Scientific American is a more popular science publication than the specialized scientific journal Nature. Rather than reviewing manuscripts in a manner similar to Nature's peer-reviewed approach, the magazine provides an open forum for presenting scientific theories and discoveries to an audience of business owners, senior managers, policymakers, and opinion leaders, complementing Nature's academic audience.
Thus, this selection of the top 10 emerging technologies of 2019 is also not purely about the most advanced and cutting-edge achievements in the academic field, but also focuses on their integration with current industries. The criteria for this selection include the following questions: do the nominated technologies have the potential to generate significant social and economic benefits? Can they change current production methods? Are they still in the early stages of development but attracting significant interest from research labs, companies or investors? Are they likely to make significant progress in the coming years?
After four virtual meetings, technologists selected the following 10 emerging technologies that are likely to grow rapidly in recent years:
1. Bioplastics
Ecology has been a hot topic in recent years. Among them, plastic waste has become a major factor threatening the world's ecology. According to the World Economic Forum, in 2014, 311 million tons of plastic were produced globally, and this number is expected to increase twofold by 2050. However, only 15 percent of plastic is recycled, with most of the rest being incinerated, landfilled, or even simply discarded in nature.
Because traditional plastics are difficult to degrade, they can persist in the natural environment for hundreds of years, and the problem is exacerbated if they are thrown into the sea - they can be accidentally ingested by marine organisms, and then pass through the food chain and enter the human body. Based on observations of volunteers' feces at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, it is speculated that each person eats about 73,000 pieces of microplastic per year.
The looming plastics crisis is likely to boost the biodegradable plastics industry, creating a "circular" plastics economy.
The so-called biodegradable plastics are plastics generated by microorganisms based on natural substances such as starch, whose source and transformation result in biomass. Like chemical plastics derived from petrochemicals, bioplastics consist of polymers (long-chain molecules) that can be molded into a variety of shapes when in the liquid state.
Earlier research has focused on how to make plastics from corn, sugarcane, or waste fats and cooking oils; however, the products often struggle to have the mechanical strength and visual properties of traditional plastics, making them difficult to apply on a large scale. However, a turnaround has occurred. Scientists have recently begun researching how to produce plastics from cellulose and lignin (the dry matter in plants) to overcome these shortcomings.
Cellulose and lignin are the most abundant organic polymers on earth and are the main components of plant cell walls.
In particular, lignin monomers are composed of aromatic hydrocarbon rings (aromatic rings), which are also the structures that provide mechanical strength in some conventional plastics. Lignin is insoluble in most solvents, but researchers have found ways to separate it from wood and woody plants using ionic liquids. Genetically engineered enzymes similar to those found in fungi and bacteria can break down dissolved lignin into its components.
The industry is now focused on this breakthrough, with a number of biotech companies, including those owned by Imperial College London, investing heavily in the field. It can be expected that this industry will see explosive growth as soon as the issues of cost and water for land use are resolved.
2, social robots
In industry, medicine and other fields, robots have been widely used, but this is still far from people's vision of the machine "man".
In recent years, however, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology have given humans the opportunity to translate thousands of years of accumulated psychological and neuroscientific knowledge into algorithms that allow robots not only to recognize voices, faces, and emotions, but also to respond appropriately to complex verbal and nonverbal cues. In addition, they will be able to make "eye" contact with humans in the future. Overall, robots are becoming more and more "human" and more and more capable of communicating with people.
Social robots, therefore, have a promising future. In fact, the related industry has already taken shape. For example, Softbank Robotics launched the "Pepper" (Pepper) robot has shipped more than 15,000. This robot can already recognize faces and basic human emotions, and can carry on conversations through the "chest" of the touch screen, in the world's major hotels, airports, shopping places to provide guidance and communication services for customers.
Technologists' confidence in the growth of the social robotics industry also comes from one particular area -- aging. The aging trend is intensifying in several parts of the world, which is an excellent area for robotics applications, and a number of companies are eyeing the meat and potatoes. There's also room for social robots in both the consumer and childcare sectors.
