Category Archives: Futurism

Theyre Forever

Coming soon: carbon-negative diamonds made from nothing but atmospheric CO2 and rainwater.

A British clean energy company called Ecotricity, founded by environmentalist Dale Vince, told The Guardian that it plans to clean up the diamond industry, which has devastating effects on the environment and has a whole lot of blood on its hands. The plan, Vince says, is to suck greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere and use it to create a more ethical version of the gemstone.

To get just one carat 0.2 grams of a traditional diamond, according to The Guardian, miners could excavate up to 2.2 million pounds of rock, use 1,028 gallons of water, and emit 238 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, The Guardian reports.

Ecotricity hopes to reverse that environmental destruction by taking carbon out of the atmosphere, producing methane a crucial ingredient in synthesizing diamonds by taking hydrogen molecules out of rainwater, and powering the whole operation with wind and solar energy.

The resulting diamond is identical to one pulled out of the ground and Vince says Ecotricity is already capable of making about 200 carats every month.

Making diamonds from nothing more than the sky, from the air we breathe is a magical, evocative idea its modern alchemy, Vince told The Guardian. We dont need to mine the earth to have diamonds, we can mine the sky.

READ MORE: Ecotricity founder to grow diamonds made entirely from the sky [The Guardian]

More on diamonds: Diamond Batteries Made of Nuclear Waste Can Generate Power For Thousands of Years

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This Guy Is Creating Actual Diamonds From Reclaimed CO2 - Futurism

In an important step toward the goal of hooking our brains up to machines, scientists have developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) system that interprets neural signals without coming into contact with the brain itself.

Typically, neural implants need to rest on top or inside the brain, which can harm and kill brain tissue in ways that scientists still dont yet fully understand. But a company called Synchron is taking a different approach: developing BCI systems that slither toward the brain through the jugular vein, circumventing the need for brain surgery altogether.

Now, Wired reports that the company has taken it a step further: Its newest BCI doesnt even need to extend all the way to the brain in order to pick up on what its saying.

The implant, which remains in the bodys vasculature near the brain, was able to pick up and interpret neural signals that heralded the intent to move a muscle. Two patients paralyzed from Lou Gehrigs disease who were implanted with the experimental device were able to use it to communicate and send text messages, according to research published in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery on Wednesday.

Self-expanding stent technology has been well demonstrated in both cardiac and neurological applications to treat other disease, neuroscientist and Synchron CEO Thomas Oxley told Wired. We just use that feature and put electrodes on top of the stent.

Its fully implantable, he added. Patients go home in a couple of days. And its plug-and-play.

Of course, its not quite that simple for the patients, who still need to spend weeks training the systems AI software to understand their neural signals once they get home. But once the system caught on to which brain impulses meant what, they were able to move a computer cursor around with an eye tracker and click their mouse just by thinking about it.

Theres a trade-off between how invasive you want to be and at what level you collect information, Andrew Pruszynski, a neuroscientist at Canadas Western University told Wired. This is trying to get to the middle ground, to insert a catheter close to the neural activity. Its obviously invasive, but certainly not as invasive as putting electrodes into the brain.

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New Brain-Computer Interface Doesn't Even Need to Touch the Brain - Futurism

Close Calls

In 48 years, an asteroid named after the Egyptian God of Chaos Apophis might hit the Earth.

Apophis will pass particularly close to the Earth in 2068, Popular Mechanics reports. And because its orbit is drifting little by little, theres a chance that it actually hits us. The odds of that happening are fairly low but the risk, scientists say, is real.

Even before then, Apophis will swing by for a visit. In 2029, it will even pass between the Earth and a network of satellites, at which point well be able to see it with our naked eyes, PopMech reports.

The University of Hawaii astronomers who couldnt rule out the 2068 impact say that the 2029 transit will definitely be harmless, though. Their work, which was presented at a 2020 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, has been tracking the changing orbit of Apophis since it was discovered in 2004.

Again, the odds that Apophis actually poses a threat to us are slim the probability is low, but the consequences would be catastrophic. Still, space agencies are preparing, according to PopMech. NASA and SpaceX are launching the DART mission, which will serve as a practice round for the plan to deflect potentially killer asteroids.

Russian scientists have also said theyre developing a nuclear missile they intend to shoot at Apophis so at the very least, the space rock wont catch us off guard.

