV689 system — nicknamed the Angel Wing. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel, Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt

Two merging galaxies in the VV689 system — nicknamed the Angel Wing — feature in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Unlike chance alignments of galaxies which only appear to overlap as seen from our vantage point on Earth, the two galaxies in VV689 are in the midst of a collision. The galactic interaction has left the VV689 system almost completely symmetrical, giving the impression of a vast set of galactic wings.

This is a wider field view of the image. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel, Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt

This angelic image comes from a set of Hubble observations inspecting the highlights of the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project. This crowdsourced astronomy project relied on hundreds of thousands of volunteers to classify galaxies and help astronomers wade through a deluge of data from robotic telescopes. In the process, volunteers discovered a rogues’ gallery of weird and wonderful galaxy types, some of which had not previously been studied. A similar, ongoing project called Radio Galaxy Zoo is using the same crowdsourcing approach to locate supermassive black holes in distant galaxies.

Noteworthy objects from both projects were chosen for detailed follow-up observations with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. In keeping with the crowdsourced nature of the Galaxy Zoo project, the targets for follow-up observations with Hubble were chosen via roughly 18,000 votes cast by the public. The selected targets include ring-shaped galaxies, unusual spirals, and a striking selection of galaxy mergers such as VV689.

Giant Ice Volcanos on Pluto May Have Formed From Multiple Cryovolcanic Eruption Events

By THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY APRIL 17, 2022

New Horizons mission scientists have determined that cryovolcanic activity most likely created unique structures on Pluto not yet seen anywhere else in the solar system. The amount of material required to create the formations suggest its interior structure retained heat at some point in its history, enabling water-ice-rich materials to build up and resurface the region through cryovolcanic processes. The surface and atmospheric hazes of Pluto are shown here in greyscale, with an artistic interpretation of how past volcanic processes may have operated superimposed in blue. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Isaac Herrera/Kelsi Singer

Scientists on NASA’s New Horizons mission team have determined multiple episodes of cryovolcanism may have created some kinds of surface structures on Pluto, the likes of which are not seen anywhere else in the solar system. Material expelled from below the surface of this distant, icy planet could have created a region of large domes and rises flanked by hills, mounds, and depressions. New Horizons was NASA’s mission to make the first exploration of Pluto and its system of five moons.

“The particular structures we studied are unique to Pluto, at least so far,” said Kelsi Singer, New Horizons deputy project scientist from the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, and lead author of the paper published on March 29, 2022, in Nature Communications. “Rather than erosion or other geologic processes, cryovolcanic activity appears to have extruded large amounts of material onto Pluto’s exterior and resurfaced an entire region of the hemisphere New Horizons saw up close.”

The region studied lies southwest of Pluto’s “heart,” Sputnik Planitia, and contains multiple large domes and rises up to 7 kilometers (about 4 miles) tall and 30 to 100 kilometers (18 to 60 miles) across, with interconnected hills, mounds, and depressions covering the sides and tops of many of the larger structures. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Isaac Herrera/Kelsi Singer

Singer’s team analyzed the geomorphology and composition of an area located southwest of Pluto’s bright, icy “heart,” Sputnik Planitia. The cryovolcanic region contains multiple large domes, ranging from 1 to 7 kilometers (about one-half to 4 miles) tall and 30 to 100 or more kilometers (about 18 to 60 miles) across, that sometimes merge to form more complex structures. Irregular interconnected hills, mounds, and depressions, called hummocky terrain, cover the sides and tops of many of the larger structures. Few if any craters exist in this area, indicating it is geologically young. The largest structures in the region rival the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.

Even with the addition of ammonia and other antifreeze-like components to lower the melting temperature of water ices — a process similar to the way road salt inhibits ice from forming on streets and highways — the extremely low temperatures and atmospheric pressures on Pluto rapidly freeze liquid water on its surface.

