BUG BOT

Ever seen a bat gobble up a bug, or a fly evade a swatting hand? Even the most agile fighter pilot can’t match those aerial acrobatics.

Now a team of Dutch researchers has built a flying robot that uses flapping wings to bank and hover like a winged animal. It’s called the DelFly Nimble, and its creators say they can program it to imitate how specific flying creatures navigate their surroundings — allowing researchers to learn about animals’ flight by trying to copy it.

FLAPPY HOUR

The DelFly, which is about the size of a ping-pong ball and weighs slightly more than a double-A battery. It uses four flapping wings to hover for five minutes or more than a kilometer on a single charge.

Its inventors at the Delft University of Technology designed it to mimic the flapping patterns of various winged creatures, from flies and beetles to bats and hummingbirds. For its first test, they programmed the DelFly to emulate the common fruit fly, which can execute rapid banked turns to avoid predators.

FREE BIRD

Previous robots that imitate the flight of small flying animals include the DARPA-funded Nano Hummingbird and Harvard’s Robobee. But in a paper about their work, the Dutch scientists note that the DelFly outperforms both: unlike the Nano Hummingbird, their robot can fly autonomously, and unlike the Robobee it doesn’t require a tethered power supply.

Already, they wrote, the DelFly has yielded new insights into fruit flies’ rapid evasion maneuvers. In the future, they hope it will help scientists better understand how a range of animals fly, and perhaps one day let us design better human-sized aircraft.

READ MORE: Flappy Robot Mimics the Aerial Acrobatics of Agile Flying Insects [EurekAlert]

More on insect-inspired robots: Want to Build a Better Climbing Robot? Copy a Cockroach.

The post This Tiny Robot Uses Flapping Wings to Imitate Animals’ Flight appeared first on Futurism.

Continued here:
This Tiny Robot Uses Flapping Wings to Imitate Animals’ Flight

AR DISAPPOINTMENT

So far, augmented reality (AR) has not lived up to its promise (see: Magic Leap’s disappointing headset). But just two innovations — 5G networks and edge computing — could change all that. That was the gospel AT&T preached during its Spark technology conference on Monday, at least.

You’ve probably already heard about 5G. It’s the next generation of high-speed cellular networks, and everyone and their mother (plus, you know, Futurism) has been anticipating its arrival for years.

You may not be familiar with edge computing, though. It’s time for that to change.

LIVING ON THE EDGE

Many of the devices we use today do their processing in “the cloud.” That really just means the processing happens at a massive data center owned by Amazon, Microsoft, or some other cloud provider, and not right on your device.

Reaching these data centers takes time, though, and we experience that delay as latency. This can be a major issue for AR devices, which need to be able to process data in near-real time in order to deliver worthwhile experiences.

To get around this issue, AT&T and other companies are turning to edge computing. Essentially, networks of smaller data centers (“cloudlets”) process some information physically closer to the source and send the rest on to the bigger data center if necessary. The result: less latency, and a better AR experience.

NEW TESTS

“Now you can think about placing low-latency, complex application and computation power closer to the users,” Igal Elbaz, AT&T’s Senior VP of Wireless Technology, said during Spark, as reported by Fierce Telecom. “By improving the functionality and the user experience, we can actually unleash some of the new business models that we all talk and hear about like AR, VR, self-driving cars, drones, mobile gaming, and others.”

So far, AT&T has just one edge computing test zone (in Palo Alto, CA), but it plans to expand that to the entire San Francisco Bay area. Eventually, “cloudlets” could blanket the entire nation, ensuring that the AR experience of tomorrow is nothing like the disappointing one of today.

READ MORE: AT&T: 5G and Edge Compute Are a Match Made for AR, VR Gaming [Fierce Telecom]

More on 5G: We’re One Step Closer to Super-Fast 5G Networks

The post Never Heard of Edge Computing? It’s About to Make Augmented Reality Way Better. appeared first on Futurism.

Read more:
Never Heard of Edge Computing? It’s About to Make Augmented Reality Way Better.

BPA PANIC

Is the plastic component bisphenol A (BPA) bad for you? It depends who you ask.

Either way, though, consumers have gotten worried that the chemical could cause health problems such as metabolic disease to cancer. So over the past decade, many manufacturers started making plastic with alternatives.

Unfortunately, though, that may not be much better: a new study in the journal Current Biology found that some of those BPA-free replacements cause similar health problems in mice — including effects that are passed down between generations.

MOUSE MODEL

Washington State University geneticist Patricia Hunt was conducting research on a totally different topic in 2003 when she first noticed the effects of BPA. The chemical was leaching out of cages in her lab and causing chromosomal abnormalities in mice.

