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How Plant Biology Could Revolutionize Renewable Energy

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Tuesday, May 28, 2024

A groundbreaking study demonstrates that plants can generate electricity that varies with their circadian rhythms, opening up new possibilities for environmentally sustainable energy production. Credit: Aniruddha Guha, editedNew research has revealed that the hydraulic systems of plants generate a streaming electric potential in sync with their circadian rhythms, presenting innovative opportunities for sustainable energy production.When plants draw water from their roots to nourish their stems and leaves, they produce an electric potential that could be harnessed as a renewable energy source. However, like all living things, plants are subject to a circadian rhythm — the biological clock that runs through day and night cycles and influences biological processes. In plants, this daily cycle includes capturing light energy for photosynthesis and absorbing water and nutrients from the soil during the day, and slowing its growth processes at night.Study Insights on Electrical Potential in PlantsIn a new study published this week in Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, the researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur detailed how biological processes produce voltage in plants and the impact of the cyclic day and night changes on this voltage.“This streaming potential, essentially a consequence of the natural energy gathered in the plant, offers a renewable energy source that is continuous and can be sustainable over long periods,” author Suman Chakraborty said. “The question we wanted to answer was how much potential it can produce, and how is electric potential influenced by the plant’s biological clock?” Plant hydraulics drive the biological process that moves fluids from roots to plant stems and leaves, creating streaming electric potential, or voltage, in the process. This study closely examined the differences in voltage caused by the concentrations of ions, types of ions, and pH of the fluid plants transport, tying the voltage changes to the plant’s circadian rhythm that causes adjustments day and night. According to the authors, this consistent, cyclic voltage creation could be harnessed as an energy source. Credit: Aniruddha GuhaMethodology and DiscoveriesTo find out, the authors inserted electrodes into the stems of water hyacinths and attached reservoirs with electrodes to pieces of lucky bamboo to closely examine how electrical potential changes depending on types of ions, ion concentration, and the pH of the fluid flowing through the plants.“Our eureka moment was when our first experiments showed it is possible to produce electricity in a cyclic rhythm and the precise linkage between this and the plant’s inherent daily rhythm,” Chakraborty said. “We could exactly pinpoint how this is related to water transpiration and the ions the plant carries via the ascent of sap.”The study quantified the voltage response originating from the movement of ions through the plant’s pathways that align uniquely with the plant’s daily rhythms.Potential for Sustainable Energy HarvestingThe authors discovered plants can actively moderate the flow of fluid or sap in sync with the day and night cycles. They also found the electric streaming potential increases with decreased concentration of ions or increased pH in the fluid.“We not only rediscovered the plant’s electrical rhythm, articulating it in terms of voltages and currents, but we also provided insight into potentially tapping electrical power output from plants in a sustainable manner with no environmental impact and no disruption to the ecosystem,” Chakraborty said.“The findings could help develop biomimetic, nature-inspired systems that can address the global energy crisis with an eco-friendly, sustainable solution in which planting a tree not only relieves the crises of climate change and declining environmental quality, but also provides a way to harness electricity from it.”Reference: “How does the diurnal biological clock influence electrokinetics in a living plant?” by Aniruddha Guha, Saumyadwip Bandyopadhyay, Chirodeep Bakli, and Suman Chakraborty, 28 May 2024, Physics of Fluids. DOI: 10.1063/5.0195088

New research has revealed that the hydraulic systems of plants generate a streaming electric potential in sync with their circadian rhythms, presenting innovative opportunities for...

Plant Hydraulics Biological Process Cover

A groundbreaking study demonstrates that plants can generate electricity that varies with their circadian rhythms, opening up new possibilities for environmentally sustainable energy production. Credit: Aniruddha Guha, edited

New research has revealed that the hydraulic systems of plants generate a streaming electric potential in sync with their circadian rhythms, presenting innovative opportunities for sustainable energy production.

When plants draw water from their roots to nourish their stems and leaves, they produce an electric potential that could be harnessed as a renewable energy source. However, like all living things, plants are subject to a circadian rhythm — the biological clock that runs through day and night cycles and influences biological processes. In plants, this daily cycle includes capturing light energy for photosynthesis and absorbing water and nutrients from the soil during the day, and slowing its growth processes at night.

