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Ancient humans are said to have evolved to leave the trees, where our primate ancestors lived, in favour of open grassy savannahs – but we may have this idea wrong

As you know, there’s a Big Debate tonight between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. It’ll be broadcast on television on ABC, a non-cable channel. ABC says this: (note that times are Eastern times):

The ABC News debate, moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis, will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 10 at 9 p.m ET. A prime-time pre-debate special will air at 8 p.m. ET. It will air on ABC and stream on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu. Viewers can also stream the debate on the ABC app on a smartphone or tablet, on ABC.com and connected devices.

The debate will last an hour and a half. I may do a live post with readers reacting in real time, but I will refrain from giving any of my own take until the next day.

If you’re a PBS fan, there’s a bunch of broadcasting on PBS starting at 6 pm EDT with the PBS News Hour, and continuing through the debate (with, undoubtedly, some post-debate analysis).

A few comments and some related articles.

Although Harris has been notably silent about specific policy issues until now, and has sat for only one (softball interview), I now see that there’s a menu of policy positions on her website, which you can see here. You’d better believe that the Trump campaign will be scanning them for what they see as weak spots.  There are, of course, a gazillion ways Trump himselfcan be attacked, though, like Harris, he seems to have moderated some of his more extreme stands (e.g., on abortion) in a pragmatic bid for victory.

I’m not convinced that either candidate will tell the truth about what they really plan to do, as both now seem to be acting pragmatically: they both want to win, and both will say what they think will get them elected. Such is politics: you can’t govern unless you win.  That said, I think Harris is absolutely serious in wanting to pass a law that reinstates the provisions of Roe v Wade nationwide, and I support her on that. But unless both houses of Congress turn Democratic, she stands no chance. As for Trump, I have no idea what he’s absolutely serious about, which scares me.

But I don’t think that Trump will have the self-control that will gain him a victory in the debate. Still, a victory in the debate may not, unlike the fatal Trump/Biden debate, have much to do with how people vote come November.

What will happen tonight?  All I can predict with confidence is that it’s going to get nasty despite both candidates having moderated their tone and made noises about sticking to the issues. I don’t think Trump can control himself, and to the extent that Harris keeps her cool, she’ll come off looking better. But I hasten to add that Trump has always seemed impervious to how he “comes off,” and the support he’s enjoyed despite all the civil and criminal trials in his future support his statement that “”I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?. . . . It’s, like, incredible.”

As Tom Friedman notes in the NYT op-ed below (click headline to read, or find the article archived here). Harris has taken some positions in the past that could come back to haunt her should Trump bring them up in the debate. These include immigration and Title IX issues. As the Free Press reports in its daily news summary.

Even as Harris gets a little more specific in 2024, the promises she made in 2019 remain a headache. The latest unwelcome reminder of the progressive positions she took in the Democratic primary five years ago come courtesy of CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, who reports that during that race Harris told the ACLU she supports cutting ICE’s funding and providing gender transition surgery to detained migrants.

Further, she’s susceptible to her statement that her values haven’t changed but some of her positions have (e.g., fracking).  If I were a moderator, I’d ask her to explain that. She’s also not good when thinking on her feet, and, with the pressure of a deranged opponent coming down on her, she has to try hard to keep her cool.

I am not a fan of Friedman so much, but I think he’s pretty much correct in his article below:

An excerpt:

“Joe and I got a lot of things right, but we got some things wrong, too — and here is what I have learned.”

For my money, uttering those 23 words, or something like them, is the key for Kamala Harris to win Tuesday’s debate against Donald Trump — and the election.

Utter them, and she will hugely improve her chances to win more of the undecided voters in this tight race. Fail to utter them or continue to disguise her policy shifts with the incoherent statement she used in the CNN interview — that while her positions might have changed on fracking and immigration, “my values have not changed” — and she will struggle.

Madam V.P., if you say your positions have changed but your values haven’t, what does that even mean? And what should we expect from your presidency — your values or your actions? Our latest poll shows too many voters still don’t know.