Recently — and years after obtaining new mouse cages made from a BPA replacement — genetic abnormalities in the sex cells of lab mice.

It was “a strange déjà vu experience,” Hunt told Science. “Our control studies started going wacko.”

FAKE PLASTIC TREES

Intrigued by the ill effects of the supposedly safe replacement cages, Hunt and her colleagues started a new experiment. They fed pregnant mice a range of BPA and alternatives. The results were bleak: the mice given two common BPA alternatives soon started to show genetic damage, including defects that showed up in their offspring — the same kind of damage as the mice who had been exposed to BPA.

Hunt’s work will need to be replicated and expanded to other BPA alternatives before we can draw conclusions. Plus, there’s still debate over whether the chemical is harmful in the doses humans are exposed to.

But if Hunt’s results stand up to further testing, it could be a moment of reckoning for the plastic industry — or at least for its public relations departments.

READ MORE: BPA substitutes may be just as bad as the popular consumer plastic [Science]

More on BPA: A Possible Culprit in the Infertility Crisis: Plastic

The post Plastics Made Without BPA Might Also Be Bad For You appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original here:
Plastics Made Without BPA Might Also Be Bad For You

KERMIT? IS THAT YOU?

Calling all mad scientists: you can now buy everything you need to genetically engineer mutant frogs in the comfort of your own home for the cut-rate price of $499.

This (admittedly weird) opportunity comes courtesy of biohacker Josiah Zayner, a former NASA biochemist who earned attention for selling DIY kits for people to fiddle with CRISPR at home, and for injecting himself with CRISPR to make himself more buff via livestream. And now, in what can only be considered the logical progression of those two projects, Zayner is selling kits to hack frogs through his web shop, The Odin.

SWOLE FROGS

Each kit comes with six green tree frogs native to Georgia and Louisiana, along with cages, food, syringes, and a genetic cocktail. The goal of the treatment is to bulk up the frogs — when injected with that serum, the frogs’ livers are supposed to produce IGF-1, a protein associated with growth in muscle, cartilage, and other cells, according to the product page.

In Zayner’s own experiments, the genetic engineering seems to have worked: the weight of the mutant frogs increased by an average of 23 percent, compared to just two percent in a control group.

CROAKED

On the product page, The Odin notes the goal of the kits is to educate people about genetic engineering and to encourage the public to take cutting-edge tech into their own hands.

It’s not clear whether the injections are healthy for frogs. Bloomberg reports that Zayner believes the kits are legal — the FDA said it doesn’t regulate the kits, and the Animal Welfare Act doesn’t protect cold-blood critters like frogs.

So, as long as your conscience doesn’t get in the way, you can now to create all the mutant frogs your home and wallet can handle. The kits are on sale now, and The Odin expects to begin shipping them on October 1.

READ MORE: The Biohacker Who Experimented on Himself Is Making DIY Mutant Frogs [Bloomberg]

More on biohacking: Surprise! It’s a Bad Idea to Hack Your Body, Says Prominent Biohacker

The post You Can Now Genetically Engineer Your Own Mutant Frogs For $499 appeared first on Futurism.

Read the rest here:
You Can Now Genetically Engineer Your Own Mutant Frogs For $499

The post This Week in Science: Sep 8 – Sep 14, 2018 appeared first on Futurism.

Visit link:
This Week in Science: Sep 8 – Sep 14, 2018

We all heard the highlights: iPhones are about to be a little better, iPads will come with more efficient batteries and computers’ more spacious hard drives won’t fill up so quickly. In fact, Wednesday’s #AppleEvent was a three-hour walkthrough of pretty incremental advances in already-ubiquitous devices. It was kind of ho-hum — except for one standout announcement.

The Apple Watch Series 4 comes with an app and a built-in heart rate monitor, making it the first ever over-the-counter electrocardiogram (EKG), according to STAT. This gives the gadget, which will cost $399, the potential to radically redefine how we all think about consumer medical devices.

The Apple Watch Series 4 is the first ever over-the-counter EKG, which gives the device the potential to radically redefine how we all think about consumer medical devices.

The device can’t replace to a trip to the doctor, but it might help more people realize they need to see a doctor in the first place — perhaps before they encounter heart trouble. Between three and six million people in the U.S. have atrial fibrillation, the most common type of irregular heartbeat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — a number that’s expected to rise in the coming decades. And as Slate reported, people with atrial fibrillation have a much higher chance of having a stroke.

