Global Technology

What new technologies will dramatically transform your world?  We’ll present an exclusive preview of the stunning breakthroughs emerging from the world’s leading research labs.

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As recently explained in the journal Science Advances, a collaborative team of international scientists has developed a new antiviral substance made from sugar which destroys viruses on contact.  This new development has shown promise for the treatment of herpes simplex, hepatitis C, HIV, and Zika virus to name just a few.  In the lab, the team demonstrated success in treating numerous viruses responsible for diseases ranging from respiratory infections to genital herpes.

Although it’s still at a very early stage of development, the broad-spectrum activity of this new treatment could make it effective against newly prevalent viral diseases such as the recent coronavirus outbreak.

Today’s so-called ‘virucidal’ substances, such as bleach, are typically capable of destroying viruses on contact, but are extremely toxic to humans and so cannot be taken or applied to the human body without causing serious harm.  On the other hand, today’s nontoxic antiviral drugs work by inhibiting virus growth, but they are not always reliable as viruses can mutate and become resistant to these treatments.  Developing virucides from sugar allows for the advent of a new type of antiviral drug, which destroys a wide range of viruses yet is non-toxic to humans.

The modified sugar molecules disrupt the outer shell of a virus, destroying it on contact, rather than simply restricting its growth.  Furthermore, the new approach has been shown to defend against drug resistance.

The researchers successfully engineered the modified molecules from natural glucose derivatives, known as cyclodextrins.  The molecules attract viruses before breaking them down on contact, destroying the virus and fighting the infection.

This is a new type of antiviral and one of the first to ever show broad-spectrum efficacy, it has the potential to be a game-changer in treating viral infections.  And it could also be game-changing in terms of dealing with new emerging infections that are not well understood.

The molecule is patented, and a spin-out company is being set up to continue pushing this new antiviral towards real-world applications.  After further testing, the substance could be used in creams, ointments, nasal sprays and other similar treatments for viral infections.  Since this new material can work to break down a wide range of viruses, it is expected to be a cost-effective new treatment even for drug-resistant viruses.

References
Science Advances, January 29, 2020, Vol. 6, No. 5, “Modified Cyclodextrins As Broad-Spectrum Antivirals,” by Samuel T. Jones, et al.  ⓒ 2020 American Chemical Association for the Advancement of Science.  All rights reserved.
To view our purchase this article, please visit:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/5/eaax9318

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Zygotic genome activation which occurs following the union of the sperm and egg marks the beginning of life.  The resultant early embryos, termed ‘zygotes’ are capable of generating the entire organism, a property known as totipotency.  These totipotent cells sit atop the developmental hierarchy and have the greatest potency of all cell types, surpassing even pluripotent embryonic stem cells.  Notably, these totipotent zygote cells lose their totipotency as they mature into pluripotency.

But now, scientists in Singapore have found a way to manipulate pluripotent cells into acquiring the totipotent capacity previously thought to exist only in the zygote.  This not only provides key insights into how totipotency is formed during the earliest events in mammalian development, but it opens new doors for potential cell therapies that were previously unexplored.

The study identified a totipotency-inducing growth factor called NELFA, which is capable of driving pluripotent embryonic stem cells into totipotency in a petri dish.  NELFA achieves this feat by causing specific changes in the gene regulatory and metabolic networks of the cell.  Specifically, NELFA has the ability to reactivate certain genes that are only active in the zygote but are otherwise silent in embryonic stem cells.  NELFA is also able to alter the energy using pathways in the pluripotent stem cells.  All these changes result in pluripotent stem cells reverting into a “totipotent state.”

Discovering this method of inducing totipotency in cells outside of the embryo also provides a means to engineer cells with maximum cell plasticity for therapeutic purposes.  This increases the potential applications of regenerative medicine, especially in cell replacement therapies.

The eventual goal of this research is to translate the findings into the development of rapid and efficient cellular reprogramming strategies for clinical applications, such as in the treatment of debilitating diseases and developmental disorders.

References
Nature Cell Biology, January 13, 2019, “Maternal Factor NELFA Drives a 2C-Like State in Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells,” by Zhenhua Hu, et al.  ⓒ 2020 Springer Nature Limited.  All rights reserved.
To view or purchase this article, please visit:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41556-019-0453-8

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Due to its affordability and environmental friendliness, hydrogen is an attractive alternative to fossil fuels and battery-electric energy for many applications including transportation.  However, because of its low density, hydrogen is difficult to transport efficiently, and existing onboard hydrogen generation methods are slow and energy-intensive.

Recently, a team of Chinese researchers made major progress in engineering a real-time, on-demand hydrogen generation system for use with fuel cells.  They describe their results in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.

