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MIT researchers invent rapid 3D printing with liquid metal

MIT researchers have developed an additive manufacturing (building one layer at a time—”3D printing” is part of the process) technique called liquid metal printing (LMP). Using liquid aluminum, it can rapidly print large-scale parts like table legs and chair frames in a matter of minutes.

The method deposits molten aluminum along a predefined path into a bed of tiny glass beads and deposits it through a nozzle at high speeds. Large-scale parts can be printed in just a few seconds (the molten aluminum cools in several minutes).

The aluminum quickly hardens into a 3D structure. The researchers say LMP is at least 10 times faster than a comparable metal additive manufacturing process, and the procedure to heat and melt the metal is more efficient than some other methods. It can also print components that are larger than those typically made with slower additive techniques, and at lower cost.

Low resolution (best for larger structures)

However, the technique sacrifices resolution (the number of dots per inch a printer can deposit) for speed and scale. But the technique would be suitable for some applications in architecture, construction, and industrial design, where components of larger structures usually don’t require extremely fine details. It could also be utilized effectively for rapid prototyping with recycled or scrap metal.

In a recent study, the researchers demonstrated the procedure by printing aluminum frames and parts for tables and chairs that were strong enough to withstand postprint machining. They showed how components made with LMP could be combined with high-resolution processes and additional materials to create functional furniture.

“But most of our built world—the things around us like tables, chairs, and buildings—doesn’t need extremely high resolution. Speed and scale, and also repeatability and energy consumption, are all important metrics,” says Skylar Tibbits, associate professor in the Department of Architecture and co-director of the Self-Assembly Lab, who is senior author of a paper introducing LMP.

Significant speedup and cooling

The team chose aluminum because it is commonly used in construction and can be recycled cheaply and efficiently. Bread loaf-sized pieces of aluminum are deposited into an electric furnace, where metal coils inside the furnace heat the metal to 700 degrees Celsius.

The aluminum is held at a high temperature in a graphite crucible, and then molten material is gravity-fed through a ceramic nozzle into a print bed along a preset path. They found that the larger the amount of aluminum they could melt, the faster the printer could go.

The process uses tiny (100-micron) glass beads to cool the metal quickly. They used LMP to rapidly produce aluminum frames with variable thicknesses that were durable enough to withstand machining processes like milling and boring.

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Ancient lake on Mars could hold traces of life

NASA Perseverance Rover’s verification of lake sediments at the base of Mars’ Jezero Crater offers new hope for finding traces of life in crater samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover. 

In new research published in the journal Science Advances, a team led by UCLA and The University of Oslo shows that at some point, the Jezero Crater filled with water, depositing layers of sediments on the crater floor.

Seeing below the surface of the crater for signs of life

“From orbit we can see a bunch of different deposits, but we can’t tell for sure if what we’re seeing is their original state, or if we’re seeing the conclusion of a long geological story,” said David Paige, a UCLA professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences and first author of the paper. “To tell how these things formed, we need to see below the surface.”

So as the rover drove onto the delta, Perseverance’s Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX) instrument fired radar waves up to 20 meters below the rover, allowing scientists to see down to the base of the sediments to reveal the top surface of the buried crater floor.

Mars Perseverance Rover RIMFAX ground penetrating radar measurements of the Hawksbill Gap region of the Jezero Crater Western Delta, Mars. Hawksbill Gap (credit: Svein-Erik Hamran, Tor Berger, David Paige, University of Oslo, UCLA, California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA)

Perseverance’s soil and rock samples will be brought back to Earth by a future expedition and studied for evidence of past life.

Mars Sample Return: Bringing Mars Rock Samples Back to Earth

NASA and the European Space Agency are developing plans for one of the most ambitious campaigns ever attempted in space: bringing the first samples of Mars material safely back to Earth for detailed study. The diverse set of scientifically curated samples now being collected by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover could help scientists answer the question of whether ancient life ever arose on the Red Planet. Bringing samples of Mars to Earth for future study would happen in several steps with multiple spacecraft, and in some ways, in a synchronized manner. This short animation features key moments of the Mars Sample Return campaign: from landing on Mars and securing the sample tubes to launching them off the surface and ferrying them back to Earth. Animation is contributed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the European Space Agency, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Marshall Space Flight Center. Learn more: https://mars.nasa.gov/msr (Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/MSFC)

Perseverance Explores the Jezero Crater Delta, Sept. 14, 2022 (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/AS

