Category Archives: Futurism

In Brief These positive results from a small clinical trial may mean you will have a new way to get your next flu vaccine. Instead of an actual injection, researchers from Georgia Teach and Emory University have developed a sticker patch that comes with microneedles that you can just stick on your skin. No Fear of Injections

We all have that friend who avoids getting flu shots out of fear of injections, right? Well, researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology and the Emory University had you we mean, your friendin mind while designing this new way todeliver vaccinations. Instead of the usual injection, the researchers came up with a sticker patchthat you can applyon yourself.

The patch comes with a hundred tiny hair-like microneedles located on its adhesive side. If you zoom in under the microscope what youll see are microscopically small needles, lead researcher Mark Prausnitz told the BBC. They puncture painlessly into the skin. Unlike regular injections that go all the way through the muscle, the microneedles puncture and dissolve into the upper layer of the skin, delivering the vaccine in about 20 minutes.

A small preliminary clinical trial was recently published in The Lancetthatinvolving 100 volunteers and showed that applying the patch was relatively painless compared to a regular flu shot. A few people got some mild side-effects, like redness and irritation on the skin where the patch was applied. These disappeared after a couple of days. Initial findings also revealed that the patch vaccines successfully immunized the users against the flu.

The FDA will require larger human studies before it definitively determines that the vaccine patch is safe and effective, but such a technology is truly revolutionary. As soon as this patch system gets approval for widespread use in the next couple of years, getting flu shots or other vaccines would be as easy as putting a Band-Aid. We could envisage vaccination at home, in the workplace or even via mail distribution, said Emorys Nadine Rouphael,speaking to the BBC.

Plus, you can do it yourself. With the microneedle patch, you could pick it up at the store and take it home, put it on your skin for a few minutes, peel it off and dispose of it safely, because the microneedles have dissolved away,Prausnitz said in a press release.

This also opens up a better transport and delivery system for vaccines to reach remote areas. The patches can also be stored outside the refrigerator, so you could even mail them to people, Prausnitz added in the press release. Hes already working witha company that wants to license this technology.

As John Edmunds from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who wasnt involved in the study, told the BBC, This study is undoubtedly an important step towards a better way to deliver future vaccines.

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Your Next Flu Shot Could Be Delivered Using an Injectionless Patch - Futurism

In Brief Researchers from Stockholm University have confirmed the existence of water's two liquid forms, one with a low density while the other has a high density. Their insight could help develop better purification and desalination processes. Not One, But Two

Similar to how weve begun to uncover new properties in Hydrogen, the worlds most basic element, scientists are now discovering how complex water really is. Considered to be one of the most fundamental molecules on Earth, water (H2O) may actually have not one, but two distinct liquid phases. The discovery was made by researchers fromStockholm University in Sweden, and the team published their findings in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The new remarkable property is that we find that water can exist as two different liquids at low temperatures where ice crystallization is slow, Stockholm University professor and researcher Anders Nilson said in a press release.

Concretely, they saw that liquid water fluctuates between high andlow density forms. X-rays at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago found the difference in structures, while the large X-ray laboratory at DESY, a national research center in Hamburg, confirmed that both forms were indeed liquid phases. We have in particular been able to follow the transformation of the sample at low temperatures between the two phases and demonstrated that there is diffusion as is typical for liquids, Fivos Perakis, apostdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University with a background in ultrafast optical spectroscopy, explained.

Its not surprising, really, for water to have such bizarre properties. For one, it already has many other uniquely strange properties that set it apart from other liquids. The new results give very strong support to a picture where water at room temperature cant decide in which of the two forms it should be, high or low density, which results in local fluctuations between the two, researcher Lars G.M. Pettersson said. In a nutshell: Water is not a complicated liquid, but two simple liquids with a complicated relationship.

On a practical level, this understanding of how water behaves at different temperatures and pressures can help researchers to develop better purification and desalination processes. On an even grander scale, however, it could help us to see how water is affected by the salts and biomolecules necessary for life. The strange properties of water become stranger still as these actually make water a prerequisite for life as we know it.

Assuming the same conditions apply in exoplanets, this could help us spot water and potentially life beyond Earth.

