Category Archives: Futurist

SALT LAKE CITY, May 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Former Toffler Associates CEO and author, Deborah Westphal, launches her new book Convergence: Technology, Business, and the Human-Centric Future, and it's available today!

As a leader in future-focused strategy, Deborah Westphal leverages more than 30 years of experience in helpingthe world's most innovative business and government leaders to challenge biases, ignite ideas, and build connections. She delivers this rich insight with anempathetic and thought-provoking writing style to chart a path for readers. Throughout the book, personal stories and historical examples highlight convergences that span the globe, impacting everything from global supply chains to climate change, and reshaping the future of business, technology, and humanity everywhere.

Each day, we see deepening intersections of people, business, and technology. This is a historic inflection point that demands leaders rebalance the energy and focus we place on technology and humans within our organizations. Convergence alerts readers to signals of accelerating disruption and orients us to new mentalmodels, decision priorities, and the human-centric perspective we need to achieve a resilient global future.

Convergence is available for $26at all major booksellers and Amazon.com. For more information, please visit https://www.convergenceishere.com/.

About Deborah Westphal

Deborah Westphal's career spans more than 30 years, government agencies and Fortune 100 companies, and virtually every continent. In 1999, Alvin Toffler tapped her as one of the founding members of his eponymous consulting firm. A passionate humanist and life-long learner, she has guided leaders to challenge biases, ignite ideas, and build resilience for a secure future for organizations including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Marriott, U.S. Air Force, Baxter International, Bayer, Heinz, Microsoft, Koppers, PPG, DARPA, National Security Agency (NSA), Loral Space Systems, NASA, Qwest, Verizon, and Westinghouse.

Contact: Kiki Keating[emailprotected] +1-603-858-2733

SOURCE Deborah Westphal

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Futurist Deborah Westphal Releases New Book, "Convergence: Technology, Business, and the Human-Centric Future" - PRNewswire

My name is Johannes Koski and Im the UI/UX Director of Returnal here at Housemarque. My role in the project has been both taking part in the design and overseeing and supporting the work done by the team. Ive had the privilege to work with a diverse multi-disciplinary group of amazing designers, artists, programmers, and audio specialists. Weve just launched a game that has been my ultimate dream project since I was a little kid, so Im super excited to be able to share something about our games UX!

The goal of a games UI is pretty straightforward: it guides the player and supports the game. In other words it gives the player all the necessary information and tools they need to understand and enjoy the games mechanics and at the same time it supports the games artistic core and storytelling with aesthetic means. In practice this unravels to hundreds of hours of planning, user interface design, concepting, usability studies, artistic choices, motion design, audio development, optimization, programming, player onboarding, and tutorial design to name a few areas.

Our core design principle is gameplay first. When designing the overall UX, one of our main goals was to remove all possible distractions from the second-to-second gameplay. We wanted to keep all the menus as clean and as minimal as possible. We even made the decision to not have a title screen or main menu at all and take the player always directly to the action.

We spent a considerable amount of time finessing all the HUD communications so that the player is always aware of critical gameplay information during intense bullet hell combat. We iterated a lot to find the perfect animation timings, intuitive color coding systems, and optimal information hierarchy to support various gameplay scenarios, etc.

The most crucial information needs to be communicated at the players immediate visual focus point in and near the reticle. Some critical guidance can be shown diegetically in and around the player character model and the actual game world. The content that is not essential for second-to-second survival can be shown in the periphery of the HUD.

Then we have the most important scenarios like near-death, low-health situations, where we throw everything we have at the players senses: HUD visor glass cracks and digital glitch animations, threatening vignettes, flashing warning icons, diegetic warning lights in players space suit, game world post-processing, health gauge color coding, player character animation, voice-over, VFX, emergency audio signals, and engaging haptic feedback.

