Tech

As a vehicle travels through space at hypersonic speeds, the gases surrounding it generate heat at dangerous temperatures for the pilot and instrumentation inside. Designing a vehicle that can drive the heat away requires an understanding of the thermal properties of the materials used to construct it. A recent two-part study at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a method to create 3D models of the fibers within composite materials then used that information to predict the thermal conductivity of the material.

"We used X-ray microtomography to create 3D images that show the orientation of the fibers," said Francesco Panerai, a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at UIUC. "In most engineering applications we use composite materials made with carbon fibers, but the method we developed can be applied to any kind of fiber and any kind of composite."

Panerai said microtomography is similar to getting a CT scan in the hospital, but with high energy X-rays that can detect fine details in microfibers, which are a fraction of the diameter of a single human hair.

"The images showing how the fibers are organized are much more than just pretty pictures--they are a description of the material in a three-dimensional grid. Now we can use the data from the 3D grid to do simulations to compute material properties for which you would otherwise have to do complicated experiments," Panerai said.

In part one of the study, Panerai and his colleagues tested three different methods to visualize the fibers. "We found that because different materials are made up of different architectures, certain methods worked better with some fibers and weaves than with others."

For example, the study concluded that the ubiquitous structure tensor approach showed very good performance on straight, random fibers, but failed to accurately estimate the orientation of a two-direction densely packed weave.

Another method based on the artificial flux demonstrated relatively good performance on two-direction woven samples, but it failed on straight random fibers.

The novel ray casting method showed promise to become a powerful approach to estimate the orientation of fibrous materials with little curvature. But, its main disadvantage is the high computational cost.

"Now that we can follow the direction of the fibers in space and determine the space between them, we can compute the material property, in this case its thermal conductivity, in three dimensions and have very accurate values.

"And, to measure conductivity experimentally, you'd need to do three experiments, one for each direction. Using this new method, we can compute the tensor and predict properties in the three directions far more rapidly and cost effectively."

Panerai said this new method to visualize fibers and the proven ability to determine material properties can help re-engineer materials.

"We can use a very specific fiber architecture to achieve a certain property such as strength or conductivity," he said. "Thermal conductivity is something everyone who works on high temperature materials tries estimate. It seems like a very simple property, but it is very hard to measure, especially for materials that are three dimensional. That's what is remarkable about the power of this method."

Frederico Semeraro, lead author of the study at NASA Ames Research Center, said, "Computing the thermal conductivity is critical to reliably predict a heat shield response. In addition, the methodology and numerical methods that have been developed are flexible enough to allow the computation of many material properties. A comprehensive understanding of the behavior of a heatshield will ultimately enable the optimization of its design."

Boston -- Though childbirth is often anticipated with optimism and enthusiasm, approximately 10 to 20 percent of pregnant individuals also experience mental health challenges during the weeks immediately before and after birth. Depression, anxiety and trauma-related disorders can all be exacerbated by increased stress related to pregnancy and postpartum experiences. But it's unknown how the stressors of a significant health pandemic can impact these complications. In a new study published in Psychiatry Review, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital surveyed pregnant women and those who had recently given birth, finding concerning rates of depression, generalized anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, which were found to be exacerbated by COVID-19-related grief and health worries.

"We know the perinatal period is already a time in which women are particularly vulnerable to mental health concerns," said corresponding author Cindy Liu, PhD, of the Department of Pediatric Newborn Medicine and the Department of Psychiatry. "We primarily wanted to see what factors related to the pandemic might be associated with mental health symptoms."

The researchers launched the Perinatal Experiences and COVID-19 Effects Study (PEACE) to better understand the mental health and well-being of pregnant and postpartum individuals within the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among 1,123 of these women surveyed between May 21 and August 17, 2020, the researchers found that more than 1-in-3 (36.4 percent) reported clinically significant levels of depression. Before the pandemic, rates of perinatal depression (depression occurring during or after pregnancy) were generally considered to be 15-20 percent. Furthermore, 1-in-5 (22.7 percent) reported clinically significant levels of generalized anxiety, and 1-in-10 (10.3 percent) reported symptoms above the clinical threshold for PTSD.

In particular, the researchers found that approximately 9 percent of participants reported feeling a strong sense of grief, loss, or disappointment as a result of the pandemic. This group was roughly five times more likely to experience clinically significant measures of mental health symptoms. More respondents (18 percent) reported being "very worried" or "extremely worried" about COVID-19-related health risks. This group was up to over four times more likely to experience clinically significant psychiatric symptoms.

The researchers recruited participants for the PEACE survey primarily via word-of-mouth, using posts on email lists and in social media groups. They noted that as a result, the sample population was fairly homogenous: 89.9 percent were white, 92.1 percent were at least college educated, and 98 percent were living with their spouse or partner. The household income for 45 percent of the participants was over $150,000.

"People who are working from home, who have maternity leave, or who simply have the time to do a survey like this are disproportionately white and well-off," Liu said. "That is a limitation to this work. Through a survey, we can get in-depth information very quickly, but we are missing the perspectives of various important segments of the population."

The researchers used standardized measures for evaluating COVID-19-related health worries and experiences of grief. "We were looking for associations that inform what we can do as clinical providers to better support families during this time," said co-author Carmina Erdei, MD, of the Department of Pediatric Newborn Medicine. "We wanted to know what is being taken away when a new mother is not able to participate in the usual rituals around birth and welcoming a new family member. The survey responses offer valuable insight into that and help guide what we as health care professionals can do better."

The researchers were able to examine how previous mental health diagnoses, as self-reported by the respondents, impacted these rates. They found that those with pre-existing diagnoses were 1.6-to-3.7 times more likely to have clinically significant measures of the three conditions analyzed. But elevated psychiatric distress was observed in participants regardless of their mental health histories.

Qualitative data gathered through the survey have also provided the team with striking insights into the perinatal experience, but these findings have not yet been analyzed systematically. The researchers note that the mental health experiences of those surveyed match what they observed clinically during the early months of the pandemic, when many of the usual perinatal supports, like assistance from a partner, family member or peer group, were limited due to fears surrounding COVID-19 infection risks and halting of support services.

