LATEST TECHNOLOGY

Technology has become maybe the best agent of amendment within the contemporary world. whereas ne'er while not risk, positive technological breakthroughs promise innovative solutions to the foremost pressing world challenges of our time, from resource scarceness to world environmental amendment. However, an absence of applicable investment, superannuated regulative frameworks and gaps publicly understanding forestall several promising technologies from achieving their potential.

The 2014 list is:

Body-adapted wearable physical science
Nanostructured Carbon Composites
Mining Metals from chemical process Brine
Grid-scale Electricity Storage
Nanowire Lithium-ion Batteries
Screenless show
Human Microbiome medical specialty
RNA-based medical specialty
Quantified Self (Predictive Analytics)
Brain-computer Interfaces

Body-adapted wearable physical science

Jogger runs around Chestnut Hill Reservoir in BostonFrom Google Glass to the Fitbit wristband, wearable technology has generated vital attention over the past year, with most existing devices serving to folks to higher perceive their personal health and fitness by observation exercise, heart rate, sleep patterns, and so on. the arena is shifting on the far side external wearables like wristbands or attachable devices to “body-adapted” physical science that more push the ever-shifting boundary between humans and technology.

The new generation of wearables is meant to adapt to the human body’s form at the place of readying. These wearables square measure generally small, jam-choked with a good vary of sensors and a feedback system, and invisible to form their use less intrusive and a lot of socially acceptable. These nearly invisible devices embrace earbuds that monitor rate, sensors worn beneath garments to trace posture, a short lived tattoo that tracks health organ and somatosense shoe soles that communicate GPS directions through vibration alerts felt by the feet. The applications square measure several and varied: somatosense shoes square measure presently projected for serving to blind folks navigate, whereas Google Glass has already been worn by oncologists to help in surgery via medical records and different visual data accessed by voice commands.

Technology analysts take into account that success factors for wearable product embrace device size, non-invasiveness, and therefore the ability to live multiple parameters and supply period feedback that improves user behaviour. However, hyperbolic uptake conjointly depends on social acceptableness as regards privacy. as an example, issues are raised concerning wearable devices that use cameras for biometric authentication and memory help. assumptive these challenges is managed, analysts project many ample devices in use by 2016.

Nanostructured Carbon Composites:

A automobile drives into a heavily secured downtown the primary day of the G20 Summit in PittsburghEmissions from the world’s rapidly-growing fleet of vehicles square measure associate environmental concern, and raising the operative potency of transport may be a promising thanks to cut back its overall impact. New techniques to nanostructure carbon fibres for novel composites square measure showing the potential in vehicle manufacture to cut back the burden of cars by 100 percent or a lot of. Lighter cars want less fuel to work, increasing the potency of moving folks and merchandise and reducing gas emissions.

However, potency is simply one concern – another of equal importance is rising traveller safety. to extend the strength and toughness of latest composites, the interface between carbon fibres and therefore the encompassing compound matrix is designed at the nanoscale to enhance anchoring – exploitation carbon nanotubes, as an example. within the event of associate accident, these surfaces square measure designed to soak up impact while not tearing, distributing the force and protective passengers within the vehicle.

A third challenge, which can currently be nearer to an answer, is that of use carbon fibre composites – one thing that has command back the widespread readying of the technology. New techniques involve engineering divisible “release points” into the fabric at the interface between the compound and therefore the fibre so the bonds is tame a controlled fashion and therefore the parts that compose the composite is recovered individually and reused. Taken along, these 3 components might have a serious impact by conveyance forward the potential for producing light-weight, super-safe and reusable composite vehicles to a mass scale.

Mining Metals from chemical process Brine
Waves crash against a beacon throughout storms that battered Britain and wherever a 14-year-old boy was hyped up to ocean, at Newhaven in South East EnglandAs the world population continues to grow and developing countries emerge from impoverishment, fresh is in danger of turning into one in all the Earth’s most restricted natural resources. additionally to water for drinking, sanitation and business in human settlements, a major proportion of the world’s agricultural production comes from irrigated crops big in arid areas. With rivers just like the Colorado, the Murray-Darling and therefore the Hwang Ho not reaching the ocean for long periods of your time, the attraction of desalinating saltwater as a brand new supply of fresh will solely increase.

Desalination has serious drawbacks, however. additionally to high energy use (a topic coated in last year’s high ten rising Technologies), the method produces a reject-concentrated brine, which may have a significant impact on marine life once came to the ocean. maybe the foremost promising approach to finding this downside is to examine the brine from chemical process not as waste, however as a resource to be harvested for valuable materials. These embrace Li, atomic number 12 and metal, still because the a lot of common atomic number 11, metallic element and K components. Li and atomic number 12 square measure valuable to be used in superior batteries and light-weight alloys, as an example, whereas rare-earth element components utilized in electrical motors and wind turbines – wherever potential shortages square measure already a strategic concern – might also be recovered.

