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Intelligence, the Icahn

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School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. We

1:09

find a way. This is

1:10

the Science Podcast for November 10,

1:13

2023. I'm Sarah Crespi. First up on this week's

1:15

show, we hear from

1:17

freelance journalist Olga Dobrovitova

1:19

about what's happening with Russian

1:22

science since the start of the Ukraine

1:24

war over 500 days ago, and why so many researchers

1:26

have left Russia. Next,

1:30

implanted electronics. Researcher Jacob Robinson talks about

1:32

how the use of Next,

1:36

implanted electronics. Researcher

1:38

Jacob Robinson talks about how to improve

1:40

electronics for inside the body.

1:43

From harvesting power to transmitting

1:45

data, there's a lot to do.

1:52

Now we're going to hear from our freelancer,

1:55

Olga Dobrovitova, about the dilemma Russian

1:57

scientists face.

1:59

Whether to stay in the country or leave

2:01

more than 500 days after the start of

2:03

the war in Ukraine. Did

2:10

you leave Russia because

2:12

of what was going on with the war in Ukraine?

2:15

Yeah, so I was in

2:17

the middle of changing jobs in February

2:21

and I was going to join an international

2:23

project and it became really clear, really

2:25

fast that that's not going to work. So

2:28

yeah, pretty much after the war started

2:30

on February 24th, I started

2:33

working with my editors and colleagues

2:35

at Science to help with

2:37

the coverage of the war itself, the

2:39

events in Ukraine, but also the protests

2:42

from Russian scientists

2:43

who were among the first groups to

2:45

actually

2:45

show their support for Ukraine

2:48

and the first to protest against the

2:50

war with an open letter that very

2:52

quickly went into the thousands

2:55

of people who have signed it.

2:56

You're now in France and you're still

2:58

covering Russia, Ukraine, all

3:00

kinds of issues and a lot has

3:03

changed in Russia since February 2022

3:05

for

3:05

the people that live there, for the research community.

3:08

We're seeing suspended collaborations,

3:09

we see sanctions, blocks

3:12

on Russian banks. The business of

3:14

doing science has become much

3:16

harder. So you wrote about

3:18

the state of Russian science 500

3:21

days, a little bit more than 500 days after

3:23

the country's invasion of Ukraine.

3:26

It's obviously not the biggest problem for the country, but

3:29

it's still a big problem for scientists.

3:31

I think it's important to preface this whole

3:34

discussion with just saying that a lot

3:36

of scientists actually think that the

3:38

state of Russian science amid the war should

3:40

be the least of their concerns. They want the war

3:43

to end, they're protesting that. They

3:45

worry about their colleagues and friends

3:47

in Ukraine and elsewhere. So

3:49

I've actually heard this several times over

3:52

the course of my reporting, people were sort

3:54

of, well, you know, we're not really

3:56

focusing on this, but obviously

3:58

the war has

3:59

had a big impact on Russian

4:02

science across fields for the physical

4:04

sciences, for life sciences. It has

4:06

been mostly about

4:07

the impact of supplies, losing

4:10

access to collaborations.

4:12

Whereas for social sciences and humanities,

4:15

it's mostly damage inflicted by the Russian state,

4:17

by the repression and the persecution.

4:20

But I think the fundamental issue that

4:23

has emerged a little more than a year and

4:25

a half, I'd say, is the split in the community,

4:27

which is on the surface geographical.

4:30

A lot of scientists have left Russia, a

4:33

lot of younger and potentially

4:35

more interested in academic

4:37

mobility.

4:38

People like that have almost all

4:40

left. I'd say it's one of the

4:42

biggest groups to have left

4:44

Russia. But I think the split

4:47

goes a bit deeper than that. And I think

4:49

that this story overall is ultimately

4:51

about the choices that people

4:53

make, scientists make, whether

4:55

they want to stay or go elsewhere, whether

4:58

they want to continue their work.

