Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology researchers improve the solubility of redox molecules for enhanced energy storage systems

Researchers introduce hydrotropic-supporting electrolyte to enhance the solubility of organic redox molecules for electrochemical capacitors

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GIST (GWANGJU INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY)

 

IMAGE: HYDROTROPES CUSTOMIZED WITH SPARINGLY SOLUBLE ORGANIC REDOX-ACTIVE SPECIES CAN ENHANCE ITS SOLUBILITY AND THE REDOX ACTIVITY OF ELECTROCHEMICAL CAPACITORS, WITHOUT COMPROMISING THE ELECTROCHEMICAL KINETICS OF THE REDOX MOLECULES, FINDS A NEW STUDY BY RESEARCHERS FROM KOREA. view more 

CREDIT: DR. SEUNG JOON YOO FROM GWANGJU INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, KOREA

Dominant battery technologies using flammable, toxic, unsustainable, and expensive energy sources are a major contributor to climate change. Switching from fossil fuels to cleaner and environmentally friendly energy sources is thus crucial to curtail the impacts of climate change. This transition can be supported by improving the efficiency of energy storage systems for safer and stable operations, sustainability, high energy/ power density.

Research on this front has focused on molecular engineering approaches to the development of aqueous-based redox-enhanced electrochemical capacitors (redox ECs). Redox ECs are a type of advanced hybrid electric double-layer capacitors that use redox-active molecules at the electrode-electrolyte interface to increase the energy density. Owing to the use of organic redox-active electrolytes, they are known to provide a cost merit, use of earth-abundant elements, and structural tunability. However, a major challenge in their development is the lack of sufficient solubility of these species in aqueous systems, which results in a low energy density. Furthermore, previous attempts at improving their solubility have proven to be time-consuming and cost extensive.

Now, researchers from Korea have used hydrotropic-supporting electrolyte (HSE) as an approach to enhancing the solubility of the organic redox-active species. The study, led by Assistant Professor Seung Joon Yoo and Professor Sukwon Hong from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Korea, was made available online on 20 April 2023 and was published in Volume 8, Issue 5 of the journal ACS Energy Letters on 12 May 2023.

The researchers used the process of hydrotropy, wherein a class of amphiphilic molecules are used. In this unique solubilization phenomenon, the volume of the hydrophobic component is relatively small compared to that of the surfactant, thus allowing an increase in the solubility of the sparingly soluble solute multifold. The researchers tested a range of quinones as a model species owing to their utility as a redox-active additive and an acceptable electrochemical stability.

The researchers found that using the HSE (p-toluene sulfonic acid (p-TsOH), 2-naphthalenesulfonic acid (2-NpOH), and anthraquinone-2-sulfonic acid (AQS)) improved the solubility of hydroquinone (HQ) without any chemical functionalization. Importantly, they demonstrated that an increase in the solubility is proportional to the concentration of the respective HSEs.

Moreover, they designed a biredox salt, 2-[N,N,N-tris(2-hydroxyethyl)] anthracenemethanaminum-9,10-dione bromide (AQM-Br), which could participate in Faradaic reactions at both the positive and negative electrodes, and tested it in the HSE system in a concentration-dependent manner. Dr. Yoo highlights, “The solubility of HQ in HSE was increased 7-fold, and a designer multifunctional dual-redox species (AQM-Br) was synthesized, the solubility of which was significantly enhanced from being barely soluble to >1 M by optimizing the HSE.”

Furthermore, the researchers also attempted to understand the action of solubilization for both the HQ and AQM-Br electrolyte. Using the intermolecular nuclear Overhauser effect and dynamic light scattering analyses, they found that the hydrotrope solubilization for HQ/HSE was achieved through the co-solubilizer mechanism, whereas for AQM-Br/HSE, it was due to the formation of quasi-micelle nanostructures.

Explaining the potential implications of the study, Prof. Yoo concludes, “Our simple approach can be readily extended to a different class of redox species and find applicable to a wide variety of applications including redox flow batteries.”In addition, our study provides a guideline for the design of energy-dense redox-active electrolytes and an optimal selection of HSE and redox-active electrolyte pairs. ”

Are redox ECs the future? It certainly looks like they’re here to stay!

