The Beginning of the End of - COVID-19 - Top Tech Here come the vaccines: inside the biggest - IEEE Spectrum
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
The
FOR THE TECHNOLOGY INSIDER | 01.21
Top
Tech
2021
Beginning
of the
Here come the vaccines:
inside the biggest
logistical project ever
End of The pandemic’s
long shadow
on work, lifestyle,
COVID-19
and recreation
Keep pushing
the limits!
Congratulations to Peter Grutter and his group at the
Nanoscience & SPM Lab at McGill University on
bridging the gap between high spatial and ultrafast
temporal resolution to advance molecular and
quantum electronics. Observing 100 fs non-linear
Megan Cowie, Nanoscience & SPM Group, optical interactions and quantized vibration-modified
McGill University
electron transfer in single molecules with AFM
are impressive achievements that set new standards
at the forefront of scientific research.
We are excited to continue our collaboration and
look forward to finding new ways of using lock-in
amplifiers and boxcar averagers to push the limits
of SPM applications.
Zurich www.zhinst.com
Instruments Your Application. Measured.
CONTENTS_01.21
Top Tech 22 PEERING INTO THE
PANDEMIC END GAME
Tech innovations will help us
30 WHERE NO ONE
HAS SEEN BEFORE
Decades in the making, the
2021: The
navigate through the long, strange James Webb Space Telescope
twilight of COVID-19. will finally launch.
By Mark Pesce By David Schneider
Beginning 26 LOOK OUT FOR APPLE’S
AR GLASSES
Augmented-reality glasses that
32 THIS IS HOW TO
VACCINATE THE WORLD
We have COVID-19 vaccines.
of the
people actually want to wear may Now we need to manufacture
finally be coming into view. and distribute billions of doses.
By Tekla S. Perry By W. Wayt Gibbs
End of 28 DEEP LEARNING AT
THE SPEED OF LIGHT
38 THE UPS AND DOWNS
OF GRAVITY ENERGY
COVID-19
Optical computing will provide STORAGE
more efficient means to carry out Startups see plenty of potential
artificial-intelligence calculations. in potential energy.
By David Schneider By Samuel K. Moore
Check out these forecasts by
IEEE Spectrum’s editors about tech
developments that we expect to
make news this year. Page 21
PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY Edmon de Haro SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | JAN 2021 | 01
CONTENTS_01.21
40
44 48
40 THE RETURN OF 48 THE CARBON-SUCKING OTHER TIDBITS FROM OUR
SUPERSONIC TRAVEL FANS OF WEST TEXAS SHORT LIST
Boom Supersonic will test-fly a Directly capturing atmospheric CO2 Ten more tech milestones to watch for
prototype for a full-size airliner it is becoming mainstream. in 2021:
plans to build. By Maria Gallucci
By Philip E. Ross 24 A Shining Light
31 Quantum Networking
50 A SMALL ISLAND WAITS 39 Winds of Change
42 ROBOT TRUCKS 41 Driverless Race Cars
ON BIG DATA RATES
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: BOOM SUPERSONIC; JULIA DUNLOP/CLIMEWORKS; BLUE ORIGIN
43 Robots Below
OVERTAKE ROBOT CARS Residents of St. Helena will soon be 46 Mars or Bust
Fully autonomous tractor-trailers swamped with data, so they’re turning 47 Stopping Deepfakes
are due to hit the road. to satellite operators. 51 Faster Data
By Evan Ackerman By Michael Koziol 53 Your Next TV
54 Brain Scans Everywhere
52 MOMENTUM BUILDS
44 THREE WAYS TO 06 NEWS
FOR LITHIUM-ION BATTERY 12 HANDS ON
THE MOON
NASA is narrowing the designs under RECYCLING 16 CROSSTALK
consideration for a new moon lander. New plants in the United States 56 PAST FORWARD
By Jeff Foust and Europe aim to revamp Li-ion
battery recycling. On the cover Design and illustration for
By Jean Kumagai IEEE Spectrum by Michael Solita
IEEE SPECTRUM
(ISSN 0018-9235) is published monthly by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved. © 2021 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., 3 Park Avenue, New
York, NY 10016-5997, U.S.A. Volume No. 58, Issue No. 1. The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units. Canadian Post International
Publications Mail (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 40013087. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Circulation Department, IEEE Spectrum, Box 1051, Fort Erie, ON L2A 6C7. Cable address:
ITRIPLEE. Fax: +1 212 419 7570. INTERNET: spectrum@ieee.org. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS: IEEE Members: $21.40 included in dues. Libraries/institutions: $399. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to
IEEE Spectrum, c/o Coding Department, IEEE Service Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Box 1331, Piscataway, NJ 08855. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Canadian GST #125634188.
Printed at 120 Donnelley Dr., Glasgow, KY 42141-1060, U.S.A. IEEE Spectrum circulation is audited by BPA Worldwide. IEEE Spectrum is a member of the Association of Business Information & Media Companies, the
Association of Magazine Media, and Association Media & Publishing. IEEE prohibits discrimination, harassment, and bullying. For more information, visit https://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/whatis/policies/p9-26.html.
02 | JAN 2021 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG
BACK STORY
WORKING THE PROBLEM
C
ontr ibuting editor W. Way t Gibbs was well prepared
for the assignment when IEEE Spectrum came calling,
asking him to dig into the challenges of manufacturing and
distributing enough COVID-19 vaccines for all the humans
on Planet Earth.
Back in 1999, Gibbs ventured into the hot zone of a new
disease called Nipah virus, which was killing entire families
in Malaysia. In 2005, Gibbs cowrote an article for Scientific
American titled “Preparing for a Pandemic,” which discussed the
looming danger of a lethal virus and the need for governments to invest
in vaccine supplies. And when the new coronavirus made it to the
Americas, he couldn’t miss it. The first confirmed death from COVID-19
in the United States happened in a Seattle-area hospital just down the
street from Gibbs’s house.
He was ready to report. But this past March, as Gibbs started
making calls for a podcast series about the pandemic, he
encountered a roadblock: All of his usual sources for stories about
infectious disease were too busy to talk to him. “They were working
the problem,” says Gibbs. “There was a mad scramble by scientists
to get on top of this—they were spinning up studies, developing tests,
dealing with the lack of PPE (personal protective equipment),” he
says. “It was extremely hard to get access.”
