Science Nation

You may get a breakdown of your home energy use in your monthly bill, but what if you could see how much energy your bedroom lamp draws versus your toaster?

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), computer scientist Shwetak Patel and his team at the University of Washington are developing new sensing systems to empower people to make better informed decisions for themselves and their homes.

Patel's initial interest was in providing the most detailed information yet for consumers about their energy and water consumption, and most of that technology has already been transferred to the marketplace. Now, with the same fundamental approach and goals of detail and ease, the researchers have turned their attention to personal health monitoring.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1253709, New Systems and Tools for Residential Sustainability Sensing. It was made through NSF's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program.

Animals inspire many designs for robots, from the gecko-inspired StickyBot to RoboBees. But, mechanical engineers at Stanford University looked to the plant world for bio-inspiration.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Allison Okamura and her collaborators at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, are building soft robots inspired by vines. Collaborators on this research include Elliot Hawkes of University of California, Santa Barbara, and Sean Follmer and Jonathan Fan of Stanford University.

The form and nature of vines are ideal for threading through narrow spaces, whether those spaces are within the human body or at a disaster site. Imagine a vine robot becoming a water hose that grows to a fire or an oxygen tube that grows to a trapped disaster victim. The team is also engineering vine robots with the ability to configure themselves into three-dimensional structures, such as manipulators and antennae for communication.

Vine robots are one type of soft robot, an emerging area of robotics engineering. Soft robots incorporate versatility, adaptability, and pliability to function more like natural organisms, and to allow humans and soft robots to work safely together.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1637446, National Robotics Initiative (NRI): Vine Robots: Achieving Locomotion and Construction by Growth.

The overall goal of this National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported project is to optimize and implement a data-based program to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of mobile health clinics. Led by health economist Rigoberto Delgado, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, a team of researchers wants to help Texas Children's Hospital and other providers target their limited resources where they can do the most good.

The team is mining public domain data in new ways, using geospatial mapping science and predictive analytics to forecast areas of highest risk for outbreaks. The researchers want to figure out not only where to send the mobile health clinics, but ultimately, how to prevent illness outbreaks in the first place and reduce the number of emergency room visits.

Delgado's colleague on the project, optimization expert Jiming Peng, of the University of Houston, is assisting with the modeling, algorithm design and analysis. "We're designing a way to predict the future demand for mobile clinic services in various communities, based on new modeling that uses many data sets from different sources," explains Peng. "And, a challenging issue is that all the optimization models developed in the project have binary variables with uncertain parameters and constraints due to the numerical errors in the process of data analysis, and the dynamic nature of the target population."

But, the researchers have already identified communities with high demand for some specific mobile clinic services in Houston and made recommendations to their hospital partners. Ultimately, they hope to reduce healthcare costs and disparities by identifying policies and strategies to encourage comprehensive and collaborative programs of mobile health units in Texas and across the United States.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1637347, Increasing Healthcare Access to At-risk Populations: Research-based Policies for Mobile Health Clinics.

Structural engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) are using downtown Los Angeles as a testbed to broaden the design of earthquake-resistant buildings to earthquake-resilient communities. In this case, resilience means that in the event of a major earthquake, or even "the big one," tall buildings would better withstand the initial impact, and clusters of skyscrapers would be able to recover more quickly from any disruptions, such as water and power outages. The key is in the data and computer modeling.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the UCLA team is creating new models that incorporate performance data not only from shake-table tests, but from sensor networks in actual buildings. The models and new systems the team engineers are meant to guide safety inspections following earthquakes, helping engineers get to hotspots more quickly.

The research tackles an important and challenging problem and will advance the ability to model and design more resilient tall buildings by also considering the impact of their performance on urban centers.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1538866, Utilizing Remote Sensing to Assess the Implication of Tall Building Performance on the Resilience of Urban Centers.

If you haven't needed the services of the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard, or EMILY, count yourself lucky. EMILY is called into action by lifeguards and emergency response teams around the world for water rescues.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), roboticist Robin Murphy of Texas A and M and her colleagues are developing some upgrades to make EMILY and other rescue robots "smarter" for large-scale water rescues, such as coming to the aid of a capsized ferry or water taxi.

Among other things, the researchers are working with tethered drones to create an "eye in the sky" combined with onboard thermal sensing to autonomously navigate EMILY to a cluster of people. Because the drone is tethered, no one must "staff" it during rescue operations and it remains clear of any participating aircraft. (The drone seen in this video was flown as part of a field demonstration approved by the Los Angeles County Fire Department.)

Murphy and her team identified some of the technology challenges during field research in the Mediterranean, where the Greek coast guard used EMILY to rescue hundreds of refugees from the water. Since then, the researchers have tested some of their upgrades for EMILY with both the Italian and U.S. Coast Guards.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF grants #1637214, RAPID: Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Increased Autonomy to Improve an Unmanned Marine Vehicle Lifeguard Assistant Robot; #0923203, Major Research Instrumentation: Acquisition of Mobile, Distributed Instrumentation for Response Research (RESPOND-R); #1135848, RAPID: Sendai Earthquake and Tsunami- Remote Assessment Using Land, Sea and Aerial Unmanned Systems, and #1143713, Shared Visual Common Ground in Human-Robot Interaction for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems. (RAPID, or Rapid Response Research, is a type of proposal used when there is a severe urgency with regard to availability of, or access to, data, facilities or specialized equipment, including quick-response research on disasters and similar events.)

Most people see a vegetable when they see a spinach leaf, but in a lab at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, they see the potential to create heart tissue. Ph.D. students at the lab are training to be leaders in bioengineering, particularly biofabrication, in a unique research setting that promotes an innovator’s mindset. They’re thinking outside the box to develop practical, commercially viable technologies that fulfill critical unmet needs.

The opportunity was funded by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, which trained students in interdisciplinary research areas while providing them with the professional skills needed to move into a variety of career paths. The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) program has picked up where IGERT left off, encouraging the development and implementation of bold, new and potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training in high priority interdisciplinary research areas.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF grant #1144804, IGERT: Training Innovative Leaders in Biofabrication.

While Earth's weather reports center on precipitation, temperature, wind direction and velocity, and humidity, space weather forecasts attempt to predict activity that occurs on the sun -- and how the particle and electromagnetic radiation caused by that activity will affect Earth.

Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most successful computing models in recent years. However, lack of accountability and non-compliance with data protection regulations have prevented major users such as business, health care and defense organizations from utilizing clouds for sensitive data and applications. One way to better ensure the security of the data is by using a personal cloud.

Neuroscientist Cindy Moss is investigating how animals use sensory information to guide their behavior. Her team at Johns Hopkins University's "Batlab" is currently focused on bat echolocation -- high frequency sonar calls a bat uses to determine the location of objects in its environment. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the group aims to better understand how these highly-specialized creatures perceive and navigate their world, and in turn, learn more about how humans do it.

Bioengineer Jeff Jacot is working on an idea that could transform the medical approach to infants with complex and sometimes fatal heart defects. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Jacot and his team at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus are pioneering new techniques in regenerative medicine, including a heart patch made of an infant's own tissue that would repair the defect and then grow right along with the baby.