2018 – Page 23 – Impact Lab

Alternative Transportation, Automobiles, Aviation, Electric Vehicles, Transportation

How Uber is getting flying cars off the ground

October 4, 2018

It wants to fly you around cities as in the Jetsons, but there are still roadblocks to overcome before UberAir can take flight.

It’s 6 p.m. in Tokyo and my flying car is late. Three years late.

Back to the Future promised me flying cars (and hoverboards) by 2015. Yet here I am in 2018, standing in one of the world’s most high-tech cities and I have to walk. I don’t even get to do it in self-lacing shoes.

I’m in Tokyo for Uber Elevate, Uber’s third conference outlining its plans to get flying cars off the silver screen and into our skies in as little as two years. It’s a lofty ambition, but Uber has partnered with some big names in aviation and picked up its share of NASA alumni to help it get there.

The goal? UberAir. A future transport network in which air travel is as easy and on-demand as Uber rides are now. As simple as “push a button, get a flight.”

Continue reading… “How Uber is getting flying cars off the ground”

China, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Science & Technology News

My career as an international blood smuggler

October 4, 2018

For years, Kathleen McLaughlin smuggled American plasma every time she entered China, home to the world’s largest and deadliest blood debacle. She had no other choice.

I started my decade-long turn as an international blood smuggler in 2004 with a mundane task: packing. I gently stacked a dozen half-liter glass vials into two soft-sided picnic coolers. The bottles held the components of a syrupy mix, a powerful medicine made from the immune system particles collected from thousands of people. A nurse would infuse the syrup into my veins, a treatment to keep my immune system under control, to halt its potentially paralyzing attacks on my nerves.

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Aviation, Law Enforcement, Legal Issues, Legalized marijuana

You can bring your weed to the LA airport now

October 3, 2018

LAX is totally cool with passengers packing it in their carry-ons—but if it’s illegal where you land, that’s on you.

It looks like travelers in Los Angeles won’t have to cram their weed inside balled-up socks or stash it in their ibuprofen bottles next time they fly—because LAX is totally chill about bringing pot into the airport now, ABC 13 reports.

This week, Los Angeles International Airport posted a new marijuana policy on its website, announcing that LAX and the LAPD will now let people stroll onto their flights carrying cannabis, as long as it’s under the legal limit.

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Amazon.com, facebook, Google, Internet

Exclusive: Tim Berners-Lee tells us his radical new plan to upend the World Wide Web

October 3, 2018

With an ambitious decentralized platform, the father of the web hopes it’s game on for corporate tech giants like Facebook and Google.

Last week, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, asked me to come and see a project he has been working on almost as long as the web itself. It’s a crisp autumn day in Boston, where Berners-Lee works out of an office above a boxing gym. After politely offering me a cup of coffee, he leads us into a sparse conference room. At one end of a long table is a battered laptop covered with stickers. Here, on this computer, he is working on a plan to radically alter how all of us live and work on the web.

“The intent is world domination,” Berners-Lee says with a wry smile. The British-born scientist is known for his dry sense of humor. But in this case, he is not joking.

Continue reading… “Exclusive: Tim Berners-Lee tells us his radical new plan to upend the World Wide Web”

Architecture, Climate Change, Great New Product, Green Friendly, Inventions

This super-reflective coating keeps buildings cool so we don’t need as much AC

October 3, 2018

Buildings are already being painted white to help keep them cool. As temperatures increase, this new addition to the paint could help lower our massive air conditioning energy use.

One of the ironies of climate change is that as heat waves become more common, people use more air conditioning–and those air conditioners help drive more climate change, and make things hotter. By the middle of the century, as more people around the world can afford air conditioners, the number of units could more than triple and end up using as much electricity as China uses today for its entire economy.

Continue reading… “This super-reflective coating keeps buildings cool so we don’t need as much AC”

Culture, Healthcare, Home Technology, Robots

Culturally sensitive robots are here to care for the elderly

October 2, 2018

Humans are living longer, healthier lives. That’s great, but there’s a downside — the growing elderly population requires an entire industry of (expensive) caregivers, and we’ll likely need even more of them in the future.

Care robots might be able to do some of that work. Researchers suspect robots could help elderly people with everything from staying active to remembering their medications. Now researchers in Europe and Japan are working to make sure those robots don’t offend the people they’re supposed to take care of — they’re making what they say are the world’s first robots with a sense of cultural norms.

