Monthly Archives: March 2021

When the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was approved for use, experts shared concerns that people would refuse to take it and hold out for the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines that seem to offer better protection against the coronavirus.

But those fears seem to be largely misplaced. Now, The Verge reports that many people who get to choose which of the three vaccines they get are opting for the Johnson & Johnson one. Based on testimonials, people seem to prefer it because it only requires one injection and one appointment rather than two.

All three vaccines are extremely effective when it comes to preventing severe and fatal cases of COVID-19. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine boasts a 72 percent overall effectiveness compared to the roughly 95 percent effectiveness of the other two. Thats still great, and as The Verge notes its better than a yearly flu shot, but its also difficult to avoid drawing comparisons.However, part of the reason the Johnson & Johnson clinical trials reported lower numbers is because the researchers also factored in the vaccines lessened protection against mild coronavirus cases, which is something that the Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials didnt do.

Thankfully, the convenience of a one-and-done vaccination seems to largely outweigh those differences in peoples minds.

There has been some resistance to the vaccine, however. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan turned down the Johnson & Johnson vaccines that were allotted to the city, CNN reports, opting instead to offer only the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

So, Johnson & Johnson is a very good vaccine, Duggan said at a Thursday press conference. Moderna and Pfizer are the best. And I am going to do everything I can to make sure the residents of the City of Detroit get the best.

But thats also because Duggan insists that Detroit can vaccinate everyone with the other vaccines alone perhaps it would be a different scenario if the choice was between the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or nothing.

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People Are Obsessed With the Vaccine That Only Requires One Dose - Futurism

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is officially rolling across the Martian wasteland.First Steps

NASAs Perseverance Mars rover is officially on the move.

Recently uploaded images show the six-wheeled robots tracks imprinted in the surrounding Martian dust.

The rover first landed in the Jezero Crater on February 18. Since then, its been testing its various scientific instruments and stretching its seven feet-foot arm.

A quick test of my steering, and things are looking good as I get ready to roll, the industrious robot tweeted from its official Twitter account. My team and I are keen to get moving. One step at a time.

Over the next two Earth years or so, Perseverance is planning to cover anywhere between three to 12 miles, exploring the surrounding area as it searches for signs of ancient life.

Perseverances six wheels, roughly 20 inches in diameter, are made of aluminum and feature cleats for traction. NASA made sure to make them more resistant to wear and tear on the Martian surface after the wheels of the rovers predecessor Curiositys looked worse for wear after spending years exploring the Martian surface.

By Earth standards, Perseverance moves extremely slowly, at only 152 meters per hour, or less than 0.1 mph. But that also means it consumes less than 200 watts, a fraction of the 150,000 watts a 200-horsepower car engine consumes, according to NASA.

READ MORE: Nasas Perseverance rover takes its first drive on Mars [BBC]

More on Perseverance: NASAs Mars Rover Percy Stretches Its Arm for the First Time

Read this article:
NASA's New Mars Rover Is Officially on the Move - Futurism

Do you remember the futuristic car that we could set aside with 2,000 Mexican pesos? It looks like we will soon see Aptera Motors start distributing them.

The vehicle manufacturing company has just closed a round of four billion dollars and now its plans to start its distribution at the end of this year 2021 seem more real, as we mentioned in December of last year.

The Aptera must undergo safety testing before the company can begin distribution, which it hopes to do later this year. Even then, it is not clear that consumers want to buy something that looks like a cross between the Batmobile and a beetle," wroteThe Washington Post .

Solar panels camouflaged on its surface allow you to recharge the battery while the car is parked. Image: Aptera Motors.

Recall that it is a car that looks like a small spaceship with an aerodynamic design, with only three wheels and two seats, and that it can be charged with sunlight while it is parked, as long as the sky is clear.

According to the company, the car will be able to achieve up to 60 kilometers of autonomy through sunlight while it is parked.

The design of the vehicle will allow it to slide with a drag coefficient of 0.13, which is the aerodynamic resistance of the car. In comparison, the Tesla Model 3 has a drag coefficient of 0.23.

The Aptera can go from 0 to 100 kilometers in just 3.5 seconds, while its top speed of 177 kilometers per hour. Image : Aptera Motors.

