Nervecentre

Banana Apocalypse

In case you didn't know, the banana - that tasty fruit we enjoy in smoothies, with breakfast or as a snack - could be on the way out.  A fungal blight is slowly destroying the worlds most favourite fruit.

Some scientists are looking at ways to save the banana, but others say it could be too late for the yellow-skinned wonder.

So, if indeed we are living in the dying days of the banana, we must make the most of it before it is confined to the extinction bin of history.

If we do lose it, it won't be powering Aussie homes, helping to prevent eye disease, helping to prevent stroke, and helping to reduce blood pressure.

Let's hope someone somewhere can save the banana.

How to Fix Global Warning

Apparently it might be possible to fix global warming by building a 600,000 sq. mile space mirror.

The fact that George Bush has always been sceptical of scientific evidence that climate change is taking place makes it all the more surprising that David Keith was summoned to the White House in 2001 by the President's Climate Change Technology Program.

Keith and more than two dozen other scientists were asked to join a round table discussion entitled "Response Options to Rapid or Severe Climate Change". Somewhat strange when you consider the administrations constant refuting of scientific evidence.

The article discusses several ways of dealing with all that excess CO2. For example;

1. Store it underground
2. Filter it from the air
3. Fertilize the ocean
4. Turn it to stone
5. Enhance clouds to reflect sunlight
6. Deflect sunlight with a space mirror

Hmm.

It's all very well suggesting these things but Nervecentre can't help but wonder where all this tinkering might lead. After all, there's a very real danger that we might trigger a global mass extinction if we raise global temperatures higher than 5 degrees C.

Source: Popular Science

Zombie Dogs

Zombie dogs.

It sounds like the title of a Hollywood horror flick. Zombie Dogs. And it might make for an interesting spin on the standard zombie horror fare, perhaps with werewolves too. But this isn't about Hollywood movies. This is about real life.

Scientists have reanimated dogs who have been dead for several hours and brought them back to life. The research was conducted to investigate a way too find out if suspended animation might be possible in humans.

What the scientists do is drain the blood from the dog's body and then replace it with an ice-cold salt solution. The animals are considered to be clinically dead as they have no heart beat, brain activity or breathing.

Three hours after this intitial process, the animals blood is replaced and they are brought back to life with an electric shock to the heart.

It is thought that humans will be used in trials of the technology within a year. So expect to see the shocking headlines then. It might be considered to be one of the first great scientific breakthroughs of the 21st century.

The process puts the animal into suspended animation and its applications could be as far reaching as saving the lives of war casualties and stabbing victims to road accident victims and future space travellers.

Unlike bodies put into suspension cryonically with liquid nitrogen, the new technique leaves organs, blood vessels and tissue undamaged through freezing. Any damaged blood vessels or tissue can be repaired after revival.

Tests show that after revival, the dogs are perfectly normal and demonstrate no sign of any brain damage.

So, even though Zombie Dogs might not be a Hollywood movie anytime soon, the worlds of the movies Re-Animator and Coma have just taken a quantum leap closer to the present.

Is She Faking It? Or Can't She Help Herself?

The female orgasm.

What an interesting subject. If you're a bloke, you'll never know what a female orgasm feels like as a physical experience. Et vice versa.

But don't be too despondent. The wonderful world of science is shedding more light on these matters and revealing stuff that we didn't know.

Scientists have noticed the female brain switches off the centre of emotion when the female climaxes. Interesting results, but the test was not conclusive and further tests are needed before the case is proven.(Or are the pervy scientists just looking for an excuse?)

Source: New Scientist

Mobile Phone Cancer Risks

Italian scientists are conducting a unique experiment with rats in the basement of a castle.

The scientists are looking to find a link between artificial electromagnetic radiation (mobile phones and mobile phone masts, power lines, etc) and cancer. It is has been suspected that there might be a link for decades but no conclusive empirical proof has been forthcoming.

The work is important for a number of reasons. It should answer, once and for all, the many questions surrounding the issue. The rats being used are very similar in biology to human beings. They have an almost exact baseline cancer incidence and, like humans, have a propensity for cancer to run in families, or genetically.

