HWY I-95 NAFTA ROUTE

Guidelines to steer the future of autonomous trucking

Virginia Tech

 

image: 

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute Concept of Operations tractor trailer at the TMC Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida.

view more 

Credit: Photo by Jacob Levin for Virginia Tech

After four years, a guidebook for the future of autonomous trucking has driven across the finish line.

In 2020, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) and 17 partners were awarded a $7.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop a concept of operations. The final report, published in July, includes best practices for the implementation of automated driving systems (ADS) in large trucks and policy issues for fleets to consider across eight topic areas.

“We’re excited that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's grant to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute for the Fleet Concept of Operations exceeded the grant requirements for both activities and matching contributions,” said Tom Kelly, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's technical point of contact for the grant. “They accomplished their goal to demonstrate several different concepts of potential ADS truck applications and research key operational issues such as insurance, roadway readiness, and fleet safety management practices. All of this culminated in a ‘playbook’ for trucking fleets considering ADS operations in the future. In addition to the research findings, the grant created a publicly available data set containing thousands of miles of ADS operations data.”

The guidelines focus on eight topic areas:

• Fleet specifications
• System installation and maintenance guide
• ADS inspection procedures
• Drive state monitoring
• Motor carrier guide to insuring automated driving system-equipped trucks
• Identification of automated driving system-equipped truck safety metrics and variables
• Road readiness assessment system
• Data transfer and cybersecurity best practices

The guidelines were just one outcome of the work, known as the Fleet of Concept Operations project (CONOPS), which also included four other goals:

• Observe and report on practices related to safely integrating automated driving system-equipped trucks into the U.S. on-road transportation system.
• Collect datat to support the modernization of regulations by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
• Demonstrate the integration of automated driving system-equipped trucks in a productive, cooperative way into existing road freight ecosystems.
• Collaborate with government entities, university and research institutes, trucking associations, and private partners.

“The goal of the CONOPS project was to provide the trucking industry with guidelines on how to safely implement, integrate, and benefit from automated driving system-equipped trucks," said Rich Hanowski, director of the Division of Freight, Transit, and Heavy Vehicle Safety at VTTI. “The research conducted, including the on-road demonstrations, provides new insights and examples of successful deployments that fleets interested in integrating ADS can emulate."

To accomplish these four goals and develop the eight guidelines, the research team conducted in-the-field operational use cases, organized a variety of demonstrations and public outreach activities, and developed a Dataverse.

Operational use cases

The primary source of data collection was three operational use cases in which an automated driving system-equipped truck would be beneficial:

• A five-day deployment at the Port of Oakland in California
• A team completing five cross-country road trips with an automated driving system-equipped truck, totaling more than 15,000 miles
• An evaluation of drivers’ actions when a vehicle is operating in an autonomous function in Whitter, Alaska, and an analysis of other ways autonomous functions could improve the supply chain

Demonstrations and public outreach

Throughout the data collection and use cases, VTTI also hosted a series of public outreach events. This included events in Charlotte, Orlando, and Dallas, during which patrons saw automated driving system demonstrations, viewed a live streamed of the cross-country data collection, and even had the opportunity to ride in an automated truck.

These events were aided by VTTI’s multiple project partners, including the San Francisco-based autonomous trucking company Pronto.ai.

“We showcased different aspects of Level 4 truck automation [high automation that still allows for human override] operations and what those might be able to look like in the future,” said Ognen Stojanovski, co-founder of Pronto.ai. “This was a demonstration of being able to integrate and deploy these kinds of technologies into the existing transportation ecosystem.”

During the event in Dallas, Kodiak Robotics provided a demonstration of an enhanced commercial motor vehicle inspection on a truck equipped with an automated driving system.

“As a leader in the autonomous technology industry, we are incredibly excited about the opportunity to enhance the safety of American highways that use the enhanced inspection program,” said Daniel Goff, Kodiak’s head of policy. “This enhanced inspection ensures that all trucks are inspected to an incredibly high standard so that law enforcement has confidence in the quality of the inspection and the roadworthiness of the trucks.”

Data usage

To support the collected data, the CONOPS Dataverse was developed to house data from the events and deployments. Hosted by VTTI, the Dataverse includes four separate collections consisting of 94 data sets each, including the following:

• Data generated from the operation of the advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving system-equipped trucks, including video, kinematic, radar, GPS, and other sensors
• Driver monitoring datasets from the automated driving system-equipped vehicles during the three use cases
• Survey responses obtained from the public during the outreach events. The data is publicly available for use by researchers, policymakers, and others seeking insights into the future of automation in trucking.