Apple has reported that the app will only provide accurate readings for people older than 22 who haven’t already been diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat. That’s one of several limitations to what the new Apple Watch EKG tech will be able to do, as The Verge pointed out — it may also cost too much for those who face the highest risk of heart disease and requires that people actually wear the watch at all times.

But if you’re in the Apple Watch’s primary demographic (read: young, trendy, healthy, rich), the device could be of use if you suspect something’s off with your heart. The new device could help those people visit to their doctors equipped with relevant data about their hearts that they captured in real time. If they weren’t wearing the device, then the doctor might just be guessing at whether or not there’s cause for concern.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared — not approved — the Apple Watch’s EKG capabilities. That may sound like a troublesome distinction, but it just means that the FDA deemed the device similar enough to existing EKGs to not warrant additional testing. This is the same approach taken by standalone EKG apps and sensors that were available on previous iterations of the Apple Watch — because there’s no radically-new technology in the heart rate monitor, there’s no legal requirement to subject it to more rigorous testing.

And because the Apple Watch has now made consumer medical devices as discrete as, well, a watch, people can keep an eye on their vitals without facing any of the stigma or discomfort that may come from carrying around a more obvious gadget.

It’s too soon to say whether or not the Apple Watch’s built-in EKG capabilities will deliver on these lofty promises — the heart rate monitor app announced Wednesday won’t be available until well after the Apple Watch Series 4 launches. But if it does, it could be the first step towards an era of accessible, wearable medical devices keeping an eye on us.

More on medical uses for the Apple Watch: The Next Version of the Apple Watch Will Be Able to Track Your Blood Sugar

The post The New Apple Watch Transforms What a “Medical Device” Can Look Like appeared first on Futurism.

See the article here:
The New Apple Watch Transforms What a “Medical Device” Can Look Like

GOING DOWN

If all goes according to plan, workers will soon start to dig an elevator shaft into the garage floor of a Los Angeles County home on behalf of Elon Musk. When completed, the hole will carry automobiles under a nearby street and into a tunnel that connects to the Boring Company headquarters.

The local city council this week approved the project, which will be carried out by Elon Musk’s Boring Company. The only wrinkle: nobody seems to know exactly why.

A SERIES OF TUBES

This morning, the SpaceX founder tweeted a link to coverage of the project, writing that the Boring Company “will transport your car all the way into your garage.”

That’s a promise that raises more questions than answers, though: does the company plan to dig tunnels to the homes of all its future customers? What would the elevators need to cost to finance all that digging, from the main tunnel to the person’s home? And once the cars are in customers’ garages, how are they supposed to get back out again?

A Boring Company spokesperson was equally enigmatic, telling local Southern California newspaper the Beach Reporter only that the dig was “an important part of the longer-term vision the company is trying to build.”

One thing the garage will definitely not do: allow Boring Company employees to pull in off the street and cruise to work underground. As part of the approval, the company agreed not to allow cars to enter from the road. Though that seems like something the system would have to do eventually if the Boring Company wanted to make it really usable for customers.

EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION

Since Musk first tweeted about the Boring Company in 2016, the company’s focus has zigged and zagged all over the place. Potential plans that have included supporting the Hyperloop, transporting individual cars, serving as a new form of public transportation and even digging tunnels on Mars (yes, really).

Will these garage elevators end up being a major part of the Boring Company’s future operations (and how that would work logistically? Anybody’s guess. For now, the company seems content to throw ideas against the wall and see what sticks. Given the way Musk uses his Twitter feed, that makes a lot of sense.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s Boring Company earns approval for futuristic garage that would connect to underground commuter tunnel [The Beach Reporter]

More on the Boring Company: Elon Musk Says Hyperloop Will Put Pedestrians, Mass Transit First

The post Elon Musk Is Digging a Tunnel in a Residential Garage and Nobody Knows Exactly Why appeared first on Futurism.

See the rest here:
Elon Musk Is Digging a Tunnel in a Residential Garage and Nobody Knows Exactly Why

FUTURE VISION

The post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland of “Mad Max.” The wholesome space utopia of “Star Trek.” The eugenicist, gene-hacking society of “Gattaca.”

When film and television creators envision future worlds, it’s not just an exercise in special effects. It’s also an opportunity to reflect on the futures to which our present moment could lead. That was one challenge that the creators of Hulu’s upcoming sci-fi series “The First,” which dramatizes a human mission to Mars in the 2030s, had to deal with — they didn’t just want to depict an accurate Red Planet. They also wanted to show the life on that future Earth that the protagonists were leaving behind.

