0:00

This is the Science Podcast for November

0:02

10th, 2023. I'm Sarah Crespi. First up on

0:04

this week's

0:05

show,

0:12

we hear from freelance journalist Olga

0:14

Dobrovitova about what's happening with

0:16

Russian science since the start

0:19

of the Ukraine war over 500 days

0:21

ago, and why so many researchers

0:23

have left Russia. Next, implanted

0:26

electronics. Researcher Jacob

0:28

Robinson talks about how to improve electronics

0:31

for inside the body, from harvesting

0:33

power to transmitting data. There's

0:35

a lot to do.

0:42

Now we're going to hear from our freelancer,

0:44

Olga Dobrovitova, about the dilemma Russian

0:47

scientists face,

0:48

whether to stay in the country or leave

0:50

more than after

0:53

the start of the war in Ukraine.

0:59

Did you leave Russia because

1:02

of what was going on with the war in Ukraine?

1:04

Yeah, so I was in

1:07

the middle of changing jobs in February,

1:10

and I was going to join

1:12

an international project and it became really clear

1:14

really fast that that's not going to work.

1:17

So yeah, pretty much after the war

1:19

started on February 24th, I

1:22

started working with my editors

1:24

and colleagues at Science to help

1:27

with the coverage of the war itself, the

1:29

events in Ukraine, but also the protests

1:32

from Russian scientists who were among the first

1:34

groups

1:34

to actually show their

1:36

support for Ukraine and the

1:38

first to protest against the war with an open

1:41

letter that very quickly went

1:43

into the thousands of people who have

1:45

signed it.

1:46

You're now in France and you're still

1:48

covering Russia, Ukraine, all

1:50

kinds of issues. And a lot has

1:52

changed in Russia since February 2022 for

1:55

the people that live there, for the research community. You

1:58

know, we're seeing suspended collaboration. We

2:00

see sanctions, blocks on Russian banks.

2:03

The business of doing science has become

2:05

much harder. So you wrote

2:08

about the state of Russian science 500

2:10

days, a little bit more than 500 days after

2:13

the country's invasion of Ukraine.

2:16

It's obviously not the

2:16

biggest problem for the country, but it's

2:18

still a big problem for scientists.

2:21

I think it's important to preface this whole

2:23

discussion with just saying that a lot

2:25

of scientists actually think that the

2:28

state of Russian science amid the war should

2:30

be the least of their concerns. They want the war

2:32

to end. They're protesting that. They

2:34

worry about their colleagues and friends

2:37

in Ukraine and elsewhere. So

2:39

I've actually heard this several times over

2:41

the course of my reporting. People were

2:43

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

2:46

focusing on this. But obviously

2:48

the war has had a big impact

2:51

on Russian science across fields

2:53

for the physical sciences, for life sciences. It

2:56

has been mostly about the impact

2:58

of supplies, losing access

3:00

to collaborations. Whereas for

3:03

social sciences and humanities,

3:04

it's mostly damage inflicted by the Russian

3:07

state, by the repression and

3:09

the persecution.

3:10

But I think the fundamental issue that

3:13

has emerged a little more than a year and

3:15

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

3:17

which is on the surface geographical.

3:20

A lot of scientists have left

3:21

Russia,

3:22

a lot of younger and potentially

3:25

more interested in academic

3:27

mobility.

3:28

People like that have almost

3:30

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

3:33

groups to have left Russia. But

3:36

I think the split

3:37

goes a bit deeper than that. And I think

3:39

that this story overall is ultimately

3:41

about the choices that people make, scientists

3:44

make, whether they want to stay or

3:46

go elsewhere, whether they want to

3:48

continue their work. And I

3:50

think the division goes deeper because

3:54

it's really hard to

3:57

understand and to actually, it's

3:59

really hard to say. what should happen to

4:01

Russian science, what is happening

4:03

to Russian science, right? So it's not a question

4:05

with a very, very straightforward answer.

4:08

What

4:08

are you seeing when you talk to researchers

4:10

that have made the decision

4:12

to leave? What are some of their motivations?

