Human life expectancy is on the rise. Whereas the average person born in 1960 could expect to live to 52.5 years of age, someone born today has an average life expectancy between 79 and 83 years of age. The question many of us ask is: how far can we push the boundaries of our human lifespan?

For many, Africa may seem like a continent with a sealed fate. But Africa is a vast continent, replete with nations growing and developing rapidly. Despite challenges that continue to assail it, Africa seems set to play an increasing role in world affairs. The question is, will African nations be able to follow the example of many Asian nations and do it sooner rather than later?

A team at the Tel Aviv University in Israel has achieved a major breakthrough by 3D-printing a heart with human tissue and vessels. In the future, this technology could be used to repair damaged hearts or to print entirely new ones, to be used for transplants.

Microplastics, very small plastic fragments, less than 5 millimetres in length, can be found in several places. And there’s a lot of it. A 2015 study showed that there are between 93 and 236 metric tons of microplastics in the world’s oceans. They have also been found in freshwater ecosystems, in the soil, and even in the air. Even more worrying, they have been found inside a lot of animal species.

We always seem to be playing a cat-and-mouse game for all of our scientific advances. A bacteria or virus appears, and we develop antibiotics or antiviral drugs to deal with it. One worry is that our overprescribing of antibiotics will continue to lead to an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, with possibly devastating consequences.

Programming was considered in the 60s and 70s a "geek activity," today it has become one of the high-paying jobs. But programmers are no less susceptible than everyone else when it comes to losing their jobs. In this article, we ask the question, "will programmers still have a job in the future?”

Satu Kalliokulju, Head of Consumer Excellence at Fiskars Group, talked about consumer futures at Fiskars. The company was founded in 1649, making it the oldest company in Finland. Their strategy is to build a family of iconic lifestyle brands – the most famous example being the orange-handled scissors.

Strategic Foresight, an important subfield of futures studies, is a discipline organizations use to gather and process information about their future operating environment. This information can include, for example, trends and developments in their political, economic, social, technological, and legal environments.

China has had a bad reputation with regard to the environment for many years. But understanding that looking out for the environment has benefits both internationally and domestically; the country has been changing. In fact, some may even argue that China is, at the moment, leading the cleantech revolution - ahead of the United States and other Western countries.

The autonomous vehicle is set to be as life-changing as the invention of the motor vehicle itself. Modern-day cities have been shaped largely by the mobility that is achieved through motor vehicles, providing transport services to people and goods alike and supported by major road networks worldwide.

Graphene, first isolated in 2004 by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester, is quite the material. Hailed as semimetal capable of disrupting the fields of electronics, energy, and others, it looked more promising than almost anything we had ever come across. But whatever happened to it?

Quantum computers, fundamentally different from your typical computer or supercomputer, hold great promise. In theory, they would help solve equations, problems, and create simulations that are beyond the reach of even the most powerful supercomputer. For that reason, a lot of people are getting excited about them.