The following submission statement was provided by /u/mossadnik:

Submission Statement:

>Global animal populations are declining, and we've got limited time to try to fix it.

>That's the upshot of a new report from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, which analyzed years of data on thousands of wildlife populations across the world and found a downward trend in the Earth's biodiversity.

>According to the Living Planet Index, a metric that's been in existence for five decades, animal populations across the world shrunk by an average of 69% between 1970 and 2018.

>Not all animal populations dwindled, and some parts of the world saw more drastic changes than others. But experts say the steep loss of biodiversity is a stark and worrying sign of what's to come for the natural world.

>According to the report's authors, the main cause of biodiversity loss is land-use changes driven by human activity, such as infrastructure development, energy production and deforestation.

>But the report suggests that climate change — which is already unleashing wide-ranging effects on plant and animal species globally — could become the leading cause of biodiversity loss if rising temperatures aren't limited to 1.5°C.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y459ht/animal_populations_have_shrunk_an_average_of_69/isc808o/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Ezekiel_W:

>Using chemical design and synthesis, the team brought together the Nobel-prize winning technology with therapeutic technology born in their own lab to overcome a critical limitation of CRISPR. Specifically, the groundbreaking work provides a system to deliver the cargo required for generating the gene editing machine known as CRISPR-Cas9. The team developed a way to transform the Cas-9 protein into a spherical nucleic acid (SNA) and load it with critical components as required to access a broad range of tissue and cell types, as well as the intracellular compartments required for gene editing.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y3xrlm/nearlimitless_crispr_therapies_this_drug_delivery/isaxg6z/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Ezekiel_W:

>Moderna Inc., the company that shot to fame after developing the vaccine for COVID-19, has teamed up with the pharmaceutical giant, Merck, to develop a personalized vaccine against skin cancer, CNBC reported. If successful, the vaccine will be used in high-risk patients of melanoma, the deadliest known skin cancer.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y3xgz9/moderna_teams_up_with_merck_for_personalized/isavnsi/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/ObtainSustainability:

A new bladeless wind energy unit, patented by Aeromine Technologies, is tackling the challenge of competing with rooftop solar as a local source of clean energy that can be integrated with the built environment. The scalable, “motionless” wind energy unit can produce 50% more energy than rooftop solar at the same cost, said the company.

The technology leverages aerodynamics similar to airfoils in a race car to capture and amplify each building’s airflow. The unit requires about 10% of the space required by solar panels and generates round-the-clock energy. Aeromine said unlike conventional wind turbines that are noisy, visually intrusive, and dangerous to migratory birds, the patented system is motionless and virtually silent.

Buildings and the built environment account for nearly 50% of all carbon emissions globally, according to Architecture 2030. Building operations contributes about 27% of emissions, while buildings materials and construction, and other construction industry energy use are estimated to account for another 20%. This represents an opportunity for buildings to be made more efficiently, and to adopt innovative technologies to generate emissions-free electricity.
BASF Corporation is currently testing the Aeromine system at a manufacturing plant in Wyandotte, Michigan. The patented technology was validated through joint research with Sandia National Laboratories and Texas Tech University.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y3x689/rooftop_wind_energy_innovation_claims_50_more/isatxy5/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/manual_tranny:

Due to a combination of subsidies for manufacturing and project tax credits, the United States could see solar and wind PPAs signed at prices below 1¢/kWh. PPAs below $0 have happened before (in Portugal), however, they are still the exception the the rule.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will pay solar panel manufacturers up to 18¢/W to manufacture solar modules. Every part of the panel is subsidized - the poly silicon, wafers, cells, and modules. The Production Tax Credit, worth 2.6¢/kWh, pays out (inflation adjusted!) for 10 years after a project is constructed. And that 2.6¢/kWh will increase ~33% for modules manufactured domestically, and an additional ~33% for projects built in solar energy communities (energy communities are brownfields & other sites where coal/oil/NG were burned after Dec 1, 1999)

When we combine the cheap IRA solar panels with the PTC, that's when we see domestic solar power PPAs signed for $0/kWh or below.

One consequence of the subsidized pricing - Credit Suisse predicts that the United States could become a net exporter of solar modules to the global market.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y3ui5x/free_electricity_credit_suisse_analysis_says/isah247/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Sariel007:

Depression is an all-too-common psychiatric condition that can profoundly affect a person’s well-being. While there is a huge range of medications available to treat depression, many people don’t respond to the first or even second medications they are prescribed. As a result, doctors must often take a trial-and-error approach, meaning it could take months or even years to find an effective medication.