According to Scientific American projections, global sales of consumer robots reached an estimated $5.6 billion in 2018, and by the end of 2025, this market will grow to $19 billion, with more than 65 million robots sold annually.
3, micro-optical devices
As a niche field, the optical industry's technological breakthroughs do not seem to be much concern, but in fact, the application of related products has been closely related to our lives. For example, traditional glass-cutting and glass-bending techniques make it difficult to create tiny lenses, so when the lenses of cell phone cameras are stacked for focusing accuracy, it makes it difficult to keep the phones thin and light. In addition, advanced optical tools such as microscopes have been plagued by this problem.
Engineers have discovered an amazing way to make optical instruments using metal instead of glass. The technique involves using extremely thin sheets of metal, less than 1 micron thick, and on its surface, engineers use a nanoscale process to add by different bumps and depressions and perforations.
When incident light hits these locations, the polarization, intensity, phase, direction and other properties of the light change. By pinpointing nanoscale objects, it is possible to ensure that the light emitted by metallic materials has selected characteristics. The most striking feature of these "metal lenses" is that they are so thin that engineers can stack several metal shells on top of each other to make small components.
In the past year, researchers have made a major technological breakthrough in this technology, solving the problem of chromatic aberration in the new lenses. The problem stems from the fact that when white light is imaged through a typical lens, different wavelengths of light have different refractive indices, which gives different colored light different propagation paths, thus presenting aberrations due to the differences in the light paths of different colored light.
The new metal lens can focus all wavelengths of white light at the same point by precise shooting. In addition to the fact that this metal lens is inherently free of chromatic aberration, similar products have the potential to help correct chromatic aberration in other products by eliminating image distortion, blurring, astigmatism and other problems.
More importantly, in addition to reducing the size of the optics, metallization will ultimately reduce the cost of the optics. It is reported that this small metal lens can be manufactured entirely from off-the-shelf semiconductor industry equipment. This is undoubtedly a big reason why it was chosen as one of the top 10 emerging technologies of the year.
The problem at the moment is that with current technology, it is still very expensive to precisely arrange nanometer-scale objects on centimeter-level chips. At the same time, metal lenses can't, for the time being, transmit light as effectively as glass lenses.
Metal lenses may first replace glass lenses in some small, simple devices -- such as endoscopic imaging devices and fiber optics -- in the coming years. That's intriguing enough that at least Google and Samsung have looked into it.
4. Disordered proteins
Decades ago, scientists discovered a special class of proteins that could be important in a range of serious diseases, from cancer to neurodegeneration.
The proteins are called "intrinsically disordered proteins" (IDPs), which are a type of disordered protein. By disordered, I mean that unlike proteins with rigid structures commonly found in cells, it does not have a stable three-dimensional structure. Because of their unstable state, IDPs are often used as "components" in a variety of other biological reactions, such as DNA transcription.
Research has shown that this loose structure gives IDPs the biological advantages of easy binding, spatial superiority, and a high degree of coordination, enabling them to bring together a wide variety of molecules at critical moments (such as cellular responses to stress). However, when they are mis-expressed, they can also cause cellular changes, and a variety of serious illnesses can ensue, including some cancers and Alzheimer's disease that are thought to be associated with them.
Despite the discovery of the mechanism, until now, scientists have been at a loss. Because most drugs currently in use require stable protein structures as targets, and the IDP doesn't leave long enough for drugs to work, some of the well-known, potentially cancer-causing disordered proteins -- including c-Myc, p53, and k-ras -- are too elusive. -are too elusive.
That changed in 2017, however, when scientists in France and Spain found that an FDA-approved drug called trifluoperazine (used to treat psychiatric and anxiety disorders) could inhibit the disordered protein NUPR1, which plays a role in pancreatic cancer. the result proved that targeting and attacking the "fuzzy" state of This result demonstrates that it is possible to target and attack IDPs in their "fuzzy" state.
