13 Major Technological Innovations To Change The World
Residents can enjoy solar panels free of charge. People can learn everything about the world in real time - not in the Internet world, but in the material world for human survival; doctors can predict the invasion of certain diseases in advance.
If these are all realities, what changes will happen in the world? Those plans to change the world will solve the mystery for us.
A series of ideas is simple.
The ambitious picture makes it impossible for us to predict all the consequences.
The Scientific American magazine's advisory and editorial board has selected many plans from the five major fields of energy, pportation, environment, electronics and robotics, and medical health, highlighting the infinite power of technology to change life.
Some of these plans are being implemented and others are still in the stage of scientific research pformation. There is no doubt that these innovations are the most promising tips for solving problems and solving problems for mankind.
1. energy
Free solar energy plan
A group of new businesses plan to install solar panels for your home free of charge.
The biggest obstacle to solar energy is capital.
In the United States, even if there is a government incentive policy, it is still expensive for residents to install solar panels on the roof to provide all the energy consumption of the houses. The cost is enough to cover the electricity charges for the next 7~10 years.
Fortunately, a financial innovation is another way for homeowners who want to save energy and reduce emissions and reduce electricity costs. First, install solar panels free of charge and then pay for them while using them.
The implementation process of the policy is similar to housing mortgage loan.
Banks or municipal bonds are paid by organizations or individuals to install solar panels, while the latter regularly repay the former investment.
As a result, the owner can directly or indirectly purchase the electricity generated by solar panels on his roof, and the cost per kilowatt hour is lower than that of the grid.
Because the new generation of solar panels is stable and of long service life, it is a safe investment for investors, and the owners also reduce their expenses, let alone experience the satisfaction of reducing carbon emissions.
Peter Reiff Rive, a founder of SolarCity, said: "this will not only make it unnecessary for solar energy to save food and clothing, but also reduce users' spending from the first day." (Peter)
This is only the beginning.
Sunshine city is the largest household solar panel handling company involved in this policy.
The company was founded in 2006 by a pair of entrepreneurs brothers. They also founded many enterprises in Silicon Valley.
Sun City rents solar panels to homeowners and provides free electricity.
The owner actually needs to pay a drastically reduced electricity charge (when the user needs a public power supply on cloudy days) plus the monthly rent of the panel.
The sum of these two costs is lower than the electricity charges before using solar energy.
The sunrun company in San Francisco also provides similar services to users. The difference is that the company charges electricity directly to users rather than the rent of solar panels.
Berkeley and boulder and other cities in the United States pioneered the financial plan to provide solar panels for individuals to purchase and install full loans.
The cost is paid in advance by municipal bonds, and then repaid by the owner within 20 years as part of the property tax.
The actual result is that users pay for the use of solar energy in the form of taxes, rents or long-term electricity contracts, which are lower than current electricity charges.
Daniel Kammen, director of renewable and alternative energy laboratory at Berkeley, University of California, said: "what is really commendable is that we have changed the way m users think about buying energy products and services," said danielm. Kammen.
Carmen made a preliminary analysis of the Berkeley loan scheme. He believed that the plan would enable users to use financial power to overcome the inherent disadvantage of renewable energy compared to the use of current energy: the infrastructure of existing pmission networks has been built up, residents have been paying for this for decades, and the government has given numerous subsidies.
The above three ways are sweeping the United States.
In addition to the Berkeley financial plan that has been implemented for nearly two years, 10 other states in the United States have also introduced legislation to allow Berkeley style fund investment loan projects.
Under the promotion of Waxman-Markey climate bill, also known as the clean energy and safety act of the United States, perhaps federal law will force this energy project to be implemented in cities.
The Edison based solar power company (SunEdison), based in Maryland, is currently doing business in 9 states of the United States.
Sunshine city has more than 4000 users in California, Arizona and Oregon, and will push business to more states in 2010.
The current level of technology is not enough to reduce the total cost of rooftop solar energy to the equivalent of traditional power grids.
That is to say, if there is no such preferential policy as investment tax relief, the cost of solar conversion projects is still higher than that of public utilities in the region.
30% of the installation cost of solar panels comes from financial subsidies, which will last for at least 8 years.
Sun City company and its competitors firmly believe that they will no longer need these subsidies by then.
Taking into account the cost of capital, the cost of panels, installation costs and the intensity of regional sunlight, Attila Toth, vice president of solar energy Edison, said: "achieving equivalence with traditional power grids depends on many factors. Different states have different time to accomplish this goal.
