Technologies of the Future

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Alright, I guess we can go ahead  and start. So a quick introduction,   we're going to be talking about the  future Technologies of tomorrow Today,   and it's by Corey. me and Ziad,  and I hope you guys enjoy. Alright Corey, take it away. Hi everybody, just to  give you a further introduction into myself,   I'm a sophomore here at SMC, my second year,  and I am actually a civil engineering major   and of course my video decided to freeze right at  that time but, yeah so a lot of my technologies are specifically geared towards civil engineering,  a field that I'm personally interested in. The   first one if you have heard of it at all is  geographic information systems. Now this isn't   a- Quinton you can go to the next slide. GIS  and geographic information systems, they're  

not specific to one exact model, there is no one  GIS. There are a variety of different software   tools that a lot of industry professionals  use in a variety of different fields. Further below you can see  in the slide we're talking   about geological surveying meteorological predictions, so like forecasting weather  patterns. But I think the most important   use of it is typically in public policy  decision-making. This is deciding where   a hospital might be built based on population  density using this geographic tool that takes data   and analyzes it in a way that can be represented  best for human beings. So largely they're used to   supplement problem solving processes. Any sort  of data that can be publicly made available 

could be used in a GIS software system  a GIS software platform, and you will be   able to gather data in a way that best helps  inform a decision making process. Quinton,   we can go on to the next slide. And just  so everybody knows, after the presentation   is concluded I have saved links to a bunch of  different sites that I used to research for this   presentation if you're interested at all just let  me know and I can send those out to you following   the presentation. [Participant] Thank you so  much I'd love that. [Host] Yeah, no problem.   So the second one that we have here is building  information modeling. This was a new one to me   when I started researching for this presentation.  This is essentially another software model similar  

to if any of you have used CAD, we've got examples  on the slides right there but instead of modeling   say one object, you're modeling a larger system in  architecture, an architectural system essentially.   This is a way for civil engineers to fabricate  and design infrastructure and buildings on a   software model. Now this might seem like a  simple innovation, but given that drafting   by hand was both a time-consuming and very  labor intensive process in previous generations,   the fact that anybody, even you or me today if we  had a BIM software model like a platform to use,   we could go on it today and we could design  a city. If any of you have maybe played,   I don't know CIV 6 or Tropico or any sort of video  game that's based on modeling a city or an empire,  this is essentially the same thing  except much much much more subject matter.

The tools that would be available in a BIM  software model are extensive. If you've ever   used SolidWorks for example, which I don't  know if any of you have taken Engineering 11,   but it would actually be a good way to get  an introduction into CAD of computer aided   design but yeah, I mean it's SolidWorks but on  a more grand scale. We can go on to the next one. The next one is not a software model like  the previous two but a physical material that  

in the upcoming generations is probably  going to be critical to a lot of our   construction and design projects  in the world at large. Next slide Quinton. So 3D graphing, and we do have a video  here if anybody-- maybe we could get a few thumbs   up I don't know maybe like four or five would  tell me that the majority of you want to see. But   3D graphing is, if you've ever heard of graphing  it's like the slide says it's a single-layer of   carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice.  This specific arrangement of the carbon atoms  

given that you're all part of the STEM program,  you know what graphene is. It has incredible   thermal and electronic properties. Graphene if I'm  not mistaken is typically used in the microsized   chips that we have in all of our electronics,  we're talking about laptops, cell phones, etc. Now the important part about 3D graphene is it's  a recent development. A lot of the research for  

this specific slide came from the 2017 study that  the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did. The way that graphene is arranged  it offers to anybody using it,   10 times the strength of steel to 5% of Steel's  density. This is similar to that old saying that   people had where "spider silk is stronger  than steel". The problem with spider silk   is obviously you wouldn't be able to use it  on any sort of scale for any sort of project,   but you would be able to utilize of 3D graphene.  I mean we're talking about immense potential for   use. It could be used in anything from spaceship  systems to consumer products today. In fact,  

while researching this slide I came across  a architect who was building an entire house   based off of 3D graphene, just basically to show  and showcase its properties. But 3D graphene   could essentially provide for a number of needs  for people today. Now I saw a lot of thumbs up   for watching the video. Quinton I don't know  if the sound will play but if you want to try   playing the video then maybe we can take a look.  You might have to reshare and then like enable sound. Okay I'll tell you, we can push on now and  we can continue with the rest and then we can  

circle back at the end of the presentation. That  way if it takes like 10 minutes to make work,   people can head on out if they want to or  keep waiting. Does that sound okay with everybody? Alright, we can move on then  Quinton, I don't have anything else.

