Would You Take A Blood Test That Predicts How Long You Will Live?

REUTERS/Luis Galdamez

Daily Mail: Would YOU take it? Scientists discover breakthrough blood test that could 'predict how long people will live'

* Experts at Boston University claim to have discovered the game-changing test
* They believe biomarker patterns in the blood will help predict a person's probability of developing cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes
* The discovery means patients will be able to identify realistic health risks early - and, crucially, modify behaviour to change the outcome

It may sound like the premise of a science fiction film.

But, believe it or not, scientists at Boston University claim to have discovered a game-changing blood test that could help predict lifespans.

The study, published in the journal Aging Cell on Friday, used biomarker data collected from 5,000 blood samples and analysed it against the donors' health developments over the subsequent eight years.

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CSN Editor: I wold definitely take it .... and avoid (or minimise) the risk factors that such a test would discover.

15 Sci-Fi Films We Want To See In 2017

Popular Mechanics: 15 Sci-Fi Films We Want To See in 2017 (and 4 We Don't)

The blockbusters, the hopeful sleepers, and the bottom feeders.

2017 holds plenty of uncertainty, but great sci-fi movies look like a sure thing. We'll see the return of Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049 and finally get some Luke Skywalker in the eighth installment of the Star Wars saga. But 2017 is full of exciting releases, crossing huge franchises, wonderful one-offs, and some more artsy types as well. These are the films that have us excited for 2017 (and few that we'll likely be skipping.)

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CSN Editor: Blade Runner is on the top of my list.

How To Defeat Facial Recognition Software

An image of a Hyperface pattern, specifically created to contain thousands of facial recognition hits. Photograph: Adam Harvey

The Guardian: Anti-surveillance clothing aims to hide wearers from facial recognition

Hyperface project involves printing patterns on to clothing or textiles that computers interpret as a face, in fightback against intrusive technology

The use of facial recognition software for commercial purposes is becoming more common, but, as Amazon scans faces in its physical shop and Facebook searches photos of users to add tags to, those concerned about their privacy are fighting back.

Berlin-based artist and technologist Adam Harvey aims to overwhelm and confuse these systems by presenting them with thousands of false hits so they can’t tell which faces are real.

The Hyperface project involves printing patterns on to clothing or textiles, which then appear to have eyes, mouths and other features that a computer can interpret as a face.

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CSN Editor: It's good to know that the surveillance state can still be defeated.

Virtual Reality Was A Disappointment At This Year's CES

The words of the day at CES were "incremental improvement."

Photo by Josh Miller/CNET

CNET: Virtually boring: VR really disappoints at CES this year

Virtual reality promises to be a mega-trend that upends how we use computers and just plain get along. So why's it such a snooze at the world's biggest tech expo?

Call it a virtual disappointment. Or virtually unsurprising. I'll just say I was virtually underwhelmed.

Whatever pun you choose, the virtual reality industry has some explaining to do after this year's Consumer Electronics Show, during which the biggest product announcements can largely be categorized as "more of the same."

Consider computer maker Lenovo, which showed off a VR headset whose primary selling point is that it's cheaper than competitors like the $599 Oculus Rift from Facebook or the $799 HTC Vive -- though Lenovo isn't discussing prices yet and the prototype on display doesn't actually work.

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CSN Editor: When you consider all the hype for the past year in regards to VR .... satisfying everyone's expectations was a tall order.

Latest X-Ray Images Are Giving Astronomers A Revealing Look At The History Of Black Holes

The image is from the Chandra Deep Field-South. The full field covers an approximately circular region on the sky with an area about two-thirds that of the full moon. However, the outer regions of the image, where the sensitivity to X-ray emission is lower, are not shown here. The colors in this image represent different levels of X-ray energy detected by Chandra. Here the lowest-energy X-rays are red, the medium band is green, and the highest-energy X-rays observed by Chandra are blue. The central region of this image contains the highest concentration of supermassive black holes ever seen, equivalent to about 5,000 objects that would fit into the area of the full moon and about a billion over the entire sky. Image courtesy X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/B. Luo et al. For a larger version of this image please go here.

