3D Printed Soft Robots Could Ease Pain of Surgery

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  Surgery is a risky and brutal business. Even today’s most advanced medical technology—surgical robots—involves the touch of cold, unyielding metal to soft, delicate flesh. With all of those complications, surgery today can still be a precarious procedure. But soft robots
  <a href="http://www.gizmag.com/camouflage-robot-harvard/23749/" title="first created">
   first created
  </a>
  by Harvard University scientists might provide some relief.
 </p>
<p>
  The robots’ ability to maneuver through small spaces and
  <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpOl_pEmRqs" title="camouflage themselves">
   camouflage themselves
  </a>
  like
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/kings-of-camouflage.html" title="cuttlefish">
   cuttlefish
  </a>
  do initially caught the attention of the military. But now these squishy creations are being re-imagined as biomedical tools. Here’s Larry Greenemeier writing for Scientific American:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   Hard robots require a sophisticated feedback mechanism to help them determine how much force to apply during surgery so they do not damage our delicate tissues and organs. Soft robots could take advantage of their rubbery appendages to reduce the likelihood of surgical damage, says Carl Vause, CEO of Soft Robotics. “Specifically, with medical devices, [you would be] allowing a robotic instrument to get into a small space, be reconfigurable in that space and do it in a way that’s tissue compliant.” Another advantage: Soft robots can be 3-D printed in a day or two from silicone and other materials that cost about $20.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/soft-robot.width-990_wsY6yJA.jpg"/>
<figcaption>This glowing robot might also be the surgical tool of the future.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
  Robotic surgery has prompted
  <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/new-concerns-on-robotic-surgeries/" title="some concern">
   some concern
  </a>
  in the recent past. The most well-known robot surgical system, known as da Vinci, is a $2 million endeavor that allows surgeons to manipulate laparoscopic instruments and an endoscopic camera attached to four robotic arms. But da Vinci significantly ups the cost of surgery and has also led to several lawsuits due to reports of sepsis, punctured blood vessels, and more.
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   It will be some time before soft robots are capable of anything nearly as sophisticated as da Vinci, but there is a lot of interest in how this emerging technology could be used in the medical field—either on its own or combined with a surgical system like da Vinci.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Experts are also interested in how soft robots could aid in prosthetics. Discover how scientists and engineers are
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/prospects-for-prostheses/">
   adding intelligence and flexibility into advanced prostheses
  </a>
  .
 </p>
<p>
  To learn more about one of the critters that inspired soft robots, watch “Kings of Camouflage” below and tune in to NOVA’s “
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/making-more-stuff.html#making-stuff-wilder" title="Making Stuff: Wilder">
   Making Stuff: Wilder
  </a>
  ,” airing October 23 at 9/8c on PBS.
 </p>
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<p>
 Photo courtesy
 <a href="http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2012/08/16a.aspx">
  DARPA
 </a>
</p>