The road ahead

While further research and development is needed for total fleet adoption, researchers said the Fleet of Concept Operations project guidelines provide the essential starting point for any fleet as well as a baseline understanding of where the industry stands with the implementation of automated driving systems in the field and what next steps are required for successful adoption.

“Automation should be developed in partnership with the humans operating around or responsible for the system,” said Andrew Krum, the project’s principal investigator and senior research associate at VTTI. “While many factors still need to be addressed, specifically fleet by fleet, this concept of operations is the first of its kind and can help to guide the future of automation in trucking fleets."

The report is available on the project website.

New provincial funding to help drive connected and autonomous vehicle research at uOttawa

University of Ottawa

 

image: 

“Our work will not only advance technological research and development but also contribute to safer, more secure, and efficient transportation systems”

Burak Kantarci

— Full Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

view more 

Credit: University of Ottawa

The University of Ottawa has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Ontario Research Fund – Research Excellence (ORF-RE) to support the “Secure, Intelligent and Trustworthy Ecosystems for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles” (SITE-CAV) project.

Led by Burak Kantarci,Full Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, uOttawa’s Faculty of Engineering, the project aims to accelerate the development and integration of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs – or vehicles equipped with sensors and decision-making software that drives and controls it without direct human intervention) into Ontario’s transportation ecosystem.

This investment will enable the creation of a collaborative team of researchers from the University of Ottawa, Western University (Professors Abdallah Shami and Xianbin Wang), and the University of Toronto (Professor Birsen Donmez), in partnership with industry leaders, to develop groundbreaking solutions for the challenges posed by CAV technology.

“This funding represents a significant milestone for our research team and highlights the importance of our work,” explained Professor Kantarci. “We are committed to driving meaningful advancements in technology that will benefit not only our students and academic community but also society at large.”

The project will involve a collaboration with leading industry partners and will ensure that the research conducted is aligned with industry needs that can translate into practical applications.

SITE-CAV will also contribute to Ontario's emerging CAV sector by training some 59 highly qualified personnel over four years, including undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers.

“Our work will not only advance technological research and development but also contribute to safer, more secure, and efficient transportation systems, ultimately enhancing public safety and supporting the adoption of autonomous vehicle technologies,” concluded Professor Kantarci.

The SITE-CAV project is set to commence in January 2025 at uOttawa’s Kanata-North campus at its Smart Connected Vehicles Innovation Centre, which includes its own private test-driving track.

 

Thousands of jellyfish clones are multiplying in B.C. lakes

University of British Columbia

 

image: 

Peach blossom jellyfish in sample jars

view more 

Credit: Polina Orlov

An invasive, freshwater jellyfish is popping up in B.C. waters in the thousands and future sightings could increase rapidly, according to UBC research.

The peach blossom jellyfish clones have been spotted in 34 places in B.C., its furthest northern range in North America, and a recent paper predicts sightings and the number of locations will increase by the end of the decade as climate change extends this range.

Dr. Florian Lüskow, who completed the research during his postdoctoral fellowship at UBC’s department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences (EOAS), and Dr. Evgeny Pakhomov, professor in EOAS and the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF), discuss the mysterious jelly.

What do we know about these jellyfish?

FL: This is an introduced jellyfish species from China which has spread around the world. We know very little about how they affect ecosystems and biodiversity of these systems in Canada, because the research hasn’t been done yet. The worry is that they harm indigenous species by outcompeting them. We’re the only researchers in Canada investigating these jellyfish, with help from citizen scientists around B.C.

Peach blossom jellyfish have been reported in B.C. since 1990, mainly in the Lower Mainland, on Vancouver Island, around the Sunshine Coast and more recently, as far inland as Osoyoos Lake. Between 1990 and 2023, a 34 year span, there have been 85 sightings, counted once per location per year, where each sighting could be one or thousands of jellyfish. But in this decade alone, we are predicting about 80 sightings, and likely in more than the 34 locations currently observed.

We know that of the 100 jellyfish examined so far, each has been male comprised of the same genetic material, which means these thousands of jellyfish are effectively clones and originated from the same polyp or a small cluster of polyps—the stage of a jellyfish which lives at the bottom of a body of water.

