Muhammad Rahman, an assistant research professor of materials science and nanoengineering, is employing Rice’s unique flash Joule heating process to convert asphaltenes instantly into turbostratic (loosely aligned) graphene and mix it into composites for thermal, anti-corrosion and 3D-printing applications.

The process makes good use of material otherwise burned for reuse as fuel or discarded into tailing ponds and landfills. Using at least some of the world’s reserve of more than 1 trillion barrels of asphaltene as a feedstock for graphene would be good for the environment as well.

“Asphaltene is a big headache for the oil industry, and I think there will be a lot of interest in this,” said Rahman, who characterized the process as both a scalable and sustainable way to reduce carbon emissions from burning asphaltene.

Rahman is a lead corresponding author of the paper in Science Advances co-led by Rice chemist James Tour, whose lab developed flash Joule heating, materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan and Md Golam Kibria, an assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada.

Asphaltenes are 70% to 80% carbon already. The Rice lab combines it with about 20% of carbon black to add conductivity and flashes it with a jolt of electricity, turning it into graphene in less than a second. Other elements in the feedstock, including hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur, are vented away as gases.

“We try to keep the carbon black content as low as possible because we want to maximize the utilization of asphaltene,” Rahman said.

“The government has been putting pressure on the petroleum industries to take care of this,” said Rice graduate student and co-lead author M.A.S.R. Saadi. “There are billions of barrels of asphaltene available, so we began working on this project primarily to see if we could make carbon fiber. That led us to think maybe we should try making graphene with flash Joule heating.”

Assured that Tour’s process worked as well on asphaltene as it did on various other feedstocks, including plastic, electronic waste, tires, coal fly ash and even car parts, the researchers set about making things with their graphene.

Saadi, who works with Rahman and Ajayan, mixed the graphene into composites, and then into polymer inks bound for 3D printers. “We’ve optimized the ink rheology to show that it is printable,” he said, noting the inks have no more than 10% of graphene mixed in. Mechanical testing of printed objects is forthcoming, he said.

Rice graduate student Paul Advincula, a member of the Tour lab, is co-lead author of the paper. Co-authors are Rice graduate students Md Shajedul Hoque Thakur, Ali Khater, Jacob Beckham and Minghe Lou, undergraduate Aasha Zinke and postdoctoral researcher Soumyabrata Roy; research fellow Shabab Saad, alumnus Ali Shayesteh Zeraati, graduate student Shariful Kibria Nabil and postdoctoral associate Md Abdullah Al Bari of the University of Calgary; graduate student Sravani Bheemasetti and Venkataramana Gadhamshetty, an associate professor, at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and its 2D Materials of Biofilm Engineering Science and Technology Center; and research assistant Yiwen Zheng and Aniruddh Vashisth, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, of the University of Washington.

The research was funded by the Alberta Innovates for Carbon Fiber Grand Challenge programs, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-19-1-0296), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (W912HZ-21-2-0050) and the National Science Foundation (1849206, 1920954).

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Materials provided by Rice University. Original written by Mike Williams. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Now, Scripps Research scientists have identified a class of drugs that might break this link. In animal models of PTSD, the drug decreased alcohol preference and intake as well as other behaviors associated with PTSD, including aggression, excessive fear and hyperarousal. The findings were published in Neuropsychopharmacology on November 18, 2022.

“The overlap of PTSD and AUD is a major problem,” says co-senior author Marisa Roberto, PhD, the Schimmel Family Chair of Molecular Medicine and a professor of Neuroscience at Scripps Research. “We’ve shown that there is potential to alleviate both disorders by targeting brain pathways that they share.”

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD, about 12 million adults in the U.S. have PTSD during a given year. Men and women who have PTSD at any point in their lives are more than twice as likely as other people to have alcohol abuse or dependence. Moreover, people who suffer from both PTSD and AUD are at a higher risk of suicidal thoughts and extreme aggression compared to those with either disorder alone.

Researchers have known that FKBP5, a protein found in the brain, plays a role in both disorders. The FKBP5 gene is responsible for lifting the brakes on the brain’s stress response pathways, and its genetic variants are associated with increased risk of AUD and PTSD. In animals, higher levels of FKBP5 have been linked to both stress exposure and alcohol exposure.