For Better Recovery from Surgery, Tap Into Music's Rhythms

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<p>
  What if you could improve the outcome of an open-heart surgery simply by pressing “play?”
 </p>
<p>
  Doctors, psychologists, and other scientists have been using music therapy for years, treating a number of diseases like dementia, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cerebral ischemia. Even for people without those diseases, music has positive psychological and emotional affects. A study last year even demonstrated that listening to
  <a href="http://www.psmag.com/culture-society/struggling-to-reconcile-conflicting-beliefs-listen-to-mozart-47766/" title="Mozart could help resolve cognitive dissonance">
   Mozart could help people resolve cognitive dissonance
  </a>
  .
 </p>
<p>
  Now, researchers in Tokyo might have evidence that music really can make us feel better physically, not just mentally or emotionally. They serenaded a group of mice which were undergoing organ transplants with varying types of music—from Verdi’s to Mozart and even “The Best of Enya.” The results were promising. Here’s Maria Konnikova writing for The New Yorker:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   At Teikyo University, Masanori Niimi and his colleagues began to notice differences between the groups as the mice recovered: the mice placed in the silent or the single-frequency rooms suffered from acute graft rejection, as their immune systems rejected the foreign cells from the transplants. Those who had been listening to either Verdi or Mozart showed significantly improved survival outcomes, living an average of twenty days longer.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Unfortunately, the mice who listened to Enya didn’t do as well, living an average of just four days longer than mice exposed to the flat tone or nothing at all.
 </p>
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<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/baby-headphones-cropped2.width-990_cm1bp3j.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Listening to music could help patients recover from complex surgeries.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
  Of course, any study that involves mice is subject to further scrutiny, since what works in mice might not work well in humans. World cultures may be attuned to music differently, too. But the key point is that rhythm appears to have a physiological and biological basis. The human auditory cortex particularly adept in its ability to differentiate between frequencies of sound:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   In fact, single neurons
   <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18185589?dopt=Abstract">
    can adjust
   </a>
   to barely noticeable frequency shifts at a level that exceeds almost all other mammals (bats are the exception). Music with a four-four tempo, which corresponds closely to a normal heart rate,
   <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/260788">
    can help
   </a>
   regulate heart rate, circulation, and breathing. Lyrical melodies and rhythms of about sixty to eighty beats a minute, which is common to much classical music and bird song,
   <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18298503">
    can stimulate
   </a>
   relaxation and alpha brain waves, a type of pattern associated with wakeful relaxation. Yet music that departs from either of those tempos confers none of the benefits.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Presumably, then, implementation of the right kind of music could help patients recover from a variety of procedures. Other scientists have even studied the effect of music on our sympathetic nervous system, metabolism, and even immune system. Perhaps someday doctors may prescribe a soundtrack to our surgery specially tuned to our biorhythms, making a speedy recovery not just dependent on medicine and rest.
 </p>
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<p>
 Photo Credit: Flickr/Patricil (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
</p>

Google Balloons Send Internet Soaring Through the Clouds

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  Jon Brodkin, writing for ArsTechnica:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   Google this week launched 30 balloons into the stratosphere in the first step toward creating what it calls a “network in the sky” that could eventually bring “balloon-powered Internet [to] everyone.”
  </p>
<p>
   Dubbed “Project Loon,” Google’s balloon-based wireless networks aim to bring 3G-like speed to what Google says are the “2 out of every 3 people on Earth” who lack a fast, affordable Internet connection. Google’s plan has been rumored for weeks. As we
   <a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/googles-balloon-based-wireless-networks-may-not-be-a-crazy-idea/">
    wrote earlier this month
   </a>
   , balloon-based communications are well established for military communications and have been proposed for public safety use in disaster areas. Google could be the first to make balloon-based networks widely used for commercial Internet access.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  One of the key hurdles Google had to surmount was how to maintain coverage with a fleet of balloons that is, at least partially, at the mercy of the winds. They solved it like they have many other problems—by throwing massive amounts of computing power at it. That way each balloon can piggyback on air currents, and when the winds aren’t in its favor, nudge the craft onto a favorable course.
 </p>
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<img alt="Project Loon" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/google-balloons.width-990_MOc45IA.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Google is not the first to pursue balloons as vehicles for commercial Internet access, but its use of wind and solar power to direct their paths is innovative.
        
    </figcaption>
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<p>
  Discover how Google dreamt up this way to access the cloud through technology held aloft
  <em>
   in
  </em>
  the clouds:
 </p>
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<p>
 Photo credit:
 <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilitephoto/9052643301/sizes/l/in/photolist-eMXasV-8367w1-8369Jd-81JAH3-81JzpW-81JA6w-81FrFK-81FtLe-81JCL1-81JzLb-81EsMc-83zxqq/">
  iLighter/Flickr
 </a>
</p>

Why Naked Mole Rats Don't Get Cancer

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  When a group of researchers at the University of Rochester in New York tried growing skin cells from naked mole rats in lab flasks, they noticed that the fluid the cells were growing in became thick and syrupy. After some investigation, they discovered that the cells, like other cells of mammalian connective tissue, were secreting a sugar called hyaluronan, except the naked mole version was five times bigger. Andrei Seluanov, who led the study, believes that larger hyaluronan can trap potential cancer cells and prevent them from growing into tumors. Writes Ed Yong for Not Exactly Rocket Science:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   But it also allows cells to stop each other from growing if they become too crowded. This is called ‘
   <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19858485">
    contact inhibition
   </a>
   ’—it’s why healthy cells form a flat layer if they’re grown in a dish but cancerous ones pile on top of each other.
  </p>
<p>
<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/blind-mole-rats-may-hold-key-to-cancer-1.11741">
    Based on an earlier study
   </a>
   , Seluanov’s team suspected that naked mole rat cells are protected against cancer because they’re especially sensitive to contact inhibition. Now, they’ve shown that large hyaluronan is responsible. The rodents’ cells are very receptive to the sugar; as they get close, hyaluronan sticks to their surface and triggers a genetic programme that stops them from growing.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  The team switched on cancer genes in naked mole rat cells and transplanted them into mice. No cancer. But when they reduced the amount of hyaluronan created by the naked mole rat cells in the mice, tumors formed.
 </p>
</section>

