Science Nation

This sustainable agriculture research relies on a unique contribution from humans -- urine. And, once you get beyond the "giggle" factor, it's an idea that is proving itself worthy of investigation.

Fertilizer is made of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus that require energy to produce. Human urine is full of those same nutrients, but we literally flush them down the toilet. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), University of Michigan environmental engineer Nancy Love and a team that includes the non-profit, Rich Earth Institute, are fine-tuning new methods to process human urine into fertilizer. The team wants to create a more sustainable fertilizer while at the same time eliminating a waste that contributes to water pollution.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1639244, INFEWS/Track 3: Advancing Technologies and Improving Communication of Urine-Derived Fertilizers for Food Production within a Risk-Based Framework.

Many children on the autism spectrum respond positively to robots, and interaction with socially assistive robots generally improves the social behaviors of children with autism, in addition to motivating them to learn.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), roboticist Maja Matarić, educational psychologist Gisele Ragusa and a team in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California are developing fundamental computational techniques that will enable the design, implementation and evaluation of robots that encourage social and cognitive growth in children with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental challenges.

Clinicians and families struggle to provide individualized educational services for children with social and cognitive difficulties. This research aims to support the children with socially assistive robots, customized to each child's individual needs, to help guide the children toward long-term behavioral goals.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1139148, Collaborative Research: Socially Assistive Robots.

Tim Gatautis suffered a spinal cord injury in a swimming accident nearly a decade ago, and he's had to use a wheel chair ever since. He'd like to be able to do more for himself and that's what brings him here to the Wyss Institute and the Biodesign Lab in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University.

Gatautis is testing out new wearable robotic devices designed for hand and arm rehabilitation, and the experience is making him feel much more hopeful about living more independently.

That's one of the goals of designer roboticist, Conor Walsh. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Walsh and team are developing lightweight, soft, wearable robots that people can wear all day, every day, to help them regain use of their upper extremities. Walsh wants to shift the paradigm of rehabilitation from one where the therapist manipulates the fingers and thumb through some range of motion to one where a soft robotic glove can help the patient do the work themselves.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1454472, CAREER: Soft Robotics for Upper Extremity Rehabilitation. CAREER is NSF's Faculty Early Career Development program.

Lee Blaney's lab at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, smells somewhat like a barnyard, and with good reason. With support from the National Science Foundation, the environmental engineer and his team are extracting nutrients from poultry litter to create a new revenue stream for farmers and help the environment at the same time. Poultry litter is generally everything that is left behind on the floors of poultry houses, including manure, bedding, leftover feed, feathers and soil. It's rich in the nutrients phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium (NPK), a fertilizer cocktail that is good for crops but can end up in nearby waterways via agricultural runoff. The team's technology separates the NPK nutrients to create Struvite, a valuable slow-release fertilizer that farmers could sell. The left-over solids are rich in carbon and can be used on fields to help soil hold more nutrients and water.

People with acquired prosopagnosia recognize few faces, a condition known also as "face blindness." These are people who have suffered brain damage that interferes with their ability to recognize faces, even the faces of people they have met many times. The condition is rare. Only a few thousand people across North America have it.

With support from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, psychologist Brad Duchaine and his team at Dartmouth College are studying the brains of 20 people with acquired prosopagnosia to better understand the computational and neural basis of face processing in general.

The research will help scientists develop a classification system for the condition and advance understanding of how different face processing abilities, such as identity, expression and gaze, are organized in the brain.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1634098, Testing and building models of face perception via acquired prosopagnosia.

A University of Utah research team is perfectly situated to study rock arches. Arches National Park in Utah has thousands of them, including one of the longest in the world, spanning 290 feet -- Landscape Arch.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), geologist Jeff Moore and his team at the University of Utah are pioneering a new method of structural health monitoring to keep tabs on the structural integrity of these spectacular geological landmarks. The researchers have discovered that each arch has its own "voice," because it naturally vibrates, like a guitar string, with its own distinct resonant frequency. Natural rock arches and bridges may appear to be stationary, but they are in constant motion and impacted by seismic sources hundreds of miles away or even helicopters flying close-by.