In the next 3~5 years, California is expected to become the first state to achieve the equivalence of solar energy and power grid.
Over the past 10 years, the cost of fossil fuels has risen at an annual rate of 3%~5%. Compared with the number of solar panels used, the cost of solar panels will be reduced by about 20%.
With the increasing cost of fossil fuels and the gradual reduction of solar energy conversion costs, solar energy will be equivalent to the grid, and then solar energy will be used in more areas.
It is no wonder that Elon Mask musk, the Tesla executive of the main electric vehicle, will become a member of the board of sunshine city company. (Elon)
2. petrol Garden
Scientists are trying to use genetic engineering to plant plants that use hydrocarbons as normal metabolic byproducts in order to get a new generation of biofuels.
In this way, gasoline and fuel can be obtained only by sunlight and carbon dioxide.
Exxon Mobil announced its investment of $600 million in July 2009, with the goal of cultivating this achievement.
Transformation of algae.
In addition, Joule biotechnologies has claimed that it has been successful, although they have not disclosed any patent details yet.
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The 13 major technological innovations to change the world (2)
3. thermonuclear power generation
The fuel of nuclear reactors is not limited to uranium and plutonium.
After the activation of traditional fission materials, thorium can create a self-sustaining proliferation reaction to form uranium 233, which is suitable for nuclear power generation.
In addition, this reaction has another advantage - preventing nuclear proliferation, because gamma rays released by the final product will make fuel handling extremely dangerous and easy to track.
4. information energy saving
Research shows that users can only understand their energy consumption state and save 5%~15% power consumption.
Smart meters allow users to keep track of the power consumption of each electrical appliance (see left chart).
Companies selling smart meters have sprung up, and Google and Microsoft have combined regional utilities to facilitate users to monitor the use of electricity.
5. high altitude wind
A study released by Stanford University in July 2009 shows that only 1% of the sustained wind energy above tens of thousands of feet (1 feet or 0.3 meters) is enough to provide all the energy needed for human civilization.
Sky windpower, California, has proposed building the wind powered windmill cluster on the ground (see chart below) to get this part of the wind power. Italy's kite Gen is planning to use kites to accomplish this feat.
6. pport
Getting rid of oil dependence
The plug-in hybrid electric vehicle is a long-term solution to short distance pportation.
In the United States, 40% of the oil from underground mining is consumed by freight trucks, and most consumers are concerned about how to reduce the fuel consumption of cars.
"People are not aware that even a small truck has far more fuel consumption than regular cars," said Bill Van van, a senior vice president of calstart, Bill van Amburg, a nonprofit clean pport technology group.
The fuel economy of a hybrid multifunction truck is not comparable to that of the 9 TOYOTA Prius.
At present, about 1300 commercial hybrid cars have been on the road in the United States, and their fuel efficiency is two times that of conventional vehicles.
But these traditional hybrid cars have congenital defects.
By recovering some of the energy lost in the braking process, they can further improve the efficiency of using gasoline fuel.
On the other hand, the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle can rely on the grid for energy supply.
After charging, they can start without any fossil fuel. In most cases, they are enough for a full day's mileage.
New technology makes automobile energy consumption change from gasoline to power grid.
(30% of all electricity in the United States in 2008 was supplied by zero carbon emissions of renewable energy and nuclear power.
)
The application of rechargeable hybrid technology to trucks is more meaningful in many aspects than in cars.
Freight trucks have shorter daily trips and regenerative braking systems (regenerative braking) can function at multiple stops.
For example, there are about 200000 postal trucks in the US Post and telecommunications industry, most of which are less than 20 miles per day.
In addition, these cars can enter the garage at night and charge by 120 or 240 volts.
The US Department of energy recently spent $45 million 400 thousand to launch the nation's largest commercial rechargeable hybrid vehicle project, which plans to put 378 medium-sized trucks into operation in early 2011.
These trucks will form 50 municipal and public convoys. The most notable feature is the assembly of the power system provided by Eaton (Eaton, a large electrical component manufacturer) and the F-550 chassis manufactured by Ford Motor Co.
(Ford Motor Co, for its own sake, has to do its own research and development after the commercial rechargeable truck has proved its potential market.
Paul Scott, chairman of the electric vehicle Association of the southern California state, predicted that "these (hybrid Paul) cars will be hit in 2011."
Bright automotive, a new auto company, has a larger plan.
They plan to replace at least 50 thousand trucks with hybrid trucks by 2014.
The company's new car Adiya (idea, see the top right) can rely on the battery to run about 65 kilometers, and after the battery runs out, it can replace the four cylinder engine driven by 100 kilometre oil consumption of about 5.88 liters.