As our culture becomes more technological, the need for more electromagnetic transmissions increases. If it is proven there is a link, then the pace or growth of this technology may lessen, or even grind to a halt. The implications and choices that a link might present could involve some tough, stark choices regarding our future development as a technological society.

The study will have been completed in less than 12 months and the scientific evidence will be announced in around 4 years time.

Source: Guardian

Wormholes May Not Be Viable, Say Scientists

That staple of the science fiction genre - the wormhole - might not be as viable a method of space travel as scientists originally thought. I wont go into the
technicalities as they are mindboggling.

Source: BBC

Human Immortality By 2050

Britain's leading thinker on the future has revealed some truly revelatory predictions about our immediate future. The mindboggling crystal ball-like analysis of the 21st century is, when taken at face value, shocking, disturbing and exciting.

The thinker - Ian Pearson, head of futurology at BT - has predicted that aeroplanes will be controlled by highly advanced computers that will have AI that mimicks human fear. He predicts that this could be programmed so that the computer would be more fearful of crashing than any of the plane passengers. Reason enough, I think, for such programming to exist, but, if a computer is approaching, or at, human level intelligence, who is to say it is right to programme such an entity to be living in a constant state of fear? And if it could be programmed to be fearful, might it not also be in danger of feeling panic?

Pearson's most startling pronouncement is that, by 2050, immortality will be effectively achieved by way of people uploading their minds into supercomputers. Of course, to the layman, this probably sounds absolutely ridiculous, but those of us that have more understanding of this know that it is an extremely probable scenario.

I am sure there will be plenty of people wanting to continue on with their lives, and discard their old, withering bodies for the freedom of an existence in a virtual world, or perhaps a way of returning to the real world through, say, cloning of their original body and brain transplantation. Or perhaps it will be possible at some stage to download your mind into a robot or android with human-like characteristics?

Pearson says that mind immortality in 2050 will initially only be available to the rich, but that by 2075-2080 it should have become a routine procedure and might well be available to all. Crikey!

Pearson's track record in his career throws weight behind his predictions. He graduated in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, spent 4 years working on missile design and has spent the past 20 years working optical networks, broadband netwrok evolution and cybernetic's in BT's laboratories. Pearson describes his predictions for the future as 'very exciting' and 'very scary'.

Pearson says that youngsters today may never have to die and points to the rapid advances in computer power as demonstrated last week by the Sony statement on the release of their Playstation 3.

Playstation 3 is 35 times more powerful than previous games consoles. In fact, Playstation 3 has 1 per cent of the power of the human brain. Pearson also predicts that Playstation 5 will probably be as powerful as the human brain.

And it doesn't stop there - Pearson says that the next milestone in technology will be the development of a supercomputer that has some form of 'consciousness'. He says that more and more technologists are coming round to the opinion that conscious machines are a prefectly viable and achievable prospect. In fact, Pearson says he believes it will be possible to engineer a concious computer with superhuman level intelligence before 2020.

Pearson thinks that such a creation would have 'emotions'. He suggests that one immediate advantage might be the outsourcing of call centres not to India but to cyberpsace where AI entities will be able to answer calls and deal with customers immediately, thereby negating long, frustrating call waits for customers.

Perhaps the most bizarre suggestion from Pearson is the idea of 'talking yoghurts'. Apparently, it is now possible to use DNA to make electronic circuits so, by about 2020-2025, you could have 'smart yoghurts' that have a stack of electronics in every single bacterium. Hmmm. As clever as this all sounds, I'm not sure the 'talking yoghurts' idea will catch on.

Pearson also suggests that before any of this happens, we will have superchips that will mean we will be able to have such things as polymer video tattoes that you can impregnate onto your skin and will last for several days. You might, for example, want to connect these up to video cameras or your mobile phone.

This is already closer than we might imagine, as Philips are already developing the world's first rollable display which is a millimetre thick, has a 12.5 cm screen and can be wrapped around an arm. The screens will begin production in about 2 years from now.

