Li Wenliang, the doctor from Wuhan, China who was one of the first to warn others about what was then an emerging coronavirus outbreak, died of the virus early on Friday morning.

Li was hospitalized in January with a bad case of 2019-nCoV. This week, reports emerged that he had died — an announcement that was immediately contested by conflicting reports from Chinese officials and Wuhan Central Hospital, which released a bizarre statement saying that doctors were still trying to resuscitate Li, who it claimed was not dead but actually in critical condition.

Now, the hospital has finally confirmed that he is in fact deceased.

“Our hospital’s ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was unfortunately infected with coronavirus during his work in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic,” reads a statement from Wuhan Central Hospital. “He died at 2:58 AM on Feb. 7 after attempts to resuscitate were unsuccessful.”

Li’s reputation as a whistleblower comes from warnings he shared about the disease that then spread on social media.

He was working in Wuhan when he warned his medical school alumni network about a potential outbreak. Li initially thought the coronavirus may have been SARS, an error that got him in trouble with the Chinese government.

The post Whistleblower Doctor Who Warned of Viral Outbreak Dies From It appeared first on Futurism.

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Whistleblower Doctor Who Warned of Viral Outbreak Dies From It

The Punishing Signal

To stop a constant barrage of car honking, the Mumbai police in India have installed noise detectors at traffic lights, The New York Times reports. The more honking, the longer the light stays red.

Their evocative name for the system: “The Punishing Signal.”

Horn not okay, please!
Find out how the @MumbaiPolice hit the mute button on #Mumbai’s reckless honkers. #HonkResponsibly pic.twitter.com/BAGL4iXiPH

— Mumbai Police (@MumbaiPolice) January 31, 2020

Mute Button

The cops also installed cryptic signs on intersections with the new system that read “Honk More, Wait More.”

A tongue-in-cheek video uploaded by Mumbai police last week has gone viral with several million views.

“Maybe they think that by honking, they can make the signal turn green faster?” the narrator of the video says.

Traffic Attack

The devious devices work by measuring the decibels at a given intersection. As soon as it detects that cars are honking at 85 decibels or higher — about the equivalent of a freight train passing from 15 feet — the red light stays on longer.

“This is what we wanted to tell them: Honking or making noise doesn’t move the traffic,” Mumbai police spokesman Pranaya Ashok told the Times. “The traffic takes its own time to move, O.K.?”

READ MORE: Mumbai Police Play a Trick on Honking Drivers [The New York Times]

More on India: India Wants to Send This Legless Humanoid Robot Into Space

The post India’s Devious New Traffic Lights Stay Red When Drivers Honk appeared first on Futurism.

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India’s Devious New Traffic Lights Stay Red When Drivers Honk

In 2016, Jang Ji-sung’s seven-year-old daughter Nayeon died of an incurable disease. Three years later, the South Korean mother was reunited with Nayeon — sort of — in a virtual world created for a televised documentary.

On Thursday, the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation shared a clip from the special documentary, titled “I Met You,” on its YouTube page, with the footage cutting between the “real world” and the virtual one.

In the former setting, Jang stands in front of a massive green screen while wearing both a VR headset and what appear to be some sort of haptic gloves. In the latter, she and her daughter talk, hold hands, and even have a birthday party complete with a lit cake.

The VR reunion is, as you might expect, extremely emotional. Jang appears to begin crying the moment she sees the virtual Nayeon, while the rest of the family — Nayeon’s father, brother, and sister — watch the reunion unfold with somber expressions and the occasional tear.

“Maybe it’s a real paradise,” Jang said of the reunion in VR, according to Aju Business Daily. “I met Nayeon, who called me with a smile, for a very short time, but it’s a very happy time. I think I’ve had the dream I’ve always wanted.”

According to Aju Business Daily, the production team spent eight months on the project. They designed the virtual park after one the mother and daughter had visited in the real world, and used motion capture technology to record the movements of a child actor that they could later use as a model for their virtual Nayeon.

All that to say: the process might not be simple and the final product might not be perfect, but we now have the technology to recreate the dead in VR — convincingly enough to move their loved ones to tears.

And the implications of that are impossible to predict.

It may have taken an entire team of experts to produce “I Met You,” but how far can we be from a platform that lets anyone upload footage of a deceased love one and then interact with a virtual version of that person? Years? Months?

And what sort of impact will that have on the grieving process? Will seeing a loved one in VR help people find closure and move on following a death? Will some people become addicted to this virtual world, spending more and more time in it and less and less in the real one?

And will it stop with VR? Or is this just the first step to androids designed to mimic our dead loved ones in both appearance and personality, like in the “Black Mirror” episode Be Right Back?

Several startups are setting the groundwork for that future, compiling data about people both living and dead so they can create “digital avatars” of those people. Other companies are already building robot clones of real people.

The key to a VR reunion being a positive thing — that is, more like a twenty-first century take on flipping through a photo album and less like that “Black Mirror” episode — appears to be in the living person fully accepting their loved one’s death.

“Since you know the person is gone, you accept the virtual equivalent for what it is — a comforting vestige,” Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano told Dell Technologies in December. “There is nothing wrong or unethical about it.”

Perhaps regulation is necessary. Rather than letting startups offer the public the chance to interact with virtual versions of their dead loved ones — undoubtedly at a cost — maybe we can make the technology available only to people who’ve submitted to a screening with a psychologist.

It’s hard to say what might work as the opportunity to interact with convincing versions of the deceased in VR is decidedly uncharted territory — but now that we’ve officially entered that arena, we have a lot of questions we need to answer as soon as possible.

Editor’s Note, 2/07/20: This article was updated to correct the name of the broadcaster that aired the documentary.

READ MORE: Sorrow-stricken mother reunites with deceased daughter in virtual world [Aju Business Daily]

More on clones: A Russian Startup Is Selling Robot Clones of Real People

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Watch a Mother Reunite With Her Deceased Child in VR

Thanks to a massive genetic study, doctors may soon be able to diagnose some types of cancer sooner than ever.