The streamlined body made of aluminum material has stronger aerodynamic performance, so that its carrying capacity is comparable to that of a postal car, but its own weight is only equivalent to that of a medium-sized car.
The founder of Brett power, John e John (John E. waters), was the developer of the EV1 power storage system for the innovative electric vehicle of the General Company.
He claims that each AI vehicle can save 5700 litres of gasoline per year and reduce 16 tons of CO2 emissions compared with the existing multi-functional trucks.
Waters said that only 450 million dollars of government loans in place can immediately start assembly production.
Besides the effect of emission reduction, the main users of new trucks are more concerned with practical interests.
Adiya's final offer is undecided, and the executive of the blight company is evasive.
But they say that if the user owns 2000 new trucks, 5 days a week and 130 kilometers a day, it will save 7 million 200 thousand dollars a year.
But no one will buy a large amount of money without any discount, unless the government starts to collect carbon dioxide tax.
Although production costs will decrease as the output increases, Phan Bugge estimates that the cost of upgrading every vehicle to hybrid power is still 30 thousand to $50 thousand.
The improvement of battery technology will also help.
The cost of the 13 kwh lithium battery pack now occupies 1/4 of the total cost of the vehicle.
Most of the research done on Chevrolet volt and other plug-in hybrid electric vehicles should also be applied to commercial batteries.
David Lauzun, vice president of product development, said: "even though we all want to be perfect, we only have to wait until the new power car is economically competitive, and everyone is saying," I have to buy one, because it saves too much money, "and they can occupy the global market.
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The 13 major technological innovations to change the world (3)
7. Bus Rapid Transit System
With the improvement of productivity, people are constantly pouring into the cities from the countryside.
Although this has created a new chapter in human civilization, many of the following troubles have put people in a dilemma.
One of the problems that can not be ignored is passenger pport in big cities.
The use of cars will cause traffic congestion and environmental pollution. Light rail construction will be slow and costly.
A simple and inexpensive way to relieve traffic tensions is to use Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which has a "subway on wheels".
The bus rapid pit system uses existing roads to separate private lanes to drive large capacity buses.
Passengers will be waiting in the closed station after payment.
When the bus enters the station, the isolation door will automatically open, allowing passengers to board the vehicle from the platform that is leveled with the bottom of the car.
Smooth roads, fast and comfortable modern stations make the bus rapid pit system more like a light rail than a chaotic regular bus.
Columbia's capital Bogota has opened 7 bus rapid pit routes since 2001 (see the right picture), with a daily passenger volume of 1 million 600 thousand.
The successful operation of the bus rapid pit system resulted in the suspension of 7000 private buses in the city. The fuel consumption and the associated environmental pollution of public pport were reduced by at least 59%.
8. environment
Ocean overhaul
Regionalization is a bold remedy for the marine crisis.
Recently, even many politicians no longer deny that the ocean is having big problems.
Many countries now regard the protection of the water quality of offshore waters as a national policy.
For this reason, leaders all over the world have begun to propose a revolutionary solution: Marine regional planning.
In fact, many years ago, conservationists were already advocating this method.
This idea is a natural extension of the management policy guiding urban landscape development in the past century.
As we all know, there is no interest shop next to kindergartens, and drilling is not set up in national parks.
Similarly, advocates of marine regional planning are envisaging that all the earth's waters can be divided into small pieces according to specific uses.
Drilling and mining can only be carried out in specific sea areas, while others are for fishing purposes only.
All fishing and exploitation activities are prohibited in the most threatened sea area.
It is not implied that the marine zoning management will be the only option, which is largely due to strong opposition to any action that restricts commercial interests.
"Not everyone likes regionalization," John C. John, director of the Florida Oceanographic Institute of Tampa, University of Florida, warned that "there is always someone's interest to be damaged," said John C. Ogden, director of the Institute of Oceanography.
The most exclusive of this reform is likely to be the "old customers" of the ocean -- commercial fishermen and oil industry groups.
Ogden said, "for a long time, they have only taken their own interests."
However, Ogden and others soon pointed out that the practice of zoning management can not only play a role in protecting resources, but also bring commercial benefits.
Josh eagle, an associate professor at University of Southern Calif law school, explains that by abandoning access to certain sea areas, industrial groups can get permission to operate in other waters, which will be easier and cheaper for Josh Igor.
Although oil companies can apply for drilling almost anywhere, they now face great commercial risks every time.