For that task, they consulted with New York University business professor and noted futurist Amy Webb. In a new interview with Marketplace, Webb described how she anticipated what life in the show’s future might look like: she took a hard look at the present.

DUMB PHONE

Webb’s primary directive, she said, is to dream up technology that allows us to understand how characters in the future live their lives, but that doesn’t take center stage. In “The First,” that meant that smart phones have become passé, replaced by ubiquitous smart glasses and earpieces that facilitate communication.

“[I]f anything the technology shouldn’t be something that people are focusing on as they’re watching the show,” Webb told interviewer Molly Wood. “It should be more like, ‘Oh, ok. That makes sense.’ And then they go back to the stories of the characters.”

TOMORROW, TODAY

Webb doesn’t believe it’s possible to predict exactly what the future will hold. Instead, she envisions ways that the present could lead to different futures. That’s a compelling way to look not just at TV, but also many of our policy and business decisions that will inform the role today’s technologies, from social media to killer robots, will play in our own future.

“The goal is to make connections,” she said. “So given what we know to be true in the year 2018, what does the year 2031 look like?”

READ MORE: When Hollywood producers need to get the future right, they call a futurist [WIRED]

More on Mars: It’s Official. Humans Are Going to Mars. NASA Has Unveiled Their Mission.

The post It’s This Woman’s Job To Dream Up Hollywood’s Sci-Fi Future appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to see the original:
It’s This Woman’s Job To Dream Up Hollywood’s Sci-Fi Future

FUTURE YE

“I really love my Tesla. I’m in the future. Thank you Elon.”

In one tweet, Kanye pretty much summed up the A-list hip-hop community’s growing affinity for Teslas. As Pitchfork meticulously documented, artists from Big Sean to Juicy J have mentioned it in their rhymes; Jaden Smith moonwalks in front of one in the video for “ICON.”

Why has the hip-hop world, long impressed by Benzes and ‘Raris, now embraced a car that’s intended to be affordable and attainable for the masses? There are tax cuts for these things — plus you have to plug them in. How unsexy is that?

The reason, according to Pitchfork, has something to do with Musk himself:

Rapper interest in Tesla is twofold: They love any implication of innovation or any association with the cutting edge, and they are amused by the supercar’s toys and gadgets. Elon Musk is viewed by rappers as a futurist, a mega-genius of limitless potential and possibility, and so the Tesla is perceived as the vehicle of tomorrow.

EVS WITH CACHE

Among the haute, pricey brands often name-checked in rap songs, Tesla stands alone in its potential to actually have an effect on global warming.

The average consumer vehicle produces 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. At the rate we’re dumping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we’re not likely to limit our warming to the semi-non-disastrous 2 degrees Celsius. For now, experts are predicting the effects of warming — more intense storms, rising seas, expanding deserts — could get much worse.

Widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) could put a pretty serious dent in our emissions.

GAS IN THE VIP

We’re not there yet — gas guzzlers are still the norm. So anyone who can get more people to buy EVs is helping the planet, whether they’re standing in front of the United Nations or the DJ while drinking Hennessey.

It’s not clear whether rapper mentions have led to increased Tesla sales. But there’s no doubt it’s good PR. And since Musk can arguably be a liability to his companies (Tesla in particular), a little extra positive marketing certainly wouldn’t hurt.

READ MORE: Objectified: Why Tesla Is Hip-Hop’s New Car of Choice [Pitchfork]

More on Tesla: Tesla’s Staying Public. Now The Stakes Are Even Higher.

The post Rappers Are Making Tesla Sexy, Which Might Be Good For the Planet appeared first on Futurism.

View post:
Rappers Are Making Tesla Sexy, Which Might Be Good For the Planet

The post This Week in Tech: Sep 8 – Sep 14, 2018 appeared first on Futurism.

Read this article:
This Week in Tech: Sep 8 – Sep 14, 2018

BRAIN IN A DISH

Will the computers of the future be built in factories as they are today, or will they be grown in labs like cell cultures?

That’s the question posed by an interdisciplinary team of biologists and computer engineers who won a $500,000 grant this week from the National Science Foundation. The researchers’ plan: to develop a computer made out of living cells and program it to perform computational tasks.

NEURAL NETWORK

Details about the upcoming project are scant. The grant winners say they will use living cells (they haven’t said what type) to construct a neural network. They say they’ll use optogenetics, a biological technique that uses light to control cells, to train the system to recognize handwritten digits. They say the hybrid project could lead to better understandings of both computers and organic brains. How all these pieces will fit together is really anyone’s guess at this point.

