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Developing nations must lead in solar geoengineering

Developing countries must lead research into solar geoengineering and not rely on studies being carried out in Europe and North America. That is the view of 12 prominent scientists who argue that the “global south” is most vulnerable to climate change and has the most to gain or lose from geoengineering. These countries should therefore drive efforts to understand the technology and discussions around its use.

Geoengineering through solar radiation management (SRM) involves cooling the Earth by reflecting away sunlight. Most research focuses on either putting reflective particles into the atmosphere or brightening clouds. Writing in Nature, the authors, including environmental physicist Paulo Artaxo from the University of São Paulo in Brazil, acknowledge that SRM is “outlandish and unsettling”. Yet solar engineering, they say, could counter some effects of climate change by slowing or stopping global temperature rises, if it can be realized.

One of the most important things about solar geoengineering is going to be who makes decisions about it and how

Andy Parker, project director of the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative

As well as warning that the environmental effects of SRM are not yet known – “it could,” they say, “be very helpful or very harmful” – the scientists state that this inherently global technology also raises difficult socio-political issues. Local scientific expertise is therefore vital to ensure that regional impact models are accurate. “If universities in the world’s advanced economies continue to lead on research then they will streak away in terms of community knowledge of the potential impacts of solar geoengineering, they might then be the ones lead on the policy side,” co-author Andy Parker, who is project director of the SRM Governance Initiative (SRMGI), told Physics World.

Supporting collaborations

To help finance more regional research, SRMGI has launched a $400,000 fund. Scientists in the developing world can apply for funds to model solar-geoengineering impacts in their regions. The fund will also support international collaborations and researchers will be encouraged to run local workshops to promote wider discussion. SRMGI was launched in 2010 by the UK’s Royal Society, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in Italy and the Environmental Defense Fund in the US. The new fund is administered by TWAS and financed by the Open Philanthropy Project, a foundation backed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna.

The Nature article also calls for research funders in advanced economies to finance collaborations with scientists in developing countries. The authors state that further outreach and research in the developing world will require extra support from governments, universities and civil society worldwide. Although the scientists say that they are neutral on whether solar geoengineering should ever be used, they do, however, “oppose its deployment until research into its safety and effectiveness has been completed and international-governance mechanisms established”.

“One of the most important things about solar geoengineering is going to be who makes decisions about it and how,” says Parker. “An equitable global conversation increases the chances that those decision will be made well.”

Ionizing radiation softens tumour microenvironment

Almost half of all cancer patients receive radiation therapy to curb the growth of malignant cells. But while the effects of ionizing radiation on cell death are well established, little is known about how radiation affects the extracellular matrix (ECM) residing within and surrounding tumours.

Researchers from Vanderbilt University and Cornell University have now demonstrated that ionizing radiation can reduce the stiffness of both the ECM of an extracted tumour and an isolated matrix of collagen fibres. Their results suggest that radiation therapy might have effects beyond disrupting cellular DNA (APL Bioengineering 2 031901).

“We wanted to know how radiation affects the tissues surrounding cells, particularly how this changes the stiffness of the matrix,” explained Cynthia Reinhart-King. “The change in tissue stiffness during tumour growth can be palpable. Stiffness, for example, is what you would look for in breast self-exams.”

During tumour progression, increased ECM deposition and cross-linking occur, leading to a thicker, stiffer matrix. This stiffer ECM is vital for cancer cells to migrate throughout the body, signal to one another and form tumours. The development of therapeutics to inhibit or reverse ECM stiffening has become a promising tool in attacking cancer cells.

To investigate the impact of ECM irradiation on tumour cells, the researchers seeded non-irradiated cancer cells on irradiated and non-irradiated collagen matrices. Using infrared spectroscopy and confocal imaging to analyse the chemical and architectural changes, respectively, they found that tumour cells were less likely to spread when seeded on ECMs softened by irradiation.

Cells suspended in a stiff matrix were more likely to migrate through the matrix to the other side of a serum gradient, analogous to how metastasizing cancer cells break free from their tumours. Softened matrices were more likely to hold cells in place. The researchers also determined that the radiation does not break down individual collagen fibres, the long, thin structural proteins that act as the matrix’s scaffolding. Instead, it softens the matrix by cutting the bonds between these fibres, relaxing the matrix and reducing its stiffness.

