Solutions to Our Problems: Teleports, Telesurgery, and the Food Pillthe FUTURIST magazine has featured recently potential oefixes and uncommon solutions to various big problems facing the world. Patrick Tucker of THE FUTURIST highlights several of them below. The Issue: Transportation The industrial world addiction to cars is costly and will become more so. The U s. uses roughly 21 million barrels of oil per day. According to a recent U s. Census bureau report, 2. 8 million people have so-called oeextreme commutes, or commutes longer than 90 minutes. The Texas Transportation Institute has found that in the United states alone 2. 3 billion gallons of gas is wasted each year in traffic jams. The Future: Globally, the number of vehicles on the world roads will grow from 800 million now to 1. 1 billion in the next 15 years. Public transportation is cited often as a cure for oil addiction. In the United states, rise of disabled elderly Americans will strain public transportation systems. Futurist Fixes 1. Non Human (Robotic) Transportation: The same drone technology that the U s. military is using in Afghanistan could be put to use in the United states to transport goods between locations safer and faster than human drivers. This could potentially free up roadways for humans as robot drivers could take a different route, as covered in the November-December 2009 issue of THE FUTURIST. The U s. military hopes to soon use drones for cargo transportation and refueling. This is certainly a realistic hope according to Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Automation Lab at MIT. In fact, one day soldiers guarding borders may see an army of remotely controlled robots rushing toward them. Cummings reports that oeseveral U s. government agencies are seriously considering how to use unmanned vehicles in first strike or initial invasion settings. She can picture a future beach assault situation similar to the U s. invasion of Normandy, but with fewer human casualties. In the unmanned vehicle invasion scenario, oethe UAVS do the initial strike; we send in robots on the beach and let the robots take the fire, and then set up a logistics camp so that Marines could go in. If a robot can launch an invasion, how long before they re delivering our goods and services automatically? Check out clips: oebig Dog Robot, The Stanley self-driving car (originally covered in THE FUTURIST in May-June 2006. irobot Packbot, covered in THE FUTURIST, March-April 2007.2. Air-powered Cars and trains: As we featured in THE FUTURIST, September-October 2008, go-karts sporting air-powered engines whizzed around a racetrack in a test of mechanical engineering students prowess at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova scotia. With support from Shell and inspiration from air-powered car concepts in Europe, the project aimed to develop a compressed air engine that would power a vehicle: like gas-powered engines, the trick is to produce force on turbines, but to do so without creating emissions. Though the go-karts could go 200 mph, they ran out of air quickly (and compressing the air in the first place requires energy that may not necessarily be oegreen), so refinements will be needed before we could all be riding on air. Check out a clip. 3. Teleportation: Teleporting human beings will probably never be realistic or safe, but it may possible to teleport simple materials reducing the need for cargo ships and trucks to haul so many materials around. oeis teleportation possible? The Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) is willing to bet it is wrote Marvin Cetron in the September-October 2008 issue of THE FUTURST. oein early 2008, the agency issued a request for proposals to learn more about quantum entanglement, among the strangest phenomena known to science. The project, called Quantum entanglement Science and Technology (Quest), could produce unbreakable codes, unbelievably fast computers, and even Star trek-like transporters. In quantum mechanics, a particle, such as an electron circling the nucleus of an atom, does not have an actual location or physical state. All that can be said of it is a set of equations that describe its probability of being given in a place with a given energy vibrating in certain ways. In effect, it occupies all of its possible states at once, oecollapsing into a single one only when observed. Two particles whose vibrations are the same in all dimensions are said to occupy the same quantum state. Ashton Bradley and his colleagues at the Australian Research Council quantum-optics lab have shown that it possible to teleport an atom. To demonstrate, Australian researchers made a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of rubidium atoms. A BEC is a substance that occurs when bosons are at very low temperatures; it can instantly freeze certain particles it comes in contact with. The researchers then aimed a beam of rubidium atoms at the condensate. Instantly chilled, the atoms in the beam also dropped to their lowest state, getting rid of the extra energy by giving off a burst of light. Astonishingly, that light contains all the quantum information needed to reconstitute the atom. Aim it at another BEC, and whatever atom it strikes takes on the quantum state of