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Welcome to the Post-Human Rights World | Foreign Policy – Foreign Policy (blog)

Posted: March 7, 2017 at 9:44 pm

Less than two months in, President Donald Trump is already shaping up as a disaster for human rights. From his immigration ban to his support for torture, Trump has jettisoned what has long been, in theory if not always in practice, a bipartisan American commitment: the promotion of democratic values and human rights abroad.

Worse is probably set to come. Trump has lavished praise on autocrats and expressed disdain for international institutions. He described Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as a fantastic guy and brushed off reports of repression by the likes of Russias Vladimir Putin, Syrias Bashar al-Assad, and Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As Trump put it in his bitter inauguration address, It is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone. Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, has written that Trumps election has brought the world to the verge of darkness and threatens to reverse the accomplishments of the modern human rights movement.

But this threat is not new. In fact, the rise of Trump has only underlined the existential challenges already facing the global rights project. Over the past decade, the international order has seen a structural shift in the direction of assertive new powers, including Xi Jinpings China and Putins Russia, that have openly challenged rights norms while at the same time crushing dissent in contested territories like Chechnya and Tibet. These rising powers have not only clamped down on dissent at home; they have also given cover to rights-abusing governments from Manila to Damascus. Dictators facing Western criticism can now turn to the likes of China for political backing and no-strings financial and diplomatic support.

This trend has been strengthened by the Western nationalist-populist revolt that has targeted human rights institutions and the global economic system in which they are embedded. With populism sweeping the world and new superpowers in the ascendant, post-Westphalian visions of a shared global order are giving way to an era of resurgent sovereignty. Unchecked globalization and liberal internationalism are giving way to a post-human rights world.

All this amounts to an existential challenge to the global human rights norms that have proliferated since the end of World War II. In that time, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, has been supplemented by a raft of treaties and conventions guaranteeing civil and political rights, social and economic rights, and the rights of refugees, women, and children. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War served to further entrench human rights within the international system. Despite the worlds failure to prevent mass slaughter in places like Rwanda and Bosnia, the 1990s would see the emergence of a global human rights imperium: a cross-border, transnational realm anchored in global bodies like the U.N. and the European Union and supervised by international nongovernmental organizations and a new class of professional activists and international legal experts.

The professionalization of human rights was paralleled by the advance of international criminal justice. The decade saw the creation of ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and the signing in 1998 of the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court an achievement that then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan hailed as a giant step forward in the march towards universal human rights and the rule of law. On paper, citizens in most countries now enjoy around 400 distinct rights. As Michael Ignatieff wrote in 2007, human rights have become nothing short of the dominant language of the public good around the globe.

Crucially, this legal and normative expansion was underpinned by an unprecedented period of growth and economic integration in which national borders appeared to disappear and the world shrink under the influence of globalization and technological advance. Like the economic system in which it was embedded, the global human rights project attained a sheen of inevitability; it became, alongside democratic politics and free market capitalism, part of the triumphant neoliberal package that Francis Fukuyama identified in 1989 as the end point of mankinds ideological evolution. In 2013, one of Americas foremost experts on international law, Peter J. Spiro, predicted that legal advances and economic globalization had brought on sovereigntisms twilight. Fatou Bensouda, the current chief prosecutor of the ICC, has argued similarly that the creation of the court inaugurated a new era of post-Westphalian politics in which rulers would now be held accountable for serious abuses committed against their own people. (So far, no sitting government leader has.)

But in 2017, at a time of increasing instability, in which the promised fruits of globalization have failed for many to materialize, these old certainties have collapsed. In the current age of anger, as Pankaj Mishra has termed it, human rights have become both a direct target of surging right-wing populism and the collateral damage of its broader attack on globalization, international institutions, and unaccountable global elites.

The outlines of this new world can be seen from Europe and the Middle East to Central Asia and the Pacific. Governments routinely ignore their obligations under global human rights treaties with little fear of meaningful sanction. For six years, grave atrocities in Syria have gone unanswered, despite the legal innovations of the responsibility to protect doctrine. Meanwhile, many European governments are reluctant to honor their legal obligations to offer asylum to the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing its brutal civil war.