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Breaking Discovery: Water Has Two Liquid Phases - Futurism

In Brief Hampton Creek has surprised the world by announcing they have been working on lab-grown meat and plan to launch commercially in 2018. This meat alternative is one of many possible solutions to the environmental problems caused by the food industry. Meaty Ambitions

Hampton Creek, a startup that develops plant-based alternatives to foods that are usually produced by animals, has announced that the lab-grown meatthey have been developing clandestinely over the last year will go commercial in 2018. If the timeline is accurate, the launch would come three years earlier than their closest competitor, Memphis Meats, which predicts their product will reach stores in 2021.

One of the biggest issues Hampton Creek will face in achieving this aim is the cost of clean meat. Although the price of lab-grown meat has fallen 99 percent in the last three years with the first lab-grown burger costing $230,000 it is still more expensive than farmed meat. Hampton Creek has not released any information concerning how much their product will cost.

Central to the companys product istheir research into replacing the scarce fetal bovine serum that most lab-grown meats use with plant-based nutrients. Simply getting that right wont be enough to produce a solid final product, though. As Josh Tetrick, CEO of Hampton Creek, conceded to Quartz, Just because youve nailed the battery doesnt mean youve nailed the electric car.

Opinion is split as to whether the 2018 goal is achievable. Some cite Hampton Creeks previous actionswhen they were developing and marketing their Just Mayo product as a reason to be skeptical. Others are more optimistic regarding Hampton Creeks timeline the Good Food Institutes executive director Bruce Friedlichtold Business Insider that with the right resources, it should be achievable.

A cost-effective, price-competitive clean meat could have paradigm-shifting consequencesfor both the world food market and the environment. Not only would it radically reduce animal suffering, it would also decrease global emissions. The meat industry is estimated by the World Resources Institute to produce 13.5 percent of greenhouse gases worldwide, and if nothing changes, this percentage is likely to increase given that the worlds population could reach around 9.7 billion by 2050.

To combat these issues, the world has seen a surge in the production of alternative meat products, which can be split into three categories: plant-based meat, such as the pea protein-based pea burger produced by Beyond Meat; more sustainable meat sources, such as the insect meat produced by Cornish Edible Insects; and lab-grown meat, such as that proposed by Hampton Creek and Memphis Meats.

If we are to survive as a species, we must radically change how much pollution we create, and changing the way we eat is a key aspect of this. Any alternative to the environmentally damaging meat industry represents a step toward preserving humanitys future, so let us all hope Hampton Creeks announcement is as promising as it seems.

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A New Company Will Have Fake Meat on the Shelves Next Year - Futurism

In Brief The world's first "Forest City," designed to fight pollution and climate change, is under construction in China. Covered in greenery and trees, it will absorb nearly 10,000 tons of CO2 and 57 tons of pollutants yearly, and produce 900 tons of oxygen.

The worlds first Forest City, created to fight pollution, is now under construction in Liuzhou, Guangxi Province, China. Designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti, a team that develops green projects all around the world, the futuristic Forest City will be home to a community of about 30,000 people. It will be covered in greenery, including nearly 1 million plants of more than 100 species and 40,000 trees that together absorb almost 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 57 tons of pollutants, and produce approximately 900 tons of oxygen annually. As a result, Forest City will help to decrease the average air temperature, improve local air quality, create noise barriers, generate habitats, and improve local biodiversity in the region.

Liuzhou Forest City will be self-sufficient, running on renewable energy sources such as geothermal and solar energy. The city will also be entirely wired, and will include commercial zones, residential areas, recreational spaces, a hospital, and two schools. Forest City will be connected to Liuzhou by a fast rail line for electric cars.

Liuzhou Municipality Urban Planning commissioned the design for the 175-hectare Liuzhou Forest City which will be situated along the Liujiang River in the northern part of Liuzhou. The project has a high profile in China and, if it succeeds, it will set an example for green city design elsewhere in the country and around the world. The project is planned to be complete sometime in 2020.

