Category Archives: Futurism

A Mandate For Humanity

Both chambers of Congress just passed the NASA Authorization Act of 2017. With this transformative development, the space agency got a lot more than just$19.508 billion in funding. They also got a very clear mandate: Get humanity to Mars.

To be clear, Mars has been in the works for some time; however, the 2017 Actplaces astrong emphasis on this goal, making it the focal point of NASAs long-term plans. In the document, congress asserts that the space agency is to get humans near or on the surface of Mars in the 2030s. Opposition to the bill from the administration isnt expected, so its more than likely to be passed into law by the presidency.

In order to get to Mars by the 2030s, Congress is asking NASA to develop an initial human exploration roadmap that must be submitted before December 1, 2017.

The bill outlines the necessity of this roadmap, stating: It is the sense of Congress that expanding human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and advancing toward human missions to Mars in the 2030s requires early strategic planning and timely decisions to be made in the near-term on the necessary courses of action for commitments to achieve short-term and long-term goals and objectives.

To that end, the 2017Act states that this plan should outline clear goals that are a bit closer to home, instead of just making a grand leap to the Red Planet all at once.The document states, A human exploration roadmap should begin with low-Earth orbit, then address in greater detail progress beyond low-Earth orbit to cis-lunar space, and then address future missions aimed at human arrival and activities near and then on the surface of Mars.

Speaking of the planned stages, NASA already has a basic outline: The human exploration of Mars crosses three thresholds, each with increasing challenges as humans move farther from Earth: Earth Reliant [now until the mid-2020s], the Proving Ground [2018-2030], and Earth Independent [now to 2030s and beyond].

You can see a full breakdown of each of these stages at this linkand a very basic breakdown of the stages in the NASA image below:

With these planned phases, NASA should be able to easily provide Congress with the roadmap that its asking for.

Through this new NASA Authorization Act, Congress affirms that Mars is the appropriate long-term goal for the human space flight program, and it is likely that the Moon will be a stop over in 2020, if the current administrations planspush forward.

Recently, much of the news covering missions to Mars involved private space companies, most notably, SpaceX and foreign space agencies including China and the UAE.

According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the company will create a permanentMartian settlement. To that end, Musks plan includes the launch of the unmanned Red Dragon spacecraft by 2018, then sending a new and reusable rocket by 2022 (which will be powered by the just recently tested Raptor rocket), and eventually launching humans to Mars after thathopefully landing by 2025.However, much of the details still need to be fleshed out.

Regardless, Musk has made it clear that he thinks such a colonization project will ultimately save the human race. And as this directive by congress reveals, the U.S. government agrees. See SpaceXs plans in this video:

To say, however, that NASA has been sitting idly by would be inaccurate. The space agency has been on a journey to Mars for some time.

So, what has NASA been up to in relation to the Red Planet? The agency already has a host of rovers currently on Mars. One, the Curiosity rover, has made much headway in helping us better understand how much water did (and maybe still does) exist on Mars.Another rover is planned for 2020. This Mars 2020 rover will gather and study data on the availability of resources, such as oxygen, on Mars.

In this respect, Sending rovers isone of the first steps in getting people to Mars.

Ultimately, in the end, getting humans to Mars isnt some empty obsession. Its a worthwhile endeavorone that has the potential to inspire generations in the same manner that the Apollo missions (and Moon landing) did. For many, getting to Mars would be the highest point of human exploration they would ever witness. Think of what New Horizons arrival at Pluto felt like, and now multiply that by about 100.

Already, Mars rover missions are accelerating innovation and research exponentially, so think of all the things that we could learn once were actually there. It is a bold new era in the final frontier.

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US Government Issues NASA Demand, 'Get Humans to Mars By 2033' - Futurism

Why We Age

In the absence of an actual fountain of youth, people have turned to drugs, creams, and even blood to prevent aging. But it turns out one of the best ways to combat the inevitable was right under our noses all alongexercise.

As we get older our cells lose their ability to generate energy effectively, which leads to the physical changeswe associate with aging.Researchled by Sreekumaran Nair at the Mayo Clinic reveals that high intensity interval training (HIIT) can help reverse those effects.

The study includedvolunteers from two age groups, one between 18 and 30, and the otherbetween 65 to 80. These groups were then divided into three: one received HIIT, another received weight training, and the third group was given a combination of both. All volunteers had to engage in the regimen for three months, and muscle biopsies were taken before and after for comparison.