As part of their research, Kelsi Singer of the Southwest Research Institute and the New Horizons team proposed the names for two structures in the cryovolcanic region honoring aviation pioneers Bessie Coleman, the first African American and Native American woman to earn a pilot’s license, and Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. The International Astronomical Union approved the names Coleman Mons and Ride Rupes in October 2021. Coleman Mons was key to understanding this region because it may be one of the most recently formed volcanic domes. Ride Rupes is one of the tallest and longest cliffs on Pluto and indicates there may be deep faulting in the area that could allow cryolava to flow up from the subsurface. The elevation values in this region range more than 8 kilometers (nearly 5 miles) from the highest areas in red/orange to the lowest areas in pink/white. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Kelsi Singer

Because these are young geologic terrains and large amounts of material were required to create them, it is possible that Pluto’s interior structure retained heat into the relatively recent past, enabling water-ice-rich materials to be deposited onto the surface. Cryovolcanic flows capable of creating the large structures could have occurred if the material had a toothpaste-like consistency, behaved somewhat like solid ice glaciers flow on Earth or had a frozen shell or cap with material that was still able to flow underneath.

Other geologic processes considered to create the features are unlikely, according to the team. For example, the area has significant variations in the highs and lows of the terrain that could not have been created through erosion. Singer’s team also saw no evidence of extensive glacial or sublimation erosion in the hummocky terrain surrounding the largest structures.

“One of the benefits of exploring new places in the solar system is that we find things we weren’t expecting,” said Singer. “These giant, strange-looking cryovolcanoes observed by New Horizons are a great example of how we are expanding our knowledge of volcanic processes and geologic activity on icy worlds.”

Images obtained in 2015 by the New Horizons spacecraft revealed diverse geological features populating across Pluto, including mountains, valleys, plains and glaciers. They were particularly intriguing because the frigid temperatures at Pluto’s distance were expected to produce a frozen, geologically inactive world.

“This newly published work is truly landmark, showing once again how much geologic personality Pluto for such a small planet has, and how it has been incredibly active over long periods,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. “Even years after the flyby, these new results by Singer and coworkers show that there’s much more to learn about the marvels of Pluto than we imagined before it was explored up close.”

The paper “Large-scale cryovolcanic resurfacing on Pluto” is published in Nature Communications.

Reference: “Large-scale cryovolcanic resurfacing on Pluto” by Kelsi N. Singer, Oliver L. White, Bernard Schmitt, Erika L. Rader, Silvia Protopapa, William M. Grundy, Dale P. Cruikshank, Tanguy Bertrand, Paul M. Schenk, William B. McKinnon, S. Alan Stern, Rajani D. Dhingra, Kirby D. Runyon, Ross A. Beyer, Veronica J. Bray, Cristina Dalle Ore, John R. Spencer, Jeffrey M. Moore, Francis Nimmo, James T. Keane, Leslie A. Young, Catherine B. Olkin, Tod R. Lauer, Harold A. Weaver and Kimberly Ennico-Smith, 29 March 2022, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29056-3

Jupiter’s moon has splendid dunes

Rutgers study shows new way dunes can form on varied celestial surfaces

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: POTENTIAL DUNES ON JUPITER’S MOON IO. AN ANALYSIS INDICATES THAT THE DARK MATERIAL (LOWER LEFT) IS RECENTLY EMPLACED LAVA FLOWS, WHILE THE REPEATED, LINE-LIKE FEATURES DOMINATING THE IMAGE ARE POTENTIAL DUNES. THE BRIGHT, WHITE AREAS MAY BE NEWLY EMPLACED GRAINS AS THE LAVA FLOWS VAPORIZE ADJACENT FROST. view more 

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/RUTGERS

Scientists have long wondered how Jupiter’s innermost moon, Io, has meandering ridges as grand as any that can be seen in movies like “Dune.” Now, a Rutgers research study has provided a new explanation of how dunes can form even on a surface as icy and roiling as Io’s.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, is based on a study of the physical processes controlling grain motion coupled with an analysis of images from the 14-year mission of NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which allowed the creation of the first detailed maps of Jupiter’s moons. The new study is expected to expand our scientific understanding of the geological features on these planet-like worlds.

