TOP 10 Emerging Technologies 2020-i
2020-11-20 15:01:06
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1 Microneedles Could Enable Painless Injections and Blood Draws
Barely visible needles, or "microneedles," are poised to usher in an era of pain-free injections and blood testing. Whether attached to a syringe or a patch, microneedles prevent pain by avoiding contact with nerve endings. Typically 50 to 2,000 microns in length (about the depth of a sheet of paper) and one to 100 microns wide (about the width of human hair), they penetrate the dead, top layer of skin to reach into the epidermis. But most do not reach or only barely touch the underlying dermis , where the nerve endings lie.
2 Sun-Powered Chemistry Can Turn Carbon Dioxide into Common Materials
The manufacture of many chemicals important to human health and comfort consumes fossil fuels, thereby contributing to carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. A new approach employs sunlight to convert waste carbon dioxide into these needed chemicals.
This process is becoming increasingly feasible thanks to advances in sunlight-activated catalysts or photocatalysts. In recent years investigators have developed photocatalysts that break the resistant double bond between carbon and oxygen in carbon dioxide. This is a critical first step in creating "solar" refineries that produce useful compounds from the waste gas -- including "platform" molecules that can serve as raw materials for the synthesis of such varied products as medicines, detergents , fertilizers and textiles.
3 Virtual Patients Could Revolutionize Medicine
What if computers could replace patients as well? If virtual humans could have replaced real people in some stages of a coronavirus vaccine trial, for instance, it could have sped development of a preventive tool and slowed down the pandemic. These are some of the benefits of "in silico medicine," or the testing of drugs and treatments on virtual organs or body systems to predict how a real person will respond to the therapies. For the foreseeable future, real patients will be needed in late-stage studies, but in silico trials will make it possible to conduct quick and inexpensive first assessments of safety and efficacy, drastically reducing the number of live human subjects required for experimentation.
Imagine Martha, an octogenarian who lives independently and uses a wheelchair. As Martha moves from her bedroom to the kitchen, the lights switch on, and the ambient temperature adjusts. The chair will slow if her cat crosses her path. If she begins to fall when getting into bed, her furniture shifts to protect her, and an alert goes to her son and the local monitoring station.
The "spatial computing" at the heart of this scene is the next step in the ongoing convergence of the physical and digital worlds. It does everything virtual-reality and augmented-reality apps do: digitize objects that connect via the cloud; allow sensors and motors to react to one another; and digitally represent the real world. Then it combines these capabilities with high-fidelity spatial mapping to enable a computer "coordinator " to track and control the movements and interactions of objects as a person navigates through the digital or physical world. Spatial computing will soon bring human-machine and machine-machine interactions to new levels of efficiency in many walks of life, among them industry, health care, transportation and the home.
A raft of apps in use or under development can now detect or monitor mental and physical disorders autonomously or directly administer therapies. Collectively known as digital medicines, the software can both enhance traditional medical care and support patients when access to health care is limited—a need that the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated.