Hitachi developing reactor that burns nuclear waste

Hitachi is developing a new reactor that burns transuranium elements, such as those produced by this advanced test reactor at Argonne National Laboratory (Image: Argonne National Laboratory/Wikimedia)

The problem with nuclear waste is that it needs to be stored for many thousands of years before it’s safe, which is a tricky commitment for even the most stable civilization. To make this situation a bit more manageable, Hitachi, in partnership with MIT, the University of Michigan, and the University of California, Berkeley, is working on new reactor designs that use transuranic nuclear waste for fuel; leaving behind only short-lived radioactive elements.

In popular imagination, nuclear waste is a wildly radioactive goo that glows like the back end of a lightning bug. But in real life, the real problem of nuclear waste isn't the "hot" stuff, but the mildly radioactive elements with atomic numbers greater than 92. That’s because highly radioactive elements have short half lives. That is, they burn themselves out very quickly – sometimes in a matter of minutes or even seconds.

On the other hand, mildly radioactive elements, such as plutonium, have half lives measured in tens of thousands or even millions of years. That makes storing them a very long-term problem, and is a particular difficulty in countries like the United States that don’t recycle transuranium elements by fuel reprocessing or fast-breeder reactors.

What Hitachi and its partners are trying to do is to find ways to design next-generation reactors that can use the low-level transuranium elements as fuel; leaving behind the high-level elements to quickly (relatively speaking) burn themselves out in no more than a century or so.

That’s not a particularly new idea. Some modular nuclear reactors already use nuclear waste as fuel. But what sets Hitachi apart is that it's looking into designs based on current boiling-water reactors that are known as Resource-renewable Boiling Water Reactors (RBWR) and are being developed by Hitachi and Hitachi GE Nuclear Energy Ltd.

The idea is to develop a new fuel element design using refined nuclear waste products along with uranium that can be installed in a standard boiling water reactor. This would not only make such reactors more economical to build, but would also use decades of safety and operations experience to achieve efficient nuclear fission in transuranium elements.

Hitachi says that it’s already carried out joint research with its partners starting in 2007 and is now concentrating on the next phase, which deals with more accurate analysis methods, as well as reactor safety and performance, with an eye toward practical application of what’s been learned.

Ceramic-studded carbon fiber fabric made to protect cyclists from road rash

Scott's ITD ProTec fabric incorporates strands of carbon fiber and a matrix of ceramic dots

If you frequently ride a bike on asphalt, then it’s entirely possible that sooner or later you’re going to wipe out and end up with some nasty skin abrasions. While such "road rash" can occur just about anywhere on the body, the shoulders and hips are particularly prone to it, as they’re the parts of the body upon which cyclists quite often end up sliding across the road. In order to help protect those areas, Scott Sports has announced a new line of cycling clothing made to protect against road rash ... with a little help from ceramics and carbon fiber.

Known as ITD ProTec, the material was designed in collaboration with Schoeller Textiles. It’s used in the shoulders of Scott’s RC ProTec jersey, and the hips of the RC ProTec bibshorts.

Instead of the usual nylon-based materials, ITD ProTec is woven from individual carbon fibers. Printed onto that fabric is a matrix of hard ceramic dots. This combination, according to Scott, results in "significantly better strength and higher abrasion resistance protecting the rider’s skin from heavy abrasion in case of crashes."

The carbon yarn reportedly has antibacterial qualities, to boot.

The jersey and shorts should be available next year, priced at US$199.95 and $229.95 respectively. You can see the material being tested in the video below.

Schoeller, incidentally, is concerned about more than just road rash. The company also recently designed bedsore-reducing sheets, and fabric used in a bulletproof suit.

AREND Project aims to ward off poachers with unmanned aerial vehicles

An unmanned aerial system being developed by AREND aims to deter rhino poaching in Africa's national parks (Photo: Shutterstock)

Like many a technology before it, the aerial drone is finding applications far beyond military circles, from burrito delivery to surveying broken bridges. One emerging area with huge potential is wildlife conservation, with drones delivering the ability to patrol and detect illegal poachers from the air. AREND (Aircraft for Rhino and Environmental Defense) is an international team of students currently developing an unmanned aerial system with the ultimate objective of combating poaching in Africa's national parks.

The AREND project is backed by Wildlife Protection Solutions (WPS), an international non-profit group concerned with the conservation of endangered species. The team consists of experts in aerospace, mechanical, electrical and software engineering stationed around the globe, from Helsinki to Colorado.

Following a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year, the team at AREND has proceeded to ramp up development of the system. The aircraft has a pusher configuration, which refers to the location of the propeller at the tail end of the fuselage, with communications antennas built into the wings and a gimbaled camera into the nose. The team says it will be capable of silently performing autonomous searches, capturing quality images throughout and then returning safely to a landing area.

The finished product will perform surveillance while distinguishing between people, large animals and other objects such as aircraft wreckage. The team envisions that squadrons of the craft will eventually be permanently ready for fast deployment, working in conjunction with a larger network of sensors to narrow the search area and record and alert authorities to the presence of poachers. This should help build pressure on poacher networks, who AREND says are only becoming more sophisticated and contend with an arrest rate of only 5 percent.

The team behind AREND isn't alone in floating aerial drones as a solution to illegal poaching. Back in January we looked an initiative from Californian company Airware which saw the testing of UAVs at the Oj Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Other drone-led conservation efforts to get off the ground this year include curtailing illegal fishing on Belize's barrier reef and hunting down invasive weeds from the air in Australia.