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China Has Officially Started Construction on the World's First Forest City - Futurism

In Brief Canadian neuroscientists have proposed a novel way of understanding how the brain stores memory. In particular, they hypothesized that forgetfulness is the brain's way of prioritizing information that's crucial for survival. The Usefulness of Forgetting

Weve all had moments of forgetfulness, and not infrequentlythe act of forgetting about something can have a negative impact on our day or even our lives. Some even consider being forgetful to be asign of damage in the brain, particularly the area tasked with storing and retaining information.While this may be true in the case of memory disorders, Canadian neuroscientists from the University of Torontopropose that the typicalmoments of forgetfulness with which most of us are familiar are actuallythe brains way of making us smarter and that those moments may even make our lives better.

In a study published in the journal Neuron, researchers offered an alternative hypothesis as to why the brain purposefully works to forget information. Though not entirely a new field of study, the neurobiology of forgetting has been relatively unexamined, as co-author Blake Richards explained during an interview with NPRs Andrea Hsu.

Their researchfound that the brains ability to store huge amounts of information can often be hindered by keeping memories that may be irrelevant for our everyday existence. In fact, I would argue theyre not just irrelevant, but they can be detrimental to living our daily lives, Richardssaid. Information that isnt necessary for us to evolve and survive, then, isnt necessary for the brain to retain.

Our memories ultimately are there to help us make decisions, to act in the world in an intelligent manner, Richards went on toexplain. Evolution cares about whether or not you are an individual whos making appropriate decisions in the environment to maximize your chances of survival.

Researchers argue that forgetting is actually a function of memory. Ironic, right? But when you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Much of Richards work on memory and forgetfulness is thanks to his application of theories on artificial intelligence (AI) and how the brain learns. He said that in the world of AI theres a phenomenon called over-fitting, where a machine ends up storing so much information that it hinders its ability to make intelligent decisions.

Richards hopes that by understanding the neurobiology of forgetting, well be able to design AI systemscapable of interacting with the world and making decisions the same way human beings do. Luckily, there are many studies currentlyfocused on trying to make AI systems or artificial neural networks behave like human brains. One crucial aspect were still working on is how to facilitatememory development in AI.By understanding the nuances of human memory, it may be possible to design AI systems that distinguish between information thats trivial and whatsnecessary for survival.

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Neuroscientists Say Forgetting Things May Be an Essential Part of Our Brain Function - Futurism

A Cryptocurrency Powerhouse

Thus far, 2017 has proven to be a notable year forcryptocurrencies and not just the one most everyones familiar with. While Bitcoin has been on a continuous upward trend, its major competitorEther is following close behind. Despite last weeks flash crash and Sundays fake news market value drop, the price of Ether is back up, opening today (Wednesday) at $282.44. Thatsup by more than 13 percent since markets closed on Tuesday, and its continually going up.

Aside from an increase in market value, Ethereums price per coin is also up. Its reached $300, which is a substantialjump from an initial value of $10 at the beginning of 2017. This is making Ethereum a more attractive option for amateur miners than Bitcoin. Therefore, theres beena surge in Ether mining from homes, using just computer graphics cards to pump new Ether units while at the same time securing the Ethereum blockchain the public ledger of transactions that makes it all possible.

Real-time index from cryptocurrency analysis site Digiconomists founder Alex de Vries shows that Ethereum mining is powered by an amount ofelectricity equivalent to that consumed by a small country.All those household computers turned into Ether miners each have blockchain transactions consuming at least, if not more than,45 kWh of electricity. According to de Vries, the entire Ethereum network could be consuming as much as4.2 Terawatt-hours (tWh) which is only a little bit morethan whats consumed bythe Middle Eastern island of Cyprus.

Still, themethodology behind de Vries index isnt totally exact, and since blockchain isdecentralized, it would be next to impossible to truly ascertain justhow much electricity thesehome-based Ether mining operations are consuming. The estimates do indicate,however, just how energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining has the potential to be. One major reason for this is the power-hungry graphics cards involved. Its ironic that mining cryptocurrencies in order to maintain blockchains which are perhaps the most efficient and secure information ledgers we have is a process thats not particularly efficient.

