Science Nation

With support from the National Science Foundation, electrical engineer Yan Wan and a team at the University of Texas at Arlington are developing a new generation of "networked" unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to bring long distance, broadband communications capability to first responders in the field. The research in this episode was supported by NSF grants #1714519 "CAREER: Co-Design of Networking and Decentralized Control to Enable Aerial Networks in an Uncertain Airspace" and #1522458 "EAGER: Aerial Communication Infrastructure for Smart Emergency Response."

With support from NSF, engineers Pablo Zavattieri and Santiago Pujol of Purdue University and Nilesh Mankame of General Motors Global R&D are collaborating to create architected materials with microstructures that can out-perform the natural systems that inspired them. The team is focused, in part, on improving the energy absorption of materials to increase safety and comfort. Think earthquake-resilient buildings, low turbulence air travel, safer sports helmets, and scratch and dent resistant cars. And some of their inspiration is coming from solutions evolution has engineered into natural materials, from honeycombs to woodpecker beaks. Many students also contribute to this research, including William G. Pollalis, Prateek P. Shah, Charles S. Kerby, Yunlan Zhang, and Kristiaan Hector, in addition to Reza Moini, who is featured in the video. The engineering research for this episode is supported by these NSF grants: #1538898 GOALI: Phase Transforming Cellular Materials, #1254864 CAREER: Multiscale Investigation and Mimicry of Naturally Occurring Ultra High-Performance Composite Materials, and #1562927 Collaborative Research: 3D Printing of Civil Infrastructure Materials with Controlled Microstructural Architectures, with co-principal investigators Jan Olek and Jeffrey Youngblood. Some of the research has been conducted in the Robert L. and Terry L. Bowen Laboratory for Large-Scale Civil Engineering Research at Purdue University.

With support from NSF, a multidisciplinary team of material scientists, engineers and architects is using nature-inspired design and new materials to create smart building skins. A smart skin enables a building to function much like elements of some living systems. It allows a building to "breathe," but independent of centralized control. This Texas A&M University team is exploring the use of smart materials, such as shape memory alloys and stimuli-responsive polymers, in a variety of approaches to produce building systems that function in concert with the environment. NSF supports fundamental research that will shape the future of the nation's constructed civil infrastructure in the context of the natural environment, technological innovations and societal needs.

The research team includes the following scientists and engineers: Zofia Rybkowski, Negar Kalantar, Ergun Akleman, Tahir Cagin and Terry Creasy, as well as the following students: Ruaa Al-Mezrakchi, Nikita Bhagat, Diya Dhannoon, Daniel Hirsch, Hyoungsub Kim, Maryam Mansoori, William Palmer and Saied Zarrinmehr.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF grant #1548243, "EAGER: Interaction of Smart Materials for Transparent, Self-regulating Building Skins."

Spadefoot toads are master "shape-shifters," able to make drastic changes to their form and behavior in response to their environment. They're excellent candidates for research on plasticity in nature, or the ability of an organism to adapt to environmental changes or differences in habitats. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), evolutionary biologists David and Karin Pfennig and their teams at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study spadefoots to better understand the role plasticity plays in adaptive evolution.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF grants #1643239, "EAGER: Does Adaptation Facilitate or Constrain Further Adaptation? Evaluating the Origins of Character Displacement;" #1753865 "Collaborative proposal: Evaluating phenotypic plasticity's role in adaptive evolution;" and #1555520, "Behavioral Dysfunction and the Evolution of Reproductive Isolation between Species."

With support from the National Science Foundation, roboticist Dan Popa and a team of engineers and nurses at the University of Louisville are developing a new generation of assistive robots designed to help nurses care for patients in a hospital. The Adaptive Robotic Nurse Assistants, developed at the , will help with routine tasks for patients, such as delivering items, taking them for walks and alerting nurses to emergencies.

Megan Leftwich and her students at Georgie Washington University are conducting a comprehensive field study on the high-performance swimming of sea lions. With support from the National Science Foundation, the mechanical engineer aims to describe mathematically the unique style of these agile swimmers.

Renowned chemist, geochemist and materials scientist Alexandra Navrotsky has become a pioneer in her field over the last 50 years. She even has a mineral named after her – Navrotskyite. With support from the National Science Foundation, Navrotsky and her team at University of California, Davis (moving to Arizona State University) have invented an instrument to study high temperature materials, including rare earth oxides.

A University of Florida team is starting to gather real-time data on the impact of waves and rising water on bridges during hurricanes. Unlike studies that rely on tests in wave laboratories, this research will use data transmitted directly from bridges during actual storms. With support from the National Science Foundation, civil engineering Professor Jennifer Bridge and her students are investigating how best to provide early warning to communities when a bridge is in danger of failing due to storm damage.

This University of Washington research is advancing deep brain stimulation, or DBS, which is used to treat people with essential tremor, Parkinson's disease and other conditions. A team at the Center for Neurotechnology, an NSF Engineering Research Center, is designing and testing upgrades for DBS devices to make them smarter and less intrusive. Along with enhanced brain sensors, new control algorithms and machine learning techniques to improve device performance, the team is ensuring the design meets the day-to-day usability needs of patients.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF grant #1028725, NSF Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (now the Center for Neurotechnology).

A quick check on a smartphone will provide you with the day's expected high temperature, but what if you could find out how hot it's going to be in your neighborhood? That type of finely tuned heat forecast would be as much for health as convenience. In fact, it could save lives. With support from NSF, a multidisciplinary University of Georgia team is compiling highly detailed, fine-resolution maps of the "urban heat island" in their town of Athens, Georgia. They're figuring out how temperatures vary in a city, block-by-block, so people can better prepare for severe heat in the future.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF grant #1637277, "A Sensor Cloud-based Community-Centric Approach for Analyzing and Mitigating Urban Heat Hazards."