The Aptea is available in four different battery capacities, which are: 100 kWh, 60 kWh, 40 kWh or 25 kWh. Also, all designs have a three-square-meter solar panel array.

The versions of the Aptera: Paradigm and Paradigm + have a cost that ranges from 25,900 to 46,000 dollars (between 535 thousand and 1 million Mexican pesos approximately, at the exchange rate of March 2, 2021).

This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com

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The Futuristic Car Looks Like a Small Spaceship and Might Be Distributed by the End of the Year - Chron

Americans are looking to the silver screen and dreaming big when it comes to their future home goals.

According to a new poll of 2,000 Americans, over a quarter of people want their own JARVIS, the AI assistant from "Iron Man".

Twenty-seven percent of people would love to have the scene screen windows tuned to the scenery channel from "Back To The Future II" while a further 25% dream about having their own JOI the AI holographic companion from "Blade Runner".

And twenty-one percent of respondents dream of having a five-second Black & Decker pizza hydrator from "Back To The Future II" with another 14% hoping to one day have a sassy Android servant from "The Jetsons".

Over one in 10 would even love to have the Artificial Intelligence technology from "Her" one day.

A study conducted by OnePoll in conjunction with ecobee aimed to uncover what people dream about when it comes to their homes and discovered that 32% would give anything to live in the Jetsons house.

In fact, five percent of those studied revealed they'd pay over $100,000 to live in the Jetsons house for just one year.

Besides the infamous Jetsons home, 29% would love to spend a night in the smart house from "Smart House" while a further 26% want to join Marty and live in the McFly house from "Back To The Future II".

From controlling room temperatures and mood lighting to cooking up food and even automated chauffeurs Americans are craving the futuristic tech they saw in movies and TV growing up.

Until robot butlers and flying cars arrive, Americans are content with smaller tech upgrades while 65% like smart home products because they're convenient, 34% look to their environmentally-friendly nature as a reason to invest in them.

Fifty-seven percent of those studied say their dream is to have their entire home completely outfitted with smart home products.

"When it comes to smart products for the home, the future really is right now. Many of the futuristic innovations we see on TV and in movies are available today, and those who are hoping to create the smart home of their dreams can do just that. Thanks to the proven cost savings, many sustainable options available and simplified experiences overall, people are embracing smart home technology more than ever before," said Stuart Lombard, founder and CEO of ecobee.

Seventy-one percent of Americans say they find it important to know what's going on in their homes when they're away.

And 77% say they'd definitely check in on their homes whenever they were away if they had the smart home technology that would allow them to do so.

Americans want to not only check on their homes while they're away but they want to make sure their loved ones are safe as well.

Nearly half (46%) are most concerned about how their pets are doing in their homes while they're away.

And 52% are worried about their kids while away from the house while a further 37% simply want to check-in on their partner while they're gone.

It's no wonder that convenience and efficiency are the two best things people enjoy when it comes to smart home technology.

As a result, security cameras and smart thermostats are the most sought after smart home devices for Americans.

"The home is the most personal space there is, and one where privacy is paramount. Now more than ever, Americans want their homes to take care of them and their families, and ultimately manage itself. Americans demand simple and easy to use smart home solutions that make their lives easier, more convenient and stress-free," added Stuart Lombard, founder and CEO of ecobee.

Continued here:
Over half of Americans picture their dream home filled with futuristic technology - Yahoo News UK

Photo credit: Jason Leung via Unsplash.

The Conversationis a news site where academics including scientists write about their work and voice their opinions about science and society. Recently, Emma Hart, Chair in Natural Computation, Edinburgh Napier University, explained that Were teaching robots to evolve autonomously so they can adapt to life alone on distant planets. She launches from artificial intelligence (AI) as it is now and then looks far into the future, when robots may become autonomous, capable of their own replication and evolution. We will teach them how to evolve, she says.

Its not an original concept. Movies and novels have worked this meme for years, describing sometimes dystopian futures of our robot descendants turning on their creators. Hart has an optimistic view of robotic evolution. She sees human designers training their creations in the art of oversight, such that they would be able to handle all the contingencies a robot starship colonizing distant planets might encounter.