This may not be the case for long, though. Unlike Bitcoin,Ethereum has plans to move away from its existing energy-intensive mining algorithms. Instead of operating on a Proof of Work model, its building a hybrid one that incorporates Proof of Stake. Simply put, this new protocol could allow an Ether holder to mine just by having their computers connected, Vries explained to Motherboard. In a full Proof of Stake algorithm, energy consumption would become negligible, he added.

Until then, mining for Ether will continue to demand huge amounts of electricity and computing power. Plus, as the price for Ether units continue to increase (with the market value of Ether following with it) more and more miners will bemining for it. Ultimately, they could wind up consuming as much electricity as the price of Ether could support. The question is, is this energy and computing power for digital currency worth it? For the time being it seems that it is,if the growing number of miners are any indication.

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Ethereum Could Be Using More Than a Country's Worth of Electricity - Futurism

In Brief The largest coal company in the world has announced that it will be shutting down 37 of its sites. The move is fueled by the increasing affordability of solar power. On its Way Out

Things are not looking good for the coal industry. In the latest blow to this fossil fuel, the world biggest coal company is closing a total of 37 mines. It seems that the rise of solar power is playing a major role in the decline of coal. The company, Coal India, produces 82 percent of Indias coal, according to The Independent. The closings account for nine percent of Coal Indias sites.

The Indian government has recently shifted from coal to cleaner, renewable sources, most notably solar power. Just last week, the government announced that it has abandoned plans for building another coal power station with Chimanbhai Sapariya. T,he countrys energy minister noted that Our focus is now on renewable energy. The government will encourage solar power. The prices of solar power continue to plummet as technology and government incentives work to make renewable energy more attractive.

India is leading the way in a renewable energy revolution. Analyst Tim Buckley said, Measures taken by the Indian government to improve energy efficiency coupled with ambitious renewable energy targets and the plummeting cost of solar has had an impact on existing as well as proposed coal-fired power plants, rendering an increasing number as financially unviable.

A recent story by the New York Timesshowed that Indias air pollution crisis is responsible for the deaths of around 1.1 million people in the country every single year, rivaling China as the deadliest in the world. The decline of coal being burned for power will only improve the air quality, saving more lives as efforts move toward cleaner energy. In another historic move, the country has pledged to ensure that every car sold in India by 2030 will be electric.

This combination will be a one-two punch to the deadly pollution plaguing the country. A new population report from the UN released last week foresees that Indias population will continue to boom and is projected to surpass Chinas 1.4 billionby 2024. That increased population is going to add to the countrys energy needs and we need to be prepared to meet it with clean energy from renewable sources.

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India Has Shut Down 37 of the World's Biggest Coal Company's Mines - Futurism

In Brief For the first time, astronomers have confirmed the discovery of orbiting supermassive black holes. The black holes are located in a galaxy 750 million light-years from Earth, and their discovery could teach us a great deal about our universe. Supermassive Orbit

Researchers at the University of New Mexico (UNM) have made an incredible discovery that could help us better understand not just black holes, but also the universe.

For the first time ever, astronomers have observed and measured two supermassive black holesorbiting one another. The black holes are hundreds of millions of light-years from us, but that just happens to be the perfect distance from the Earth for optimal observation.

The observation process was an undertaking 12years in the making. For a long time, weve been looking into space to try and find a pair of these supermassive black holes orbiting as a result of two galaxies merging, professor Greg Taylor explained in a UNM news release. Even though weve theorized that this should be happening, nobody had ever seen it until now.

The team used the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA)to plot the black holes trajectoriesand confirm that they are indeed in orbit with one another. However, the size of the black holes makes their orbital period around 24,000 years, so even after viewing the binary system for over a decade, the scientists have yet to witness any curvature in their orbit.

These orbiting black holes could teach us a great deal about our universe.Supermassive black holes have a lot of influence on the stars around them and the growth and evolution of the galaxy, Taylor explained. So, understanding more about them and what happens when they merge with one another could be important for our understanding for the universe.

Bob Zavala, an astronomer with the U.S. Naval Observatory, likens the potential of this discovery to what astronomers were able to learn about stars from studying theirbinary orbits. Now well be able to use similar techniques to understand super-massive black holes and the galaxies they reside within, he told UNM.