Okay hello everybody, my name is Ziad, I'm a  bio major so the majority of my slides will be   talking about innovations in the medical field and  biological fields. So the first technology I want   to share is mRNA technology, something you guys  have probably heard about during COVID-19.  it was used to produce the COVID-19 vaccine most  of you guys have so let's talk about it.

So the technology is definitely not new,  it was developed in the 60s and it was   only able to be delivered into cells in  the 1970s. so I mean that's a pretty long   time if you think about the way technology  goes about. And the first time we've seen   it actually being used in a practical sense to  actually treat something was during COVID-19,   so the technology has been building up over the  years till we finally perfected it for COVID-19,   and it was a perfect opportunity to bring  it to market. So not only can it treat

infectious diseases such as COVID-19, but it can also treat diseases like  cancer by use of the spike protein.   And the platform is so flexible that they're  now doing human testing of an HIV vaccine for   using the mRNA platform. It can treat also-  [Participant] I was just saying that one's world-changing, that's a long time  coming and it's crazy that they're   finally making an HIV vaccine. [Host]  Yeah well they finally perfected the  

technology to make it. Not only  HIV, and cancer, and covid-19,  but in the future, you're probably going to  see malaria, tuberculosis, diseases such as   cystic fibrosis, rabies, and influenza. So  I mean mRNA can be used to target basically   any pathogen by use of the spike protein. If you  just put in the code for the particular protein it will stimulate the immune response to  create those antibodies. Basically for the future of this technology because of COVID-19,  I do think the amount of funding that was put   into this technology was something we've  never seen before so that's why I think   this technology will only continue to  progress in the future. Alright, next slide. So my next slide is  about organ bioprinting.

It's probably something you've  seen in the news in recent times. Next slide. So the reason I chose this is  because just in the United States alone,   there are 106,075 men, women, and children who  are on the organ transplant waiting list as of   June this year, and that's kind of crazy if you  think about it because there are on average only   6,000 organs via living donors per year and  we only get 8,000 donors per year based on   things from accidents that people who actually  donate them after they're dead. So previous slide. And then also every day 17 people die  waiting for an organ transplant according to  

the Health Resource and Services Administration, and every ninth person another person  gets added to the wait list. And the the   interesting thing is if you look at the  statistics from the Health and Resource   Services Administration is that like more  than 90% of the people on the transplant   list need a kidney and the other 10%  is composed of people who need a heart. And my second point is heart transplants have  a 40% rejection rate and kidney transplant kidney   rejection rates are 25%. So what that means is if  you take a transplant from one person to another,   these are the rates that it will fail. But  with the 3D bioprinting technology that's  

not a factor because the way it works is that they use your cells to cultivate the other   cells will which they'll use to feed  into the 3D printer to make the models,   so there's basically a 100% chance that it will  not fail based on just your body rejecting it,   your body won't reject it.  So that's why I think this   will be a good technology for the  future that people should look out for. Alright my third technology is Neuralink,  something that really interested me. Next slide. Alright so first of all we got  to talk about who came up with the idea so so two professors came up with idea:  Pendra Mossini and Rand Jay Nudo. They  

introduced the idea of Neuralink and founded the  company, but it was only until later that a person   called Elon Musk bought the bought the company  [Participant] Can I weigh in on this one? I just   want to say there's so much more BMI stuff in  the history of it goes so much farther before   Neuralink, like there's so much more to brain  machine interfaces than just Neuralink and   you could buy a DIY kit to program stuff  that uses your brain waves as input today. [Host] Okay, thank you for the addition. Alright,  so how does it work? So Neuralink it plants a   surgically implanted mesh into the brain using a  needle. After releasing the mesh into the brain  

