"Vaccines are completely safe and more of Colorado's children need them."

"Get your children vaccinated."

It wasn't until 1998, then a mother came up to me and said, Dr. Larry, did you know that there's mercury in vaccines? And I said, no, I did not. And as a medical student, I was trained to critically think. If you see an observation, you go after it and try and figure out if there's a question to ask. So instead of just ignoring it, I looked further into the vaccine ingredients and I didn't understand why these same ingredients were actually in vaccines. I was starting to hear stories from parents, not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands of stories from parents who took a very healthy child into their doctor's office and then found that their child lost much of their health. Whether it was their speech, whether it was seizures, whether it was death, whether it was asthma, allergies, eczema, whether it was autism, whether it was learning disabilities, whether it was inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune diseases. And every one of those parents were told it had nothing to do with the vaccine.

EVERY SINGLE ONE!

There is no study to prove that unvaccinated children have ever been proven to start an epidemic. I have been seeing families in my practice for over 20 years that have opted out of vaccination. They are the healthiest children I have ever seen. And more and more parents are understanding the dangers of vaccines. And that's why we're seeing such pressure to mandate vaccines because more of the science is coming out. We assume that if we vaccinate, we're getting protection, we assume that if we vaccinate, we're stopping spread of disease. Those are assumptions that have never been solidified in science.

I asked the dad what happened and the dad tells me, yeah, the shot went in. He was sitting in the chair. I basically instantly see as his whole face goes white, has had like lawls back. You know, he's like staring straight up. His eyes go to the back of his head. He goes limp and he and his whole body convulses like three or four times, maybe 30 seconds or so after you've been given a shot roughly. And that's what's kind of interesting is this is a family who had not vaccinated. Um, they were not planning to vaccinate and then they decided they had to because of the new school law.

A seemingly completely healthy little girl playing freeze tag in the front yard. Mom wakes her up the next morning. She is paralyzed from the neck down this after just getting the flu shot vaccine. With me, her mother, Carla. Carla, why do you believe this was because of the flu shot?

Because there was nothing else. And then no other life changing events or no other medications out of the ordinary given it had been the only thing that had been given to her or happened to her during the time period and extensive testing was done at the hospital to try to find another cause and non was able to be found.

Well, I mean I have to come from the perspective of a parent who has a vaccine injured child. I took my bright healthy precocious little two and a half year old boy in for a fourth DPT shot. And within hours of that shot, I witnessed him suffer a convulsion, a collapsed shock, a state of unconsciousness, and he was eventually diagnosed with minimal brain damage, including multiple learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder. We have seen children become disabled and chronically ill. One in six child in America is now learning disabled. Why are so many highly vaccinated children? So sick.

A five pound pre-mi gets the same vaccination as a 10 pound full termer. They need to be individualized and explain why you and why you decided not to vaccinate your youngest children. I have three. I have three children. My oldest site is kind of the sacrificial lamb. He was vaccinated and had a huge amount of thin Marisol, huge amount of mercury. And after he had the MMR and the chickenpox vaccination on the same day, we never saw him again for three years. Never saw him again. He developed autism. He lost language, he lost social skills, he lost bowel control. He became very sick within hours of vaccination. So I, you know, I held his hand there over the proverbial fire. He got burned. Don't ask me to line up my other two children to get burned again. What kind of parent would I be? 

Like if I was a doctor, I would want you to get sick because the more times you get sick, the more money I make. I don't get sick. I'm just being honest. I don't get sick. My children have never been sick. Okay. Vaccine, they've never been vaccinated, none of that. And they don't get sick. Okay. Because the mother's milk in the breast is a, the vaccination that they need. That's it.

Do any vaccines contain egg protein? Oh yes. Influenza. Do any vaccines contain gelatin from pigs? Uh, yes. Do any vaccines in the childhood vaccine schedule continue an albumin? Oh yes. What is human albumin? Human albumin is part of the human serum part of the blood that is liquid. That can be problematic, right? Well, it could be, I mean, if, uh, if the individual is not not healthy. Or if maybe some of the human blood components bind to some of the aluminum and develop antibodies, self antibodies. Correct. If they develop antibodies against a certain component that would not be good. Do I need vaccines on the childhood vaccine schedule contain MRC5 human diploid cells. Yes, of rubella, varicella, hepatitis A. What are MRC5 cells? They are human fiber blast, a cell strain. They were created by taking fetal tissue from a particular fetus that was aborted by maternal choice. And the cells, so-called fiberblast cells were cultivated.

And another year has passed... The more mature we become, the more we think the days, weeks, months flash faster. If only you could slow down time! - we often think. But, as Claudia Hammond, the author of The Curved Time, explains, our problems with running minutes are due to the fact that we do not understand the essence of time. What can be done about this?

For most of us, time is something linear, absolute and flowing all the time - but is it true? And how can we change our ideas about time so that we are no longer bothered by the fact that it passes quickly?

“Time” is the most commonly used noun in English. We all know this feeling - “time is running out.” Our present immediately turns into the past, “today” quickly becomes “yesterday”.

If you live in an area with a changing climate, then every year before you change season after season. When we grow up and become adults, the years accelerate and begin to flicker one after another.

Although neuroscientists have not yet been able to find a built-in clock in the human brain that is responsible for tracking the passing time, people surprisingly feel it well.

If someone told us that he would come in five minutes, we have some idea when to wait for him. We have the feeling of a week or a month. As a result, most of us can say that the functions of time are quite obvious: it constantly leaves at a measurable pace, and the direction is also clear - from the future to the past.

Of course, a person’s sense of time can depend not only on biology, but also on cultural traditions and the century in which we live.

