The world today is evolving, we may not be where we thought we’d be as depicted in several Sci-fi movies but we sure are evolving.
Today, we bring you some of the coolest innovations and technologies that are shaping the future and changing our world.
Here are they are;
Cancer-detecting ‘Smart Needles’
Scientists in the UK have developed a ground-breaking new “smart needle” that can detect and diagnose one of the most common types of cancer within seconds using low-power laser light to pinpoint cancerous tissues or cells.
The team mainly focused on the type of cancer called lymphoma (a cancer of the immune system), but the technique could also be helpful in diagnosing other forms of the disease. Using a technique called Raman spectroscopy, the ‘optical biopsy’ measures the light scattered by tissues when a laser contained in the needle is shone onto it.
This Pioneering new technique could revolutionise cancer diagnosis as it’s much less intrusive and the diagnosis can be made within seconds, the scientists say.
Space Tourism
A new company, Space Perspective aims to send passengers and research equipments to the stratosphere aboard Spaceship Neptune, a balloon-borne pressurized capsule.
Spaceship Neptune’s cabin will be built to accommodate up to eight passengers on a six-hour long trip: four hours to travel 100,000 feet and back, and two hours of leisure time at the destination.
Capsule recovery would occur in the waters around Kodiak Island and the Aleutian Island chain in the south west of the US, depending upon the seasonal wind patterns.
The balloon design is derived from technology NASA has used for decades to fly large research telescopes, Space Perspective said.
Each passenger could pay an estimated $125,000 for a journey.
The space balloon’s first trip, which will be uncrewed, will take place early 2021 and is set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida.
Car Batteries That Charge In 10 Minutes
One of the factors holding back electric cars from mass adoption is charge time. At the moment, it takes too long for the battery to charge, especially in comparison to how long it takes to fill up a tank with liquid or gas fuel, this is because, the flow of lithium particles known as ions from one electrode to another to charge the unit and hold the energy ready for use does not happen smoothly with rapid charging at lower temperatures as rapid charging of lithium-ion batteries degrades the batteries.
However, researchers at Penn State University, US have found that if the batteries could heat to 60°C for just 10 minutes and then rapidly cool again to ambient temperatures, lithium spikes would not form and heat damage would be avoided.
The battery design they have come up with is self-heating, using a thin nickel foil which creates an electrical circuit that heats in less than 30 seconds to warm the inside of the battery. The rapid cooling that would be needed after the battery is charged would be done using the cooling system designed into the car.
Internet For Everyone
The UN has declared that right to Internet access, also known as the right to broadband or freedom to connect, is the view that all people must be able to access the Internet in order to exercise and enjoy their rights to freedom of expression and opinion and other fundamental human rights, sadly so many people in Africa and the rest of the world still do not enjoy this right.
Google’s Project Loon aims to solve this problem using helium balloons to beam the internet to inaccessible areas. In this project, the balloons float in the stratosphere, twice as high as airplanes and the weather.
In the stratosphere, there are many layers of wind, and each layer of wind varies in direction and speed. Loon balloons go where they’re needed by rising or descending into a layer of wind blowing in the desired direction of travel. By moving with the wind, the balloons can be arranged to form one large communications network.
The signal is then passed across the balloon network and back down to the global Internet on Earth.
Project Loon partnered with telecommunications companies to share cellular spectrum so that people will be able to access the Internet everywhere directly from their phones and other LTE-enabled devices.
Artificial Neurons On Silicon Chips
Scientists have found a way to attach artificial neurons onto silicon chips, mimicking the neurons in our nervous system and copying their electrical properties.
“Until now neurons have been like black boxes, but we have managed to open the black box and peer inside,” said Professor Alain Nogaret, from the University of Bath, who led the project.
“Our work is paradigm-changing because it provides a robust method to reproduce the electrical properties of real neurons in minute detail.
“But it’s wider than that, because our neurons only need 140 nanowatts of power. That’s a billionth the power requirement of a microprocessor, which other attempts to make synthetic neurons have used.
Researchers hope their work could be used in medical implants to treat conditions such as heart failure and Alzheimer’s as it requires so little power.
Invisibility Cloak
A new idea for a cloaking technology has been created by researchers from TU Wien (Vienna), together with colleagues from Greece and the USA.
This technology, a completely opaque material is irradiated from above with a specific wave pattern — with the effect that light waves from the left can now pass through the material without any obstruction.
The idea can be applied to different kinds of waves, it should work with sound waves just as well as with light waves. .
This technology is still in the works, the researchers believe; “with certain materials and using our special wave technology, it is indeed possible.”
Flying Cars
Flying Cars may soon be a reality as companies around the world are speeding work on it, to be the first to launch one.
Most notably is Uber under its new service, ‘Uber Elevate’. The ride hailing service is set to move things up a notch from offering chopper rides to offering rides in flying taxis.
The company’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi revealed the design at its annual Uber Elevate Summit, Last year in Washington, US.
The new design resembles a cross between a plane and a helicopter, with a rotor to get the craft in the air and wings to provide lift once it’s up to speed.
The company is still conducting test flights but has noted that this new service will be cheaper than hailing a cab.
Living Robots
A team of researchers from the University of Vermont have successfully designed and built ‘living’ robots using different types of cells scraped from frogs.
“These are novel living machines,” said Joshua Bongard, a computer scientist and robotics expert at the University of Vermont, who co-developed the millimetre-wide bots, known as xenobots.
“They’re neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It’s a new class of artefact: a living, programmable organism.
While the frog-bots are still at a very early stage in development, it’s possible that more complex versions could be used in the future for tasks like nano-surgery (performing jobs such as cleaning plaque from arteries or delivering drugs) and cleaning up micro-plastics.
Energy Storing Bricks
Researchers led by Washington University in St Louis, in Missouri, US, have developed a method that can turn the cheap and widely available building material into “smart bricks” that can store energy like a battery.
Although the research is still in the proof-of-concept stage, the scientists claim that walls made of these bricks “could store a substantial amount of energy” and can “be recharged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour”.
The researchers developed a method to convert red bricks into a type of energy storage device called a supercapacitor.
This involved putting a conducting coating, known as Pedot, onto brick samples, which then seeped through the fired bricks’ porous structure, converting them into “energy storing electrodes”.
Iron oxide, which is the red pigment in the bricks, helped with the process, the researchers said.
Synthetic Skin
Swiss researchers have developed a wearable, sensor-packed second skin that could let VR users ‘touch’ objects in virtual worlds.
Virtual reality has come on in leaps and bounds over the years, but tactile sensations have been notably by either their absence or their crudity. Thanks to researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne’s (EPFL) Reconfigurable Robotics Lab (RRL) and the Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces (LSBI), however, this could be about to change.
A series of soft sensors and actuators have been designed to create a realistic sense of touch, something which is helped by constantly measuring skin deformation with strain sensors. The prototype that has been built offers real-time feedback at a frequency of 100Hz frequency and a sensitivity of up to one newton of force
The skin is made of silicone and electrodes comprising a liquid-solid gallium mixture. Pneumatic actuators, which can be pumped with air, provide feedback to the user. The skin is thin enough not to interfere with movement, and while for now the prototype is limited to a finger attachment, it’s hoped that future versions with progress to something much larger.