“We hope that neuron scientists will be able to use this technology as a testbed for studying the human brain,” said Yevgeny Berdichevsky, a professor of bioengineering at Lehigh University who’s working on the project, in a press release.

I HAVE NO MOUTH, AND I MUST SCREAM

When scientists at the University of Pennsylvania unveiled lab-grown globules of human brain tissue, it prompted an outcry from ethicists who worried that the “minibrains” could experience consciousness as they became more complex. It’s not yet clear whether this project will raise similar concerns.

But the work does suggest a radically different vision of future computing technology in which everything from buildings to computers could be grown from seeds, like flowers.

READ MORE: Growing computers in petri dishes [Lehigh University]

More on lab-grown brains: A Brain in a Dish: 3D Mini-Brains Prove to Be Remarkably Accurate

The post Researchers Just Got Funding to Grow a Neural Network in a Petri Dish appeared first on Futurism.

Continue reading here:
Researchers Just Got Funding to Grow a Neural Network in a Petri Dish

LET’S GO FLY A KITE

Flying cars always work perfectly in the movies. But now that we’re close to actually building some, we’re finding they come with all sorts of problems. Perhaps the most prominent technological hurdle: striking the delicate balance between equipping the vehicles with a battery powerful enough to actually do anything useful, and not having a battery so heavy that it weighs down the entire vehicle.

One California start-up came up with a new solution that involves keeping so-called flying cars on a pretty short leash. Karman Electric proposes tethering flying cars to a crisscrossed network of power lines. As WIRED reported, they already began testing the concept with quadcopter drones.

TRAFFIC JAM

Tethering a flying car to the ground may avoid the big battery problem, but it introduces a whole slew of other logistical problems.

In order to prevent bird strikes and collisions with primitive, terrestrial commuters, Karman envisions flying cars that use this upside-down trolley system in less populated areas (another problem: who’s gonna pay for that?). As they approach cities and towns, pilots would be able to detach from their earthly bonds and use stored-up battery power to elevate above those land-bound suckers.

HEY HERE’S A THOUGHT

If the most energy-efficient way to use a flying car is to tether it to the ground on a specific, pre-defined pathway, why not just take a train? We already have those, and they work pretty well.

READ MORE: To Solve Flying Cars’ Biggest Problem, Tie Them to Power Lines [WIRED]

More on the challenges of flying cars: Uber Plans To Launch Flying Taxis With Technology That Doesn’t Exist

The post Flying Cars May Work Best When Tethered to Power Lines appeared first on Futurism.

See more here:
Flying Cars May Work Best When Tethered to Power Lines

FIXING THE NEWS CYCLE

Digital media has seen better days. Russian bots run free while overtly-biased and misleading news drowns out real journalism on social media. Some believe artificial intelligence might be able fix it.

The problem? They’re not quite sure how. A new contest is looking for submissions from engineers, scientists, journalists, and the like to submit their ideas.

CATEGORICALLY SPEAKING

The AI Ethics Initiative, a research organization dedicated to developing AI that helps people, launched an open challenge for new ways that AI might be able to improve media.

The contest will select four winners (one per category) who will receive a cut of the $750,000 of prize money (about $75,000 to $200,000 each).

One category: new ways to govern the platforms on which we all get our news. Social media giants have struggled to protect their audiences from misinformation without censoring them. Maybe an algorithm could do a better job.

The other categories involve developing AI systems that could stop propagandists and other bad actors, help journalists better communicate complex technological concepts, and redesign digital platforms so they better serve the public.

THIS SOUNDS SO EASY!

The problems in the way we generate, share, and consume our news are probably too complex for single AI tools (or even four of them) to fully address. So the contest winners are unlikely to provide the panacea the AI Ethics Initiative might be going for. But the conversation the contest generates is still valuable: it’ll bring more diverse and groundbreaking ideas to the table. Crowdsourcing ways to fix these issues might actually help us do it.

The contest is open for submissions until October 12. Semifinalists will be announced in mid-November, and finalists in March 2019.

READ MORE: AI and the News: An Open Challenge [AI Ethics Initiative]

More on improving digital platforms: Explaining Its Decisions Isn’t Going To Make Twitter Better

The post A New Contest Is Looking For AI That Can Fix How We Get Our News appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post here:
A New Contest Is Looking For AI That Can Fix How We Get Our News

AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS

If you think human improv comedy is insufferable, wait until you see a show that can’t pass the Turing Test.

Kory Mathewson, an artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, created an algorithm designed to riff with him onstage. He trained it to create lines of dialogue to be used in an improv performance by feeding it subtitles from hundreds of thousands of movies.

