Science Friday - Smart Toilet, Soft Robotics, Naked Mole Rats. March 17, 2023, Part 2

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Stop Flushing Your Health Data Down The Toilet You could be flushing important information about your health right down the toilet—quite literally. Pee and poop can tell you a lot about your health, so what if your waste…didn’t go to waste? What if, instead, it could tell you more about your health? Like number one, it can catch a condition like diabetes early. Or number two, check out what’s going on in your gut microbiome. That’s the goal of the smart toilet—a device that gets all up in your business to tell you more about your health. Ira talks with the inventor of the PH Smart Toilet, Dr. Seung-min Park, instructor of urology at Stanford’s School of Medicine in California, about how the toilet works, how it can be used to catch diseases early on, and the ethical implications of such a device.   50 Years Later, Reflecting On The Treaty That Controls Wildlife Trade 50 years ago this month, a collection of nations met in Washington and reached agreement on a way to regulate international trade in certain wildlife species—from orchids to gorillas. That agreement came to be known as CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The treaty has come to cover over 30,000 different plants and animals. Some, listed in Appendix 1 of the treaty, are under a complete ban on commercial use, while other species have their trade tightly regulated via a system of permits. Dr. Susan Lieberman, the vice president for international policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society, has attended the last 13 meetings of the CITES signatories. She joins Ira to talk about the convention, and what it has meant for conservation over the last 50 years.   This Skin-like Robot Can Heal Itself Think of a robot, and the image that may come to mind is a big, hulking body building cars or working in factories. They battle each other in the movies. But a growing field called softbotics focuses on thin, flexible materials—closer to human skin than to a Transformer. There’s been a breakthrough in this field out of Pittsburgh: softbotics that can not only conduct electricity, but can heal itself from damage. This replicates the healing abilities of organic materials, like skin, but can happen in seconds. Dr. Carmel Majidi, mechanical engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, joins Ira to break down possible futures for this material, including a new generation of prosthetics.   Naked Mole-Rats Are Eternally Fertile There may be no stranger—or more impressive—critter than the naked mole-rat. They may look unassuming, but they can defy aging, have an astonishingly high pain tolerance, and are resistant to cancer. And their list of superpowers doesn’t stop there. Scientists recently discovered yet another way these rodents reject the mammalian status quo: by producing egg cells, and staying fertile, until the day they die. This makes them unlike humans, whose ovaries eventually stop producing eggs. So what can we learn about fertility from these strange critters? Ira talks with the lead researcher of this study, Dr. Miguel Brieño-Enriquez, assistant professor at the Magee-Womens Research Institute and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences.   Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.     Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, happy 50th birthday to CITES, the agreement that regulates the trade of wildlife and plants. We're going to check in on how much progress has been made these last 50 years, plus a breakthrough in material science. Get this, a soft robot that can heal itself. We'll talk about what we can learn from these more skin-like bots, and no, they are not as creepy as they may sound. Trust me. But before we get into that, I want to bring on a guest who is doing his duty to literally do his duty. He's developing a toilet that analyzes your waist and might be able to help diagnose an illness from sampling it. In other words, you could be flushing important information about your health right down the toilet, and I mean that literally. But what if your waist

didn't go to waste. What if instead it could tell you more about your health, like number one, checking on your number one and catching a condition like diabetes early? Or number two, checking out number two, to see what's going on in your gut. Maybe your microbiome needs some attention. That's the goal of the smart toilet, a device that gets all up in your business to tell you more about your business, so to speak. Conditions like urinary tract or kidney infections, even cancer can be detected by what gets dumped into a toilet. And as cool as it may sound, it does bring up concerns about privacy and ethics. For example, the toilet keeps track of who is using it by taking fingerprints of your fingers and, well, of your rear end, even photos of your

but. So how do we keep that very personal stuff out of the wrong hands? Just a brief heads up, we're going to get a bit graphic in the interest of science, of course, all the way to the end, if you know what I mean. Joining me is the inventor of the pH smart toilet, Dr. Sunming Park, instructor of urology at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California. Welcome to Science Friday. Yeah, thank you for having me today. How does the toilet learn about me? Even if you are a superhuman, you cannot avoid number one and number two processes because it's a very natural.

