SCIENCE NEWS: Humans will have evolved into ‘different’ species by 2050 – scientist claims

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By 2050, a completely new type of human will evolve as a result of radical new technology, behaviour, and natural selection.This is according to Cadell Last, a researcher at the Global Brain Institute, who claims mankind is undergoing a major ‘evolutionary transition’.

In less than four decades, Mr Last claims we will live longer, have children in old age and rely on artificial intelligence to do mundane tasks.Instead of living fast and dying young, Mr Last believes humans will live slow and die old.Your 80 or 100 is going to be so radically different than your grandparents,’ Mr Last says

By 2040, cabs will be driven by Google robots, shops will become showrooms for online outlets and call centres will be staffed by intelligent droids.That’s the scenario depicted in recent research which suggests robots could be taking over our lives and jobs in less than 30 years.

The competition for work caused by a rise in the robots population will see us heading to surgeons for ‘additional processing power for our brains’, 

We may also be requesting bionic implants for our hands that will make us able to perform tasks as fast as any machine.Futurologists, commissioned by global job search website xpatjobs.com, say workers will have less job security and will work more unsociable hours.
Those who take these risks and innovate with their own bodies will be the biggest earners in 2040, they claim.

However, the study added that workers may be left with poor eyesight, smaller sexual organs, and constantly-furrowed brows as they struggle to keep up to life in the 21st century.

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SCIENCE Squirrel-like Jurassic critters shed light on mammal origins

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It may not have been the friendliest place for furry little creatures, but three newly identified squirrel-like mammals thrived in the trees of the Jurassic Period, with dinosaurs walking below and flying reptiles soaring above.

Scientists announced on Wednesday the discovery in China of fossils belonging to three critters in a find that sheds light on a poorly understood collection of ancient mammals, and indicates that mammals as a group appeared earlier than some experts thought.

The three species come from a group called haramiyids that previously had been known only from isolated teeth and fragmented jaws. Scientists had not even been sure they were mammals at all.
The nicely preserved fossils from Liaoning Province in northeastern China proved definitively they were mammals, in part because of the presence of three bones of the middle ear characteristic of all mammals from shrews to whales to people.

The three species - whose scientific names are Shenshou lui, Xianshou linglong and Xianshou songae - date from about 160 million years ago, a time when dinosaurs ruled the land. But a number of recent fossil discoveries have shown that mammals were far more diverse during that period than previously recognized.

The three species likely looked like small squirrels, with slim bodies and elongated fingers in the hands and feet, indicating they were dedicated tree dwellers. They had long and probably prehensile, or grasping, tails, another feature that helped them stay in the tree branches.

"I would predict that they spent even more time in the trees than squirrels," said Jin Meng, a vertebrate paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who led the study published in the journal Nature.

Based on the shape of their teeth, they probably were omnivorous, eating insects, nuts and fruit, Meng said. The remains were so well preserved that they showed more than just the hard parts such as teeth and bones that commonly fossilize, but also soft parts such as fur and the animal's guts, he added.

The three species had an estimated weight ranging from about that of a mouse, one ounce, to that of a small squirrel, about 10 ounces. While they may have looked and acted like today's squirrels, they were only very distantly related to them.

The researchers said these fossils, along with other evidence, suggests that the first true mammals that evolved from mammal-like ancestors appeared perhaps 208 million years ago during the Triassic Period. Some scientists have contended that mammals entered the picture millions of years later than that.

(Reporting by Will Dunham. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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GREAT SCIENTIST: Albert Einstein The Civil Rights Activist; The Political Side Of The World’s Greatest Scientist

Albert Einstein, history’s most recognized scientist, did not just concern himself with the intricacies of the universe. Einstein, on numerous occasions, made himself clear about his social and political stances in life. There is one story about Einstein that stands out as one of the greatest examples of his involvement in the social justice movement. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist was once invited to Lincoln University, where he was tasked to be the keynote speaker for the school’s commencement exercises. All who were present expected Dr. Einstein to talk exclusively about relativity, and his other leading ideas in physics and cosmology. 

Instead, he delivered a speech about racism, which he described as a “disease of white people.” During the speech, Albert Einstein firmly stated that he “did not intend to be quiet” about the evils of racism and prejudice, and his influence in the movement remained strong ever since. Later on, Lincoln University would come to oversee the graduation of leading African American individuals, like the artist Larry Neal and Thurgood Marshall, the very first African American justice in the United States.

Albert Einstein’s strong statements came from experience. As a Jew in Europe during the rise of Nazi Germany, Einstein and his colleagues experienced humiliation and abuse during their tenure at the University of Berlin. Although he was already behind United States borders when the Nazis came into full power in 1933, many of his fellow academics who remained behind suffered a great deal of torment.

Upon arriving at Princeton in New Jersey, he realized that the treatment African Americans were receiving in the town was terribly akin to how Jews were treated in University of Berlin. Seeing a parallel in experiences, Albert Einstein decided to speak out against the injustice he observed at Princeton. One story that marked his dedication to the equality cause was when he offered famous black singer Marian Anderson to stay at his home after she was denied lodging at the inns in New Jersey.

