Ramez Naam makes the point that futurists need to follow what real human nature is and the economics of technology. Ramez provides useful perspective in the video below. * prosaic current actions for improvement are ignored and underestimated (exercise, learning a new skill are choices that can be made that improve more than any drug …
the U.S. Census Bureau today projected that on Jan. 1, 2014, the United States population will be 317,297,938. This represents an increase of 2,218,622, or 0.7 percent, from New Year’s Day 2013. In January 2014, one birth is expected to occur every 8 seconds in the United States and one death every 12 seconds. The …
China’s May exports rose 1 percent from a year earlier, down from 14.7 percent in April, while imports dropped 0.3 percent from a year earlier. The median estimates of analysts were for 7.4 percent export growth and 6.6 percent import gains. The $20.4 billion trade surplus compared with forecasts for $20 billion. The slowdown in …
Arxiv (32 pages)- The OPERA neutrino experiment at the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory has measured the velocity of neutrinos from the CERN CNGS beam over a baseline of about 730 km with much higher accuracy than previous studies conducted with accelerator neutrinos. The measurement is based on high-statistics data taken by OPERA in the years …
Sossina Haile and William Chueh next to the benchtop thermochemical reactor used to screen materials for implementation on the solar reactor. This is a follow up to prior coverage on this project to make fuel from sunlight California Institute of Technology (Caltech) are using a common metal most famously found in self-cleaning ovens to change …
Ben Goertzel has finished writing the last chapter of his co-authored two-volume book on how to create beneficial human-level AGI, Building Better Minds (expected 2011 publish date) This site had an interview by Sander Olson of Ben Goertzel last year The last chapter describes, in moderate detail, how the CogPrime cognitive architecture (implemented in the …
Robin Hanson forecasting the next mode of growth. Mode Doubling Date Began Doubles Doubles Grows Time (DT) To Dominate of DT of WP ———- ——— ———– —— ——- Brain size 34M yrs 550M B.C. ? “~16” Hunters 230K yrs 2000K B.C. 7.2 8.7 Farmers 860 yrs 4700 B.C. 8.1 7.5 ?? 58 yrs 1730 3.9 …
Previously this site had speculated on using current and in development technology to create a Bolo supertank from science fiction. From Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends : Caterpillar engineers and computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up to develop an autonomous 700 ton mining truck. The super-large mining truck was a baseline from which …
One day soon a biosensing nanodevice developed by Arizona State University researcher Wayne Frasch may eliminate long lines at airport security checkpoints and revolutionize health screenings for diseases like anthrax, cancer and antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Frasch works with the enzyme F1-adenosine triphosphatase, better known as F1- ATPase. This enzyme, only 10 to 12 …