Pearson also predicts stackable chips that will effectively wipe out the risk of viruses and says that by 2020 'virtual worlds' will have become the norm, offering 3D virtual environments that will be almost indistinguishable from the real thing, with nervous system hook-ups to mimic the sensations.

One thing is for certain, we may very well be living at one of the most pivotal and exciting times in human history and the advances that will be made over the next 50 years will be mindboggling.

Of course, much of this predicting dovetails neatly into the theory of Ving's Singularity, a point whereby a civilisations technology reaches a point of almost limitless exponential growth or rather, a technological 'event horizon'. Whether a technological singularity is actually possible is still speculative but it's still a fascinating area of thought.

Source: Observer

Bird Flu

Channel 4 News featured a special report the other night on bird flu.

They reported that they have seen new evidence from the World Health Organisation, (due to be released to the world's media soon), that shows that the virus is showing signs of rapid mutation and that the risk of a human pandemic is now very likely.

In northern Vietnam, patterns of infection are changing amongst humans. The disease is becoming milder, but it is also clustering - evidence, (the scientists say), that it is rapidly mutating and working out ways to become more infectious/contagious amongst humans. And laboratory analysis has also confirmed that the bird flu virus (H5N1) is also subtly changing its genetics also adds further evidence.

Bird flu is proving to be a virus full of surprises. The jump it originally made fom ducks into chickens is akin to a virus jumping from a cat to a horse. The leap from chickens to humans was even bigger.

And another worrying development has emerged in Indonesia, where authorities have detected bird flu for the first time in pigs. Three pigs have tested positive for H5N1 and have now been quarantined. They will be tested further before being slaughtered.

Source: Channel 4

The Future Faces Of Mankind?

Could these be the possible future faces of mankind?

MSNBC seem to think so. They argue that mankind is at a crossroads in evolution where the decisions we make over the coming decades, centuries and millenia will determine the outcome for our species.

Fascinating stuff, but their timescale seems to be waaaaay out. I don't know where they got the idea from that it would take at least 5 million years to become starfaring superhumans. Surely that will be achieved in a few tens of thousands of years (or even sooner)...

Source: MSNBC

Friday April 13th, 2029

Friday the 13th is a day when we should all be on our guard for accidents, mishaps and things that go wrong. But just what would be the mother of all Friday the 13th's? An asteroid collision perhaps?

Asteroid 2004 MN4 is going to be coming frighteningly close to Earth on Friday April 13th 2029. In space terms, a hairs breadth from Earth.

Not only that, it is one heck of a big mumma! Scientists say that 2004 MN4 is about 320 metres wide - that's big enough to devastate an area the size of Texas or create gigantic tsunamis should it hit water. Eeeeek!

We are now being told that 2004 MN4 will not hit Earth. After detailed calculations, scientists seem convinced that the impact risk is non-existent. However, it looks as though the closeness of the encounter will actually change the trajectory of 2004 MN4 sending it on a different orbit about the Sun, bringing it back toward the Earth around 2035. (Some even fear an impact then - scientists say these fears are unfounded and premature.)

If certain authorities knew a body this size were likely to hit the Earth in the near future, what would they do? Would they tell the world? Or, would the decision be made to keep the truth hidden? Top secret? Think about it...Something this size hitting Earth would create mass panic and instability in regions of the world for many years in the run up to the impact. It could even trigger a world war.

They are saying that on the night of Friday April 13th, 2029 those living in Africa, Europe and Asia should be able to see 2004 MN4 with the unaided naked eye - even through city lights! Hmmm.

Maybe it is just me but, sometimes governments, fearing widespread panic, tell agencies and individuals to shut up fast and deny everything, in order to prevent mass panic and chaos. On Christmas Eve 2004, the scientists calculated that 2004 MN4 had a 1in 60 chance of hitting Earth. They have now had a chance to 'refine' their calculations and have announced that there is 'no chance' of 2004 MN4 hitting Earth at all. But what if there has been a cover up? Let's hope not...

Source: RedNova