The UNM team plans to observe the black holes again in three or four years to confirm their findings and get a more precise reading of the orbit. This discovery will undoubtedly provide a wealth of new knowledge for many years to come.

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A Groundbreaking Discovery Just Verified the Existence of Orbiting Supermassive Black Holes - Futurism

In Brief A system of drones has been developed to help quell the loss of Earth's trees. The system can help plant almost 100,000 trees per day.

The Earth is rapidly losing its forests at a rate muchfaster than humans can replant. Exact figures vary, but according to Scientific American, most analysts attribute upwards of 15 percent [of global carbon emissions] to deforestation. This means that by clearing or burning the Earths forests, we are directly contributing to the rapidly increasing rate of climate change.

One Australian engineer is enlisting technology to fight the battle against deforestation. Dr. Susan Graham has helped develop a pair of drones that can help mitigate some of the damage by planting trees at a rate that far outpaces what is possible to do by hand.

The first dronescans an area of land, searching for an ideal plot to plant. This drone helps to make a 3D map of the area and then special algorithms are employed to find the best places to plant. The second drone then takes that map and its payload of up to 150 seed pods and gets to work shooting the seeds into the ground. Lauren Fletcher, the CEO of BioCarbon Engineering, said: Were firing at one a second, which means a pair of operators will be able to plant nearly 100,000 trees per day 60 teams like this will get us to a billion trees a year.

Drones get a lot of press for their delivery capabilities, but Amazon packages arent the only way to utilize this technology. There are lifesaving drones that can beat EMTs to emergencies, drones that could help to supportdeclining bee populations, and even drones to stand in for backup dancers. All of this and much more is to come, since not even the sky is the limit.

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New Drone Plans an Ambitious Mission to Plant 100000 Trees a Day - Futurism

In Brief A fake news story about the death of Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, caused the cryptocurrency to lose $4 billion. Although Ethereum is retaining much of its value, this highlights the problems of fake news and the market's volatility. Power of Fake News

On Sunday,4Chan, the trolls paradise, was used to post a photo of Ethereum (ETH) founder Vitalik Buterin along with a story of his death in a car crash: Fatal car crash. And now we have our answer. He was the glue. It will be difficult for ETH to recover and the entire crypto sphere is in big trouble.

Ethereum is currently the second most valuable cryptocurrency in the world. Itis also arguably the hottest cryptocurrency in relative terms, up as much as 4,000 percent this year alone and drawing interest from elites all over the world. At least partially driving this is the fact that other technologies are being built off of Ethereum, whichseems poised to become the blockchainof choice around the world.

The price of Ethereum, despite having risen so much this year thus far, remains volatile, and it was already experiencing a decline yesterday when the news about Buterins death hit the internet. By the days end, about $4 billion dropped from its total market value.

Of course, Buterin wasnt actually dead:

His selfie holding the modern equivalent of the days newspaper a piece of paper with the latest block mined on the Ethereum blockchain written on it put that rumor to bed. If you feel like youve seen that move before, you may be remembering Julian Assanges livestream dispelling rumors of his death the same way back in January.

Despite Sundays fake news emergency, Ethereum is still trading more than30 times higher today than it was in early January, so in some ways this was just a blip in the cryptocurrencys progress. On the other hand, theres little doubt that fake news manipulation has showcased a weakness in Ethereum. Buterin is the well-known face of Ethereum, and it seems that although the cryptocurrency exists independent of any control by him, right now its health is influenced by him to some extent.

Ultimately, this story highlights that all cryptocurrencies are inherently volatile, at least for now. On June 21, for example, a single multi-million dollar sell order caused a flash crash in Ethereum, a symptom of a young and underdeveloped infrastructure. This problem will be repaired over time as the cryptocurrency market evolves, regardless of what happens (or doesnt happen) to founders.

This episode alsoprovide a cautionary tale about the power of fake news. However, that particular problem certainly isnt limited to the cryptocurrency world its an epidemic everywhere, from climate change to politics and election newsto the search for life. Perhaps a strategic combination of critical thinking and technologywill be the answer to the fake news problem; for now, however, were glad both Buterin and Ethereum are alive and well.

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Ethereum Lost $4 Billion in Market Value Due to Fake Fatal Car Crash - Futurism