To report for Spectrum on the worldwide push for COVID-19
vaccines [“This Is How to Vaccinate the World,” p. 32], Gibbs knew
he needed a new approach to reach top-level officials who were
making key decisions. He applied for the National Press Foundation’s
vaccine boot-camp fellowship, and won one of the 25 spots. The
virtual fellowship brought scientists and government regulators to
the group, enabling Gibbs to lob questions at such decision-makers
as Peter Marks, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s
division for vaccine safety. Other experts took time from their hectic
schedules to speak to the Fellows about the potential manufacturing
scale-up of different types of vaccines, and the massive task of
JASON REDMOND
building out infrastructure to distribute billions of doses. His article
01.21
explores these issues, which are arguably the defining challenges of
2021. “There are a number of questions that we still have to answer,”
Gibbs says, “as these vaccines become a reality.” ■
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | JAN 2021 | 03
CONTRIBUTORS
EDITOR IN CHIEF Susan Hassler, s.hassler@ieee.org ADVERTISING PRODUCTION +1 732 562 6334
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Glenn Zorpette, g.zorpette@ieee.org ADVERTISING PRODUCTION MANAGER
Evan Ackerman EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, DIGITAL
Harry Goldstein, h.goldstein@ieee.org
Felicia Spagnoli, f.spagnoli@ieee.org
SENIOR ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR
Ackerman, an IEEE Spectrum contributing editor, MANAGING EDITOR Elizabeth A. Bretz, e.bretz@ieee.org
Nicole Evans Gyimah, n.gyimah@ieee.org
has written about (and ridden in) many self-driving SENIOR ART DIRECTOR EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD, IEEE SPECTRUM
vehicles over the past decade. “Autonomous cars Mark Montgomery, m.montgomery@ieee.org Susan Hassler, Chair; David C. Brock, Robert N. Charette,
are more exciting for most of us, but autonomous PRODUCT MANAGER, DIGITAL Erico Guizzo, e.guizzo@ieee.org
Ronald F. DeMara, Shahin Farshchi, Lawrence O. Hall,
trucks could be an easier problem to solve,” SENIOR EDITORS
Jason K. Hui, Leah Jamieson, Mary Lou Jepsen,
Ackerman says. In this issue, he describes California Stephen Cass, cass.s@ieee.org
Deepa Kundur, Peter Luh, Michel Maharbiz, Allison Marsh,
startup TUSimple’s attempt to develop fully Carmen Menoni, Sofia Olhede, Majumbar Somdeb, Wen Tong,
Jean Kumagai, j.kumagai@ieee.org Maurizio Vecchione
autonomous freight trucks [p. 42]. “A driver‑out Samuel K. Moore, s.k.moore@ieee.org
test this year will be a significant step towards Tekla S. Perry, t.perry@ieee.org
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD, THE INSTITUTE
useful autonomy that we can trust,” he says. Kathy Pretz, Chair; Qusi Alqarqaz, Philip Chen, Shashank Gaur,
Philip E. Ross, p.ross@ieee.org Lawrence O. Hall, Susan Hassler, Peter Luh, Cecilia Metra,
David Schneider, d.a.schneider@ieee.org San Murugesan, Mirela Sechi Annoni Notare, Joel Trussell,
Eliza Strickland, e.strickland@ieee.org Hon K. Tsang, Chenyang Xu
Jeff Foust DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR Brandon Palacio, b.palacio@ieee.org
PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR Randi Klett, randi.klett@ieee.org
MANAGING DIRECTOR, PUBLICATIONS
EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE
Steven Heffner
Foust is a senior staff writer at SpaceNews. In ONLINE ART DIRECTOR Erik Vrielink, e.vrielink@ieee.org
IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave., 17th Floor,
“Three Ways to the Moon,” he examines designs NEWS MANAGER Mark Anderson, m.k.anderson@ieee.org
New York, NY 10016-5997
for a vehicle to land people on the moon ASSOCIATE EDITORS TEL: +1 212 419 7555 FAX: +1 212 419 7570
[p. 44]. NASA’s hope had been to launch such an Willie D. Jones (Digital), w.jones@ieee.org BUREAU Palo Alto, Calif.; Tekla S. Perry +1 650 752 6661
expedition by 2024, although lately the prospects Michael Koziol, m.koziol@ieee.org
DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT,
for that seem dim. “I have been waiting decades SENIOR COPY EDITOR Joseph N. Levine, j.levine@ieee.org MEDIA & ADVERTISING Mark David, m.david@ieee.org
to see humans go to the moon, being too young COPY EDITOR Michele Kogon, m.kogon@ieee.org
ADVERTISING INQUIRIESNaylor Association Solutions,
to have witnessed Apollo,” says Foust. “Even if EDITORIAL RESEARCHER Alan Gardner, a.gardner@ieee.org
Erik Henson +1 352 333 3443, ehenson@naylor.com
a 2024 return is now unlikely, I’m patient: I can ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
REPRINT SALES +1 212 221 9595, ext. 319
wait a few more years.” Ramona L. Foster, r.foster@ieee.org
REPRINT PERMISSION / LIBRARIES Articles may be
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Evan Ackerman, Robert N. Charette,
photocopied for private use of patrons. A per-copy fee must
Charles Q. Choi, Peter Fairley, Maria Gallucci, W. Wayt Gibbs, be paid to the Copyright Clearance Center, 29 Congress
Mark Harris, Jeremy Hsu, Allison Marsh, Prachi Patel,
Maria Gallucci Megan Scudellari, Lawrence Ulrich, Emily Waltz
St., Salem, MA 01970. For other copying or republication,
contact Managing Editor, IEEE Spectrum.
Spectrum contributing editor Gallucci is a freelance EDITOR IN CHIEF, THE INSTITUTE COPYRIGHTS AND TRADEMARKS IEEE Spectrum is a
journalist based in New York City. In this issue, Kathy Pretz, k.pretz@ieee.org registered trademark owned by The Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers Inc. Responsibility for the substance
she writes about recent efforts to extract carbon ASSISTANT EDITOR, THE INSTITUTE
of articles rests upon the authors, not IEEE, its organizational
dioxide directly from the air, an emerging strategy Joanna Goodrich, j.goodrich@ieee.org
units, or its members. Articles do not represent official
to minimize the catastrophic effects of climate DIRECTOR, PERIODICALS PRODUCTION SERVICES Peter Tuohy positions of IEEE. Readers may post comments online;
change [p. 48]. “Direct-air capture has gone from MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION SPECIALIST Michael Spector comments may be excerpted for publication. IEEE reserves
an obscure solution to one that’s drawing a lot of ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR, PUBLICATIONS Gail A. Schnitzer the right to reject any advertising.
mainstream buzz,” Gallucci says. “It’s an exciting
technological advance—but also an unsettling
reminder of society’s struggle to curb emissions.”
