Social Control as Social Service and the Art of Meme Hygiene

Study shows babies learn to imitate others because they themselves are imitated by caregivers

Sep 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-09-babies-imitate-imitated-caregivers.html

(The whole article is basically a good description of recursion.)

• Social learning avoids laborious trial and error; the wheel does not have to be reinvented each time.
• "Children acquire their ability to imitate because they themselves are imitated by their caregivers" 
• Parents respond to the signals given by the child and reflect and amplify them. A mutual imitation of actions and gestures develops. 
• "These experiences create connections between what the child feels and does on the one hand and what it sees on the other"
• "Imitation is the start of the cultural process toward becoming human" 
• Over the course of generations and millennia, this interplay has led to the cultural evolution of humans"

via Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich:  Samuel Essler et al, The cultural basis of cultural evolution: Longitudinal evidence that infant imitation develops by being imitated, Current Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.08.084. 

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.08.084

Image credit: Speaking of memetics, imitation, and learning, the image above is an example of a computer trying to be a human - a graphic designer specifically. We can see how, in very subtle ways, computers can't be people, not just yet: AI Art - Ad Poop - 2024

Social bonding gets people on the same wavelength, neural synchronization study suggests

Mar 2024, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-social-bonding-people-wavelength-neural.html

176 three-person groups of human participants wore caps with fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy) electrodes while they communicated with strangers in a face-to-face triangle. (But it sounds like they communicated via text message, although they were sitting across from each other.)

This writeup is so concise I have to copy the whole thing:

Each group democratically selected a leader, so each group of three ultimately included one leader and two followers. After strategizing together, groups played two economic games designed to test their willingness to make sacrifices to benefit their group (or harm other groups).

Experimenters assigned some triads to go through a bonding session, where they were grouped according to color preferences, given uniforms, and led through an introductory chat session to build familiarity.

Bonded groups spoke more freely and bounced between speakers more frequently and rapidly, relative to groups that didn't experience this bonding session. This bonding effect was stronger between leaders and followers than between two followers.

Neural activity in two brain regions linked to social interaction, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) and the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), aligned between leaders and followers if they had bonded.

The authors state that this neural synchronization suggests that leaders may be anticipating followers' mental states during group decision-making, though they acknowledge that their findings are restricted to East Asian Chinese individuals communicating via text (without non-verbal cues), whose culture emphasizes group cohesion and commitment towards group leaders.

via Beijing Normal University: Ni J, Yang J, Ma Y (2024) Social bonding in groups of humans selectively increases inter-status information exchange and prefrontal neural synchronization. PLoS Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002545

https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002545

Charting brain synchronization patterns during social interactions - Yuto Kurihara from Waseda University - Apr 2024

Charting brain synchronization patterns during social interactions

Apr 2024, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-04-brain-synchronization-patterns-social-interactions.html

See the infographic above, really well done.

"Our findings challenge the conventional understanding"

Cooperative interactive tasks between individuals with weak social ties result in more synchronized brain activity compared to individuals with strong ties. 

The participants were given a joint tapping task where they had to tap a mouse button in opposite rhythms. They wore earphones and had to anticipate their partner's movements.

Researchers suggest that the lack of familiarity between strangers requires a more involved process for predicting each other's actions or behaviors in a cooperative task. Consequently, this heightened engagement leads to a more efficient transfer of information between closely connected nodes within the neural network.

via Waseda University: Yuto Kurihara et al, The topology of interpersonal neural network in weak social ties, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55495-7

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-55495-7

Understanding the spread of behavior: How long-tie connections accelerate the speed of social contagion

Apr 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-behavior-social-contagion.html

This is all getting pretty scary; I used to think this was something far off, but it sure seems we have both the knowledge and the means to do these things, and I wonder how it's being done already, and highly doubt it's not being done already. Too irresistible. 

Initially, researchers thought highly clustered ties that are close together in networks created the perfect environment for the spread of complex behaviors that require significant social reinforcement. However, long ties, which are created through randomly rewired edges that make them "longer," accelerate the spread of social contagions. 

(So this is not about weak vs strong ties, but short vs long.)

Having a small probability of adoption below the contagion threshold is enough to ensure that random rewiring accelerates the spread of these contagions.