Study Insights on Electrical Potential in Plants

In a new study published this week in Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, the researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur detailed how biological processes produce voltage in plants and the impact of the cyclic day and night changes on this voltage.

“This streaming potential, essentially a consequence of the natural energy gathered in the plant, offers a renewable energy source that is continuous and can be sustainable over long periods,” author Suman Chakraborty said. “The question we wanted to answer was how much potential it can produce, and how is electric potential influenced by the plant’s biological clock?”

Plant Hydraulics Biological Process

Plant hydraulics drive the biological process that moves fluids from roots to plant stems and leaves, creating streaming electric potential, or voltage, in the process. This study closely examined the differences in voltage caused by the concentrations of ions, types of ions, and pH of the fluid plants transport, tying the voltage changes to the plant’s circadian rhythm that causes adjustments day and night. According to the authors, this consistent, cyclic voltage creation could be harnessed as an energy source. Credit: Aniruddha Guha

Methodology and Discoveries

To find out, the authors inserted electrodes into the stems of water hyacinths and attached reservoirs with electrodes to pieces of lucky bamboo to closely examine how electrical potential changes depending on types of ions, ion concentration, and the pH of the fluid flowing through the plants.

“Our eureka moment was when our first experiments showed it is possible to produce electricity in a cyclic rhythm and the precise linkage between this and the plant’s inherent daily rhythm,” Chakraborty said. “We could exactly pinpoint how this is related to water transpiration and the ions the plant carries via the ascent of sap.”

The study quantified the voltage response originating from the movement of ions through the plant’s pathways that align uniquely with the plant’s daily rhythms.

Potential for Sustainable Energy Harvesting

The authors discovered plants can actively moderate the flow of fluid or sap in sync with the day and night cycles. They also found the electric streaming potential increases with decreased concentration of ions or increased pH in the fluid.

“We not only rediscovered the plant’s electrical rhythm, articulating it in terms of voltages and currents, but we also provided insight into potentially tapping electrical power output from plants in a sustainable manner with no environmental impact and no disruption to the ecosystem,” Chakraborty said.

“The findings could help develop biomimetic, nature-inspired systems that can address the global energy crisis with an eco-friendly, sustainable solution in which planting a tree not only relieves the crises of climate change and declining environmental quality, but also provides a way to harness electricity from it.”

Reference: “How does the diurnal biological clock influence electrokinetics in a living plant?” by Aniruddha Guha, Saumyadwip Bandyopadhyay, Chirodeep Bakli, and Suman Chakraborty, 28 May 2024, Physics of Fluids.
DOI: 10.1063/5.0195088

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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South Texas coal-fired power plant to switch to clean energy after receiving more than $1 billion in federal money

San Miguel Electric Cooperative's plan to turn into a solar and battery plant will leave only 14 coal-fired power plants in the state.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. A South Texas coal-fired power plant will receive more than $1 billion in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to convert into a solar and battery facility, according to the agency. The switch by San Miguel Electric Cooperative, located in Christine in Atascosa County, to a solar and battery plant will be funded by more than $1.4 billion of a $4.37 billion federal grant to support clean energy while maintaining rural jobs. With the co-op’s transition to a renewable energy plant, only 14 coal-fired power plants will be left in the state. In September, the CEO of San Miguel Electric Cooperative, Craig Courter, told a local newspaper that with federal funding, the co-op can “virtually eliminate our greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to provide affordable and reliable power to rural Texans.” “We take pride in our attention to detail in safety, environmental compliance, community service and mined land reclamation,” Courter told the Pleasanton Express. According to the USDA’s Thursday announcement, the transformation will reduce climate pollution by more than 1.8 million tons yearly and support as many as 600 jobs. In 2019, a Texas Tribune investigation showed that state agencies allowed San Miguel Cooperative to contaminate acres with toxic chemicals. These chemicals can leach into groundwater and soil and endanger people’s health. According to 2023 EPA data, the plant is the fourth-largest mercury polluter of all power plants in the state. “For years, folks in my county have been worried about water contamination from San Miguel’s lignite mine, so with this announcement, we are hopeful that McMullen County’s water will be clean long into the future,” McMullen County Judge James Teal told the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental group. Teal said that county government officials are looking forward to a benefits plan that will “implement a quality remediation process for the existing plant and mine and provide us with peace of mind that the mess has been cleaned up.” The most important Texas news,sent weekday mornings. San Miguel will still need to establish a timeline for shutting down the coal plant. Still, it’s a “historic victory” for South Texas, said James Perkins, a Sierra Club Texas campaign organizer. Other co-ops in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, and Nebraska received similar federal funding. “Texans want healthy air and water and affordable, reliable energy — and we’re ready to come together to get it done,” said Perkins.