Nearing Certainty About Heisenberg's Uncertainty... Or Not

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<p>
  One of the basic tenets of quantum mechanics is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that the more precisely one measures a particle’s momentum, the more uncertain its position becomes. The reverse is also true, which means that in theory, it’s impossible to know the exact position and momentum of a subatomic particle at the same time.
 </p>
<p>
  Heisenberg originally used the principle to show that there is a limit to the accuracy of particle detectors, but he never offered direct evidence to support his ideas. Now, UK physicist Paul Busch and his colleagues believe they have a proof. Here’s Ron Cowen, writing for Nature:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   In their theoretical work, Busch and his colleagues imagined making simultaneous measurements of a particle’s position and momentum in an arbitrary quantum state. They compared the errors in such measurements to two special cases — in which either the position or the momentum of the particle is well known. They found that the combined errors in measurements of the position or momentum in these two cases obeyed Heisenberg’s principle and was always smaller than for cases in which the two properties were measured simultaneously. This step allowed them to prove Heisenberg’s original conjecture.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Scientists remain skeptical, though. Read the
  <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/proof-mooted-for-quantum-uncertainty-1.13270" title="full article">
   full article
  </a>
  to learn more about one physicist’s objection to Busch’s proof, as well as what those doubts mean for quantum computing. For some background on quantum computing, hear from
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/quantum-computing.html" title="MIT's Seth Lloyd">
   MIT’s Seth Lloyd
  </a>
  . And for some comic relief, watch this video:
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  Quantum mechanics is nothing to laugh at. Well, sometimes it is.
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How to Make a False Memory

<p></p><p><i>“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”</i> —Marcel Proust</p><p>Proust was on to something. As powerful as our memories may be, they’re certainly not infallible. Our minds lead us astray all the time, but experts hadn’t gotten to the root of the brain’s deceptiveness—until now.</p><p>Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have successfully implanted a false memory in a mouse, giving insight into how memories—true and false—may form in the human brain. Led by Susumu Tonegawa (a Nobel laureate for his work in immunology), the team <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/">reported Thursday in the journal Science</a> that they caused genetically modified mice to remember being shocked in a particular place when, in reality, that electric shock was delivered when the mouse was somewhere else entirely. Here’s <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517226/scientists-make-mice-remember-things-that-didnt-happen/">Susan Young, writing</a> for Technology Review:</p><p>Previously, the MIT-based team had <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22441246">shown</a> that it could pinpoint the location and assemblage of cells that carry a memory, and that activating those cells stimulated memory recall in mice. To create the new, false memory, Tonegawa’s team reactivated a mouse’s memory of a safe place while the animal received shocks in its feet, thus transforming the original memory.</p><p>First, the team used genetic tricks to label the brain cells involved in the memory of a chamber that was safe and neutral. The next day, they put the animal in a second chamber, a completely different setting. There, the animal got foot shocks while the researchers simultaneously shone light to reactivate the memory of the harmless first chamber. When the animal was put back in the first chamber, it fearfully froze—a clear indication that it remembered getting shocked in that chamber, even though that never happened.</p><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/science/false-memory-planted-in-a-mouse-brain-study-shows.html">James Gorman wrote in The New York Times</a> that although mice and people are evolutionarily distant, the processes that govern memory formation in mammals are ancient. In both mice and men, memories form in an area of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus—so conclusions drawn from this study are likely to apply to humans as well. Moreover, the scientists’ ability to locate and edit a memory is a significant achievement. Gorman quotes <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/science/may-britt-and-edvard-moser-explore-the-brains-gps.html?pagewanted=all">Edvard I. Moser</a> , a neuroscientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology:</p><p>“What I find fascinating about this,” Dr. Moser said, “is that you actually can point to a physical substrate to memory,” what the researchers call an engram. Neuroscientists have long talked about engrams, but Dr. Moser said the recent research is the closest they have gotten to pointing to a spot in the brain and saying, “That is the memory.”</p><p>Of course, researchers have long known that memory blurs fact and fiction. But this new discovery is an important step toward figuring out how that actually works. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jul/25/false-memory-implanted-mouse-brain">Writes Alok Jha</a> for <i>The Guardian</i> :</p><p>The mouse models created by the MIT team will help scientists ask ever more complex questions about memories in people. “Now that we can reactivate and change the contents of memories in the brain, we can begin asking questions that were once the realm of philosophy,” said Steve Ramirez, a colleague of Tonagawa’s at MIT.</p>

