The comprehensive commitment of the international community to global climate change will further promote the development of new technologies. As the chief culprit of the greenhouse effect, various countries and industries are making active efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Major developed countries such as the United States, Britain and the European Union, as well as developing countries such as China and India, have promised the international community to achieve a significant reduction in total carbon emissions by 2030.
At the same time, the agricultural and food sectors will further develop the market supply of protein substitutes, such as impossible hamburgers and beyond meat. Sensor data connected through the Internet of Things will increasingly support the intelligent management of land, crops, fertilizers and irrigation water, which will help to further reduce carbon emissions.
Phosphate fertilizer is the main fertilizer of grain in the world, and its preparation depends largely on the use of nitrogen-containing industrial fertilizers. According to the statistics of FAO, the world needs about 1.65438+ tons of nitrogen every year to maintain the global crop yield. Nitrogen fertilizer is usually produced by converting nitrogen in the air into ammonia. Ammonia-containing fertilizers maintain about 50% of the world's grain output, and the process of preparing ammonia-containing fertilizers will consume 1% of the world's main energy demand, and the carbon dioxide emitted by industrialization accounts for 1% to 2% of the global carbon emissions.
In order to reduce this part of carbon emissions, researchers are getting a solution to make nitrogen fertilizer through natural methods. For example, corn, grain and other major food crops depend on inorganic nitrogen in the soil, and the roots of leguminous plants interact with soil bacteria to form nodules, which transform nitrogen in the atmosphere into ammonia through the ability of bacteria to fix nitrogen. These natural nitrogen fixation methods greatly encouraged researchers.
At present, the investment of government and social capital in developed countries has provided strong support for research and development in the field of engineering nitrogen fixation, and crops using natural biomass may soon become the key element of more sustainable food production in the future.
The new technology will promote the detection of human breath and be used for disease diagnosis. This sampling method is far less time-consuming than blood drawing. Using new technology for biological detection is similar to the alcohol breath analyzer for police to check drunk driving, and this method can also be used for future disease diagnosis.
There are more than 800 compounds in human breath. Recent studies have shown that there is a strong correlation between the concentrations of different compounds in exhaled gas and diseases. For example, the increase of acetone concentration is a strong sign of diabetes, and the increase of nitric oxide concentration can be used as a biological detection marker of respiratory diseases; The increase of various aldehyde indexes indicates that the probability of lung cancer is extremely high.
Moreover, the method of breath detection will greatly reduce the waiting time of detection. Usually, it only takes a few minutes, and the data of breath detection sensor will be analyzed by an external computer to generate a detection report.
In addition to producing results faster than blood drawing, the respiratory sensor also uses non-invasive detection methods. In countries with limited medical resources, its ease of use, portability and cost performance will provide better medical security. Breathing tests can also help to reduce the spread of the virus in the community, in a way similar to checking an individual's temperature before entering public places such as supermarkets or restaurants.
In March, 2020, Israeli researchers have completed the exploratory clinical application, and the detection result of COVID-19 (coronavirus pneumonia) by breath detection has reached 95% accuracy and 100% sensitivity. At present, this technology is undergoing extensive clinical trials, but it needs to be further matured before it can be fully popularized.
Wouldn't it sound amazing if when you go to the pharmacy, the pharmacist doesn't fill your prescription by prefabricating drugs, but prepares the drugs that best meet your signs according to your diagnosis?
Due to the particularity of drugs, traditional drug production is concentrated in qualified manufacturers and completed by mass production. The composition and dosage of drugs are standardized, and it is impossible to customize drugs with different compositions and dosages for individuals. However, the latest microfluidic and on-demand drug manufacturing technologies are expected to make this idea a reality.
On-demand drug manufacturing, also known as continuous process drug manufacturing, can complete drug production at one time. Its working principle is that the pharmaceutical ingredients are input into small-scale synthesis equipment through fluid, and the synthesis equipment prepares the ingredients according to the needs, so as to tailor the required drugs for patients.
The greater significance of this technology is that it can be deployed in remote areas or field hospitals to produce drugs at any time according to demand. This also means that fewer resources are needed to store and transport drugs, and the dosage can be tailored to individual patients.
In 20 16, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) successfully developed a refrigerator-sized drug synthesis device, and prepared 1000 doses of commonly used drugs within 24 hours: diphenhydramine hydrochloride, which was used to relieve allergic symptoms; Diazepam is used to treat anxiety and muscle spasm; Antidepressant fluoxetine hydrochloride; Local anesthetic lidocaine hydrochloride.
At present, the cost of portable equipment for on-demand drug production is as high as millions of dollars, which hinders its wide popularization. In addition, new quality assurance and quality control standards are needed to standardize the individualization of formula and the preparation of single drug. However, with the reduction of costs and the improvement of the regulatory framework, the future on-demand manufacturing of drugs will bring subversive changes to the pharmaceutical industry.
Nowadays, the wireless devices that make up the Internet of Things (IoT) have become the backbone of the network world. Wireless devices in the Internet of Things are deployed as living tools at home, wearable devices in biomedicine and sensors in dangerous and hard-to-reach areas. With the development of the Internet of Things, it will be more widely used in agricultural water-saving irrigation and pesticide spraying, smart grid, bridge or concrete infrastructure defect monitoring, early warning of disasters such as mudslides and earthquakes.