The authors note that their results have ramifications for both in vitro and in vivo systems. In vitro, the data suggest that irradiation could be used to create matrices with tailored mechanical properties. In vivo, the findings imply that therapeutic doses of radiation may alter tissue mechanics directly.

Reinhart-King notes that these findings might enable future fractionated radiation – longer term bouts of therapy using a lower radiation intensity. One particular area of interest is determining whether softening can reduce nearby blood vessel leaking and improve drug delivery. “Since there are risks associated with radiation, we’re interested in investigating how fractionated the dose should be,” she explained. “The key will be to find the right balance.”

Eggshell nanostructure changes help chicks hatch

New atomic-force microscopy images and electron microscopy measurements have revealed that the nanostructure of the chicken eggshell changes during egg incubation, going from being very hard and strong to being much weaker just before the chick hatches. The shell strength appears to be determined by the presence of nanostructured mineral associated with osteopontin, an eggshell protein that is also found in composite biological materials such as bone. The finding could help in chicken breeding programmes to select for more crack-resistant eggs that are less likely to be infected by pathogens, as well as in the design and development of novel bio-inspired nanocomposite materials.

“Thanks to hundreds of millions of years of evolution, the nanostructure has developed to provide optimal material properties for something as seemingly fragile as an avian eggshell,” explains Marc McKee of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who led this research effort. “An eggshell, which is made of a thin mineralized calcium carbonate (calcite) layer, is remarkably strong, and tough enough to serve its protective function during egg incubation, but it thins from the inside out at a certain point in time to allow the chick to more easily hatch and pip from its shell.

“As a biological nanocomposite, the interplay between a protein matrix and minerals allows for unique and ideal properties for a shell structure that has persisted since the time of the dinosaurs. We were able to partly recreate this nanostructure in calcite mineral in the lab using a single protein known as osteopontin.”

The role of osteopontin

The eggshell of the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus) is about 95% weight calcium-carbonate mineral and about 3.5% weight organic material/matrix (including water). There are hundreds of proteins in the eggshell matrix, but a major one is osteopontin (OPN). OPN belongs to the family of mineral-binding proteins thought to be responsible for controlling mineralization processes in the shell thanks to their particularly high negative charge and open flexible structure/

McKee and colleagues have now analysed the three layers of a chicken eggshell for the first time to better understand their nanostructure and mechanical properties, and how they evolve over time. These layers are: the vertical crystal layer (VCL), the palisades layer (PL), and mammillary layer (ML). They found that the amount of OPN varies throughout the layers and that it is most abundant in the VCL and PL layers. “Generally, smaller nanostructure correlated with harder shells,” says McKee.

Imaging an eggshell’s interior

“Amongst many methods, we used a focused-ion beam to cut a very thin slice of an eggshell so that we could then image its interior at the nanoscale with electron microscopy,” he says. “We also used atomic force and scanning electron microscopy to examine cut and fractured eggshells to obtain fracture-surface topography information.”

To find out whether OPN might be able to induce nanostructural changes in synthetic calcium carbonate, the researchers then grew calcite crystals in the presence of different concentrations of OPN and examined their internal structure using AFM and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. They also measured the hardness and elastic modulus of these nanostructured layers in nanoindentation experiments and found that higher concentrations of OPN lead to smaller nanostructural dimensions, and thus greater hardness, than lower OPN concentrations.

Recreating eggshell structures

“Thanks to these experiments, we were able to partly recreate in the lab the nanostructure that was seen in the eggshells,” McKee tells nanotechweb.org. “The findings from these studies may inform the design of new synthetic nanocomposite materials with desirable properties.

“Nanocomposites are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and new materials are being developed by many industries. These materials can be made to be both strong and lightweight, for instance,” he adds.

“A better understanding of eggshell nanostructure might also allow us to select for strains of hens that could consistently produce stronger and tougher eggs, which could be more resistant to pathogens (such as salmonella) that cause food poisoning,” he says.

The research is detailed in Science Advances DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aar3219.

Arctic ice depends on half a degree of heat

Half a degree celsius doesn’t sound like much, but for the Arctic ice it could make a world of difference.

Two separate studies have calculated what it would take to keep the Arctic ice frozen through the summer months – and thus preserve the precious polar ecosystem and help contain further global warming.

It’s simple: fulfil the promises that 195 nations made in Paris in 2015, and keep global warming to “well below 2 °C” and ideally at 1.5 °C by the year 2100.