***

Reference

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.3c00254

Authors:  Jinhwan Byeon1, Jinhyuck Ko2, Subin Lee2, Da Hye Kim2, Sung Won Kim2, Dowon Kim3, Wangsuk Oh4, Sukwon Hong1, and Seung Joon Yoo2

Affiliations:        

1Department of Chemistry, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

2School of Materials Science and Engineering,Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

3Department of Chemistry, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

4Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana−Champaign

 

About the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST)

The Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) is a research-oriented university situated in Gwangju, South Korea. Founded in 1993, GIST has become one of the most prestigious schools in South Korea. The university aims to create a strong research environment to spur advancements in science and technology and to promote collaboration between international and domestic research programs. With its motto of “A Proud Creator of Future Science and Technology,” GIST has consistently received one of the highest university rankings in Korea.

Website: http://www.gist.ac.kr/

 

About Assistant Professor Seung Joon Yoo from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

Dr. Seung Joon Yoo is an Assistant Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology (GIST), Korea. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 2014. From 2015 to 2019, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the laboratory of Prof. Galen D. Stucky, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is a recipient of the prestigious NSF Partnership for International Research and Education: Electron Chemistry and Catalysis Interfaces (PIRE-ECCI) Postdoctoral Fellowship and Graduate Fellowship. His current research interests include organic chemistry, electrochemistry, and electrochemical energy storage. His lab is the organic electrochemistry and energy materials laboratory at GIST.

 

About Professor Sukwon Hong from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

Sukwon Hong is a Professor of Chemistry at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST). His group is developing organometallic catalyst for asymmetric reactions, ethenolysis, CO2 chemistry, and photochemistry. The Hong group at GIST is also developing functional molecules for energy conversion, such as solar cells and thermoelectricity. Before coming to GIST, Dr. Hong worked as assistant professor at the University of Florida. In 2003, He received his PhD in Chemistry from Northwestern University, USA.

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JOURNAL

ACS Energy Letters

DOI

10.1021/acsenergylett.3c00254 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Solubility-Enhancing Hydrotrope Electrolyte with Tailor-Made Organic Redox-Active Species for Redox-Enhanced Electrochemical Capacitors

Young red kangaroos grow up quickly where hungry dingoes lurk in Australia

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THE DINGO BARRIER FENCE, AUSTRALIA view more 

CREDIT: PROFESSOR. COREY BRADSHAW, FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

New research shows that young red kangaroos protected by the dingo-proof fence in Australia take more time to grow up than their counterparts on the other side, who quickly outgrow the risk of being a predator dingo’s next meal.

The Flinders University study shows that protected red kangaroos south of the dingo fence have a slower growth rate than those living north of the fence, where they are exposed to the dingo.

In an article published in the Journal of Mammalogy, research led by Vera Weisbecker and the Global Ecology labs from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), also revealed that there are more young and female kangaroos inside the dingo-proof fence, showing that the fence impacts on different aspects of the red kangaroo’s life cycle.

“Red kangaroos are one of the dingo’s favourite prey species, so we were not surprised to find fewer of the smaller females and younger animals when there are more dingoes around,” says Associate Professor Vera Weisbecker.”

“However, we did not expect to see that, on average, young animals inside the fence were lighter and smaller than those outside the fence.”

In the first study of its kind, Dr Rex Mitchell, who collected and analysed the data from a licensed scientific shooting programme, says that the faster growth rate of red kangaroos outside of the fence and more vulnerable to predation could be a defensive adaptation for survival against dingoes preferring smaller red kangaroos.

“They certainly appear to escape the dangerous weight range more quickly than their protected cousins inside the fence.”

Co-author Dr Frédérik Saltré used satellite-based analyses to evaluate the impact of vegetation cover on these striking differences to ensure the difference in growth rate was not simply related to higher food availability outside the fence, but the results were also surprising.

“Counter-intuitively, we found less vegetation inside than outside the fence in the year of sampling,” he says. “There might, in fact, have been more food available to the slower-growing kangaroos inside the fence, meaning they were really taking their time to grow up.”

