Enzyme Inhibitors Might Reverse Male Pattern Baldness
So far the drugs have only been tested on a different cause of baldness. NEW YORK, NY (October 23, 2015) --Inhibiting a family of enzymes inside hair follicles that are suspended in a resting state restores hair growth, a new study from researchers at Columbia University Medical Center has found. The research was published today in the online edition of Science Advances. In experiments with mouse and human hair follicles, Angela M. Christiano, PhD, and colleagues found that drugs that inhibit the Janus kinase (JAK) family of enzymes promote rapid and robust hair growth when directly applied to the skin. These drugs, tofaci...
Source: FuturePundit - October 24, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Robots Expanding Into More Warehouse Work
When Amazon bought warehouse robot maker Kiva Systems they pulled Kiva's robots off the market to give Amazon a competitive advantage. Kiva's robots are integrated with Amazon's IT systems. Now VC-funded start-ups are pursuing the gap left by Kiva's departure. These new robot designs work for a fraction of the human minimum wage in the United States. While growth in online ordering has caused an almost quarter growth in human employment in warehouses in the last 5 years Amazon has doubled its use of factory robots in less than a year. Robot labor is growing faster than human labor. Robots will eventually gain the ability t...
Source: FuturePundit - October 23, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Most Earth-like worlds still to come in future
See: Most earth-like worlds have yet to be born, according to theoretical study Earth came early to the party in the evolving universe. According to a new theoretical study, when our solar system was born 4.6 billion years ago only eight percent of the potentially habitable planets that will ever form in the universe existed. And, the party won't be over when the sun burns out in another 6 billion years. The bulk of those planets -- 92 percent -- have yet to be born. So we have one of the early entrants in the Earth-like world history of the universe. Suppose Earth-like worlds have much higher chance of giving birth to int...
Source: FuturePundit - October 23, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
California Weather Headed For Greater Precipitation Swings
The hot September 2015 weather continues a trend in the year toward making 2015 the warmest year on record. If green house gas emissions continue at current or even higher rates then California will experience greater swings between very wet and very dry weather with less moderate weather in between. The models showed that in the future, assuming emissions continue to increase, California seasons will exhibit more excessively wet and excessively dry events. These results suggest that the frequency of droughts could double and floods could triple between the early 20th century and late 21st century. "By 2100, we see more --...
Source: FuturePundit - October 21, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Dyson Sphere under construction 1,481 light-years away?
Double digit variations in measured solar output from another star. Astronomers are hard put to offer a natural explanation. Alien engineers at work on a massive structure? It is all happening at star KIC 8462852, in the constellation Cygnus. The search for exoplanets also really means a search for massive alien megastructures, which will produce a much larger signal than planets of sufficiently massive. So searching for exoplanets is potentially much more rewarding than it first appears. The $600 million Kepler Space Telescope has been money well spent. We should follow it with more instruments aimed at investigating this...
Source: FuturePundit - October 16, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Editing Pig Genomes To Grow Transplant Organs For Humans
CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology was used to disable 62 porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs), which it is feared could cause diseases in humans if pig organs were transplanted into humans. Geneticist George Church has co-founded a company that is developing genetically modified pigs to grow organs for human transplant. They did additional editing to reduce the threat of human immune response to pig antigens. Pretty cool stuff. What ought to be done as well: additional editing to make the pig organs age more slowly. That way the transplanted organs will last longer. Domestic farm pigs only live 6 to 10 years. Those pi...
Source: FuturePundit - October 11, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Human Labor Going To Lose Value?
See: Brynjolfsson and McAfee: Will humans go the way of horse labor? The use of horse labor used to grow along with the population and the economy. In the United States horse labor grew 6 fold from 1840 to 1900. But then it plummeted as internal combustion engines replaced horses on farms, in factories, for transportation. Does the same fate await humans, or at least some humans? I see signs that human laborers who are only capable of simpler cognitive tasks are in declining demand and areas of prosperity are shrinking in size. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has an excellent web site section called Occupational Output H...
Source: FuturePundit - October 11, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Toyota: Autonomous Highway Driving By 2020
Check out what Toyota is doing with autonomous vehicle development. By contrast, Tesla is just weeks away from autonomous highway driving. Elon Musk expects Tesla to achieve full autonomy in 3 years but with regulatory delays the deployments will vary between jurisdictions. Looks like the 2017 Cadillac CT6 will be the second car to hit the market with autonomous highway driving capability. Recently Daimler tested an autonomous truck in real highway traffic. Future cars are going to be autonomous and electric. General Motors says their cost of batteries has fallen to $145/kwh. To put that in perspective, that's a drop from ...