In subsequent studies, scientists have massively screened and evaluated thousands of drugs. They found a number of them that could inhibit c-Myc, and molecules that could act on IDPs such as beta-amyloid, which has been linked to diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.
The discovery sparked enthusiasm in industry. Today, biotech company IDP Pharma is developing a protein inhibitor for the treatment of multiple myeloma and small-cell lung cancer; Graffinity Pharmaceuticals has identified a small molecule that can target tau proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease pathology; and Cantabio Pharmaceuticals is looking for small molecules to stabilize IDPs involved in neurodegeneration.
5. Controlled-release fertilizers
In order to feed the world's growing population, the global use of chemical fertilizers is bound to increase. But traditional fertilizers are not only inefficient, but also do tremendous damage to the environment.
In the past, farmers used to apply fertilizer in 2 ways, either by spraying ammonia, urea and other substances into the field to supplement nitrogen to the crops, or by sowing potassium carbonate or other mineral particles to generate phosphorus when reacting with water. But with these 2 methods, the efficiency is very low, and only a relatively small portion of the nutrient enters the plant. The rest of the large amount of nitrogen goes into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases, and the phosphorus goes into the waters, leading to overgrowth of algae and other organisms, causing economic losses.
In this case, new fertilizers have come into being.
In the past, agricultural scientists invented what is known as a slow-release fertilizer. They made small capsules of nitrogen, phosphorus and other needed nutrients in certain ratios, and the presence of a capsule shell slowed the rate at which water and the nutrients inside combined and the rate at which the nutrient products escaped from the capsule, giving the crop time to fully absorb them.
This year's new research goes even further, turning "slow-release" into "controlled-release," or controlled-release -- adjusting the shell through sophisticated materials and manufacturing techniques. This allows nutrients to be released in response to changes in soil temperature, acidity or moisture. Initial results of this technology are already being seen, such as Haifa's controlled-release fertilizers that are linked to temperature, so that when the temperature rises, the rate of crop growth and the rate of fertilizer release increase in tandem.
Industry insiders generally say that in the future of "precision agriculture", controlled-release fertilizers are an indispensable part. It is envisioned that controlled-release fertilizers will be combined with data analysis, artificial intelligence, and new sensors and other technologies to accurately deliver fertilizers, thereby increasing crop yields and minimizing the excessive release of nutrients. However, controlled-release fertilizers are likely to be the first segment to emerge in the next few years, as several other technologies require significant capital investment and will take a long time.
6, telepresence (Telepresence)
In the movie "Kingsman" there is a scene, when the protagonist with high-tech glasses, the original empty room filled with people, and the presence of these "people" are actually in the far side of the projected virtual image of the people, which is a typical telepresence scene. This is a typical telepresence scenario.
Just as video-calling applications such as Skype and FaceTime have moved from the business world to the mass market, and massively multiplayer online gaming has fundamentally changed the way people interact with each other on the Internet, collaborative telepresence could change the way people interact with each other virtually, inside and outside of business.
Imagine a group of people interacting fluidly in different parts of the world and even being able to feel each other's touch. This kind of collaborative telepresence could change the way people live in the future, making physical location irrelevant.
Advances in several areas make this prospect possible. First, AR/VR technology is gaining ground. According to data compiled by the Prospect Industry Research Institute, the market for high-end VR devices has continued to grow in recent years, and VR technology has begun to penetrate from personal applications to enterprise-level applications in industries such as industry, education, healthcare, and retail.
Secondly, the world is flying to build 5G network, the future of data transmission capacity can be guaranteed, and there is no delay time. The application of the new technology will reduce the delay of VR products by nearly 10 times and increase network efficiency by 100 times, providing consumers with a guarantee to feel the scene remotely. Remote transmission is impossible to complete the elimination of latency, but predictive AI algorithms can make up for this shortcoming.
In addition, innovators are perfecting technologies related to remote interaction, such as haptic sensors that allow people to feel what the robots they control touch.
