Real Things That Used To be Science Fiction

Futurology, the study of predicting future technological advancements, is littered with failed predictions of how we'd all be living in cloud cities and eating meals in pill form by now. But just recently there has been a rash of genuine inventions right out of Sci Fi, and these were published respectable journals on days other than April 1st.

For example, CNET are reporting a paper published in Nature from researchers from Griffith University and Swinburne University of Technology in Australia have successfully created a high-definition 3D holographic display with a wide viewing angle of up to 52 degrees, based on a digital holographic screen composed of small pixels that bend the light. While there is still work to be done, that's something straight out of Star Wars from 1976 that exists in the real world now.

Also, as Forbes reported, a flying car straight out of The Jetsons, being designed by AeroMobil, could go on sale as soon as 2017. Last year, the Slovakian company unveiled its latest prototype of an elongated, road-ready vehicle with stowable wings that can navigate both city traffic and the airspace in between landings and take-offs from the world’s airports.

Flying Car from AeroMobil

Another staple of classic sci fi like 2001 A Space Odyssey or Red Dwarf is a computer that you can talk to. These days, we're so used to Google Now, SIRI and Cortana on our phones that this technology has become mainstream. However. IBM is taking it very seriously and recently reorganised itself such that the Watson super computer that became champion of champions on the American game show  Jeopardy! has become one of Big Blue's main go-to-market business units. That means that they're setting its problem solving abilities off on complex healthcare and 'smarter cities' challenges that could really affect the way we live our lives in future.

IBM's Watson computer wins Jeopardy!

We've had about 20 years of science fiction works involving quantum computers. In 2011, Canadian company D-Wave  announced the D-Wave One quantum computer, sporting a 128 qubit processor. By 2012 they had announced the D-Wave Two, the world's first commercially available quantum computer. In 2013 NASA, Google and the USRA launched a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab using a 512-qubit D-Wave Two that would be used for research into machine learning. So, that's a pretty strong endorsement that it's a technology that has well and truly stepped out of the page and into the real world.

D-Wave 2 Commercial Quantum Computer

All very interesting, but where's my self driving car like the Johnny Cab in Total Recall? Well, here it is, thanks to Google, and it's not science fiction but it's science fact. It has been driving trials round San Francisco for a while now and, pending legislation, it will be coming to a road near you some time soon.

A Google Self Driving Car

But what about robots that clean your house? Already done, and on the market with self-guiding vacuum cleaners like the Roomba.

Roomba vacuum cleaner robot.

If you add in a couple of recent 'stretch target' developments, things start to get very interesting. For example, IFLScience are reporting that NASA may have stumbled upon how to achieve Warp Drive, that staple technology of 1960s Star Trek episodes that drove the Starship Enterprise faster than the speed of light through the final frontier using an EMDrive electromagnetic thruster. Now NASA seems to have taken down the tentative announcement that IFL Science is referring to, but there's plenty of speculation on the matter elsewhere.

An EMDrive thruster prototype

Likewise, the space elevator, first proposed in science fiction by Arthur C Clarke as a cheap way of getting satellites and space craft into orbit, may be just over the horizon. Scientists at Penn State university have created strands of diamond nanotubes, which may be the strongest man made material yet created, which cold act as a lift cable for hoisting things into orbit, slung round a geostationary satellite (another Arthur C Clarke proposal that became reality).

Space Elevator (Source: Wikipedia)

At this rate there won't be much left in science to write fiction about.

Protected Habitat Has Grown From 4 to 18 Million Square Kilometres Since 1970

According to the United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) report in May 2010 the area of nationally designated protected nature areas has grown considerably since 1970.

In 1970 the total was just over 4 million square kilometres, whereas by the end of the report period it had grown to over 18 million square kilometres:

Source: cbd.int/gbo3/

By the time of the later GB04 report, the UNEP-WCMC was showing that at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas are on track to be conserved.

The UNEP-WCMC was also tracking as one of its goals that the Nagoya Protocol on biodiversity would be signed and ratified, which it has been by 58 states and the EU. By helping to ensure benefit-sharing, the Protocol creates incentives to conserve and sustainably use genetic resources, and therefore enhances the contribution of biodiversity to development and human well-being.