Space Daily: Deepest X-ray image ever reveals black hole treasure trove

An unparalleled image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is giving an international team of astronomers the best look yet at the growth of black holes over billions of years beginning soon after the Big Bang. This is the deepest X-ray image ever obtained, collected with about 7 million seconds, or 11 and a half weeks, of Chandra observing time.

The image comes from what is known as the Chandra Deep Field-South. The central region of the image contains the highest concentration of supermassive black holes ever seen, equivalent to about 5,000 objects that would fit into the area of the full Moon and about a billion over the entire sky.

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CSN Editor: It is hard to fathom how massive these objects really are .... ranging in mass from about 100,000 to 10 billion times the mass of the Sun.

Tweet For Today

From astronomy to mathematics to neuroscience: meet the #30Under30 in science https://t.co/pxS4yqobBT pic.twitter.com/ykmr6Evix4

— Forbes (@Forbes) January 8, 2017

NASA Can Now Better Predict A Total Solar Eclipse's Path

Using of a number of NASA datasets, notably the global elevation maps from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the shape and location of the shadow is depicted with unprecedented accuracy.

Credit: NASA/Goddard/SVS/Ernie Wright

Science Daily: NASA moon data provides more accurate 2017 eclipse path

On Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, millions in the U.S. will have their eyes to the sky as they witness a total solar eclipse. The moon's shadow will race across the United States, from Oregon to South Carolina. The path of this shadow, also known as the path of totality, is where observers will see the moon completely cover the sun. And thanks to elevation data of the moon from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, coupled with detailed NASA topography data of Earth, we have the most accurate maps of the path of totality for any eclipse to date.

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CSN Editor: This will be a rare opportunity for many who live in the U.S..

This Robot Can Play Chess With A Chessboard

A robot developed by Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute plays chess at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 8, 2017 ©Rob Lever (AFP)

AFP: For 'intelligent' robot, chess is just a hobby

A robot developed by engineers in Taiwan can pour coffee and move chess pieces on a board against an opponent, but he's looking for a real job.

The robot developed by Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute, which spent the week playing games against opponents at the Consumer Electronics Show, was displaying what developers call an "intelligent vision system" which can see its environment and act with greater precision than its peers.

With this enhanced vision, the robot can perform variety of tasks for service and manufacturing, and can also learn on the job with artificial intelligence.

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CSN Editor: Playing chess with a robot has just got interesting.

Huge Iceberg Is About To Break Off From Antarctica

An iceberg one-fourth the size of Wales is about to break off of Antarctica.

Credit: Copyright MIDAS Project, A. Luckman, Swansea University

Live Science: Delaware-Size Iceberg Is About to Break Off from Antarctica

An icy thread measuring a mere 12 miles (20 kilometers) long is all that's anchoring a massive iceberg the size of Delaware to its home in West Antarctica, climate scientists report.

If the iceberg breaks away — an event known as calving — the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica will lose more than 10 percent of its area, which amounts to about 2,000 square miles (5,000 square km), according to Project MIDAS, an Antarctic research project based in the United Kingdom.

MIDAS researchers noticed the rift in 2014, and have used satellite and other data to monitor it ever since. The rift made headlines late last year when NASA's IceBridge mission snapped a photo showing the eerily immense crack, which measured 70 miles (112 km) long, more than 300 feet (91 meters) wide and about one-third of a mile (0.5 km) deep as of Nov. 10, 2016.

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CSN Editor: At its current rate, this will split within 2 years .... unless the region experiences a greater cooling trend.

The Art And Science of Designing Noise Alarms

Atlas Obscura: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

There's an art and science to making one sound seem more urgent than another.

When the cockpit recorder transcript from Air France Flight 447 was leaked to the public in 2011, many startling details emerged. The plane, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board, had been under the control of pilots who were communicating poorly and not realizing one another’s mistakes. The plane’s speed slowed to dangerous levels, activating the stall alarm—the one, in the words of Popular Mechanics, “designed to be impossible to ignore.” It blared the word “Stall!” 75 times.

Everyone present ignored it. Within four minutes, the plane had hit the water.

