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How cool would it be if we could one day regulate our atmosphere, control the climate and maybe even blast threatening asteroids into stardust? Well, to do those things would require A LOT of energy. Essentially, we’d have to be able to harness all the power from the Sun. According to the Kardashev scale that ranks planets according to their ability to harness the energy from their star and even their galaxy, that would make Earth a Type II civilization. What does that mean and how far away are we from achieving that level of uber energy capacity? You’ll have to tune in to find out as Peter and Richard welcome back Michio Kaku, physicist and science communicator extraordinaire to help us better understand “What If we became a type II civilization?”

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It’s essentially the guts of a smartphone combined with brain-implanted micro electrodes, as TechCrunch reports. The “Gennaris bionic vision system,” a project that’s more than ten years in the making, bypasses damaged optic nerves to allow signals to be transmitted from the retina to the vision center of the brain.

The system is made up of a custom-designed headgear, which includes a camera and a wireless transmitter. A processor unit takes care of data crunching, while a set of tiles implanted inside the brain deliver the signals.

“Our design creates a visual pattern from combinations of up to 172 spots of light (phosphenes) which provides information for the individual to navigate indoor and outdoor environments, and recognize the presence of people and objects around them,” Arthur Lowery, professor at Monash University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, said in a statement.

Circa 2019


Monoclonal antibodies are man-made versions of immune system proteins (antibodies) that are designed to attach to a specific target (in this case, proteins on the surface of cancer cells). These drugs can help your immune system react to and destroy the cancer cells. Some monoclonal antibodies also fight cancer in other ways.

Chemo given along with a monoclonal antibody is a standard treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

The monoclonal antibodies used to treat CLL can be divided into groups based on which protein they target.

In recent years we have seen the move away from ‘politics as usual’. Non-traditional figures have entered the political arena to disrupt the typical entrenched narratives. The election and worldwide popularity of Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand Prime Minister just one example of a new kind of leader who prioritises national wellbeing and happiness in the belief that everything else will follow.

Brigadier General (Retired) Dr. Loree Sutton Next Mayor of New York City?

Brigadier General Dr. Loree Sutton, ex-army general, physician, LGBTQ, mental healthcare advocate, is a further example of a leader who attempts to bridge the gap between people and focus on wellbeing. She is a candidate who is bringing a centrist, holistic, “quality-of-life” based approach to rejuvenating and re-inventing one of the world’s major financial, technological, and cultural capitals, New York City. https://loreeformayor.nyc @NYC Mayor’s Office.

From brigadier general to new york city mayor?

Darmstadt, 15 September 2020. – The European Space Agency (ESA) awarded a €129.4 million contract covering the design, manufacturing and testing of Hera, the space agency’s first mission for planetary defence, ESA announced today.

The contract was signed by Franco Ongaro, ESA Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality, and Marco Fuchs, CEO of Germany space company OHB, prime contractor of the Hera consortium, ESA said today. The signing took place at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, which will serve as mission control for the 2024-launched Hera.

The mission will be Europe’s contribution to an international asteroid deflection effort, set to perform sustained exploration of a double asteroid system, ESA said.

Hera will be, along with NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft, humankind’s first probe to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system, a little understood class making up around 15% of all known asteroids, the agency said.

Hera is the European contribution to an international planetary defence collaboration among European and US scientists called the Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA).