25.
A Blood test foe depression
This year, Eva Redei, a professor
at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, published a paper that
identified molecules in the blood that correlated to major depression in a
small group of teenagers. Ridge Diagnostics has also started to roll out a test
analyzing 10 biomarkers linked to depression in adults. “Part of the reason
there’s a stigma for mental illness, including depression, is that people think
it’s only in their heads,” Redei says. “As long as there’s no measurable,
objective sign, we’re going to stay in that mind-set of ‘Just snap out of it.’
” Blood tests will take mental illness out of the squishy realm of feelings.
And as Lonna Williams, C.E.O. of Ridge Diagnostics, says, they’ll help people
understand “it’s not their fault.”
Elizabeth Weil
26.
Bathroom cleaning
Researchers at the Wyss Institute
for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard are working on a technology
that would make household cleaning supplies much smarter — almost like a
sprayable forensics team. When the spray hits a surface where there are
pathogens present, like your bathroom sink, it would bind to the bad stuff and
turn a color — orange, say, for E. coli. Then you could knock it out with a
stronger disinfectant.
Nathaniel Penn
You need a lot of water to put out
a sizable blaze, and the chemicals used in fire extinguishers can be toxic
(halons, the most effective chemical fire suppressant, create holes in the
ozone layer). So the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon
has developed a hand-held wand that snuffs out fires, without chemicals.
According to the program’s manager, Dr. Matt Goodman, an electric field
destabilizes the flame’s underlying structure rather than blanketing the fire
to smother it. Eventually, the technology could be used to create escape routes
or extinguish fires without damaging sensitive equipment nearby.
Nathaniel Penn
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