Citation: Paige, D. A., Hamran, E., F. Amundsen, H. E., Berger, T., Russell, P., Kakaria, R., Mellon, M. T., Eide, S., Carter, L. M., Casademont, T. M., Nunes, D. C., Shoemaker, E. S., Plettemeier, D., Dypvik, H., Holm-Alwmark, S., & N. Horgan, B. H. (2024). Ground penetrating radar observations of the contact between the western delta and the crater floor of Jezero crater, Mars. Science Advances. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi8339 (open-access)

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Writing by hand leads to higher brain connectivity than typing on a keyboard 

What have we lost by typing on a keyboard? To find out, researchers in Norway are investigating the underlying neural networks involved in both modes of writing.

“We show that when writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns are far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard,” said Prof Audrey van der Meer, a brain researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and co-author of the study published in Frontiers in Psychology.

“Such widespread brain connectivity is known to be crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, is beneficial for learning.”

Research design

The researchers collected EEG data from 36 university students who were repeatedly prompted to either write or type a word that appeared on a screen. When writing, they used a digital pen to write in cursive directly on a touchscreen. When typing they used a single finger to press keys on a keyboard.

High-density EEGs, which measure electrical activity in the brain using 256 small sensors sewn in a net and placed over the head, were recorded for five seconds for every prompt.

Connectivity of different brain regions increased when participants wrote by hand, but not when they typed.

Movement for memory

“We have shown that the differences in brain activity are related to the careful forming of the letters when writing by hand while making more use of the senses,” van der Meer explained. Since it is the movement of the fingers carried out when forming letters that promotes brain connectivity, writing in print is also expected to have similar benefits for learning as cursive writing.”

On the contrary, the simple movement of hitting a key with the same finger repeatedly is less stimulating for the brain. “This also explains why children who have learned to write and read on a tablet, can have difficulty differentiating between letters that are mirror images of each other, such as ‘b’ and ‘d’. They literally haven’t felt with their bodies what it feels like to produce those letters,” van der Meer said.

Citation: H., A. L. (2024). Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: A high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1219945. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945 (open access)

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Scientists Hack DNA to Make Next-Gen Nanostructures

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, and Stony Brook University have developed a radical new method for producing a wide variety of designed metallic and semiconductor 3D nanostructures. The method uses a “hacked” form of DNA that instructs molecules to organize themselves into targeted 3D patterns.

The new method could produce robust nanostructures from multiple material classes. The study was recently published in Science Advances.

“We have been using DNA to program nanoscale materials for more than a decade,” said corresponding author Oleg Gang, a professor of chemical engineering and of applied physics and materials science at Columbia Engineering and leader of the Soft and Bio Nanomaterials Group at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), a DOE Office of Science user facility at Brookhaven Lab.

“Now, by building on previous achievements, we have developed a method for converting these DNA-based structures into many types of functional inorganic 3D nano-architectures, and this opens tremendous opportunities for 3D nanoscale manufacturing.”

Next level of self-assembly: microelectronics and semiconductor devices

CFN is a leader in researching self-assembly, the process by which molecules spontaneously organize themselves. In particular, scientists at CFN are experts at DNA-directed assembly. Researchers program strands of DNA to “direct” the self-assembly process towards molecular arrangements that give rise to beneficial properties, such as electrical conductivity, photosensitivity, and magnetism. Then, those structures can be scaled up to functional materials.

To date, CFN has used DNA-directed assembly to produce switchable thin films, 3D nanosuperconductors, and more.

3D metallic nanostructures

“We have demonstrated various types of structures we can organize using DNA-directed assembly. But, to take this research to the next level, we can’t only rely on DNA,” Gang said. “We needed to expand upon our method to make more robust structures with more specific functionality for advanced technologies like microelectronics and semiconductor devices.”

Recently, Gang and colleagues were able to grow silica, an oxidized form of silicon, onto a DNA lattice. The addition of silica created a much more robust structure, but the procedure was not widely applicable to different materials. The team still needed further research to develop a method that could produce metallic and semiconductor materials in an efficient way.

So to build out a more universal method for producing 3D nanostructures, researchers in CFN’s Soft and Bio Nanomaterials Group collaborated with the Center’s Electronic Nanomaterials Group.

Scientists in this group pioneered a novel material synthesis technique called vapor-phase infiltration. This technique bonds a precursor chemical, in vapor form, to a nanoscale lattice, penetrating beyond the surface and deep into the material’s structure. Conducting this technique on the silica structures Gang’s team had previously built, using precursors with metallic elements, enabled the researchers to produce 3D metallic structures.