"Further work could study such strategies for seeding complex behaviors"

This research suggests those wanting to achieve fast, total spread would benefit from implementing intervention points across network neighborhoods with long-tie connections to other network regions

via University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, Sloan School of Management at MIT: Dean Eckles et al, Long ties accelerate noisy threshold-based contagions, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01865-0

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01865-0

Vibe Miners Find Sweet Spot for Mind Override

There are some other posts with these "40Hz articles", and sometimes it comes out as 80Hz too. But for real what the hell is going on? How is this only now becoming a thing? 

Also, people suffering from epilepsy, and the rest of the people who think it's a good idea to help them, have been consistently discovering one crazy thing after another, proving why we, as humans, are supposed to spend valuable resources helping people no matter who they are. 

How 40Hz sensory gamma rhythm stimulation clears amyloid in Alzheimer's mice

Feb 2024, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-40hz-sensory-gamma-rhythm-amyloid.html

"Ever since we published our first results in 2016, people have asked me how does it work? Why 40 Hz? Why not some other frequency?" 

They first replicated the lab's prior results that 40 Hz sensory stimulation increases 40 Hz neuronal activity in the brain and reduces amyloid levels, then measured increases in cerebrospinal fluid in the brain tissue of mice treated with sensory gamma stimulation compared to untreated controls, and also measured an increase in the rate of interstitial fluid leaving the brain.

via Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Picower Institute: Li-Huei Tsai, Multisensory gamma stimulation promotes glymphatic clearance of amyloid, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07132-6. 

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07132-6

Image credit: Deep learning simulation of 10,000 beryllium atoms - HZDR CASUS - 2023

New brain stimulation technique shows promise for treating brain disorders

Feb 2024, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-brain-technique-disorders.html

Non-invasive brain stimulation method called Patterned Low-Intensity Low-Frequency Ultrasound (LILFUS), which is based on specific ultrasound parameters that mimic the brainwave patterns of theta (5 Hz) and gamma (30 Hz) oscillations observed during learning and memory processes.

The new tool allowed the researchers to either activate or deactivate specific brain regions at will - intermittent delivery of the ultrasound was found to induce long-term potentiation effects, while continuous patterns resulted in long-term depression effects.

One of the most promising aspects of this new technology is its ability to facilitate the acquisition of new motor skills. When the researchers delivered ultrasound stimulation to the cerebral motor cortex in mice, they observed significant improvements in motor skill learning and the ability to retrieve food.

Interestingly, researchers were even able to change the forelimb preference of the mice. This suggests potential applications in rehabilitation therapies for stroke survivors and individuals with motor impairments.

But....it would also suggest...

via Center for Cognition and Sociality in the Institute for Basic Science: Ho-Jeong Kim et al, Long-lasting Forms of Plasticity through Patterned Ultrasound-induced Brainwave Entrainment, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk3198.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adk3198

Brain waves found to travel in one direction when memories are made and the opposite when recalled

Mar 2024, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-brain-memories-recalled.html

By carefully monitoring neural activity of people who were recalling memories or forming new ones, the researchers managed to detect how a newly appreciated type of brainwave—traveling waves—influences the storage and retrieval of memories.

"Broadly, we found that waves tended to move from the back of the brain to the front while patients were putting something into their memory," 

"When patients were later searching to recall the same information, those waves moved in the opposite direction, from the front towards the back of the brain" 

The study drew on data from participants who were being treated for drug-resistant epilepsy at hospitals across the United States.

via Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science: The direction of theta and alpha travelling waves modulates human memory processing, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01838-3.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01838-3

Mind Reading Is Real Now And Also Your Brain Is Controlled by Lasers

Brain activity decoder can reveal stories in people's minds

May 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-brain-decoder-reveal-stories-people.html

Semantic decoder can translate a person's brain activity -- while listening to a story or silently imagining telling a story -- into a continuous stream of text to help people who are mentally conscious yet unable to physically speak, such as those debilitated by strokes, to communicate intelligibly again.

Does not require subjects to have surgical implants (ie noninvasive, holy grail of brain stuff).