5:00

And I think the division goes deeper

5:03

because it's really hard

5:06

to understand and to

5:08

actually, it's really hard to say

5:10

what should happen to Russian science, what

5:13

is happening to Russian science, right? So it's

5:15

not a question with a very, very straightforward

5:17

answer. What

5:18

are you seeing when you talk to researchers

5:21

that have

5:22

made the decision to leave? What are some of their

5:24

motivations? So for most Russian

5:26

scientists who left, I'd say the big

5:29

reason was the fundamental

5:31

disagreement with the state and they

5:33

could no longer tolerate

5:35

the government that is invading

5:37

another country, but also really

5:39

oppressing the citizens, right? Because most of

5:41

those scientists immediately went to protest

5:44

in the street and they were detained. One

5:46

of the first things the Russian government

5:49

did very early in the invasion

5:51

was they criminalized, and calling

5:53

it a war. So when I say

5:56

war in the story, that is actually illegal

5:58

in Russia. climate where

6:00

you want to live, where you want to work.

6:02

And actually a few people I've

6:05

talked to have had experience working

6:07

outside Russia. And some of them actually came

6:09

back to Russia

6:09

at some point over the last 20 years.

6:12

And now they're saying, well, I essentially

6:15

made a bet, right? I took the risk

6:17

of coming back to Russia, even

6:19

though I was concerned that the

6:22

political climate was soaring a bit, but

6:24

I still held out hope. But

6:26

now there's no hope. I just have to

6:28

leave. I think that's fundamentally,

6:30

that's the biggest reason. Any

6:32

concerns about being able to

6:34

do science in Russia, being able

6:37

to collaborate

6:37

with colleagues abroad, I think those

6:39

are all secondary fundamental

6:41

age states. It's the deep opposition to

6:43

what the government is doing. Yeah, you talked a

6:45

little bit about a comparison between the brain

6:47

drain in

6:48

the 90s when people left after

6:50

the collapse of the Soviet Union. But

6:52

that, again, the motivations are just so

6:54

much different now. Yeah, one of the people

6:57

on the story actually spells it out quite nicely

6:59

because he says that in the 90s people

7:01

went

7:03

sort of in search for a better life, they

7:05

went to other countries to find professional

7:08

success or just, you know, tolerable working

7:10

conditions

7:11

funding because that was the biggest problem

7:13

in the 90s.

7:14

There was no support from the state from the government.

7:17

But these days, people are running

7:20

from Russia, they're leaving Russia,

7:22

basically, to go wherever

7:25

they could. Most of these people have

7:27

landed in temporary positions.

7:29

They're not sure they will stay

7:32

where they are. So it's mostly

7:34

about actually leaving Russia

7:36

rather than going anywhere specifically. One

7:39

other important

7:40

difference between this wave of

7:42

brain drain and the one in the 90s is

7:45

Russian scientists nowadays, especially

7:47

the ones interested in leaving and

7:49

the ones who left

7:51

are much more integrated into

7:53

the global community. Most of

7:55

them, if not all, speak enough English

7:57

or other languages, they know how to publish.

8:00

international journals that makes

8:01

it much easier to move.

8:03

Do we know how many people, particularly

8:05

scientists, have left Russia? So

8:08

that is obviously the biggest question on everyone's

8:10

minds, right? How many scientists

8:12

have left the scale of this brain

8:14

train.

8:15

It's really hard to estimate because

8:18

it's a sensitive topic. Nobody in the Russian

8:20

government likes to talk about it. And

8:23

the scientists and policy experts

8:25

who do talk about it, sometimes they

8:27

tend to inflate it a bit, I'd say, for

8:29

their own purposes. There's no hard

8:31

data. But there are sort

8:34

of proxies that you could use

8:36

to get a sense of what

8:38

the scale might be. One of the proxies

8:41

is looking at open source software

8:43

developers. They're arguably more

8:46

mobile than scientists, but still,

8:48

I'd say maybe it's

8:49

on par with other highly

8:52

qualified professionals, according to the

8:54

analysis that we refer to

8:56

in the story, up to a third of open

8:58

source software developers have actually left Russia.

9:01

Another way to look at the potential

9:04

scale of the brain rate would be to look at the intention,

9:06

right? How many people want to leave Russia? And

9:09

there was an industry survey in 2022, which asked

9:11

scientists how the

9:12

war, how that

9:16

affected their intention to leave Russia. A

9:19

whole third of respondents in that, you

9:21

know, several thousand strong survey said

9:23

that either somewhat or strongly

9:26

increased their intention to leave.

