2057 is a Discovery Channel television program hosted by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. It premiered on January 28, 2007, and attempts to predict what the world will be like in 50 years based on current trends. The show takes the form of a docudrama with three separate episodes, each having informative stories ingrained into the plot. All three episodes aired on January 28, 2007.
The first episode, "The Body", predicts medical advances from robotic surgery to flying ambulances. The show's presentation plot shows a man falling out of a window (from tripping over a Roomba) on to the street below, and being cared for in a futuristic hospital.
The surgeons discover that his out of date artificial heart has been damaged in the three-story fall. A heart that is completely compatible with the patient is "printed" using an ingenious device that combines the biology of building new organs and the technique of computer printers. Before the surgery can take place, the hospital finds an abnormality in his urine samples. The samples that were taken from the hospital did not match the ones that the toilet in his home analyzed that morning. The man was previously insured with a premium policy, which was canceled when the hospital discovered he had been using clean urine samples to hide the fact that he had been drinking. Insurance policies generally raise premiums when they discover clients use alcohol, and people hide this fact with clean urine samples.
Once the insurance company analyzes the data and discovers that the patient tried to essentially scam them, his policy is immediately dropped. He is placed in the non-insured ward of the hospital, and his expensive surgery is canceled. The only person to come to his aid is a crafty female surgeon who performs the operation anyway. By tricking the system into thinking that a deceased patient with a premium policy is still alive, she is able to perform the surgery using the deceased patient's insurance policy. She then tells the system that the deceased patient died two days later, making it look like they died on the operating table during the surgery that she actually performed on the fall victim.
"The City", examines the advances futuristic technology will bring to the home such as humanoid robots and holographic pets. The storyline has Paul, a thirteen-year-old boy accidentally releasing his holographic shark friend into the city's computer program, halting major city functions and electronics.
The year is 2057. Everything is computerized, from cars to buildings to clothing. One of the main characters is young Paul Gater, son of a female police officer Georgina Gater. John Gater, Paul's grandfather, was born at the dawn of the internet (around 2000) and has been writing computer code ever since. Paul an apprentice to his hacker grandfather, and is already manipulating code at a young age.
Holograms are commonplace in 2057, and most children have holograph projectors embedded within their clothing. These devices project images of anything, and act like GPS devices to guide children around urban environments safely. When his grandfather creates a hologram shark to replace the dolphin that he currently has, Paul decides to go one step further. He uses his laptop to hack into the city's network in an attempt to display his shark on advertisement boards across the city.
Not only does the laptop project the shark onto every holographic video screen in the city, it overloads the entire network and cripples the entire city. The laptop also carried with it an ancient virus that the future city had no protection against. The virus attacks the operating system that the entire city is run on...an operating system that has been in place, untouched for decades.
The only possible suspect to Georgina is her father, who had moved out of her house earlier in the day after a fight about his computer hacking. An APB is put out on him, and it's a race against time to stop the virus while Paul and his grandfather try to evade the law. When Georgina discovers that Paul was actually the one who released the virus into the city, she protects them from capture and allows them access into the old, unused central hub of the city.
Once inside the hub, grandfather and grandson immediately connect John's laptop into a connection that can communicate with the operating system that the city is built on. Paul's grandfather erases incriminating personal information about Paul that was transferred to the system, then codes a few lines before the police burst in the room. Brave Paul stands in front of his grandfather, protecting him from the guns the police are pointing at them as he finishes the last lines of code. When his grandfather presses enter, the city's power ominously flickers off.
A few moments later, the power is restored and the city jumps back to life. The virus and shark are gone, and life in the city goes back to normal. Realizing that her father is a hero, Georgina makes amends and all is well in the city of tomorrow.
"The World" is probably the most complex episode of the three, discussing topics as varied as satellites that transmit data at extreme speed using lasers, to more political topics such as probable future geopolitical scenarios involving China and the United States as two opposing superpowers and the ramifications of a worldwide energy crisis with solar power positioned as a likely candidate to relieve the world's energy needs.