Were especially happy how our unique 3D map and HUD minimap turned out. Theres a lot of verticality in our levels so a compass or a traditional 2D map wasnt enough. It was challenging to create a map system for randomly generated levels that was precise, looked good stylistically and wouldnt cause a performance hit. The map will be very helpful for both player guidance and planning combat flow.

Were using a wide variety of 3D Audio, DualSense wireless controller audio, and haptics to keep the player aware of their situation and surroundings even though their visual focus would be in combat and player survival. For example we implemented a rising charge-up UI sound that telegraphs the charge level of the alternative weapon fire, resolving in a distinct UI audio cue and haptics pulse once its fully charged. The haptics for this feature get prioritized in gameplay to give the player feedback on the most important combat cues.

Malignant items emit a heartbeat-like haptics pulse when nearby the player. This heightens the sense of risk and reward associated with these special items and helps in differentiating them from other pickups.

Parasites are another feature that received bespoke audio and haptics. Once you pick one of these up and it becomes attached to your suit, distinct haptic textures and audio cues of the parasite are used to remind the player they picked one up and that its active on the suit, potentially causing damage.

The hologram projections appearing while scanning a new item have been complimented by both haptics and sound effects, providing a granular sense of the scanner sweeping through the object as well as adding tactile weight to the interaction experience. Sending these sounds through the controller speaker as well made the whole scanning experience a lot more physical and real for the player.

For Returnals UI art direction, the main direction came from who Selene was, the company she worked for, and the technology she would have available to her. Strictly industrial and functional. This technology is also susceptible to damage and glitch errors because of the devices its displayed on: CRT monitors, tactile wrist computer displays, etc.

Theres a great correlation between the dated 70s aesthetic and good sci-fi horror. This could be because many of us grew up watching these movies and so they stay with us because of that sense of nostalgia. Our primary UI/HUD color is a haunting shade of teal that partly originates from the early monochrome cathode-ray tube computer monitors and tactical night-vision gear. The usage of this particular ghostly color also creates an eerie sense of looming horror.

(Concept art from Returnal, Mighty Canvas)

Looking at old consoles used in traditional industries, there is dedicated space for each component, most of the options are binary and there are no fancy gradients, transitions or effects. Its chunky and clunky, with little attention to visual flourishes.

We took this idea and limited the effects that we would use. So there is little to no directional motion. Everything flickers on and off. We chose to not create any layers. So no pop-ups over the screen UIs, as this felt too technically developed. The color palette was strict and the only effects and ambient animations are the ones we use to replicate the CRT aesthetic.

For the controls customization we wanted to make it as intuitive as possible and designed it so that the controller map is the very first thing you see when entering the options menu. From there we wanted to draw you in to trying out a different controller preset or create your own to fit your play style.

We put a lot of focus on making the remapping process easy to understand and use. Allowing you to quickly get an overview of where the actions are mapped, using a dynamic graphic on the right, we show where on the controller the action is currently mapped and if deciding to swap, showing which input you swap with.

While moving around actions and changing the layout of the DualSense wireless controller, we made sure you could easily see an overview of all of your changes directly from the remapping. A simple button press will bring up the full controller map so you can view your custom setup at any time.

This approach to previewing your changes was carried forward to use for other settings to make it easy to see your changes without having to return to gameplay for each change. When using a custom preset and you have rotated the whole controller for example, the preview on the right hand column will dynamically update to reflect that.If you are changing the deadzone on the right stick, we highlight the stick in the preview to make it clear which one you are changing.

Returnal has many different settings for controls, gameplay, audio, and video, and within these categories are features developed for accessibility. We worked from the ethos of these not being separated out to an accessibility category because there is such a wide range of players with different needs and these features can be used by everyone who wants them ensuring that we include rather than exclude players.

We also gave the player a larger range of choices for color blind mode. We added a slider for intensity so you can try it out and select what works for you. In addition we created three alternative color palettes for certain colors in the UI. The colors were selected based on their visibility and clarity for the three main color blind types: Deuteranopia, Protanopia, and Tritanopia. These options were added for players to try them out and use them if they found they helped increase clarity and visibility of HUD elements and text. We did the same for the collectible item beam colors, offering alternative options for players that wanted them.

