Planet Labs are Using Tiny Satellites to Benefit Humanity - Video

A small group of scientists from Planet Labs monitor the Earth's resources using a network of tiny satellites that they call “Doves.”

In January 2014, they delivered Flock 1, the world’s largest constellation of Earth-imaging satellites, made up of 28 Doves.

Together with subsequent launches, they have launched 71 Doves, toward imaging the entire Earth, every day.

Planet creates commercial and humanitarian value with the market's most capable global imaging network.

Fresh data from any place on Earth is foundational to solving commercial, environmental, and humanitarian challenges.

Their global sensing and analytics platform unlocks the ability to understand and respond to change at a local and global scale.

Will Mankind Destroy Itself? - Michio Kaku

The physicist, Michio Kaku, sees two major trends in the world today: the first is toward a multicultural, scientific, tolerant society; the other, as evidenced by terrorism, is fundamentalist and monocultural.

Whichever one wins out will determine the fate of mankind.

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40,000 People needed to Colonise any Alien Planet

Adrian Mann's illustration depicts a future starship under construction in Earth orbit using a ring-type construction facility, which could provide hotel rooms for guests who wish to view the construction.

Hungary-based space illustrator Adrian Mann is a graphical engineer for Project Icarus.
Credit: Adrian Mann

If humanity ever wants to colonise a planet beyond the solar system, it's going to need a really big spaceship.

The founding population of an interstellar colony should consist of 20,000 to 40,000 people, said Cameron Smith, an anthropologist at Portland State University in Oregon.

Such a large group would possess a great deal of genetic and demographic diversity, giving the settlement the best chance of survival during the long space voyage and beyond, he explained.

"Do you want to just squeak by, with barely what you can get? Or do you want to go in good health?" Smith said on July 16 during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations (FISO) working group (mp3 file).

"I would suggest, go with something that gives you a good margin for the case of disaster."

Revisiting the numbers
In the past, researchers have proposed that a few hundred people would be sufficient to establish a settlement on or near an alien planet but Smith thought it was time to take another look.

"I wanted to revisit the issue," he said. "It had been quite a long time, and of course we now know more about population genetics from genomics."

For his study, which was published in April in the journal Acta Astronautica, Smith assumed an interstellar voyage lasting roughly 150 years.

This time frame is consistent with that envisioned by researchers at Icarus Instellar, a nonprofit organization dedicated to pursuing travel to another star.

Smith's calculations, which combine information from population genetics theory and computer modeling, point toward a founding population of 14,000 to 44,000 people.

A "safe and well-considered figure" is 40,000, about 23,000 of whom would be men and women of reproductive age, Smith writes in the study.

This figure may seem "astoundingly large," Smith acknowledged, but he stressed that it makes sense.

Smith writes in the Acta Astronautica paper; "This number would maintain good health over five generations despite;

• increased inbreeding resulting from a relatively small human population, 
• depressed genetic diversity due to the founder effect, 
• demographic change through time and 
• expectation of at least one severe population catastrophe over the five-generation voyage,"

Data from the real world support the overall thrust of his findings, Smith added.

"Almost no natural populations of vertebrates dip below around five to 7,000 individuals," he said during the FISO talk.

" There are genetic reasons for this. And when they do go below this, sometimes they survive, but many times they go into what's called a demographic or extinction vortex."

Sending frozen sperm and eggs on the voyage with a limited number of human "tenders" is also an option, Smith said, though he didn't consider it seriously in the new paper.

"It can be done, but it's so different from the human experience of living in communities and so forth that I've kind of avoided that," he said.

"I'm kind of assuming, or sticking with, 'What is the experience of humanity so far, and what can we learn from it?"

Stephen Hawking: Threat to Humanity - Artificial Intelligence and Smart Weapon Systems

Stephen Hawking, in an article inspired by the new Johnny Depp flick Transcendence, said it would be the "worst mistake in history" to dismiss the threat of artificial intelligence.

In a paper he co-wrote with University at California, Berkeley computer-science professor Stuart Russell, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics professors Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek, Hawking cited several achievements in the field of artificial intelligence, including self-driving cars, Siri and the computer that won the US game show Jeopardy!

"Such achievements will probably pale against what the coming decades will bring," the article in Britain's Independent said.

"Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history," the article continued. "Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks."

The professors wrote that in the future there may be nothing to prevent machines with superhuman intelligence from self-improving, triggering a so-called "singularity."

"One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand."

"Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all," the article said.

"Although we are facing potentially the best or worst thing to happen to humanity in history, little serious research is devoted to these issues outside non-profit institutes such as the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, the Future of Humanity Institute, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and the Future of Life Institute."

"All of us should ask ourselves what we can do now to improve the chances of reaping the benefits and avoiding the risks."

Stephen Hawking: We MUST Explore Space or Humanity has NO Future!

In this photo provided by Cedars-Sinai, British cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who has motor neuron disease, gives a talk titled "A Brief History of Mine," to workers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, on Tuesday, April 9, 2013. 

AP Photo/Cedars-Sinai, Eric Reed

Stephen Hawking, the British physicist who spent his career decoding the universe and even experienced weightlessness, is urging the continuation of space exploration—for humanity's sake.

The 71-year-old Hawking said he did not think humans would survive another 1,000 years "without escaping beyond our fragile planet."

Hawking made the remarks Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he toured a stem cell laboratory that's focused on trying to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig's disease.

Hawking was diagnosed with the neurological disorder 50 years ago while a student at the notorious  Cambridge University.

He recalled how he became depressed and initially didn't see a point in finishing his doctorate. But he continued his studies.

"If you understand how the universe operates, you control it in a way," Stephen Hawking. 

Renowned for his work on black holes and the origins of the cosmos, Hawking is famous for bringing esoteric physics concepts to the masses through his best-selling books, including "A Brief History of Time," which sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.

Hawking has survived longer than most people with Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

ALS Background
ALS attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control the muscles. People gradually have more and more trouble breathing and moving as muscles weaken and waste away.

There's no cure and no way to reverse the disease's progression. Few people with ALS live longer than a decade.

Hawking receives around-the-clock care, can only communicate by twitching his cheek, and relies on a computer mounted to his wheelchair to convey his thoughts in a distinctive robotic monotone.

Dr. Robert Baloh

Despite his diagnosis, Hawking has remained active. In 2007, he floated like an astronaut on an aircraft that creates weightlessness by making parabolic dives.

"However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at," he said Tuesday. Dr. Robert Baloh, director of Cedars-Sinai's ALS program, said he had no explanation for Hawking's longevity.

Baloh said he has treated patients who lived for 10 years or more. "But 50 years is unusual, to say the least," he said.

Alien Invasion - A matter of scale! - Video

Centraal Beheer Achmea Insurance: UFO by hourigan

Managing our Finite Water Resources - YouTube

Social sciences have given us a new understanding of how societies are managing natural resources such as water supply.

A research project under the Sustainable Practices Research Group, led by Professor Mark Harvey, is exploring our management and consumption of drinking water in the UK and across the globe.

Global Consciousness - Edgar Mitchell: Apollo 14 Astronaut - Cartoon

 

 

All credit for the cartoon goes to Zen Pencils

South African fossils: Between ape and human

Two fossil skeletons of early humans appear to mark a halfway stage between primitive "ape-men" and our direct ancestors.

A year of detailed study has revealed that the skeletons are a hodgepodge of anatomical features: some bones look almost human while others are chimpanzee-like.

The two fossils, an adult female and a juvenile male, were discovered in the Malapa cave system near Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2008.

Both about 1.2 metres tall, they are unusually complete and well-preserved and date from 1,977,000 years ago.

Excavated by Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and colleagues, they were given the name Australopithecus sediba.

Australopithecines were early hominids that lived between 4 and 2 million years ago: the best-known fossil example is a 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia and nicknamed Lucy. Unlike chimpanzees and other apes, they walked on two legs, but their brains were still small. Not until Homo erectus evolved, around 1.8 million years ago, did larger brains appear.

Together with a large team of researchers, Berger has spent the last year intensively studying the two A. sediba skeletons. He says they are unusually advanced for an Australopithecus, and may show how the australopiths evolved into humans.
Brainy

One area of particular interest is the brain size. So far, the male skull has been excavated. It's also been named: South African schoolchildren chose the name Karabo, which means "answer" in the Setswana and Sotho languages of southern Africa.

Kristian Carlson of the University of the Witwatersrand and colleagues used synchrotron scans to build a detailed 3D image of the inside of the skull, allowing them to calculate the shape of Karabo's brain.

This was small even for an australopith, with a volume of just 420 cubic centimetres. A. afarensis, by contrast, averaged 459 cc, despite being an earlier species. That suggests there was no overall increase in brain size over the course of australopith evolution.