It’s OK to say: “I learned a lot as vice president. I’m proud of our record of putting America on a sustainable path to a clean energy future. It will make us more secure and more prosperous. But I also see that we can’t get there overnight. For reasons of both economic security and national security, we need an all-of-the-above energy strategy right now. So you can trust that in a Harris presidency, America will continue to lead the world in exploiting our oil and gas advantages but we will do it in the cleanest way possible while making the transition as fast as possible.”

I’m not so sure that admitting she was wrong will “hugely improve her chances” to win over undecided voters, but if she doesn’t she’ll be in a tight place.

Will admitting she was wrong hurt her? Not to me, but perhaps to the American public, which may interpret it as a weak candidate flip-flopping on the issues.  Here’s one of the issues—from CNN—that she might want to back off on, especially given the fact that illegal immigration is now an important issue to many Americans (as is, to a lesser extent, “affirmative care”).

Click to read Kaczynski’s article mentioned above:

An excerpt from CNN:

As Kamala Harris pivots to the political center in her campaign for president, a 2019 questionnaire from a leading civil rights organization spotlights her past support for left-wing causes such as taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners.

In an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire then-Sen. Harris filled out as a candidate for president in 2020, she also expressed support for decriminalizing federal drug possession for personal use, and for sweeping reductions to Immigration and Custom Enforcement operations, including drastic cuts in ICE funding and an open-ended pledge to “end” immigration detention.

The questionnaire has received scant media attention and a spokesperson for the ACLU claimed it had remained live from 2019.

But the ACLU’s website upload and page source indicate the questionnaire was reposted last month after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. CNN was unable to find questionnaires filled out by other candidates from the 2020 campaign that the ACLU had reposted.

Harris has acknowledged that some of her stances have evolved over time but that she holds core beliefs that remain unshakable: “My values have not changed,” she said in an interview with CNN last month.

The ACLU questionnaire, which was sent  to all Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2020 presidential campaign, provides a clear record of Harris’ progressive stances. Some candidates did not respond to the questionnaire, including Joe Biden.  The ACLU later ran radio ads attacking Biden for not answering.

The ACLU also had volunteers question candidates at public town halls and later posted videos on their website of their responses.

During one town hall event in New Hampshire in April 2019, Harris was asked by a voter if she supports adding a “third gender” to federal identification cards.

“Sure,” Harris answered to a round of applause from the crowd. “I have my entire life and career been an ally and I see the issue of LGBTQ rights as a fundamental civil rights and human rights issue, period,” Harris said.

Here’s a graphic of that, again from CNN:

I have to say that her stand on this: giving federal funding for gender surgery for immigrants who entered the country illegally, is absurd.  And slashing ICE funding is not something most Americans want.  She’d better be ready to disavow these positions, because if Team Trump has any smarts, they’ll bring them up.

Perhaps most Americans will be watching the debate as a form of entertainment rather than a way to figure out how to vote. It’s not at all clear that there will be more debates, though, so this may be the only chance to see the candidates go mano a mano. All we know is the country is poised to go down two very divergent paths, and I find debate about that to be more anxiety-inducing than entertaining.

Anyway, these are just random thoughts, but I invite your random thoughts or predictions about the debate.  I’m sure people will have more to say tomorrow.

Three amazing recent asteroid finds show what’s possible in terms of astronomy online.

Practical astronomy is increasingly becoming an online affair. In 2023, we wrote about this trend, and highlighted how Russian observer and amateur astronomer Filipp Romanov used time on a remote observatory to successfully discover two asteroids, which he named 623826 Alekseyvarkin and 623827 Nikandrilyich after his great-grandfathers. Now, Filipp has repeated this feat and pushed the limit of what’s possible online with the discovery of a trio of asteroids, including a rare near-Earth asteroid discovery found using a remote system.

Universe Today caught up with Filipp to explain how he did it:

“I have been searching for asteroids in images from remote telescopes from time to time for almost two years, and I have discovered four asteroids that have received their names, but on August 26th, 2024, I made a great find—I found a near-Earth asteroid in the images obtained using the 0.51-meter f/6.8 remote telescope T59 located at the Siding Spring Observatory of the iTelescope network, which is visible in all eight (300 second exposure) photos of one of the fields of the sky.”