In the search for better approach, some researchers are exploring the use of machine learning to predict which patients will respond to a specific antidepressant medication. In a study published 12 September in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, one team describes a machine-learning algorithm that analyzes the electrical activity of people’s brains and could predict response to the antidepressant Sertraline with 83.7 percent accuracy.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y3u04g/ai_can_offer_insight_into_who_responds_to/isac9yx/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Leprechan_Sushi:

I guess this is one of those inventions that did not take off. A proposed a new system for the mass production of chicken that removes the birds’ cerebral cortex so that they don’t experience the horrors of being packed together tightly in vertical farms. He argues that it would be more humane to have blind chickens than ones that can see.

It does look like nothing came of this.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y3gvte/food_project_proposes_matrixstyle_vertical/is8jnat/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/ForHidingSquirrels:

Since sometime in 2015, when solar growth really started picking up in terms of total volume - we've been hearing that growth rates won't keep up when growing from a larger base...but here we are in 2022 - with a projected 30% global growth this year, and almost the same amount last, yeah - but something foolishly large projected for next year - 100% manufacturing capacity growth?

Tells me I should ignore most things said to me in2015.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y3antd/solar_silicon_manufacturing_about_doubling_from/is7j2xo/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/mossadnik:

Submission Statement:

>The Synthetic Party, a new Danish political party with an artificially intelligent representative and policies derived from AI, is eyeing a seat in parliament as it hopes to run in the country’s November general election.

>The party was founded in May by the artist collective Computer Lars and the non-profit art and tech organization MindFuture Foundation. The Synthetic Party’s public face and figurehead is the AI chatbot Leader Lars, which is programmed on the policies of Danish fringe parties since 1970 and is meant to represent the values of the 20 percent of Danes who do not vote in the election. Leader Lars won't be on the ballot anywhere, but the human members of The Synthetic Party are committed to carrying out their AI-derived platform.

>Leader Lars is an AI chatbot that people can speak with on Discord. You can address Leader Lars by beginning your sentences with an “!”. The AI understands English but writes back to you in Danish.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y3470o/this_danish_political_party_is_led_by_an_ai_the/is6g170/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/el_gee:

Robotics firms like Starship, which is headquartered in the United States, say they are creating new jobs and electric bots are greener than car or van drop-offs. But couriers' unions fear they bring a looming risk of job losses and worsening conditions for delivery riders and drivers.

But Starship says robots can bring benefits to society as they can take over some of the menial, poorly-paid tasks currently done by gig workers - and create new jobs for the humans who manage them.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y2xhe6/rise_of_delivery_robots_leaves_drivers_fearful_of/is5axnr/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/upyoars:

> Prior research has shown that, at the edges of the solar system, there is a point at which the solar wind slows to a speed at which sound can travel—it is called the termination shock. Prior research has also shown that there exists a point where the solar wind becomes incapable of pushing back against pressure exerted by interstellar space—it is called the heliopause. Both of the Voyager space probes have pushed through this boundary and into interstellar space. And as they did so, they sent back sensor data.

> By analyzing data from three sources, the researchers noted a sudden change in pressure exerted by the solar wind in 2014, and used the relatively short time scale of the event to study the shape of the heliopause and termination shock. When modeled, the researchers found that huge ripples were formed in the boundary areas. They also found major shifts in the distance to the heliopause, suggesting that its shape was not uniform and that it was continually changing for unknown reasons.

> The researchers hope to learn more about the boundary of the solar system using data sent back to Earth from a new probe set to launch in 2025—it will be capable of sending back measurements of neutral atom emissions with higher precision.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y2n0cf/data_suggests_there_are_rippled_structures_at_the/is3uvf9/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/ForHidingSquirrels:

I’ve been wondering why battery manufacturers have been moving to the southeast other than cheap labor. Eventually it’ll be because of supply chain benefits. Access to steel, maybe mining, good highways, well priced electricity, and of course state regulations. Anyone have real information on this?

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y2jm20/us_federal_reserve_sees_ev_battery_belt/is39je5/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/phife_is_a_dawg:

Solid-state batteries also perform better in stressful environments, as they are less prone to overheating, fire and loss of charge over time, however they typically cannot discharge energy at the same rate as li-ion batteries.

Until now, this has made them unsuitable for powering large electronics, such as electric vehicles, as they require batteries capable of discharging their energy an incredibly fast rate.

