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DigiLens, a developer of transparent waveguide display technology, says it’s working toward a waveguide display which could bring a 150 degree field of view to AR and VR (or XR) headsets. The company expects the display will be available in 2019.

Founded in 2005, DigiLens has developed a proprietary waveguide manufacturing process which allows the company to “print” light manipulating structures (Bragg gratings) into a thin and transparent material wherein light can be guided along the optic and be made to project perpendicularly, forming an image in the user’s eye. While DigiLens isn’t the only company which makes waveguide displays, they claim that their process offers a steep cost advantage compared to competitors. The company says they’ve raised $35 million between its Series A and B investment rounds.

While DigiLens’ displays have primarily been used in HUD-like applications, the company is increasingly positioning its wares toward the growing wearable, AR, and VR industries. At AWE 2018 last week, DigiLens Founder & CTO Jonathan Waldern told me that the company expects to offer a waveguide display suitable for AR and VR headsets which could offer a 150 degree field of view between both eyes. He said that a single display could be suitable for AR and VR modes in the same headset by utilizing a liquid crystal blackout layer which can switch between transparent and opaque, something which DigiLens partner Panasonic has developed. A clip-on light blocker or other type of tinting film ought to be suitable as well.

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Too bad the middle class is shrinking!

The rate of growth in residential rooftop solar photovoltaics (PV) in Australia since 2008 has been nothing short of breathtaking.

Our new research suggests that the households most likely to join in the solar spree are those that are affluent enough to afford the upfront investment, but not so wealthy that they don’t worry about their future power bills.

Australia now has the highest penetration of residential rooftop PV of any country in the world, with the technology having been installed on one in five freestanding or semi-detached homes. In the market-leading states of Queensland and South Australia this ratio is about one in three, and Western Australia is not far behind, with one in four having PV.

Continue reading “Are solar panels a middle-class purchase? This survey says yes” | >

The idea of “healthy ageing” is a contradiction in terms.

Suppose you read the following sentence in an article about company management: “This factor is central in achieving successful bankruptcy.” It sounds rather weird, doesn’t it? What if you read this about football team training? “Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to lose a game in a successful way.” These are so-called oxymorons—by Oxford’s definition, “figures of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction.”

The contradictory nature of the statements above is more than just apparent—bankruptcy is the exact opposite of “success” for a company, and the same goes for losing a game for a football team. One can get very creative with these: “a blockbuster fiasco”; “the façade of the building deteriorated nicely”; and so on. Examples closer to home would be “healthy aging” or “aging gracefully”.

Sometimes, semantics do matter

Continue reading “Getting sick in a healthy way” | >

Really excited to announce our new initiative to make early-stage rejuvenation therapies more accessible.

Our mission is to enable people to vastly extend their healthy lifespan and be part of the first generation to cure aging.

We support the development of rejuvenation therapies that undo the damage of aging by funding basic research, bringing together the world’s leading scientists at our annual Undoing Aging conference and helping startups that work on actual therapies for human use.

In addition, we are developing our ‘Personal Longevity Strategy’ which harnesses the enormous wealth of the world’s cutting-edge medical knowledge to empower people to make informed decisions about extending their healthy lifespan right now.

Continue reading “Review current and up-coming rejuvenation therapies” | >

Good news: The toolkit for neurorehabilitation is growing.

___ MindMaze Consolidates First-ever FDA Approval for Inpatient and Outpatient Neurorehabilitation Therapy (press release): MindMaze, a leader in braintech, has today announced that it has obtained FDA clearance to launch its portable neurorehabilitation product, MindMotion™ GO, in the United States. Together with.

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Onstage at the launch of Amazon’s Alexa Prize, a multimillion-dollar competition to build AI that can chat like a human, the winners of last year’s challenge delivered a friendly warning to 2018’s hopefuls: your bot will mess up, it will say something offensive, and it will be taken offline. Elizabeth Clark, a member of last year’s champion Sounding Board team from the University of Washington, was onstage with her fellow researchers to share what they’d learned from their experience. What stuck out, she said, were the bloopers.

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We were interested to learn that Juvenescence Limited, a biotech and development company involved in the development of therapies that target the aging processes, has successfully raised $50 million in a series A financing round.

Jim Mellon, the chairman of Juvenescence Limited, said, “We are delighted with the progress we have made and the faith that investors have placed in us to build a world-class company, one that we hope will lead the field in longevity science for the benefit of humanity as well as yield superb returns for our shareholders. Our company ethos is to advance the science that will add years of healthy life to every human being, and that is exactly what we are executing on at record speed.”

Juvenescence has raised $63 million from various international investors since its creation in October 2016 and is now moving forward with a number of key projects. The company is comprised of a number of industry leaders in business as well as a solid scientific team led by Dr. Declan Doogan and Dr. Annalisa Jenkins.

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But there’s a recent lesson worth learning from. Globalization and automation caused upheaval in the manufacturing industry from the 1980s through the early 2000s, and millions of factory workers lost their jobs. The disruption to communities is still being felt, and is arguably at the root of a lot of the biggest social and economic problems of this era.

Some big ideas are starting to percolate. But less dramatic ones might work, too.

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Americans installed 2.5 gigawatts of solar panels in the first quarter of the year—a 13 percent increase from a year earlier, according to a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association. That made solar the leading source of new energy generation at 55 percent, dominating over wind and natural gas turbines. This was in spite of the fact that President Donald Trump imposed tariffs earlier this year on imported panels and their parts, reported Bloomberg News. Total installations are on track to reach 10.8 gigawatts at the end of the year, with installations reaching more than 14 gigawatts by 2023.

Read it at Bloomberg.

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Neutrinos are so tiny and inconspicuous that physicists believed for a long time they had no mass. Now, a massive device that scientists say will determine the mass of neutrinos has begun operation in Karlsruhe.

What is the exact mass of the three known kinds of neutrinos? Any answers? No? Well, don’t worry, because nobody knows. Not yet. Electron, muon and tau neutrinos are simply too difficult to grasp for scientists.

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