Scientific American says that everything needed for telepresence technology is in place, and that related industries are poised for transformative growth in three to five years. Companies such as Microsoft, for example, are working on technologies that are expected to support a multibillion-dollar industry by 2025.
7, blockchain tracking technology
According to the World Health Organization, about 600 million people get food poisoning and 420,000 die each year. And after an outbreak, it takes investigators days to weeks to track down the source. In the meantime, many more people may be victimized by it, and much of the food may be disposed of without discrimination.
The use of blockchain technology is critical to reducing, if not eliminating, food poisoning and food waste.
Blockchain is a distributed bookkeeping system in which entries are recorded sequentially in multiple identical "ledgers" stored on computers in multiple locations, with redundancy arranged so that tampering with any of the "ledgers" has no impact on the overall system. This redundant arrangement allows tampering with any one "ledger" without affecting the records of the entire system, creating a highly reliable record of transactions.
By integrating growers, distributors, and retailers on a single public ****chain, it is possible to create a set of trusted pathways for a given food product through the end-to-end supply chain. With this record, retailers, restaurants and others can immediately remove contaminated food from circulation and accurately destroy faulty inventory.
Earlier, IBM has developed a blockchain-based cloud platform, IBM Food Trust, and it has already been adopted by large sellers such as Carrefour, Walmart, Sam's Club, Albertsons, Smithfield Foods and others. In one test, Walmart identified the source of a "tainted" item in seconds, which could have taken days in the past.
8. New nuclear reactors
After Fukushima, the world turned its back on nuclear energy, and many countries' nuclear power programs were shut down, plunging the development of nuclear energy technology into the doldrums. But with issues like carbon emissions heating up in recent years, the development of nuclear energy, the quintessential clean energy source, is back on the agenda.
The principle behind the mainstream light-water reactors of the past few decades has been to stack small particles of uranium dioxide inside long cylindrical rods encased in a zirconium alloy. The zirconium allows neutrons released by fission in the core block to pass through, thus maintaining the continuation of the nuclear fission reaction.
The problem is that if a control failure causes zirconium to overheat, it reacts with water to produce hydrogen, which can explode. This situation led to 2 of the world's worst reactor accidents - the 1979 explosion and partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in the U.S., and the 2011 explosion and radiation leak at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant - were due to this cause.
Currently, nuclear energy giants Westinghouse Electric and Famatom are developing so-called accident-resistant fuels that reduce the chances of the fuel overheating, and even if it does, it produces little, if any, hydrogen. One direction is to improve zirconium alloy wrappers to reduce reactions. Others are trying to replace zirconium and uranium dioxide with different materials.
The new technology reportedly doesn't require drastic changes to existing reactors, so it could be phased in gradually from now on. However, Scientific American mentions that nuclear power has already been called off in the United States, and there are heavy restrictions in many developed countries such as Germany. It may be up to Russia and China to set the example for a new generation of nuclear power technology to blossom.
Russia is also deploying other safety measures; state-run Rosatom recently installed newer "passive" safety systems at home and abroad that can curb overheating even if a plant loses power and coolant can't circulate effectively. Westinghouse and others are also incorporating passive safety features into their latest designs.
There are also manufacturers experimenting with models of "Generation IV" reactors that use liquid sodium or molten salt instead of water to divert heat from fission, eliminating the possibility of dangerous hydrogen generation. China reportedly plans to connect a demonstration helium-cooled reactor to the power grid this year.
9. DNA data storage
According to software company Domo, in 2018, people around the world performed 3.88 million Google searches, watched 4.33 million YouTube videos, sent 159,362,760 emails, posted 473,000 tweets, and posted 49,000 photos on Instagram every minute .
It is estimated that by 2020, each person in the world will be generating 1.7MB of data per second, or 418MB in a full year.With a world population of 7.8 billion, at this rate, the magnetic or optical data storage resources that currently store zeros and ones will run out in a century. In addition, it takes a lot of energy to run a data center. In short, we're going to have a serious data storage problem, and it's only going to get worse as time goes on.
There's an amazing-sounding storage technology in development: DNA-based data storage.
