Technology has immortality, cures for the worlds devastating diseases, quantum computing and a host of other science fiction notions in its grasp. Current trends in a number of areas indicate that over the next 10 years many of these technologies will come to fruition. "The Next 10 Years" tracks the trends that will transform our everyday lives in almost unimaginable ways.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Catalyst could help turn CO2 into fuel - energy - 15 March 2007 - New Scientist Tech

Catalyst could help turn CO2 into fuel - energy - 15 March 2007 - New Scientist Tech:
A new catalyst that can split carbon dioxide gas could allow us to use carbon from the atmosphere as a fuel source in a similar way to plants.

"Breaking open the very stable bonds in CO2 is one of the biggest challenges in synthetic chemistry," says Frederic Goettmann, a chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany. "But plants have been doing it for millions of years."

Plants use the energy of sunlight to cleave the relatively stable chemical bonds between the carbon and oxygen atoms in a carbon dioxide molecule. In photosynthesis, the CO2 molecule is initially bonded to nitrogen atoms, making reactive compounds called carbamates. These less stable compounds can then be broken down, allowing the carbon to be used in the synthesis of other plant products, such as sugars and proteins.
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Thursday, March 15, 2007

The universe is a string-net liquid - fundamentals - 15 March 2007 - New Scientist

The universe is a string-net liquid - fundamentals - 15 March 2007 - New Scientist:
In 1998, just after he won a share of the Nobel prize for physics, Robert Laughlin of Stanford University in California was asked how his discovery of "particles" with fractional charge, now called quasi-particles, would affect the lives of ordinary people. "It probably won't," he said, "unless people are concerned about how the universe works."

Well, people were. Xiao-Gang Wen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Levin at Harvard University ran with Laughlin's ideas and have come up with a prediction for a new state of matter, and even a tantalising picture of the nature of space-time itself. Levin presented their work at the Topological Quantum Computing conference at the University of California, Los Angeles, early this month.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Deconstructing Brain Wiring, One Neuron at a Time

Deconstructing Brain Wiring, One Neuron at a Time:
Researchers have long said they won’t be able to understand the brain until they can put together a “wiring diagram” – a map of how billions of neurons are interconnected. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have jumped what many believe to be a major hurdle to preparing that chart: identifying all of the connections to a single neuron.
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Wired 15.03: PLAY

Wired 15.03: PLAY:
Stephen Friend has the first hand-built fuel cell-powered house in the US. No, not another hopeful boil-your-own-yogurt demo for an impractical technology, but a real, sustainable achievement that makes its own hydrogen in a cedar shed out back. And it has a huge advantage over electric systems favored by his neighbors on Stuart Island, an off-the-grid Pacific Northwest paradise in Washington’s Puget Sound.
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