We wanted to give you multiple options to play with when customizing the text. Adjusting the size, color, language, adding speaker names and background opacity were all added to make subtitles easier to read. All the changes can be previewed in the options menu, making their choice instantly clear to the player in the menu negating the need to exit and see the changes in-game.

Thanks for taking the time to learn about Returnals UI/UX art direction, and to all the players who have joined us on this journey. Returnal is out now on PS5.

Continue reading here:
Unpacking Returnals UX design: Gameplay-first UI, retro-futuristic tech, and accessibility - PlayStation.Blog

The fact that Toyota started to build its own 175-acre city of the future its already yesterdays news. It is happening and its going to be a society of the future, fully automated, sustainable and interconnected using AI technology. But what we didnt know up until now was how theyre planning to power the entire ecosystem. Turns out theyre going to use hydrogen energy.

Toyota and ENEOS are going to test the hydrogen-based supply chain in and around Woven City, from the production phase to delivery and usage. The Japanese carmaker sees hydrogen as one of the cleanest energy sources available and tries to explore and implement the hydrogen and fuel cell technology as much as it can.

Woven City starts as a small-scale project, with a community of roughly 360 residents, but will eventually reach over 2,000 individuals, including Toyota employees. It will serve as a live-in laboratory for present and future Toyota technology and inventions.

The futuristic town will have three types of streets, each with its specific purpose: one for pedestrian use, another one for automated driving and the third one for pedestrians with personal mobility vehicles. The goal is to create a sustainable urban environment that promotes carbon neutrality in everyday mobility.

ENEOS is in fact a petroleum company that is now focusing on hydrogen production. The company operates 45 commercial hydrogen refueling stations in Japan and promotes a low-carbon use of energy.

Woven City will be located at the base of Mount Fiji, in Susono City, Shizuoka Prefecture. It was designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, whose portfolio includes among others the LEGO House in Denmark, the two World Trade Center buildings in NYC, and Googles Mountain View and London HQ buildings.

See more here:
Toyota's Futuristic Woven City Will Be Powered by Hydrogen - autoevolution

A trampoline room, an estimated $130 million market value and a size rivaling that of the White House are some of the unique features of the fortress-like Washington compound of the soon-to-be-divorced Bill and Melinda Gates.

But the suburban Seattle property, should it ever be up for grabs, could be a very tough sell.

Were all fascinated with this story for the obvious reasonsthe unfathomable wealth, these are both respected people on the world platform, said Ernie Carswell of Douglas Elliman, a Los Angeles-based agent with upward of 25 years of experience selling some of the citys most lavish and big-name properties.

They have an incredible home, but now, if it has to be sold, it's not going to be wham bam thank you maam, he said.

Dubbed Xanadu 2.0.but listed in property records as the more straight-laced Gates Residencethe ex-couples main home on the edge of Lake Washington near Seattle, is perhaps the jewel in the crown of a hefty property portfolio that has seen hundreds of millions of dollars invested across the U.S. in the form of beachfront mansions, equestrian estates and vast swaths of farmland, property records show.

I have a nice house, the Microsoft boss, whos worth an estimated $124 billion, said on Reddit in 2019. It includes a trampoline room which seems kind of over the top but my kids love using it to work off their excess energy. I am not sure how guilty I should feel about being in a great house.

Details of the home are scarce, but glimpses of what lies behind its walls have been revealed over the years, many in an account from a Microsoft intern who visited in 2007 and wrote about the experience in a blog post.

Going down Bills driveway is like arriving at Jurassic Park, the intern, Robert Smith, wrote, referring to the film. The driveway is long, windy, goes steeply down, and is just covered in plant life.

He also revealed the existence of a movie theater and a room that looked to be completely filled with couches and pillows.