9:28

And if you look at younger people

9:29

at scientists under 39,

9:31

that figure was slightly over 50 percent. That's

9:34

a different question, whether they can, even whether they

9:36

have left. But the intention, of course,

9:38

is still

9:39

very much there.

9:40

You also, for

9:41

the story, spoke with people who stayed

9:44

in Russia and continue to try to be

9:47

researchers, although I don't know how easy it is

9:49

these days. You know, what were some of the reasons

9:51

they said that they prefer

9:53

to stay or do they have to stay?

9:55

So, first of all, I should say that many

9:57

of those people actually either declined to be interviewed

10:00

or spoke to me anonymously

10:02

because you can get informed

10:05

on, you can get reported for activities

10:07

that disparage the Russian

10:10

state or

10:10

overload the Russian army. One

10:12

of the experts in the story talks

10:14

about these repressions,

10:16

these persecutions being

10:19

expressly random, right? So there's no way

10:21

of telling in advance whether

10:24

something will cause you trouble. I think that's

10:26

actually,

10:27

that must have been the reason why many of those people

10:29

declined to be interviewed. But the

10:31

ones that did agree spoke

10:34

mostly of the need to

10:36

stay to keep

10:38

teaching younger scientists, keep teaching

10:40

students good practices, ethical

10:43

ways of doing science, actually teaching

10:46

them good things. If everyone leaves,

10:48

there's a generational gap ahead

10:50

of us, I think, in training scientists.

10:53

Some of the people who stayed also

10:56

mentioned that it would

10:58

have been really hard for them to

11:00

leave the objects of their research,

11:02

right? So maybe if you're a mathematician,

11:04

you could probably grab your papers

11:07

and leave. But if you're studying tree

11:09

rings in Siberia, that's a little

11:11

harder to do. But I felt

11:13

that that was always secondary to concerns

11:17

over supporting younger generations, supporting

11:19

people who are just starting out in science.

11:22

Yeah, I mean, it's a country's heritage in

11:24

some ways,

11:25

like this dynasty of scientists training

11:27

one generation after the next. And

11:29

that was raised also in several conversations.

11:33

Nobody is really ready to say, you know,

11:35

we should just close it down.

11:38

We should leave Russia and forget about

11:40

it. People still think that it's important

11:43

that a country as big as Russia,

11:45

a nuclear power, we have

11:47

people who understand science, understand

11:50

how science works, who are able to

11:53

do environmental monitoring, infectious

11:55

disease monitoring, even if you're not concerned

11:57

about actual Russians.

12:00

understanding students and making

12:02

the most of it, you still

12:04

need something. I think that's

12:06

a more fundamental reason, right? You

12:08

don't want to just abandon the whole country

12:10

to

12:11

pseudoscience. And that also came up,

12:13

by the way, because there's a demand for

12:16

what's called sovereign science, the

12:18

science that reflects Russian interests,

12:21

there's also been a surge in

12:23

dubious claims, basically. Something

12:26

that seems to be pro-Russia

12:28

and anti-Western can get

12:30

a boost. In that sense, it's even

12:32

more important to have actual scientists who

12:35

know that climate change doesn't

12:37

go against

12:37

Russia's interests. It's not a conspiracy

12:40

theory against the government. Yeah,

12:42

as you point out,

12:43

access to the Arctic and what is happening

12:45

there is really important for

12:47

people who are trying to monitor climate

12:49

change, and that's getting harder and harder. Yeah,

12:52

and I think, especially in conversations, not

12:55

just with Russian scientists, but also with Western

12:57

scientists outside Russia,

12:59

this often comes up as the reason not

13:01

to abandon Russian science, not to cut

13:03

off old ties. We can't just

13:06

pretend half of the Arctic,

13:08

the Russian controls, does not exist. We

13:11

need that data, we need better information, and

13:13

we need to collaborate with Russians, right?

13:16

Because you can't really just access the Arctic

13:18

without Russian scientists. That's not really

13:20

how it works.

13:22

So I think when people discuss

13:24

the sanctions against Russian science,

13:27

how they should be strengthened

13:29

or whether they should be dropped, one

13:31

of the factors that certainly influences this

13:33

conversation is how close they feel

13:36

to these unique assets

13:38

that Russia has. I mean, you can

13:40

tell that physicists, maybe economists,

13:43

who are not that concerned, I guess, with

13:45

climate research, they're like, well, whatever, we won't

13:48

miss it, right? There's nothing to miss about Russian

13:50

science.