That extra half a degree makes a huge difference. At a maximum global average warming of 2 °C above the norm for most of human history, the Arctic could become technically ice-free once every three to five years.

Reduce carbon dioxide emissions even further, take greater steps to conserve forests and keep the global temperature at the 1.5 °C maximum rise, and the chances are that the Arctic seaways will open only about one summer in 40 years.

Glaciologists consider the Arctic “ice-free” when there are only a million square kilometres of floe left. It has yet to happen. But the sea ice has become noticeably thinner, and smaller in surface area, over the last 40 years.

For more than two decades, meteorologists and oceanographers have repeatedly warned that runaway global warming, as a consequence of ever-greater combustion of fossil fuels, could bring about an ice-free polar ocean by about 2050.

Sea ice is part of the climate machine. It reflects solar radiation and keeps the ocean cool. It provides a surface on which Arctic seals can haul out, and on which polar bears can feed.

But the catch is that, although the world’s nations almost unanimously voted in Paris to contain global warming, the pledges made at the time were nowhere near ambitious enough.

Since the Paris meeting global warming has accelerated, and one group has warned that the 1.5°C limit could be exceeded by 2026. Many researchers think that the political decisions of the next decade will be vital.

Clear benefits

Researchers already know that the 1.5 °C target will deliver palpable rewards: it will make a huge difference, for instance, to sea levels, grain harvests and global fish catches.

US and Canadian climate scientists set out to see what difference half a degree would make to the Arctic. They worked with different climate simulations to reach roughly the same conclusion, in two papers in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The Canadian team calculated that at 2 °C, ice-free conditions would happen every five years; at 1.5 °C, the hazard would drop to one in 40 years; at 3 °C, permanent ice-free summers would be likely. A second study from the US backed up the premise.

“I didn’t expect to find that half a degree celsius would make a big difference, but it really does,” said Alexandra Jahn, of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Higher costs

“At 1.5 °C half the time we stay within our current summer sea ice regime, whereas if we reach two degrees of warming, the summer sea ice will always be below what we have experienced in recent decades.”

Higher levels of warming would impose higher costs: 4 °C of warming would deliver a high probability of an ocean free of ice for three months every summer by 2050, and five months a year by 2100.

“The good news is that the sea has a quick response time and could theoretically recover if we brought down global temperatures at any point in the future,” Dr Jahn said.

“In the meantime, though, other ecosystems could see permanent negative impacts from ice loss, and those can’t necessarily bounce back.”

Nanowires boost nuclear fusion

Smaller, cheaper neutron sources and new opportunities for simulating the extreme conditions at the centre of stars are among the possible benefits of new research carried out by physicists in the US and Germany. The group directed rapid-fire pulses of intense blue light from a compact laser at arrays of nanostructures to generate a dense plasma yielding large numbers of neutrons created by nuclear fusion.

Scientists have built ever more energetic lasers in the quest to demonstrate nuclear fusion’s feasibility as an energy source. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California, for example, generates pulses with a whopping 1.8 MJ of energy, in order to compress tiny pellets of deuterium and tritium to the point where the nuclei fuse and emit copious numbers of neutrons. The aim is to achieve ignition, when the alpha particle released by the fusing nuclei provides the heat for a self-sustaining reaction – with the energy of the emitted neutrons ultimately being tapped to produce electricity. However, NIF is enormous – occupying the area of three football pitches – and, like other high-energy lasers, can only fire a handful of times a day.

Some researchers are instead working on less energetic but more rapid-fire lasers. These will never get anywhere close to ignition, but can still achieve exceptionally high intensities – thanks to the extreme brevity and hence power of their pulses. Such lasers can create plasmas with very high energy densities ideal for studying extreme astrophysical environments, for example. These devices could also potentially be used as compact sources of neutrons, which probe atomic structure in ways not possible with X-rays. Neutrons are usually produced at large accelerators or reactors and a compact source would be welcomed by scientists.

Rapid bursts

In the latest work, Jorge Rocca of Colorado State University in the US and colleagues used a titanium-sapphire laser to generate pulses lasting just 60 fs with up to 1.65 J of energy. Capable of being fired three times a second at arrays of deuterated polyethylene nanowires each about 5 µm long and either 0.2 µm or 0.4 µm in diameter, the pulses rip electrons from the surface of the nanowires. The electrons then get accelerated to very high energies within the void between the wires, causing the wires to heat up rapidly and explode. The resulting plasma accelerates deuterons to energies up to several megaelectronvolts, causing the deuterons to fuse and generate rapid bursts of neutrons.

