New Scientist - USA (2020-11-28)

28 November 2020 | New Scientist | 21

Drug discovery

Robotics Materials science

Microplastics are

found on Everest

Tiny bits of plastic

less than 5 millimetres

across have been found on

Mount Everest. A sample

taken near Everest base

camp in Nepal had 79

microplastic particles per

litre of snow while one at

8440 metres above sea

level was found to contain

12 pieces per litre (One

Earth, DOI: 10.1016/ j.

oneear.2020.10.020).

Island toads are

shrinking rapidly

Toads introduced to two

Indian Ocean islands from

South Africa 100 years ago

have shrunk quite quickly.

Female toads on Mauritius

are now up to 33.9 per cent

smaller than their South

African counterparts. Those

on Réunion are up to 25.9

per cent smaller. Males

shrank on Mauritius, but

not on Réunion (Biology

Letters, doi.org/fjq8).

Vegan diet linked to

more broken bones

People who don’t consume

animal products are more

at risk of breaking bones,

especially hips, according

to the largest study of this

issue. The overall risk was

quite small – about an extra

20 bones broken per 1000

people over 10 years (BMC

Medicine, doi.org/fjx6).

Potent antifungal

found in sea creature

A NEW antifungal compound that

works even on treatment-resistant

fungi has been discovered in the

microbiome of a marine animal.

Fungal infections affect

hundreds of millions of people

every year. “They’re particularly

a problem for people whose

immune system is suppressed,”

says David Andes at the University

of Wisconsin-Madison. The new

compound may help because it

is effective against many fungal

PICK-AND-PLACE robotic arms for

packing boxes in warehouses can

now work more than 350 times

faster because of a neural network

that predicts how quickly they can

safely transport items.

The pandemic has led to a surge

in online shopping. To address the

need for faster robots, Ken Goldberg

and Jeffrey Ichnowski, both at the

University of California, Berkeley,

have improved the speed of a robot

arm once it has grasped an object,

a bottleneck in automated packing.

Robots can move quickly, but not

always safely. The level of “jerk”, or

rapid change in acceleration, can

mean the difference between a

successfully delivered package and

one flung on the floor. Jerk can also

lead to wear and tear on the robotic

arm, reducing its working life.

Ichnowski and Goldberg and their

colleagues added a so-called neural

network to their robotic software.

They then let the network assess

the way the robotic arm performed

as it moved thousands of objects

over the course of several weeks.

Eventually, the network learned

to identify the best movement path

to take in any given scenario within

80 milliseconds. The pre-existing

software took 29 seconds to run

the calculation (Science Robotics,

doi.org/fjqq). Chris Stokel-Walker

pathogens that infect humans,

such as Candida auris.

Andes and his colleagues

found the compound – which

they named turbinmicin – inside

Micromonospora bacteria that live

within sea squirts. They made the

discovery by screening bacteria

isolated from a variety of marine

animals. The team searched for

bacteria with promising chemical

fingerprints and found that

turbinmicin targeted a fungal

protein called Sec14p, which no

other antifungal drugs target

(Science, doi.org/ghktcp).

Turbinmicin’s efficacy against

Spray can make

pills steerable

A GLUE-LIKE magnetic spray can

turn objects such as pills into mini

robots that can be controlled and

navigated through the body.

Magnetic fields can be used

to make sprayed objects roll, flip

and crawl. Yajing Shen at City

University of Hong Kong and

his team even used the spray to

animate an origami crane’s wings.

“Our spray can convert various

tiny objects to mini robots,” says

Shen. Objects can be flat or 3D and

only a thin coating of spray is

required, he says. Dubbed M-spray,

the substance contains polyvinyl

alcohol, gluten and iron particles.

The coating can be removed

using an oscillating magnetic

field to break it down into powder,

leaving the object intact, says

Shen. This could prove useful

for delivering pills to a particular

location. The powder can be

absorbed or excreted by the body.

The team tested this by

manoeuvring an M-spray-

coated drug to a target area in

an unconscious rabbit’s stomach

and disintegrating its coating

(Science Robotics, doi.org/ghkr7w).

The spray’s properties make it

a good candidate for biomedical

uses, says co-author Xinyu Wu at

Shenzhen Institute of Advanced

Technology, China. Ibrahim Sawal

C. auris is promising, given that

this contagious fungus appears

to have developed resistance to

almost all currently available

antifungal drugs.

One problem with antifungal

drugs is potential toxicity, because

of similarities between fungal and

human cells. Fungi and humans

are both eukaryotes – organisms

with complex cells containing a

nucleus and organelles that are

bound by membranes. “It’s hard

to kill them without hurting us,”

says Andes. So far, the compound

shows no sign of toxicity in

animals, he says. DL

Warehouse bot upgrade could

cope with e-shopping surge

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Really brief

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