To be sure, not all of these developments are new; international rights treaties have always represented an aspirational baseline to which many nations have fallen short. But the human rights age was one in which the world, for all its shortfalls, seemed to be trending in the direction of more adherence, rather than less. It was a time in which human rights advocates and supportive leaders spoke confidently of standing on the right side of history and even the worlds autocrats were forced to pay lip service to the idea of rights.

If the human rights age was one in which the contours of history were clear, today it is no longer obvious that history has any such grand design. According to the latest Freedom in the World report, released in January by Freedom House, 2016 marked the 11th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. It was also a year in which 67 countries suffered net declines in political freedoms and civil liberties. Keystone international institutions are also under siege. In October, three African states South Africa, Burundi, and Gambia announced their withdrawal from the ICC, perhaps the crowning achievement of the human rights age. (Gambia has since reversed its decision, following the January resignation of autocratic President Yahya Jammeh.) Angry that the ICC unfairly targets African defendants, leaders on the continent are now mulling a collective withdrawal from the court.

African criticism reflects governments increasing confidence in rejecting human rights as Western values and painting any local organization advocating these principles as a pawn of external forces. China and India have both introduced restrictive new laws that constrain the work of foreign NGOs and local groups that receive foreign funding, including organizations advocating human rights. In Russia, a foreign agent law passed in 2012 has been used to tightly restrict the operation of human rights NGOs and paint any criticism of government policies as disloyal, foreign-sponsored, and un-Russian.

In the West, too, support for human rights is wavering. In his successful campaign in favor of Brexit, Nigel Farage, then-leader of the UK Independence Party, attacked the European Convention on Human Rights, claiming that it had compromised British security by preventing London from barring the return of British Islamic State fighters from the Middle East. During the U.S. election campaign, Donald Trump demonized minorities, advocated torture, expressed admiration for dictators and still won the White House. Meanwhile, a recent report suggests that Western support for international legal institutions like the ICC is fickle, lasting only as long as it targets other problems in other countries.

In the post-human rights world, global rights norms and institutions will continue to exist but only in an increasingly ineffective form. This will be an era of renewed superpower competition, in what Robert Kaplan has described as a more crowded, nervous, anxious world. The post-human rights world will not be devoid of grassroots political struggles, however. On the contrary, these could well intensify as governments tighten the space for dissenting visions and opinions. Indeed, the wave of domestic opposition to Trumps policies is an early sign that political activism may be entering a period of renewed power and relevance.

What, then, is to be done? As many human rights activists have already acknowledged, fresh approaches are required. In December, RightsStart, a new human rights consultancy hub, launched itself by suggesting five strategies that international rights NGOs can use to adapt to the existential crisis of the current moment. (Full disclosure: I have previously worked with one of its founders.) Among them was the need for these groups to communicate more effectively the importance of human rights and use international advocacy more often as a platform for local voices. Philip Alston, a human rights veteran and law professor at New York University, has argued that the human rights movement will also have to confront the fact that it has never offered a satisfactory solution to the key driver of the current populist surge: global economic inequality.

In a broader sense, the global human rights project will have to shed its pretensions of historical inevitability and get down to the business of making its case to ordinary people. With authoritarian politics on the rise, now is the time to re-engage in politics and to adopt more pragmatic and flexible tactics for the advancement of human betterment. Global legal advocacy will continue to be important, but efforts should predominantly be directed downward, to national courts and legislatures. It is here that right-wing populism has won its shattering victories. It is here, too, that the coming struggle against Trumpism and its avatars will ultimately be lost or won.

Photo credit:CHIP SOMODEVILLA/Getty Images

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Women’s rights are human rights, period – Huffington Post

Posted: at 9:44 pm

In January, millions of women around the world took to the streets to advocate for legislation and policies on womens rights and other issues. While the Womens March on Washington drew 500,000 passionate activists and the lions share of the media attention, the march also extended to all seven continents in locations as varied as DR Congo, Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. The message was clear and profound women will not sit back and be designated as second class citizens. Womens rights are human rights, period.