The researchers used an alloy of gallium, indium, tin, and bismuth to catalyze a hydrogen-generating reaction.  When this alloy meets an aluminum plate immersed in water, hydrogen is produced.  When this hydrogen source was connected to a proton exchange membrane fuel cell, the chemical energy in the hydrogen was converted into electrical energy.

Compared with traditional methods of electric power generation, proton exchange membrane fuel cells have a very high conversion efficiency.   They can start rapidly and run quietly.  Moreover, the only waste product they generate is water, making them environmentally friendly.

The researchers found that the addition of bismuth to the alloy had a huge effect on hydrogen generation when compared to an alloy of gallium, indium, and tin without bismuth.  Including bismuth in the alloy leads to a more stable and durable hydrogen generation reaction.  Another important factor in the design of this hydrogen generation system is the ability to recycle the alloy.  That helps minimize cost and environmental impact.

Before new hydrogen generators and fuel cells can become a commercial solution for transportation and other applications, several problems still need to be solved.  For instance, existing methods for post-reaction mixture separation can cause corrosion and pollution problems and heat dissipation in the hydrogen reaction process also needs to be optimized.

Once these difficulties are resolved, this technology could be used for applications ranging from transportation to myriad portable devices.

References
Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, January 28, 2020, “Instant Hydrogen Production Using Ga-In-Sn-Bi Alloy-Activated AI-Water Reaction for Hydrogen Fuels Cells,” by Shuo Xu, et al.  ⓒ 2020 AIP Publishing LLC.  All rights reserved.
To view or purchase this article, please visit:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5124371

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Australian researchers have developed an ultra-thin and ultra-flexible electronic material for the touchscreens of the future, which could be printed and rolled out like a newspaper.

This touch-responsive technology recently explained in the journal Nature Electronics. is 100 times thinner than existing touchscreen materials and so pliable it can be rolled up like a tube.

To create the new conductive sheet, researchers used a thin film common in cell phone touchscreens and shrunk it from 3D to 2D, using liquid metal chemistry.

The nano-thin sheets are readily compatible with existing electronic technologies and because of their incredible flexibility, could potentially be manufactured through roll-to-roll processing just like a newspaper.

Today’s cell phone touchscreens are mostly made of a transparent material, indium-tin-oxide, that is very conductive, but also very brittle.

The researchers created a new version that’s supremely thin and flexible.  You can bend it, you can twist it, and you could make it far more cheaply and efficiently than the slow and expensive way that we currently manufacture touchscreens. And turning it two-dimensional also makes it more transparent, so it lets through more light and saves energy.

The research published in Nature Electronics shows it’s possible to create printable electronics cheaply by using ingredients you could buy from a hardware store and printing it onto plastics to make the touchscreens of the future.

The material could also be used in many other optoelectronic applications, such as LEDs and touch displays, as well as in future smart windows.

The research team has already used the new material to create a working touchscreen, as a proof-of-concept, and they have applied for a patent for the technology.

References
Nature Electronics, January 24, 2020, “Flexible Two-Dimensional Indium Tin Oxide Fabricate Using a Liquid Metal Printing Technique,” by Robi S. Datta, et al.
ⓒ 2020 Springer Nature Limited.  All rights reserved.
To view or purchase this article, please visit:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-019-0353-8

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Electronics are showing up everywhere: on our laps, in our pockets and purses and, increasingly, snuggled up against our skin or sewed into our clothing.

But the adoption of wearable electronics has so far been limited by their need to derive power from bulky, rigid batteries that reduce comfort and may present safety hazards due to chemical leakage or combustion.

Stanford researchers have developed a soft and stretchable battery that relies on a special type of plastic to store power more safely than the flammable formulations used in conventional batteries today.  The new stretchable battery was described recently in Nature Communications.

The use of plastics, or polymers, in batteries is not new.  For some time, lithium-ion batteries have used polymers as electrolytes  -  the chemical medium that transports negative ions to the battery’s positive pole.  But those polymer electrolytes are flowable gels that could, in some cases, leak or burst into flame.

To avoid such risks, the new polymer is solid and stretchable rather than gooey and potentially leaky. Yet it still efficiently carries an electric charge between the battery’s poles.  In lab tests, the experimental battery maintained a constant power output even when squeezed, folded and stretched to nearly twice its original length.

The prototype stores roughly half as much energy, ounce for ounce, as a comparably sized conventional battery.  The team is now working to increase the stretchable battery’s energy density, build larger versions of the device and run future experiments to demonstrate its performance outside the lab.  One potential application for such a device would be to power stretchable sensors designed to stick to the skin to monitor heart rate and other vital signs as part of the BodyNet wearable technology also being developed at Stanford.