It is always called the nature's call. So what we're trying to do is trying to glean biomarkers from human excretion because we believe the human excretion is a wealthy resource for your health tracker. So we're collecting data such as digital bio-mobacco. biomarker, that's a physiological, biochemical, and behavioral data collected by smart sensors in the toilet. So you have sensors and probes in the toilets. So walk me through this. I go to the toilet. I do my business. Yes. Then do I flush it or does it collect it before the flush and what happens? Yes. We are trying to make it as passive as possible, which means you don't have to do a thing, single thing.

So naturally you do your natural behavior, then all the procedure will be performed by the smart toilet itself. So you don't have to do a thing. So we have sensors which detect the user's sitting. Sensors that detect the user's end of defecation or urination. We have sensors to collect the data from excreted specimen. So how does it know if it's me or someone else on the toilet? Yes, it's a very important question because your toilet will be shared by roommate or family members. It's also for a personalized health care.

So we're trying to provide as personalized as possible. So we're trying to put the fingerprint scanner at the flush lever. So whenever you flush it, we're trying to capture your fingerprint scan so that we can match the result that's collected by the smart toilet. So that's a one way to identify a person. And second way is we're utilizing human anus as a biometric identifier, which is a very unusual case. But I collaborate with a colorectal surgeon for last five years, and they already knew that it can be used as a biometric identifier because it's so unique for a person. So we utilize that as a biometric identifier, and we proved that it's more than a 95% accuracy that identify a person. Let me just see if I understand this. Are you saying that my anus is unique, is unique like a fingerprint?

Yes, that's correct. Wow. Have you tested this toilet on yourself? Yes, I did. Not for the anal print stuff, but I installed the first prototype that was collaborating with the industrial partner. And it is installed in my house. and I tested almost like 87 days consecutively. There were 800 defecation and urination events combined. It is literally called the Stool and Voiding Diary. And the data that it collects, where does the data go? Yeah, all the data will be stored in the cloud system. So we want to connect it to local hospital or local, you know, the healthcare system.

so that the physician can routinely analyze or assess access to the data so that they want to find out if anything happened before the user feel ill or something. You know, some people might be uncomfortable listening to us talking conversation. But as you say, everyone poops and pees, it's nature's call. How does that affect the advancement of smart toilets among scientists and the industry? Yes, there are a huge amount of the pressure, actually, because there's a criticism about our system being too much about, like, it sounds like or it resembled like a big brother in 1984. Because we're tracking almost like a very private event of human being, right? Right. Because of human excreta has been tabooed in almost every culture.

So, and there's a lot of different things. associated with a human excretion, such as menstruation? Well, isn't that, couldn't that be threatening to some people? Certainly in this age that we live in about knowing if someone is pregnant or not? Yes, this is one of the biggest challenge for us, because our system may track the pregnancy record. If it is revealed to other, like, you know, agency, then they may track the abortion. So it's kind of very sensitive subjects.

So we want to protect our systems data as much as possible. So we're just regarding all the generated data from our system as a PHI, patient health information. What about people like astronauts, you know, might. Yes. There are no doctors up there. Maybe you can detect things. Yes. I think one of the best application of our system is for the deep space mission because NASA is trying

to send people to Mars in next 10 years. But one of the biggest problem for sending people to Mars is the travel time because it will take at least six months to 12 months. And the space crew member will be exposed to the very hostile walking environments, including radiation, including like a confinement, distance from the years, etc., etc. So we're trying to protect the astronauts as much as possible and proactive. So we're trying to utilize our system to monitor the immune system by analyzing microbiome in the thesis. Right, right. You know, I imagine when you came up with this idea, the first thing scientists do is say,

how can I get this funded, right? Yes. Did you have any trouble finding people who would like to invest in your research? Yes. Honestly, I submitted this proposal to National Science Foundation in 2021. and I thought it was a good fit for that request for proposal because the request for proposal was titled Smart Connected Health. But even though I was able to address all the issues about the Smart Tollet, but the reviewers actually believe that there's a glitch in our approach because there's going to be a lot of ethical consideration, privacy issues, and consideration for future. female participants, and all the issues.

So especially it is well-known subject in the field, but people still have some barriers or some, like, obstacles to adopt this system as a routine, you know, monitoring system. Right. Well, I think, I mean, just in privacy issues, no one wants incriminating photos of their rear end getting out. That's true. So we're trying to replace the sensors a little bit less invasive manner.

