Monthly Archives: June 2017

In BriefPoor air quality kills 1.2 million people in India every year.To help battle that staggering statistic the Indian government isinstituting a plan to help get fossil fuel powered vehicles off theroad. The plan calls for the end of gas powered vehicle sales by2030. Indias Electric Future

Every car sold in India from 2030 will be electric, under new government plans that have delighted environmentalists and dismayed the oil industry.

Its hoped that by ridding Indias roads of petrol and diesel cars in the years ahead, the country will be able to reduce the harmful levels of air pollution that contribute to a staggering 1.2 million deaths per year.

Indias booming economy has seen it become the worlds third-largest oil importer, shelling out $150 billion annually for the resource so a switch to electric-powered vehicles would put a sizable dent in demand for oil. Its been calculated that the revolutionary move would save the country $60 billion in energy costs by 2030, while also reducing running costs for millions of Indian car owners.

Indias Energy Minister Piyush Goyal says the government will financially support the initiative for the first two or three years, but the production of electric vehicles will be driven by demand and not subsidy after that.

More than a million people die in India every year as a result of breathing in toxic fumes, with an investigation by Greenpeace finding that the number of deaths caused by air pollution is only a fraction less than the number of smoking-related deaths.

The investigation also found that 3% of the countrys gross domestic product was lost due to the levels of toxic smog.

In 2014, the World Health Organization determined that out of the 20 global cities with the most air pollution, 13 are in India.

Efforts have been made by the countrys leaders to to improve air quality, with one example coming in January 2016 when New Delhis government mandatedthat men could only drive their cars on alternate days depending on whether their registration plate ended with an odd or even number (single women were permitted to drive every day).

While such interventions have enjoyed modest success, switching to a fleet of purely electric cars would have a much greater environmental impact.

Indeed, its been calculated that the gradual switch to electric vehicles across India would decrease carbon emissions by 37% by 2030.

As Indias ambitious electric vehicle plans begin to take shape, oil exporters will be frantically revising their calculations for oil demand in the region.

In its report into the impact of electric cars on oil demand, oil and gas giant BP forecast that the global fleet of petrol and diesel cars would almost double from about 900 million in 2015 to 1.7 billion by 2035.

Almost 90% of that growth was estimated to come from countries that are not members of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), such as India and China.

China is also gearing up for a move away from gas-guzzling cars.

Last month, the Chinese confirmed they intend to push ahead with plans that will see alternative fuel vehicles account for at least one-fifth of the 35 million annual vehicle sales projected, by 2025.

Oil bosses claim its too early to tell what the implications of a move away from petrol and diesel cars will be. However, Asia has long been the main driver of future oil demand and so developments in India and China will be watched extremely closely.

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India Will Sell Only Electric Cars Within the Next 13 Years - Futurism

In BriefBioquark is about to begin a trial that will attempt to bringbrain-dead patients back to life using stem cells. However, thetrial is raising numerous scientific and ethical questions forother experts in the field. Back From The Dead

Researchers seem to be setting their sights on increasinglylofty goals when it comes to the human body from the worlds first human head transplant, to fighting aging, and now reversing death altogether. Yes, you read that right. A company called Bioquarkhopes to bring people who have been declared clinically brain-dead back to life. The Philadelphia-based biotech company is expected to start on the project later this year.

This trial was originally intended to go forward in 2016 in India, but regulators shut it down. Assuming this plan will be substantially similar, it will enroll 20 patients who will undergo various treatments. The stem cell injection will come first, with the stem cells isolated from that patients own blood or fat. Next, the protein blend gets injected directly into the spinal cord, which is intended to foster growth of new neurons. The laser therapy and nerve stimulation follow for 15 days, with the aim of prompting the neurons to make connections. Meanwhile, the researchers will monitor both behavior and EEGs for any signs of the treatment causing any changes.

While there is some basis in science for each step in the process, the entire regimen is under major scrutiny. The electrical stimulation of the median nerve has been tested, but most evidence exists in the form of case studies. Dr. Ed Cooper has described dozens of these cases, and indicates that the technique can have some limited success in some patients in comas. However, comas and brain death are very different, and Bioquarks process raises more questions for most researchers than it answers.

One issue researchers are raising about this study is informed consent. How can participants in the trial consent, and how should researchers complete their trial paperwork given that the participants are legally dead and how can brain death be conclusively confirmed, anyway? What would happen if any brain activity did return, and what would the patients mental state be? Could anything beyond extreme brain damage even be possible?

