7 BREAKTHROUGHS FROM 2014 THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

7 Breakthroughs From 2014 That Will Change Your Life
By Logan Ward, Popular Mechanics, 15 October 2014.

Coming soon. Or, soon-ish.

1. A Mind-Controlled Quadcopter

Bin He, a biomedical engineer at the University of Minnesota, made news this year when his grad student, wearing a high-tech hairnet with 64 electrodes, controlled a drone with his brain waves. Aside from being a great party trick, these drones would be a major step toward helping victims of stroke, spinal-cord injury, or neurodegenerative disease.

Expected Arrival: Less than 10 years

2. Instant Disease Screening From a Single Drop of Blood

Anita Goel, a Harvard-trained nanobiophysicist, has designed a handheld diagnostic lab the size of a smartphone. The Gene-RADAR analyzes a single drop of blood or saliva for DNA irregularities that indicate the presence of cancer, deadly viruses, and other diseases. HIV researchers in Rwanda are currently field-testing the first devices.

Expected Arrival: Five years

3. Modular Nuclear Reactors

These days even environmentalists are raising the banner for nuclear power. But two daunting issues remain: safety and cost. José Reyes and his team at Oregon State University dealt with that by creating scalable reactors that are built underground, with operating bays housed in earthquake-proof buildings and systems that shut down and self-cool without additional water or power. The only problem is getting them approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Expected Arrival: More than 10 years

4. High-Efficiency Jet Engines

Fighter jets use gas-guzzling, low-bypass turbofans to generate their enormous thrust. Passenger planes use high-bypass turbofans - far more efficient but not nearly as fast. GE's adaptive-cycle engine, developed by Dan McCormick and his team at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, is a hybrid of the two, with high-power and high-efficiency modes. Air Force adoption would cut 25 percent of their annual jet-fuel use, which accounts for 10 percent of all U.S. aviation consumption.

Expected Arrival: Five years

5. A Custom-Fitted Electronic Heart Wrap

John Rogers at the University of Illinois and Igor Efimov at Washington University hope to bring heart-analyzing technology to the heart itself with a custom-made wire-mesh wrap. This network of more than 30 electrodes can automatically deliver corrective shocks and feed live data wirelessly to doctors, notifying them of danger before physical symptoms even have the chance to manifest in the patient.

Expected Arrival: Five to 10 years

6. A Microscope the Size of a Pushpin That Goes Inside You

Tumour biopsies can have a low degree of accuracy, not to mention a high degree of pain, so Christopher Contag and his team at Stanford University School of Medicine created a subdermal optical device that provides 3D views of living cells. It allows researchers to monitor real-time interactions between immune cells and tumours, providing insight into new therapies.

Expected Arrival: 10 years

7. Self-Assembling Robots

With M-Blocks, MIT grad student John Romanishin hopes to be able to drop self-assembling robots that turn into temporary bridges or go on recon missions in war zones. Tiny flywheels spinning up to 20,000 revolutions per minute allow the blocks to move around before their face-mounted magnets grab hold, forcing them into the designated shape. They have fewer moving parts than other robots and a much greater potential for miniaturization.

Expected Arrival: More than 10 years (but only three for a toy version!)

[Source: Popular Mechanics. Edited. Some links added.]