Cool science stuff ... and more reasons to be thankful

Put this at the top of your shopping list!  Future Visions: Microsoft has published an anthology of original Science Fiction short stories reflecting its research projects, with entries by Elizabeth Bear, Greg Bear, David Brin, Nancy Kress, Ann Leckie, Robert Sawyer, Seanan McGuire, and Jack McDevitt. 

I visited Microsoft's cutting edge research labs before writing my story... on predictions. This free ebook is now available on Amazon, Google, Kobo and other sellers.

And soon... my long anticipated and long-delayed third short story collection will be available for pre-order.  Stay tuned.

And now -- a potpourri of items to help us all give thanks for being members of a fantastic civilization.  Our ancestors - who struggled to get us here - would be proud of us in most ways... except for giving in to gloom and failure of confidence, just when we are on the verge of putting it all together.

== Insight into the Brain ==

Mikhail Rabinovich, a physicist and neurocognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and a group of researchers have now mathematically modeled how the mind switches among different ways of thinking about a sequence of objects, events, or ideas that are based on the activity of “cognitive modes.” The new model, described in an open-access paper in the journal Chaos, may help scientists understand a variety of human psychiatric conditions that may involve sequential memory, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar, and attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia and autism. 

What about thinking machines? A new book from John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, looks at the future of Artificial Intelligence: What to Think About Machines that Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence, with provocative essays by Steven Pinker, Frank Tipler, Daniel Dennett, George Dyson, Kevin Kelly, Nick Bostrom, Sam Harris, Freeman Dyson, Nicholas Carr, and others...

This Singularity University video examines whether we can reverse-engineer a brain.

== Cool stuff! ==

Physics Girl shows a way-cool trick of bouncing balls transferring momentum... and how this relates to the way a supernova works.  You might like a lot of her other videos.

NASA released this mesmerizing video of a liquid drop floating in space.

Intel is summoning contestants for an upcoming 2016 TV show called “America’s Greatest Makers”.  Competitors will vie for a $1M grand prize. An exceptional opportunity for all you talented Tinkerers out there.

Magnificence on a tiny level: See the winners of this year's microphotography contest hosted by Nikon.

Iceland is building its first humanoid electricity pylons, 150-foot steel figurines that look like mythical male and female giants … and support power lines in their hands. The first one is now scheduled for construction in 2017. 

== Tech news ==

Potassium is 880 times more abundant in the Earth’s crust than lithium the workhorse element in modern batteries. Now there is hope that potassium might replace Lithium in carbon-based batteries, making them far cheaper.  

Scientists have developed a robust, solid-state catalyst that shows promise to replace expensive platinum for hydrogen production from water.  One of many potential "medium game changers." 

The new Anti-UAV Defense System (Auds) beams high-powered radio to freeze drones in mid-flight. The Auds works by disrupting a drone’s signal to make it unresponsive. 

Or... will we soon see drones that dissolve into air once their mission is done? 

4D Printing Tech: Using components made from smart shape-memory materials with slightly different responses to heat, researchers have demonstrated a four-dimensional printing technology that allowed creation of complex self-folding structures.

Drones build a rope bridge you could safely cross. Not only entrancing, but useful. My sons could’ve used this in scouts!

“The Pike,” a 40mm laser semi-guided missile that can be fired using a standard tube grenade launcher, but expanding range from 150 to 2000 yards. 

== Geosciences ==

For many years I have corresponded with  Michael Rampino, a New York University geologist, about theories of mass extinction. (I even filled a small part of idea space with a low probability theory of my own.) Now, with Ken Caldeira, a scientist in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, Michael offers new support linking the age of meteorite impacts with recurring mass extinctions of life every 26 million years, including the demise of dinosaurs. This cycle has been linked to periodic motion of the sun and planets through the dense mid-plane of our galaxy. Scientists have theorized that gravitational perturbations of the distant Oort comet cloud that surrounds the sun lead to periodic comet showers in the inner solar system, where some comets strike the Earth.