Our work represents the latest progress towards the kind of autonomous robot ecosystems that could help build humanitys future homes, far away from Earth andfar away from human oversight.[Emphasis added.]

Oversightis a key word to follow in her story, as she conjures up visions of robotic ecosystems with training grounds for baby robots, areas for mature ones, and a recycling plant to keep everything green.

What provides the inspiration and motivation for Harts confidence in the future of autonomous, reproducing AI? The challenges of planning for all the contingencies that our AI machines will face seem daunting. Enter Darwin:

An impossible brainteaser for humans,nature has already solved this problem. Darwinian evolution has resulted in millions of species that are perfectly adaptedto their environment. Although biological evolution takes millions of years,artificial evolution modelling evolutionary processes inside a computer can take place in hours,or even minutes. Computer scientists have been harnessing its power for decades, resulting in gas nozzles to satellite antennas that are ideally suited to their function, for instance.

In short, evolution did it, and evolution will do it. Confusion between artificial selection and natural selection lives on. To Hart, they are one and the same. One just takes longer, thats all (millions of years instead of hours or minutes). She never explains how humans evolved oversight. Maybe a lucky mutation in an ape brain happened millions of years ago. But now that we have it, it will persist, she is sure. Humans must subtract themselves from evolution so that the robots can carry on the valuable trait of oversight.

But current artificial evolution of moving, physical objectsstill requires a great deal of human oversight, requiring a tight feedback loop between robot and human. If artificial evolution is to design a useful robot for exoplanetary exploration,well need to remove the human from the loop.In essence,evolved robot designs must manufacture, assemble and test themselves autonomously untethered from human oversight.

That wordoversightjust flew by two times. Robot designers will need to confer that ability on the robots. They wont be able to conquer exoplanetary systems without it. But wait; didnt life on Earth manage to conquer all the ecosystems of our planet without that trait? Darwinism, by definition, is undirected; where did it get oversight?

If something seems amiss in Harts story, it is a thread holding the whole sweater together. It is belief in thecreative power of natural selectionto do anything and everything. Pull on this thread and the whole garment unravels; more precisely, it disintegrates. There never was a sweater. It was all an illusion. A realistic ecosystem in Michael Behes view would show organisms getting by with broken traits, not inventing new ones.

Take the evolution of oversight. Hart assumes thatoversightlike the kind that AI designers employ in their carefully thought-out plans to design robot cities is, itself, a product of natural selection. Maybe the trait we call oversight started with a random mutation to theFOXP2gene or something, giving a dominant hominid male the ability to organize his population to think and plan together. Looking forward from that mutation, nothing in Darwinism would connect it to foresight, logic, or thought. Looking backward from now, Hart would have to conclude that nothing in her evolution of oversight connects with truth or logic, either. There are only behaviors that might have been rewarded with survival. For her to assume a connection, she would have to reach into a different worldview and borrow concepts of truth and morality. She cannot conjure those up from Darwinian principles, which are purposeless and unguided.

Harts futuristic vision of humans passing on our capacity for oversight to machines depends on the fallacy that mental traits like thoughts, logic, and foresight can be explained by natural selection. At this stage in human evolution in 2021, she must assume, our thoughts and design principles are real: they are based on truth (i.e., that what we perceive connects to external reality) and morality (i.e., that it is morally good to share matters of truth and embrace integrity for its own sake). Taking that for granted, she leaps ahead into the future and envisions our progeny human robot ecosystems evolving in a Darwinian way, taking advantage of the creative power of natural selection. Its a convenient myth, because well never live to see it happen.

As well as being rendered in our simulator,child robots produced via our hybrid evolution are also 3D-printed and introduced into a real-world, creche-like environment.The mostsuccessfulindividuals within thisphysical training centremake their genetic code available for reproduction and for the improvement of future generations, whileless fit robots can simply be hoisted away and recycledinto new ones as part ofan ongoing evolutionary cycle.

Natural selection will, she believes, pick up where it left off in the evolution of oversight.

Looking forward, thelong-term visionisto develop the technologysufficiently to enable the evolution of entire autonomous robotic ecosystems that live and work for long periods in challenging and dynamic environmentswithout the need for direct human oversight.

In this radical new paradigm, robots areconceived and born, rather than designedand manufactured. Such robots will fundamentally change the concept of machines, showcasinga new breedthat can change their form and behaviour over time just like us.

For someone too nave to understand that bad things can happen in such scenarios, we suggest that Hart readThat Hideous Strengthand follow it up with C. S. Lewiss argument from reason (The Magicians Twin, Chapter 8). Her team is apparently having fun designing very simplistic body plans and brains with her 3-D printer. The real disappointment will come when AI teams of the future find out that machines have no desire or power to keep doing what their programmers told them to do. Perhaps they will go off in unexpected directions, like the brooms in TheSorcerers Apprentice sequence inFantasia, destroying things left and right and eliminating their own traits if they continue operating at all. Without foresight and mind, nothing requiring oversight will happen. Entropy will rule, as it must.

For more on this theme, listen to Robert J. Marks of Discovery Institutes Bradley Center onID the Future.

Read the rest here:
Futuristic Evolution by AI The Darwin Connection - Discovery Institute

Rendering of the Voyager Station with Approaching SpaceX StarshipImage: Voyager Station Newsroom (Fair Use)

Will people actually be staying in space hotels by 2027? Thats the promise of Orbital Assembly and Voyager Station, space startups that got a lot of headlines this week. But there are plenty of skeptics that space hotels could become a reality for Americans who are still waiting on universal healthcare.

The people behind Orbital Assembly and Voyager Station have a vision for tomorrow that includes plenty of space tourism, space manufacturing, and even orbiting space hotels for normal people like you and me. (Well, maybe not you and me exactly, but a version of you and me with a lot more money.) And they want to start construction on an orbiting space hotel by 2025, according to several news sites that broke the newsrecently.

But before you pack your bags, consider the past 60 years of identical promises that wed all be vacationing on the moon. Sadly, none of them have quite worked out.

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The proprietor of the 98 Hotel in Canadas Yukon territory took out an ad in the Whitehorse Star newspaper on April 26, 1962 promising that he was going to be one of the first hotel men with rooms available for rent on the moon.

Named for the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898, the 98 Hotel was operated by Chris Van Overen, who explained in his newspaper ad that the world had changed dramatically within his lifetime. The world had changed so much and so quickly, in fact, that he had complete confidence hed be opening a hotel on the moon one day soon.

From the newspaper ad:

No matter who gets to the moon first, Russia or the United States, (and I have a hunch it will be one of our Cape Canaveral astronauts) I intend to build the first hotel on the moon. Ill call it 98 Hotel II and it will have all the conveniences of the space age. Getting to the moon or building a hotel there is not as fantastic as it might sound. We are living in a world where the difficult is becoming the normal and todays impossibility will be tomorrows commonplace. We are living in a age of the unexpected and the improbably. Dont question it... live it!

The 98 Hotel still exists, but it doesnt look like theyre promising space travel anymore. Theyre just promising social distancing in an effort to keep people safe during the covid-19 pandemic.

In 1958, the Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago hosted a lavish indoor ice-skating show with an amazing finale, complete with a Hilton hotel on the moon. It was an idea that apparently stuck with the family, because Conrads son Barron Hilton told the Wall Street Journal in 1967 that he wanted to cut the ribbon on the first Hilton hotel on the moon.

Barron Hilton told the Journal that this spectacular dream would happen within his lifetime, something that might not have sounded so ludicrous during the age of Apollo. The hotel chain even started handing out promotional hotel keys that read Lunar Hilton in 1967 and 1968, along with reservation confirmations like the one above.

The fine print seems pretty important, obviously. Your accommodations were subject to confirmation for arrival after the year 1980.

It wasnt just hotel heirs who had the itch to put hotels in space. The Associated Press put out a syndicated article about space hotels in the summer of 1966, three years before humans would first set foot on the moon. And perhaps people of the 1960s can be forgiven for believing anything was possible when it came to the future of space travel.

The article called the concept of space hotels in a space city 1995-style, which is pretty funny when you remember what 1995 was actually like.