The oil company may have invested millions of dollars in developing a new oil well. At the last moment, it had to give up because of a lawsuit.
When regionalization management is just beginning to be implemented, the opposing parties will be able to make a difference to the other side, and once the division is completed, the parties will not be able to hinder each other's actions.
Whether the final report of the Select Committee will clearly put forward the management of marine regionalization is still unknown.
However, they have promised to thoroughly reform marine governance institutions by proposing the establishment of the National Oceanographic Commission, whose task is to coordinate and integrate marine affairs, which are currently responsible for numerous federal agencies.
This action is coming at the right time.
Just as society is beginning to realize that great efforts must be made to protect marine health, we need to make more efforts to get more energy and more food, and to develop the coastal economy more flexibly and to cope with climate change.
The root of the marine crisis is not what people are dumping or dumping on the ocean, but that governments do not manage them properly.
As Claude said, "we have to consider the ocean issue in a comprehensive way. We can't get a headache."
9. garbage energy
Artificial arcs can process garbage and generate electricity.
The energy contained in garbage lies in its chemical bonds.
Plasma gasification technology (plasma gasification) has been developed for decades, using this technology to extract energy from garbage.
This process is very simple in theory.
When the current passes through the gas in the enclosed container (usually ordinary air), it produces arcs and ultrahigh temperature plasmas, that is, ionized gases, which can reach 7000 degrees centigrade, even hotter than the surface of the sun.
If this happens in nature, it is called lightning, so literally speaking, plasma gasification is actually artificial lightning in containers.
The extremely high temperature of the plasma can destroy the molecular bonds of any rubbish in the container, thus converting organic matter into synthetic gas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen), and other substances will become vitreous slag.
Syngas can be used as a fuel for generating electricity in turbines, and can also be used to produce ethanol, methanol and biodiesel. Slag can be processed into building materials.
In the past, the gasification method was difficult to compete with traditional municipal garbage disposal methods.
But gradually mature technology reduces the cost of this method, and the price of energy is also rising.
Now, "the two curves have been intersect - sending garbage to the plasma treatment plant is cheaper than making it into a garbage dump," said Luis Dirceo, director of the Institute of plasma research at Georgia Institute of Technology, Louis (circeo).
2009 in early summer, waste management, a waste disposal giant, began working with inentec, based in Oregon, to put inentec's plasma gasification equipment into commercial use.
They are building large pilot plants in three states of Florida, Louisiana and California, and each plant has more than 1000 tons of refuse disposal capacity per day.
Plasma is not perfect.
Although the toxic heavy metals contained in vitreous slag have passed the EPA's leachable standard (Japan and France used it many years ago as building materials), the community is still doubtful about building such a factory.
The carbon footprint of synthetic gas power generation is smaller than that of coal-fired power generation.
Dirceo said, "using a plasma to treat a ton of garbage is equivalent to reducing the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by two tons."
But this method will increase the net emissions of greenhouse gases.
Zhe Cho admits: "things can't be perfect.
However, the EPA has statistics that if all MSW in the United States is treated by plasma and generate electricity, it will provide 5%~8% of the total electricity demand in the country equivalent to the power generation of about 25 nuclear power plants or all the existing hydropower stations.
It is estimated that by 2020, the daily output of garbage in the United States will reach 1 million tons, so the use of plasma technology to recover some of the energy from the garbage will become more and more important.
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The 13 major technological innovations to change the world (4)
10. cement absorbs carbon dioxide as a sponge.
The production of carbon dioxide from traditional cement production accounts for at least 5% of the world's total emissions, but the use of new materials can produce "carbon neutral" cement.
Novacem, a subsidiary of Imperial College London, University of London, uses two Magnesium Oxide to make cement, which naturally absorbs carbon dioxide during solidification.
The Calera company in California, USA, uses seawater to fix carbon emitted from a nearby power plant into cement.
11. new honeybees
Since 2006, colony collapse failure (CCD) has resulted in the extinction of more than 1/3 bees (see global science 2009 fifth issue: why mysterious bees disappear).
Farmers who used bee pollination to apricot, peach, apple trees and other crops are now counting on a blue orchard wall bee to save the situation.
An efficient orchard wall bee (right picture) has the same pollination range as the sum of 50 common bees, but it is difficult to raise such bees because they prefer to live alone.
These little guys can't completely replace bees, but when scientists struggle with colony collapse failure, they can form a defense line for agricultural safety.
12. salt water crops
With the increasing supply of fresh water in the world and the increasing demand for food, salt tolerant crops will undoubtedly alleviate this burden.
