What scientific and tech pursuits do you think will dominate and make breakthroughs this year?

3-D motion sensing, hands-free control technology.
Image credit to the Royal United Services Institute

We've spent just one month in 2014, and still have eleven months to go. A whole lot can happen in eleven months, especially in the world of science and technology. So my dear friends all over the world, I want to hear your own say as regards what areas in science and technology and their applications that have high prospects making waves this year; you can talk on the scientific and tech endeavours that will likely make the most impact on your region (where you're living), your job, area of academic pursuit, the gadgets you use and any other thing that'll help make life easier for you.

For me, the first area that I'm looking at is healthcare delivery sector (don't blame me for choosing it first 'cos  I'm training to be a medical doctor). The area of regenerative medicine will witness breakthroughs this year because of the promising works going on and even some good results already documented in the past year in stem cell science, especially the birth of the Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Technology; and of course gene therapy (the use healthy genes to replace faulty genes behind diseases like sickle cell anaemia, some age-related bindness that result from the defectiveness of genes in the light-sensitive cells of the retina--in fact researchers at the Oxford University reported in the journal Lancet of their breakthrough trials in which they improved the visions of patients who were on the brink of going blind by replacing faulty genes in their retina with healthy copies--and so on). I'm very optimistic these two areas I mentioned in medicine will make significant progress before this year.

Gene and Stem Cell Therapy Modalities. Image credit to Stem Genex

Another area I'm looking forward to is the hands-free motion gesture technology for smartphones and smart TVs, with companies like Apple acquiring the 3-D motion sensor firm PrimeSense and Samsung introducing some motion gesture technologies on its latest flagship smartphones and TVs. 2014 will see a prolific rise in the encroachment of this hands-free control technology in many areas we may not even think of now but that will definitely make how we operate in these areas much easier.

What are your expectations as regards this piece this year; what areas are you optimistic will witness massive upgrade? Your response, opinions, comments and criticisms are highly invaluable, appreciated and welcomed.

Faster than the speed of light: the Non-Conservative Scientist

Faster than Light. Image credit to Tibco

Mindridge University of Physics in the country of Zerusylnia was famed all over the world for its many scientific breakthroughs in physics and which found countless applications in various areas of industry.

Professor Brecknard Musfield was an eminent physicist in the School of Nuclear –Atomic Physics, Mindridge University of Physics, and he had won the Nobel Prize in Physics three times for his exceptionally basic and fundamental research works in nuclear and atomic physics. He was a gifted teacher and was admired by all his students. Professor Brecknard Musfield was among the many eminent physicists who believed that once any theory or law has been established in physics it was very difficult to challenge or subject to change.

Into the zone of limitlessness-the Super Light speed. Image credit to Planet Science

This was the only problem Mr. Throdert Rinth, a final year student of Nuclear-Atomic Physics at Mindridge University of Physics, had with Professor Brecknard Musfield.

‘No theory or law in science, no matter how established, is absolute’, he would tell Professor Musfield whenever such discussion arose in any of their lectures.

‘Listen my lad, once anything has been established---in science, in physics---it is very difficult to challenge it; more so, it can never be changed .Why? Because these scientific theories and laws are the cornerstone of inventions, innovations and discoveries’, the white-haired Professor would reply in his cool, confident manner.

‘They cannot be subjected to change provided the inventions and innovations made using them as a backbone remained within their elastic limits. But when you begin to imagine similar inventions and discoveries that could be made by exceeding their elastic limits, you now see that these established scientific theories and laws can be subjected to modification’, Mr. Throdert countered on one occasion of such discussion. There was silence in the large lecture theatre; most of the students had not expected such reply. Even the Professor was short of words for a few seconds. Then he looked at Mr. Throdert from above the rim of his glasses.

‘I know that some theories can be modified, like that of Dalton was’, he said. ‘But what do you mean by exceeding the elastic limits of these scientific theories and laws?’

‘Would you agree with me that there may exist or may be generated a radiation that can travel faster than light?’ said Mr. Throdert. There were scattered murmurings among the other students in the class.

‘Thereby changing the Special Theory of Relativity by Professor Albert Einstein?’ Professor Brecknard asked, looking at this student who was still a toddler in physics.