As reported by Stat News, In 2016, neurologist Dr. Ariane Lewis and bioethicist Arthur Caplan wrote in Critical Care that the trial is dubious, has no scientific foundation, and suffers from an at best, ethically questionable, and at worst, outright unethical nature. According to Stat News, despite his earlier work with electrical stimulation of the median nerve, Dr. Cooper also doubts Bioquarks method, and feels there is no way this technique could work on someone who is brain-dead. The technique, he said, relies on there being a functional brain stem one of the structures that most motor neurons go through before connecting with the cortex proper. If theres no functional brain stem, then it cant work.

Pediatric surgeon Charles Cox, who is not involved in Bioquarks work, agrees with Cooper, commenting to Stat News on Bioquarks full protocol, its not the absolute craziest thing Ive ever heard, but I think the probability of that working is next to zero. I think [someone reviving] would technically be a miracle.

Pastor remains optimistic about Bioquarks protocol. I give us a pretty good chance, he said. I just think its a matter of putting it all together and getting the right people and the right minds on it.

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Scientists Hope to Use Stem Cells to Reverse Death in ... - Futurism - Futurism

In Brief Elon Musk has tweeted his intention to resign from the presidential advisory councils on which he sits. The resignation was prompted by Trump's decision to remove the United States from an international climate agreement.

Elon Musk is a man of his word. After todays announcement that the Trump administration is pulling out of the historic Paris climate agreement, Musk sent a tweet out confirming that he will be resigning from the presidential advisory councils on which he sits, as he promised yesterday.

Musk reiteratedthe idea that is rapidly being accepted by more and more deniers around the world: that climate change is real.

Yesterday, Musk also expressed that he has done all he could to dutifully advise the president on this matter, tweeting: Dont know which way Paris will go, but Ive done all I can to advise directly to POTUS, through others in WH & via councils, that we remain.

According to a November 2016 poll by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, nearly 70 percent of Americans were in favor of the Paris agreement. The decision to remove the United States from the accords deals a significant blow to international efforts to reduce carbon emissions and quell or reverse the impact of climate change. This decision will also give China the opportunity to emerge as the worlds climate leader ahead of the U.S., as the country said prior to Trumps decision that they intended to remain committed to the agreement.

Elon Musks Tesla is at the forefront of the clean energy revolution building popular electric vehicles, solar roofs, and battery packs to integrate energy consumption.

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Elon Musk Just Made Good On His Word. He's Officially Leaving Trump's Council. - Futurism

In Brief This year's winning team in SpaceX's Hyperloop competition comes from the Netherlands, and a Dutch tech startup has already built an initial testing site for the project. The goal is to have a Hyperloop system between Amsterdam and Paris by 2021.

It looks like the Netherlands would soon join Slovakia, and the Czech Republic as the next European country to have a Hyperloop. A Dutch team from the Technical University of Delft (TU Delft) won this years edition of SpaceXs competition to develop this next generation, super-fast transport technology, and theyre already setting up a full-scale testing center.

The Dutch teams idea will be realized by tech startup Hardt Global Mobility, in partnership with TU Delft, the Dutch national railway NS, and construction company BAM. Building the 30 meter (98 foot) tube is the first step.

In this facility we will test all systems that dont require high speeds, Hardt CEO Tim Houter told Reuters. So think about the levitation system, but also the propulsion system, but really important, all the safety systems will be tested in this low-speed but full-scale testing facility. The initial round of testing has already received $675,000 in funding. More would be needed for a high-speed test line by 2019 to accomplish their goal of setting up a Hyperloop system between Amsterdam and Paris by 2021.

First proposed in 2013 by SpaceXs founder and CEO Elon Musk, the Hyperloop is transportation system for people and cargo that features pods traveling through tubes or possibly tunnels at roughly 1,126 k/h (700 mph). Apart from the European sites mentioned, other Hyperloop projects are already at work in Canada, Los Angeles, and Dubai.

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A New Hyperloop System is Slated to Connect European Cities by 2021 - Futurism

In BriefResearchers have detected gravitational waves, ripples in timeand space, for the 3rd time. This discovery could offer new insightinto unanswered questions surrounding dark matter and black holes. Gravitational Waves Revealing The Universe

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) just detected gravitational waves, ripples in time and space, for the third time. Two black holes collided, forming a huge black hole 49 times more massive than our sun, and this generated the waves. This kind of collision was also the cause of the waves detected previously by LIGO, although the masses of the black holes varied. This repetition of the discovery confirms that a new area of astronomy now exists.

