$11.3 million NIH Superfund award to address environmental health issues caused by VOCs

Wayne State University to lead multidisciplinary, multiorganization team

Grant and Award Announcement

WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY - OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH

 

IMAGE: WAYNE STATE'S MELISSA RUNGE-MORRIS, M.D. AND CAROL MILLER, PH.D., HAVE RECEIVED AN $11.3 MILLION AWARD FROM NIEHS FOR A NEW SUPERFUND RESEARCH PROGRAM. ART BY ALEXIS WRIGHT, WSU STUDENT. view more 

CREDIT: ALEXIS WRIGHT, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT, COLLEGE OF FINE, PERFORMING AND COMMUNICATION ARTS

DETROIT – Wayne State University has received a five-year, approximately $11.3 million award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health to create a new Superfund Research Program, the “Center for Leadership in Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR).” The Center will be dedicated to understanding and mitigating adverse birth outcomes and serious developmental health problems that have been associated with urban environmental exposure to volatile organic chemcials (VOCs), a special class of pollutant found in the subsurface of post-industrial cities like Detroit.

VOCs are a group of aromatic or chlorinated organic compounds that transition to a vapor or gas. They are a source of indoor air contamination in the urban built environment. Commonly encountered VOCs  include benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene. Nationwide, VOCs pose a potential threat to human health through a process known as “vapor intrusion.” Vapor intrusion occurs when man-made chemicals in the subsurface vaporize, rise through the subsurface, and ultimately migrate into overlying homes and buildings through structural cracks in walls, floors and building foundations. CLEAR will provide new methods for assessment, testing and mitigation to help reduce toxic exposures and improve health outcomes. It will also offer an important training component for Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows, providing them with an opportunity for hands-on field and laboratory research, microinternships, and a graduate certificate in urban environmental health.

Headquartered on the Wayne State University campus, CLEAR will focus on Detroit as the principal study site. The CLEAR team consists of engineering and biomedical scientists, educators, and community partners. Detroit has the highest preterm birth rate in the United States. The city also has a very large number of identified sites of environmental contamination (brownfields) with VOCs. The CLEAR team hypothesizes that VOC exposure through vapor intrusion early in life incites inflammatory responses in maternal tissues as well in the developing offspring that reprogram the developing immune system and other critical systems, setting the stage for preterm birth and/or associated adverse health outcomes.

The CLEAR research team is led by  Melissa Runge-Morris, M.D., and Carol Miller, Ph.D., who also co-lead the One Health Initiative at Wayne State University. Physician-scientist Runge-Morris is the director of the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences/Center for Urban Responses to Environmental Stressors (IEHS/CURES) at Wayne State University. Engineer Miller is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Wayne State University and director of Healthy Urban Waters, funded by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation. The innovative CLEAR program integrates engineering and biomedical approaches to detect, quantify and eradicate the health risks that stem from environmental exposure to VOCs and their mixtures. The research team is made up of 31 faculty in six colleges and schools at Wayne State along with researchers from Henry Ford Health System, Michigan State University, Ann Arbor Technical Services, Inc., North Carolina State University and University of Florida.

“We will have five integrative environmental science and engineering and biomedical research projects that will investigate toxic mechanisms, exposure pathways, biomarkers and strategies to prevent exposures and improve public health outcomes,” said Runge-Morris. “This will include new detection methodologies including phytoscreening – a screening method used to identify bioactive substances in plants. In addition, we will integrate Internet of Things and edge computing for real-time contaminant detection, rapid-response, mitigation and remediation of toxins. We will apply advanced analysis methods and tools to determine the impact of VOC exposures on preterm birth and other adverse health outcomes.”

The CLEAR team recently published new evidence linking preterm birth outcomes in people to VOC pollution in Detroit. The study demonstrated positive associations between VOC exposures and adverse birth outcomes which have been noted in other studies in the United States, Canada, France, Brazil and Spain. The CLEAR team also have found a positive association between VOC exposure and maternal inflammation as well as changes in placental gene expression.

“Detroit has the highest minority population in the Great Lakes region with issues of numerous health and environmental injustices,” said Miller. “These are related to aging infrastructure and prevalent legacy contaminants. With the highest reported rate of preterm births in the U.S., it is critical to examine the etiologic factors that are playing a key role in this public health emergency. This study is critical to researching and developing new methods of assessment, testing and mitigation to reduce toxic exposures and improve health outcomes of our vulnerable community in Detroit as well as many other cities around the U.S. and the world.”

The project number for this National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences award is P42ES030991.