New research revealed that subtle signs of cancer can emerge years before a patient is diagnosed, according to The Guardian. While it’s too soon to deploy the findings in a clinical setting, they could eventually provide doctors with new tools for catching cancer in its earliest stages — when it’s most readily treatable.

Scientists at the Francis Crick Institute performed a genetic analysis of samples from over 2,500 tumors corresponding with 38 types of cancer, according to The Guardian. Their work, published Thursday in the journal Nature, identified common mutations linked to cancer.

They found that the mutations generally occur within the same nine genes — and can show up years before other discernable signs of cancer do.

“Unlocking these patterns means it should now be possible to develop new diagnostic tests that pick up signs of cancer much earlier,” Peter Van Loo, one of the lead authors of the study, told The Guardian.

The team told The Guardian that if their work is incorporated into clinical tests, doctors may be able to spot cancer sooner in as many as one-third of all patients.

“One could try and identify these [early mutations] and do some kind of very sensitive imaging on patients that were positive,” Van Loo told The Guardian. “Or even further into the future, one could conceive of methods that really targeted these cells and made them light up in an imaging approach or just kill them in one go. That’s a bit science fiction at the moment.”

The post New Research: Cancer Symptoms Can Appear Years Before Diagnosis appeared first on Futurism.

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New Research: Cancer Symptoms Can Appear Years Before Diagnosis

Wrong Priorities

In February 2019, a 19-year-old Brazilian man livestreamed his suicide on the popular video-sharing app TikTok. An hour and a half later, TikTok noticed and removed the video.

Three hours after that, TikTok finally contacted the police, a former employee of the Brazilian offices of TikTok parent company ByteDance has told The Intercept Brazil — and it spent those hours putting together a public relations strategy.

Clock’s Ticking

The employee, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, provided the Intercept with an image of an internal document detailing TikTok’s minute-by-minute response to the livestreamed suicide.

It suggests that TikTok found out about the stream via messages from influencers on WhatsApp — and not from the team in China tasked with monitoring content.

“The main issue was just how unprepared the Chinese team was for a situation like this,” the source told the Intercept, “where the app’s algorithm didn’t catch that it was a suicide, let alone bring down the livestream, even after so many complaints.”

Standard Statement

The Intercept wrote that TikTok didn’t answer any of its specific questions about the incident, but did provide a statement.

“We remain deeply saddened by this tragic incident and sympathize with the family,” the statement said. “We encourage anyone who needs support or is concerned about a friend or family member to contact a suicide hotline.”

READ MORE: TikTok Livestreamed a User’s Suicide — Then Got Its PR Strategy in Place Before Calling the Police [The Intercept]

More on TikTok: Researchers Find Major Security Flaws in Popular App TikTok

The post TikTok Waited Three Hours to Tell Cops About Livestreamed Suicide appeared first on Futurism.

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TikTok Waited Three Hours to Tell Cops About Livestreamed Suicide

Catastrophic Failure

According to a NASA safety review panel, Boeing’s first uncrewed flight test of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft in December nearly ended in a “catastrophic failure” — another blow that could delay its plan to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station from American soil.

“The panel has a larger concern with the rigor of Boeing’s verification processes,” said Paul Hill, a former NASA flight director who serves on the safety review panel that found the new problems, according to Reuters.

Glitch Plural

The Starliner had already ended in the wrong orbit during its December maiden voyage, failing to reach the ISS as a result of an unrelated software glitch.

This second glitch, referred to as “a valve mapping software issue” in a Boeing statement, could have led to the wrong thrusters firing upon re-entry, which “could have led to risk of spacecraft loss” according to NASA.

Moving Forward

NASA has yet to decide if it wants to demand Boeing repeat an uncrewed test flight to the ISS, according to Reuters, or go ahead with its first crewed test flight with astronauts Nicole Mann, Chris Ferguson, and Mike Fincke on board.

According to NASA’s statement, investigators are still figuring out why the glitch occurred, but have “made excellent progress for this stage of the investigation.”

READ MORE: Boeing’s botched Starliner test flirted with ‘catastrophic’ failure: NASA panel [Reuters]

More on Starliner: Astronauts “Can’t Wait” to Try out Starliner Despite ISS Failure

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NASA: Boeing Starliner Test Nearly Ended in “Catastrophic Failure”

Way Way Out

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have fascinated astronomers ever since they were first observed in 2007.

We’ve only started to understand these powerful signals and have yet to figure out their cause. Some have even speculated they could be signs of extraterrestrial life.

Now, Vice reports, a new study by Cornell University researchers has identified an FRB source about half a billion light years from Earth that pulses, ominously, on a regular 16-day cycle.

Pattern Recognition

That makes it the first discovered FRB to be on a repeating schedule, according to the paper.

The team analyzed 28 bursts between September 2018 and October 2019 recorded by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB), a radio telescope in British Columbia, Canada.

The Mystery Remains

Scientists have a number of ideas as to what may be causing the regular cycle. The signal could be coming from an orbiting object, for instance, that only sends signals at a certain point in its orbit.

It could also be coming from a binary star system made up of a massive star and a highly magnetized star, as outlined in a different study published on arXiv.

READ MORE: Something in Deep Space Is Sending Signals to Earth in Steady 16-Day Cycles [Vice]

More on fast radio bursts: Astronomers Detect Eight New Potential Alien Signals

The post Powerful Radio Signal From Distant Galaxy Seems to Have a Pattern appeared first on Futurism.

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Powerful Radio Signal From Distant Galaxy Seems to Have a Pattern

Facilitating Change

Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Andy Levin have introduced a new bill that would build a national infrastructure for electric vehicles.

The EV Freedom Act would allocate the resources for the U.S. to build a nationwide network of electric vehicle chargers within five years, Reuters reports. That would alleviate a major hurdle to widespread electric car adoption, making it far easier for the population to transition away from gas power.

