So for this scholarship I'm applying for there is an essay question asking that we discuss what we feel will be the most important advancement in engineering in the next 25 years. The essay will be judged on whether they agree, your insight into the subject, and the understanding of the widespread application of ideas.
So, thus far I have compiled a few ideas as to what I think may happen in the next 25 years:
Near room-temperature superconductors
Memristors
Devices making clean water available worldwide
Fusion Reactors
Genetically modified retroviruses as treatment for all sorts of diseases
Ditto for Bacteria
Something making MRIs cheaper (not sure what it would be)
This would be a good topic to start discussing. If any of the other Eng. Students would like to know about the scholarship just speak up and I'll post the link.
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5 comments:
"Ditto for Bacteria"
Yeah my parents actually built a lab in our basement, and are developing a bacteria that can block the transmission of HIV. (however it's not technically "engineering", sorry)
The website is here:
lavaxhealth.com
So, this post was really interesting but being not an electronics kind of person as it seems you are Carter, I had to look up a lot of these. I think the retrovirus one is the coolest although i don't exactly understand how it would work. Could somebody bother to explain? Would we create a helpful virus that destroys the dangerous viruses...therefore mutating with it and taking away the vast amounts of constant R&D costs needed to develop new drugs? I looked up the memristors and although not booting up your comp sounds fun, i don't see the big deal about it...care to explain?
I would think modifying retroviruses for treating ailments would be somewhat dangerous because of the high rate of mutations. If after the the treatment is finished you want to terminate the progeny of the retrovirus wouldn't that be really hard to do? You can't rely on retroviral drugs, because those would only suppress the cycle, and you can't rely on your immune system because of the high mutability. More over, there is the danger of the attenuated retrovirus reactivating (if using a human retrovirus to start off with)
I might be wrong, so if any opposing opinions, I'd be interested in discussing.
K.Tao - I think if I wanted it enough I could put an engineering label on absolutely anything. It's a pretty loose definition. I am disappointed, however, that the link doesn't work. I just get a godaddy page telling me that they do, in fact, host the site. Worthless.
Ok, about retroviruses - naturally we're dealing with something volatile. HIV, for example, is a retrovirus. In mentioning it I made the assumption that in 25 years we would have determined and thus controlled a few more variables associated with them. I think the best purpose for them would really be in vaccines. The better we can manufacture a virus, the better we can make one with similar DNA to something that we really want to avoid. I'm not sure if it's a retrovirus or just a weak form of the virus, but a vaccine for HPV came out in the last few years. If they could vaccinate people from AIDS I'm pretty sure I would instantly become more of a whore than you could even fathom. I'm excited. Maybe I'm using a bit of a misnomer when I say retroviruses, I just assume that DNA implantation is a large part of it.
Ok, memristors: I asked Roshan the same question I asked here and he brought up memristors. The wiki article was entirely too mathematical for me to figure out what the big deal was. I'm not the type to look at an ODE and say "holy shit! that does that?!" so I just asked Roshan. Basically a memristor can do the job of an entire logic gate at about the same size as one component. So you have a choice to make chips about 10 times smaller or 10 times faster. The current memsistors aren't quite 10x efficient, but I believe it is in the mathematical model as a possibility. Basically you'd get both supercomputers that are in danger of becoming skynet and the sweet phone from zoolander from the same device. Sound sweet?
for a minute, i thought you meant "eng" like "English," aka the acme of perfection - then i realized you can't speak or read or write so it was engineering.
CHEERS.
- Xu
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