It is estimated that by 2025, there will be 40 billion IOT devices online in the world, and it is a new challenge to provide convenient on-demand power supply for these devices. 5G wireless signals will emit more radiation energy than 4G transmission, which indicates that many low-power wireless devices will never need to be plugged in for power supply.
At present, researchers have successfully collected the radiation energy of Wi-Fi routers and microwave RF devices to power low-power IOT devices. This emerging technology will raise the collection of radiant energy to a new level and provide energy solutions for the large-scale deployment of IOT equipment.
In the future, life science will pay more attention to increasing "healthy life", not just life span.
According to the data of the World Health Organization, between 20 15 and 2050, the proportion of the global population over 60 will rise from 12% to 22%. Chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer, diabetes and arteriosclerosis pose great challenges to the health and social development of the elderly. Reversing aging or finding a "fountain of youth" has always been a human desire.
Researchers have quantified the activity of all genes, the concentration of protein and metabolites in cells by genome coding technology, and combined with gene research, the key mechanism of human aging has become more and more clear. Researchers have found that the identifier of human biological age is a key predictor of human disease and death risk.
Recently, researchers have actively promoted the development of targeted therapy through their continuous understanding of the mechanism of human aging. For example, a recent preliminary clinical study shows that taking a pharmaceutical mixture containing human growth hormone for one year can reverse the body's "biological clock" 1.5 years. Scientists also found that injecting protein from young people's blood into old mice can improve age-related brain dysfunction. The results show that diseases such as age-related cognitive decline can be reversed by scientific methods.
At present, through the analysis and design of genetic engineering methods and the vigorous promotion of government and medical capital, drugs developed by more than 100 companies around the world have entered the preclinical stage or early clinical trial stage. This new technology makes human beings more hopeful to fight against aging and even challenge the "ultimate topic of life and death".
Industrial-scale synthetic ammonia can be said to be one of the most important inventions in the 20th century. Ammonia is used to produce fertilizer and provide fuel for 50% of the world's food production, which makes it the key to global food security. However, ammonia synthesis is an energy-intensive chemical process, which requires a catalyst to fix nitrogen with hydrogen.
Hydrogen must be synthesized artificially. At present, fossil fuels, natural gas, coal or oil are used for distillation at high temperature to produce hydrogen. The problem is that this process will produce a lot of carbon dioxide, accounting for 1% to 2% of the global total emissions.
Using renewable energy to decompose water to produce green hydrogen is expected to change this situation. In addition to eliminating carbon emissions in the process of hydrogen production, this method can also produce more pure hydrogen, and it does not contain chemicals mixed in fossil fuels, such as compounds containing sulfur and arsenic, which will "poison" the catalyst, thus reducing the reaction efficiency.
Cleaner hydrogen also means that better catalysts can be developed without having to put up with toxic chemicals in fossil fuels. At present, Danish companies have announced the development of new catalysts for green ammonia production.
At present, the main obstacle of green hydrogen production is high cost. In order to solve this problem, European energy companies have launched scientific and technological innovation research and development, with the goal of providing green hydrogen at the price of € 0/.5 per kilogram/kloc by 2030.
Continuous non-invasive monitoring of chronic diseases has always been the expectation of the medical community. The good news is that wireless, portable and wearable monitoring sensors will soon be used in clinic. Monitors use various methods to detect biomarkers in sweat, tears, urine or blood. Wearable monitoring sensors use light or low-power electromagnetic radiation (similar to mobile phones or smart watches) to monitor chronic diseases.
For example, electronic contact lenses can obtain cancer biomarkers or blood sugar levels through tears for diabetes monitoring; Saliva sensor using radio frequency identification technology can monitor saliva biomarkers and give early warning to oral ulcer, respiratory inflammation, HIV, intestinal infection, cancer and coronavirus pneumonia.
According to the estimation of the United Nations, using 3D printers to build houses can help solve the challenge of insufficient housing for 654.38+06 billion people worldwide.
The concept of 3D printing room is not new. It was inspired by the project of Mars immigrants, because Mars did not have most of the materials needed to build houses. Printing the mixture of concrete, sand, plastic and adhesive through a large 3D printer can be used as a relatively simple and low-cost construction method, which seems to be very suitable for alleviating the housing problem in remote and poor areas.
At present, at least 65.438+0 billion active devices constitute the Internet of Things (IoT), and it is expected that this number will double in the next 654.38+00 years. In order to give full play to the advantages of Internet of Things in communication and automation, it is necessary to distribute equipment and collect data all over the world. Processing data in the cloud data center, using artificial intelligence to identify data anomalies, thus providing early warning for human beings. Such as climate anomalies and natural disasters. But the problem is that the area covered by terrestrial cellular network is less than half of the whole world, leaving a huge connection gap.
Space-based Internet of Things system can make use of low-cost, low-weight (less than 10 kg) nano-satellite network hundreds of kilometers away from the earth to make up for these gaps. The first nanosatellite was launched in 1998. So far, about 2000 nanosatellites have been used for orbit monitoring. Space exploration technology companies such as Starlink, OneWeb, Amazon and Telesat have used nanosatellites to provide global Internet coverage.
The construction of space Internet of Things still faces many challenges. For example, the life span of nanosatellites is relatively short, about two years, and it must be supported by expensive ground infrastructure. In order to cope with the increasingly serious problem of orbital space debris, international space agencies are planning to automatically de-orbit satellites or use other spacecraft to collect these debris at the end of their functional life.