The Top 10 Inventions Of The First Half Of 2016

New treatment for cancer

According to information from the BBC, scientists discovered a new method for treating cancer at the beginning of 2016. The method consists of tuning up the human immune system to fight cancer cells.

The new therapy has caused amazement, because more than 90 percent of all the terminally ill patients treated have gone into remission. Dr. Alan Worsley, with Cancer Research UK, has declared that his lab has been working for some time using this type of technology, genetically engineering cells.

As noted on the BBC website, white blood cells were taken from people with leukemia, modified in the lab and returned to the donors.

In conclusion, he added that the scientists working on the new treatment have high hopes, but they have only taken the first steps in developing the new method.

Eternal 5D data storage

The news about inventing a method to provide practically eternal data storage spread instantly across the Internet. As is well known, everything goes bad over time, and we have not heretofore had the ability to keep digital data indefinitely.

But researchers at the University of Southampton have developed a way to keep it. According to the official information, the advanced data storage technology will allow data to survive for billions of years.

Scientists at one of Britain’s best universities have developed a method to record and retrieve processed 5D digital data by femtosecond laser writing, using nanostructured glass.

The device looks like a small glass disk. This breakthrough may be opening a new era of eternal data archiving.

Flu trap

Scientists at the University of Manchester have developed a new method to trap the flu virus.

According to information in The Telegraph, researchers have made a fabric coating for masks and air filters which isolates the viral particles responsible for flu.

The new technology simulates the carbohydrate structures on the surface of the cells lining the airway and the esophagus.

New prime number

At the beginning of this year Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search discovered a new prime number, 2^74207281-1.

If you are asking yourself if this is important, the point is that the cryptography, the practice and study of techniques for secure communication, needs to use both complex numbers and the Mersenne prime numbers.

Nowadays we have only 49 Mersenne numbers, and the new number is the largest prime number ever known. The total number of numerals in the number is about 24 billions.

Second biological skin

Researchers in the USA have developed an invisible elastic skin that looks like real human skin. It can be applied to the body to hide wrinkles and common defects and can help to improve the condition of actual skin.

According to information in the Nature Materials journal, reported by scientists at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the new skin is composed of commonly used chemicals which are safe and can be used with no irritation or allergic reactions.

So maybe people will be able to hide their wrinkles in the near future and always look young.

Pill of youth

British scientists reported that they have developed a «pill of youth». Researchers indicate the new invention could be available in two years.

The pill contains minerals and thirty vitamins such as B, C, and D and folic acid, so there is a chance that the invention may reverse aging of the brain and slow the progress of neurological diseases, for example Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

We need to add that there have been many reports about such pills over the years, but today there is hope that science has made the real first steps forward to a treatment for extending youth.

The thinnest solar cells

At the beginning of this year scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team reported the invention of amazing, flexible, thin photovoltaic cells.

According to information on the official MIT website, the cells are so light that they can rest on top of soap bubbles without breaking them.

It may take many years to develop these cells into a real commercial product, but this new concept demonstrates a new approach to making solar cells. In the near future it can help power the next generation of portable electronic devices.

An artificial pancreas

Scientists have invented and tested an artificial pancreas for patients who suffer from first type diabetes, the autoimmune disease of the endocrine system.

After successfully testing the new invention there is an opportunity that the product will be on the market in western countries at the end of 2017.

As the researchers reported, the introduction of an artificial pancreas will help to avoid the hospitalization of thousands patients in France annually.

Wireless flexible smartphone 

Some novelties in the world of technology can literally daze us. Maybe the world’s first wireless flexible smartphone is not as useful an invention as, for example, a breakthrough treatment for cancer, but nevertheless it is one of the most amazing things that researchers have developed this year.

The invention, which the creators at Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab have named ReFlex, allows users to feel physical, tactile feedback while interacting with the apps through bend gestures.

Mind-Reading Machine

One more device that previously could exist only in fairy tales. At the beginning of this year, news about a mind-reading machine that visualises human thoughts amazed a lot of people.

The point of a successful experiment was that scientists were able to sketch out the thoughts of volunteers exactly just by scanning their brains.

The new method to reconstruct the images in a person’s mind helps researchers to understand how the memory works in our brains.

Read more here.

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