13:51

Whereas when you talk to climate researchers, they're

13:54

like, yeah, maybe not. Maybe that's

13:56

we can't cut Russia out of it. The

13:59

government is actually... pushing particular

14:01

collaborations, particular

14:02

international partners for research

14:04

now.

14:05

How is that working out, being selective

14:07

at that like government level for who

14:10

researchers should be working with?

14:11

That is the second part to the whole

14:14

like sovereign science narrative, that the

14:16

Western science turned against us,

14:19

but we have these great partners,

14:21

China, India, Iran,

14:24

countries outside the Western

14:27

science space that are really eager

14:30

to work with Russia,

14:31

the Russian science funders funding

14:33

agencies have boosted the

14:36

joint funding calls for these

14:38

projects. But I

14:40

say it's not that straightforward. It looks

14:42

very unique on paper,

14:44

but when you actually try to establish these collaborations,

14:48

some of those countries don't really have enough shared

14:50

interests with Russia topics that they

14:52

could work on. And for some of them, I mean,

14:54

for China, there's a lot of declared

14:57

interest. But if you look at the

14:59

recent wave of prosecutions

15:02

of Russian scientists for treason,

15:05

many of those cases are actually linked

15:07

to supposedly selling

15:10

state secrets to China.

15:12

I mean, to be pushing more collaboration

15:15

with China, actually, I can see this

15:17

in a very different light with those prosecutions

15:19

in mind. Yeah, it definitely would make

15:21

people hesitant to

15:23

try to collaborate if there's

15:25

this risk for

15:26

going on trial for treason. Of course, of

15:28

course.

15:29

So, you know, it's hard to make predictions

15:31

now about what is going to happen because

15:33

the conflict is still happening. The

15:35

government is still repressing the

15:38

speech of the scientists at state in the

15:40

country. But did anybody that you talked

15:42

to say, you know, I have a lot of hope,

15:44

or I think that we're going to

15:46

see things degrade further? When

15:48

I asked people what

15:50

their outlook

15:50

was for the next several

15:53

years, most of them, I think, if not

15:55

all of them actually started with, that really

15:57

depends on when the war ends. Right.

16:00

waiting for that, I'd say. But

16:02

beyond that, beyond just wanting

16:04

the war to end, well,

16:05

there's actually a very pertinent

16:08

Russian saying, on average, Russians

16:10

live pretty well.

16:12

Worse than last year, but definitely better than

16:14

next year. So I

16:16

think that was sort of the sentiment

16:19

behind many answers, right? People do not expect

16:21

anything to improve really soon. They

16:24

don't expect any recovery

16:27

from isolation to start until

16:29

well after the war is over.

16:31

That will take time.

16:32

But also, again, depending on the field,

16:34

people are really worried, especially

16:37

in social sciences,

16:38

that

16:39

the destructive processes

16:40

that mostly the Russian government is doing

16:43

for social sciences, for humanities,

16:46

again, it's not the sanctions that are doing the most

16:48

of the damage. It's actually the government.

16:50

And fundamentally, that's going to be harder

16:53

to recover from without

16:54

some drastic fundamental changes.

16:58

And people are worried that best

17:00

case scenario, we end up with a big diaspora

17:03

that is

17:03

hopefully going to return to

17:05

Russia at some point and find

17:07

colleagues who have stayed there and who actually

17:10

survived and are still being silenced.

17:13

And we

17:14

reunite the community again, I'd say. I

17:16

think that's the optimistic vision.

17:19

The longer this war goes on, obviously,

17:21

the harder

17:21

it is to actually

17:23

hold and declare any sort of hope

17:26

for this. So

17:27

is this hard to write about? I mean,

17:29

besides the fact that very few people

17:31

were willing to talk from inside of Russia, is it

17:34

a hard story to do?

17:36

It is. I think

17:38

right now, there's

17:40

understandably very little appetite

17:42

for context and nuance

17:44

around all things Russia.

17:46

Talking about Russian science

17:48

and the troubles that Russian science is

17:51

in,

17:51

can feel really inappropriate given what's

17:54

happening in Ukraine and

17:56

given the obvious

17:58

links between Russian science.

