Author Archives: Editors

Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2020

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Experts highlight advances with the potential to revolutionize industry, health care and society

If some of the many thousands of human volunteers needed to test coronavirus vaccines could have been replaced by digital replicas—one of this year’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies—COVID-19 vaccines might have been developed even faster, saving untold lives. Soon virtual clinical trials could be a reality for testing new vaccines and therapies. Other technologies on the list could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by electrifying air travel and enabling sunlight to directly power the production of industrial chemicals. With “spatial” computing, the digital and physical worlds will be integrated in ways that go beyond the feats of virtual reality. And ultrasensitive sensors that exploit quantum processes will set the stage for such applications as wearable brain scanners and vehicles that can see around corners.

These and the other emerging technologies have been singled out by an international steering group of experts. The group, convened by Scientific American and the World Economic Forum, sifted through more than 75 nominations. To win the nod, the technologies must have the potential to spur progress in societies and economies by outperforming established ways of doing things. They also need to be novel (that is, not currently in wide use) yet likely to have a major impact within the next three to five years. The steering group met (virtually) to whittle down the candidates and then closely evaluate the front-runners before making the final decisions. We hope you are as inspired by the reports that follow as we are.

1. MICRONEEDLES COULD ENABLE PAINLESS INJECTIONS AND BLOOD DRAWS

2. SUN-POWERED CHEMISTRY CAN TURN CARBON DIOXIDE INTO COMMON MATERIALS

3. VIRTUAL PATIENTS COULD REVOLUTIONIZE MEDICINE

4. SPATIAL COMPUTING COULD BE THE NEXT BIG THING

5. DIGITAL MEDICINE CAN DIAGNOSE AND TREAT WHAT AILS YOU

6. ELECTRIC AVIATION COULD BE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

7. LOW-CARBON CEMENT CAN HELP COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE

8. QUANTUM SENSORS COULD LET AUTONOMOUS CARS ‘SEE’ AROUND CORNERS

9. GREEN HYDROGEN COULD FILL BIG GAPS IN RENEWABLE ENERGY

10. WHOLE-GENOME SYNTHESIS WILL TRANSFORM CELL ENGINEERING

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Huawei, 5G, and the Man Who Conquered Noise- by Steven Levy

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How an obscure Turkish scientist’s obscure theoretical breakthrough helped the Chinese tech giant gain control of the future. US telecoms never had a chance.

illustration of a city overlaid with wires cash and technology
ILLUSTRATION: MOJO WANG

(A worth reading article on 5G network war between USA and China. Turkish Scientist, Erdal Arikan, discovered “Polar codes” (backbone of 5G network) to transmit high volume data at high speed and without noise error. He offered to US companies, but they refused, but Chinese company, Huawei, jumped on it. It made Huawei a force to reckon with in 5G network. This is the major friction between USA and China, other trade war is just a noise. f.sheikh)

“Polar codes itself is not what’s important,” Erdal continued. “It is a symbol. 5G is totally different than the internet. It’s like a global nervous system. Huawei is the leading company in 5G. They will be around in 10, 20, 50 years—you cannot say that about the US tech companies. In the internet era, the US produced a few trillion-dollar companies. Because of 5G, China will have 10 or more trillion-dollar companies. Huawei and China now have the lead.”

US companies and the US government can no longer expect to beat China back with threats or indictments, even if they are sometimes warranted. And it’s not just telecom companies like Huawei. For all the furor at the highest levels over whether the teen-oriented social app TikTok presented security issues, the real threat to American business was that its Chinese engineers had devised an AI-powered recommendation engine that Silicon Valley had not matched.

Arıkan says the experience has led him to respect Huawei—and to provide a warning to the country where he learned information theory. “I owe a lot to the US,” he says. “I give you friendly advice: You have to accept this as the new reality and deal with it accordingly.”

To paraphrase Shannon: No one knows the future. But Huawei and China now have a hand in controlling it.

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posted by f.sheikh

Understanding the Trump voters: Here’s why nobody is doing it right-by Nathaniel Manderson

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( Interesting article. It is true that working class poor has not fare well in new economy and is ripe for exploitation by Trump. But no one has the solution, including Trump, how to provide good paying jobs in age of automation when majority of them lack higher education-f.Sheikh)

I‘ve been an evangelical pastor and a teacher in an immigrant community. I’m not shocked Trump did better this time

ased on the last two presidential elections, there is clearly a failure in reporting, polling and understanding of almost half of America. Perhaps liberals would simply like to govern and run for office by only mobilizing their half of the population and overlooking that other half, but I would imagine this country won’t get closer to equal opportunity with that type of thinking. It’s true that much of the divisive language comes from Trump supporters who seems to enjoy Trump’s deplorable approach to life and politics. Does that embody every single person who voted for Donald Trump in the last two elections? If you think that, then you are as lost as the narrow reporting and polling I have witnessed during the last four years.  

My life has brought me across the lives of many other people, which has allowed me to understand the viewpoints of both sides in a more personal and complicated way. I’m a former pastor, and my favorite family in one of my churches was one that actually attended a Glenn Beck rally. Do you realize how kooky you need to be to travel from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., to attend a Glenn Beck rally as a family? Yet I have nothing but warm feelings for them: Best family in the church by far. They were close to each other, kind and down to earth — and as far from me politically as anyone I have ever met. My least favorite family was full of hate, judgment and self-righteousness — yet I agreed with them on every single political issue. In fact, that liberal family is the sole reason I left formal ministry. 

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posted by f.sheikh

The genes we’re dealt-By Erik Parens

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The new field of social genomics can be used by progressives to combat racial inequality or by conservatives to excuse it.

Over the past decade, economists, sociologists and psychologists have begun collaborating with geneticists to investigate how genomic differences among human beings are linked to differences in their behaviours and social outcomes. The insights sought are wide-ranging: why do some of us have a greater sense of subjective wellbeing than others? Why do some go further in school than others? When it comes to income, why do some people earn more and others less?

As surprising as it might be to readers familiar with the history of often-ugly efforts to investigate complex behaviours and outcomes through genetics, some prominent members of this new cohort of researchers are optimistic that their work will advance progressive political agendas. According to the progressive authors of a recent European Commission report, insights from what I call ‘social genomics’ are ‘fully compatible with agendas that aim to combat inequalities and that embrace diversity.’

Indeed, findings from social genomics are compatible with what we in the United States consider Left-leaning agendas to combat inequalities. They are, however, equally compatible with what we think of as Right-leaning agendas that accept – or make peace with – inequalities. Moreover, such findings are as compatible with a Right-leaning version of ‘embracing diversity’ as they are with a Left-leaning one. This should move Left-leaning social genomicists to curb their optimism about the potential of their research to advance their political agendas.

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posted by f.sheikh