While the sentiment is easily understood, the execution is often more complex. To improve gender diversity, employers look to balance ratios, broaden the hiring net, and ensure representation at the table. Similarly, the public and not-for-profit institutions that promote education and health and other basic services seek to reach women as well as men. There is a tendency merely to involve women once things are already in place, let women in the room but not think critically about how the room is arranged. By confining our efforts to bringing women into the conversation without questioning the underlying power relations, we add women and stir, running the risk of reproducing inequality, further marginalizing women, and denigrating their roles in society.

Yes, gender balance is important; however, it should not be the goal. Transformative change can only happen when a strong movement for gender equality reshapes norms, habits and social policy. In order for this to become a reality, we need to rethink the roles of women and men, adolescent girls and boys, as well as women and men facing disability, old age, marginalization and vulnerability. This is true everywhere but especially so in geographies, North and South, where poverty is manifest and therefore where women are vital for sustaining healthier, better-educated and vibrant communities.

Sticking with the status quo will lead to a world that neither responds to the needs of women and girls, nor provides adequate and efficient services that empower women to become leaders in their communities. Globally, over 1.2 billion women lack access to basic sanitation and hygiene. This has far-reaching impact on their lives, from childhood to motherhood and on to their twilight years.

Without access to toilets, women fear assault and a loss of dignity from having to defecate in the open. They suffer urinary tract infections and other diseases from holding in their urine or feces. When they menstruate they miss work, intentionally not travel, and avoid school, thereby suffering economic losses for the family. The average woman menstruates for 3000 days in her lifetime; however, the subject is hidden by taboos preventing women from learning how to manage their periods hygienically and safely.

In a forthcoming study on womens access to sanitation services in the West African country of Niger by WSSCC, UN Women and the African Institute of Training and Demographic Research, researchers found that less than 12% of those surveyed felt safe while using toilets. When asked why, they said that it is because they are not gender segregated. In the same study, researchers found that at least 70% of toilets surveyed could not be closed from the inside. The study will be launched 20 March during an event at the Commission on the Status of Women.

This has a huge impact on the well-being of women and girls, inducing shame, risk and fear. For the 1.2 billion women who lack access, a focus on sanitation and hygiene is an effective way to link one vital narrative (toilets) to sustain another (womens rights).

Over the past five years, there has been a groundswell of interest in menstrual hygiene as well as in a set of tactics activists and policy makers are using to break the taboo associated with the subject. In places as diverse as Senegal, Niger, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malawi and Cambodia, women and men are openly discussing menstruation.

At the national level, governments are engaging in conversations with activists to ensure schools, health clinics, public markets, transport hubs, as well as individual households have safe, secure sanitation facilities for women and adolescent girls. Their commitment takes the form of approved policy guidelines and budget allocations, as well as retooled program interventions and systems to monitor the implementation of these programs.

At the local level, individual households, local governments and small-scale entrepreneurs are engaging in conversations about how to bring about a change of behavior in which people make connections between sanitation and health, hygiene and dignity. Their commitment takes the form of tens of millions of people stopping the practice of open defecation, investing in sanitation and adopting hygiene practices, including menstrual hygiene, that ensure no one is left behind.

While interest in menstrual hygiene is growing, with it is a wider reflection on the appropriateness of basic services for the disabled, socially marginalized groups, the elderly and the homeless as well as for women. The discussion on menstruation is breaking down barriers, allowing for a deeper reflection on multiple forms of inequality and discrimination.

These critical, yet pragmatic tactics to promote gender equality are far from complete. Much work remains. However, the likelihood of these gaining traction is greater as a result of the commitments made by 182 Member States in September 2015 with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals. The 17 SDGs as they are commonly referred to, provide a fifteen year (2016-2030) framework for social, ecological and economic development. Rather than being confined to one goal, the themes of gender, equality and non-discrimination run through most of the targeted actions of all 17 global goals. The attainment of one goal requires an understanding of the other goals. By improving their access to sanitation and hygiene, women can at once manage menstrual hygiene with safety and dignity, have greater mobility, attend school and take steps to realize their productive potential.