Brain activity is measured using an fMRI scanner after extensive training of the decoder, in which the individual listens to 15 hours of podcasts in the scanner. 

Later, provided that the participant is open to having their thoughts decoded, their listening to a new story or imagining telling a story allows the machine to generate corresponding text from brain activity alone.

Back to reality: 

The result is not a word-for-word transcript. Instead, researchers designed it to capture the gist. Decoding worked only with cooperative participants who had participated willingly.Results for individuals on whom the decoder had not been trained were unintelligible.

If participants on whom the decoder had been trained later put up resistance -- for example, by thinking other thoughts -- results were similarly unusable. Tactics like thinking of animals or quietly imagining telling their own story let participants easily and completely thwart the system.

Afterthoughts:

So you need to insert yourself in an fMRI for this to work. You also need to give permission for it to read your thoughts. But if you think that advances in quantum materials isn't going to put fMRIs in your baseball cap within the next 20 years, then you better start reading "terms and conditions" more carefully from now on. They even mention their tech can be translated to a newer form of MRI called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a "portable brain-imaging system".

via University of Texas at Austin: Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings, Nature Neuroscience (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01304-9

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01304-9

Image credit: AI Art - Human brain carbon fiber cybernetic biomechanical cymatics 1 - 2023

AI tool generates video from brain activity

May 2023, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-05-ai-tool-generates-video-brain.html

On the heels of the UT Austin paper above, although I can't help but be skeptical of this one:

Watching 20 hours worth of movies in an fMRI, plus Stable Diffusion, gets you a dream recorder. 

Also, you heard it folks: Dream researcher Daniel Oldis, working with a colleague at the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the University of Texas, Austin.

Dream researcher.

via Researchers at the National University of Singapore and the Chinese University of Hong Kong: Zijiao Chen et al, Cinematic Mindscapes: High-quality Video Reconstruction from Brain Activity, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2305.11675

https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2305.11675

AI Art - Human brain carbon fiber cybernetic biomechanical cymatics 2 - 2023

40 Hz vibrations reduce Alzheimer's pathology, symptoms in mouse models

May 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-hz-vibrations-alzheimer-pathology-symptoms.html

Non-invasive sensory stimulation of 40 Hz gamma frequency brain rhythms can reduce Alzheimer's disease pathology and symptoms, already shown with light and sound by multiple research groups in mice and humans, can now extend to tactile stimulation.

The MIT group is not the first to show that gamma frequency tactile stimulation can affect brain activity and improve motor function, but they are the first to show that the stimulation can also reduce levels of the hallmark Alzheimer's protein phosphorylated tau, keep neurons from dying or losing their synapse circuit connections, and reduce neural DNA damage.

"This work demonstrates a third sensory modality that we can use to increase gamma power in the brain" 

In case you were wondering:

To produce the vibration stimulation, the researchers placed mouse cages over speakers playing 40 Hz sound, which vibrated the cages. Mice received six weeks of vibration stimulation. 

And since this all sounds so dubious, we need some background:

In a series of papers starting in 2016, a collaboration led by Tsai's lab has demonstrated that light flickering and/or sound clicking at 40 Hz (a technology called GENUS for Gamma Entrainment Using Sensory stimuli), reduces levels of amyloid-beta and tau proteins, prevents neuron death and preserves synapses and even sustains learning and memory in a variety of Alzheimer's disease mouse models.

Upcoming: MIT spin-off company Cognito Therapeutics has launched stage III clinical trials of light and sound stimulation as an Alzheimer's treatment.

Reminder: You don't need FDA approval for tactile stimulation. (As opposed to light or sound pulses, and as opposed to all the Alzheimer's drugs out there trying to get to market...).

via Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Aging Brain Initiative at MIT: Ho-Jun Suk et al, Vibrotactile stimulation at gamma frequency mitigates pathology related to neurodegeneration and improves motor function, Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2023.1129510

https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2023.1129510

Exploring how psychedelic drugs affect a rat's brain

Aug 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-exploring-psychedelic-drugs-affect-rat.html

"Simultaneous Synchronization"

Researchers at Lund University have developed a technique for simultaneously measuring electrical signals from 128 areas of the brain in awake rats. They have then used the information to measure what happens to the neurons when the rats are given psychedelic drugs. The results show an unexpected and simultaneous synchronization among neurons in several regions of the brain.