it wraps around the brain ultimately to merge with  the brain. Tests with mice have shown  successful   results and I think they already started  human trials just a couple months ago. And the reason why I chose Neuralink is because  of the the proprietary chip that they have can read double the amount of neurons  that the previous technologies did. Alright let's see, so the diseases  that it can cure or treat. So nearly

one billion people on planet Earth suffer from  neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's   Parkinson's, and the biggest one most  people don't talk about is strokes. So Michael J Fox, a well-known actor,   suffers from Parkinson's disease and he uses  Neuralink to help him from suffering from it.   So when would we see this technology   in the mainstream with people actually getting paid to work on it, not just one company? So it's stated by the company that this  device can be used by people without medical   need in approximately 10 to 12 years. So  people who don't have medical diseases,   they won't need they won't need  permission from the FDA to use   this device yeah. Human trials have  already started, yeah that's about it. It looks like it's my turn now. So for  anybody who doesn't know me, my name is Quinton   and I'm an astrophysics/physics major at SMC. So  the topics I'm going to be talking about today  

will be tailored toward my major. Alright, so the  first one I'm going to be talking about is quantum   computing which is an interesting topic because  it's still a new technology, There hasn't been   much progress for it yet and there haven't been a lot of applications for it yet. However,   if we can get it to work correctly,  if we can improve it well enough,   it could have a serious amount of benefits if  we can perfect it. So in the picture you have   here is what a quantum computer looks like  right now: a bunch of wires. It looks like something pretty complicated and there's  a lot of technology behind it to make it work. so I'm going to talk a little bit about why  quantum computing is so important to look   into nowadays. And basically, we're reaching  a point right now where a computer or computer  

components are being minimized to a scale so  small that if they were minimized any further   they would break the law of physics. And without  going into quantum physics too much, the reason   for that is that basically, once you get down to  a Quantum level of particles or to a level where   the particles are so small, like smaller than  an atom, the laws of physics kind of break down.   And so that's why if we were to minimize those  computer components more we wouldn't really be   able to understand how they would work, and so  the computer wouldn't work. And so that's why   perfecting quantum computing is so important and  that's because if we want to progress further in   our technology and the computers we have, we need  to understand quantum physics a little better. The chart that you guys see on the left talks  about how the efficiency of a quantum computer   can be exponentially increased if you add  qubits to it. And qubits are basically the   same thing as bits. And for those that aren't  too familiar with computers, bits are basically,  

the pieces of information that a computer  uses to kind of carry out its command. And   qubits are basically the same thing as  a bit, except that there's a little q in   front which corresponds to quantum physics. The  difference between the two is that while bits,   they either give you zero or one, so  they can either be one of the two values,   qubits can have either value so qubit is kind  of like a probability you don't know if it's   going to be one or zero until You observe it.  Which you might have heard in quantum physics,  

if you look at a particle, once you observe  it, it will take on a certain state, but   before you observe it the state is impossible to  predict. And so basically the reason behind this, the low error rate and high error rate, is  that even if you add more qubits to the computer,   it's not really going to make it any more powerful  if you don't understand how quantum physics work.   If you build a computer based on the regular  laws of physics, adding more qubits is not   going to make it any more powerful. But if you  have a low error rate, if you can perfect the  

understanding of quantum physics, and you add  more bits to the computer, it'll make it more   powerful just like any other computer. So we  have to understand how quantum physics works   in order for quantum computers to work. Onto  my next slide. As I was saying earlier, quantum   computing has a lot of potential, and despite the  difficulty in increasing the efficiency of it,   there can be a lot of breakthroughs or there have  been a lot of breakthroughs that have already been   made in the field. And you can see that on the  right like I was saying earlier, you need to add  

more qubits to make a quantum computer more  powerful, but you need to understand quantum  physics in order to do that. So back in  2010 there weren't a lot of qubits that   we could put in a quantum computer for it to  work but as we understand quantum physics more   we can add more qubits and that progress kind of  follows a linear path, or it's expected to follow   a linear path. So as time goes on we should be  able to make quantum computers more powerful Back to what I was saying, essentially  we're nowhere near the point of making   quantum computers useful, but sometime in  the somewhat near future according to the   graph maybe like in the 2050s, we should be  able to actually use quantum computers for   practical uses. Alright and so for my last two  slides, I'll be talking a little bit about the  

