Decently strong mix of articles this month from various disciplines, with an emphasis on discoveries that have a good chance of being very practically useful in the near future.

• Personally the most exciting bit of news to me is that it may soon be possible to make diagnosis of depression more reliable through a blood test. The test works by looking at 13 RNA markers that indicate how active the underlying genes have been, genes that are particularly correlated with the incidence of mood disorders or have been identified in previous work to be associated with depression. The test should also be capable to predicting who will go on to develop bipolar disorder and how serious the condition will be. This test, if it passes the testing stage, will likely only be used to accompany more traditional ways to diagnose rather than be used by itself, but it should be obvious to everyone how significant this will be if it is widely deployed.
• But I suspect that most people are excited about is TMSC’s announcement that it has invented a semiconductor that is smaller than 1 nanometer. I don’t know much about the details except that semi-metal bismuth as electrodes. TMSC also cautions that the technology may very well not not make it to commercial production at all. But it signals that we haven’t yet seen the end of incremental improvements to chip technology.
• Another piece of technology that I suspect will be deployed rather quickly is vertical wind turbines. The sight of windmill-shaped wind turbines are now a familiar sight in many landscapes but it seems that vertically oriented ones are more efficient and perform even better in a grid formation with some turbines behind others. In the traditional arrangement, this would result in turbulence in the rows of turbines behind those in front.
• This paper, though it has yet to be peer reviewed, could have major ramifications as well. As we all know, plants need nitrogen and a lot of what fertilizer does is give nitrogen to plants. This paper describes how a plant that is self-sufficient in nitrogen, by being able to use the nitrogen present in the atmosphere, could be made through synthetic biology.
• Finally a paper in economics that I believe adds more nuance to our understanding of wealth inequality. It describes how career earnings growth in the US more than doubled between 1960 and 2017 and this was because of the growing importance of jobs that requires decision-making skills. Accordingly while workers used to hit peak earnings in their 30s, they now hit it in their 50s. This reflects the importance of critical thinking skills in jobs and how learning skills and knowledge over a lifetime adds a great deal of value. I believe this helps explain some of the frustrations of the young in the present day and the disparity in earning potential.