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May 28, 2019

Civilization: Institutions, Knowledge and the Future — Samo Burja

Posted by in categories: futurism, materials

Our civilization is made up of countless individuals and pieces of material technology, which come together to form institutions and interdependent systems of logistics, development and production. These institutions and systems then store the knowledge required for their own renewal and growth.

We pin the hopes of our common human project on this renewal and growth of the whole civilization. Whether this project is going well is a challenging but vital question to answer.

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May 28, 2019

Researchers crack an enduring physics enigma

Posted by in categories: mathematics, physics

For decades, physicists, engineers and mathematicians have failed to explain a remarkable phenomenon in fluid mechanics: the natural tendency of turbulence in fluids to move from disordered chaos to perfectly parallel patterns of oblique turbulent bands. This transition from a state of chaotic turbulence to a highly structured pattern was observed by many scientists, but never understood.

At EPFL’s Emerging Complexity in Physical Systems Laboratory, Tobias Schneider and his team have identified the mechanism that explains this phenomenon. Their findings have been published in Nature Communications.

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May 28, 2019

Brain stimulation enhances visual learning speed and efficiency

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Practice results in better learning. Consider learning a musical instrument, for example: the more one practices, the better one will be able to learn to play. The same holds true for cognition and visual perception: with practice, a person can learn to see better—and this is the case for both healthy adults and patients who experience vision loss because of a traumatic brain injury or stroke.

The problem with learning, however, is that it often takes a lot of training. Finding the time can be especially difficult for with injuries who may, for instance, need to re-train their brains to learn to process .

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May 28, 2019

The world’s most beautiful headphones are here, and they’re made of fungus

Posted by in category: futurism

And other biomaterials such as bacteria and biosynthetic spider silk.

2 minute Read.

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May 28, 2019

Ancient fungi may have laid the groundwork for complex life

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, habitats

But previous examination of the fungal “molecular clock,” using DNA-based methods, suggested that fungi may have evolved much earlier, between 760 million and 1.06 billion years ago. Extracted from Arctic Canadian shales, the newly discovered billion-year-old fossilized fungal spores and hyphae (long thin tubes) plug the gap in the fossil record and suggest that fungi may have occupied land well before plants.

The fungal fossils were found in rocks that were probably once part a shallow-water estuary. Such environments are typically great for fungi thanks to nutrient-rich waters and the build up of washed-up organic matter to feed on. The high salinity, high mineral and low oxygen content of these ancient coastal habitats also provided great conditions to perfectly preserve the tough chitin molecules embedded within fungal cell walls that otherwise would have decomposed.

While it’s not certain whether the newly-discovered ancient fungi actually lived within the estuary or were washed into the sediments from the land, they show many of the distinctive features you’d expect in modern terrestrial fungi. The germinating spores are clearly defined, as are the branching, thread-like tubes that help fungi explore their environment, named hyphae. Even the cell walls are distinctively fungal, being made up of two clear layers. In fact, if you didn’t know they were so old, you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish them from modern fungi.

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May 28, 2019

Fungus Found in Australian Soil Can Oxidize Gold

Posted by in category: futurism

The chemical process may make the metal more soluble and move it closer to the Earth’s surface.

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May 28, 2019

Next-Gen Spacesuit Helmet Has an “Iron Man” Heads Up Display

Posted by in categories: health, space

An artificial intelligence firm says its heads-up display for astronauts could help them better manage complex space missions.

Hypergiant Industries built an “Iron Man”-inspired space helmet called HyperVSR, which can display details like an astronaut’s vital signs or other information about a mission. CEO Ben Lamm told Futurism that it may improve astronaut safety by putting more information at crew members’ fingertips and cutting down on how much they have to maneuver in a spacesuit.

“Space is an unpredictable environment, where challenges can change dramatically over the course of just a few minutes,” Lamm said. “During these situations, it’s paramount that astronaut safety is never in question. We’ve designed our helmet to enable astronauts to quickly gather information about a situation, as well as assess their own health, for enhanced decision-making even during emergencies.”

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May 28, 2019

Honeywell One Step Closer To Universal Quantum Computer

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

The quantum computing effort at Honeywell appears to be heating up. Over the last several months, the company has announced a series of new developments in its trapped ion quantum computer research, which suggests that it is close to launching its first system.

If you weren’t aware that Honeywell had a quantum computing program, you are not alone. While the occasional terse news statement about this effort is posted on the company’s quantum solutions page, the tech giant has otherwise been rather tight-lipped about its plans in this area. A request from us for more information was met with: “We don’t have anything further to add on this front.”

Since October of last year, Honeywell has been offering these smaller tidbits on a regular basis. In November, the company revealed it had started testing its first-generation qubit devices, followed in January by the claim that it had “demonstrated record-breaking high fidelity quantum operations” on its trapped-ion qubits. In March, it announced it had demonstrated “parallel operating zones” on the device, which it believes will provide faster execution and more flexible qubit connectivity.

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May 28, 2019

SpaceX Starlink Satellite Simulations

Posted by in category: satellites

Mark Handley (UCL, University College London) has simulation showing the orbits of various SpaceX Starlink satellite constellations. There are simulations of 72, 264 and 11927 satellites. SpaceX is launching 60 satellites at a time. SpaceX has 60 production Starlink satellites in orbit now for testing.

SpaceX plans six more launches of Starlink satellites by the end of the year and should have enough for an initial 720 satellites for North America, Europe and Asia service by March or April 2020.

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May 28, 2019

What’s Telling About Telomeres (and the Aging Process)

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Is aging a natural process that we simply have to accept as a fact of life?

A philosopher would say yes. Many doctors would also agree: that our cells eventually reach a point where they can no longer divide and either die or reach senescence, a retirement phase. Many scientists believe in the “Hayflick limit” — that no one can live past about 120 years old. These people might also say that aging — and dying — is a good thing; that the world is already overcrowded, that we already cannot handle our aging populations, that life must be finite to appreciate it, that all good things must come to an end.

But there’s a growing group of people — including gerontologists, biologists, engineers, and futurists—who believe that aging is a disease in itself, a disease that can be cured. That aging is not an immutable process, an inevitable “dying of the light,” to quote poet Dylan Thomas, but one we can “rage against” — through science, drugs, and lifestyle changes.

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