Energy
Agriculture
Climate

Hawaiian Electric Company's Shaky Credit Prompts Proposal for Help From State

Still reeling financially from the devastating wildfires that destroyed much of Lahaina in 2023, Hawaiian Electric Co. wants the state to back the utility’s contracts with wind and solar farms

Still reeling financially from the devastating wildfires that killed at least 102 people and destroyed much of Lahaina in 2023, Hawaiian Electric Co. wants the state to back the utility’s contracts with wind and solar farms.The idea is to make sure new projects can come online despite a cloud of uncertainty in financial markets over HECO. Rebecca Dayhuff Matsushima, HECO’s vice president for resource procurement, said the company hasn’t finished revising proposed legislation for lawmakers to introduce. But she acknowledged the company has been briefing key lawmakers on its proposal ahead of the legislative session that starts in January.“We’re still refining that draft and we hope to get close to a final version later this week,” she said.The idea is for the state to step into HECO’s shoes if the company were to default on payment obligations to wind and solar farms.At stake, Matsushima said, is the ability for HECO to seamlessly bring online large-scale renewable projects to replace aging fossil-fuel burning generators targeted to shut down in the next several years. “Utility scale projects are being put on hold left and right,” said Isaac Moriwake, managing attorney for Earthjustice’s regional office in Honolulu. “Right now, we’re completely stalled out.”Hawaii Rep. Nicole Lowen, chair of the House Energy and Environmental Protection Committee, said HECO’s proposal makes sense conceptually as a solution and should pose little or no risk to utility customers or taxpayers. “But,” Lowen said, “the devil is always in the details.” Contracts Are Key Part Of Hawaii’s Energy Policy Hawaii’s energy policy calls for all electricity sold in the state to be produced from renewable resources by 2045. To achieve that goal, HECO relies on third-party “independent power producers” to build large-scale projects — chiefly wind and solar farms, which require massive investments recouped over decades.To pay for the projects, the power producers enter long-term contracts with HECO to buy electricity for a certain price. The producers then borrow money to pay for the projects up front, with a promise to use payments from HECO to repay the loans.The problem is HECO’s credit profile, which was battered after the August 2023 wildfire. The company faces hundreds of lawsuits related to the fire, which was started when a downed HECO power line ignited dry grasses, according to official investigations. As a result, the company’s stock price has plummeted, and its credit rating has been cut to junk status.That’s made it hard for the power producers to borrow money when they go to credit markets saying their customer is a utility facing billions of dollars in potential liability.“Independent Power Producers (‘IPPs’) have expressed concerns with the Hawaiian Electric’s credit rating and the inability of the IPPs to finance projects or to finance them at reasonable rates given the Company’s current credit rating and financial situation,” the company explains in a document shared with lawmakers and others.The problem has lingered since last session, when it started becoming clear that fallout from the fires was affecting Hawaii’s progress toward its renewable energy goals.At that time, lawmakers proposed a bill to enable HECO to strengthen its credit profile by letting it issue a new type of bond. Unlike other types of corporate debt, the new bonds could have been secured by a new fee charged directly to utility customers. Such bonds are viewed as carrying little risk and are frequently used by utilities to raise money because they bear lower interest rates than standard corporate debt. The securitization bill along with other measures theoretically would have shored up HECO’s credit profile and could have made it easier for the power producers to borrow money at low rates to finance their projects. Supporters included producers like Longroad Energy and Clearway Energy, as well as the Ulupono Initiative, which invests in renewables. But some lawmakers viewed the securitization bill as an open-ended bailout for HECO and sought sweeping changes from the utility in return. The measure took another political hit when HECO’s chief executive, Shelee Kimura, testified that HECO might use funds from securitization to pay wildfire claims as a last resort. The measure ultimately stalled.The new idea is a narrower proposal to backstop HECO’s renewable energy contracts using the state’s creditworthiness.“With the state’s ability to step into the utility’s place, it is likely that financing parties will view contracts with the utility as being supported by the investment grade credit rating of the state instead of the utility, avoiding higher bills and risks to reliability,” the company says in its presentation. As envisioned, the proposal would mean little risk to the state if it had to step into HECO’s shoes, Lowen said.Electricity generated by the power producers would go to customers who would pay for it. But instead of that money flowing through HECO to the power producers, the money would flow through the state.But Lowen said it’s unlikely the state would have to step up for HECO.And HECO’s fortunes soon may change dramatically. The utility and its parent, Hawaiian Electric Industries, have joined other defendants in the massive wildfire litigation to craft a $4 billion offer designed to settle all wildfire claims. While the fire victims have agreed to settle, the insurance industry remains a major holdout. Having paid more than $2 billion in wildfire claims to victims, the insurers want to sue HECO and others allegedly responsible for starting the fires to recoup their claims.The Hawaii Supreme Court is expected to rule next month on whether the parties can settle without the insurers signing on.In the meantime, HECO’s Matsushima said it’s important to give the power producers confidence to invest in Hawaii. Permits for existing fossil fuel generators on Maui and the Big Island are set to expire in 2028 and additional projects on Maui are heading toward obsolescence in 2030 and 2031. Oahu generators face no deadlines, but there is room for expansion, she said.It benefits customers to get renewable projects on track to ensure customers reliable access to electricity from clean resources at good prices, Matsushima said.“This definitely is something we should be looking at,” Earthjustice’s Moriwake said.This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Energy
Climate

