A Dutch company called QuTech, working with Intel, just pulled off a silicon chip-based quantum computer. The future’s looking good for spooky action.
Read more
Every year, millions of people around the world die from drinking unclean water. Now, researchers have developed a process that can purify water, no matter how dirty it is, in a single step. Scientists from Australian research organization CSIRO have created a filtration technique using a graphene film with microscopic nano-channels that lets water pass through, but stops pollutants. The process, called “Graphair”, is so effective that water samples from Sydney Harbor were safe to drink after being treated.
And while the film hails from graphene, Graphair is comparatively cheaper, faster and more environmentally-friendly to make, as its primary component is renewable soybean oil, which also helps maximise the efficiency of the purifying technique’s filter counterpart. Over time, oil-based pollutants can impede water filters, so contaminants have to be removed before filtering can even begin, but using Graphair removes these pollutants faster than any other method.
Water purification usually involves a complex process of several steps, so this breakthrough could have a significant impact on the some 2.1 billion people who don’t have clean, safe drinking water. “All that’s needed is heat, our graphene, a membrane filter and a small water pump. We’re hoping to commence field trials in a developing world community next year,” said lead author Dr Dong Han Seo, who added that the team is looking for industry partners to help scale up the technology, and is also working on other applications for Graphair, such as seawater and industrial effluents.
Read more
An experimental treatment completely reversed Alzheimer’s disease in mice by reducing the levels of a single enzyme in the animals’ brains. The results further bolster the theory that amyloid plaques are at the root of this mysterious brain disease, and that addressing these plaques could lead to an eventual cure for Alzheimer’s. The study, published February 14 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, found that slowly reducing levels of the enzyme BACE1 in mice as they aged either prevented or reversed the formation of amyloid plaques in the brain, a hallmark sign of Alzheimer’s disease…
Read more
Try a quick experiment: Take two flashlights into a dark room and shine them so that their light beams cross. Notice anything peculiar? The rather anticlimactic answer is, probably not. That’s because the individual photons that make up light do not interact. Instead, they simply pass each other by, like indifferent spirits in the night.
But what if light particles could be made to interact, attracting and repelling each other like atoms in ordinary matter? One tantalizing, albeit sci-fi possibility: light sabers — beams of light that can pull and push on each other, making for dazzling, epic confrontations. Or, in a more likely scenario, two beams of light could meet and merge into one single, luminous stream.
It may seem like such optical behavior would require bending the rules of physics, but in fact, scientists at MIT, Harvard University, and elsewhere have now demonstrated that photons can indeed be made to interact — an accomplishment that could open a path toward using photons in quantum computing, if not in lightsabers.
Read more
A solar storm is headed for the U.S.
Posted in futurism
The Undoing Aging 2018 Conference is coming to Berlin to discuss the science of rejuvenation biotech!
The SENS Research Foundation and the Forever Healthy Foundation have joined forces to host an exciting conference about rejuvenation biotechnology on March 15–17, 2018 at the Umspannwerk Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany.
A conference for everyone
The conference is open to the wider community interested in this field and anyone can attend. We believe that this is a fantastic move, as it allows more people to engage with the science and to learn firsthand from the researchers working on the front line. We very much support the idea that we are all in this together and thus are delighted to see that the event is open to the entire community.
Transcending Politics Preview
Posted in media & arts, robotics/AI
“There’s no escape: the journey to a healthier society inevitably involves politics.”
Starting with these words, David Wood, Executive Director of Transpolitica and Chair of London Futurists, introduces his book “Transcending Politics: A Technoprogressive Roadmap to a Comprehensively Better Future”.
For more details about this book, see https://transpolitica.org/projects/transcending-politics/
The music in this video has been generated by AI from Jukedeck — create your own at http://jukedeck.com
“There are two reasons to do something like this,” the letter says, referring to the $4 billion a year the foundation spends in developing countries trying to end child mortality, distribute vaccinations and improve access to education, plus another $500 million it shells out in the United States.
The billionaire philanthropists are committed to doing the best they can for the world with what they have.
Read more