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CSN Editor: Like building a better mouse trap .... there is a need to build a better alarm.

The Race To Build Quantum Computers Is Heating Up

Next Big Future: Google, Microsoft, labs and start-ups will create universal quantum computers in 2017 and achieve quantum supremacy over classical computers

Google started working on a form of quantum computing that harnesses superconductivity in 2014. In 2017 or 2018 Google hopes to perform a computation that is beyond even the most powerful ‘classical’ supercomputers — an elusive milestone known as quantum supremacy. Its rival, Microsoft, is betting on an intriguing but unproven concept, topological quantum computing, and hopes to perform a first demonstration of the technology.

The quantum-computing start-up scene is also heating up. Christopher Monroe, co-founded the start-up IonQ in 2015, plans to begin hiring in earnest this year.

Physicist Robert Schoelkopf at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who co-founded the start-up Quantum Circuits, and former IBM applied physicist Chad Rigetti, who set up Rigetti in Berkeley, California, say they expect to reach crucial technical milestones soon.

The largest trapped ion quantum computer with 20 qubits is being tested in an academic lab led by Rainer Blatt at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

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CSN Editor: Both Microsoft and Google are investing heavily in this tech frontier.

Will Global Warming Result In Europe Cooling Down?

CONVEYOR BELT Rising temperatures could shut down the Atlantic Ocean current (depicted here) that helps warm northwestern Europe, a new simulation shows.

Science News: Warming could disrupt Atlantic Ocean current

New simulations revise freshwater impact on circulation’s stability.

Spewing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could shut down the major ocean current that ferries warm water to the North Atlantic, new climate simulations suggest. While not as extreme as the doomsday scenario portrayed in the movie The Day After Tomorrow, such a shutdown could cause wintertime temperatures to plummet by an estimated 7 degrees Celsius or more in northwestern Europe and shift rainfall patterns across the globe.

Many previous climate simulations predicted that the Atlantic circulation would remain largely stable under future climate change. But those simulations failed to accurately portray how relatively freshwater flows between the Atlantic and Southern oceans, an important mechanism as the climate warms. After fixing that inaccuracy, Yale University climate scientist Wei Liu and colleagues set up an extreme climate scenario to test the current’s robustness. Doubling CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere shuttered the Atlantic current in 300 years, the researchers’ simulation showed.

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CSN Editor: So the argument now is .... global warming will cause catastrophic cooling in Europe.

Tweet For Today

New genetic studies may change the existing map of how humans left Africa and colonized the world. https://t.co/W8ZUmKHiOq pic.twitter.com/HYPaYf06NL

— Science News (@ScienceNews) January 5, 2017

A Historical Analysis On Climate Change

Screenshot of MWP Mapping Project (Source: Luening http://t1p.de/mwp downloaded 27-Dec-2016)

Watts Up With That?: Documenting the Global Extent of the Medieval Warm Period

In this article I pose the following questions:

Was the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) a global event?
Where the MWP temperatures higher than recent times?
The reasons for asking these questions are that climate establishment have tried to sideline the MWP as a purely local North Atlantic event. They also frequently state that current temperatures are the highest ever.

I attempt to answer these questions below.

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CSN Editor: A good historical analysis on climate change.

The Communist Zil Limousine Is No More

ByvalByvalich

Popular Mechanics: The Ultimate Communist Automaker Is Dead

Who'll make Putin a new American-style copycat limo now?

What the hell is ZiL to begin with? Well, it's the acronym of 'Zavod imeni Likhachova', or 'Plant named for Likhachov', an automobile, truck, military vehicle and heavy equipment manufacturer based in Moscow, Russia. Its trucks, you've seen plenty of in cold war movies and in developing countries around the world. Its cars, not so much. That's because they were never meant to be driven by the common people.

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CSN Editor: This model is so out of date that .... in a way .... gives it a certain style.

Who Invented The Microwave Oven?

Microwaves cook and heat food, boil water and pop popcorn and aren't harder on food than the stove. Credit: GE

Live Science: Who Invented the Microwave Oven?