EP: Polyps are very small, usually around a millimetre in size, and it is challenging to locate them. They inhabit shallow areas and can be found on rocks and submerged wood debris. Hence, we usually know about jellyfish introduction when we see the floating medusa form produced by polyps appear in the water, which appear only when water temperature is higher than 21 degrees Celsius —so polyps could be in many more lakes without us knowing about it. We do not know how and when introduction of the species occurred, but it was likely through medusa-producing polyps carried on recreational boats or on the bills or feet of birds when feeding.

We found medusae in ponds, quarries and lakes, but never in creeks or rivers. And, we know that the jellyfish aren’t harmful to humans, because their stings can’t pierce human skin.

How is climate change affecting these jellies?

FL: B.C. is the northernmost point in this continent for the peach blossom jellyfish’s range. It relies on mild winters and high summer temperatures to reproduce, so we wouldn’t see them in the Prairies because the winters are too cold.

EP: If climate change leads to freshwater temperature increases across B.C., we will likely see wider spread. Modelling indicates that even Alaskan reservoirs may potentially see invasion. However, there is a silver lining: So far only males, which are genetically identical, have been observed. This means that the jellyfish cannot complete their sexual reproduction and thus its adaptation to new environments will be limited. This would curtail their spread.    

What are the next steps?

EP: The priority should be two-fold: first, to properly map the actual distribution of the peach blossom jellyfish, including range, in B.C. Second, to better quantify the jellyfish impact on freshwater ecosystems, including young salmon.

FL: To achieve the first objective, we’d like to use environmental DNA, which is a tool that ascertains the DNA in a sample of water. This would allow us to find out if the jellyfish is present even if we can’t see it, say, in its polyp form.

We’d also like to receive observations wherever they occur. People who spot a peach blossom jellyfish can submit a report to iNaturalist, the Invasive Species Council of BC, or to us.

This would help us answer fundamental questions about the jellyfish and its impact on B.C. ecosystems and species, allowing better informed management recommendations.

---

Journal

Canadian Journal of Zoology

DOI

10.1139/cjz-2024-0007 

 KINK

Can technology turn exercise pain into pleasure?

Most exercisers stop VR 'exergaming' when the program gets too tough or dull - could sensors that tune into a person's emotional state reverse low adherence?

University of Bath

Virtual reality (VR) video games that combine screen time with exercise are a great way to get fit, but game designers face a major challenge – like with regular exercise, adherence to ‘exergames’ is low, with most users dropping out once they start to feel uncomfortable or bored.

Computer scientists at the University of Bath believe they’ve found a solution: create exergames that use sensors to continuously measure a person’s emotional state while they exercise, then tweak the game – for instance, making it easier or harder – to keep the user engaged.

Dr Dominic Potts, lead author of a new study into harnessing cutting-edge sensor technology to keep exercisers motivated, said: “When it comes to physical exercise in all forms, motivation and exercise adherence are huge problems. With exergaming, we can address this issue and maximise a person’s enjoyment and performance by adapting the challenge level to match a user’s abilities and mood.

“Exercise games that are completely adaptive will sense a person's emotions and give them more ‘rewards’ when they’re struggling and more obstacles when they’re ready for a new challenge.”

Game designers have long aspired to develop more personalised exergames – i.e. programs that tune in to a person as they work out, adapting to their struggles and ambitions of the game unfolds – however, finding a trustworthy method for measuring a user’s evolving emotional state has proven elusive.

The Bath team has made a breakthrough by employing a novel range of sensors – which could be embedded in VR headsets and wearable devices such as smartwatches – to track physical changes experienced by an exerciser as they work out.

The team’s findings were published recently at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), where the paper received an honourable mention award.

The researchers hope their findings will be adopted by game designers to create immersive programs that can keep a person peddling, running or weightlifting long after they’d normally choose to quit.

Background noise

Until now, sensors – which can be extremely effective at tracking emotional states when a person is sedentary – have proven unreliable at measuring the emotional landscape of a person involved in physical activity, making it hard to recognise if a person is experiencing happiness, stress of boredom.

“Traditionally, these sensing devices have been put into VR headsets to track blinks and pupil dilation, but generally they are highly susceptible to physiological and background noise,” explained Dr Potts.

Unwanted ‘noise’ is generated in two ways: by a person moving in unpredictable ways – as they often do when exercising – and by the exerciser responding to the virtual environment (VE) they’re immersed in. So, for instance, a sensor that shows a person’s pupils dilating as they exercise might reflect luminosity changes in the VE rather than the user’s evolving emotional state.