Oil and gas firms operating in Colorado falsified environmental impact reports

State’s energy and carbon management commission said fraudulent pollution data was reported for at least 344 wellsOil and gas companies operating in Colorado have submitted hundreds of environmental impact reports with “falsified” laboratory data since 2021, according to state regulators.Colorado’s energy and carbon management commission (ECMC) said on 13 December that contractors for Chevron and Oxy had submitted reports with fraudulent data for at least 344 oil and gas wells across the state, painting a misleading picture of their pollution levels. Consultants for a third company, Civitas, had also filed forms with falsified information for an unspecified number of wells, regulators said. Continue reading...

Oil and gas companies operating in Colorado have submitted hundreds of environmental impact reports with “falsified” laboratory data since 2021, according to state regulators.Colorado’s energy and carbon management commission (ECMC) said on 13 December that contractors for Chevron and Oxy had submitted reports with fraudulent data for at least 344 oil and gas wells across the state, painting a misleading picture of their pollution levels. Consultants for a third company, Civitas, had also filed forms with falsified information for an unspecified number of wells, regulators said.Some of the reports, which were conducted and filed by the consulting groups Eagle Environmental Consulting and Tasman Geosciences, obscured the levels of dangerous contaminants in nearby soils, including arsenic, which is linked to heart disease and a variety of cancers, and benzene, which is linked to leukemia and other blood disorders, among other pollutants, according to the commission.“I do believe that the degree of alleged fraud warrants some criminal investigation,” said Julie Murphy, the ECMC director, in November.Regulators first revealed in November that widespread data fabrication had occurred, noting that the companies had voluntarily disclosed the issue months earlier. Last week, as officials specified which sites were known to be affected, the New Mexico attorney general’s office said it was also gathering information about the consulting groups’ testing methods.“This highlights the whole problem of our regulatory agency relying on operator-reported data,” said Heidi Leathwood, climate policy analyst for 350 Colorado, an environmental non-profit. “The public needs to know that they are really being put at risk by these carcinogens.”Paula Beasley, a Chevron spokesperson, wrote via email that an independent contractor – which ECMC identified as Denver-based Eagle Environmental Consulting – notified the company in July that an employee had manipulated laboratory data.“When Chevron became aware of this fraud, it immediately launched an investigation into these incidents and continues to cooperate fully and work closely with the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission,” Beasley wrote. “Chevron is shocked and appalled that any third-party contractor would intentionally falsify data and file it with state officials.”Jennifer Price, an Oxy spokesperson, also wrote via email that a third-party environmental consultant informed the company about employee-altered lab reports and associated forms. “Upon notification, we reported the issue to Colorado’s Energy and Carbon Management Commission and are reassessing the identified sites to confirm they meet state environmental and health standards,” she added.In emailed responses, Tasman Geosciences spokesperson Andy Boian said that Tasman’s data alterations were the work of a single employee and were “minor” in nature, and presented “no human health risk”. But Kristin Kemp, the ECMC’s community relations manager, said the commission’s investigation had not yet confirmed whether that was true.“What we can say already is that the degree of falsified data is vast, from seemingly benign to more significant impact,” she said.Boian also said Tasman “has filed legal action” against its former employee.Civitas and Eagle Environmental Consulting did not respond to requests for comment.Across the US, cash-strapped state regulators have long outsourced environmental analysis to fossil fuel companies, who self-report their own ground-level impacts. But the revelations about widespread data fabrication in Colorado – the fourth-largest oil- and gas-producing state in the US – raises questions about whether operators and their consultants can truly self-police.