“Our studies point to the possibility of Io as a new ‘dune world,’” said first author George McDonald, a postdoctoral researcher in Rutgers’ Earth and Planetary Sciences Department. “We have proposed, and quantitatively tested, a mechanism by which sand grains can move, and in turn dunes could be forming there.”

Current scientific understanding dictates that dunes, by their nature, are hills or ridges of sand piled up by the wind. And scientists in previous studies of Io, while describing its surface as containing some dune-like features, concluded the ridges could not be dunes since the forces from winds on Io are weak due to the moon’s low-density atmosphere.

“This work tells us that the environments in which dunes are found are considerably more varied than the classical, endless desert landscapes on parts of Earth or on the fictional planet Arrakis in ‘Dune,’” McDonald said.

The Galileo mission, which lasted from 1989 - 2003, logged so many scientific firsts that researchers to this day are still studying the data it collected. One of the major insights gleaned from the data was the high extent of volcanic activity on Io – so much so that its volcanoes repeatedly and rapidly resurface the little world.

Io’s surface is a mix of black solidified lava flows and sand, flowing “effusive” lava streams, and “snows” of sulfur dioxide. The scientists used mathematical equations to simulate the forces on a single grain of basalt or frost and calculate its path. When lava flows into sulfur dioxide beneath the moon’s surface, its venting is “dense and fast moving enough to move grains on Io and possibly enable the formation of large-scale features like dunes,” McDonald said.

Once the researchers devised a mechanism by which the dunes could form, they looked to photos of Io’s surface taken by the Galileo spacecraft for more proof. The spacing of the crests and the height-to-width ratios they observed were consistent with trends for dunes seen on Earth and other planets.

“Work like this really allows us to understand how the cosmos works,” said Lujendra Ojha, a co-author and an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “In the end, in planetary science, that is what we are trying to do.”

The paper also included authors from the University of Oregon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-29682-x 

ARTICLE TITLE

Aeolian sediment transport on Io from lava–frost interactions

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Apr-2022

Explanation for formation of abundant features on Europa bodes well for search for extraterrestrial life

Peer-Reviewed Publication

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THIS ARTIST’S CONCEPTION SHOWS HOW DOUBLE RIDGES ON THE SURFACE OF JUPITER’S MOON EUROPA MAY FORM OVER SHALLOW, REFREEZING WATER POCKETS WITHIN THE ICE SHELL. THIS MECHANISM IS BASED ON THE STUDY OF AN ANALOGOUS DOUBLE RIDGE FEATURE FOUND ON EARTH’S GREENLAND ICE SHEET. (IMAGE CREDIT: JUSTICE BLAINE WAINWRIGHT) view more 

CREDIT: JUSTICE BLAINE WAINWRIGHT

Europa is a prime candidate for life in our solar system, and its deep saltwater ocean has captivated scientists for decades. But it’s enclosed by an icy shell that could be miles to tens of miles thick, making sampling it a daunting prospect. Now, increasing evidence reveals the ice shell may be less of a barrier and more of a dynamic system – and site of potential habitability in its own right.

Ice-penetrating radar observations that captured the formation of a “double ridge” feature in Greenland suggest the ice shell of Europa may have an abundance of water pockets beneath similar features that are common on the surface. The findings, which appear in Nature Communications April 19, may be compelling for detecting potentially habitable environments within the exterior of the Jovian moon.

“Because it’s closer to the surface, where you get interesting chemicals from space, other moons and the volcanoes of Io, there’s a possibility that life has a shot if there are pockets of water in the shell,” said study senior author Dustin Schroeder, an associate professor of geophysics at Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). “If the mechanism we see in Greenland is how these things happen on Europa, it suggests there’s water everywhere.”

