"Aye there, don't be forgetting 'bout Transparent Aluminum."
Posted on 02/03/2007 10:06:34 AM PST by AntiGuv
1. Bendable Concrete
The nickname for Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) is self-explanatory: bendable concrete. Specially coated microscopic polymer fibers slide past each other instead of snapping under stress, so ECC bends without breaking. The material has been used to create stretchable expansion joints for a Michigan bridge, and to allow the coupling beams in a 41-story tower in Yokohama to flex during Japan's frequent earthquakes.
Short-term impact: LOW
It could take years for ECC to be commonly used in construction, unless a major earthquake puts it in the spotlight.
2. PRAM (Phase-Change Random Access Memory)
Flash memory, with no moving parts to break or wear down, is the datastorage technology of choice for devices such as iPods and digital cameras. But phase-change RAM is set to overtake flash entirely—it uses a chemical found in rewritable discs, which is alternately heated and cooled to store data. The result is memory that's 30 times faster than flash, with more than 10 times the life span.
Short-term impact: HIGH
Samsung demonstrated a PRAM prototype in September 2006 and expects PRAM-enabled devices to be available in 2008.
3. Printed Solar Panels
Tomorrow's solar panels may not need to be produced in high-vacuum conditions in billion-dollar fabrication facilities. If California-based Nanosolar has its way, plants will use a nanostructured "ink" to form semiconductors, which would be printed on flexible sheets. Nanosolar is currently building a plant that will print 430 megawatts' worth of solar cells annually—more than triple the current solar output of the entire country.
Short-term impact: LOW
Solar power still isn't in wide use, so even a tech breakthrough will take time to have an effect. But the long-term outlook is brighter.
4. Passport Hacking
Starting this year, all new U.S. passports will include a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip that stores a digital photo of the owner, as well as biographic data (name, date of birth, and so on). The goal is to prevent passport counterfeiting, but hackers already have flexed their muscles: A German security researcher publicly cloned an e-passport at a Las Vegas conference last summer. The State Department promises additional encryption, which hackers will no doubt put to the test.
Short-term impact: LOW
Most people won't need a new passport for years. And even if counterfeiters are able to swipe data to make forged documents, these RFID chips won't hold financial information or Social Security numbers.
5. Vehicle Infrastructure Integration
Your car may have GPS navigation and radar blind-spot monitoring, but it still doesn't stand a chance against traffic. The Department of Transportation's Vehicle Infrastructure Integration program, which faces its final testing in 2007, might even the odds. The program involves installing a 5.9-GHz short-range wireless link in your car that can talk with other cars, as well as with control units at intersections and along the side of the road. Pool all the information being beamed from cars—speed, location, whether the wipers are on—and you have a map of traffic and weather conditions, so that drivers can be directed away from trouble spots.
Short-term impact: LOW
This is only the latest—albeit the smartest—in a long history of federal initiatives to win the war on traffic. Next year, lawmakers will decide whether to wire up hundreds of thousands of intersections and roads, but getting automakers to install standardized transmitters might prove even trickier.
6. Body Area Network
Picture this: The cell-phone in your pocket sends a tiny electrical current—a fraction of an amp—along your skin, so your car door springs open at your touch and your PC logs in when you grab the mouse. That's what German start-up ImCoSys says its new smartphone will be capable of, thanks to body area network (BAN) technology. Of course, proving those claims would require partner companies to build BAN-compatible devices, and no such deals have been announced since the phone was released last summer.
Short-term impact: LOW
Using your body as a secure network is smarter than sticking finger-print scanners everywhere, but there's no guarantee that BAN products will ever materialize.
7. Plasma Arc Gasification
Garbage can be a gold mine—when it's heated to 10,000 F. A plant being built in Florida will use a plasma arc jet (like the one shown here) to turn 3,000 tons of garbage a day into steam for nearby factories, sludge for road construction, and 120 megawatts of electricity—all with promise of minimal emissions.
Short-term impact: LOW
The Florida plant will go on line in 2009, at the earliest.
8. VoN (Video on the Net)
The first Video on the Net (VoN) conference was in 1998, but the concept of watching videos on your PC is only now reaching maturity. Products like Apple's iTV video-streaming box, due to launch this year, promise to simplify the sometimes geeky process of finding and playing video files. And Google's $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube last fall is evidence that VoN is big business, though exactly what kind of business is anyone's guess.
Short-term impact: HIGH
TiVo, DVRs, and iTunes have already changed the way many people watch TV, and VoN is likely to make shows and movies more accessible than ever.
9. Smart Pills
These swallowable, vitamin-size sensors won't make you smarter, but anything that lets you avoid an endoscopy is a pretty good idea. The FDA-approved sensor from Buffalo-based SmartPill transmits data about pressure, acidity, and temperature to a 5 x 4-in. receiver that patients carry around with them during the pill's trip through their gastrointestinal tract. SmartPill already has competition: The Israeli company Given Imaging has developed a similar sensor called PillCam.