This issue was solved by researchers at Nasa’s Solid-state Architecture Batteries for Enhanced Rechargeability and Safety (SABERS) unit, who were able to increase the battery’s discharge rate by a factor of 10 using innovative new materials that have yet to be used in batteries.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y2e8be/nasa_has_invented_a_new_type_of_highperformance/is2fcw0/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/dacourtbatty:

Turns out they aren’t that good but still interesting.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y2a6qm/lab_grown_brain_cells_play_video_game_pong/is1p1gb/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/SuperDry_Accident:

"Today, Nature Astronomy released a paper that shows off the sorts of science the Webb Telescope was designed to produce. Early on, the new telescope was pointed at a system of two massive stars that orbit each other closely. Ground-based observations had detected a ring or two produced by the interactions of these giants; the Webb was able to determine that there are at least 17 concentric rings of material that have been put in place over the previous 130 years.

And just to show off, astronomers were able to obtain a spectrum of the material that forms the rings." "One is an O-type star, the largest and hottest class of stars we know of. The second is called a Wolf-Rayet"

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y2aecb/webb_captures_truly_strange_set_of_rings_built_by/is1qfko/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/thedailybeast:

More and more scientists think it’s time to think through the political implications of first contact.

“In the event of contact, things will likely move very quickly, and we may not have the time to carefully vet our reasoning,” said Chelsea Haramia, a philosopher at Spring Hill College in Alabama.

When Kenneth Wisian and John Traphagan, respectively geophysicist and religious-studies experts at the University of Texas, studied the issue back in 2020, they came away more than a little worried.

Their main concern was that whichever country first makes contact with intelligent aliens—by way of a probe or radio broadcast or some other means—might suddenly become the most powerful country ever. Even if it wasn’t very powerful before first contact.

Knowledge of alien technology, “if wielded solely by one nation here on Earth, might enable it to dominate the world,” Wisian and Traphagan wrote in their peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Space Policy.

“Controlling communication with an [extraterrestrial intelligence] could be the biggest ‘prize’ ever in international competition.”

It was an alarming assertion. But not every scientist agreed with it. A team led by Jason Wright, a Penn State astronomer, rebutted Wisian and Taphagan in a different study. Their main point is that the most likely method of contacting aliens is also the easiest and cheapest: radio.

Almost any country with satellite T.V. could use the same basic tech to listen to, and talk back to, aliens. “There are an enormous number of radio dishes designed to communicate with Earth satellites that could easily be repurposed for such an effort,” wrote Wright and his coauthors.

So which group of scientists do you think is right? How will humans respond?

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y296re/will_first_contact_with_et_spark_a_war_among/is1k035/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/greenappletree:

This actually might work and has a certain aesthetic that appeal to certain demographics. Would look great on a VW bug for example. From the article itself this is what it has to say.

>No matter how many cameras or sensors they use, autonomous cars will never be perfect, but research coming out of Japan suggests that a simple upgrade could help reduce the risk of self-driving cars hitting undetected pedestrians: a pair of animated googly eyes that make it obvious what the vehicle has or hasn’t spotted.

one issue I can see is that if the eyes malfunction and someone gets hit then that can lead to a lawsuit. Innovative though.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y282mv/big_googly_eyes_could_make_autonomous_cars_safer/is1dq8t/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/mossadnik:

Submission Statement:

>In October 2018, a small star was ripped to shreds when it wandered too close to a black hole in a galaxy located 665 million light years away from Earth. Though it may sound thrilling, the event did not come as a surprise to astronomers who occasionally witness these violent incidents while scanning the night sky.

>But nearly three years after the massacre, the same black hole is lighting up the skies again — and it hasn’t swallowed anything new, scientists say.

>“This caught us completely by surprise — no one has ever seen anything like this before,” says Yvette Cendes, a research associate at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and lead author of a new study analyzing the phenomenon.

>The team concludes that the black hole is now ejecting material traveling at half of the speed of light, but are unsure why the outflow was delayed by several years. The results, described this week in the Astrophysical Journal, may help scientists better understand black holes’ feeding behavior, which Cendes likens to “burping” after a meal.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y26hnm/weve_never_seen_anything_like_this_before_black/is13a05/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/redingerforcongress:

> ‘More questions than answers’ MNT also spoke with Dr. Danelle Fisher, a pediatrician and chair of pediatrics at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, about this study. She said that as both a pediatrician and a mother, her first reaction to the study was fear.

> “What are we doing environmentally to these unborn babies that we can detect these particles in their system before they’re even born?” she asked. “That’s just so frightening.”

> “And then the next question that I have […] is […] are we going to see worse disease states?” Dr. Fisher continued. “How do we deal with it? How do we treat it? Do we need to treat it?”

> “I feel like this study gave me more questions than answers,” she noted, “[b]ut a good study will do that — it will encourage you to think about what the ramifications are, what we can do to make it better, and what kinds of directions we need to go in when we’re looking at future studies.”

