Electronic plants created

Summary:
Researchers have created analog and digital electronics circuits inside living plants.
The scientists have used the vascular system of living roses to build key
components of electronic circuits.

Researchers at Linkping University in Sweden have

created analog and digital electronics circuits inside living
plants. The group at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics
(LOE), under the leadership of Professor Magnus Berggren,
have used the vascular system of living roses to build key
components of electronic circuits.
The article featured in the journal Science Advances demonstrates wires, digital logic, and
even displays elements -- fabricated inside the plants -- that could develop new applications
for organic electronics and new tools in plant science.
Plants are complex organisms that rely on the transport of ionic signals and hormones to
perform necessary functions. However, plants operate on a much slower time scale making
interacting with and studying plants difficult. Augmenting plants with electronic functionality
would make it possible to combine electric signals with the plant's own chemical processes.
Controlling and interfacing with chemical pathways in plants could pave the way to
photosynthesis-based fuel cells, sensors and growth regulators, and devices that modulate
the internal functions of plants.
"Previously, we had no good tools for measuring the concentration of various molecules in
living plants. Now we'll be able to influence the concentration of the various substances in
the plant that regulate growth and development. Here, I see great possibilities for learning
more," says Ove Nilsson, professor of plant reproduction biology and director of the Ume
Plant Science Center, as well as a co-author of the article.
The idea of putting electronics directly into trees for the paper industry originated in the
1990s while the LOE team at Linkping University was researching printed electronics on
paper. Early efforts to introduce electronics in plants were attempted by Assistant Professor
Daniel Simon, leader of the LOE's bioelectronics team, and Professor Xavier Crispin, leader
of the LOE's solid-state device team, but a lack of funding from skeptical investors halted
these projects.
Thanks to independent research money from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation in
2012, Professor Berggren was able to assemble a team of researchers to reboot the
project. The team tried many attempts of introducing conductive polymers through rose

stems. Only one polymer, called PEDOT-S, synthesized by Dr. Roger Gabrielsson,
successfully assembled itself inside the xylem channels as conducting wires, while still
allowing the transport of water and nutrients. Dr. Eleni Stavrinidou used the material to
create long (10 cm) wires in the xylem channels of the rose. By combining the wires with
the electrolyte that surrounds these channels she was able to create an electrochemical
transistor, a transistor that converts ionic signals to electronic output. Using the xylem
transistors she also demonstrated digital logic gate function.
Dr. Eliot Gomez used methods common in plant biology -- vacuum infiltration -- to infuse
another PEDOT variant into the leaves. The infused polymer formed "pixels" of
electrochemical cells partitioned by the veins. Applied voltage caused the polymer to
interact with the ions in the leaf, subsequently changing the color of the PEDOT in a
display-like device -- functioning similarly to the roll-printed displays manufactured at Acreo
Swedish ICT in Norrkping.
These results are early steps to merge the diverse fields of organic electronics and plant
science. The aim is to develop applications for energy, environmental sustainability, and
new ways of interacting with plants. Professor Berggren envisions the potential for an
entirely new field of research:
"As far as we know, there are no previously published research results regarding
electronics produced in plants. No one's done this before," he says.
Professor Berggren adds, "Now we can really start talking about 'power plants' -- we can
place sensors in plants and use the energy formed in the chlorophyll, produce green
antennas, or produce new materials. Everything occurs naturally, and we use the plants'
own very advanced, unique systems."

Half of all Amazonian tree species may face

extinction

Summary:
Scientists report that more than half the tree species in the Amazonian rainforest
may be globally threatened. However, the study also suggests that Amazonian
parks, reserves, and indigenous territories, if properly managed, will protect most of
the threatened species.

More than half of all tree species in the world's most diverse
forest--the Amazon--may be globally threatened, according
to a new study.
But the study also suggests that Amazonian parks, reserves, and indigenous territories, if
properly managed, will protect most of the threatened species.
The findings were announced by a research team comprising 158 researchers from 21
countries, led by Hans ter Steege of Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands and
Nigel Pitman of The Field Museum in Chicago, USA.
The Field Museum was heavily involved with this study--the paper was co-authored by The
Field Museum's Corine Vriesendorp and relied on data contributed by the Field's Robin
Foster. Furthermore, some of the tree plot data was collected through the Museum's rapid
inventory program, in which ecologists, biologists, and anthropologists travel to the Amazon
and take stock of the plants, animals, and people who live there.
Forest cover in the Amazon has been declining since the 1950s, but scientists still have a
poor understanding of how this has affected populations of individual species.
The new study, published this week in the journal Science Advances, compared data from
forest surveys across the Amazon with maps of current and projected deforestation to
estimate how many tree species have been lost, and where.
The authors concluded that 36 to 57 percent of the Amazon's estimated 15,000 tree
species likely qualify as globally threatened under IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
criteria.
"We aren't saying that the situation in the Amazon has suddenly gotten worse for tree
species," said Pitman. "We're just offering a new estimate of how tree species have been
affected by historical deforestation, and how they'll be affected by forest loss in the future."
Because the same trends observed in Amazonia apply throughout the tropics, the
researchers argue that most of the world's more than 40,000 tropical tree species likely
qualify as globally threatened.
Fortunately, the authors report, protected areas and indigenous territories now cover over
half of the Amazon Basin, and contain sizable populations of most threatened tree species.

