S&T SPECIAL….Big Leaps Made in 2012

S&T SPECIAL….Big Leaps Made in 2012     All lists are to some extent arbitrary, and this one is no exception. However, such lists are useful because they strip away the year’s noise and let us focus on the real thing. This year produced a fair number of breakthroughs in science and technology, and we assemble our favourites from varied fields. Some of them like the Higgs boson and junk DNA are truly fundamental and would have made their way into any list, but a few others are more subjective selections picked as much for hope as for promise. Certain entries such as biofuels, cloud computing and big data were intentionally excluded from the list. Biofuels may have no future or at best a limited one. Cloud computing and big data do not depend on big breakthroughs for mass adoption. We have selected one solar energy breakthrough that is at present an infant, but this field is still ripe for invention. A battery breakthrough just managed to make the list, but more because of its impact on economics than for its basic science HIGGS BOSON It is the scientific breakthrough of the year, of the decade or probably of several decades. Its discovery confirmed once again, as has happened many times in the past, the ability of the human mind to look at a string of equations and deduce how nature works at the deepest level. We will hear about this particle at least one more time next year – in March – when scientists are to announce the final confirmation of its discovery. The Higgs boson discovery will not improve our lives immediately. But who knows, a century from now it might help us finetune the properties of space around us, reduce the mass of objects temporarily or design some fantastic mode of space travel. JUNK DNA It is the second most important scientific discovery of the year. Till September this year, scientists had thought that a substantial portion of human DNA was junk and performs no function. But now they know that at least 80% of this junk has a function. They are involved in the regulation of the genes that code for proteins and are thus an extremely important part of our genome. As we figure out how precisely this junk DNA controls the other genes, we will also know why some people get certain diseases while others do not. In the next few years, this discovery will let us design new drugs and other ways of treating diseases. So unlike the Higgs particle, discovering the function of junk DNA has an immediate technological benefit. SILICON NANOPHOTONICS The computing industry has been facing a major problem in recent years: we produce data faster than their computer hardware can handle. For the big data revolution to be truly useful, the communication between chips has to speed up considerably. They are slow because our chips use electrons for computing, and electrons are generally slow. The obvious solution is to use light for communication instead of electrons, but integrating optical technology with silicon is not easy. Two years ago, IBM demonstrated the principles of such integration. Last month, it demonstrated the fabrication of such silicon nanophotonics on a single 90 nanometer chip. The first step towards a new field has been taken, and over the next few years silicon nanophotonics can replace the electronic buses used in chips. And some day this decade we could have an all-optics chip. LIGHT-FIELD CAMERA Cameras evolve very slowly. In the last century, they have seen only two revolutions. The first was the birth of colour photography, and the second the shift from analogue to digital photography. The light-field camera may well be the third shift: the ability to shoot a picture first and then focus later. To be precise, you can shoot a picture and then focus on parts of it while the rest remains blurred, and do this repeatedly to get a perfect picture. This is possible because the camera captures light from all directions, and not from just one direction like other cameras, letting the camera software create multiple focal points. The first consumer light-field camera, called Lytro, debuted early this year. Watch it change photography over the next few years. MIT ALL-CARBON SOLAR CELL Solar cells need to be very efficient or very cheap for us to use them widely for electricity generation instead of coal. They are still far away from these ideal situations, but technology is inching closer every year. But the call-carbon photovoltaic cell from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) would be a leap in technology when commericalised. It is the realisation of a dream, to use the infrared part of the spectrum that comprises 40% of the sun’s energy reaching the earth. It is a completely new type of photovoltaic cell and is made of two kinds of carbon: nanotubes and buckyballs. It requires little material, and is highly efficient and seemingly-stable. We could one day make high-efficiency photovoltaic cells if we overlay the all-carbon cell on top of the existing silicon photovoltaic cells. ROOM-TEMPERATURE MASER Put simplistically, a maser consists of microwaves while laser consists of light. Lasers have revolutionised technology, but masers were invented much before the laser and were used in the first television broadcast across the Atlantic. Masers could be as useful as lasers in the world of technology, but so far we did not know how to make them without strong magnets and expensive cooling techniques. This year, scientists at the National Physical Laboratory and Imperial College in London demonstrated the first room-temperature maser. This prototype device could be the beginning of a big shift in technology, where masers are used in as many ways as lasers are. One example is ultra-sensitive body scanners that can detect cancer tumours early; they could change medical imaging. Another application is space communications. We may use the maser to build telescopes that can detect extraterrestrial life. STEM CELL THERAPY Early this year, scientists reported having made mice live longer by injecting them with stem cells. They also reported how they repaired, using stem cells, muscle damage in mice with multiple sclerosis. Then came a report of easing the symptoms of blindness by using stem cells. All of this was in January. The rest of the year saw a series of advances that collectively took stem-cell therapy forward. They made progress in treating in mice schizophrenia and heart disease, and in humans type I diabetes, AIDS and other diseases. Scientists also grew human muscle and liver tissue using stem cells, and surgeons stitched back a vein grown from a patient’s stem cells. Australian scientists reported turning cells in the pancreas into insulin-producing cells with precision. A cure for Type I diabetes is not far away. LITHIUM ION SUPER-BATTERY We finally pick an invention that is not a fundamental breakthrough but a significant improvement over existing products. Such improvements can be game-changers in batteries, and a large number of researchers in universities and companies are reporting significant performance enhancements. We pick one that seems among the most promising. In May this year, Washington State University researchers developed lithium ion batteries that have the triple the current capacity and can also recharge faster and more number of times than current ones. They did this by replacing the carbon anode, which holds the lithium ions and hence the charge, with tin that can store more ions. The product looks exactly like current lithium ion batteries and hence do not necessitate redesign of gadgets. A commercial product is expected within one year.

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