“Slower growth inside the fence could have some advantages for the animals,” says co-author Professor Corey Bradshaw.

“Having to put the whole body’s resources into growth, particularly when food is scarce, can mean that other areas of the body are compromised—an animal might be in poorer health or have fewer offspring, for example.”

The team says it’s also surprising that the dingo-proof fence could affect kangaroo growth patterns during the relatively short time of its existence.

Dr Mitchell says: “In the area we investigated, the dingo-proof fence was in disrepair until nearly 50 years ago, or about 17 kangaroo generations.” He adds that changes in a population’s growth patterns usually take much longer to evolve.

The team, therefore, agrees that more research is needed to address how much the dingo-proof fence affects kangaroos and other prey species.

“We need to know if this pattern is repeated over more years, and whether it is heritable or just a short-term reaction to exposure to dingoes. We also need to fine-tune our understanding of the vegetation, because vegetation cover might not mean that all the vegetation could be eaten by kangaroos,” says Associate Professor Weisbecker.

“The fence is a unique Australian megastructure, and a huge predator-prey experiment. Examining how the fence modifies our native wildlife is important in the continuing debate over the efficiency and merits of the dingo-proof fence, not only relative to the dingo itself, but also to the invasive species such as rabbits that the dingo eats.”

Associate Professor Vera Weisbecker and Professor Corey Bradshaw are Chief Investigators at CABAH. Dr Rex Mitchell and Dr Frédérik Saltré are CABAH Postdoctoral Researchers.

The Dingo Barrier Fence, Australia.

CREDIT

Professor.Corey Bradshaw, Flinders University.

The Dingo Fence sign, Australia.

CREDIT

Wikipedia Commons

A Dingo in Kakadu National Park, Australia.

CREDIT

Professor. Michael S. Y. Lee, Flinders University

Kangaroos is Cleland Wildlife Park, South Australia

CREDIT

Professor. Michael S. Y. Lee, Flinders University

Red kangaroo behind a fence.

CREDIT

Flickr commons

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JOURNAL

Journal of Mammalogy

DOI

10.1093/jmammal/gyad053 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Differential developmental rates and demographics in Red Kangaroo (Osphranter rufus) populations separated by the dingo barrier fence

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

31-May-2023

AI

Digital twins for construction and mechanical industries

A number of tech companies have joined forces with Aarhus University on a new research project to develop digital twins for the mechanical and construction industries. The aim is to give Danish and foreign enterprises a digital pat on the back

Grant and Award Announcement

AARHUS UNIVERSITY

For many companies, designing and testing new products is extremely costly in terms of both time and money.

A new Danish research project now aims to change this. The project, called CP-SENS, is co-finansed by the Innovation Fund Denmark and is being headed by researchers from Aarhus University to develop a digital twin platform for mechanical and construction industries.

The goal is to get companies and enterprises to start using digital-twins.

"Digital twins are currently revolutionizing a wide range of industries, but many enterprises don't have a chance to keep up. We want to change this, and our project will develop special sensors and tools that will facilitate a simple and cost-free transition to using digital twins," says Dr. Dmitri Tcherniak, Senior Research Engineer at HBK - Hottinger Brüel & Kjær, the leading partner of CP-SENS.

The aim of CP-SENS is to be a one-stop-shop for Danish and foreign enterprises that want to try their hand at modern digitalization and digital twins. It is a sort of playground where companies can try out intelligent IT systems tailored to their development and/or production without having to dive deeply into their purses.

"Today, there are no such digital-twin solutions for enterprises in these sectors, and this is suffocating innovation. However, enterprises do actually feed a lot of innovation, and therefore we want to give them access to these digital tools, simply because they'll then have time and other benefits that would otherwise be financially prohibitive," says Professor Peter Gorm Larsen from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Aarhus University, who is also a co-owner of the project and head of the university's Centre for Digital Twins.

Associate Professor Giuseppe Abbiati, Head of Section at the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering at Aarhus University, partner of the CP-SENS project, backs him up.

