The premise of the Olympics is to measure and reward the greatest human ability at various skills or sports. Modern pharmacology offers many substances identified as potentially beneficial to an athlete - meaning they give an unfair advantage to a competitor - the World Anti-Doping Agency provides a nine page handout identifying substances for which an athlete can be disqualified. With so much pressure on the athletes and so much money for sponsorships on the line, there are substantial reasons to cheat for those who are less sporting.

That doesn't mean there aren't other ways to help athletes reach or maintain their potential. In addition to regular training and hiring the best coaches, athletes also use the services of dieticians, massage therapists, sleep counselors, hydration specialists and gait analysis professionals in order to smooth every bump in their lifestyle, conditioning and performance. Some athletes even choose to sleep in a chamber that mimics high-altitude air quality to increase performance. And as modern research enables more experiments finding ways to benefit athletes that aren't cheating, by eliminating hurdles that keep athletes from reaching their peak performance, we'll hear of more bizarre - and questionable - methods athletes will use to enhance their skills.

Another great artifact from Institute for the Future. This time focusing on the use of genetics to create predator species capable of limiting the growth of problem species - ocean species in this scene.

It raises some good questions and brings together a few current trends: genetic engineering, failure of ecosystems as important species are wiped out to provide food (whether they are the food species or depend on disappearing habitat), and using prize money to crowd-source innovations.

Wars are fought over which flawed ideology works best and communism has turned out to be one of the most flawed, even if the original roots were designed to fix the flaws in the capitalist structures of 19th century Europe. Karl Marx's work developed into 1848's Communist Manifesto and later in Das Kapital in a response to conflict between the more wealthy ownership classes and the labour class that provides the man power for production. Marx viewed Capitalism as "the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" and made many predictions on how this socioeconomic system would eventually fail due to the internal tension between these two classes. His work would later be used to overthrow nations in order to create failing economic states where the communist effort was misused to create more disproportionate social inequality than found in nearly any other form of representative government.