10 High-Tech breakthroughs 2013 that will change our understanding of the modern world

This list has been published annually for many years, since 2001. And 2013 is not an exception. A current list of the most important areas of High-Tech includes the following areas: deep training, temporary social Media, Prenatal DNA Sequencing, additive manufacturing, robot Baxter, Memory Implants, smart watches, Ultra-Efficient Solar Power, Big Data from Cheap Phones, Supergrids , Deep Learning. Their technical contents and the current condition are briefly described here.
1). Temporary Social Media
It’s clear that messages on the Internet that are able to self-destruct quickly,are likely to improve the interaction safety in the global network and allow people to be more open and natural in such virtual communication with each other. Obviously, for exactly this purpose there will be created special temporary social networks as one of the most important personal privacy aspects is inability to control the disclosed by users private information by a third-party.

Unfortunately, today technological level of the Internet is that there are shortcomings and errors in the storage of personal data in the “cloud”, when someone (often an anonymous hacker) can gain control over one’s photo, chat, or personal status update. Besides, a user not always wills hih personal private be available forever. Therefore, ensuring the confidentiality and security of the Internet is the main task of the social networks today. A new type of a social network Snapchat (http://www.snapchat.com/), which provides a temporary service that allows friends to share their own photos, which self-destruct in a few seconds after posting, can serve as an example of a new type social network.
2). Prenatal DNA Sequencing
Under Prenatal DNA Sequencing they understand complex prenatal diagnosis to detect certain fetal abnormalities at the stage of its prenatal development. Today such diagnostics can detect more than 98% of fetuses from the aspect of Down syndrome development, 99.9% – the Edwards syndrome, and more than 40% of heart developmental disorders and others. Therefore, in the case of the fetus of a particular genetic disease or predisposition to it, parents can understand the state of modern medicine with the help of a medical consultant and gauge their strength. In this case, it is very important for parents to answer one basic question: can they carry out the rehabilitation of such a child? So receiving the medical examination results, the family makes a decision about the fate of the unborn child and decides on the continuation of gestation or on an abortion.
Disputing paternity refers to the prenatal diagnosis at early gestational age.

3). Additive Manufacturing
Additive manufacturing today is an industrial version of the 3D-printing, which is now just beginning to enjoy application and has already occupied some item’s place , e.g., medical implants and plastic prototypes. Of course, it mostly concerns a small circle of companies, as technologically tuned solution for mass production of critical materials intended to replace, for example, metal alloys, which is not very common in today’s world. Nevertheless, General Electric, an American transnational corporation which is one of the latgest high-tech equipment producers in the world, stands on the cusp of industrial use of modern technology – 3D-printing -for the production of parts for new aircraft engines, e.g., the fuel injector. At the same time as the main intelligence unit of production it is planned to use the so-called 3D-printer – a device that uses a layered creation of a physical object on the basis of software and virtual 3D-model.
4). Baxter: The Blue-Collar Robot
The industrial robot Baxter was created in 2012 by Rethink Robotics company (http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/). In fact, it represents a totally new type of robotic machines. Its creators try to convince their potential buyers that they have developed a new generation of robot that does not require complex programming and expensive industrial and manufacturing process integration.
They are of the opinion that tall you need is to place the robot at the production line and the machine will decide itself what to do.