“It’s obvious: if you want the oil and gas industry to pay you money for a service, you better not find any big problems, or they’re not going to pay you,” said Sharon Wilson, a former consultant for the oil and gas industry who is now an anti-fracking activist in Texas. She said she left her post after her employer’s findings, which she described as trustworthy, were routinely ignored by industry.It is not uncommon for hired consultants to misreport numbers in a way that benefits their clients in the fossil fuel industry, said Anthony Ingraffea, emeritus professor of civil engineering at Cornell University. In 2020, he published a study that found widespread anomalies in how methane emissions were reported across fracking sites in Pennsylvania.“Make sure that the responsibility – the regulatory responsibility, the moral responsibility – is as uncertain as your lawyers can set it up to be,” he said of the practice of outsourcing environmental impact studies. “In other words, point to somebody else.”In an email, Kemp said that companies, contractors and regulators support one another like legs on a three-legged stool, with each trusting the other to pull its weight. She explained that regulators like the ECMC will always be at least somewhat dependent on self-reported data, due to the impracticality of monitoring hundreds of operators at thousands of sites – but that existing processes may need reconsideration.“ECMC’s regulatory workflow is grounded in an expectation that people abide by the law, with reasonable measures in place to ensure that to be the case,” she wrote. “But if we determine we can no longer rely broadly on receiving accurate information, we’d need action – and the scope and scale of that action will be determined by what we learn during the ongoing investigation.”According to the commission, 278 of the wells disclosed so far to have falsified information are operated by Chevron, which contracted with Eagle Environmental. Sixty-six belong to Oxy, a Houston-based energy firm which contracted with Tasman Geosciences. Civitas, which also worked with Eagle Environmental Consulting, disclosed it too had filed falsified data, but has yet not shared information about which of its sites were affected.Most of the wells in question are in rural Weld county, in north-eastern Colorado, which is home to 82% of the state’s oil production and contains more than half of its gas wells. However, regulators revealed that some of the sites with falsified data are close to cities such as Fort Collins, Greeley and Boulder. About half are no longer operational and had been deemed safely remediated by the state.So far, the only sites shared with the public have been those self-reported by the operators, rather than discovered by the ECMC. “It’s likely more sites will become known as the ongoing investigation unfolds,” Kemp wrote.Eagle and Tasman, the consultants who allegedly provided false data, also work outside the state, raising concerns their employees may have submitted fraudulent data elsewhere.“We believe that this is potentially of such danger and magnitude that the situation warrants further inquiry,” said Mariel Nanasi, executive director of the Santa Fe-based non-profit New Energy Economy.Lauren Rodriguez, director of communications for New Mexico’s office of the attorney general, confirmed on 16 December that the office was indeed looking into the allegations around the consulting groups’ work.“The single Tasman individual involved in the data alteration did not do any work for Tasman in [New Mexico], or any other states,” Boian said by email.Kemp, the ECMC spokesperson, said it was still unclear why two independent third-party consultants came forward to self-report data falsification around the same time. But the consequences could be serious: forging an official document filed to a public office is a class 5 felony in Colorado, punishable by one to three years in prison and up to $100,000 in fines. The ECMC will also consider fines and other enforcement actions, she said.The Colorado attorney general’s office declined to comment on the ongoing investigation. And while Kemp said it wasn’t yet clear why the environmental consultants admitted the falsification when they did, she noted that the buck ultimately stops with the oil and gas operators.“Regardless of who’s at fault, the burden of responsibility falls to the operator,” she said.

