Discover some new planets

// 30 seconds per day, a lifetime of productivity, right here »

Advertise | Talk to Us | Shop | Unsubscribe

The Futurist is your daily tech, cosmic, and science (both weird or otherwise) newsletter with articles and content curated just for you.

In today's edition:

// PLATO

// AI and control

// Ocean acidification

// Experimental vaccine

Scientists in Japan develop experimental Alzheimer's vaccine that shows promise in mice

"Scientists in Japan may be at the start of a truly monumental accomplishment: a vaccine that can slow or delay the progression of Alzheimer's disease. In preliminary research released this week, the vaccine appeared to reduce inflammation and other important biomarkers in the brains of mice with Alzheimer's-like illness, while also improving their awareness. More research will be needed before this vaccine can be tested in humans, however."

// Gizmodo »

30 seconds a day can make you 100x more productive

ProductivityGlide is a bite-sized email with huge benefits. All you need to do is subscribe to make your life more productive, your work more efficient, and your days easier. [Ad]

// ProductivityGlide »

Ocean acidification is going to do all sorts of weird things to animals' sensory perception

"Researchers at the University of Toronto Scarborough in Ontario put Dungeness crabs in water just slightly more acidic than normal — conditions that are already present in some coastal ecosystems and could be widespread by the year 2100 if humans continue to emit a high level of greenhouse gases. They found that the animals need to be exposed to cadaverine, a food signaling chemical, at a concentration 10 times higher than normal before they register its presence."

// Hakai Magazine »

Giving AI direct control over anything is a bad idea – here's how it could do us real harm

"One of the key reasons we shouldn't let AI have executive power is that it entirely lacks emotion, which is crucial for decision-making. Without emotion, empathy and a moral compass, you have created the perfect psychopath. The resulting system may be highly intelligent, but it will lack the human emotional core that enables it to measure the potentially devastating emotional consequences of an otherwise rational decision."

// The Conversation »

PLATO mission could detect tens of thousands of habitable planets

"In 2026, the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch the PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO), an exoplanet-hunting mission that will investigate over 245,000 stars to look for planets similar to Earth. The mission is expected to find tens of thousands of potentially habitable planets."

// Interesting Engineering »