For example, in the language of the Amazonian tribe Amondava there is no word “time” at all. According to some scholars, they do not have the concept of time within which any events take place.

Meanwhile, it is difficult for us to say exactly how time was perceived in the distant past, since research on this began only 150 years ago.

We know that Aristotle saw the present as something constantly changing. Around 160 A.D. the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius described time as a river of passing events. And today, at least in the West, many still use these ideas.

However, physicists tell us a different story. Despite the fact that time is what seems to us to flow in one direction, some scientists do not agree with this.

In the last century, the discoveries of Albert Einstein blew up humanity’s notions of time. He demonstrated that time is created by things, it does not wait somewhere there until things begin to happen inside it.

Einstein showed that time is relative, it flows more slowly for fast-moving objects. Events do not occur routinely. There is no single universal, common to all “now” - in the sense in which it was understood in Newtonian physics.

Yes, this is true - many events taking place in the Universe can be arranged in a certain sequential order, but time is not always laid out on the shelves of the past, present and future. Some equations of physics work in any of the directions.

To convince a person that something happened to him in the past that he does not remember now is much easier than we think

Several physicists, including Carlo Rovelli, author of popular books, go even further, suggesting that time does not go anywhere. It simply does not exist; it is an illusion.

Of course, scientists can assume that time does not exist, but we know from our own experience: a sense of time, perception of time is characteristic of every person. The evidence of physicists contradicts the way we perceive life, its course.

Yes, our concept of the future or the past may not be applicable to everything that happens everywhere in the Universe, but it reflects the realities of our life on planet Earth.

However, like Newton’s idea of absolute time, our human idea of time may be erroneous. There is a more appropriate approach to it.

The deceiving past

One aspect of the perception of time that is common to most of us is how we think about our past, presenting it as a gigantic video archive, where we can go to recall certain events in our lives.

But psychologists have already shown that autobiographical memory does not work at all like that. Most of us forget much more than we remember, sometimes completely forgetting what happened, despite the fact that our friends or relatives insist that it was with us. Sometimes even reminders of specific episodes of the past do not help.

We preserve memories so that a meaning is created for what happened. And every time we turn to them, we reconstruct the events so that they do not contradict the new information that we possess.

To convince a person that something happened to him in the past that he does not remember now is much easier than it seems to us.

Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has been researching this phenomenon for decades, convincing people that they remember how they once kissed a giant green frog. Or one day they met a rabbit Bugs Bunny (a cartoon character in Warner Bros. Studios) at Disneyland.

And here is another mistake of ours: it seems to us that imagining the future is a process that is different from thinking about the past. In fact, both processes are interconnected.

We call for help the same areas of the brain for both memories and imagination of what may happen to us in the future.

It is the possession of memories that allows us to construct the future, mixing scenes of what has already happened to us on the screen of our mind. This skill allows us to make plans and test different possibilities and hypotheses before we start putting plans into practice.

All this is the result of how our brain perceives time. A baby with almost no autobiographical memories lives exclusively in the present. He is pleased. He is crying. He is hungry. He feels bad. The baby experiences all this, but does not think about how cold he was a month ago and does not worry that the temperature in the room will drop again.

Gradually, the baby begins to develop a sense of himself. Along with this comes the understanding of time, the ability to distinguish yesterday from tomorrow.

Time is at the heart of not only how we organize our life, but also how we feel it

Even at that age, however, imagining yourself in the future is a very difficult task. Psychologist Janie Bazby Grant found that if you ask three-year-old kids what they will do tomorrow, only a third of them will give an answer that can be regarded as acceptable, plausible.

When psychologist Christina Ethans gave small children salty bagels, and then left them to choose what else they want - the same bagels or water. It is not surprising that after salt they were thirsty and most chose water.

However, when she asked what they would like tomorrow, the majority chose water again. (Adults chose bagels because they understood that tomorrow they would like to eat.)

Young children are not able to imagine themselves in the future, where they will feel differently than at the present moment.

Past experience is actively being created in our brains. For the construction of the perception of time, various factors are important - memory, concentration, emotions, the feeling of one place or another.

Our idea of time is rooted in our mental reality. Time is the basis not only of how we organize our life, but also of how we feel it.

Of course, you can say that it doesn’t matter at all whether we perceive time correctly according to the laws of physics. We don’t have to remember all the time that the Earth is a ball when we walk on a flat surface.

We can say that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, although we know perfectly well that this Earth revolves around the Sun, and not vice versa.

Our ideas about the world do not try to correspond to scientific ones - we are able to feel the world around us, using only the feelings we possess.

Any device transmitting data can be used to track users. A joint study by the Canadian nonprofit project Open Effect and the University of Toronto, published in early February, showed that this is especially true for wearable devices, such as smart watches and fitness bracelets.

These fashionable gadgets make information about our well-being and movements almost public.

The efforts of the IT industry are mainly aimed at protecting data, the damage from unauthorized access to which is obvious: bank card passwords, personal correspondence, state secrets. Who may need diet schedules or running routes in the park?

Apparently, the manufacturers of wearable devices were guided by this logic. Most gadgets transmit data over Bluetooth channels that are easily detected by other devices. The data is almost not encrypted, stored on manufacturers’ servers. How long they are stored, and whether they can be removed from there, is unknown.

Big fitness brother

It’s no secret that shopping centers analyze the behavior of customers: with the growth of the popularity of wearable devices, this can be done in the “god mode”. How many steps did a 43-year-old man take in a drive store before his heartbeat increased and he went to a restaurant? Already, such information can be removed from a distance by their devices that are not even connected to smartphones.