But wait, because there's more:

Pär Halje and the research team was studying rats with Parkinson's disease that had problems with involuntary movements. The researchers discovered a tone -- an oscillation or wave in the electrical fields -- of 80 hertz in the brains of the rats with Parkinson's disease. It turned out that the wave was closely connected to the involuntary movements.

Now you know, 80 hertz. Although the above study said 40 hertz.

One important note on how this was done and why it's a big deal:

"For several of these areas, it is the first time anyone has successfully shown how individual neurons are affected by LSD in awake animals." 

We see that the neurons' activity synchronizes itself in a special way -- the waves in the brain go up and down essentially simultaneously in all parts of the brain where we are able to take measurements. This suggests that there are other ways in which the waves are communicated than through chemical synapses, which are relatively slow."

via Lund University: Ivani Brys et al, 5-HT2AR and NMDAR psychedelics induce similar hyper-synchronous states in the rat cognitive-limbic cortex-basal ganglia system, Communications Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-05093-6

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05093-6

Music Science and the Mathematical Language of the Universe

But First:

Stressed plants emit airborne sounds that can be detected from more than a meter away

Mar 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-stressed-emit-airborne-meter.html

Tomato and tobacco plants that are stressed -- from dehydration or having their stems severed -- emit sounds that are comparable in volume to normal human conversation, and sound like bubble wrap, but in a fequency we can't hear, at 30–50 clicks per hour at random intervals.

via Tel Aviv University: Lilach Hadany, Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative, Cell (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.03.009.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.03.009

Completely unrelated image credit: The OMEGA Laser - J Adam Fenster and University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics - 2023

New research shows how cultural transmission shapes the evolution of music

Mar 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-cultural-transmission-evolution-music.html

The Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics; their study design was awesome:

The researchers used singing experiments to study music evolution in an unprecedented detail: testing the evolution of more than 3,400 melodies sung by around 1,800 participants from India and North America. To simulate music evolution, they used a method similar to the classic game of "broken telephone," where messages are passed from one participant to the next.

In this case, melodies had to be passed from one to the next by singing. Over time, participants make mistakes in their efforts to repeat the melodies they hear, which gradually shapes the evolution of music towards melodies that are appealing and easy to learn by everyone.

They call it the transmission bias, and they found US participants tended to produce melodies that were biased towards certain cultural conventions of Western music, whereas Indian participants showed a bias towards common Indian scales.

via Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics: Manuel Anglada-Tort et al, Large-scale iterated singing experiments reveal oral transmission mechanisms underlying music evolution, Current Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.070

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.070

Here comes the sun: New study shows how UK weather conditions influence music success in the markets

May 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-05-sun-uk-weather-conditions-music.html

The research, which analyzed over 23,000 songs that reached the UK weekly top charts in the last 70 years, found that songs that were energetic, danceable, and evoked positive emotions such as joy and happiness were positively associated with warm and sunny weather and negatively associated with rainy and cold months. Similarly, energetic and positive music varied according to expected seasonal patterns in the UK, increasing in summer and decreasing in winter.

BUT - hyper popular songs exhibited the strongest associations with weather fluctuations, less popular songs showed no relationship at all. 

AND - only music features reflecting high intensity and positive emotions were associated with weather conditions, whereas music features reflecting low intensity and negative emotions were not related to weather at all. This suggests that negative emotional states may be more influenced by individual situational factors rather than general environmental conditions.

via University of Oxford: Manuel Anglada-Tort et al, Here comes the sun: music features of popular songs reflect prevailing weather conditions, Royal Society Open Science (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.221443

https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.221443

Research shows why our taste in music can't be siloed into catch-all genres

Jun 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-06-music-siloed-catch-all-genres.html

That one trick: "The pop music people liked best was from the decade during which they were around 20 years old." (Learned this from a wedding DJ, many years ago.)

Also: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (exists).