New processes exploitation catalyst-assisted chemistry raise the chance of extracting these metals from reject chemical process brine at a price which will eventually become competitive with land-based mining of ores or lake deposits. This economic profit might offset the general price of chemical process, creating it a lot of viable on an oversized scale, successively reducing the human pressures on fresh ecosystems.

Grid-scale Electricity Storage
A tree stands close to fog over the central Bosnian city of Vitez on the Lisac range throughout sunsetElectricity can't be directly keep, thus electrical grid managers should perpetually make sure that overall demand from shoppers is strictly matched by associate equal quantity of power fed into the grid by generating stations. as a result of the energy in coal and gas is keep in comparatively giant quantities, typical fossil-fuelled power stations provide dispatchable energy accessible on demand, creating grid management a comparatively certainty. However, fossil fuels conjointly unleash greenhouse gases, inflicting temperature change – and lots of countries currently aim to interchange carbon-based generators with a clean energy mixture of renewable, nuclear or different non-fossil sources.

Clean energy sources, specially wind and star, is extremely intermittent; rather than manufacturing electricity once shoppers and grid managers need it, they generate uncontrollable quantities only if favourable weather permit. A scaled-up nuclear sector may additionally gift challenges owing to its most well-liked operation as always-on baseload. Hence, the event of grid-scale electricity storage choices has long been a “holy grail” for clean energy systems. To date, solely wired storage hydropower will claim a major role, however it's costly, environmentally difficult and all hooked in to favourable earth science.

There square measure signs that a spread of latest technologies is obtaining nearer to cracking this challenge. Some, like flow batteries might, within the future, be ready to store liquid energy in giant quantities analogous to the storage of coal and gas. numerous solid battery choices also are competitory to store electricity in sufficiently energy-dense and cheaply accessible materials. new made-up graphene supercapacitors provide the chance of very speedy charging and discharging over several tens of thousands of cycles. different choices use kinetic mechanical energy like giant flywheels or the underground storage of compressed gas.

A a lot of novel possibility being explored at medium scale in FRG is greenhouse gas methanation via atomic number 1 electrolysis, wherever surplus electricity is employed to separate water into atomic number 1 and gas, with the atomic number 1 later being reacted with waste CO2 to create alkane series for later combustion – if necessary, to get electricity. whereas the round-trip potency of this and different choices could also be comparatively low, clearly storage potential can have high amount within the future. it's too early to choose a winner, however it seems that the pace of technological development during this field is moving faster than ever, in our assessment, conveyance a elementary breakthrough a lot of seemingly within the close to term.

Nanowire Lithium-ion Batteries

A vehicle cornered long by associate storm sits abandoned on the Glenshane Pass in Northern IrelandAs stores of electrical charge, batteries square measure critically necessary in several aspects of recent life. Lithium-ion batteries, which supply smart energy density (energy per weight or volume) square measure habitually packed into mobile phones, laptops and electrical cars, to call simply a couple of common uses. However, to extend the vary of electrical cars to match that of petrol-powered competitors – to not mention the battery period of time between charges of mobile phones and laptops – battery energy density has to be improved dramatically.

Batteries square measure generally composed of 2 electrodes, a positive terminal called a cathode, associated a negative terminal called an anode, with associate solution in between. This solution permits ions to maneuver between the electrodes to supply current. In lithium-ion batteries, the anode consists of black lead, that is comparatively low-cost and sturdy. However, researchers have begun to experiment with semiconducting material anodes, which might provide a lot of larger power capability.

One engineering challenge is that semiconducting material anodes tend to suffer structural failure from swelling and shrinking throughout charge-discharge cycle. Over the last year, researchers have developed attainable solutions that involve the creation of semiconducting material nanowires or nanoparticles, that appear to resolve the issues related to silicon’s volume growth once it reacts with Li. The larger expanse related to nanoparticles and nanowires more will increase the battery’s power density, letting quick charging and current delivery.

Able to totally charge a lot of quickly, and manufacture 30%-40% a lot of electricity than today’s lithium-ion batteries, this next generation of batteries might facilitate remodel the electrical automobile market and permit the storage of star electricity at the menage scale. Initially, silicon-anode batteries square measure expected to start to ship in smartphones at intervals ensuing 2 years.

Screenless show

An illustration image shows a lady watching the Facebook web site on a pc in MunichOne of the a lot of frustrating aspects of recent technology is that, as devices have miniaturized, they need become harder to move with – nobody would sort out a completely unique on a smartphone, as an example. the dearth of area on screen-based displays provides a transparent chance for screenless displays to fill the gap. Full-sized keyboards will already be projected onto a surface for users to move with, without fear over whether or not it'll work into their pocket. maybe evoking recollections of the first Star Wars films, holographic pictures will currently be generated in 3 dimensions; in 2013, MIT’s Media research lab rumored a example cheap holographic color visual display unit with the resolution of a typical TV.