A terrestrial analog

On Earth, researchers analyze polar regions using airborne geophysical instruments to understand how the growth and retreat of ice sheets might impact sea-level rise. Much of that study area occurs on land, where the flow of ice sheets is subject to complex hydrology – such as dynamic subglacial lakes, surface melt ponds and seasonal drainage conduits – that contributes to uncertainty in sea-level predictions.

Because a land-based subsurface is so different from Europa’s subsurface ocean of liquid water, the study co-authors were surprised when, during a lab group presentation about Europa, they noticed that formations that streak the icy moon looked extremely similar to a minor feature on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet – an ice sheet that the group has studied in detail.

“We were working on something totally different related to climate change and its impact on the surface of Greenland when we saw these tiny double ridges – and we were able to see the ridges go from ‘not formed’ to ‘formed,’ ” Schroeder said.

Upon further examination, they found that the “M”-shaped crest in Greenland known as a double ridge could be a miniature version of the most prominent feature on Europa.

Prominent and prevalent

Double ridges on Europa appear as dramatic gashes across the moon’s icy surface, with crests reaching nearly 1000 feet, separated by valleys about a half-mile wide. Scientists have known about the features since the moon’s surface was photographed by the Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s but have not been able to conceive a definitive explanation of how they were formed.

Through analyses of surface elevation data and ice-penetrating radar collected from 2015 to 2017 by NASA’s Operation IceBridge, the researchers revealed how the double ridge on northwest Greenland was produced when the ice fractured around a pocket of pressurized liquid water that was refreezing inside of the ice sheet, causing two peaks to rise into the distinct shape.

“In Greenland, this double ridge formed in a place where water from surface lakes and streams frequently drains into the near-surface and refreezes,” said lead study author Riley Culberg, a PhD student in electrical engineering at Stanford. “One way that similar shallow water pockets could form on Europa might be through water from the subsurface ocean being forced up into the ice shell through fractures – and that would suggest there could be a reasonable amount of exchange happening inside of the ice shell.”

Snowballing complexity

Rather than behaving like a block of inert ice, the shell of Europa seems to undergo a variety of geological and hydrological processes – an idea supported by this study and others, including evidence of water plumes that erupt to the surface. A dynamic ice shell supports habitability since it facilitates the exchange between the subsurface ocean and nutrients from neighboring celestial bodies accumulated on the surface.

“People have been studying these double ridges for over 20 years now, but this is the first time we were actually able to watch something similar on Earth and see nature work out its magic,” said study co-author Gregor Steinbrügge, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) who started working on the project as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford. “We are making a much bigger step into the direction of understanding what processes actually dominate the physics and the dynamics of Europa’s ice shell.”

The co-authors said their explanation for how the double ridges form is so complex, they couldn’t have conceived it without the analog on Earth.

“The mechanism we put forward in this paper would have been almost too audacious and complicated to propose without seeing it happen in Greenland,” Schroeder said.

The findings equip researchers with a radar signature for quickly detecting this process of double ridge formation using ice-penetrating radar, which is among the instruments currently planned for exploring Europa from space.

“We are another hypothesis on top of many – we just have the advantage that our hypothesis has some observations from the formation of a similar feature on Earth to back it up,” Culberg said. “It’s opening up all these new possibilities for a very exciting discovery.”

Schroeder is also a faculty affiliate with the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), an associate professor, by courtesy, of electrical engineering and a center fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. 

This research was supported by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and, in part, by NASA Grant NNX16AJ95G and NSF Grant 1745137.

