GLIMPSES OF THE
FUTURE |
Improving On Spider Silk The silk spun by spiders for their webs is renowned for its strength-to-weight ratio. But now bio-materials experiments with spider dragline silk (taken from an Araneus spider’s silk glands) have resulted in a bio-mimicked new material that is even stronger than its natural counterpart. To make this new material, materials scientists from the Max Planck Institute and the Martin Luther University in Germany had to 'infiltrate' the inner protein structure of the spider’s dragline, silk threads with a metal ion of zinc (Zn 2+). These experiments built on earlier analyses of the mandibles of leaf-cutter ants, locusts, and marine polychaetes (a type of large sea worm) that showed a strong relationship between accumulated Zinc, Aluminium and Titanium levels in these materials and their high tensile and hardness properties. Previous attempts to incorporate such metals synthetically had proven to be too great a technological challenge. Do You Forget To Blink? The eye strain and resulting damage that often afflicts those who forget to blink while on a gaming marathon or glued to the Internet is a widespread problem. To combat this, Japan’s Masunaga Optical Manufacturing has unveiled Wink Glasses, which feature blink-sensing lenses that start to fog if the wearer neglects to keep their peepers hydrated. If the lightweight clip-on lens senses that the user has gone for more than five seconds without blinking it will begin to fog, hindering vision until the wearer starts to blink again. Wink Glasses run for eight hours on a single charge. Should the user be locked in for a longer session (a practice which surely has its own set of health issues) the lenses can alternatively be connected to a USB power source. WiFi Pacemaker Connects On The Net A heart pacemaker was connected to the outside world via WiFi for the first time last month. After relying on a pacemaker for 20 years, Carol Kasyjanski became the world's first recipient of a wireless pacemaker that allows her doctor to monitor her health from afar via the Internet. Dr. Steven Greenberg, the director of St. Francis' Arrhythmia and Pacemaker Center in New York, said the new technology helps him better treat his patients and will likely become the new standard in pacemakers. He said the server and the remote monitor communicate at least once a day to download all the relevant information and alert the doctor and patient if there is anything unusual. Proper Broadband Comes To AfricaA fiber-optic cable providing broadband to millions of people in Southern and Eastern Africa went live last month The cable, built by Seacom, is the first of about 10 new undersea connections expected to serve Africa before the middle of 2010. The expansion will cost about $2.4 billion and will help connect Africa with Europe, Asia and parts of the Middle East at higher speeds and at lower cost. Right now, Africa has only one submarine fiber-optic cable: the less efficient SAT-3 cable in Western Africa, owned primarily by Telkom, the South African telecom company, and last updated in 2002. Those with no access to that cable are forced to use expensive and slow satellite links. Invisible Camera 'Flash' Invented Researchers at New York University have developed a system for taking photos in poor lighting conditions using an invisible flash. This could result in celebrities (and others) not even knowing they're being photographed. Named dark light flash photography by its creators, the system uses light waves beyond our visible range and special software and algorithms to produce photos comparable in quality to a long exposure shot. Energy Services 'Calls' By Text Message An emergency call centre in the basement of the county jail in Waterloo, Iowa, became the first in the USA to accept text messages sent to '911', last month. 911 texting should be of particular help to the county's deaf and hard-of-hearing residents, who have had to rely on more cumbersome methods to reach 911. There have also been several cases in the USA of kidnap victims summoning help by surreptitiously texting friends or relatives, who then called 911. With direct texting to 911, they should be able to get help faster.
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Commercial Dog Cloning Begins Next Year RNL Bio, a biotech firm based in Seoul, South Korea, plans to open a research centre for canine cloning early next year. The Korean company will focus on cloning pets, working dogs and also endangered species, including wolves.
It has particularly high hopes for working dogs, such as bomb and drug sniffing retrievers and also a new breed of dogs known for their talent at detecting cancer cells. Cloned Pigs Could Provide Organs For Humans Korean scientists have produced genetically engineered pig clones with organs designed for human transplants. However, xeno-transplantation attempts in the past have had almost no success. Self-Healing Paint On The Way Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, have produced paint which is self healing. The researchers have developed a process for producing electroplated layers containing liquid filled nano-capsules that measure only a few hundred nanometers in diameter. When broken, the liquid in the capsules escapes and 'heals' the damage to the painted surface. The researchers have produced the first copper, nickel and zinc coatings with the new capsules, although surface coverage does not extend beyond the centimetre scale. They estimate that it will be another one and a half to two years before whole components can be coated. The team is also working on more complex systems involving differently filled capsules whose fluids react with one another like a two-component adhesive. 'Cloud Ships' Proposed To Reduce Global Warming Ships which sail the seas producing clouds are being proposed by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a controversial climate think-tank. The project, which is being worked on by rival US and UK scientists, would see 1,900 wind-powered ships ply the oceans sucking up seawater and spraying minuscule droplets of it out through tall funnels to create large white clouds. These clouds, it is predicted, would reflect around one or two per cent of the sunlight that would otherwise warm the ocean, thereby canceling out the greenhouse effect caused by Carbon Dioxide emissions. Nature's Magnets Decoded And Put To Work The genetic code for 'magnetosomes' - nano-sized biological magnets - has been unravelled. Magnetosomes are created by oxygen-averse bacteria to allow them to steer by the Earth's magnetic field, often to deep regions of the ocean where there is less oxygen. Now that the genes have been identified, they can be transferred to other organisms or altered to produce customised magnetic particles for practical applications. Already, for example, the particles have been extracted from bacteria and injected into mice to improve imaging of cancers by MRI scanners. They've also been used as nanomagnets in tests to detect biological molecules such as the sugar-regulating hormone insulin. Rugged Robots Communicate Inside A Volcano A squadron of rugged 'spiderbots' lowered by helicopter into Mount St Helens, Washington State, USA has become the first network of volcano sensors that can automatically communicate with each other and with satellites, rather than sending data to a base station first. Since the system can route data around any sensors that break and can simply be dropped into volcanoes, it is more robust and easier to deploy than current sensor systems, which must be carefully set up by hand. Similar networked robots could one day be used to study geological activity elsewhere in the solar system, say scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which helped develop and monitor the robots. Back issues of 'Glimpses' are archived here. |