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Biotech, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Solar Power, Wearables

Japan’s new solar-powered “Second Skin” device revolutionizes wearable tech

October 2, 2018

It looks more like a band-aid than a watch.

Advances in wearable tech have been pretty impressive lately, but the device described in a new Nature study blows the competition out of the water. While the Apple Watch is now equipped with an FDA-approved EKG sensor and companies like Samsung are going out of their way to make smartwatches look like fashion statements, the device described in the paper, published Wednesday, puts both to shame. This heart-sensing device has no wires, requires no charging, and is so small that it can wrap around a rat’s heart.

Study co-author Kenjiro Fukuda, Ph.D., a research scientist at Japan’s RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science is quick to say that his device represents a big step forward for wearables. It looks more like a band-aid than a watch, and it’s thinner than a piece of cardboard.

Continue reading… “Japan’s new solar-powered “Second Skin” device revolutionizes wearable tech”

Health & Fitness, Human Behavior, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints

The ‘blood boy’ clinic is coming to NYC so rich people can live forever

October 2, 2018

The way Dr. Jesse Karmazin sees it, New York City needs some fresh blood.

It’s been over a year since we last heard from the physician behind Ambrosia LLC, the company hoping to reverse aging by pumping adults with the blood plasma of the young, but don’t think for a second that Karmazin’s been sitting still. Far from it.

Karmazin confirmed today over email that he plans to transform what was once a clinical trial running out of Monterey, California, into a full-fledged New York City-based clinic offering that most elusive of products: youth.

And you’d better believe it will cost you.

Continue reading… “The ‘blood boy’ clinic is coming to NYC so rich people can live forever”

Latest Trend, Legalized marijuana, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

The next big thing in cannabis? Terpenes

October 1, 2018

The future of the industry is all in the nose.

Looking for a new angle to approach the cannabis business? While medical and lifestyle entrepreneurs have been honing in on the active cannabinoids, like THC and CBD, it turns out the real soul of the plant has been right under our noses.

Terpenes are the future of cannabis. These organic, aromatic compounds exist naturally in the essential oils of all plants — they’re what give herbs, flowers, and fruits their signature aromas. But terpenes are also the specific reason why various strains of cannabis affect the body and mind in subtly different ways.

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Analysis, Children, DNA

In the 23 and Me era, kids of sperm donors are finding each other

October 1, 2018

Imaging discovering you have a half-sibling you’ve never met—or dozens of them. Customers of genetic-information services are uncovering family secrets, and then using social networks to make connections..

When you use 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature, you get a message cautioning you that the information you’re about to see could be unexpected. For Danny-J Johnson, that couldn’t have been more of an understatement.

Continue reading… “In the 23 and Me era, kids of sperm donors are finding each other”

Biotech, Engineering, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

Two people with paralysis walk again using an implanted device

October 1, 2018

‘It was like watching fireworks, but from the inside’

After Kelly Thomas’ truck flipped with her inside of it in 2014, she was told that she probably would never walk again. Now, with help from a spinal cord implant that she’s nicknamed “Junior,” Thomas is able to walk on her own.

Thomas and Jeff Marquis, who was paralyzed after a mountain biking accident, can now independently walk again after participating in a study at the University of Louisville that was published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Thomas’ balance is still off and she needs a walker, but she can walk a hundred yards across grass. She also gained muscle and lost the nerve pain in her foot that has persisted since her accident. Another unnamed person with a spinal cord injury can now independently step across the ground with help from a trainer, according to a similar study at the Mayo Clinic that was also published today in the journal Nature Medicine.

Continue reading… “Two people with paralysis walk again using an implanted device”

Analysis, Employment, Latest Trend

Report: Millennials, Boomers prefer flexible work schedules

September 30, 2018

BOULDER – A new report from FlexJobs shows Millennials, Baby Boomers and other workers place a high value on job flexibility.

Based on responses from more than 3,000 workers in an August survey, the report revealed that work flexibility was very important to all groups.

“Although the generations are interested in work flexibility for different reasons, one thing is clear: they all place a high value on work flexibility, with particular emphasis on telecommuting options,” said Sara Sutton, founder and CEO of FlexJobs.

Continue reading… “Report: Millennials, Boomers prefer flexible work schedules”