"This is good news from the Amazon that you don't hear enough of," said ter Steege. "In
recent decades Amazon countries have made major strides in expanding parks and
strengthening indigenous land rights," he said. "And our study shows this has big benefits
for biodiversity."
However, parks and reserves will only prevent extinction of threatened species, the paper
emphasizes, if they suffer no further degradation. The authors caution that Amazonian
forests and reserves still face a barrage of threats, from dam construction and mining to
wildfires and droughts intensified by global warming, and direct invasions of indigenous
lands.
"It's a battle we're going to see play out in our lifetimes," said co-author William Laurance of
James Cook University in Australia. "Either we stand up and protect these critical parks and
indigenous reserves, or deforestation will erode them until we see large-scale extinctions."

Lasers could rapidly make materials hotter than the

Sun
Summary:
Lasers could heat materials to temperatures hotter than the centre of the Sun in
only 20 quadrillionths of a second, according to new research.

Lasers could heat materials to temperatures hotter than the

centre of the Sun in only 20 quadrillionths of a second,
according to new research.

Theoretical physicists from Imperial College London have devised an extremely rapid
heating mechanism that they believe could heat certain materials to ten million degrees in
much less than a million millionth of a second.
The method, proposed here for the first time, could be relevant to new avenues of research
in thermonuclear fusion energy, where scientists are seeking to replicate the Sun's ability to
produce clean energy.
The heating would be about 100 times faster than rates currently seen in fusion
experiments using the world's most energetic laser system at the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in California. The race is now on for fellow scientists to put the team's
method into practice.
Researchers have been using high-power lasers to heat material as part of the effort to
create fusion energy for many years. In this new study, the physicists at Imperial were
looking for ways to directly heat up ions -- particles which make up the bulk of matter.
When lasers are used to heat most materials, the energy from the laser first heats up the
electrons in the target. These in turn heat up the ions, making the process slower than
targeting the ions directly.
The Imperial team discovered that when a high-intensity laser is fired at a certain type of
material, it will create an electrostatic shockwave that can heat ions directly. Their discovery
is published today in the journal Nature Communications.
"It's a completely unexpected result. One of the problems with fusion research has been
getting the energy from the laser in the right place at the right time. This method puts
energy straight into the ions," said the paper's lead author, Dr Arthur Turrell.
Normally, laser-induced electrostatic shockwaves push ions ahead of them, causing them to
accelerate away from the shockwave but not heat up. However, using sophisticated
supercomputer modelling, the team discovered that if a material contains special
combinations of ions, they will be accelerated by the shockwave at different speeds. This
causes friction, which in turn causes them to rapidly heat. They found that the effect would
be strongest in solids with two ion types, such as plastics.
"The two types of ions act like matches and a box; you need both," explained study coauthor Dr Mark Sherlock from the Department of Physics at Imperial. "A bunch of matches
will never light on their own -- you need the friction caused by striking them against the
box."
"That the actual material used as a target mattered so much was a surprise in itself," added
study co-author Professor Steven Rose. "In materials with only one ion type, the effect
completely disappears."
The heating is so fast in part because the material targeted is so dense. The ions are
squeezed together to almost ten times the usual density of a solid material as the

electrostatic shockwave passes, causing the frictional effect to be much stronger than it
would be in a less-dense material, such as a gas.
The technique, if proven experimentally, could be the fastest heating rate ever
demonstrated in a lab for a significant number of particles.
"Faster temperature changes happen when atoms smash together in accelerators like the
Large Hadron Collider, but these collisions are between single pairs of particles," said Dr
Turrell. "In contrast the proposed technique could be explored at many laser facilities
around the world, and would heat material at solid density."

How does our brain form creative and original ideas?

Summary:
A new study attempted to crack the connection between brain activity and creativity.
The results shed a new, perhaps unexpected light, on our ability to think outside the
box

Developing an original and creative idea requires the

simultaneous activation of two completely different networks
in the brain: the associative -- "spontaneous" -- network
alongside the more normative -- "conservative" -- network;
this according to new research conducted at the University
of Haifa.
The researchers maintain that "creative thinking apparently requires 'checks and
balances'." The new research was conducted as part of the doctoral dissertation of Dr.
Naama Mayseless, and was supervised by Prof. Simone Shamay-Tsoory from the
Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa in collaboration with Dr. Ayelet Eran
from the Rambam Medical Center.