But Carlson says A. sediba's brain had been subtly reorganised. The orbitofrontal region, which sits just behind the eyes, is a different shape to those of other australopiths and apes, and may have been rewired into a more human-like design.

Carlson draws particular attention to an area called the inferior frontal gyrus, which has bulged out in A. sediba. In modern humans this area is important for language processing, hinting that A. sediba had advanced communication skills.

Carlson remains cautious, however, pointing out that spoken language relies on adaptations like vocal cords. Although neck bones were part of the find, they have not yet been studied in detail, so we don't know if A. sediba was built for speech.

We need to treat the brain studies with great caution, says Robert Barton of Durham University in the UK. "Interpretation of surface features of brains is fraught at the best of times," he says, "but on individual specimens that are merely impressions of the original brain and millions of years old to boot?"

Mankind in 3D: Humans in Space

Click on the picture to see more 3D images

Stephen Hawking Says Humanity Won't Survive Without Leaving Earth

If humanity is to survive long-term, it must find a way to get off planet Earth — and fast, according to famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.

In fact, human beings may have less than 200 years to figure out how to escape our planet, Hawking said in a recent interview with video site Big Think. Otherwise our species could be at risk for extinction, he said.

"It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million," Hawking said. "Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space."

Humans stuck on Earth are at risk from two kinds of catastrophes, Hawking said. First, the kind we bring on ourselves, such as possible devastating impacts from climate change, or nuclear or biological warfare.

A number of cosmic phenomena could spell our demise, too. An asteroid could slam into Earth, killing large swaths of the population and rendering the planet uninhabitable. Or a supernova or gamma-ray burst near our spot in the Milky Way could prove ruinous for life on Earth.

Life on Earth could even be threatened by an extraterrestrial civilization, Hawking has pointed out on his Discovery Channel television series, "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking."

Dangerous aliens may want to take over the planet to use its resources for themselves, he said in the series. It would be safer for the survival of our species if we had people living on other worlds as a backup plan, Hawking proposed.

"The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet," he told Big Think. "Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."

Quick Facts you may not know about the Amazon

Here are some quick facts about the Amazon that you may not know and can amaze your friends with.

• 1.4 billion hectares of forest


• The world's largest river basin and the source of one-fifth of all free-flowing fresh water on Earth


• 60% of the Amazon is in Brazil, in an area larger than western Europe - the rest of the Amazon spans across Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana


• One in ten known species in the world live in the Amazon Rainforest
  Threats – Soy plantation expansion, cattle ranching, unsustainable logging, human settlement


• Amazon basin is home to 21 million people of which about 30% live in rural areas and 200,000 are indigenous


• The Amazon covers approximately 50% of Brazil and stores huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Burning of forest, however, has released so much of this greenhouse gas that Brazil is now placed 4th in the world for CO2 emissions

For more information on the de-forestation of the Amazon and surrounding rainforests, click on this link to take you to Flora and Fauna International website

Saving Gorillas Starts With Understanding Their Human Neighbours

Saving Gorillas Starts With Understanding Their Human Neighbours

Understanding local human cultures is key to preserving gorillas, elephants and other wildlife in African parks and reserves, according to new research from Purdue University.

"Conservation efforts and the management of protected areas are often designed with the best intentions, but sometimes supporting scientific data is missing or incorrect assumptions are made about a local culture or even the outsiders or trade that plays a role in the area," said Melissa Remis, a professor of anthropology who studies gorillas.

"Conservation isn't just about protecting wildlife, you also need to consider the human dimension such as how local hunting technologies or even migration can change how land is used."

6 Emotions You Never Knew You Had

CAN you name the six basic emotions? Take a straw poll of your friends and we guarantee that you will find no consensus. Yet psychologists are unequivocal: joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. These are the Big Six, quite literally, the in-your-face emotions - the ones that everyone the world over exhibits with the same dramatic and characteristic facial expressions. They have been the subjects of intense research for over half a century, not least because of the role they have played in our survival as a species.

Times have changed, though. Our ancestors may have had daily need of fear to flee predators, anger to conquer foes and disgust to avoid diseases, but we live in a more subtle world in which other emotions have come to the fore. There are many contenders. Avarice, embarrassment, boredom, depression, jealousy and love, for example, might epitomise the modern age. Yet some more obscure emotions may be increasingly relevant today. Here we explore five of them, any one of which could make a case to be promoted to a place alongside the Big Six.