We checked out his dock, his beach (with sand imported from Hawaii), hot tub and boat. Hes also got this area of his house where a stream runs down from under the house into Lake Washington, the intern wrote. We also saw the indoor/outdoor pool that has an underwater grate that allows you to swim between the two sections.

Such a degree of customization within a private residence doesnt make a home more valuable, though it does garner attention, according to Mr. Carswell.

It gets some great PR, a sound bite, Mr. Carswell said. I don't think it adds value, but it gives great recognition.

But the Gates trampoline room is probably going to become the next owners bowling alley, he said.

Spanning a reported 66,000 square feet, the compoundwhich property records indicate has a value of $130.8 milliondwarfs anything else on the market in Washington state currently.

A custom home built much larger and more lavishly than any property in the area can lead to difficulties when selling, Mansion Global previously reported.

The Chicago-area mansion of former NBA star Michael Jordan is a prime example.

Spanning 56,000 square feet, Mr. Jordans home is three times as large as the next largest mansion in the area and the house is loaded with custom amenities, including a regulation-size basketball court and a round infinity pool with a grassy island at its center.

The basketball legend first listed the mansion in 2012 for $29 million, and it remains on the market today asking $14.8 million.

In the case of the Gates house, the size isnt a detractor, but it's only going to appeal to a very limited number of buyers who come with their staff, Mr. Carswell said. You have the privilege and the responsibility of maintaining 60,000-70,000 square feet. Whos going to be dusting that?

Encompassing a more than five-acre waterfront parcel, the Gates Residencewhich came with $1.13 million property tax bill last year, public records showis in the upmarket Seattle suburb of Medina, where the most expensive home currently on the market is asking $22.5 million, according to listing records.

The likelihood of the residence ever hitting the market thoughand exact details of the split that was announced Monday have yet to be laid outis slim, according to local Medina agent Tere Foster, of Team Foster at Compass.

Firstly, they just have no need, said Ms. Foster, who is the listing agent on the aforementioned $22.5 million home. When I talk to clients in these categories they say we don't sell real estate, we acquire real estate.

So it would be unlikely. Are there buyers out here that can afford it? There are. There's a lot of local money and a lot of money outside of this market, she said. But its hard for me to imagine it would ever be sold.

And secondly, if the sprawling estate were ever going to change hands, its unlikely to be exchanged on the open market.

If the family wanted to sell, it would be marketed in a quiet way. They know all the people that could write the checks, Ms. Foster said.

The property is somewhat of a local landmark in Medina. I can tell you when we get people in from out of the country, buyers say, we want to live as close to the Gates compound as possible. You have people who move to Medina because Bill Gates lives there, she added. They're very good neighbors.

See the article here:
The Opulent, Futuristic Megamansion of Bill and Melinda Gates Could Be a Hard Sell - Mansion Global

An experimental treatment gives kids with the genetic condition Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Syndrome (SCID), better known as bubble baby disease, a chance to go about life without the risk of constant infection and sickness.

SCID can be caused by a wide variety of genetic mutations that essentially disable a patients immune system. That makes everyday pathogens deadly to them, and kids with the condition constantly take antibiotics to try and manage the disease that otherwise tends to kill within a year or two of life, according to the Associated Press.

But those antibiotics are a short-term fix researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles decided instead to try to switch the immune system back on. In doing so, they discovered a seemingly counterintuitive trick: turning HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, into a delivery system that helped ferry a healthier version of the relevant genes and replace the mutated ones.

And it seems to work all 50 kids who received the experimental treatment are still alive and seem healthy years later, according to a study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine that followed up on the patients two and three years after treatment.

People ask us, is it a cure? Who knows long term, but at least up to three years, these children are doing well, Stephen Gottschalk of the St Jude Childrens Research Hospital, who didnt contribute to the new study but worked on similar projects in the past, told the AP. The immune function seems stable over time so I think it looks very, very encouraging.