"Obstetric practices weren't able to screen for mental health symptoms as well, all while people's mental health was under the most pressure," said co-author Leena Mittal, MD, of the Department of Psychiatry. "Mental health supports have persisted and come back in new ways, and the amount of innovation surrounding delivering group and individual care, especially using virtual platforms, is phenomenal. On the psychiatry side of things, we have never been busier, and individuals and families who feel they need mental health care should seek it."

Glucosamine supplements may reduce overall mortality about as well as regular exercise does, according to a new epidemiological study from West Virginia University.

"Does this mean that if you get off work at five o'clock one day, you should just skip the gym, take a glucosamine pill and go home instead?" said Dana King, professor and chair of the Department of Family Medicine, who led the study. "That's not what we suggest. Keep exercising, but the thought that taking a pill would also be beneficial is intriguing."

He and his research partner, Jun Xiang--a WVU health data analyst--assessed data from 16,686 adults who completed the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2010. All of the participants were at least 40 years old. King and Xiang merged these data with 2015 mortality figures.

After controlling for various factors--such as participants' age, sex, smoking status and activity level--the researchers found that taking glucosamine/chondroitin every day for a year or longer was associated with a 39 percent reduction in all-cause mortality.

It was also linked to a 65 percent reduction in cardiovascular-related deaths. That's a category that includes deaths from stroke, coronary artery disease and heart disease, the United States' biggest killer.

"Once we took everything into account, the impact was pretty significant," King said.

The results appear in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

King himself takes glucosamine/chondroitin, one of the most common formulations of glucosamine supplements.

"I'm in a local cyclists' club, and we go for rides on weekends," he said. "One day I asked the other cyclists if they took glucosamine, and everyone did. And I thought, 'Well, I wonder if this is really helpful?' That's how I got curious about it."

He explains that because this is an epidemiological study--rather than a clinical trial--it doesn't offer definitive proof that glucosamine/chondroitin makes death less likely. But he does call the results "encouraging."

"In my view, it's important that people know about this, so they can discuss the findings with their doctor and make an informed choice," he said. "Glucosamine is over the counter, so it is readily available."

A Rutgers study has discovered that vitamin D regulates calcium in a section of the intestine that previously was thought not to have played a key role. The findings have important implications on how bowel disease, including ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, may disrupt calcium regulation.

In a healthy person, the body absorbs calcium to maintain strong bones and perform other important functions like helping muscles move and nerves carry messages between the brain and body parts. Vitamin D is critical for this calcium absorption from the intestine and for the function of the intestine.

The study, published in the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology, highlights the importance of the distal segments of the intestine - including the colon - in vitamin D regulation of calcium and bone calcification. Previously, this regulation was thought to only occur in the proximal intestine, the first section of the intestine immediately beyond the stomach.

From the study, researchers also learned that a transporter of manganese -- an essential element that plays a role in many cellular processes -- was one of the genes most induced by vitamin D in both the proximal and distal intestine.

The study's lead author, Sylvia Christakos, a professor in the Department of Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, says these findings suggest that vitamin D plays other roles as well. "The findings suggest that vitamin D may have a role not only in calcium absorption, but also in the cellular regulation of other essential ions and in the function of intestinal stem cells," she said.

This research may lead to new strategies that can compensate for calcium malabsorption and increase the efficacy of intestinal calcium uptake to minimize bone loss due to bariatric surgery, small bowel resection or reduced calcium absorption after menopause or due to aging.

DUARTE, Calif. -- A cancer-killing virus that City of Hope scientists developed could one day improve the immune system's ability to eradicate tumors in colon cancer patients, reports a new study in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The preclinical research is a first step to showing that City of Hope's oncolytic virus CF33 can target hard-to-treat tumors that "handcuff" the immune system and keep T cells from activating the immune system to kill cancer cells. More specifically, the researchers demonstrated in mouse models that CF33 appears to increase PD-L1 expression in tumor cells and causes them to die in a way that stimulates an influx of activated immune cells.

"CF33 is a safe, innovative virus City of Hope developed that can become a gamechanger because of how potent it is and because of its ability to recruit and activate immune cells," said Susanne Warner, M.D., a surgical oncologist at City of Hope and senior author of the study. "Our oncolytic virus trains the immune system to target a specific cancer cell. Preclinical models show that a combination treatment of oncolytic virus CF33 with anti-PD-L1 checkpoint inhibition leads to lasting anti-tumor immunity, meaning if a similar cancer cell ever tries to regrow, the immune system will be ready and waiting to shut it down."

Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and is expected to cause 53,200 deaths in 2020, according to the American Cancer Society. City of Hope researchers are excited about the potential of CF33 to enhance colon cancer treatment and point out that CF33 has been effective preclinically against a wide variety of cancers.

Yuman Fong, M.D., the Sangiacomo Family Chair in Surgical Oncology at City of Hope, and his team created oncolytic virus CF33 and expect to open a clinical trial to test the safety of this treatment in human patients in 2021. This treatment addresses a problem in cancer: Most solid tumors do not respond to checkpoint inhibitors because the "uncloaked tumor cell" still isn't recognized by the immune system, Fong said.

"CF33 selectively infects, replicates in and kills cancer cells. This study demonstrates that a designer virus we created to infect a wide variety of cancers can make tumor cells very recognizable to the immune system," Fong said. He, Warner and other City of Hope physician-scientists are working on turning "cold tumors" resistant to treatment into "hot tumors" that can be killed by a well-trained immune system.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved only one oncolytic virus thus far: T-VEC, which is a local immunotherapy treatment that kills melanoma cells.

To confirm their hypothesis, City of Hope scientists tested four groups: control with no treatment, anti-PD-L1 alone, CF33 alone, and a combination of CF33 and anti-PD-L1. Results indicated that a combined treatment of City of Hope's oncolytic virus and anti-PD-L1 appeared to be most effective. It also increased CD8+ T cells, which are immune cells that remember previous diseases and are trained to kill them if they are reintroduced later. In other words, the models developed anti-tumor immunity. This means that animals cured of their cancer were effectively immune to future tumor growth.

Fong and colleagues have demonstrated CF33's anti-tumor immune efficacy against triple-negative breast cancer cell lines, in brain tumor cells, in liver cancer models, and in pancreatic, prostate, ovarian, lung and head and neck cancer. Moreover, a recent City of Hope-led study found that CF33 could be combined with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy to target and eliminate solid tumors that are otherwise difficult to treat with CAR T therapy alone. City of Hope has licensed CF33 to Imugene Limited, a company developing novel therapies that activate the immune system against cancer.