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-29458-3 

ARTICLE TITLE

Double ridge formation over shallow water sills on Jupiter’s moon Europa

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Apr-2022

New process enables 3D printing of small and complex components made of glass in just a few minutes

Scientists combine materials science invention with newly developed 3D printing technology

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG

Because of its outstanding transparency as well as its stability in contact with heat or chemicals, glass is relevant for many high-tech applications. However, conventional processes for shaping glass are often tedious, energy-intensive and quickly reach their limits for small and complicated components. The Freiburg materials scientists Dr. Frederik Kotz-Helmer and Prof. Dr. Bastian E. Rapp, in cooperation with the University of California at Berkeley in the US, have developed a novel process that can be used to produce very small components from transparent glass quickly and precisely using micro 3D printing. Possible applications include components for sensors and microscopes, but also for lab-on-a-chip systems. The researchers were able to publish their results in the current issue of the renowned journal Science.

Glass powder in plastic binder

The new technology is based on so-called Glassomer materials, which Kotz-Helmer and Rapp developed at the Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) at the University of Freiburg. “Glassomer materials consist of glass powder in a special plastic binder,” says Kotz-Helmer, “allowing to process glass like a plastic.” The resulting components are then placed in a furnace, which causes the plastic to burn and the glass to be sintered, i.e. densified. “In the end, the components consist of one hundred percent highly transparent fused silica glass,” says Kotz-Helmer.

Component is created in a single step

The Freiburg scientists have now combined Glassomer materials with a new 3D printing process developed by a research team led by Prof. Dr. Hayden Taylor from the University of California, Berkeley. Conventional 3D printers print their objects layer by layer. However, in the new process, called Computed Axial Lithography (CAL), the component is created in a single step. A vessel containing liquid, light-sensitive material is exposed to two-dimensional light images of the object to be printed from many different angles. Where the images overlap and the amount of light absorbed thus locally exceeds a certain threshold, the material hardens abruptly - within a few minutes, the component is formed. The excess, still liquid material can be washed off.

Structures with the thickness of a single hair

“In principle, this process also works with Glassomer material,” says Kotz-Helmer. For this purpose, the Freiburg scientists developed a material made of glass powder and plastic that is both highly transparent and hardens quickly at a suitable threshold value. “The devil was in the chemical details here,” says the materials scientist. Previously, moreover, the CAL process had only been suitable for relatively coarse structures. By combining the materials science expertise at the University of Freiburg and the project partner Glassomer GmbH, a Freiburg spin-off, as well as the further development of the system technology at the University of California, it has now been possible to combine and improve these technologies. “For the first time, we were able to print glass with structures in the range of 50 micrometers in just a few minutes, which corresponds roughly to the thickness of a hair,” says Kotz-Helmer. “In addition, the surfaces of the components are smoother than with conventional 3D printing processes.”

Glass as a substitute for vulnerable plastic

Kotz-Helmer sees possible applications for the innovative manufacturing process, for example, in micro-optical components of sensors, virtual reality headsets and modern microscopes: "The ability to manufacture such components at high speed and with great geometric freedom will enable new functions and more cost-effective products in the future."

Microfluidic channels are also needed for so-called lab-on-a-chip systems for research and medical diagnostics. Until now, these have mostly been made of plastics, but they often cannot withstand high temperatures and aggressive chemicals. Thanks to the new process technology, complex channel systems can now be manufactured in glass, says Kotz-Helmer: "Thanks to the thermal and chemical stability of glass, many new fields of application are opening up, especially in the area of chemistry on-a-chip synthesis."

 

Original publication
J. Toombs et al. (2022): Volumetric Additive Manufacturing of Silica Glass with Microscale Computed Axial Lithography. In: Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abm6459

 

Contact:
Dr. Frederik Kotz-Helmer
Laboratory of Process Technology
Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK)
University of Freiburg
Tel.: 0761 / 203-7355
E-Mail: frederik.kotz@imtek.de

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abm6459 

ARTICLE TITLE

Volumetric Additive Manufacturing of Silica Glass with Microscale Computed Axial Lithography

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Apr-2022

How to print a robot from scratch: Combining liquids, solids could lead to faster, more flexible 3D creations

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

Imagine a future in which you could 3D-print an entire robot or stretchy, electronic medical device with the press of a button—no tedious hours spent assembling parts by hand.