Five-Year Plan

Without a national infrastructure, electric vehicle owners largely depend on each automaker’s decision to build charging stations, which aren’t always compatible with one another. While Tesla has installed plenty, other automakers’ customers often need to travel farther just to find power.

“There is just no way that we will get to broad scale adoption of electric vehicles until we crush range anxiety and then it will happen precipitously,” Levin told Reuters.

Step One

Democratic lawmakers have called for a national transition to electric vehicles by 2030 or 2035 at the latest, Reuters reports. Getting charging stations in place by 2025 would be an important step toward that goal.

“This is the infrastructure bill that we need to be rallying around.” Ocasio-Cortez told Reuters. “A lot of naysayers will say, ‘They are trying to get rid of cars.’ Well, we’re not trying to get rid of cars. We’re trying to actually advance and improve our fleets… We have to go electric.”

READ MORE: U.S. House Democrats propose electric vehicle charging network [Reuters]

More on electric vehicles: Electric Vehicles Are the Future, but Their Batteries Are Stuck in the Past

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Congress Proposes Nationwide Network of Electric Car Chargers

Bernardeta Gómez has been blind for 16 years. But using a bionic eye developed by Spanish neuroengineer Eduardo Fernandez, she was able to see again — without using her biological eyes at all.

The system, which Fernandez is honing at his University of Miguel Hernandez lab, comprises a few different parts, as detailed in a newly-published story in MIT Technology Review.

First, there’s a pair of glasses fitted with a camera that connects to a computer. The computer translates the camera’s live video feed into electronic signals. Those signals are then sent via a cable to a port that Fernandez surgically embedded in the back of Gómez’s skull. That port connects to an implant in the visual cortex of Gómez’s brain.

Or it did for six months, anyway — that’s all the time Fernandez was approved to test the bionic eye with Gómez before he had to remove the 100-electrode implant.

For those six months, though, Gómez visited the lab four times per week, using the system to see a low-res version of the world around her. Though what she “saw” in her mind was little more than glowing dots, it was still enough to allow her to identify letters, lights, and people.

“She even played a simple Pac-Man-like computer game piped directly into her brain,” MIT Tech wrote.

Now that Fernandez knows his bionic eye works, he’s looking ahead to the next steps. Those will include testing ways to prevent the implant from degrading while in the body — and testing the entire system on more people.

“Berna was our first patient, but over the next couple of years we will install implants in five more blind people,” he told MIT Tech. “We had done similar experiments in animals, but a cat or a monkey can’t explain what it’s seeing.”

Fernandez isn’t the only researcher developing a bionic eye that restores vision while bypassing the biological eyes altogether — and the new approach could have a far greater impact on the blind community.

“Previously all attempts to create a ‘bionic eye’ focused on implanting into the eye itself,” Alex Shortt, a surgeon at Optegra Eye Hospital, told The Daily Mail in a July 2019 story focused on a system that works similarly to Fernandez’s. “It required you to have a working eye, a working optic nerve. By bypassing the eye completely, you open the potential up to many, many more people.”

The post Scientists Plugged a Bionic Eye Directly Into This Woman’s Brain appeared first on Futurism.

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Scientists Plugged a Bionic Eye Directly Into This Woman’s Brain

High Stakes

A team of artificial intelligence researchers at the University at Buffalo plans to study the brain waves and eye movements of around 25 people, Digital Trends reports, while they play a video game.

They’ll then use the information they glean from the gamers to build an advanced AI — so that it can then coordinate the actions of entire fleets of autonomous military robots.

Play On

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — better known as DARPA — has awarded the UB team a $316,000 grant for the study, which researcher Souma Chowdhury told Digital Trends is moving at “a pretty aggressive pace.”

The team still needs to gather the gamer data, but that shouldn’t take too long. The researchers have already built a real-time strategy game for the study, with a round of the game taking about five to 10 minutes to complete. If each of the gamers plays six or seven games, Chowdhury expects the team will have enough data to train its AI.

Intelligent Swarm

Ultimately, the researchers hope to end up with an AI that can guide the actions of groups of 250 robots on the ground and in the air, giving the fleet the ability to autonomously navigate unpredictable environments.

“Humans can come up with very unique strategies that an AI might not ever learn,” Chowdhury told Digital Trends. “A lot of the hype we see in AI are in applications that are relatively deterministic environments. But in terms of contextual reasoning in a real environment to get stuff done? That’s still at a nascent stage.”

READ MORE: Good at StarCraft? DARPA wants to train military robots with your brain waves [Digital Trends]

More on training AI: A Finnish Startup Is Using Prison Labor to Train AI

The post DARPA Is Using Gamers’ Brain Waves to Train Robot Swarms appeared first on Futurism.

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DARPA Is Using Gamers’ Brain Waves to Train Robot Swarms

So! Futurism Media is looking to hire a Staff Writer for Futurism.com to work out of our Brooklyn office. Ready? Here’s the deal:

A Staff Writer at Futurism.com will:

• Report directly to the Managing Editor of Futurism.com, as they pitch and write anywhere from five to seven short, razor-sharp news hits a day, giving our readers the succinct summaries, context, and takeaways on offer at The Byte.
• Staff writers will also contribute reported medium-length stories and features, in addition to special projects, source development, and beat reporting.

The Byte, which will be the primary charge of our new hire, is a relevant, useful, sharp, smart, funny, and crucial daily must-read for the leaders of tomorrow, today. Here’s what we’re looking for when hiring writers for it, in order of priority:

• Writing chops. While it’d help if you have a background or understanding of writing about technology and science, as well as ideas concerning the future of the world, it’s not crucial. The important thing, first and foremost, is that you have a passion for writing and can string together fun, sharp, concise, informative, exciting copy — and that you can do it quickly, without preciousness. Literary journal aspirants or chronic dissertation writers need not apply. Same goes to anyone married to any kind of static, universal style guide. If your writing reads well, we want it, and we don’t care if it comes to us from a high school sports desk or the steerage deck at an ad agency.
• Competitiveness and work ethic. We’re a small media operation and we keep things trim. We ask of our writers the ability to work hard, work smart, and the desire to be entrepreneurial about their work. We need someone we can trust to get the job done, to learn from mistakes quickly in order to get us where we’re going.
• Editing chops. If you’re already a halfway decent writer, you’re probably also gonna instinctually understand how to make other people’s writing better (or at the very least, help them deliver clean, concise copy). This is less about any practical editing experience than it is an ability to deal with other people’s work — to take things from good to great, and to communicate with writers in a constructive, respectful, and ultimately meaningful way that helps them get that much closer to achieving the highest level of quality they can reach.
• News instincts and strong ideas. Again, you don’t have to be a science or technology expert, but you need to have some interest in topics like AI, quantum computing, medtech, universal basic income, blockchain, transportation, urbanization, green energy initiatives, and wonderfully rich characters like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (as well as a sense of who’s missing from conversations about science and technology). If this stuff makes your eyes gloss over, sorry, this isn’t for you — but if you’re fascinated by the rough edges as those things make their way into everyday life, you could be a terrific fit. And needless to say, if you already have an intense passion for these subjects, and strong ideas about them, we’re definitely looking for you.

Candidates of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply. And if you think you’ve got what it takes, here’s what we’d like from you, submitted right here:

• An email cover letter and a resume. We know, it’s standard and basic. But we want a quick, clean snapshot of who you are and what you’ve got to say.
• A few writing samples, linked in your cover letter. They can be literally anything — we just want you to show us you, at the best of your abilities.

We’re an exciting, growing company focused on the future, and from where we stand, it’s pretty bright. Come join us on the ride.

Futurism/Singularity University is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

The post We’re Hiring: Futurism.com Wants a Staff Writer appeared first on Futurism.

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We’re Hiring: Futurism.com Wants a Staff Writer

Personal Quarantine

A US businessman named Rick Pescovitz wore a personal, transparent tent in the window seat of a commercial airliner.

Pescovitz — the brother of BoingBoing‘s David Pescowicz, who blogged about the ordeal — says he was reportedly to avoid contracting the deadly coronavirus that’s been claiming the lives of hundreds of people around the world.

Under the Weather

But it was mostly a publicity stunt. Pescovitz is the CEO of StadiumPod, a company that makes tiny tents called “Under the Weather Pods” for sports spectators — and proud soccer moms and dads — who want to stay dry while it rains. Pescovitz even went on Shark Tank to pitch the idea.

Sounds like Pescovitz has decided to reframe his tents as personal quarantine zones. According to BoingBoing — remember, this is the dude’s brother writing — “the flight attendant happily took his photo” and the man sitting next to Pescovitz “didn’t even bat an eye.”

Stay Safe

It’s unclear how effective the tent actually would be at fending off a virus — and if Pescovitz said yes to a cup of coffee.

If you don’t want to shell out for your own personal tent, experts advise to treat the coronavirus much like the common flu: wash hands regularly and be wary of touching possibly contaminated surfaces.

READ MORE: Personal tents for airplane passengers to avoid coronavirus [BoingBoing]

More on the virus: Scientists Warn: You Can Catch Coronavirus More Than Once

The post Man Wears Personal Plastic Tent on Flight to Avoid Deadly Virus appeared first on Futurism.

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Man Wears Personal Plastic Tent on Flight to Avoid Deadly Virus

China is in the midst of a medical emergency. The world, though? Not so much, according to health experts.

Inlate December 2019, health officials in China reported that a previously unidentified coronavirus, later dubbed 2019-nCoV, had infected 59 people in the city of Wuhan.

By January 24, the number of people infected by the respiratory virus reached 830, with 25 confirmed deaths. Two days later, officials announced that both figures had more than doubled at least 2,000 infected and 56 deaths.

The numbers shared by state-run Chinese media on Monday were even worse, with 2,840 confirmed coronavirus cases and 81 deaths.Fifty million Chinese residents are now under quarantine, but that hasnt stopped 2019-nCoV from spreading to 11 other countries, including the United States.

Based on those stats alone, it sounds like were witnessing the beginning of the type of catastrophe typically relegated to blockbuster movies based on Michael Crichton books but is the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, the term health officials use to define a new disease that quickly spreads across a large area and affects a significant number of people?

Not according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Make no mistake, this is an emergency in China, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHOs director general, told reporters on Thursday, but it has not yet become a global health emergency.

So, the WHO doesnt think a never-before-seen virus thats suddenly killing dozens and quickly spreading across the globe is a pandemic. And that begs the question, Why not?

First off, while the coronavirus is spreading quickly, the number of people affected is still relatively low in the grand scheme of things. For comparison, the seasonal flu kills between 290,000 and 650,000 people every year, according to the WHO.

Based on the number of known coronavirus cases and deaths, its mortality rate is only slightly higher about three percent and as pointed out by The Guardian, that could actually be an overestimate, since the number of people unknowingly infected might actually be far higher than the reported figures.

Additionally, while the coronavirus has now infected people in 12 countries, all of the deaths have occurred in just one: China. That makes the situation more of an epidemic an outbreak spreading rapidly within one population than a pandemic.

The situation is still evolving rapidly, and the WHO decided that the coronavirus wasnt a global emergency before the death toll jumped this weekend not to mention before it cropped up in Europe and Australia. And on Monday, it said it made a mistake in labeling the global risk for the coronavirus as moderate instead of high.

Theres still a chance the coronavirus outbreak could evolve to the pandemic level. And if that happens, the WHO could declare it a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC. That would essentially send the message that the WHO doesnt think China can handle the situation and that it and other nations needs to intervene.

For now, though, the WHO seems satisfied with Chinas effort to address the coronavirus outbreak, so while the situation is certainly both unusual and frightening, its not a pandemic not yet, anyway.