Then, according to a new paper uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, Mathewson used the AI to perform a mind-bending experiment to test if a live audience could differentiate it from a human performer.

TALKING HEAD

In the experiment, three human performers took the stage. One improvised dialogue in response to audience cues. Another repeated dialogue fed by an offstage human through an earpiece. And a third said lines provided by the AI, read to them by an offstage human via earpiece.

After the performance, audience members guessed which performer had been reciting the AI’s lines. Most of them correctly identified the AI — but a handful of viewers were fooled.

CONVERSATION STARTER

It’s an intriguing experiment, but watching the AI spit out stilted dialogue with Mathewson, it’s hard to imagine the routine becoming a comedy classic.

“Blueberry, I created you,” Mathewson tells a robot programmed with the improv AI during a performance earlier this year, in a video by Bloomberg Businessweek. “I downloaded a voice into your brain so that you could perform in front of these people.”

“So they do not know what I am going to say?” the robot asks.

“I don’t know what you’re going to say either,” Mathewson says, laughing. Good stuff.

READ MORE: AI tries bad improv comedy to trick people into thinking it is human [New Scientist]

More on AI performers: A Robot Will Become A Real-Life Movie Star

The post Behold: A Robot That Can Do Improv Comedy Just as Badly as a Human appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to see the original:
Behold: A Robot That Can Do Improv Comedy Just as Badly as a Human

Last night, SpaceX tweeted something we already knew: the company has signed the first private passenger to fly around the Moon. More new information is on the horizon — we’ll get to find out who that passenger is on Monday — but until then, the tweet included something pretty exciting for the more detail-oriented among us: a brand new rendering of the Big Big Falcon Rocket (BFR).

SpaceX has signed the world’s first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle—an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling to space. Find out who’s flying and why on Monday, September 17. pic.twitter.com/64z4rygYhk

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 14, 2018

Musk did indeed confirm that the rendering is new. It’s the first update on the design since the BFR was announced in 2017. And the tweet also notes that the BFR is going to be the craft to fly that passenger to infinity and beyond, instead of the Falcon Heavy as was originally planned. The mission itself, so far, is the same: take a loop around the Moon before returning to Earth.

The BFR consists of a rocket and spaceship (the Big Falcon Spaceship). But the rendering shows a number of features that we didn’t know anything about. Reddit sleuths spent the night enhancing, cropping, and investigating. Here’s some of what they came up with.

Editor’s Note: Reddit comments have been edited for clarity and brevity. 

The Wings

Reddit user rustybeancake:

If you zoom in on the two delta wings / fins at the rear, it appears they can rotate up and down. There’s sort of a hinge against the body. Wonder if they will be flat against the body at launch, Dream Chaser style? Or just for use as control surfaces? Maybe they will just rotate up slightly for reentry. Edit: another option could be that they move during final landing approach (in atmosphere) for precision landing control – sort of like the lower fins on the New Glenn booster.

Reddit user CX-OO1:

Its not a control surface style hinge. Looks more like in vertical mode the three fins are symmetrical, 120 degrees. In landing mode I guess, two fins on the bottom flatten out or go dihedral for a classic plane config.

Reddit user han_ay:

I did a quick edit and increased the exposure and it definitely looks like the closest wing is hinged while the top wing is fixed. Here’s a crop of just the wings.

Reddit user antimatter_beam_core:

The new radial fin design is surprising, because most reentry vehicles have flat or convex bottoms, whereas those fines are going to make the heat shield concave. I’m no expert, but that seems like it might cause some problems.

The Engines

Reddit user antimatter_beam_core:

The engine configuration is also radically different. They’ve gone from four vacuum engines and two (later changed to three iIRC) surface level engines, two seven engines which look pretty much identical, which suggests they must all be optimized for the same pressure (closer to surface level it would seem from a quick comparison to the old design). That seems really odd given the second stage mostly does its burns in near vacuum.

Reddit user LivingOnCentauri:

Maybe they implemented the concept of retractable nozzles? They could use this only for departing to Mars and the other BFS ships won’t have it.

Reddit user zekromNLR: 

I saw someone on /r/SpaceXMasterrace speculate that the sort of tiled skirt thing around the engines might be some form of extendible “secondary nozzle,” which could allow the Rvacs to be used even down to sea level with more or less the same Isp as the sea-level raptor.

Reddit user zolartan:

Yes, and additionally, the engine nozzles seem to have been moved deeper into the spaceship. In the first version they were protruding, now, they are inside some kind of dish lined probably with heat shields. My guess would be that this is perhaps to better protect the engines during landings from flying debris? Or does it perhaps act as a better heat shield when entering the atmosphere?