That possibility may be closer than ever thanks to a recent advancement in 3D-printing technology led by engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder. In a new study, the team lays out a strategy for using currently-available printers to create materials that meld solid and liquid components—a tricky feat if you don’t want your robot to collapse.

“I think there’s a future where we could, for example, fabricate a complete system like a robot using this process,” said Robert MacCurdy, senior author of the study and assistant professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering.

MacCurdy, along with doctoral students Brandon Hayes and Travis Hainsworth, published their results April 14 in the journal Additive Manufacturing.

3D printers have long been the province of hobbyists and researchers working in labs. They’re pretty good at making plastic dinosaurs or individual parts for machines, such as gears or joints. But MacCurdy believes that they can do a lot more: By mixing solids and liquids, 3D printers could churn out devices that are more flexible, dynamic and potentially more useful. They include wearable electronic devices with wires made of liquid contained within solid substrates, or even models that mimic the squishiness of real human organs.  

The engineer compares the advancement to traditional printers that print in color, not just black-and-white.

“Color printers combine a small number of primary colors to create a rich range of images,” MaCurdy said. “The same is true with materials. If you have a printer that can use multiple kinds of materials, you can combine them in new ways and create a much broader range of mechanical properties.”

Empty space

To understand those properties, it helps to compare 3D printers to the normal printers in your office. Paper printers create an image by laying down liquid inks in thousands of flat pixels. Inkjet 3D printers, in contrast, use a printhead to drop tiny beads of fluid, called “voxels” (a mash-up of  “volume” and “pixel”), one on top of the other.

“Very soon after those droplets are deposited, they are exposed to a bright, ultraviolet light,” MacCurdy said. “The curable liquids convert into solids within a second or less.”

But, he added, there are many cases in which you might want those liquids to stay liquid. Some engineers, for example, use liquids or waxes to create tiny channels within their solid materials, which they then empty out at a later point. It’s a bit like how drips of water can carve out an underground cavern. 

Engineers have come up with ways to make those kinds of empty spaces in 3D-printed parts, but it usually takes a lot of time and effort to clean them. The channels also have to stay relatively simple. 

MacCurdy and his colleagues decided to find a way around those limitations—better understanding the conditions that would allow engineers to print solid and liquid materials at the same time. 

Liquid courage

The researchers first designed a series of computer simulations that probed the physics of printing different kinds of materials next to each other. One of the big problems, MacCurdy said is: How can you keep your droplets of solid materials from mixing into the liquid materials, even when the droplets of solid material are printed directly on top of the liquid droplets?

“We found that the surface tension of a liquid can be used to support solid material, but it is helpful to pick a liquid material that is more dense than the solid material—the same physics that allow oil to float on top of water,” Hayes said.

Next, the researchers experimented with a real 3D printer in the lab. They loaded the printer up with a curable polymer, or plastic (the solid), and with a standard cleaning solution (the liquid). Their creations were impressive: The group was able to 3D-print twisting loops of liquid and a complex network of channels not unlike the branching pathways in a human lung. 

“Both structures would have been nearly impossible to make through previous approaches,” Hainsworth said.

MacCurdy also recently joined a team of researchers from CU Boulder and the CU Anschutz Medical Campus who are developing ways to 3D-print realistic models of human tissue. Doctors could use these models to practice for procedures and make diagnoses. The project will employ MacCurdy’s liquid-solid approach among other tools. 

“We hope that our results will make multimaterial inkjet 3D printing using liquids and solids more accessible to researchers and enthusiasts around the world,” he said.