We are able to produce fusion on the microscale, and to produce a large number of neutrons very efficiently

Jorge Rocca, Colorado State University

The researchers used nanowire arrays in order to excite as many deuterons as possible. As Rocca explains, the laser pulses easily penetrate the space between the nanowires and therefore heat up a much larger volume of material than they could if striking a flat, solid surface (which they would barely enter given the same light intensity). Also crucial in the experiment, he says, was frequency doubling the usually infrared output of the titanium-sapphire laser to create blue pulses. This allowed the team to filter-out less intense pre-pulses that would otherwise destroy the nanowires ahead of the main pulse.

Carrying out their experiment in this way, Rocca and colleagues found they could produce neutrons more efficiently than ever before using laser pulses at around the 1::J level – generating up to 2 million fusion neutrons per joule. That efficiency, they showed, was about 500 times higher than could be obtained by firing the laser pulses at flat targets made from the same material in solid form (which is about five times denser than the arrays).

Flash of neutrons

“We are able to produce fusion on the microscale, and to produce a large number of neutrons very efficiently,” says Rocca. “You have a flash of neutrons coming out.”

While the efficiencies achieved were higher than those obtained with similar-sized lasers, they were nevertheless lower than those at NIF- which recently yielded some 8×1015 neutrons per pulse, or about 4 billion neutrons per joule. However, Rocca and colleagues did find that the neutron yield in their experiment shot up as they increased the energy of their pulses, in line with predictions they made using computer simulations.

The group is now working to further raise the pulse energy in order to boost the yield enough to do neutron radiography. In the meantime, Rocca says the team has been approached by other groups interested in using their neutron source to calibrate neutrino detectors.

The research is reported in Nature Communications.

Why penguin colonies look like liquids

The distribution of sites occupied by breeding pairs of king penguins resembles that of molecules in liquid that has been cooled suddenly to form a glass-like structure. That is the conclusion of an international team of physicists that has analysed penguin colonies using a simple model developed nearly a century ago to explain interactions between atoms and molecules.

The researchers believe that king penguins adopt the glassy structure because it can “heal” itself in the wake of external disturbances such as wayward seals wandering through a colony.

King penguins reproduce on islands in the Southern Ocean, where they come together in the summer to form breeding colonies of as many as one million birds. Unlike some other penguins, however, these birds do not build nests. Instead, a breeding pair will incubate their egg in one location on the ground, which they protect from other penguins. Individual breeding sites are regularly spaced and the overall structure of the colony remains highly stable over the two months it takes for the eggs to incubate.

Aggressive birds

When a female king penguin lays an egg, the parents take turns incubating by carrying the egg on their feet. The other parent, who is often away foraging, must make its way through the huge colony without getting too close to other breeding sites – where it will be fended-off aggressively by the resident penguins. Despite the dynamic nature of the colony, the average shift in the position of a pair’s breeding site over two months is just 1.3 m – which is roughly the separation between neighbouring sites.

Now, Richard Gerum and colleagues at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany – along with researchers in France, Monaco and the US – have used aerial photographs of breeding colonies to map the locations of several thousand breeding pairs. Their analysis of the data suggest that the structure of the breeding sites can be described as a 2D liquid of particles that interact via a Lennard-Jones potential.

First proposed in 1924 by the British theoretical physicist John Lennard-Jones, the potential combines a long-range attractive force between two particles with a repulsive force that works over a much shorter range. The competition between these two forces allows the Lennard-Jones potential to model how atoms or molecules can attract each other to form a liquid, while at the same time maintaining the atomic or molecular separations seen in real substances.

Pecking radius

The team used the long-range attraction to model the tendency of penguins to form a dense breeding colony. The birds do this because large numbers provide protection from predators and also because there is a limited amount of land suitable for breeding on their island homes. The short-range repulsion is used to model the “pecking radius” – or how close a breeding pair will allow another penguin to approach their egg before they will attack.

An analysis of the model revealed that the structure of the breeding colony resembles that of a liquid that has been “quenched” to create a solid-like glass. It is this glass-like state that endures for weeks without any significant change. The researchers believe that the process to create the glassy state begins with the first penguins arriving at the breeding location to create a diffuse, gas like structure. As more pairs arrive, the density increases and the colony “cools” and condenses to a liquid. Then, the transition to a glassy state is driven by the reduced motion of the penguins and increased territorial defending as site separation approaches the pecking radius.

