Category Archives: Transhuman News

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

According to new research,dark matter may be an even bigger mystery than previously believed.

The stuff is thought to make up a significant percentage of the mass of the universe yet its near impossible to study, let alone observe.

Physicists have had to resort to studying the way dark matter bends light between distant sources such as a galaxy and the observer, an effect called gravitational lensing. The higher the concentration of dark matter, the more pronounced the effect.

But when a team of European researchers looked at data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope, they found that the gravitational lensing effect around massive structures called galaxy clusters was ten times as strong as predicted by simulations.

We have done a lot of testing of the data in this study, and we are sure that this mismatch indicates that some physical ingredient is missing either from the simulations or from our understanding of the nature of dark matter, said Massimo Meneghetti, of the INAF-Observatory of Astrophysics and Space Science of Bologna in Italyand lead author of a paper about the research published today in the journal Science, in an ESA statement.

In other words were missing a key ingredient.

One possible origin for this discrepancy is that we may be missing some key physics in the simulations, Meneghetti said in a NASA statement.

To conduct their research, Meneghettis team produced a dark-matter map using observations from of a sample of three massive galaxy clusters.

They discovered something unexpected: smaller-scale images nested within larger lens distortions in each galaxy clusters core. In other words, the gravitational lensing effect was significant, leading them to believe they had stumbled upon dense concentrations of dark matter.

The discrepancy highlights just how little we know about the mysterious stuff that appears to make up most of the known universe.

READ MORE: Dark matter might be even stranger than we thought, according to Hubble [Digital Trends]

More on dark matter: Astronomers Discover Deep-Space Structure, 1.4 Billion Light Years Across

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Dark Matter's Effect Is 10x What It Should Be, Scientists Say - Futurism

Bill Gates the retired Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist has emerged as a surprisingly high-profile figure during the coronavirus pandemic, criticizing the governments response to the disease and raising money to distribute a vaccine.

Now, in a new interview with CNBC, Gates says that hes still optimistic that a vaccine is on the way. Its possible that one will be available by the end of the year, he said, but he considers it unlikely.

The only vaccine that if everything went perfectly, might seek the emergency use license by the end of October, would be Pfizer, he said. None of the vaccines are likely to seek approval in the U.S. before the end of October.

But by the very end of 2020 or 2021, the multibillionaire said, he thinks that the chances will start to get better and better.

I do think once you get into, say, December or January, the chances are that at least two or three will (seek approval) if the effectiveness is there, he told the network.

In the same interview, Gates also expressed optimism about the results of the vaccines under development by Moderna and AstraZeneca.

We do see good antibody levels both in the phase one and the phase two, so were pretty hopeful, Gates said.

Both Russia and China have already approved emergency vaccines but without testing rigorous enough to convince doctors.

This is a reckless and foolish decision, Francois Balloux, Professor of Computational Systems Biology at University College London said, told Science Media Centre in August.

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Bill Gates: Sorry, But It's Unlikely There'll Be a Vaccine This Year - Futurism

Colleges are back in session in the United States and experts arent convinced schools are ready to handle a looming mental health crisis among students.

I am so concerned, Bernadette Melnyk, the Chief Wellness Officer and Dean of the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University, told Futurism. I mean look at the statistics, prior to COVID, of mental health issues in college students. When we are getting 56 percent of students admitting that they feel things are hopeless or 46 percent of them feeling so depressed that its difficult to function? That was before COVID. What are we going to see during and following COVID?

This is a pandemic within a pandemic, Melnyk added.

Many first-year and returning college students recently left their childhood homes for the start of a new academic year. Unless their school is operating online, that means moving into a dorm room and hoping that the deadly pandemic,which is still spreading throughout the nation, doesnt come their way.

Compounding the problem, some college towns have already become COVID-19 hotspots, according to The Verge. And while managing the surge of new coronavirus cases will be a challenge, an oft-overlooked, equally-dire healthcare crisis will likely soon follow: colleges getting overwhelmed as they try to provide mental healthcare to everyone who needs it.

Unfortunately, over 600 American universities still plan to conduct classes primarily or entirely in person as of this articles publication.

These pressures dont exclusively target college students. But undergrads are in a unique position. Many are moving away from home for the first time and navigating a brand new chapter of their lives only now theyre also expected to do so during a deadly pandemic that could affect them, their friends, or their family.

In other words, the dangers of COVID-19 are likely to make an already psychologically-taxing time even worse. Research published this month in the journal JAMA Network Open found that rates of depression have tripled among American adults since the pandemic began. Just over one in four Americans between the ages 18 and 24 have contemplated suicide during the same time period. About a third of graduate students reported signs of anxiety or depression, according to Nature News. The non-profit group United Way recently released research showing how some U.S. states, including Alabama and Texas, have nearly 1,000 residents for each mental healthcare provider. The national average falls at 438.

