MU’s Illumination spotlights local research, innovation

Think of it as innovation illumination–and perhaps the handsomest science publication ever.

Using a satin rather than glossy cover, the University of Missouri’s research magazine, Illumination, combines high production values with clever design elements to send a subtle, yet powerful, message before the cover is even opened: We report substantive research–not glossy, pie-in-the-sky fluff.

Like the two features profiled here that I penned for editor Charles Reineke, Illumination spotlights innovation with the power to change the world.

Chemistry and Serenity
With a $250,000 National Science Foundation grant, University of Missouri-Columbia assistant engineering professors Qingsong Yu and Hao Li want to make getting a great smile something to smile about. Their new technology, a so-called “plasma brush,” brings the serenity of low-temperature chemistry to procedures that use the spinning, whirring, grinding and dreaded dental drill.

The plasma brush also reduces a huge waste that bites into nearly every dental practice: replacing failed fillings. By modifying the surface of the tooth, the brush improves the composite bond.

“Most composites are made of polymers and ceramic,” Li told me. “They last, on average, five to eight years before they shrink and break,” after which bacteria, acids and enzymes infiltrate the tooth and cause more decay. “The plasma brush should greatly improve the bond and eliminate those problems,” he said.

Resembling its low-tech counterpart, the toothbrush, but with a slightly larger handle hooked up to a few gas tanks, the plasma brush uses argon gas to create a flaming “tip” known as a plasma. But this flame isn’t hot. Through the magic of chemistry, it operates at room temperature.

The heat-free flame “saves healthy tissue,” Yu told me. Conventional cavity prep–mechanical drilling and acid etching–often harms surrounding gums and nerves.

New York’s Park Avenue reconstructive dentist Daniel Noor, whose office employs the latest laser instrumentation–told me that plasma dentistry “makes a lot of sense–no shots, no drills, no pain, no fear. I would certainly use it after FDA approval.”

Calling tooth decay “the most chronic health problem in children,” pediatric dentist Santos Cortez, who chairs the Long Beach, Calif., Children’s Oral Health Task Force, said he, too, supports the concept.
More children miss school for problems with their teeth than for any other reason, and fear of the dentist–a.k.a. odontophobia–is a major reason they have problem teeth. The plasma brush, Cortez told me, “would be wonderful for pediatric dentistry. One of the most frightening issues for children is the noise of the drill.”

Evolution Solution
Call it solving by evolving.

University of Missouri-Columbia engineering professor Craig Kleuver and former MU graduate student Aaron Olds are digitizing Darwin to send space ships on long-distance flights that require careful maneuvers. What’s more, their program–a computer algorithm known as “differential evolution”–is available to all.

Using the mathematical equivalents of Darwinian evolution–reproduction, random mutation and natural selection–differential evolution seeks the best, or fittest, space route through an endless maze of interplanetary possibilities.

“It can find the route that takes the least time or the least fuel, or that maximizes the amount of payload a spacecraft can carry,” Kleuver told me.

Highly evolved routes include several well-timed “gravity assists” that use a rotating planet’s gravitational field to change a spaceship’s course or slingshot it farther into space, conserving valuable rocket fuel like a pedal-free bike ride down a hill.

Orbiting planets assume myriad positions that create dozens of gravity boost scenarios. Differential evolution rapidly analyzes successive “propulsion maneuvers” to maximize the best boost scenario.

NASA may seem like a natural Kleuver client, but the U.S. space agency uses proprietary software developed in house “that is arcane and hard to learn,” said Dave Brody, media director and science writer for Space.com and Space News.

Investors in private space tourism such as Richard Branson or Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace are more likely to appreciate the evolution solution, Brody told me.

Using differential evolution to navigate a precision landing on an asteroid intrigues him even more. Asteroids are green, Brody said. One day, they’ll eliminate strip mining. “Precious metals like titanium, platinum, and palladium are hard to come by on Earth, but far easier to mine on an asteroid,” he explained.

Space-bound crews will one day construct and repair space stations using raw materials from asteroids near Earth that would otherwise spell our doom, he added.

“For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction,” Brody said, citing Isaac Newton’s 3rd law of motion. “For every ton of material you jettison from an asteroid headed toward Earth, you push the asteroid in the opposite direction.”

One wonders what Charles Darwin would say if he knew that his highly-charged, controversial theory may help everyone survive–not only the fittest–by helping Earth survive in more ways than one.
“Instead of threatening us, asteroids will become a valuable part of almost every space mission,” Brody said. “Thanks largely to software that uses new algorithms like differential evolution.” ?