Notably, the CF33 virus may be tracked by non-invasive PET scanning. "If we can perfect the technique, we can give someone a viral injection and watch it work - see where it goes and identify cancer cells that we didn't even know existed," Warner said. "Doctors would have real-time data and know if we should give a patient a higher dose or where to direct the treatment based on tumors that have not yet been killed."

What Warner describes is a developing field called theranostic precision medicine, meaning doctors are able to give patients therapies and concurrently diagnose them to provide the most appropriate treatment for that patient. It is one of many precision medicine approaches City of Hope is developing and offering to patients.

The next step for the current study is to test the innovative CF33 virus platform in different solid tumor models.

AURORA, Colo. (Dec. 1, 2020) - One of world's earliest examples of art, the enigmatic `Venus' figurines carved some 30,000 years ago, have intrigued and puzzled scientists for nearly two centuries. Now a researcher from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus believes he's gathered enough evidence to solve the mystery behind these curious totems.

The hand-held depictions of obese or pregnant women, which appear in most art history books, were long seen as symbols of fertility or beauty. But according to Richard Johnson, MD, lead author of the study published today in the journal, Obesity, the key to understanding the statues lays in climate change and diet.

"Some of the earliest art in the world are these mysterious figurines of overweight women from the time of hunter gatherers in Ice Age Europe where you would not expect to see obesity at all," said Johnson, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine specializing in renal disease and hypertension. "We show that these figurines correlate to times of extreme nutritional stress."

Early modern humans entered Europe during a warming period about 48,000 years ago. Known as Aurignacians, they hunted reindeer, horses and mammoths with bone-tipped spears. In summer they dined on berries, fish, nuts and plants. But then, as now, the climate did not remain static.

As temperatures dropped, ice sheets advanced and disaster set in. During the coldest months, temperatures plunged to 10-15 degrees Celsius. Some bands of hunter gatherers died out, others moved south, some sought refuge in forests. Big game was overhunted.

It was during these desperate times that the obese figurines appeared. They ranged between 6 and 16 centimeters in length and were made of stone, ivory, horn or occasionally clay. Some were threaded and worn as amulets.

Johnson and his co-authors, Professor (ret.) of Anthropology John Fox, PhD, of the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, and Associate Professor of Medicine Miguel Lanaspa-Garcia, PhD, of the CU School of Medicine, measured the statues' waist-to-hip and waist-to-shoulder ratios. They discovered that those found closest to the glaciers were the most obese compared to those located further away. They believe the figurines represented an idealized body type for these difficult living conditions.

"We propose they conveyed ideals of body size for young women, and especially those who lived in proximity to glaciers," said Johnson, who in addition to being a physician has an undergraduate degree in anthropology. "We found that body size proportions were highest when the glaciers were advancing, whereas obesity decreased when the climate warmed and glaciers retreated."

Obesity, according to the researchers, became a desired condition. An obese female in times of scarcity could carry a child through pregnancy better than one suffering malnutrition. So the figurines may have been imbued with a spiritual meaning - a fetish or magical charm of sorts that could protect a woman through pregnancy, birth and nursing.

Many of the figurines are well-worn, indicating that they were heirlooms passed down from mother to daughter through generations. Women entering puberty or in the early stages of pregnancy may have been given them in the hopes of imparting the desired body mass to ensure a successful birth.

"Increased fat would provide a source of energy during gestation through the weaning of the baby and as well as much needed insulation," the authors said.

Promoting obesity, said Johnson, ensured that the band would carry on for another generation in these most precarious of climatic conditions.

"The figurines emerged as an ideological tool to help improve fertility and survival of the mother and newborns," Johnson said. "The aesthetics of art thus had a significant function in emphasizing health and survival to accommodate increasingly austere climatic conditions."

The team's success in amassing evidence to support its theory came from applying measurements and medical science to archaeological data and behavioral models of anthropology.

"These kinds of interdisciplinary approaches are gaining momentum in the sciences and hold great promise," Johnson said. "Our team has other subjects of Ice Age art and migration in its research sights as well."

A new global study finds older people in wealthy countries consume more alcohol than their counterparts in middle-income countries, on average, although a higher cost of alcohol is associated with less frequent drinking. Across counties, people drink less as they get older, but at different rates and starting points. The study was led by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center. Findings are published in the journal Addiction.

Alcohol consumption among older adults is trending higher across numerous countries, and alcohol use disorders among adults 65 and older have more than doubled in the last ten years. Moreover, there are signs that alcohol consumption is further increasing during the pandemic. Age-related changes that slow metabolism and increase the odds of medication interactions make alcohol consumption likely more harmful among older than younger adults.

The researchers analyzed survey data collected from 100,000 individuals age 50 and older in 17 countries in Europe, as well as China, Mexico, Israel, South Korea, and the United States. Average weekly alcohol consumption ranged from 0.59 units in Mexico to 6.85 units in the Netherlands. In the United States, older adults consumed 2.07 standard units per week. One standard unit is equivalent to a small shot glass of vodka or a 12oz glass of 5 percent beer.

The price of alcohol--measured by the cost of a bottle of red label Smirnoff vodka--varied from a low of $7.92 in Mexico to $38.06 in Ireland (4.96 standard units/week).

In most countries drinking decreased with age (U.S., China, Chile), but some countries had sharper age-related decreases (England, Ireland, Czech Republic) and others were fairly stable and had brief increases in drinking after age 50 (Denmark, France). This variation across age and countries is explained both by the health and socioeconomic status of older adults living in each country and country-level factors like economic development and alcohol prices.

Heavy drinking among older adults was highest in the Czech Republic and lowest in Israel, with levels of heavy drinking in most countries declining by age or slightly increasing then declining by older ages. Economic development and the cost of alcohol did not influence levels of heavy drinking, which may be driven by factors such as gender and cultural norms. Heavy drinking is defined for men as having more than three drinks per day or binging more than five drinks in a single occasion, and for women as having more than two drinks per day or binging more than four drinks in a single occasion.

"Public concern over drinking largely focuses on young people, but alcohol is also a serious threat to the health of older adults. In fact, the majority of alcohol-related deaths occur among older people," says first author Esteban Calvo, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology in the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center. "While some studies purport to show a benefit to drinking in old age, these findings are likely distorted by the fact that older drinkers tend to remain drinking if they are healthy, while recent abstainers (as opposed to lifetime abstainers) may only quit when they are sick."