Practical action, taken to scale and reinforced by the commitments of the international community, is a decided break from business as usual. Women and men are now better placed to generate a discussion on how the status quo is leading to a world that isnt responding to the needs of women and girls. They can replace add women and stir by being part of efforts to improve policy, budgets and program design. They can re-think the people who execute and implement, those who are left behind, the indicators that we use to monitor progress, which together can improve the suitability of these services, so that sanitation and hygiene is a reality for everyone, everywhere.

At WSSCC, we are committed to this principle, and are applying it in all countries where we operate, thereby informing our work on policy, advocacy and the large-scale implementation of sanitation improvement programs. We recognize the importance of empowering women and men to take control of their sanitation needs, to construct latrines, and to improve their health and well being. The approach, known as collective behavior change, builds trust, enabling women and men to promote menstrual hygiene while also contributing to efforts to end female genital mutilation and prevent child marriage.

The path of least resistance reproduces gender inequality. It is time we stop adding, and start integrating women into the work place, the policy arena and the delivery of basic services. On this International Womens Day 2017, that indeed would #BeBoldForChange.

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NASA is Going to Create The Coldest Spot in the Known Universe – Futurism

Posted: at 9:44 pm

Creating Cold Atom Lab

This summer, a box the size of an ice chest will journey to the International Space Station (ISS). Once there, it will become the coldest spot in the universemore than 100 million times colder than deep space itself. The instruments inside the box an electromagnetic knife, lasers, and a vacuum chamber will slow down gas particles until they are almost motionless, bringing them just a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

This box and its instruments are called the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL). CAL was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is funded byNASA. Right now at JPL, CAL is in the final assembly stages, and getting ready for its trip to space which is set for August 2017. CAL will be hitching a ride on SpaceX CRS-12.

Once in space on the ISS, five scientific teams plan will use CAL to conduct experiments. Among them is the team headed by Eric Cornell, one of the scientists who won the Nobel Prize for creating Bose-Einstein condensates in a lab setting in 1995.

Atoms that are cooled to extreme temperatures can form a unique state of matter: a Bose-Einstein condensate. This state is important scientifically because in it, the laws of quantum physics take over and we can observe matter behaving more like waves and less like particles. However, these rows of atoms, which move together like waves, can only be observed for fractions of a second on Earth because gravity causes atoms to move towards the ground. CAL achieves new low temperatures for longer observation of these mysterious waveforms.

Although NASA has never observed or created Bose-Einstein condensates in space, ultra-cold atoms can hold their wave-like forms longer while in freefall on the International Space Station. JPL Project Scientist Robert Thompson believes CAL will render Bose-Einstein condensates observable for up to five to 10 seconds. He also believes that improvements to CALs technologies could allow for hundreds of seconds of observation time.

Studying these hyper-cold atoms could reshape our understanding of matter and the fundamental nature of gravity, said Thompson. The experiments well do with the Cold Atom Lab will give us insight into gravity and dark energysome of the most pervasive forces in the universe.

These experiments could potentially lead to improved technologies, including quantum computers, sensors, and atomic clocks for navigation on spacecraft. CAL deputy project manager Kamal Oudrhiri of JPL cites dark energy detection applications as especially exciting. Current physics models indicate that the universe is about 68 percent dark energy, 27 percent dark matter, and 5 percent ordinary matter.

This means that even with all of our current technologies, we are still blind to 95 percent of the universe, Oudrhiri said. Like a new lens in Galileos first telescope, the ultra-sensitive cold atoms in the Cold Atom Lab have the potential to unlock many mysteries beyond the frontiers of known physics.

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NASA Has Plans to Give Mars a Magnetic Shield to Enable Human Colonization – Futurism

Posted: at 9:44 pm

Building Mars

At the forefront of modern space exploration looms the possibility of manned missions to Mars. From the ambitious schemes of Elon Musk, to NASAs hopeful plan,to the collaborative endeavor of the ESA and Russia, it seems as though every major space agency is making strides towards putting humans on Mars. But, on a cold and desolate planet whose minuscule atmosphere is severely lacking, how do you sustain human life for long periods of time?

