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Global futurist Jonathan Brill talks about future-proofing yourself from events like the pandemic

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Virtually no one was prepared for the dramatic shift in every aspect of their lives caused by COVID-19.

But there were major exceptions. In a 2015 TED Talk, Bill Gates warned a disruptive Spanish flu-like pandemic was inevitable. He observed the response to West Africas 2014 Ebola outbreak and the poor response from the rest of the world.

It was as if the world was hit by a Rogue Wave, says global futurist Jonathan Brill, the author of a book by that name. In the book, he said rogue waves are far more likely to happen than previously understood. The key, according to Brill, is to spot the changes that foreshadow their arrival.

Spotting the telltale signs is, however, only step 1 in the development of appropriate responses that ensure you can successfully navigate the choppy waters. Brill encourages readers to adopt a Sherlock Holmes approach to observing, assessing or deducing and then eliminating the impossible, which means that whatever remains, no matter how crazy, must be possible.

The challenge with this approach is that it is antithetical to the processes most of us employ individually and as companies processes built for less-volatile times. Brill says those processes presume that you can deliver compound growth year after year, if you reduce risk, improve efficiencies, and keep your products up to date.

We invited Brill to join for a Conversation That Matters about how you can future-proof yourself and your business to survive and profit from radical change.

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Conversations That Matter: A survival guide for rogue times - Vancouver Sun

A team of researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital claims to have improved the specific functionsof the human brain by using artificial intelligence paired with electrical brain stimulation.

In a study involving 12 patients who were undergoing brain surgery for epilepsy, the scientists say they wereable to improve the patients mental function when stimulating areas of the brain with small amounts of electrical energy.

The surgery involves placing hundreds of tiny electrodes across several different regions of the brain to record neural activity and track down the areas where the seizures are coming from.

The researchers used all of this data to zero in on a region of the brain called the internal capsule that they believe is responsible for cognitive control. In other words, its the area of the brain that appears to allow us to shift our attention from one task to another.

Its a potentially revolutionary treatment for those struggling with mental illness that is, if it indeed turns out to be effective for the broader public. While the human studys results are impressive, the researchers still have a long way to go to demonstrate the need or effectiveness of such a severe medical intervention.

The goal of the stimulation was to get patients back in the drivers seat and let them feel a new sense of agency, said Alik Widge, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Medical School and coauthor of a paper about the research published the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering earlier this week, in a statement.

An example might include a person with depression who just cant get out of a stuck negative thought, said Widge. Because it is so central to mental illness, finding a way to improve it could be a powerful new way to treat those illnesses.

A machine learning algorithm helped the team isolate the patients control abilities from their brain activity and their actions.

This system can read brain activity, decode from that when a patient is having difficulty, and apply a small burst of electrical stimulation to the brain to boost them past that difficulty, Widge said.

The analogy I often use is an electric bike, he added. When someones pedaling but having difficulty, the bike senses it and augments it. Weve made the equivalent of that for human mental function.

Participantsin the trial reported that their anxiety got better once the system jumped into action, mostly due to the fact that they had more cognitive control and were able to shift their focus better.

This could be a totally new approach in treating mental illness, Widge said. Instead of trying to suppress symptoms, we could give patients a tool that lets them take control of their own minds.

READ MORE: Researchers boost human mental function with brain stimulation [University of Minnesota Medical School]

More on brain stimulation: Stanford Scientists Say Brain Magnets Can Relieve Depression

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Scientists Claim to Improve Human Brain Function With Implants and AI - Futurism

"The virus, COVID-19, may well have been one negative feedback."Gaias Return

Influential environmentalist James Lovelock has long believed that the Earth self-regulates like a living organism.

His Gaia theory, named after the Greek deity of the same name who represents the personification of the Earth, suggests that our planets environment adjusts itself in response abuse such as what humanity is currently throwing at it.

And given our horrendous treatment of the environment, Gaia is about to return with a vengeance, the 102-year-old warns in anew commentary piece for The Guardian.

While that kind of argument may sound a bit like the plot of Avatar, it is an elegant encapsulation of the idea that our actions are throwing processes that long preexisted us seriously out of whack. And that means we need to act right now or face serious consequences.

Lovelock argues that surface temperatures of our planet were modulated for billions of years thanks to Gaia: forests, oceans and other elements in the the Earths regulating system, which kept the surface temperature fairly constant and near optimal for life.

But humanity has messed with that carefully balanced formula substantially.

Two genocidal acts suffocation by greenhouse gases and the clearance of the rainforests have caused changes on a scale not seen in millions of years, he writes. We are entering into a heat age in which the temperature and sea levels will be rising decade by decade until the world becomes unrecognizable.

To Lovelock, we cant simply put up a bunch more solar and wind farms to end our reliance on burning fossil fuels. In fact, the environmentalist made a surprising conclusion: We need to build more nuclear power stations to overcome that, though the greens will first have to get over their overblown fears of radiation.

And a global pandemic should come as a warning, he said. The virus, COVID-19, may well have been one negative feedback, Lovelock writes. Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier.