According to the researchers, creativity is our ability to think in new and original ways to
solve problems. But not every original solution is considered a creative one. If the idea is
not fully applicable it is not considered creative, but simply one which is unreasonable.
The researchers hypothesized that for a creative idea to be produced, the brain must
activate a number of different -- and perhaps even contradictory -- networks. In the first part
of the research, respondents were give half a minute to come up with a new, original and
unexpected idea for the use of different objects. Answers which were provided infrequently
received a high score for originality, while those given frequently received a low score. In
the second part, respondents were asked to give, within half a minute, their best
characteristic (and accepted) description of the objects. During the tests, all subjects were
scanned using an FMRI device to examine their brain activity while providing the answer.
The researchers found increased brain activity in an "associative" region among
participants whose originality was high. This region, which includes the anterior medial
brain areas, mainly works in the background when a person is not concentrating, similar to
daydreaming.
But the researchers found that this region did not operate alone when an original answer
was given. For the answer to be original, an additional region worked in collaboration with
the associative region -- the administrative control region. A more "conservative" region
related to social norms and rules. The researchers also found that the stronger the
connection, i.e., the better these regions work together in parallel -- the greater the level of
originality of the answer.
"On the one hand, there is surely a need for a region that tosses out innovative ideas, but
on the other hand there is also the need for one that will know to evaluate how applicable
and reasonable these ideas are. The ability of the brain to operate these two regions in
parallel is what results in creativity. It is possible that the most sublime creations of
humanity were produced by people who had an especially strong connection between the
two regions," the researchers concluded.

A new green power source

Summary:
To limit climate change, experts say that we need to reach carbon neutrality by the
end of this century at the latest. To achieve that goal, our dependence on fossil
fuels must be reversed. But what energy source will take its place? Researchers
report that they just might have the answer: blue-green algae.

As world leaders prepare to gather in France for the 2015

United Nations Conference on Climate Change next week,
global warming -- and how to stop it -- is a hot topic.
To limit climate change, experts say that we need to reach carbon neutrality by the end of
this century at the latest. To achieve that goal, our dependence on fossil fuels must be
reversed. But what energy source will take its place? Researchers from Concordia
University in Montreal just might have the answer: blue-green algae.
In a study published in the journal Technology, a team led by Concordia engineering
professor Muthukumaran Packirisamy describe their invention: a power cell that harnesses
electrical energy from the photosynthesis and respiration of blue-green algae.
"Both photosynthesis and respiration ... involve electron transfer chains. By trapping the
electrons released by blue-green algae during photosynthesis and respiration, we can
harness the electrical energy they produce naturally," says Packirisamy.
Why blue-green algae? Because it's everywhere.
Also known as cyanobacteria, blue-green algae are the most prosperous microorganisms
on earth, evolutionarily speaking. They occupy a broad range of habitats across all
latitudes. And they've been here forever: the planet's early fauna and flora owe their
makeup to cyanobacteria, which produced the oxygen that ultimately allowed higher life
forms to flourish.
"By taking advantage of a process that is constantly occurring all over the world, we've
created a new and scalable technology that could lead to cheaper ways of generating
carbon-free energy," says Packirisamy.
He notes that the invention is still in its early stages. "We have a lot of work to do in terms of
scaling the power cell to make the project commercial."
Currently, the photosynthetic power cell exists on a small scale, and consists of an anode,
cathode and proton exchange membrane. The cyanobacteria or blue green algae are
placed in the anode chamber.
As they undergo photosynthesis, the cyanobacteria release electrons to the electrode
surface. An external load is connected to the device to extract the electrons and harness
power.
As Packirisamy and his team develop and expand the project, he hopes that the micro
photosynthetic power cells will soon be used in various applications, such as powering cell
phones and computers. And maybe one day they'll power the world.

New 'self-healing' gel makes electronics more flexible

Summary:
Researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind self-healing gel that repairs and
connects electronic circuits, creating opportunities to advance the development of
flexible electronics, biosensors and batteries as energy storage devices.

Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The

University of Texas at Austin have developed a first-of-itskind self-healing gel that repairs and connects electronic
circuits, creating opportunities to advance the development
of flexible electronics, biosensors and batteries as energy
storage devices.
Although technology is moving toward lighter, flexible, foldable and rollable electronics, the
existing circuits that power them are not built to flex freely and repeatedly self-repair cracks
or breaks that can happen from normal wear and tear.
Until now, self-healing materials have relied on application of external stimuli such as light
or heat to activate repair. The UT Austin "supergel" material has high conductivity (the
degree to which a material conducts electricity) and strong mechanical and electrical selfhealing properties.
"In the last decade, the self-healing concept has been popularized by people working on
different applications, but this is the first time it has been done without external stimuli," said
mechanical engineering assistant professor Guihua Yu, who developed the gel. "There's no
need for heat or light to fix the crack or break in a circuit or battery, which is often required
by previously developed self-healing materials."
Yu and his team created the self-healing gel by combining two gels: a self-assembling
metal-ligand gel that provides self-healing properties and a polymer hydrogel that is a
conductor. A paper on the synthesis of their hydrogel appears in the November issue
of Nano Letters.
In this latest paper, the researchers describe how they used a disc-shaped liquid crystal
molecule to enhance the conductivity, biocompatibility and permeability of their polymer
hydrogel. They were able to achieve about 10 times the conductivity of other polymer
hydrogels used in bioelectronics and conventional rechargeable batteries. The
nanostructures that make up the gel are the smallest structures capable of providing
efficient charge and energy transport.
In a separate paper published in Nano Letters in September, Yu introduced the self-healing
hybrid gel. The second ingredient of the self-healing hybrid gel is a metal-ligand
supramolecular gel. Using terpyridine molecules to create the framework and zinc atoms as

a structural glue, the molecules form structures that are able to self-assemble, giving it the
ability to automatically heal after a break.
When the supramolecular gel is introduced into the polymer hydrogel, forming the hybrid
gel, its mechanical strength and elasticity are enhanced.
To construct the self-healing electronic circuit, Yu believes the self-healing gel would not
replace the typical metal conductors that transport electricity, but it could be used as a soft
joint, joining other parts of the circuit.
"This gel can be applied at the circuit's junction points because that's often where you see
the breakage," he said. "One day, you could glue or paste the gel to these junctions so that
the circuits could be more robust and harder to break."
Yu's team is also looking into other applications, including medical applications and energy
storage, where it holds tremendous potential to be used within batteries to better store
electrical charge.
Yu's research has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the American
Chemical Society, the Welch Foundation and 3M.

It's a beauty: Quantum crystal is now more valuable

Summary:
Physicists have made their 'quantum crystal' of ultracold molecules more valuable
than ever by packing about five times more molecules into it. The denser crystal will
help scientists unlock the secrets of magnets and other, more exotic materials.

Physicists at JILA have made their "quantum crystal" of

ultracold molecules more valuable than ever by packing
about five times more molecules into it. The denser crystal

will help scientists unlock the secrets of magnets and other,

more exotic materials.
The crystal is actually a gas of particles trapped in 3-D formation by laser beams. The trap,
called an optical lattice, has wells--local regions of low energy--like an egg carton made of
light. The researchers maneuvered a single molecule into each well, successfully filling
about 25 percent of the crystal. The structure has an advantage over a real crystal, as it is
made of scientifically interesting molecules that normally would not crystallize.
Described in the Nov. 6, 2015, issue of Science,* the JILA crystal is useful for studying
correlations among the molecules' "spins," or rotations, a quantum behavior related to
magnetism. The denser crystal will enable scientists to study and model complex effects
such as how spin correlations or entanglement--a quantum link between the properties of
separated particles--spread through a large system. Scientists might use these effects, for
example, to make novel materials for electronics or other applications.
JILA is operated jointly by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and
the University of Colorado Boulder.
"The density in the crystal is now high enough to introduce long-range order, so the
molecules behave as an interconnected system instead of just a collection of isolated
particles," JILA/NIST Fellow Jun Ye says. "The molecules are close enough to each other
for their spins to migrate and relocate to other molecules, allowing us to investigate
quantum connections of many particles that may lead to new materials."
Each molecule consists of one potassium atom bonded to one rubidium atom. The
molecules are polar, with a positive electric charge on rubidium and a negative charge on
potassium. This feature means the molecules can be controlled with electric fields and can
interact strongly, even when far apart.
"Because our molecules are polar, neighboring molecules in the lattice will interact with
each other," JILA/NIST Fellow Deborah Jin says. "When each molecule has multiple
neighbors to talk to, these interactions become much more important and affect the entire
crystal."
Building the quantum crystal was something of a tour de force in atomic manipulation.
While researchers can create a crystal from one atomic gas relatively easily, combining two
different atomic gases was difficult. But this was necessary to arrange for the two different
atoms to form a molecule. The recipe required a small cloud of rubidium atoms, a class of
particles that like to act in unison, and a large cloud of potassium atoms, which tend to be
more independent.
The JILA team loaded the optical lattice by overlapping the two clouds to match their
densities and energy levels in the intersection so that one of each type of atom tended to
accumulate in each well. Researchers then used magnetic fields and lasers to fuse the
atom pairs into molecules with the lowest possible vibrational and rotational energy.
Remaining stray atoms were flushed out of the trap.