Improving Representativeness in Westminster

The theme of this blog is about things that are getting better, not necessarily things that are fixed and wrongs that have been completely righted. As is the case with equality in the UK parliament.

The treaty known as Magna Carta, signed in 1215, wrestled power away from King John and allowed people other than the monarch to have a say in the running of the country. But it wasn't a sudden democratic revolution following which all sectors of society were proportionally represented in parliament. Far from it, in fact it moved power towards a group of 25 rebel barons who comprised a section of feudal aristocracy just below a viscount in prominence.

Slowly, these baronial representatives developed into the Knights of the Shire, who were usually wealthy landowners elected by the County Court presided over by the sheriff, which formed the precursor of the House of Commons in the year 1295. Even at this stage, the common man or woman could never hope to become one of these parliamentary representatives, and in fact the vast majority of the British public wasn't eligible to even vote for them.

It took until the 19th century for the British Houses of Commons to become even vaguely representative. By 1829 voting wasn't restricted by ethnicity, by 1918 there was universal male suffrage and by 1928 women were allowed the vote too.

Life peers (barons and baronesses) sitting in the House of Lords are still very much in effect, but since 1957 these are now appointed by the prime minister rather than the monarch and they are no longer inherited by the offspring of the peer without lifting a finger to earn it.

The net result of all this is that power has slowly ebbed away from (mostly male) monarchs and the (mostly male) landed gentry inheriting their power, and has ebbed towards something resembling a cross section of the people of the country a bit more.

For example, since the first female MP was elected in 1918 the number of female MPs has risen slowly to approximately 20% of all MPs (148 female MPs versus 502 male MPs), including of course the first female prime minister during that period in Margaret Thatcher, elected in 1979:

Also, since the introduction of pay for MPs in 1911 being a full time MP is now viable for those without an independent source of wealth (e.g. for those who aren't already rich landowners before they get elected), which wasn't true in years gone by, directly paving the way for the first predominantly working class government in 1923.

Nowadays, the make-up of parliament is less skewed than in days gone by. The average MP is pretty close to the average UK adult in ethnicity (as of the 2010 election there were 27 MPs out of 650 from an ethnic minority) and the average MP is only marginally older than the average adult. MPs are much more likely to be a university graduate than the average adult, which is perhaps understandable given that it's a professional grade job. The two remaining glaring issues remain private schooling and gender, although the latter is at least improving as we have seen above:

Source parliament.uk

In terms of sexuality of MPs, the first MP to be outed as gay was in 1976. Since then we had the first MP come out whilst in office in 1984, the first openly gay parliamentary candidate elected in 1997, the first MP in a civil partnership in 2006, the first bisexual MP in 2013 and LGBT MPs from Labour, Plaid Cymru, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives.

In the House of Lords, the biggest party affiliation of lords is conservatives at 224, compared to the next nearest party which is Labour with 215 peers. So, gone are the days when landed gentry Whigs and Tories populated the lords exclusively, things are a bit more representative now.

This representativeness is an evolving process. To be truly representative of this nation parliament would have to become something like the following:

• 50.9% would be female
• 1.1% would be lesbian or gay, with 0.4 being bisexual and about 4% being unsure or 'other' and so on...
• 87% would be white, 7% Asian, 3% black and about 2% mixed race and so on...
• 59% would be Christian, 26% would have no religion, 4.5% would be Muslim, 1.5% Hindu and so on...
• 7% would be educated in private schools, 
• 0.2% of MPs who are graduates would have graduated from Oxbridge (based on 2000 Oxbridge students per year out of 1 million total graduates per year)

So, there's a long way to go, but the trend is towards a more representative Westminster than ever before.

Global Population Growth Rate Slowing

Much has been made of the fact that the global population rate has ballooned over the past few decades, spawning anti-immigration political movements as if migrants are the only factor in this growth. In fact, the global population growth is largely attributed to couples having more than two babies on average. But there are signs that growth may be slowing.