the original atom. In effect, an atom at the transmitting end has disappeared and been reconstituted at the receiving end. There is still an atom at each end but the quantum oeidentity has moved from one to the other. It is a long way from teleporting a few individual atoms to sending people from the Enterprise to a planet surface. But, while it may take decades to transmit something as complicated as a virus or a single molecule of DNA, it should be possible eventually theoretically to send a human being from one place to another through a matter transmitter. The Issue: Energy The Future: World energy demand will increase dramatically. Experts predict that energy demand will rise by 60%between 2002 and 2030 and will require about $568 billion in new investments every year. Developing nations growing hungrier for scarce oil supplies, coupled with concern over the environment in developed nations, will signal the end of the oil era. Petroleum alternatives now comprise about 17%of global energy use and are growing at just 30%per year. By 2020, only 30%of global energy is likely to come from alternative energy sources. Futurist Fixes 1. Piezoelectrics. As covered in THE FUTURIST magazine (November-December 2007: Two students at MIT School of architecture are attempting to capture the untamed energy of urban crowds and convert it into a source of electric power. James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk call their project a oecrowd farm. It a series of connected floor blocks that depress very slightly when people walk, run, or jump on them, causing the blocks to move against one another. The design converts this oeslippage into power. The crowd farm itself doesn t generate very much power but the principle on which it based, Piezoelectrics, could play an important role in the future. Ambient energy i e. vibrations in the surrounding environment derived from the piezoelectric phenomenon could provide power for future nanoscale devices. Tiny tools need motors to keep them running, but conventional power sources such as batteries are too big and eventually lose charge. In the future, nanodevices could use zinc oxide nanowires that draw energy from vibrations such as from the flow of blood or ultrasonic waves to produce the electrical charges needed to keep them operating. Visuals. 2. Genetically-engineered saltwater algae. In the March-April 2009 issue of THE FUTURIST, Dennis Bushnell, a chief research scientist at NASA wrote that algae and bacteria are the two most important biofuel technologies of the 21st century. As a replacement for oil, algae is extremely practical, utilizes mostly cheap and abundant resources like saltwater and wasteland, and has the potential to reduce global carbon-dioxide output tremendously. Unlike corn or even sugar ethanol, halophyte algae (algae that grow in saltwater) do not compete with food stocks for freshwater. oewhen the cost of pumping ocean water into so-called wasteland regions such as the Sahara is factored in, the cost of halophytic algae biofuel is less than the cost of petroleum trading at $70 per barrel or higher. Because desert areas receive a lot of sunlight halophyte algae farmers could use solar-powered pumps to move water up from sea level or even up from underground aquifers such as the Nubian sandstone aquifer system that sits beneath desolate regions of Libya, Chad, and Sudan. Suddenly, wastelands in Western australia, the Middle east, eastern Africa, the American southwest, and west Texas become valuable, productive real estate. oehalophytic algae, cultivated correctly, could lessen the world food and water shortages. Some 68%of the freshwater that is now tied up in conventional agriculture could instead go to thirsty populations rather than irrigating freshwater dependent crops. Even better algae require only a fraction of the land area of many other crops. Read Bushnell op-ed for THE FUTURIST. 3. Ocean-current power. Tidal-current turbines and tidal-stream turbines tapping the power of sea systems like the Gulf stream could provide energy for power-hungry states such as Florida. Energy use in Florida will go up nearly 30%in the next decade as a result of growth. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University have received a $5 million grant to see how the Gulf stream, which flows at 1, 000 times the rate of the Mississippi river, might be tapped for power, as originally covered in THE FUTURIST, March-April 2007. The Center of Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology at Florida Atlantic University The Issue: Hunger The earth population is projected to increase by 2. 