A bioengineer at the University of California, Riverside, may have found a way to prevent counterfeit medications: pill coatings inspired by the sprinkles on baked goods and candies.
The idea was borne out of pandemic boredom. Confined to his home, Grover was struck by the patterns of nonpareils he saw on candies, and found himself counting the number of little balls on each one. “It’s random, how they’re applied,” he says. “I wondered if it ever repeats itself or if each of these candies is unique in the entire world.” He suspected the latter, and some quick math proved his hypothesis: Given dozens of nonpareils per candy in a handful of different colors, it’s highly unlikely that the sprinklings on any two candies would be identical.
He quickly realized his finding could have practical applications: pills or capsules could be coated with similar “sprinkles,” with the manufacturer photographing each pill or capsule before selling its products. Consumers looking to weed out fakes could potentially take a photo with their cell phones and go online to compare images of their own pills to the manufacturer’s database, with the help of an algorithm that would determine their authenticity. Or, a computer could generate another type of unique identifier, such as a text-based code, tracking to the color and location of the sprinkles. This would allow for a speedier validation than a photo-based comparison, Grover says. “It could be done very quickly, in a fraction of a second.”
Researchers and manufacturers have already developed some anti-counterfeit tools, including built-in identifiers like edible papers with scannable QR codes. But such methods, while functional, can be costly to implement, Grover says.
It wouldn’t be paranoid to take such precautions. Counterfeits are a growing problem, according to Young Kim, a biomedical engineer at Purdue University who was not involved in the CandyCodes study. “There are approximately 40,000 online pharmacies that one can access via the Internet,” he says. “Only three to four percent of them are operated legally.” Purchases from online pharmacies rose dramatically during the pandemic, and Kim expects a boom in counterfeit medical products alongside it.
The FDA warns that U.S. consumers can be exposed to counterfeits through online purchases, in particular. The problem is magnified in low- to middle-income nations, where one in 10 medical products are counterfeit, according to a World Health Organization estimate. Cost doesn’t seem to be a factor, either; antimalarials and antibiotics are most often reported as counterfeits or fakes, and generic medications are swapped as often as brand-name drugs, according to the same WHO report.
Counterfeits weren’t tracked globally until 2013; since then, there have been 1,500 reports to the WHO, with actual incidences of counterfeiting likely much higher. Fake medicines have been estimated to result in costs of $200 billion each year, and are blamed for more than 72,000 pneumonia- and 116,000 malaria-related deaths.
Researchers and manufacturers have already developed some anti-counterfeit tools, including built-in identifiers like edible papers with scannable QR codes or barcodes that are stamped onto or otherwise incorporated into pills and other medical products. But such methods, while functional, can be costly to implement, Grover says.
CandyCodes could provide unique identifiers for at least 41 million pills for every person on the planet.
William Grover
“Putting universal codes on each pill and each dosage is attractive,” he says. “The challenge is, how can we do it in a way that requires as little modification to the existing manufacturing process as possible? That's where I hope CandyCodes have an edge. It's not zero modification, but I hope it is as minor a modification of the manufacturing process as possible.”
Kim calls the concept “a clever idea to introduce entropy for high-level security” even if it may not be as close to market as other emerging technologies, including some edible watermarks he’s helped develop. He points out that CandyCodes still needs to be tested for reproducibility and readability.
The possibilities are already intriguing, though. Grover’s recent research, published in Scientific Reports, predicts that unique codes could be used for at least 41 million pills for every person on the planet.
Sadly, CandyCodes’ multicolored bits probably won’t taste like candy. They must be made of non-caloric ingredients to meet the international regulatory standards that govern food dyes and colorants. But Grover hopes CandyCodes represent a simple, accessible solution to a heart-wrenching issue. “This feels like trying to track down and go after bad guys,” he says. “Someone who would pass off a medicine intended for a child or a sick person and pass it off as something effective, I can't imagine anything much more evil than that. It's fun and, and a little fulfilling to try to develop technologies that chip away at that.”
Sparklers produce a beautiful display of light and heat by burning metal dust, which contains iron. The recent work of Canadian and Dutch researchers suggests we can use iron as a cheap, carbon-free fuel.
Iron as a fuel
Iron is abundantly available and cheap. More importantly, the byproduct of burning iron is rust (iron oxide), a solid material that is easy to collect and recycle. Neither burning iron nor converting its oxide back produces any carbon in the process.
Iron oxide is potentially renewable by reacting with electricity or hydrogen to become iron again.
Iron has a high energy density: it requires almost the same volume as gasoline to produce the same amount of energy. However, iron has poor specific energy: it’s a lot heavier than gas to produce the same amount of energy. (Think of picking up a jug of gasoline, and then imagine trying to pick up a similar sized chunk of iron.) Therefore, its weight is prohibitive for many applications. Burning iron to run a car isn’t very practical if the iron fuel weighs as much as the car itself.
In its powdered form, however, iron offers more promise as a high-density energy carrier or storage system. Iron-burning furnaces could provide direct heat for industry, home heating, or to generate electricity.