Editors Note, 1/29: This article was updated to correct the number of deaths attributed to the seasonal flu annually.

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Is the Coronavirus a Pandemic? Here's What Experts Say. - Futurism

Space Ritz

NASA announced Monday that its chosen private space station manufacturer Axiom Space to build the first commercial launch destination read: space hotel for thesuper wealthy and attach it to the International Space Station. The goal is to help grow an economy in low-Earth orbit, according to NASA.

According to an Axiom Space statement, the startup is planning to launch a node module, research & manufacturing facility, crew habitat, and large-windowed Earth observatory to form the Axiom Segment of the ISS, starting in the latter half of 2024.

A ticket to space will likely be atrociously expensive and limit the privilege of a leisurely vacation in orbit to the uber-rich. A ticket will cost upwards of $50 million, according to a 2018 New York Times interview with Axiom CEO Mike Suffredini.

Its a bargain! Suffredini added.

The startup envisions the hotel as a zero gravity-friendly nest-like cabinwith unobstructed views of Earth and high-bandwidth communications back to home, according to the companys website.

Before the ISS is officially retired a date still under discussion Axiom Space is planning to switch to its own large power platform to house its Axiom Segment rather than relying on the ISS, according to the company.

READ MORE: NASA Picks Axiom to Add a Garish Space Hotel to the ISS [Gizmodo]

More on Axiom: A Ticket to the Moon: An Out-of-this-World Journey

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NASA Is Adding a Space Hotel to the Space Station - Futurism

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Friday that a second case of 2019-nCoV coronavirus currently sweeping through China has been confirmed inside the US.

The patient was making her way backto Chicago from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, in mid-January. She is now in stable condition and doing well, Scientific American reports.

Almost 900 cases of the virus have been identified so far, with at least 26 deaths as of today, according to CNBC.

Despite the major press coverage the outbreak is getting, the CDC says theres little cause for alarm.

While CDC considers this a serious public health threat, based on current information, the immediate health risk from 2019-nCoV to the general American public is considered low at this time, reads Fridays statement.

The World Health Organization also stopped short of declaring it a global health emergency on Thursday. More cases, though, are likely to continue to accumulate worldwide.

Nancy Messonnier, director ofthe CDCs National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told Scientific American that this is a rapidly changing situation, both abroad and domestically and that so far 63 people are under investigation in the US.

US authorities are doing their best to gain control over the situation. On Wednesday, the CDC ordered individualized screenings for all direct flights from Wuhan at fiveUS airports.

See more here:

CDC Confirms Second Chinese Virus Case in the US - Futurism

A WILD RIDE. Those, by and large, are the first words that come to mind looking back on Futurisms 2019 and all the news that made up these past twelve months.

We ran thousands of stories this year. They ranged from investigative projects, to interviews, to the building blocks of our site: Sharp hour-by-hour analysis on the science and technology narratives of the day. These stories shaped (and are still shaping) the weird, wonderful, frightening, inspiring, and ever-critical present moment were in, to say nothing of the future well occupy on this planet or elsewhere.

That said: Every once in a while, one of these hundreds of stories exceeds our wildest expectations, drawing hundreds of thousands of readers from across the world, and for weeks at a time, too.

To that end and without further ado, here are The Ten Most-Read Futurism Stories of 2019 along with our best guesses as to why they garnered so much attention, and what it might mean for our future.

10. The First Black Hole Photo Is Even More Amazing When You Zoom Out

When: April 12, 2019

What: After the Event Horizon Telescope team unleashed the first-ever image of a black hole, a separate team dropped an incredible follow-up image of the space around it.

Why: A sense of genuine epochal awe surrounded the release of the historic first image of a black hole, for starters. But when we covered NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory release of the wider shot, showing how distant galaxy M87s black hole was nestled in a boggling vast cloud of high-energy particles, our readers couldnt stop looking. Heck, neither could we.

9. Our Solar System Is Blanketed in a Giant Wall of Fire

When: Nov. 21, 2019

What: Voyager 2 sent back readings suggesting that the edge of the solar system is surrounded by a bubble of 49,427 degrees Celsius (89,000 degrees Fahrenheit) plasma.

Why: We think of the deep solar system as a dark, frozen expanse, but this story showed that its a frontier of extraordinary unknowns that can apparently get, to put it lightly, hot. Even better, NASAs best tool to plumb its mysteries is Voyager 2 a probe thats been traveling away from the Sun since 1977, giving the story an outrageous old-meets-new finishing coat.

8. NASA Engineer Says New Thruster Could Reach 99% Speed of Light

When: Oct. 14, 2019

What: NASA engineer David Burns said that his new thruster design could reach a ludicrous velocity if you give it enough time to accelerate.

Why: The idea of light-speed travel scratches a sci-fi itch, and Burns has a knack for self-promotion. His thrusters undeniably clever it would use a type of particle accelerator to manipulate the speed of an ion loop, subtly changing their mass through relativity effects, thus generating a gentle thrust without propellant. Give it enough time, according to Burns, and it could reach 99 percent the speed of light. The caveats? Itd require building an enormous device in space, and itd take an extremely long time to speed up.

7. New Research: Human Civilization Will Likely Collapse by 2050

When: June 3, 2019

What: An Australian climate change analysis reached a Mad Max conclusion: Were screwed, and on a clock.

Why: The last year in news has often felt a touch world-ending, no? To say nothing of the worlds ongoing fascination with post-apocalyptic fiction, from Dawn of the Dead to The Hunger Games. The wide interest in this, though, illustrates our looming fear of a real collapse event especially when the research comes from a former fossil fuel exec. The good news, according to the research, is that drastic environmental policies could pull the planet back in the right direction. Also, lets be real: the art for this one, by Futurism writer Victor Tangermann, was haunting and beautiful.

6. NASA Research: Astronauts Are Getting Clots, Bizarre Blood Flow

When: Nov. 14, 2019

What: A NASA research project seemingly showed astronauts suffering from ominous circulatory problems.