From the July 31, 1966 edition of the Sunday Home News in New Brunswick, New Jersey:

In 1995, a 4,000-man Space City is in orbit around the earthincluding a space hotel for tourists and a hospital to explore new areas of medical research. The moon, Mars and Venus are colonized by scientists.

[...]

The orbiting hotel is, of course, one of the most exclusive hotels in the world, travel costs being what they are. Its crowning glory is the world famous Starlight Room, which serves gourmet dinners under a naked view of the heavens.

The article went on to say that it wouldnt be cheap, even with the most optimistic of predictions. A three-week stay at this space hotel just a decade in the future (1975) would cost $200,000 per person, including transportation. And while that sounds like a lot of money here in 2021, its even more when you consider inflation. Spending $200,000 in 1966 is over $1.65 million in 2021 dollars.

The article promised that by 1995, things would surely be different and a reduction in price would be likely, since launch costs would come down by a factor of ten within the next 30 years.

The 1982 book, The Kids Whole Future Catalog, promised kids that theyd be able to visit space hotels by the far-out year 2002. And hotels wouldnt be anything special without a pool, especially when your audience is kids, so it makes sense that the book would feature a fictional letter bragging about the low-gravity pool.

From the book The Kids Whole Future Catalog:

April 16, 2002

Dear Susan,

We arrived at the space hotel yesterday, and the first thing I did was try out the swimming pool. It really is as much fun as everyone says, but the low gravity takes getting used to. Everything happens more slowly than usual - you feel as though youre part of a movie thats being show in slow motion. When you jump off the diving board, you can easily do two or three somersaults before you hit the water - and when you do go in, you leave a hole which takes a few seconds to fill up. The pool doesnt look anything like the ones on Earth. Its like an enormous barrel with water lining the inside. The barrel rotates very slowly, creating just enough force to keep the water pushed up against the sides. When youre in the pool, you can see water curving uphill and people swimming upside down overhead. As if that isnt strange enough, you can also see people floating through the air in the zero-g area at the center of the barrel. To get there, all you have to do is jump high off the diving board and flap your arms like wings. If you hold a paddle in each hand, its easier to steer. I want to tell you about all the other things Ive done, but there isnt time. Ill write again tomorrow.

Love, Jenny

Needless to say, we werent exactly floating in outer space in 2002. If you were an American, your world was likely inundated with the aftermath of the September 11 attacks the previous year. The country had already invaded Afghanistan under the theory that, despite not attacking the U.S. it was harboring terrorists, and the Bush administration was gearing up to invade Iraq under similarly faulty logic.

So, yeah, no space hotels in 2002.

In the year 2000, Robert Bigelow, a real estate tycoon and owner of Budget Suites, told reporters he was willing to gamble $500 million on building a space hotel. It was a bold promise and one that he would make again in 2009 and again in 2016 and again in 2018.

Well, you get the idea. Were, um, still waiting on Bigelows space hotels, much like the flying car that always seems just two years away.

Do you remember the strange world of 2018? A man named Trump was president, all those crazy kids were eating Tide pods, and you didnt have to wear a mask everywhere you went. Well, back in 2018, there was also the promise of a space hotel by 2021.

A startup called Orion Span promised to build something called Aurora Station which was supposed to be built by 2021 and serving hotel guests by 2022. The price was expensive, with 12-day trips starting at over $9 million, but no one expects the first space hotels to be cheap. The weird part, of course, is promising something so ambitious in such a short time period.

Orion tried to raise $2 million for its space hotel concept in 2019, but only raised $235,700, according to Space News. So it looks like theyre probably not going to make those deadlines of 2021 and 2022.

Of course, those are only the more earnest predictions and promises about vacations in outer space. There were plenty of other predictions from sci-fi movies and the like. The classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1967, has maybe the most famous depiction of space accommodations. And the first season of the Jetsons TV show in 1962 even told kids that space hotels were a certainty of the future.

Will Orbital Assembly be able to fulfill its promise of putting us in space hotels by the year 2027? We sure hope so. But consider us skeptical when things are crumbling here on Earth.

A new report about U.S. infrastructure gave the country a grade of C- from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Its hard to get people to invest in space hotels when you cant even provide reliable clean water to people here on our home planet.

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We've Been Promised These Futuristic Space Hotels for 60 Years - Gizmodo