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Today's world looks increasingly like the future. Robots workfactory assembly lines and fight alongside human warriors on the battlefield,
while tiny computers assist in everything from driving cars to flying airplanes.
Surgeons use the latest technological tools to accomplish incredible feats, and
researchers push the frontiers of medicine with bioengineering. Science fiction
stories about cloning and resurrecting extinct animals look increasingly like
relevant cautionary tales.
But even the best of science and technology has yet to solve
climate change and famine, or conquer disease. More and more people live on a
planet with shrinking resources, which leads to political strife and conflict.
Here, we examine some of the hottest areas where researchers hope to forge a
better tomorrow.
HACK THE BRAIN
Much
of the human brain remains a mystery embedded in billions of neurons. Now
researchers behind the Blue
Brain Project have announced plans to create a
functioning, artificial human brain within the next decade. They have already
modeled part of an artificial rat brain using the IBM supercomputer Blue Gene,
and said that the simulated brain cells have even begun self-organizing without
human intervention. Success in reverse-engineering the brain could lead to a
model for biomedical testing, as well as a better understanding of human
consciousness. The researchers only caution that it's no artificial intelligence ... at least, not yet.
HARNESS THE SUN'S FIERY FURNACE
Nuclearfusion has kept the sun shining for billions of years. Now scientists want to
recreate that power on Earth and finally tap into fusion's unbeatable energy
efficiency. Giant lasers at the National
Ignition Facility could
help along that breakthrough by focusing
their power on a tiny hydrogen fuel pellet, and
ideally release more energy than what the lasers require. Still more
alternatives involve the magnetic
confinement of high-temperature plasma involved
in fusion, or even a rebranded form of cold
fusion. For now, LiveScience readers have already voted on their best
bets for alternative energies.
GLOBAL CLIMATE CONTROL
Forget
modest goals like trying to halt
Mother Nature from raining on the Olympics.
Geoengineering plans befitting Bond villains have become hot topics for the
National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society and the White
House science advisor. Ideas include lofting reflective
particles up into the atmosphere to divert
sunlight and cool the planet, or seeding the oceans with iron to encourage
carbon-gobbling algae blooms. Even billionaire Bill Gates joined a patent
filing on an idea to slow or stop hurricanes, by deploying a fleet of ships to
churn the ocean and cool the warm surface water that fuels such storms. Climate
control technologies have almost become reality, which raises the question of
whether scientists and policymakers want to risk the side
effects of such schemes.
ELIMINATE WASTE
New
technologies look to turn all our trash into reusable materials. Chicken
feathers and other agricultural castoffs
could become the future of plastics. Biodegradable plastics that dissolve
harmlessly in seawater might actually
encourage people to throw their garbage into the ocean. Food scraps, sewage and
other waste has already begun
to fuel some power plants and generators
for the U.S.
Army and civilians alike. Achieving 100
percent sustainability may still sound daunting, but the efforts do add up. MIT
researchers have even begun a Trash Track project to gauge the costs and
patterns of waste disposal in New York, Seattle and London, in hopes of helping
more people think green.
FEED THE WORLD
Solving
world hunger represents an incredibly difficult task, given that the political
situations and economics of each region bring their own complications.
Nonetheless, scientists have moved to protect the important crops that feed
most of the world. Researchers continue to develop different varieties of
wheat, corn and rice that have greater
yields and are more resistant to
temperature changes, drought conditions and even insects. New information
technologies can keep farmers updated on the
condition of their crops and agricultural practices which preserve
nutrient-rich soil in the long run. Even lab
grown meat could help satiate the growing
worldwide demand, if people can get over the irk factor. And if all else fails,
scientists have stored thousands of seeds in a doomsday
vault to safeguard the future of food.
REGENERATE THE BODY
No
one has regenerative powers just yet, but patients can expect a growing array
of therapies to repair or entirely replace organs in the human body. A British
team grew the world's first
artificial liver from
umbilical cord stem cells in 2006, and other researchers have since found that
even the heart may harbor
stem cells capable of regenerating the organ.
Adult stem cells have also helped restore eyesight using a patient's own
healthy eye stem cells in an Australian study, and Chinese scientists
demonstrated the potential of adult stem cells by creating live mice from
reprogrammed skin cells. The future of individually-tailored organs and
therapies may soon arrive.
KNOW IT ALL
People
could eventually hold a hitchhiker's guide to everything that they see. Pick up
a carton of OJ in the supermarket, and nutritional comparisons about that brand
would appear. Flip through a new bestseller in the bookstore, and reader
reviews might flash on the pages. MIT has already unveiled
a prototype of such a technology in 2009, which
combines a webcam, a projector and a smart phone to link the Internet's vast
array of information with the real world. Such wearable devices would work
together with embedded "smart" systems and tags to create an augmented
reality, where staring at a street might bring up GPS coordinates
and a local map. In the 21st century, information reigns supreme.
A PERFECT ARTIFICIAL LIMB
U.S.veterans and other prosthetic users may soon wield artificial hands, arms and
legs as easily as they control their natural limbs. The most advanced
prostheses tend to use "smart" microprocessors that act as tiny
brains to anticipate how a user will walk or move an arm. But both
monkeys and humans have already used brain
signals alone to control robotic arms and
digital applications, which paves the way for new brain interfaces with
artificial limbs. Such technology could then retrofit the latest prostheses to
give users ultimate control over that "Luke
AROUND THE WORLD IN 90 MINUTES
Phileas Fogg took 80 days to go around the world,
but travelers may eventually hop halfway around the globe in less than an hour.
The U.S. Air Force and Brazil are developing a Lightcraft concept that could someday ride
laser-produced explosions into the sky, and deliver passengers or cargo around
the world. Barring that wild ride, space planes that could take off and land like regular aircraft
have begun undergoing serious development in the U.K. and United States, and some could fly within
the next few years.
READ MY MIND
True
mind-reading devices remain in the realm of science fiction, and lie detectors
rely on indirect cues to catch fibbers. Still, brain scans have allowed
neuroscientists to predict what people will do during specific task
experiments, and even to observe when a person will make
a mistake up to half a minute beforehand.
Another technique has used near-infrared
light to figure out simple preferences
based on brain activity. These feats rely on analyzing brain patterns that
occur during specific actions, rather than truly cracking the brain's neural
code, but they still have scientists and legal experts debating mind-privacy
issues. Perhaps in the near future, they'll just use
Twitter for a meeting of minds.
As culled from Tech News Daily
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