"Twenty years ago, you needed programmers to integrate programs and digitalize company portfolios. Today, it's almost like a computer game. This project aims to break down the complexity of system integration and make processes automatic so that anyone with an engineering background in any company can use a digital twin. It'll be a huge boost to companies, and I hope that many of them will accept the offer," he says.

The project is co-finansed with DKK 13.6 million from Innovation Fund Denmark's Grand Solutions programme. The project partners are Aarhus University, Hottinger Bruel and Kjaer World, Vestas Aircoil, Vienna Consulting Engineering, and Force Technology. The project starts in May 2023 and will run for three years.

Facts

The Innovation Fund's investment: DKK 13.6 million / EUR 1.8 million
Total budget: DKK 19.2 million / EUR 2.6 million
Duration: 3 years
Official title: Cyber-Physical Sensing for Machinery and Structures - CP-SENS

Partners

Hottinger Brüel & Kjær
Vestas Aircoil
Vienna Consulting Engineering
FORCE Technology
Aarhus University:

• Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering
• Department of Mechanical and Production Engineering

Reading between the cracks: artificial intelligence can identify patterns in surface cracking to assess damage in reinforced concrete structures

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DREXEL UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THE CONCEPT OF CRACK-TO-GRAPH CONVERSION USING CORNER DETECTION AND PIXEL TRACKING ALGORITHM. (A) ORIGINAL CRACK PATTERNS FROM THE EXPERIMENTS (B) CRACK PATTERNS SKETCHED MANUALLY; (C) CRACK PATTERNS WITH NODES; AND (D) CRACK GRAPH WITH NODES AND EDGES. view more 

CREDIT: DREXEL UNIVERSITY

Recent structural collapses, including tragedies in Surfside, Florida, Pittsburgh, and New York City, have centered the need for more frequent and thorough inspections of aging buildings and infrastructure across the country. But inspections are time-consuming, and often inconsistent, processes, heavily dependent on the judgment of inspectors. Researchers at Drexel University and the State University of New York at Buffalo are trying to make the process more efficient and definitive by using artificial intelligence, combined with a classic mathematical method for quantifying web-like networks, to determine how damaged a concrete structure is, based solely on its pattern of cracking.

In the paper “A graph-based method for quantifying crack patterns on reinforced concrete shear walls,” which was recently published in the journal Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, the researchers, led by Arvin Ebrahimkhanlou, PhD, an assistant professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering, and Pedram Bazrafshan, a doctoral student in the College, present a process that could help the country better understand how many of its hundreds of thousands of aging bridges, levees, roadways and buildings are in urgent need of repair.

“Without an autonomous and objective process for assessing damage to the many reinforced concrete structures that make up our built environment, these tragic structural failures are sure to continue,” Ebrahimkhanlou said. “Our aging infrastructures are being used beyond their design lifespan, and because manual inspections are time-consuming and subjective, indications of structural damage may be missed or underestimated.”

The current process for inspecting a concrete structure, such as a bridge or a parking deck, involves an inspector visually examining it for cracking, chipping, or water penetration, taking measurements of the cracks, and noting whether or not they have changed in the time between inspections — which may be years. If enough of these conditions are present and appear to be in an advanced state — according to a set of guidelines on a damage index — then the structure could be rated “unsafe.”

In addition to the time it takes to go through this process for each inspection, there is widespread concern that the process leaves too much room for subjectivity to skew the final assessment.

“The same crack in a reinforced concrete structure can appear menacing or mundane — depending on who is looking at it,” Bazrafshan said. “A crack can be an innocuous part of a building’s settling process or a telltale sign of structural damage; unfortunately, there is little agreement on precisely when one has progressed from the former to the latter.”

The first step for Bazrafshan and Ebrahimkhanlou’s group was to eliminate this uncertainty by creating a method to precisely quantify the extent of cracking. To do it, they employed a  mathematical method called graph theory, which is used to measure and study networks — most recently, social networks — by pinpointing its graph features, such as the number of times cracks intersect on average. 