Short-term impact: HIGH
Although you won't be popping them on a daily basis, these sensors—which at press time, were on the verge of being shipped—could make a wide range of invasive procedures obsolete.
10. Data Cloud
Ferrying data from one hard drive to another via e-mail, flash memory thumb drives, or rewritable discs is no way to live. What if every one of your files, from skimpy documents to gigabyte-hogging music collections, were accessible from any Internet connection, forming a vast data cloud that followed you wherever you went? A host of products and services let you create a data cloud right now, from Maxtor's networked hard drives to Google's rumored Gdrive, with "unlimited" storage on the search giant's servers. Add a synchronization service such as Microsoft's FolderShare, which applies a change you've made on your PDA to that same file on your laptop and PC, and you're one step closer to retiring the original data storage device—the one in your head.
Short-term impact: HIGH
For better or worse, data clouds are here to stay. With improved file sharing as well as new security concerns, they're already changing the face of computing.
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I understand there is water-permeable roadbed that lets rainwater percolate into the aquifer (water conservation). Also, LED space lighting is coming soon (HUGE energy savings).
...bunch of lazy cops mailing tickets all day from the donut shop. I'm not a fan of this one, the potential for authoritarian abuse would be almost irresistible.
There is a company in Michigan that is making flexible solar panels that are bonded to roofs using a pressure sensitive adhesive. They are really good and easy to install. This company has grown tremendously in the last few years.
Thin Film PV is less efficient than more traditional forms of solar but it has its use in smart buildings and for mobile type of applications. Keep an eye on Innovalight as well.
Data Cloud- Apple has had thisw for years. It is called the iDisk.
Data cloud is another form of something called ubiquitous computing which is something championed by Motorola. If will require Wi-Max to be a reality though.
Wow!
"Nanosolar is currently building a plant that will print 430 megawatts' worth of solar cells annually—more than triple the current solar output of the entire country."
This sounds familiar ... is Nanosolar somehow connected to CitizenRe, the company that is taking security deposits for "rented" custom residential solar installations, in states with net metering? I'll have to admit, their plan sounds appealing, and will provide a stable source of power while reducing your electric bill, with no upfront cost other than the aforementioned security deposit, $500.00. The only thing that could be vaguely off-putting for me is that their marketing plan sounds rather like multi-level marketing. Their plan revolves around remote monitoring of every installation, handling the selling of daytime solar (at peak rates), which oftentimes completely offsets off-peak rate grid power consumed at night, effectively using the electric utility as storage.
Anybody knowledgeable enough to comment? Web address for CitizenRe is http://www.citizenre.com
Not so Nanosolar. The non-silicon thin-film substrate (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Diselenide (CIGS)) yields cell performance as good as current crystalline silicon cells.
The solar technology sounds very promising. I have a family member who is part of a team working to make solar shingles and siding for homes although he acknowledges it will be years before such technology is cheap enough to be feasible.
Potential yields are hard to calculate but if the costs were in comparison to fifty year shingles/high quality vinyl siding it would be a very viable industry.
Technological growth continues to explode at an incomprehensible rate!
The data cloud thing would be especially useful, personally. As is the PRAM, and the solar panels are a good idea. The BAN seems a little weird, though. And aren't there going to be a lot of people getting passports because of recent laws requiring one to get back from Canada, Mexico, and other countries in the Americas?
“…this one might not get much interest”
I think you’re wrong. I think there are a lot of techie types here – not that I’m a true techie. Thanks for the post.
My wows:
1. Bendable Concrete –I can see this as major in making buildings in those areas safer, much like the technology allowing buildings to “float” still while the ground below shakes. I’m curious if this has any practical application high stress structures like bridges, elevated road surfaces, damns– could this help alleviate stress fractures?
2. PRAM (Phase-Change Random Access Memory) – It seems like only yesterday I was wowed by my 8086 , floppy disks, fax machines with thermal paper and mobiles phones the size of a shoe box. But what sort of power is required to heat and cool the chemical and how sensitive is it to external temperature changes?
3. Printed Solar Panels –this could make solar energy a lot more affordable and feasible – a very good thing. Other than residential – does this mean anything for heavy industrial energy users?
Not impressed by:
4. Passport Hacking – tell a hacker that your technology is hack proof and it will be hacked in less than a week.
5. Vehicle Infrastructure Integration – until people stop driving like complete idiots and roads are upgraded or built before the demand reaches max capacity, I’m afraid being stuck in traffic is just a way of life in urban areas.
6. Body Area Network – just strikes me as creepy.
The obligatory FR joke:
7. Plasma Arc Gasification – sounds like what my ex-husband did after eating a bowl of chili.
Ok, what's their stock symbol?
NanoSolar is privately held and not seeking new capital, according to their website. Innovalight describes itself as an "early stage company," and are actively seeking VC.
Heating garbage for energy is brilliant.
I wish I could run my car on that...
"Body Area Network"
Who would want their body incorporated into a network operating under Windows? What would happen when you crashed?
Do you know the name of the company. TIA
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