Electrochemical cells can absorb carbon in the atmosphere and convert it into electric energy.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone is not enough to stop global warming. Now, we must remove some carbon dioxide that already exists in the atmosphere. The good news is that there are many ways to do this; The bad news is that these methods basically consume a lot of energy.

The ideal carbon sequestration technology can generate electricity instead of consuming energy. In a paper published in Science Progress in July, 20 16, researchers Wadi Al Sadat and Lyndon Archer of Cornell University in the United States described the design of an electrochemical battery that can capture carbon dioxide.

The anode material of the battery is aluminum, which has low cost, large reserves and easy processing. The anode is made of porous carbon, into which researchers inject a mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Aluminum, oxygen and carbon dioxide react inside the battery to generate electricity and aluminum oxalate. Sadat and Archer said that during the life cycle of a 1.4 volt battery, the carbon absorbed by the battery is 2.5 times that released when the battery is manufactured.

Archer said that he and his colleagues still have a long way to go to turn this design into practical technology. First, they need to prove that the technology is cost-effective and scalable. Archer predicts that if they can successfully realize this transformation, this battery will be equipped on power stations and automobile exhaust pipes in the future.

2. Brand new antibiotics

The method of designing new compounds can be used to fight drug-resistant bacteria.

It is hard to imagine a world without antibiotics, but we are approaching such a world because of the large-scale abuse of antibiotics. According to the national centers for disease control and prevention, in the United States alone, more than 23,000 people die each year from bacterial infections that antibiotics cannot cope with. A study funded by the British government estimates that by 2050, 654.38+0 billion people worldwide will die of drug-resistant bacteria every year. Scientists are trying to find new drugs that can kill superbugs, such as macrolide antibiotics.

Miles and his team found a way to synthesize macrolides. In order to synthesize this compound, the researchers decomposed the structure of macrolides into eight basic modules, and then combined them in new forms to adjust their chemical properties in different ways. In a paper published in Nature from 2065438 to May 2006, the Myers team said that they had synthesized more than 300 new compounds. The researchers experimented with 14 kinds of pathogenic bacteria and found that most compounds can inhibit bacteria, and many of them can kill drug-resistant strains.

3. Quantum satellite

The space-based transmission of quantum keys may make the "unbreakable" Internet a reality.

To establish an absolutely safe encryption method, you don't need more advanced technology than pencil and paper: you just need to choose a string of random characters and numbers as the key to encrypt information. Write this key on paper, and burn the paper after one use. The key is to ensure that no one can intercept or tamper with the key. On the Internet, the act of stealing or tampering with keys has never stopped. Quantum key distribution can solve this problem by generating a one-time key from entangled photons. The problem with quantum key distribution is that no one knows how to transmit entangled photons over a long distance. But in August this year, the Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully put the world's first quantum satellite into orbit, which took a big step to solve this problem.

The project of Chinese Academy of Sciences is called Quantum Science Experimental Satellite, which is a cooperative project with Austrian Academy of Sciences. This project uses satellites to transmit quantum keys to two observation stations in China. The distance between the two observation stations is 1200 km, which is eight times the longest transmission record at present. If researchers in China set a new record for the transmission distance of quantum keys, future satellites can provide an orbital platform and build an unbreakable "quantum Internet", and the laws of physics can guarantee the absolute security of encrypted data packets.

4. Micro-robot replaces surgery

The remote control micro-robot can complete the treatment in the body.

The more advanced the medical intervention means, the less invasive it is. Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have invented a robot that can perform simple operations in the stomach without incisions or external cables-the patient just swallows the robot.

This kind of micro-robot is wrapped in buccal tablets made of ice and will enter the stomach after being taken by people. After the ice sac melts, the robot will open like an origami. The unfolded robot looks like a wrinkled paper. The positions of folds, gaps and patches on the material are carefully designed. They will expand or contract when heated or subjected to a magnetic field, and then move. This movement is similar to that of joints and muscles. The surgeon can control the movement of the robot by influencing the magnet on the robot through the external electromagnetic field.

The main body of the robot is made of biocompatible materials-some materials come from the small intestine of pigs and are also the materials of sausage casings. These materials can be used for body wounds or fixed on wounds like band-AIDS. Robots can also use their own magnets to "catch" and remove foreign objects, such as button cell swallowed by mistake.

5. Looking for software in poor areas

Machine learning software can analyze satellite images and find remote and poor areas that need help.

In 20 15, the United Nations set the goal of eliminating global extreme poverty by 2030. This goal is very bold. To achieve the goal, the first step is to find out where the poorest people are, which is very difficult. Economic investigation in poor and war-prone countries is expensive and dangerous. Researchers try to solve this problem in an indirect way: they look for particularly dark areas in satellite photos at night. Marshall Bok, assistant professor of earth science system at Stanford University, explained: "Generally speaking, the local economic conditions with lights on at night are better." But this method is flawed, especially in distinguishing the degree of poverty. At night, from space, the places with mild poverty and extreme poverty are the same, and they are all dark.

Bok and his team at Stanford believe that machine learning can be used to improve satellite imaging research. The researchers used daytime and nighttime satellite images from five African countries to train image analysis software. After synthesizing the daytime and nighttime picture data, the computer "learns" to relate the characteristics of daytime pictures (roads, urban areas and agricultural land) with different levels of nighttime brightness. "By using night lighting, we can find out the important features in daytime photos," Bok said.

