Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance, according to a new study published online today by the American Journal of Public Health. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.
The study, conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.
“The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors, and baseline health,” said lead author Andrew Wilper, M.D., who currently teaches at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease — but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications.”
Imagine a day when a submarine could blast a target to smithereens using nothing more than acoustic energy. That’s the idea behind a recently granted U.S. Navy patent for a cavitation weapon. The powerful weapon would use sonar to generate “acoustic remote cavitation,” i.e. a big pressure bubble, that would destroy everything from torpedoes to mines. As the patent describes:
*A method is disclosed of generating a predetermined field of cavitation around a remote target in an underwater environment. The method includes the steps of identifying a remote target location, generating at least two acoustic beams, each at a high power output, from an underwater acoustic source, and controlling the generated acoustic beams to intersect with each other at the remote target location and thereby create a destructive cavitation field at the intersection of the beams. The acoustic source and target can be located in unconfined underwater space and at a distance of at least 100 m apart. *
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Burger-and bratwurst-flipping robots officially became a thing in 2017, but there is much more to come in the years ahead when we think about the potential applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and other cutting-edge technologies to the future of food production. Developments in 3D printing, cloud computing, big data, blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) will introduce new possibilities to the industry—with AI binding them all together and providing powerful insights to help change every facet of food production, distribution and retailing. So, what transformations for food and beverage production could occur in the aftermath of various bursts of innovation rising from these new technologies with seemingly magical powers?
Thinking ahead to 2025, distinct images of the future start to come into view. For example, could celebrity-inspired robochefs custom-make personalized meals based on a cloud-stored digital profile which takes into account each diner’s personal preferences, dietary issues, allergies, and health records? As a form of food manufacturing, personalized food could be achieved with 3D printing, with the factory providing the ingredients with the food then printed in the consumer’s home or a local food fabrication centre – which could be anything from a school kitchen to your local cafe. This form of future food production would create opportunities for manufacturers to interact with consumers more directly, perhaps using blockchain to eliminate the information loss that normally occurs through layers of middlemen like transport and retail.
Self-driving trucks and autonomous drones for food transport and urban vertical gardens could help meet the rising food demands of the future – extending the manufacturers’ reach in previously unimaginable ways. Virtual reality and augmented reality also offer unconventional access to consumers from the manufacturing side—simulated taste, smell and even touch may soon become part of the food and drink experience. The ability to test new ideas and access new markets in mixed reality is a huge new opportunity for food and drink manufacturers. Picture the scene, the consumer creates their ideal meal – including taste, smell, touch and visual presentation. The food is then robo-picked from the manufacturer’s town centre based vertical farm, the meal is prepared by the robo-chef in the back of the autonomous delivery vehicle and then transported and flash heated by a drone that literally places the meal on your dining table. Every technological element of this scenario is there now or will be within a year or two at the outside.
Is anybody home? Astronomers have pinpointed two planets orbiting a nearby star that meet pretty much every requirement for supporting life. They’re almost exactly the same mass as the Earth, they are billions of years old (which means life could have had time to evolve), and they’re orbiting their star at a distance that would support things like water flow and habitable temperatures.
The upgrades include changes to make AI programming simpler—and to speed up powerful machines for specific AI tasks.
The news: The International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) kicked off in Frankfurt yesterday with the release of the latest list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world. US machines still top the ranking, but China has the most computers on the list (219 versus 116 for the US).
Supercomputers have already turbocharged some AI applications. For example. the US’s Summit supercomputer (pictured above), which leads the Top 500, has already run a complex machine-learning model for climate research faster than any other machine.
“At first it didn’t bother me — but after a while, it started taking a toll,” Bennetti told me. “I got to feel, like, a cloud — a darkness — over me. I started being depressed. I’m a very happy, outgoing person, and I was [becoming] withdrawn. My anxiety went up. It was hard to get through it every day. It started affecting my home life.”
Johnson was particularly disturbed by the site’s sole bathroom, which she regularly found in a state of disrepair. (The company says it has janitors available every shift in Tampa.) In the stalls, signs posted in response to employee misbehavior proliferated. Do not use your feet to flush the toilet. Do not flush more than five toilet seat covers at one time. Do not put any substances, natural or unnatural, on the walls.
In an unexpected last-second change, SpaceX has moved Falcon Heavy Flight 3’s center core landing on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) from 40 km to more than 1240 km (770 mi) off the coast of Florida.
Drone ship OCISLY is already being towed to the landing site, necessary due to the sheer distance that needs to be covered at a leisurely towing pace. The current record for distance traveled during booster recovery was set at ~970 km by Falcon Heavy center core B1055 in April 2019. If successful, Falcon Heavy center core B1057 will smash that record by almost 30% after sending two dozen spacecraft on their way to orbit. Falcon Heavy Flight 3 is scheduled to lift off in support of the Department of Defense’s Space Test Program 2 (STP-2) mission no earlier than 11:30 pm ET (03:30 UTC), June 24th. A routine static fire test at Pad 39A will (hopefully) set the stage for launch on Wednesday, June 19th.