The team believes that the colony does not condense further to create a crystalline solid because although this would result in a small increase in density, the rigid nature of a lattice would make it very difficult to heal the structure of the colony after a local disturbance.

Quick healing

“Our data confirm that the observed colony structure provides sufficient flexibility to adapt to internal and external changes,” explains Gerum. “For example, a pair losing or abandoning their egg leaves a vacancy, but we never see vacant spots in our aerial images. We also frequently see elephant seals that pass through the colony and force the penguins to move, but these local disturbances appear to be healed quickly.”

The research is described in Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.

Italy picks Frascati for fusion test facility

A site near Rome has beaten eight other locations in Italy to host the €500m Divertor Tokamak Test Facility (DTT). ENEA, Italy’s energy and technology agency, announced yesterday that its research centre in Frascati will host the facility with construction set to start in November. The DTT will take seven years to complete.

A fusion tokamak contains a plasma of hydrogen isotopes heated to hundreds of millions of degrees and made to fuse, generating energy. The isotopes are held in place by magnetic fields, but if they drifted to the walls of the reactor they would damage it. The magnetic fields in a reactor are therefore shaped in such a way that the plasma leaks are channelled to a divertor at the foot of a reactor chamber that dissipates the heat.

Today it is Italy that wins because it invests in knowledge and sustainable energy

ENEA president Federico Testa

The divertor at the €20bn ITER fusion reactor, which is currently being built in Cadarache, France, is made from tungsten tiles. However, this material is unlikely to be adequate for an actual demonstration fusion power plant that would feed electricity to the grid continuously. The DTT, being 10 m high and with a 5 m radius, will therefore investigate alternatives types of divertor that could suit a future reactor. The machine will use superconducting magnets to contain a plasma and would have space around the edges of its plasma chamber to incorporate divertors of different shapes to spread the heat load over a larger area. It could also test divertors made of more resistant materials, such as liquid lithium.

Scientific prospects 

The nine sites around Italy, which also included Brindisi and Pescara, were evaluated based on their economic, environmental and technical benefits, with Frascati coming out on top. “Today it is Italy that wins,” says ENEA president Federico Testa. “Because it invests in knowledge and sustainable energy with a project that guarantees positive scientific and employment prospects for everyone and, in particular, for young people.”

The ENEA notes that around 1500 people will be involved in building the DTT. The project is funded by €60m from Eurofusion, a consortium of European research organisations, while another €80m will come from the Italian government. The Lazio regional government will supply €25m while China will provide €30m and ENEA partners another €50m. The remaining €250m will come from the European Investment Bank via a loan.

3D modelling unlocks insight into cancer progression

Medics may soon have a better understanding of how tumours grow and progress, thanks to research from an international collaboration. The study examined how the various cells that comprise tumours interact, in what is known as the tumour microenvironment (Biofabrication 10 035004).

Senior author David Mooney from Harvard University explained: “The tumour microenvironment is characterized by an intricate network of interactions between different cells and the extracellular matrix (ECM). Together, these elements contribute to the microenvironmental regulation of tumour progression and the cancer’s spread to other parts of the body.

“Our aim was to better understand how these interactions work, which will ultimately help with predicting and halting the growth and spread of cancer tumours.”

To do this, the researchers developed an in vitro 3D cellular model of a lung cancer tumour on an interpenetrating hydrogel.

This allowed them to examine how macrophages – a type of cell in the body capable of engulfing and absorbing bacteria and other small cells and particles – and the stiffness of the ECM influence epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, a fundamental step in cancer cell metastasis.

“The ECM is not just a supportive structure. It is now recognised as an essential dynamic component, hosting multiple biochemical and mechanical signals that modulate tumour progression,” said first author Marta Alonso-Nocelo, from the Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela. “Our results showed that, in the absence of the macrophages, changes in ECM stiffness enhanced the spread and invasiveness of the lung cancer cells. When macrophages were present, modified tumour cell growth only occurred when the ECM was in a state of high stiffness.”

The study highlights the importance of both mechanical and soluble cues in tumour progression. It also demonstrates how the mechanical properties of the tumour microenvironment can affect tumour cell growth and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, as well as impacting how tumour cells regulate and are affected by macrophages.

