FLASH TALKS: Probing the Future

The Winner – Ultra-conductive Copper!

After the presentations and Q&A were completed, the audience voted for the overall Best Presentation. That award went to Malcolm Burwell for his inspiring and clever discussion of the properties and opportunity for ultra-conductive copper, a product composed of nanoscale layers of copper and graphene.  While still expensive, ultra-conductive copper delivers significant efficiency improvements for electrical equipment operating at room temperature.  Not quite Star Trek’s “transparent aluminum” perhaps, but a technical breakthrough, nevertheless.

Aging

Two presenters focused on issues in aging. Seth Rhoades noted that increasing life span requires changes in how we think about the later stages of life. Demographic charts used to show a steadily declining slope as deaths accumulate when people age.  Improving health care and advanced medical technology is changing that slope.  Most of us are living longer, yet ultimate human lifespans remain the same – this tends to square off the graph of demographic trends.  Yet increasing lifetimes does not necessarily mean increasing vitality – nor does it improve the problems of a declining labor pool, overall consumption of resources, or inequality of opportunity.  These are significant issues for our future society.

Brian Agurcia, in contrast, highlighted the opportunities for an increasingly aging population to achieve remarkable vitality by applying best practices in nutrition, exercise, positive psychology and human connections.  Brian intends to push the envelope and achieve the goal of making 100 the new 50 – fully cognitive, fully fit, living the good life. This begins one person at a time, but in time can become the human cultural norm

Climate

From the very first time global warming was discussed as an environmental concern in the 1950’s, the greenhouse gas effect has dominated the main stage.  According to Christopher Haines, this has obscured the critically important role played by other, more precipitous changes affecting the earth’s thermal trends – deforestation and urbanization.  Both significantly alter albedo – the ratio of absorbed versus reflected energy from the sun – and the rate of change in the past century has been many times greater than changes in greenhouse gases.  The good news is that these trends are also easier to reverse, with improvements in urban planning and architecture and reforms to land use practices. These offer significant opportunities to reverse climate trends.

Phaux-Phosphorus

Mark Hediger may have given the most imaginative presentation of the night, using the analogy of Dr. Evil and Mr. Incredible to outline the key role of phosphorus in such biochemical processes as energy metabolism and cellular signaling.

He reports that significant advances in our understanding of these processes, as well as future developments in research, diagnosis and treatment will result from the use of “phaux-phosphorus”, a non-ionic phosphate isostere.  These synthetic chemicals can trace phosphorus pathways and behaviors while remaining biologically neutral – a very useful tool!

Education and Innovation

According to Jennifer Clifford, Community labs are increasingly viewed as a key resource for science literacy and innovation through hands-on molecular biology learning and experimentation.  With high tech equipment and experienced scientific coaching, anyone with curiosity and imagination can “do” cutting edge science.  Bio labs provide a real-world framework for understanding the ramifications of biotech, and the vocabulary for discussing the impacts, the risks and the ethics of science.

Democracy and Capitalism

In the sweep of human progress across the millennia, capitalism and democracy have delivered significant benefits, but they have only been around a few hundred years.  According to Henry Lieberman and Christopher Fry, these two institutions are destined to fail, as they are premised on a competitive model of human behavior.

Competition is the underpinning of winner-take-all economics and politics, and it is normal under conditions of scarcity.  But technology is on the verge of eliminating scarcity, and we should define a better societal model – one based on cooperation.  In the economic sphere, the result is makerism, where everyone is enabled to make what they need or want.  In the political frame, this leads to reasonocracy, where populations demand that decisions are made in the public interest based on science and data.  As laid out in their book, “Why Can’t We All Get Along,” this is what humans really want.

Cities

Guadalupe Babio, the final speaker of the evening, led the audience on a ride through the sophisticated modeling of cities towards the ideal of a 3D cityscape where life, work and play are seamlessly integrated.  If 2/3 of the population is living in cities in 2050, how do we make them more livable? Mobility is the key to new paradigms, and the complex models are helping design dream cities of the future, where density is increased but people are more connected than ever.  Cities of the future can be greener, cleaner, friendlier, less congested and, ultimately, much more livable.