‘Yes Professor. And why do I ask this? If you think of superfast telecommunication, superfast internet and so on, you’ll agree with me that the current maximum constant speed of electromagnetic radiation requires an upgrade’.

‘You must be out of your mind. If you think that you can change the Special Theory of Relativity you’re wasting your time: nothing, no particle can travel faster than light; even highly energized electrons reach a maximum speed beyond which they cannot exceed no matter the increment in energy--at this point energy and mass becomes interconvertible so that any additional energy input makes the electrons more massive without increasing their speed’. Many of his mates thought Throdert was out of his mind to argue with the Professor.

Mr. Throdert could say no more. But as he walked to his room that day, he began to see an oasis in the desert of discovering or developing a wave-particle that can travel faster than light.

‘Maybe this will be my focus in my postgraduate studies’, he said to himself. ‘It will solve a myriad of problems’

.

Mr. Throdert Rinth graduated with a first class honours in Nuclear-Atomic Physics at the age of 23.His dream of doing his postgraduate studies at Mindridge University of Physics was dashed when his research proposal---“Generating a Wave-Particle with Super-Light Speed”---was rejected. He was told to choose another research proposal but he refused.

‘You’re very stubborn’, Professor Brecknard Musfield told him on one of the days they met at Mindridge University Postgraduate School administrative complex. ‘You think if this was feasible nobody would have embarked on it. You have a great career ahead of you; be wise my lad’.

After about a month of trying and not succeeding to convince Mindridge, Mr. Throdert decided to try other Universities’ postgraduate schools and physics research institutes in Zerusylnia. All the postgraduate schools and virtually all the physics research institute he applied rejected the research proposal because they considered it non-feasible and what would be a waste of resources to attempt.

In the fifth month of his search, the Research Institute of Nuclear-Atomic Physics in Madizania state of Zerusylnia accepted his research proposal. The Institute was headed by an eminent physicist and Nobel laureate, Professor Rudojan Drischy. Professor Rudojan was among the very few eminent physicists who were still non-conservative and open-minded about anything in science.

‘Anything in science is subject to change because it is in change that we come to see that our mind, capability, science and physics----may have no limits within the human context’, he would always tell his students.

Mr. Throdert started his research work at once. For next five years, he researched and experimented on light beams and other electromagnetic radiations. He visited various parts of the world to collect samples of radioactive elements for his studies. By the end of the sixth year, he had not yet come up with any clue; even Professor Drischy started becoming sceptical about the feasibility of this research.

However, in the fourth month of the seventh year of his stay at the Institute, Mr. Throdert stumbled on something. While studying energized light beams and other radiations, he found out that below the constant speed of light, the energy of these beams and radiations had two segments----one segment of the energy contributed to increase their frequencies and the other segment contributed to increase in their wavelenghts; but as the radiations approached the constant speed of light, their  wavelenght-energy diminished while their frequency-energy increased, corresponding to the very high frequencies and very small wavelenghts observed at the speed of light; any further energizing beyond this point made the radiations more massive.

‘If I can find a way of independently manipulating each of these segmental radiation energies, then I can increase them, obtaining a radiation with a very high frequency and large wavelenght and travelling at a super-light speed’, he reasoned.

And this he worked towards. After another four years, he invented a device called “Wave-Energy Dissector” that allowed him to achieve his target. This new radiation Mr. Throdert called “mutaradiaton”[a mutated electromagnetic radiation], and its speed was five times that of normal light radiation. Three years later, he also built devices that used resonance frequency and interference of wave principles to show that mutaradiaton existed in nature.These accomplishments got him a doctorate degree in nuclear-atomic physics  from the Institute.

Mutaradiaton became indispensable in may areas, especially in intergalaxy space probe communication; it made telecommunication and the internet ultrafast, giving rise to Tenth Generation UltraComm Evolution Network (10G UCE Network), that offered internet speed in the range of hundreds of terabytes per second download.

Three years later, Dr.Throdert Rinth was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Physics, at the age of 40.One of the distinguished guests at the award ceremony was Professor Brecknard Musfield who was now the president of the World Academy of Physicists, the highest board of physicists in the world.

‘Now I believe you, Dr. Throdert Rinth, that when inventions and discoveries that exceed the elastic limits of current estblishished scientific theories  need to be made, then there is a need to subject these scientific principles to modification because the human mind is virtually limitless. And I believe this is a new dimension for the scientific community. I am now a convert of open-minded scientce’, Professor Brecknard concluded in his address. There were many rounds of applause from every corner of the golden-lit auditorium.

