Contents
Theme of the week
Crew Dragon successfully returned to Earth
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Crew Dragon successfully splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on August 2, 2020. After two months on the ISS, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley have returned to Earth.
Good splashdown of Dragon confirmed! Welcome back to Earth, @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug! pic.twitter.com/0vAS3CcK9P
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 2, 2020
In terms of technology, this is not a breakthrough in the space industry: Soyuz regularly fly to the orbital station, and the Chinese manned spacecraft Shenzhou fly to the Tiangong-2 near-Earth laboratory. But a successful Crew Dragon mission will change the organization of flights, because SpaceX is a private company that can dispose of its manned spacecraft as it wants. This means that people in the future will be able to travel into space more often, and such trips themselves will become cheaper. For comparison: in 2020, to send an astronaut to the ISS using the Soyuz, you need to spend $ 90 million, and on the Crew Dragon ship – $ 55 million. And due to the fact that Crew Dragon can accommodate four people, not six will be able to be on the space station at the same time astronauts as before, but seven. This will allow more complex experiments and increase their number.
By 2021, the Boeing Corporation hopes to complete all tests and send its Starliner manned spacecraft with people on board to the ISS. If Boeing succeeds, then there will be at least two private competing companies in the US that will be engaged in space flights. This will make traveling to orbit more accessible and safer. Then in the future everyone will be able to hear: “Dear passengers, welcome to Earth! Thank you for using the services of SpaceX.”
New trend: slow medicine
The “slow” movement appeared in the early 1980s as a response to the acceleration of the pace of life. Proponents of this approach believe that quality is more important than quantity, even if you have to spend more time on the task. This philosophy has also become popular among physicians, who point out that medicine cannot be optimized by reducing the time of admission of patients and increasing the number of reports.
Despite the introduction of artificial intelligence and new technologies, such as telemedicine, it is becoming more difficult to diagnose. The cause of most chronic diseases, including mental illness, is a complex of factors, from genetics to stress. Therefore, doctors need to determine what caused the disease, and not just treat the symptoms. An important role in this is played by therapists, to whom patients go in the first place. To make a correct diagnosis, doctors must be able to listen to the patient, and this requires a deeper knowledge of psychology. Then the therapist will understand what the real cause of the disease is and refer the patient to the right specialist.
Proponents of slow medicine believe that thanks to this approach, patients will begin to better understand health issues and will more closely monitor their condition. This will help to reduce the number of hospitalizations and “unnecessary” visits to the hospital, and doctors will have more time to diagnose complex cases.
Forecast of the week: what will banks and hospitals look like in the future
Experts from the consulting firm Deloitte predict that the hospitals of the future will become more compact and specialized. More and more people will be treated at home, and only seriously ill patients will be hospitalized. This will happen due to the development of telemedicine, artificial intelligence and mobile hospitals. As a result, hospitals will shrink in size, but become more functional thanks to smart rooms that can be quickly reconfigured to meet the needs of a particular patient.
Modern technologies will also change banks. According to experts from the American consulting company Forrester, they will become “invisible”, but at the same time their role for clients will increase. With the help of predictive analytics, banks will start offering their services exactly when users need it. All communication will take place via the Internet, and physical branches will be closed. At the same time, banks will finally cease to be only financial institutions: they will build business ecosystems around themselves from personalized services and products. To make this model successful, banks need to collect a lot of accurate and truthful user data. The key to this is a culture of trust that is supported by moral, social and environmental values.
Development of the week
Airship for humanitarian missions
The American company LTA Research and Exploration, in which Google co-founder Sergey Brin invested, sold its first airship Airship 3.0, an 18-meter vessel with 12 electric engines. Unlike the airships of the past, Airship 3.0 is safer, more technologically advanced and more environmentally friendly. The helium lifts the ship into the air, while the hydrogen powers the electric motors. The airship is 3D printed from durable and lightweight carbon fiber. It is planned to be used to deliver humanitarian cargo to hard-to-reach areas and for commercial flights.
One line
- Gas whirlwinds around black holes can be “movie films” that record everything that happened around in the past.
- The “mirror” form of lithium will make batteries more efficient.
- The VR show The Fabric Of Reality, a fashion show of young designers in virtual reality, took place.
- Octopuses have been made transparent by editing their genes using CRISPR technology.
- Gene therapy cured mice with advanced Alzheimer’s.
- Virgin Galactic unveiled the concept of a supersonic passenger aircraft.
- The lattice algorithm has been called the leader of post-quantum cryptography.
What to read
A Memory Called Empire novel by Annalinden Weller, who writes under the pseudonym Arkady Martine. In 2020, the work won the Hugo Literary Award for Science Fiction. The plot focuses on the dynastic and social crisis in the Teikskalaanli empire – a cyberpunk interpretation of the history of Byzantium. One of the main themes of the book is political: the author discusses how the imperial consciousness is formed and what it means for the culture and psychology of society.
What to listen
Release of the Get WIRED podcast about digital avatars (Virtual Beings) and the culture that develops around them. Avatars are virtual characters endowed with artificial intelligence. In this episode, journalist Emma Gray Ellis talks about her experience of “communicating” with digital beings who gathered at the Virtual Beings Summit. During the event, representatives of IT companies and the avatars they created talked about how they see the world in five years, and the audience guessed which of them was real and which was a hologram.
What to see
Lecture by Mikhail Lebedev, Doctor of Philosophy and Scientific Director of the HSE Center for Bioelectrical Interfaces, on the activity of neurons and neuroimpalants. He talks about the history of this technology, experiments with brain stimulation, and about the areas in which neural interfaces will be useful to people in the future.
Subscribe to the Trends Telegram channel and stay up to date with current trends and forecasts about the future of technology, economics, education and innovation.