IEEE BOARD OF DIRECTORS PUBLICATIONS Steven Heffner
Prachi Patel
PRESIDENT & CEO Susan K. “Kathy” Land, president@ieee.org +1 212 705 8958, s.heffner@ieee.org
+1 732 562 3928 FAX: +1 732 981 9515 CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Karen L. Hawkins
+1 732 562 3964, k.hawkins@ieee.org
Spectrum contributing editor Patel is a freelance PRESIDENT-ELECT K.J. Ray Liu
CORPORATE ACTIVITIES Donna Hourican
science and technology writer in Pittsburgh. TREASURER Mary Ellen Randall
+1 732 562 6330, d.hourican@ieee.org
In this issue, she reports on NASA’s renewed SECRETARY Kathleen A. Kramer
MEMBER & GEOGRAPHIC ACTIVITIES Cecelia Jankowski
interest in nuclear propulsion for missions to PAST PRESIDENT Toshio Fukuda
+1 732 562 5504, c.jankowski@ieee.org
Mars and beyond, including the prospect for VICE PRESIDENTS STANDARDS ACTIVITIES Konstantinos Karachalios
fast interplanetary travel and a long-haul power Stephen M. Phillips, Educational Activities; Lawrence O. +1 732 562 3820, constantin@ieee.org
Hall, Publication Services & Products; Maike Luiken, Member
source for the ship [p. 10]. “These are exciting EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES Jamie Moesch
& Geographic Activities; Roger U. Fujii, Technical Activities;
developments,” she says. “This could be what James E. Matthews, President, Standards Association;
+1 732 562 5514, j.moesch@ieee.org
takes humans to Mars or allows in-depth exploring Katherine J. Duncan, President, IEEE-USA
GENERAL COUNSEL & CHIEF COMPLIANCE OFFICER
of Saturn’s moon Titan for evidence of life.” DIVISION DIRECTORS
Sophia A. Muirhead +1 212 705 8950, s.muirhead@ieee.org
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Thomas R. Siegert
Alfred E. “Al” Dunlop (I); Ruth A. Dyer (II); Sergio Benedetto (III);
+1 732 562 6843, t.siegert@ieee.org
Manfred “Fred” J. Schindler (IV); Thomas M. Conte (V); Paul M.
TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES Mary Ward-Callan
Cunningham (VI); Miriam P. Sanders (VII); Christina M. Schober
Mark Pesce (VIII); Rabab Kreidieh Ward (IX); Dalma Novak (X)
REGION DIRECTORS
+1 732 562 3850, m.ward-callan@ieee.org
MANAGING DIRECTOR, IEEE-USA Chris Brantley
Pesce writes Spectrum’s Macro & Micro column +1 202 530 8349, c.brantley@ieee.org
Eduardo F. Palacio (1); Barry C. Tilton (2); Jill I. Gostin (3);
and is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University Johnson A. Asumadu (4); James R. Look (5); Timothy T. IEEE PUBLICATION SERVICES & PRODUCTS BOARD
of Sydney’s Incubate program. In “Peering Into Lee (6); Jason Jianjun Gu (7); Antonio Luque (8); Alberto Lawrence O. Hall, Chair; Sergio Benedetto, Edhem Custovic,
the Pandemic Endgame,” he muses on shifts in Sanchez (9); Deepak Mathur (10) Stefano Galli, Lorena Garcia, Ron B. Goldfarb, W. Clem Karl,
culture and technology wrought by the pandemic DIRECTOR EMERITUS Theodore W. Hissey Hulya Kirkici, Paolo Montuschi, Sorel Reisman, Gaurav Sharma,
[p. 22]. Pesce helped develop Virtual Reality Maria Elena Valcher, John P. Verboncoeur, John Vig, Bin Zhao
IEEE STAFF
Modeling Language, and in 1991 he founded the EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & COO Stephen Welby IEEE OPERATIONS CENTER
world’s first consumer VR company. He hosts the +1 732 562 5400, s.p.welby@ieee.org 445 Hoes Lane, Box 1331
podcasts “The Next Billion Seconds” and, with CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Cherif Amirat Piscataway, NJ 08854-1331 U.S.A.
Jason Calacanis, “This Week in Startups Australia.” +1 732 562 6017, c.amirat@ieee.org Tel: +1 732 981 0060 Fax: +1 732 981 1721
04 | JAN 2021 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG
Design better devices — faster.
Topology optimization of a heat sink.
Engineers from Fraunhofer IAPT used topology
optimization and additive manufacturing to design a heat
sink, a common component in many electronic devices.
The topology-optimized design was then transformed
into a simulation application to automate and customize
certain design tasks. Now, engineers, designers, and
manufacturers companywide are able to efficiently
optimize intricate heat sink geometries and prepare them
for 3D printing.
The COMSOL Multiphysics® software is used for
simulating designs, devices, and processes in all fields of
engineering, manufacturing, and scientific research. See
how you can apply it to topology optimization and additive
manufacturing processes.
comsol.blog/3D-printing-optimization
News The fast Fourier transform
(FFT) is the unsung digital
workhorse of modern life.
It’s a clever mathematical shortcut that
makes possible the many signals in our
device-connected world. Every min-
ute of every video stream, for instance,
entails computing some hundreds of
FFTs. The FFT’s importance to practi-
cally every data-processing application
in the digital age explains why some
researchers have begun exploring how
quantum computing can run the FFT
algorithm more efficiently still.
“The fast Fourier transform is an
important algorithm that’s had lots of
applications in the classical world,” says
Ian Walmsley, physicist at Imperial Col-
lege London. “It also has many applica-
tions in the quantum domain. [So] it’s
important to figure out effective ways
to be able to implement it.”
The first proposed killer app for
quantum computers—finding a num-
ber’s prime factors—was discovered by
mathematician Peter Shor at AT&T Bell
Laboratories in 1994. Shor’s algorithm
scales up its factorization of numbers
more efficiently and rapidly than any
classical computer anyone could ever
design. And at the heart of Shor’s phe-
A QUANTUM SPEEDUP nomenal quantum engine is a subrou-
tine called—you guessed it—the quantum
Fourier transform (QFT).
FOR THE FAST FOURIER Here is where the terminology gets
a little out of hand. There is the QFT
at the center of Shor’s algorithm, and
TRANSFORM then there is the QFFT—the quantum
fast Fourier transform. They represent
different calculations that produce dif-
ferent results, although both are based
Quantum computers will turbocharge the on the same core mathematical concept,
algorithm that underpins much of modern tech known as the discrete Fourier transform.