We have further confirmation of the existence of stellar-mass black holes that are larger than 20 solar masses these are objects we didnt know existed before LIGO detected them, MITs David Shoemaker, a LIGO spokesperson, said in a press release. It is remarkable that humans can put together a story, and test it, for such strange and extreme events that took place billions of years ago and billions of light-years distant from us. The entire LIGO and Virgo scientific collaborations worked to put all these pieces together.

In September 2015, LIGO first directly observed these gravitational waves during its first run since receiving Advanced LIGO upgrades. The second detection followed in December 2015, and this latest detection, called GW170104, followed in January of this year. In each case, both of LIGOs twin detectors perceived gravitational waves from the collisions of the black holes, but this latest observation does offer a few new pieces of information.

For example, it suggests which directions the black holes might be spinning in, and indicates that at least one of the black holes in the pair may not be aligned with the overall orbital motion. Scientists are hoping that they can learn more about how binary black holes form by making more LIGO observations.

This work is testing, and thus far providing proof for, the theories proposed by Albert Einstein. For example, the theory of relativity says that dispersion, the effect that happens as light waves in a physical medium travel at different speeds, cannot happen in gravitational waves. LIGO has not found any evidence of dispersion in gravitational waves, as predicted by relativity.

It looks like Einstein was right even for this new event, which is about two times farther away than our first detection, Georgia Techs Laura Cadonati, the Deputy Spokesperson of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), said in the press release. We can see no deviation from the predictions of general relativity, and this greater distance helps us to make that statement with more confidence.

Moving forward, the LIGO-Virgo team will keep searching LIGO data for any hint of gravitational waves emanating from the far corners of the Universe. The sensitivity of the detector will improve during the next run starting in late 2018 after researchers apply technical upgrades, hoping to see even more. Caltechs David Reitze, the LIGO Laboratorys executive director, said in the press release, While LIGO is uniquely suited to observing these types of events, we hope to see other types of astrophysical events soon, such as the violent collision of two neutron stars.

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LIGO Just Detected the Oldest Gravitational Waves Ever Discovered - Futurism

In BriefResearchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory weresurprised when they turned a molecule into a an atom-sucking blackhole by blasting it with the most powerful X-ray laser beam in theworld. Stripping It Bare

Essentially, a black hole is an object whose gravity is so strong that it sucks in surrounding objects. Thats what became of a small molecule that researchers from the Stanford operatedSLAC National Accelerator Laboratory blasted with the worlds most powerful X-ray laser. The molecule turned into an atom-sucking molecular black hole.

Worry not, however, as such an effect requires an X-ray laser thats a hundred times more intense than what you would get if you focused all the sunlight that hits the Earths surface onto a thumbnail, Sebastien Boutetsaid in a press release. Thats how strong the Coherent X-ray Imaging instrument used for this experiment is, said Boutet, who is a co-author of the studythe team published in the journal Nature. Its capable of releasing hard X-rays by using the highest possible energies available from the equipment.

The researchers used special mirrors to focus the X-ray beam into a very small spot, which was a little bit over 100 nanometers in diameter, to check three types of samples with heavy atoms: individual xenon atoms (with 54 electrons each) and two types of molecules with single iodine atoms (containing 53 electrons each). They didnt expect the extreme effect the X-ray laser would actually have onthese samples, which surpassed their calculations based on previous studies.

When blasted with the X-ray laser beam from the Coherent X-ray Imaging instrument, the molecules iodine atom lost more than 50 electrons with just 30 femtoseconds or millionths of a billionth of a second. The void that was left then pulled in electrons from the rest of the molecule, which it also blasted out before finally blowing up.

We think the effect was even more important in the larger molecule than in the smaller one, but we dont know how to quantify it yet, lead researcher Artem Rudenko explained in the press release. We estimate that more than 60 electrons were kicked out, but we dont actually know where it stopped because we could not detect all the fragments that flew off as the molecule fell apart to see how many electrons were missing. This is one of the open questions we need to study.

That effect, of course, wasnt something the researchers intended. However, they did learn a very important lesson from it. Using X-rays with ultrahigh intensities is necessary forexperiments that try to image individual biological objects such as bacteria and virusesat a high resolution.At the same time, its also useful in studying the charge dynamics of complex molecules and to understand how matter behaves in extreme conditions.

For any type of experiment you do that focuses intense X-rays on a sample, you want to understand how it reacts to the X-rays, Daniel Rolles, who also headed the study, said in the press release. This paper shows that we can understand and model the radiation damage in small molecules, so now we can predict what damage we will get in other systems.

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Scientists Just Produced A "Molecular Black Hole" Using X-Rays - Futurism