‘Thank you, my teacher’, Dr. Throdert began in the closing remarks of his Nobel address. ‘I want to say that theories and conventions in science are established to make us develop further by challenging their limits. Thank you all my teachers at the great Mindridge University of Physics; and thank you, my supervisor, Professor Rudojan Drischy for your patience and faith in one of the things you strongly believe in. God bless the physics community; God bless the scientific community; God bless you all; and God bless the whole world’.There was a a standing ovation for this great physics genius as he left the podium.

Two years later, Dr. Throdert Rinth was appointed a professor of Nuclear-Atomic Physics at the Mindridge University of Physics.He was also elected a Distinguished Fellow of the World Academy of Physicists.

Smart Energy Efficiency: The Insight I Got from my Radiology Clinical Posting.

Teletherapy Simulation Room, College of Medicine, University College Hospital and University of Ibadan, Ibadan.

 In med school, we rotate from one department to another, spending approximately two months in majority of the rotations/postings. I have enjoyed quite a few of them---Internal Medicine I, Surgery I,Ophthalmology, and most recently Radiology.

We spent just one week in this department, learning the various equipment that use radiation and sound waves to diagnose patients (to identify the cause of the symptoms of their disease conditions) and the principles underlying each of these imaging modalities as we call them in medicine. Believe me there's a lot of physics behind their working mechanisms; and this one thing should make you very cautious: the inevitable exposure to dangerous radiations such as x-rays, gamma rays, alpha particles, neutrons and so on which can cause cancer, loss of hair on the skin, cataract (leading to blindness). But hey, the partial comfort here is that there are high occupational safety measures taken before one starts working with those rayey and wavy guys.

On the other hand, my intent of sharing this with you is to lay bare an insight I had during the clinical posting. While we were being taught in a practical demonstration in the CT (Computerized Tomography) suite one day by one of the resident radiologists something caught my attention. He talked about the principle by which the X-ray machine and CT machine generate x-rays used for imaging patients (the William Roentgen experiment of cathode rays-electrons- hitting the anode to give off an unknown radiation---of course we were taught this superficially in secondary school and in a more broad perspective in our first year in the university when we did the basic sciences---and an enormous amount of heat). In fact, 99% of the total electrical voltage used to accelerate the electrons from the cathode to the anode are converted to heat and only 1% generate the x-rays. Resources are spent in the form of cooling units to cool the machine to prevent its breakdown from such enormous heat generated. I could hear myself saying to me: "this is a waste of resources and may be a lack of deeper consideration".

In this current age of ours when technology has woven its webs and threads into virtually every tunnel of our endeavour; in this age that has given birth to ingenious technological applications from the science of thermoelectricity (conversion of heat energy into electrical energy); and I thought: "we should harness the potential of this weapon of thermoelectricity to stop this waste in x-ray machines.

Dance floor tiles generating electricity for the hall. Image credit to Newlaunches

And so my insight, and I'm throwing it as a challenge to those out there in the thermoelectric science and technology industry, is this: we can devise a way to turn this wasted 99%-generated heat energy into other useful forms of energy. One way could be to couple the area in the machine where this heat is generated with a new thermoelectric material invented by researchers at the Ohio State University. The material engineered at the nanoscale level (one-billionth of a metre) consists of an element thallium which has been integrated into a compound lead telluride; it works by using heat to generate electrons that act as the fuel which it uses to generate electricity. This has already been demonstrated in cars by researchers at the California Institute of Technology. Another way is to create an entirely different method that could be more efficient than the Ohio State University material because the thallium-lead telluride technology is pending patent registration.

Smart floors of the future. Image credit to taringas

As technology expands we become more efficient in everything we do, including the generation, use and recycling of energy because energy can neither be created nor destroyed but can be converted from one form to another. A UK company, Pavegen, invented floor tiles that generate electricity by people walking on them: they were installed in some railway stations in London during the 2012 Olympic games, which were powered by the millions of people walking on them to board trains to the various games venues. Also, American students at Harvard University (one a Nigerian) recently invented a football, Soccket ball, that generates electricity from the kinetic energy it acquires after being played for minutes. So, I believe this efficiency can equally be replicated in this case of x-ray-generating machines such that we wouldn't be wasting resources again to waste a very useful resource.  

