Science in the News 2014

Scientifically, 2014 has been an astounding year. It has been filled with many breakthroughs in all areas of science. In the eyes of several people, this past year will become known for its developments and advances in technology. As I researched the most important stories of the year in this topic, I found three articles that really struck me, and showed me just how much innovation 2014 has brought to society.

When I chose technology to be the main theme in my report, I couldn't help but think about the revolutionary 3D printer. I only had positive ideas about the new machine, but an article I read on Mashable, proved me wrong. The story discusses how a man in Pennsylvania discovered a way to fit real bullets into a 3D-printed gun. But first, let’s talk about what the 3D printer is. The 3D printer works just as a normal printer, printing any digital object. The only, and most obvious, difference between the two is that the 3D printer allows you to create 3-dimensional objects, with the click of a button. The object is converted from a digital file to a 3D object through the additive process. This is a process which sets layers of material on top of each other, until the object is fully formed. These materials can be changed from, for example, metal to plastic, almost like the ink (see figure 1). 

Figure 1: An ORDbot Quantum 3D printer

“You can make your own 3D-printed gun, but, until now, shooting it was another matter,” says Lance Ulanoff, author of the article. Michael Crumling, an amateur gunsmith, designed a bullet capable of being shot by the gun, without the gun exploding, as it did in some of his previous attempts. His bullet looks more like a shotgun shell, because it’s thicker and longer than an actual bullet (see figure 2). 

Figure 2: A 3D-printed gun, along with its 3D-printed bullets

Since the bullet itself holds and channels the explosion, the shot is clean and not harmful to the gun. These bullets are, of course, 3D-printed. Showing his disapproval of the process of printing 3D guns, was staff attorney for national watchdog group the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Michael McLively. "If you can prove they work as well as a regular gun, and you can evade the background check process, it makes it that much easier for dangerous people to get 3D printed guns," McLively stated. The negative side is that it gives people access to virtually anything they want. To own a 3D gun, one does not need a gun license, just a 3D printer, making it all the more easier to have one’s own, as the price of one ranges from 400 to a couple thousand US dollars. The printer can be used to create anything. From Legos to grenades, it does whatever the user tells it to do. This article is important because it shows the pros and cons, the upsides and the downsides, to a new, innovative machine, the pro of which is that it gives people access to virtually anything they want.

The second report I read was about the first ever brain-based circuit board, which I found on The Daily Mail. With the help of his team of researchers from Stanford University, professor Kwabena Boahen was able to create 16 custom-designed ‘Neurocore’ chips, keeping power and energy efficiency in mind. Each of these support 65,536 neurons. When put together, the chips can make one million neutrons and billions of synaptic connections. The Neurogrid, as Boahen has named it, is virtually the size of an iPad (see figure 3). 

Figure 3: The Nerugrid circuit board

Working 9,000 times faster and needing 40,000 times less power to run than any personal computer, the current price of one of these tablet-sized circuit boards is around 40,000 US dollars. By changing to normal manufacturing processes, as personal laptops and computers are, the price can lower drastically, reaching as low as 400 US dollars. Boahen’s goal is to provide these boards to computer scientists and engineers, even those with no awareness about neuroscience, allowing them to control things such as controlling a humanoid robot. In addition to creating the Neurogrid, Boahen and his crew are working on a prosthetic limb, controlled by the circuit board itself, almost like a remote controlled car, or a drone. So, why should we care? The answer is simple. This is the future. A machine capable of mimicking the brain process of calculations which is only the size of a tablet is truly incredible. And just the thought of one of the 40,000 US dollar prototype laying there on Kwabena Boahen’s desk, is even harder to accept.

Searching through the same website, I found a story about the Peugeot 2008 Hybrid Air. This new car is just one of a whole generation of cars which will be running on air. Car companies have been aiming at creating the most energy-efficient cars in the world. After three years of working on this air-powered vehicle, about 100 scientists finally completed the project at Peugeot’s research center in Velizy, just south of Paris, France. The new Hybrid Air (see figures 4 and 5) will supposedly be “more ecologically sound than the current breed of ‘green’ vehicles that combine electric engines with traditional ones,” according to the writer, Ray Massey. 

Figure 4: The interior of the Hybrid Air

Figure 5: The exterior of the Hybrid Air

With the diagram provided in the article (see figure 6), we can see that the car works in such a way that, when it moves, the air is pumped into a cylinder using extra energy from the petrol engine, along with energy from the heat of the brakes. The air is then released to start the hydraulic motor, letting the car run on petrol, air, or both! 

Figure 6: A diagram describing how the car runs

Unlike today’s hybrids, which use expensive batteries which are hard to get rid of and replace, the Peugeot will run off a renewable resource, like air, whose energy will be reused after slowing down or breaking.  It’s zero-emission, air-powered feature will automatically set when the vehicle is going slower than 43 miles, or just over 69 kilometers, per hour. The Hybrid Air will be available in 2016, at a price of around 16,000 British pounds. A spokesman of manufacturer PSA Peugeot-Citroen stated, “We are not talking about weird and wacky machines. These are going to be in everyday cars.” This is the significance of this article and of this news story. He was trying to show the world that the Peugeot 2008 Hybrid Air could be the key to a cleaner, safer, and more appealing future.

In conclusion, these stories are the most significant ones in terms of technology not only because of their importance in the whole world, but because of the way they could end up impacting you and me. Discovering a new planet is great, no one is saying otherwise. However, the aspect of the discovery that does not make it as significant to average people like ourselves, is its relatability. Not one person will ever visit this planet, nonetheless inhabit it. The difference between reports about dinosaur fossils and a new 3-dimensional printer comes with the stories ability to connect with the reader. Even though it is not yet as common as an average 2-dimensional printer, the new, innovative machine operates in a way that allows average people access to anything they would like, including guns! I’m sure a hybrid car which runs on air is much more “attractive,” so to say, than finding the Sun’s sibling. Because what we, as a society, ultimately want from science is something that we can use, something we can have access to. And the only area which provides that access is, as you may have guessed, technology.