18:00

and the military-industrial complex and

18:02

the Russian state. All of that I think is

18:05

very clear to everyone

18:07

I've spoken to in this story, pretty

18:08

much everyone.

18:10

But I still thought it was important to

18:12

add

18:12

some nuance, some context

18:15

to this narrative that Russia's

18:17

just cut off and we don't

18:19

really know what's going on there. I think we still

18:22

do and I'm grateful

18:23

to people who actually agreed to talk to me under

18:25

their

18:26

names or anonymously. I think that was very

18:28

important for me to make

18:31

those voices heard as well. Thank you so

18:33

much, Olga, for talking with me. Thank you,

18:35

Sarah. Olga Dobrovidova is

18:37

a science journalist based in France.

18:39

You can find a link to the story we discussed at

18:42

science.org slash podcast. Stay

18:45

tuned for my next conversation with researcher

18:48

Jacob Robinson about improving

18:50

electronics that go inside the body. You

18:59

could think about the body as a series

19:01

of nested machines at

19:04

different scales. Cells as

19:06

tiny machines inside the machines

19:08

that are our tissues, that are organs, that

19:11

make our hormones or move us around,

19:14

inputs and outputs, chemical

19:16

gradients, electrical power. Of

19:18

course, it's way too complicated for humans

19:21

to make on purpose. And

19:23

our bodies, these machines, don't always work

19:25

as expected. Sometimes

19:28

we actually put real machines that are simpler

19:30

but helpful inside our biological

19:33

machines, our bodies. These are implants

19:35

that help us stimulate or regulate or

19:37

just report out what our body is

19:39

doing

19:40

so we can treat it better.

19:42

These machines can have their own power or

19:45

take advantage of some of the activity of our

19:47

cells or muscles. Now we

19:49

have Jacob Robinson. His colleagues

19:52

wrote a review about the future of

19:54

miniature bioelectronics

19:56

this week in science. Hi Jacob, welcome

19:58

to the Science Podcast.

19:59

Hey Sarah, great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah,

20:02

sure. I first think about

20:04

case

20:05

makers when I hear about implanted electronics.

20:08

What else is there out there now,

20:10

you know, that's implanted in people's bodies?

20:12

They're walking

20:13

around with a little tiny device somewhere

20:15

on them. Yeah. Lots of things. So you may

20:17

be familiar with continuous glucose monitors.

20:19

Oh yeah. Right. People with diabetes

20:22

want to be able to track their insulin or blood

20:24

sugar. That's one example. Cochlear

20:26

implants is another.

20:27

Yeah. So that helps with hearing and it

20:29

basically is a sensor and it stimulates

20:32

something further down the line. Yeah. It

20:34

stimulates the nerves in the inner ear

20:36

and the cochlea

20:37

for people who can't hear. Very

20:39

cool. There's lots of other examples. Cardiac

20:42

loop recorders, things that could monitor your

20:44

heart rate. There's basically

20:46

an expansion of different types of devices

20:49

that people are probably familiar with that we use

20:51

to stimulate and record activity

20:53

inside the body. Right. So there's kind of

20:55

an array of targets, but there's also

20:58

different modes they're operating and they could be stimulating.

21:00

They could be taking data. What

21:02

are some of the advantages to having

21:05

these onboard medical devices?

21:08

One of the real advantages to

21:10

having these implantable medical

21:12

devices is

21:13

their ability to be much

21:16

more specific

21:17

in the way that they interact with the body.

21:19

Then you can be with drugs. Right.

21:22

For example, I didn't mention deep

21:24

brain stimulation, but that deep brain stimulation is another

21:26

type of device and that stimulates the region

21:28

of the brain. That's very specific,

21:31

very difficult to target with the drug because drugs can

21:33

go everywhere in your body. But with an electronic

21:35

device, it can go directly to a target

21:37

that could be a nerve for chronic pain. It could

21:39

be a region of the brain in the case

21:41

of Parkinson's disease that results in the tremor.

21:45

Those targets we can interact with very

21:47

precisely in a spatial targeting. We can also

21:49

be very precise

21:50

and poorly or with time. You can turn them on

21:52

and off as you need them throughout the day

21:55

in ways that drugs are really difficult to regulate.

