Futurism – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Replacing the sleepers without removing the rails

Posted by Shailesh Prasad in futurism

Sep 27
2016

Credit: imgur.com/JOeNC94

China strengthens scientific cooperation with countries along Belt and Road

Posted by Karen Hurst in futurism

Sep 26
2016

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech during a symposium on the Belt and Road Initiati.

Time Might Only Exist In Your Head. And Everyone Else’s

Posted by Sean Brazell in futurism, physics

Sep 26
2016

To physics, time has no direction. Until you come along and give it a past, present, and future.

Jet thruster

Posted by Shailesh Prasad in futurism

Sep 26
2016

This handheld jet thruster takes the hard work out of swimming.

Quantum study sparks questions about why time runs forward and not backward

Posted by Karen Hurst in futurism, quantum physics

Sep 26
2016

Why do we remember the past, but not the future? It seems like a silly question, but for some scientists, it’s a deep mystery wrapped up in physics and perception.

The mystery takes another twist in a study appearing in the same journal that published Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity more than a century ago.

Uber researches vertical-takeoff planes for short-haul city rides

Posted by Karen Hurst in drones, futurism

Sep 26
2016

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s your Uber ride arriving to take you to work.

Uber is researching how to offer customers short-haul flights on vertical-takeoff aircraft in future, the ride-hailing company’s Product Head Jeff Holden told a a Recode reporter on stage at the Nantucket Conference on Sunday.

Holden said the company is looking into drone-like aircraft, “so we can someday offer our customers as many options as possible to move around.”

New Zealand startup Thought-Wired allows people with severe disabilities to communicate using their brain waves

Posted by Karen Hurst in futurism, robotics/AI

Sep 24
2016

Interacting with people through brainwaves either via technology or a telepathic six sense has been long explored in the genre of science-fiction: in Hollywood blockbuster X-Men the character Professor X is telepathic and has the ability to tap into and read other people’s minds.

While the concept of telepathy or thought-controlled communication was once thought to be a futuristic concept or a concept reserved only for the realm of science-fiction, technology today is advancing fast, with the world soon to expect the commercialisation of holograms as explored in The Time Machine, autonomous cars as seen in iRobot and now brainwave communication like in X-Men.

While science-fiction explores the dark side of these technologies, the real world is exploring a multitude of applications to enhance and improve people’s everyday lives.

Weekend Being: Jacob Koshy writes on Manu Prakash, an engineer from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Posted by Karen Hurst in futurism

Sep 24
2016

Frugality, crafting inexpensive knock-offs and making do with little may be the ethos of India’s pharmaceutical industry, its manufacturing sector and the spirit with which our scientists conduct their research but an Indian-origin bio-engineer at Stanford University has just won one of America’s grandest prizes — the MacArthur ‘Genius’ grant — worth Rs.4 crore for designing a $1 microscope.

Towards do-it-yourself science

Manu Prakash from Rampur, Uttar Pradesh and an engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, has made a name for fashioning ingenious devices that make the essence of science — observation and experiments — accessible to those who can’t afford expensive instruments.