Humanity Must Save the Wild Tigers: An Obligation without Negotiation

There are only 3000 Tigers left in the wild. There are only 3000 Tigers left in the wild. Sorry, but it needs repeating. Wild Tigers have never been in a tighter spot and only humanity can help.

Only 1.7 per cent of historical tiger numbers are alive today. Indian tigers, such as the one seen here charging the camera, could be a new focus of conservation.

New research in PLoS Genetics suggests that the most effective way to save the wild tiger or at least a representative group, is to focus conservation efforts on the Indian variety, which has over half of the species's genetic diversity. By default, this also means turning our backs on 50% of Tiger genes that we deem as 'un-saveable' or beyond 'salvation'. It brings great shame on humanity to admit this and endorse it.

Indian tigers are equipped with such eclectic genes, that it could be better able to adapt to the future change, inflicted on it by humanity, than any other tiger on Earth.

Why are we continuing to stress this species to extinction. Is it purely economics and money or is it simply a selfish drive to become, not only the dominant species on the Earth but the only species.

Japan Whale Killings are not Research

IN 1986, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling to allow stocks to replenish. However, this ongoing ban allows member nations to grant themselves special permits to kill whales for scientific research, with the proviso that the whale meat is utilised following data collection.

Only Japan holds a special permit. Its current research programme, which started in 2000 and is run by the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), proposes to kill more than 1000 whales a year in the Antarctic and the western north Pacific. The stated objectives are to determine the population structure and feeding habits of several whale species, including endangered fin and sei whales, in order to "manage" stocks.

Japan has already been widely criticised for its whaling, which is generally seen as a thinly disguised hunting operation. But with the 2009 IWC meeting looming, it is worth rehearsing the arguments against scientific whaling.

Although Japan's early results produced useful information, recent advances in non-lethal techniques such as biopsies mean that data can now be obtained without killing whales. Similarly, it is no longer necessary to kill whales to work out what they have been eating, as this can be determined from DNA in samples of faeces.

The scientific impact of the research is also limited. Relatively little research is published in international peer-reviewed journals, compared with research programmes on other marine mammals such as dolphins. According to the ICR, scientific whaling has produced 152 publications in peer-reviewed journals since 1994. However, just 58 of these papers were published in international journals. The rest were IWC reports or articles published in domestic journals, largely in Japanese. Most of the findings are not circulated among the wider scientific community, and the failure to subject papers to impartial review renders the value of much of this literature questionable.

Whether the results from scientific whaling are useful for stock management has also been questioned. The Scientific Committee of the IWC has explicitly stated that the results generated by the Japanese Whale Research Program in the Antarctic (JARPA) "were not required for management". Independent research shows that the data may overestimate whale abundance by up to 80 per cent (Marine Ecology Progress Series, vol 242, p 295).

Maschinenmensch - The hunt for Singularity

This fictional robot, known as the Maschinenmensch or "false Maria", featured in Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis (Image: Everett Collection / Rex)

Vernor Vinge

Although Kurzweil is the public face of the singularity today, Vernor Vinge coined the term.

He was inspired by a monograph written in 1964 by the statistician and Bletchley Park code-breaker Irving John Good entitled "Speculations concerning the first ultra-intelligent machine". Good argued that for humanity to survive, we must create a machine more intelligent than ourselves. Such a machine would be able to continually improve itself, becoming more and more intelligent, essentially without limit.

The idea was developed by Vinge, a computer scientist and science fiction author, in an essay written in 1993 called "The coming technological singularity". He argued that the singularity would occur in the mid-21st century, and that barring civilisation-wide disasters it is inevitable.

Vinge has also explored the idea in a number of science fiction novels.

Statistician Irving John Good (1965) speculated on the consequences of machines smarter than humans:

"Let an ultra-intelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make."

Becoming Human: A Timeline of Anthropology

Galileo; technology pointer

Galileo's Middle finger - Right Hand

The power of Galileo's observations in supplanting religious ideology is best captured in this image of his finger.

It was detached from his remains in 1737 and encased in glass and gilt, pointing heavenward: a scientific reliquary for a secular saint.

A new exhibit in Florence shows Galileo's contribution to humanity using astronomical artefacts, stunning artwork and impressive technology (Image: Biblioteca Marucelliana / Firenze)

Question; If you had the option to 'collect' one finger from a famous or revered person, which finger would you select and why?