So I think we're utilizing. sensor, which we call optical sensor, but AKA it's a camera, basically. So we're trying to make it as less invasive possible, such as like we can use IR camera instead of, you know, photographic camera or some other like, you know, the LIDA sensors, which measure the distance between the point. So we're trying to replace it so that the people will not have some feeling about the invasive nature of this smart-tales system. Right. Part of your goal is getting this really in-depth individual data,

sort of an information dump, if you will. This is part of a growing idea about precision health and personalized medicine, right? That's correct. Even before a person is born, prenatal genetic screen can be done, which means the precision health starts with, can be starting with the conception. So we're trying to protect people or trying to maintain people as healthy as possible by continuous monitoring of their health signatures. Do you have a special name? You have a special name for your toilet that would make it more fun to sit on instead of threatening? Yeah, we call it a precision health toilet, but it's not that funny at all.

Well, you know, I'm thinking more like the tush toilet or something like that then. So we have a motto, actually. We have a, the motto is don't waste a waste. That's a one, yeah, don't want a motto that tells about, even though it's a waste, there's like a wealth of biologic information so that we can glean. Well, you're right. When people who need the help that the toilet might offer them, it's a very serious business. Speaking of business.

Yes. Dr. Park, thank you for taking time to be with us today, and good luck. Thank you so much for having me today. It's my great honor and pleasure. Dr. Sung Ming Park, instructor of urology at Stanford School of Medicine. After the break, marking 50 years of CITES, the international agreement that protects many species of plants and animals that are in high demand, making sure the trade doesn't affect their species survival in the wild.

Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. There are some kinds of wildlife that you can't buy or sell at your local store, right? Like elephant ivory. And that's because 50 years ago, this month, a collection of nations met in Washington and reached agreement on a way to regulate international trade in certain wildlife species. That agreement came to be known as CITES. Joining me to talk about that convention and what it means for protecting wildlife species. Wildlife over these last five decades is Dr. Susan Lieberman. She's the Vice President for International Policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. She's based in London. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thank you very much. Nice to have you. How extensive is CITES? I mean, just how much of wildlife and what kind is covered? It covers about 35,000 species. Animals and plants, first of all. The majority of what's listed are plants. The majority of which are in what's called Appendix 2, which means they can be traded.

They were potentially threatened with extinction, but their trade is really strictly regulated. About 950 species are listed in Appendix 1. Those are species that cannot be traded commercially internationally at all. African elephants, gorillas, tigers, great whales, sea turtles, and everything in between. And those decisions are taken by the governments that are members of the treaty. When you say those decisions are taken, they're still being listing and delisting? Yeah, we just finished last November the 19th meeting of what's called the conference of the parties, the governments that are members and are parties to the treaty get together,

make a bunch of decisions on the implementation, enforcement, but also which species should be listed or removed from the convention. And now it's up to 184 governments, 183 countries plus the EU that are members. So it's almost the entire world. Agreed is this list of species trade is either regulated or trade is prohibited. I'm not going to say every wildlife species that is threatened by trade is listed, but a large percentage on. I want to get into those details a little later, but let's talk a bit about the history since it is the 50th anniversary that we're saying. celebrating. What brought it about in the 1970s? Why was that the time? Well, the early

1970s were a period of initial awareness of endangered and threatened species. We had the Endangered Species Act here in the U.S. And people were beginning to see species declining due to trade because that's when globalization got really going. What drove it initially was not the pet trade in turtles or parrots that we see today, but the trade in the cat speech. issues for the fur trade, and governments and conservationists got together and said, it's a pre-for-all. There were no international rules at all, and they said, we need rules, we need regulation. You mentioned governments came together to negotiate the treaty. They did it in Washington, D.C., and all the other governments other than the U.S. call it the Washington Convention. It was a period of

agree governments coming together and agreeing they needed to do the right thing for conservation. So before that, it was like the Wild West. Completely. And if you think, okay, they're now 184 countries. Previously, some countries may have bans on an export of something, but there were no international regulation. U.S. could export, import anything, China could export or import anything. And there were no international rules.

