What's Next: Michael Graham Richard
I think that 2007 needs to be the year when the pace of the transition to a green future accelerates. We need something to super-charge the process, just like the Internet revolution came much faster because of all the over-investments in fiber-optics and infrastructure caused by the dot-com bubble. I sincerely wish that the catalyst would be a positive event, but there are also chances that it could be something catastrophic like a super-Katrina or a new alarming scientific discovery. Let's not wait for a cataclysm. Let's start now. The good thing is that we have all the technologies and tools, and many things that would assuredly quicken the pace of change are also known: Correct distortions in the market -- Remove subsidies to fossil fuels, take into account that ecosystems are very valuable on many levels (including economic) even when untouched by humans, and start adding environmental costs to the price of many things (e.g., coal, suburbs) instead of "externalizing" them, and have society as a whole pick up the bill.
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Hot Technologies for 2007: OCT:Imaging of the Future
Advances in optical imaging are improving many facets of everyday life, the most important of which is healthcare. One optical technique that stands out above the rest is optical coherence tomography (OCT). Developed in 1991 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, OCT is exploding onto the medical diagnostics scene with a bounty of potential uses, including the prevention of blindness and heart attacks, and even the early detection of cancer. Getting hot OCT is a near real-time imaging technique similar to ultrasound that uses light instead of sound to achieve far greater resolution. Low coherence infrared light is directed onto the sample under test, and, using principles of interferometry, the intensity of the reflections is measured and compared to a reference beam to produce high resolution images of the sample.
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I think that 2007 needs to be the year when the pace of the transition to a green future accelerates. We need something to super-charge the process, just like the Internet revolution came much faster because of all the over-investments in fiber-optics and infrastructure caused by the dot-com bubble. I sincerely wish that the catalyst would be a positive event, but there are also chances that it could be something catastrophic like a super-Katrina or a new alarming scientific discovery. Let's not wait for a cataclysm. Let's start now. The good thing is that we have all the technologies and tools, and many things that would assuredly quicken the pace of change are also known: Correct distortions in the market -- Remove subsidies to fossil fuels, take into account that ecosystems are very valuable on many levels (including economic) even when untouched by humans, and start adding environmental costs to the price of many things (e.g., coal, suburbs) instead of "externalizing" them, and have society as a whole pick up the bill.
Read More
Hot Technologies for 2007: OCT:Imaging of the Future
Advances in optical imaging are improving many facets of everyday life, the most important of which is healthcare. One optical technique that stands out above the rest is optical coherence tomography (OCT). Developed in 1991 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, OCT is exploding onto the medical diagnostics scene with a bounty of potential uses, including the prevention of blindness and heart attacks, and even the early detection of cancer. Getting hot OCT is a near real-time imaging technique similar to ultrasound that uses light instead of sound to achieve far greater resolution. Low coherence infrared light is directed onto the sample under test, and, using principles of interferometry, the intensity of the reflections is measured and compared to a reference beam to produce high resolution images of the sample.
Read More
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