READ MORE: Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth [The Guardian]

More on climate action: World Leaders Mocked for Flying Private Jets to Climate Conference

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Famed Scientist Warns That Earth May Rise Up and Kill Humanity - Futurism

The footage is unreal.Solar Blast

During the days leading up to Halloween, the Suns surface was roiling with activity, blasting powerful bursts of radiation towards the Earth, according to NASA.

While our planets surface is protected from the cosmic drama by its atmosphere, the flare ups can wreak havoc on GPS and communications satellites.

One solar flare was so powerfulthat it was classified as an X1-class flare upon detection on October 28, NASA said, which is one of the most intense of its kind.

A video released by NASA shows the spectacle in motion and emphasizes, once again, the flabbergasting power of our star.

The solar storm also triggered dazzling displays of auroras,commonly known as the northern lights, in the night skies over stretches of North America.

Since December 2019, the Suns activity has been gaining steam, a part of its natural solar cycle. Each cycle lasts about 11 years, rising from calm to stormy and back again.

Solar activity can heat up so much, in fact, that the Suns magnetic poles end up flipping, blasting off massive amounts of solar material in the process.

The strongest X-class solar flare ever recorded was an X28-class flare, meaning that it was 28 times more powerful than the October 28 flare, according to NASA. It may have been even more powerful than that, as the sensors cut out at that level.

These events are the biggest explosions in the solar system and can release as much energy as a billion hydrogen bombs,according to NASA.So even though the Sun enables life on Earth, dont ever forget its potential for terrible destruction as well.

READ MORE: Active Sun Unleashes Powerful X-Class Solar Flare [NASA]

More on solar flares: The Sharpest-Ever Image of a Sunspot Looks Like a Portal to Hell

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The Sun Just Blasted the Earth With an Enormous Solar Flare - Futurism

Think like a Novation Launchpad or an AKAI MPD, but in the shape of a drum kit. Codenamed the Collector, this futuristic vision from the mind of Liu Tianchen aims at bridging the worlds of electronic music and actual instrument-playing together. The rather slick-looking electronic drum kit features six adjustable pads and two pedals mounted on a folding frame. The kit comes with a folding stool too, and two drumsticks, giving you a near-authentic drumming experience.

The difference, however, is in the fact that the Collector doesnt rely on a pre-existing bank of drum sounds, but instead, gives the artist the flexibility to collect and build their own banks, either by purchasing samples online or making samples of their own. Then, working just like any good MIDI controller, the Collector lets you create beats using these samples in a way that closes the gap between actually jamming on a real-life drum kit, and just simply pressing buttons on a MIDI controller. When youre done, the entire setup packs up like an easel and stool, and stands flat vertically against a wall, occupying a fraction of the space that a real drum kit would.

The Collector Future Drum Kit is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Liu Tianchen

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This futuristic drum kit lets you sample real world audio and turn them into synthesized rhythms - Yanko Design

It's an obscene concentration of wealth.Richer, Richest

Tesla shares are surging yet again and that has CEO Elon Musks net worth blasting past the competition, leaving the likes of Warren Buffet and Amazons Jeff Bezos in the dust.

By Monday, Musks riches rose to just over $335 billion, just over a third of a trillion dollars. The increase was the result of Tesla shares jumping some 8.5 percent on Monday, Bloomberg reports.

In many ways, its an obscene concentration of wealth. Just a tiny fraction of his riches could be used for philanthropic endeavors to great effect, especially when it comes to world hunger, asDavid Beasley, the director of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), pointed out during a CNN interview last week.

Whats indisputable is that Musk is ascending to never-seen-before levels of personal wealth. The CEO billionaire is now three times richer than Buffet, a man who became the richest person in the world back in 2008 with a measly net worth of just $62 billion at the time.

Musks own riches made him the worlds richest person earlier this year for the second time, eclipsing Blue Origin CEOand space competitor and Bezos.

The news comes a week after rental car company Hertz announced a massive deal with Tesla involving the ordering of some 100,000 cars. But on Monday, Musk admitted on Twitter that hed like to emphasize that no contract has been signed yet.

The revelation had Tesla shares sliding, cutting back on some of the gains the company has made over the last week. Tuesday, shares dropped as much as 5.2 percent, according to Bloomberg.

Tesla is still up 56 percent in the last month alone and is now worth over $1 trillion as of Monday, though.

Similarly, Musks personal wealth is breaking records. The CEO just became the first person to be worth more than $300 billion last week, and now hes soared far past that.

The top one percent are amassing unprecedented amounts of money, an inflection point as levels of economic inequality continue to rise, particularly in the US.Where it all leads, at this point, is anyones guess.

READ MORE: Elon Musk Is Now Three Times Richer Than Warren Buffett [Bloomberg]

More on Elon Musk: Elon Musks World Hunger Tweet Is Taking the UN Wildly Out of Context

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Elon Musk's Net Worth Is Now Three Times That of Warren Buffett's - Futurism

Back into safe mode.Safe Mode

Things are not looking good for NASAs groundbreaking Hubble Space Telescope.

The orbital observatory has been put into safe mode yet again, according to a NASA update, and halting all science operations. Hubbles science instruments encountered an issue on October 23, related to synchronizing instruments and the commands and data requests sent from Earth.