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y27jho/air_pollution_toxic_particles_present_in_lungs_of/is192s9/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:

From the Article

>The uncrewed Artemis I mission would mark the debut of the SLS and Orion capsule, for what would be a more than monthlong journey around the moon. It kicks off NASA’s long-awaited return to the moon’s surface, the first mission in the Artemis lunar program. Tentatively, the plan is to land the agency’s astronauts on the moon by its third Artemis mission in 2025.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y25del/nasa_aims_for_midnovember_launch_of_delayed/is0wdee/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/nastratin:

Satya Nadella doesn’t think your headset will replace your laptop

Is the metaverse a place we’ll all spend all our time someday, thus replacing all our current tech with glasses and headsets? Microsoft’s CEO doesn’t think so:

>When I think about the Metaverse, the first thing I think about is it’s not going to be born in isolation from everything else that’s in our lives, which is you’re going to have a Mac or a Windows PC, you’re going to have an iOS or an Android phone, and maybe you’ll have a headset.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y23kvw/an_interview_with_meta_ceo_mark_zuckerberg_and/is0maxv/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:

Submission Statement

This research seems quite tied to Korea's domestic battery production industry, so I hope this bodes well for its commercialization.

Other questions need to be addressed too. As this is quite a fundamental redesign of lithium-ion battery chemistry, how much lithium would this new battery use? That could have quite a significant effect on the final cost.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y21zhn/south_korean_researchers_say_they_have_developed/is0e27f/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:

From the article: America's fastest internet has become faster. The Department of Energy's (DOE) dedicated science network, ESnet (Energy Science Network), has been upgraded to ESnet6, boasting a staggering bandwidth of 46 Terabits per second (Tbps). Before you get any ideas, hold up. For now, it's strictly for scientists.

"ESnet6 represents a transformational change in the way networks are built for research, with improved capacity, resiliency, and flexibility," ESnet executive director Inder Monga said in a press release. "Together, these new capabilities make it faster, easier, and more efficient for scientists around the world to conduct and collaborate on ground-breaking research."

ESnet was established in 1986, and over the past 35 years, the network has served as the "data circulatory system" for the DOE from the Berkeley Lab. It connects all of its national laboratories, tens of thousands of DOE-funded researchers, and DOE's premier scientific instruments and supercomputing centers.

The network has had several upgrades and transmitted 1.1 exabytes of data over the network in 2021. According to the statement, traffic on ESnet increases by a factor of ten every four years.

To compare, you could be getting by on a few hundred Megabits per second (Mbps), while ESnet6 is equivalent to 46 million Mbps, according to the New Atlas.

Even if you're on a 10 Gbps fiber connection, which is the fastest internet speed available to consumers, ESnet6 has you beat 46,000 times over.

ESnet6 is made up of 15,000 miles (24,000 km) of fiber optic cables spanning the country, enabling network backbone links that can each transfer data between 400 Gigabits per second (Gbps) and 1 Tbps for record-time transfers. Though it set the record for the fastest internet network in the world, it isn't a record data transmission speed. An experimental setup in Japan, which achieved a speed of 1 Petabit per second (PBPs), which is 1,000 Tbps, has bagged the honor for the same.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y221dl/worlds_fastest_internet_network_has_been_upgraded/is0ebft/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/tonymmorley:

"Antifungal compound helping disease-causing bacteria thrive may treat humans and plants, too." Cosmos, October 11th, 2022, Root Source here: New Antifungal Antibiotic

For 99% of our history as a species, we have been disproportionally outgunned in our war against the microbes, and desperately ignorant. And while we have made enormous progress in beating the microbes into submission, antibiotic resistance remains an ongoing challenge, particularly in livestock.

While it's early days for discoveries like this, some of which may take decades to reach the market, it shows that our improving mastery of genome sequencing is generating tangible innovation with future potential.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y1n4aw/new_antibiotic_hiding_in_diseased_potatoes/irybed4/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:

From the Article

>The Space craft that NASA deliberately crashed into an asteroid last month succeeded in nudging the rock moonlet out of its orbit -- the first time humanity has altered the motion of a celestial body, NASA chief announced on Tuesday

Which leads to an interesting question, would this methodology be the basis for future endeavors to nudge other asteroids out of its orbit, should that celestial body threatened Earth in the future years to come?

Since other countries particularly China doing the same thing in 2026 how would such actions affect both geopolitical and outer space policy?

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y1h8fh/nasa_says_dart_mission_succeeded_in_altering/irxch6d/