Cure is often considered a loaded term, especially when talking about experimental treatments that havent seen mainstream use yet, but the limited study and the 50 tentative success stories offer a reason to suspect that gene-editing technology may be able to manage a notoriously dangerous disease down the road.

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Scientists Turned HIV Into a Life-Saving Gene Therapy - Futurism

Its the perfect headline: in a new paper, a group of scientists laid out evidence for why they think NASAs rovers and Mars orbiters have already collected photographic evidence of fungi on Mars. Could those bubble-shaped rocks really be puffball-like growths, basking in the radiation battering down on the desolate Martian surface?

Think again, experts say.

The conditions on Mars are so extreme that youre not going to see fungi or any kind of life growing at that sort of speed under conditions like coldness and low air pressure, Jonathan Clarke, president of Mars Society Australia,told the South China Morning Post. Life can barely survive, let alone thrive.

Clarke also took issue with the paper claiming that mushrooms were actually growing on Mars.

Its just like if you go to a beach and there are shells, he told the newspaper. If the wind blows, the sand moves and exposes more shells. But we wont say the shells are growing there, its just that they become visible.

The paper did have some fairly impressive credentialing, with authors listed from the Smithsonian Institute and George Mason University. But as it turns out, the lead author of the paper was Rhawn Gabriel Joseph, a fringe researcher known for dubious and unscientific claims about life on other planets.

Joseph has a lengthy track record of attempting to get his research published in reputable scientific journals. At one point, he even started his own renegade journal.

Joseph did break through and get a paper published in the journal Astrophysics & Space Science in November 2019, as Ryan points out but it was promptly retracted after finding the paper proffers insufficient critical assessment of the material presented and literature cited, and fails to provide a solid underpinning for the speculative statements made in the article which, in their view, invalidates the conclusions drawn.

In other words, the journal realized its mistake, and seemingly laughed him out of the room.

Josephs latest paper was published in the journal Advances in Microbiology, a journal headquartered in China thats been criticized for republishing existing articles, as Nature reported back in 2010.

And so here we are yet again,with the latest paper being shredded by the scientific community.

Claiming that mushrooms are sprouting all over Mars is an extraordinary claim that requires better evidence than an analysis of photographic morphology by a known crank who has claimed, on the basis of the same kind of analysis, that he has seen fields of skulls on Mars, University of Minnesota, Morris, developmental biologist Paul Myers told CNET.

In short, we have a mountain of evidence that Mars is extremely unhospitable to life as we know it on Earth. And photographic evidence is simply not nearly enough, experts say.

We have more than photos, records, instruments that tell us what these materials are made of, David Flannery, lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology who is a member of NASAs Mars 2020 mission science team, told SCMP. And we have models for the features we see around us.

Robots are sending back huge amounts of data, he added. We have plenty of information but its just that no one is interpreting the features that we see as something like fungi. Theres zero evidence for that.

This paper, which is really not credible, will be ignored by the scientific community, Flannery said.

Advances in Microbiologyhas remained quiet, failing to respond to Ryans requests for comment.

The journals managing editor Zoey Yang did tell SCMP that the paper was accepted with revisions as we received four review results from different reviewers after peer review. They all suggest that we accept it after some revisions.

Its an admittedly enjoyable daydream: the prospect of mushrooms growing on Mars would be a tremendous breakthrough in our understanding of our Solar System and humanitys place in the universe.

But without backing up such claims with extensive evidence and compelling support from academic peers the findings should be treated with a grain of salt.

READ MORE: No, NASA photos are not evidence of fungus growing on Mars, sorry [CNET]

More on Joseph: Extremely Dubious Scientist Believes Theres Mushrooms and Lichen on Mars

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Originally posted here:
Experts Shred Paper Claiming to Identify Mushrooms on Mars - Futurism

Let's hope this feature never materializes.Scanning Billboards

US automaker Ford has patented a piece of technology that could prove to be a major headache for its customers if,that is, it ever makes it into the companys cars.