The physicist was once quoted as saying “politics is more difficult than physics.” Scientific breakthroughs can be achieved through objectivity. Political issues, however, continue to evade human logic and compassion. Einstein recognized our impressive capability to answer scientific problems, but heavily criticized our failure to recognize social concerns.

Albert Einstein is not very well known for his contributions to societal change, but it is high time we recognized the fact that his contributions to social justice is just as important as his amazing contributions to science.

[Image from Adam Fagen via Flickr]

Benjamin Ekpenyong

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LifePrint is a small social networked printer that lets you output photos from anywhere

While it's perfectly fine to print your pictures at home or at a photo center, what if you want to print a picture somewhere in between? You're not near either of those places, so that picture-printing urge usually has to sit in the back burner. LifePrint, however, wants to make sure you can print your pictures regardless of where you are, with a small nondescript printer and, hopefully, $200,000 in Kickstarter funding.

LifePrint, specifically meant for photo printing from your smartphone, separates itself from the competition (Polaroid and Fujifilm being the biggies) in how you're able to print. Through the LifePrint app, you can print pictures either on a WiFi network or on a cellular data network. In addition, you can print pictures from a LifePrint device that could be thousands of miles away, so long as you and someone else follow each other on the LifePrint app. Don't care for a particular photo? You can reject to print that cat picture your grandma keeps sending you.

Speaking of following, LifePrint isn't just the printer and the app, but also a social network where you can follow people. Interestingly, instead of a "like" option for pictures, you can just print them out. You can also choose to share pictures through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, with those pictures having the #LifePrinted attached to them. You can, of course, choose not to do any of that and remain off the grid, for the privacy-focused among us.

Through the app, you can also edit your pictures, with options such as color filters, picture stitching, adding talk bubbles and other text, and border selection. Pictures won't be huge by any means, with the "film" size at 3 x 4, capped at 10 prints. If you want to buy more prints, LifePrint hopes to have film available through retailers and its website once the Kickstarter campaign is finished.
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Wireless electricity? It's here

A world without wires

Katie Hall was shocked the second she saw it: a light-bulb glowing in middle of a room with no wires attached.

Looking back, it was a crude experiment, she remembers: a tiny room filled with gigantic cooper refrigerator coils -- the kind you'd see if you cracked open the back of your freezer.

She walked in and out between the coils and the bulb -- and still the bulb glowed.

"I said: 'Let's work on this. This is the future.'"

What's the trick?

"We're going to transfer power without any kind of wires," says Dr Hall, now Chief Technology Officer at WiTricity -- a start-up developing wireless "resonance" technology.

"But, we're not actually putting electricity in the air. What we're doing is putting a magnetic field in the air."

It works like this: WiTricity build a "Source Resonator" -- a coil of electrical wire that generates a magnetic field when power is attached.

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If another coil is brought close, an electrical charge can be generated in it. No wires required.

"When you bring a device into that magnetic field, it induces a current in the device, and by that you're able to transfer power," explains Dr Hall.

And like that, the bulb lights up.

Wireless homes

Don't worry about getting zapped: Hall assures that the magnetic fields used to transfer energy are "perfectly safe" -- in fact, they are the same kind of fields used in Wi-Fi routers.

In the house of the future, wire-free energy transfer could be as easy as wireless internet.

If all goes to WiTricity's plans, smartphones will charge in your pocket as you wander around, televisions will flicker with no wires attached, and electric cars will refuel while sitting on the driveway.

WiTricity have already demonstrated their ability to power laptops, cell-phones, and TVs by attaching resonator coils to batteries -- and an electric car refueller is reportedly in the works.

Hall sees a bright future for the family without wires:

"We just don't think about it anymore: I'm going to drive my car home and I'm never going to have to go to the gas station and I'm never going to have to plug it in.

"I can't even imagine how things will change when we live like that."

World outside

Beyond these effort-saving applications, Hall sees more revolutionary steps.

When Hall first saw the wireless bulb, she immediately thought of medical technology -- seeing that devices transplanted beneath the skin could be charged non-intrusively.

WiTricity is now working with a medical company to recharge a left-ventricular assist device -- "a heart-pump essentially."

The technology opens the door to any number of mobile electronic devices which have so far been held back by limited battery lives.

"The idea of eliminating cables would allow us to re-design things in ways that we haven't yet thought of, that's just going to make our devices and everything that we interact with, that much more efficient, more practical and maybe even give brand new functionality."]

What's next?

The challenge now is increasing the distance that power can be transferred efficiently. This distance -- Hall explains -- is linked to the size of the coil, and WiTricity wants to perfect the same long-distance transfers to today's small-scale devices.

For this reason, the team have high hopes for their new creation: AA-sized wirelessly rechargeable batteries.

For Hall, the applications are endless: "I always say kids will say: 'Why is it called wireless?'"

"The kids that are growing up in a couple of years will never have to plug anything in again to charge it."

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