Category Archives: Futurism

Black children deserve the fullness and luxury of seeing themselves represented across the board. Through literature, television, or in classrooms, seeing possible futures that invoke excellence from Black youth is infinitely important. This is the predominant force behind the concept of Afro-futurism. Afro-futurism is the merging of science and technology with vivid philosophies of what the future holds for African diasporic people. The empowerment of young people then allows us, in turn, to reimagine a world with all versions of ourselves protected and validated.

Lupita Nyongo has been deeply invested in making young children feel strong and comfortable in their own skin with her heartfelt childrens book Sulwe, and with her portrayal of characters such as Nakia in Marvels Black Panther. Now, she has taken on another project that will change the game for younger generations coming up now.

YouTube Kids new dynamic series Super Sema is about an inventive young girl, Sema, who fearlessly engages in different scenarios in her town of Dunia. Set in an Afro-Futuristic world, Sema, her twin brother MB and their peers work together through flexing their creative muscles and utilizing STEM to prevent the wily schemes of the towns villain Tobor. The kids tackle themes like virtual reality, recycling, and being brave in the face of adversity. Super Sema is the type of show I wish I had growing up, Nyongo tells EBONY. Sema is Kenyan, shes smart and my hope is that younger generations can see this and learn new things in a fun way without feeling the direct pressure to learn.

In conjunction with Kukua, an education entertainment company, the award-winning actress proudly serves as executive producer of this series while also voicing Semas mother. Even more impressive, Kukua is an all female lead team leading the charge behind this stellar show.

In America, it seems abnormal for there to be teams solely consisting of women however in other parts of the world, it is the standard, says Nyongo.

There have been significant strides to push Black youth to gain interest and thrive in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics over the past two decades. However, there is still work to be done. As STEM roles are some of the highest-earning positions in the United States job force, Black people are still widely underrepresented in this field. With the introduction of Super Sema to younger audiences, the charge is that the show will inspire limitless opportunities for creativity and invention within the space.

Season one of Super Sema is now available to watch on YouTube Kids.

Savannah M. Taylor is a native of Springfield, MA, and a graduate of Syracuse University where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in African American Studies with a minor in Communication & Rhetorical Studies. Some of her many passions include storytelling through various mediums and bringing awareness to Black history and culture through the advocacy of the Black diasporic community. These passions led her to start her own initiative called The Silhouette Brand, a platform to provide access to resources, opportunity, and exposure for people across the African diaspora.

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Lupita Nyongo, Super Sema and the Power of STEM - EBONY

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A controversial study published last year in the European Respiratory Journal claimed that current smoking was not associated with adverse outcome in COVID-19 patients.

It was a highly unusual conclusion, as COVID-19 primarily attacks the lungs, and as the World Health Organization has pointed out smoking impairs lung function, increasing the risk of respiratory infections, including coronaviruses.

But over half a year later, the medical journal has retract the paper, as The Guardian reports. The reasoning: some of the authors had financial ties to the tobacco industry.

A retraction issued by the European Respiratory Journal stated that it was brought to the editors attention that two of the authors had failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest at the time of the manuscripts submission.

Among the international team that penned the paper are several researchers who have direct ties to the tobacco industry.

That is, one of the authors (Jos M. Mier) at the time had a current and ongoing role in providing consultancy to the tobacco industry on tobacco harm reduction, reads the retraction, and another (Konstantinos Poulas) at the time was a principal investigator for the Greek NGO NOSMOKE a science and innovation hub that has received funding from the Foundation for a Smoke Free World (an organization funded by the tobacco industry).

NOSMOKE promotes pro e-cigarette research from the tobacco industry, as The Guardian points out.

The authors fired back, saying that a conflict of interest wasnt grounds for a full retraction.

The Respiratory Journal, however, wrote in its retraction notice that the editors felt the decision was justified based on the nature of the undisclosed relationship, in the context of the sensitive subject matter presented, and on the need to align the published journal content with the bylaws of the publishing society.

One senior author, Konstantinos Farsalinos, told Retraction Watch that he found the retraction unfair and unsubstantiated, after he proposed to publicly release the full dataset to be independently verified, but was reportedly turned down by the editors.

Its not the only paper of its kind. In fact, an April 2020 preprint also concluded that tobacco may help prevent smokers from catching COVID-19.

Researchers found that a far smaller proportion of smokers, as compared to the average number of smokers in France, experienced serious symptoms of COVID-19. A major neurobiologist told The Guardian at the time that nicotine may be stopping the coronavirus from entering cells.

But evidence of smoking actually protecting people from infection is dubious at best, according to experts.