Ebrahimkhanlou originally developed the process for using graph features to create a kind of “fingerprint” for each set of cracks in a reinforced concrete structure and — by comparing the prints of newly inspected structures to those of structures with known safety ratings — produce a quick and accurate damage assessment.

“Creating a mathematical representation of cracking patterns is a novel idea and the key contribution of our recent paper,” Ebrahimkhanlou said. “We find this to be a highly effective way to quantify changes in the patterns of cracking, which enables us to connect the visual appearance of a crack to the level of structural damage in a way that is quantifiable and can be consistently repeated regardless of who is doing the inspection.”

The team used AI pixel-tracking algorithms to convert images of cracks to their corresponding mathematical representation: a graph.

“The crack-to-graph conversion and feature-extraction processes take just a minute or so per image, which is a significant improvement by comparison to the inspection process which could take hours or days to make all of the required measurements,” Bazrafshan said. “This is also a promising development for the possibility of automating the entire analysis process in the future.”

To develop a feature framework for comparison, they had a machine learning program extract graph features from a set of images of reinforced concrete shear wall structures with different height-to-length ratios, that were created to test different behaviors of the walls that could occur in an earthquake.

Focusing specifically on the group of images that showed moderate cracking — the kind that shows that the safety of the structure is under question — the team trained a second algorithm to correlate the extracted graph features with a tangible scale showing the amount of damage imposed on the structure. For example, the more cracks intersect one another — which corresponds with a higher “average degree” of their graph feature — the more serious the damage to the structure.

The program assigned a weighted value to each of these features, depending on how closely they correlated with mechanical indicators of damage, to produce a quantitative profile against which the algorithm could measure new samples to determine the extent of their structural damage.

To test the assessment algorithm, the team used images of three large-scale walls that had been mechanically tested in a lab at the University at Buffalo to determine their conditions. The team used images of one side of each wall as a training set and then tested the model with images of the opposite side to test its ability to predict each sample’s level of damage.

In each case, the AI program was able to correctly assess the damage with greater than 90% accuracy, indicating that the program would be a highly effective means of rapid damage assessment.

“This is just the first step in creating a very powerful assessment tool that leverages volumes of research and human knowledge to make faster and more accurate assessments of structures in the built environment,” Ebrahimkhanlou said. “Imposing order on a seemingly chaotic set of features is the essence of scientific discovery. We believe this innovation could go a long way toward identifying problems before they happen and making our infrastructures safer.”

The group plans to continue its work by training and testing the program against larger and more diverse datasets, including other types of structures. And they are also working toward automating the process so that it could be integrated into structural monitoring systems, as well as the process of collecting photos and video of damaged structures following earthquakes and other natural disasters.

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JOURNAL

Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering

DOI

10.1111/mice.13009 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A graph-based method for quantifying crack patterns on reinforced concrete shear walls

Could a better diet make your brain younger?

New findings from a long-term diet trial show a positive effect on brain health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, June 1, 2023 – Switching to a Green Mediterranean Diet positively affects brain health, according to new research from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Weight loss attenuated brain aging in a sub-study of the DIRECT-PLUS trial.

DIRECT PLUS was a large-scale, long-term clinical trial over 18 months among 300 participants.

The sub-study was conducted by Prof. Galia Avidan of the Department of Psychology and Dr. Gidon Levakov, a former graduate student at the Department of Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

Their findings were published recently in eLife.

The larger study was led by Prof. Iris Shai of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, an adjunct Professor from the Harvard School of Public Health and an honorary professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany, along with her former graduate student Dr. Alon Kaplan, and colleagues from Harvard and Leipzig Universities.

Obesity is linked with the brain aging faster than would normally be expected. Researchers can capture this process by calculating a person’s ‘brain age’ – how old their brain appears on detailed scans, regardless of chronological age. This approach also helps to check how certain factors, such as lifestyle, can influence brain aging over relatively short time scales.

Levakov, Kaplan, Shai and Avidan studied 102 individuals who met the criteria for obesity. The participants received a brain scan at the beginning and the end of the program; more tests and measurements were also conducted at these times to capture other biological processes affected by obesity, such as liver health.