Wearable devices in only one of the eight brands investigated are not subject to surveillance - we are talking about Apple. Manufacturers of smart watches use Bluetooth Low Energy Privacy technology, the name of which speaks for itself.

The same technology is used in Microsoft Band 2 watches, but they have not been analyzed by researchers. In Russia, they are practically not on sale. Other manufacturers - Basis, Fitbit, Garmin, Jawbone, Mio, Withings, and Xiaomi - use spy-friendly technology.

One and a half months before the publication of the report, researchers invited these seven companies to familiarize themselves with the vulnerabilities discovered. Interest showed Basis, Fitbit and Mio.

Fitbit, a California-based fitness bracelet market leader, praised the work of Open Effect and the University of Toronto. At the same time, according to businessmen, it is unlikely that a hacker who stumbles upon a device will know who it belongs to.

Gadget like evidence

Another problem: data on wearable devices is easily falsified, which makes their use as evidence in court and in insurance cases pointless. However, there have already been such precedents: for example, in Canada, a woman proved to the court that a four-year-old traffic incident still affects her health using Fitbit fitness bracelet data.

In Australia, the court trusted a bracelet of the same brand, which showed that its owner was sleeping, and not running in the snow around the house from an alleged rapist hunting her. Regardless of the specific cases, the price of such evidence is low.

Not all findings of the study are presented to the public. In the near future, the authors promise to talk about how accurate measurements of wearable devices.

The wearable device market is one of the fastest growing in the IT industry. Unlike fitness bracelets, the functionality of a smart watch is determined by the applications that are installed on them and which can be updated and changed.

Artificial intelligence is often portrayed as a threat to humanity - it steals jobs and spies on us, and in general will soon become smarter than all people put together, and then ... But wait. Many of the key problems of the 21st century can be solved precisely by smart machines.

Artificial intelligent systems are learning to perform more and more everyday tasks. Nevertheless, many of us believe that robots and artificial intelligence, AI, threaten the inviolability of our privacy, jobs and our security.

But even the most ardent critics of AI recognize that it can potentially bring great benefits to humanity.

Intelligent machines are already helping people cope with the most complex and dangerous problems - from disease to crime.

"We should not consider artificial intelligence as something that competes with us, but as something that increases our capabilities and capabilities," said Takeo Kanade, professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University (USA).

And all because AI does not know what boredom is and, like none of us, is able to identify trends and relationships.

Perhaps this is what will help humanity survive in the 21st century.

Here are at least five areas where artificial intelligence is already giving us its shoulder.

1. Against armed violence

Last year, 15,000 people died in the United States due to the use of firearms - among developed countries, the United States holds an unenviable primacy in the number of cases of violence with small arms.

To cope with a seemingly uncontrolled outbreak of this type of crime, in some large cities of the country turned to the help of technology.

The automated system listens to the areas of the city with the help of many sensors for firing, which helps the police quickly determine where something is wrong - literally 45 seconds after someone pulled the trigger.

Already 90 cities - mainly American, but also from South Africa and South America - use this system. Its smaller versions are located on the territory of nine university campuses. The US Secret Service has installed ShotSpotter in the White House.

However, according to Ralph Clark, head of ShotSpotter, in the future the system will not be used simply to respond to incidents.

“We would like to understand how our data can be used for forecasting,” he says. “The system can add to the overall picture of the weather, the situation on the roads, crime data - all this will help police patrols to more consciously and accurately respond to the situation.”

2. Against hunger

For 800 million people on the planet, cassava roots are the main source of carbohydrates.

This plant, similar to sweet potato, is often used in the same way as we use potatoes, plus they make flour for baking bread.

The ability of cassava to grow where other agricultural plants do not take root has made it the sixth most popular food crop in the world.

Cassava, however, is very vulnerable to diseases and pests that can destroy entire fields of this plant.

Researchers at Makerere University (Uganda), along with plant disease specialists, have created an automated system - the Mcrops project .

Local farmers take pictures (using cheap models of smartphones) of their cassava fields, and artificial intelligence analyzes the photo for signs of four major diseases.

“The symptoms of some of these diseases are not so easy to notice,” explains Ernest Mwebase, who heads the project. “Farmers get from us a handheld expert who will tell you if you need to pollinate the fields or whether it is better to mow and plant everything elsewhere.”

MCrops now diagnoses with an accuracy of 88%, saving farmers time and money.

In addition, with the help of MCrops, local authorities are informed about a possible epidemic that threatens hunger.

Mwebase and his colleagues hope to create a similar system for combating diseases of banana trees. In addition, artificial intelligence is able to automate pest tracking.

3. Against cancer and blindness

Every year, more than 8.8 million people die of cancer in the world and another 14 million find it.

The patient’s chances of survival are greatly enhanced by early diagnosis, one of the main methods of which is a rather laborious examination with many diagnostic procedures.

Artificial intelligence is ready to provide its services here. Both Alphabet (a company that owns Google) with its DeepMind project , and IBM are striving to make the survey process faster.

DeepMind teamed up with doctors from the British Health System (NHS) to teach AI how to distinguish healthy tissue from diseased tissue when scanning the head and cervical spine.

In addition, together with the doctors at the renowned Morphilds Ophthalmology Clinic, the computer system is taught the early recognition of eye diseases leading to vision loss.

According to Dominic King, head of the DeepMind Health program, it is too early to talk about concrete successes, but what artificial intelligence has learned now is very optimistic.

King says AI technology will help doctors recognize cancer cases much faster, which in turn will allow treatment to begin earlier.

IBM said its Watson AI artificial intelligence system can analyze scans and detect signs of a tumor with an accuracy of 96%.