The team's research has important implications for the conservation and management of these dynamic natural structures, which are so symbolic of the U.S. western landscape.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1424896 Structural Monitoring of Rock Arches.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), materials scientist Ramille Shah of Northwestern University and materials engineer Adam Jakus were able to validate the commercialization potential of a new 3D printable synthetic material they call "Hyperelastic Bone™," which they foresee will be a vast improvement over the current options, including other manmade materials. Shah and Jakus have doctorates in materials science and engineering.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1508285 I-Corps: 3D Tissue Inks: Multifunctional 3D Printing Platform for Bone Graft Substitutes.

Roboticists Karl von Ellenrieder and Satyandra Gupta may work on opposite U.S. coasts, but they envision the same future for work on the water -- fleets of boats and ships operating more safely, efficiently and less expensively, with the help of robotics. USVs, or unmanned surface vehicles, are basically robotic boats guided by humans, who may or may not be on board. von Ellenrieder of Florida Atlantic University and Gupta of the University of Southern California say teams of humans working with robotic boats could transform jobs vital to society, such as bridge inspections, environmental monitoring, and search and rescue.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), von Ellenrieder and Gupta are currently focused on engineering new decision-making tools to make USVs smarter and more autonomous. Advances in this area could be extremely important from both a regulatory and practical standpoint for the future deployment of human–robot teams on the water.

This research is part of NSF’s investment in the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), which seeks to accelerate the development and use of robots in the United States that work beside, or cooperatively with, people.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF awards #1526016 and #1634433, NRI: Collaborative Research: Enabling Risk-Aware Decision Making in Human-Guided Unmanned Surface Vehicle Teams.

A major issue in rehabilitation robotics is that devices such as exoskeletons and treadmills correct patients' movements only while they are using the device. Gelsy Torres-Oviedo, who has a doctorate in biomedical engineering and is the director of the Sensorimotor Learning Lab at the University of Pittsburgh, hopes to change that.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Torres-Oviedo leads a research team that uses rehabilitation robotics and motion capture cameras to study "locomotor learning." That's the ability of a patient with an impaired gait to adapt their walking patterns and learn new movements. This research has broad impact for public health because it aims to guide the use of technology for effective gait rehabilitation after stroke, which is the leading cause of long-term disability in the United States.

"We're very interested in understanding the factors that determine that specificity in learning and how we can manipulate them. We want to help patients retain what they've learned and carry it over to their daily living," says Torres-Oviedo.

The ultimate goal is to use quantitative tools to characterize in a very systematic way the impairments that every stroke survivor has and tailor the intervention.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1535036, the role of naturalistic movements on the generalization of locomotor learning.

Butterflies and moths constitute 10 percent of all known biodiversity in terms of numbers of named species. Understanding the formation of color patterns has long played a central theme in understanding biology, and butterfly wing color patterns represent a prime model to explore the history, genes and mechanisms underlying wing patterning.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), developmental biologist Arnaud Martin and his team at George Washington University are using cutting-edge genomic techniques, such as CRISPR, to better understand how the rich stripes and swirls of a butterfly's wing take their shape.

"The wing patterns are used in nature for camouflage, avoiding predators, indicating toxicity and to find mates," says Martin. "So, we know why they are all so diverse, but now the question, I would say, is to understand how it happens, how do you create such an explosive diversity during deep evolutionary time."

A single gene (WntA) drives shape changes across the wing surface in many distantly related species, thus suggesting a fundamental and ancestral function in butterfly wing formation. Together with research teams at the University of Puerto Rico and Cornell University, Martin's lab is setting the foundation for understanding how the DNA code can give rise to tremendous diversity of living beings on the planet.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1656553, Collaborative Research: cis-Regulatory Basis of Butterfly Wing Pattern Evolution.