06 | JAN 2021 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Dan Page
The QFT is poised to find techno- says Ryo Asaka, a physics graduate
logical applications first, though nei- student at Tokyo University of Sci- JOURNAL WATCH
ther appears destined to become the ence and lead author on the study.
new FFT. Instead, QFT and QFFT Greg Kuperberg, a mathematician
seem more likely to power a new at the University of California, Davis, Health Care Needs
generation of quantum applications. says the Japanese group’s work pro- Empathic AI
The quantum circuit for QFFT is vides a scaffolding for future quan-
just one part of a much bigger puz- tum algorithms. However, he adds, In an analysis of 156 papers on artificial
zle that, once complete, will lay “it’s not destined by itself to be a intelligence (AI) in pregnancy health, a
the foundation for future quantum magical solution to anything. It’s team in Spain found only two papers in
algorithms, according to research- trundling out the equipment for which emotions were used as inputs. Their
ers at the Tokyo University of Sci- somebody else’s magic show.” review, published in the journal IEEE Access,
ence. The QFFT algorithm would It is also unclear how well the pro- concluded that expanded use of “emotional
process a single stream of data at the posed QFFT would perform when AI,” or affective computing, could help
same speed as a classical FFT. How- running on a quantum computer improve health outcomes for pregnant
ever, the QFFT’s strength comes not under real-world constraints, says women and their infants.
from processing a single stream of Imperial’s Walmsley. But he sug- While affective computing has worked
data on its own but rather multiple gested it might benefit from running well in areas such as image searches for
data streams at once. The quantum on one kind of quantum computer emotions and teaching robots to interact
paradox that makes this possible, versus another (for example, a socially with humans, computers in general
called superposition, allows a single magneto-optical trap versus nitro- are not great at interpreting human
group of quantum bits (qubits) to gen vacancies in diamond) and could emotions, says Aleix Martinez, director of
encode multiple states of informa- eventually become a specialized the Computational Biology and Cognitive
tion simultaneously. So, by repre- coprocessor in a quantum-classical Science Lab at Ohio State University.
senting multiple streams of data, the hybrid computing system. That is partly because we humans aren’t
QFFT appears poised to deliver faster University of Warsaw physicist good at it ourselves.
performance and to enable power- Magdalena Stobińska, a main coor- Study after study shows that humans
saving information processing. dinator for the European Commis- are pretty bad at knowing what they feel
The Tokyo researchers’ quantum- sion’s AppQInfo project—which will internally, much less understanding how
circuit design uses qubits efficiently train young researchers in quan- other people feel or teaching a computer
without producing so-called gar- tum information processing starting how to understand, says Martinez. “If I don’t
bage bits, which can interfere with in 2021—notes that one main topic know what I am experiencing, how am I going
quantum computations. One of their involves developing new quantum to tell you what I am experiencing?” he asks.
next big steps involves developing algorithms such as the QFFT. Yet there still is little doubt that in many
quantum random-access memory “The real value of this work lies in areas of health care, including pregnancy,
for preprocessing large amounts of proposing a different data encoding “emotion is important,” says Andreea
data. They laid out their QFFT blue- for computing the [FFT] on quantum Oprescu, at the University of Seville, in Spain.
prints in a recent issue of the jour- hardware,” she says, “and showing “We think that should not be overlooked.”
nal Q
uantum Information Processing. that such out-of-box thinking can —MEGAN SCUDELLARI
“QFFT and our arithmetic opera- lead to new classes of quantum algo-
tions in the paper demonstrate their rithms.” —Jer emy Hsu An extended version of this article appears on
power only when used as subroutines our website in the Journal Watch section.
POST YOUR COMMENTS AT
in combination with other parts,” spectrum.ieee.org/fourier-jan2021
NEWS
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | JAN 2021 | 07
GAIT RELIEF: Researchers have made a
robotic leg that can assist in walking, running,
or just balancing—striving ultimately for a
hybrid limb that can be an arm, too.
Third Leg Lends a Hand
Need an extra hand? How about an extra
foot? Roboticists in Canada, from the
Université de Sherbrooke, in Q uebec,
have been developing supernumer-
ary robotic limbs that are designed to
explore what humans can do with three
arms, or even three legs. The robotic
limbs are similar in weight to human
limbs, and are strong and fast thanks
to m
agnetorheological “clutches” that
feed pressurized water through a hydro-
static transmission system. This system,
coupled to a power source inside a back-
pack, keeps the limb’s inertia low while
also providing high torque.
Mounted at a user’s hips, a supernu-
merary robotic arm can do things like
2020’S MOST POPULAR hold tools, pick apples, play badminton,
and even smash through a wall, all while
BLOG POSTS under the remote control of a nearby
human. The supernumerary robotic leg is
more autonomous, able to assist with sev-
Updating some of IEEE Spectrum’s top-performing eral different human gaits at a brisk walk
online stories of the year and add as much as 84 watts of power.
The leg could also be used to assist with
balance, acting as a sort of hands-free
Spectrum first began publishing an online edition in 1996. cane. It can even move quickly enough
And in the quarter century since, our website has tried to to prevent a fall— far more quickly than
serve IEEE members as well as the larger worldwide base of a biological leg. Adding a second robotic
tech-savvy readers across the Internet. In 2020, four of Spectrum’s leg opposite the first suggests even more
top 10 blog posts were about COVID-19; another four were about possibilities, including a human-robot
robots. (One was about both.) Two discussed programming languages, quadruped gait, which would be a com-
another popular item on our site. Here we revisit five of those favor- pletely new kind of motion.
ite postings from the past year, updating readers on new develop- Eventually, the researchers hope to
ments, among them promising COVID-19 tests and therapeutics, generalize these extra robotic limbs
PIERRE CAILLOUETTE
no-code programming, and an incredibly versatile robotic third leg. so that a single limb could function as
All of which, if the tremendous challenges of the past year offer any either an arm, a leg, or perhaps even
guidance, could be a useful survival kit for enduring whatever 2021 a tail, depending on what you need it
has in store. to do. Their latest work was presented
NEWS
08 | JAN 2021 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORGin October at the 2020 International ogy, says his team’s eLife study has Unfortunately, the so-called Detect
Conference on Intelligent Robots and been partly vindicated in the months kits haven’t yet made it to doctors’ offices
Systems (IROS), cosponsored by IEEE since publication. Their paper high- or drugstore shelves. As of press time,
and the Robotics Society of Japan. lighted a dozen compounds they said Rothberg hoped to receive emergency
—Eva n Ack er m a n could be effective for some COVID-19 use authorization from the U.S. Food
patients. Three of those drugs in par- and Drug Administration in late Decem-
The above is an update to a blog post ticular have since proved, in early clini- ber, which would enable Homodeus to
(2020’s fifth most popular ) that originally cal trials, to show significant promise: distribute the kits to health profession-
appeared on 4 June at spectrum.ieee.org/ Icatibant (a bradykinin blocker), calcife- als. The kit could then be approved for
thirdarm-jun2020 diol (a vitamin D analogue that targets consumers early in 2021.
a pathway related to bradykinin), and The Homodeus team got slowed down
dexamethasone (a steroid that blocks by their insistence on simplicity and
COVID-19 Study: Quell the signaling from bradykinin receptors). scalability, Rothberg tells IEEE Spectrum.