Watson AI is being tested by doctors in 55 hospitals around the world to diagnose cancer of the breast, lung, colon, cervix, ovary, stomach and prostate.

Rob tells that artificial intelligence can work effectively even with simple things like your refrigerator - for example, remotely control its operation and turn on freezing and cooling cycles when the power supply is not loaded.

By 2050, a new class of people will appear, whose experience, skills and education will be completely unsuitable in society. For such “useless people” there simply will not be a suitable job.

Their appearance was predicted in his latest book by Homo Deus, one of the most famous futurologists, historian and writer Yuval Noah Harari. Such a prospect threatens those who “are deprived of any value in the economic, political or even artistic terms, those who are not conducive to the prosperity of society,” says the scientist.

Growing inequality, the extinction of professions due to the automation of work processes and other problems of a rapidly changing labor market today make us nervous and think about finding our place in the world of the future.

According to a study published this year, “Work of the future. What forces will shape reality in 2030” conducted by PwC, 74% of respondents in China, Germany, India, Britain and the United States are ready to acquire new skills and even completely change their specialization, if only stay professionally in demand.

Passion and flexibility

“The generation of my parents changed about five jobs on average during their life. My generation doubled this number to 10. And we should expect the same dynamics in subsequent generations. Now it’s impossible to spend all our life developing one skill and making a career out of it. This era is a thing of the past, “said Zach Klein, creator of educational services DIY and JAM, as well as the founder and designer of the video service Vimeo.

Harari is confident that most of the skills that children now acquire in schools will become irrelevant by the time they are 40.

When asked how to prepare children for professions of the future that do not yet exist, Klein says that we need to start with reforming the education system. In the USA, for example, he said, very little attention is paid to the interaction of students in the educational process, instead, emphasis is placed on competition.

In his projects, he tries to create an environment where a student of any age can teach something to another child or surprise older children with his results, as well as receive feedback on his work.

DIY service and its paid analogue of JAM allow children anywhere in the world to develop skills that interest them, share experiences with online friends, discuss projects and teach each other.

“In a regular school, the teacher gives homework and gets a lot of the same work in response. And in general, the school has a system where someone looks down at children,” Klein complains. “[At school] we are trying to get the children to distract from really curious things and concentrate on developing a particular skill. But they already have it! We just need to stop making them focus on one thing. “

Already now we see how people who have chosen a certain profession in their youth grow up and understand that society no longer needs them. According to Klein, to avoid this, it is necessary to teach people to be flexible from childhood and to easily give up classes that do not spark them.

Klein emphasizes that schools remain the main environment where children gain knowledge: “There, the child has social connections. The school is the best we have, but in situations where it does not provide the opportunity to learn what is interesting to you, the Internet gives you a new chance. “

Neural networks are not an enemy, but a friend

The company Sana Labs, which is developing a new training system based on artificial intelligence, unlike DIY, does not focus on the interactivity of learning and involvement in the student community, but on the personalization of the educational process.

The creator and head of Sana, Joel Hellermark, considers it important to combine three factors: personalized learning, the use of neural networks and online education. The main goal of his project is to learn to keep the student’s attention and interest in the learning process as long as possible.

No matter what the child is interested in. This business is a vehicle through which he can find his passion. If he once finds her, he will not be able to live without this feeling

Lost Einstein’s

But even innovative educational systems do not provide the opportunity to determine which of the children will be able to make a breakthrough in a particular scientific field.

“We are very good at determining which of the children is good at playing the trumpet and which is good at football. But we are not very good at recognizing among children those who have the potential to create a phenomenal, new product,” said the New York Times businessman and investor Steve Case, commenting on the Equality of Opportunity project.

According to a study in the United States, whether a child becomes an inventor or not is influenced by factors such as access to new technologies, as well as skin color, social status and gender.

“The cult of creativity is widespread. Opportunity is not,” Case concludes.

“There are a lot of them - these” lost Einstein’s “- those who could create something significant, if he had the opportunity to develop in the field of innovation since childhood”

Report “Who in America Becomes an Inventor?” Project “Equal Opportunities”

What to teach children?

“What do we tell our children? First of all, to stay afloat, they need to constantly adapt to the changing environment, be in touch with others and most importantly - to maintain their sense of identity and their value system,” says Blair Sheppard, head of global development strategies and leadership at PwC.

37% of PwC survey respondents said they see the future of the labor market full of opportunities for implementation. However, as many people answered positively to the question of whether they are concerned about the threat of labor automation.

“The main problem is not to create jobs. It is to set tasks that people would do better than the algorithm,” said Harari.

According to scientists from Oxford University, nearly half of the jobs in the States will be replaced by computers in the next 10-20 years.

They will free a person from routine work and leave him analytic tasks, leadership, work with emotional intelligence - those areas where empathy and creativity are needed, the PwC report says.

How not to waste human potential?

In a report entitled “Technologies, Jobs and the Future of Labor” (released in December 2016 and updated in February 2017), McKinsey analysts conclude that with large-scale automation of jobs, one of the solutions could be to introduce basic income.

Jana objects: “Basic income is perceived as a panacea. But this is a path that does not even include attempts to create jobs! This is a waste of human potential. Think about how many hidden geniuses we can miss in this way. Just give people money for nothing - it’s too bad a decision. “

However, Jana supports charity and social benefits, but only as a temporary measure, saving in an acute situation. She is confident that in the next few decades, humanity will be able to get rid of at least extreme poverty.

In their report, McKinsey experts recommend stimulating the perception of human capital as any other type of human capital in society. It is also necessary to concentrate on the question of how a person can work productively with machines and how to rethink his tasks in this regard. And of course, invest in the development of creative skills and critical thinking.