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DOI

10.1016/j.addma.2022.102785 

ARTICLE TITLE

Liquid-solid co-printing of multi-material 3D fluidic devices via material jetting

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Apr-2022

Georgia State researchers take step toward developing ‘electric eye’

Using nanotechnology, scientists have created a newly designed neuromorphic electronic device that endows microrobotics with colorful vision.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: WORKING PRINCIPLE AND DEVICE STRUCTURE OF THE NEW COLOR SENSOR DESIGN BY GEORGIA STATE RESEARCHERS. view more 

CREDIT: GRAPHIC IMAGE FROM RESEARCH TEAM

ATLANTA—Georgia State University researchers have successfully designed a new type of artificial vision device that incorporates a novel vertical stacking architecture and allows for greater depth of color recognition and scalability on a micro-level. The new research is published in the top journal ACS Nano.

“This work is the first step toward our final destination­–to develop a micro-scale camera for microrobots,” says assistant professor of Physics Sidong Lei, who led the research. “We illustrate the fundamental principle and feasibility to construct this new type of image sensor with emphasis on miniaturization.”

Lei’s team was able to lay the groundwork for the biomimetic artificial vision device, which uses synthetic methods to mimic biochemical processes, using na­notechnology.

“It is well-known that more than 80 percent of the information is captured by vision in research, industry, medication, and our daily life,” he says. “The ultimate purpose of our research is to develop a micro-scale camera for microrobots that can enter narrow spaces that are intangible by current means, and open up new horizons in medical diagnosis, environmental study, manufacturing, archaeology, and more.”

This biomimetic “electric eye” advances color recognition, the most critical vision function, which is missed in the current research due to the difficulty of downscaling the prevailing color sensing devices. Conventional color sensors typically adopt a lateral color sensing channel layout and consume a large amount of physical space and offer less accurate color detection.

Researchers developed the unique stacking technique which offers a novel approach to the hardware design. He says the van der Waals semiconductor-empowered vertical color sensing structure offers precise color recognition capability which can simplify the design of the optical lens system for the downscaling of the artificial vision systems.

Ningxin Li, a graduate student in Dr. Lei’s Functional Materials Studio who was part of the research team, says recent advancements in technology make the new design possible.

“The new functionality achieved in our image sensor architecture all depends on the rapid progress of van der Waals semiconductors during recent years,” says Li. “Compared with conventional semiconductors, such as silicon, we can precisely control the van der Waals material band structure, thickness, and other critical parameters to sense the red, green, and blue colors.”

The van der Waals semiconductors empowered vertical color sensor (vdW-Ss) represent a newly-emerged class of materials, in which individual atomic layers are bonded by weak van der Waals forces. They constitute one of the most prominent platforms for discovering new physics and designing next-generation devices.

“The ultra-thinness, mechanical flexibility, and chemical stability of these new semiconductor materials allow us to stack them in arbitrary orders. So, we are actually introducing a three-dimensional integration strategy in contrast to the current planar micro-electronics layout. The higher integration density is the main reason why our device architecture can accelerate the downscaling of cameras,” Li says.

The technology currently is patent pending with Georgia State’s Office of Technology Transfer & Commercialization (OTTC). OTTC anticipates this new design will be of high interest to certain industry partners. “This technology has the potential to overcome some of the key drawbacks seen with current sensors, says OTTC’s Director, Cliff Michaels. “As nanotechnology advances and devices become more compact, these smaller, highly sensitive color sensors will be incredibly useful.”

Researchers believe the discovery could even spawn advancements to help the vision-impaired one day.

“This technology is crucial for the development of biomimetic electronic eyes and also other neuromorphic prosthetic devices,” says Li. “High-quality color sensing and image recognition function may bring new possibilities of colorful item perception for the visually impaired in the future.”

Lei says his team will continue pushing these advanced technologies forward using what they’ve learned from this discovery.

“This is a great step forward, but we are still facing scientific and technical challenges ahead, for example, wafer-scale integration. Commercial image sensors can integrate millions of pixels to deliver high-definition images, but this has not been implemented in our prototype yet,” he says. “This large-scale van der Waals semiconductor device integration is currently a critical challenge to be surmounted by the entire research society. Along with our nationwide collaborators that is where our team is devoting our efforts.”