We looked back and we think, that's impossible. But someone had to come up with the idea, and they did. and they negotiated and came up with a treaty that is now, it is seen as one of the most successful, if not the most successful conservation agreement. Yeah, let's talk about this process then. How does it get decided what animals get on the list? So how did they get listed before one of these big conferences or summits where all the governments who are members get together, governments have to submit a scientific proposal.

And they take it to this forum and they present it and they either, everybody agrees by consensus, or there's a vote that requires a two-thirds vote, which is really interesting because later treaties more recently are not based on vote. Everyone has to agree it's all consensus. And there was a lot of foresight in saying, look, you're never going to have 100%. But if you get two-thirds of the members, now it's practically two-thirds of the whole world, then that species proposal should be approved. So there are going to be species that may qualify, but if a government doesn't submit it,

It doesn't happen. And a lot of us in the conservation community, wildlife conservation society, and others, work closely with governments monitoring species impacted by trade doing the science, publishing papers, and inform governments when we believe they should take into consideration submitting a proposal. Do you get much pushback from some of these governments? You know, in some cases, there's thank you very much, but we have political and economic pressures on us here, so we can't submit that proposal. I don't want to pretend it's all pure science. Everyone's sitting around a room and there's no politics going on. And, you know, it took almost 30 years to really list the majority of the world sharks on CITES. And that wasn't because the science wasn't there. But no, sometimes there's pushback.

Sometimes governments will say, oh, it's a really great idea. But no, I don't have the time or politically or that's too fraught or that's too economically valuable. But often governments, you know, really appreciate it. And we work behind the scenes with a lot of governments, if they have low capacity in particular. The U.S. and EU don't need our help. They mean, need a push, but they don't need our help. They've got good scientists. But other countries sometimes do need help with the capacity to take a scientific proposal

to such a major international forum. Are there different levels of protection, like tears? Yeah, well, there's basically two. The appendix one are the species that are threatened, and there can be no international commercial trade. There can be non-commercial trade with a permit, like for scientific research or something like that. But for commercial trade, that tier is the greatest protection. Would a zoo be considered commercial trade?

Generally, no. Generally, the zoos are considered not for what's called not for primarily commercial purposes. Of the accredited major zoos are exchanging animals for conservation purposes, etc., or may move an animal for health purposes, whereas the circuses, for example, are commercial, right? Because their reason for moving animals is primarily commercial to make money. Yeah. And at the other level, you mentioned. The other level is this appendix, too, where trade is allowed. You'll think of the American alligator maybe, and there are a lot of other species.

Trade is allowed, but it's tightly regulated. Governments have to issue a permit, and that permit has to be based on science, that it's not detrimental to the species, and it has to also confirm that it's legal. So there's a tight control in government's check permits when shipments come in. I'm not going to say it's perfect, but those are basically the two tiers that are involved. So I may still see animals or animal products that are governed by CITES in the marketplace. True, absolutely. And you shouldn't think automatically that it's illegal. If you find, well, certainly American alligator, if it's in the U.S., it's not an

export. It's within the U.S. But if you see American alligator products in Europe, that doesn't mean it's illegal. It's appendix, too, and it probably most likely had a permit from the U.S. government for export from one of the states in the U.S. What are the teeth, no pun intended, of this being enforced? Well, there's two levels. The main level is there's no CITES police out there, the headquarters of the secretariat are in Switzerland. They don't have like a, a, uh, a, uh, police force out there. It's enforced and implemented at the national level. So imports and exports from each country are enforced by their own enforcement authorities. The U.S. has dedicated

agents and inspectors of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Other countries have custom, well, we have customs too, but other countries have special individuals in customs. It's enforced at the national level, basically. But in addition, the countries are really not the with the treaty. There are egregious violations. Society gets together and will look at issues of noncompliance by countries and has authority to ban trade and wildlife from that country until they clean up their act. That's not done lightly, but it does have some teeth. Sometimes they're not sharp enough, but some other treaties have no teeth. Yeah, yeah. And this only covers visible trade. There must be a lot of illegal and poaching that's going on that the treatise can't regulate.