They used the brain scans taken at the start and end of the study to examine the impact of the lifestyle intervention on the aging trajectory. The results revealed that a reduction in body weight of 1% led to the participants’ brain age being almost 9 months younger than the expected brain age after 18 months. This attenuated aging was associated with changes in other biological measures, such as decreased liver fat and liver enzymes. Increases in liver fat and production of specific liver enzymes were previously shown to negatively affect brain health in Alzheimer’s disease.

"Our study highlights the importance of a healthy lifestyle, including lower consumption of processed food, sweets, and beverages, in maintaining brain health," says Dr. Levakov.

 “We were encouraged to find that even a weight loss of 1% was sufficient to affect brain health and lead to a 9-month reduction in brain age,” says Prof. Avidan.

The findings show that lifestyle interventions which promote weight loss can have a beneficial impact on the aging trajectory of the brain seen with obesity. The next steps will include figuring out whether slowing down obesity-driven brain aging results in better clinical outcomes for patients. In addition, the study shows a potential strategy to evaluate the success of lifestyle changes on brain health. With global rates of obesity rising, identifying interventions that have a positive impact on brain health could have important clinical, educational, and social impacts.

The DIRECT-PLUS trial research team was the first to introduce the concept of the green-Mediterranean, high polyphenols diet. This modified Mediterranean diet is distinct from the traditional Mediterranean diet because of its more abundant dietary polyphenols (phytochemicals, secondary metabolites of plant compounds that offer various health benefits) and lower red/processed meat. On top of a daily intake of walnuts (28 grams), the green-Mediterranean dieters consumed 3-4 cups of green tea and 1 cup of Wolffia-globosa (Mankai) plant green shake of duckweed per day over 18 months. The aquatic green plant Mankai is high in bioavailable iron, B12, 200 kinds of polyphenols and protein, and is therefore a good substitute for meat.

Additional researchers included: Anat Yaskolka Meir, Ehud Rinott, Gal Tsaban, Hila Zelicha, and Prof. Ilan Shelef of BGU, as well as Matthias Blüher, Uta Ceglarek, Michael Stumvoll of the University of Leipzig.

This work was funded by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project number 209933838- SFB 1052; the Rosetrees Trust (grant A2623); Israel Ministry of Health grant 87472511; Israel Ministry of Science and Technology grant 3-13604; and the California Walnuts Commission.

None of the funding providers took part in any stage of the design, conduct, or analysis of the study, and they had no access to the study results before publication.

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JOURNAL

eLife

DOI

10.7554/eLife.83604 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The effect of weight loss following 18 months of lifestyle intervention on brain age assessed with resting-state functional connectivity

University College Dublin researcher receives ERC funding to unlock insights into pig-to-human heart transplants

XenoSim project will establish the new field of ‘computational cardiac xenotransplantation’ and establish pioneering computational techniques with significant implications for a range of scientific disciplines

Grant and Award Announcement

UCD RESEARCH & INNOVATION

Thursday 1st June: Dr Philip Cardiff, Associate Professor at University College Dublin's School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, has received a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant of €2 million for his 5-year project XenoSim. With the support of this award, Dr Cardiff will develop advanced computational techniques that can provide unprecedented insights into the cutting-edge realm of pig-to-human heart transplants

ERC Consolidator Grants are awarded to help excellent scientists, who have 7-12 years’ experience after their PhDs, to pursue their most promising ideas. Worth €657 million in total, the grants will create around 1950 jobs for postdoctoral fellows, PhD students, and other staff at host institutions around Europe

President of the ERC Professor Maria Leptin said: “ERC Consolidator grants support researchers at a crucial time of their careers, strengthening their independence, reinforcing their teams and helping them establish themselves as leaders in their fields. And this backing above all gives them a chance to pursue their scientific dreams.”

A funded investigator in the national Advanced Manufacturing Centre I-Form and Director of the Bekaert University Technology Centre at University College Dublin, Dr Cardiff said: “We stand on the threshold of a groundbreaking medical era where pig-to-human heart transplants are becoming a reality. From an engineering standpoint, pig hearts share similarities with their human counterparts in terms of ‘pump design’; however, their distinct size, shape, and functional characteristics introduce important differences that can impact their performance within the human body.”