READ MORE: A God of Chaos Asteroid Could Hit Earth in 2068 [Popular Mechanics]

More on asteroids: This Awful Tabloid Predicts a Killer Asteroid Almost Every Day

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There's a Chance This Giant Asteroid Will Smash Earth in 2068 - Futurism

PISCATAWAY, N.J., Sept. 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Futurism Technologies, Inc. takes great pride in co-sponsoring the AHA Virtual Conference 2020. Join us in the virtual conference, as we continue to extend our support to the healthcare sector through response to recovery and rebuilding in the age of COVID-19.

Futurism will be presenting its 'Smart Hospital' solutions at the AHA Virtual Conference 2020, aimed at empowering healthcare providers and organizations with a connected care system.

"We are delighted to be a part of this virtual conference and extend our services and support to help healthcare organizations get aboard the digital journey. Our position as a trusted DX partner demonstrates our robust portfolio of digital transformation and cybersecurity offerings," said Sheetal Pansare, CEO of Futurism Technologies.

Futurism understands that the future of a connected and smart healthcare system revolves around care, collaboration and data security and is dedicated to help healthcare providers identify and adopt novel ways and solutions to connect with patients efficient whilst combat increased security vulnerabilities both within and beyond the walls of a traditional clinic or hospital setup.

Visit our virtual boothnow to find out how we can help you become more resilient and responsive as a healthcare provider during these unprecedented times and beyond.

Visit our virtual booth here: https://onlinexperiences.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:4;F:APIUTILS!40000&UserKey=28559557&UserType=1&BoothKey=378516&LangLocaleID=0

About Futurism Technologies, Inc.

Futurism Technologies, Inc. helps hospitals and healthcare institutions leverage digital technology to fast track their operations and provide on-demand patient care within a secured and highly connected environment. With decades of expertise and proven record, Futurism has evolved as a trusted DX partner for a number of businesses, helping them to unlock the true value of digital. Futurism provides DX servicesacross the entire value chain including digital infrastructure, business processes, digital customer engagement, and cybersecurity.

Learn more about Futurism Technologies, Inc. at http://www.futurismtechnologies.com

Leo J ColeChief Marketing OfficerMobile: +1-512-300-9744Email:[emailprotected]

Website: http://www.futurismtechnologies.com

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Futurism Announces Participation in the AHA Virtual Conference 2020 - PRNewswire

A team of researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, has built a bionic device that they say can restore vision to the blind through a brain implant.

The team is now preparing for what they claim will be the worlds first human clinical trials of a bionic eye and are asking for additional funding to eventually manufacture it on a global scale.

Its essentially the guts of a smartphone combined with brain-implanted micro electrodes, as TechCrunch reports.The Gennaris bionic vision system, a project thats more than ten years in the making, bypasses damaged optic nerves to allow signals to be transmitted from the retina to the vision center of the brain.

The system is made up of a custom-designed headgear, which includes a camera and a wireless transmitter. A processor unit takes care of data crunching, while a set of tiles implanted inside the brain deliver the signals.

Our design creates a visual pattern from combinations of up to 172 spots of light (phosphenes) which provides information for the individual to navigate indoor and outdoor environments, and recognize the presence of people and objects around them, Arthur Lowery, professor at Monash Universitys Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, said in a statement.

The researchers are also hoping to adapt the system to help those with untreatable neurological conditions, such as limb paralysis, to regain movement.

If successful, the MVG [Monash Vision Group] team will look to create a new commercial enterprise focused on providing vision to people with untreatable blindness and movement to the arms of people paralyzed by quadriplegia, transforming their health care, Lewis said.

A trial in July showed that the Gennaris array was able to be transplanted safely into the brains of three sheep using a pneumatic insertor, with a cumulative 2,700 hours of stimulation not causing any adverse health effects.

Its still unclear when the first human trials will take place.

With extra investment, well be able to manufacture these cortical implants here in Australia at the scale needed to progress to human trials, Marcello Rosa, professor of physiology at Monash and MVG member, said in the statement.

The news comes after Elon Musks brain computer interface company Neuralink announced its testing its coin-sized interface prototype in live pigs. The end goals are similar: to treat brain issues including blindness and paralysis.

Whether the Monash device is technically the first bionic eye, though, may come down to semantics.

