The Physics of the Future: How Science will Change Daily Life by 2100 by Michio Kaku - To Be Released on March 22, 2011
Based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists, who are already inventing the future in their labs, Kaku—in a lucid and engaging fashion—presents the revolutionary developments in medi cine, computers, quantum physics, and space travel that will forever change our way of life and alter the course of civilization itself.
Dr. Kaku’s astonishing revelations include:
The Internet will be in your contact lens. It will recognize people’s faces, display their biographies, and even translate their words into subtitles.
You will control computers and appliances via tiny sen sors that pick up your brain scans. You will be able to rearrange the shape of objects.
Sensors in your clothing, bathroom, and appliances will monitor your vitals, and nanobots will scan your DNA and cells for signs of danger, allowing life expectancy to increase dramatically.
Radically new spaceships, using laser propulsion, may replace the expensive chemical rockets of today. You may be able to take an elevator hundreds of miles into space by simply pushing the “up” button.
Like Physics of the Impossible and Visions before it, Physics of the Future is an exhilarating, wondrous ride through the next one hundred years of breathtaking scientific revolution.
TheUnitedStates has always prized its history of individual creativity, citing a unique and ingrained American spirit of ingenuity.
Franklin Roosevelt called on it to pull the country out of the Depression, and President Obama focused on it in his most recent weekly address:
"It is only by building a new foundation that we will once again harness that incredible generative capacity of the American people," the president said. "All it takes are the policies to tap that potential — to ignite that spark of creativity and ingenuity — which has always been at the heart of who we are and how we succeed."
Inventors have certainly shaped the nation, especially in the heyday of American science from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries, when it produced such famous and revered names as Edison, Einstein, Ford, and many others.
But how did the UnitedStates really come by that reputation for innovation?
Great timing
Though other countries had their own very influential eras, America's distinction as a natural leader in technology stems in part from the fact that U.S. scientists — coincidentally and conveniently — peaked at a time when it first became possible to produce some of the most important technologies of the modern world.
The United States did not begin its history as a scientific powerhouse. Despite encouraging invention, those first few decades of its existence were spent relatively poor, both economically and in technological infrastructure.
It was Britain and Germany, rather, that dominated science into the 19th century. While British engineers built the foundation for the Industrial Revolution, helped largely by their invention of the steam engine, German scientists developed key principles in the world of physics.
With the framework laid in Europe, it was easier for the United States to excel when it finally emerged from the Civil War in 1865, according to University of Pennsylvania historian of technology Thomas P. Hughes, who explores this "golden age" of American science in his book American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970 (University of Chicago Press; 2004).
"No other nation has displayed such inventive power and produced such brilliant innovators as the United States during the half-century that began around 1870," wrote Hughes, who noted that the number of new patents issued annually in the country more than doubled between 1866 and 1896.
Americans were naturals at applied science, improving many ideas that were already in existence and bringing them to fruition with resources newly available during the Industrial Revolution: Samuel Morse did it in creating the telegraph; Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb, but he made it practical and got his name in lights for the work; many men attempted to fly before the Wright brothers finally succeeded — under power and more or less controlled — at Kitty Hawk in 1903.
During this time of "independent" invention, it was often the last link in the chain that got credit. And that final link was often American.
Influx of brainpower
During this era, the United States also benefited from the influx of brainpower from around the world, able to claim the imported knowledge as their own.
Many European scientists, recognizing the incredible creative potential of the growing country and drawn by grants from well-funded institutes, made the move between the two world wars. Nikola Tesla, one of the "fathers of electricity," was among them, as well as and many of the researchers involved in the creation of the atomic bomb, such as Albert Einstein.
Since the mid 20th century, national borders around scientific achievement have relaxed. U.S. scientists have been involved in important recent discoveries, but easier communication and partnerships between multinational institutions, rather than independent research, has made science a more global affair.
Whether another age of inventors is on the way in the United States remains to be seen, according to Hughes.
"As yet, however, we have not realized the remarkable quality of a comparable era in American history," he said.
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Editor's Note:This article is part of a series this week about the history and future of innovation in science and technology that makes life better and more productive.
ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2011) — The more honesty and humility an employee may have, the higher their job performance, as rated by the employees' supervisor. That's the new finding from a Baylor University study that found the honesty-humility personality trait was a unique predictor of job performance.
"Researchers already know that integrity can predict job performance and what we are saying here is that humility and honesty are also major components in that," said Dr. Wade Rowatt, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor, who helped lead the study. "This study shows that those who possess the combination of honesty and humility have better job performance. In fact, we found that humility and honesty not only correspond with job performance, but it predicted job performance above and beyond any of the other five personality traits like agreeableness and conscientiousness."
The Baylor researchers along with a business consultant surveyed 269 employees in 25 different companies across 20 different states who work in positions that provide health care for challenging clients. Supervisors of the employees in the study then rated the job performance of each employee on 35 different job skills and described the kind of customer with whom the employee worked. The ratings were included in order to inform higher management how employees were performing and for the Baylor researchers to examine which personality variables were associated with job performance ratings.
The Baylor researchers found that those who self-reported more honesty and humility were scored significantly higher by their supervisors for their job performance. The researchers defined honesty and humility as those who exhibit high levels of fairness, greed-avoidance, sincerity and modesty.
"This study has implications for hiring personnel in that we suggest more attention should be paid to honesty and humility in applicants and employees, particularly those in care-giving roles," said Megan Johnson, a Baylor doctoral candidate who conducted the study. "Honest and humble people could be a good fit for occupations and organizations that require special attention and care for products or clients. Narcissists, on the other hand, who generally lack humility and are exploitative and selfish, would probably be better at jobs that require self-promotion."
The study currently appears online in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, and is the first to link honesty and humility to better job performance.
