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Archive for the ‘policy’ category: Page 38

Jul 24, 2015

What is water worth? — By Giorgis Kallis | Forbes India

Posted by in categories: economics, environmental, policy

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The traditional framing of the issue is a choice between accepting the power of markets and ‘playing their game’ to win environmental concessions vs. the purist perspective of saying No to any hint of money or markets in environmental policy.
In this article we will describe the positions of two relatively new fields of study—Ecological Economics and Political Ecology—in an effort to redefine the terms of the choice and chart a path for a pragmatic approach.

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Jul 2, 2015

Elon Musk-backed Future of Life Institute Provides $7M in Safe AI Project Grants

Posted by in categories: existential risks, policy, singularity

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Jun 30, 2015

The Millennium Project’s “2015−16 State of the Future” report on the Prospects of the Global Outlook to be released July 31st

Posted by in categories: futurism, governance, policy

Washington, DC (PRWEB) June 30, 2015

Another 2.3 billion people are expected to be added to the planet in just 35 years. “By 2050, new systems for food, water, energy, education, health, economics, and global governance will be needed to prevent massive and complex human and environmental disasters,” explains Jerome Glenn, CEO of The Millennium Project. As Pope Francis said in His Encyclical Letter, “Halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster.”

The “2015−16 State of the Future” reviews the global situation and future prospects in a broad range of areas from environment to business and technology, and global ethics. Its executive summary states that:

Continue reading “The Millennium Project’s "2015-16 State of the Future" report on the Prospects of the Global Outlook to be released July 31st” »

Jun 23, 2015

Strings Are Dead

Posted by in categories: anti-gravity, cosmology, defense, general relativity, gravity, innovation, particle physics, philosophy, physics, policy, quantum physics, science, space travel

In 2014, I submitted my paper “A Universal Approach to Forces” to the journal Foundations of Physics. The 1999 Noble Laureate, Prof. Gerardus ‘t Hooft, editor of this journal, had suggested that I submit this paper to the journal Physics Essays.

My previous 2009 submission “Gravitational acceleration without mass and noninertia fields” to Physics Essays, had taken 1.5 years to review and be accepted. Therefore, I decided against Prof. Gerardus ‘t Hooft’s recommendation as I estimated that the entire 6 papers (now published as Super Physics for Super Technologies) would take up to 10 years and/or $20,000 to publish in peer reviewed journals.

Prof. Gerardus ‘t Hooft had brought up something interesting in his 2008 paper “A locally finite model for gravity” that “… absence of matter now no longer guarantees local flatness…” meaning that accelerations can be present in spacetime without the presence of mass. Wow! Isn’t this a precursor to propulsion physics, or the ability to modify spacetime without the use of mass?

As far as I could determine, he didn’t pursue this from the perspective of propulsion physics. A year earlier in 2007, I had just discovered the massless formula for gravitational acceleration g=τc^2, published in the Physics Essays paper referred above. In effect, g=τc^2 was the mathematical solution to Prof. Gerardus ‘t Hooft’s “… absence of matter now no longer guarantees local flatness…”

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Jun 23, 2015

The Feasibility of Interstellar Propulsion

Posted by in categories: cosmology, defense, disruptive technology, general relativity, gravity, innovation, particle physics, philosophy, physics, policy, quantum physics, space travel

Recent revelations of NASA’s Eagleworks Em Drive caused a sensation on the internet as to why interstellar propulsion can or cannot be possible. The nay sayers pointed to shoddy engineering and impossible physics, and ayes pointed to the physics of the Alcubierre-type warp drives based on General Relativity.

So what is it? Are warp drives feasible? The answer is both yes and no. Allow me to explain.

The empirical evidence of the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, now known as the Lorentz-FitzGerald Transformations (LFT), proposed by FitzGerald in 1889, and Lorentz in 1892, show beyond a shadow of doubt that nothing can have a motion with a velocity greater than the velocity of light. In 1905 Einstein derived LFT from first principles as the basis for the Special Theory of Relativity (STR).

So if nothing can travel faster than light why does the Alcubierre-type warp drive matter? The late Prof. Morris Klein explained in his book, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, that mathematics has become so powerful that it can now be used to prove anything, and therefore, the loss of certainty in the value of these mathematical models. The antidote for this is to stay close to the empirical evidence.

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Jun 21, 2015

What are our rights and duties towards alien life? — Lizzie Wade | AEON

Posted by in categories: alien life, ethics, law, policy

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“The ethics of encountering non-sentient alien life in our solar systems boils down to a core dilemma, says Waller. ‘Is it about conservation and preservation? Or is it about our needs, wants, and desires?’ On Earth, natural-resource grabs have a history of bringing out the worst in us as a species…There’s plenty of reason to believe other planets will be chock-full of resources we’d like to exploit, even if the life forms are microbial – perhaps especially if they’re microbial.” Read more

Jun 15, 2015

Smart urban planning in Amsterdam — Feargus O’Sullivan | CityLab

Posted by in categories: architecture, economics, energy, engineering, environmental, government, materials, policy, science, sustainability

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“Instead of treating Amsterdam as complete and starting again elsewhere, the IJburg plan has managed to find more space in a city that thought it had no more left.”

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Jun 11, 2015

United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space: 2015

Posted by in categories: governance, policy, science, space, treaties

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“The fifty-eighth session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space will be held from 10–19 June 2015 at the United Nations Office at Vienna, Vienna International Center, Vienna, Austria.”

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Jun 3, 2015

Elon Musk Rebuffs Critics with Fundamentals

Posted by in categories: business, economics, environmental, government, innovation, policy, science, solar power, space, transportation

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“If he was paid by the oil and gas industry lobby he couldn’t have written a more favorable article for them.”—Elon Musk

Video & Article on Criticism about Incentives

Jun 2, 2015

The Arctic’s Internet Is So Expensive That People Mail the Web on USB Drives — Via Motherboard

Posted by in categories: business, computing, economics, finance, governance, hacking, policy, strategy

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“Canada’s domestic digital divide, with the North as its epicenter, has been a point of growing concern over the last several years. Much of the internet in the northernmost regions of the country is still beamed down by satellites, but a plan to link Europe and Asia with fiber optic cable via Nunavut is currently being negotiated by a Toronto-based company called Arctic Fibre.”

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