New Species, Robot Dresser and Why does Time Fly as we Age?

March 7

This week we discover some new species that have been living off the coast of Chile. We investigate a robot dresser that can help people in need to dress and we find out how gold can easily be recovered from used electronics. Finally we try and answer the question, Why does time fly as we age?

Bizarre New Species

There is so much that we don’t know about what actually lives in the oceans. We are finding new exotic species regularly. An international team has recently found more than 100 new species during a mission exploring seamounts off the coast of Chile.

Seamounts are large underwater mountains usually formed by volcanic activity. They are found all over the earth. The seamounts form a critical habitat for a huge range of creatures ranging from coral, mollusks, crustaceans and fish to marine mammals. The newly explored underwater mountain chain runs from Chile to Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

Roughly 20,000 square miles of seafloor were mapped and four new seamounts were discovered. An underwater robot that can dive to 14,000 feet was used to collect data. Each seamount hosted an individual and distinct ecosystem.

More work needs to be done to confirm that the animals are new species however it is clear that there are a lot more species under the sea that we know about.

Robot Dresser

A team at the University of York has developed a robot that can help people to dress each day. This includes the elderly that are unable to fully dress themselves. The robot is able to mimic the two handed movements of care workers as they dress individuals.

Previous attempts at dresser robots have only used one robotic arm. The team’s research found that this approach was uncomfortable for most people. Inspired by their discussions with carers on how they helped people to dress they developed a two arm robot dresser that is better able to mimic the actions of the carer.

The robot learnt how to dress individuals by observing carers dressing real people. An AI algorithm then allowed the robot to mimic the movements required. This included how to move the hands and the angles required. The robot can be stopped by the gentle touch of a human hand when there is a need for human intervention.

Using the robot for practical tasks such as dressing frees up the health care worker to concentrate more on providing companionship and observing the general wellbeing of the individual in their care. To date the robot has only been tested in the laboratory. The next step is for it to be trialled in aged care settings.

Recovering Gold from Electronics

Electronic waste contains a lot of valuable materials. Recovering the gold from electronics is currently expensive, use toxic materials and is energy intensive. However with rising prices gold recovery is becoming more attractive.

A team from the Department of Health Sciences in Zurich have developed an efficient and cost effective way to recover the gold using a sponge made from a protein matrix. The team denatured whey proteins under acidic conditions and high temperatures into protein nanofibrils in a gel. The gel was then dried creating the sponge.

Using this sponge the team was able to recover god from 20 old computer motherboards. The metal parts of the motherboards were dissolved in acid to ionize the metals. The sponge was placed in the metal ion solution, the gold ions adhered to the protein fibers more efficiently than other metal ions. The sponge is then heated which reduced the gold ions into flakes which were melted into a gold nugget. The nuggets were 91% gold (equivalent to 22 carats) and 9% copper.

Credit Advanced Materials

The technology is economically viable. The materials and energy cost is 50 times lower than the current value of the gold recovered. The researchers are now developing the process for the commercial market whilst further refining the process to enable recovery from other possible waste sources.

Why does Time Fly as we Age?

This is not a scientific breakthrough rather this story comes from a blog post by Paras Chopra. I found the post fascinating so thought that many of you might like to read a short summary of it as well. After all, no matter how old we are, we are all aging. You can read the full blog post here.

Chopra argues that the brain is a prediction device. Evolution has shaped it to construct a model of the world so that we get a survival and reproductive edge. This is how it becomes an efficient storage device. Our brain is obsessed with predicting how things are going to happen. If we catch a ball in flight our brain has looked at the path of the ball and predicted where the ball will be and it then instructs our hand to go to that place and catch the ball. Some of us are better predictors than others.

The brain is also efficient. It will only pay attention to things that are new and surprising. When we were children, everything was new so our brains created a lot of memories. As we age the brain slows down on creating memories for things we have seen before. Surprises become a patch on an old memory rather than a newly laid memory. As life starts repeating itself, the memories become fewer and courser. We become more efficient the older we get.

The more predictable our days the shorter they will feel. Predicability impacts the perception of time now and for the future.

So how do we slow down time. As we age we avoid exploring and taking risks. We fall into routines and repeat. We exploit the world that we know. The key to changing this is to travel mentally or physically to new places. As soon as we figure out the new place we will make a predictive model and time will speed up again.

The key therefore is to continually challenge yourself and do something different. Learn a language or instrument. Start to paint, change your routine and daily activities. Maybe start writing a newsletter about the things on your mind.

Don’t get me wrong. Predictably is efficient and we all need some of that in our lives. However if you want to slow your experience of time down once in a while, do something completely different. It will create some new memories.

Paying it Forward

If you have a start-up or know of a start-up that has a product ready for market please let me know. I would be happy to have a look and feature the startup in this newsletter. Also if any startups need introductions please get in touch and I will help where I can.

If you have any questions or comments please comment below.

I would also appreciate it if you could forward this newsletter to anyone that you think might be interested.

Till next week.