A separate brain implant, a visual prosthetic device, developed by scientists at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston,recently allowed both blind and sighted participants to see the shape of letters, as detailed in a paper published in May.

READ MORE: Researchers ready world-first vision restoration device for human clinical trials [TechCrunch]

More on Neuralink: Neuroscientist: There Was a Huge Problem With Neuralinks Demo

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Doctors Are Preparing to Implant the World's First Human Bionic Eye - Futurism

Who Wants to Be an Astronaut?

Space Hero, a US-based production outfit that claims to be the first space media company, says it has secured a spot on a 2023 SpaceX mission to the International Space Station, Deadline reports.

Its genius plan: turn it into a reality TV series and have contestants from all over the globe vie for a ticket into space.

Contestants will have to go through a gauntlet of challenges to test their physical, mental and emotional strength, qualities that are essential for an astronaut in space, according to Deadline.

An episode toward the end of the series will allow voters from around the globe to vote for the contestant they want to shoot into space, courtesy of a seat on board a SpaceX Dragon module. The show will then follow their journey to the ISS.

The winner will spend 10 days on board the station, alongside actual astronauts.

We see the world changing in front of our eyes, project creator Thomas Reemer told Deadline. In times like these we yearn to look up to people for the right reasons, so its time to look amongst ourselves to find the heroes that will inspire a bright future.

Its actually not the first attempt at space-based reality television. A previous shot, in the late 1990s, was originally called Destination: Mir yes, the Soviet Unions space station that operated from 1986 to 2001 but had to be changed to Destination: Space after Russia took its space station down. Needless to say, it never actually set anyone into orbit.

READ MORE: Space Travel Reality Show Set To Send Contestant To ISS In Works From Space Hero Company & Propagate [Deadline]

More on space reality TV: 20,000 Apply to Be Billionaires Girlfriend, Get Free Moon Trip

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Reality TV Show Says It Will Send Contestant to International Space Station - Futurism

Designers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands teamed up with a local natural history museum to develop the Living Cocoon, a moss-filled, living coffin made out of a special fungus.

The coffin significantly speeds up the time it takes for a human body plus all the clothing and other materials that get buried along with it to decompose, from roughly a decade to as little as two years, according to its inventors.

Thats in large part thanks to its construction material of mycelium, a fast-growing, fungus-like bacterial colony that can grow into massive underground networks.

Mycelium is also able to neutralize toxic substances and provide nutrition to anything growing nearby, meaning that the soil will actually benefit from such a burial in the long term.

The Living Cocoon enables people to become one with nature again and to enrich the soil, instead of polluting it, Bob Hendrikx, founder of Loop, the startup that developed the coffin, said in a statement.

To Hendrikx, its about living alongside living materials. We are currently living in natures graveyard, he argued. Our behavior is not only parasitic, its also short-sighted.

We are degrading organisms into dead, polluting materials, but what if we kept them alive?, he added. Just imagine: a house that can breathe and a T-shirt that grows with you.

The researchers behind the Living Cocoon have already completed a funeral in which the deceased was buried in one, what they claim to be a worlds first, as Dutch News reports.

The Living Cocoon echoes similar inventions, such as the Infinity Burial Suit, dreamed up by green burial company Coeio. Its essentially a death suit, with mycelia spores infused into its crocheted netting.

Loop is now investigating the positive effects and increases in biodiversity as a result of burying such a coffin.

We want to know exactly what contribution it makes to the soil as this will help us to convince local municipalities in the future to transform polluted areas into healthy woodland, using our bodies as nutrients, Hendrikx added.

READ MORE: A growing business: Dutch develop living coffin made of mushroom mycelium [Dutch News]

More on mushrooms: These Researchers Want You to Live In a Fungus Megastructure

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This Moss-Filled Coffin Is Made Out of Fungus - Futurism

Commercial Airlock

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is about to carry what will soon become the International Space Stations first privately-built airlock.

The airlock, called Bishop and built by aerospace company Nanoracks, is designed to get payloads from inside the space station into the openness of space.

The company has previously built standardized boxes for space-based experiments and tiny satellite deployers, The Verge reports.

The Bishop is shaped like a bell jar and attaches itself to the outside of the space station using a number of clamps and latches.

Once its there, its just extra real estate until we want to use it, Mike Lewis, Nanoracks chief innovation officer, told The Verge. We can use it in a number of ways, the first of which is to bring things outside.