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Pollution
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Feds to assess environmental risks of proposed Northwest Hydrogen Hub

Companies have proposed 10 projects for the Northwest hub so far, including several hydrogen production facilities, hydrogen distribution pipelines and storage projects, and projects that would spur adoption of hydrogen-powered trucks, buses and hydrogen refueling stations, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

A year after naming the Northwest one of seven new “regional hydrogen hubs” in a nationwide competition, the U.S. Department of Energy is beginning its review of possible environmental risks of developing certain hydrogen projects and is inviting the public into the process.The review, announced Wednesday, will analyze any adverse effects from developing hydrogen projects and the impact of potential infrastructure, their scope, design and construction. But the assessments are only a first step and do not necessarily mean the projects will go forward and receive funding, the agency said. It is holding a virtual meeting for the public in January and will take comments until spring.The projects involve the development and distribution of “green” hydrogen energy and its end users. Green hydrogen can be produced with water and used without emitting greenhouse gases. Green hydrogen energy is seen as a key source of clean energy to help reduce climate-warming emissions from sectors that currently rely on fossil fuels and are hard to electrify because of the huge amounts of energy they demand.The Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub, which includes Washington, Oregon and Montana, was chosen in 2023 to receive about $1 billion in federal funding during the next decade. Companies have proposed 10 projects for the Northwest hub so far, including several hydrogen production facilities, hydrogen distribution pipelines and storage projects, and projects that would spur adoption of hydrogen-powered trucks, buses and hydrogen refueling stations, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.The hydrogen produced in the Northwest could also be used to make fertilizer and power energy-demanding processes like semiconductor manufacturing.By replacing fossil fuels in some transportation and in hard to electrify sectors, the hub could divert up to 1.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year, according to the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Association. That’s equivalent to removing about 400,000 gasoline-powered cars from roads annually.But the Northwest Hub has faced challenges getting off the ground, with project developers pausing plans due to unaffordable renewable energy prices as regional rates for electricity — needed to make green hydrogen — skyrocket. They’re also facing a lack of demand along with delays and confusion over a federal tax credit that was meant to spur investment and jump-start the industry.Learn more and submit commentsRegister here to attend a virtual meeting about the hydrogen hub environmental assessment on Wednesday, Jan. 22 from 6 to 8 p.m.Submit comments on the environmental assessment process through March 23, 2025 here.‘Green hydrogen’Green hydrogen starts with water, which is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. Using a device called an electrolyzer, an electric current is passed through the water, causing a reaction that splits the hydrogen and oxygen from one another. The hydrogen is captured and stored. The production process requires a lot of electricity. But as long as that electricity comes from a renewable source, such as wind or solar power, the hydrogen is “green” and carbon neutral. When burned as fuel, hydrogen emits no carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases, just water.-- Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle, abaumhardt@oregoncapitalchronicle.comOregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

Energy
Climate
Transportation

Need a research hypothesis? Ask AI.

MIT engineers developed AI frameworks to identify evidence-driven hypotheses that could advance biologically inspired materials.