Screenless show might also be achieved by projected pictures directly onto a person’s membrane, not solely avoiding the necessity for weighty hardware, however conjointly promising to safeguard privacy by permitting folks to move with computers while not others sharing constant read. By January 2014, one start-up company had already raised a considerable add via Kickstarter with the aim of commercializing a private diversion and cinema device exploitation retinal show. within the long term, technology might permit colligation interfaces that bypass the attention altogether, sending “visual” data on to the brain.

This field saw speedy progress in 2013 and seems set for close breakthroughs of scalable readying of screenless show. numerous firms have created vital breakthroughs within the field, as well as computer game headsets, bionic contact lenses, the event of mobile phones for the aged and partly blind folks, and hologram-like videos while not the necessity for moving components or glasses.

Human Microbiome medical specialty

MRSA microorganism strain is seen {in a|during a|in associate exceedingly|in a very} Petri dish in an exceedingly microbiological laboratory in BerlinThe organic structure is maybe a lot of properly delineate as an scheme than as one organism: microbic cells generally add up human cells by ten to 1. This human microbiome has been the topic of exasperating analysis within the past few years, with the Human Microbiome Project in 2012 reportage results generated from eighty collaborating scientific establishments. They found that over ten,000 microbic species occupy the human scheme, comprising trillions of cells and creating up 1%-3% of the body’s mass.

Through advanced deoxyribonucleic acid sequencing, bioinformatics and culturing technologies, the various bug species that cohabitate with the organic structure square measure being known and characterised, with variations in their abundance correlative with malady and health.

It is more and more understood that this excess of microbes plays a very important role in our survival: microorganism within the gut, as an example, permit humans to digest foods and absorb necessary nutrients that their bodies would otherwise not be ready to access. On the opposite hand, pathogens that square measure present in humans will typically flip virulent and cause illness or maybe death.

Attention is being targeted on the gut microbiome and its role in diseases starting from infections to fatness, {diabetes|polygenic disorder|polygenic malady} and inflammatory internal organ disease. it's more and more understood that antibiotic treatments that destroy gut flora may end up in complications like eubacteria difficile infections, which may in rare cases result in serious complications. On the opposite hand, a brand new generation of medical specialty comprising a set of microbes found in healthy gut square measure beneath clinical development with a read to rising medical treatments. Advances in human microbiome technologies clearly represent associate unexampled thanks to develop new treatments for serious diseases and to enhance general tending outcomes in our species.

RNA-based medical specialty

Handout image of structures found within the HIV ribonucleic acid ordering as known by UNC researchersRNA is an important molecule in cellular biology, translating genetic directions encoded in deoxyribonucleic acid into the assembly of the proteins that alter cells to perform. However, as macromolecule production is additionally a central consider most human diseases and disorders, RNA-based medical specialty have long been thought to carry the potential to treat a spread of issues wherever typical drug-based treatments cannot provide a lot of facilitate. the sector has been slow to develop, however, with initial high hopes being crumpled by the sheer quality of the trouble and therefore the have to be compelled to higher perceive the variability of organic phenomenon in cells.

Over the past year, there has been a revitalisation of interest during this new field of biotech tending, with 2 RNA-based treatments approved as human medical specialty as of 2014. RNA-based medicine for a spread of conditions as well as genetic disorders, cancer and communicable disease square measure being developed supported the mechanism of ribonucleic acid interference, that is employed to silence the expression of defective or overexpressed genes..

Quantified Self (Predictive Analytics
A woman speaks on her iPhone as she walks on a busy street in downtown ShanghaiThe quantified-self movement has existed for several years as a collaboration of individuals aggregation continual information on their everyday activities so as to form higher decisions concerning their health and behavior. But, with today’s net of Things, the movement has begun to come back into its own and have a wider impact.

.Brain-computer Interfaces
Chilean technologist Jorge Alviarez, places head sensors on Jenifer Astorga, World Health Organization suffers from paralysis, throughout a coaching session for her in urban center town.The ability to regulate a pc exploitation solely the facility of the mind is nearer than one would possibly assume. Brain-computer interfaces, wherever computers will browse and interpret signals directly from the brain, have already achieved clinical success in permitting quadriplegics, those suffering “locked-in syndrome” or those that have had a stroke to maneuver their own wheelchairs or maybe drink occasional from a cup by dominant the action of a robotic arm with their brain waves. additionally, direct brain implants have helped restore partial vision to those that have lost their sight.
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