In 1950 the global population was just over 2 billion. Today it stands at 6.7 billion, and it's projected to edge towards 10 billion in coming decades:

Source: World Growth Report

However, as you can see from that curve, the growth rate is starting to tail off. The growth spurt that caused the population explosion since 1950 was due to a population growth of up to 2%. Today, the growth rate has dropped to 1.1% and it's projected to fall still lower to less than 0.5% in the coming decades:

Source: World Growth Report

If we break this down by region, it seems that growth in most regions is tailing off, with growth in the developed Europe region going negative into population decline. Only Africa's growth rate continues to rise, driven by growth in sub-Saharan countries:

Source: Wikipedia

The 'medium variant' UN forecast predicts that population will level out at 10bn by the year 2100. 

However, some forecasts go further than that and predict that birthrates will fall below 'replacement rate' in the 2020s, meaning that on average we will be having fewer than one child per person. The 'low variant' of the UN population predictions considers the possibility that population may peak at 8bn and decline to 6.7bn by 2100.

Source: UN 'Low' prediction

Japanese Maglev Train Breaks World Speed Record

A Japanese magnetic levitation (known as maglev for short) train has broken the world speed record by reaching 603 km/h, or 374 mph, beating its own 590 km/h speed record set just last week:

It is now by far and away the fastest train on earth, beating China's 430 km/h maglev, Japan's 320 km/h Shinkansen bullet train and Europe's 300 km/h Eurostar train. For the record, the UK's planned HS2 trains will go at up to 400 km/h (250 mph), so already well behind the curve before it has been built.

Notable historic train speed records include:

• Richard Trevithick's first railway steam locomotive set a record of 8 km/h (5 mph) in 1804.
• Stephenson's Rocket set a dizzying record of 48 km/h (30 mph) in 1830.
• The steam locomotive Mallard set a still unbroken steam speed record of 125.88 mph (202.58 km/h) in 1938, as top speed that UK intercity trains still travel at today. 
• France's TGV wheeled train hit 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph) in 2007.

So, the Japanese maglev can travel at 121 times the speed that Trevithick's first locomotive did just 211 years ago. That's some progress,

Global Infant Mortality Rates Dropped by Nearly a Quarter Between 2005 and 2013

According to data collated by the World Bank, infant mortality dropped by nearly a quarter between 2005 and 2013.

The stats measure the number of infants dying before reaching one year of age, per 1,000 live births in a given year. As you can see from the graph below (the original is a bit clearer) the global average has dropped form just over 44 deaths per 1,000 live births to 33.6 deaths per 1,000 liver births in just 8 short years:

Source: World Bank

Actually, if you delve into the raw data, you can see that data goes back as far as 1960, where the average tragically calculated as a over 104 deaths per 1000 live births. So the longer term picture is an even more dramatic improvement.

The mortality rate in the first five years of live is just as encouraging, dropping from 62.7 to 45.6 in the same period:

Source: World Bank

The average five year mortality rate in 1960 calculated at an even more tragic 169 per 100 births! So that's an even more amazing improvement.

The stats don't reveal the reasons for this, but it's likely that some of the other trends they are tracking play a part, including percentage of pregnant women receiving prenatal care, the increasing number of births attended by skilled staff, improving immunisation and better sanitation than in years gone by.

Ethiopia's Famine Stricken Deserts Turning To Green

Back in 1984, images of the unfolding Ethipian famine shocked the world. As Michael Burke's news reports filled our screens with images of weak, fly-covered babies with distended bellies taking their last weary breaths in front of our very eyes, the world decided it must do something to help.

The net result was the Live Aid and Band Aid charitable events, aimed at the people of the West giving money to flood the crisis stricken region with grain and build wells. It was an incredible scene of generosity to help prop up a region that was beset by biblical droughts.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" - proverb

However, it wasn't a sustainable way for the country to go on living. It was time to stop buying the man a fish, and time for the man to build himself an irrigation system. And that's just what the people of Ethipoia's Tigray province have done for themselves.