So when will a passenger actually board this spectacular craft for a Moon loop? In short, it’ll be a while. The BFR still hasn’t undergone all of the necessary testing, so The Wall Street Journal reports the spacecraft might still be at least a year or two from an initial test flight. Ars Technica speculates we’re look at a date closer to late 2023 at the very earliest.

But there’s a good chance we’ll find out sooner if these redditors are right. Perhaps even on Monday when SpaceX will make its announcement noted in the tweet (check its livestream here).

More on the BFR: Elon Musk Has a Plan to Get You Anywhere on Earth in An Hour

The post The New Render of Elon Musk’s BFR Means It Might Have Some Dope Features appeared first on Futurism.

Read the rest here:
The New Render of Elon Musk’s BFR Means It Might Have Some Dope Features

It’s never been more possible to buy and fly a jetpack. But, that doesn’t mean you necessarily should. Here are some of the risks.

The post Jetpack Travel is More Feasible Than Ever, But Not Without Risks appeared first on Futurism.

Read this article:
Jetpack Travel is More Feasible Than Ever, But Not Without Risks

CRACK A BOTTLE

Recycling a glass bottle means it’ll probably be taken to a facility where it will be sorted, crushed, melted and ultimately molded into new glassware. That’s better than just throwing it into a landfill, but the process is also inefficient and does little to mitigate the the impact of the resources used to first make it.

Now, NPR reports that the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative, a “member-owned, cooperative corporation in charge of picking up and processing nearly 100 percent of all containers redeemed in Oregon,” is debuting a thick, durable beer bottle that it says can be cleaned, refilled, and resold without being broken down. It’s the first such system in the country, according to the report, and could vastly decrease the environmental impact of beverage sales.

“Every time that bottle gets reused, you’re cutting the carbon footprint of that bottle in half,” Joel Schoening, a spokesperson for the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative, told NPR. “It’s the most sustainable choice in the beer aisle.”

MILK DUDS

Long before the modern era of recycling, milkmen who delivered fresh dairy to residential homes in reusable glass bottles were a staple of the local food systems in the United States and Europe. But they faded away after the 1960s, because milk had a longer shelf life that made it more practical to sell in grocery stores.

In Oregon, state officials say that reviving reusable beverage containers is an easy way to decrease waste without impacting consumers, who can collect a 10 cent deposit for the new bottles, just like old ones — plus an extra 12 cents each if they bring back 20.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

To kickstart the program, the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative is partnering with seven breweries in the state. If all goes to plan, cider and winemakers will come next, Schoening told NPR.

When the effort was first announced in May, Oregon Public Broadcasting noted that the bottles would be taken to a facility in Montana to be washed, but it’ll still emit less carbon than making a whole new bottle or recycling one.

The project represents an optimistic vision of the environmental future: one that turns to old-fashioned approaches, in addition to high-tech solutions, to help solve some of our biggest sustainability challenges.

READ MORE: Oregon Launches First Statewide Refillable Bottle System In U.S. [NPR]

More on sustainability: Norway Plans a Sustainable “City of the Future”

The post Oregon Breweries Now Sell Beer In Reusable Bottles appeared first on Futurism.

Here is the original post:
Oregon Breweries Now Sell Beer In Reusable Bottles

Wearable, health-monitoring technology like Apple Watches don’t just offer an array of high-tech functions, they may even save your life one day.

The post Tiny, Health-Monitoring Technology Could Help Save Lives appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to see the original:
Tiny, Health-Monitoring Technology Could Help Save Lives

Just three months ago, and for the first time ever, the FDA approved the sale of a cannabidiol(CBD)-based medicine. Researchers and recreational users alike considered this approval to be a big step. CBD is one of the main compounds found in cannabis – unlike THC, however, it doesn’t cause psychoactive effects. Even so, CBD is still technically classified by the DEA as a Schedule 1 substance (i.e. one with no currently accepted medical use), even if marijuana is legal in your state.

However, based on the FDA’s new approval, it’s possible this classification could change. Which could mean opportunities for even more research. Already, some studies suggest CBD could lessen anxiety, help with pain, reduce the proliferation of breast cancer cells, or even – as was seen in a recent study from King’s College London – reduce abnormal brain function in people with psychosis.

A quick Google search yields nearly 97 million results touting the advantages of CBD. Youtube has hundreds of thousands of videos of people sharing stories about how this versatile compound has supposedly altered their lives for the better. Despite what might seem like compelling anecdotal and research-based evidence, scientists are still divided when it comes to CBD, its legal classification, and its potential benefits.