"As countries develop economically and older people living there can afford to drink more, these countries should consider policies to regulate alcohol consumption, potentially combining minimum alcohol prices, taxation, sale and marketing regulations, and cessation programs," adds senior author Katherine M. Keyes, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School.

Lasers are used in a range of everyday devices, harnessing the power of light molecules, photons, - lined up to form highly concentrated beams of light - to perform now common tasks such as scanning barcodes and removing tattoos.

As biosensing and bio-imaging research seeks to look deep inside tissue to the intracellular level miniaturising laser devices poses significant challenges for these nanoscale biological applications. In new research, published in Nature Communications, scientists demonstrate how the earlier promising concept of a microcavity laser can produce an energy-saving and user-safe laser emissions requiring low pump power.

Corresponding author Dr Jiajia Zhou, from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), said that normally low pump power is insufficient to make nanoparticles to lase but the team was able to "control the luminescent emitters within every single nanoparticle to interact with each other so that the electrons can accumulate at specific energy levels".

"This means that even at a very low power pump the nanoparticles will lase, in fact we demonstrated a two-order of magnitude lower pumping threshold compared to what is usually achieved," she said.

The research team also had to engineer the binding surface of the nanoparticle matrix to form a cavity surface with a uniform single layer.

Dr Zhou said that potentially the Near Infra Red (NIR) microcavity laser can be embedded in thick tissues, single cells, and to sense the environmental indicators such as temperature, pH, and refractive index.

"Monitoring the change of these indicators can tell us the health status of the tissues or cells, which sits in the scope of early-stage disease detection, "she said.

Senior author, director of UTS Institute for Biomedical Materials & Devices Professor Dayong Jin, said this discovery held great promise for biological applications.

''I think this is definitely a step forward to realising the dream that just as we use a laser pointer on a powerpoint slide, we could point a tiny device inside a cell, and illuminate an area of interest inside the compartments of a cell.

"Lowering the requirement for the pump power means less tissue damage as the laser penetrates the sample. Also, in this case the laser emission is as sharp as a line, it can sense the indicators more accurately by avoiding the undesired interference which frequently happens in spontaneous fluorescence-based sensing," he said.

"It's not science fiction. We've demonstrated a single nanoparticle, which is smaller than an intracellular compartment, can act like a laser, and at low power but it can still emit a sharp signal. In otherwords a 'laser pointer' small enough to get inside a cancer cell, and illuminate to stop the engine of that cancer cell," Professor Jin, who is also the director of UTS-SUStech Joint Research Centre, said.

Tsukuba, Japan - Cooked, fresh, sun-dried, or juiced, whichever way you prefer them, tomatoes are arguably one of the most versatile fruits on the planet--and yes, despite mainly being used in savory dishes, tomatoes really are a fruit.

The popularity of tomatoes has led to the development of more than 10,000 cultivars of various sizes, shapes, and hues. Interestingly though, there is little genetic diversity among modern tomato varieties. This lack of diversity, coupled with the fact that many traits are controlled by multiple genes, makes improving plant yield and quality a major challenge for tomato breeders.

But in a study published this week in Scientific Reports, researchers led by the University of Tsukuba explain how modern gene editing technology may be able to give tomato breeders a helping hand.

"The tomato was the first genetically modified food to be approved for human consumption," says senior author of the study Professor Hiroshi Ezura. "However, many early transgenic varieties contained genes derived from other species, raising safety concerns among consumers. Therefore, coupled with the fact that most transgenic varieties showed only moderate improvements in quality, tomato breeding has, for the most part, moved away from transgenics."

Unlike traditional genetic modification, modern gene editing techniques leave no trace in the genome and can introduce small changes within a native gene, mimicking natural variation.

Tomatoes contain relatively high levels of carotenoids, the yellow, red, and orange pigments found in many plants. Carotenoids are precursors to vitamin A and demonstrate antioxidant and anti-cancer properties, making them hugely important to human nutrition. Several natural mutations that enhance carotenoid accumulation in tomatoes have been documented, but their introduction into commercial varieties is a complicated and time-consuming prospect.

The University of Tsukuba-led team therefore set about reproducing carotenoid accumulation mutations in tomatoes using gene editing technology.

"Single nucleotide changes in individual tomato genes had previously been achieved using Target-AID gene editing technology," explains Professor Ezura. "However, we designed a system whereby changes were simultaneously introduced into three genes associated with carotenoid accumulation."

Among 12 resulting tomato lines, 10 contained mutations in all three target genes. Further examination of two lines with the dark green fruit and purple roots of natural carotenoid accumulation mutants revealed high levels of carotenoids, particularly lycopene, in the gene-edited plants.

Professor Ezura explains, "This shows that it is possible to improve multigenic plant quality traits using gene editing technology, and opens up a whole range of options for improving the yield, shelf-life, nutrient content, and disease resistance of different crop plants, which has obvious benefits for both human health and the environment."

A new study, led by a researcher at the Yale School of the Environment's Center for Industrial Ecology and published recently in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, has found that the total mass of electronic waste generated by Americans has been declining since 2015. In an age when most of us can't imagine life without our digital devices, this surprising finding has ramifications for both how we think about electronic waste's future and for the laws and regulations regarding e-waste recycling, according to the study's authors.

The biggest contributor to this decline is the disappearance of the large, bulky cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions and computer monitors from American homes, says Callie Babbitt, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology's Golisano Institute for Sustainability and one of the study's authors. Since about 2011, CRT displays have been on the decline in the waste stream, helping to lead the overall decline in total e-waste mass.

This decline in bulkier displays means that e-waste regulations may have to be rethought, says Babbitt. "If you look at the state laws that exist in many places for e-waste recycling, many of them set their targets based on product mass," she says. As the overall mass of e-waste declines, meeting those targets becomes more difficult. Moreover, says Babbitt, the main goal of these regulations had been to keep electronics with high levels of lead and mercury out of landfills, where they can eventually leach into the surrounding environment. But these days, a more pertinent concern is how to recover elements like cobalt (used in lithium-ion batteries) or indium (found in flat-panel displays). These elements aren't as environmentally toxic; rather, they are relatively scarce in the Earth's crust, so failing to recapture them for reuse in new electronics is wasteful. "The e-waste recycling system is somewhat backwards-looking," says Babbitt; it has struggled to keep pace with the changing nature of electronics.