4:15

So for most Russian scientists who left,

4:17

I'd say the big reason was the

4:19

fundamental disagreement with

4:22

the state. And they could no longer tolerate

4:25

the government that is invading another

4:27

country, but also really oppressing

4:29

the citizens, right? Because most of those scientists

4:32

immediately went to protest in the street

4:35

and they were detained. One of the first

4:37

things the Russian government did very

4:40

early in the invasion was they criminalized,

4:43

even calling it a war. So when

4:45

I say

4:45

war in the story, that is actually illegal

4:48

in Russia.

4:49

It's not a climate where you want to live,

4:51

where you want to work. And actually a few

4:54

people I've talked to have had experience

4:56

working outside Russia. And some of them actually

4:59

came back to

4:59

Russia at some point over the last 20 years.

5:02

And now they're saying, well, essentially

5:04

made a bet, right? I took the risk of

5:07

coming back to Russia, even though I

5:10

was concerned that the political climate

5:12

was soaring a bit, but I still

5:14

held out hope.

5:16

But now there's no hope. I just I have

5:18

to leave. I think that's fundamentally,

5:20

that's the biggest reason. Right. Any

5:22

concerns about being able

5:24

to do science in Russia, being

5:26

able to collaborate

5:27

with colleagues abroad? I think those are

5:29

all secondary fundamental age.

5:31

It's the deep opposition to

5:33

what the government is doing. Yeah, you talked a

5:35

little bit about a comparison between the brain

5:37

drain in

5:38

the 90s when people left after

5:40

the collapse of the Soviet Union. But

5:42

that again, the motivations are just

5:44

so much different now. Yeah. One of the

5:46

people in the story actually spells it out quite nicely

5:48

because he says that in the 90s, people

5:51

went

5:52

sort of in search

5:53

for a better life. They went to other

5:55

countries to find professional

5:57

success or just tolerable working

6:00

conditions,

6:01

funding, because that was the biggest problem

6:03

in the 90s.

6:04

There was no support from the state, from the government.

6:07

But these days, people are running

6:10

from Russia. They're leaving Russia

6:12

basically to go wherever they

6:15

could. Most of these people have

6:17

landed in temporary positions.

6:19

They're not sure they will stay

6:21

where they are. So it's mostly

6:23

about actually leaving Russia

6:26

rather than going anywhere specifically. One

6:29

other important

6:29

difference between this wave

6:32

of brain drain and the one in the 90s is

6:34

Russian scientists nowadays, especially

6:37

the ones interested in leaving and

6:39

the ones who left,

6:40

are much more integrated into

6:43

the global community.

6:44

Most of them, if not all, speak enough English

6:47

or other languages. They know how to publish

6:49

in international journals. That makes

6:51

it much easier to move.

6:52

Do we know how many people, particularly

6:55

scientists, have left Russia? So

6:57

that is obviously the biggest question on everyone's

7:00

minds, right? How many scientists

7:02

have left the scale of this brain

7:04

drain?

7:05

And it's really hard to estimate because

7:08

it's a sensitive topic. Nobody in the Russian

7:10

government likes to talk about it. And

7:12

the scientists and policy experts

7:15

who do talk about it, sometimes they

7:17

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

7:19

their own purposes. There's no hard

7:21

data. But there are sort

7:23

of proxies that you could use

7:26

to get a sense of what

7:28

the scale might be.

7:29

One of the proxies is looking at open

7:32

source software developers.

7:34

They're arguably more mobile

7:36

than scientists, but still,

7:38

I'd say maybe it's

7:39

on par with other highly

7:41

qualified professionals, according to the

7:43

analysis that we

7:45

refer to in the story, up to

7:47

a third

7:47

of open source software developers

7:49

have actually left Russia.

7:51

Another way to look at the potential

7:53

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

7:56

right? How many people want to leave Russia? And

7:59

there was an industry.

7:59

survey in 2022 which

8:02

asked scientists how

8:05

the war, how that affected their intention

8:07

to leave Russia. A whole third

8:09

of respondents in that, you know, several

8:11

thousand strong survey said it

8:13

either somewhat or strongly increased

8:16

their intention to leave. And if you

8:18

look at younger people, at scientists under 39,

8:21

that figure was slightly over 50%. It's

8:23

a different question whether they can leave and whether they

8:25

have left, but the intention, of course,

8:28

is still

8:28

very much there.