This Insect Jumps Using Built-In Gears

<p>
</p>
<p>
 Biomimicry—the use of nature to inspire design—is
 <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/22702/10-technologies-we-stole-animal-kingdom">
  widely used by cutting-edge technologists
 </a>
 to design everything from bullet train noses, new X-ray machines, and lighter and safer cars. But let’s take a moment to flip that idea on its head. Are there things we thought humans invented that have been later discovered in nature?
</p>
<div class="newsletter"></div>
<p>
 As a matter of fact, yes. Nymphs of a common insect found in Britain—
 <i>
  Issus coeleoptratus
 </i>
 , a species of planthopper—has what were presumably a very human creation—gears. While working at the University of Cambridge, Greg Sutton noticed a strange mechanism on the insect’s back legs. Here’s Adam Cole
 <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/09/13/219739500/living-gears-help-this-bug-jump">
  reporting
 </a>
 for NPR’s Morning Edition:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
 There was a tiny row of bumps on the inside of each leg where it met the insect’s body. The bumps looked just like the teeth of gears. And when the planthopper jumped, they acted like gears too — as teeth meshed, the legs turned in synchrony. Sutton says his finding,
 <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6151/1254">
  published
 </a>
 this week in
 <i>
  Science
 </i>
 , is the first mechanical gear system ever observed in nature.
</p>
</blockquote>
<div class="ad"></div>
<p>
 The small bumps—called trochanters—are incredibly well suited to the planthopper, which springs away from danger in the blink of an eye. Sutton filmed the bugs hopping with a high-speed camera and noticed that both leaping legs moved almost simultaneously—the difference between the two was as short as 30 millionths of a second. That’s much shorter than the time it takes for a neuron to execute even the smallest, most rudimentary task. The synchrony propels the insect faster, farther, and straighter.
</p>
<p>
 Ed Yong,
 <a href="http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/12/this-insect-has-gears-in-its-legs/">
  writing
 </a>
 for Not Exactly Rocket Science, has more background on Sutton’s research:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
 The planthopper nymphs lose them when they become adults. But the adults don’t shoot off in uncoordinated spins—if anything, they’re better jumpers than the youngsters. Their hind trochanters make much closer contact with each other, and Sutton thinks that
 <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20086132">
  the friction between them helps to keep them in time
 </a>
 . “We’re kind of sure about that, but not entirely sure,” he says.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<i>
  Issus coeleoptratus
 </i>
 ‘s gears work similarly to their human-designed counterparts, but they have a leg up at smaller scales. Sutton—a mechanical engineer—thinks the trochanters could help us build more efficient machines:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
 Modern machines, such as 3-D printers, could easily create gears with these shark-fin teeth. Sutton is really excited by the prospect, and suspects that they may perform better in very small machines. “Modern machinery often doesn’t work at very small scales,” he says. “Friction doesn’t matter so much when you have two big gears next to each other but when you get small, friction starts killing you.”
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
 The planthoppers might help to solve that problem. “We’re still being impressed and shocked by what we find in the back garden,” says Sutton.
</p>
<p>
<i>
  For more bioinspired technologies, watch “Making Stuff Wilder”, airing October 23 at 9/8 central on PBS.
 </i>
</p>
<div class="related"></div>
<p>
 Photo by Burrows/Sutton
</p>

<p>Are there things we thought humans invented that have been later discovered in nature?</p>

Allison Eck

Articles