A Surreptitious Find

Timing and planning is crucial in the hunt for asteroids, as Filipp elaborates: “I reserved in advance the necessary time on this telescope (when the waning gibbous Moon did not illuminate the sky above this observatory, and when the Moon was still below the horizon) for imaging, calculated the celestial coordinates, and requested specifically for the searching of main-belt asteroids and photography of two areas of the sky near the near the ecliptic and in the opposition region.”

The region is crucial, as asteroids coming into opposition ‘opposite’ to the Sun as seen from Earth are also at their brightest. Also, the area in the constellation Pisces where asteroids are reaching this point in late August into September is also relatively vacant, and far from the densely packed plane of the Milky Way Galaxy. In the era of visual astronomy in the mid-19th century, more asteroids were discovered in September than any other month.

It was in the same constellation than Filipp made a surprise discovery.

“I found an asteroid with a fast movement. In the images, this astronomical object looked like lines, unlike star-shaped (point source) main-belt asteroids, and I thought that it might be a near-Earth asteroid.” This fast motion leaving trails in the images is a clue that the object is also closer to the Earth.

Still, Filipp had to be sure that the asteroid wasn’t a known space rock. “I checked that there were no matches with known astronomical objects from the Minor Planet Center (MPC) database and sent the data of my astronomic measurements to the NEO Confirmation Page (NEOCP) so that they appear there for the attention of astronomers around the world.”

Pinning Down an Asteroid Find

This stage is crucial, in order to confirm the discovery and refine the position and orbit of the asteroid… and the more observations the better. Bad weather over key sites or losing the asteroid in the Sun’s glare can mean a discovery can go missing for months, or even years. “I immediately wrote to a number of astronomers with a request to confirm this astronomical object, but some of the astronomers did not have clear weather for observations (or were) not online at the time. Only one amateur astronomer immediately responded.” Filipp then made a quick decision to use precious observing time to make a follow up observation, using an iTelescope in Chile. “As a result, we both managed to confirm this asteroid and each of us sent results of our astrometric measurements to the MPC.”

Automatic sky surveys have since picked up asteroid 2024 QS, including the Mount Lemmon Survey on September 3rd, and the ATLAS-HKO and -MLO surveys in Hawaii on September 5th.

Asteroid 2024 QS, captured September 1st, days before closest approach to the Earth. Credit: Filipp Romanov.

The discovery became known as 2024 QS, a 43-meter asteroid on a 1.8 year orbit around the Sun, passing 12.1 LD (lunar distances, or slightly less than 4.7 million kilometers) from the Earth yesterday on September 9th at 00:39 Universal Time (UT). This pass ejected the asteroid from the near-Earth vicinity. About 35,000 Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are known of though certainly, amateur astronomers finding one is rare.

…And Something More Asteroids 679996 (left) and 679999 (right). Credit: Filipp Romanov.

Two more recent discoveries were also made by Filipp:

The first was asteroid 2023 PS3, found on August 9th, 2023 using the the 2-meter Liverpool Telescope. This small (150-170 meter in diameter) asteroid is on a 2.56 year orbit. 2023 PS3 is a member of the Hungaria Group. Astronomers only know of about 30,000 Hungaria Group asteroids. This asteroid was later named 679996 Mariyafilippovna, after Filipp’s great-grandmother.

M.F. Romanova (left) and M.M. Varkina (right), the two great grandmothers of Filipp Romanov.

Mariya Filippovna Romanova (1919-1979) lived in Chugueka and worked as a secretary-typist and as a clerk. She was awarded the Veteran of Labour medal.

Next was asteroid 2023 SJ76, found on September 16th, 2023 using the T11 iTelescope located at the Utah Desert Remote Observatory located at Great Basin desert in Beryl Junction, Utah.

This main-belt asteroid is several hundred meters across, and has an orbital period of 3.57 years. It later received the name of 679999 Mariyavarkina after Filipp’s great-grandmother Mariya Maksimovna Varkina, who tragically died while pregnant in a bus accident in Primorsky Krai, Russia in 1962. She was Mordvin (by nationality), and from Sabanovo (near Penza, Russia).

Filipp Romanov at his laptop.

Congrats to Filipp on these amazing finds, and showing us all what’s possible, with a little dedication and persistence.

The post Amateur Astronomer Finds Additional Asteroids With Remote Telescopes appeared first on Universe Today.