8:30

You also, for the story, spoke with people

8:32

who

8:33

stayed in Russia and continue to

8:35

try to be

8:37

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

8:39

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

8:41

they said that they preferred

8:42

to stay or did they have to stay?

8:45

So first of all, I should say that many

8:47

of those people actually either declined to be interviewed

8:50

or spoke to me anonymously because

8:53

you could get informed on, you could get reported

8:56

for activities that

8:58

disparage the Russian state or reload

9:00

the Russian army.

9:01

One of the experts in the story

9:03

talks about these repressions, these

9:06

persecutions being expressly

9:09

random, right? So there's no way of telling

9:12

in advance whether something will cause you

9:14

trouble. I think that's actually, that

9:17

must have been the reason why many of those people

9:19

declined to be interviewed. But the

9:21

ones that did agree spoke

9:24

mostly of the need to stay

9:26

to keep teaching younger

9:29

scientists, keep teaching students, good

9:31

practices, ethical ways

9:33

of doing science, actually teaching

9:36

them good things. If everyone leaves,

9:38

there's a generational gap ahead

9:40

of us, I think, in training scientists.

9:43

Some of the people who stayed also

9:46

mentioned that it would

9:48

have been really hard for them to

9:50

leave the objects of their research, right?

9:52

So maybe if you're a mathematician, you could

9:54

probably grab your papers and

9:56

leave. But

9:57

if you're studying tree rings in Siberia, then you could probably leave the

9:59

paper.

9:59

That's

10:00

a little harder to do.

10:03

But I felt that that was always secondary to

10:05

concerns over supporting younger

10:08

generations, supporting people who are just starting

10:10

out in science.

10:11

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

10:14

some ways, like this dynasty

10:16

of scientists training one generation

10:18

after the next. And that

10:20

was raised also in several conversations.

10:22

Nobody is really ready

10:24

to say, we should just

10:27

close it down. We should leave

10:29

Russia and forget about it. People still

10:31

think that it's important that a country

10:34

as big as Russia,

10:35

a nuclear power, actually

10:37

have people who understand science,

10:39

understand how science works, who are

10:41

able to do

10:43

environmental monitoring, infectious

10:45

disease monitoring. Even if you're not concerned

10:47

about the actual Russians

10:50

understanding science and making

10:52

the most of it, you still need something.

10:55

I think that's

10:56

a more fundamental reason, right? You

10:58

don't want to just abandon the whole country

11:00

to

11:01

pseudoscience. And that also came up,

11:03

by the way, because there's a demand for

11:06

what's called sovereign science, the

11:08

science that reflects Russian interests.

11:10

There's also been a surge

11:12

in

11:13

dubious claims, basically. Everything

11:16

that seems

11:17

to be pro Russia and anti-Western

11:20

can get a boost. In that sense, it's

11:22

even more important to have actual scientists who

11:24

know

11:25

that climate change doesn't go against

11:27

Russia's interests. It's not a conspiracy

11:30

theory against the government. Yeah.

11:32

As you point out,

11:33

access to the Arctic and what is happening

11:35

there is really important for

11:37

people who are trying to monitor climate

11:39

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

11:42

And I think, especially in conversations, not

11:44

just with Russian scientists, but also with Western

11:47

scientists outside Russia, this

11:49

often comes up as the reason not to

11:51

abandon Russian science, not to cut off

11:54

all ties. We can't just pretend

11:56

that half of the Arctic that Russia

11:58

controls doesn't...

11:59

exist. We need that data, we need

12:02

better information, and we need to collaborate with

12:04

Russians, right? Because you can't really just

12:07

access the Arctic without Russian scientists.

12:09

That's not really how it works.

12:11

So I think when people discuss

12:14

the sanctions against Russian science,

12:16

how they should be strengthened

12:18

or whether they should be dropped,

12:21

one of the factors that certainly influences

12:23

this conversation is how close they feel

12:26

to these unique assets that

12:28

Russia has.