Why: Everybody loves a feel-good story about a successful rocket launch or a shiny experiment on the International Space Station. But its difficult to ignore growing evidence that space is a hostile environment for the human body and this study, which examined ultrasounds from astronauts whod spent time on space station, showed signs of clots and bizarre blood flow. Needless to say, more research is needed, but this could be an opening act to the human space travel story narrative of this era.

5. Here Are New Pics of That Weird Substance China Found on the Moon

When: Sept. 19, 2019

What: China baffled the world when it announced that its rover had found a mysterious substance on the Moon. Then it released a photo.

Why: The implication of Chinas original announcement, which described the substance as gel-like, was that the material was deeply baffling. Thats probably why droves of Futurism readers visited to see the picture for themselves and share their thoughts though, underwhelmingly, the consensus among researchers is that the material, rather than a gel, is probably lunar glass that formed during a meteor strike.

4. A Dense Bullet of Something Blasted Holes in the Milky Way

When: May 15, 2019

What: According to research by a Harvard-Smithsonian scientist, a dense bullet of something punched holes in our home galaxy many years ago.

Why: A lot of our most-read stories this year were epic in scope, but this galactic-scale mystery by Futurism writer Dan Robitzski might take the cake. Gaps in the stellar stream suggest that something one culprit could be a chunk of dark matter, a million times the mass of our Sun crudely tampered with the large-scale structure of the Milky Way. Just like our readers, we were obsessed and well be keeping an eye out for followup astrophysical research to share with them.

3. NASA: Four Astronauts Will Stay on the Moon for Two Weeks

When: Oct. 30, 2019

What: NASA dropped tantalizing new details about its upcoming Moon missions, which include sending four astronauts to the lunar surface for 6.5 days.

Why: Our readers have a longstanding interest in NASAs efforts to return to the Moon, so these rare specifics from the inscrutable space agency were irresistible. Whats more, this new info demonstrated the depth of NASAs ambition: the 6.5 day mission, which will be loaded with at least four expeditions on the lunar surface, will be twice as long a Moon visit as any other in human history.

2. Russian Sub That Caught Fire Possibly Sent to Cut Internet Cables

When: July 3, 2019

What: In the aftermath of a Russian submarine fire, rumors emerged in Russian media that the sub was on a mission to cut undersea internet cables.

Why: Remember the tragic fire that killed 14 Russian sailors this year? Observers pointed out that Moscow was unusually cagey about the incident, refusing to say even whether it had been a nuclear sub. And then, in a pair of bombshell reports, two Russian outlets reported that the vessel had been a secretive craft thats long been speculated to have been designed to sabotage undersea internet cables. Much like other Russian drama in recent years, this one never got a satisfying conclusion but it was a rare glimpse into the murky world of deep-sea espionage.

1. Chinese Scientists Cloned Gene-Edited Monkeys With Horrifying Results

When: Jan. 25, 2019

What: Chinese scientists made five clones of a monkey that had been gene-edited to suffer from serious psychological problems.

Why: Our most-read story all year took a dive into the lurid world of genetic engineering. Scientists in China tinkered with the DNA of a macaque monkey, and then cloned the animal five times the first time a gene-edited primate had ever successfully been cloned. But ethically, Futurisms Kristin Houser explained, the experiment was a mess: the macaques genes had been altered to give it depression, anxiety, sleep problems and a schizophrenia-like condition. Researchers say the altered monkeys will be a valuable research tool for developing new therapies. But, at the same time, its a Jeff VanderMeer-esque sign of the grotesque frontiers of CRISPR and, like our readers, we couldnt look away.

Read more here:

The Top Ten Most-Read Futurism Stories of 2019 - Futurism

U.S. President Donald Trump is simultaneously an expert on wind power and completely baffled by it by his own estimation, anyways.

I never understood wind, Trump said during a speech at conservative nonprofit Turning Point USAs Student Action Summit on Saturday, according to the official White House transcript. You know, I know windmills very much. I have studied it better than anybody.

But the rest of Trumps speech implies that only the first part of that statement is true: he knows very little about wind power other than the fact that hes against it.

Trump also cited the process used to produce turbines as a mark against them.

They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, he said, but they are manufactured, tremendous if you are into this tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere.

But as pointed out by The Hill, researchers from the American Wind Energy Association found that a typical wind project repays its carbon footprint in six months or less. Meanwhile, the benefits of the devices can last fora typical lifespan of 20 to 25 years a good investment no matter how you look at it.

Another of Trumps beefs with wind turbines? They kill birds.

You want to see a bird graveyard? Trump asked the audience. You just go. Take a look. A bird graveyard. Go under a windmill someday. Youll see more birds than youve ever seen ever in your life A windmill will kill many bald eagles. Its true.

Though its hard to say for sure how many bald eagles fall victim to wind turbines, the devices do kill approximately 234,012 birds in the U.S. every year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

But for comparison, collisions with glass buildings like the ones Trump has made a career stamping his name on kill 599,000,000 birds every year. Thats 2,559 times more birds than turbines.

Trump didnt mention that during his speech, but he did trot out anotherfrequent claim: that wind turbines negatively impact property values and once again, its clear he doesnt have his facts straight.

So they make these things and then they put them up, he told the audience. And if you own a house within vision of some of these monsters, your house is worth 50 percent of the price.

While some smaller studies have found that a nearby wind farm can decrease a homes value, larger studies including a 2013 analysis of more than 50,000 homes in nine states concluded that turbines have no negative impact on property values.

Still, given that Trump has previously claimed that wind turbines decrease home values by 75 percent, this new 50 percent figure does get him closer to the truth so while he clearly doesnt know windmills very much, his claims about wind energy do appear to be getting slightly most accurate than theyve been in the past. Very slightly.

