This Could be the Most Important Global Initiative Ever
If you’re reading this right now you’re a part of the one third of the world with internet access. Obviously that means two thirds of the world are unlikely to read FutureWatch.
That makes me sad. We’ll it doesn’t really, but it does highlight an issue. If two thirds of the world don’t have access to the internet, it’s fair to say they’re missing out on a basic human right.
Now I know many might say, ‘As if the internet is as important as food, shelter and medicine.’ But I disagree. I put access to the internet up there with those staples of humanity.
Hear me out. In order for the world to progress, advance technology and help make the earth better for everyone, we need to be connected. We need to pool resources and utilize all the intelligence the world has to offer.
If we can tap into the other two thirds of the world, who knows how much faster we could advance? Take some time to think about the benefit the internet has contributed towards your own life. Hopefully now you start to appreciate where I’m coming from.
Thankfully I’m not alone in my thinking. There’s an ever-growing population of people across the world trying to connect people. And some of the world’s most influential people are helping to push the cause.
Internet.org launched this week. Its goal is to connect the entire world through the internet. It’s a massive project. Considering it means getting the internet to about another four billion people, it will take some time.
Of course it will also take some serious corporate power (because let’s face it, governments can’t do it). And on board are some of the biggest players in the world: Samsung, Nokia, Facebook, Ericsson, QUALCOMM, Mediatek and Opera are all involved.
As it’s just getting off the ground, there’s little detail as to how you and I can exactly help at this point. However you can get to the site, and connect through Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to keep up to date with it all.
I plan to get on board in any way, shape or form I can. It’s that important an initiative; the future of the world depends on it.
Mice, the Most Important Guinea Pigs in Regenerative Medicine
When you’re building a house there are a couple of things needed to make it structurally sound.
First you need solid foundations. Then you need a frame. Sometimes a scaffold takes place of a frame. These all help to keep the structure rigid.
Finally you fill in the frame or scaffold with materials to complete the structure. Sometimes you use concrete, brick, timber or plaster.
Now assuming you have a good builder and they follow the right steps, you end up with a good quality house.
The process builders use to build a house are the same processes scientists can use to build…re-born organs. This is part of the regenerative medicine revolution.
For some time we’ve talked about tissue regeneration. Kidneys, livers, skin and other body parts. We’ve talked about heart regeneration too. However the tricky thing about the heart is that it’s quite complex. It has many tissue types, which make it the most difficult organ to regenerate.
Add to the matter if it fails…everything fails.
However the potential to regenerate the heart starts to be a more likely prospect when you add stem cells to the mix…literally.
And because of stem cells scientists have reached a new breakthrough in regenerative medicine.
The research paper published in Nature Communications explains the breakthrough:
‘We create heart constructs by repopulating decellularized mouse hearts with human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived multipotential cardiovascular progenitor cells. We show that the seeded multipotential cardiovascular progenitor cells migrate, proliferate and differentiate in situ into cardiomyocytes, smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells to reconstruct the decellularized hearts. After 20 days of perfusion, the engineered heart tissues exhibit spontaneous contractions, generate mechanical force and are responsive to drugs.’
Wow, that’s a lot of science talk. Simplified, it means the scientists took human adult stem cells and put them in a stripped down scaffold of a mouse heart. With some tweaking and fine tuning, it started to beat again.
Sure it’s just a mouse heart for now. But as we’ve said before, it’s another example of the strides forward taken by science. If you ignore the journey you never appreciate the destination as much.
With the science and technology of stem cells the science world is discovering some amazing breakthroughs.
Graphene Just Got Demoted to Second Place
A slight departure from the usual Energy topic we provide in FutureWatch. But rest assured this breakthrough is worthy of a disruption to normal transmission.
Hopefully you’ve heard of graphene. If you haven’t, some have touted it as the future ‘wonder material’ that will change the world. It’s super strong, conductive and lightweight.
However graphene is now the number two super material of the future. It’s replacement? A new nanomaterial called Carbyne.
Teams of scientists from Rice University, Texas and Konkuk University, Seoul are the ones that cracked this new nanomaterial.
Instead of sifting through the 19 page long scientific document full of formulas and algebra, here’s the key information you need to know:
‘The comprehensive ‘portrait’ of carbyne that we have drawn can be formulated like this. It has an extreme tensile stiffness—stiffer by a factor of two than graphene and carbon nanotubes—and a specific strength surpassing that of any other known material.
‘This combination of unusual mechanical and electronic properties is of great interest for applications in nanomechanical systems, opto-/electromechanical devices, strong and light materials for mechanical applications, or as high– specific-area energy storage matrices.’
Carbyne is evidence of the non-stop progression of technology and science. And with its supremacy over graphene, we might just need to realign our thinking on super-materials.
At the end of the day humankind has discovered every naturally occurring element. But with nanotechnology, we’re now discovering amazing new materials like graphene and carbyne.
These are materials that will help drag the world forward and open new horizons.
Industries such as aerospace, electronics, energy and medicine will all benefit. The potential of carbyne, graphene and other nanomaterials is huge and makes for an exciting future.
Sam Volkering
Technology Analyst, Revolutionary Tech Investor
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