12:29

I mean, you can tell that physicists, maybe

12:32

colonists,

12:33

who are not that concerned, I guess, with

12:35

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

12:38

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

12:40

Russian science.

12:41

Whereas when you talk to climate researchers, they're

12:43

like, yeah, maybe not, maybe that's, we

12:46

can't cut Russia out of it. Mm-hmm.

12:48

The government is actually pushing particular

12:51

collaborations, particular international partners

12:53

for research now. How is that

12:55

working out, being selective at that,

12:57

like, government level for who researchers

13:00

should be working with?

13:01

That is the second part to the whole,

13:04

like, sovereign science narrative, that the

13:06

Western science turned against us, that

13:08

we have these

13:10

great partners, China,

13:12

India, Iran, countries

13:15

outside the Western

13:17

science space, that are really

13:18

eager to work with Russia.

13:21

The Russian science funders funding

13:23

agencies have boosted

13:25

the joint funding calls for

13:27

these projects.

13:29

But I say it's not that straightforward.

13:30

It looks very, very

13:33

neat on paper. But when you

13:35

actually try to establish these collaborations,

13:37

some of those countries don't really have enough shared

13:40

interests with Russia topics that they

13:42

could work on.

13:43

And for some of them, I mean, for China, there's

13:45

a lot of declared interest.

13:47

But if you look at the recent

13:49

wave of prosecutions of Russian

13:52

scientists for treason,

13:55

many of those cases are actually linked

13:57

to

13:58

supposedly, you know, selling

13:59

state secrets to China. I

14:02

mean, to me pushing more collaboration

14:04

with China, actually, I could see this in

14:06

a very different light with those prosecutions

14:09

in mind. Yeah, it definitely would make

14:11

people hesitant to try

14:13

to collaborate if there's

14:14

this risk for

14:16

going on trial for treason. Of course, of

14:18

course.

14:18

So it's hard to make predictions

14:21

now about what is going to happen because

14:23

the conflict is still happening, the

14:25

government is still repressing the

14:27

speech of the scientists at the state in the

14:29

country. But did anybody that you talked

14:32

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

14:34

I think that we're going to see things degrade

14:36

further? When I asked people

14:39

what their outlook

14:40

was for the next several

14:42

years, most of them, I think, if not

14:44

all of them actually started with that really

14:47

depends on when the war ends, right? Everyone

14:49

is waiting for that, I'd say. But

14:51

beyond that, beyond just wanting

14:54

the war to end, well,

14:55

that's actually a very pertinent

14:57

Russian saying. On average, Russians

15:00

live pretty well.

15:01

Worse than last year, but definitely better than

15:04

next year.

15:05

So I think that was sort

15:07

of the sentiment behind many answers.

15:10

People do not expect anything to improve

15:12

really soon. They don't expect any

15:15

recovery from isolation to

15:17

start until well after the war is

15:20

over. That

15:20

will take time. But also, again,

15:23

depending on the field, people are really worried,

15:26

especially in social sciences,

15:28

that

15:29

the destructive processes that

15:31

mostly the Russian government is doing for social sciences,

15:33

for humanities, again,

15:35

it's not the sanctions that are doing the most

15:38

of the damage, it's actually the government.

15:40

And fundamentally, that's going to be harder

15:42

to recover from without

15:44

some drastic fundamental changes.

15:47

And people are worried that best

15:49

case scenario, we end up with a big diaspora

15:52

that is

15:53

hopefully going to return to Russia

15:55

at some point and find

15:57

colleagues who have stayed there and who actually.

15:59

survived and are still doing science.

16:02

And we

16:04

reunite the community again, I'd say. I

16:06

think that's the optimistic vision.

16:08

The longer this war goes on, obviously,

16:11

the harder it is to actually hold

16:13

and declare any sort of hope for

16:15

this. So

16:17

is this hard to write about? I

16:18

mean, besides the fact

16:19

that very few people were willing to talk

16:22

from inside of Russia, you know, is it a hard

16:24

story to do?

