Humankind has long lamented its short allotment of time upon this earth. The dream of immortality has inspired legends throughout history, such as the fabled Fountain of Youth sought by new world explorers in the 16th Century. Today, anti-aging products and treatments have blossomed into a multi-billion dollar industry – offering everything from anti-wrinkle creams to make you “look years younger”, to expensive hormone treatments that claim to reduce or even avert the effects of aging.

Quantum dots – tiny fluorescent crystals that contain just a few dozen molecules of semiconducting metal – are about to transition from an emerging technology to a mainstream product.

Many people best know helium as the party gas that keeps colorful balloons aloft – and for its amusing side effect of making your voice squeak if you inhale it. But it is also a valuable and non-renewable resource, and the world’s reserves of helium may be starting to run out.

After years of fighting for scientific and commercial credibility, the Canadian quantum computing firm D-Wave Systems seemed to achieve both in May of 2011.

If you could take just one medicine with you to survive on a desert island, your best bet would be a supply of antibiotics.

China scored yet another world record early in 2012 when it announced the completion of the “world’s biggest battery” at Zhangbei, in Hebei province near Beijing. The factory-sized facility, developed for China’s national power authority by the US electric car company BYD, houses massive arrays of lithium-ion batteries capable of storing 36 megawatt-hours of electricity – enough to supply more than 10,000 homes with electricity for more than an hour.