Shahana Althaf, the lead author on the study and a postdoctoral associate at the Yale Center for Industrial Ecology, notes that a shift in e-waste recycling to capture more of these critical elements could also help the United States secure its supply of the ingredients required for manufacturing electronic devices. Geopolitical uncertainties can pose threats to what Althaf terms "mineral security" for the U.S. "People are slowly realizing... the need to ensure domestic supply," she says. Rather than mining the ore from the Earth's crust, capturing the elements from electronic waste could instead provide these crucial elements. In addition to mineral security, this would reduce the environmental destruction that traditional mining often entails.

The sheer number of electronic devices entering the waste stream is also leveling off or slightly declining, Babbitt and Althaf say. This is due to something that Babbitt terms "convergence": gaming consoles, for example, can act as DVD players; smartphones are also cameras and video recorders. In the past, says Babbitt, people needed separate devices for each of those applications.

To amass the data necessary for their study, the authors used material flow analysis, a technique for quantifying the resources going into or out of a system. They focused on twenty categories of digital devices -- including computers, smartphones, digital cameras, and audio-visual equipment -- and disassembled dozens of products in a lab in order to determine the relative content of various important elements, in addition to relying on previously published data.

"This is a very important finding that cuts against the widely held idea that electronic waste is the 'fastest growing waste stream," says Reid Lifset, the editor-in-chief of the Yale-based Journal of Industrial Ecology. "It shifts our understanding of the problem with e-waste," he says.

In the United States, e-waste recycling is regulated at the state level, and only half the states have e-waste recycling laws. That leads to a patchwork of regulations which makes it harder for companies to navigate if they wanted to make their products easier to recycle, says Babbitt. A more holistic, federal approach could help increase the overall capture of rare elements. Ultimately, we should "see waste as a resource," says Althaf: an opportunity, rather than a problem.

New research published in the journal Diversity and Distributions used cutting-edge technology to show that wild cousins of sorghum, the fifth-most important cereal crop globally, are most concentrated in Australia, despite having been domesticated in Africa. But with 12 of the total 23 wild relative species possibly endangered, four vulnerable, and four near threatened, these economically important wild plants are in peril, the authors warn.

All crops, including sorghum, have wild relatives, just as wolves are wild relatives of domesticated dogs. From rocky slopes and sand dunes to grasslands and forests, wild sorghum species are hardy and resilient. Breeders can use these traits to develop new sorghum varieties that are better adapted to hotter and drier conditions while containing less cyanide - a toxic compound found in the leaves and stem which constrain the crop's current use as animal feed.

As both a human and animal food crop, sorghum is grown on every inhabited continent; is more drought- and heat-tolerant than maize and can grow without fertilizer. In parts of Africa and Asia, it is a critically important crop for food and nutrition security. Most wild sorghum species are found in northern and western Australia and Queensland; one is found in the Americas, and five in Africa and Asia.

"First we needed to know as specifically as possible where the wild relatives live, which was not an easy task. The most widespread species extends 34,403,804 km2 from Japan to Pakistan; the least widespread extends 400 km2 across the remote Katherine Region in Australia," said Harry Myrans, who conducted the research at Monash University in Australia.

"We were shocked to find that many wild species are currently not sufficiently safeguarded, in protected areas or natural habitats; nor in genebanks. Habitat destruction, invasive species, and climate change itself all threaten their existence," said Myrans. "The emphasis now needs to be on creating conservation policies to protect the wild plants, and urgent seed collection activities to protect them in genebanks for the long-run."

Sorghum's wild relatives in hot environments could help breeders develop heat-tolerant crop varieties, boosting sorghum's resilience in Africa and Asia, said Roslyn Gleadow, the study's senior author and President of the Global Plant Council. Cold-tolerant traits, meanwhile, could be used to develop sorghum varieties able to beat cold spells in Australia, or in colder countries such as Germany.

"This is why conservation and human survival are connected," said Gleadow. "People forget that the reason Koala bears exist is because the trees they eat exist. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it's that our human existence is closely linked with our environment. Preserving wild diversity related to crops is critical for our health."

"We need to know what wild relatives we have left, where, and then conserve them urgently," said Gleadow. "When they are in danger, we are in danger," she said, adding that some populations are easy to find, for example, because they are near a road, but that unknown swathes of potentially important diversity for agriculture likely occur in remote areas and are unmapped and unprotected.

Cutting-edge technology was used to understand the distribution and conservation status of sorghum's wild relatives. Maria Victoria Diaz, a co-author from the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, said, "We used big data analytics to process millions of data points to predict the global distributions of these wild plants. This critical research has enabled us to process more data than ever before, and it will allow us to create a methodology to understand the distributions and conservation of other crops."

The research group has previously investigated wild relatives of chile peppers, zucchini, carrots, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, highlighting gaps in our understanding of the conservation status of wild relatives.

"Humanity's activities are destroying wild spaces at such rapid speed. We know that crop wild relatives are useful, but they are so underexplored. What is sure is that as they disappear, whatever unique and valuable uses they have to humans, to their environment and other species that live in it, disappear forever," said Colin Khoury, a crop diversity expert at the Alliance.

"This work shows that despite previous explorations of wild relatives in Australia and beyond, more needs to be done. In this case, Australia is clearly a hotspot of diversity. If more attention were paid to protecting these plants in the country, this will pay off in combating climate and food security threats not only in Australia but in many other countries as well," he said. "Protecting these wild plants is critical not just for Australia, but for the world."

In recent years, the microbiota -- the community of bacteria and other microorganisms that live on and in the human body -- has captured the attention of scientists and the public, in part because it's become easier to study. It has been linked to many aspects of human health.

A multidisciplinary team from Memorial Sloan Kettering has shown for the first time that the gut microbiota directly shapes the makeup of the human immune system. Specifically, their research demonstrated that the concentration of different types of immune cells in the blood changed in relation to the presence of different bacterial strains in the gut. The results of their study, which used more than ten years of data collected from more than 2,000 patients, is being published November 25, 2020, in Nature.