5 billion people in the next four decades, most of these people will be born in the countries that are least able to grow food. Research indicates that these trends could be improved offset by global education among the world developing populations. Population declines sharply in countries where almost all women can read and where GDP is high. As many as 2/3 of the earth inhabitants will live in water-stressed areas by 2030 and decreasing water supplies will have a direct effect on hunger. Nearly 200 million Africans are facing serious water shortages. That number will climb to 230 million by 2025 according to the United nations Environment Program. Finding fresh water in Africa is often a huge task, requiring people (mostly women and children) to trek miles to public wells. While the average human requires only about 4 liters of drinking water a day, as much as 5, 000 liters of water is needed to produce a person daily food requirements. Futurist Fixes 1. The Food Pill. In the future, we may see a type of pill for replacing food, but experts say it likely would not be a simple compound of chemicals. A pill-sized food replacement system would have to be extremely complex because of the sheer difficulty of the task it was being asked to perform more complex than any simple chemical reaction could be. The most viable solution, according to many futurists, would be a nanorobot food replacement system. Dr. Robert Freitas, author of the Nanomedicine series and senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, has described several potential food replacement technologies that are somewhat pill-like. The key difference, however, is that instead of containing drug compounds, the capsules would contain thousands of microscopic robots called nanorobots. These would be in the range of a billionth of a meter in size so they could easily fit into a large capsule, though a capsule would not necessarily be the best way to administer them to the body. Also, while these microscopic entities would be called oerobots, they would not necessarily be composed of metal or possess circuitry. They would be robotic in that they would be programmed to carry out complex and specific functions in three-dimensional space. Here how these would work: the main reason people eat is to replace the energy they expend walking around, breathing, living life, etc. Like all creatures, we take energy stored in plant or animal matter. Freitas points out that the isotope gadolinium-148 could provide much of the fuel the body needs. But a person can t just eat a radioactive chemical and hope to be healthy, instead he or she would ingest the gadolinium in the form of nanorobots. The gadolinium-powered robots would make sure that the person body was absorbing the energy safely and consistently. Freitas says the person might still have to take some vitamin or protein supplements but because gadolinium has a half life of 75 years, the person might be able to go for a century or longer without a square meal. For people who really like eating but don t like what a food-indulgent lifestyle does to their body, Freitas has two other nanobot solutions. oenutribots floating through the bloodstream would allow people to eat virtually anything, a big fatty steak for instance, and experience very limited weight or cholesterol gain. The nutribots would take the fat, excess iron, and anything else that the eater in question did absorbed not want into his or her body and hold onto it. The body would pass the nurtibots and the excess fat, normally out of the body in the restroom. A nanobot Dr. Freitas calls a oelipovore would act like a microscopic cosmetic surgeon, sucking fat cells out of your body and giving off heat, which the body could convert to energy to eat a bit less. In the January-February 2010 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine, Freitas lays out his ideas for improving human health through nanotechnology. 2. Better Design. Finding fresh water in many parts of Africa is a monumental task. Individuals (mostly women and children) are forced often to trek long distances to lakes ponds, or public water pumps in other villages, and are able to bring back only about 25 liters (6. 6 gallons) at a time. But inventor Trevor Field of the South african company Roundabout Outdoor is reducing the problem to a matter of child play. The Playpump (covered in the November-December 2005 issue of THE FUTURIST) is more than a merry-go-round. It designed not only to amuse rambunctious kids, but also to pump desperately needed fresh water from depths of up to 100 meters. While the average human requires only about 4 liters of drinking water a day as much as 5, 000 liters of water is needed to produce a person daily food requirements. The Playpumps, which are erected in school playgrounds, are able to produce 1, 400 liters of water an hour, all while keeping children entertained. oewe ve got 700 units in the ground right now, says Field. oewe estimate those pumps help about 1, 000 to 2, 000 people. At a community about 40 miles north of Johannesburg, they had 500 children and no water supply to the school at all; they had no fresh water, no toilet, no water to wash their hands. Every drop they used they had to bring from kilometers away. We installed a Playpump there some years ago. The Playpump is just one example of a new and building movement, improving the circumstances of the poor through design. A pot for more-efficient food storage, a bicycle rigged to carry hundreds of pounds of cargo, and simple pumps for irrigating crops during the dry season these are just a few simple technologies that deal with the everyday problems of the 90%of humanity usually neglected by the world top designers and the subject of a recent exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. With sections focusing on food, water, shelter, health and sanitation, energy and transportation, and education, oedesign for the Other 90%focused on problem solving for the vast majority of the world people who survive under the poverty level or who are affected by natural disasters. oeninety-five percent of the world designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10%of the world customers, notes advisory council member Paul Polak, president of International Development Enterprises. oenothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.