About Wayne State University

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit research.wayne.edu.

Comparison of low-value services among Medicare advantage, traditional Medicare beneficiaries

JAMA Health Forum

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Advantage had lower rates of low-value care (tests, treatments, and procedures that provide little to no clinical benefit) than those enrolled in traditional Medicare in this study of 2.4 million Medicare beneficiaries.

Authors: Brian W. Powers, M.D., M.B.A., of the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.2935)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.2935?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=090922

About JAMA Health Forum: JAMA Health Forum has transitioned from an information channel to an international, peer-reviewed, online, open access journal that addresses health policy and strategies affecting medicine, health and health care. The journal publishes original research, evidence-based reports and opinion about national and global health policy; innovative approaches to health care delivery; and health care economics, access, quality, safety, equity and reform. Its distribution will be solely digital and all content will be freely available for anyone to read.

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JOURNAL

JAMA Health Forum

Association between Medicaid dental payment policies, children’s dental visits

JAMA Health Forum

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

PrintEmail App

About The Study: Increased Medicaid dental payment rates were associated with significant but modest improvements in children’s dental visits and oral health according to this analysis of nationally representative survey data.

Authors: Brandy J. Lipton, Ph.D., of San Diego State University in San Diego, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.3041)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.3041?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=090922

About JAMA Health Forum: JAMA Health Forum has transitioned from an information channel to an international, peer-reviewed, online, open access journal that addresses health policy and strategies affecting medicine, health and health care. The journal publishes original research, evidence-based reports and opinion about national and global health policy; innovative approaches to health care delivery; and health care economics, access, quality, safety, equity and reform. Its distribution will be solely digital and all content will be freely available for anyone to read.

 

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JOURNAL

JAMA Health Forum

ANIMAL TESTING

Food insecurity has lasting impacts on the brains and behavior of mice

Results suggest young people may suffer long-term consequences, in particular in the area of cognitive flexibility

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - BERKELEY

While food insecurity is a problem for a growing segment of the U.S. population — made even worse by the coronavirus pandemic — few studies have looked at the effect that feast or famine has on the developing brain in isolation from other factors that contribute to adversity.

A new study by neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, simulated the effects of food insecurity in juvenile mice and found lasting changes later in life.

“We show that irregular access to food in the late juvenile and early adolescent period affects learning, decision-making and dopamine neurons in adulthood,” said Linda Wilbrecht, UC Berkeley professor of psychology and member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.

One key difference in behavior involved cognitive flexibility: the ability to generate new solutions when the world changes.

“Mice searching for rewards might be inflexible, sticking to only one strategy even when it no longer yields a reward, or they might be flexible and quickly try out new strategies. We found that the stability of the food supply mice had when they were young governed how flexible they were under different conditions when they were grown up,” she said.

Epidemiological studies have linked food insecurity in children and adolescents with weight gain in later life, as well as learning problems and lower scores in mathematics, reading and vocabulary. But these studies are confounded by other poverty-related issues, such as maternal depression and environmental stressors. The new study was designed to look at the developmental and behavioral impacts of food insecurity in a controlled setting not possible using human subjects.

The study has implications for humans. Policymakers acknowledge the importance of good nutrition in early childhood through high school, with federally-funded free or reduced-price breakfast and lunch programs available in schools throughout the United States. The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) also provides benefits to supplement the food budget of needy families. For families living paycheck to paycheck, these food programs have demonstrated effects — in particular, boosted performance in school and rates of graduation.

But there may be times when kids cannot access food programs, such as during summer vacation. Programs may also inadvertently create a feast and famine cycle when benefits are distributed with weeks between payments, potentially leaving impoverished families unable to afford food at the end of each payment cycle. According to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 6.2% of households with children — 2.3 million households total — were food insecure in 2021.

“I think that we have to understand that even transient food insecurity matters, the brain doesn’t just catch up later. Food insecurity can have long-term impacts on how someone's brain functions,” Wilbrecht said. “The ability to learn and make decisions is something that's developing during childhood and adolescence, and we are seeing how these critical skills are impacted by access to food. Access to food is something that we can address in this county. Feeding and benefits programs exist, and we can make them better by making access to benefits or food more reliable and consistent. Supporting brain development is a good reason to support food programs.”

The research, conducted with UC Berkeley faculty members Helen Bateup, Stephan Lammel and their lab colleagues, will appear in an upcoming print edition of the journal Current Biology. It was posted online July 20.

Flexibility under changing rules

Wilbrecht and her colleagues, including Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar Ezequiel Galarce, mimicked human food insecurity in mice by delivering food on an irregular schedule while still allowing enough food to maintain safe body weight. This food regimen began a week before puberty onset in mice, equivalent to late childhood in humans, and continued for 20 days through the equivalent of late teen ages in mice. Another group of mice was offered food whenever they wanted it.

They then tested cognition in adulthood using foraging tasks where mice searched a changing environment for rewards. For example, a behavior — in this case, learning which odor led to the Honey Nut Cheerios — might be successful for a short time, but not forever. A second odor now predicted where the reward was hidden.

The well-fed and food-insecure mice were tested as adults in both certain and uncertain settings, with noticeable differences in cognitive flexibility. Food-insecure mice were more flexible in uncertain situations than were well-fed mice, while well-fed mice were more flexible in more stable situations.

“You would have to test in the field to see how these different flexibility profiles affect survival,” she said. “The findings are nuanced, but hopeful, because we identify both gain and loss of function in learning and decision-making that are wrought by experience of scarcity.”

While the effect of food insecurity on cognition in male mice was robust, female mice showed no effect on cognition.

“This is one of the most robust behavioral effects we've ever seen when we've been modeling adversity,” Wilbrecht said.

Food insecurity had other decidedly negative effects in female mice, however. Those females who were food insecure when growing up tended to become overweight when given unrestricted food in adulthood, something mirrored in humans who’ve grown up with food insecurity. Male mice showed no such effect.

Doctoral student Wan Chen Lin and researchers in the Bateup and Lammel labs also looked at the brain’s reward network, which is governed by the neurotransmitter dopamine, and found changes there, as well, in male mice.

“We found that the neurons in the dopamine system, which is critical for learning, decision- making and reward-related behaviors, like addiction, were significantly altered in both their inputs and their outputs,” Wilbrecht said. “It suggests there are more broadscale changes in the learning and decision-making systems in the brain.”

For example, the researchers saw changes in the synapses of dopamine neurons that project to the nucleus accumbens and also found changes in dopamine release in the dorsal striatum. These dopamine neurons have been shown to play a role in learning and decision-making in numerous other studies.

The researchers are continuing their studies of food-insecure mice to determine if they are more susceptible as adults to addictive behaviors, which are associated with the dopamine network.

Other UC Berkeley authors of the paper are former postdoctoral fellow Polina Kosillo, former doctoral student Christine Liu and senior scientist Lung-Hao Tai. The work was supported the National Institutes of Health (R21 AA025172, U19NS113201) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Bateup is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator and a Weill Neurohub investigator.

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2022.06.089 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

New Rice study: When it comes to military intervention, Americans prefer to ‘give peace a chance’

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RICE UNIVERSITY

A new Rice University and University of Nevada, Las Vegas study on Americans’ attitudes about military intervention finds the public prefers when the U.S. works with other military powers, protects civilians and resolves conflicts peacefully.

 

The paper authored by Songying Fang, an associate professor of political science at Rice, and Jared Oestman, an assistant professor of political science at UNLV and recent Rice Ph.D. graduate in political science, appears in a recent edition of Armed Forces & Society.

 

The researchers specifically examined public opinion on military intervention in a hypothetical civil war in which the motivations for U.S. involvement varied.

 

They gave survey participants several different scenarios in which political and humanitarian interests would be affected. Fang and Oestman probed attitudes toward three aspects of a military intervention: the motivation, the form and the mandate (in other words, what it takes to achieve success). This research took a different approach than previous public opinion surveys, which have gauged attitudes on specific military campaigns as they unfold.

 

“Those types of surveys conducted amid specific military conflict may not offer all the options and dimensions for the public to consider, and thus don’t often paint a complete picture of public preferences,” Fang said. “By using this hypothetical scenario and with a survey experimental design, we were able to use a consistent framework to compare public support across different scenarios.”

 

Instead of supporting U.S. soldiers engaging in combat without allies, the study found, people were more likely to back multilateral intervention (including United Nations peacekeeping efforts), protecting civilians and resolving conflicts peacefully. The only scenario in which most respondents expressed support for unilateral intervention was when fighting terrorism. Fang and Oestman also found that concerns about the perceived legitimacy of U.S. intervention were more important than the cost and success of a military campaign.

 

When breaking down the findings by gender, political views and education levels, the researchers found Republicans were less likely to support U.N.-led peacekeeping measures than their Democratic counterparts. People with at least a college degree were significantly less likely to support the U.S. going it alone on military intervention. Those who expressed a higher degree of nationalism and/or had less education were more likely to support unilateralism. Finally, women were more likely than men to support peacekeeping and protecting civilians.