Plus, iron oxide is potentially renewable by reacting with electricity or hydrogen to become iron again (as long as you’ve got a source of clean electricity or green hydrogen). When there’s excess electricity available from renewables like solar and wind, for example, rust could be converted back into iron powder, and then burned on demand to release that energy again.
However, these methods of recycling rust are very energy intensive and inefficient, currently, so improvements to the efficiency of burning iron itself may be crucial to making such a circular system viable.
The science of discrete burning
Powdered particles have a high surface area to volume ratio, which means it is easier to ignite them. This is true for metals as well.
Under the right circumstances, powdered iron can burn in a manner known as discrete burning. In its most ideal form, the flame completely consumes one particle before the heat radiating from it combusts other particles in its vicinity. By studying this process, researchers can better understand and model how iron combusts, allowing them to design better iron-burning furnaces.
Discrete burning is difficult to achieve on Earth. Perfect discrete burning requires a specific particle density and oxygen concentration. When the particles are too close and compacted, the fire jumps to neighboring particles before fully consuming a particle, resulting in a more chaotic and less controlled burn.
Presently, the rate at which powdered iron particles burn or how they release heat in different conditions is poorly understood. This hinders the development of technologies to efficiently utilize iron as a large-scale fuel.
Burning metal in microgravity
In April, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched a suborbital “sounding” rocket, carrying three experimental setups. As the rocket traced its parabolic trajectory through the atmosphere, the experiments got a few minutes in free fall, simulating microgravity.
One of the experiments on this mission studied how iron powder burns in the absence of gravity.
In microgravity, particles float in a more uniformly distributed cloud. This allows researchers to model the flow of iron particles and how a flame propagates through a cloud of iron particles in different oxygen concentrations.
Existing fossil fuel power plants could potentially be retrofitted to run on iron fuel.
Insights into how flames propagate through iron powder under different conditions could help design much more efficient iron-burning furnaces.
Clean and carbon-free energy on Earth
Various businesses are looking at ways to incorporate iron fuels into their processes. In particular, it could serve as a cleaner way to supply industrial heat by burning iron to heat water.
For example, Dutch brewery Swinkels Family Brewers, in collaboration with the Eindhoven University of Technology, switched to iron fuel as the heat source to power its brewing process, accounting for 15 million glasses of beer annually. Dutch startup RIFT is running proof-of-concept iron fuel power plants in Helmond and Arnhem.
As researchers continue to improve the efficiency of burning iron, its applicability will extend to other use cases as well. But is the infrastructure in place for this transition?
Often, the transition to new energy sources is slowed by the need to create new infrastructure to utilize them. Fortunately, this isn’t the case with switching from fossil fuels to iron. Since the ideal temperature to burn iron is similar to that for hydrocarbons, existing fossil fuel power plants could potentially be retrofitted to run on iron fuel.
This article originally appeared on Freethink, home of the brightest minds and biggest ideas of all time.
Leaps.org talks with Dr. Tom Oxley, founding CEO of Synchron, a company that's taking a unique - and less invasive - approach to "brain-computer interfaces" for patients with ALS and other mobility challenges.
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In our conversation, Dr. Oxley talks about “Bluetooth brain”; the critical role of AI in the present and future of BCIs; how BCIs compare to voice command technology; regulatory frameworks for revolutionary technologies; specific people with paralysis who’ve been able to regain some independence thanks to the Stentrode; what it means to be a neurointerventionist; how to scale BCIs for more people to use them; the risks of BCIs malfunctioning; organic implants; and how BCIs help us understand the brain, among other topics.
Dr. Oxley received his PhD in neuro engineering from the University of Melbourne in Australia. He is the founding CEO of Synchron and an associate professor and the head of the vascular bionics laboratory at the University of Melbourne. He’s also a clinical instructor in the Deepartment of Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Oxley has completed more than 1,600 endovascular neurosurgical procedures on patients, including people with aneurysms and strokes, and has authored over 100 peer reviewed articles.
Links:
Synchron website - https://synchron.com/
Assessment of Safety of a Fully Implanted Endovascular Brain-Computer Interface for Severe Paralysis in 4 Patients (paper co-authored by Tom Oxley) - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/art...
More research related to Synchron's work - https://synchron.com/research
Tom Oxley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomoxl
Tom Oxley on Twitter - https://twitter.com/tomoxl?lang=en
Tom Oxley TED - https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_oxley_a_brain_implant_that_turns_your_thoughts_into_text?language=en
Tom Oxley website - https://tomoxl.com/
Novel brain implant helps paralyzed woman speak using digital avatar - https://engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2023/08/novel-brain-implant-helps-paralyzed-woman-speak-using-a-digital-avatar/
Edward Chang lab - https://changlab.ucsf.edu/
BCIs convert brain activity into text at 62 words per minute - https://med.stanford.edu/neurosurgery/news/2023/he...
Leaps.org: The Mind-Blowing Promise of Neural Implants - https://leaps.org/the-mind-blowing-promise-of-neural-implants/
Tom Oxley