When worker ants are exposed to a pathogenic fungus, they build nests that are more compartmentalised to reduce the risk of an epidemic

Researchers have designed and synthesized a new organic semiconductor for organic solar cells (OSCs). By adding specific side units to their structure, they achieved separation between the frontier molecular orbitals, leading to lower exciton binding energy and increased power conversion efficiency. This tuning of the design of an acceptor component is expected to increase the performance of OSCs leading to more effective large-scale photovoltaic systems and new devices.

Pure metal nanowires (NWs) are nanomaterials with distinctive properties that make them useful for various applications. However, their utilization in modern electronics has been limited by the lack of a mass-production method. Researchers have now succeeded in the mass growth of aluminum NWs. The underlying growth process could in principle be extended to other metals, removing the limitations to the mass production of NWs and ushering in a new era of nanotechnology.

Methane concentrations in Earth's atmosphere increased at record speed over the past five years. At least two-thirds of annual methane emissions now come from human activities, including fossil fuel use, agriculture, and landfills and other waste.

A research team developed a microbial strain that efficiently produces aromatic polyester using systems metabolic engineering.

Researchers have introduced a novel method for converting the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into ethanol, a sustainable fuel. This significant advancement could pave the way for more environmentally friendly and economically viable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Bioactive glasses, a filling material which can bond to tissue and improve the strength of bones and teeth, has been combined with gallium to create a potential treatment for bone cancer. Tests in labs have found that bioactive glasses doped with the metal have a 99 percent success rate of eliminating cancerous cells and can even regenerate diseased bones.

Researchers report on a new defect passivation strategy for improved power conversion efficiency and stability of perovskite solar cells.

A study has developed an innovative method that overcomes the limitations of traditional additive manufacturing (3D printing), significantly simplifying and accelerating the production of geometrically complex cellular ceramics. This groundbreaking approach has the potential to revolutionize the design and processing of multifarious ceramic materials, opening up new possibilities for new applications in energy, electronics, and biomedicine, including robotics, solar cells, sensors, battery electrodes, and bactericidal devices.

When cars, planes, ships or computers are built from a material that functions as both a battery and a load-bearing structure, the weight and energy consumption are radically reduced. A research group is now presenting an advance in so-called massless energy storage -- a structural battery that could halve the weight of a laptop, make the mobile phone as thin as a credit card or increase the driving range of an electric car by up to 70 percent on a single charge.

From migrating sauropods and semi-aquatic predators to doting parents, palaeontologists are finally uncovering the mysteries of the lifestyles of dinosaurs

As I’ve said many times, while over 100 American colleges and Universities have adopted a version of the University of Chicago’s policy of free speech, only a handful have adopted our complementary policy of institutional neutrality (“The Kalven Report”). That policy mandates that our University, its departments, and other “official” units, are forbidden from making statements espousing a specific ideology or taking moral or political stand—except when making such a statement directly supports the university’s mission of teaching, learning, and research. Institutional neutrality—which in our school also involves investment decisions—is designed to buttress freedom of expression: nobody feels that they would be punished if they went against some “official” political statement.

As I wrote in an earlier post announcing that Columbia University also has professed this policy (I’ll believe it when I see it there):

The only universities that have adopted Kalven-esque principles, besides us, number two: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Vanderbilt University. (Vanderbilt’s Chancellor, Daniel Diermeier, is a free-speech advocate who was Provost here before he moved south.)  Some professors at Northwestern University have urged adoption of institutional neutrality, but so far little seems to have happened.

(See Diermeier’s WSJ critique of Harvard’s lame attempt at institutional neutrality.)

So, including Chicago, we had four schools adopting a policy that should be universal.  But if you count Simon Fraser University near Vancouver, B.C. as “American” (well, it’s North American), now we have five.  Read the announcement from Simon Fraser’s President by clicking on the screenshot below.

A transcript (I’ve bolded the important stuff except for the title and subtitle, but some of the bolded stuff is troubling, at least to me):

Message from the President: the Role of Universities in Troubled Times

September 09, 2024

As president of SFU, I am often asked by students, faculty and staff to take a stance on partisan political matters and current events. These requests have increased greatly in the past year, during which this topic has been at the forefront of discussion on university campuses around the world. I want to share some thoughts on why I have come to the view that it is important for university administration not to take public positions on such matters.