“With the support of this ERC Consolidator grant, we aim to unlock invaluable insights into these differences by developing advanced biomechanical computational models. This pioneering research promises to offer not only unprecedented insights into the cutting-edge realm of cardiac xenotransplantation but also to establish pioneering computational techniques with significant implications for a wide range of scientific disciplines.”

The Project

Xenotransplantation has long been a dream for clinicians and now, due to rapid progress in gene editing, is becoming a reality. To overcome immediate rejection, barriers of immunity and infection have to be overcome, but achieving long-term success requires a deep understanding of the physiological and mechanical challenges introduced by the anatomically dissimilar xenotransplants. 

‘XenoSim: Providing Computational Insights into Cardiac Xenotransplantation’, aims to address these challenges by providing fundamental clinical insights into the nascent field of cardiac xenotransplantation through the development and application of novel high-resolution, higher-order, multiphysics simulation methods. Tremendous progress has been made in biomedical imaging, nonetheless, a multitude of physical phenomena relevant to xenotransplantation are not available for experimental observation. 

In-silico studies are uniquely placed to provide insights into the haemodynamic disruption caused by replacing a human heart with an anatomically dissimilar one. XenoSim is targeting the establishment of the first family of porcine cardiac xenotransplant models that can provide clinically significant insights into the haemodynamic compatibility of porcine donor hearts, the impact of surgical approach, and the consequence of pathologies. 

To provide these novel insights requires new coupled simulation approaches. Accordingly, the project aims to create a new class of monolithic finite volume fluid-electrosolid interaction methods, which can provide predictions in clinically relevant timescales through the exploitation of hybrid CPU-GPU systems. XenoSim will establish the new field of computational cardiac xenotransplantation. Furthermore, the novel numerical methods established by XENOSIM are expected to impact a broad range of fields well beyond the project end.

The XenoSim team will employ three Postdoctoral researchers, three PhD students and one Research Assistant.

Learn more about the ERC Consolidator grants and recipients here.

 

Petit-spot volcanoes involve the deepest known submarine hydrothermal activity, possibly release CO2 and methane

Researchers reveal the hydrothermal activity of "petit-spot" volcanoes using samples obtained from 5.7km underwater—the deepest known to date

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASEDA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS HAVE ANALYZED SAMPLES FROM PETIT-SPOT VOLCANOES TO CONFIRM THEIR HYDROTHERMAL ACTIVITY AND ESTIMATED THE PROCESS BEHIND THE HYDROTHERMAL ACTIVITY. view more 

CREDIT: KEISHIRO AZAMI FROM WASEDA UNIVERSITY

Underwater volcanism on the Earth's crust are active contributors of many different elements to the oceanic environment. Hence, they play an important role in biogeochemical and chemosynthetic cycles of the ocean. Although there have been many studies on high-temperature hydrothermal systems in the mid-ocean ridge—a series of underwater volcanoes that trace the edges of the different oceanic plates—there is little information on low-temperature hydrothermal systems in other volcanoes, such as "petit-spot" volcanoes.

Petit-spot volcanoes are small volcanoes that are found around the world, in regions where oceanic plates flex. Recent studies in the east of the Japan Trench have found that petit-spot volcanoes erupt alkaline magma that is enriched in carbon dioxide (CO2). These volcanoes also produce a volcanic rock called peperite that results from the heating of water-rich sediment, which implies hydrothermal fluid production and methanogenesis. Thereby, it is suggested that petit-spot volcanoes may vent hydrothermal fluids containing methane. These findings indicate the need for a better understanding of the hydrothermal activity of petit-spot volcanoes to properly evaluate their contributions to marine biogeochemical cycle.

In a recent study, a team of scientists, including Assistant Professor Keishiro Azami from Waseda University, investigated hydrothermal deposits from a petit-spot volcano at a water depth of 5.7 km in the Japan Trench in the western North Pacific Ocean. "The submarine hydrothermal activity we have described in our paper is the deepest known to date. Based on our findings, we have further estimated the hydrothermal interactions that occur in petit-spot volcanoes," explains Azami. The research team also included Dr. Shiki Machida from Chiba Institution of Technology and Associate Professor Naoto Hirano from Tohoku University. The paper has been published in Communications Earth & Environment.