21:57

Your review kind of goes

21:58

over the.

21:59

various components of these devices

22:02

and how they can be improved

22:05

or what the barriers are to improvement. One

22:07

of the things that you talk about the most

22:09

is the energy source. When I think about

22:11

pacemakers, I think about batteries.

22:14

You have to actually replace the battery at a

22:16

pacemaker after a certain period of time. Not

22:18

ideal. Not ideal. You don't really want to do

22:21

multiple invasions into the body. How

22:23

else are they a limitation and the scale? Why

22:26

else are

22:26

they a problem for implanted

22:28

devices? It's not just the challenge

22:31

of having to replace the batteries, which you obviously

22:33

don't want. On swapping

22:36

a surgically implanted device every few years. The

22:38

other thing that batteries really

22:41

limit is the size. There's this trade-off.

22:43

It's like, I don't want to swap this battery

22:45

out every two years. I need

22:48

a bigger battery. Well, a bigger battery

22:50

is a bigger implant. If I

22:52

have that big implant, it can't necessarily

22:55

be at the location that I want to stimulate

22:57

or record. We can't fit an iPhone

22:59

everywhere inside of our body. Exactly.

23:03

Then you're like, okay, I got to put my iPhone, let's

23:05

say in the chest, and then I have to have a wire

23:08

going from that battery pack

23:10

to my brain or to my heart or wherever

23:12

it is I want to interact with. Now you have

23:15

wires connecting this battery

23:17

pack to someplace else.

23:19

Yeah, you get more stuff in your body. You

23:21

have more connections, places where things

23:23

can fail. I know I keep using the phone as

23:25

an example, but bear with me. It is this really

23:28

good example of miniaturization.

23:31

Smaller screens to a certain extent,

23:33

smaller batteries, more and more computing

23:36

power in a smaller size.

23:39

They're getting better at hiding in our pockets

23:41

and being more and more powerful. How

23:43

is that kind of miniaturization, particularly

23:46

with batteries, how has that

23:48

been translated into the implants that

23:50

we're talking about?

23:51

Some of the advantages that are making their way over are

23:54

lower power electronics, so maybe

23:56

you don't need as much energy from the battery,

23:58

and better batteries. So things that

24:01

are smaller but still have enough

24:03

energy to operate your device for a longer period of time.

24:06

There are maybe better

24:07

alternative ways

24:10

to deliver power to these

24:12

devices. And you go through these in

24:14

a lot of detail in the review.

24:17

And I really thought this was interesting. One

24:19

is harvesting energy from the body

24:21

in a number of different ways. Can you kind

24:23

of walk us through some of those options? Yeah. And

24:26

maybe taking a step back,

24:28

the idea of having a battery in

24:30

your entire device is great. And we're

24:32

trying to draw as much as we can from advances

24:35

to make these batteries smaller, to last longer. But at some

24:38

point,

24:39

the battery is so small that

24:41

the amount of energy that you have isn't

24:43

going to last you for an entire day. Yeah.

24:46

And at that point, it becomes kind of annoying to have to recharge

24:48

something multiple times a day. Yes. For

24:50

anybody who's ever had, I

24:52

don't know, a phone, it's true. Yes. Yeah.

24:56

I don't want to say, hold on, time out. I have to charge my phone three times a day.

24:58

You don't want that through your implanted device either.

25:01

So the focus of this review is to say, look, if

25:03

I wanted to really push the limit to make something

25:05

really tiny, that battery is not going to last me long enough.

25:08

So I have to get energy from somewhere else. And

25:10

maybe I could get energy from the body itself. We make energy. Yes.

25:14

Yeah. We're expending energy through

25:16

our movements, the heat of our body

25:18

is energy that we can maybe harvest.

25:21

And maybe we can use that energy instead

25:23

of a battery and devices could be made extremely

25:25

tiny.

25:25

Yeah. I mean, we do see this and

25:27

watch it now. Like you can charge your

25:29

watch by swinging your arm around. Isn't that

25:31

right? Exactly.

