Baltic Sea Eutrophication And Climate Change
The lower levels of the Baltic Sea in northeast Europe have little oxygen (eutrophic) and efforts to raise sea oxygen by lowering sewage run-off and fertilizer run-off seem to be getting blocked by warming water. Of course, if the sewage run-off hadn't been reduced the oxygen levels would be lower still. Fish can't survive without oxygen. So this matters for fisheries production. 01 December 2014/Kiel. Despite extensive measures to protect the Baltic Sea from anthropogenic activities since the late 1980s, oxygen concentrations continue to decrease. Rising temperatures in the bottom water layers could be the reason for the ...
Source: FuturePundit - December 7, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Medical Privacy In Our Biologically Upgraded Future
Any information that goes into some corporation's or government's computer systems runs a significant risk of getting grabbed by hackers. The latest sensation is the Sony Pictures Entertainment leak, possibly by North Korean hackers. This follows hacks done on computer systems of Target, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase, and other companies. These hacks have implications for the privacy of your medical records. Also, any information on a corporate computer is at risk of a court order or other legal move to come into the hands of a government. The same is true of information that one government agency has that another government ...
Source: FuturePundit - December 5, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
55 Cancri Super-Earth Spotted With Ground-Based Telescope
A planet just 40 light years away spotted about 10 years ago using space-based telescopes has also been detected using a fairly modest ground-based telescope. Since ground-based telescopes are much cheaper than space-based telescopes this opens up the potential to use lots of ground-based telescopes to search for planets that might harbor life. TORONTO, December 1, 2014 - For the first time, a team of astronomers - including York University Professor Ray Jayawardhana - have measured the passing of a super-Earth in front of a bright, nearby Sun-like star using a ground-based telescope. The transit of the exoplanet 55 Cancri...
Source: FuturePundit - December 4, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Thinking About Future IO Devices
I own some recently purchased hard copy books because some books were published before ebooks became the rage, the books are out of print, they aren't available in ebook format, and I have to buy them used. Here's the interesting part: I read hard copy books much more slowly than ebooks. The effort to go figure out where I last left this or that hard copy book takes too much time as compared to switching between about 150 partially read ebooks which I currently have on Kindle or Nexus tablet. I'm going to keep all my hard copy books next to my bed to increase the odds I'll put hard copy books into the rotation when reading...
Source: FuturePundit - December 1, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
High Blood Pressure An Immune Disease?
Placental growth factor in mice activates an immune response that causes high blood pressure. High blood pressure is a leading cause of death around the world, and its prevalence continues to rise. A study published by Cell Press on November 20th in the journal Immunity shows that a protein in the spleen called placental growth factor (PlGF) plays a critical role in activating a harmful immune response that leads to the onset of high blood pressure in mice. The findings pave the way for the development of more effective treatments for this common and deadly condition. But since the nervous system controls placental growth ...
Source: FuturePundit - November 28, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
DNA Methylation And Aging
On the backbone of the DNA double helix enzymes attach methyl groups (just 1 carbon and 3 hydrogens) as a way to regulate gene expression. Some Wake Forest researchers have taken a look at whether DNA methylation is one of the mechanisms that cause diseases associated with aging. In a study published in the current issue of Nature Communications, the researchers found age-related differences in DNA methylation in 8 percent of the 450,000 sites tested across the genome. Most of these changes did not seem to affect which cellular genes were turned on or off. However, the Wake Forest Baptist team did find a small subset of ag...
Source: FuturePundit - November 27, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Genetic Modification Cuts Acrylamide In Fried Potatoes
Safer french fries thru science. What I'd also like to see potatoes genetically engineered to not build up solanine (the poison that makes potatoes green). As more poisons in plants are identified and plant genetic engineering becomes cheaper to do we should alter more crops to be safer to eat.... (Source: FuturePundit)
Source: FuturePundit - November 8, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Automation Cuts Human Contact In Commercial Transactions
The next step on the road to greater automation to eliminate contact with clerks, cashiers, and sales agents: Keyless check-in to hotel rooms using a smart phone app. Smart phones are going to become like magic wands. Rental car doors will open when you press a button on your smart phone. Hotel doors will too. You'll order food with a smart phone app and it'll be ready when you reach a restaurant. The day will come when the table will be laid out with food before you get there and you'll let your phone guide you to the right table. Or you'll order while en route to a restaurant and when you get there pick up your order in ...