“We talk a lot about creativity. This is an incredibly important skill for innovation and entrepreneurship. However, you should not focus on developing traditional creative abilities in our understanding. We offer a slightly different solution: we study what skills students want to learn and try to make them creative “says Klein.

“We don’t know what to expect in the future, and I think we should put up with this,” he admits.

A modern city without cars? It sounds tempting, but not for everyone. Is this possible at all and do we really want it?

Imagine children playing soccer on the streets of a city. Imagine tourists taking carelessly taking pictures in the middle of the road. Restaurants that set their tables right on the street. And around - no cars, no motorcycles, no buses.

Something like that I remember Venice, the only city without cars that I saw. We were there with friends during the summer holidays at the university. We then traveled around Italy on the way.

Venice, of course, is unique in that it is built on small islands. But still it was very nice to be in a city where you can roam without dodging cars.

Over the past 100 years, cars have become the dominant force in the urban landscape. The streets are specially expanded so that it can be freer and faster to drive along, so that there is more parking space.

Private cars revolutionized the way we move, but at the same time they brought a lot of problems with us - from polluted air to traffic accidents.

And today there is still a small but growing number of cities trying to get rid of cars.

In the past few years, Oslo and Madrid have repeatedly hit the headlines about the plans of their authorities to ban car traffic in the center of these capitals. The plans, however, have not yet been fully realized.

However, these intentions represent a broader trend: to make traffic in large cities more difficult.

“Our main goal is to bring the streets back to the people,” says Hannah Markussen, Oslo’s deputy mayor for urban development. “It's important to understand how we want to use our streets and what they are for. We think streets are the place where you meet people, where you eat in outdoor restaurants, where children play, where artists show their work. "

To achieve this, Oslo completely closed part of the streets in the city center for cars, removed almost all parking spaces, replacing them with bicycle paths, benches and miniature parks.

There is also an environmental aspect. Oslo was built in a geological hollow, which is why the city (especially in winter) suffers from severe air pollution. According to local authorities, over the past ten years, the degree of pollution has decreased significantly.

Oslo residents are less likely to use a car to travel around the city (from 35% of trips in 2009 to 27% in 2018), and the number of people using a bicycle, public transport or just walking has increased.

JH Crawford is perhaps the most famous representative in the world of those who advocate cities without cars; he is the author of two books on this subject.

"In addition to the long-proven problems associated with environmental pollution and millions of deaths in car accidents, the most unpleasant consequences of the impact of cars on society should be recognized as the incredible damage they cause to social space," he emphasizes.

The bottom line is that cars significantly reduce social interaction. "The most popular places in cities for people are places without cars," says Crawford. These are parks, squares or streets given to pedestrians.

According to him, in such American cities as Houston and Dallas, up to 70% of urban land is given for parking. "The current housing crisis is due to lack of land. Get rid of cars and the problem will be solved right away."

No cars at all?

A city without cars? That sounds attractive. But is it possible? And does everybody want this? What about emergency services?

And what will people who find it difficult to walk? And what will happen to the growing suburbs of megacities, with the so-called sleeping areas?

Are we trying to impose on all the townspeople an idea that is mostly popular only among representatives of the young generation, who seek to live and work in the city center?

"The quickest way to kill a city center is to stop people from coming there," says Hugh Bliden of the Association of British Drivers.

The dying commerce and business on the central streets of many British cities will not be helped in any way by restrictions on automobile traffic, he emphasizes, and city centers will quickly become a haven for drug addicts and drunkards.

He agrees that many cities are too crowded with cars, but, in his opinion, this is due to poor layout. You just need more parking in the right places.

Ransford Achimpong, a city-planning researcher at the University of Manchester, said banning cars would help clean the air and improve people's health, but if you take the car away, provide an alternative.

There is such a concept of the "last mile", "pedestrian shoulder" from the stop of transport to the house. This is the final part of our daily itinerary, and if public transport does not make this part minimal, we will still drive cars.

Although Oslo Mayor Markussen pays tribute to the invasion of human rights when his ability to travel by car is taken away, she emphasizes: “In many cases, not restricting car traffic means restricting other people's freedoms. Cars prevent children from playing on the streets, and older people to cross the road."

"Oslo also has a problem with air pollution. We can say that cars violate the rights of residents with asthma, forcing them to sit at home and not go out when the degree of pollution is especially high," she says.

The future - without cars?

“If you look to the future with optimism, this trend will only strengthen,” Achimpong says. “Look at the statistics - apparently, we have passed the peak of the popularity of owning our own car and drive less now. There is also a big difference in habits between millennials and baby boomers, between different generations. "

He believes that young people are increasingly refusing to own a car.

All this indicates that the dominance of cars in our cities will gradually come to naught in a natural way.

On the other hand, he points out, there is a growing demand for new transportation services - such as Uber or Lyft, or unmanned taxis. “But these are also cars,” he emphasizes.

He notes that in most developing countries, the popularity of owning a car is booming, and their governments take this into account when developing infrastructure that takes into account the interests of car owners.

It is on cars that most trips are made in municipal areas far from the center of the metropolis - take, for example, the London highway M25 or Beijing, where as many as seven ring roads.

It is difficult to say how far this trend will lead us. In any case, I do not forget that the only way to leave Venice free of cars was to stand on the side of the road, vote and wait until some car stopped...

In 2015, a total of more than 126 thousand organ transplants were performed in the world. This is an average of 14.5 transplants per hour.

In the vast majority of cases, it was a question of transplanting parts of the body necessary for the continuation of life. Most (41.8%) were kidney transplants, followed by the liver and heart.