In light of all that, Melnyk believes that many colleges are unready.

I think some [schools] have good plans, Melnyk said. But Im sure many do not, seriously.

Given the trifecta of increased need, limited access, and the costs of American healthcare, on-campus services may be the only support available to some students. But students told Futurism that in recent semesters, their schools have been woefully under-resourced for the realities of campus mental healthcare.

I tried to make an appointment in November, when I was really needing help, Libby, a recent graduate of Weber State University, told Futurism. I got a call days later from the center, and they said they would be available after winter break, and that I should try again in January. When I tried again, they said their next available appointment was in late March. I had already sought care elsewhere because I was in severe need of psychological and psychiatric evaluation. I had to take on the cost myself because it was relatively urgent and I couldnt wait that long anymore.

Others stuck around for the wait, just to get such ineffective or limited care that the whole exercise felt worthless. Another student told Futurism that she reached out to her schools counseling center because she felt suicidal, but was told she would have to wait weeks before she could make an appointment. When her session finally arrived, she was paired with a psychology graduate student who was so poorly trained that they started crying while the student described her story.

You dont have to look too hard to uncover similar horror stories of students who were unable to get the mental healthcare they needed. Unless schools have really taken steps to improve, its unlikely that theyll be able to care for everyone who needs support during the new semester.

Leandra Peloquin, a mental health case manager at San Francisco State University, handles off-campus counseling referrals for students. Peloquin was optimistic that mental healthcare providers are trying to do everything they can to help students, though she admitted that problems could arise.

I feel we are at the point in society where weve made a lot of technological advances that enable us to connect to our students in different ways. I think our students are flexible. Theyre adaptable, Peloquin said. I think that if the effective efforts are made so that students can connect, can receive the support that they need, that the university will be successful.

She says that she expects mental healthcare to go smoothly at first this year, but that theres the possibility the counseling center gets so many appointment requests that some students will have to wait, even though they always reserve space for any urgent crises.

I think that it can be a struggle, right? Peloquin told Futurism. Just thinking about universities we, for example, we dont have a waitlist right now. Now as the semester gets deeper and deeper in were looking later in the semester we could perhaps have a waitlist if were at capacity. So it really depends on what the need is.

The challenges that university counselors are about to face only amplify existing problems with how mental healthcare is offered. Melnyk has made a career talking to college presidents, counseling centers, and anyone else who could change the system about how the current paradigms focus on crisis management is a major disservice to students.

First of all, we have got to recognize all the findings from research that show that when our students are struggling with mental health issues, their performance, their engagement, is going to be a lot worse, Melnyk said. What universities dont typically do is help their students from the get-go.

Basically, in order for a student to get the counseling they need, they must first suffer, then recognize that they need help, and then make and wait for an appointment. Its no surprise, then, that two of three students who face mental health issues on campus ultimately leave school early.

We live in such a sick healthcare system, Melnyk said. We really do. And weve got to flip that paradigm to wellcare and prevention, which would be so much more beneficial to the population our health outcomes, our academic outcomes, and cost.

But college students, especially first-years, are more likely to face these challenges without the social support network of close friends or family just by virtue of being on campus and away from home, perhaps for the first time.

Holding school entirely online comes with its own set of challenges. Take the University of North Carolina, which was declared a clusterfuck by its own student newspaper. UNC attempted to open in-person and immediately caused a COVID-19 outbreak before pivoting to online education.

Futurism contacted Dr. Allen OBarr, a psychiatrist who serves as director of the UNC counseling center, before the school shut down. By the time we got in touch, UNC had already gone online and OBarr was relieved about it.

Im really glad that we did it, he said. Its safer for all even though I suspect that it will have big financial implications.

Across the board, universities have adapted to the pandemic by offering mental healthcare and counseling remotely, through private video or phone calls. Unfortunately, even then, students can get left behind.

Doctors are licensed to practice at the state level. For telehealth purposes, that means that the practitioner and the patient must be in the same state to have a session without running afoul of the law. So even if a schools counseling center is up and running and has adequately prepared to offer teletherapy, students who live out of state arent allowed to access it.

OBarr told Futurism that he and his team at UNC need to evaluate the laws on a state-by-state basis to see if theyre allowed to help students. At San Francisco State, Peloquin says she and a colleague put together a written guide and, if needed, can hop on the phone to help out-of-state students seek out mental health resources in their area.