As a part of their study, the team analyzed the chemical and mineralogical composition of dredge samples obtained from the oceanic floor near the petit-spot volcano. They found that the samples were primarily composed of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) oxides, and that their characteristics were attributed to hydrothermal origin, i.e., the Fe–Mn oxides precipitated directly from hydrothermal fluid. These results indicate petit-spot hydrothermal activity as the reason for the formation of these oxides and the petit-spot volcano as the deepest hydrothermal site known to date. The researchers also found that the chemical and mineral compositions of the samples were indicative of low-temperature hydrothermal activity.

The researchers then performed x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to identify the elemental distribution of the sample cross-sections and performed independent component analysis on the elemental distribution data to elucidate the formation process of these Fe–Mn oxides. Their findings suggested that the formation of these Fe–Mn oxides starts when petit-spot magma produces low-temperature hydrothermal fluid, which flows up via the sediment column and precipitates Mn oxides at the interface with seawater. This Mn oxide layer, which contains silicate debris, then grows downwards toward the seabed as more Mn oxide is deposited. Eventually this debris is altered. Next, Fe oxides are deposited via the same action on the interface between the low-temperature hydrothermal fluid and the Mn oxides. A hydrogenetic rim then grows on these deposits at the surface that is exposed to seawater, after the cessation of hydrothermal activity.

“Based on previous research, we can estimate hydrothermal fluid from petit-spot volcanoes to be enriched in CO2 and methane compared to that from the mid-ocean ridge,” explains Azami. "This means, in turn, that the elemental contributions from petit-spot hydrothermal activity around the world may potentially have important implications for global biogeochemical cycles, in particular the carbon cycle."

These findings underscore the presence of hydrothermal activity in cold and old oceanic plates and highlight the need for further studies on petit-spot volcanoes.

 

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Reference

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00832-3

Authors:

Keishiro Azami1, †, 2, Shiki Machida2, Naoto Hirano3, Kentaro Nakamura4, 1, 2, Kazutaka Yasukawa4,1, Tetsu Kogiso5, Masao Nakanishi6, Yasuhiro Kato1, 2

Affiliations         

1Department of Systems Innovation, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

2Ocean Resources Research Center for Next Generation, Chiba Institution of Technology, 2-17-1 Tsudanuma, Narashino, Chiba 275-0016, Japan

3Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, 41 Kawauchi, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8576, Japan

4Frontier Research Center for Energy and Resources, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

5Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Yoshida-nihonmatsu, Sakyo, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan

6Graduate School of Science, Chiba University, 1-33 Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan

†Present address: School of Creative Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan

 

About Waseda University

Located in the heart of Tokyo, Waseda University is a leading private research university that has long been dedicated to academic excellence, innovative research, and civic engagement at both the local and global levels since 1882. The University has produced many changemakers in its history, including nine prime ministers and many leaders in business, science and technology, literature, sports, and film. Waseda has strong collaborations with overseas research institutions and is committed to advancing cutting-edge research and developing leaders who can contribute to the resolution of complex, global social issues. The University has set a target of achieving a zero-carbon campus by 2032, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015. 

To learn more about Waseda University, visit https://www.waseda.jp/top/en  

 

About Assistant Professor Keishiro Azami

Keishiro Azami is an Assistant Professor at the School of Creative Science and Engineering at Waseda University in Japan. His research focuses on geochemistry and solid Earth sciences, with a special interest in the ferromanganese crust. Dr. Azami is also a member of the Geochemical Society of Japan, the Japan Geological Society, and the Japan Geoscience Union. He has published seven papers. Dr. Azami obtained his PhD from the University of Tokyo in 2022.

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JOURNAL

Communications Earth & Environment

DOI

10.1038/s43247-023-00832-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Hydrothermal ferromanganese oxides around a petit-spot volcano on old and cold oceanic crust