“Our focus is on getting the work out As they finalized the prototype, they also
“Bradykinin Storm” in ways that are going to help people,” secured their supply chains. Once they
Jacobson says. “We’re excited about receive FDA approval they’ll be able to
Precisely how the novel coronavirus
these other data points that keep con- “deliver upwards of 10 million tests per
causes COVID-19 may still be a mys-
firming the model.” month,” Rothberg says.
tery. But one year into the pandemic,
–M a r k A nderson –Eliza Str ick l a nd
it’s no longer quite a mystery wrapped
inside an enigma. This was the upshot
The above is an update to a blog post The above is an update to a blog post
of a landmark coronavirus study from
(2020’s second most popular) that origi- (2020’s eighth most popular) that origi-
July conducted by a team of American
nally appeared on 2 August at spectrum. nally appeared on 13 March at spectrum.
scientists using the Summit supercom-
ieee.org/covidcode-aug2020 ieee.org/covidtest-mar2020
puter at the Oak Ridge National Labora-
tory, in T ennessee. Their genetic-data
mining paper, published in the journal
eLife, concluded that one lesser-studied At-Home COVID-19 Test Hits The Hello Robot Arm Offers
biomolecule arguably lies at the heart Snags a Leg Up
of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes
COVID-19. When last we heard from the maver- Last summer was a challenging time
Bradykinin is a peptide that regu- ick biotech entrepreneur Jonathan to launch a new robotics company. But
lates blood pressure and causes blood Rothberg, he’d just invented a rapid Hello Robot, which announced its new
vessels to become permeable. The Oak diagnostic test for COVID-19 that was mobile manipulator this past July, has
Ridge study concluded that the novel as accurate as today’s best lab tests but been working hard to provide its robot
coronavirus effectively hacks the body’s easy enough for regular people to use (called Stretch) to everyone who wants
bradykinin system, leading to a sort of in their own homes. Rothberg had piv- one. Over the last six months, Hello
molecular landslide. In so many words, a oted one of his companies, the synthetic Robot, based in Martinez, Calif., has
“bradykinin storm” overdilates blood ves- biology startup Homodeus, to develop shipped dozens of the US $17,950 robots
sels in the lungs, leading to fluid buildup, a home test kit. During the first months to customers, which have included an
congestion, and difficulty breathing. And of the pandemic, he worked with aca- even mix of academia and industry.
because an overabundance of bradykinin demic and clinical collaborators to test One of these early adopters of Stretch
can trigger heart, kidney, neurological, his team’s designs. In March, he optimis- is Microsoft, which used the robot as
and circulatory problems, the brady- tically projected a ready date of “weeks part of a company-wide hackathon last
kinin hypothesis may lead to yet more to months.” By late August, when The summer. A Microsoft developer, Sidh,
coronavirus treatments. New Yorker published an article about has cerebral palsy, and while Sidh has
Daniel Jacobson, Oak Ridge chief sci- his crash project, he spoke of getting no trouble writing code with his toes,
entist for computational systems biol- the tests “out there by Thanksgiving.” there are some everyday tasks—like get-
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | JAN 2021 | 09ting a drink of water—that he regu- York City and Washington, D.C., to
larly needs help with. Sidh started deliver critical services to residents;
a hackathon team with Microsoft a loan-processing system for a bank
employees and interns to solve this so it could receive Paycheck Pro-
problem with Stretch. Although tection Program applications from
most of the team knew very little small businesses; and a workforce
about robotics, over just three days safety solution to aid the return
of remote work they were able to of employees to their workplaces.
program Stretch to operate semi- Tech companies capitalized
autonomously through voice con- on this trend too. In June 2020,
trol. Now Stretch can manipulate A mazon Web Services released its
objects (including cups of water) at no-code tool, Honeycode, in beta.
Sidh’s request. It’s still just a pro- A month later, Microsoft launched
totype, but Microsoft has already Project Oakdale, a built-in low-code
made the code open source, so that data platform for Microsoft Teams.
others can benefit from the work. With Project Oakdale, users can
Sidh is still working with Stretch create custom data tables, apps,
to teach it to be even more useful. and bots within the chat and video-
NUCLEAR-
In the past, Hello Robot cofounder conferencing platform using Power
Charlie Kemp’s robot of choice has Apps, Microsoft’s no-code software.
been a $400,000, 227-kilogram The no - c o d e m ove m e nt i s
robot called PR2. Stretch offers
many of the same mobile manipu-
also reaching the frontiers of
artificial intelligence. Popular POWERED
ROCKETS
lation capabilities. But its friendly no-code machine-learning plat-
size and much lower cost mean that forms include Apple’s Create ML,
people who before might not have Google’s AutoML, Obviously AI,
considered buying a robot are now
giving Stretch a serious look.
and Teachable Machine. These
platforms make it easier for those GET A SECOND
LOOK
—Eva n Ack er m a n with little to no coding expertise to
train and deploy m achine-learning
The above is an update to a blog post models, as well as quickly catego-
(2020’s sixth most popular) that origi- rize, extract, and analyze data. NASA is investing in the
nally appeared on 14 July at spectrum. No-code development is set to technology for missions to
ieee.org/hellorobot-jul2020 go mainstream over the coming Mars and beyond
years, with the market research
company Forrester predicting the
emergence of hybrid teams of busi-
Toward a World ness users and software developers For all the controversy they
Without Code building apps together using no- stir up on Earth, nuclear reac-
code platforms. As the trends noted tors can produce the energy
No-code development—building above take root in both the public and propulsion needed to rapidly take
software without writing code— and private sectors, there is little large spacecraft to Mars and, if desired,
gained momentum in 2020 as doubt today that—to modify an old beyond. The idea of nuclear rocket
a result of the COV ID -19 pan- programmer’s maxim—the future engines dates back to the 1940s. This
demic. Governments and organi- increasingly will be written in no- time around, though, plans for inter-
zations needed swift action for a code. —R ina Di a ne Ca ba ll a r planetary missions propelled by nuclear
f ast-moving crisis. They turned fission and fusion are being backed by
to no-code platforms to rapidly The above is an update to a blog post new designs that have a much better
develop and deploy essential soft- (2020’s most popular) that originally chance of getting off the ground.
ware, including a COVID-19 man- appeared on 11 March at s pectrum. Crucially, the nuclear engines are
agement hub that allowed New ieee.org/nocode-mar2020 meant for interplanetary travel only,
not for use in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Chemical rockets launch the craft out
NEWS beyond low Earth orbit. Only then does
the nuclear propulsion system kick in.
10 | JAN 2021 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORGATOMS FOR PROPULSION: Rockets
powered by nuclear fission or fusion are now
vying to become the preferred (and faster)
means of traveling the solar system.
during fission so they can sustain a
chain reaction, instead of striking and
damaging the reactor structure. BWX
intersperses its fuel blocks between
hydride elements, while USNC-Tech’s
unique design integrates a beryllium
metal moderator into the fuel. “Our
fuel stays in one piece, survives the
hot hydrogen and radiation conditions,
and does not eat all the reactor’s neu-
trons,” Eades says.