16:26

It is. I think

16:27

right now there's

16:30

understandably very little appetite

16:32

for context and nuance around

16:34

all things Russia. Talking

16:36

about Russian science

16:38

and the troubles that Russian science is in

16:41

can feel really inappropriate, given what's

16:43

happening in Ukraine

16:44

and

16:46

given the obvious links between

16:48

Russian science and the military-industrial

16:51

complex and the Russian state. All

16:54

of that, I think is very clear to

16:56

everyone I've spoken to in this story,

16:58

pretty

16:58

much everyone. But I still thought

17:00

it was important to add

17:02

some nuance, some context

17:05

to this narrative that Russia's

17:07

just cut off and we don't

17:09

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

17:11

still do. And I'm grateful to people who

17:14

actually agreed to talk to me, under their names

17:16

or anonymously. I think that was very important for me

17:19

to make those voices

17:21

heard as well. Thank you so much, Olga,

17:23

for talking with me. Thank you, Sarah. Olga

17:26

Dobrovidova is a science journalist based

17:28

in France. You can find a link to the story

17:31

we discussed at science.org

17:33

slash podcast. Stay

17:35

tuned for my next conversation with researcher

17:38

Jacob Robinson

17:39

about improving electronics

17:41

that go inside the body. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

17:59

that make our hormones

18:02

or move us around

18:03

inputs and outputs, chemical

18:05

gradients, electrical power. Of course

18:09

it's way too complicated for humans to make

18:11

on purpose and our

18:13

bodies, these machines, don't always work

18:15

as expected. Sometimes we actually put

18:18

real machines that are simpler but

18:20

helpful inside

18:21

our biological machines, our bodies.

18:23

These are implants that help us

18:25

stimulate or regulate or just report

18:28

out what our body is doing so

18:30

we can treat it better. These

18:32

machines can have their own power or

18:34

take advantage of some of the activity of our

18:37

cells or muscles.

18:39

Now we have Jacob Robinson. He

18:41

and his colleagues wrote a review about the future

18:44

of miniature bioelectronics this

18:46

week in Science. Hi Jacob, welcome to the

18:48

Science Podcast. Hi

18:50

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

18:52

I first think about case

18:54

makers when I hear about implanted electronics,

18:57

what else is there out there

18:59

now? You know that's implanted in people's

19:02

bodies. They're

19:02

walking around with a little tiny device somewhere

19:04

on them. Yeah, lots of things. So you

19:06

may be familiar with continuous glucose monitors.

19:09

Oh yeah. Right, people with diabetes

19:11

want to be able to track their insulin or blood

19:13

sugar. That's one example, cochlear

19:15

implants. There's another.

19:17

Yeah, so that helps with hearing

19:19

and it basically is a sensor and it stimulates

19:22

something further down the line. Yeah, it

19:23

stimulates the nerves in the inner ear

19:26

and the cochlea

19:27

for people who can't hear. Very

19:29

cool. There's lots of other examples. Cardiac

19:32

loop recorders, things that could monitor your

19:34

heart rate. There's basically

19:36

an expansion of different types of devices

19:38

that people are probably familiar with that we use

19:40

to stimulate and record activity

19:43

inside the body. Right, so there's kind of

19:45

an array of targets but there's also

19:47

different modes they're operating in. They could be stimulating,

19:50

they could be taking data. What

19:52

are some of the advantages to having

19:54

these onboard medical

19:56

devices?

19:58

One of the real advantages to

19:59

having these implantable

20:02

medical devices

20:03

is their ability to be much

20:05

more specific

20:07

in the way that they interact with the body

20:09

than you can be with drugs.

20:11

For example, I didn't mention deep brain

20:14

stimulation, but that deep brain stimulation is another type

20:16

of device and that stimulates the region of the

20:18

brain. It's very specific, very

20:21

difficult to target with a drug because drugs kind of

20:23

go everywhere in your body. But with an electronic

20:25

device, it can go directly to a target that

20:27

could be a nerve for chronic pain. It could

20:29

be a region of the brain in the case

20:31

of Parkinson's disease that results in the tremor.

20:34

Those targets can interact with very

20:36

precisely spatial targeting. We can also

20:38

be very precise

20:40

temporally or with time. You can turn them on

20:42

and off as you need them throughout the day

20:45

in ways that drugs are really difficult to regulate.