When the training is over, Bok's software can only find the location of poor areas based on satellite images during the day.

6. clothes that can be refrigerated

Nano-porous fibers make the wearer feel cool and can reduce the need for air conditioning.

The hotter the earth gets, the more people turn down the air conditioning temperature. But air conditioning and refrigeration need energy, and obtaining energy will emit greenhouse gases.

Cui Yi is a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University. He wants to use clothes to help people cool down. Even the thinnest cotton fiber clothes will absorb the infrared rays emitted by the body, thus locking the heat. Cui Yi and his team found that a kind of nano-porous polyethylene material (nanoPE) used to make lithium-ion batteries can let these radiate out.

Compared with cotton clothes, nanoPE can cool the simulated human skin by 2 degrees Celsius. Cui Yi's team reported this discovery in the journal Science in September of 20 16. Cui Yi said: "If you wear nanoPE clothes, as long as the outside temperature is slightly lower than your body temperature, you will feel cool." If it is a hot day, you may still want to turn on the air conditioner, but you can raise the temperature. Studies have shown that as long as the air conditioning temperature is increased by a few degrees, the energy consumption can be reduced by nearly half.

7. Ultimate antivirus program

A rare genetic mutation may produce drugs that can fight all viruses.

As we all know, the virus is good at avoiding the attack of artificial drugs, but it is very weak in the face of the rare gene mutation ISG 15. People with this mutation can better resist most viruses that can infect humans-but less than 1 00000 people carry this mutation. Duzan Bogunovic of icahn school of medicine at mount sinai believes that this mutation can be simulated to develop drugs. It is possible for him to find a drug that can temporarily fight against all viruses, so that people will not get sick because of viruses.

Bogunovic hopes to find a drug that can target the ISG 15 mutation in the same way. "As long as our system is slightly adjusted, the first outbreak of infection can be suppressed," he explained. Bogunovic's team is screening promising antiviral drugs from 6.5438+0.6 million compounds. When they find candidate compounds, they need to carefully adjust the chemical properties of the compounds, complete toxicology and animal tests, and finally conduct human clinical trials. Whether this research will succeed is uncertain. Some people with ISG 15 mutation occasionally have seizures and have autoimmune disease symptoms similar to lupus erythematosus. Drugs developed by researchers need to avoid side effects.

8. The new algorithm makes the computer learn to think laterally.

Artificial intelligence can make computers do better than humans in visual pattern recognition.

If someone shows you letters of a strange alphabet and asks you to write them on a piece of paper, maybe you can do it, but the computer can't-even if it has the most advanced deep learning algorithm. Even if we only do some basic picture distinguishing work, the machine learning system needs to be trained with a lot of data.

With the help of Bayesian programming, a machine learning framework, computers are not far from this leap. A group of researchers from new york University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Toronto confirmed that computers using Bayesian programming learning method can recognize and copy unfamiliar handwritten characters better than people by learning only one example.

There are essential differences between Bayesian programming learning method and deep learning. Deep learning roughly simulates the basic pattern recognition ability of the human brain. The inspiration of Bayesian planning learning comes from another ability of human brain: inferring a series of actions that can generate a certain pattern. This machine learning method is both universal and efficient.

9. Cheap diagnostic test paper

Cheap and rapid screening methods for diseases such as Ebola and tuberculosis can save the lives of patients in remote and poor areas.

A patient with a high fever came to a clinic in rural Africa. The diagnosis may range from mild typhoid fever to Ebola. Even if this clinic has blood test equipment, it will take several days to get the results. So what should doctors do? Prescribe antibiotics or isolate patients?

In the past ten years, researchers have been looking for a quick and cheap test paper diagnosis method (similar to pregnancy test stick or test paper) to save lives in this situation.

The first generation of diagnostic test paper can only find molecules or pathogenic microorganisms produced by intruders, so as to detect diseases. But there may be a diagnostic tool to directly detect pathogen DNA next. These tools, called nucleic acid tests, allow doctors to accurately diagnose diseases at the earliest stage. Researchers such as yeager and George Whitesides, a professor of chemistry at Harvard University, are independently studying nucleic acid test strips.

10. Supramolecular composed of super atoms

The new method can design atoms, molecules and useful materials beyond the limit of the periodic table of elements.

There seem to be many elements in the periodic table, but not enough for chemists and materials scientists. In order to design synthetic materials with some unusual characteristics, such as designing silicon semiconductors that are degradable like wood, natural formulas often have limitations. Colin Nuckolls, a professor of chemistry at Columbia University, said: "Many times, what you want is an atom that doesn't exist." Supramolecular composed of so-called "super atoms" can meet this demand. Superatoms are atomic groups that behave like single atoms. Researchers can try to make them have special electromagnetic properties, which are difficult or impossible to obtain through the natural combination of elements. Although chemists knew how to build super atoms decades ago, they could not find a reliable way to connect them into larger structures.

Now, Nuckers' research team has found a way to make "design molecules" from super atoms. These synthetic structures can simulate the characteristics of natural molecules, and materials scientists can "fine-tune" these characteristics to achieve some special goals. Nuckers said: "You can easily change the chemical properties or magnetism of molecules made of super atoms, but you can't do this by atomic structure alone. This is like adding a dimension to the periodic table of elements. "