"The scientific community had already accepted the idea that the gut microbiota was important for the health of the human immune system, but the data they used to make that assumption came from animal studies," says Sloan Kettering Institute systems biologist Joao Xavier, co-senior author of the paper together with his former postdoc Jonas Schluter, who is now an assistant professor at NYU Langone Health. "At MSK, we have a remarkable opportunity to follow how the composition of the microbiota changes in people being treated for blood cancers," Dr. Xavier adds.

A Unique System for Studying Changes in the Body

The data that were used in the study came from people receiving allogeneic stem cell and bone marrow transplants (BMTs). After strong chemotherapy or radiation therapy is used to destroy cancerous blood cells, the patient's blood-forming system is replaced with stem cells from a donor. For the first few weeks until the donor's blood cells -- including the white blood cells that make up the immune system -- have established themselves, the patients are extremely vulnerable to infections. To protect them during this time, patients are given antibiotics.

But many of these antibiotics have the unwanted side effect of destroying healthy microbiota that live in the gut, allowing dangerous strains to take over. When the patient's immune system has reconstituted, the antibiotics are discontinued, and the gut microbiota slowly starts to grow back.

"The parallel recoveries of the immune system and the microbiota, both of which are damaged and then restored, gives us a unique opportunity to analyze the associations between these two systems," Dr. Schluter says.

A Years-Long Effort to Find Answers

For more than ten years, members of MSK's BMT service have regularly collected and analyzed blood and fecal samples from patients throughout the BMT process. The bacterial DNA were processed by the staff at MSK's Lucille Castori Center for Microbes, Inflammation, and Cancer, which played a key role in creating the massive microbiota dataset. "Our study shows that we can learn a lot from stool -- biological samples that literally would be flushed down the toilet," Dr. Xavier notes. "The result of collecting them is that we have a unique dataset with thousands of datapoints that we can use to ask questions about the dynamics of this relationship."

This wider effort has been led by Marcel van den Brink, Head of the Division of Hematologic Malignancies, and a team of infectious disease specialists, BMT doctors, and scientists. "For a fair number of patients, we collected daily samples so we could really see what was happening day to day," Dr. van den Brink says. "The changes in the microbiota are rapid and dramatic, and there is almost no other setting in which you would be able to see them."

Previous research using samples collected from this work has looked at how the gut microbiota affects patients' health during the BMT process. A study published in February 2020 reported that having a greater diversity of species in the intestinal microbiota is associated with a lower risk of death after a BMT. It also found that having a lower diversity of microbiota before transplant resulted in a higher incidence of graft-versus-host disease, a potentially fatal complication in which the donor immune cells attack healthy tissue.

New Clues about a Complicated Relationship

The databank that the MSK team created contains details about the types of microbes that live in the patients' guts at various times. The computational team, including Drs. Schluter and Xavier, then used machine learning algorithms to mine electronic health records for meaningful data. The data from the health records included the types of immune cells present in the blood, information about the medications that patients were given, and the side effects patients experienced. "This research could eventually suggest ways to make BMTs safer by more closely regulating the microbiota," Dr. van den Brink says.

Analyzing this much data was a huge undertaking. Dr. Schluter, who at the time was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Xavier's lab, developed new statistical techniques for this. "Because experiments with people are often impossible, we are left with what we can observe," Dr. Schluter says. "But because we have so many data collected over a period of time when the immune system of patients as well as the microbiome shift dramatically, we can start to see patterns. This gives us a good start toward understanding the forces that the microbiota exerts on the rebuilding of the immune system."

"The purpose of this study was not to say whether certain kinds of microbes are 'good' or 'bad' for the immune system," Dr. Xavier explains, adding that this will be a focus of future research. "It's a complicated relationship. The subtypes of immune cells we would want to increase or decrease vary from day to day, depending on what else is going on in the body. What's important is that now we have a way to study this complex ecosystem."

The researchers say they also plan to apply their data to studying the immune system in patients receiving other cancer treatments.

Laboratory research and analysis of epidemiological data by Silvia Corvera, MD, and Tiffany Moore Simas, MD, MPH, MEd, and colleagues show that low levels of a protein commonly seen in screening tests for chromosomal disorders during the first trimester of pregnancy is associated with adipose tissue remodeling, glucose resistance and gestational diabetes mellitus in pregnant women. The study, published in Science Translational Medicine, outlines a new role for pregnancy-associated plasma protein A, known as PAPPA, in gestational diabetes, with translational potential as both a diagnostic tool and therapeutic target.

"We currently evaluate women for gestational diabetes at 24 to 28 weeks of pregnancy, so there's only a short window of time when we can intervene clinically," said Dr. Moore Simas, chair and professor of obstetrics & gynecology. "If there was an opportunity to intervene earlier during pregnancy, we have a greater opportunity to improve outcomes."

Dr. Corvera, the Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research and professor of molecular medicine, added, "Gestational diabetes is a huge health problem not just for mothers, but also for children, because we know these metabolic changes can be passed on to the next generation. Children born from mothers with gestational diabetes are at higher risk for metabolic diseases and type 2 diabetes as they get older."

Gestational diabetes mellitus is one of the most common complications of pregnancy, impacting as many as 5 to 9 percent of all pregnancies in the U.S. Women with gestational diabetes are unable to use insulin effectively. Glucose builds up in the blood instead of being absorbed by the cells, causing hyperglycemia. Unlike type 1 diabetes, which is caused when the body does not make enough insulin, gestational diabetes results in insulin being less effective at removing glucose from the blood, a condition referred to as insulin resistance.

The precise causes of gestational diabetes are not clear. However, about half of women who have gestational diabetes go on to develop type 2 diabetes within three to five years, suggesting an underlying or enhanced susceptibility. Moreover, exposure to hyperglycemia correlates to other metabolic disorders, obesity and cardiometabolic disorders in offspring.

During pregnancy, a women's physiology changes to adapt to maternal and fetal nutritional needs, including a reduction in insulin sensitivity that allows for the enhanced glucose availability for the fetus. Likewise, healthy expansion and accumulation of adipose tissue is a normal physiological change necessary to maintain proper nutrient levels for both mother and fetus. Healthy adipose tissue is also important for metabolism and glucose homeostasis. It keeps fat away from other organs, such as the heart and liver, where it can accumulate and cause disease.