Universities are comprised of thousands of students, faculty and staff who all hold unique opinions and views, informed by their scholarly work and lived experiences. I believe that universities need to be a place where people can freely engage in academic inquiry, share ideas, learn from each other, disagree constructively and peacefully protest. And I believe that my role as university president is to help facilitate an environment where people can have robust conversations, including on controversial topics.

In the past, I have made statements related to world events in an attempt to be responsive to issues our community is concerned with. However, I have come to understand that taking a public position on behalf of the university can have a chilling effect on the vigorous discussion and debate of students, faculty and staff. While these statements were intended to provide comfort to and express solidarity with members of the university community, their potential impact on open discussion runs contrary to the university’s purpose. I also recognize that there are many local, global and personal issues affecting community members at any given time, and issuing statements on some topics but not others can further contribute to feelings of exclusion.

If SFU is truly to be a place where people feel comfortable sharing their ideas and participating in meaningful dialogue, the university must be non-sectarian and non-political in principle. In order to facilitate this, I believe that the institution—and senior leadership as representatives of the institution—must refrain from taking public positions on topics unrelated to the business of the university, including partisan matters and world events.

Living by Our Values

Academic freedom, as enshrined in our collective agreements and underscored in What’s Next: The SFU Strategy, creates the conditions for scholars to freely examine, question, teach and learn within their area of study, provided that these actions are based on an honest search for knowledge. To truly live by our core values of academic freedom and critical thinking, we need to hold space for difficult and controversial conversations to take place responsibly and respectfully, as well as defending and protecting the human right to express views within the bounds of the law.

As outlined in What’s Next, we are also committed to embedding the values of equity and belonging in every decision and action. We have a collective responsibility to create a culture of inclusive excellence where all feel welcome, safe, accepted and appreciated. Taken together, academic freedom and inclusive excellence support each other and work together to create a vibrant academic community where everyone feels a sense of belonging.

One of the foundational practices of university life is to be exposed to different points of view, broaden our perspectives and have our beliefs and ideas challenged. This may be uncomfortable, but it is also an important part of being an engaged citizen. As we take on this work, it is important to remember that students, staff and faculty are accountable to SFU’s policies and codes of conduct. If violations of established codes of conduct, university policies or laws occur, we will follow the appropriate processes and procedures to address them.

In a time of increased polarization, we must preserve the vibrancy of our academic community while ensuring that difficult conversations are grounded in care and respect for each other. This is a challenging task, but I believe it is one we can accomplish, together. I want to assure you that senior leaders are committed to doing our part by promoting—not shutting down—healthy dialogue at SFU.

Joy Johnson
Pronouns: she, her, hers
President & Vice-Chancellor
Simon Fraser University

Now the “pronoun statement at the bottom undermines this statement just a tad, but on the whole Dr. Johnson (a researcher in “gender and health”) seems to understand the issues at play. But there is one bit of her message that seriously undermines her statement:

As outlined in What’s Next, we are also committed to embedding the values of equity and belonging in every decision and action. We have a collective responsibility to create a culture of inclusive excellence where all feel welcome, safe, accepted and appreciated.

This statement is indeed a debatable political assertion, because “equity” is not equal opportunity for everyone, which is not only the law but morally correct. Rather, “equity” is a policy of equal outcomes, and is premised on the debatable claim that a lack of equal outcomes must perforce reflect bias against an underrepresented group (e.g., “structural racism” or “structural sexism”). The University of Chicago would never adopt a policy calling for equity, but of course we do have a policy of equality of opportunity.  Our University would never assert that it tries to ensure “equity” because that is a debatable statement about ideology.

Further, ensuring that everyone feels “welcome, safe, accepted, and appreciated” may not be possible if there is true freedom of speech.  For that kind of speech almost invariably assures that, at least at some times, some students claim that they feel “unsafe” and “unwelcome”.  That, for example, was one reason that an art history professor at the private Hamline University in Minnesota was fired for showing images of old Islamic pictures in which Muhammed’s face was unveiled.  Showing those pictures (which some Muslims feel is disrespectful or even blasphemous) made some students feel “unsafe,” and that  “they didn’t belong.”  (The professor sued Hamline and, I think, got an other job.)

