Top 5 Future Technology Stories of the Week

This week’s top 5 future technology stories feature a couple of articles about breakthrough medical technology, one breakthrough in computer technology, one about space tech, and a fifth story about a recent discovery that will bring down the price of hydrogen fuel cell cars of the future.

Some of the discoveries involve using GPS systems inside the human body to signal the exact location of cancer cells, combining neurons and computer wires, speeding up computers by replacing copper wires, NASA new mission that is not the moon and cheaper fuel cells for hydrogen cars.

Doctors Use New GPS System and Radiation to Zap Tumors

Like a car navigating a city street, a global positioning system guided a radiation beam directly to Gene Scallon’s prostate. Once there, radiation zapped the cancer cells into smithereens. And Scallon didn’t feel a thing … That’s important because breathing or coughing causes organs to move — and the prostate gland can move unpredictably on its own.

New Technology Mixes Neurons and Computer Wires

Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, led by Minrui Yu and Yu Huang, have published an ACS Nano paper, “Semiconductor Nanomembrane Tubes: Three-Dimensional Confinement for Controlled Neurite Outgrowth,” in which they show that they have been able to successfully coax nerve cell tendrils to grow through tiny tubes made of the semi-conductor materials silicon and germanium.

Researchers Speed Up Computer Using Advanced Thermal Material

Scientists in GE’s Global Research Center have demonstrated an advanced thermal material system that could pave the way to faster computing and higher performing electronic systems. Leveraging technologies developed under GE’s Nanotechnology Advanced Technology Program, they have fabricated a prototype substrate that can cool electronic devices such as a laptop computer twice as well as copper.

NASA Plans Mission to Near Earth Asteroid

NASA’s current goal of sending astronauts on an asteroid-bound mission by 2025 is one of the core ideas in the space exploration vision laid out by President Barack Obama last year. It represents a major shift from NASA’s earlier plan, which was aimed at returning astronauts to the moon.

Platinum Less Fuel Cell Expected to Drive Down Costs

Catalysts made of carbon nanotubes dipped in a polymer solution equal the energy output and otherwise outperform platinum catalysts in fuel cells, a team of Case Western Reserve University engineers has found.