As of now, the data supporting smokers paradox claims are limited and questionable, read a review in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

The claims of a protective effect must be viewed with extreme caution by both the general population as well as clinicians, the review read.

In the context of smoking and COVID-19, poor data collection can lead to several erroneous conclusions, the journal writes. If patients with missing smoking data are not eliminated from the total pool, smokers may be wrongly underrepresented.

The findings highlight just how difficult it can be to make sense of the flood of data about COVID. But without disclosing a conflict of interest particularly when its undisclosed ties to the tobacco industry during a pandemic involving a respiratory illness its crucial to make sure the data isnt taken out of context.

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Paper Claiming Cigarettes Protect Against COVID Retracted for Ties to Tobacco Industry - Futurism

Are traders cashing in or are they afraid of Biden's tax plan?Bitcoin Drop

The value of Bitcoin, along with several other digital currencies, plummeted on Friday, following US president Joe Bidens announcement of a significant capital gains tax hike, CNBC reports.

The value of the digital currency fell to just below $50,000, its lowest since early March. According to CoinMarketCap, the drop represented the wiping out of $200 billion in market value a startling reminder of cryptocurrencys persistent volatility.

Its not entirely clear what caused the drop, but its reasonable to suspect that Bidens plans to raise the capital gains tax for the wealthiest Americans to 43.4 percent may have led to a wave of selling, as CNBC suggests.

Analysts had also warned earlier this week that the value of Bitcoin is about to drop significantly after hype surrounding the public listing of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase caused values to soar.

Bitcoin headed South today after President Biden signaled that he wanted to raise capital gains tax in the US, Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst, told Global News. Now whether that happens or not, many bitcoin investors are probably sitting on some substantial capital gains if they stayed the course over the past year.

Halley also noted that taxation and market regulation remain the crypto markets Achilles Heel.

Despite the dip, though, Bitcoin is still up 65 percent since the start of this year.

Not everybody is convinced Bidens tax plan was to blame.

I dont think Bidens taxes plans will have a big impact on bitcoin, Ruud Feltkamp, CEO at automated crypto trading bot Cryptohopper, told Global News.

Bitcoin has only gone up for a long time, it is only natural to see a consolidation, Feltkamp argued. Traders are simply cashing in on winnings.

READ MORE: Over $200 billion wiped off cryptocurrency market in a day as bitcoin plunges below $50,000 [CNBC]

More on Bitcoin: Analyst Predicts 50 Percent Drop in Bitcoin Value

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Bitcoin Crashes, Wiping Over $200 Billion Off Crypto Market - Futurism

After decades of international cooperation, Russia is handing over the keys.Severing Ties

Dmitry Rogozin, the hot-tempered head of Russias state space corporation Roscosmos, has confirmed that the country will pull out of the International Space Station after 20 years of continuous international occupation of the aging orbital research outpost, the Financial Times reports.

Its the end of decades of cooperation in space, severing significant ties between Russias space efforts and the rest of the worlds NASA and the European Space Agency in particular.

We are beginning negotiations with our NASA partners, we are formalizing them now, Rogozin told reporters, as quoted by FT. It does not mean that the station will be scrapped and dumped into the ocean immediately after 2025. We will simply hand over the responsibility for our segment to the partners.

The news comes after a video uploaded to Twitter by Rogozin on Tuesday showed the construction of the first module of Russias own space station, scheduled to be launched into orbit within the next decade.

If we succeed in orbiting [the station] in 2030, consistent with our plans, that would be a colossal breakthrough, Rogozin said.

After decades of research, the International Space Station is showing significant wear and tear. As rumors swirled over the weekend that Russia was considering the break, the countrys deputy prime minister Yury Borisov noted to state news agency TASS that the space stations condition leaves much to be desired, and that reports of malfunctions have become more frequent in recent times.

The news marks a new chapter in Russia distancing itself from the rest of the world when it comes to space research. The country also recently signed an agreement with China to build a separate station in lunar orbit after turning down offers to develop the Gateway, a station with a similar purpose, with NASA.

READ MORE: Russia to pull out of International Space Station in 2025 [Financial Times]

More on Russias plans: Russia Shows Off First Module of Its Upcoming Space Station

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Russia Confirms That It's Abandoning the International Space Station - Futurism

The blast could be heard in a neighboring state and reportedly turned tap water brown.Gender Bender

New Hampshire police say that the blast from a gender reveal event a party in which expecting parents dramatically reveal the anticipated gender of their baby was so powerful that it frightened neighbors, cracked the foundations of nearby homes, and could even be heard across state lines.

We heard this God-awful blast, neighbor Sara Taglieri told NBC 10 Boston. It knocked pictures off our walls Im all up for silliness and whatnot, but that was extreme.