Many of these studies on the benefits of CBD are somewhat short-term human studies, or derived from animal research (which doesn’t always mean the same results will be seen in humans), according to NPR. Dr. Esther Blessing, for example, a psychiatrist and researcher at New York University, tells NPR that more clinical trials are needed with CBD to draw firm conclusions about it’s effectiveness. This is especially true since supplements aren’t regulated in the same was as pharmaceuticals –which means that quality and consistency vary across CBD products.

To address this concern, CBD provider Mellowment has become a standard in the industry by using natural, ethically-sourced ingredients that serve its broad customer base. Taken daily, “Mellowment packs a multitude of benefits (in addition to anxiety and pain relief) including anti-seizure properties, and relief from inflammation, pain, anxiety, migraines, and irregular sleep” according to the Mellowment site.

Mellowment offers top-quality supplements that range from low to high impact which allows consumers to manage their stress or pain accordingly. If, for example, a consumer is having a busy or stressful work week, (s)he might opt to take the “low-impact” nootropic: a non-drowsy formula that may positively affect with cognitive function and anxiety. If a consumer is recovering from an injury, on the other hand, (s)he could be better served by the “high impact” pill that could help relieve severe pain and inflammation.

With the rise of personal, online testimony, cannabis is quickly gaining traction. 30 states have already legalized medical marijuana. It is estimated that CBD oil is a $1-2 billion industry already, and growing fast. Perhaps CBD’s impassioned adoption will lay the groundwork for future research.

A non-editorial team at Futurism has partnered with Mellowment to create this article, and we may receive a percentage of sales from this post. Mellowment is owned in part by an employee of Futurism. This supplement has not been evaluated by the FDA, and is not intended to cure or treat any ailments. Do not take CBD products if you are allergic to any of the ingredients in the product you are consuming. Tell your doctor about all medicines you may be on before consuming CBD to avoid negative reactions. Tell your doctor about all medical conditions. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins and herbal products. Other side effects of CBD include: dry mouth, cloudy thoughts, and wakefulness. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of any drugs to the FDA. Visit http://www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088. 

The post CBD Oil is a Multibillion-Dollar Industry. But is the Supplement Right For You? appeared first on Futurism.

More:
CBD Oil is a Multibillion-Dollar Industry. But is the Supplement Right For You?

FAKE NEWS

In the early, optimistic days of the internet, we thought it would be a repository of high-quality information. Instead, it’s starting to feel like a bottomless ocean of lies that rewards attention-grabbing disinformation and pollutes the political process.

That’s the note of alarm that three members of Congress sounded in a letter this week to Daniel Coats, the U.S. director of national intelligence. In it, the lawmakers warned specifically about the technology called deepfake, which lets computer users with little tech savvy create convincing footage of people doing and saying things that they never actually did.

“Hyper-realistic digital forgeries — popularly referred to as ‘deep fakes’ [sic] — use sophisticated machine learning techniques to produce convincing depictions of individuals doing or saying things they never did, without their consent or knowledge,” read the letter. “By blurring the line between fact and fiction, deep fake technology could undermine public trust in recorded images and videos as objective depictions of reality.”

MISINFO

Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA), Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) and Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) signed the letter to Coats. In it, they requested that the heads of the intelligence community prepare a report that would tell Congress what steps it has planned to fight the dissemination of faked clips.

“Forged videos, images or audio could be used to target individuals for blackmail or for other nefarious purposes,” they wrote. “Of greater concern for national security, they could also be used by foreign or domestic actors to spread misinformation.”

INFOCALYPSE

Deepfakes rose to prominence early this year on Reddit, where posters started using it to splice the likenesses of celebrities into pornographic films and the visage of Nicolas Cage into movies he never appeared in. Soon afterward, experts at a DARPA meeting of media forensics experts became concerned about it the technology. One expert told the Outline that doctored footage of a world leader declaring war could spark a “full-blown nuclear holocaust.”

A deepfake hoax of a world leader hasn’t viral — yet. If it does, it will be a test of our collective skepticism — in an age when even genuine information is swiftly politicized online.

READ MORE: Deep Fakes Letter [Adam Schiff]

More on information warfare: If DARPA Wants To Stop Deepfakes, They Should Talk To Facebook And Google

The post Lawmakers: Deepfakes Could “Undermine Public Trust” in “Objective Depictions of Reality” appeared first on Futurism.

See the article here:
Lawmakers: Deepfakes Could “Undermine Public Trust” in “Objective Depictions of Reality”