20:47

Your review kind of goes over the

20:49

various components of these devices

20:52

and how they can be improved

20:54

or what the barriers are to improvement. One

20:57

of the things that you talk about the most

20:59

is the energy source. When I think about

21:01

pacemakers, I think about batteries.

21:03

You have to actually replace the

21:05

battery at a pacemaker after a certain

21:07

period of time. Not

21:08

ideal. You don't really want to

21:10

do multiple invasions into the

21:12

body. How else are they a limitation

21:14

in this field? Why else are

21:16

they a problem for implanted

21:18

devices? It's not just the challenge

21:20

of having to replace the batteries, which you

21:22

obviously don't want. Swapping

21:25

a surgically implanted device every few years. The

21:28

other thing that battery is really

21:30

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

21:33

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

21:35

out every two years. I

21:37

need a bigger battery. A bigger battery

21:40

is a bigger implant. If

21:42

I have that big implant, it can't necessarily

21:44

be at the location that I want to stimulate

21:47

or record. We can't fit an iPhone

21:49

everywhere inside of our body. Exactly.

21:53

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

21:55

say, in the chest. Then I have to have a wire

21:57

going from that battery pack to... my

22:00

brain or to my heart or wherever it is I

22:02

want to interact with them. So now you have like

22:04

wires connecting this battery

22:07

pack to someplace else.

22:08

Yeah, you get more stuff in your body. You have

22:11

more connections, places where things can

22:13

fail. I know I keep using the phone as an

22:15

example, but bear with me. You know, it is

22:17

kind of this really good example of miniaturization.

22:21

Smaller screens

22:21

to a certain extent, smaller batteries,

22:24

more and more computing power in a smaller

22:27

size. They're getting better at

22:29

better at hiding in our pockets and being more and more powerful.

22:32

How is that kind of miniaturization, particularly

22:35

with batteries, how has that

22:37

been translated into the implants that

22:39

we're talking about?

22:41

Some of the advantages that are making their way over are

22:43

lower power electronics. So maybe don't

22:46

need as much energy from the battery and

22:49

better batteries. So things that are smaller,

22:51

but still have enough energy to operate

22:53

your device for a longer period of time.

22:56

There are maybe better alternative

22:59

ways to deliver

23:01

power to these devices. And you go through these

23:04

in a lot of detail in

23:06

the review. And I really thought this was interesting.

23:08

One is harvesting energy from the

23:11

body in a number of different ways. Can

23:13

you kind of walk us through some of those options? Yeah.

23:15

And maybe taking a step back,

23:18

the idea of having a battery in

23:20

your entire device is great. And we're

23:22

trying to draw as much as we can from advances

23:25

to make these batteries smaller to last longer.

23:27

But at some point, the battery is

23:29

so small that the amount of energy

23:31

that you have isn't going to last you

23:34

for an entire day. And at

23:36

that point, it becomes kind of annoying to have to recharge something

23:38

multiple times a day. Yes. For anybody who's

23:40

ever had, I don't know, a phone.

23:43

It's true. Yes. Yeah. I don't want to say,

23:45

hold on, time out. I have to charge my phone three times a

23:47

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

23:50

either. So

23:50

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

23:53

I wanted to really push the limit to make something

23:55

really tiny, that battery is not going to last me

23:57

long enough. So I have to get energy from somewhere else.

23:59

And maybe I could get energy from the body itself.

24:02

We make energy. Yes. Yeah, we're

24:04

expending energy through our movements.

24:07

The heat of our body is energy that

24:09

we can maybe harvest. And maybe we can use

24:11

that energy instead of a battery and

24:13

devices could be made extremely tiny.

24:15

Yeah, I mean, we do see this in watches

24:17

now. Like you can charge your watch

24:19

by swinging your arm around. Isn't that right?

24:21

Exactly. Kinematic energy can be harvested

24:24

for some of these devices as well. So we look

24:26

at all the advances and some of these advances

24:28

aren't materials advances. So if

24:30

I can have a material that does a better job of

24:32

harnessing that kinematic energy, then

24:35

I could support more advanced functions.