The team also experimented with liquid-phase infiltration, a technique that forms chemical bonds on a material’s surface, except with a liquid precursor. In this case, the team bonded different metal salts to silica, forming a variety of metallic structures. For example, they were able to combine platinum, aluminum, and zinc on top of one nanostructure.

The team was able to produce 3D nanostructures containing different combinations of zinc, aluminum, copper, molybdenum, tungsten, indium, tin, and platinum. This is the first demonstration of its kind for creating highly structured 3D nanomaterials.

There are several properties needed to make useful materials for technologies like semiconductor devices. For this study, the researchers imparted electrical conductivity and photoactivity on the 3D nanostructures.

Making world-leading research accessible; a liquid-handling robot

CFN will now work to apply the method to more complex research and offer it to visiting scientists. As a user facility, CFN makes its capabilities and expertise available to “users” across the country and the world.

The ecosystem of CFN’s expertise and facilities that benefited this research is also a benefit to users, and CFN is constantly expanding its offerings and making them more accessible. For example, scientists are looking to implement the new research method into one of the Center’s newest tools, a liquid-handling robot.

CFN also studies the mechanical properties of nanomaterials, and the materials like the ones developed in this work hold great potential for enhancing mechanical performance, as was recently shown by the group in another study, the researchers say.

“Overall, CFN’s new method for creating designed, robust, and functionally tunable 3D nanostructures has set the stage for breakthroughs in advanced manufacturing at small scales. Their work could enable diverse emerging technologies, and it will provide new opportunities for science initiatives and users at Brookhaven Lab.”

This study was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

Citation: Michelson, A., Subramanian, A., Kisslinger, K., Tiwale, N., Xiang, S., Shen, E., Kahn, J. S., Nykypanchuk, D., Yan, H., Nam, Y., & Gang, O. (2024). Three-dimensional nanoscale metal, metal oxide, and semiconductor frameworks through DNA-programmable assembly and templating. Science Advances. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl0604 (open-access)

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Bad-actor AI activity will escalate by mid-2024, amplifying disinformation in election season: GWU researchers

A new study led by researchers at the George Washington University (GWU) predicts that daily, bad-actor AI activity is going to escalate by mid-2024, increasing the threat that it could affect election results in 50 countries. The research, published today in the journal PNAS Nexus, is the first quantitative scientific analysis that predicts how bad actors will misuse AI globally.

Among their findings:

  • Bad actors need only basic Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) AI systems to manipulate and bias information on platforms, rather than more advanced systems such as GPT 3 and 4, which tend to have more guardrails to mitigate bad activity.
  • A road network across 23 social media platforms will allow bad-actor communities direct links to billions of users worldwide without users’ knowledge.
  • Bad-actor activity driven by AI will become a daily occurrence by the summer of 2024*
  • Social media companies should deploy tactics to contain the disinformation, as opposed to removing every piece of content. According to the researchers, this looks like removing the bigger pockets of coordinated activity while putting up with the smaller, isolated actors.

* To determine this, the researchers used proxy data from two historical, technologically similar incidents that involved the manipulation of online electronic information systems. The first set of data came from automated algorithm attacks on U.S. financial markets in 2008, and the second came from Chinese cyber attacks on U.S. infrastructure in 2013. By analyzing these data sets, the researchers were able to extrapolate the frequency of attacks in these chains of events and examine this information in the context of the current technological progress of AI.

The open-access paper, “Controlling bad-actor-AI activity at scale across online battlefields,” was published in the journal PNAS Nexus. The research was funded by the U.S. Air Force Office for Scientific Research and The Templeton Foundation. 

Citation: Cross online battlefields. PNAS Nexus, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae004 (open-access)

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IntelliGenes accessible AI software helps predict diseases

To help predict diseases, researchers at Rutgers Health have developed IntelliGenes software, which combines artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning approaches.

A study published in Bioinformatics explains how IntelliGenes can be used by a wide range of users to analyze multigenomic and clinical data. It’s accessible by anyone, says Zeeshan Ahmed, lead author of the study and a faculty member at Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research (IFH).

Personalized patient predictions

Previously, there were no AI or machine-learning tools available to investigate and interpret the complete human genome, especially for non-experts. So Ahmed and members of his Rutgers lab developed IntelliGenes software. It combines conventional statistical methods with cutting-edge machine-learning algorithms to produce personalized patient predictions and a visual representation of the biomarkers significant to disease prediction.