It took a while. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been producing detailed topographic maps for more than 125 years. Today they are nearly all digitized and free to download through the USGS Map Store, plus the ability to overlay every USGS topographic map on top of Google Earth. An incredible treasure trove for both map junkies and casual hikers alike. Civil servants doing good.   

See these open source methods to make underwater exploring ROVs. 

== BioTech & Health News ==

Offering promise for curing disease... Researchers create complex kidney structures from human stem cells derived from adult skin cells.

Will we all be web-spinners? Genetically engineered yeast can now brew silk proteins that can be spun into fibers. The properties of those fibers can be altered by tinkering with the protein concentration and the temperature, tension, and other aspects of the spinning process.

Wow… Researchers found that when this vine was climbing a tree it was able to imitate the host leaves in terms of size, shape, color, orientation and even vein conspicuousness.  Furthermore, when a single vine was associated with multiple tree species, it was able to sequentially mimic these different hosts.

An amazing story about the latest discoveries re human origins.

Do Omega 3 fats actually protect against heart disease?  Conflicting results suggest a mutation that is common among Inuit people and ¼ of Asians may be partly at work. 

According to a recent paper in Scientific Data, about three-fifths of human diseases are believed to have been initially passed along to us by animals.  See this flow in an eerie and daunting visual. As you’d expect, the strongest connection is between humans and livestock.

Simply giving near-sighted children glasses can dramatically boost their school performance. Convincing Chinese teachers and parents is harder.

== Future Fiction ==

Part documentary and part science fiction, The Visit: An Alien Encounter is a faux documentary of first contact, milking a sense of mystery and suspense that might accompany such a transforming event. (Available for streaming on Amazon.) Will it be silly or cogent?  I guess we’ll see…

… though it is highly reminiscent of a TV series I was on called Alien Encounters (Discovery Channel) that took viewers through a similar situation that evolves rapidly and disturbingly in unexpected directions — alternating fictional segments with interviews in which varied sages discuss plausible technologies and conceivable outcomes.

And finally...

Inventor Lowell Wood just broke Edison's record at 1805 awarded U.S. patents. This feature about Wood portrays an American original who just happened to live in exactly the sub-civilization that best leveraged his talents, benefiting us all. (Among the inventions are a few that you might find suggested, way back in 1987, in EARTH… but never mind that.)

Okay!  That great big pile of cool items ought to keep you busy, clicking and skimming while groaning and loosening your belts on Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday)... or else however you folks elsewhere around the world celebrate Thursday.  (Ah... Thursday!)

Don't let grouches undermine our confidence.  Star Trek awaits.  Do thrive and persevere.

Sci Fi Visons : Gloom vs Optimism

Some brilliant anthologies for your shopping list! These include one about war and one that’s free, one about Star Wars and one by me! 

Your best deal is a free download (thanks to corporate sponsorship) of Future Visions: Original Stories Inspired by Microsoft featuring tales that explore possible impacts of future technology, such as quantum computing, machine learning and other trends gathered from cutting edge research. (Authors were invited to talk to mavens at at Microsoft Labs, but free to tap all kinds of sources. Just released!

With contributions from top science fiction authors, including Greg Bear, Elizabeth Bear, Nancy Kress, Robert J. Sawyer, Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Jack McDevitt and  — there's also one of my own best recent scribblings -- about the science of prediction. A topic which has long fascinated me.

War Stories of the Future is another sponsored anthology, this time from the Atlantic Council’s contest for fictional portrayals of how future combat might be transformed by rapidly changing technology. This volume is edited by August Cole, whose novel with Peter Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, is now a best-seller. "The collection features stories from best-selling science-fiction writer David Brin (the nature of heroes and warriors) and Linda Nagata (linked ground combat overseen from afar), as well as entries by Ken Liu, Madeleine Ashby, Matthew Burrows and August Cole." I also helped judge the tales that were winners of a special contest exploring the future of defense and security.

