top 10 emerging technologies 2008

Acording to the MIT

1. Modeling Surprise
   Microsoft is developing software that will determine the level of surprise that can occur in the population a certain event. This program will predict the reactions of the population to unusual events, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or terrorist attacks and thus help devise plans of action. Combining massive quantities of data, insights into human psychology, and machine learning can help manage surprising events, says Eric Horvitz.
2. Probabilistic Chips
   Krishna Palem thinks a little uncertainty in chips, which consists of electronic components whose behaviour is not entirely deterministic, could extend battery life in mobile devices and maybe the duration of Moore's Law, too.
3. Nano Radio
   Alex Zettl, a researcher at the University of Berkeley, has built molecular size radios using nanotubes; this development will improve from mobile phones to improve communications between microdevices.
4. Wireless Power
   Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity.
5. Cellulolytic Enzymes
   Frances Arnold, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, is working on the creation of enzymes able to metabolize the cellulose transforming it into biofuels. So far, Arnold worked on the creation of enzymes capable of breaking the cellulose towards its transformation into fuel, but you think you can go beyond that and now claims that the very bacteria that are used in the fermentation process can produce these enzymes, that would produce biofuels in a single step.
6. Reality Mining
   Sandy Pentland is using data gathered by cell phones to learn about human behavior.
7. Offline Web Applications
   Adobe's Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of the browser and the desktop.
8. Graphene Transistors
   The graphene is a structure of a carbon atom thick that presents a very high electrical conductivity. Walter de Heer, Georgia Institute of Technology, is investigating the manufacture of electronic components of graphene, because its high conductivity makes components faster than those of silicon. De Heer believes that the electronic components based on graphene could exceed a terahertz.
9. Connectomics
   Jeff Lichtman hopes to elucidate brain development and disease with new technologies that illuminate the web of neural circuits.
10. Atomic Magnetometers
    John Kitching, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is working on developing a magnetometer size of a grain of rice. This tiny tool can revolutionize teams from magnetic resonance used in medicine until the bomb detectors.