3D Printer, Big Problems, Hot Issues, Legal Issues

3D printed guns are now legal… What’s next?

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On Tuesday, July 10, the DOJ announced a landmark settlement with Austin-based Defense Distributed, a controversial startup led by a young, charismatic anarchist whom Wired once named one of the 15 most dangerous people in the world.

Hyper-loquacious and media-savvy, Cody Wilson is fond of telling any reporter who’ll listen that Defense Distributed’s main product, a gun fabricator called the Ghost Gunner, represents the endgame for gun control, not just in the US but everywhere in the world. With nothing but the Ghost Gunner, an internet connection, and some raw materials, anyone, anywhere can make an unmarked, untraceable gun in their home or garage. Even if Wilson is wrong that the gun control wars are effectively over (and I believe he is), Tuesday’s ruling has fundamentally changed them.

Continue reading… “3D printed guns are now legal… What’s next?”

Analysis, Healthcare, Inventions, Medicine

These mind-blowing images of the human body were made by a new kind of scanner

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Phil and Anthony Butler aren’t just father and son. The physics professor and bioengineering professor (respectively) are also business partners. And this week, their company, MARS Bioimaging, unveiled a first-of-its-kind x-ray scanner 10 years in the making.

First, a quick recap of how x-ray imaging works. When x-rays travel through your body, they’re absorbed by denser materials (bones) and pass right through softer ones (muscles and other tissues). The x-rays that pass through unimpeded hit a film on the opposite side of your body. These show up as areas of solid black. The places where the x-rays couldn’t pass through appear solid white.

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Biotech, Cancer, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Scientists just found a novel, cheap way to use CRISPR gene editing to fight cancer

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Immunotherapy Holds Big Promise for Beating Cancer

CRISPR is by all accounts a fascinating technology. Its headline feature is that it can literally be used to slice, dice, and otherwise manipulate the body’s genetic code—functions that could carry staggering implications for treating everything from inherited disorders to cancer to HIV/AIDS one day.

Now, new (though extremely early) research suggests that CRISPR could be used to vastly improve upon a new form of cancer-fighting methods that turn the body’s own immune T cells into specially targeted killers that attack cancerous tissue.

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Amazon.com, Analysis, Latest Trend, Shopping

Amazon, Alibaba and Nike all point to the next innovation in retail: Personalized physical spaces

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Last week I wrote a piece entitled, “Amazon Go Means Goodbye Status Quo.” The piece not only heaped praise on Amazon but also highlighted how Amazon Go, over the long-run, is about far more than the mere buzzwords of “checkout-free shopping.” The thesis is that if one studies Amazon Go closely, he or she will see that it already hints at the next great innovation in retail history: the personalized physical store.

While I expected and even predicted the news back in February that Amazon would roll out more stores this year, I did not expect, in less than one week from publishing this most recent Go piece, that new activities would emerge that would validate this thesis even further.

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Analysis, Automation, Robotics, Robots

America’s robot geography

A Lynx robot with Amazon Alexa integration is on display at the Robotics Marketplace at CES in Las Vegas

Robots, it seems, are everywhere these days. They clean our floors, mow our lawns, make many of our industrial products, and are even being trained to give hugs and serve as pets. As robots increasingly become a part of our daily lives, a growing chorus of commentators warns that they may take away our jobs and further damage the once great Rust Belt cities that once powered the American economy and served as the backbone of the middle class.

But which cities and regions will house the robot revolution? Will the rise of robotics correct or reinforce America’s growing spatial inequality?

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Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Medicine, New Discoveries

These anti-aging pills seem to be actually working

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Pills hailed as the first real “anti-aging” drugs inched a little closer to the market after a study found they cut the number of respiratory infections in the elderly by half.

The drugs: The pills act on an aging-related pathway called TORC1. Inhibiting this pathway “has extended life span in every species studies to date,” according to Joan Mannick, who led the study for drug giant Novartis. Those species include mice and worms.