References
Nature Communications, November 26, 2019, “Decoupling of Mechanical Properties and Ionic Conductivity in Supramolecular Lithium-Ion Conductors,” by David G. Mackanic, et al.  ⓒ 2019 Springer Nature Limited.  All rights reserved.
To view or purchase this article, please visit:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13362-4

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How would you go about returning books to the correct shelves in a large library with the least amount of walking?  How would you determine the shortest route for a truck that has to deliver many packages to multiple cities?  These are some examples of the “traveling salesman problem,” a type of “combinatorial optimization” problem, which frequently arises in everyday situations.  Solving the traveling salesman problem involves searching for the most efficient of all possible routes.  As everyone who has ever taken a business school “operations management” class knows, this quickly becomes an overwhelming challenge for humans or conventional computers.

To solve this conundrum, scientists are actively exploring the use of special-purpose integrated circuits. With this method, each state in a traveling salesman problem (for example, each possible route of the delivery truck) is represented by “spin cells,” each having one of two states.  Here a circuit that can store the strength of one spin cell state over another represents the distance between two cities for the delivery truck. Using a large system containing the same number of spin cells and circuits as the cities and routes for the delivery truck, we can identify the state requiring the least energy, or the route covering the least distance, thus solving the traveling salesman problem or any other type of combinatorial optimization problem.

However, a major drawback of the conventional way of using integrated circuits to do this is that it requires pre-processing, and the number of components and the time required to input the data increase as the scale of the problem increases.  For that reason, this technology has only been able to solve a traveling salesman problem involving a maximum of 16 cities.

However, a group of Japanese researchers aimed to overcome this constraint.  They observed that the interactions between each spin cell are linear, which ensured that the spin cells could only interact with the cells near them, prolonging the processing time.  So, they decided to arrange the cells differently to ensure that all spin cells could be connected to each other.

To do this, they first arranged the circuits in a two-dimensional array, and the spin cells were arranged separately in a one-dimensional arrangement.  The circuits could then read the data and an aggregate of this data was used to switch the states of the spin cells.  This means that the number of spin cells required, and the time needed for processing were both drastically reduced.

The researchers presented their findings at the IEEE’s 18th World Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics.  The new technique constitutes a fully coupled method and has the potential to solve a traveling salesman problem involving up to 22 cities.  The team is hopeful that this technology will have future applications as a high-performance system with low power requirements that will enable office equipment and tablet terminals to easily find optimal solutions for a wide range of combinatorial business problems.

References
Tokyo University of Science, January 23, 2020, “The Easy Route The Easy Way: New Chip Calculates the Shortest Distance in an Instant.” ⓒ 2020 Tokyo University of Science.  All rights reserved.
To view this article, please visit:

https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/mediarelations/archive/20200123001.html

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The internet of things (or IoT) spans everything from the smart speakers and Wi-Fi-connected home appliances to manufacturing machines that use connected sensors to manage tasks on an assembly line to warehouses that manage real-time inventory movement to surgeons who can perform extremely precise surgeries with robots.  But for these applications, timing is everything: a lagging connection could have disastrous consequences.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering are taking on that task, proposing a system that would use currently underutilized resources in an existing wireless channel to create extra opportunities for lag-free connections.  The process, which wouldn’t require any additional hardware or wireless spectrum resources, could alleviate traffic backups on networks with many wireless connections, such as those found in smart warehouses and automated factories.

The researchers announced their findings at the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2019 International Conference on Emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies.

The network’s automatic response to channel quality, or the signal-to-noise ratio (or SNR), is almost always a step or two behind.  When there is heavy traffic on a channel, the network changes to accommodate it. Similarly, when there is lighter traffic, the network meets it, but these adaptations don’t happen instantaneously.  They used that lag  -  the space between the channel condition change and the network adjustment  -  to build a side-channel solely for IoT devices where there is no competition and no delay.

This method exploits the existing SNR margin, using it as a dedicated side channel for IoT devices.  Lab tests have demonstrated a 90 percent reduction in data transmission delay in congested IoT networks, with a throughput up to 2.5 Mbps over a narrowband wireless link that can be accessed by more than 100 IoT devices at once.

The IoT has an important future in smart buildings, transportation systems, smart manufacturing, cyber-physical health systems, and beyond.  This research could remove a very important barrier holding it back.”

References
Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Emerging Networking Experiments And Technologies, December 2019, “EasyPass: Combating IoT Delay with Multiple Access Wireless Side Channels,” by Haoyang Lu, et al.  ⓒ 2019 ACM, Inc.  All rights reserved.
To view or purchase this article, please visit:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359989.3365421