A microwave oven is a kitchen appliance that is in nearly every U.S. home — 90 percent of households have one, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the touch of a couple of buttons, this ubiquitous device can boil water, reheat leftovers, pop popcorn or defrost frozen meats in mere minutes.

The microwave oven was invented at the end of World War II. Yet it took awhile for them to catch on. At first they were too big and expensive, and people didn't trust them because of the radiation they use. Eventually, technology improved and fears faded. By the 2000s, Americans named the microwave oven as the No. 1 technology that made their lives easier, according to J. Carlton Gallawa, author of the Complete Microwave Oven Service Handbook.

And it was all due to a happy accident with some melted chocolate.

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CSN Editor: I am old enough to remember the microwave was an oddity that no one could afford to have. Today .... I own 2 of them ... one in my home and one at my chalet .... and all for around $100 per.

This 'Anti-Robot' Can Carry A Human And Run Over 20mph

Daily Mail: Meet 'Prosthesis', the terrifying 14ft-tall 'anti-robot' that can carry a human and run over 20mph almost SILENTLY

* Prosthesis is an 'exo-bionic racing robot' that is controlled by a human pilot sitting inside it
* The human sits at the center of the machine, and moves their arms to control it
* According to the creators, it can hit speeds of more than 30 km per hour

A 14-foot-tall exo-bionic racing robot could soon be tearing across the Nevada desert.

Exhibitors revealed the massive Prosthesis bot at CES 2017 in Las Vegas today, and they say it can hit a top speed of roughly 20 miles per hour – and despite its imposing size, it’s nearly silent when it moves.

The 7,700lb ‘anti-robot’ is controlled by a human pilot who stands at the center of the mechanical exoskeleton, using arm movements to drive it forward at terrifying speeds.

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CSN Editor: This is one big robot.

Look At All The World’s Global Trade In One Interactive Map

Foreign Policy: Watch: All the World’s Global Trade in One Interactive Map

It’s hard to understand the jargon-laden and math-saturated world of international trade. But a new interactive map helps visualize global imports and exports, showing just how massive global trade really is.

Each dot, color-coded by type of trade like agriculture, minerals, plastics, and transportation, represents $1 billion. As the graphic shows, there are a lot of dots — 15,600, in fact, to represent the $15.6 trillion of international trade in 2015 (the latest year from which U.N. data is available) according to the U.N. Comtrade database that tracks the world’s economic statistics.

Take a gander at the interactive version here. Or simply watch the above video:

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CSN Editor: China, Europe, and the U.S. is where all the action is.

China Invests Big In 'Green Technologies'

China is shifting away from dirty coal power and towards cleaner fuels. (Reuters: Jason Lee)

ABC News Online: China to spend $493 billion on green power by 2020

China will plough 2.5 trillion yuan ($493 billion) into renewable power generation by 2020, the country's energy agency says, as the world's largest energy market continues to shift away from dirty coal power towards cleaner fuels.

The investment will create over 13 million jobs in the sector, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said in a blueprint document that lays out its plan to develop the nation's energy sector during the five-year 2016 to 2020 period.

The NEA said installed renewable power capacity including wind, hydro, solar and nuclear power would contribute to about half of new electricity generation by 2020.

The agency did not disclose more details on where the funds — which equate to about $98 billion each year — would be spent.

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CSN Editor: No breakdown on where the money is going to be spent .... but I am willing to bet that most of it will be on nuclear power.

Japanese Company Replaces Office Workers With Artificial Intelligence

Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance believes it will increase productivity by 30% Photograph: Toru Hanai/REUTERS

The Guardian: Japanese company replaces office workers with artificial intelligence

Insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making 34 employees redundant and replacing them with IBM’s Watson Explorer AI

A future in which human workers are replaced by machines is about to become a reality at an insurance firm in Japan, where more than 30 employees are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders.

Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance believes it will increase productivity by 30% and see a return on its investment in less than two years. The firm said it would save about 140m yen (£1m) a year after the 200m yen (£1.4m) AI system is installed this month. Maintaining it will cost about 15m yen (£100k) a year.

The move is unlikely to be welcomed, however, by 34 employees who will be made redundant by the end of March.

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CSN Editor: So it begins.