SciTech Gist Celebrity of the Week: Professor Shinya Yamanaka

Professor Shinya Yamanaka was born 52 years ago in  Higashiōsaka Japan. In 1987, he earned his MD from Kobe University and PhD from Osaka City University in 1993, all in Japan. Shinya Yamanaka started his residency in orthopaedic surgery at the National Osaka Hospital, spending only two years (1987 to 1989) after which he pulled out, one likely reason being that at one point he could not remove a benign tumour from a patient after spending one hour in the theatre, whereas a skilled surgeon could do so in roughly ten minutes. In fact, some colleagues at the hospital mocked him, calling him an obstacle to the medical profession.

Professor Yamanaka's Lab at the Gladstone Institute. Image credit to University of California San Francisco 

Having pulled out of residency, he decided to come to the US where he spent three years (1993 to 1996) at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. By the end of 1996, he returned to Japan and took up the position of an assistant professor at Osaka City University Medical School; instead of doing research, he found himself looking after mice in the lab.

Still determined to pursue his dream founded on an insight he had on stem cells (cells that have not undergone any differentiation to take up specialized forms such as skin cells,heart cells and so on), he took up a stem cell research job at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in 1999. And for the next six to seven years he worked on stem cells pioneering a new technique he called Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell technology (iPS cell) which involves the reversal of a fully differentiated and specialized cell, like a mature heart cell called cardiomyocyte, back to a pluripotent stem cell similar to those in the embryo (a 7-day old fertilized egg in the womb) and which can now be re-transformed into a different kind of specialized cell, like a skin cell.

The application of this breakthrough in stem cell biology quickly spread like wild fire in different areas of the medical field, presenting a whole new base for the study of degenerative diseases like Alzheimer, Parkinson and so on, whose development and progression were poorly understood because of the limitations in the current techniques employed in studying them. For instance, I can take a neuron (brain cell) from  an Alzheimer patient (one whose brain cells are progressively dying), reverse it back to a stem cell and re-transform it to any other cell type: in doing this, I can observe the actual changes at the genetic and molecular level which occurred in this neuron with the onset and progression of the disease by comparing its genetic framework with that of a normal neuron from the same patient. This iPS cell technology has already started revealing very potent targets of drug development for some of these incurable diseases, raising hopes for their treatment. Also, this technology has helped provide an alternative to the use of embryonic stem cells for many research purposes in the field of regenerative medicine, circumventing ethical issues surrounding the use of human embryos for research: basically, if I want to use stem cells for my research, all I have to do is get cells from any part of the body--hair, skin, saliva--and reprogramme them to stem cells.

And for this novel breakthrough, Professor Shinya Yamanaka was jointly awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize

Professor Yamanaka receiving the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine from His Majesty King Carl XVI of Sweden. Image credit to the Nobel Assembly

in Medicine or Physiology with Sir Professor John Gurdon, a Cell Biologist at the University of Cambridge, who pioneered the technique of cloning animals from non gamete cells. In 2013, he received the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, an award by Facebook, Google and a genetics company 23andMe.

Google launches smart contact lens

The year 2014 will be the opening door for wearable smart devices, many tech analysts and experts say. Prequel to this, tech giants like Samsung and Sony launched their smartwatches last year. Samsung before that, introduced some compatible wearable accessories such as the S Band and Heart Rate Monitor for their galaxy S4 last year June.

Google Smart contact lens. Image credited to Muktware

Google has not been left out in this elite group as they released the beta version of their Google Glass, a smart eye glass that functions by responding to vocal commands and which will be out in the market probably before this year runs out. And now it has taken its prowess in the wearable technology sector to another level when it announced a few days ago that it was testing a prototype smart contact lens.

The smart contact lens has the healthcare sector as its main focus of application according to the BBC. The smart contact lens will use a tiny wireless chip and glucose sensor embedded in two layers of lens materials to measure and record per second glucose levels in tears; and an integrated tiny LED (light emitting diode) light would signal to indicate when glucose levels have passed certain healthy benchmarks, especially in diabetic individuals.