technologies that have been researched in the  International Space Station, and the reason why   the International Space Station is so important  for progressing technology. It's in space and   the main importance of that is that since it's  in space, there's pretty much no gravity on the   International Space Station so researching things  like biological processes changes in human bodies,   they work a little bit differently when  they're not subjected to gravity and so we can use the research in micro  gravity environment to cure diseases. For example, to study aging  processes in human cells,   to study the blood flow in circulatory systems,  to understand how organs work a little better,   and just to facilitate research for so  many different topics other than just   regular biological processes  and things that I mentioned earlier. And so one of those examples that  I'm going to be talking about is a protein   crystalization and specifically how we can  use that in microgravity environments to   cure diseases. Just to give a little bit of an  introduction about what protein crystallization  

is and why it's important. So basically, certain  enzymes or proteins, because enzymes are proteins,   they can be used as biomarkers to determine  if humans have a certain health condition or   disease. So if they're present in the body  we can figure out if somebody has a specific   disease or health condition such as genetic  disorders like muscular dystrophy, cancer,   or if they're prone to a heart attack, or  if they have lot of liver disease, etc. 

Essentially the way that we can study  these proteins to understand them better   and to figure out how we can cure those  diseases that they're associated with is   that we can crystallize them in certain  chemical processes, and this is important   in the microgravity environment because the  crystals grow slower and they grow more orderly   which also causes them to grow larger and in more  complex shapes. And since they grow more complex, when we study them it can be a  little bit more precise since   the shapes of the protein crystals are  more complex. Go on to my next slide. We can pretty much eradicate all the diseases  that I have listed right here so things like   salmonella, which affects more than 90 million  people every year, believe It or not. Stuff   like cystic fibrosis, heart attacks, and  liver disease like I mentioned earlier,   DMD which is a type of genetic disorder, for  muscular dystrophy like I mentioned earlier, and   then we can also help figure out how to reverse  damage DNA. And as some of you may know, damaged  

DNA results in a lot of health complications  like cancer and other DNA-related conditions. And so onto my next slide, I had  a video to show you guys here but it looks   like it didn't format so I apologize for that  but it basically described how we can study these   crystals and understand how they cure the diseases  that they're associated with a little bit better.  So onto my next slide I'm going to be talking  about tissue chips in a microgravity environment   and the study of these kind of works similarly to  how you would study protein crystals for example.   And the reason for that being is that they're also  in microgravity environments and like I mentioned,   the biological processes that happen inside of  these tissue chips which I will describe in just   a moment, they occur more slowly so it's easier to  study them. So just to give a quick description of   tissue chips, they're just like these small little  vessels so as you see in the picture on the right,   they're like these small little like polymer  material cards where you can inject things like   human cells into them and you can also inject  other things to test the interaction between   those cells and solutions of certain mixtures.  For example, blood, diseases like cancer,  

or drugs. So the scientists or the researchers on  the ISS they study the interactions on these in a   microgravity environment and it's very similar to  the concept of studying protein crystallization.  The interactions between the cells and  the solutions can be researched more   thoroughly because they they occur more  slowly they develop in a more organized   fashion and they can also be stored for longer in  microgravity conditions. I guess the main idea of  

studying it in microgravity is that since it's  in microgravity, the process isn't influenced   as much by the force of gravity, and as you  know forces are what makes things move it,   causes motion. So if the force of gravity is  lacking, the process is going to develop more slowly. So it looks like that's all I  had to talk about today but thank you   guys all for attending and if you  have any questions you can always   email us about the topics that we  talked about. Thank you guys for attending. Ziad I see your mouth moving  but I think you're muted. If you were   trying to talk to us. [Ziad] I was muted the  whole time, oh my god. I said I just posted   the link to the mentor workshop sign-in sheet  and I'm saying go ahead fill out so you can get   credit for it because I think when you're part  of the STEM program you do need two of them a   semester. So fill it out and if anyone doesn't  have any questions, thank you guys for coming in.

2024-02-11

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