First, payloads Nanoracks is planning for the airlock to primarily deploy satellites are attached to the inside of Bishop. Astronauts then close the hatches, remove the air inside the airlock. A robotic arm detaches the entire assembly from the space station afterward.

Its a lot like on a submarine when youre going out into the water, except the difference is youre going out into the vacuum of space, Lewis told The Verge.

Two out of the space stations existing three airlocks currently allow people to leave the station. One, the Japanese Experiment Module, allows for payloads to be released.

Japanese startup GITAI is already planning to test out its robotic arm inside Nanoracks airlock.

Bishop is headed to the space station as soon as mid-November.

READ MORE: The first commercial airlock is heading to the International Space Station later this year [The Verge]

More on the ISS: NASA Still Hasnt Found the Damn Leak on the Space Station

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The ISS Is About to Get Its First Commercial Airlock - Futurism

Fly Like a Bird

Multinational aerospace corporation Airbus is investigating a new way for airliners to save fuel: by flying in formation, like a herd of migrating geese.

The manufacturers research incubator Airbus UpNext studied the aerodynamic efficiencies that arise out of flying in formation, CNN reports.

UpNext is planning to test the idea with two passenger jets as part of a demonstration project called fellofly. Early tests, involving two of the companys A350aircraft, already started in March 2020.

Its very, very different from what the military would call formation flight, Sandra Bour Schaeffer, CEO of Airbus UpNext, told CNN. Its really nothing to do with close formation.

By flying nearby each other, each bird or airplane benefits from the next objects wake. The tip of each birds wings creates a vortex, which can provide lift for the next bird behind it.

[The pilots] will be 1 1/2 to 2 nautical miles away from the leading aircraft, and slightly offset, which means they are on the side of the vortex, explained Bour Schaeffer, an experienced flight-test engineer, to CNN. Its no longer the vortex, its the smooth current of rotating air which is next to the vortex, and we use the updraft of this air.

According to Schaeffer, A350s could save anywhere between five and ten percent in fuel an enormous number.

Despite the fuel savings, having airliners fly closeby each other involves at least some level of risk. Before the technique could become mainstream, the team would have to convince service providers and government aviation agencies to change regulations to allow for airliners flying in formation.

READ MORE: Why passenger jets could soon be flying in formation [CNN]

More on Airbus: Airbus Planes Will Track How Often Passengers Go to the Bathroom

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Here's Why Airliners Might Soon Fly in Formation Like Birds - Futurism

Planetary Rings

Given the right circumstances, some carbon-rich exoplanets could be entirely made out of diamonds and silica, according to a new study published recently in The Planetary Science Journal.

These exoplanets are unlike anything in our solar system, lead author and geophysicist Harrison Allen-Sutter from Arizona State University said in a statement.

Most stars form from the same cloud of gas, meaning that they end up being made out of mostly the same stuff.

Stars with less carbon a lower carbon-to-oxygen ratio than the Sun tend to resemble Earths composition and will end up being made up of mostly oxides and silicates. Diamonds are rare on Earth our planet is only about 0.0001 percent diamond.

But other stars that are made out of significantly higher levels of carbon than the Sun would end up converting a significant portion of their mass to diamond and silicate, according to the new research that is, if theres enough water around, a relatively abundant resource in the universe.

To bolster the hypothesis, the researchers dipped silicon carbide in water and compressed it to extremely high levels of pressure. A laser heated the mass while an X-ray machine took measurements.

The result: the silicon carbide reacted with water and was transformed into silica and diamonds.

In other words, the core of carbon-rich exoplanets could be composed of mostly silica and diamonds, given certain temperatures and levels of pressure.

Such diamond rich planets are extremely unlikely to harbor life. Theyd end up being extremely hard and far less likely to be geologically active. That means their atmospheres may end up being far too inert to be habitable.

There is a silver lining however: future exoplanet discoveries could be ruled out as habitable thanks to their unusually high density profiles.

Regardless of habitability, this is one additional step in helping us understand and characterize our ever-increasing and improving observations of exoplanets, Allen-Sutter argued.

READ MORE: Myriad Exoplanets in Our Galaxy Could Be Made of Diamond And Rock [Science Alert]

More on diamonds: Physicists Just Teleported Quantum Information Inside a Diamond

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Scientists: There Are Likely Entire Planets Made Out of Diamond and Silica - Futurism