25:32

Kinematic energy can be harvested

25:34

for some of these devices as well. So we looked

25:36

at

25:37

all the advances and some of these advances aren't materials

25:39

advances. So

25:40

if I could have a material that does a better job

25:42

of harnessing that kinematic energy, then

25:45

I could support more advanced functions. If

25:48

that's a stimulation function or a sensing function,

25:50

I could power that just with the energy from the body itself,

25:53

thanks to advances in new materials. Right.

25:56

So materials that get energy from flexing,

25:59

like the flexing.

25:59

of your arms or to

26:02

find rapid movement that you have

26:04

in the beating of a heart that's a different type

26:06

of material that we might use to harvest that energy.

26:08

So these are all movements, they're movements

26:10

that are manifest in slightly different ways and they're different

26:12

materials that are better at capturing that energy

26:15

from the body. How about chemical

26:17

energy from the body?

26:18

We have chemical gradients. We have basically

26:21

little electric circuits of our own

26:24

inside of our bodies. Yeah, exactly right.

26:26

The acid in our gut can be used to

26:29

power devices, particularly a device you might imagine

26:31

swallowing, like a smart pill. There's a lot

26:34

of these opportunities for us to use the chemicals

26:36

in our bodies as kind of like their own

26:39

battery for a device that has no batteries

26:41

at all.

26:42

What if you can't get

26:43

all the power you need from a

26:45

small battery or from harvesting?

26:47

Can we talk about this process of beaming

26:50

energy into the

26:51

body wirelessly?

26:53

Ideally, I want to put something in my body.

26:56

No batteries and it's going to make me better because

26:58

it's going to stimulate and record and never have to recharge it again because

27:00

it's getting all the energy it needs from my body. The

27:03

problem with that idea is that when

27:05

we looked at the literature to see how

27:07

much energy we're able to harvest, it

27:09

doesn't support all of the functions that I

27:11

want to do. It's really hard to get enough

27:13

energy even for cardiac pacing, the

27:16

deep brain stimulation application. So I wanted

27:18

to measure the oxygen in one's

27:20

blood.

27:21

There are no examples in the literature that we could

27:24

find where we're able to harvest that much

27:26

energy from the body itself. So the mass

27:28

doesn't work out? There's not enough juice from the materials

27:31

that we have to harvest energy, at least not yet.

27:33

The idea is then to just send the power directly. No

27:35

battery needed, just

27:36

get it into the body as much as you

27:38

need, right? Yes. I want to

27:40

beam it

27:40

in and that way I don't have to have a battery inside.

27:43

That's great.

27:44

Safer. Size becomes less of an

27:45

issue. Oh yeah, make it super tiny

27:48

and ideally never have to replace it because

27:50

there's no battery that runs out. Okay, so

27:52

the concern here, which you raised in your review, is

27:55

beaming energy into the body could

27:57

cook something, could cook the tissue.

28:00

up uncomfortably or do damage.

28:02

So how do you get around that

28:04

problem if you want to move energy into the body

28:06

without harming it?

28:08

This is where we can look to materials yet again.

28:10

So we can find materials that are more efficient

28:13

at capturing that energy,

28:14

and then we don't have to turn up that energy

28:16

beam so high. The other thing we can

28:18

do is you can find materials that absorb

28:21

different types of energy. So magnetic

28:23

fields are a really good example of this. In a

28:25

magnetic field, you can go to an MRI machine,

28:28

you get magnetic fields to go through your body, it's very safe,

28:30

and we're discovering that there are materials

28:33

that can efficiently harvest energy

28:35

from those magnetic fields.

28:36

Ultrasound is another example. If

28:38

you use ultrasound for diagnostics,

28:40

there's a new class of devices

28:42

that are using ultrasound to capture

28:45

energy from those ultrasound waves.

28:47

One last

28:48

consideration for these devices,

28:51

we also need to talk about how to

28:53

get data into them

28:55

and out of them. So we don't want to have

28:58

big hard drives in there, we don't want

29:00

to have to plug people into things, how

29:02

are we going to link these things so

29:04

that we can get that

29:05

sensor information or give the

29:08

device commands? Yeah, that was the last

29:10

piece that we looked at.

29:11

We have similar considerations, right? If I want to

29:13

beam

29:13

energy in the body, it has to be safe.

29:16

I also want to be able to send data

29:18

using that same form of energy.

29:20

At the same time, I want to be able to get data back.

29:23

One thing we are always trying to fight against

29:25

is the energy that's being consumed by that device.