Finally, “inclusive excellence,” though it links to an explanation of its meaning, is really a slippery concept.  In many cases where students and groups differ in achievement, the words “inclusive” and “excellence” may not be compatible.

So this statement is a sort-of acceptance of Kalven, but shows some unsettling signs of wokeness. For the time being we’ll see what happens at Simon Fraser. It is a public university, but there’s no First Amendment in Canada.

The link was sent to my reader Mike, who is associated with Simon Fraser. Mike said this in an email:

I wanted to share some good news. My university president today publicly embraced institutional neutrality for the university and its senior leadership.  (See below).

We don’t have a real policy yet, we don’t know how far down the administrative structure this neutrality will extend, and I don’t know whether this or a different message was sent to our students at the same time. But I hope clarifying those things will be a next step. It’s a huge improvement over the past 5 years in which the president created a new vice-president-level DEI infrastructure and pursued other initiatives that have chilled free expression by choosing sides on controversial topics including Hamas terrorism. So although there is work to do this is good news and a good day for my university. The people most responsible for this positive development are the faculty leaders of our Heterodox Academy Campus Community at SFU. Our group has politely, publicly, and insistently urged our colleagues and administrators to back off from adopting public positions on policy or cultural issues on behalf of everyone at the university, and we have extolled the virtues of academic freedom of expression. We think that public campaign has borne its first fruit. I hope its effects will continue to be felt (a real policy, extended to students, and extended down to the level of department chairs).

Mike’s statement about the President setting up a DEI infrastructure is further unsettling. I hope this is good news for Simon Fraser, but, as a cynic, I found the President’s statement worrisome. The first sign that Dr. Johnson means what she says it that she has to dismantle or cut way back on the DEI business. For DEI itself, or at least the ideology behind its most common implementations, is itself ideologically debatable. Remember, the “E” stands for “equity.”

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss467_Matthew_Stewart_2024_09_10.mp3 Download MP3

Matthew Stewart is an independent philosopher and historian who has written extensively about the philosophical origins of the American republic, the history of philosophy, management theory, and the culture of inequality. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, among other publications. In recent years he has lived in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, and is currently based in London. He is the author of Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic and An Emancipation of the Mind: Radical Philosophy, the War over Slavery, and the Refounding of America.

Shermer and Stewart discuss:

• What does the phrase “The Law of Nature and Nature’s God” mean?
• What is heretical about the origins of the American Republic?
• Religion of the founders: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Jay, James Madison, Thomas Paine
• Ethan Allen and Thomas Young
• The Enlightenment influence on the Founding Fathers
• John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza
• Ancient Greek influences on the Founding Fathers
• Epicurus’s Dangerous Idea
• Lucretius’s “swerving” atoms
• Theism, Deism, Pantheism, Atheism
• Reason and empiricism
• Self-evident truths
• Morality and the origin of right and wrong
• Happiness and its pursuit
• The religion of freedom
• Enslaving other humans: what were these people thinking and feeling?
• Should they have known better?
• Racists or creatures of their time in which nearly everyone held such views?
• Monogenism vs. polygenism
• Abolitionism
• John Brown
• Frederick Douglass
• Theodore Parker
• Abraham Lincoln
• Civil War cause: slavery or states’ rights?
• Religious supporters of abolition: Quakers, William Wilberforce
• How did American slavery lead to civil war?
• Why did the war result in emancipation?

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

Five satellites due to launch this week could be brighter than most stars, and astronomers fear the growth of such constellations could have a catastrophic impact

By now we have all seen the impressive robot videos, such as the ones from Boston Dynamics, in which robots show incredible flexibility and agility. These are amazing, but I understand they are a bit like trick-shot videos – we are being shown the ones that worked, which may not represent a typical outcome. Current robot technology, however, is a bit like steam-punk – we are making the most out of an old technology, but that technology is inherently limiting.