Google Glass. Image credited to Wikimedia

One in ten people of the world's population will have diabetes by 2035 according to the estimates from the International Diabetes Federation. And with this potential technology many catastrophic incidents from sudden rise or drops in glucose levels will be averted as the suffering individuals would have a portable real-time per second reading of their glucose level because this smart contact lens will work with an application on smartphones and tablets; this also means that these individuals' physicians will constantly monitor their patients via smartphones and tablets.

Though this project is still in the experimental stages, Google said its working with the US Food and Drug Administration and other partners (to develop apps) to make it available in the market.

IBM Set to Take Humanoid Computing to the next Level

IBM Watson Supercomputer.

IBM BlueGeneP Supercomputer.

IBM Watson Supercomputer.

 Computing technology firm, IBM are making plans to explore the virtually limitless potential of its supercomputer named Watson after its former president Thomas Watson and which was built in 2005 by the firm's DeepQA project. The supercomputer defeated its human rivals in the America's Favorite Quiz Show, Jeopardy TV game show; and the supercomputer has been shown to compute substantial chunks of information at a rate faster than the human brain.

According to a report on the BBC news site, IBM has earmarked about $1 billion to create a new division solely for the supercomputer. The company aims to harness the supercomputer's capabilities in mimicking how people think (using natural language and analytics) and understanding language complexities and learning from  experience, to develop faster and smarter software solutions for businesses and individuals.

Emerging area of immediate application, according to expert opinion, is healthcare where medical professionals will likely access the supercomputer's gigantic cloud computing database, Softlayer, using smartphones that are linked wirelessly to their diagnostic equipment.

A non-invasive, bloodless malaria test developed.

Researchers at the Rice University, Texas USA, led by Dmitri O. Lapotko, have designed a rapid non-invasive test for malaria, which uses harmless laser pulses, and neither requires drawing blood sample with a needle and syringe nor any reagent. Studies were first carried out on mice; and clinical trials on humans would likely have started .

The research work published on 27th November, 2013 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, detailed how the scientists harnessed the high optical absorbance of hemozoin, the breakdown product of haemoglobin digestion by the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum in red blood cells, to safe laser beams to generate a picosecond-long localized vapour nanobubble around the hemozoin nanoparticles. These vapour nanobubbles called Hemozoin-generated Vapour Nanobubbles carry an acoustic (sound) signature that can be detected by a nanosensor called optical detector. The overall procedure involved attaching a fibre optic probe to the earlobe of a mouse; this probe sent laser pulses through the skin of the earlobe, and in 20 seconds the nanosensor recorded the acoustic signature obtained, detecting the presence of malaria parasite even when only one red blood cell in a million was infected, with no false positives according to the technology's inventor, Dmitri O. Lapotko.

And according to a report on the New York Times, the technology can be powered by a car battery through a device that is tough enough to work in hot and dusty rural areas , which could transform malaria diagnosis especially in endemic areas of the world by effortlessly screening one person every 20 seconds for less than half a dollar ( N75.00 in Nigeria) down from the current finger-pricking 15 minute-long test which costs more than a dollar.

Cambridge University scientists print new retinal cells

A group of scientists from University of Cambridge John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, the Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, and the Eye Department, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, has, for the first time, successfully printed two types of retinal cells from adult rats--ganglion cells and glial cells--using a piezoelectric inkjet printer, a type 3-D printing technique known as bioprinting. These two cells, while functioning to relay information from the eye to certain areas of the brain, support and protect the retinal neurons, the cones and rods. The research published on 17th December, 2013 in the journal Biofabrication showed that the printed retinal cells were able to retain their healthy growth and survival in culture

. The scientists who stated that the work was still preliminary hope to carry out more extensive research to perfect their findings, including extending the inkjet bioprinting technology to the light-sensitive photoreceptor cells of the retina responsible for sight, before beginning any human clinical trials that will aim to treat blindness resulting from damage to the nerve cells of the retina.

You're welcomed

$10 billion Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Lab Switzerland  

I'm so excited to launch this blog.The idea has been brewing on my mind for quite a very long time now. The world would not have witnessed so much progress were it not for the great advances in the fields of science and technology and their extended applied fields. Science and its myriads of applications fascinate and will keep on inspiring me. Hence, this a tool I have designed to share this love and passion with you all. Your constructive comments and criticisms are most welcomed.