Then there’s the the recent re-launch of Star Wars on Trial: The Force Awakens Edition. Your big chance - if you missed the earlier editions - to experience full-on combat between folks who are critical of the quantum-shallow Lucas universe and those unthinking zombies who actually swallow the faux-eastern “wisdom”-claptrap of that awful little green pixie-ovenmitt Yoda...

… but no, we’ll save that rant for this truly fun and pyrotechnic and intellectually stimulating volume!  

Oh, you can also vote on the various charges, like a jury. Innocent... or guilty as charged? And sure, we know many will vote acquittal out of reflex, without reading the arguments. But you won’t! There's also a book giveaway on Goodreads.

All three of these great volumes are coming out this  very month!  But want more?  Well, I saved the best for last. Coming in late winter — will be my long-awaited third short story collection Insistence of Vision, from Studio Digital and The Story Plant.  With a beautiful Patrick Farley cover and some of the best tales I ever wrote… and which you are very unlikely to have read, like “Chrysalis,” “The Logs,” “Transition Generation,” “Mars Opposition,” and “Insistence of Vision.”  Pre-order on Amazon.

== Gloom vs Optimism ==

See a cool story (from The Oatmeal) of courage and dedication that winds up having meaning to all of us… especially science fiction fans, pondering the sour excess of pessimism and reflex dystopianism that has taken over so much of our mythology.  You’ll understand when you learn who the hero of this story turns out to be.

Many of us have been trying to combat the gloom merchants, whose lesson is too-seldom “avoid this mistake” and too-often “give up hope.” I’ve addressed the surprising and infuriationg underlying reason why so many authors and film directors habitually preach hopelessness.  Neal Stephenson’s Hieroglyph Project with Arizona State’s Center for Science and Imagination is another effort to beckon sci fi back to a guardedly and caustiously optimistic, can-do spirit.

New Utopians: This article in the New Republic adds to the rebellion: Jeet Heer writes, “The prophets of doom are unusually loud in our time, and almost every vision of the future, whether by sober ecologists or wild-eyed science fiction writers, carries with it the stench of despair. The collapse of civilization has become its own narrative cliché.” It then goes on to profile my dear and respected colleague Kim Stanley Robinson, rightfully, as a central figure in the counter-attack of problem-solving tales of (tentative) utopia. (Though many reasers of Robinson's most recent novel, Aurora, would deem it a shift to the dour side.

 Sure, this essay leaves out the rest of us hope-peddlers and can-do pushers, and it implicitly assumes that socialism is the sole route to redemption. “Robinson’s attempt to keep the flame of Utopia alive in a despairing era has made him a lonely figure.”  Um, hello?  

In another move away from dystopian visions, a relatively new subgenre - Solarpunk - promises to offer more sustainable, optimistic  -- even inspirational -- visions of the near-future, one you might even want to live in. On the Hieroglyph website, Adam Flynn writes that "Solarpunk is a future with a human face and dirt behind its ears."

Getting down to specifics, this article from Big Think argues that: “All Space Colonies Will Begin as Dictatorships…” because the rough and tumble of democracy won’t work where one shattered window can kill everyone. Well… um… duh? Except the analogy of “dictatorship” is silly and harmful. A better parallel is the captaincy of a ship. On a ship, with death just meters away, there must be a captain whose orders are swiftly obeyed.

Yet that is not a 'dictatorship,' because the owners of the ship have sovereignty over who gets to be captain! The owners dictate policy, such as deciding the next destination, while the captain is a “dictator” regarding implementation. That is, unless and untill the owners (who might be a democracy of people aboard either a sea or space vessel or a Mars colony) decide to fire her and pick someone else.

We live in an era of such simplistic metaphors that few people grasp this distinction. That even under conditions that are stressful and dangerous, we can still be citizens and sovereign adults who – ultimately – share responsibility for the course we set.