No, but so say, for example, rhino horn is banned, okay, but they're still poaching of rhinos in southern Africa and still smuggling and trafficking by organized criminal gangs from southern Africa to Asia, right? So that's not a fault of sight. He'd say that it's on appendix one, but it needs to be better enforcement in Africa and in the importing countries. in Asia. But again, as you say, this is international trade. Right. Right. There could be domestic stuff that's unprotected. That's up to each country's national law, but for really endangered dependence one species, CITES governments have also adopted resolutions and recommendations to countries on what they need to do domestically as well, such as there's a lot of talk about cracking down more on the online trade, because there's a lot of online trade.

now in wildlife and wildlife products. But also, countries have been recommended to close their domestic ivory markets. And that's happened. China, the U.S., the EU, UK, have closed their domestic ivory markets. You can't find ivory in New York if you walk on Fifth Avenue right now. I remember what in the 80s when you put.

But closing the domestic market, CITES has recommended it as a way to help the elephants recover. And it's actually working. If you were to renegotiate or start 50 years later and start over from the beginning with this treaty, would you do anything differently? How would you improve it? Well, if you started now, I think it would be harder to get the voting. Oh, really? Yeah, there's much more of a sense.

Well, we should have consensus that everyone should agree. That's one of the problems with the Convention on Biological Diversity or the Climate Change Convention. Decisions are only by consensus. No, I think the treaty is great, actually. I think, you know, it's taken, the treaty is clear that it covers all foreign fauna. It might have been clearer that definitely it includes marine fish, but governments have all agreed it does. So the treaty is great. When things are not working, it's not the fault of a treaty, which is a piece of paper that everyone has agreed to.

It's a fault of implementation or many countries just don't have the capacity. They don't have the resources or the capacity to. crack down as much as they would like. You know, environment ministries or departments are never the best funded. Yeah, I've been following this for years. I understand. This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios. How do we know that this treaty is working so well? How do you measure it? It's a tough one to measure because we don't have another planet where we don't have the treaty that we can compare us control, right? But if we look at, there are species that we're declining and after the of CITES are starting to recover or not declining further, such as tigers.

Tigers have been hit hard by the illegal trade, but we're seeing in India healthy populations increases in a number of other countries. But many of these species are subject to other threats. You know, climate change is so much worse, habitat loss is so much worse. So if you say, well, species X is still declining, CITES isn't working, but maybe species X is, being hit by all these other threats, but it is hard to measure. There's no question, because you also need the resources

to monitor wildlife's populations, and some of these species are very long-lived. Some of the species of whales where the trade was banned in the late 1980s on Cyanides of Endix I and the International Whaling Commission, or only now we're seeing signs of recovery

of populations because their generation time is so long. But what we can measure is that they're no longer declining. Well, speaking of whales, how does this fit into the universe of other environmental agreements that you track? And I'm thinking of the recent high seas treaty. Yeah, I think that's, first of all, that's a super important agreement that governments finally agree that there is a way to protect biodiversity in the half of the planet that is high seas or what's called areas beyond national jurisdiction. Many species on the high seas are also impacted by international trade, and CITES also regulates that. So there's a mechanism under CITES for issuing permits and all of that.

If, say, sharks that are listed on CITES are taken on the high seas, countries that land them, bring them within their borders, are required to issue a CITES permit and confirm that it's not detrimental to the species. That's considered trade as well, from the high seas to a court. So there is an intersection, and CITES predates the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the authority for this new treaty. So it's a matter of juggling and adopting decisions and resolutions in CITES, but they're well integrated because it's the same government. Right. This being the 50th anniversary this year, let's end on a high note. Can you give me a few success stories, places you think CITES has really done its job? Well, here in the U.S., the American alligator is not an endangered species.

It was an endangered species when SITES was agreed. The trade in alligator is tightly regulated by the federal government and the states. Populations are doing well. Some people in Florida may think they're doing too well, but populations are doing well. There are many species of parrots whose populations were crashing. With the regulation under SITES, the populations are either increasing or stabilized. that unfortunately there is still illegal trade. And as I mentioned, tiger populations are increasing in India,

in the Russian Far East, in Thailand, and a couple other countries in spite of trade pressures. And a lot of that, without studies, I think tigers would be gone. Now, I can't prove that scientifically, because I said there's no control to get against. But I think if we look at the big cap species, we look at jaguars, there is a problem with illegal trade in their teeth. But in general, the populations are doing okay.