Taglier confirmed to the Washington Post that the explosion had caused a crack in her homes foundation. The Union Leader reported that the blast was caused by 80 pounds of the explosive Tannerite was felt in a 20-mile radius and may have turned tap water brown in the area.

We are all about celebrating happy moments like having a baby, but their celebration was felt and heard not only by different neighborhoods but through different towns, Taglieri told the Post. Its not like we are upset because there was blue or pink confetti on our yard. It was such a large blast.

The unidentified person behind the explosion has turned himself in, according to the Union Leader, and is cooperating with authorities.

Nobody was injured by the blast, but it comes after a wave of surreal and sometimes deadly stunts related to gender reveal parties. Last month, for instance, two were killed in an airplane crash related to a gender reveal event, and earlier this year two died in an explosion at yet another gender reveal celebration.

In New Hampshire, authorities said, the baby was a boy.

READ MORE: A huge explosion cracked house foundations in New Hampshire. An extreme gender-reveal party was to blame. [The Washington Post]

More on explosions: Astronomers Detect Biggest Explosion Since the Big Bang

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Gender Reveal Explosion Was So Strong It Cracked Home Foundations - Futurism

Image by Yogesh Pedamkar via Unsplash / Futurism

Scientists from the University of Oxford have developed a vaccine that they say gives unprecedented protection against malaria, a deadly mosquito-borne disease that killed more than 400,000 people worldwide last year.

In a phase II clinical trial currently under review by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet the team found that the vaccine protected young children from the West African country Burkina Faso against malaria with 77 percent efficacy, according to a press release, making this the first vaccine to clear the World Health Organizations benchmark of 75 percent. A lower dose of the vaccine still showed 71 percent efficacy.

With that research complete, the researchers who are collaborating with the Serum Institute of India and American pharmaceutical company Novavax plan to launch a massive phase III trial to determine whether or not the vaccine is safe and effective enough for distribution.

Malaria is one of the leading causes of childhood mortality in Africa, Burkina Faso Minister of Health Charlemagne Oudraogo said in the release We have been supporting trials of a range of new vaccine candidates in Burkina Faso and these new data show that licensure of a very useful new malaria vaccine could well happen in the coming years. That would be an extremely important new tool for controlling malaria and saving many lives.

Developing a vaccine for malaria is tricky, in no small part because the disease is caused by a parasite instead of a virus. But just like viral vaccines, the idea is to prompt an immune response to a weakened form of the parasite in the liver that will help the body fend off the real thing. Scientists have been trying to do this for years, but past attempts resulted in far worse protection than this new one, with efficacy rates around 43 and 50 percent.

We are highly excited to see these results on a safe and highly effective malaria vaccine, Serum Institute of India CEO Cyrus Poonawalla and Chairman Adar Poonawalla said in the press release, which will be available to the whole world through an excellent collaborative effort between Serum Institute, the University of Oxford and Novavax Inc.

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Scientists Say They've Invented a "Highly Effective" Malaria Vaccine - Futurism

The simulation combined the insights of the experts on how they envision the mining industry in 2030, followed by a voting round to determine the most likely scenarios.

Employees in mining firms are expected to demand new norms in which information sharing is not avoided but promoted to gain public support

Main findings in the report are that increasing demands for transparency from the public and investors, matched with advances in information technologies and rising competition over talent will lead employees in mining firms to demand that management accept and apply new norms in which information sharing is not avoided but promoted to gain public support.

The shifting social norms within the mining industry, accelerated by digital technologies that will better connect communities to miners, will lead to a new normal in which mining firms will adopt a corporate culture that focuses on restoring and gaining the trust of local communities by providing them with access to information in real-time, the review states.

According to the report, such transparency is also a must-have when it comes to decision-making. This open-access scenario also sees more automation and data usage, whose value and demand are expected to grow. As a result, mining firms will create value based on their ability and potential to fulfill such requirements beyond the traditional economic performance indicators, the analysis reads.

The change in norms and the way things operate is expected to reflect demands not only from employees, communities and regulators but also from the public, as end-consumers are likely to be raising the bar and demanding commitment to Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance standards.

The crowds primary recommendation to industry executives was to understand that now is the time to experiment, take an active approach, and increase the number and investments in projects that are aimed at achieving better ESG objectives via the use of new technologies, adoption of new norms, whilst seeking to achieve higher transparency, the report states.

Even though new technologies are considered key to keeping the industry current, the experts do not see major risks related to the disruption of the mining sector by Silicon Valley-type companies.