Source: FuturePundit - November 3, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Nuclear Reactor Operators Want Extensions To 80 Years
The plants were built decades ago. If brittle parts can be replaced they could operate for 80 years. What I wonder: Could new nukes be designed to make it much easier to extend their lives? The most obvious step: make it easier to swap in replacement parts for those parts that get brittle from radiation. Is that practical? Already possible? The market is going to undervalue designs that can last for 80 years. Bonds sold to build a nuclear power plant will have 10-20-30 year redemptions. On a related note, The Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar 2 reactor is finally being completed after first being ordered in 1970. If i...
Source: FuturePundit - October 20, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
When Will Self Driving Cars Become Mandatory?
Self driving cars will eventually be safer on average than human-driven cars. Vivek Wadhwa predicts 15 years until we start debating a ban on human driving of cars. I expect many incremental steps toward autonomous vehicles before that happens. The regulatory pattern with safety features on cars is that they almost all become mandated as soon as they become affordable. Among the current mandatory car safety features in the United States: Seat belts, air bags, and (started in the 2012 model year) Electronic Stability Control (ESC). The ESC is most interesting because it requires a computer to make decisions to prevent an ac...
Source: FuturePundit - October 19, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Will Human 2.0 Designs Prevent Return To Malthusian Trap?
Some people think we've left the Malthusian Trap permanently in our past. Now, some parts of the world have yet to do so. But the optimists think a permanent shift to low total fertility rates and industrialization in the entire world is in the cards as free markets spread everywhere. I am not with the optimists because I expect natural selection, both on the genetic level and on the social-religious level, will cause a reversion to higher fertility rates and population explosion until natural resources cause very painful limits to population size. Natural selection is relentless and seems very hard for conscious human min...
Source: FuturePundit - September 28, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Singularity Nirvana: We Can Not Solve Our Own Problems?
Some people are optimistic about our future because (the thinking goes) some computer scientists and computer engineers will create artificial intelligences that are smarter than us that will build machines even smarter in a rapid loop which will result in intelligences orders of magnitude greater than ours. Then these machines will solve all our problems. One assumption in this scenario is that these AI machines will stay friendly to us. I'm seriously skeptical about this assumption. How friendly are we to bacteria or molds or even a tree or rat? This is not an original observation on my part. Lots of people are afraid th...
Source: FuturePundit - September 26, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Japan To Cut Tuna Fishing In Half
Tuna are getting harvested before they've even spawned. As a first step, "this is a good move", Wakao Hanaoka, a marine eco-expert for Greenpeace Japan, told Al Jazeera. "Some 98 percent of the catch is juvenile." A 50% cut is not big enough. The size of tuna biomass is now down at least 96% from where it was before large scale human fishing. What's needed: land crops genetically engineered to contain enough omega 3 fatty acids to serve as suitable feed for aquaculture fish farms.... (Source: FuturePundit)
Source: FuturePundit - September 20, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Biotech Still Lags Far Behind Computer Tech In Our Lives
We are still waiting for the biotech revolution to start. So far it exists mainly as press releases extolling research papers. Where the rubber meets the road (our daily lives) it is pretty much missing in action while computer tech continues to transform our lives Computers and fiber optic cables have made a variety of big impacts on our social lives and have increased the convenience and pleasure of living. By contrast biotech has made somewhere between little and no impact. Okay, Bt corn has probably sliced some number of cents off the price of beef and pork. But otherwise I'm hard pressed to point at a significant biot...
Source: FuturePundit - September 19, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Thinking About Electric Car Range And Recharging Stations
Even with high current it still takes about 1 minute per 3 miles of driving range to recharge a Tesla S. Home charging of a Tesla is still a commitment at 58 miles per hour of charge. The Tesla Supercharger stations, on the other hand, get 170 miles in 30 minutes. Think about that 30 minutes per 170 miles. Drive 3 hours on a highway and stop for a half hour to recharge. The Tesla S has a range of 265 miles. So you can go longer than that. But you can't use the full range because air conditioning or high speed could cut into your range. Probably more limiting is the frequency of charging stations. If you've driven 200... (Source: FuturePundit)
Source: FuturePundit - September 14, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