29:28

If I want to make it tiny, I want to be able to transmit

29:31

data without consuming a lot of energy

29:33

from my implant. And what we've found in the

29:36

literature that we described in this review

29:38

is that there's a variety of ways to use materials

29:41

again, and these materials reflect

29:43

energy back. It's called backscatter.

29:45

And if I can get materials that reflect back

29:47

ultrasound, reflect back magnetic

29:49

fields, reflect back electromagnetic

29:52

waves,

29:53

then I can communicate efficiently

29:55

with these implants without using

29:57

up a lot of energy on the implanted device.

29:59

device itself. So you supply the energy when

30:02

you're going to get the messages. Yeah.

30:04

The way that I think about a lot of these backscatter communication

30:07

standards are kind of like a tuning

30:09

fork. If I want to

30:12

get information from someone who's holding

30:14

a tuning fork, I just need a way to

30:16

bang on it. So if I have a hammer, I could bang

30:18

on that tuning fork and I can listen to

30:20

the way that that tuning fork rings down

30:23

the tone.

30:24

And me holding that tuning fork,

30:26

I can put my finger on it to keep it from ringing down or

30:28

I can leave my finger off and let it ring down

30:30

for a long period of time.

30:32

And so as someone holding the tuning fork, I can

30:34

expend very, very little energy just putting

30:36

my finger on or off that tuning fork. And

30:38

the person holding the hammer, they're using all that

30:40

energy to bang on that fork. And

30:43

that's what we're trying to do here. That external device

30:46

that's providing the power is also banging on that

30:48

tuning fork. So we don't have to have any energy

30:51

or very little energy consumed on that device

30:53

in order to transmit data back. That's

30:55

something that's been really powerful to open up these miniature

30:57

devices that are smart and talk

31:00

to those external devices. Putting this all

31:02

together, you kind of have explored

31:04

the limitations of what we have now

31:06

and some future directions for improvements and

31:08

the different components

31:10

of biomedical devices like this. Looking

31:13

way out into the future, things are improved,

31:15

they're refined. What kinds of applications

31:17

do you

31:17

see in the future for bioelectronics?

31:20

Yeah, I love to think about where we're heading with this.

31:23

The world I'd like to imagine is one where there's a

31:26

mesh network inside the body, kind

31:28

of like at home I have my wireless network

31:30

and I can walk anyplace in my house and I can

31:33

connect to the internet. And the body, I think

31:35

we have that similar type of opportunity where we can

31:37

have tiny devices that can measure

31:40

blood oxygenation, blood pressure,

31:42

heart rate, glucose,

31:45

neural activity. All of this can be

31:47

connected into a system that can

31:49

provide therapy in

31:51

ways that adapt to your needs. For

31:54

example, if you're seated, your

31:56

blood pressure doesn't need to be as high as

31:58

maybe when you're standing. And so we can regulate

32:01

the heart, we can regulate blood vessels

32:03

relative to

32:03

your needs and adapt with you as

32:06

you go throughout your day.

32:07

You're collecting all the baseline data

32:09

and then using that to decide

32:12

when assists

32:12

are necessary. We think of it as like

32:14

a cruise control, but for your physiological

32:17

processes. It adapts, you know, as you're going

32:19

throughout the day, if I need more stimulation, it automatically

32:22

can increase that level of therapeutic

32:24

stimulation or decrease that level of

32:26

therapeutic stimulation without even having to think

32:28

about it.

32:29

Thank you so much, Jacob. Well, thank you, Sarah. It

32:31

was a real pleasure to chat with you.

32:32

Jacob Robinson is a professor in the Department

32:35

of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice

32:37

University.

32:38

You can find a link to the review we discussed at

32:40

science.org slash podcast.

32:43

And that concludes this edition of the Science

32:46

Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions,

32:49

write to us at sciencepodcast at

32:51

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find us on the podcasting

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or you can listen to the show on our website,

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science.org slash podcast.

33:03

This show was edited by me, Sarah Crespi,

33:05

Megan Cantwell, and Kevin McLean with

33:08

production help from Podigy.

33:10

Jeffrey Cook composed the music on

33:12

behalf of Science and its publisher, AAAS. Thanks

33:16

for joining us.