Many scientists and science fiction enthusiasts have, over the years, speculated at the possibility of terraforming Mars. Finding innovative ways to make the surface of the red planet gradually more conducive to human living. There have been many ideas and models created in the hopes of successful terraforming. Engineers designed a shell that could be placed around a small planet which could protect the planet from radiation and help to facilitate an atmosphere over time. Others thought that by breaking apart the martian crust they could release enough CO2 to build up an atmosphere. There have been many attempts, but the issues of cosmic and solar radiation paired with the unsurvivable atmosphere and dry terrain are always too much.

And, while the concept of terraforming Mars isnt completely impossible, to successfully do it you would need to protect against cosmic radiation, solar radiation and solar winds, increase planet temperature, add oxygen and nitrogen to the atmosphere, and do all of this in a way that could be self-sustaining. Not impossible, but currently posing serious obstacles.

Despite all of these hurdles, scientists have not stopped trying to find inventive ways to terraform Mars. NASA recently proposed a unique strategy that shows a promising solution that could address some of these issues: a magnetic shield. Sincethe current scientific consensus is that Mars atmosphere was lost because of solar winds and the disappearance of the planets magnetic field, this solution shows promise. Mars magnetic field once protected the red planet while supporting an atmosphere (and moisture), and NASA scientists think it can be artificially restored.

According to Dr. Jim Green, Director of NASAs Planetary Science Division, In the future it is quite possible that an inflatable structure(s) can generate a magnetic dipole field at a level of perhaps 1 or 2 Tesla (or 10,000 to 20,000 Gauss) as an active shield against the solar wind.

The research team working on this idea recently conducted a simulation with their artificial magnetosphere, thanks to the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC). They found that their dipole shield would be able to protect against solar wind and help to balance the Martian atmosphere. Because the shield would work as an artificial magnetic field, the atmosphere would actually continue to thicken over time.

This could be just another stepping stone in a long line of terraforming concepts, but this solution holds concrete possibility. Because it could help to actually create a better atmosphere over time and can actually be simulated within a lab, it is possible that the future of terraforming will begin with magnets.

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Two Compounds Revealed to Slow Age-Induced Degeneration – Futurism

Posted: at 9:44 pm

Anti-Aging Effects

Researchers from the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute and colleagues have discovered the anti-aging effects of two compounds. One is naturally occurring and found in red grapes and red wine, while the other is a drug commonly used to treat type 2 diabetes. The former, known as resveratrol, has been previously regarded for its health benefitsand has even been called an elixir of youth. The latter, a drug called metformin, has also been researchedfor its anti-cancer effects.

The team found that resveratrol can preserve muscle fibers and protect synapses from agings crippling effects. To reach this conclusion, they conducted a study of two-year-old mice treated with resveratrol for a year (two years is generally considered old for mice). The team paid particular attention to how resveratrol affected synapses called neuromuscular junctions. These are crucial for voluntary movement, relaying motor commands from spinal cord neurons to muscles.The team published their study today in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.

Neuromuscular junctions are known to benefit from optimum diet and exercise, which protect these special synapses from agings wear and tear. Valdez and his team discovered that resveratrol can have similar effects, but the researcher clarified that these neuroprotective benefits wont be achieved by drinking red wine. In wine, resveratrol is in such small amounts you could not drink enough of it in your life to have the benefits we found in mice given resveratrol, Valdez explained. These studies are in mice and I would caution anyone from blasting their bodies with resveratrol in any form.

On the other hand, tests involving metformin revealed no significant effect on neuromuscular junctions. However, it slowed the rate of muscle fiber aging. Metformin is an FDA-approved drug to treat diabetes, but our study hints it may also serve the purpose of slowing the motor dysfunction that occurs with aging, Valdez said.