5). Memory Implants
Some world-famous neuro-biologists and bio-engineers, such as Theodore Berger from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (USA), claim that they were able to decipher the code by means of which the human brain generates long-term memories in its cortex. It’s a well-known fact that for the last two decades a group of scientists has been working upon artificial silicon chips creation under his guidance. These chips are able to imitate brain neurons signal processing.
It’s out of the question that Berger and his colleagues are still to conduct large-scale clinical trials of the developed neural “dentures” on humans, because recently only some tests on animals have been undertaken. Still, it is expected that in the measurable future due to this artificial implants people will be able to keep their memories even in case of having suffered various brain injuries or diseases.
6). Smart Watch
Pebble company (http://getpebble.com/) is considered to be the world’s first smart watch successful developer. Notice that the main difference of the mentioned above watch is that unlike ordinary watch, it is able to interact with mobile devices, e.g., iPhone or Android smartphone, connected to each other by means of Bluetooth. That’s why Pebble Watch can reflect not only the current time, but some mobile phone notifications as well, e.g., an incoming call, SMS or email, all types of notifications (alarm, birthdays, important business meetings, ect.), as well as display short messages from Twitter.
Nevertheless, Pebble plans Watchface SDK production especially for the development engineers next spring, and this miniature SDK will allow to create your own applications for Smart Watch.
7). Ultra-Efficient Solar Power
The efficiency doubling of solar batteries should soon completely change the economics of the sun renewable energy production. At present moment there already exist pilot projects and scientific research, which can make it real. This is evidenced by Harry Atwater (Harry Atwater), Caltech professor of materials science and applied physics. He believes that his laboratory can make it available for widespread use of a device that is likely to produce twice as much solar energy as the currently existing solar panels. As a rule, the solar batteries, available at the market at present, are made of made of a homogeneous semiconductor material, usual silicon. Since this material absorbs only a narrow band of the solar spectrum, a large part of the energy stays unused. Thus the presently existing solar panels tend to convert at least 20% of solar energy into electricity. But the device the Atwater group are at work on, will have an efficiency of at least 50%.
8). Big Data from Cheap Phones
Big Data in ICT implies using different approaches, tools and Рё data processing methods, which can either be structured or unstructures. Alltogether, they represent huge amounts of digital information.
As the defining parameters for the large data characterization experts name “three VВ»: volume (as physical volume data), velocity (speed, both revenue and data processing), and variety (possibility of simultaneous different types of data processing). It is known that in 2011 Gartner analytics named Big Data as trend в„–2 among 10 advanced innovation in the information technology infrastructure. Two years ago big data gave its way in favor virtualization (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220975/Gartner_s_Top_10_IT_challenges_include_exiting_baby_boomers_Big_Data).
However, already at that time Gartner experts estimated uniquely overall technological big data impact as the most significant in comparison even with energy saving and monitoring. Besides according to Gartner’s evaluation of big data, it’s ahead of social networking and IT, cloud computing and consumer products, including tablet computers and a number of other important high technology. No wonder application of big data processing technology is expected to have one of the most powerful influences on the further ICT development in the modern world.
9). Supergrids
In most cases Supergrid means a huge international power transmission net to transcontinental distancies, which can be used for exchange and uninterrupted trade of large electricity amounts between different countries.
If to speak about the recent Supergrid trends, the work upon harmonization and unification of the European UCTE network with its neighboring Unified Energy System of Russia and former USSR countries (IPS / UPS) is being done at present moment.
10). Deep Learning
Deep Learning is a sub-area of the so-called machine learning. This is a difficult for understanding (i.e., for a normal inhabitant) concept, which is based on two postulates, when such training: 1) is based on the use of a large number of information levels, required for modeling of complex relationships in the data itself; 2) on the use of unlabeled data (without the participation of the teacher), or 3) on a combination of unlabeled data together with labeled data (ie, with partial involvement of the “teacher”). When teaching high-level reporting, features are formed with the use of low-level. And such a complex hierarchy of attributes, that uses different levels, is called Deep Architecture.
Over time, deep architectures made real technological revolution in the field of machine learning, substantially exceeding other models. They proved to be particularly useful in solving problems of speech recognition and image in the audio – video recording and in a whole range of others. So now we can state that artificial intelligence finally becomes really smart.
To sum up
At the end of the analytical report it is necessary to notice that among the mentioned above breakthrough technologies in the Republic of Belarus only 3 of them are in use. They are: Big Data, prenatal diagnosis and the composite part in the Unified Energy System. Herewith, EPAM Systems widely deals with Big data. The company possesses its own Big Data Competency Center, functioneering on order for 10gen Inc (http://www.10gen.com/). And prenatal diagnosis can find a new lease of life in our Republic in case BelBiograd works.