Survival is the driver for adaptation: safety engineering changed the future, security engineering prevented disasters and transition engineering navigates the pathway to the climate-safe future

Consider a simple idea describing the time, space and relationship scales of survival. Engineering has been going along with the current paradigm that growth in wealth and material consumption can continue through innovation and technology development. The proposed survival continuum concept represents a new way to think about sustainability that has clear implications for influencing engineering projects in all fields. The argument for survival as the driver for adaptation is developed sequentially, building on theory, definition, examples and history. The key idea is that sustainability will be effectively addressed by a new engineering discipline furthering development of the field of safety engineering with longer time scale, broader space scale and more complex relationship scale. The implication is that the past 100-year development of safety engineering can be leveraged to fast-track the inclusion of sustainability risk management throughout the entire engineering profession. The conclusion is that a new, interdisciplinary field, Transition Engineering, is emerging as the way our society will achieve sustainability-safety through rapid reduction in fossil fuel use and reduction in detrimental social and environmental impacts of industrialization.

Lab-to-Field Transition of RNA Spray Applications – How Far Are We?

The drastic loss of biodiversity has alarmed the public and raised sociopolitical demand for chemical pesticide-free plant production, which is now treated by governments worldwide as a top priority. Given this global challenge, RNAi-based technologies are rapidly evolving as a promising substitute to conventional chemical pesticides. Primarily, genetically modified (GM) crops expressing double-stranded (ds)RNA-mediating gene silencing of foreign transcripts have been developed. However, since the cultivation of GM RNAi crops is viewed negatively in numerous countries, GM-free exogenous RNA spray applications attract tremendous scientific and political interest. The sudden rise in demand for pesticide alternatives has boosted research on sprayable RNA biopesticides, generating significant technological developments and advancing the potential for field applications in the near future. Here we review the latest advances that could pave the way for a quick lab-to-field transition for RNA sprays, which, as safe, selective, broadly applicable, and cost-effective biopesticides, represent an innovation in sustainable crop production. Given these latest advances, we further discuss technological limitations, knowledge gaps in the research, safety concerns and regulatory requirements that need to be considered and addressed before RNA sprays can become a reliable and realistic agricultural approach.

Evidence for the Fulde–Ferrell–Larkin–Ovchinnikov state in bulk NbS2

We present measurements of the magnetic torque, specific heat and thermal expansion of the bulk transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) superconductor NbS2 in high magnetic fields, with its layer structure aligned strictly parallel to the field using a piezo rotary positioner. The upper critical field of superconducting TMDs in the 2D form is known to be dramatically enhanced by a special form of Ising spin orbit coupling. This Ising superconductivity is very robust to the Pauli paramagnetic effect and can therefore exist beyond the Pauli limit for superconductivity. We find that superconductivity beyond the Pauli limit still exists in bulk single crystals of NbS2 for a precisely parallel field alignment. However, the comparison of our upper critical field transition line with numerical simulations rather points to the development of a Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov state above the Pauli limit as a cause. This is also consistent with the observation of a magnetic field driven phase transition in the thermodynamic quantities within the superconducting state near the Pauli limit.

Improved Accuracy of S-Value Based Dosimetry: Transitioning from Cristy-Eckerman to ICRP Adult Phantoms

BackgroundIn 2016, the International Commission on Radiological Protection and Measurements (ICRP), published the results of Monte Carlo simulations performed using updated and anatomically realistic voxelized phantoms. The resulting absorbed fractions are substantially more accurate than calculations based on the Cristy-Eckerman (CE) stylized (or mathematical) phantoms. Despite this development, the ICRP absorbed fractions have not been widely adopted for radiopharmaceutical dosimetry. To help make the transition, we have established a correspondence between tissues defined in the CE phantom and those defined in the ICRP phantoms. Using pre-clinical data from biodistribution studies performed, we have calculated absorbed doses for Th-227 labeled HER2 targeted antibody. We compare the CE phantom-based calculations as implemented in the OLINDA v1 software with those obtained using ICRP absorbed fractions as implemented in 3D-RD-S, a newly developed software package that implements the MIRD S-value methodology. We also compare ICRP values with a hybrid set of calculations in which alpha-particle energy was assumed completely absorbed in activity containing tissues. ResultsWe observed a non-negligible difference in the absorbed dose calculated using each of the methods for each radiation type. This can be attributed to a combination of greater accuracy in absorbed fraction calculations and differences in the time integrated activity coefficient values due to difference in representation of anatomy by the phantoms. The total absorbed dose for Thorium-227 was dominated by alpha particles, hence the differences in beta and photon absorbed doses were inconsequential in terms of total dose. ConclusionThe results obtained by comparing these different implementations of the MIRD S value methodology provide the data needed to help the field transition to the more anatomically accurate ICRP phantom-based dosimetry. Key words : ICRP phantom, radiopharmaceutical dosimetry, Cristy-Eckerman phantom

Ligand-field transition-induced C-S bond formation from nickelacycles

Photoexcitation is one of the acknowledged methods to activate Ni-based cross-coupling reactions, but factors that govern the photoactivity of organonickel complexes have not yet been established. Here we report the...

Superconductivity beyond Pauli's limit in bulk NbS2: Evidence for the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov state

We present magnetic torque, specific heat and thermal expansion measurements combined with a piezo rotary positioner of the bulk transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) superconductor NbS2 in high magnetic fields applied strictly parallel to its layer structure. The upper critical field of superconducting TMDs in the 2D form is known to be dramatically enhanced by a special form of Ising spin orbit coupling. This Ising superconductivity is very robust against the Pauli limit for superconductivity. We find that superconductivity beyond the Pauli limit still exists in bulk single crystals of NbS2. However, the comparison of our upper critical field transition line with numerical simulations rather points to the development of a Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov state above the Pauli limit as a cause. This is also consistent with the observation of a magnetic field driven phase transition in the thermodynamic quantities within the superconducting state near the Pauli limit.