The region is primarily agricultural and the majority of the population is employed in this sector. Agriculture is dependent on unreliable rainfall. For many years rainfall has been very low and erratic. As a result, repeated crop failure and scarcity of food have forced inhabitants to depend on famine relief in the form of food for work.

Using an ancient system of national service like labour conscription, where able bodied men and women give 20 days labour a year, the people of Tigray province have set about terracing entire mountains to trap water. As the BBC reports, once you had to dig 50ft (15m) down to find water. Now it's just 10ft, and 94 acres (38 hectares) of former desert have been transformed into fertile fields.

Source: BBC News

Thanks to land restoration programmes, young people and 14 households headed by women have been allocated communal land to farm for themselves. Abrehan Girmay (pictured below) has raised his income from US$0.35 an hour as a stone mason and increased his income four-fold thanks to his new role as a farmer.

Source: ruralpovertyportal.org

Irrigation allows a farmer to raise the number of harvest from two per year to three, to move from barely above subsistence farming to the ability to produce a surplus. Schemes like this allow Ethiopian people to move from dependency to self sufficiency, and from being aid recipients to being entrepreneurs.

If that continues, they'll no longer need the west to give them that fish, they'll be able to fish for themselves.

New Immunotherapy Treatments and Targeted Treatments for Cancer

According to a report in IFLScience, Immunotherapy, which uses the body’s own defence mechanism, is at long last becoming accepted as a front-line treatment for cancer, taking its place alongside conventional chemotherapy and radiation-based treatments. 

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy treatment initially approved for advanced melanoma, recently became the first drug to be approved through the UK’s early access to medicine scheme, which gives patients with life threatening or serious conditions access to medicines that are unlicensed or off-label.

The readiness of melanoma skin cancers to become malignant and spread to other parts of the body makes them deadly if not caught early. Pembrolizumab is an antibody that acts on the immune system to allow it to recognise cancer cells, triggering an immune response rather than destroying cancer cells directly.

Source: pharmatutor.org

Meanwhile, a new generation of 'targeted' cancer treatments are also being developed. Rather than hammering all cell growth, both benign and cancerous, as standard chemotherapy and radiotherapy do, targeted treatments are much more focussed. Targeted cancer therapies are therefore expected to be more effective than older forms of treatments and less harmful to normal cells.

These targeted drugs target certain parts of cancer cells that make them different from other cells,or they target other cells that help cancer cells grow. Some targeted drugs are more “targeted” than others. Some might target only a single abnormal protein in cancer cells, while others can affect several different proteins in cancer cells. Others just boost the way the body fights the cancer cells.

Satellite Data Shows The Earth is Getting Greener

A new study in Nature Climate Change found that for the past few years, the earth has been getting a little bit greener, accumulating an additional 4 tons of biomass (vegetation) between 2003 and 2012.

Source: Nature.com

As PopSci reported, the rise is due to the fact that former Soviet countries have started to grow forest back over farmland, plus China has started massive tree planting campaigns. The researchers also found that more arid areas had a lot of vegetation as well, including shrubs in savannahs in Africa, Australia, and South America.

Source: Nature.com

Sadly, the above two diagrams do show that tropical forest deforestation in the Amazon continues apace, but at least the overall global trend is positive.

Renewable Energy Demand to Significantly Outgrow Fossil Fuels in 2015

According to a report in The Economist, global demand for renewable energy is predicted to increase at a much faster rate than traditional 'dirty' non-renewable energy sources.

Renewable energy is expected to increase by 13% in 2015 to help satisfy the developing world's increasing energy needs. Compare that to coal and petroleum which are predicted to grow at less than 2%:

Total energy needs will grow at just over 2% which means that over time, renewable sources are grabbing an increasingly larger slice of the pie of our overall energy needs, albeit starting from a much lower base.

This is partly driven by initiatives like the forthcoming global climate change treaty, replacing the Kyoto Protocol, which is likely to be signed at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) in Paris. The countries of the UNFCCC agreed in 2011 to negotiate a global legally binding agreement by 2015, to come into force by 2020.