READ MORE: Trump rails against windmills: I never understood wind [The Hill]

More on wind power: New Research: Texas Could Ditch Coal Entirely for Wind and Solar

Excerpt from:

Donald Trump Doesn't Seem to Know Anything About Wind Power - Futurism

Constant Surveillance

For the second half of 2020, Baltimore will be under constant police surveillance as a trio of spy planes constantly sweep the city.

The plan, which CBS News reports will cover about 90 percent of the city, is meant to deter violent crime. And while police commissioner Michael Harrison says the spy planes arent accurate enough to spot an individuals face, the monitoring program raises glaring privacy concerns for city residents and visitors.

Baltimore actually enacted a similar surveillance program in 2016 but it operated under total secrecy until Bloomberg journalists uncovered it, CBS reports.

And while Harrison says things will be different this time he promised but hasnt yet scheduled community meetings to discuss how and why the footage will be used police officials continue to defend the first version of their city-wide spy ring.

The program has civil liberties groups up in arms over what amounts to constant surveillance without a warrant or probable cause, according to CBS.

The surveillance plane means putting every resident of Baltimore under permanent surveillance, creating a video record of everywhere that everyone goes every time they walk outside, reads a joint statement from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland and the Coalition for Justice, Safety, and Jobs. If the police did that in real life, in person on our streets, we would never accept it.

READ MORE: Baltimore to become first city monitored by police surveillance planes [CBS News]

More on surveillance: Florida Police Cut a Secret Deal to Promote Amazons Ring Cameras

Go here to read the rest:

Baltimore Police Plan to Monitor the Whole City With Spy Planes - Futurism

IN A WORD?

2019 was amess.

From neural networks spitting out images inspired by lab monkeys nightmares, to dark matter bullets leaving fist-sized holes in the chest cavities of astronauts, this year was filled with the kinds of scientific and technological discoveries that often left us, lacking better poetry, with a single, all-consuming thought:

WTF.

Note that its not WTF? The difference is between a rhetorical question, and a declarative statement: This is our world. This is our world?! This is our world. We cant even begin to imagine what weird questions (or answers) the dark and twisted minds of the worlds great scientific and technological talent will come up with for the next one. Forgoing that for now, we say this: May their imaginations be banished to the underworld for eternity but before they do, lets peek into their twisted minds one last time. These are the Most WTF Science and Technology Moments of 2019.

When: April 18, 2019

The Headline: Someone Listed a T-Rex on eBay, and Paleontologists Are Furious

W. A Montanan discovered the 68 million-year-old skeleton of a baby tyrannosaurus rex in his yard. Deciding that it spent enough time at such a low-class local institution as the museum thats housed the skeleton since 2017, the great and noble amateur archeologist decided to sell it on eBay. For a cool $2.95 million.

TF. Paleontologists were understandably pissed! They wanted time to study this rare and valuable artifact, not shop it over four slides like its a rare Beanie Baby. Oh, and his listing somehow actually included the garbled line: This Rex was very a very dangerous meat eater. Its a RARE opportunity indeed to ever see a baby REX, if they did not grow quickly they could not catch prey and would die. eBay: Wheres the worlds great excavations go to be sold to some overly moneyed rando whose most recent cop is a signed Battlefield Earth shirt and a pair of Nikes worn by the Heavens Gate cult. Cool.

When: May 2, 2019

The Headline: A Neural Net Hooked Up to a Monkey Brain Spat Out Bizarre Images

W. Oh, just your average day at the animal testing lab. Harvard scientists hooked up a monkey brain to a neural net, then tried to stimulate individual neurons responsible for recognizing faces, by showing it images generated by the AI.

TF. We probably could have seen this one coming. The images generated by the AI more or less what the monkey saw or imagined were darker and more twisted than anything we couldve prepared ourselves for. The scientists saw blurs that resembled humans wearing surgical masks likely lab technicians. We saw the shit of nightmares for the next three years, and several grands worth of bills in trauma therapy.

When: April 13, 2019

The Headline: Pepsi Plans to Project a Giant Ad in the Night Sky Using Cubesats

W. Imagine looking into the magnificent splendor of night sky, finding the great constellation of Orion, and seeing him holding a Pepsi can. Which is what a Russian company called StartRocket (basically) wanted when they endeavored to launch a cluster of cubesats into space to form orbital billboards.

TF. Hopefully we dont have to be the ones to tell you that literally plastering the night sky with annoying billboard ads is a horrendous idea that shouldve never been conjured in the first place. Not only would it be an eye sore, weve already learned from SpaceXs Starlink satellites that such an endeavor could pose a very real threat to the astronomy community by messing with their observations. A spokeswoman for PepsiCo confirmed to Futurism that the company was in fact collaborating with the startup, but after backlash, the company called the idea off. For now.

Credit: Warner Bros/Pixabay/Victor Tangermann

When: September 5, 2019

The Headline: 5 Insane Quotes From Boris Johnsons Bizarre UN Speech About Tech

W. Former tabloid journalist and current British prime minister Boris Johnson gave a truly unhinged speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Like, truly, deeply, profoundlyweird.

TF. BoJos talk jumped from talking about pink-eyed terminators a particularly egregious allegory of the singularity to terrifying limbless chicken. As for that last bit, your guess is a good as ours. If we learned anything in 2019, its that the worlds politicians have about as firm a grasp on the nuances of technology as something that lacks the appendages, motor skills, and cognitive ability to coordinating grabbing anything with. Which is to say: Not at all.

When: April 10, 2019

The Headline: Chinese Scientists Gene-Hacked Super Smart Human-Monkey Hybrids

W. Using cutting-edge gene-editing techniques, a team of Chinese scientists improved memories of unaltered monkeys by adding a human version of a gene to the macaques brains, which made them develop along a more human-like timeline. The monkeys even had better reaction times.

TF. Unsurprisingly, the research kicked off a debate about the ethics of altering the genes of macaques. Geneticists called the move a very risky road to take, arguing that it could lead to even more extreme modifications in the future. Like when we teach them how to launch military coups. Against us. And then enslave us. And then put us in cages. And then watch as they debate amongst themselves whether they evolved from the dumbcreatures or were divined to Earth through prayer to The Great Banana In the Sky.