While the crowd suspects that the Tesla-ization trend will spill over to the mining industry sooner rather than later, the majority of participants dont perceive it as an existential industry threat (a Kodak-type disruption). Instead, they viewed it as the emergence of a new type of actor alongside the traditional Tier I firms.

In detail, the experts consulted believe that Tier II mining companies will be likely adopting digital technologies at a faster rate and, thus, will use them to improve production while, at the same time, decreasing costs and reducing their environmental footprint.

A new set of technologies will help smaller companies to tap and explore areas that were considered not profitable, opening the market to new deposits and increasing productivity and efficiency, creating a market that is highly proliferated with new suppliers in comparison to todays situation, the report reads. This trend is likely to accelerate as the prices of raw materials such as copper, zinc, gold, and uranium continue to increase.

Spurred by the covid-19 pandemic, mining companies, especially junior firms, are likely to develop remote operations of mobile mining equipment, which may eventually become autonomous.

This trend, combined with the developments in data aggregation and analysis of fuel consumption, is likely to provide Tier II mining firms with the ability to reduce costs and extract minerals at a higher efficiency, the document states. The crystallization of this new normal will happen when the movement from remote work to complete automatization of work starts to take place. As less labor will be required to operate mining equipment, Tier II mining firms will increase the use of technology companies that offer SaaS products, with a focus on remote and autonomous operations.

In the view of those consulted by Sandpit Innovation and Wikistrat, the use of digital technologies will also allow Tier II mining firms to use their size as an advantage when streamlining operations, equipment maintenance, and supplying spares to the mine sites.

In addition, participants developed scenarios in which Tier II companies will operate new circular business models that will use the data collected to reduce the environmental footprint of their products, allowing them to brand themselves as innovative and green in comparison to tier one firms that will be slow to adopt the new technologies.

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More transparency, data usage expected from the mining industry of the future report - MINING.COM - MINING.com

Image by Fusion Medical Animation via Unsplash / Futurism

Scientists at Texas A&M University ran a routine genetic screen on samples of a COVID-19 patient and discovered a troubling new variant of the coronavirus.

The variant, named BV-1 because it was found in Brazos Valley, Texas, seems to be more infectious than the original version of the coronavirus that first swept the globe, CNBC reports, and preliminary testing suggests that it can also resist the immune systems antibody response. And because the patient was sick for several weeks, the scientists who discovered the strain suggest that infections may last longer as well.

We do not at present know the full significance of this variant, but it has a combination of mutations similar to other internationally notifiable variants of concern, Texas A&M Chief Virologist Ben Neuman told CNBC. This variant combines genetic markers separately associated with rapid spread, severe disease and high resistance to neutralizing antibodies.

The scientists have submitted a paper on the new variant to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to make sure that officials know about it and can help monitor any other cases that pop up, but their work hasnt yet been published in any academic journal.

Apparently, BV-1 is genetically similar to the B.1.1.7 strain that was first identified in the UK and now causes more infections in the US than any other variant of the coronavirus, according to CNBC. That may be good news, since the vaccines that have been approved for use seem to defend against the B.1.1.7 variant fairly well. But because BV-1 is so new, its too soon to tell whether or not its also susceptible to the existing vaccines.

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Meet BV-1, the Newest COVID Variant To Be Terrified Of - Futurism

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The British Army will be 10,000 soldiers smaller.Military Downsizing

As part of a major military overhaul, the United Kingdoms Army is about to shrink by 10,000 soldiers.

Or at least, thats the number of human soldiers. Part of the move to restructure the military, the BBC reports, is to invest more heavily in military robots, drones, and other tools of high-tech combat. Overall, the update represents an adaptation to the changing face of warfare with more of an emphasis on cyberwarfare than ground troops.

As of January, the UKs Army had about 80,000 troops considerably fewer than a decade ago. The plan now is to bring that number even further down to about 70,000, mostly by letting soldiers retire or leave and choosing to not replace them, according to the BBC.

Meanwhile, the Army is investing more heavily in drones and combat robots something that a British general previously suggestedcould make up a large fraction of the armed forces. The shift also means putting more resources into cyberwarfare by expanding the militarys national cyber force and establishing a space command that sounds like it will function similarly to the US Space Force.

At the same time, the UK plans to significantly increase the number of nuclear warheads at its disposal, according to The Washington Post.

This overall shift in focus, according to the BBC, is meant to make the Army more effective and strategic, especially in the face of new emerging technologies and changing military landscapes, rather than merely making it larger.

READ MORE: Defence review: Army to be reduced by 10,000 troops [The BBC]

More on military robots: Top General Says Robot Soldiers Could Make Up 25 Percent of British Army

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Preparing for Military Robots, UK Army Reduces ... - Futurism