Reliable tracking

In the new study, 72 participants were involved in a VR static bike race while the Bath scientists used a specific combination of sensors to measure pupil size, facial expressions, heart rate, levels of sweating, skin inflammation and electrodermal activity (which measures the skin’s ability to conduct electricity, reflecting stress levels).

Data was collected through the sensors while racers worked out in four distinct VEs, where each environment was designed to induce a specific emotion (happiness, sadness, stress, and calmness). Participants moved through these VEs at three different exercise intensities (low, medium, and high).

For each workout, the researchers were able to paint an accurate picture of a user’s emotional state, matching the game’s level of difficulty and the nature of the VE with the physiological changes experienced by the user, as picked up by their sensors.

Drawing from this research, eight guidelines have been formulated for creators of VR exergame, aimed at enhancing the emotional engagement of users. Among these recommendations are the following:

• Pupil-detecting sensors should be designed to correct for luminosity changes in the virtual environment.
• Preexisting sweat levels of a user should be taken into account to predict stress and arousal of the nervous system.
• Sensor data should be cleaned before and during an exergame (i.e. removing signals unrelated to emotional changes) to measure interpersonal differences and enable the game to be tailored to each user.
• Multiple physiological sensors should be used to improve predictions of a user’s emotional state.

Dr Christof Lutteroth, who leads exergame research as director of the REVEAL research centre and is co-investigator at CAMERA, both based at the University of Bath, said: “In the long run, our objective is to make VR exercise emotionally intelligent.

“We fully expect VR physical activity to explode in popularity in the years ahead – school children are already using them as part of their exercise programmes and they are also being used in rehab and sports science – so it’s important to focus on making technology that’s emotionally intelligent and adaptive to differences between users.”

The University of Bath research team for this study included: Dr Dominic Potts, Masters student Zoe Broad, Psychology undergraduate Tarini Sehgal, Joseph Hartley, Professor Eamonn O'Neill, Dr Crescent Jicol, Dr Christopher Clarke and Dr Christof Lutteroth.

Link to video explainer: https://youtu.be/P_AXa4Lb1UU?si=tCkhFxPAcN7gNH2f

---

DOI

10.1145/3613904.3642611 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Sweating the Details: Emotion Recognition and the Influence of Physical Exertion in Virtual Reality Exergaming

 

When is the right time to launch new technologies?

Study led by Bayes helps companies avoid presenting innovative products and technologies to the marketplace at the wrong moment

City St George’s, University of London

 

image: 

A flow chart outlining management decision-making process on when to launch new technology to the market.

view more 

Credit: Robinson and Veresiu (2004)

New research from Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) finds that being on the cutting edge of technology is not enough to ensure success in the market, and managers must strategically time launches to create a source of opportunity and credibility for the firm.

The study, led by Dr Thomas Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Bayes, with Dr Ela Veresiu, Associate Professor of Marketing at Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, develops a framework for guiding organisations on the best situations for a product launch.

The research identifies four timing situations that can confront marketing managers. Knowing the features and traits of each timing category allows firms to develop a launch strategy leading to success:

• Synergistic timing is the optimal, legitimate launch condition whereby a firm and its stakeholders share norms about when things should occur. Here the market is ready for a product and stakeholders are ready to embrace change.
• Flexible timing consists of low firm-led coordination but high stakeholder willingness to change. Consumers and other stakeholders initiate the legitimacy of a launch moment by being open to a product’s prospective utility. Flexible timing can become synergistic timing if a firm decides its product is sufficient for early release, or it can buy time with consumers by sharing prototype failures or ‘drip-feeding’ information about a product.
• Inflexible timing occurs when there is little appetite from stakeholders to change their timing expectations, so the firm must induce appetite for new technology that can overcome stakeholder caution about the future. To move from inflexible to synergistic timing, managers should aim to restrict a product’s tech functionality or increase its dependency on human intervention.
• Antagonistic timing arises when both stakeholder willingness to change and firm-led coordination are low, and launching new technology should not be a priority in this instance.

The conceptual paper draws on the 2013 release of the Google Glass augmented reality (AR) experience, which failed because it launched at the wrong moment. The firm itself was not adequately prepared, nor were consumers ready to accept the functionality of the device, leading to the glasshole moniker. A decade later, consumers are ready for public filming and social media sharing. Legislation is also in place in a way that now makes Ray-Ban’s Meta Smart Glasses a very desirable device.