DNA, the material from which life's information is stored, consists of long strands of nucleotides A, T, C, and g, which store data in different orderings. It is fairly simple to both routinely sequence (read), synthesize (write) and precisely copy it. Also, DNA is stable enough that people today can still sequence complete genomes of fossils from more than half a million years ago, for example.
What's really noteworthy is the storage capacity of DNA, which is capable of storing data in precise, massive quantities at densities far exceeding those of electronic devices. For example, the storage density of E. coli is about 1019 bytes per cubic centimeter, according to calculations by Harvard scholars published earlier in the journal Nature Materials. In other words, a cube of DNA with a side length of about 1 meter would be good enough to meet the world's current storage needs for 1 year.
The idea is not just theoretical; in 2017, Church's team at Harvard University used CRISPR technology to record an image of a human hand into the genome of E. coli, which was later successfully read with more than 90 percent accuracy. More recently, the University of Washington and Microsoft Research jointly developed a system to automatically write, store and read data encoded in DNA.
Currently, the cost of reading and writing DNA needs to come down further if it is to compete with traditional electronic storage methods. Still, even if DNA storage doesn't catch on quickly, it will almost certainly be used in some specific industries.
10, renewable energy storage
In the past few years, the cost of wind and solar energy equipment has plummeted, and the world's growing emphasis on carbon reduction has prompted dramatic changes in the global power generation mix. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. renewable energy generation capacity has doubled in 10 years. And over the next 2 years, wind, solar and other renewables will remain the fastest-growing part of the power mix.
The problem people are facing now is that there is no compatible method of energy storage.
The current mainstream means of generating clean energy are fairly unstable. To the annual scale, wind power generation in spring, fall and winter, summer power generation, solar power generation in summer and fall, spring and winter power generation; days as a yardstick, wind power generation in the morning and evening, midday and midnight power generation, solar power generation in the daytime, more evening and evening does not generate power.
Such characteristics, if not processed access to the grid, the grid to bring great instability, summer electricity, wind power can not keep up with the evening electricity, solar power generation can not meet the demand.
Therefore, the unstable and unsustainable primary energy must first be fed into the storage system by accumulating storage, and then connected to the grid in a way that is suitable for grid operation.
For decades, pumped storage has been one of the world's major large-scale energy storage methods. Its principle is very simple, is to create reservoirs. When power generation is high and there is plenty of power, pumping machines are turned on to pump water into reservoirs that are in a higher position. When you need to generate electricity, open the gate to release the water, the water flow through the turbine along the way, driving the turbine rotation power generation. This method is simple and effective, but there are big problems, one is to build a dam is very expensive, and the second is to the terrain depends on the big, it is difficult to popularize.
So in the last year or two, towards the battery technology research has become the industry's new hotspot.EIA said that by February 2019, the U.S. utility-scale battery storage scale has jumped from a few megawatts 10 years ago to 866 megawatts. Wood Mackenzie estimates that the energy storage market grew by a factor of 1 from 2018 to 2019 and will grow by a factor of 2 from 2019 to 2020.
It is industry **** knowledge that lithium battery technology will be the new windfall of the energy industry in the next 5-10 years. By then, we may see lithium battery systems capable of storing 4-8 hours of energy, enough to supply the electricity generated by solar power during the day to the evening peak.
The problem is that this may be the limit of lithium-ion batteries. For renewable energy to really carry the load in power generation systems, better storage systems and greater mobilization capabilities are needed, and scientists must achieve a leapfrog over lithium-ion battery technology.
Possible directions now include liquid flow batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. A number of companies in the industry are currently working on them, and some have already received investment, but unfortunately, no finished product that can be used in mass production has been presented for the time being.By the end of 2017, only three large-scale flow battery storage systems had been deployed in the U.S., and utility-scale hydrogen power systems are still in the demonstration phase, the EIA said.
However, with increasing pressure to reduce emissions globally, energy storage technology advances and fires are on the cards, driven by the growth of the renewable energy market.
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