{"id":28064,"date":"2019-03-21T08:39:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T00:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/?p=28064"},"modified":"2019-03-21T08:39:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T00:39:26","slug":"ten-big-global-challenges-technology-could-solve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/2019\/03\/21\/ten-big-global-challenges-technology-could-solve\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten big global challenges technology could solve"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

None is easy, but all are incredibly important.<\/strong>
\nby The Editors February 27, 2019<\/p>\n

\nCarbon sequestration<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Cutting greenhouse-gas emissions alone won\u2019t be enough to prevent sharp increases in global temperatures. We\u2019ll also need to remove vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which not only would be incredibly expensive but would present us with the thorny problem of what to do with all that CO2. A growing number of startups are exploring ways of recycling carbon dioxide into products, including synthetic fuels, polymers, carbon fiber, and concrete. That\u2019s promising, but what we\u2019ll really need is a cheap way to permanently store the billions of tons of carbon dioxide that we might have to pull out of the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Grid-scale energy storage<\/h3>\n

Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are becoming cheap and more widely deployed, but they don\u2019t generate electricity when the sun\u2019s not shining or wind isn\u2019t blowing. That limits how much power these sources can supply, and how quickly we can move away from steady sources like coal and natural gas. The cost of building enough batteries to back up entire grids for the days when renewable generation flags would be astronomical. Various scientists and startups are working to develop cheaper forms of grid-scale storage that can last for longer periods, including flow batteries or tanks of molten salt. Either way, we desperately need a cheaper and more efficient way to store vast amounts of electricity.<\/p>\n

\nUniversal flu vaccine<\/h3>\n

Pandemic flu is rare but deadly. At least 50 million people died in the 1918 pandemic of H1N1 flu. More recently, about a million people died in the 1957-\u201958 and 1968 pandemics, while something like half a million died in a 2009 recurrence of H1N1. The recent death tolls are lower in part because the viruses were milder strains. We might not be so lucky next time\u2014a particularly potent strain of the virus could replicate too quickly for any tailor-made vaccine to effectively fight it. A universal flu vaccine that protected not only against the relatively less harmful variants but also against a catastrophic once-in-a-century outbreak is a crucial public health challenge.<\/p>\n

\nDementia treatment<\/h3>\n

More than one in 10 Americans over the age of 65 has Alzheimer\u2019s; a third of those over 85 do. As people\u2019s life spans lengthen, the number of people living with the disease\u2014in the US and around the world\u2014is likely to skyrocket. Alzheimer\u2019s remains poorly understood: conclusive diagnoses are possible only after death, and even then, doctors debate the distinction between Alzheimer\u2019s and other forms of dementia. However, advances in neuroscience and genetics are beginning to shed more light. That understanding is providing clues to how it might be possible to slow or even shut down the devastating effects of the condition.<\/p>\n

\nOcean clean-up<\/h3>\n

Billions of tiny pieces of plastic\u2014so-called \u201cmicroplastics\u201d\u2014are now floating throughout the world\u2019s oceans. Much of this waste comes from bags or straws that have been broken up over time. It\u2019s poisoning birds, fish, and humans. Researchers fear that the effects on both human health and the environment will be profound, and it may take centuries to clean up the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic that have accumulated over the decades. Because the pollution is so diffuse, it\u2019s difficult to clean up, and while there are prototype methods for tackling the massive oceanic garbage patches, there is no solution for coasts, seas, and waterways.<\/p>\n

\nEnergy-efficient desalination<\/h3>\n

There is about 50 times as much salt water on earth as there is fresh water. As the world\u2019s population grows and climate change intensifies droughts, the need for fresh water is going to grow more acute. Israel has built the world\u2019s biggest reverse-osmosis desalination facilities and now gets most of its household water from the sea, but that method is too energy intensive to be practical worldwide. New types of membranes might help; electrochemical techniques may also help to make brackish water useful for irrigation. As far as climate-change adaptation technologies go, creating drinking water from the ocean ought to be a top priority.<\/p>\n

\nSafe driverless car<\/h3>\n

Autonomous vehicles have been tested for millions of miles on public roads. Pilot programs for delivery and taxi services are under way in places like the suburbs of Phoenix. But driverless cars still aren\u2019t ready to take over roads in general. They have trouble handling chaotic traffic, and difficulty with weather conditions like snow and fog. If they can be made reliably safe, they might allow a wholesale reimagining of transportation. Traffic jams might be eliminated, and cities could be transformed as parking lots give way to new developments. Above all, self-driving cars, if widely deployed, are expected to eliminate most of the 1.25 million deaths a year caused by traffic accidents.<\/p>\n

\nEmbodied AI<\/h3>\n

Last fall a video of Atlas, designed by Boston Dynamics, swept the internet. It showed the robot jumping up steps like a commando. This came only two years after AlphaGo beat the world\u2019s best Go player. Atlas can\u2019t play Go (it is embodied, but not intelligent), and AlphaGo can\u2019t run (it\u2019s intelligent, in its own way, but lacks a body). So what happens if you put AlphaGo\u2019s mind in Atlas\u2019s body? Many researchers say true general artificial intelligence might depend on an ability to relate internal computational processes to real things in the physical world, and that an AI would acquire that ability by learning to interact with the physical world as people and animals do.<\/p>\n

We can predict hurricanes days and sometimes weeks in advance, but earthquakes still come as a surprise. Predicting them with confidence could save millions of lives.<\/p>\n

Earthquake prediction<\/h3>\n

Over 100,000 people died in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami\u2014triggered by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded\u2014killed nearly a quarter of a million people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and elsewhere. We can predict hurricanes days and sometimes weeks in advance, but earthquakes still come as a surprise. Predicting earthquakes with some confidence over the medium term would allow planners to figure out durable solutions. At least giving a few hours\u2019 warning would allow people to evacuate unsafe areas, and could save millions of lives.<\/p>\n

\nBrain decoding<\/h3>\n

Our brains remain a deep mystery to neuroscientists. Everything we think and remember, and all our movements, must somehow be coded in the billions of neurons in our heads. But what is that code? There are still many unknowns and puzzles in understanding the way our brains store and communicate our thoughts. Cracking that code could lead to breakthroughs in how we treat mental disorders like schizophrenia and autism. It might allow us to improve direct interfaces that communicate directly from our brains to computers, or even to other people\u2014a life-changing development for people who are paralyzed by injury or degenerative disease.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

None is easy, but all are incredibly important. by The Editors February 27, 2019 Carbon sequestration Cutting greenhouse-gas emissions alone won\u2019t be enough to prevent sharp increases in global temperatures. We\u2019ll also need to remove vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which not only would be incredibly expensive but would present us with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6541,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-howto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6541"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28065,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28064\/revisions\/28065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/nurazaliah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}