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This puts a new spin on espionage:
The future When you meet someone new, shaking hands won't just be an exchange of pleasantries. You'll also share data directly through your skin contact or through wireless transfer initiated by the contact.... Japanese telecommunications giant NTT DoCoMo has achieved data rates of 10 megabits a second over skin.
I remember in year 10 history, Mr Owens was telling us about spies "dumping" their info and having to pick it up (it was all very technical). Now you can swap info just by accidentally bumping into each other on the train?! O___o;;;
Genetic research is already well advanced, although ongoing ethical debates will shape how it will be implemented. Will we get embryonic gene therapy? Or is it only after birth that any genetic problems can be treated? Best-case scenarios could see us have new organs grown from our own tissue and have cancer treated with a vaccination.
*Cough* This sort of tissue cloning will no doubt have its own long, convoluted, unresolved ethical debate once it becomes a realistic option. Embryonic gene therapy? Sounds like the making of the "Coordinators" to me =/
Why the heck would you treat genetic problems after birth? Orz It's much easier to treat one cell as opposed to millions.
And "genetic research is already well advanced"? If the number of "mechanism currently unknown" I had to write in my immunology essay is any indication, genetic research is best described as...embryonic =P
Cancer treatment with vaccination has been an appealing idea for the last decade, but there are still a lot of limitations to overcome. I'd hate to call it without researching first, but the only realistic "vaccination" is by inoculating the patient with T cells or by somehow stimulating the T cell response. But T cells are highly discriminatory, while cancer cells are highly diverse (meaning, there's no magic key that'll zap all cancer cells into non-existence).
...And we have a trouble enough stimulating a good T cell response against some of our curable diseases, like tuberculosis. And non-curable diseases, like HIV =/
I think a lot of people got really excited two decades or so ago, when we first stepped into genetic-based studies, of creating some sort of disease-free utopia on Earth once we understand everything that happens in diseases.
Unfortunately, in the last decade, the more we understand, the less likely it's getting. Health is all about balance, and this balance is never fully dependent on genetics.
......Ugh. That's all I'm about to say on the future of health. The rest of the future looks much more delightful. Glowing tablecloths? I want one! XD
PS: Okay, I had to put in a word for this:
When you pull up to refuel your car the smell of petrol is no longer in the air. Now it's a real "gas" station, pumping hydrogen.
Umm. I haven't done chem since first year, so things might have changed. But. I thought the biggest problem that hydrogen, despite being a highly efficient (?) fuel, was never used as fuel because......................
It's explosive?!?!
Although apparently the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen into water produces a lot of energy......
...I'll shut up before I dig myself a bigger hole.
The future When you meet someone new, shaking hands won't just be an exchange of pleasantries. You'll also share data directly through your skin contact or through wireless transfer initiated by the contact.... Japanese telecommunications giant NTT DoCoMo has achieved data rates of 10 megabits a second over skin.
I remember in year 10 history, Mr Owens was telling us about spies "dumping" their info and having to pick it up (it was all very technical). Now you can swap info just by accidentally bumping into each other on the train?! O___o;;;
Genetic research is already well advanced, although ongoing ethical debates will shape how it will be implemented. Will we get embryonic gene therapy? Or is it only after birth that any genetic problems can be treated? Best-case scenarios could see us have new organs grown from our own tissue and have cancer treated with a vaccination.
*Cough* This sort of tissue cloning will no doubt have its own long, convoluted, unresolved ethical debate once it becomes a realistic option. Embryonic gene therapy? Sounds like the making of the "Coordinators" to me =/
Why the heck would you treat genetic problems after birth? Orz It's much easier to treat one cell as opposed to millions.
And "genetic research is already well advanced"? If the number of "mechanism currently unknown" I had to write in my immunology essay is any indication, genetic research is best described as...embryonic =P
Cancer treatment with vaccination has been an appealing idea for the last decade, but there are still a lot of limitations to overcome. I'd hate to call it without researching first, but the only realistic "vaccination" is by inoculating the patient with T cells or by somehow stimulating the T cell response. But T cells are highly discriminatory, while cancer cells are highly diverse (meaning, there's no magic key that'll zap all cancer cells into non-existence).
...And we have a trouble enough stimulating a good T cell response against some of our curable diseases, like tuberculosis. And non-curable diseases, like HIV =/
I think a lot of people got really excited two decades or so ago, when we first stepped into genetic-based studies, of creating some sort of disease-free utopia on Earth once we understand everything that happens in diseases.
Unfortunately, in the last decade, the more we understand, the less likely it's getting. Health is all about balance, and this balance is never fully dependent on genetics.
......Ugh. That's all I'm about to say on the future of health. The rest of the future looks much more delightful. Glowing tablecloths? I want one! XD
PS: Okay, I had to put in a word for this:
When you pull up to refuel your car the smell of petrol is no longer in the air. Now it's a real "gas" station, pumping hydrogen.
Umm. I haven't done chem since first year, so things might have changed. But. I thought the biggest problem that hydrogen, despite being a highly efficient (?) fuel, was never used as fuel because......................
It's explosive?!?!
Although apparently the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen into water produces a lot of energy......
...I'll shut up before I dig myself a bigger hole.