JILA scientists first created ultracold molecules in 2008 and several years ago formed the
first molecular crystal, in which the molecules swapped spins. To reduce chemical reactions
and extend molecule lifetimes, researchers made the trap wells deeper. Now they've
achieved their next goal of filling enough wells to unify the crystal as a system, opening the
door for intriguing new quantum phenomena.
The research was funded by NIST, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army
Research Office and National Science Foundation.
As a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST promotes U.S.
innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards
and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.

Flexo-electric nanomaterial created

Summary:
Researchers have developed a 'flexo-electric' nanomaterial. The material has builtin mechanical tension that changes shape when you apply electrical voltage, or that
generates electricity if you change its shape. The researchers also show that the
thinner you make the material, the stronger this flexo-electric effect becomes.
Researchers describe this as a completely new field of knowledge with some
interesting applications. You could use the material to recharge a pacemaker inside
the human body, for example, or to make highly sensitive sensors.

Researchers at the University of Twente's MESA+ research

institute, together with researchers from several other
institutions, have developed a 'flexo-electric' nanomaterial.
The material has built-in mechanical tension that changes
shape when you apply electrical voltage, or that generates
electricity if you change its shape. In an article published in
the leading scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology, the
researchers also show that the thinner you make the
material, the stronger this flexo-electric effect becomes.

Professor Guus Rijnders, who was involved in the research,

describes this as a completely new field of knowledge with
some interesting applications. You could use the material to
recharge a pacemaker inside the human body, for example,
or to make highly sensitive sensors.
Piezoelectric materials are widely used in electronic applications. In specific terms, these
are crystalline materials that can convert electrical power into pressure and vice versa. The
disadvantage of these materials is that they contain lead -- which has environmental and
health risks -- and that the piezoelectric effect decreases when you make the material
thinner.
The thinner the material, the stronger the effect
Ever since the 1960s physicists have been arguing that the flexo-electric effect could exist.
This would enable non-piezoelectric materials to be given piezoelectric properties. At that
time, however, manufacturing methods were inadequate for the production of such
materials. Now, researchers from the University of Twente, the Catalan Institute of
Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and Cornell University have succeeded in developing a
flexo-electric nano system just 70 nanometres thick. It turns out that even though the flexoelectric effect is very weak, the thinner you make the material, the stronger the effect
becomes.
Ultrasensitive sensors
According to Professor Guus Rijnders, who was involved in the research, it will eventually
be possible to create flexo-electric materials with a thickness of just a few atomic layers.
This discovery could have all kinds of interesting applications. 'You could make sensors that
can detect a single molecule, for example. A molecule would land on a vibrating sensor,
making it just fractionally heavier, slowing the vibration just slightly. The reduction in
frequency could then easily be measured using the flexo-electric effect.' In addition to ultrasensitive sensors, flexo-electric materials could also be useful in applications that require a
limited amount of power, but which are difficult to reach, such as in pacemakers or cochlear
implants inside the human body.

Hydra can modify its genetic program

Certain cells of the animal change to overcome the loss of its nervous
system
ummary:
Champion of regeneration, Hydra is capable of reforming a complete individual from
any fragment of its body. It is even able to remain alive when all its neurons have
disappeared. Researchers have discovered how: cells of the epithelial type modify
their genetic program by overexpressing a series of genes, among which some are
involved in diverse nervous functions.

Champion of regeneration, the freshwater polyp Hydra is

capable of reforming a complete individual from any
fragment of its body. It is even able to remain alive when all
its neurons have disappeared. Researcher the University of
Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have discovered how: cells
of the epithelial type modify their genetic program by
overexpressing a series of genes, among which some are
involved in diverse nervous functions. Studying Hydra
cellular plasticity may thus influence research in the context
of neurodegenerative diseases. The results are published
in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
The freshwater Hydra is endowed with an extraordinary power of regeneration, discovered
by the Swiss naturalist Abraham Trembley more than 250 years ago. The group of Brigitte
Galliot, professor at the Department of Genetics and Evolution of the Faculty of Science of
UNIGE, has studied the stem cells functioning and cellular plasticity of the polyp: "its
nervous system regulates in particular contraction bursts, feeding behavior, moving or
swimming. If the stem cells responsible for its renewal are depleted, the Hydra can still
develop, even when all its neurons have disappeared. We wanted to understand how this is
possible."
Enhancing other cells' sensing ability
The researchers compared gene expression at various positions along the body axis in
polyps devoid or not of their nervous stem cells. They observed a modification of the
genetic program in animals depleted of these cells: "we identified 25 overexpressed genes
in epithelial cells, the cells forming the Hydra's coating tissues. Some of these genes are
involved in diverse nervous functions, such as neurogenesis or neurotransmission," says
Yvan Wenger, co-first author of the article.
"Epithelial cells do not possess typical neuronal functions. However, Hydra's loss of
neurogenesis induces epithelial cells to modify their genetic program accordingly, indicating

