GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE
A monthly digest of technologies, developments and trends that will shape our lives. (If you would prefer not to receive these digests, flip back 'NO THANKS' and you will be removed from the list).

Cloned Dogs Go To Work

In what may be the first really useful application of mammalian cloning, five cloned dogs have been delivered to a police force in South Korea. The dogs were cloned from a famous 'parent', a five-year-old German shepherd called 'Quin' who made headlines during the investigation of a high-profile child murder case that shocked the nation in 2007.

Despite being trained for only three days to detect human scent, Quinn needed just 20 minutes to find the body of the victim at an orchard near the scene of the crime, releasing more than 30,000 police officers who had been searching in vain for over a month.

Considering that it normally takes about four to five months to train a 'cadaver dog,' Quinn's heroics were seen as indication of a superior natural ability as a search dog, which led the police to request the Sooam Biotech Research Center In Seoul to clone the animal last year.

Flying Could Become 70% Cleaner

An MIT-led team has designed a green airplane that is estimated to use 70 percent less fuel than current planes while also reducing noise and emission of nitrogen oxides (NOx).

The design was one of two that the team, led by faculty from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, presented to NASA last month as part of a $2.1 million research contract to develop environmental and performance concepts that will help guide the agency’s aeronautics research over the next 25 years.

Known as 'N+3' to denote three generations beyond today’s commercial transport fleet, the research program is aimed at identifying key technologies, such as advanced airframe configurations and propulsion systems, that will enable greener airplanes to take flight around 2035.

Stem Cells Coaxed To Become Ear Hairs

Humans are born with 30,000 'hearing hairs' in each ear which react to vibrations and detect sounds. But once they die off or get damaged, they’re gone for good and humans who lose such hairs are left deaf.

Now Stefan Heller, a professor of otolaryngology at Stanford University, wants to change that. To that end, he recently succeeded in creating mouse hair cells in a petri dish.

Heller and his team used embryonic stem cells from mice, along with mouse fibroblasts (cells found within fibrous connective tissue) reprogrammed to act like stem cells. After ten years of lab work, they were able to engineer these cells into something that looked and performed just like hair cells of the ear.

Could an end to human deafness be on the horizon?

$3 Microscope Plugs Into Mobile Phones

A new small digital microscope that costs just a few dollars can plug into a cell phone and perform basic medical diagnostics that would ordinarily require expensive lab equipment.

The microscope, developed by Aydogan Ozcan, professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at UCLA, uses no lenses and saves on cost and weight by using algorithms to get more information from images.

The device can generate blood counts and identify disease cells and bacteria from simple images sent through a USB connection to a cell phone that uses software to processes the data. The latest version of the microscope integrates an interference-based contrast method to provide better images in addition to diagnostic information.

USAF Heals Wounds With Lasers And Nanotech

The US Air Force is using 'Star Trek' medical techniques to close wounds instead of using stitches or staples. Medics are using nano-technology and lasers to seal up wounds at a molecular level.

Massachusetts General Hospital researchers Irene Kochevar, Robert Redmond and dermatologist Sandy Tsao are behind the nano-tech project, which has been funded by various agencies within the Department of Defense for eight years. They’ve successfully tried out the nano-sutures in lab experiments and a clinical trial of 31 patients in need of skin incisions.

Towards Better Manners In The Bedroom

Considerate partners struggle to control flatulence whilst in bed but, even with the best intentions, there can be an occasional accident.

Now there is a new a solution to such domestic discourtesy in the form of the Better Marriage Blanket that soaks up offensive 'flatulence molecules' to keep any partnership smelling rosy even after the most destructive Indian curry.

Flatulence molecules pass through the blanket’s cotton shell and are absorbed into a layer of activated carbon fabric, which is reportedly the same type of fabric used by the military to protect against chemical weapons.

When should we expect underwear made of this material?

Google Invests To Predict The Future

Google has invested in a startup company that claims to be able to predict the future.

The company's investment arm, Google Ventures, has sunk an undisclosed sum into Recorded Future, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup that offers customers new ways to analyse the past, present and the predicted future,' according to a new Google Ventures Web site..

Recorded Future's own Web site doesn't list any products for sale, but the company appears to have developed a data analytics technology that could be used to try to predict future stock market events or even terrorist activity, according to blog posts and videos on its site. The technology looks at how frequently an entity or event is referred to in the news and around the Web over a period of time, then uses that data to project how it might behave in the future.

Solar Cells Printed On Paper

Researchers have already succeeded in creating highly absorbing flexible solar cells that can be printed on plastic. Now researchers at MIT have gone one step further with the development of the first solar cell printed on paper. The new solar cells are created by coating paper with organic semiconductor material using a process similar to an inkjet printer.

The MIT researchers used carbon-based dyes to 'print' the cells, which are about 1.5 to 2 percent efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. That falls well short of the more than 40 percent efficiency record for a multi-junction solar cell, or even the recent 19 percent efficiency record for silicon ink-based solar cells. But Vladimir Bulovic, director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Research Center, has said that any material could be used to print onto the paper solar cells if it was deposited at room temperature, thus enabling greater efficiencies.

100 MPG Car Engine In Development

Betting that fossil fuels will be around for a long time yet, EcoMotors of Michigan has just received an $18 million investment to develop a new engine capable of 100 MPG.

The new power plant could improve fuel economies by up to 60 percent while halving the weight and size of standard gas and diesel-powered engines. Pairing high power density with compact size opens up a world of options for cheaper, more aerodynamic vehicles with vastly-extended driving ranges.

Chinese automotive supplier Zhongding Holding Group is one of the investors and in exchange for the money, Zhongding, will receive two prototype engines (one for gas and one for diesel) that they can use to demonstrate the technology to their customers.

Wiring Up The Patients

A wireless monitoring system for people with debilitating conditions such as Parkinson's disease or chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) could allow healthcare workers to assess a patient's health and the development of their disease without hindering their movements.

Researchers at Kalasalingam University, in Tamil Nadu, India, say that assessment of a patient's disease state under the normal conditions of their everyday lives is becoming increasingly important in improving treatment and following the progression of many conditions as well as keeping costs down by avoiding unnecessary medical call outs and hospital visits.

The research team has developed a real-time monitoring system for patients consisting of vital signs sensors, a sensor network, electronic patient records and web portal technology that calls on medical personnel when life-threatening events occur. The team claims that their new system circumvents some of the issues associated with current monitoring technology, such as unwieldy equipment and inconvenient wires between sensors and processing unit, a lack of integration of different sensors, the non-existent support for data collection and knowledge discovery that technology could offer medical research.

Heart Attacks Diagnosed From Saliva

A diagnostic tool developed by Rice University scientists to detect heart attacks using a person's saliva is being tested at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center (MEDVAMC) in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston.

The research team has developed a microchip sensor, the Nano-Bio-Chip, which processes saliva and yields on-the-spot results.

'The device works by analysing saliva, looking for cardiac biomarkers of injury implicated in the heart attack,' said Dr. Biykem Bozkurt, professor of medicine at BCM.

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