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Automation, Employment, Latest Trend, Robotics, Science & Technology News

Robots will lead to more human trafficking, slavery, report says

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Tens of millions of workers could lose their jobs to automation, particularly in southeast Asia, over the next 20 years.

Garment workers among those most at risk of losing their jobs, finding few low-skill alternatives and facing exploitation, according to the Verisk Maplecroft report.

The rise of robot manufacturing will dramatically alter the labor market in southeast Asia and result in a spike in human trafficking, slavery and other labor abuses, according to a report released Thursday.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Economy, Employment

How artificial intelligence could kill capitalism

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If you believe the hype, then Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to change the world in dramatic ways soon. Nay-sayers claim it will lead to, at best, rising unemployment and civil unrest, and at worst, the eradication of humanity. Advocates, on the other hand, are telling us to look forward to a future of leisure and creativity as robots take care of the drudgery and routine.

A third camp – probably the largest – are happy to admit that the forces of change which are at work are too complicated to predict and, for the moment, everything is up in the air. Previous large-scale changes to the way we work (past industrial revolutions) may have been disruptive in the short-term. However, in the long term what happened was a transfer of labor from countryside to cities, and no lasting downfall of society.

However, as author Calum Chace points out in his latest book ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Two Singularities’ this time there’s one big difference. Previous industrial revolutions involved replacing human mechanical skills with tools and machinery. This time it’s our mental functions which are being replaced – particularly our ability to make predictions and decisions. This is something which has never happened before in human history, and no one exactly knows what to expect.

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Current Events, Entertainment, Games

The first Fortnite World Cup with $100 million in prize money is happening in 2019

Qualifiers start later this year, and anyone can participate.

Epic Games announced more details about its e-sports plans for Fortnite, revealing today during its live celebrity-streamer ProAm tournament in Los Angeles during E3 that the competitions will all be part of what’s called the Fortnite World Cup. The prize pool, first announced earlier this year, will be $100 million. It will be spread out over a number of different “organized events, online events, and major organized competitions all over the world,” reads the developer’s blog post.

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Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Inventions, Medicine

CERN chip enables first 3D color X-ray images of the human body

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Using CERN technology, Mars Bioimaging has created the first 3D, color X-ray images of the human body.

Medical X-ray scans have long been stuck in the black-and-white, silent-movie era. Sure, the contrast helps doctors spot breaks and fractures in bones, but more detail could help pinpoint other problems. Now, a company from New Zealand has developed a bioimaging scanner that can produce full color, three dimensional images of bones, lipids, and soft tissue, thanks to a sensor chip developed at CERN for use in the Large Hadron Collider.

Mars Bioimaging, the company behind the new scanner, describes the leap as similar to that of black-and-white to color photography. In traditional CT scans, X-rays are beamed through tissue and their intensity is measured on the other side. Since denser materials like bone attenuate (weaken the energy) of X-rays more than soft tissue does, their shape becomes clear as a flat, monochrome image.

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Big Problems, communication, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior

Endangered Languages: Why do they face extinction?

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Portrait of a Warrior Asmat tribe in traditional headdress.

By definition, endangered languages are those that are facing extinction in the future. Several languages are not being used and are replaced by languages that are widely spoken in various countries and regions. If the trends are not reversed, the next century will see a few more of them becoming extinct.

Many older languages only have very few speakers since they are no longer taught or learned by younger people. When the last speakers of endangered languages die, the languages die with them, unless there are efforts to revive the language.

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Alternative Transportation, Aviation, Breakthrough Thinking, Engineering, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Flying trains could be coming your way

French firm has designed an airplane with removable wings.

It’s presenting plane to Boeing, Asia to cut Europe dependence.

It sounds like something Q, the tech guy in James Bond movies, would create: A plane that lands on a runway, shrugs its wings off, turns into a train and rolls on to rails to drop you off at your local station.

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