In the new study, co-first authors Bryan Cruz, PhD, and Valentina Vozella, PhD, and additional colleagues studied rats with symptoms similar to comorbid human PTSD and AUD. Like people with the disorders, the animals drink more alcohol than average, are irritable and fearful, and exhibit anxiety and sleep disturbances, the team showed. The researchers treated the animals with either of two drugs known to target FKBP5: benztropine (Cogentin®), which is FDA-approved to treat Parkinson’s disease and targets a number of molecules in the brain, or SAFit2, an experimental compound designed specifically for blocking FKBP5.

They found that benztropine reduced alcohol preference in stressed male and female animals, as well as aggressive behavior in the females. SAFit2 reduced alcohol drinking in stressed males, and decreased levels of extreme fear in both male and females. Neither drug impacted sleep.

“The results may have varied between male and female animals because of reproductive hormones,” says Cruz. “There is new literature suggesting that the activity of these kinds of compounds varies in females throughout the estrous cycle.”

The team says that the fact that benztropine is already FDA-approved suggests the potential for repurposing it in people with PTSD.

“We think FKBP5 inhibitors might be useful in preventing AUD after the onset of PTSD,” adds co-senior author Eric Zorrilla, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine. “More work is needed to determine whether these compounds also can prevent the recurrent relapse that hampers recovery.”

Support for this study was provided by The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA027700, AA028879, AA013498, P60 AA006420, AA017447, AA021491, AA029841, AA015566, K99 AA026638 and T32 AA007456), the Schimmel Family Endowed Chair, and the Department of Defense (DoD).

“To date, swimming soft robots have not been able to swim faster than one body length per second, but marine animals — such as manta rays — are able to swim much faster, and much more efficiently,” says Jie Yin, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State. “We wanted to draw on the biomechanics of these animals to see if we could develop faster, more energy-efficient soft robots. The prototypes we’ve developed work exceptionally well.”

The researchers developed two types of butterfly bots. One was built specifically for speed, and was able to reach average speeds of 3.74 body lengths per second. A second was designed to be highly maneuverable, capable of making sharp turns to the right or left. This maneuverable prototype was able to reach speeds of 1.7 body lengths per second.

“Researchers who study aerodynamics and biomechanics use something called a Strouhal number to assess the energy efficiency of flying and swimming animals,” says Yinding Chi, first author of the paper and a recent Ph.D. graduate of NC State. “Peak propulsive efficiency occurs when an animal swims or flies with a Strouhal number of between 0.2 and 0.4. Both of our butterfly bots had Strouhal numbers in this range.”

The butterfly bots derive their swimming power from their wings, which are “bistable,” meaning the wings have two stable states. The wing is similar to a snap hair clip. A hair clip is stable until you apply a certain amount of energy (by bending it). When the amount of energy reaches critical point, the hair clip snaps into a different shape — which is also stable.

In the butterfly bots, the hair clip-inspired bistable wings are attached to a soft, silicone body. Users control the switch between the two stable states in the wings by pumping air into chambers inside the soft body. As those chambers inflate and deflate, the body bends up and down — forcing the wings to snap back and forth with it.

“Most previous attempts to develop flapping robots have focused on using motors to provide power directly to the wings,” Yin says. “Our approach uses bistable wings that are passively driven by moving the central body. This is an important distinction, because it allows for a simplified design, which lowers the weight.”

The faster butterfly bot has only one “drive unit” — the soft body — which controls both of its wings. This makes it very fast, but difficult to turn left or right. The maneuverable butterfly bot essentially has two drive units, which are connected side by side. This design allows users to manipulate the wings on both sides, or to “flap” only one wing, which is what enables it to make sharp turns.

“This work is an exciting proof of concept, but it has limitations,” Yin says. “Most obviously, the current prototypes are tethered by slender tubing, which is what we use to pump air into the central bodies. We’re currently working to develop an untethered, autonomous version.”

The paper, “Snapping for high-speed and high-efficient, butterfly stroke-like soft swimmer,” will be published Nov. 18 in the open-access journal Science Advances. The paper was co-authored by Yaoye Hong, a Ph.D. student at NC State; and by Yao Zhao and Yanbin Li, who are postdoctoral researchers at NC State. The work was done with support from the National Science Foundation under grants CMMI-2005374 and CMMI-2126072.

Video of the butterfly bots can be found at https://youtu.be/Pi-2pPDWC1w.