Other results: "By systematically recording liking at genre and sub-genre levels, the researchers obtained a more differentiated picture of musical taste. ... Across all genres, subtypes that represented the mainstream variant were generally preferred over more challenging alternatives."

via Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics: ou don't know a person('s taste) when you only know which genre they like: Taste differences within five popular music genres based on sub-genres and sub-styles, Frontiers in Psychology (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1062146

https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1062146

Image credit: Illustration of liquid quasicrystals consisting of dodecagons - Zeng et al at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg for Nature Chemistry - 2023

Brain2Music taps thoughts to reproduce music

Jul 2023, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-brain2music-thoughts-music.html

Music samples covering 10 genres including rock, classical, metal, hip-hop, pop and jazz were played for five subjects while researchers observed their brain activity under functional MRI (fMRI). This data trained a model to match the music and the brain waves. But then, another machine, this one trained on music-text data to generate music from text prompts, is combined with the brains-on-music model. The two models mix and match so that "the generated music resembles the musical stimuli that human subjects experienced, with respect to semantic properties like genre, instrumentation and mood".

In other words, with your own machine like this, you would be able to make music just by thinking about it. 

Also noted: despite advances in text-to-music models, "their internal processes are still poorly understood." 

via Google and Osaka University: Timo I. Denk et al, Brain2Music: Reconstructing Music from Human Brain Activity, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2307.11078

https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2307.11078

Brain recordings capture musicality of speech, with help from Pink Floyd

Aug 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-brain-capture-musicality-speech-pink.html

The phrase "All in all it was just a brick in the wall" comes through recognizably in the reconstructed song, its rhythms intact, and the words muddy, but decipherable. This is the first time researchers have reconstructed a recognizable song from brain recordings of 29 patients. [you can actually hear the re-construction at the link above]. From some of the people who brought the first reconstruction of the words a person was hearing from recordings of brain activity alone (2012).

Also about left brain vs right brain, language vs music, pinpoint vs field action --

Bellier emphasized that the study, which used artificial intelligence to decode brain activity and then encode a reproduction, did not merely create a black box to synthesize speech. He and his colleagues were also able to pinpoint new areas of the brain involved in detecting rhythm, such as a thrumming guitar, and discovered that some portions of the auditory cortex -- in the superior temporal gyrus, located just behind and above the ear -- respond at the onset of a voice or a synthesizer, while other areas respond to sustained vocals.

"Language is more left brain. Music is more distributed, with a bias toward right," Knight said.

"It wasn't clear it would be the same with musical stimuli," Bellier said. "So here we confirm that that's not just a speech-specific thing, but that's it's more fundamental to the auditory system and the way it processes both speech and music."

via University of California Berkeley, Albany Medical Center: Music can be reconstructed from human auditory cortex activity using nonlinear decoding models, PLoS Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002176

https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002176

Image credit: Crystalline Density Wave illustration - Harald Ritsch Innsbruck University EPFL - 2023

What's love got to do with it? An exception to the recognition of musical themes

Sep 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-exception-recognition-musical-themes.html

(I am so confused by this study)

Researchers played 14-second snippets of vocals in 31 languages from a bank of songs that originated from a host of cultures to more than 5,000 people from 49 countries. The research team included subjects not only from the industrialized world, but more than 100 individuals who live in three small, relatively isolated groups of no more than 100.

They then asked the listeners to rank the likelihood of each sample as being one of four music types: dance, lullabies, "healing" music, or love music. People from all cultures could easily identify all except love songs -- only 12 of 28 groups could recognize love songs.

(Is it the point of the study to prove that a love song is determined by its lyrics rather than by its musical style? Confused.)

"One reason for this could be that love songs may be a particularly fuzzy category that includes songs that express happiness and attraction, but also sadness and jealousy," said lead author Lidya Yurdum, who works as research assistant at the Yale Child Study Center and is also a graduate student at the University of Amsterdam. "Listeners who heard love songs from neighboring countries and in languages related to their own actually did a little better, likely because of the familiar linguistic and cultural clues."

But other than love songs, the authors discovered, the listeners' "ratings were largely accurate, consistent with one another, and not explained by their linguistic or geographical proximity to the singer—showing that musical diversity is underlain by universal psychological phenomena."

via Yale: Lidya Yurdum et al, Universal interpretations of vocal music, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2218593120

https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2218593120

Research demonstrates the power of rhythm as a design element in evolution and robotics

Oct 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-power-rhythm-element-evolution-robotics.html

Varying the rhythm of movement -- the music of how the pieces move together over time -- is a new way of designing robot movement. For example, the breaststroke is characterized by three time-intervals: a slow period of reaching forward, a fast period of pushing backward and a static period of coasting. For optimum performance, the lengths of time for those intervals typically go long, fast, long. But in certain situations—outracing or outmaneuvering a predator, for example—the ratios of those periods change drastically.

The work builds on research Bejan published nearly 20 years ago, where he demonstrated that size and speed go hand-in-hand across the entire animal kingdom whether on land, in the air or under water. The physics underlying that work dealt with weight falling forward from a given animal's height over and over again. In this paper, Bejan shows that his previous work was incomplete, and that all animals, robots and other moving things can further optimize their mechanics by adding an element of rhythm.

It is yet another example of how good design—whether made by humans or through natural evolution—is truly a form of art."

via Duke University: A. Bejan et al, Locomotion rhythm makes power and speed, Scientific Reports (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-41023-6

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41023-6

Doppler Vibrometers, Persistent Surveillance, and Free Energy

We're seeing a lot of noise about energy harvesting in the last few months. It sounds like a scifi dream, but it's actually not that uncommon, especially for wearables and wifi.

It grabs extra ambient energy, whether it's solar, pressure, temperature differences, or just the electromagnetic radiation that's floating all around us from our advanced communications technologies.

The crazy part is when you scale it up. Wearables aren't really here yet, and neither is the 5G mesh network. It's also not being integrated into our building materials or civil infrastructure. But it's coming, and here's some examples, besides the obvious examples of solar, wind and hydro:

Using softened wood to create electricity in homes

Mar 2021, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-03-softened-wood-electricity-homes.html

They're using fungus to eat-away the insides of the wood, to make it more spongy, so it can become squishy when you walk on it, and thereby generating electricity via the piezoelectric effect. The floor creates electricity as we walk across it. 

via: Jianguo Sun et al. Enhanced mechanical energy conversion with selectively decayed wood, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd9138

Battery-free Game Boy runs forever

Sep 2020, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-09-battery-free-game-boy.html

Your own button-pressing as you play the game powers the game:

"It's the first battery-free interactive device that harvests energy from user actions," said Northwestern's Josiah Hester, who co-led the research. "When you press a button, the device converts that energy into something that powers your gaming."

"Sustainable gaming will become a reality."

Your paper notebook could become your next tablet

Sep 2021, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-09-paper-notebook-tablet.html

"Self-powered paper-based electronic device" 

"We developed a method to render paper repellent to water, oil and dust by coating it with highly fluorinated molecules. This omniphobic coating allows us to print multiple layers of circuits onto paper without getting the ink to smear from one layer to the next one."

BUT -- "flourine" and "omniphobic" sound like PFAS which, if scaled-up, is bound to be an ecological distaster.

Martinez said this innovation facilitates the fabrication of vertical pressure sensors that do not require any external battery, since they harvest the energy from their contact with the user.

via: Marina Sala de Medeiros et al, Moisture-insensitive, self-powered paper-based flexible electronics, Nano Energy (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.105301

Small generator captures heat given off by skin to power wearable devices

May 2021, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-small-captures-skin-power-wearable.html

It converts heat from our skin into electrical energy.

via: Cell Reports Physical Science, Liu et al.: "Efficient Molecular Encoding in Multifunctional Self-Immolative Urethanes". DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2021.100412

Nikon Small World 2020 - Crystals - Justin Zoll

Researchers develop flexible crystal, paving the way for more efficient bendable electronics

Feb 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-flexible-crystal-paving-efficient-bendable.html

A team of researchers led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has developed a new material, that when electricity is applied to it, can flex and bend forty times more than its competitors, opening the way to better micro machines.

Conversely, when it is bent, it generates electricity very effectively and could be used for better 'energy harvesting' — potentially recharging batteries in gadgets just from everyday movements.