Moore Simas, a practicing OB/GYN, often saw these physiological changes firsthand. "One of the things you notice when performing a C-section is that the appearance of the adipose tissues varies greatly from person to person," said Moore Simas. "These are observable differences in the internal adipose tissue around organs that didn't seem to necessarily correspond to the mother's weight."

Moore Simas mentioned these observations to Corvera, who studies the molecular mechanisms of adipose tissue and diabetes. The two then began working together to try to unravel the underlying molecular changes related to adipose tissue during pregnancy.

To pinpoint the factors contributing to differences between healthy and unhealthy adipose tissue in pregnant women, Corvera ran a series of RNA screens on adipose tissue from pregnant women after cesarean delivery, so they could identify possible differences in gene expression. She also ran RNA screens on adipose tissue from nonpregnant women undergoing bariatric surgery. These samples were compared to elucidate differences between adipose tissue growth in response to pregnancy or overnutrition.

"Here was an opportunity to study how fat tissue differs between pregnant and obese women," said Corvera. "Were there differences that could help us understand how healthy adipose tissue develops vs. unhealthy tissue?"

Among the findings was the elevated presence of Insulin-like Growth Factor-Binding Protein 5 (IGFBP5) in fat from pregnant women. IGFBP5 traps another protein, Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), which is necessary for cell proliferation and tissue growth. Corvera and Moore Simas thought that the high levels of IGFBP5 in adipose tissue may be connected to a well-known protein, PAPPA. It has been known for years that pregnant women produce PAPPA, which is not normally found circulating in the blood. This protein, made by the placenta, continues to rise until the end of pregnancy and disappears once the placenta has been delivered. Though low levels of PAPPA have been used to screen for Down syndrome and other chromosomal disorders, its precise biological function is not well understood.

Working in human cells as well as mouse knock out models, which do not express PAPPA, Corvera found that the PAPPA protein was cleaving IGFBP5. This cleavage allowed IGF-1 to be free to act on cells of adipose tissue and make healthy adipose tissue during pregnancy. Active throughout life but most active during puberty, IGF-1 is normally sequestered unless it binds to an insulin growth factor binding protein. Once bound, it works in conjunction with growth hormones in the development of new tissue. This is one reason its level rises during the growth spurts associated with puberty.

PAPPA levels are normally screened for in the first trimester of pregnancy because of its correlation to chromosome disorders. The availability of these biological samples allowed Moore Simas and her team to review the medical records of 6,361 pregnant women to analyze levels of PAPPA in the first trimester and compare them with blood glucose levels later in pregnancy. She found that lower levels of PAPPA were correlated to increased insulin resistance and gestational diabetes later in pregnancy.

These results support the hypothesis that increased levels of PAPPA and IGFBP5 in pregnant women allow IGF-1 to work, so that healthy adipose tissue can be produced. By contrast, lower levels of PAPPA, which correlate with excessive insulin resistance, don't promote healthy adipose tissue, leading to excessive insulin resistance, increased blood glucose levels and gestational diabetes in pregnant women.

"It's as though the placenta is telling the adipose tissue what to do, through expression of PAPPA," said Corvera.

The next step for Moore Simas and Corvera is to record PAPPA and glucose levels at various points in pregnancy to more accurately pinpoint how and when PAPPA is triggering physiological changes during pregnancy. They would also like to see if PAPPA levels can be used to predict blood glucose levels, insulin resistance and gestational diabetes before the presentation of clinical symptoms.

"Beyond the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of these findings, this is a new pathway involved with gestational diabetes that we've identified," said Moore Simas. "There's a lot more to understand about this novel mechanism and how it works."

Corvera said, "In pregnancy, the PAPPA protein is important for the development of healthy adipose tissue. Although very large amounts of PAPPA are made by the placenta during human pregnancy, it is possible that it may play a role outside pregnancy, as small amounts of PAPPA are also made in other tissues. In this way the PAPPA protein and the IGF-1 signaling pathway could play a role in the healthy development of adipose tissue outside of pregnancy and be relevant for other metabolic diseases. This is something we're eager to explore."

New antennas so thin that they can be sprayed into place are also robust enough to provide a strong signal at bandwidths that will be used by fifth-generation (5G) mobile devices. Performance results for the antennas, which are made from a new type of two-dimensional material called MXene, were recently reported by researchers at Drexel University and could have rammifications for mobile, wearable and connected "internet of things" technology.

The MXene antennas, which have been in development at Drexel for just over two years, are already performing nearly as well as the copper antennas found in most mobile devices on the market today, but with the benefit of being just a fraction of their thickness and weight.

"This combination of communications performance with extreme thinness, flexibility and durability sets a new standard for antenna technology," said Yury Gogotsi, PhD, Distinguished University and Bach professor of Materials Science and Engineering in Drexel's College of Engineering, who is the lead author of a paper on the MXene antennas recently published in the journal Advanced Materials. "While copper antennas have been the best in terms of performance for quite some time, their physical limitations have prevented connected and mobile technology from making the big leaps forward that many have predicted. Due to their unique set of characteristics MXene antennas could play an enabling role in the development of IoT technology."

While mobile communications companies currently are on the cusp of introducing 5G technology, which could capitalize on an less-used portion of the telecommunication spectrum to enable faster data transmission, it will likely become the standard range of operation for new technology.

Beyond reaching performance capabilities, antennas for devices of the future must also be able to acquit themselves well in a variety of environments outside of the circuitboards of phones and computers. According to Gogotsi, this makes MXene an appealing material for new antennas because it can be spray applied, screen printed or inkjet-printed onto just about any substrate and remains flexible without sacrificing performance.

"Generally copper antenna arrays are manufactured by etching printed circuit boards, this is a difficult process to undertake on a flexible substrate," said Meikang Han, PhD, a post-doctoral researcher at the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute who contributed to the research."This puts MXene at a distinct advantage because it disperses in water to produce an ink, which can be sprayed or printed onto building walls or flexible substrates to create antennas."

In the paper, Gogotsi and his collaborators, including Professor Gary Friedman, PhD, and Kapil Dandekar, PhD, E. Warren Colehower Chair Professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in Drexel's College of Engineering, reported on the performance of three sets of spray-coated MXene antennas, which were between 7-14 times thinner and 15-30 times lighter than a similar copper antenna - even thinner than a coat of paint. They tested the antennas in both lab and open environments for key performance measures of how efficiently the antenna converts power into directed waves - gain, radiation efficiency and directivity. And they did the testing at the three radio frequencies commonly used for telecommunication, including one in the target frequency of operation for 5G devices.