24:37

If that's a stimulation function or a sensing function,

24:39

I could power that just with the energy from

24:42

the body itself, thanks to advances

24:44

in new materials, right?

24:45

So materials that get energy from flexing,

24:49

like the flexing of your arms or

24:51

the fine rapid movement

24:53

that you have in the beating of a heart, that's a different

24:55

type of material that we might use to harvest that energy.

24:58

So these are all movements, but they're movements that are

25:00

manifest in slightly different ways. And they're different materials

25:03

that are better at capturing that energy from the

25:05

body.

25:06

How about chemical energy from the

25:08

body?

25:08

We have chemical gradients. We have basically

25:11

little

25:11

electric circuits of our own inside

25:14

of our bodies. Yeah, exactly right.

25:16

The acid in our gut can be used to

25:18

power devices, particularly a device you might imagine

25:21

swallowing, like a smart pill.

25:23

There's a lot of these opportunities for us to use

25:25

the chemicals in our bodies as kind of like

25:27

their own battery for a device

25:30

that has no batteries at all.

25:31

What if you can't get

25:32

all the power you need from a

25:34

small battery or from harvesting?

25:37

Can we talk about this process of beaming

25:39

energy into the body wirelessly?

25:42

Ideally, I want to put something in my

25:44

body, no batteries, and

25:46

it's going to make me better because it's going to stimulate

25:48

and record. I never have to recharge it again because it's getting all the

25:50

energy it needs from my body.

25:52

The problem with that idea is that

25:54

when we looked at the literature to see how

25:56

much energy we're able to harvest, it

25:59

doesn't support...

25:59

all of the functions that I want to do.

26:02

It's really hard to get enough energy, even for cardiac

26:05

pacing, the deep brain stimulation

26:07

application. If I wanted to measure the oxygen

26:10

in one's blood, there are no

26:12

examples in the literature that we could find where

26:14

we're able to harvest that much energy

26:16

from the body itself. So the mass doesn't work

26:19

out? There's not enough juice from the materials that we have

26:21

to harvest energy, at least not yet. The idea

26:22

is then to just send the power directly, no battery

26:25

needed, just get it into the body as

26:27

much as you

26:27

need, right? Yes, I want to beam it in,

26:30

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

26:32

That's great, safer. Size becomes less

26:35

of an issue? Oh yeah, and I get super tiny,

26:37

and ideally never have to replace

26:39

it because there's no battery that runs out. Okay,

26:42

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

26:44

is beaming

26:44

energy into the body could

26:47

cook something, cook the tissue, like

26:49

heat it up uncomfortably or do damage.

26:52

So how do you get around that problem

26:54

if you want to move energy into the body without

26:56

harming it?

26:57

This is where we can look to materials yet again.

27:00

So we can find materials that are more efficient

27:03

at capturing that energy, and then we don't

27:05

have to turn up that energy beam so high.

27:07

The other thing we can do is you can find materials

27:10

that absorb different types of energy.

27:12

So magnetic fields are a really good example of this.

27:15

In a magnetic field, you can go to an MRI

27:17

machine, you can get magnetic fields to go through your body,

27:19

it's very safe,

27:20

and we're discovering that there are materials

27:22

that can efficiently harvest energy

27:25

out of those magnetic fields.

27:26

Ultrasound is another example.

27:28

Right, these ultrasounds are diagnostics.

27:30

There's a new class of devices

27:32

that are using ultrasound to capture

27:34

energy from those ultrasound waves.

27:37

One last consideration for

27:40

these devices, we also need to talk about

27:42

how to get data

27:44

into them and out of them. So

27:46

we don't want to have big hard drives in there,

27:49

we don't want to have to plug people into things.

27:52

How are we going to link these things so

27:54

that we can get that sensor information

27:56

or give the device commands? Yeah,

27:59

that was the last piece.

27:59

that we looked at.

28:01

We have similar considerations, right? If I want to

28:03

beam energy in the body, it has to be safe.

28:05

I also want to be able to send data

28:08

using that same form of energy.