There is another route to small, safe
nuclear-powered rockets, says S amuel
Cohen at Princeton Plasma Physics
The challenge has been making these enabling the craft to send back high- Laboratory: fusion reactors. Mainline
nuclear engines safe and lightweight. quality data for years. fusion uses deuterium and tritium fuels,
New fuels and reactor designs appear up Getting enough thrust out of a nuclear but Cohen is leading efforts to make a
to the task, as NASA is now working with rocket used to require weapons-grade, reactor that relies on fusion between
industry partners for possible future highly enriched uranium. Low-enriched deuterium atoms and helium-3 in a high-
nuclear-fueled crewed space missions. uranium fuels, used in commercial temperature plasma, which produces
“Nuclear thermal propulsion would be power plants, would be safer to use, but very few neutrons. “We don’t like neu-
advantageous if you want to go to Mars they can become brittle and fall apart trons because they can change struc-
and back in under two years,” says under the blistering temperatures and tural material like steel to something
Jeff Sheehy, chief engineer in NASA’s chemical attacks from the extremely more like Swiss cheese and can make
Space Technology Mission Directorate. reactive hydrogen. it radioactive,” he says. The Princeton
To enable that mission capability, he However, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp. lab’s concept, called Direct Fusion Drive,
says, “a key technology that needs to Technologies (USNC-Tech), based in also needs much less fuel than conven-
be advanced is the fuel.” Seattle, uses a uranium fuel enriched tional fusion, and the device could be
Specifically, the fuel needs to endure to below 20 percent, which is a higher one-thousandth as large, Cohen says.
the superhigh temperatures and vol- grade than that of power reactors but Fusion propulsion could in theory far
atile conditions inside a nuclear ther- “can’t be diverted for nefarious purposes, outperform fission-based propulsion,
mal engine. Two companies now say so it greatly reduces proliferation risks,” because fusion reactions release up to
their fuels are sufficiently robust for a says director of engineering Michael four times as much energy, says NASA’s
safe, compact, high-performance reac- Eades. The company’s fuel contains Sheehy. However, the technology isn’t
tor. In fact, one of these companies has microscopic ceramic-coated uranium as far along and faces several challenges,
already delivered a detailed conceptual fuel particles dispersed in a zirconium including generating and containing the
design to NASA. carbide matrix. The microcapsules keep plasma and efficiently converting the
Nuclear propulsion uses energ y radioactive fission by-products inside energy released into directed jet exhaust.
released from nuclear reactions to while letting heat escape. “It could not be ready for Mars missions
heat liquid hydrogen to about 2,430 °C— Lynchburg, Va.–based BWX Technolo- in the late 2030s,” he says.
some eight times the temperature of gies, is working under a NASA contract USNC-Tech, by contrast, has already
nuclear-power-plant cores. The propel- to look at designs using a similar ceramic made small hardware prototypes based
lant expands and jets out the nozzles at composite fuel—and also examining an on its new fuel. “We’re on track to meet
tremendous speeds. This can produce alternate fuel form encased in a metal- NASA’s goal to have a half-scale demon-
twice the thrust per mass of propellant lic matrix. “We’ve been working on stration system ready for launch by 2027,”
as compared to that of chemical rock- our reactor design since 2017,” says Joe says Eades. The next step would be to
ets, allowing nuclear-powered ships to Miller, general manager for the com- build a full-scale Mars flight system, one
travel longer and faster. Plus, once at the pany’s advanced technologies group. that could very well drive a 2035 Mars
destination, be it Saturn’s moon Titan or Both companies’ designs rely on dif- mission. —Pr achi Patel
Pluto, the nuclear reactor could switch ferent kinds of moderators. Moderators
NASA
POST YOUR COMMENTS AT
from propulsion system to power source, slow down energetic neutrons produced spectrum.ieee.org/nuclearrockets-jan2021
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | JAN 2021 | 11Hands On
HANDS ON BY ALEKSEJ LAZAREV
12 | JAN 2021 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATIONS BY James ProvostLoRa FOR
HUMANS
CO-OPT AN IoT
TECHNOLOGY FOR A
TWO-WAY PAGER
When you need to send data
wirelessly, you have a lot of choic-
es these days. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,
Zigbee, and cellular connections are some
of the more common options, but a relatively
new protocol is growing in popularity. LoRa
provides low-power, low-bandwidth com-
munications over medium ranges—between
2 and 15 kilometers, depending on how clut-
tered the environment is.
LoRa was created for the burgeoning
Internet of Things, linking remote sensors
and embedded devices back to central- HUMAN READABLE: This two-way pager uses the LoRa low-power radio protocol, which can have
ized nodes using spread-spectrum trans- a range of 10 to 15 kilometers. An off-the-shelf LoRa transceiver module is fitted to a custom PCB
with a user-friendly display and navigation controls. A real-time clock module keeps track of local time.
missions. Data rates normally vary between
0.3 and 27 kilobits per second, with up to
50 kb/s possible: Slower data rates corre-
spond to longer ranges. The original vision communication. The data rate is too low to to order two AI-Thinker Ra-02 LoRa mod-
for LoRa was focused tightly on machine- make voice calls practical, but what about ules and two ATmega328-based microcon-
to-machine communication, but its par- a more venerable kind of device: Could I trollers, dig out my breadboard, and build
simonious power demands have made it make a LoRa two-way pager? Although a proof-of-concept design. Before long I
attractive to tinkerers for other applications. my work as a hardware engineer involves could send alphanumeric strings back and
As someone always interested in trying out analyzing antennas, I was much less fa- forth, displaying the results on an 84-by-
new hardware technologies, I wondered if miliar with the design of radio-frequency 48-pixel LCD display originally designed
LoRa could be used for human-to-human circuits themselves. So my first step was for Nokia phones.
DEPARTMENTS
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | JAN 2021 | 13HANDS ON BY ALEKSEJ LAZAREV
the classic golden-brown tarnish of
overheated solder joints—I had be-
come a fashion victim!
Once I made adjustments and
got everything assembled cor-
rectly, I began testing the board
and realized I had a problem with
my on/off button controller: When
the power button is pressed, it en-
ables a voltage regulator to begin
supplying 3.3 volts to the SAMD21
microprocessor. As a safety fea-
ture, if the controller doesn’t re-
ceive an acknowledgment that the
processor is chugging along within
2 seconds, it turns off the supply.
