One of the iOS 12 features to generate a lot of buzz has been Screen Time – a way to monitor app usage and set limits to reduce the amount of time spent staring at your phone.
You can use it yourself, of course, but parents can also use it to limit the time their kids spend using particular apps, like games or YouTube. One company, though, thinks it has an even better idea: require kids to exercise to earn app time …
Anyone who has wanted to generate their own energy and filter their own water can now do so with an amazing open source device.
Speaking on stage at Inspirefest 2018, Chinese-Canadian mechanical and electrical engineer Eden Full Goh described what inspired her to develop a cheap, easy-to-build solar panel device called the SunSaluter.
Born during the aftermath of the financial meltdown a decade ago, a publicly-traded real estate brokerage called eXp Realty is establishing itself as one of the brightest rising companies in its industry—and one of the most creative users of digital technology today.
By several measures, the company is experiencing a moment of true exponential growth.
Since last October, eXp Realty’s stock price has surged more than 300 percent, and this year the company announced they had doubled their number of real estate agents in just seven months. At the beginning of the year, they had roughly 6,500 brokers, but today they have over 12,000 operating in more than 300 markets across the US and Canada. This pace of growth is unprecedented for a single national brokerage and almost unthinkable for a real estate company not structured as a collection of local franchises.
UBS Chief Economist Daniel Kalt is in very high demand. So, the Swiss investment bank decided to clone him, digitally at least. Now through a rendering captured by more than 120 high-definition cameras in over a full day of shooting, the company can have Kalt (or at least his likeness) meet with multiple clients at a time via interactive video chat, without ever even stepping foot in the conference room.
When it comes to generating energy from sunlight, unusual solutions have been shown to make the process more efficient.
Now, a team of researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) has demonstrated how solar cells made of living organisms can generate energy even with limited sunlight. Known as “biogenic” solar cells, these cells could offer an alternative to synthetic cells currently used in conventional solar panels, providing an energy source despite bad weather. A paper detailing the research was published this month in the journal Small.
The new design features a raft of professional features.
Czech-based virtual reality (VR) startup VRgineers specialises in producing high-end head-mounted displays (HMDs) for enterprise, having started with the VRHero 5K Plus. Now the company has unveiled a successor, XTAL, a pro headset with unique features.
VRFocus first reported on the new enterprise-grade headset a few months ago, with VRgineers revealing little in the way of specifications, just that the company was working on a new project.
The XTAL headset has been built around the needs of professional designers and engineers – so don’t expect to see on in Best Buy or PC World – boasting a 5K resolution, 170º field-of-view (FoV), and patented non-Fresnel lenses.
For all but the most elite athletes, buying athletic shoes can be hit or miss: Go to the store, find something you like, and try it on. If it doesn’t feel quite right, too bad. Try another shoe.
Adidas sees a future where motion capture tech, data analysis software, and 3D printing come together in the store to create a pair of kicks tailored to your exact needs. One foot slightly smaller than the other? No problem. You overpronate? Don’t worry about it. Technology will provide the perfect shoe.
All of the big shoe companies are racing toward that goal. Adidas offered a glimpse of how that might happen when it brought its pop-up Speedfactory Lab Experience to Brooklyn, New York.
JD.com is expanding its consumer base with drone delivery and local recruits who can exploit villages’ tight-knit social networks to drum up business.
In isolated regions, JD.com is expanding its reach, creating on-the-ground jobs and testing drone delivery. Will villagers be less tempted to leave for the big city?
Xia Canjun was born in 1979, the youngest of seven siblings, in Cenmang, a village of a hundred or so households nestled at the foot of the Wuling Mountains, in the far west of Hunan Province. Xia’s mother was illiterate, and his father barely finished first grade. The family made a living as corn farmers, and had been in Cenmang for more generations than anyone could remember. The region was poor, irrigation was inadequate—the family often went hungry—and there were few roads. Trips to the county seat, Xinhuang, ten miles away, were made twice a year, on a rickety three-wheeled cart, and until the age of ten Xia didn’t leave the village at all. But he was never particularly unhappy. “When you are a frog at the bottom of the well, the world is both big and small,” he likes to say, referring to a famous fable by Zhuangzi, the Aesop of ancient China, in which a frog, certain that nowhere can be as good as the environment he knows, is astonished when a turtle tells him about the sea. As a child, Xia said, he was “a happy frog,” content to play in the dirt roads between the mud houses of the village.
Meet the tiny, versatile robots built to navigate high-risk environments.
DARPA’s efforts to propel military technology forward often manifest in a diverse fashion, spanning everything from drone submarine development to a biostasis program that aims to buy more time to rescue soldiers on the battlefield. The SHRIMP program, short for SHort-Range Independent Microrobotic Platforms, is another potentially life-saving initiative that is being designed to navigate through hazardous natural disaster zones.
Designer babies are on the horizon after an influential group of scientists concluded that it could be ‘morally permissible’ to genetically engineer human embryos.
In a new report which opens the door to a change in the law, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, said that DNA editing could become an option for parents wanting to ‘influence the genetic characteristics of their child.’
Although it would be largely used to cure devastating genetic illnesses, or predispositions to cancers and dementia, the experts said they were not ruling out cosmetic uses such as making tweaks to increase height or changing eye or hair colour, if it would make a child more successful.
The U.K. engineer said the miniature technology can improve the way maintenance is carried out by speeding up inspections and eliminating the need to remove an engine from an aircraft for repair work to take place.
To explore the concept, the Rolls-Royce has teamed up with robotics experts at Harvard University in the U.S. and the University of Nottingham in England.
Rolls-Royce said Tuesday it is developing tiny “cockroach” robots that can crawl inside aircraft engines to spot and fix problems.
A new device that relies on simple condensation to collect clean water from the atmosphere promises to provide up to 11 gallons of safe drinking water without an external power source, greenhouse gas emissions, or adverse environmental impacts. What’s more, the innovative Water Seer collection device could potentially run forever, gifting generations of people with access to ‘liquid gold’ in areas of the world where a harsh climate or lack of infrastructure make access to clean drinking water a major problem. Water Seer is powered by a simple wind turbine, and the device could easily be the first step toward a sustainable, enduring solution to water shortages around the world.