 

“Our study shows that Americans are highly supportive of the U.S. becoming militarily involved in the scenarios we presented,” Oestman said. “However, perhaps because of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they also display a strong preference for the U.S. to prioritize efforts that focus on protecting civilians and peacefully resolving conflicts over engaging directly in combat. Also related to this may be the finding that they are also highly concerned about the legitimacy of any actions the U.S. might take.”

The paper, “The Limit of American Public Support for Military Intervention,” is available online at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0095327X221107700

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JOURNAL

Armed Forces & Society

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

New Rice study: When it comes to military intervention, Americans prefer to ‘give peace a chance’

U.S. clinical trial evaluating antiviral for monkeypox begins

NIH trial gathering data on tecovirimat (TPOXX)

Business Announcement

NIH/NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES

 

IMAGE: COLORIZED SCANNING ELECTRON MICROGRAPH OF MONKEYPOX VIRUS (GREEN) ON THE SURFACE OF INFECTED VERO E6 CELLS (BLUE). IMAGE CAPTURED AT THE NIAID INTEGRATED RESEARCH FACILITY (IRF) IN FORT DETRICK, MARYLAND. view more 

CREDIT: NIAID

Interested volunteers can visit the ACTG website for information on clinical trial A5418. Please do not call or email the NIAID News and Science Writing Branch to inquire about enrolling in this trial.

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A Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating the antiviral tecovirimat, also known as TPOXX, is now enrolling adults and children with monkeypox infection in the United States. Study investigators aim to enroll more than 500 people from clinical research sites nationwide. Interested volunteers can visit the ACTG website (clinical trial A5418) for more information. The trial is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The NIAID-funded AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) is leading the study, which may later expand to international sites. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at NIH is supporting several sites, including through the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Network (IMPAACT).

Tecovirimat, manufactured by the pharmaceutical company SIGA Technologies, Inc., New York City, is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of smallpox. The drug prevents the virus from spreading in the body by preventing virus particles from exiting human cells by targeting a protein found on both the variola virus, which causes smallpox, and the monkeypox virus. Clinicians currently can access tecovirimat for U.S. patients with monkeypox through an expanded access or “compassionate use” request process.

“Monkeypox can be an extremely painful infection that lasts for weeks,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “We currently lack efficacy data that would help us understand how well this drug may mitigate painful monkeypox symptoms and prevent serious outcomes. This clinical trial was designed to answer those important questions.”

A global outbreak of human monkeypox virus, first identified in May 2022, prompted public health emergency declarations from both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this past summer. The majority of cases identified thus far have been in men who have sex with men, although other populations, including women and children, can become infected. From Jan. 1, 2022, to Sept. 7, 2022, the WHO has reported 52,996 cases and 18 deaths across 102 countries, territories and areas. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported 21,274 cases in the U.S.

Prior to the global outbreak, monkeypox cases and outbreaks were mostly confined to countries in central and west Africa, where the virus is endemic. Monkeypox can cause flu-like symptoms and painful skin lesions. In rare cases, monkeypox virus can cause serious complications, including dehydration, bacterial infections, pneumonia, brain inflammation, sepsis, eye infections and death. The virus can be transmitted from person to person through direct contact with skin lesions, body fluids, and respiratory droplets, including through intimate contact, particularly sexual contact, and by indirect contact with items such as contaminated clothing or bedding. Preliminary analyses indicate that sexual transmission may be playing a role in the current outbreak.

The clinical trial of tecovirimat in the United States is led by Timothy Wilkin, M.D., professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. Adults and children of any age with monkeypox are eligible to enroll in the trial. Adults with severe monkeypox virus infection or those at high risk for severe disease including individuals with underlying immune deficiency, a history of or active inflammatory skin conditions, pregnant people and children all will be enrolled in an open-label arm in which all participants receive tecovirimat. Other adult participants—530 total—will be randomly assigned in a 2:1 ratio to receive tecovirimat or placebo pills. Tecovirimat capsules are taken by mouth for 14 days, and the dose is based on the participant’s weight. This part of the trial is double-blind, meaning neither participants nor investigators will know who is receiving placebo or tecovirimat.

Investigators will gather data to determine if participants receiving tecovirimat heal more quickly (all lesions scabbed over or flaked off) compared with those taking placebo. They also will examine tecovirimat’s impact on pain scores, rates of progression to severe disease, clearance of monkeypox virus from various samples, and its safety, among other data. This study also will provide critical data on the optimal dosing and safety of tecovirimat in children and people who are pregnant. 

