After doing some research for the latest materials that will revolutionize modern technology, I was taken aback with what I discovered.
Those extremely innovative technologies include the stuff that makes up your DNA, your contact lenses, and the sugar you put in your morning coffee.
Surprising, right?
From DNA-driven nanochips that power supercomputers, to flexible touchpads that contribute to skin-like prosthetic limbs that can actually feel, to scientifically modified sugarcane that will become the world’s renewable and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel and ethanol, these seemingly small and insignificant items will overthrow modern technologies as we know them.
Here’s the breakdown of how household items will become the high-tech materials the world will soon depend on.
Molecular Informatics
The next computer revolution won’t rely on a binary system of zeros and ones.
The future of computation will be able to store and process millions upon millions of pieces of information with the help of microscopic molecular machines.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense charged with dreaming up futuristic new technologies for the military, is developing a new “Molecular Informatics” program to do exactly that.
“Chemistry offers a rich set of properties that we may be able to harness for rapid, scalable information storage and processing,” stated Anne Fischer, the program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office.
“Millions of molecules exist, and each molecule has a unique three-dimensional atomic structure as well as variables such as shape, size, or even color. This richness provides a vast design space for exploring novel and multi-value ways to encode and process data beyond the 0s and 1s of current logic-based, digital architectures.”
But there are a few drawbacks. In order for the information to be read, its DNA must be translated into a digital format.
And structurally, DNA’s four letters of encoding make it a rather difficult and limited way to encode information.
That means asking questions like: How exactly can information be coded within a molecule?
“Fundamentally, we want to discover what it means to do ‘computing’ with a molecule in a way that takes all the bounds off of what we know, and lets us do something completely different,” Fischer said. “That’s why we absolutely need the diverse knowledge of many different fields working together to jump into this new molecular space to see what we can discover.”
A trio of scientists, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard L. Feringa, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for designing and creating molecularly run machines that actually work.
It’s the molecules that aid in muscle contraction that are powering the tiny machines and could eventually power a new kind of molecular supercomputer, researchers say.
By imitating the human brain’s ability to solve complex problems with precision and speed with the conversion of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) into other molecular wastes, these molecularly driven biocomputers could also do the same, but much faster than conventional supercomputers.
Some of the problems set up against the biocomputers would take a conventional supercomputer a lifetime to crack.
And that is saying quite a bit considering that modern supercomputers are incredibly powerful as it is.
According to LifeScience, the world’s fastest supercomputer, Tianhe-2 in China, is capable of carrying out up to about 55 quadrillion calculations per second, which is many thousands of times more than a desktop computer or video game console.
Now researchers are suggesting that ATP could help power these new biocomputers in a similar fashion to the human brain.
Scientists have developed a glass-coated silicon nanochip with a network of microscopic channels.
The scientists send fibers of proteins made up of actin filaments and micotubules through the microscopic channels of the nanochip.
These proteins are propelled by myosin, which helps muscles contract, and kinesin, which helps transport cargo inside of cells.
The ATP acts as the gasoline for the molecular motors with added fluorescent labels as headlights.
These agents course through the channels of the nanochip, simultaneously tackling multiple issues at once, again, just like the human brain.
However, in terms of revolutionary feats, DNA-driven computing is in the very early stages.
But that is not to degrade what has already been done.
In this lifetime, we may yet see incredibly powerful and complex supercomputers being driven by the same structures that make up our brains.
That’s a little more than food for thought, to say the least.
Flexible Innovations
A new transparent, flexible touchpad can sense the slightest touch of a finger even when stretched or bent to full capacity.
Its technology has the potential to be implemented in display screens, camera, batteries, and solar panels.
It can even be woven into clothing, prosthetic limbs, or even human bodies.
The device is made with a substance called hydrogel, which is structurally similar to the materials from which contact lenses are made.
By adding salt to the water-laden hydrogel, electrically charged ions can flow within and generate an electric field around it.
