How will our relationship to technology evolve in the future? Will we regard it as something apart from ourselves, part of ourselves, or as a new area of evolution? In this new video from the Galactic Public Archives, Futurist Gray Scott explains that we are a part of a technological cosmos. Do you agree with Scott that technology is built into the universe, waiting to be discovered?
In Unexpected Futurist, we profile the lesser known futurist side of influential individuals. This episode’s unexpected time-traveler: Benjamin Franklin. Ben Franklin was an inventor, observer, electricity pioneer, and serial experimenter, so it’s not entirely surprising he looked to the future. But it turns out he was looking to the far, far future. In 1780 he wrote a letter to a friend in which he lamented that he was born during the dawn of science.
Why is it that a cut on your finger seems to last for days, but a cut in your mouth is usually healed by morning? There are a lot of factors at play, but 2017 research found one intriguing answer that could benefit more than just your mouth: there’s a molecule in your saliva that can help grow new cells.
Scientists already knew that saliva contains a peptide called histatin-1 that fights off bacteria and aids in wound healing. For a 2017 study published in the FASEB Journal, Chilean researchers set out to discover exactly how the little molecule helped heal wounds. In a series of experiments, they added histatin-1 to chicken embryo cells and several types of human blood-vessel cells, and watched what happened.
There are many steps that have to happen for a wound to heal. New skin cells have to form and migrate from the wound’s edges little by little to cover the whole thing like a Band-Aid. Active cells called fibroblasts move in, too, helping to produce collagen, elastin, and other proteins that the new skin will need. The body also starts regrowing blood vessels, which boosts blood flow to the wound and makes it heal even faster.