that they are ready to assume some of these functions. These "naturally" genetically
modified epithelial cells are thus likely to enhance their sensitivity and response to
environmental signals, to partially compensate for the lack of nervous system," explains
Wanda Buzgariu, co-first author of the article. The detail of these new functions remains to
be discovered, as well as how epithelial cells proceed to overexpress these genes and thus
adapt their genetic program.
Cellular plasticity maintains youth
Studying Hydra's cellular plasticity may be relevant in the context of neurodegenerative
diseases. Indeed, some of the genes identified in this animal play an important role in
cellular reprogramming or in neurogenesis in mammals. The researchers therefore wonder:
would it be possible to restore sensing or secretion functions from other cell types, when
some neurons degenerate?
This study also allows to go back to the origins of nervous systems. Epithelial cells most
probably preceded nerve cells, performing some of their functions, although in a much
slower way. "The loss of neurogenesis in Hydra may provide an opportunity to observe a
reverse evolutive process, because it sheds light on a repressed ancestral genetic toolkit.
An atavism of epithelial cells, when they most probably also possessed proto-neuronal
functions," concludes Brigitte Galliot.

Ants filmed building moving bridges from their live

bodies
Applications for robots in disaster relief, deep sea exploration
Summary:
Army ants build living bridges by linking their bodies to span gaps and create
shortcuts across rainforests in Central and South America. An international team of
researchers has now discovered these bridges can move from their original building
point to span large gaps and change position as required.

Army ants build living bridges by linking their bodies to span

gaps and create shortcuts across rainforests in Central and
South America. An international team of researchers has

now discovered these bridges can move from their original

building point to span large gaps and change position as
required.
The bridges stop moving when they become so long that the increasing costs incurred by
locking workers into the structure outweigh the benefit that the colony gains from further
shortening their trail. Bridges dismantle when the ants in the structure sense the traffic
walking over them slows down below a critical threshold.
Co-lead author Dr Christopher Reid, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney's
Insect Behaviour and Ecology Lab and formerly with the New Jersey Institute of
Technology, said the findings could be applied to develop swarm robotics for exploration
and rescue operations. By analysing how ants optimise utility, researchers may be able to
create simple control algorithms to allow swarms of robots to behave in similar ways to an
ant colony.
The paper, 'Army ants dynamically adjust living bridges in response to a cost-benefit tradeoff', is being published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences (PNAS).
The team of researchers -- from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology (Konstanz,
Germany), University of Konstanz, and the United States's New Jersey Institute of
Technology, Princeton University and George Washington University -- found the bridges
can assemble and disassemble in seconds. They can also change their position in
response to the immediate environment.
The dynamic nature of the bridges has been found to facilitate travel by the colony at
maximum speed, across unknown and potentially dangerous terrains. Prior to the study it
was assumed that, once they had been built, the bridges were relatively static structures.
"Indeed, after starting at intersections between twigs or lianas travelled by the ants, the
bridges slowly move away from their starting point, creating shortcuts and progressively
lengthening by addition of new workers, before stopping, suspended in mid-air," said Dr
Reid.
"In many cases, the ants could have created better shortcuts, but instead they ceased
moving their bridges before achieving the shortest route possible."
The researchers discovered that, although ants benefitted from shorter travelling distances
because of their bridges, they also incurred a cost by sequestering workers that could be
used for other important tasks. When building their bridges, army ants had to balance this
cost-benefit trade-off.
Dr Reid said the findings had implications for other self-assembling systems, such as
reconfigurable materials and autonomous robotic swarms. "Artificial systems made of
independent robots operating via the same principles as the army ants could build largescale structures as needed," Dr Reid said.

"Such swarms could accomplish remarkable tasks, such as creating bridges to navigate
complex terrain, plugs to repair structural breaches, or supports to stabilise a failing
structure.
"These systems could also enable robots to operate in complex unpredictable settings,
such as in natural disaster areas, where human presence is dangerous or problematic."