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Materials provided by North Carolina State University. Original written by Matt Shipman. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

It’s why Jaws swam out of sight for more than an hour and hints at the glamour of giftwrap. In movie theaters, living rooms, and even labs, the thrill of the unseen can be counted on to keep us guessing. But when it comes to the hidden chemical world of cells, scientists need no longer wonder.

Inspired by this same thrill, researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology developed an innovative way to ‘see’ the fine structure and chemical composition of a human cell with unmatched clarity and precision. Their technique, which appeared in PNAS earlier this week, takes a creative — and counterintuitive — approach to signal detection.

“Biology is one of the most exciting sciences of our time because there has always been a divide between what we can see and what we cannot see,” said Rohit Bhargava, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the study.

As the smallest functional units in our bodies, cells have long commanded the attention of researchers interested in determining what they’re made of and where each element resides. Together, the “what” and the “where” form an all-purpose cellular blueprint that can be used to study biology, chemistry, materials, and more.

Before this study, obtaining a high-resolution copy of that blueprint ranked among the impossible.

“Now, we can see inside cells in a much finer resolution and with significant chemical detail more easily than ever,” Bhargava said. “This work opens a range of possibilities, including a new way to examine the combined chemical and physical aspects that govern human development and disease.”

The researchers’ work builds on prior strides in the field of chemical imaging.

Whereas optical microscopy uses visible light to illuminate surface-level features like color and structure, chemical imaging uses invisible infrared light to reveal a sample’s inner workings.

When a cell is exposed to IR light, its temperature rises, and it expands. We know from night vision goggles that no two objects absorb IR wavelengths in exactly the same way; comparing a poodle to a park bench is evidence enough that warmer objects emit stronger IR signatures than cooler ones. The same is true inside a cell, where each type of molecule absorbs IR light at a subtly different wavelength and emits a unique chemical signature. Examining the absorption patterns — a method called spectroscopy — allows researchers to pinpoint the whereabouts of each.

Unlike night vision goggles, the researchers do not analyze the absorption patterns as a color spectrum. Instead, they interpret the IR waves with a signal detector: a minute beam fastened to the microscope on one end, with a fine tip that scrapes the cell’s surface like the nanoscale needle of a record player.

Innovations in spectroscopy over the last decade have focused on steadily increasing the strength of the initial IR wavelengths.

“It’s an intuitive approach because we are conditioned to think of larger signals as being better. We think, ‘The stronger the IR signal, the higher a cell’s temperature becomes, the more it expands, and the easier it will be to see,'” Bhargava said.

A sizeable setback is hidden within this approach. As the cell expands, the motion of the signal detector becomes more exaggerated and generates “noise”: so-called static that impedes accurate chemical measurements.

“It’s like turning up the dial on a staticky radio station — the music gets louder, but so does the static,” said Seth Kenkel, a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Bhargava’s lab and the study’s lead author.

In other words, no matter how powerful the IR signal became, the quality of the chemical imaging could not advance.

“We needed a solution to stop the noise from increasing alongside the signal,” Kenkel said.

The researchers’ remedy to noisy cellular imaging works by divorcing the IR signal from the detector’s movement, allowing for amplification without the added noise.

Instead of focusing their energies on the strongest possible IR signal, the researchers began by experimenting with the smallest signal they could manage, ensuring that they could effectively implement their solution before upping the strength. Though “counterintuitive,” according to Kenkel, starting small allowed the researchers to honor a decade of spectroscopy research and lay critical groundwork for the future of the field.

Bhargava likens the approach to a road trip gone awry.

“Imagine that spectroscopy researchers were in a car, headed to the Grand Canyon. Of course, everyone would think that the faster the car moves, the faster they’ll reach the destination. But the problem is that the car is headed east from Urbana,” he said.

Increasing the hypothetical car’s speed is analogous to strengthening the IR signal.

“We pulled over, looked at a map, and pointed the car in the correct direction. Now, the increased speed — the increased signal — can effectively move the field forward.”

The researchers’ “map” enables high-resolution chemical and structural imaging of cells at the nanoscale — a scale 100,000 times smaller than a strand of hair. Notably, this technique is free of fluorescent labeling, or dyeing molecules to increase their visibility under a microscope.