Crafting a unique and promising research hypothesis is a fundamental skill for any scientist. It can also be time consuming: New PhD candidates might spend the first year of their program trying to decide exactly what to explore in their experiments. What if artificial intelligence could help?MIT researchers have created a way to autonomously generate and evaluate promising research hypotheses across fields, through human-AI collaboration. In a new paper, they describe how they used this framework to create evidence-driven hypotheses that align with unmet research needs in the field of biologically inspired materials.Published Wednesday in Advanced Materials, the study was co-authored by Alireza Ghafarollahi, a postdoc in the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (LAMM), and Markus Buehler, the Jerry McAfee Professor in Engineering in MIT’s departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of Mechanical Engineering and director of LAMM.The framework, which the researchers call SciAgents, consists of multiple AI agents, each with specific capabilities and access to data, that leverage “graph reasoning” methods, where AI models utilize a knowledge graph that organizes and defines relationships between diverse scientific concepts. The multi-agent approach mimics the way biological systems organize themselves as groups of elementary building blocks. Buehler notes that this “divide and conquer” principle is a prominent paradigm in biology at many levels, from materials to swarms of insects to civilizations — all examples where the total intelligence is much greater than the sum of individuals’ abilities.“By using multiple AI agents, we’re trying to simulate the process by which communities of scientists make discoveries,” says Buehler. “At MIT, we do that by having a bunch of people with different backgrounds working together and bumping into each other at coffee shops or in MIT’s Infinite Corridor. But that's very coincidental and slow. Our quest is to simulate the process of discovery by exploring whether AI systems can be creative and make discoveries.”Automating good ideasAs recent developments have demonstrated, large language models (LLMs) have shown an impressive ability to answer questions, summarize information, and execute simple tasks. But they are quite limited when it comes to generating new ideas from scratch. The MIT researchers wanted to design a system that enabled AI models to perform a more sophisticated, multistep process that goes beyond recalling information learned during training, to extrapolate and create new knowledge.The foundation of their approach is an ontological knowledge graph, which organizes and makes connections between diverse scientific concepts. To make the graphs, the researchers feed a set of scientific papers into a generative AI model. In previous work, Buehler used a field of math known as category theory to help the AI model develop abstractions of scientific concepts as graphs, rooted in defining relationships between components, in a way that could be analyzed by other models through a process called graph reasoning. This focuses AI models on developing a more principled way to understand concepts; it also allows them to generalize better across domains.“This is really important for us to create science-focused AI models, as scientific theories are typically rooted in generalizable principles rather than just knowledge recall,” Buehler says. “By focusing AI models on ‘thinking’ in such a manner, we can leapfrog beyond conventional methods and explore more creative uses of AI.”For the most recent paper, the researchers used about 1,000 scientific studies on biological materials, but Buehler says the knowledge graphs could be generated using far more or fewer research papers from any field.With the graph established, the researchers developed an AI system for scientific discovery, with multiple models specialized to play specific roles in the system. Most of the components were built off of OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 series models and made use of a technique known as in-context learning, in which prompts provide contextual information about the model’s role in the system while allowing it to learn from data provided.The individual agents in the framework interact with each other to collectively solve a complex problem that none of them would be able to do alone. The first task they are given is to generate the research hypothesis. The LLM interactions start after a subgraph has been defined from the knowledge graph, which can happen randomly or by manually entering a pair of keywords discussed in the papers.In the framework, a language model the researchers named the “Ontologist” is tasked with defining scientific terms in the papers and examining the connections between them, fleshing out the knowledge graph. A model named “Scientist 1” then crafts a research proposal based on factors like its ability to uncover unexpected properties and novelty. The proposal includes a discussion of potential findings, the impact of the research, and a guess at the underlying mechanisms of action. A “Scientist 2” model expands on the idea, suggesting specific experimental and simulation approaches and making other improvements. Finally, a “Critic” model highlights its strengths and weaknesses and suggests further improvements.“It’s about building a team of experts that are not all thinking the same way,” Buehler says. “They have to think differently and have different capabilities. The Critic agent is deliberately programmed to critique the others, so you don't have everybody agreeing and saying it’s a great idea. You have an agent saying, ‘There’s a weakness here, can you explain it better?’ That makes the output much different from single models.”Other agents in the system are able to search existing literature, which provides the system with a way to not only assess feasibility but also create and assess the novelty of each idea.Making the system strongerTo validate their approach, Buehler and Ghafarollahi built a knowledge graph based on the words “silk” and “energy intensive.” Using the framework, the “Scientist 1” model proposed integrating silk with dandelion-based pigments to create biomaterials with enhanced optical and mechanical properties. The model predicted the material would be significantly stronger than traditional silk materials and require less energy to process.Scientist 2 then made suggestions, such as using specific molecular dynamic simulation tools to explore how the proposed materials would interact, adding that a good application for the material would be a bioinspired adhesive. The Critic model then highlighted several strengths of the proposed material and areas for improvement, such as its scalability, long-term stability, and the environmental impacts of solvent use. To address those concerns, the Critic suggested conducting pilot studies for process validation and performing rigorous analyses of material durability.The researchers also conducted other experiments with randomly chosen keywords, which produced various original hypotheses about more efficient biomimetic microfluidic chips, enhancing the mechanical properties of collagen-based scaffolds, and the interaction between graphene and amyloid fibrils to create bioelectronic devices.“The system was able to come up with these new, rigorous ideas based on the path from the knowledge graph,” Ghafarollahi says. “In terms of novelty and applicability, the materials seemed robust and novel. In future work, we’re going to generate thousands, or tens of thousands, of new research ideas, and then we can categorize them, try to understand better how these materials are generated and how they could be improved further.”Going forward, the researchers hope to incorporate new tools for retrieving information and running simulations into their frameworks. They can also easily swap out the foundation models in their frameworks for more advanced models, allowing the system to adapt with the latest innovations in AI.“Because of the way these agents interact, an improvement in one model, even if it’s slight, has a huge impact on the overall behaviors and output of the system,” Buehler says.Since releasing a preprint with open-source details of their approach, the researchers have been contacted by hundreds of people interested in using the frameworks in diverse scientific fields and even areas like finance and cybersecurity.“There’s a lot of stuff you can do without having to go to the lab,” Buehler says. “You want to basically go to the lab at the very end of the process. The lab is expensive and takes a long time, so you want a system that can drill very deep into the best ideas, formulating the best hypotheses and accurately predicting emergent behaviors. Our vision is to make this easy to use, so you can use an app to bring in other ideas or drag in datasets to really challenge the model to make new discoveries.”