But the SAMD21 was taking about
PAGER PLATFORM: The LoRa module is controlled using an Arduino-compatible microcontroller, and 2.5 seconds to respond! I found
the user can extend the hardware using any off-the-shelf peripheral with an Arduino library that supports the ultimate solution by perusing
the I2C protocol, via a dedicated socket on the PCB. the controller’s datasheet, where I
discovered a note that a variant of
the controller was available with
Of course, you can’t take a breadboarded modules for easier-to-obtain RFM95W a 10-second waiting period. Once the new
circuit out into the world for field testing, so transceivers. The final design also includes on/off controller arrived, a little work with a
I designed a prototype printed circuit board a pager motor for silent operation, a 3-way hot-air gun had the new component in place.
that duplicated my breadboard design along navigation switch for operation, and an SD Testing revealed another minor error: I had
with a battery and some control buttons. The card adapter. Thanks to my experience with reversed the data lines to the onboard real-
tests occurred in the teeth of a German winter, antenna analysis, most of the fine-tuning of time clock, which I’d added to keep local time
so an associate and I were disinclined to ven- the second iteration of the PCB was dedi- and which is connected to the SAMD21 via
ture outside for long distances, but we veri- cated to ensuring that the trace connecting an I2C connection. Once I’d fixed that, I was
fied that we could communicate while over the transceiver to the antenna had the opti- done with my pager, which I’ve dubbed the
a kilometer apart. The cold weather also re- mal 50-ohm impedance. The transmission LoRaNicator.
vealed an unexpected problem: One pager line uses a ground plane on the other side of As I’m more interested in hardware de-
was powered by nickel metal hydride batter- my PCB, so a calculation using the thickness sign than coding, the system software is
ies, the other by a lithium-ion cell. The NiMH of the PCB showed I needed a 1-millimeter- pretty basic and does little more than allow
battery coped with the low temperatures just wide trace. I also tweaked how the ground the exchange of text messages between us-
fine, but the Li-ion cell would suffer voltage plane was connected to the antenna mount ers. It’s my hope that others might use the
drops that caused the microcontroller to reset. and transceiver module to get the best high- LoRaNicator as an open platform to create
The next step was to create a more re- frequency behavior I could. more complex applications that can take ad-
fined design. The most obvious improve- In addition, I opted to have the solder-stop vantage of this low-power, low-infrastructure
ment was the screen, which I upgraded to mask of my PCB produced in stylish black, method of communication. I’ve also tried
a 128-by-64-pixel LCD. I also upgraded which turned out to have another unexpect- to make it easy to extend the LoRaNicator’s
the microcontroller: I needed more com- ed result. The reflow oven I use for soldering hardware by including a set of external pins to
puting power but wanted to stay within the surface-mount components uses an infra- which I2C devices can be attached, such as a
Arduino-compatible ecosystem, so I went red heater, and in my first attempt to popu- GPS unit or other sensors.
with an SAMD21 Cortex M0, which is used late the board with components, the black —ALEKSEJ LAZAREV
by a number of “post-AVR” Arduino micro- mask heated up much more rapidly than the
POST YOUR COMMENTS AT
controllers. I also swapped out the AI-Thinker green PCBs I normally used. The result was spectrum.ieee.org/lora-jan2021
14 | JAN 2021 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORGPROOF 3 CLOSED 5/15/20 @ 11:27 am EV INT Please return to: JNL MK by
Careers
PROFILE: SIMONE CAMPANONI tenure-track assistant professor in the com-
puter science department of Northwestern
CREATING BETTER SOFTWARE COMPILERS University, in Evanston, Ill. He is a busy man:
FOR FASTER COMPUTING He has four active grants from the National
Science Foundation, has written one book,
contributed to six articles and 28 conference
As Moore’s Law sputters, proceedings, and has nearly 300 other cita-
researchers keep looking for tions. And he’s won various awards including
ways to boost computing perfor- Northwestern’s 2017–2018 Best Teacher
mance. One person working on approaches Award for the electrical engineering and com-
based around next-generation compilers is puter science department and a 2017 ACM
Simone Campanoni. As all software written in Research Highlights award.
languages such as C or Java must be passed For those interested in working in c ompiler
through a compiler to translate programs into and related research, Campanoni offers
the low-level instructions that the computer some general and some specific advice:
executes, any improvements that allow the In general, “One, gravitate around brilliant
generated code to run better will automati- people—even if they don’t have the exact
cally boost the performance of programs. same interest as you; and two, find the right
Along with teaching three compiler classes The results are “already yielding, on problems, by applying the first-principles
at Northwestern, Campanoni leads a team commodity hardware, significant speed method.” By the first-principles method,
currently consisting of half a dozen Ph.D. increases and energy reductions in desktops Campanoni explains he means, “When
students and four undergrads. Much of their and s ervers—for [Internet of Things], wear- something is done in a certain way today,
work is centered around designing compil- ables, and other small devices, that means I ask myself, what is the bare minimum cost of
ers that are closely matched to the computer primarily power savings,” he says. doing that, to assess the gap between what
architecture, operating system, and pro- Campanoni grew up in a small village in is done today versus the optimum way.”
gramming language they will be used with. Northern Italy, where he got his first com- More specifically, Campanoni has p osted
“Generating high-performance machine puter—a Compaq with a 266-MHz Pentium II his advice for Ph.D. students interested in
code automatically is essential to achieving processor—while in high school. He earned compilers and computer science, includ-
fast software innovation. Moore’s Law does B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer engineer- ing reading Jean-Luc Doumont’s book Trees,
not lead to efficiency per se,” Campanoni ing and an information technologies P.h.D. at Maps and Theorems, which is aimed at help-
points out. “It only gives you more transistors, the Politecnico di Milano. ing engineers become efficient commu-
which you can use to create more complex In 2009, he moved to the United States and nicators, and learn tools such as LLVM. If
hardware. Unfortunately, the extra hardware went on to spend nearly six years as a postdoc you want to experiment with the results of
is often underutilized because writing soft- at Harvard University in the computer science Campanoni’s team’s research yourself, you
ware for complex computer architectures is department. There—among other things— can download some compiler prototypes
challenging and costly. My group’s interest together with his mentors, Professors David that the group has developed from his North-
is in [generating] code that will leverage the Brooks and Gu-Yeon Wei, he started the western Web page. —DANIEL P. DERN
full power of hardware innovations in current HELIX research project, an automatic paral-
POST YOUR COMMENTS AT spectrum.ieee.org/
and next-generation computing systems.” lelization framework. Today, Campanoni is a campanoni-jan2021
JASON BROWN
DEPARTMENTS
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | JAN 2021 | 15CrossTalk
NUMBERS DON’T LIE_BY VACLAV SMIL OPINION
SWEDEN’S COVID RESPONSE
adjustments, and all key decisions
have been left to the state epidemiolo-
gist, Anders Tegnell, who has relied on
appealing to his compatriots to behave
responsibly.
