DTN 048: DOE Looks to Robot Worms to Move the Power Grid Underground

Plus: Japan becomes 5th country to land on the moon, Scientists clone first rhesus monkey using new method, God commands pastor's crypto scam, AI develops new low-lithium battery design, and more.

January 22, 2024

The Big Picture

“The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced $34 million in funding to support a dozen projects focused on improving the nation’s power resilience by moving some grid infrastructure underground. The projects span 11 states, and are being developed by small and large businesses, national labs, and universities. They are being funded through the Grid Overhaul with Proactive, High-speed Undergrounding for Reliability, Resilience, and Security program — aptly known as GOPHURRS — and managed by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. Projects include multiple worm-inspired digging approaches, an artificial intelligence and aerial drone solution, ground penetrating radar and advances in cable deployment and splicing. The U.S. electric system spans more than 5.5 million line-miles and contains over 180 million power poles, “all of which are susceptible to damage by weather and its effects, and account for a majority of power outages in the country each year,” DOE said. “Undergrounding power lines is a proven way of improving the system reliability for both transmission and distribution grids.” (Utility Dive)

Take Our Subscriber Survey

Each month, we send $100 and a copy of our favorite book to a randomly selected respondent to our Subscriber Survey.

Subscribe to the newsletter and tell us what you think for a chance to win.

Deep Tech News

JPEG of the Week

A white machine is shown, holding a pig's liver for organ donation. Two surgeons tend to the machine.

This is that “extracorporeal,” or outside-the-body, genetically edited pig liver that was successfully attached to the veins of a brain-dead man by surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania for 3 days in December 2023.

The initial test of the system was run in collaboration with the biotech company eGenesis and is designed to help people survive acute liver failure, which can be caused by infection, poisoning, or (most commonly) too much alcohol. In earlier studies, at the University of Maryland, two men with terminal heart disease had their hearts replaced with hearts from pigs developed by another company, United Therapeutics. Remarkably, each was able to live with the animal heart, but only for a short time; both died within two months of the transplant. Scientists continue to scrutinize why the hearts failed, but at least the second patient’s heart showed signs of rejection. The use of a pig organ that’s kept outside the body might prove easier to pull off, since it only needs to work for a limited time. (via MIT Tech Review)

Peer Review

Funding x M&A

Miscellanea

Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France / Woman will suffer diarrhea forever from Ozempic bowel injury / The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology / How much of the world is it possible to model? / Scientists hate Netflix documentaries / Colorado pastor charged for cryptocurrency scam he perpetrated at God's command / What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter / Yes, your pet might eat your corpse. That’s a problem for investigators / Nightshade, the free tool that ‘poisons’ AI models, is now available for artists to use / Dutch man sabotaged Iranian nuclear program without Dutch government's knowledge / Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Is Working on a Secret Military Drone Project / How much life has ever existed on Earth? / Animal sounds in most nature documentaries are made by humans / Smart molluscs

a digital agency built for the future.

Haus Biographics is a digital agency in NYC that specializes in marketing and communications for deep tech organizations. Check out our website, follow us on Twitter, or say [email protected]