When a finger comes near the hydrogel, it interacts with the electric field so electrodes attached to it can be detected.
These signals are distinguishable from those generated when the hydrogel is flexed, researchers say.
What’s even better is that the devices are cheap to manufacture — they cost about $1 per square meter.
“You can put these on pretty much anything,” says John Madden, an electrical engineer at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
“It opens up the opportunity to make wearable devices, or some sort of robotic skin, or putting it under a carpet to detect someone elderly falling.”
Scientists are implementing this technology into extremely advanced prosthetic limbs.
A new prosthetic skin in development is warm and elastic like real skin and is also packed with many different kinds of sensors that could one day help people with prosthetic limbs regain their sense of touch.
Scientists have fitted the “skin” to a prosthetic hand, which successfully withstood operations such as shaking hands, typing on keyboards, grasping baseballs, holding hot and cold drinks, touching wet and dry diapers, and touching other people.
They even included heat sensors within the “skin” that could make the prosthetic limb capable of feeling a person’s body temperature.
Human skin is elastic, soft, and warm, said study co-author Dae-Hyeong Kim, a biomedical engineer at Seoul National University in South Korea. “Our device has such properties.”
The new skin is exceptionally sensitive and can sense a wide variety of data, such as information on temperature, humidity, stretching, and pressure, the researchers said.
In the future, scientists are hoping to connect these bionic limbs fitted with flexible skin technology from the touchpads to the human nervous system, which would ultimately restore patients’ sense of touch as well.
This would mean loosing a limb wouldn’t be such a great, great loss after all.
Fueled by Sugar
America’s oil consumption far exceeds that of any other country.
Our heavy dependence on fossil fuels leaves the future dangerously unstable.
Alternative fuel sources at this point are a dire necessity.
A multi-institutional team led by the University of Illinois has proven sugarcane can be genetically engineered to produce oil in its leaves and stems for biodiesel production.
The research was originally published in the scientific journal Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology.
The dual-purpose crops are said to be five times more profitable per acre than soybeans and two times more profitable than corn in the production of biodiesel.
More importantly, sugarcane can be grown in the marginal land along the Gulf Coast where soybeans and corn are unable to flourish, utilizing otherwise infertile ground while not taking away vital land for other vital crops.
“Instead of fields of oil pumps, we envision fields of green plants sustainably producing biofuel in perpetuity on our nation’s soil, particularly marginal soil that is not well suited to food production,” said Stephen Long, Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences.
Long leads the research project Plants Engineered to Replace Oil in Sugarcane and Sweet Sorghum (PETROSS) that has pioneered this work at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois, says ScienceDaily.
“While fuel prices may be considered low today, we can remember paying more than $4 per gallon not long ago,” Long states.
“As it can take 10-15 years for this technology to reach farmers’ fields, we need to develop these solutions to ensure our fuel security today and as long as we need liquid fuels into the future.”
Long and the other scientists go on to predict that the genetically modified sugarcane should ultimately be more productive than originally anticipated.
Even the leftover sugars from the genetically modified cane can be used in the production of ethanol.
Two birds, one stone.
The current production cost of biodiesel from soybean is $4.10 per gallon.
Using oil cane instead, that cost drops to $3.30 per gallon for 2% oil cane and to $2.20 per gallon for 20% oil cane.
Although $2.20 per gallon does not represent a large savings over the current price of gasoline in the United States compared to past fuel prices, Long illuminates the bigger picture:
We need to start building for a future when gas is no longer as low as $1.50 per gallon, and we need to avoid any future dependency on other countries for our oil. We are lucky to have the land resources to do this and, in doing so, to ensure that future generations have a supply of oil that is domestic and renewable.
The Bottom Line
It’s almost funny to think that such large strides are being made with such tiny and insignificant things such as DNA, contact lens gel, and sugar.
What’s even better is that all of this could be done within this lifetime.
That’s all for now.
Until next time,
John Peterson
Pro Trader Today