He added that the anti-diabetes drug may protect synapses depending on dosage amounts: There could be an opportunity for researchers and medical doctors to look at the patient population using this drug and ask whether metformin also has a positive effect on motor and cognitive function in humans.

The study expands the potential uses for the two compounds. Because metformin already has FDA approval, it may be easier to manufacture it as an anti-aging drug. As for resveratrol, the researchers plan to further study what exactly allows for these neuroprotective effects. The next step is to identify the mechanism that enables resveratrol to protect synapses, Valdez said. If we know the mechanism, we can modify resveratrol or look for other molecules that are more effective at protecting the synapses.

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EPA: Fossil Fuel Companies No Longer Need to Report Emissions – Futurism

Posted: at 9:44 pm

Today the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it will no longer ask fossil fuel companies to reveal their emissions of certain greenhouse gases. The decision bears the mark of new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has fought the agency on behalf of oil and gas companies for years.

Last year, pursuant to the Clean Air Act, the EPA sent letters to more than 15,000 oil and gas companies. The letters requested information about methane and volatile organic compound (VOC) sources to inform future industry standards. This data wouldve helped the agency to fight climate change, protect air quality, and safeguard human health across the nation.

As if the need for emissions reporting was ever questionable, Pruitt has given companies free reign to pollute with plausible deniability. Several attorneys general from fossil fuel-producing states sent a letter to Pruitt yesterday, urging him to withdraw the EPAs request. Today he made the change.

Its absurd that one of Scott Pruitts first acts is to refuse information on a dangerous pollutant, said Melinda Pierce, legislative director at the Sierra Club.

The public process around the draft request was lengthy, and involved two commentperiods before a final request was made. Ironically, many from the oil and gas industry supported the need for more transparency in this space.

But now, it appears the EPA will be flying blind when it comes to fighting atmospheric pollution. Its unclear whether the agency has a contingency plan for monitoring the thousands of fossil fuel projects within the United States.

Its telling oil and gas companies to go ahead and withhold basic information about pollution from the public. It erodes the confidence of the American people that the EPA is prepared to fairly oversee the oil and gas industry, Mark Brownstein, vice president of the Environmental Defense Funds Climate and Energy Program, told me.

The EPA currently collects emissions stats under its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, but notes there is a reporting threshold, and the reporting requirements do not currently cover certain emission sources. This means its data isnt necessarily representative of the entire universe of emissions, and also doesnt include insights on equipment, facility design, or performance of operations.

I reached out to EPA representatives asking how it will acquire this data in the future, but did not receive an immediate response.

In a statement today, Pruitt said: By taking this step, EPA is signaling that we take these concerns seriously and are committed to strengthening our partnership with the states. Todays action will reduce burdens on businesses while we take a closer look at the need for additional information from this industry.

Methane, which has a more significant warming effect than other greenhouse gases, is especially concerning to climate scientists. Its been skyrocketing due to an increase in domestic natural gas production. Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discovered that methane emissions were 60 percent higher than previous estimates.

The EPA has been one of the Trump administrations most vulnerable targets when it comes to reform. So far, the agency has undergone a gag order, political vetting, and threats of major staffing cuts.

Just because he doesnt want to hear the truth on the dangers of methane from oil and gas operations, doesnt make it any less dangerous to the millions of Americans that are forced to breathe this pollutant in on a daily basis, Pierce added.

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Blue Origin Just Unveiled an Enormous Engine for Manned Missions – Futurism

Posted: at 9:44 pm

In Brief

SpaceXs well-known competitor in the private space industry, Blue Origin, is making strides in its efforts forprivate citizens to breach the final frontier. While SpaceX pushes forward to its lunar missionin 2018, Blue Origins founder, Jeff Bezos, is confident in his companys plan to send two astronauts to space by the end of 2017. Now, Bezos has revealed the engine that will propel his company to its next stage the BE-4 rocket.