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JOURNAL

ACS Nano

DOI

10.1021/acsnano.1c09875 

ARTICLE TITLE

van der Waals semiconductor empowered vertical color sensor

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Apr-2022

KU study identifies most vital strategies for successfully implementing changes in industry

Effective change agents, realistic timelines key in architecture, engineering, construction improvement initiatives

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

LAWRENCE — Organizations regularly need to implement change initiatives to stay current, update technology, improve efficiency, enter new markets or make other improvements. However, research has suggested that more than half of change initiatives attempted in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry fail. A new study from the University of Kansas has found that six change strategies are key to successful implementation and two of them are vital for highly successful, sustained change.

The study also found that the type of change is not as important to its success as key management strategies. In surveying AEC firms across North America about an attempted change initiative, researchers found that effective change agents and a realistic timeline for the change were the two most important factors for an initiative to be deemed very successful and to last.

In their survey, researchers asked 633 firms to describe a change initiative they had attempted to install. They then implemented a scale to determine if the effort was unsuccessful, somewhat successful or very successful. The scale evaluated if the initiative was successful by three key metrics: if it was implemented into operations, benefits achieved and long-term sustainability.

"We analyzed data from across the entire industry. With organizational change, it’s something that starts with management and reaches all levels,” said Omar Maali, a doctoral candidate in engineering at KU and the study’s lead author. “They are attempted to improve efficiency, have better outcomes or make some update to the work environment. The worst thing that could happen is you lose your investment, or people try the change and revert back to what they used to do. There are a lot of recommendations in the professional literature about how to implement change. We found six key organizational change management practices."

The six key practices authors identified, in order of importance to achieve successful implementation of change:

• Effective change agents
• Establishing a realistic timeframe for the adoption process
• Communicated benefits of the change
• Establish clear and measured benchmarks of the change process
• Senior leadership commitment
• Training resources.

Maali co-wrote the study with Nancy Kepple, associate professor of social welfare, and Brian Lines, associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering, all at KU. Their work, titled “Strategies to Achieve High Adoption of Organizational Change Initiatives within the AEC Industry,” was published in the Journal of Management in Engineering, part of a special issue on rethinking the benefits of adopting digital technologies in the AEC industry.

Effective change agents are defined as those working within a company who are affected by or need to accommodate a change. Maali used an example of someone required to use a new technology or software who adopts it before a deadline, advocates for its benefits with colleagues, answers questions they may have and demonstrates the value of making the change to their peers. That importance of establishing the value of change among equals instead of through mandates from management — coupled with a realistic timeframe for making the change — were the most vital practices, according to the analysis. However, the authors said management could not only focus on those two practices and realistically expect success.

“To avoid unsuccessful change efforts, you needed to use at least five organizational change management strategies to get a return on investment and make it successful,” Maali said. “To move to very successful, it was vital to have effective change agents and a realistic timeframe.”

The one strategy that didn’t prove critical to avoiding unsuccessful change was training resources, which the authors said was surprising, as previous research has suggested otherwise, especially in adopting digital technologies. And while adopting digital technologies has been a traditionally difficult change, it was not shown to be different than other types of change initiatives in that all six strategies were necessary to make it successful.

The value of the findings lies both in the large data set with information from firms across the architecture, engineering and construction industry in different regions attempting many types of changes with varying levels of success. Understanding which management strategies are most important can help firms successfully reach their goals when implementing necessary changes. Maali said future research will further explore what constitutes a realistic timeframe, and if it is not possible to achieve one, what other factors become most important. In the meantime, better understanding how to successfully implement change initiatives can help avoid unsuccessful or unsustained efforts, a major barrier in the industry.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Management in Engineering

DOI

10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0001051 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Strategies to Achieve High Adoption of Organizational Change Initiatives within the AEC Industry