Aging actually happens at a cellular level. As the mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell) declines with age, it leads to many age-related conditions everything from worsening eyesight to cancer. HIIT training which involves short bursts of intense physical activity, mixed with periods of lower-intensity exercise can apparently boost the mitochondrias ability to generate energy by 69 percent among older subjects, and 49 percent in a younger group.

Perhaps the most telling sign of cellular aging is when the body begins to have difficultywith specific functions, such as the muscles ability to burn excess blood sugar which could lead to diabetes. HIIT training lead to not just a halt in thedecline, but evenreversed it. After three months of interval training, everything converged towards what we saw in young people, says Nair.

In addition to positive impacton a cellular level, the training also provideda major improvement in lung, heart, and circulation health. The amount of oxygen the younger groupcould inhale rose by 28 percent, androse by 17 percent among the older volunteers.

Among the group that was given weight training instead of HIIT, no mitochondrial or respiratory improvements were observed. Under this exercise regimen, the best benefit received was gaining muscle mass. In the group that received a combination of both, oxygen consumption rose by 21 percent among older volunteers, and showed intermediate results.In a statement announcing their research, Dr. Nair said:

Other research centered around anti-aging efforts are also making significant strides: a drug called metformin, which has long been used to treat diabetes, has just been approved for clinical trials involving its potentialage-related applications. A separate study claims to have formulated a drug that can help slow down the aging process. Having a deeper understanding of genetics has also helped scientists gainnew insights into how we can effectively slow physical aging and the onset of age-related diseases.

Given these findings, combined with numerous breakthroughs in the field, we may be closer to the fountain of youth than we think.

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Scientists Have Found a Way to Reverse the Signs of Aging - Futurism

In Brief Take a trip to the newest star system discovered by NASA from the comfort of your own home. Downloading the TRappist-1 update to the Space Engine simulator will allow you to visit estimations of the planets.

You dont have to wait to explore the seven Earth-sized exoplanetsrecently discovered in the TRAPPIST-1 system. You can do it right now.

Hours after the announcement on Wednesday, Vladimir Romanyuk released a downloadable pack for his universe simulator Space Engine, which contains all seven planets. All you have to do is download Space Engine, then the TRAPPIST-1 pack, then add the file to the addons/ folder. Once youve done that you can load up the simulator and get up close with each of the seven planets.

It should be noted that no one yet knows what the surface of these planets truly look like. NASA drew up an illustration with some scientific predictions but thats all we have right now. As Space Engine is a simulator, it has also authored its own vision of these planets, based on their bulk density.

Space Engine renders the first planets as warm terras while the rest are cool deserts. A couple have oceans, many of them have huge cyclones rampaging across their rocky surfaces, but whats missing are any signs of life.

Three of the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system are in the habitable zone, which means they could support life. Lets hope Space Engine is off the mark there. In fact, its simulation of these planets is way off at the moment, to the point that Romanyuk is considering some manual tweaks. They would include increasing the temperature of the star and correcting the planet orientation in relation to the sun so they are no longer tidally locked.

If youre unable to visit the planets for yourself in Space Engine then you can check out Imgur user DRMirage809s photo gallery of their own trip to TRAPPIST-1. YouTuber Anton Petrov also gives a tour in his video, however, he hasnt installed the new planet pack, so it only includes the three planets that were discovered previously and not the four new ones.

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See 7 Earth-Like Planets Recently Discovered by NASA - Futurism - Futurism

A New COIN

JP Morgan Chase & Co. is the biggest bank in the United States. It is one of the largest employers in the American banking sector, with more than 240,000 employeesserving millions of customers. Some of those employees are lawyers and loan officers who spend a total of 360,000 hours each year tackling a slew of rather mundane tasks, such as interpreting commercial-loan agreements. Now, the company has managed to cut the time spent on this work down to a matter ofsecondsusing machine learning.

In June, JP Morgan started implementing a program called COIN, which is short for Contract Intelligence. COIN runs on a machine learning system thats powered by a new private cloud network that the bank uses. Apart from shortening the time it takes to review documents, COIN has also managed to help JP Morgan decrease its number of loan-servicing mistakes. According to the programs designers, these mistakes stemmed from human error in interpreting 12,000 new wholesale contracts every year.

COIN is part of the banks push to automate filing tasks and create new tools for both its bankers and clients. Automation is now a growing part of JP Morgans $9.6 billion technology budget. In fact, over the past two years, technology spending in JP Morgans consumer banking sector has totaled about $1 billion. We have invested heavily in technology and marketing and we are seeing strong returns, the bank said in a presentation prior to its annual investor day.

