AI, Automation, Employment, Robots, Science & Technology News

Are robots eating our jobs? Not according to AI

6E8753E8-EE8E-41DA-A1A2-C845EDE44F5F

Automation has been gradually transforming the workplace for years (think Excel spreadsheets or chatbots). As artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and deep learning systems that can learn from each other become more prevalent and smarter (think Alexa or IBM Watson), they continue to replace more manual, repetitive job tasks. Consequently, automation and robots are changing more jobs globally at breakneck speed.

A McKinsey Global Institute report suggests that between 400 million to 800 million jobs worldwide will be lost due to automation by 2030. The report claims that the U.S. could lose between 16 to 54 million jobs by 2030. The pace at which robots are entering our workforce is staggering. Oxford Economics expects robots and automation to replace 20 million (8.5%) global manufacturing jobs by 2030.

Keep in mind that these predictions came before anyone predicted the Covid-19 pandemic or its impact on our workforce. The pandemic has made the need for digital transformation and automation more urgent as the critical need to work from home, physical distancing and contactless become the new normal.

Continue reading… “Are robots eating our jobs? Not according to AI”

Analysis, brains, Health & Fitness, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The surprising upsides of worrying

 88EC81AB-A29D-471D-AFAB-E8A6A981FF63

Anxiety can be exhausting, but there is often a reason for it – and there are some surprising benefits to certain kinds of worrying.

“I’m a near-professional worrier,” admits Kate Sweeny ruefully. She’s struggled for much of her life with anxiety over things she can’t entirely control – including, these days, whether her parents are following social-distancing guidance during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A constant hum of low-grade worry affects many people, but what’s distinct about Sweeny is that it partly motivated her career choices. As a health psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, she specialises in understanding worry and stress.

“Not everybody uses their own life as fodder for research,” she laughs, but she’s found inspiration in her own experiences. One of her surprising findings has been that worrying can be beneficial in a variety of situations, from waiting for exam results to safeguarding health.

Continue reading… “The surprising upsides of worrying”

Agriculture, Farming, Legalized marijuana, Science & Technology News

Groundbreaking for a one-of-a-kind hemp processing plant in Fort Benton

 DE72F11C-8B44-4165-8386-A55104EDCA89

FORT BENTON — Thursday was a big day in Fort Benton as the mayor, a U.S. senator, and hemp farmers broke ground on a new facility – the first of its kind in the nation.

 Employees of the industrial hemp company IND HEMP were joined by Fort Benton Mayor Rick Morris and Democratic U.S. Senator Jon Tester for the ceremony, which marked the opening of the nation’s first scaled hemp decortication and fiber processing plant. The Chouteau County town, with around 1,500 residents, gained national attention for the opening event.

“Stuff like this just doesn’t come along for rural Montana,” said Morris. “It’s a big deal for Fort Benton.”

Continue reading… “Groundbreaking for a one-of-a-kind hemp processing plant in Fort Benton”

Battery, Coronavirus, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

LG unveils a battery-powered air purifier you strap to your face

 27AA650A-4F5E-45A6-9D27-2C4001D10E5E

LG is releasing a face-mounted, battery-powered air purifier

Korean electronics giant LG has adapted its home air purifying technology into a battery-powered, air purifying face mask with twin H13 HEPA filters, multi-speed fans and a UV-LED sterilizing case. But there’s still a lot we don’t know.

The PuriCare Wearable Air Purifier, as LG is calling it, appears quite a remarkable device. It straps to the face with straps behind the ears like a regular face mask, but carries an 820-mAh battery to run an active air filtration and purification system for up to eight hours on low mode and two hours on high.

Continue reading… “LG unveils a battery-powered air purifier you strap to your face”

Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Rejuvenating old organs could increase donor pool

93CB8473-70FE-4084-AE25-986243B1DF30

Despite the limited supply of organs available for patients on waitlists for transplantation, organs from older, deceased donors are frequently discarded or not utilized.

Available older organs have the potential to close the gap between demand and supply that is responsible for the very long wait-times that lead to many patients not surviving the time it takes for an organ to become available.

Older organs can also often provoke a stronger immune response and may put patients at greater risk of adverse outcomes and transplant rejection. But, as the world population ages, organs from older, deceased donors represent an untapped and growing resource for patients in need. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital are leading efforts to breathe new life into older organs by leveraging a new class of drugs known as senolytics, which target and eliminate old cells.

Using clinical and experimental studies, the team presents evidence that senolytic drugs may help rejuvenate older organs, which could lead to better outcomes and a wider pool of organs eligible for donation. Results are published in Nature Communications.

“Older organs are available and have the potential to contribute to mitigating the current demand for organ transplantation,” said corresponding author Stefan G. Tullius, MD, Ph.D., chief of the Division of Transplant Surgery at the Brigham. “If we can utilize older organs in a safe way with outcomes that are comparable, we will take a substantial step forward for helping patients.”

Continue reading… “Rejuvenating old organs could increase donor pool”

Automation, Automobiles, Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

Sometime soon, your car will park itself in urban garages

C1D5D20A-236D-47BE-85E8-C305B7348D7C

A Ford Escape automatically stops as a pedestrian crosses in front during a self park demonstration, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020 in Detroit.

Ford, Bosch and real estate company Bedrock are teaming up to test technology that will let vehicles park by themselves in parking decks. The companies are testing the technology using floor-mounted sensors and computers that can control mainly existing features in the Ford Escape.