A new patent filed by the car company suggests Ford cars could soon scan the cars surroundings for billboard advertising and interpret that information to deliver contextual information to the cars display, as spotted by automotive publication Motor1.

Such information could include the advertisers phone numbers, products, or directions to a particular store an invasive vision of the future of driving.

Its a dystopian vision of our advertising-laden present and near future. Such a feature could also represent a major distraction for future drivers, as Motor1 points out.

But as of right now, its nothing more than a patent. In other words, theres no guarantee the feature will ever materialize.

Ford submits patents on new inventions as a normal course of business, but they arent necessarily an indication of new business or product plans, the company told Motor1 in a statement.

Lets hope this particular concept isnt any indication of where Ford is headed.

READ MORE: Ford Patents Terrible Billboard Scanning Tech, Shows In-Car Ads [Motor1]

More on Ford: Ford CEO Mocks Tesla For Rolling Out Half-Finished Autonomous Driving

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Ford Patents Tech to Annoy Drivers With In-Car Advertisements - Futurism

Stewart Brand, writer and founder of Whole Earth Catalog, portrait inside the Mirene, a converted 1912 tugboat where he and his wife Ryan Phelan call home in Sausalito. Photo: Stephen Lam, The Chronicle

For a devoted futurist like Stewart Brand, who is famous for his projections about technology and the environment, looking at his own past doesnt necessarily come naturally.

Given his fame as creator of the iconic 1960s DIY handbook Whole Earth Catalog (described by Steve Jobs as Google in paperback form), and later as an influential technologist at the forefront of the personal computing revolution, numerous filmmakers have asked the Marin cyberculture legend to make a movie about his life. But Brand never wanted to waste precious time or energy on nostalgia. He said no to the idea of a biopic until filmmakers Jason Sussberg and David Alvarado approached Brand in 2017.

Now their fascinating docu-portrait We Are as Gods is screening at this years San Francisco International Film Festival, available to stream through Sunday, April 18.

We pitched Stewart the idea that instead of just looking backward, wed create a portrait of the futurist as already living in a future others cant yet quite see, said Sussberg in a video interview from his San Francisco home.

Sussberg and Alvarado, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., had already made a short film in 2014 for Time magazine about de-extinction, Brands late-in-life passion project promoting the use of biotech to bring back extinct species like the passenger pigeon, the American chestnut tree, even the woolly mammoth.

They planned to make Brands zeal for genetic engineering central to their proposed feature-length documentary. To their surprise, over an extended conversation with Brand at Skywalker Ranch following a screening of their last film, Bill Nye: Science Guy, Brand said yes.

In We Are as Gods, the two filmmakers travel with Brand, now 82, to Siberia, where hes attempting, with geneticist George Church, to re-wild the ecosystem, and to west Texas, where his Long Now Foundation is building a 10,000-year clock inside a mountain to foster long-term thinking.

Looking forward and looking back are pretty connected, actually, Brand said during a recent afternoon on Sausalitos waterfront.

He and his wife, Ryan Phelan, welcomed The Chronicle onto the Mirene, a 64-foot 1912 tugboat theyve called home at Waldo Point Harbor, Sausalito, for almost 40 years. There Brand explained that when he launched his 1980s think tank, Global Business Network, he started to consider himself a professional futurist.

I got really interested in what the French call the longue dure, the long view of things, he said. You can only feel even remotely comfortable thinking about the future if you have a lot of knowledge of the deep past.

Its a very Brand-ian answer, both surprising and philosophical, to the question of what it felt like to watch his lifes high and low points unfurl onscreen in the new film. (Brand is candid in We Are as Gods about battling depression in the 70s.)

Theres a lot of life to pack into the 94-minute film that gives audiences a whirlwind tour through his irreverent mind and numerous incarnations.

Brand was a self-described free-range kid from Illinois who studied biology at Stanford with notorious doomsayer Paul Ehrlich. He pioneered LSD use with Ken Kesey and co-produced the 1966 Trips Festival. In 1968 Brand launched the Whole Earth Catalog with an iconic cover photo of Earth from space, and a slogan: We are as gods and might as well get good at it.

Brand pivoted to technology after seeing promise and the cool factor in early Stanford gamers excitement. (Ready or not, computers are coming to the people, he wrote in Rolling Stone in 1972.) He put on the first Hackers Conference, and founded the proto-Facebook online community the Well during the dial-up modem days of the mid-80s.

I think Stewart is naturally pulled toward things on the fringe of what could be a possible future, and then he rushes toward it, obsesses about it and feeds off the excitement for about five years, and then gets bored and moves on to the next thing, Alvarado said. That pattern was so interesting to us, and a through line in the film.

Brand has never shied away from controversy, especially when it comes to his belief in using technology to save our planet. The film includes footage of him taking heat from Peter Coyote and others for following his techno-optimism to dangerous lengths. Its a criticism he and Phelan counter persuasively and with heart.

Ive been a conservationist since the 1950s, and I saw the environmental movement go down some primrose paths that blinded them to some important capabilities, says Brand, referring to the knee-jerk environmental backlash against any kind of technological intervention in nature.

But only by trying new stuff can you maybe find a better solution. Think of the alternative trying nothing?

Brand is all too aware where complacency leads on a planet thats growing hotter, more flammable and less habitable by the year.

While still a true futurist, Brand admits to feeling more reflective in his 80s. Hes been working closely with his biographer, John Markoff, and spent hundreds of hours with Alvarado and Sussberg.

The filmmakers were so overwhelmed with material they said they easily could have made an entire film about each part of Stewarts life, and revealed theyre planning on launching a podcast so we can go into even more detail.

In one of the most captivating sections in We Are as Gods, 28-year-old Brand became so fixated on the need for humankind to see a photo of the whole Earth from space that he hitchhiked across the country selling buttons for a quarter each that said, Why havent we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?

He was confident that if NASA released the image, people would appreciate the Earths fragility and do more to protect it.

The image of the mushroom cloud from 1945 on dominated everybodys thinking about the world, Brand says. Its a really simple image, and as a symbol it was a powerful framing device.

Whats interesting is there is so far not one iconic image of climate change. If I could devise one, I would gladly do it.

We Are as Gods is available to stream for $12 as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival through Sunday, April 18. sffilm.org

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Stewart Brand portrayed as tech futurist and publisher in We Are as Gods - SF Chronicle Datebook

According to a new study by a team of scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, relatively high exposure to background radiation may actually lead to healthier lives.

Background radiation is a type of ionizing radiation that originates from both natural and artificial sources. Natural sources include cosmic radiation from space and naturally occurring radioactive materials, while artificial sources include anything from medical X-rays to nuclear weapons testing.

As detailed in the study, published in the journal Biogerontology, the researchers examined background radiation data dating all the way back to 1960s across all 3,129 counties in the United States using the Environmental Protection Agencys radiation dose calculator.

They then cross referenced this data with cancer rates from the United States Cancer Statistics and life expectancy data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington Medical Center.

What they found was surprising. Those who lived in areas where background radiation levels were higher, across genders, experienced significantly lower rates of lung, pancreatic, colon and rectal cancers.

Here, we show that life expectancy, the most integrative index of population health, was approximately 2.5 years longer in people living in areas with a relatively high vs. low background radiation, the researchers wrote in their paper.

Exposure to a high background radiation displays clear beneficial health effects in humans, reads the paper.

Decades of scientific theory are potentially being disproven by the remarkable researchers at BGU, Doug Seserman, CEO at the universitys American Associates, said in a statement. These findings might even provide a sense of relief for those who reside in areas in the U.S. with higher-than-average background radiation.

Rather than claiming high background radiation directly causes these improved health effects, the researchers are rather suggesting that prevailing paradigms about the need to keep exposures as low as possible as any level of ionizing radiation is harmful should be questioned.