Launching new technology in the market is therefore, according to the research, a social game, in which timing is an issue of poise and tact when engaging with stakeholders. Offering time signals consideration, respect, and mindfulness. Not offering enough time is rude and gets in the way of understanding and feeling comfortable around the new technology.

The research was supported by a comprehensive review of literature looking into the role of time in market legitimacy, using the Business Source Complete database to extract academic articles around subject – plus articles from 20 4*,4 and 3 ranked marketing journals that contained key words. The resulting sample of 172 articles were then coded to identify key and recurring themes around time.

Dr Robinson said insights on the role of timing are essential for firms to improve the odds of success at launch.

“While 30,000 new products are introduced every year, 95 percent fail,” he said.

 “Consider a marriage proposal on the first date, a request for more time after ten years in a relationship, waiting too long to thank a relative for a birthday present or serving a dessert before the mains at a dinner party. Stakeholders have strong timing-norms about pacing, sequencing, coordination and planning that impact the readiness of the market.

“While marketers often have a linear view of technology, our research on timing reveals that it is not always the case that the old is simply replaced by the new – often old, failed technologies have a comeback.

“Product categories like AR glasses rose from their own ashes in ‘phoenix markets’, suggesting that it can be worthwhile to revisit old failures. Smartwatches, electric cars, and social media were all initial failures that later succeeded. Substantial losses could have been avoided had they had better timing frameworks.

“While the timing framework is developed for launching new technologies, our research also has broader applications for rebranding and mergers, political marketing, understanding the fashion cycle, service design and the experience economy.”

‘Timing Legitimacy: Identifying the Optimal Moment to Launch Technology in the Market’ by Dr Thomas Robinson and Professor Ela Veresiu is published in the Journal of Marketing.

---

Journal

Journal of Marketing

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Timing Legitimacy: Identifying the Optimal Moment to Launch Technology in the Market

 

Dr. Torabi to study vulnerabilities in electric vehicle charging management systems

George Mason University

Dr. Sadegh Torabi, Assistant Professor, Information Sciences and Technology, College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), and Research Fellow at the Center for Secure Information Systems (CSIS), is set to receive funding for the project: “Collaborative Research: CISE MSI: RPEP: OAC: Macroscopic and Microscopic Inference and Analysis of Vulnerabilities within EV Charging-Management Systems.” 

Via this project, Dr. Torabi and his partners will establish a collaborative ecosystem among academia, industry, and the public sector to bolster the resilience of the EV Charging Infrastructure (CI). The critical nature of EV CI has made them targets for malicious attacks, often state-sponsored, exploiting rarely investigated vulnerabilities. Dr. Torabi aims to develop proactive methodologies to identify and analyze Internet-connected EV Management Stations (EVMS) and their software, thoroughly exploring and mitigating related vulnerabilities.  

Dr. Torabi’s primary objective is to detect deployed configurations and their interconnections, while retrieving critical artifacts, such as firmware binaries and compiled software, for comprehensive vulnerability analysis and disclosure. This project also outlines innovative methods to pinpoint and assess exploitable vulnerabilities within this evolving paradigm, while developing a feedback CI-centric repository for disseminating essential design guidelines and tangible threat information to various stakeholders. By bolstering the resilience of EVMS, this project advances clean and sustainable transportation, reinforces national security, and contributes to stabilizing energy supply and demand.

Dr. Torabi will receive $225,000 as a PI from the National Science Foundation for this project. Funding will begin in Oct. 2024 and will end in late Sept. 2028.

###

 

Prestigious NSF award to advance UK research to track emerging pathogens

The University of Kentucky is one of four institutions supported with this award. Pigman College of Engineering’s Scott Berry will lead the newly established NSF Pandemic Environmental Surveillance Center for Assessing Pathogen Emergence (NSF ESCAPE)

University of Kentucky

 

video: 

Scott Berry, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the UK Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, is the principal investigator of the nearly $18 million award from the National Science Foundation. It will establish the NSF Pandemic Environmental Surveillance Center for Assessing Pathogen Emergence (NSF ESCAPE) at UK which will focus on environmental surveillance by combining social science, engineering, bioinformatics and risk modeling.

view more 

Credit: University of Kentucky Research Communications

We all have lived through a pandemic, its uncertainties, challenges, losses and scientific breakthroughs. A prestigious award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is advancing the work of a team of researchers at the University of Kentucky to help society be better prepared for potential future pandemics.

