Science of the Future
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
Alien signal or damp squib? Rio 2.0 scale promises to help judge
When a team of Russian astronomers reported in 2015 that a telescope in the Caucasus region had intercepted a mysterious ...
Viewpoint: Media’s misrepresentation of artificial intelligence could derail promising technology
In June of [2017], five researchers at Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Research unit published an article showing how bots can simulate ...
Less harmful sugar? More efficient sweet silica could ‘shake up’ the food industry
The surprising truth about cake is that it’s astonishingly inefficient. So are lollipops, pies, sticks of gum, and cookies, each ...
Viewpoint: Space colonization could be a really bad idea for humanity
[W]ould colonization of space lead to a dystopia? In a recent article in Futures, which was inspired by political scientist Daniel Deudney’s forthcoming ...
‘Rice 2.0’: GMO grain could neutralize HIV virus before it does any harm
An international team of researchers .... plans to fight HIV using only cereal; namely, rice. In a new paper, they ...
Would you watch a movie written and animated by artificial intelligence?
The next time you sit down to watch a movie, the algorithm behind your streaming service might recommend a blockbuster ...
Viewpoint: Stop worrying about intelligent robots taking all the jobs
The coming artificial intelligence revoloution will inevitably change the way the European workforce operates. How should policymakers prepare? ...
CRISPR-edited seeds ‘personalized’ for individual farms could boost worldwide food production
The seeds farmers plant in their fields can carry certain desirable traits, such as drought tolerance or pest resistance. Breeding ...
Live to 150? AI suggests it’s possible, but not without clearing huge ‘hurdles’
[Scientist Alex Zhavoronkov] firmly believes that aging research is the most important field of science right now. In the past, ...
Viewpoint: CRISPR-edited tomatoes illustrate our newfound power to ‘transform our food’
LIKE ANY SELF-RESPECTING farmer, Zachary Lippman was grumbling about the weather. Stout, with close-cropped hair and beard, Lippman was standing ...
Viewpoint: GMOs may be controversial, but bio-technology is creating a greener, cleaner world
Jason Kelly, founder of the microbe engineering company Ginkgo Bioworks, wants those who work in the often-contentious field of GMOs ...
Gene drives could speed up inheritance of certain beneficial traits in mammals, study finds
Researchers have used CRISPR, the genome editing tool, to speed the inheritance of specific genes in mammals for the first ...
Molecular pharming: Could cancer treatments one day grow on trees?
Could you imagine a world in which clinical treatments for illnesses such as cancer grew on trees? Professor Julian Ma ...
Don’t expect ‘instantaneous eureka moment’ in search for alien life
From War of the Worlds and Arrival to SETI and Stephen Hawking, both pop culture and scientists feed the expectation that the discovery of extraterrestrial life will ...
‘Farmbots’: Precision farming with agricultural robots could boost crop yields, cut chemical use
According to both the Government and farmers, the future of farming is one in which small robots will have a ...
Will we soon be able to regenerate limbs?
[Axolotl] salamanders stand out as the only vertebrates that can replace complex body parts that are lost at any age, ...
Could printable lungs solve transplant shortage?
[Recently] I had the chance to hold a replica of the upper part of a human airway—the windpipe plus the ...
Genetic beacon could detect ‘invasive scourge’ of stinkbugs before they ravage crops
If a farmer can grow it, a brown marmorated stinkbug can destroy it. This invasive scourge has ravaged apples, peaches, ...
Biosecurity dilemma: Should mega synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks be trusted to police its own industry?
Try as a nefarious actor might, it would be near impossible to order the ingredients for making a deadly virus ...
China embraces artificial intelligence-driven agriculture, emerges as global technology hothouse
China is facing a number of growing pains, but one in particular has proved more taxing than most: How can ...
From veganism to ‘post meat’ foods: The six varieties of meat substitutes
Civilians often clump the alternative meat companies and labs together in some kind of big meatless meatball, but, just like ...
Search for alien life gets boost from new NASA project
The ability to detect life on distant worlds still eludes us, but a new project coordinated by NASA now takes ...
Downside to ‘real AI’: Who wants to talk to a smart robot?
[On June 19, IBM] announced that it had brought us one step closer to “real AI” (an intelligence as smart as ...
Synthetic ‘skin’ could return pain sensations to users of prosthetic limbs
Current prosthetic limbs aren’t yet capable of transmitting complex sensations like texture or pain to the user, but a recent ...
Delving into the real danger of artificial intelligence
CEOs of artificial intelligence companies usually seek to minimize the threats posed by AI, rather than play them up. But ...
Want to be a cyborg? Here are 5 steps you can take
We’ve put together a list to introduce you to some of the most interesting products that can help you upgrade ...
Artificial intelligence that can predict the future—or at least a small piece of it
There’s an artificial intelligence system that can peer into the future and anticipate what you’re about to do. … [F]ortune-telling ...