Even in Sweden, his approach has not
IN 2008, I CONCLUDED THAT THE A regrettable corollary is that we remain remained unchallenged, but abroad it
next major pandemic would arrive repeatedly unprepared for their spread has elicited two remarkably divergent
before 2021. The very year after this and that we mismanage our responses criticisms. Some say, “They did not
forecast saw a minor event—involving on truly grand scales. But this does not resort to any panicky lockdowns, and
the H1N1 influenza virus—but the 2019 prevent people from making simplistic they are none the worse for it,” while
pandemic obviously qualifies as a major judgments. others say, “They did not lock down
global outbreak. Sweden’s response to the COVID-19 anything, and the consequences have
This was no remarkable feat of fore- virus is a perfect example of this habit. been catastrophic.” Neither statement
casting, just a simple recognition that The response has not been decided by is true, but even an interim appraisal,
pandemics reappear rather frequently. politicians, it has not involved major made in November 2020, shows an out-
COVID DEATHS IN SWEDEN Z-SCORES (MEASURES OF EXCESS MORTALITY)
FOR SOME EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
Sweden Denmark United Kingdom France Italy
Sweden has followed a policy all its own on Baseline Substantial increase Corrected for delay in registration
COVID-19 and received both praise and blame Source: EuroMOMO
for it. The point was to keep the pandemic 40
20
within bounds without greatly infringing 0
personal freedom. The country has indeed
suffered a higher mortality rate than its peers, 40
20
but it is still too early for a final accounting. 0
40
20
0
40
20
0
40
20
0
Week 36 40 44 46
NUMBERS DON’T LIE BY VACLAV SMIL ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/
xxx1019
16 | JAN 2021 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Francesco Muzi/StoryTKcome that is as singular as it is a part of and 12 percent higher in France. On the 21st week of 2020, returning within nor-
a larger piece. other hand, the mortality rate in Finland mal range by the 27th week, and steadily
To begin with, Sweden shut down high and Norway was only about 10 percent declining afterward to below the nor-
schools and universities, but not grade that of Sweden, and Denmark’s rate was mally expected rate by the 40th week of
schools and kindergartens; it restricted about 80 percent lower. 2020. By the 45th week, Swedish mor-
very large gatherings, allowed restau- There is no doubt that Sweden’s num- tality remained well below the expected
rants, shops, and services to remain bers were inflated, in part, by the rela- level and even below the Norwegian rate.
open, while leaving to the individual tively high share in its population of the Meanwhile France, Italy, Spain and
the responsibility of limiting smaller foreign born (who are more vulnerable Belgium had, once again, high excess
gatherings. The early consequence of to infection)—a quarter of the people are mortalities, and only the Finnish mor-
these decisions seemed severe: Excess immigrants, and nearly a third have at tality was well below the Swedish rate.
mortality began to rise steeply in late least one parent born abroad. Similarly, The final verdict about Sweden’s rela-
March, and in April it reached levels comparisons of excess all-cause mortal- tive success or indefensible failure is
far higher than in any of the country’s ity (a rate that is better able to capture still many months in coming.
immediate Nordic neighbors. But by the actual death toll attributable to the Obviously, you can use these com-
midsummer, cumulative mortalities pandemic) show that in October 2020 parisons to portray Sweden as either
divided by the size of the population the Swedish rate was marginally lower a success (vis-à-vis Spain, the U.K., or
were considerably lower in Sweden than than in France, 30 percent lower than the United States) or a failure (vis-à-vis
in several populous European nations. in the United States, only half as high Germany or Finland). But we will have
By the middle of November, cumula- as in Spain—but 2.5 times higher than to wait until the second wave of the pan-
tive death rates were twice as high in in Finland and five times higher than demic has fully asserted itself to see how
Belgium, 45 percent higher in Spain, in Germany. such comparisons will fare. n
25 percent higher in the United States, EuroMOMO, which monitors mortal-
United Kingdom, and Italy (the country ity, shows Swedish deaths rising substan-
POST YOUR COMMENTS AT spectrum.ieee.org/
with extensive restrictive lockdowns) tially above normal from the 13th to the sweden-jan2021
DAILY COVID-19 DEATHS
PER MILLION INHABITANTS
Sweden Denmark France
Italy United Kingdom United States Day 1 occurs in each country when its death count reaches eight.
Source: Covid19insweden.com
20
10
5
2
1
0.5
0.2
0.1
Day 1 51 101 151 201 251 266
CROSSTALK
↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at https://spectrum.ieee.org/
xxx1019
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | JAN 2021 | 17INTERNET OF EVERYTHING BY STACEY HIGGINBOTHAM CROSSTALK
recycling centers to take back devices
when they are at the end of their lives.
The solution could be as simple as, say,
Amazon adding a screen to the app for a
smart device that offers the address of a
local recycling partner whenever some-
one chooses to decommission that device.
The idea is not unprecedented for
smart devices. The manufacturer of the
Tile tracking device has an agreement
with a startup called Emplacement that
offers recycling information when the
battery on one of Tile’s trackers dies and
the device is useless. Another example
is GE Appliances, which hauls away old
appliances when people buy new ones,
even as added software potentially short-
ens their years of usefulness.
Companies can also make the recycling
process easier by designing products
differently. For example, they should
E-WASTE ISN’T INEVITABLE
rely less on glues that make it hard to
salvage recyclable metals from within
electronic components and use smaller
circuit boards with minimal components.
Companies should also design their con-
IN MY OFFICE CLOSET, panies are building devices that used to nected products so that they physically
I have a box full of perfectly last decades—such as thermostats, fridges, work in some fashion even if the software
good smar t-home gad- or even lights—with five- to seven-year and app are defunct. In other words, no
gets that are broken only life-spans. one should design a connected product
because the companies that built them When e-waste became a hot topic in that works only with an app, because
stopped updating their software. I can’t the computing world, computer mak- doing so is all but forcing its obsolescence
bear to toss them in a landfill, but I don’t ers such as Dell and HP worked with in just a few years. If the device still works,
really know how to recycle them. I’m not recycling centers to better recycle their however, people might be able to pass it
alone: Electronic waste, or e-waste, has electronics. You might argue that those along for reuse even if some of the fan-
become much more common. programs didn’t do enough, because cier features aren’t operational.
The adoption of Project Connected e-waste is still a growing problem. In 2019 Connected devices won’t be in every
Home Over IP (CHIP) standards by alone, the world generated 53.6 million home in the future, but they will become
Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee metric tons of e-waste, according to a more common, and more people will
Alliance will make smart homes more report from the Global E-waste Monitor. come to rely on the features they offer.
accessible to more people. But the smart And the amount is rising: According to Which means we’re set for an explosion
devices these people bring into their the same report, each year we produce of new electronic waste in the next five
homes will also eventually end up on 2.5 million metric tons more e-waste to ten years as these devices reach the
the junk heap. than the year before. end of their life-spans. How we handle
Perhaps surprisingly, we still don’t This is an obviously unsustainable that waste—and how much of it we have
have a clear answer as to what we should amount of waste. While recycling pro- to deal with—depends on the decisions
do when a product’s software doesn’t grams might not be enough to solve the companies make now. n
outlive its hardware, or when its elec- problem, I’d still like to see the makers
POST YOUR COMMENTS AT
tronics don’t outlast the housing. Com- of connected devices partner up with spectrum.ieee.org/ewaste-jan2021
18 | JAN 2021 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Jude BuffumYou can also read