Whiffs from cyanobacteria likely responsible for

Earth's oxygen
Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere emerged in whiffs from a
kind of cyanobacteria in shallow oceans around 2.5 billion
years ago, according to new research from Canadian and
US scientists.
These whiffs of oxygen likely happened in the following 100 million years, changing the
levels of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere until enough accumulated to create a permanently
oxygenated atmosphere around 2.4 billion years ago -- a transition widely known as the
Great Oxidation Event.
"The onset of Earth's surface oxygenation was likely a complex process characterized by
multiple whiffs of oxygen until a tipping point was crossed," said Brian Kendall, a professor
of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo. "Until now, we haven't
been able to tell whether oxygen concentrations 2.5 billion years ago were stable or not.
These new data provide a much more conclusive answer to that question."
The findings are presented in a paper published this month in Science Advances from
researchers at Waterloo, University of Alberta, Arizona State University, University of
California Riverside, and Georgia Institute of Technology. The team presents new isotopic
data showing that a burst of oxygen production by photosynthetic cyanobacteria temporarily
increased oxygen concentrations in Earth's atmosphere.
"One of the questions we ask is: 'did the evolution of photosynthesis lead directly to an
oxygen-rich atmosphere? Or did the transition to today's world happen in fits and starts?"
said Professor Ariel Anbar of Arizona State University. "How and why Earth developed an
oxygenated atmosphere is one of the most profound puzzles in understanding the history of
our planet."
The new data supports a hypothesis proposed by Anbar and his team in 2007. In Western
Australia, they found preliminary evidence of these oxygen whiffs in black shales deposited
on the seafloor of an ancient ocean.
The black shales contained high concentrations of the elements molybdenum and rhenium,
long before the Great Oxidation Event.

These elements are found in land-based sulphide minerals, which are particularly sensitive
to the presence of atmospheric oxygen. Once these minerals react with oxygen, the
molybdenum and rhenium are released into rivers and eventually end up deposited on the
sea floor.
In the new paper, researchers analyzed the same black shales for the relative abundance
of an additional element: osmium. Like molybdenum and rhenium, osmium is also present
in continental sulfide minerals. The ratio of two osmium isotopes -- 187Os to 188Os -- can tell
us if the source of osmium was continental sulfide minerals or underwater volcanoes in the
deep ocean.
The osmium isotope evidence found in black shales correlates with higher continental
weathering as a result of oxygen in the atmosphere. By comparison, slightly younger
deposits with lower molybdenum and rhenium concentrations had osmium isotope
evidence for less continental input, indicating the oxygen in the atmosphere had
disappeared.
The paper's authors also include Professor Robert Creaser of the University of Alberta,
Professor Timothy Lyons from the University of California Riverside and Professor Chris
Reinhard from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Ghostly and beautiful: 'Planetary nebulae' get more

meaningful physical presence
A way of estimating more accurate distances to the
thousands of so-called planetary nebulae dispersed across
our Galaxy has been announced by a team of three
astronomers based at the University of Hong Kong: Dr
David Frew, Prof Quentin Parker and Dr Ivan Bojicic. The
scientists publish their results inMonthly Notices of the
Royal Astronomical Society.

Despite their name, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. They were
described as such by early astronomers whose telescopes showed them as glowing disclike objects.
We now know that planetary nebulae are actually the final stage of activity of stars like our
Sun. When they reach the end of their lives, these stars eject most of their atmosphere into
space, leaving behind a hot dense core. Light from this core causes the expanding cloud of
gas to glow in different colours as it slowly grows, fading away over tens of thousands of
years.
There are thousands of planetary nebulae in our Galaxy alone, and they provide targets for
professional and amateur astronomers alike, with the latter often taking spectacular images
of these beautiful objects. But despite intense study, scientists have struggled to measure
one of their key properties -- their distance.
Dr Frew, lead author on the paper, said: "For many decades, measuring distances to
Galactic planetary nebulae has been a serious, almost intractable problem because of the
extremely diverse nature of the nebulae themselves and their central stars. But finding
those distances is crucial if we want to understand their true nature and physical
properties."
The solution presented by the astronomers is both simple and elegant. Their method
requires only an estimate of the dimming toward the object (caused by intervening
interstellar gas and dust), the projected size of the object on the sky (taken from the latest
high resolution surveys) and a measurement of how bright the object is (as obtained from
the best modern imaging).
The resulting so-called 'surface-brightness relation' has been robustly calibrated using more
than 300 planetary nebulae whose accurate distances have been determined via
independent and reliable means. Prof Parker explained that, "the basic technique is not
new but what marks out this work from what has gone before is the use of the most up-todate and reliable measurements of all three of those crucial properties."
This is combined with the use of the authors' own robust techniques to effectively remove
"doppelgangers" and mimics that have seriously contaminated previous planetary nebulae
catalogues and added considerable errors to other distance measurements.
The new approach works over a factor of several hundred thousand in surface brightness,
and allows astronomers to measure the distances to planetary nebulae up to 5 times more
accurately than previous methods. "Our new scale is the first to accurately determine
distances for the very faintest planetaries" said Dr Frew. "Since the largest nebulae are the
most common, getting their distances right is a crucial step."
Planetary nebulae are a fascinating if brief stage in the life of a low- to middle-weight star.
Being able to better measure distances and hence the sizes of these objects will give
scientists a far better insight into how these objects form and develop, and how stars as a
whole evolve and die.