In recent years, the number of transplants of the lungs, pancreas and small intestine is also growing.

Doctors learned to transplant not only organs, but also various tissues. Transplants of bone marrow, tendons, cornea of the eye, skin, heart valves, nerves and veins are quite common.

However, many parts of the body still cannot be replaced. Which and why?

Head

Head transplantation is impossible - and hardly possible in the foreseeable future.

“We need to focus on achievable things. Over the past 50 years, we have achieved a lot in transplanting any part of the body below the neck,” said Gabriel Onisku, transplant consultant at the Royal Hospital of Edinburgh and Secretary of the European Organ Transplant Society.

Lorna Mason, a transplant surgeon and president of the British Transplant Society, agrees with him. After all, the goal of doctors is to save the life of as many people as possible, so you need to “choose the most realistic options.”

In addition to the obvious philosophical debate (whether the brain is transplanted into the body or the body is transplanted to the brain?), The main difficulty of this type of operation was the problem of connecting the brain to the spinal cord.

Most transplant operations face the problem of successfully connecting blood vessels, but the spinal cord, which is responsible for movement, is a network of highly specialized nerve cells called neurons.

The spinal cord is a network of nerve cells.

Cells of this type transmit information using electrical and chemical signals, and if they are damaged, it will be impossible to replace them or bind them together again.

This explains why today serious spinal cord injuries often remain incurable.

Dr. Mason says that in the event of an injury or damage to the brain due to illness, “there are more realistic options — such as replacing cells where possible.”

Scientists are developing cell therapy, which in some cases will allow neurons to regenerate and develop.

“Cell therapy can stop, and in some cases even reverse, the development of a degenerative disease of brain tissue,” says Dr. Mason. “Treatment of this kind can help patients with dementia or multiple sclerosis.”

Retina

The retina is located at the back of the eyeball and is responsible for converting light into a visible image

Although successful corneal transplantation operations have been carried out for several decades, it is still impossible to transplant the retina - the inside of the eyeball, which allows us to see objects and images.

This part of the body, again, includes many branched neural connections, so that transplantation of such a complex neural structure remains outside the scope of modern technical capabilities.

And although the list of completely impossible transplants is limited to these two bodies, there are transplant operations that have not yet become commonplace for surgeons.

Gall bladder

After any transplant surgery, the patient will have to spend the rest of his life on immunosuppressive drugs that will avoid rejection of the new organ, and in the case of the gall bladder, it’s just not worth it.

“Any transplant is a balance between the patient’s good and the inevitable consequences: recovery from such an operation and the need to take medicine for the rest of your life,” explains Lorna Mason.

The gall bladder, which is green in this model, is a useful but not vital organ, says Dr. Gabriel Onisku

The gallbladder is located under the liver and contains bile - a fluid that is secreted into the small intestine and helps digestion. It simplifies your life, but is not vital.

“It’s like an appendix. If stones form regularly in the gallbladder or if it is affected by a disease, it’s healthier to remove it. We can live well without it,” says Dr. Onisku.

In this case, the patient is recommended to change the diet and lifestyle in order to simplify digestion.

Spleen

Dr. Onisku says the spleen is a slightly different case, as it is “an organ that filters, repairs and preserves red blood cells.” But at the same time, according to him, the spleen is also not necessary to maintain life, so the same principle applies to it.

After removing the spleen, the patient must take antibiotics all his life - but, again, the whole thing is balance and that is more effective for the patient.

“Removal and antibiotics are a lower risk than undergoing a transplant operation and taking medications for the rest of your life to avoid rejection,” Mason assures.

The focus will always be on those parts of the body that support life, however, says Dr. Onisku, “the organs are transplanted for some reason, this should satisfy the patient’s needs.”

“That’s why we, for example, do a uterus transplant,” he explains. “You can live without this organ, but the patient may feel that she will not fulfill her life’s destiny if she does not have children. A uterus transplant will satisfy the needs of this particular patient “

Doctors are confident that in the future, patients will be able to be helped not only through traditional organ transplant surgeries - such as a liver, heart or lung - but also through cell regeneration and transplantation.

“An ideal example is a transplant of Langerhans islet cells for diabetes,” Dr. Onisku says, referring to tiny clusters of cells that secrete insulin. “To solve the problem, we transplant cells from the pancreas, not the whole gland.”

Stem cell transplant may be an alternative to organ transplant

As demand grows, doctors are exploring more complex treatment strategies that go beyond organ transplantation and cell therapy - and transplantation is increasingly complemented by regenerative medicine, new technologies, and bioengineering.

Onisku says: “We study artificial organs, that is, organs that are restored using stem cells, and probably even organs grown in a different environment are xenografts.” This is the name of donor organs or tissues of animal origin, as well as human organs grown in the body of an animal for subsequent transplantation to humans.

​Owls can improve their health and well-being by changing their circadian rhythm - the so-called biological clock - with a few simple steps, researchers from Australia and the UK found.

They studied people who fall asleep after midnight, but sleep for a long time in the morning, the so-called “owls.”

It turned out that you can change the circadian rhythm if you go to bed every day at the same time, avoid caffeine and sit in the morning in the sun.

Researchers say their advice may seem obvious, but if followed, they can help a lot of people.
Everyone has their own biological clock, and they are set for sunrise and sunset. That is why we sleep at night.

But for some, this clock seems to be behind.

The so-called “larks” wake up early, but become extremely sleepy in the evening. With “owls,” the opposite is true — they prefer to go to bed late at night, but they find it difficult to get up in the morning.