Its yet another unfortunate predicament for the groundbreaking spacecraft, which has been in orbit in 1990, delivering some of the most magnificent views of our galaxy in human history.

A quick reset allowed scientists to resume science operations the next morning. But just two days later, the telescopes instruments issued the same error again multiple times.

As a precaution, the telescopes instruments entered safe mode state, as designed.

Now, Hubble scientists are poring over the data to figure out how to address the synchronization issue and how to get more data from the spacecraft. NASA says these that these activities are expected to take at least one week.

NASA also says that the rest of the spacecraft is operating as expected.

The news comes after the aging space telescope experienced some serious computer issues, forcing teams to switch to an on-board backup computer earlier this year.

In July, NASA announced some good news, revealing that the move was successful.

Hubble has been in orbit for 31 long years and has had to be serviced in person several times. The last time astronauts were able to visit the telescope for servicing was in 2009.

But that was on board NASAs Space Shuttle, which has long been retired. Astronauts currently have no way to return to the telescope, making any software or hardware issues exceedingly difficult to address and meaning that any new problem could potentially be fatal.

READ MORE: Hubble Remains in Safe Mode, NASA Team Investigating [NASA]

More on Hubble: Gaze in Awe at This Fiery Pac-Man Shaped Supernova, Gobbling Stars

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Oops: NASA Admits That the Hubble Space Telescope Is Busted Again - Futurism

HRH Prince Mohamed Bin Salman announced this project at the beginning of 2021, presented as a unique cluster of hyper-connected communities along a central spine, based on three layers: a pedestrian surface layer, where there will be zero cars, an intermediate service layer, and a base layer for underground high-speed, emissions-free transportation. The Line has already started taking shape, as The Daily Mail reports, with the first machines tunneling through the mountains.

The Line is part of NEOM, a large-scale project that envisions a futuristic city-state that would be 100% sustainable, unfolding over 10,000 square miles in the Tabuk province of Saudi Arabia. NEOM is meant to become a high-tech hub, as well as a major touristic attraction. Within this impressive urban development, the Line is planned to run along a 105-mile (170 km) area as a type of city with zero cars and zero streets, preserving 95% of the surrounding natural environment.

At the surface level, the one million future residents will have access to all essential services within walking distance. Everything will be powered by renewable energy. All logistics and deliveries will be conducted underground, at the invisible middle layer of the Line. Finally, ultra-high-speed trains, controlled by Artificial Intelligence, will ensure passenger and cargo transportation at the base level.

According to the NEOM project, this is an unprecedented approach to urban design, helping people reclaim the space that is typically occupied by cars and congested roads. NEOM aims to become the worlds largest carbon-free urban system, incorporating various types of renewable energy, as well as the latest technology. This massive city-state is estimated to cost around $500 billion.

With the Lines construction having kicked off, the first residents of this three-layered community cluster could start settling in as soon as 2024. It will take longer for the huge NEOM city-state to be completed, but tourists will be able to visit it in the near future.

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A Smart, Sustainable Futuristic City With No Cars and No Roads Is Starting to Take Shape - autoevolution

A team of researchers successfully tested a sample of Martian dirt, first scooped up by NASAs Mars Curiosity rover in March 2017, by directing the rover mix it with chemical reagents inside a cup.

This mixture then released organic molecules which NASA has never detected on the surface of Mars ever before, Inverse reports.

While its an exciting discovery, it falls short of demonstrating that carbon-based lifeforms once lived on the surface of the Red Planet. It is, however, a step in that direction.

This experiment was definitely successful, Mava Millan, postdoctoral fellow at NASAs Goddard Spaceflight Center and lead author of a new study published on Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, told Inverse.

While we havent found what we were looking for, biosignatures, we showed that this technique is really promising, she added.

The experiment has expanded the inventory of molecules present in Martian samples and demonstrated a powerful tool to further enable the search for polar organic molecules of biotic or prebiotic relevance, Millan and her team concluded in their paper.

The two chemicals most prominently found in the mixture were benzoic acid and ammonia, both possible indicators of ancient life.

One of the things that we were trying to look for [when searching for] organic molecule on Mars is to understand the past habitability of Mars and to look for bioindicators, Millan told Inverse.

The team is now hoping to find the molecules parents, or where they came from. Millan and her team suggest in their paper that they could be the result of geological processes.

Its not the first time Curiosityhas detected organic molecules in Martian soil, but the new discovery is expanding the list of organic molecules detected by NASA.

The news comes after an international team of astrobiologists detected a presence of thiophenes, which are special compounds found in coal, crude oil and white truffles back on Earth, after analyzing samples picked up by Curiosity.

The researchers suggested in March 2020 that the thiophenes could be a sign of ancient life on Mars, but more research is still needed.

Meanwhile, Millan and her team are hoping NASAs Perseverance rover will shed more light on the organic molecules.

READ MORE: NASA just found these organic molecules on Mars for the first time [Inverse]

More on Curiosity: Scientists Say NASAs Mars Rover Is on the Site of Ancient Ponds, Not a Huge Lake

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NASA Rover Detects Organic Molecules on the Surface of Mars - Futurism