The tech I am talking about is motor-driven actuators. An actuator is a device that converts energy into mechanical force, such a torque or displacement. This is a technology that is about 200 years old. While they get the job done, they have a couple of significant limitations. One is that they use a lot of energy, much of which is wasted as heat. This is important as we try to make battery-driven robots that are not tethered to a power cord. Dog-like and humanoid robots typically last 60-90 minutes on one charge. Current designs are also relatively hard, so that limits their interaction with the environment. They also depend heavily on sensors to read their environment.

By contrast we can think about biological systems. Muscles are much more energy efficient, are soft, can be incredibly precise, are silent, and contain some of their own feedback to augment control. Developing artificial robotic muscles that would perform similar to biological systems is now a goal of robotics research, but it is a very challenging problem to crack. Such a system would also need to contract slowly or quickly, and even produce bursts of speed (if, for example, you want your robot to jump). They would need to be able to produce a lot of power, enough for the robot to move itself and carry out whatever function it has. It would also need to be able to efficiently hold a position for long periods of times.

As a bonus, human muscles, for example, have stretch receptors in them which provide feedback to the control system which not only enhances control but allow for rapid reflexive movements. Biological systems are actually very sophisticated, which is not surprising given that they have had hundreds of millions of years to evolve. Reverse engineering such systems is no easy task.

Researchers, however, have made some preliminary progress. To start they need a material that can contract or stretch (or change its shape is some way) when a voltage is applied to it. That is the fundamental function of a muscle – they contract when activated by nerve stimulation. Muscles will also contract when an external electrical stimulus is applied to them. The musculoskeletal system is essentially a system of contracting muscles, arranged so as to move joints in different directions – the biceps flexes the elbow while the triceps extends the elbow, for example. But also there are often different muscles for the same action but with different positions of maximal mechanical advantage.

Designing such a system won’t be the challenge for engineers – thinking about such forces is bread and butter for engineers. The limiting factor right now is the material science, the artificial muscle itself. The other technological challenge (where we have already made good progress) is developing the various sensors that work together to provide all the necessary feedback. Humans, for example, use multiple sensory modalities at the same time. We use vision, of course, to see our environment and guild our movements. We also have proprioception which allows our brains to sense where our limbs are in three-dimensional space. This is why you can move accurately with your eyes closed (close your eyes and touch your nose – that’s proprioception). The vestibular system tells us how we are oriented with respect to gravity and senses any accelerating forces acting on us (such as spinning around). We also have tactile sensation so we can sense when we are touching something (our feet against the ground, or something in our hands). Our muscles can also sense when they are being stretched, which further helps coordinate movement.

Our brains process all of this information in real time, comparing them to each other to provide a unified sense of how we are oriented and how we are moving. Motion sickness, vertigo, and dizziness result when the various sensory streams do not all sync up, or if the brain is having difficulty processing it all.

Designing a robotic system that can do all this is challenging, but it starts with the artificial muscles. There are a few approaches in development. MIT researchers, for example, developed a fiber made of different materials with different thermal expansion properties. When stimulated the fiber coils, and therefore shortens. Muscles are made of many individual fibers that shorten when activated, so this could serve as the building block of a similar approach. The question is – will dozens or hundreds of these fibers work together to form a muscle?

More recently scientists have developed an electrohydraulic system – essentially bags of oil that contract or stretch when stimulated. Preliminary testing is promising, with a key feature that the system is energy efficient.

A recent Nature review breaks down the various artificial muscle systems by the environmental stimuli to which they respond: “According to different stimuli, artificial muscles can be categorized as thermoresponsive, electrically responsive, magnetically responsive, photoresponsive, chemically responsive, and pressure driven.” There are also multi-stimuli driven systems. They can also be categories by potential application. These include micro-robotic systems, where very tiny actuators are needed. Also there are biomedical applications, such as prosthetics and implantable devices. And of course there are robotic applications, but this is a huge category that includes many different sizes and designs of robots.

Most of this research has been essentially done in the last decade, so it is still very new. Interest and investment is increasing, however, as the potential of “microactuators” and “soft robotics” is better understood. This could potentially be a transformative technology, with lots of applications beyond just building more efficient and agile robots.

The post Artificial Robotic Muscles first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Four private astronauts are riding a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule further from Earth than any human since 1972, where they will attempt the first ever civilian spacewalk

Using images captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, researchers have created a cloud atlas of Mars, to better understand the climate of the Red Planet