Over the coming years and decades, artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to usher in a new era of automation. Accordingly, the increase in automated systems will bring with it job displacement in a number of industries, including finance, transportation, manufacturing, information technology, and even law. In total,one study projected that 57 percent of the worlds jobs are at risk of being replaced by automated systems.

This is due, in part, to growing access to technology and cheaper computing systems. Automation can increaseefficiency and limit or altogether eliminate human error, as JP Morgans COIN program has demonstrated. Were starting to see the real fruits of our labor, said Matt Zames, the banks CTO. This is not pie-in-the-sky stuff.

The bank, however, doesnt see their move toward better automated systems as a cause of unemployment. People always talk about this stuff as displacement. I talk about it as freeing people to work on higher-value things, which is why its such a terrific opportunity for the firm, said Dana Deasy, Chief Information Officer at JP Morgan.

Whatever the case may be, automation will cause a job disruption in the years to come. In some places, like JP Morgan, its already begun. Institutions, both private and public, have to be ready to adjust to the economic future automation will bring with it.

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An AI Completed 360,000 Hours of Finance Work in Just Seconds - Futurism

In Brief

Airbus, a company best known for building airplanes, has partnered with the car company Italdesign and unveiled their car-drone hybrid called Pop.Up.

Unlike typical flying car concepts, the Pop.Up features a modular set-up that will allow it to operate both on ground and in the air. A drivable passenger capsule, about the size of a smart car, can attach to a giant quadcopter that will lift it into the air, giving passengers the option to travel through the traffic or above it.

The plan is for the Pop.Up to be controlled by Artificial Intelligence so that passengerscan summon the vehicle on demand via an app. Airbus sees this as the most efficient way to ferry passengers. It would also the first fully electric, zero-emission vehicle system designed specifically to relieve traffic congestion, which is expectedto increase by 2030.

This vehicle is design to meet the needs of the future, explained Italdesign CEO Jrg Astalosch in a press release.

Today, automobiles are part of a much wider eco-system: if you want to design the urban vehicle of the future, the traditional car cannot alone be the solution for megacities, Astalosch said. In the next years ground transportation will move to the next level and from being shared, connected and autonomous it will also go multimodal and moving into the third dimension.

Whilethe Pop.Up is still in the concept stage, Italdesign and Airbus argue that it is the most feasible concept car to date. If the companiess hopes come to fruition, it wont be long before wesee their vehicle on our roads and in the skies.

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Airbus Has Revealed Its Flying Car-Drone Hybrid - Futurism

Mind Control

One reasonhumans fear robots and autonomous technologies in general is the potential for them to spiral out of our control (perhaps taking over the world while theyre at it). Since wedont yet know exactly how technological singularity would play out, for now, robots taking over the world remains just science fiction.

To that end, heres something that might appease those who worry a lot about machines taking over the world. Technology currently in development at Massachusetts Institute of Technologys (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), together with researchers from Boston University, is working on a way to give robots command using brain signals.Essentially, this letspeople control robots using onlytheir minds.

Researcherscreated a feedback system that allows robots to correct their mistakes easily. This system uses brain activity data from an electroencephalography (EEG) monitor, scanning for brain signals called error-related potentials (ErrPs). ErrPs are generated whenever the brain notices a mistake.

This feedback mechanism works in real time, thanks to the teams machine-learning algorithms that makes the system capable of classifying brain waves in just 10 to 20 milliseconds. As you watch the robot, all you have to do is mentally agree or disagree with what it is doing, explained CSAIL director Daniela Rus, senior author of the teams research paper which was accepted for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) which will take place in May. You dont have to train yourself to think in a certain way the machine adapts to you, and not the other way around.

Of course, monitoring ErrPs is just one piece of the puzzle.To be able to control a robot fully using the human brain, it would take more than than just reading a couple of brain signals. But this research on more intuitive human-robot interaction opens up possibilities for application in real-world setups that require a person to control robots. For example, managing robot assembly lines in factories or autonomous driving systems.

Imagine being able to instantaneously tell a robot to do a certain action, without needing to type a command, push a button or even say a word, Rus said. A streamlined approach like that would improve our abilities to supervise factory robots, driverless cars, and other technologies we havent even invented yet.

University of Freiburg computer science professor Wolfram Burgard commented onthis technologys potentialfor developing effective tools for brain-controlled robots and prostheses. Burgard, who wasnt part of the study, also added, Given how difficult it can be to translate human language into a meaningful signal for robots, work in this area could have a truly profound impact on the future of human-robot collaboration.

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MIT Tech Lets You Control Robots With Your Thoughts - Futurism