In each instance, the MXene antennas performed within 5% percent of copper antennas, with performance increasing with thickness of the antenna. The best performing MXene patch antenna, about one-seventh the thickness of standard copper antennas, was 99% as efficient as a copper antennas operating at 16.4 GHz frequency in an open environment. MXenes were also 98% as effective as their copper counterparts operating in the 5G bandwidth.

Their performance exceeded that of several other new materials being considered for antennas, including silver ink, carbon nanotubes and graphene. And, siginificantly, these performance numbers did not waiver when the MXene antennas were subjected to as many as 5,000 bending cycles - a mark of durability that far surpasses its peer materials.

"MXene's scalability and environmental sustainability in manufacturing has been well estabilished, for this material to now achieve performance goals on pace with the best materials on the market today is certainly a significant development," Gogotsi said. "As we continue to test various coating patterns and techniques while additionally optimizing the composition of MXene materials, I expect their performance to continue to improve."

So, you need a robot that climbs stairs. What shape should that robot be? Should it have two legs, like a person? Or six, like an ant?

Choosing the right shape will be vital for your robot's ability to traverse a particular terrain. And it's impossible to build and test every potential form. But now an MIT-developed system makes it possible to simulate them and determine which design works best.

You start by telling the system, called RoboGrammar, which robot parts are lying around your shop -- wheels, joints, etc. You also tell it what terrain your robot will need to navigate. And RoboGrammar does the rest, generating an optimized structure and control program for your robot.

The advance could inject a dose of computer-aided creativity into the field. "Robot design is still a very manual process," says Allan Zhao, the paper's lead author and a PhD student in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He describes RoboGrammar as "a way to come up with new, more inventive robot designs that could potentially be more effective."

Zhao is the lead author of the paper, which he will present at this month's SIGGRAPH Asia conference. Co-authors include PhD student Jie Xu, postdoc Mina Konakovi?-Lukovi?, postdoc Josephine Hughes, PhD student Andrew Spielberg, and professors Daniela Rus and Wojciech Matusik, all of MIT.

Ground rules

Robots are built for a near-endless variety of tasks, yet "they all tend to be very similar in their overall shape and design," says Zhao. For example, "when you think of building a robot that needs to cross various terrains, you immediately jump to a quadruped," he adds, referring to a four-legged animal like a dog. "We were wondering if that's really the optimal design."

Zhao's team speculated that more innovative design could improve functionality. So they built a computer model for the task -- a system that wasn't unduly influenced by prior convention. And while inventiveness was the goal, Zhao did have to set some ground rules.

The universe of possible robot forms is "primarily composed of nonsensical designs," Zhao writes in the paper. "If you can just connect the parts in arbitrary ways, you end up with a jumble," he says. To avoid that, his team developed a "graph grammar" -- a set of constraints on the arrangement of a robot's components. For example, adjoining leg segments should be connected with a joint, not with another leg segment. Such rules ensure each computer-generated design works, at least at a rudimentary level.

Zhao says the rules of his graph grammar were inspired not by other robots but by animals -- arthropods in particular. These invertebrates include insects, spiders, and lobsters. As a group, arthropods are an evolutionary success story, accounting for more than 80 percent of known animal species. "They're characterized by having a central body with a variable number of segments. Some segments may have legs attached," says Zhao. "And we noticed that that's enough to describe not only arthropods but more familiar forms as well," including quadrupeds. Zhao adopted the arthropod-inspired rules thanks in part to this flexibility, though he did add some mechanical flourishes. For example, he allowed the computer to conjure wheels instead of legs.

A phalanx of robots

Using Zhao's graph grammar, RoboGrammar operates in three sequential steps: defining the problem, drawing up possible robotic solutions, then selecting the optimal ones. Problem definition largely falls to the human user, who inputs the set of available robotic components, like motors, legs, and connecting segments. "That's key to making sure the final robots can actually be built in the real world," says Zhao. The user also specifies the variety of terrain to be traversed, which can include combinations of elements like steps, flat areas, or slippery surfaces.

With these inputs, RoboGrammar then uses the rules of the graph grammar to design hundreds of thousands of potential robot structures. Some look vaguely like a racecar. Others look like a spider, or a person doing a push-up. "It was pretty inspiring for us to see the variety of designs," says Zhao. "It definitely shows the expressiveness of the grammar." But while the grammar can crank out quantity, its designs aren't always of optimal quality.

Choosing the best robot design requires controlling each robot's movements and evaluating its function. "Up until now, these robots are just structures," says Zhao. The controller is the set of instructions that brings those structures to life, governing the movement sequence of the robot's various motors. The team developed a controller for each robot with an algorithm called Model Predictive Control, which prioritizes rapid forward movement.

"The shape and the controller of the robot are deeply intertwined," says Zhao, "which is why we have to optimize a controller for every given robot individually." Once each simulated robot is free to move about, the researchers seek high-performing robots with a "graph heuristic search." This neural network algorithm iteratively samples and evaluates sets of robots, and it learns which designs tend to work better for a given task. "The heuristic function improves over time," says Zhao, "and the search converges to the optimal robot."

This all happens before the human designer ever picks up a screw.

"This work is a crowning achievement in the a 25-year quest to automatically design the morphology and control of robots," says Hod Lipson, a mechanical engineer and computer scientist at Columbia University, who was not involved in the project. "The idea of using shape-grammars has been around for a while, but nowhere has this idea been executed as beautifully as in this work. Once we can get machines to design, make and program robots automatically, all bets are off."

Zhao intends the system as a spark for human creativity. He describes RoboGrammar as a "tool for robot designers to expand the space of robot structures they draw upon." To show its feasibility, his team plans to build and test some of RoboGrammar's optimal robots in the real world. Zhao adds that the system could be adapted to pursue robotic goals beyond terrain traversing. And he says RoboGrammar could help populate virtual worlds. "Let's say in a video game you wanted to generate lots of kinds of robots, without an artist having to create each one," says Zhao. "RoboGrammar would work for that almost immediately."

One surprising outcome of the project? "Most designs did end up being four-legged in the end," says Zhao. Perhaps manual robot designers were right to gravitate toward quadrupeds all along. "Maybe there really is something to it."