As a result, “Owls” are often difficult to adapt to modern life, since most people work from nine to five and they have to wake up many hours before their body is ready for awakening.

All this, as shown by numerous studies, ultimately affects the health status of “owls.”

Scientists studied the behavior of 21 “extreme” owls, which on average went to bed only at 2.30 at night and did not wake up before ten in the morning.

They were ordered:

• Wake up two or three hours earlier than usual and spend as much time as possible on the street under the morning sun
• Have breakfast as early as possible
• Exercise only in the morning
• Dine at the same time every day and eat nothing after 19:00
• Refuse caffeine after 15:00
• Do not doze off after 16:00
• Go to bed two or three hours earlier than usual and reduce the light in the evenings
• Go to bed and get up at the same time every day

After three weeks of this regimen, the biological clock of these people has shifted by two hours, say researchers at the University of Birmingham, the University of Surrey and Monash University in Australia.

The results of the study, published in the journal Sleep Medicine, indicate that the participants in the experiment slept no less than before.

Participants also reported that they were less likely to sleep during the day or in the mornings, that they had decreased levels of stress and depression. At the same time, their reaction rate increased.

“A simple daily regimen can help owls switch their biological clocks and improve both their physical and mental health,” said Professor Debra Skin of the University of Surrey.

“Lack of sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances can negatively affect a person’s well-being, and also increase the risk of cardiovascular disease or cancer and diabetes,” she says.

Light affects the “tuning” of the biological clock, and researchers advise the “owls” to limit the sources of artificial light in the evenings.

Regular sleep patterns are also important. If for a long time. people fall asleep and get up at different times of the day, this can “knock down” the biological clock.

The results of the study may seem obvious, but the scientists did not know how the participants who went to bed late all their lives would react to the new regime.

According to the researchers, it is important to understand that a significant part of the population can be helped without resorting to emergency measures.

Around the largest Facebook social network, disputes about the competency of collecting and using user information do not subside. Such data could be used to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016. The British company Cambridge Analytica is blamed for this.

But would you ever like to know what Facebook specifically knows about you, and how does the social network use this information?

The social network constantly learns something new about you.

If you are one of the two billion active Facebook users, then most likely the social networks will know your date of birth, phone number, occupation, favorite music, places you visit, transport used and your favorite leisure activities.

To help advertisers conduct targeted advertising campaigns, the social network groups all the data into categories according to age, gender, interests, devices used to connect to the network and many other parameters.

The social network explains the need to collect information by the desire to make the ads displayed to users more interesting and urgent.

How can you find out that Facebook knows about you, in which category it relates to you, and how it decides which advertisement to show you?

So, there is a page called "Your Advertising Preferences." It is divided into four parts:

Your interests

The "Your interests" section lists your advertising preferences according to your tastes in the field of entertainment, professional and sports interests, the places you have visited and what you did there, your family, education, hobbies and lifestyle.

The social network explains why each of these elements is present there - a significant part of them appears after you click on any advertising link, install any application or put “like”, and also comment on any page.

The advertisers you interacted with

This section lists which advertisers have your contact information, which ads interest you and which sites you visit.

Your data

This section contains information about your marital status, employer and current position (if you indicated this in your profile).

But, perhaps, the most curious thing is that it indicates which advertising category you were assigned to (a lot of them - for example, “born in June”, “technology adherents”, “expatriates”, “iPad Air owners”).

Ad Settings

In this section, you can specify whether you want Facebook to send you ads in accordance with your interests, both on the social network and on other sites and applications that Facebook does not own.

A little tip: if you delete all the preferences and information that the social network has about you, this will not lead to a decrease in the amount of advertising in your feed: you will continue to see it, but it will appear by chance. You cannot completely block Facebook ads. “Thanks to advertising, the social network continues to be free,” says Facebook.

How does it feel to be a cyborg? We debunk common myths about bionic limbs, implanted microchips and other attributes of cybernetic organisms.

In mid-summer, when there was a lot of heat in London, I decided to plunge into Serpentine Pond to my misfortune. In this small pond in Hyde Park, in the center of the city, from the 18th century, bathers used to cool down, heated by the sun, got used to. I left my clothes ashore and rushed into the cool water. And then I heard a strange crack: I forgot to remove my hearing aids. So, in the green darkness of the pond my recently returned hearing choked.

The next day, two apparatuses, peas of red and blue, still showed no signs of life. Fortunately, my otolaryngologist soon found time to receive me. I thought he would chastise me for forgetfulness, but he, on the contrary, said with enthusiasm: "See, this means that your brain has fully adapted to these devices."

This full adaptation has a downside. My brain is no longer adapted to life without hearing aids. Without them, I hear worse than I heard before. Little electronic gags became a continuation of me. I can physically separate from them (to take it out of my ears and hold it in my hand), but I cannot separate from my hearing. And I hear partly thanks to the ears, and partly thanks to these electronics.

In the end, if you learn to run very fast, maybe you end up flying - and there is only one way to check it.

It turns out that I became a cyborg out of necessity, and not out of a whim. A machine makes up part of my body, and for him that’s normal. But I don’t feel like a Robocop or Universal Soldier. If I'm a cyborg, then where are my superhuman abilities?

There is a big difference between cyborg descriptions in science fiction and the real life of people who depend on artificial implants or prostheses.

In the process of working on this column, I talked with a variety of people whom I met over the past year. Each of them joined the concept of expanding the capabilities of our body: from an artist who hears color, to a person who starts his motorcycle with a microchip implanted in his hand. What observations from their life can they share?