The rocket was finally unveiledafter six long years of development. The engine is expected to be ready for take off by 2019. Seven of these engines will powerthe upcoming New Glenn rocket. The New Glenn is similar to its predecessor, the New Shepard, in that it willbe a reusable space vehicle with a first stage that can return to the launch site standing upright upon each flight. There will be two New Glenn rockets a 2-stage and a 3-stage version. The New Glenn is expected to be 7 meters (23 feet) in diameter and range from 82 meters (270 feet) to 95 meters (313 feet).

So where do the BE-4 engines come in? The first and second stages will have boosters made up of the BE-4 engines, while the third stage will incorporate an older BE-3 engine. A distinction between the New Glenn and the New Shepard is that the former will be equipped with enough power to carry heavy cargo payloads and astronauts into orbit around the Earth.

While the New Glenn has yet to be made, its expected that the New Glenn sporting the BE-4 engine will be delivering goods and people by the end of the decade. In the meantime, the BE-4 engine will undergo certification at Blue Origins West Texas-based site.

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China Is Making Futuristic Space Rockets That Launch From Planes – Futurism

Posted: at 9:44 pm

In Brief

China wants to take a shortcut in sending their rockets into space. Instead of the usual take off from the ground, Chinese engineers are working on designing a space rocket that canbe launched from an aircraft, according to a senior official talking to state-run newspaper China Daily.

Li Tongyu, the head of carrier rocket development at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, explained that the rockets are meant to send hundreds of low-orbit satellites into space for military and research purposes. The academys designers already have a ready-for-production model for a solid-fuel rocket thats capable of carrying a 100-kilogram (220-pound) payload into low Earth orbit. The designers, however, intend to develop a heavy-duty version of the rocket, capable of carrying a 200-kilogram (440-pound) payload.

The Y-20 strategic transport plane will be the carrier of these rockets. The jet will hold a rocket within its fuselage and release it at a certain altitude. The rocket will be ignited after it leaves the plane, Li explained. The country will only consider launching solid-fuel rockets from aircraft,as land-based rockets relying on liquid fuel require days of preparation,according to Chinese experts, and China will continue to rely on conventional rockets for heavier satellites, as well.

If successful, China may be pioneeringa new method for the country to fly space missions. Air-launched rockets can be deployed more quickly than their ground-launched counterparts, so the method couldsave valuable time when sending a crew to repair satellites or when launching observation satellites that could assist in relief efforts during disasters. They also arent beholden to launch range schedules and susceptible to weather-related delays.

Recently, China has been beefing up its space program. Just last year, the country sent its second space station into orbit, as the Tiangong-1 retired with a crash into the Earth. By April 2017, the Chinese plan to launch their first cargo spacecraft into space with a goal to maintain a permanently crewed space station by 2022. China has also expressed intentions to send a mission to Mars.

Any countrys dedication of funds and resources into space exploration is good for humanity as a whole, so having China making space a priority is great news for anyone interested in expanding our understanding of the cosmos.

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New Research Could Turn Water Into the Fuel of Tomorrow – Futurism

Posted: at 9:44 pm

Water for Fuel

Over the past decades, fossil fuelshave become the backbone of the worlds industries. They have also been the number one cause of man-made climate change. Fortunately, things are beginning to change, as fossil fuels are on the decline thanks to the rise of renewable energy sources.

An alternative energy source with great potential is solar power. One variant of solar energy is solar fuel, which is produced by using sunlight to convert water or carbon dioxide into combustible chemicals. Because of the relative abundance of solar fuel components, its considered a desirable goalfor clean-energy research. However, these reactions, such as producing hydrogen by splitting water, arentpossible by using just sunlight. Materials to efficiently facilitate the process arenecessary.

Scientists have been working on creating practical solar fuels by developing low-cost and efficient materials to serveas photoanodes. Photoanodes are similar to the anodes in a battery and activatethe production of solar fuel by aiding the flow ofElectronsduring the process. Scientists from the Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have successfully doubled the number of potential photoanodes in just two years.

Now, researchers led by Caltechs John Gregoire and Berkeley Labs Jeffrey Neaton have developed a new, faster method to identify new materials to use as photoanodes, and theyve found 12 promising candidates. They published their research in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Neaton, director for the Molecular Foundry at Berkeley Lab, said that the study advanced this field of research by not only providing an improved method to look for photoanodes, but also by giving researchers insight into the new photoanodes.