In another study, published in Scientific Reports, the researchers applied IntelliGenes to discover novel biomarkers and predict cardiovascular disease with high accuracy.

“There is huge potential in the convergence of datasets and the staggering developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Ahmed, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Early detection of common and rare diseases

“IntelliGenes can support personalized early detection of common and rare diseases in individuals, as well as open avenues for broader research ultimately leading to new interventions and treatments,” said Ahmed.

The researchers tested the software using Amarel, a high-performance computing cluster managed by the Rutgers Office of Advanced Research Computing.

Citation: DeGroat, W., Mendhe, D., Bhusari, A., Abdelhalim, H., Zeeshan, S., & Ahmed, Z. (2023). IntelliGenes: A novel machine learning pipeline for biomarker discovery and predictive analysis using multi-genomic profiles. Bioinformatics, 39(12). https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btad755

Citation: DeGroat, W., Abdelhalim, H., Patel, K. et al. Discovering biomarkers associated and predicting cardiovascular disease with high accuracy using a novel nexus of machine learning techniques for precision medicine. Sci Rep 14, 1 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-50600-8

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Robotics At The Nanoscale: A DNA-Based Electromotor Powered by Nanopore Flow

Scientists have created the world’s first working nanoscale electromotor. Using a turbine engineered from DNA, it’s powered by hydrodynamic flow inside a nanopore (a nanometer-sized hole in a membrane) of solid-state silicon nitride, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The researchers say the electromotor could help spark research in future applications, such as building molecular factories to create useful chemicals or medical probes based on molecules inside the bloodstream to detect diseases.

Designing at the nanoscale

DNA turbine powered by a transmembrane potential across a nanopore (credit: X. Shi et al.)

“Common macroscopic machines become inefficient at the nanoscale,” said study co-author professor Aleksei Aksimentiev, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. “We have to develop new principles and physical mechanisms to realize electromotors at the very, very small scales.” 

That work was headed by Hendrik Dietz of the Technical University of Munich and Cees Dekker of the Delft University of Technology.

Dietz, a world expert in DNA origami, manipulated DNA molecules to make the tiny motor’s turbine, consisting of 30 double-stranded DNA helices. Decker’s lab work demonstrated how the turbine rotates by applying an electric field.

Aksimentiev’s lab carried out all-atom molecular dynamics simulations on a system of five million atoms to characterize the physical phenomena of how the motor works, using the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Frontera, the top academic supercomputer in the U.S. Aksimentiev also had access to the NSF-funded Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) and to Expanse of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and Anvil of Purdue University.

DNA as an electromotor

The DNA nanoturbine, which can rotate up to a billion revolutions per minute, builds on a previous study that showed that a single DNA helix is the tiniest electromotor that one can build. DNA has emerged as a building material at the nanoscale, according to Aksimentiev. “This new work is the first nanoscale motor where we can control the rotational speed and direction,” he said.

“In the future, we might be able to synthetize a molecule using the new nanoscale electromotor, or we can could use it to as an element of a bigger molecular factory, where things are moved around, he added. “Or we could imagine it as a vehicle for soft propulsion, where synthetic systems can go into a bloodstream and probe molecules or cells, one at a time.”

In the movie Fantastic Voyage, a team of Americans in a nuclear submarine is shrunk and injected into a scientist’s body to quickly fix a blood clot. Aksimentiev said something like this could actually happen (except for the miniature people part).

Citation: Shi, X., Pumm, AK., Maffeo, C. et al. A DNA turbine powered by a transmembrane potential across a nanopore. Nat. Nanotechnol. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-023-01527-8 (open-access)

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‘Magic trap’ preserves quantum coherence in ultracold molecules longer than expected

In recent research, Rice University and Durham University scientists were able to prolong quantum behavior in an experimental system nearly 30-fold by using ultracold temperatures and laser wavelengths. These generated a “magic trap” that helped delay the onset of decoherence.

Generally, the coherence of this rotating behavior in ultracold molecules decays over a very short amount of time, note the researchers. Before now, the longest recorded quantum state of rotating molecules was 1/20th of a second.

A magic wavelength of light

The researchers were inspired by theoretical work by Temple University’s Svetlana Kotochigova that suggested a certain “magic” wavelength of light could preserve quantum coherence for a longer period of time.

