Ten New Ideas That Intrigue Us.

By Karen and Erica

The world is active and advancing (in most respects), and full of clever people with grand ideas.  Here is an extremely idiosyncratic list, in no particular order, of ten that fascinated us as we began this new year.

Architecture. We love architecture, and tall, shiny buildings made of concrete and steel and glass. But they are not necessarily environmentally friendly, even when they increase density. New technologies in engineering and construction are making positive changes, and allowing for the creation of amazing structures. We would love to see the platinum LEED-certified Museum of The Future in Dubai, pictured above. It is an entirely new shape, for a structure other than a bangle, with entirely newly designed windows. The museum is intended to showcase innovation facilities and design studios, and to be a repository for ideas not yet conceived. We love that.

The museum’s remarkable facade is a perfectly smooth, joint-free assembly of 1,240 unique stainless-steel-and-fiberglass-fused panels fabricated using methods borrowed from the aviation industry. And it’s not just an eye-catching shape; it’s doing all the real work that any standard building envelope is expected to do.

Net Zero Flight. Commercial planes are not environmentally friendly either, but we humans will not be tied down. So-–we need either to invent a new form of instant travel—here are some excellent ideas–or design new aircraft using new fuels. Engineers are on it! Aircraft company Eviation has launched its Alice plane, using electric propulsion technologies, about which it says: Environmentally friendly, financially and socially sustainable: the Alice heralds a new era of transporting people and goods. It sure is pretty, so we hope it works.

Robots. They’ve been around for a while, but every time we see a video of how a new one moves we are just captivated. Digit is built with bird-like legs and is designed to pick up and stack boxes. That is of course a worthy objective, but the obvious next step is a good looking android that will do cleaning and laundry and maybe even cooking. Will we see one in 2024?

Self-Cleaning Sheets. Really? Made with silver threads, these miracle sheets apparently do not need to be washed more than once every three weeks. And they also apparently allow you to sleep better. Can they be genuine? We have not tested them. Have you? If they work maybe we don’t need a robot. (But we want one.)

CRISPR. We first heard of CRISPR during Covid, when we read a grand book about Jennifer Doudna, a pre-eminent scientist on CRISPR’s front lines. In this video, Doudna describes CRISPR as being like word processing—you can cut and paste genes as you wish to fix anomalies created by bad ones. This gene editing technique was approved for use, and is now actually being deployed, against blood diseases sickle cell anemia and β-thalassaemia. Seems miraculous.

Clinicians administer Casgevy by taking blood-producing stem cells out of the bone marrow of people with either disease, and using CRISPR–Cas9 to edit the genes encoding haemoglobin in those cells. The gene-editing tool relies on an RNA molecule that guides the Cas9 enzyme to the correct region of DNA, which the enzyme cuts.

Celestial holography. This was a completely new concept for us, and we don’t quite get it, but it tickles our imagination because, like Werner Heisenberg, we suspect that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine-–it’s stranger than we can imagine. Here’s a short article which suggests, with scientific force, that we might be living inside a hologram:

The idea that the reality we perceive is projected inward, like a hologram, from a surface that encloses the universe like wrapping paper, is truly a Heisenbergian mind-stretcher. Nevertheless, there are a few deep hints that it might be true. Even if it isn’t true, pretending that it is has provided us with a powerful suite of tools for cracking tough problems and exploring big ideas.

Ultrasound-guided microvehicles. These vehicles actually exist—tiny bubbles that can be directed to deliver drugs to a targeted area of the brain without having negative effects on other areas. The bubbles are 1.5 micrometers in diameter and dissolve after they make delivery. OK, we hope never to need them–but what an astonishing concept.

No cell phone? Tired of carrying your phone everywhere, and feeling compelled constantly to drag it out and see what’s going on? Here’s a tiny device you can pin to your clothes and use with your palm. Will people want it? We do!

It uses voice controls, touch controls, and a camera to sense the wearer’s intentions, and it crafts answers using machine intelligence and displays them on your outstretched hand using a tiny projector. It’s a weird and audacious device that Humane hopes will free its customers from having to carry their phones everywhere.

Listening devices. No, not another set of ear buds, but a small, silicon-enclosed tool that hears the sounds your body makes. It lets you know if you need to pay attention. The tool is already used to monitor tiny preemies, who are too small for a stethoscope, and works well to keep an eye onyour lungs, among other things.

“Lungs can make all sorts of sounds, including crackling, wheezing, rippling and howling,” [Dr. Ankit Bharat, a thoracic surgeon at Northwestern Medicine] said. “It’s a fascinating microenvironment. By continuously monitoring these sounds in real time, we can determine if lung health is getting better or worse and evaluate how well a patient is responding to a particular medication or treatment. Then we can personalize treatments to individual patients.”

Machines designed by sea creatures. Scientists that study sea creatures have come up with extraordinary constructs by inventing machines that mimic those creatures. Here’s a description of just one device:

Octopus tentacles are able to grip a range of objects even smaller than the suckers themselves due to tiny projections called denticles. Inspired by these suckers, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign developed an electrothermal manipulator with a layer of soft hydrogel that is temperature-responsive and can handle fragile, thin tissue for medical treatment, regenerative medicine, and surgery. By replicating this biological strategy, the temperature-responsive hydrogel can grip a thin tissue sheet in just 10 seconds, thereby providing efficient and safe transfer, and avoiding the risk of wrinkling or tissue damage. This also has potential applications in robotics and the automation of manufacturing processes.

We find all of this most exhilarating.

What rousing new ideas have you discovered?