Energy
Science

Suggested Viewing

Precarious

An independent art film, Precarious is a haunting evocation of the aftermath of the explosion at Chernobyl, 25 years on. Accompanied by testimony from a group of unseen veterans of the disaster, Precarious bears witness to both the folly and resilience of humans and to nature's fragility.

Crisis
Pollution
Energy

Resilience

In 1998, a vast power grid serving 5 million people in Canada was destroyed by an ice storm. Twenty years later researchers of that disaster are developing a new kind of resilient power grid. Based in part on the book The Grid and the Village, the film explores how to protect grids and the people they serve from war, terrorist attack, and extreme weather.

Energy
Climate
Crisis

100 Short Stories

100 Short Stories is a collage ranging from the serious to the humorous. This original and engaging documentary tackles opinions regarding governance, public policy, and questions what are sound ideas socially, environmentally and culturally in today’s society. It’s about predatory Capitalism, renewable energy, stopping the frakers, and contemporary life in Atlantic Canada. Created by Neal Livingston, a well-known Nova Scotian documentary filmmaker and artist – as well as renewable energy practitioner, developer and policy advocate – who calls the film partly autobiographical.

Culture
Energy
Documentary

THE SPRAYER

In the land occupied with the sprayers army, no one has the right to grow any kind of plants either in public or private. So many of the people and soldiers do not even know how a plant grows or looks like, until one day one of the soldiers finds a seed buried deep down in the dust and his curiosity is just the beginning of something extraordinary, something big, something revolutionary.

Plants
CO2
Animation

Backyard

Following stories about the effects of fracking in Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Dakota, and Montana, an eerie similarity emerges despite the vast differences in geography, personal histories, and different stages of hydro-fracking development that involves increasingly difficult methods of fossil fuel extraction at increasing costs to the people and the environment. Interspersed throughout these human stories are animated illustrations of the bigger “puzzle picture” of which each story is only one small piece.

Resources
Land Use
Energy

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