It features an American and a Chinese man, both chemists, in a space elevator laboratory discovering how to make more efficient solar panels but being disrupted by their respective countries' political friction mirroring a Cold War. With only weeks to go before their program is shut down, the two chemists discover what they are looking for by accident (similar to the discovery of penicillin), but by this time tension between the U.S. and China over the possession of Central Asian oil fields has almost reached the point of war. Each side attempts to coerce their representative to release the formula for the new solar panels to their side only: The Americans tell their representative to bribe the Chinese chemist into hiding the discovery from the Chinese, while the Chinese abduct the wife of the Chinese chemist, hoping that will convince him only to reveal the new discovery to them.
In the end, the Chinese and American chemists both decide that the future of the world is more important than their respective countries' political aspirations. They instead use a laser signal to leak the new discovery to the media and every scientific institution in the entire world. The Chinese chemist also makes a point of thanking his government for looking after his wife while he is away, thus ensuring that no harm will come to her without the prospect of public scrutiny, while afterwards the Chinese and American scientist both begin to comment on what the world will be like in 2107. The new discovery is then celebrated all over the world.
The year 1952 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Luc Montagnier was a French virologist and joint recipient, with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen, of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He worked as a researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and as a full-time professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
The Pasteur Institute is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. The institute was founded on June 4, 1887, and inaugurated on November 14, 1888.
Education has been of prime interest to Poland's rulers since the early 12th century. The catalog of the library of the Cathedral Chapter in Kraków dating from 1110 shows that Polish scholars already then had access to western European literature. In 1364, King Kazimierz the Great founded the Cracow Academy, which would become one of the great universities of Europe. The Polish people have made considerable contributions in the fields of science, technology and mathematics. The list of famous scientists in Poland begins in earnest with the polymath, astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus, who formulated the heliocentric theory and made an important contribution to the scientific revolution.
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 individuals, working in any field, who have shown "extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction" and are citizens or residents of the United States.
The Highest Science and Technology Award also known as the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award, State Supreme Science and Technology Award, or China's Nobel Prize is the highest scientific award issued by the President of the PRC to scientists working in China. The award, given annually each January since 2000, is one of the five State Science and Technology Prizes established by the State Council of the People's Republic of China.
The year 1931 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
The year 2009 involved numerous significant scientific events and discoveries, some of which are listed below. 2009 was designated the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations.
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Invasive Procedures (2007) is a medical thriller by American writers Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston. This novel was based on the short story "Malpractice" by Card, which first appeared in the Analog magazine in 1977.
Robert Charles Gallo is an American biomedical researcher. He is best known for his role in establishing the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the infectious agent responsible for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and in the development of the HIV blood test, and he has been a major contributor to subsequent HIV research.
Albert Stevens (1887–1966), also known as patient CAL-1, was a house painter from Ohio who was subjected to an involuntary human radiation experiment and survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human. On May 14, 1945, he was injected with 131 kBq of plutonium without his knowledge or informed consent.
Walter Ian Lipkin is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and a professor of Neurology and Pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He is also director of the Center for Infection and Immunity, an academic laboratory for microbe hunting in acute and chronic diseases. Lipkin is internationally recognized for his work with West Nile virus, SARS and COVID-19.
Lujo is a bisegmented RNA virus—a member of the family Arenaviridae—and a known cause of viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) in humans. Its name was suggested by the Special Pathogens Unit of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases of the National Health Laboratory Service (NICD-NHLS) by using the first two letters of the names of the cities involved in the 2008 outbreak of the disease, Lusaka (Zambia) and Johannesburg. It is the second pathogenic Arenavirus to be described from the African continent—the first being Lassa virus—and since 2012 has been classed as a "Select Agent" under U.S. law.
The year 2011 involved many significant scientific events, including the first artificial organ transplant, the launch of China's first space station and the growth of the world population to seven billion. The year saw a total of 78 successful orbital spaceflights, as well as numerous advances in fields such as electronics, medicine, genetics, climatology and robotics.
Martin L. Yarmush is an American scientist, physician, and engineer known for his work in biotechnology and bioengineering. After spending 4 years as a Principal Research Associate in Chemical Engineering at MIT, in 1988 he joined Rutgers University, where he currently holds the Paul and Mary Monroe Endowed Chair in Science and Engineering and serves as Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering. Yarmush is the founding director of the Center for Engineering in Medicine & Surgery (CEMS) at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also a Lecturer in Surgery and Bioengineering at Harvard Medical School, and a member of the Senior Scientific Staff at the Shriners Hospital for Children, Boston.
The history of cancer describes the development of the field of oncology and its role in the history of medicine.
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