New vision for multifunctional materials

The protective shell of a sea-dwelling chiton paves the way towards
new materials that combine different functions

Multifunctional materials with sensory capabilities like those

of vision, touch or even smell could profoundly expand the
possibilities of industrial design in many areas. Taking a cue
from nature, a cross-institutional collaboration involving
researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired
Engineering at Harvard University and MIT has deciphered
how the biomineral making up the body armor of a chiton
mollusk has evolved to create functional eyes embedded in
the animal's protective shell. The findings could help
determine so far still elusive rules for generating humanmade multifunctional materials and are reported in the
November 20 issue of Science.
Multifunctional materials that can sense physical stimuli in their environments could enable
us to build houses that make use of their environments, to constantly monitor wear-and-tear
and look for signs of damage in materials or even to better deliver some drugs and produce
bioengineered organs.
"To date, artificial materials that have the ability to perform multiple and often structurally
opposite functions are not available. We can not yet rationally design them but studying
different multifunctional biomaterials present in nature should ultimately allow us to deduct
the key principles for this relatively new area of materials science," said Joanna Aizenberg,
Ph.D., who is a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute, leader of the Wyss Adaptive
Material Technologies platform, and also is the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials
Science at Harvard's John A. Paulsen School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
(SEAS). Early work by Aizenberg on a sea-dwelling brittlestar that uses the same
mineralized material to grow both a skeleton and visual organs had set the stage for the
exploration into multifunctional biomaterials.
Now, inspired by previous biological research performed by Daniel Speiser, Ph.D.,
Aizenberg and Christine Ortiz, Ph.D., the Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and
Engineering at MIT, formed a multi-disciplinary team to study another tell tale example
offered by nature: the outer protective shell of the chiton Acanthopleura granulata, a tropical

sea water mollusk, that is endowed with hundreds of tiny eyes. Speiser is a Professor at the
University of South Carolina who joined the Harvard/MIT-led effort.
Most eyes in nature are made of organic molecules. In contrast, the chiton's eyes are
inorganic and made of the same crystalline mineral called aragonite that also assembles
the body armor. They enable the chiton to perceive changes in light and thus to respond to
approaching predators by tightening their grip to surfaces under water.
Using a suite of highly resolving microscopic and crystallographic techniques, the team
unraveled the 3-dimensional architecture and geometry of the eyes, complete with an outer
cornea, a lens and an underlying chamber that houses the photoreceptive cells necessary
to feed focused images to the chiton's nervous system. Importantly, the researchers found
that aragonite crystals in the lens are larger than in the shell and organized into more
regular alignments that allow light to be gathered and bundled.
"By studying isolated eyes, we identified how exactly the lens material generates a defined
focal point within the chamber which, like a retina, can render images of objects such as
predatory fish," said Ling Li, a postdoctoral fellow working with Aizenberg and a co-first
author of the study.
"We also learned that optical performance was developed as a second function to the
otherwise protective shell with mutual trade-offs in both functionalities. The material
properties that are favored for optical performance are usually not favored for mechanical
robustness so that the evolving chiton had to balance out its mechanical vulnerabilities by
limiting the size of the eyes and placing them in regions protected by strong protrusions,"
said Li.
"The investigation of Nature's finest "multitasking artists" can provide insight into functional
synergies and trade-offs in multifunctional materials and guide us in other studies toward
the development of revolutionary biomimetic materials. We thus are probably one step
closer to construct houses made of a material that is not only mechanically robust, but also
furnished with lenses capable of flexibly regulating light and temperature inside and sense
environmental conditions," said Aizenberg.
"This study shows just how amazing nature is at solving complex problems in simple and
elegant ways. By uncovering the design rules that this simple organism uses to selfassemble a multi-functional shell that simultaneously provides physical protection from the
environment and an eye that can sense oncoming invaders, the team is now in a position to
leverage these insights to engineer synthetic materials that could lead to entirely new
solutions for both industrial and medical applications," said Wyss Institute Founding
Director Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who also is the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular
Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, and Professor of
Bioengineering at SEAS.
The research team used the 2-BM beamline at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility located at Argonne National
Laboratory, to conduct high-resolution X-ray micro-tomography towards determining the 3-D
morphology of the sensory structure in the shell of chitons.