%Among the designs with the potential to radically change the world: Lifestraw. Lifestraw is a personal water-purification device, designed by Torben Vestergaard Frandsen. The simple activated carbon filtration system aims to tackle the Millennium Development Goal of reducing the proportion of the world people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. Details: Vestergaard-Frandsen Disease Control Textiles, www. vestergaard-frandsen. com or www. lifestraw. com. Check it outline: Playpump. Lifestraw. The Issue: Health The U s. spends more money on healthcare than any other nation. We spend a higher proportion of GDP (roughly 15) %and we pay the most per person (roughly $4000 per person annually). The Future: By the year 2025, the number of Americans aged 65 or older will expand from 35 million to more than 60 million, which will strain the healthcare system regardless of the passage of any particular piece of legislation. Futurist Fixes 1. Telemedicine and Robotic Surgery. As originally covered in the FUTURIST: Allison Okamura of the Johns hopkins university Department of Mechanical engineering says the real potential of robotic surgery or rather computer-enhanced surgery is to reduce the impact of surgeries (make them less invasive, less costly) and improve patients health. Haptic systems are a particularly promising area of research in the field of robotics. Haptics involve making robotic surgical instruments more sensitive to human touch and, reciprocally, allowing robot tools to convey sensory tactile data to the doctors who wield them. Okamura and her team have developed a haptic system that helps doctors view how much pressure their robotic instruments are applying to a given area. This sort of research will enable surgeons to better perform minimally invasive surgeries. Surgical robots can also photograph, survey and collect data in ways that humans cannot and give surgeons a better sense of how the operation went, after the fact. oewhen you do assisted robot surgery, you re already tracking the tools that are inside the patient, says Okamura. oeyou can have force-sensors and other ways of examining force, and then you re acquiring data at the same time that you re doing the procedure, so you can be getting even more information that can be used for diagnosis or in scheduling postop appointments. You can model tissue health based on the data you acquired during operation by the robot. The hope is that it will also improve our knowledge about how the patient is doing. This type of technology may play a role in future telesurgeries. A Hawaiian heart doctor named Benjamin Berg dictated a complicated surgery over an Internet feed for a Guam man located 3, 500 miles away. Berg monitored every move and heartbeat of the patient via sensors embedded in the catheter that had been inserted into the patient heart. Faster Internet speeds will allow doctors to monitor their patients around the clock in their patients homes. The Renaissance Computing Institute in North carolina has developed an Outpatient Health Monitoring System (OHMS) for patients with chronic conditions such as asthma. The device uses wireless sensors to constantly monitor patients and check environmental factors in the patients home like the presence of allergens, pollution, or humidity. It like getting a remote checkup from your doctor all the time. 2. Genome Specific Cures. A few years ago, the notion of cancer treatment that was specific to a person genome was seen as a fantasy. But, as geneticist and open-source medicine evangelist Andrew Hessel wrote in the January-February 2010 issue of THE FUTURIST, oethanks to rapidly moving technologies like synthetic biology, the prospects are very different today. This is a powerful new genetic engineering technology founded on DNA synthesis that amounts to writing software for cells. It the ideal technical foundation for open-source biotechnology. Moreover synthetic biology drops the cost of doing bioengineering by several orders of magnitude. Small proteins, antibodies, and viruses were amenable to the technology and within reach of a startup. According to Hessel, individualized drugs could lower the cost of drug development across the entire spectrum of the development chain. Only very small-scale manufacturing capability is necessary. Lab testing is simplified. And clinical trials are reduced to a single person: No large phased trials are necessary, so there no ambiguity about who will be treated, and every patient can be profiled rigorously. This shaves money and years off development. Moreover, with the client fully informed and integral to all aspects of development and testing, the developer liability approaches the theoretical minimum

< Back - Next >

Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011