As a result of this linear no-threshold paradigm, hundreds of billions of dollars go towards lowering radiation levels, according to the researchers.

Its unclear if these same effects would apply for higher rates of background radiation beyond the levels caused by natural sources.

It is reasonable to suggest that a radiation threshold does exist, yet it is higher than the upper limit of the natural background radiation levels in the US, reads the paper.

READ MORE: Decades of Scientific Theory Disproven: Beneficial Health Effects Found From High Background Radiation Exposure [Ben-Gurion University of the Negev]

More on radiation: Armed Criminals Steal Truck Full of Deadly Radioactive Materials

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Scientists Claim That Actually, Radiation Is Good For You - Futurism

The U.K. Home Secretary on Monday moved to proscribe the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group predominately in the U.S., as a terrorist organization and make membership in it illegal in the U.K.

Under the proposal, membership or inviting support in the group would be a criminal offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison. A new law that will shortly receive Royal Assent would lengthen the sentence to 14 years, according to a U.K. press release. Once approved by parliament, the listing of Atomwaffen Division is expected to come into effect later this week.

Atomwaffen Division, which seeks a race war to bring about a fascist, white ethno-state, formally disbanded in March 2020, but months later, the National Socialist Order (NSO) announced itself as the groups successor, according to a post on Telegram. The U.K. named NSO as an alias; Atomwaffen Division was listed by Canada in February as a terrorist entity.

Vile and racist white supremacist groups like this exist to spread hate, sow division and advocate the use of violence to further their sick ideologies, said Home Secretary Priti Patel.

Atomwaffen Division had recruited inside the U.S. military, PBS Frontline reported in a 2018 documentary. In September 2020, the group, as NSO, resurfaced in Colorado Springs, Colorado, placing stickers containing images of Adolf Hitler, a swastika and a recruitment email on the windows of local businesses, according to a local media report.

Right-wing extremist groups such as Atomwaffen Division have adapted their use of online tools over time as they face government crackdowns, Kharon reported last year.

Atomwaffen Division has inspired other groups abroad, including the Feuerkrieg Division, which the U.K. listed in July 2020 as a terrorist organization, the U.K. government statement said. The group was aligned with the Sonnenkrieg Division, another U.K.-listed right wing extremist group, according to a U.S. congressional resolution calling to ban the group. A number of U.K. terror prosecutions cited Atomwaffen Divisions influence on teenagers, the BBC reported.

The groups relaunch announcement as NSO was carried by neo-fascist publication The American Futurist, which earlier this month also published NSOs translation of Why We Fight, a Third Reich manifesto from the Nazi era just as relevant today as it was back then.

This week, The American Futurist updated its donation page, providing language on how to obtain monero, a type of virtual currency, and donate it to the publication, according to a post on Gab, a right-wing social media network. The publication has decided to stop accepting funds in currencies other than monero due to privacy concerns, the donation page says.

Several high-level members of Atomwaffen Division have been prosecuted in the U.S. Brandon Clint Russell, a co-founder, was sentenced in January 2021 to five years in prison for possessing an unregistered destructive device and unlawful storage of explosive material. Russells writings from prison have been published by The American Futurist, where he is listed as a staffer.

Cameron Shea, a leader of Atomwaffen Division, pleaded guilty earlier this month to federal conspiracy and hate crime charges for threatening journalists and advocates who worked to expose anti-Semitism. Two co-defendants, including Johnny Ramon Garza, have pleaded guilty and been sentenced; a fourth pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial, prosecutors said.

John Cameron Denton, a former Atomwaffen leader, pleaded guilty in July 2020 to his role in a conspiracy conducting swatting events targeting journalists, a harassment tactic involving the deception of emergency dispatchers who are sent under the belief of imminent danger. His sentencing is scheduled for next month, according to the court docket; prosecutors are seeking a five-year prison sentence, court records show.

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UK to Add Atomwaffen Division to Proscribed Terrorist List | Kharon - Kharon Brief