28:10

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

28:13

One thing we are always trying to fight against

28:15

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

28:18

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

28:21

data without consuming a lot of energy

28:23

from my implant.

28:24

And what we've found in the literature that we describe

28:27

in this review is that there's a variety of ways

28:29

to use materials again. And

28:31

these materials reflect energy back.

28:33

It's called backscatter. And if I can get

28:36

materials that reflect back ultrasound, reflect

28:38

back magnetic fields, reflect back

28:41

electromagnetic waves,

28:42

then I can communicate efficiently

28:45

with these implants without using

28:47

up a lot of energy on the implanted device

28:49

itself. So you supply the energy when you're

28:52

going to get the messages? Yeah. The

28:54

way that I think about a lot of these backscatter communication

28:57

standards are kind of like a tuning

28:59

fork. If I want to

29:01

get information from someone who's holding

29:04

a tuning fork, I just

29:05

need a way to bang on it. So if I

29:07

have a hammer, I could bang on that tuning fork. And I

29:09

can listen

29:10

to the way that that tuning fork rings

29:12

down, the tone. And me holding

29:14

that tuning fork, I

29:15

can put my finger on it to keep it from ringing down.

29:18

Or I can leave my finger off and let it ring

29:20

down for a long period of time. And so as

29:22

someone holding the tuning fork, I can expend

29:24

very, very little energy just putting my finger

29:26

on or off that tuning fork. And the person

29:28

holding the hammer, they're using all that energy

29:30

to bang on that fork. And

29:33

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

29:36

that's providing the power is also banging on that tuning

29:38

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

29:40

or very little energy consumed on that device

29:43

in order to transmit data back. That's

29:45

something that's been really powerful to open up these

29:47

miniature devices that are smart and talk

29:50

to those external devices. Putting this all

29:52

together, you kind of explored

29:53

the limitations of what we have now

29:56

and some future directions for improvements in

29:58

the different components. biomedical

30:01

devices like this. Looking way out into

30:03

the future, things are improved, they're refined,

30:05

what kinds of applications do you see in

30:08

the future for bioelectronics?

30:10

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

30:12

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

30:15

a mesh network inside

30:17

the body, kind of like at home I have

30:19

my wireless network and I can walk any place

30:21

in my house and I can connect to the internet.

30:24

In the body I think we have that similar type of opportunity

30:26

where we can have tiny devices

30:29

that can measure blood oxygenation,

30:31

blood pressure, heart rate,

30:33

glucose, neural activity.

30:36

All of this can be connected into a system

30:38

that can provide therapy

30:41

in ways that adapt to your needs.

30:43

For example, if you're seated,

30:46

your blood pressure doesn't need to be as high

30:48

as maybe when you're standing and so we can regulate

30:50

the heart, we can regulate blood vessels

30:53

relative to your needs and adapt

30:55

with you as you go throughout your day. You're

30:57

collecting all the baseline data and

30:59

then using that to decide when

31:01

assists

31:02

are necessary. We think of it as like

31:04

a cruise control but for your physiological

31:06

processes that adapts, you know, as you're going

31:09

throughout the day. If I need more stimulation, it automatically

31:11

can increase that level of therapeutic

31:13

stimulation or decrease that level of therapeutic

31:16

stimulation without even having to think about it.

31:18

Thank you so much, Jacob. Well, thank you, Sarah. It's a

31:20

real pleasure to chat with you.

31:22

Jacob Robinson is a professor in the Department

31:24

of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice

31:27

University.

31:28

You can find a link to the review we discussed at

31:30

science.org slash podcast.

31:33

And that concludes this edition of the Science

31:35

Podcast. If you have any comments

31:37

or suggestions, write to us at

31:40

sciencepodcast at aaas.org.

31:43

To find us on the podcasting app,

31:46

search for Science Magazine. Or

31:48

you can listen to the show on our website, science.org

31:51

slash podcast. This

31:53

show was edited by me, Sarah Crespi,

31:55

Megan Cantwell, and Kevin McLean

31:57

with production help from Podigy.

31:59

Jeffrey could compose the music on

32:02

behalf of science and its publisher triple

32:04

as thanks for joining us