Elon Musk’s plan for the hyperloop promised city-to-city travel at speeds in excess of 700 mph, making the trip between New York City and Washington, D.C., 29 minutes. Bloomberg QuickTake Q&A explains what hurdles exist, and how they can be overcome, before the hyperloop becomes reality. (video by Henry Baker) (Source: Bloomberg)
Researchers from Harvard University and the University of Nottingham have developed a new filling that stimulates stem cells in dental pulp to regenerate and even regrow teeth damaged by disease and decay. According to Newsweek Magazine, the discovery earned a prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry after judges described it as a “new paradigm for dental treatments.”
The treatment is believed to potentially eliminate the need for root canals.
Filling materials stimulate stem cells to encourage dentin growth.
Work isn’t working anymore. Labour productivity has fallen in the UK since the financial crisis; 13.5 million people are living in low-income households; real wages are falling and the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality, is rising.
The sustainability and quality of jobs in our economy is also decreasing – 7.1 million workers now face precarious working conditions, meaning that uncertainty (and for many, anxiety) itself is now built into our employment system. According to some estimates, 30 per cent of UK jobs could potentially be automated away by the early 2030s. Depending on the sector, this will mean a remarkable reduction of required hours of human labour. With less work to go around, we will find ourselves in heightened competition with machines and each other, ever more desperate for stability.
Is this our only future? No. But in order to change it and move beyond this crisis, we first need to confront our very conception of work. For a long time we have thought of work as a matter of individual choice – a free, private agreement between a single person and an employer. You, the thinking goes, are free to pick whatever job you like as long as the employer is happy to have you on board and there are a sufficient number of jobs created by the free market.
One manufacturing company just made history by successfully using a special 3D printer in extreme, space-like conditions.
The team printed polymer alloy parts in a super-high vacuum, and hope their new tech will allow the design and manufacture of much more ambitious spacecraft and space-based telescopes.
“This is an important milestone, because it means that we can now adaptively and on demand manufacture things in space,” Andrew Rush, CEO of Made in Space, told Scientific American.