There's no word yet as to exactly when AREND's drones will take to the skies, but with demand for rhino horn on the rise in China and South East Asia, it won't be a moment too soon when they do.

Fourteen-year-old develops DIY tablet kits to educate and inspire

Taj Pabari (left) has developed DIY tablet kits designed as educational tools for kids

Less than one year ago, 14-year-old Taj Pabari was like any other kid, toiling away on a 3D printer at school (ok, maybe not quite like any other kid). An assignment required the class to sandwich two pieces of plastic together, but where some students simply saw air, Pabari envisioned the makings of a new kind of educational toy. Fast-forward some 10 months and he finds himself shortlisted for a Young Innovator of the Year award and pitching his product to potential investors. So what is it that has catapulted Pabari from the classroom to rubbing shoulders with industry leaders in the space of a year? Gizmag caught up with the Australian entrepreneur to learn all about his Lego-inspired tablet kits and how he plans on changing the face of IT education.

"I was in class and we had to stick two pieces of plastic casing together," explains Pabari. "So I thought, why not make this into a tablet? I pulled apart my Nexus, reworked the casing a little, cut out a display and built a computer in between."

Mix the possibilities of 3D-printing, a working knowledge of computer hardware and a dash of youthful optimism and you have the beginnings of MechTech Creations, Pabari's Brisbane-based tablet startup. Early iterations of its tablet kits were set to cost less than AUD$50 (US$46), among the cheapest available. However, a number of problems relating to personnel and suppliers prompted a change of direction, leading Pabari's team to pursue something a little more educational.

"Like most children, we loved Lego and that feeling of accomplishment when a creation comes together," says Pabari. "What we are trying to do is deliver that immediate satisfaction but with the long-lasting, educational benefits."

The ImaginTech Tablet Kit is designed to teach children aged four to 14 the inner workings of an Android tablet, and not just its physical components. After piecing together the tablet's hardware, visual programming software called ImaginCoder enables kids to experiment with building their own games and apps.

"What we are trying to do is inspire young innovation," says MecTech's COO, Ben Mandeville-Clarke, who is comparatively ancient at 19 years old. "We are creating what we hope will be the Lego of the 21st century."

Trading plastic bricks for processing chips and lithium batteries may sound like quite a leap, but anyone who has witnessed a child within arm's reach of a smartphone or tablet will know how captivating they can be. Harnessing this fascination while inspiring a little technological curiosity is the name of the game for Pabari, and he's confident his team have got the balance just right.

The ImaginTech Tablet Kit includes a 7-inch, 1024 x 600p multi-touch display and a 1.2 GHz Dual Core Processor. Equipped with 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage (extendable to 32 GB via MicroSD slot), the tablet is powered by a 2,500 mAh rechargeable lithium-polymer battery. Once these components have been fitted together, the final product measures 180 x 115 x 7 mm (7 x 4.5 x .27 in) and weighs 120 g (4.2 oz). It also sports a 0.3-megapixel front-facing and 2-megapixel rear-facing camera for good measure.

Unfortunately, Pabari didn't take out the Young Innovator of the Year award, but that won't be holding him back. The educational tablet kits will come in white, blue and pink and priced at AU$219 (around $US203), and will be available for pre-order on MechTech's site in the coming days, with shipping slated for December.

Scientists grow fully-functioning organ inside a mouse from scratch

Fibroblasts transplanted onto the mouse kidney form an organised and functional mini-thymus (right, kidney cells in pink, thymus cells in dark blue) (Image: University of Edinburgh)

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have grown a fully-functional organ inside a mouse; opening the possibility of one day manufacturing compatible organs for transplant without the need for donors. Using mouse embryo cells, scientists at the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine created an artificial thymus gland with the same structure and function as an adult organ.

Organ transplants are one of the great medical success stories of the 20th century. Where patients once faced disability or even death, they've been given new life in the form of donated organs to replace their damaged or diseased ones. The problem is that the supply of suitable donor organs has always been in a state of severe shortage. For decades, scientists have worked on producing lab-grown organs and even though such research has produced simple organs such as an artificial esophagus and "mini-kidneys," the creation of whole, complex, functional organs has remained out of reach – until now.

The University of Edinburgh team produced the artificial thymus gland using a technique that the scientists call "reprogramming." It involves fibroblast cells, which form connective tissue in animals, being removed from a mouse embryo and then treated with a protein called FOXN1, so that they changed into thymic epithelial cells (iTEC). These were then mixed with other thymus cells and transplanted into living mice by grafting them to the animal’s kidneys.

There, over a period of four weeks, the cells grew into a complete, functioning thymus gland that can produce T cells, which are an important part of the immune system. According to the scientists, the development goes beyond previous efforts because the thymus serves such a key part in protecting the body against infection and in eliminating cancer cells.

The team is currently working on refining the reprogramming technique in the hope of developing a practical medical procedure, such as creating bespoke thymus glands made to match a patient’s own T cells. They see the development of a lab-grown thymus as a way of treating cancer patients whose immune system has been compromised by radiation or chemotherapy, and children born with malfunctioning thymuses.

"Growing 'replacement parts' for damaged tissue could remove the need to transplant whole organs from one person to another, which has many drawbacks – not least a critical lack of donors," says Rob Buckle, Head of Regenerative Medicine at the MRC. "This research is an exciting early step towards that goal, and a convincing demonstration of the potential power of direct reprogramming technology, by which one cell type is converted to another. However, much more work will be needed before this process can be reproduced in the lab environment, and in a safe and tightly controlled way suitable for use in humans.”

The team’s results were published in Nature Cell Biology.

The video below discusses the lab-grown thymus project.