Last week both Jeremy and I blogged about the promising developments of Nanowires, which have the prospect of making tiny supercomputers, possibly powered by solar. Although the current method of growing the tiny wires like grass is fascinating, it is very inefficient. To make any of these technologies useable in the real world, vast improvements in the creation of nanowires will be needed. The National Institute of Standards and Technology have improved that by adapting techniques used in the semiconductor industry. By putting tiny amounts of gold into the substrate, they can make up to 600 tiny transistors from one batch of nanowires. The field of Nanoscience still has a long way to go but with advances like this happening all the time, we’re getting closer.
Powerful new diagnostic method for identifying disease organisms
Paging Dr. McCoy: a technique that uses a magnetic field to selectively separate tiny magnetic particles, developed at Purdue and Duke universities, could be used to diagnose the presence of many diseases in a single sample within minutes, with a sensitivity up to a million times higher than current methods. (Via Science Daily.)
View an animation of the process, called non-linear magnetophoretic separation, here. (The image above is a still from this animation.)
(Image: Purdue University via Science Daily.)
[tags]medicine, technology, disease[/tags]
Power-generating … shirts?
Now this is just a great idea, plain and simple – clothing made from fabrics with piezo-electric materials embedded in them, which will generate electric current as a result of the flexing produced by the wearer’s motion. The project has been sponsored to the tune of AUS$4.4million by the Australian Defence Department, and the potential for military applications is obvious enough, but the same technology would be very lucrative in the commercial sector too. Of course, it’s not in the bag yet – the researchers behind the idea suggest a viable product may be ready in four or five years – but the day when I can travel without having to pack an arsenal of batteries and wall-warts can’t come soon enough. [Via SmartMobs] [Image by Mgus]
[tags]mobile, devices, power, generation, clothing[/tags]
Organic food proven to be better for you
With the organic food market growing and growing, it’s easy to wonder just how much difference it makes. Are just paying more for the same input to our bodies? A group of food scientists grew a number of different crops and animal produce, one lot entirely organic, the other non-organic. They found that organic fruit, vegetables and especially milk had more antioxidants and healthy fatty acids. It’s interesting to note that the most technologically advanced option isn’t always the best one – future agriculture will have to combine new inventions with older techniques if it wants to hit the sweet spot of good food. Now I’m glad I got that subscription to Abel and Cole veg boxes.
Top 87 Bad Predictions About the Future
Just what it says: here are 87 predictions about the future (and the original list at Wikipedia this list appears to be based on) that turned out, as the future became the present (and then, inexorably, the past) to be Just Plain Wrong. (Via John C. Wright.)
The section on computers gives you a taste:
- «Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.» – Popular Mechanics, March 1949.
- «There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.» – Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.
- «I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.» – The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.
- «But what… is it good for?» – IBM executive Robert Lloyd, speaking in 1968 microprocessor, the heart of today’s computers.
UPDATE: Added link to Wikipedia list of failed predictions, which the 2spare.com list appears to be based on.
(U.S. Army Photo via Wikimedia Commons.)
[tags]predictions, futurism, computers[/tags]