"The idea of devices that complement a person is not new at all," says Amal Graafstra, a motorcycle rider with a chip in my hand. Just tools have become smaller and more convenient to use. "This was the trend, and it will remain so. From rudimentary objects, stones and sticks, to forged steel and electronic circuits, and in the future to genetic engineering - the same principle everywhere, transhumanism: the desire to continuously and significantly transform the human condition "says Graafstra.

Many consider this concept of transformation dangerous. In science fiction, one cannot count fictional worlds in which body modifications divided society into an elite and outcasts. Is it true that transhumanism makes such a tough choice: to evolve using technology or to wither?

"Yes, there are fears that body modifications may lead to a kind of arms race that will leave those who have decided to do nothing with themselves outboard. But such a scenario is possible only if only the goal to surpass the neighbor moves people", - considers the transhumanist philosopher Gennady Stolyarov. In an interview in April, he told me that death does not have to be inevitable.

Stolyarov believes that instead of endlessly optimizing themselves in an attempt to achieve an ideal, people of the future are more likely to focus on individuality. “Different individuals will modify themselves in different ways, expanding their capabilities in different directions. There will not be a single hierarchy with super modified people at the top of the pyramid and ordinary people at its foot. Instead, as a result of the adoption of new technologies by society, a future will arise in which the organism’s modifications flourish magnificent color ", - Stolyarov speaks.

His point of view is closer to me, and I share his vision. Mass literacy did not make everyone want to read the same books, but created a market for a wide variety of literature - from tabloid novels to solid volumes on ancient history. People study ideas that, in their opinion, reflect their own ideas about the world. There is every reason to believe that the same principle will apply to future technologies.

In my experiment, no one had a self-satisfied coma. People are more sophisticated than rats

Stuart Mela

But in the world of cyborgs, we are unlikely to feel like supermen. Doctors made so many specialized prostheses to Paul Carter in their youth that their kit began to resemble a Swiss penknife. Carter notes that modifying the body is not a magic wand that instantly gives you some super-powers or at least the usual capabilities of a trained person: “If you give a person springy prostheses, he will not become a sprint star. For this, you need a base in the form of talent and good Sports discoveries The discoveries that we made in prosthetics have great potential and can change the lives of many people with disabilities for the better, but they need to be looked at in the context of a more general social picture, and not just as a means to achieving a single goal. "

Gabriel Litsina, who experimented with the discovery of infrared vision in people, agrees. “We need to dispel the myth that modifying the body easily turns us into superhuman. It’s important not to go beyond the scope of scientific reality. Of course, it’s possible to improve a person, but it’s much harder than eating a pill or pressing a button,” says Litsina.

He cites his own experiments as an example: his subjects found that they can see better in the dark, following a certain diet, but at the same time they began to perceive green and blue colors worse.

Transhumanism is not the best form of fulfillment of desires. Many claim that they would like to learn to fly, but the same people cannot force themselves to even run. Modification of the body should be considered rather than as a solution to the problem, but as a tool for developing oneself in the right direction. In the end, if you learn to run very fast, maybe you end up flying - and there is only one way to check it.

One more important lesson can be learned from Licin’s research: body modification is not limited to technical devices. It is not necessary to implant a chip in your head to improve brain function - you can get by with biological means. This topic was developed by John Crian: he told me that certain bacteria in the intestines can make a person smarter, without any wires and microcircuits. "Speaking about brain modification, you should not forget about the rest of the body. Neuroscientists should recognize the importance of signals from the periphery: from the immune system, hormones or gut microbes," says Krian.

In fantastical descriptions of cyborg people, a moralizing note, as old as humanity itself, is often slipping through: how pride leads to a fall. There is an opinion that mankind may play too much to improve itself and lose control over what is happening. Technology can be addictive: which of us didn’t sit in a restaurant with friends buried in their smartphones?

I spoke with Stuart Mela, the creator of a device that gives pleasure when a button is pressed. He believes that not everything is lost for mankind: "With regard to pleasure implant generators, there was a fear that such a device could cause a person to stop taking care of themselves, like the notorious rats who were starving because they could stimulate pleasure centers in the brain by pressing the lever. But in my experiment no one had a coma caused by self-satisfaction. People are nevertheless more complicated than rats. "

There are those who oppose body modifications, claiming that this is unnatural. This argument always seemed a little strange to me. Usually, those who put it forward believe that a person must certainly be the same as themselves. Neil Harbisson wears an antenna that allows him to hear color. He does not see anything unnatural in this. “There is an opinion that, by mutating ourselves, we lose something human, but I think that nothing more human can be invented,” he says. “I completely disagree with the point of view that the alliance with technology moves us away from reality, from nature or from other living beings. Take me: technology has not made me feel closer to cars or robots, quite the opposite. The presence of an antenna makes me closer to insects and other creatures with antennae; hearing through bone tissue makes me closer to dolphins and other inhabitants of the sea who hear just that; ultraviolet and infrared vision makes me closer to animals and insects that perceive this range. I feel a closer connection with nature than ever. Technology can help us get back to nature, "Harbisson believes.

The British summer is over, it’s autumn in the yard, and I don’t go swimming at the pond, but the question of how closely my body is able to integrate cars into itself does not leave me. I understand that I will not become a superman, but this does not prevent me from exploring various options for expanding my capabilities with the help of technology and biology.

Soon I will have new unique hearing aids, the prototypes of which are now being tested by a company in the south of London. They will not only enhance the surrounding sounds, but also transform electromagnetic fields into audible signals. Can my brain adapt to this? Will the ability to perceive the electromagnetic environment make me another person? Answers to these questions will be given by time and constant exercises.

Who knows what future these first steps will lead us to? Perhaps we cyborgs will someday become waterproof.