Scott Berry, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the UK Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, is the principal investigator of the six-year cooperative agreement projected to be nearly $18 million.

It’s part of NSF’s Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) program, which was initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic to address both the immediate threat as well as the broad range of diseases that drastically impact life on Earth.

In this second phase of the program, the awards establish centers comprised of multidisciplinary research teams to tackle this challenge.

UK is one of four institutions supported with this award. Its new center, named the NSF Pandemic Environmental Surveillance Center for Assessing Pathogen Emergence (NSF ESCAPE), will focus on environmental surveillance by combining social science, engineering, bioinformatics and risk modeling.

“The prevention of a pandemic is a complex process that requires a multidisciplinary set of skills,” said Berry. “People often think about doctors and nurses, but it’s really so much more than that. It’s public health officials, utility operators, basic scientists, engineers, policymakers — an entire community of problem solvers.”

NSF ESCAPE expands this team’s previous work using wastewater testing to show the first signs of a disease outbreak in a community. Berry invented a new technology called exclusion-based sample preparation to create a fast and simple way to test samples.

With the help of engineering students, Berry and his team also created a mobile lab to take wastewater testing to rural Kentucky.

“Appalachia is one of the most underserved regions of the United States, and we really wanted to bring cutting-edge technology out there,” said Berry. “That mission is reflected in our partnerships on this project. While we develop these technologies with low resource communities in mind, it’s really applicable to all our communities — rural and urban.”  

Berry is leading the seven-year effort along with co-principal investigators Matthew Scotch, Ph.D., associate dean and professor in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University; James Keck, Ph.D., a research physician at the University of Alaska Anchorage and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium; and Sarah Olson, Ph.D., the associate director of epidemiology for the Wildlife Conservation Society Health Program.

“Our team is made up of many different groups across a huge geographical distance, as well as a diversity of different skills,” said Berry. “We’re hoping to continue to develop these tools that allow us to push environmental surveillance into the farthest reaches of the world.

“That includes expansion of our surveillance to animals. Pathogens are known to jump between animals and humans, and so we can’t just limit our analysis to humans alone. We have to really look at everything.”

Berry and the NSF ESCAPE team will also work with Sahar Alameh, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the College of Education, to develop curricula for students to tackle misinformation about diseases, pandemics and viruses. Alameh’s research focuses on helping students better understand scientific phenomena and supporting teachers in that work.

Researchers will also offer training for people working in public health to better understand what this new type of data means and how they can use it to help the health of their communities.

“Research on emerging infectious diseases is a critical investment in our future, and it necessitates a collaborative approach that spans multiple disciplines and sectors and incorporates the newest tools and technology,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “By bringing together experts in biology, computer science and artificial intelligence, engineering and more, these investments are well positioned to predict, prevent and respond to potential pandemics across all forms of life, thus safeguarding the health, economic stability and security of our nation.”

This project is part of a series of NSF-funded work totaling $72 million. The network of team-based centers will accelerate fundamental research and development activities to develop methods and tools that will help predict and mitigate future pandemics, whether they arise in animals, plants or humans.

Learn more about the NSF’s PIPP program online.

The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy recently invited Berry and his team to a roundtable focused on emerging technologies for preventing health emergencies. Wastewater surveillance for outbreak early warning was one of the four types of broad technology spotlighted in the discussions.

Learn more about Berry’s work early on in the pandemic to help the UK campus monitor the prevalence of COVID. The team would expand that project to better serve communities with a mobile testing lab to take to nursing homes and low-resource areas of Kentucky.  

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. 2412446. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

 

NIH awards will support innovation in syphilis diagnostics

Initiative to simplify testing process for an accelerated public health response

Grant and Award Announcement

NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

 

image: 

Electron micrograph imagery of Treponema pallidum, the bacteria that cause syphilis, including a foreground close-up of a single particle (right). Spiral-shaped bacteria are colorized in gold.

view more 

Credit: NIAID

The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has awarded grants for 10 projects to improve diagnostic tools for congenital and adult syphilis—conditions currently diagnosed with a sequence of tests, each with limited precision. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that adult and congenital syphilis cases increased by 80% and 183% respectively between 2018 and 2022—a crisis that prompted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a national taskforce to respond to the epidemic.  

“Syphilis antibiotics work, but antiquated testing makes it very difficult to ensure that people are appropriately diagnosed and fully treated,” said NIAID Director Jeanne M. Marrazzo, M.D., M.P.H. “Advanced diagnostics could streamline syphilis care and also enhance our ability to measure the efficacy of candidate syphilis vaccines and other prevention modalities.” 

