Future Technology 500

For some time now, the world of technology has been utterly transforming everything that we do. It has become among the biggest drivers of modern civilization, and pays a critical role in the growth of our species as a whole. More importantly, though, technology has become so vital to our way of modern life that we need to know what is coming ext.

Want to know what the future holds for the world of technology? Well, now you can. Thanks to the help of the new technology database by the Israeli Technology Transfer Organizations (TTOs). This database holds 1,300+ new techs which are both in development and in conceptualized stages of development.

Exciting stuff, right? We could be very much on the precipice of a wholesale change to the entire world – and we could know about it in advance. As one of the many layers of the Start-Up Nation Finding, a new discovery platform for innovators, this database helps us to see the amazing features of the future. From paper which can create its own electrical charge to renewable diesel, the world of tech is already looking to help transform the world.

From making cars more affordable and environmentally applicable to combating the signs of ageing and skin disease, technology has many ideas lined up for the short-term and long-term future. Undertaken by Israeli non-profit group Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), this is all about helping to “connect businesses, governments and organizations around the world to Israeli innovation.”

This exciting new experience is sure to play a major role in developing a long-term transformation of the tech industry. For example, this new database is going to help us see the upcoming changes in major technological pursuits. From drug discovery to materials science through to gene sequencing and even robotics, there’s an armada of options waiting for you to grasp hold of here.

For this reason, it has become easily one of the most popular options for those looking to innovate. It’s also showing the various patents, companies and research specialist who are registered with the 16 various TTOs throughout Israel.

Indeed, SNC is now combining data from the TTOs individually, to help make sure that it can correlate with their own data on the Start-Up Nation Finder. This is very important, and has been majorly assisted by Watson, the AI engine that IBM is creating. This has helped to work with complex technological content and make it more easily understood across the industry.

From the new AI systems which are coming that will work to help provide sight restoration to the use of spider silk proteins to create super strong fibers that could work for bone support and tissue reconstruction, many options exist.

In the past, we could only find out about the latest and greatest human technological innovations by reading about them as they were released. With this, we can see the changes arrive long before they are even created: now, you can see the concepts technology is presenting.

Scientists have always known of the existence of graphene. After all, we all have used pencils once in our lives and the result of drawing using the writing device is the substance in question. Basically, it’s this one atom thick crystal that is one million times thinner than human hair and 200 times stronger than steel. The problem was: no one knew how to extract it out of graphite.

This is where two Russian-born scientists come in. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novosolev are researchers at the University of Manchester and in one of their Friday night experiments – sessions they hold not linked to their job to maintain interest in their field and generate new ideas – they accidentally created graphene with the help of Scotch tape.

The pair wrote a three-page paper describing what they had just discovered. It was rejected by Nature – twice – but eventually got published in the journal Science in 2004.

Since then, researchers all over the world have devoted time to studying this fantastic material that is as pliable as rubber and can stretch to 120% of its length. They also found that the material is a good conductor of heat and electricity.

Six years after Geim and Novosolev published their paper, they were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. As a result, the material they were able to create was lauded as “a wonder material” and one that “could change the world.” Researchers from various fields – medicine, chemistry, physics, electrical engineering – all come together to study this groundbreaking material.

As a result, the number of graphene-related patents have risen. The UK Intellectual Property Office alone reports of a jump from 3,018 in 2011 to 8,416 at the beginning of 2013. Samsung and Sungkyunkwan University in Korea, Zheijiang University in China and IBM in the US are the leaders in patent applications.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to products that can be developed using graphene: bendable computer screens, long-life batteries, very fast microcomputers, etc. Although the possibilities were endless, the amount of time it took to make the substance was lengthy and the temperatures too high. This is the area that Caltech staff scientist David Boyd was able to address with yet another accidental discovery.

Boyd wasn’t having luck with creating graphene by exposing methane to a heated copper surface. He got distracted by a phone call leading him to leave the copper on heat for a longer time than usual. Once he got back, he found that graphene was formed due to the added heat that removed a key impurity.

Basically, what used to take about 10 hours and a very high temperature to do can now be accomplished in around five minutes and at a lower temperature.

The discovery just opens of worlds of possibilities when it comes to graphene-based products. As Boyd told Pasadena Star-News, “You could imagine something crazy. You could wrap a building in graphene to keep it from falling over.”

External Resource

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/19/better-graphene-making-process-breakthrough_n_6891226.html