Toggle light / dark theme

Rejuvenation challenges the status quo, but that’s only good.


One of the reasons why the idea of rejuvenating people isn’t all that easy to sell is that it challenges the status quo. For good or bad, we’re used to the fact that our health goes south on us as time goes by, ultimately killing us if nothing else does.

That’s not a nice certainty to have, but our species is one of planners; we tend to prefer bad certainties to uncertainty. For example, some people want to be certain that, at some point, they won’t be fit for work anymore and will need to retire; they prefer this over the uncertainty of not knowing how they’d make a living at age 150.

That’s not the only reason. Radical change requires radical rethinking of anything affected by the change itself; as rejuvenation would affect our social contracts, the job market, future planning, our idea of life milestones, of family, what it means to be old, and many other things, it would take a lot of rethinking—which is something humanity generally does only grudgingly and on its own sweet time.

Read more

Ready-made snap-together solar panels that turn waste heat into hot water are being developed at Brunel University London in a £10 million sustainable energy scheme starting next month.

With energy use in buildings predicted to double or even triple by 2050, and most home energy used to heat water, project PVadapt promises to crack several sustainable energy problems at once.

Funded by Horizon 2020, the three and a half-year multi-disciplinary project aims to perfect a flexible solar powered renewable energy system that generates both heat from and electricity.

Read more

TRULY SUPER. There’s a reason researchers call graphene a “super material.” Even though it’s just a single layer of carbon atoms thick, it’s super strong, super flexible, and super light. It also conducts electricity, and is biodegradable. Now an international team of researchers has found a way to use the super material: to create artificial retinas.

They presented their work Monday at a meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

ARTIFICIAL RETINAS. The retina is the layer of light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye responsible for converting images into impulses that the brain can interpret. And without a functional one, a person simply can’t see.

Read more

Ryff has a big idea that it says could turn the $23 billion product placement market upside down. Product placement is the advertising tactic of placing a branded object, like a bottle of Coca-Cola, in a scene in a movie or a TV show.

Los Angeles-based Ryff has figured out how to do this digitally with cloud technology. Ryff figures out the places in video content where virtual objects can be placed in a scene where they seem like they are a natural part of the environment. That means the objects have to be rendered realistically enough so they can be mistaken for being part of a real scene, as recorded in a movie or TV show or a commercial, said Roy Taylor, CEO of Ryff, at an event on Thursday evening.

“We are on a new platform that makes images intelligent,” Taylor said. “Ryff is the world’s first image technology company using AI and visual computing to change the way we experience entertainment.”

Read more