It does happen like that, lot's of departments within big companies have R&D focus with time dedicated to development/discovery. The problem is that the output is captured. If it doesn't end up in a product, the general public will never know
We do not have firsthand experience with the Nuclera's chip based system. But there are some key differences based on what we can find online:
- their system uses display technology based backpanel from Eink to activate the electrodes. The display itself could be the consumable that is disposed after each run (we are not sure from their website). The technology is suited for manipulating very small volumes. Looks like they have picked applications that span enzymatic DNA synthesis and protein eexpression
- the Callisto system uses standard PCBs and plastic surface that interfaces with the droplets. The PCBs are not disposed after each run, while the plastic surface is. We can also handle a large dynamic range of volumes in liquids making it suitable for more standard molecular biology workflows.
I grew up in the Fort Johnson neighborhood in Charleston, so I was surprised to see that it was listed as a martello. The magazine is definitely still there, a little brick building with very thick walls (especially for the size of the building). It looks like several forts were built and destroyed on the site (https://www.dnr.sc.gov/marine/mrri/ftjohnson.html) but the only trace I've ever seen are the earthwork battlements along the harbor side. The location is better known for the point (right by the magazine) where the first shot of the civil war was fired towards Fort Sumter.
'All light causes evaporation' is not really true. IR heating works because the wavelength resonates with the vibration modes of the intramolecular bonds. Water has low absorption of visible wavelengths, so you would not expect light absorption in the visible spectrum to provide enough energy to knock individual water molecules free.
Water is an interesting substance and a lot of the properties of water come from intermolecular hydrogen bonding and polarity. Even though it's a liquid, there are transient molecular structures that spontaneously occur in bulk due to hydrogen bonding between water molecules. The polarity of water causes interesting effect at interfaces (surface tension, electrical double layer, etc).
It's possible that the water in the hydrogel is forming some hydrogen bonded structure that interacts with green light. Where the individual water molecules won't strongly interact, the larger structure does. That could lead to the ejection of 'packets' of water molecules as discussed in the paper. Why and what these multi-molecular structures are? No idea. But this is a very interesting effect.
Their setup looks remarkably similar to my PhD work [0][1] (that included a PoC and simulation). We didn't do power generation, but there was significant electrical activity (nanoamps and millivolts per pore). If I remember right, even at the time there was ongoing research to use porous films to generate power from saltwater, but the ongoing issue was biofouling. Turns out it's really easy to clog a pore that is nanometer-scale.
Oh wow, this is really cool. I've seen the exact patterns under 'thin film buckling' (Ziebert et al., “Strongly buckled square micromachined membranes,” J MEMS 8 423-432, 1999) when fabricating ~25nm x50umx50um thick, edge-supported, square membranes of SiN. It always seemed a little crazy that something so delicate could distort that much and remain intact.
I am not a particle physicist, but the explanations of quantum mechanics and particle physics here have been sufficiently detailed to let me get past the hand-wavy, paradox laden pop-sci descriptions you see elsewhere.
Having worked at the largest synthetic DNA manufacturer (at least they were, I think they still are)... a lot of his information is just wrong. There is a huge incentive to lowering the cost of producing oligos and synthetic genes. This is actually a very interesting time in the space (shoutout AnsaBio).
I encourage him to continue explore new ways of making DNA, but understanding the market is very different from building off an expired patent.
I don't know your particular situation, so no judgement from me... but I've been out-lifted by a one handed guy and seen a one legged man run a half-marathon. Personally, I would have done more running if I was one-handed, and more lifting if I was one-legged, but different strokes...
