Artificial Intelligence Doctors and Virtual Reality Vacations Are on the Horizon

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Robot doctors, virtual reality vacations and smart toothbrushes. These are just a few of the things the world can expect to see in the not-so-distant future, says Stanford and Duke researcher and lecturer Vivek Wadhwa.

Speaking to a crowd of more than 300 people in Palm Beach in December at billionaire Jeff Greene’s “Closing the Gap” conference, which addressed the growing divide between the wealthy and poor and how the rise of machines might kill white-collar jobs, Wadhwa sketched a sci-fi vision for the future that he says will soon be a reality thanks to rapid technological innovation.

“The future is going to be happening much, much faster than anyone ever imagined,” said Wadhwa, explaining that tech growth has been exponential — meaning as technology advances it does so with increasing speed.

It took more than a century to go from Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone to Gordon Gekko’s iconic clunker in the movie Wall Street. Just two decades later we had the first iPhone. In 2010, $1,000 would buy a computer with the computational power of a mouse brain; soon it will buy you a computer as strong as the human brain.

“In about seven or eight years the iPhone 12 will have the same computing power that you do,” said Wadhwa. (Read more from “Artificial Intelligence Doctors and Virtual Reality Vacations Are on the Horizon” HERE)

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Homeless Squatters Are Taking over LaGuardia Airport

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Vice President Joe Biden once compared it to a “Third World country” — but LaGuardia Airport has become so riddled with homeless that it could now even make some of those nations look good.

The number of derelicts living at the airport has increased dramatically in the past year, turning the main terminal into the city’s most popular de facto flophouse, where they sleep, eat and wash up while competing for space with passengers, according to Port Authority sources.

At least 50 homeless people live inside the airport’s Terminal B, which anyone can get into without passing through security, sources said.

On one night last week, men and women were sacked out on cardboard that they had spread out over warm vents on the floor, a reporter observed. Others were curled up on chairs near Air Canada while televisions blared above their heads. A few were bunched together in couples, but most were solo and kept their distance from others.

Meanwhile, passengers tried to keep as far away as possible while they waited for their flights. (Read more from “Homeless Squatters Are Taking over LaGuardia Airport” HERE)

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Drone Owners Get Christmas Surprise from FAA

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Buyers beware! If that drone you find under the Christmas tree weighs much more than half a pound, you’re going to have to register it with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) before you fly it outside.

The FAA and the Department of Transportation (DoT) announced new rules on Monday that will mean nearly all drone operators will have to register their drones in a national database.

The authorities have been attempting to crack down on unlicensed drones amid their rising popularity – they are expected to be one of this Christmas’s biggest toys. But drones have been seen as a major menace and have disrupted firefighting efforts, been used to snoop on neighbors and to smuggle drugs into prison (not to mention regularly flying too close to manned aircraft).

The new rules cover all drones weighing more than 0.55lb (0.25kg) and take effect on 21 December. A significant number of Christmas toys may be affected – and quite a few children may need to get their parents to register for them, because licensed drone pilots must be over 13 years of age. Drone owners who began flying their quadcopter vehicles before that date will have until 19 February to comply.

New drone toys are notably light – the box containing the largest radio-controlled flying Millennium Falcon toy weighs barely 1.7lb, according to the manufacturer, Spinmaster, and that includes the remote. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and a customer service representative could only give the weight of the vehicle and its controller. (Read more from “Drone Owners Get Christmas Surprise from FAA” HERE)

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Asteroid to Pass Earth on Christmas Eve

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A large asteroid is approaching the Earth-moon system and will provide a good opportunity for radar observations in the days ahead. Asteroid 163899 – also known as 2003 SD220 – will come closest to Earth on Christmas Eve (December 24, 2015). It’ll pass at a safe distance, and there’s no need to worry about reports claiming it will skim the Earth, or cause earthquakes. At its closest, asteroid 2003 SD220 will be some 6,787,600 miles (11 million km) from our planet’s surface. That’s more than 28 times the Earth-moon distance! It’s so far away that only professional and advanced amateur astronomers are likely to capture optical images of this space rock.

Don’t believe any media suggesting that this space rock may cause earthquakes. Those assertions are misleading and incorrect. Even if 2003 SD220 were passing closer, it’s doubtful earthquakes would result. In fact, there’s no scientific evidence that an asteroid’s flyby can cause any seismic activity, unless it collides with Earth, but – in this case – that clearly will not be the case.

This asteroid isn’t a newly discovered object. Its name – 2003 SD220 – indicates its discovery year. The Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search (LONEOS) program in Flagstaff, Arizona discovered the asteroid on September 29, 2003.

One notable feature of this asteroid is its large size. Preliminary estimates suggested a size of 0.7 miles to 1.5 miles (1.1 km to 2.5 km). Now the size estimate has been bumped up, after recent radar observations from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. The new observations suggest the asteroid is about 1.25 miles (2 km) long.

The asteroid is thought to have a very slow rotation of about one week. (Read more from “Asteroid to Pass Earth on Christmas Eve” HERE)

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Still in a Crib, yet Being Given Antipsychotics

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Andrew Rios’s seizures began when he was 5 months old and only got worse. At 18 months, when an epilepsy medication resulted in violent behavior, he was prescribed the antipsychotic Risperdal, a drug typically used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults, and rarely used for children as young as 5 years.

When Andrew screamed in his sleep and seemed to interact with people and objects that were not there, his frightened mother researched Risperdal and discovered that the drug was not approved, and had never even been studied, in children anywhere near as young as Andrew.

It was just ‘Take this, no big deal,’ like they were Tic Tacs,” said Genesis Rios, a mother of five in Rancho Dominguez, Calif. “He was just a baby.”

Cases like that of Andrew Rios, in which children age 2 or younger are prescribed psychiatric medications to address alarmingly violent or withdrawn behavior, are rising rapidly, data shows. Many doctors worry that these drugs, designed for adults and only warily accepted for certain school-age youngsters, are being used to treat children still in cribs despite no published research into their effectiveness and potential health risks for children so young.

Almost 20,000 prescriptions for risperidone (commonly known as Risperdal), quetiapine (Seroquel) and other antipsychotic medications were written in 2014 for children 2 and younger, a 50 percent jump from 13,000 just one year before, according to the prescription data company IMS Health. Prescriptions for the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) rose 23 percent in one year for that age group, to about 83,000. (Read more from “Still in a Crib, yet Being Given Antipsychotics” HERE)

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Autonomous Weaponized Robots: Not Just Science Fiction

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Robots have been keeping police officers safe for years by disposing of bombs and assisting in hostage situations, but a rapid increase in technology could trigger a robot revolution over the next decade.

Robots are already being weaponized: In 2014, a South African company started selling drones that could shoot 80 pepper balls per second, and police in North Dakota have been cleared to use a type of drone that is armed with tear gas and Tasers. Police use of Tasers—they’re designed to be nonlethal but can trigger cardiac arrest—killed 540 Americans from 2001 to 2013, according to Amnesty International. Right now, this technology requires an operator to remotely control the robots and the weapons.

(Read more from “Autonomous Weaponized Robots: Not Just Science Fiction” HERE)

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Scientists Have Found a New Strain of Bacteria That Is Resistant to All Antibiotics

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FOR years experts have warned there would come a day when antibiotics would cease being effective.

And it seems that day could be sooner than first thought after scientists discovered a new superbug that is not just impervious to the last line of defence medication, but has the ability to infect other bacteria.

But instead of destroying its virulent cousins this new strain of e.coli actually strengthens them by giving them the same antibiotic shield . . .

Experts, while worried about the potential effect this discovery would have, hoped it would remain in China . . .

But this week those hopes were dashed when researchers in Denmark revealed they had found a similar strain in poultry from Germany as well as in a Danish man who had never travelled outside the country. (Read more from “Scientists Have Found a New Strain of Bacteria That Is Resistant to All Antibiotics” HERE)

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US Children Diagnosed with ADHD Explodes 43% in Last Decade

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The prevalence of ADHD diagnoses soared 43 percent in the United States in the first decade of the century, with more than one in 10 youths now diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, researchers said Tuesday.

ADHD is the most commonly identified mental disorder in the United States, often treated with psychological therapy and prescription stimulants like Ritalin to improve behavior and focus.

Its precise causes are unknown, though some research has pointed to difficulties during pregnancy, exposure to toxins and family history as playing a role. . .

When researchers looked specifically at teenagers, they found the diagnoses had risen 52 percent since 2003.

“This analysis suggests that 5.8 million US children ages five to 17 now have this diagnosis. . . (Read more from “US Children Diagnosed with ADHD Explodes 43% in Last Decade” HERE)

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A Peek Inside the Orion Spacecraft That Will Fly Us to Mars

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The length of humanity’s planned journey to Mars will be much more than the 6 months or so that it’ll take to fly there. Though NASA plans to send astronauts to the red planet sometime in the 2030s or 40s, it’s going to take decades of research and testing to develop the equipment to get us there.

The ship that will carry humans to another planet is the Orion capsule, of which NASA is already testing prototypes. And at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Popular Science got to take a look inside an Orion mock-up.

If the spacecraft looks a little cramped for a 6- to 9-month trip, that’s because the capsule won’t be going to Mars alone. The plan is to launch Orion from Earth and, once in space, have it dock with a larger habitat module (whose design is still TBD) before beginning its journey to Mars.

Plus, Orion engineer Stuart McClung says the spacecraft is not all that small compared to what we use to send astronauts to the International Space Station. “If you walk over to the Soyuz capsule on the other side of the building, this is like a big stretch limo compared to that Soyuz capsule.”

The engineers at the Johnson Space Center use the Orion mock-up for designing, training, and testing–for example, deciding on a seat layout and crew interfaces. (Read more from “A Peek Inside the Orion Spacecraft That Will Fly Us to Mars” HERE)

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Billionaire Jeff Greene Says Technology Will Kill White-Collar Jobs, Hosts Conference on Inequality

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Touch-screen ordering at fast food restaurants, robots welding car parts at Tesla factories, apps like Uber taking a bite out of the taxi and limo industry: They’re all good for innovation but perhaps not so great for the workers whose jobs are on the line, according to real estate billionaire Jeff Greene.

“What globalization did to blue collar jobs and the working class economy over the past 30 or 40 years, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics will do to the white collar economy — and at a much, much faster pace,” says Greene.

It’s a problem that will only exacerbate the growing gap between the rich and the poor, he claims, because we’ve left ourselves unprepared for the inevitable automation of many jobs traditionally done by humans.

“I realized that that is the greatest threat we have in our country today,” says Greene. “So I thought, ‘Let’s convene some of the greatest minds from academia, government, business and the nonprofit sector to come together to talk realistically about what’s happening.’”

What he devised is a two-day conference spanning Monday and Tuesday dubbed “Closing the Gap: Solutions for An Inclusive Economy,” hosted by Greene at Palm Beach’s Tideline Ocean Resort & Spa. Speakers include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, author Thomas Friedman, former Apple and Pepsi CEO John Sculley, lawyer and TV personality Star Jones and boxing legend Mike Tyson. (Read more from “Billionaire Jeff Greene Says Technology Will Kill White-Collar Jobs, Hosts Conference on Inequality” HERE)

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