Melnyk points to the steps shes taken at Ohio State as a model for the nation. Namely, she says, schools must preemptively promote wellness and preventative care rather than playing whack-a-mole with emergencies.

From freshman year early teach evidence-based techniques that we know are protective against mental health disorders, Melnyk recommends. Like mindfulness, cognitive-behavioral skills building. I look at this as mental resiliency, right? Equipping ourselves with those resiliency skills that we know are protective factors against mental health disorders.

And, in that regard, Melnyk says that students need to step up as best they can.

We cant place this 100 percent on universities. Our students have to take responsibility for their mental health too. They need to make their mental health a priority. They have to engage in healthy habits that we know are good for mental and physical health.

If theres any sort of upshot to all of this, experts tell Futurism, its that we as a society might learn from our mistakes and build a mental healthcare system thats better, more accessible, and more compassionate.

This pandemic has been a great tragedy for many people and it seems it will continue to be for a while, OBarr told Futurism. There is no disregarding the suffering. That said, I believe that it has caused us to sit still long enough to see inequities in our national and global system that privileged individuals could afford to overlook in the pre-pandemic world.

I truly believe that we have a chance to emerge as a better nation and global society if we can find a way to all work together on this, he added.

Melnyk is encouraged that more schools are looking for Chief Wellness Officers or asking her to share her expertise, but these changes especially the paradigm shift she advocates for can take years to implement when faced with institutional barriers and persistent stigmas that surround mental healthcare.

But we have an urgent situation here going on, Melnyk said. Weve got so much research to show that when students dont have good mental health, by golly, their grades arent going to be good. Theyre not going to show up to class, theyre going to slip.

I dont know that people really understand that to the degree they need to understand that.

If you are experiencing suicidal ideation and need help, please call the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text HELLO to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

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The Mental Healthcare Crisis Coming to American Universities - Futurism

Fire Hazard

In recent years, more than 1,500 customers have reported that their Amazon-made electronics are sparking, catching fire, and even exploding.

Reports include poorly-made microwaves that spark and smoke when theyre turned on, USB cords that heat up and start fires, and others, CNN reports. The common thread is that they were all made by AmazonBasics rather than third-party sellers. And despite clear safety hazards, many of the products in question are still on the market.

Amazon has ended up in hot water for shoddy goods in the past, like when third-party vendors were busted selling moldy and spoiled food. But these electrical problems, which CNN reports have caused house and car fires that caused personal injuries, all stem from products made by Amazon itself.

This is more than a reliability problem, this is a potential safety problem, Michael Pecht, an engineer who evaluated the troublesome products at CNNs request, told the network.

Amazon told CNN that it responds to reports of hazardous items by pulling them from the marketplace or even changing the products themselves. Amazon indeed removed some of the dangerous items, but CNN found that dozens more that were still there.

The company also downplayed the problem. While experts told CNN that the number of customers complaining about the same fire hazards reduces the odds that the problem was user error, Amazon said that relying on customer complaints can be misleading.

READ MORE: Dozens of Amazons own products have been reported as dangerous melting, exploding or even bursting into flames. Many are still on the market [CNN]

More on Amazon: Amazon Keeps Delivering Moldy, Spoiled Food to Customers

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Amazon Products Are Reportedly Exploding and Catching Fire - Futurism

Robot Underlords

Two major convenience store franchises in Japan are testing out robots capable of stocking shelves using two creepy hands with three fingers each, CNN reports.

The seven-foot is called Model-T, named after the Ford automobile that triggered a car revolution in the early 1900s, and was developed by Japanese startup Telexistence. During a pilot program, it was controlled by a pilot in an office miles away.

It is able to grasp, or pick and place, objects of several different shapes and sizes into different locations, Matt Komatsu, head of business development and operations at Telexistence, told CNN.

That makes it more nimble and mobile than the robots used by Walmart to scan shelves for inventory, according to its inventors.

The goal is to allow a single human to work at multiple stores, a solution for possible labor shortages. Japan also has a rapidly aging population with fewer able-bodied people ready to take on such jobs.

The Model T is controlled by a human wearing a virtual reality headset and special gloves. A microphone and headphones even allow for communication with nearby shoppers.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic ended up accelerating development of the Model T as such a technology could end up reducing human-to-human contact. According to CNN, Telexistence saw an uptick in interest over the last couple of months.

READ MORE: Seven-foot robots are stacking shelves in Tokyo convenience stores [CNN]

More on robotic workers: Walmart Employees Hate Their New Robot Coworkers

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Stores In Japan Are Stocking Shelves With Remote-Controlled Robots - Futurism