The Rice Hazzard Group applied this theory in the laboratory in a new experimental technique. They created a “magic trap” that kept the molecules rotating quantum mechanically for nearly 1.5 seconds ⎯ a 30-fold increase.

The study, published in Nature Physics, is the first experimental demonstration of its kind and provides a new arena to study quantum interactions, the researchers say.

The research was supported by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, U.K. Research and Innovation Frontier Research, the Royal Society, Durham University, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the W.F. Keck Foundation and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Citation: Gregory, P.D., Fernley, L.M., Tao, A.L. et al. Second-scale rotational coherence and dipolar interactions in a gas of ultracold polar molecules. Nat. Phys. (2024). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-02328-5 (open-access)

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Next (Little) Thing: Insect-like Mini-robots

Engineers at Washington State University have developed two miniature bug-like robots that could be used in the future for work in areas such as artificial pollination, search and rescue, insect control, environmental monitoring, micro-fabrication and robotic-assisted surgery. (Also great for creepy-crawler pranks?)

The two mini-bugs weigh in at just 8 milligrams and 55 milligrams, and can move at about six millimeters a second—way slower than ants, who can run at a meter/sec.

How they work

The trick: tiny actuators make the robots move, weighing less than a milligram—the smallest known to have been developed for micro-robotics, said Néstor O. Pérez-Arancibia, Flaherty Associate Professor in Engineering at WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, who led the project. 

The actuator uses a material called a “shape memory alloy” (SMA) that is 1/1000th of an inch in diameter and can change shapes and move when heated—no moving parts or spinning components. The SMA technology also requires only a very small amount of electricity or heat to make them move.

Water strider next

The researchers would next like to copy another insect and develop a water strider-type robot that can move across the top of the water surface as well as just under it.

They are also working to use tiny batteries or catalytic combustion to make their robots fully autonomous and untethered from a power supply.

Citation: C. K. Trygstad, X. -T. Nguyen and N. O. Pérez-Arancibia, “A New 1-mg Fast Unimorph SMA-Based Actuator for Microrobotics,” 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Detroit, MI, USA, 2023, pp. 2693-2700, doi: 10.1109/IROS55552.2023.10342518.

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New Sensors Record One Or Two Neurons Deep In The Brain

New sensors are capable of recording activity deep within the brain from large populations of individual neurons, with a resolution of as few as one or two neurons, according to a study published in the Jan. 17, 2024 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

The research team is led by the Integrated Electronics and Biointerfaces Laboratory (IEBL) at the University of California San Diego.

High-resolution sensing

The new approach relies on ultra-thin, flexible and customizable probes made of clinical-grade materials and equipped with sensors that can record extremely localized brain signals. The probes are much smaller than today’s clinical sensors, so they can be placed extremely close to one another, allowing for high-resolution sensing in specific areas at unprecedented depths within the brain. 

The probes can record with up to 128 channels (the state of the art in today’s clinical probes is only 8 to 16 channels). The researchers plan to develop future versions that can expand the number of channels to thousands per probe, dramatically enhancing physicians’ ability to acquire, analyze and understand brain signals at a higher resolution. 

Wireless monitoring of epilepsy patients up to 30 days

This technology, called “UC San Diego Micro-stereo-electro-encephalography (µSEEG),” is a first step towards precision wireless monitoring of patients with treatment-resistant epilepsy for extended periods of time—up to 30 days—as they go about their daily lives. Other potential applications include helping people with Parkinson’s disease, movement disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, obesity, treatment-resistant depression, high-impact chronic pain and other disorders.

The new probes can also provide therapeutic electrical stimulation to precise locations on the surface of the brain cortex. They are 15 microns thic (about 1/5th the thickness of a human hair) and are extremely compact, minimizing the differences between the material properties of the probe and the brain.

These sensors will communicate wirelessly with a small computer system in a wireless cap, which a person could wear for extended periods of time. This cap would provide wireless power and the computational infrastructure to capture the brain signals being recorded from a person’s brain for 30 days

Experimental subjects

In the new paper, the team reports the functioning of the new system in two human patients. The team also presents data from a series of different animal models, including successful recordings from rat barrel cortex in both acute and chronic settings; recording of the somatosensory cortex in an anesthetized pig; and recordings in non-human primates at different depths inside the brain. 

Citation: Lee, K., Paulk, A.C., Ro, Y.G. et al. Flexible, scalable, high channel count stereo-electrode for recording in the human brain. Nat Commun 15, 218 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43727-9 (open-access)

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