Source: FuturePundit - October 9, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
$1000 Genome By Veritas Genetics
DNA sequencing costs have dropped several orders of magnitude in the last 15 years. The cost passed below $10k in around 2011 and has continued to drop since. Now some people can now get their DNA sequenced for $1000. Veritas Genetics today announced that the company is making it possible for participants in the Personal Genome Project (PGP) to be among the first to get their whole genome sequenced and interpreted for less than a $1,000. Led by Veritas Genetics Co-Founder Dr. George Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Personal Genome Project, PGP is a long-term effort to sequence tho...
Source: FuturePundit - October 1, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
End Of Moore's Law For CPU Speed Increases Coming To End
The rate of computer processor power growth has slowed from doubling once every two years to once every 2.5 to 3 yeas. The doublings might stop entirely by about 2025. Will other forms of technological advance speed up to take the place of CPU doubling speed as a driver of economic growth? I'm thinking of genetic editing with CRISPR-Cas9 and other genetic manipulation techniques yet to be discovered. Biotech continues to have a far smaller impact than the computer industry on economic growth and living standards. But in theory biotech ought to be able to deliver far larger benefits - most notably rejuvenation therapies. Th...
Source: FuturePundit - September 28, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Robotic Drones Build Rope Bridge
So far only rope bridges. One of the benefits of fully robotic road and bridge construction: shorter periods of traffic disruption. Robots will be able to operate 24x7. A new bridge will go up in a third of the time or less. New office buildings will go up much faster too. The CEO of big auto parts maker Magna thinks robotic advances will cause manufacturing to shift back from China to USA and Europe. This will cut shipping costs and reduce inventory costs of finished goods getting transported across oceans. Lower demand for shipping as more goods are made locally? On the bright side, those who still have jobs will pay les...
Source: FuturePundit - September 20, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Volvo Working On Robotic Trash Collectors
Read about it here. The robots would collect the trash cans to bring to the dump truck. But in many neighborhoods currently you take your trash can to the curb. Then the truck comes along and a sort of forklift comes down from the truck, operated by the driver, to pick up the can. So an autonomous vehicle with cameras and image processing could have computer logic to guide the trash can grabber. Wheeled robots would be an improvement. They could cruise up a driveway way to grab the trash cans and so would certainly avoid the problem of forgetting to put out the trash at the curb. Though the robots would get attacked by som...
Source: FuturePundit - September 18, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
How To Colonize Mars
Since it is so expensive to move people safely to Mars it would make sense to wait until we have the technologies needed to do three thing: first send robots to construct a large underground habitat. Then create and send genetically engineered organisms that can grow food, fiber, drugs, and structural elements in Martian conditions. Then create genetic sequences that would adapt people to life on Mars and give them formidable intellects and long lasting bodies. send a very small number of humans with lots of genetically engineered embryos. Grow the colonists on Mars. The first colonists would spend their time raising a lar...
Source: FuturePundit - September 16, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Can You Make Better Choices For Politicians Than Stocks?
Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams writes an excellent blog. Here is an example of the quality of his thinking: If the vast majority of smart people can't beat the stock market indexes why do they think they can do better at knowing who to elect as President? A small number of people are better at guessing about the future. Large scale screening of the public would let us know who they are. This has already been done to rank 3000 people by their ability to make accurate predictions. But if I was running the CIA or an investment bank I'd do this on a much larger scale. The people with the best predictive skills are largely unkn...
Source: FuturePundit - September 15, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Hundreds Of Colleges Provide No Earnings Boost
Most graduates of hundreds of colleges are doing no better than high school grads 10 years after graduation. Great that this has been quantified. Why? Two reasons you already know: Smart people make more money because they can do more. College does not make you smarter. Colleges with lower standards offer a way to get a degree without being very bright. Some colleges teach few useful skills. They lack accounting courses, let alone engineering or computer science. Even some schools have those courses recruit mostly students who aren't capable of passing them. Even a substantial chunk of the earnings boost associated with el...
Source: FuturePundit - September 14, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