Syphilis is a common sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum. It can cause adult neurological and organ damage, as well as congenital abnormalities, stillbirths, and neonatal deaths. The CDC reports that U.S. syphilis incidence has increased since 2000, marked by a sharp rise in cases since 2019 and an escalating toll in medically underserved populations. 

The current syphilis testing algorithm requires at least two antibody-based tests, which are based on decades-old technology. These tests are unable to reliably distinguish between antibodies from active versus resolved syphilis infection. They also cannot consistently confirm whether a course of antibiotics has successfully cleared the T. pallidum bacteria from the body. Fortunately, modern molecular techniques, such as nucleic acid amplification systems and platforms which detect fragments of a pathogen, are now in use for other infectious diseases and could be adapted for diagnosing syphilis.

The new NIAID grants explore a range of immunologic and diagnostic concepts, including basic research to improve understanding of infant immune responses to syphilis, novel tests to identify different parts of T. pallidum genomic material in infants and adults, measures of antibiotic resistance in T. pallidum strains, and testing platforms that are feasible to use at the point of care rather than an off-site laboratory. With a cumulative $2.4 million in funding distributed across recipients, the awards are as follows:

Magic Lifescience, Inc., Mountain View, California
Project title: Development of a novel syphilis molecular diagnostic assay for a point-of-care multiplexed genital ulcer panel test on giant magnetoresistive biosensors
Principal investigator: Elaine Ng, Ph.D. (early-stage investigator)
Grant: 1 R21 AI185972-01

Research at Nationwide Children's, Columbus, Ohio 
Project title: Interrogating infant immune responses for diagnosis of congenital syphilis infection
Principal investigator: Masako Shimamura, M.D. 
Grant: 1 R21 AI186003-01

University of California San Francisco
Project title: Multi-omic approaches to identify novel biomarkers for the diagnosis of syphilis in pregnancy and assessment of treatment response
Principal investigator: Stephanie Gaw, M.D., Ph.D.
Grant: 1 R21AI186006-01

University of Texas at Austin
Project title: A triad approach towards improved diagnostics for maternal and congenital syphilis
Principal investigator: Sanchita Bhadra, Ph.D. (early-stage investigator) with Randolph Hubach, Ph.D., M.P.H. (Purdue University)
Grant: 1 R21 AI185965-01

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas
Project title: Pre-analytic factors affecting molecular tests for congenital syphilis
Principal investigator: Jeffrey Sorelle, M.D. with Emily Adhikari, M.D.
Grant: 1 R21 AI185968-01

University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada 
Project title: Development of a direct diagnostic test for infectious and congenital syphilis
Principal investigator: Caroline Cameron, Ph.D.
Grant: 1 R21 AI186005-01

University of Washington, Seattle
Project title: Rapid and ultrasensitive aptamer-based detection technologies for T. pallidum
Principal investigator: Stephen Salipante, M.D., Ph.D.
Grant: 1 R21 AI184484-01

University of Washington, Seattle
Project title: Rapid point-of-care detection of T. pallidum resistance to macrolides and tetracyclines by multiplexed loop-mediated amplification (LAMP)
Principal investigator: Joshua Lieberman, M.D., Ph.D. (early-stage investigator)
Grant: 1 R21 AI184749-01

University of Washington, Seattle
Project title: Sensitive Treponema pallidum genome recovery through tiling amplicon sequencing
Principal investigator: Alexander Greninger, M.D., Ph.D., M.S., M.Phil.
Grant: 1 R21 AI185726-01

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg
Project title: Released peptidoglycan fragments are a biomarker for early stages of syphilis
Principal investigator: Brandon Jutras, Ph.D.
Grant: 1 R21 AI185998-01

---

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®

 

Assorted, distinctive behavior of molten uranium salt revealed by neutrons

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory

 

image: 

In this illustration, neutrons produced at the SNS (purple dots) scatter off molten UCl3, depicted in green, revealing its atomic structure. Yellow and white globs (simulated data) represent the oscillating UCI3 bonds.

view more 

Credit: Alex Ivanov/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Assorted, distinctive behavior of molten uranium salt revealed by neutrons

 

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a world leader in molten salt reactor technology development — and its researchers additionally perform the fundamental science necessary to enable a future where nuclear energy becomes more efficient. In a recent paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, researchers have documented for the first time the unique chemistry dynamics and structure of high-temperature liquid uranium trichloride (UCl3) salt, a potential nuclear fuel source for next-generation reactors.

