Innovations Galore

3D Printing and Desktop Manufacturing, a new revolution in the making, is reshaping the way we manufacture things by addressing the long tail of fabrication and customization. It took more than a decade to bring this technology restricted to expensive prototyping labs to the masses and is surprisingly driven by crowd funded garage born companies than large corporations. Bespoke manufacturing driven by bespoke innovation by people like you and me!

3D Printing is revolutionizing everything from Medicine to Aviation by rewriting the economics of niche and custom built parts. Surgeons will be able to order customized implants instead of relying on an expensive inventory of pre-made implants that in the end are still a compromise for the patient. Some scientists are even trying to print tissues and organs using this technology and this development can prolong life expectancy to unprecedented levels in the not so distant future.

On the other end, this technology can breathe fresh life into ageing equipment whose parts are no longer available due to short product life cycles across the industry. Repair shops will now become mini factories repairing and even producing custom products.

Finally Desktop Manufacturing is still in its infancy and could have more profound implications than Desktop Computing (PC Revolution). Welcome to the age of Manufacturing at the speed of thought!

Artificial organs made from harvested or artificial organ scaffolds and our own cells!! The dream of every transplant recipient and doctor. An unlimited supply of organs for transplant literally extending life.... This may be the ultimate frontier for medicine till we can cheat death..... Seems to be just a few years away :-)

This week Mahindra & Mahindra India lauched e2o, the world's most affordable city ready electric vehicle (EV), in New Delhi setting a benchmark for other automobile companies across the globe.

The e2o EV costs 14,000 USD. (Approx w/o subsidies) and is not just some hacky wacky limited edition prototype but an affordable and comfortable city vehicle for the Indian market.

e2o is one of the first EVs to bring down the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) below that of gasoline powered automobiles and marks an important milestone in our pursuit for a clean and efficient alternative.

Finally a ray hope for the environment and budget conscious average city dweller is on the horizon. It would be interesting to see what other auto-makers will come up with to compete with this sensible, practical and aggressively priced EV.

One of the greatest inventions of our time may just be computer driven automobiles and we are going to see them much sooner than we expect.

No wonder Google, Caltech and many other visionary companies are investing heavily on this technology and it may not just be about safety and convenience.

These cars can coordinate and cooperate to reduce congestion, commute times and fuel consumption.

Imagine door-to-door taxis, shuttles or even limos that are more comfortable and cheaper than driving yourself home. They will make the commute a more enjoyable experience and pool customers to get their price advantage.

How about socializing and sipping on a glass of wine or coffee on your way back home?

Fantastic!

Resistance free Anti-biotics may seem like a physicians pipe-dream but a new discovery about how bacteria coordinate and wreak havoc inside our bodies has just given us new hope in this direction.

Dr. Bonnie Bassler and her colleagues at Princeton have uncovered a dark secret about many disease causing bacteria and they are working on developing potent anti-biotics that can stem infectious bacterial diseases in their roots.

Normally every infection has an incubation period during which bacteria multiply in our body and after a while these bacteria start their offensive. This is common knowledge.

But according to Dr. Bassler, bacteria have a chemical mediated communication system that lets them assess their population strength and become virulent only after they have sufficient numbers. Now their team is working to disrupt this communication system and stop the bacteria from ever mounting an offensive. Same old bacteria but no more disease. Now this is news :-)

Augmented Reality has received quiet a lot of attention recently but all that hype was about prototypes such as the Sixth Sense from MIT labs and Google Glasses.

But now an unlikely contender, Nokia, has launched City Lens, an augmented reality browser to explore the city around you. Its really a leap forward in terms of context awareness and sensing. You can just point your mobile camera at any street or building and know whats interesting in there. And its already available on their phones for you and me.

Hats off to Nokia for pulling off this feat in such troubled times.

Sixth sense technology invented by Indian (MITstudent). If this product is mass produced will reduce the use of monitors, keyboards, mouse, cell phones which eventually help protect the environment.

Stem Cell technology: intresting to know that this can cure diseases. Below video will show its potential.

Amazing technology that was almost science fiction just a few years ago as shown in Minority Report (Movie)

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is all set to revolutionize payments, identity and authorization systems. With Google and other major players betting high on this technology to broker payments, its not difficult to imagine its utility and outlook. Its already in wide use across China as an alternative ticketing system. We can see the same thing happening in London museum too.