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Jun 5, 2019

The Privacy Project

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, internet

Companies and governments are gaining new powers to follow people across the internet and around the world, and even to peer into their genomes. The benefits of such advances have been apparent for years; the costs — in anonymity, even autonomy — are now becoming clearer. The boundaries of privacy are in dispute, and its future is in doubt. Citizens, politicians and business leaders are asking if societies are making the wisest tradeoffs. The Times is embarking on this monthslong project to explore the technology and where it’s taking us, and to convene debate about how it can best help realize human potential.


The New York Times is launching an ongoing examination of privacy. We’ll dig into the ideas, history and future of how our information navigates the digital ecosystem and what’s at stake.

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Jun 4, 2019

LEDs created from wonder material could revolutionize lighting and displays

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, computing, solar power, sustainability

In solar cells, the cheap, easy to make materials called perovskites are adept at turning photons into electricity. Now, perovskites are turning the tables, converting electrons into light with an efficiency on par with that of the commercial organic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) found in cellphones and flat screen TVs. And in a glimpse of how they might one day be harnessed, researchers reported last week in Science Advances that they’ve used a 3D printer to pattern perovskites for use in full-color displays.

“It’s a fantastic result, and quite inspirational,” says Richard Friend, a physicist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom whose team created the first perovskite LED in 2014. The result raises hopes that the computer screens and giant displays of the future will consist of these cheap crystalline substances, made from common ingredients. Friend cautions, however, that the new perovskite displays aren’t yet commercially viable.

The materials in current semiconductor LEDs, including the organic versions, require processing at high temperatures in vacuum chambers to ensure the resulting semiconductors are pristine. By contrast, perovskites can be prepared simply by mixing their chemical components in solution at room temperature. Only a brief heat treatment is needed to crystallize them. And even though the perovskite crystals end up with imperfections, these defects typically don’t destroy the materials’ ability to emit light.

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Jun 4, 2019

Hi-tech gadget will be used to relieve severe headaches under raft of new NHS treatments

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Severe headache sufferers will be given a gadget rather than pills to alleviate the pain, the head of NHS England announced on Wednesday.

Cluster headaches, which are often mistaken for migraines, are one of the most debilitating conditions known to medical science, with women often describing the pain as worse than childbirth.

Now sufferers will be offered a hand-held device that delivers mild electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve to block the pain signals that cause the headaches.

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Jun 4, 2019

White meat is just as bad for you as red beef when it comes to your cholesterol level, study says

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food

The red meat or white meat debate is a draw: Eating white meat, such as poultry, will have an identical effect on your cholesterol level as eating red beef, new research indicates.

The long-held belief that eating white meat is less harmful for your heart may still hold true, because there may be other effects from eating red meat that contribute to cardiovascular disease, said the University of California, San Francisco researchers. This needs to be explored in more detail, they added.

Non-meat proteins such as vegetables, dairy, and legumes, including beans, show the best cholesterol benefit, according to the new study published Tuesday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Continue reading “White meat is just as bad for you as red beef when it comes to your cholesterol level, study says” »

Jun 4, 2019

Promise in the Gloom? How Bleak Future Scenarios for Employment Might Save the Environment

Posted by in categories: environmental, robotics/AI

How might future changes in the structure of business and the nature of work impact the environment?

While governments around the world are wrestling with the potential for massive on-rushing technological disruption of work and the jobs market, few are extending the telescope to explore what the knock-on impacts might be for the planet. Here we explore some dimensions of the issue.

Although replacing humans with robots has a dystopian flavor, what, if any positives are there from successive waves of artificial intelligence (AI) and other exponentially developing technologies displacing jobs ranging from banker to construction worker? Clearly, the number of people working and the implications for commuting, conduct of their role and their resulting income-related domestic lifestyle all have a direct bearing on their consumption of resources and emissions footprint. However, while everyone wants to know the impact of smart automation, the reality is that we are all clueless as to the outcome over the next twenty years, as this fourth industrial revolution has only just started.

There is a dramatic variation in views on the extent to which automation technologies such as AI, robotics and 3D / 4D printing will replace humans or enable wholly new roles. For example, A 2016 McKinsey automation study reported that, with current technologies, about a third of most job activities are technologically automatable, affecting 49% of the world economy, an estimated 1.1 billion employees and $12.7 trillion in wages. China, India, Japan, and USA account for more than half of these totals. The report concluded it would be more than two decades before automation reaches 50% of current activities.

Continue reading “Promise in the Gloom? How Bleak Future Scenarios for Employment Might Save the Environment” »

Jun 4, 2019

Bill Andrews — Gene Editing, Stem Cells, NAD, Parabiosis, Senolytics

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, neuroscience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-5o980D9QM&feature=share

I didn’t know Bill Andrews created the treatments Liz Parrish took. Also, he has an Alzheimer’s human test next month.

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Jun 4, 2019

Marijuana CEO: ‘Many of us are cannabinoid deficient’

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

The growing interest in cannabis and cannabis-derived products has sparked uncertainty and concern over the industry’s lack of regulations. On Thursday, the FDA held a hearing that looked deeper into the science and safety concerns that surround marijuana and CBD.

Medical Marijuana Inc (MJNA) CEO Stuart Titus is optimistic about the effects that cannabis-derived products have on humans.

“We have a very large self-regulatory system in our human bodies called the internal or the endogenous cannabinoid system,” Titus told YFi AM (video above). “And basically since cannabis has been removed from our diets for the past 80-plus years, many of us are cannabinoid deficient, and thus we start taking a nice supplementary-size serving of CBD. Many people are moving to a much higher level of overall health and wellness.”

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Jun 4, 2019

MacOS Catalina: all about Apple’s macOS 10.15

Posted by in category: futurism

Apple debuts macOS 10.15 at WWDC 2019.

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Jun 4, 2019

Chrome OS 75 makes Pixel Slate tablet mode animations “buttery smooth”, take a look

Posted by in category: futurism

It appears that the animation lag when using a Pixel Slate in tablet mode is vastly improved in Chrome OS 75. I snapped this short video on my Slate showing how much better it works.

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Jun 4, 2019

Mini antimatter accelerator could rival the likes of the Large Hadron Collider

Posted by in categories: computing, cosmology, particle physics, transportation

Researchers have found a way to accelerate antimatter in a 1000x smaller space than current accelerators, boosting the science of exotic particles.

The new could be used to probe more mysteries of , like the properties of the Higgs boson and the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and provide more sensitive testing of aircraft and computer chips.

The method has been modelled using the properties of existing lasers, with experiments planned soon. If proven, the technology could allow many more labs around the world to conduct antimatter acceleration experiments.

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