It's not only CITES, but the ability of many countries to manage their wildlife is increased, I think, because of CITES, because they have to implement this treaty. And the last one I would say, even though there's controversy around it, elephants, without CITES, we would only have elephants in a few countries in Southern Africa. But they'd held on an increasing in parts of East Africa and Central Africa because of the controls of CITES. controls on the ivory tree. These are great success stories in animals. What about success stories in plants? Yeah, the one that comes to mind is the big leaf mahogany, the very valuable species of the rainforest,

particularly of South America. It took four sighties meetings to convince the governments to list it on appendix 2 and regulate the trade. But that trade is now being regulated, being regulated well, and the species is not being wiped out. The trade is being monitored. and regulated closely. And interestingly, many other timber species have now been listed since the mahogany was listed. There was a lot of resistance. You can't list timber. It's hard to

regulate. It's hard to identify. But they are identifiable. And there has been a lot of progress in the timber trade since the early years in the discussions on mahogany. Well, Dr. Lieberman, I want to congratulate you and wish you and your organization well and 50th anniversary of this treaty. And thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you very much for having them. I appreciate it. Dr. Susan Lieberman, Vice President for International Policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. We have to take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about a breakthrough in soft robotics, a material that's soft, flexible, and can heal itself and be electrified.

You're going to want to stay tuned for this. This is Science Friday. I'm Myraflict. You're familiar with robots, right? You've seen those big hulking bodies building cars, working in factories. They battle each other in the movies. Yeah, but there is now a growing field called softbotics. And these are thin, flexible materials closer to human skin than to a transformer. And there's been a breakthrough in this field.

Softbotics can not only conduct electricity, but can heal itself from damage. Wow. So how could these materials be used? Joining me to talk about this is my guest, Dr. Kamel Majidi, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Tell us what this material looks like. Describe it for us, please. This material is a pretty soft and almost gel-like substance. It's very stretchy. It has elastic properties. It's kind of as soft as the softest, the natural. biological tissue. So think even softer than skin. The material is electrically conductive. It has very high conductivity enough to power digital circuits or even motors. And it also has this feature

that it's self-healing. So if it ever gets damage, if it gets torn, ruptured, punctured, the material can basically stick to itself and refuse and restore its elasticity and also restore its electrical conductivity. We're not talking about that liquid metal like the Terminator. in the movie and gets back together and heals itself? Well, in a sense that there are elements of that in this material. Really? Yep. The material actually does incorporate a type of liquid metal alloy.

This is a eutectic blend of gallium and indium. So gallium and indium by themselves are solid at room temperature, but when you mix the two together, they form this eutectic where the alloy is liquid. And the liquid metal basically allows the conductive pathways within this material to quickly restore themselves, to heal themselves if it ever gets damaged and press back together. So we mix in that gallimindium liquid metal along with silver flakes, and all that is suspended within this polyvinyl alcohol gel. That sounds really cool. What makes it different from other softbotics? The key difference is the fact that it's self-healing.

So the material binds itself together through hydrogen bonds. So these are actually the same hydrogen bonds that produce forces between water molecules. And so these materials have a very high density of these hydrogen bonds. And when those bonds break, they can readily form themselves back together upon contact. The other important novelty here is that we're combining that mechanical or that elastic self-healing property with this electrical self-healing. So utilizing the liquid metal, we're able to get the electrical pathways to also instantaneously reform any time this material is ruptured. So just to be clear, so I understand this, when you say self-healing, you don't have to do

anything to it, like put a band-aid on it or something and unite the parts together. It knows how to do that by itself? Right, yeah, just like if you apply tape to a surface, it will just readily wet and stick. So this material has this self-adhering type property. You don't have to apply heat. You don't have to do any special chemical treatment or stitch the material together. Just bringing it back in contact with itself is enough to reform those bonds. And so how much can you beat it up and still have it fix itself?

Not that I'm advocating violence here. So I just wonder how much healing it can do. Well, pretty much the same wear and tear that natural biological tissue would undergo. And so, you know, definitely if you were to really run this through the ringer and obliterate the material and remove material, you can permanently damage the robotic system or the soft electronics. The idea here more is to be able to create robots, machines, electronics, and just withstand pretty much the same wear and tear that natural organisms have to encounter in their daily

activities. And so if you have your material rub up against the surface, or just, you know, make some impact. You know, if there's a cut or a tear or basically a bruise with these materials, they'll be able to restore their connectivity. They can stay functional. Anything beyond that,

you would have to do more serious repairs to the robot or to the circuit. And so what would the best uses for this material be? What applications do you see? There's a couple of applications that motivated us to look at this. One of the primary motivations was actually to make electronics that are soft and stretchable,

and that can adhere to the body, basically function as a second skin or as an electronic sticker that could be used to, say, monitor physiological health. So the gel that we use is very similar to the gels that are used for medical devices that monitor cardiac activity or muscle activity. The challenge with those, though, is that all those materials require being wired up to some external hardware, and so you can only perform those measurements within a clinical setting. With these materials, the idea is that you can stick these materials to your body

and use them outside of a clinical setting. They can monitor your heart rate, your cardiac activity, they can monitor your muscle activity, and they can withstand the same wear and tear that you just encounter on a daily basis. And so if these materials get torn or ruptured, they can refuse back together and they can provide those continuous electrical measurements. Another big application of these materials, where I should say another potential application of these materials is to use them as artificial skin and artificial nervous tissue for a next generation of soft and biologically inspired robots. So imagine robots and machines that mimic, say, a snail or an octopus or, say, a lizard in their ability to maneuver,

in environments to form, squeeze through confined spaces. When we shift from kind of more conventional robotic systems to these softer or more biologically inspired robots, we no longer have the luxury of encasing or protecting all of the delicate electronics and soft materials within a hard case. So it's important that we make those materials robust so that they can withstand the types of impacts and mechanical loading, let's say a natural organism. would experience. And just like with natural organisms that can heal themselves and repair any kind of damage or cuts, we'd want those same properties in these soft robotic materials as well.

So the soft robotic material could squeeze itself into tight places searching for people or something, and then if it gets injured, it's to heal itself at the same time? That's exactly it. I mean, one application of these soft robots would be to explore areas that wouldn't be practical or safe, save for a human or for a more conventional. Volkier Robotics System. You could imagine having these robots in aquatic environments or in dry environments where they could do water quality testing or they could monitor air quality. You could use them to assist in and, say, search and rescue operations. So that's, yeah, exactly. That's the idea with these robotic systems. Wow, this whole field of softbotics, it's just like a game

changer it sounds. There is that potential. This is something. that's exciting for us and a lot of other researchers out there because we do see a lot of transformative potential with softbotics. So by virtue of taking the hard case off of robotic systems, engineering them out of materials that are soft and deformable and have these self-healing properties, it truly can really change how we use robotics in our everyday lives. Could it be used in the medical field, for example, in better prosthetics that have better sensory touch and knowing where things are? Definitely.

One of the big motivators actually in this field of softbotics is to create robotic systems that are wearable that could be used for human motor assistance and could also potentially be used as prosthetics. And so there's a lot of challenges there with engineering robotic systems that can match a lot of the same mechanical and functional properties of our biological tissue and our limbs and our organs. And so that remains one of the big challenges within the field. This material that we worked on with combining soft and stretchable elasticity, with electrical conductivity, with self-healing, this represents just one basic step. This material represents just one basic building block

for those more complex systems that could eventually function as a soft prosthetic or a some type of assistive device. I'm going to give you the Science Friday blank check question, not that I have one in my back pocket here, but if you could think about the future and something that you would love to develop, but it would take some kind of real money and resources, where would that go?

What's something that you would really like to see happen or something you could really use? I mean, one dream in the field, one big grant challenge, is if we could use these softbotic materials to engineer something like a robot hand that had the same degree of dexterity, the same degree of sensing capability that a natural human hand does, we could produce that using these materials that could be printable, that could seamlessly integrate together, a material that would be lightweight, that you could actually use as a prosthetic

or put on, say, mount to an arm of a robot, that would be one of the big dreams. And that's something actually that currently I'm looking to pursue with collaborators across multiple different universities. This does represent one of the big grand challenges in the field. Sounds great. Well, you'll come back and tell us about it when you do, okay? I hope to do so. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Dr. Carmel Magidi, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University

in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Believe me when I say that there may be no stranger-looking or more impressive critter than the naked mole rat. They may look unassuming, but they can defy aging, have an astonishingly high pain tolerance, and can be resistant to cancer. It is truly incredible, and it doesn't stop there.