Participants will be followed for at least 8 weeks and will be asked to fill out a symptom diary, do daily skin checks at home and attend virtual and in-person clinic appointments. They also will undergo physical exams and will be asked to provide blood and other bodily fluid samples, including swabbing fluid from their lesions. 

Data on the safety and efficacy of tecovirimat will be submitted to the FDA. An independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) will monitor participant safety throughout the duration of the study. The trial timeline will depend on the pace of enrollment. This research is supported through the following NIAID grants: UM1AI068636, UM1AI106701 and UM1AI068634, and NICHD contract number HHSN275201800001I. 

NIAID also is collaborating with the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to initiate a separate clinical trial of tecovirimat in adults and children with monkeypox in that country. More information about that trial will be available in a forthcoming announcement. 

NIAID conducts and supports research—at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide—to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID website. 

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit https://www.nih.gov/. 

NIH...Turning Discovery Into Health®

Carnivorous plants inspire smart slippery surfaces and bionic robots

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COMPUSCRIPT LTD

 

IMAGE: FIGURE 1. BASIC CONCEPT OF HYBRID BIONIC MOISTURE RESPONSIVE SHAPE-MORPHING SLIPPERY SURFACE INSPIRED FROM MULTI-FORM CARNIVOROUS PLANTS. THE NEPENTHES PITCHER PLANT CATCHES INSECTS PASSIVELY WITH THE HELP OF A LUBRICANT-INFUSED SLIPPERY SURFACE. THE DIONAEA MUSCIPULA PREYS ACTIVELY THROUGH A STIMULI-RESPONSIVE ACTUATION MECHANISM. WE COMBINED THE SLIPPERY SURFACES (PASSIVE PREY) AND STIMULI-RESPONSIVE ACTUATION (ACTIVE PREY), SO WE PROPOSED A HYBRID BIONIC MOISTURE DEFORMABLE SLIPPERY SURFACE-BASED GO, WHICH ENABLES BOTH ACTIVE AND PASSIVE DROPLET MANIPULATION. GO: GRAPHENE OXIDE; RGO, REDUCED GO. view more 

CREDIT: OEA

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances; DOI 10.29026/oea.2023.210163  discusses how carnivorous plants inspire smart slippery surfaces and bionic robots.

 

Carnivorous plants have inspired innovations of advanced stimuli-responsive actuators and lubricant-infused slippery surfaces. However, hybrid bionic devices that combine carnivorous plants' active and passive prey trapping capabilities remain challenging. The research team developed a moisture-responsive shape-morphing slippery surface. They integrated a lubricant-infused slippery surface with an LRGO/GO bilayer actuator. The team prepared a series of proof-of-concept actuators, including a smart frog tongue and a smart flower, demonstrating active/passive trapping, droplet manipulation, and sensing.

 

Carnivorous plants can trap and digest small insects through sophisticated actuating mechanisms or unique surface wettability. This ability has inspired the development of artificial smart surfaces/devices for engineering applications, such as anti-icing surfaces, anti-biofouling, droplet condensation, and droplet manipulation. Mimicking their trapping behaviors has led to innovative strategies for designing synthetic surfaces, actuators, and robots.

 

Generally, the trapping mechanism of carnivorous plants differs among different species, which can be classified into two categories: active trapping and passive trapping. However, hybrid bionic devices that combine the merits of the two distinct kinds of carnivorous plants, with both positive and passive trapping abilities, are still rare. The combination of Dionaea muscipula-inspired actuators with a slippery surface that mimics the Nepenthes pitcher plant isbeneficial to both actuator design and the development of a smart surface with superwettability. Nevertheless, it is challenging to reach this end.

 

Femtosecond laser direct writing (FsLDW) induced photoreduction and simultaneous structuring to prepare a GO and LRGO bilayer actuator that enables dynamic deformation under moisture actuation. After that, a lubricant-infused slippery surface was integrated with the graphene actuator by immobilizing lubricant at the LRGO side through the capillary forces.

 

The two types of carnivorous plants demonstrate distinct strategies for trapping prey. Nepenthes pitcher plants catch insects through a passive trapping mechanism with the help of lubricants-infused slippery surfaces. In contrast, Dionaea muscipula performs an active trapping behavior through a sophisticated actuating mechanism. The concept of the hybrid bionic model is the combination of the two tapping behaviors within one synthetic smart surface here, which the research team called a stimuli deformable slippery surface.