The novel material is both electrostrictive and piezoelectric. Its electrostrictive properties means it can change shape when an electric current is applied, while piezoelectric means the material can convert pressure into electric charges.

via Nanyang Technological University: Yuzhong Hu et al. Ferroelastic-switching-driven large shear strain and piezoelectricity in a hybrid ferroelectric, Nature Materials (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-020-00875-3

Engineers harvest Wi-Fi signals to power small electronics

May 2021, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-harvest-wi-fi-power-small-electronics.html

To harness this under-used source of energy, a research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Japan's Tohoku University (TU) has developed a technology that uses tiny smart devices known as spin-torque oscillators (STOs) to harvest and convert wireless radio frequencies into energy to power small electronics. In their study, the researchers had successfully harvested energy using Wi-Fi-band signals to power a light-emitting diode (LED) wirelessly, and without using any battery.

via: National University of Singapore: Raghav Sharma et al. Electrically connected spin-torque oscillators array for 2.4 GHz WiFi band transmission and energy harvesting, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23181-1

Slightly Off-Track:

World's fastest information-fueled engine designed by university researchers

May 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-world-fastest-information-fueled-university.html

"Information engine" converts the random jiggling of a microscopic particle into stored energy. What the f*** is an information engine? (Maxwell's Demon was an information engine.)

Here you go: 

The information engine designed by SFU researchers consists of a microscopic particle immersed in water and attached to a spring which, itself, is fixed to a movable stage. Researchers then observe the particle bouncing up and down due to thermal motion.

"When we see an upward bounce, we move the stage up in response," explains lead author and Ph.D. student Tushar Saha. "When we see a downward bounce, we wait. This ends up lifting the entire system using only information about the particle's position."

via Simon Fraser University: Tushar K. Saha et al, Maximizing power and velocity of an information engine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2023356118

Researchers create ambient vibration energy harvester with automatic resonance tuning mechanism

Sep 2020, phys.org

ttps://techxplore.com/news/2020-09-ambient-vibration-energy-harvester-automatic.html

Is this real? Because they're making it sound like it's totally real:

The energy harvester performs automatic resonance tuning by adjusting its own frequency in response to the environmental conditions, thereby harvesting electrical energy from waste energy sources such as vibration, heat, light, and so on. It's especially useful for small electronic devices that operate wirelessly, like IoT systems.

So if you have a guitar, or some nice big glassware, you may have tried make it sing all by itself, just by humming or singing at the right frequency, until it sings along. That's the standing frequency of the body of the guitar, or the resonant frequency. It's the overall frequency at which the guitar naturally vibrates. All things naturally vibrate, at a molecular level. And when you scale that up, all the molecules that make a guitar, all their vibrations cancel out, until you have one resonant frequency.

This self-tuning energy harvester has to find that frequency, so that it can collect that waste. 

 

via the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) research team from the KIST Center for Electronic Materials: Youn-Hwan Shin et al, Automatic resonance tuning mechanism for ultra-wide bandwidth mechanical energy harvesting, Nano Energy (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.104986

Post Script, for the Wordporn: Doppler Vibrometers

Device tracks house appliances through vibration, AI

Sep 2020, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-09-device-tracks-house-appliances-vibration.html

Hyper surveillance, the panopticon and integrated building management systems:

Do I even need to explain it? You can already guess how it works. If you give enough data to enough computing power, you can know everything. It's called omniscience.

This is a deep learning neural net that learns the vibration patterns of the appliances in your house by pointing a laser at an interior wall in the center of a home, or the ceiling in two-story homes. It's ultimately identifying the paths traveled by the vibrations from room to room, called path signatures. It's 96% accurate and can even identify dripping faucets, besides the obvious exhaust fan, refrigerator, etc. 

But wait, the bonus!! -- The device is primarily useful in single-family houses, Zhang said, because in buildings it could pick up activities in neighboring apartments, presenting a potential privacy risk. -- It's so fucking good it can spy on your neighbors!

Persistent surveillance is the future, accept it.

via: Wei Sun et al, VibroSense, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (2020). DOI: 10.1145/3411828

Post Post Script:

The Crystal Radio (uses no power except that of the radio signal itself, goes back to the late 1800's, and was responsible for the introduction and popularization of radios for the general public.)