Scientists recently discovered yet another way these rodents reject the mammalian status quo by producing egg cells and staying fertile until the day they die. Yes, unlike humans whose ovaries eventually stop producing eggs. Here to tell us what we can learn about fertility from naked mole rats is Dr. Miguel Branyo Enriquez, assistant professor at the McGee Women's Research Institute and the University of Pittsburgh. Welcome to Science Friday. Hello, how are you? Fine. Thanks for joining us. This is truly an amazing animal.

Miguel, you study reproduction of all the critters in the world. Why do you look to the naked mole rat for answers? Well, sometimes science is weird and it comes to you. I used to work with human and mouse, and it was more like an accident that these little creatures came into my life. We found this magic cells in the ovary and everything started. third. So I think that they found me. Let's go into this because you knew that naked mole rats could breed at older ages, but you didn't

know how they did it, right? Yeah, correct. So the last paper that was published before our work was from 1978, and they said like, okay, it seems like they have a lot of germ cells, but we don't know anything about that. So we decided to dig in how they do it. And for that, we start these experiments and this research and has been like an incredible journey to learn how they do it. So you looked into the germ cells in these eggs. Tell us about the theories you were looking at. Yeah. So if you think in other mammals, including the human, basically you create a lot of germ cells, but you killed them a lot. At bird, they have like a certain number and everything starts to go down. So if you have a lot in the naked more rat, they should be because either they have millions and millions and

millions, or B, they don't have like this kind of apoptosis or third because they are creating more. And in fact, we try to look for all of them. And now we know that the real answer is like a cocktail of the three options. Well, explain that to me. What do you mean by that? That means that when we analyze the abandoned reserve of the naked marat and we count the germ cells, we see that they're like postnatal, they ate about 1.5 million. That is like 95 times more than in mouse, but also we saw that those cells, they had the capacity to divide. And the division is not just like during that small period postnatally. It's also later stages in life. And then third thing is like, as I mentioned, a lot of cells go to up of doses or cell dead inhuman. And we

found that in the case of the naked marat, even when they have a little bit of this kind of cell that, it's really limited and it's still being a lot of germ cells. Wow. So naked mole rats had 95 times more egg cells than a mouse of the same age. And those cells kept dividing throughout their lives. Wow. So these eggs aren't running out. Yeah, correct. So they're producing eggs right until their death. Well, so far we analyze them up to 12 years old. So they live for 37 years. And in all the cases, we see cells that are positive for the markers of germ cells and divisions. So it's, It seems like we can say that it's for the entire life. My lab is working to look in this in 37 years old ovaries. So hopefully soon I will be able to confirm you this.

But I mean, we know that they have babies forever. So big chances that this is real. Wow. Wow. And you don't know how that happens. Well, it seems like what are we seeing in these ages is that they have the population of cells that once they turn into a queen, they start dividing a little bit faster than in the other ones.

So it's a mix of putting more germ cells into the pool at the same time that they have a big pull of sex. Right. Now, you're a professor of reproductive sciences, right? There's got to be something you want to learn about how these reproduce, how the naked mole rat is so great at making all these eggs and reproducing. I mean, we want to learn everything about them. They're like so weird. But if we think in human, they're like a lot of things that are similar. First, it's like if you think for how many years a female, will be able to have babies is kind of the same age, but also how the processes in the over here happening are quite similar up to a certain point. That is great, but for us what is really important is like this two, or how we can understand how they do it, to bring to the human population the capacity or, like, in the future,

develop strategies to improve the quality of the germ cells or extended the lifespan of the germ cells. But at the same time, we want to learn, how the ovary per se keep the animal healthy. Because in the case of human, what we know is that as soon as the female hits menopause, they're like an increase of risk of cancer, mental disease, et cetera, et cetera. So it's in one side is like how we can help for reproduction at the same time that we, how we can use what are we learning from them to improve aging in female.

Great point, great point. and we wish you great look in your research. And when you learn that stuff, will you come back and tell us? For sure, I will love to talk to you and tell you more stories about our lovely creatures. We love them. We love them. Thank you very much for joining us today.

Thank you. Much a gracias. Dr. Miguel Breino Enriquez, assistant professor at the McGee Women's Research Institute at the University of Pittsburgh. And that's it for this week. If you missed any part of this program or we would like to hear it again,

subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And you can say hi to us all week on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or contact us the old-fashioned way, SciFri at ScienceFriday.com. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week.

I'm Ira Flato.