While the facilities in Beckman’s Microscopy Suite were critical to the study’s experimental stage, the idea itself arose not from sophisticated technology, but from a culture that supported curiosity, unconventional problem-solving, and diverse perspectives.

“This is why the Beckman Institute is an amazing place,” Bhargava said. “This project needed ideas from spectroscopy, from mechanical engineering, from signal processing, and of course biology. You can’t combine these fields seamlessly anywhere other than Beckman. This study is a classic example of Beckman’s blend of interdisciplinary science at the cutting edge of advanced science and technology.”

Research reported in this press release was supported in part by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers T32EB019944 and R01EB009745, as well as the National Science Foundation under award number 2153032. This content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

His latest project created an algorithm that can predict and measure the incompleteness of electronic health records — in everything from your lab results to disease diagnoses, medical history to prescription records.

Missing information in the electronic health records (EHR) that hospitals and doctor’s offices keep is like a leaking pipe, he says. If you don’t know where the leak is, you can’t fix it, and soon the house can flood. The same dangers can happen in healthcare. A recent study by Gurupur revealed that a critical percent of digital health records contained missing information.

His algorithm uses mathematics and computer science to answer, “Where is the water leaking?” he says. The analysis performed by Gurupur and his team found that the level of incompleteness per year varies and there is not a pattern of where missing data happens. His algorithm helps identify attributes that have a higher tendency to be incomplete — the areas of the water pipe that are more vulnerable and can break more frequently.

His previous studies have documented that the biggest reasons for missing health information are communication and education. Communication between patients and their providers isn’t always clear — especially if the patient is interacting with a healthcare professional who does not speak their native language. Cultural barriers may keep patients from sharing important information with their providers. Digital technology also creates its own challenges. Providers may not fill out electronic records until day’s end — and forget what the patient said or not have it accurately in their notes. Hospitals and clinics switch electronic health record systems, requiring extensive new retraining which results in a learning curve for providers. Some healthcare workers, especially those who did not grow up with technology, may not be adept at using EHRs.

“Missing health information can sometimes be as simple as a person who isn’t sure what button to push in the new system,” Gurupur says.

Ayan Nasir ’20MD is finishing his internal medicine residency at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. As a UCF undergraduate and medical student, Nasir did research with Gurupur on health informatics. Before entering the medical field, Nasir worked in finance and says he was amazed at the quality control and data accuracy differences difference between banking and health records. Those discrepancies inspired him to make improving health informatics the subject of his two-year Focused Inquiry and Research Experience (FIRE) project at the medical school, where Gurupur served as his research mentor.

His residency has reinforced his passion for improving health informatics.

“When I see a patient, what I put in the electronic health record reflects one episode of their care,” he says. “But that information is going to guide every future medical decision. That’s why electronic records must be complete.”

Gurupur gave this example to highlight the impact of incomplete health data. A patient with limited English skills visits a new provider who does not speak the patient’s native language. With their communication challenges and the rush of a clinical practice, the patient forgets to mention that they are on a particular drug for Type 2 diabetes. There is nothing about previous diabetes treatment in the electronic health record so the provider prescribes a standard drug in a standard dosage for that condition. Now the patient can be receiving twice the recommended amount.

Medicine is looking at ways to use more big data — artificial intelligence — to diagnose and provide more evidence-based treatments. But that computer analysis relies on complete patient data, Nasir points out.

“When it comes to medicine, you’re only as good as your data,” he says.

Gurupur says developing reliable algorithms for missing data is also important to health systems. Recent studies have shown that hospitals can lose an average of $5 to $8 million a year because of missing data that impacts their insurance reimbursement rates. With the algorithm, hospital leaders can learn exactly where missing information is coming from — a particular floor, department, service — and address it.

Both Gurupur and Nasir believe health informatics is at a critical tipping point. Health systems rely on electronic records but must develop ways to ensure all the information they collect is complete and accurate. Nasir is getting his master’s in health informatics at Northwestern University and points out that such graduate medical training programs show the increasing importance of using data to better care for patients. He believes future health technology will improve care even more — computers will translate conversations between providers and patients directly into the electronic record, reducing the need for providers to input data manually after each visit, for example.

“We are just at the beginning of this transformation,” he says. “It’s exciting to be part of this work.”

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Materials provided by University of Central Florida. Original written by Wendy Sarubbi. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.