 

Traditional stimuli-responsive actuators enable reversible deformation under external stimuli. They reveal the great potential for developing trapping robots. However, in most cases, simple bending deformation cannot trap insects because of the slow response to environmental stimuli or the lack of surface wettability control. The team combined the moisture-responsive actuator with a lubricant-infused slippery surface together. The combined effect of actuation and slippery property endows the oil-infused LRGO/GO film with enhanced trapping ability.

 

The research team demonstrated a moisture-responsive shape-morphing slippery surface that can contact droplets actively and let them slide away passively. Based on this hybrid bionic concept, a smart frog tongue that can catch and manipulate droplets containing live tubificidaes is prepared. Notably, the slippery surface can bend under moisture actuation, get in touch with the droplet, and let it slide to the bottom, demonstrating both active catching and passive trapping capabilities.

 

In conclusion, the in-situ integration of the lubricant-infused slippery surface with the bilayer actuator does not degrade the actuating performance. It also improves its deformation degrees under moisture actuation. The presence of an oil layer can entirely prevent the transmission of water molecules through the LRGO side, and selective water adsorption only occurs within the GO layer. As a result, the oil-LRGO/GO actuator demonstrated large deformation curvature, short response/recovery time, and improved stability. For practical applications, laser interference ablation that uses an interference effect for periodical patterning is more effective. The significance of this work lies in the fabrication of a shape-morphing slippery surface with hybrid bionic functionalities of both stimuli-responsive deformation and oil-lubricated slippery properties.

 

The combination of shape-morphing ability with the slippery surface benefits both actuating performance and the usefulness of a smart surface with superwettability. It leads to new applications, such as droplet collection, manipulation, and rainfall sensing. Moisture-responsive actuators can directly harness energy from naturally occurring or engineered evaporation from water. That can subsequently be converted to mechanical energy or electricity, such as weather-responsive architectural systems, smart textiles, and soft robots. The cross-species bio-inspired materials benefit both actuator design and the development of smart surfaces with superwettability. The moisture-responsive shape-morphing slippery surface reveals great potential for developing bionic robots.

  

CAPTION

Figure 5. The manipulation of droplets on moisture responsive shape-morphing slippery surface. (a) Schematic illustration for the active and passive manipulation of a droplet containing live tubificidaes using the shape-morphing slippery surface. (b) The photographs of shape-morphing slippery frog tongue. The scale bar is 1.5 cm. (c) A smart water droplet harvesting flower. Every flower petal is made of the shape-morphing slippery surface (oil-LRGO/GO). The scale bar is 1.5 cm. (d) Moisture triggered active approach to water droplets containing live tubificidaes and the passive sliding behavior on the shape-morphing slippery surface. The scale bar is 0.5 cm. (e) The corresponding trajectory of the water droplet peripheries during the dynamic process. (f) The curvature changes of the shape-morphing slippery surface in (d). (g) The open-circuit voltage and (h) short-circuit current.

CREDIT

OEA

Article reference: Han DD, Zhang YL, Chen ZD, Li JC, Ma JN et al. Carnivorous plants inspired shape-morphing slippery surfaces. Opto-Electron Adv 6, 210163 (2023). doi: 10.29026/oea.2023.210163  

 

Keywords: femtosecond laser fabrication / graphene oxide / moisture responsive actuators / slippery surface / bionic devices

 

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Opto-Electronic Advances (OEA) is a high-impact, open access, peer reviewed monthly SCI journal with an impact factor of 8.933 (Journal Citation Reports for IF2021). Since its launch in March 2018, OEA has been indexed in SCI, EI, DOAJ, Scopus, CA and ICI databases over the time and expanded its Editorial Board to 36 members from 17 countries and regions (average h-index 49).

The journal is published by The Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, aiming at providing a platform for researchers, academicians, professionals, practitioners, and students to impart and share knowledge in the form of high quality empirical and theoretical research papers covering the topics of optics, photonics and optoelectronics.

 

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More information: http://www.oejournal.org/oea

Editorial Board: http://www.oejournal.org/oea/editorialboard/list

All issues available in the online archive (http://www.oejournal.org/oea/archive).

Submissions to OEA may be made using ScholarOne (https://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/oea).

ISSN: 2096-4579

CN: 51-1781/TN

Contact Us: oea@ioe.ac.cn

Twitter: @OptoElectronAdv (https://twitter.com/OptoElectronAdv?lang=en)

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DOI

10.29026/oea.2023.210163