Researchers at Adelaide University in Australia use genetic engineering.
On land, it is easy for people to find maps and tell them where they can do things, but management in the marine field is mixed up with various regulations made by a large number of institutions, and each regulation is only responsible for one aspect.
In the United States, for example, an institution manages commercial fishing, often only responsible for one species at a time; the other is responsible for managing toxic substances; submarine mining is also managed by another organization - and so on, there are nearly 20 management bodies.
Larry B. Crowder, a marine ecologist at Duke University in the US, explains that these institutions tend to act on their own when making decisions, instead of thinking about what other institutions are doing B Larry.
"Imagine how bad it would be if all doctors were faced with a critical illness only when they considered their specialties and never communicated with other colleagues," Claude said. "It would be even worse if the sea was managed like this."
Marine conservationists such as Claude eagerly look forward to a final election of a select committee headed by President Obama of the United States to comprehensively manage 200 nautical miles off the coast of the United States.
The scope of such a project is very large: the United States controls about 11 million 400 thousand square kilometers of sea area, in other words, the territorial sea area of the United States is 25% larger than that of its territory.
In September 2009, the Committee put forward a plan to point out that the best way to minimize the harmful effects of human on the ocean is regionalization instead of special management.
Many environmentalists hope that these plans can be implemented on the ocean, which will give them some influence in areas where they are not affected.
Once a sea area is designated as a resource conservation area, commercial activities such as commercial fishing and mining will be restricted.
But under the current rules and regulations, the protection organization wants to prevent a project that they think is harmful, such as opening a new drilling point in the offshore area. The only way is through expensive litigation.
So far, however, the Select Committee has been cautious in raising the ability of a crop to resist salt accumulation in leaves, allowing the plant to survive in an environment that would have made it wilt.
If the same genetic modification is applied to cereal crops such as rice (map) and wheat, the land damaged by drought or excessive irrigation may become a barn again.
Scientists are conducting experiments.
13. electronics and robots
Omnipotent machine
By using small and ubiquitous sensors, we will be able to perceive the whole physical world, just like we can swim in cyberspace.
In early 2009, Hewlett-Packard Co announced the central nervous system for the earth (cense) project, which plans to deploy 1 trillion tack size sensors on the earth in 10 years.
Technicians say that the information gathered by this ubiquitous sensor network will greatly change our understanding of the world, just as the Internet brings great changes to business.
"People are not aware of the coming new wave," says Paul Saffo. "Now we are entering a new era of perceiving the world, and amazing changes are coming." Paul Safe said.
A large number of sensors, namely "sensing particles", are analyzed and processed by computer, and automatically prompt or even respond directly. This will not only enhance our understanding of nature, but will also bring more revolutionary applications.
For example, a building that can manage its own energy use, a bridge that sends out maintenance requests to engineers automatically when problems arise, a vehicle that tracks traffic patterns and detects traffic jam, and can distinguish whether a house or a dog's family safety system enters the house. These are just a few examples.
So far, cense is the most noticeable item in publicly released projects, but in fact, HP is not the only body to develop this technology of perceiving the world.
Intel is designing a new sensing kit, and many university laboratories are also doing research work.
From the perspective of all developments in this field, the future world will undoubtedly be a world full of sensors.
These sensors are capable of producing rich and reliable data, and they must be reliable enough to adapt to harsh environments.
The sensor suite itself is very small, but it requires enormous computing power.
All the information they collected must be sent to the server cluster for analysis.
Finally, someone must pay for this.
"Economics is a fundamental problem," says Deborah estrin, a computer scientist at the University of California in Losangeles. "Every sensor has its own cost, because sensors need to be maintained, powered and calibrated.
So it's not feasible to spread sensors everywhere. "
In fact, Peter Hartwell, a senior Hewlett-Packard Co researcher (Peter Hartwell), believes that if the cense project wants to achieve the desired goal, the cost of the sensor must be close to zero.
This is why the Hewlett-Packard Co wants to design a new type of sensor. In the past, every kind of data needed a special device to collect.
Hartwell pointed out that the volume of sensors that can perform multiple functions at the same time will be larger than before, but the cost of each data acquisition unit will be reduced.
With it, Hewlett-Packard Co can use a sensor to provide services to different customers at the same time, thereby reducing costs.
Let's take a look at the important application of sensors in engineering projects -- hypersensitive accelerometer.
The sensors integrated in the chip can track the movement of the internal mobile platform relative to other parts of the chip, thus measuring acceleration changes. The accuracy is more than 1000 times higher than that of Nintendo Wii.
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