Science Nation

There's a new renewable energy player in town and it's about to make waves in the industry. Despite its massive potential as a source for renewable energy, the ocean is unlikely to contribute meaningfully to electricity supplies without dramatic, innovation-driven reductions in the cost of energy conversion. That's where engineers Balky Nair, Rahul Shendure and Tim Mundon come in with their company, Oscilla Power. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), they're developing a utility-scale wave energy harvester called the Triton. It's a sturdy system with few moving parts -- rugged enough to stand up to harsh seas with little need for maintenance. This technology shows promise as a means for delivering utility-scale electric power to the grid at a price that is competitive with conventional fossil or renewable technologies. The team plans more tests with increasingly larger and more sophisticated prototypes.

The familiar phrase “wearing your heart on your sleeve” took on a whole new meaning during the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Wearable health tracking devices broke into full stride and some of them got a head start from the National Science Foundation.

Many animals, from insects to humans, are social. Their brains have evolved to be sensitive to sensory cues that carry social information, such as: speech sounds, pheromones and visual cues. But very little is known about how animal brains process and integrate this information. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), neuroscientist Mala Murthy and a multidisciplinary team at Princeton University want to understand what happens in the brain when animals process information, communicate and socialize. The team is using courtship and mating behavior of fruit flies as an experimental system to reveal how sensory input is processed and integrated with information about a fly's internal state to produce social behavior. Murthy says what the researchers are learning will contribute to a better understanding of interaction and communication in many animals, including humans.

It's easy to think of soap suds when one thinks of bubbles, but these bubbles can clean without chemicals. These are cavitation bubbles, which are created when air is churned up in water. And what researchers are learning could ultimately lead to chemical-free cleaning methods for fruits and vegetables. With support from NSF, biofluid scientist Sunghwan "Sunny" Jung and his team at Virginia Tech are studying how a cavitation bubble creates a suctioning effect when it collapses, pulling everything close by toward it. Cavitation bubbles are already in use for certain industrial applications, such as cleaning water at treatment plants. Jung's fluid mechanics lab is working with food scientists to see how effective cavitation bubbles are at pulling everything from soil to E. coli and Salmonella away from the smooth surface of a tomato or the bumpy surface of a cantaloupe. In the future, Jung envisions bubble machines as a common appliance at farmer's markets and maybe even in households.

These tiny creatures are Arctic surfclams. They're getting packed up for a trip to the shore. With some help, they're about to take up residence in an intertidal mudflat on the Maine coast, or "Downeast" as they say around here, referring to ships sailing centuries ago from Boston east to Maine and downwind. The area's rich maritime history is not lost on Brian Beal, a marine ecologist with the University of Maine at Machias who has lived here all of his life and grew up working on the water. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Beal and a team based at the university's Marine Science Field Station at the Downeast Institute are putting their aquaculture innovation skills to work. The team's goals are to diversify the U.S. market for shellfish and increase the number of jobs in that market. The researchers are focused on two types of shellfish with the potential to bring more jobs and dollars to the area: blue mussels and Arctic surfclams. In the case of the latter, Arctic surfclams are not only a valuable species, but, Beal says, no one has ever tackled culturing them before. Arctic surfclams are a deepwater species that range from Rhode Island north to Newfoundland. Low densities have so far prevented the species from becoming a highly valued fishery in the U.S., but in Canada, there's a $50 million fishery off the southeast coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and off the Grand Banks, south of Newfoundland. The other species, blue mussels, aren't new to Maine. They've been a part of the seafood industry here for years. Beal would like to expand the market for blue mussels by making cultivation more of a turnkey operation by providing mussel growers with a choice between collecting wild seed (that depends each year on the vagaries of nature) and a more consistent hatchery-reared seedling.

According to the World Health Organization, the Ebola outbreak that started in West Africa in 2014 has sickened nearly 30,000 people, killing about one third of them. Detection of the Ebola virus is currently the only way to keep the disease from spreading. In the past, Ebola diagnostic tests, or assays, have been considered reliable only up to a point. The Ebola virus doesn't use DNA to store its genetic code. It uses a chemical cousin, called RNA, and extracted RNA degrades easily; one little mistake at the start of a test can ruin the whole thing.

Some chronic conditions, such as the autoimmune disease scleroderma, are especially difficult to treat because patients exhibit highly variable symptoms, complications and treatment responses. The process of finding an effective treatment for an individual can be frustrating for doctors, and painful and expensive for patients. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), computer scientist and professor Suchi Saria, with Dr. Fredrick Wigley and an interdisciplinary team of experts at Johns Hopkins University, is leading a groundbreaking effort using Big Data to ease some of that pain for scleroderma patients. The team's research is in machine learning, a subfield of computer science and statistics that allows machines to learn from data. The team designs statistical algorithms that enable computers to analyze large volumes of medical records and identify subgroups of patients with similar patterns of disease progression. In addition, the system learns the symptoms and treatments that are predictive of specific patterns of improvement or deterioration to help doctors pick the right set of treatments for an individual patient. Doctors can then map the course of treatment for new patients, based in part on what the computers reveal about what happened to other patients with similar symptoms. Saria foresees data analysis similar to this helping clinicians treat other chronic diseases, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

The National Ecological Observatory (NEON) is a large-facility project managed by NEON Inc., and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NEON is a continental-scale research platform for discovering and understanding the impacts of climate change, land-use change and invasive species on ecological systems. NEON will gather long-term data on the biosphere's response to changes in land use and climate, as well as its interactions with the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. Data will be collected by automated sensors, an airplane and field crews in 20 NEON regions, or 'domains,' over 30 years-time. Scientists and the public everywhere can access the data online. The Mid-Atlantic domain comprises the core site in Front Royal, Virginia, at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's 3,200-acre campus, along with two additional sites located at Blandy Experimental Farm near White Post, Virginia, and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland.

Solar cells integrated into new construction, particularly skyscrapers, are an enticing energy option. However, this effort can be hampered by the cost and architectural considerations sometimes needed to mount traditional photovoltaic (PV) cells. What if engineers could make it easier with a lightweight, clear and flexible solar cell? Traditional solar panels, such as silicon, soak up much of the sun's light, including visible light, and convert it to energy. A transparent panel allows visible light to shine through, by making the light we can't see with our eyes--such as ultraviolet and infrared--do the work. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Michigan State University materials scientist and chemical engineer Richard Lunt and his team are developing transparent solar panels that could be retrofit to cover existing windows instead of replacing them. With the square footage of glass that's on skyscrapers and other buildings, the tremendous potential for energy and cost savings is clear!

When you think of researchers working on nanotechnology, you probably picture scientists and engineers manipulating incredibly small structures in a state-of-the-art lab. But there are many others who are also interested in the future of this technology, including community planners, political scientists, urban designers--maybe even your next door neighbor. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University is engaging the public and a wide range of experts to think deeply about where nano and other emerging technologies are headed and how to make them work effectively for everyone. Recent and ongoing activities include the Futurescape City Tours, the Phoenix 2050 Design Studio, the Nano Around the World card game and the Life Cycle Assessment for Responsible Innovation workshop.