This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Disrupting Japan where we publish the revised transcripts from the show’s podcast interviews with Japanese entrepreneurs. This is heavily revised from the original transcripts. For the full interview, go here.
Citi has produced another of its Disruptive Innovations publications, which takes a look at what it considers to be the top ten disruptive technologies. It is a sign of the changing times that anti-aging medicines are number 2 in its list.
1. All-Solid-State Batteries 2. Anti-Aging Medicines 3. Autonomous Vehicle Networks 4. Big Data & Healthcare 5. Dynamic Spectrum Access 6. eSports 7. 5G Technology 8. Floating Offshore Wind Farms 9. Real Estate Market Disruptors 10. Smart Voice-Activated Assistants.
What was considered fringe science a decade ago is now rapidly becoming a mainstream industry. Our understanding of aging has advanced quickly in the last 10 years, and the tools and innovations seem to come more quickly with each passing year. A variety of therapies that target different aging processes are in development, and some are at fairly advanced stages; if you are interested in their progress, check out the Rejuvenation Roadmap.
Speedy, affordable water tests that can be used in on location and even run continuously will help scientists identify disease-causing bacteria in under an hour and potentially reduce the spread of common illnesses such as diarrhoea, which kills an estimated 842,000 people every year.
Hundreds of millions of samples are tested each year to detect harmful bacteria in drinking and environmental water, food and beverages, but tests can take days or, in some cases, even weeks to provide definitive results. By then, many people may have fallen ill from diseases caused by bacteria such as E. coli or legionella.
Shrinking the laboratory to the size of a home printer – and bringing down test times to an hour or less – could help to stop outbreaks in their tracks and keep people safe.
BREAKING.
NASA is working to contain a small leak onboard the International Space Station.
The issue appears to be contained and the people on board the station do not appear to be under any immediate threat. But it did trigger a real alarm through the floating lab, which sent astronauts scrambling to find the cause of the problem.
The crew was forced to check for the source of the leak by closing separate modules on the space station and finding which of them may be damaged. It was eventually tracked down in part of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft, which arrived at the station in early June carrying a crew of astronauts.
In 2018, Canada is ranked tenth in the world in nominal GDP. It is a rich developed country. Despite having an economy that is 11 times smaller than the USA or 7 times smaller than China, Canada has world competitive or world-leading projects in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, molecular nanotechnology, nuclear fusion and nuclear-molten salt.
Chile’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has observed a galaxy that looks nothing like what researchers expected. It’s forming stars at an absolutely incredible rate.
The “Monster Galaxy”, also known as COSMOS-AzTEC-1, formed just 2 billion years after the Big Bang, and it turns more than a thousand Suns worth of gas into stars each year. Scientists still don’t understand these early galaxies very well, but now they have some new information that can shed light on why they form stars so blisteringly fast.