They say the technology is likely to arrive before widespread use of fully autonomous vehicles because sensors and computers inside parking decks can be used.

Continue reading… “Sometime soon, your car will park itself in urban garages”

Big Problems, Coronavirus, Higher Education, Science & Technology News

The Economic Model of Higher Education Was Already Broken. Here’s Why the Pandemic May Destroy It for Good

Virus Outbreak-Ohio Schools

Logan Armstrong, a Cincinnati junior, works while sitting inside a painted circle on the lawn of the Oval during the first day of fall classes on at Ohio State University on Aug. 25, 2020.

Karabell is an author, investor, and commentator. He is the president of River Twice Research. His forthcoming book is Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power.

With the fall semester upon us, colleges and universities unveiled their plans for students—and many are just as quickly upending those plans. The University of North Carolina and Notre Dame recently announced they were changing their on campus plans as COVID-19 cases spiked. Many other universities are sure to follow. Already, universities ranging from Syracuse to Ohio State are suspending hundreds of students for violating social distancing rules, while COVID-19 outbreaks are on the rise on campuses such as the University of Alabama. While there is considerable variety in the actual plans, ranging from mostly in-person to all virtual, they all share one imperative: to maintain an economic model that is as imperiled by the pandemic as the hardest hit service industries.

Continue reading… “The Economic Model of Higher Education Was Already Broken. Here’s Why the Pandemic May Destroy It for Good”

Nanotechnology, new technology, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Army of a million microscopic robots created to explore on tiny scale

BC737CBC-5605-4ADB-8467-7CF1B61A165E

Artist’s rendition of an array of microscopic robots

 A troop of a million walking robots could enable scientific exploration at a microscopic level.

Researchers have developed microscopic robots before, but they weren’t able to move by themselves, says Marc Miskin at the University of Pennsylvania. That is partly because of a lack of micrometre-scale actuators – components required for movement, such as the bending of a robot’s legs.

Miskin and his colleagues overcame this by developing a new type of actuator made of an extremely thin layer of platinum. Each robot uses four of these tiny actuators as legs, connected to solar cells on its back that enable the legs to bend in response to laser light and propel their square metallic bodies forwards.

Continue reading… “Army of a million microscopic robots created to explore on tiny scale”

2020 Predictions, Analysis, Coronavirus, Entertainment, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The Event Industry is being confronted by its Napster moment

CE080BC8-3C7D-465F-8C70-364726CBD754

All types of business events are in danger of their revenue streams of tickets, sponsorships, memberships, and other types of fees being eroded. This is happening as the world gets used to digital formats and alternatives emerge to physical networking, matchmaking, and other tasks we get out of these events. The threat sounds familiar?

 

I won’t bury the headline: the vast, global events industry is going through its Napster moment through this pandemic, and is in denial on what this will do to it.

Everything about the underlying economics of this sprawling, diverse, chaotic and highly profitable sector is being undercut by the move to virtual, and 2019 may be the year where the industry’s revenues peaked. This year could be the event industry’s 2000 moment à la what happened to the music industry.

I was there during the music industry’s Napster moment in late ’90s, a cub reporter covering the vast promise of early internet, and wrote hundreds of stories about what happened to labels and the economic structure of music industry and music acts. I wrote about the atomization of the album into singles and the download boom with rise of Apple’s iTunes, and then the start of the streaming boom that led to Spotify and others since.

Continue reading… “The Event Industry is being confronted by its Napster moment”

DNA, Genes, Health & Fitness, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Body fat transformed by CRISPR gene editing helps mice keep weight off

 1EADAD0E-F41D-42CD-AD4B-AE3A61699229

A 3D illustration of brown fat cells, which both burn and store energy

 White fat cells can be turned into energy-burning brown fat using CRISPR gene-editing technology. These engineered cells have helped mice avoid weight gain and diabetes when on a high-fat diet, and could eventually be used to treat obesity-related disorders, say the researchers behind the work.

Human adults have plenty of white fat, the cells filled with lipid that make up fatty deposits. But we have much smaller reserves of brown fat cells, which burn energy as well as storing it. People typically lose brown fat as they age or put on weight. While brown fat seems to be stimulated when we are exposed to cold temperatures, there are no established methods of building up brown fat in the body.

Yu-Hua Tseng at Harvard University and her colleagues have developed a workaround. The researchers have used the CRISPR gene-editing tool to give human white fat cells the properties of brown fat.

Continue reading… “Body fat transformed by CRISPR gene editing helps mice keep weight off”

Coronavirus, Employment, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

The office, as you know it, is dead

103C7EB5-8EEF-463A-BE77-6B54EB07AF96

 Plexiglass, masks, warning signs: Is this the office of the future?

 New York (CNN Business)Bustling skyscrapers and office parks packed with workers could be a relic of the pre-pandemic world.

The health crisis has forced millions of Americans to abandon their offices in favor of working from home, for better or worse. Now there are signs this may not be a short-term phenomenon, but more of a permanent shift in favor of remote work even after a Covid-19 vaccine is in place.

More than two-thirds (68%) of large company CEOs plan to downsize their office space, according to a survey released Tuesday by KPMG.

Continue reading… “The office, as you know it, is dead”

Discover the Hidden Patterns of Tomorrow with Futurist Thomas Frey
Unlock Your Potential, Ignite Your Success.

By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.

Learn More about this exciting program.