What is particularly significant about this study, which combines experiment and theory, is that in addition to identifying several new compounds for solar fuel applications, we were also able to learn something new about the underlying electronic structure of the materials themselves, Neaton said in a Caltech press release.

To discover these new photoanodes, the team combined computational and experimental approaches. AMaterials Project database was mined for potentially useful compounds. Hundreds of theoretical calculations were performed using computational resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), together with software and expertise from the Molecular Foundry. Once the best candidates for photoanode activity were identified, it was time to test those materials in the laboratory.

The materialswere simultaneously tested for anode activity under different conditions using high-throughput experimentation. This was the first time these kinds of experiments had been run this way, according to Gregoire.

The key advance made by the team was to combine the best capabilities enabled by theory and supercomputers with novel high throughput experiments to generate scientific knowledge at an unprecedented rate, Gregoire said in the press release.

They found that compounds with vanadium, oxygen, and a third element had highly tunable electronic structure that made them uniquely favorable for water oxidation.

Importantly, we were able to explain the origin of their tunability, and identify several promising vanadate photoanode compounds, Neaton said in the press release.

This research has provided us with more ways to make use of water one of the worlds most abundant resource as an energy source.As advancements like this allow us to develop renewable energy cheaply and more efficiently, governments, investors, and individuals alike will have more reasons to leavefossil fuels in the past.

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Meet the Revolutionary Apple That Grows Human Skin – Futurism – Futurism

Posted: at 9:44 pm

Whats In An Apple?

Apples are a staple in most peoples homes and, it seems, in science. There was Newtons apple, and the proverbial daily apple to keep your doctor away. Now, biophysicist Andrew Pellingof University of Ottawa wants to add an apple of his own into the mix and this one might bring with it the future of biomaterials and human tissue repair.

Many scientists thought the idea of this apple itself was a little fruity. Pelling said that his team did not have many cheerleaders when they startedto look for ways to grow human cells by biohackingfruits.

Nobody else is doing this. In fact, in the early days people thought Id lost my mind, Pelling said during a TED Talk earlier in 2016. What Im really curious about is if one day it will be possible to repair, rebuild, and augment our own bodies with stuff we make in the kitchen.

How Pellingsteam achieved this was rather simple, he said. To remove the apples cellular material, they bathed it in boiled water and liquid dish soap. As a result, the apples cells popped open. After the apple was washed clean of all its disgorged cellular material, what was left of it was a rigid cellulose scaffolding like an apples skeletal structure, so to speak. The spaces that once contained apple cells were then filled with mammalian cells.

Pelling demonstrated the success of the technique on several occasions, and in some playful ways. For instance, his teamcarved apples into the shape of human ears and then infused them with skin cells. The apple-ears were remarkably life-like.

Pellings method is, of course, still in its early developmental stages. At this point, it cant be tested on human beings. The team did test it on mice, though. Pelling injected cellulose scaffolding under the skin of lab mice. Amazingly, the mice didnt show any adverse immune reactions to the infusion. Within a few months, the animals body had populated the scaffolding with their own cells. The scaffoldhad become part of the tissue, Pelling said.

These studies have spurred two doctors from hospitals in Ottawato expressed their interests in Pellings work. The doctors are brainstorming possible medical applications of this technique with Pelling. One potential is for regenerative medicine, particularly as scaffolds to graft skin and bone. The scaffolds currently used these procedures are derived from collagen harvested from human cadavers, which can be cost-prohibitive.

A toonie-sized piece of traditional scaffolding material costs $1,000. Weve developed a material that could be just as good for a fraction of a penny, Pelling said. Plus, would you want a piece of cadaver in you, or a piece of apple?

But why stop at just apples? Pelling and his team are also looking at the potential of cellulosescaffolding derived from asparagus or even rose petals to be used as biomaterials to repair bone or nerve damage. And thisjust one way that biohacking can revolutionize our lives.

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