 

“This is a first critical step in enabling good predictive models for the design of future reactors,” said ORNL’s Santanu Roy, who co-led the study. “A better ability to predict and calculate the microscopic behaviors is critical to design, and reliable data help develop better models.”

 

For decades, molten salt reactors have been expected to possess the capacity to produce safe and affordable nuclear energy, with ORNL prototyping experiments in the 1960s successfully demonstrating the technology. Recently, as decarbonization has become an increasing priority around the world, many countries have re-energized efforts to make such nuclear reactors available for broad use.

 

Ideal system design for these future reactors relies on an understanding of the behavior of the liquid fuel salts that distinguish them from typical nuclear reactors that use solid uranium dioxide pellets. The chemical, structural and dynamical behavior of these fuel salts at the atomic level are challenging to understand, especially when they involve radioactive elements such as the actinide series — to which uranium belongs — because these salts only melt at extremely high temperatures and exhibit complex, exotic ion-ion coordination chemistry.   

 

The research, a collaboration among ORNL, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of South Carolina, used a combination of computational approaches and an ORNL-based DOE Office of Science user facility, the Spallation Neutron Source, or SNS, to study the chemical bonding and atomic dynamics of UCl3 in the molten state.

 

The SNS is one of the brightest neutron sources in the world, and it allows scientists to perform state-of-the-art neutron scattering studies, which reveal details about the positions, motions and magnetic properties of materials. When a beam of neutrons is aimed at a sample, many neutrons will pass through the material, but some interact directly with atomic nuclei and “bounce” away at an angle, like colliding balls in a game of pool.

Using special detectors, scientists count scattered neutrons, measure their energies and the angles at which they scatter, and map their final positions. This makes it possible for scientists to glean details about the nature of materials ranging from liquid crystals to superconducting ceramics, from proteins to plastics, and from metals to metallic glass magnets.

Each year, hundreds of scientists use ORNL’s SNS for research that ultimately improves the quality of products from cell phones to pharmaceuticals — but not all of them need to study a radioactive salt at 900 degrees Celsius, which is as hot as volcanic lava. After rigorous safety precautions and special containment developed in coordination with SNS beamline scientists, the team was able to do something no one has done before: measure the chemical bond lengths of molten UCl3 and witness its surprising behavior as it reached the molten state.

 

“I’ve been studying actinides and uranium since I joined ORNL as a postdoc,” said Alex Ivanov, who also co-led the study, “but I never expected that we could go to the molten state and find fascinating chemistry.”

 

What they found was that, on average, the distance of the bonds holding the uranium and chlorine together actually shrunk as the substance became liquid — contrary to the typical expectation that heat expands and cold contracts, which is often true in chemistry and life. More interestingly, among the various bonded atom pairs, the bonds were of inconsistent size, and they stretched in an oscillating pattern, sometimes achieving bond lengths much larger than in solid UCl3 but also tightening to extremely short bond lengths. Different dynamics, occurring at ultra-fast speed, were evident within the liquid.

 

“This is an uncharted part of chemistry and reveals the fundamental atomic structure of actinides under extreme conditions,” said Ivanov.

 

The bonding data were also surprisingly complex. When the UCl3 reached its tightest and shortest bond length, it briefly caused the bond to appear more covalent, instead of its typical ionic nature, again oscillating in and out of this state at extremely fast speeds — less than one trillionth of a second.

 

This observed period of an apparent covalent bonding, while brief and cyclical, helps explain some inconsistencies in historical studies describing the behavior of molten UCl3. These findings, along with the broader results of the study, may help improve both experimental and computational approaches to the design of future reactors.

 

Moreover, these results improve fundamental understanding of actinide salts, which may be useful in tackling challenges with nuclear waste, pyroprocessing. and other current or future applications involving this series of elements.

 

The research was part of DOE’s Molten Salts in Extreme Environments Energy Frontier Research Center, or MSEE EFRC, led by Brookhaven National Laboratory. The research was primarily conducted at the SNS and also used two other DOE Office of Science user facilities: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center and Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source. The research also leveraged resources from ORNL’s Compute and Data Environment for Science, or CADES.

 

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. — Emily Tomlin

---

Journal

Journal of the American Chemical Society

DOI

10.1021/jacs.4c05765 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Transient Covalency in Molten Uranium(III) Chloride