“These results deepen our understanding of how tumours grow and spread, as well as some of the catalysts for this,” said Mooney. “More study is needed, but this is a promising step towards finding ways to slow these processes.”

Radiotherapy: bridging the gap

A major effort is under way to develop innovative, robust and affordable medical linear accelerators for use in low- to middle-income countries.

If you live in a low- or middle-income country (LMIC), your chances of surviving cancer are significantly lower than if you live in a wealthier economy. That’s largely due to the availability of radiation therapy (see The changing landscape of cancer therapy). Between 2015 and 2035, the number of cancer diagnoses worldwide is expected to increase by 10 million, with around 65% of those cases in poorer economies. Approximately 12,600 new radiotherapy treatment machines and up to 130,000 trained oncologists, medical physicists and technicians will be needed to treat those patients.

Experts in accelerator design, medical physics and oncology met at CERN on 26–27 October 2017 to address the technical challenge of designing a robust linear accelerator (linac) for use in more challenging environments. Jointly organised by CERN, the International Cancer Expert Corps (ICEC) and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the workshop was funded through the UK Global Challenges Research Fund, enabling participants from Botswana, Ghana, Jordan, Nigeria and Tanzania to share their local knowledge and perspectives. The event followed a successful inaugural workshop in November 2016, also held at CERN (CERN Courier March 2017 p31).

The goal is to develop a medical linear accelerator that provides state-of-the-art radiation therapy in situations where the power supply is unreliable, the climate harsh and/or communications poor. The immediate objective is to develop work plans involving Official Development Assistance (ODA) countries that link to the following technical areas (which correspond to technical sessions in the October workshop): RF power systems; durable and sustainable power supplies; beam production and control; safety and operability; and computing.

Participants agreed that improving the operation and reliability of selected components of medical linear accelerators is essential to deliver better linear accelerator and associated instrumentation in the next three to seven years. A frequent impediment to reliable delivery of radiotherapy in LMICs, and other underserved regions of the world, is the environment within which the sophisticated linear accelerator must function. Excessive ambient temperatures, inadequate cooling of machines and buildings, extensive dust in the dry season and the high humidity in some ODA countries are only a few of the environmental factors that can challenge both the robustness of treatment machines and the general infrastructure.

Simplicity of operation is another significant factor in using linear accelerators in clinics. Limiting factors to the development of radiotherapy in lower-resourced nations don’t just include the cost of equipment and infrastructure, but also a shortage of trained personnel to properly calibrate and maintain the equipment and to deliver high-quality treatment.

On one hand, the radiation technologist should be able to set treatments up under the direction of the radiation oncologist and in accordance with the treatment plan. On the other hand, maintenance of the linear accelerators should also be as easy as possible – from remote upgrades and monitoring to anticipate failure of components. These centres, and their machines, should be able to provide treatment on a 24/7 basis if needed, and, at the same time, deliver exclusive first-class treatment consistent with that offered in richer countries.

STFC will help to transform ideas and projects presented in the next workshop, scheduled for March 2018, into a comprehensive technology proposal for a novel linear accelerator. This will then be submitted to the Global Challenges Research Fund Foundation Awards 2018 call for further funding. This ambitious project aims to have facilities and staff available to treat patients in low- and middle-income countries within 10 years.

Professor Wu and e-skin

Nanomaterials with advanced functional properties can enable unconventional transistor architectures and devices that exceed the sensitivity of the human skin, as Wenzhuo Wu told Physics World at innoLAE 2018 in Cambridge, UK. He described the piezotronic transistor – first introduced by Zhong Lin Wang at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2007 – and some of the research on nanowire arrays and 2D materials currently underway at his lab in Purdue University. He also highlighted the importance of work to manufacture and integrate materials into functioning devices, as well as analysis of new functional materials.

About Wenzhuo Wu

Wenzhuo Wu is assistant professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University in the US. He graduated in electronic science and technology at the University of Science and Technology of China in 2005 and received a Master’s in electrical engineering at the National University of Singapore in 2008. He completed his PhD in Zhong Lin Wang’s lab at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2013, and stayed to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship until 2015 before moving to Purdue University. He worked on the smart skin device discussed in the video during his PhD at Georgia Tech. His research interests include nanomanufacturing, self-powered nanosystems, renewable energy, human-integrated technologies and smart sensors and electronics.

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