When: May 10, 2019

The Headline: Heres What an Album Between a Musician and an AI Baby Sounds Like

W. Conceptual sound artist and composer Holly Herndon released her new artificial intelligence-inspired album PROTO earlier this year. It heavily features performances by an inhuman intelligence housed in a DIY souped-up gaming PC, that Herndon lovingly refers to as her AI baby.

TF. Were gonna let the music speak for itself here, except to say that this is nothing short of a truly eerie listening experience best experienced yourself once, and only once. Special shoutout to the nightmarish beatboxing sounds on the track Godmother, a collaboration with artist Jlin.

When: July 26, 2019

The Headline: Dark Matter Bullets Could Tear Human Flesh Apart

W. A doctoral candidate in physics is suggesting that tiny amounts of dark matter could slice the human body into pieces, Resident Evil-style. The particles could end up behaving like high-speed bullets, tearing giant holes into the bodies of astronauts, resulting in serious injury or death, according to the author. The closest analogy to a macro collision with a human being is a gunshot wound, reads the study.

TF. Its a wild, random claim that seemingly emerged from nowhere. Yet its also a terrifying thought, especially considering we barely even know what dark matter even is, or what its made out of. Do astronauts really have to worry about this? This theory stretches a pretty long list of assumptions to its drawn out and arguably sensationalist conclusion.

When: November 21, 2019

The Headline: Horrible Christian App Narcs to Your Mom If You Watch Porn

W. Covenant Eyes, a creepy religious app, was built to block people from looking at porn by using an AI-powered filter. If the app finds somebody gawking at lewd smut, it hails the authorities like your mom. But actually.

TF. Looking at pornography is as harmless as taking a selfie for most people in most situations. Vilifying the act in the name of the Lord will only cause a rift between people and cause some truly uncomfortable conversations to crop up about the birds and the bees. Is this really going to protect children? Barely. Will it stop literally anybody ever from watching porn? Doubt it.

When: July 16, 2019

The Headline: Mad Scientist Mom Turns Autistic Son Into a Cyborg

W. In an essay for Quartz, neuroscientist Vivienne Ming discussed how she channeled her inner mad scientist to give her autistic son superpowers. She build a facial and expression-recognition system for Google Glass. Ive chosen to turn my son into a cyborg and change the definition of what it means to be human, she wrote. But do my sons engineered superpowers make him more human, or less?

TF. Calling somebody wearing an enhanced pair of Google Glasses a cyborg is, eh, a bit of a stretch. And did she really have to refer to herself as a mad scientist while doing it?

When: March 11, 2019

The Headline: Creepy Database Lists Whether 1.8M Chinese Women Are Breedready

W. An internet freedom non-profit discovered a creepy-ass database of Chinese women labelled as breedready. The database includes personal details of more than 1.8 million Chinese women, including phone number, birthday, level of education, and marital status. Their ages ranged from 15 to 95 years-old, each with a breedready score. The average age was 32.

TF. Not only is it a preposterous violation of personal privacy, the chance of the database being abused by somebody with less-than-good intentions? Sky high. Making matters worse, nobody even knows where the database comes from, or who created it. Is this the Chinese government trying to address a growing population problem? Or something even more sinister?

When: September 23, 2019

The Headline: Russia: We Know Cause of Space Station Leak but Havent Told NASA

W. In late 2018, astronauts aboard the International Space Station discovered a tiny hole in the Russian side of the orbital outpost. Houston and Moscow noticed a drop in cabin pressure kicking off a search for the culprit, and a later investigation suggested that the hole was drilled from inside the space station. Days after claiming the hole was probably caused by a tiny meteorite, the Russian space agency changed its mind and said it found evidence of several attempts at drilling with a wavering hand. Many months later, Russia claimed it finally figured out the cause of the hole but is keeping the information under wraps.

TF. Nobody knows what caused the drilled hole in the space station. NASA doesnt, (Russias version of NASA) Roscosmos doesnt even an entire spacewalk solely dedicated to uncovering the mystery didnt shine any light on the situation. Was it deliberate sabotage? Did Russias gun-toting humanoid robot have anything to do with it? Like most of 2019s WTF moments in science and technology, we all want to know the answer, but also, on some level, might be better off not knowing the answer at all.

Excerpt from:

JFC: The Most WTF Science and Tech Moments of 2019 - Futurism

Super Puffs

In case you needed more evidence that the universe is infinitely baffling, scientists just revealed new information about a bizarre type of exoplanet so light that they have roughly the same density as cotton candy.

The ultra-light worlds have been nicknamed super-puffs by the scientists analyzing them, according to a European Space Agency press release, invoking their Kirby-esque fluffiness and new data from the Hubble Space Telescope suggests how they might have formed.

Scientists first spotted the gassy puff balls earlier this decade NASA identified them in the Kepler 51 system in 2012, and astronomers realized how unusually light they are two years later, according to the release.

To clarify, the three exoplanets are about as big as Jupiter, but have about one-hundredth the mass of the gas giant.

Using Hubble, astronomers hoped to scan the super-puffs atmospheres for water. But they didnt find any, in part because a massive layer of clouds prevented them from looking any deeper.

This was completely unexpected, University of Colorado, Boulder researcher Jessica Libby-Roberts said in the release. We had planned on observing large water absorption features, but they just werent there. We were clouded out!

But that wont be the case for long the researchers suspect that the exoplanets accumulated their atmospheres before moving closer to their star, which will likely burn it all away in the coming eons.

READ MORE: Cotton candy planet mysteries unravel in new Hubble observations [ESA/Hubble Observation Center]

More on bizarre exoplanets: Newly Discovered Exoplanet is Unlike Any Other

Read more from the original source:

These Rare Exoplanets Have the "Density of Cotton Candy" - Futurism