[Popular STEM] Curating the Internet: STEM digest for June 19, 2021

Trials are beginning for a lozenge that's intended to whiten teeth and rebuild tooth enamel; Mobile phones took half-a century to achieve mainstream adoption; Scientists partially restore sight for a blind volunteer; Towards 3D printing of human organs, on Earth and in space; and Robots are still challenged by automation of household chores

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Fresh and Informative STEM Content: Welcome to my little corner of the social blockchain

1. Trials begin on lozenge that rebuilds tooth enamel - A team of researchers from the University of Washington are preparing a trial for a lozenge containing a genetically engineered peptide which is designed to be able to bind to and repair damaged tooth enamel. It is hoped that the technology will be safe for adults and children as well as being commercially viable. In addition to strengthening tooth enamel, it also produces a whitening effect that is brighter than current tooth whitening products. The whitening is especially useful because current whitening products are constructed from bleach, which weakens tooth enamel. Another common dental-hygiene chemical is fluoride, which protects tooth enamel but does not help it to regenerate. The product has already been tested on extracted teeth from rats, pigs, and humans. It has also been trialed on live rats. The goal for human trials is three-fold: (i) demonstrate efficacy; (ii) documentation; and (iii) bench-marking the whitening against existing treatments. -h/t Daniel Lemire


2. The first mobile phone call was 75 years ago – what it takes for technologies to go from breakthrough to big time - The first mobile phone service was demonstrated in 1946 and had 5,000 customers by 1948. The product took up most of a car's trunk. The first hand-held mobile phone was demonstrated in 1973, but half of the US wasn't using the product for another three decades. Key factors in the development and adoption of the product included miniaturization, military necessity, and the deployment of nationwide cellular networks. The article doesn't mention it, but I suspect that cost reductions associated with Moore's Law were also critical.
   
   

   Here is a video promoting a 1940s era mobile telephone system.
   

   1940s BELL TELEPHONE "MOBILE TELEPHONES" MOVIE EARLY CELL PHONE / MOBILE TELEPHONE SYSTEM 90884


3. Scientists Partially Restored a Blind Man’s Sight With New Gene Therapy - An article in nature medicine reported, last month, that a team of scientists has been successful at partially restoring a blind man's site. The accomplishment was achieved with a technique called, optogenetics, where the researchers added light-sensitive proteins to a patient's retina. The team acknowledges that this is just the beginning of what must be accomplished in order to restore full sight, since the patient only gained the ability to see a "ghostly" view of an object, and that was only possible when wearing special goggles. Nonetheless, this is believed to be a major milestone towards a cure for some inherited forms of blindness. Interestingly, optogenetics was first developed as a way for scientists to probe the functioning of the brain, and only later adapted to this purpose. -h/t Daniel Lemire


4. NASA inches closer to printing artificial organs in space - In America, an average of 17 people per day die while waiting for organ transplants. To combat this problem, NASA issued the Vascular Tissue Challenge six years ago for researchers to create "thick vascularized human tissue" with the capability to survive for thirty days. This month, two winners were announced. Both teams were from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and both used 3D printing techniques. The techniques differed, however, in the way that the vascularized tissues were formed. One team used spongy tissue structures and the other used tubular structures. According to team leader and institute director, Anthony Atala,

   the challenge represented a hallmark for bioengineering because the liver, the largest internal organ in the body, is one of the most complex tissues to replicate due to the high number of functions it performs.

   Although NASA's challenge was issued six years ago, the Wake Forest team had already been working on the problem, and the concept of tissue engineering has been around for more than two decades. In addition to its practical uses in saving the lives of people who need organ transplants, the techniques could also help future astronauts on deep-space missions. To that end, NASA is doing similar research in a Biofabrication Facility (BFF) on the International Space Station.


5. It’s (Still) Really Hard for Robots to Autonomously Do Household Chores - The good news is that robots are now able to do some simple household chores. The bad news is that it is still very hard. In the recent "ICRA 2021 Robot Household Marathon", researchers from the University of Bremen conducted an experiment where a PR2 robot was challenged to set up a table for a simple breakfast and cleanup at the end of the meal. The experiment is described like this:

   PR2’s job here is to prepare breakfast by bringing a bowl, a spoon, a cup, a milk box, and a box of cereal to a dining table. After breakfast, the PR2 then has to place washable objects into the dishwasher, put the cereal box back into its storage location, toss the milk box into the trash. The objects vary in shape and appearance, and the robot is only given symbolic descriptions of object locations (in the fridge, on the counter).

   The robot was able to accomplish its goals, but the entire, laborious, process took it about 90 minutes. The robot also experienced unrecoverable failures during two out of five trials. In general, the clean-up tasks were more of a challenge than the set-up tasks.
   
   Here is a video of the robot in action:
   

   Robot Household Marathon: EASE Generative Models of Everyday Activity

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