In the last ten years, the increase in global imbalances has posed a theoretical challenge for international macroeconomics. Why did some less-developed countries with a higher need for capital, like China, lend to richer countries?
Continue reading… “Why some poorer countries lend to richer countries”
Futurist Thomas Frey: The thought occurred to me that mounting a video projector to a flying drone could give it unusual capabilities.
Continue reading… “192 Future Uses for Flying Drones”
Google’s self-driving car has made impressive progress but there are still some major limitations for automated driving. It can’t drive itself in 99 percent of the country. The car knows nearly nothing about parking, and can’t be taken out in snow or heavy rain, and it would drive straight over a gaping pothole.
Continue reading… “Google’s self-driving cars still face many hidden obstacles”
Google delivery drone.
Google has secretly been working on the Project Wing program at GoogleX for the last two years. The company has been working on building flying robots that can deliver products across a city in a minute or two. (Video)
Continue reading… “Project Wing – Google’s secret drone-delivery project”
Women prefer to be in a relationship where the man is taller.
Research has already suggested that tall men are generally paid better are viewed as more masculine and competent. Now a new research paper suggests that their height advantage also spills over into their personal lives.
Continue reading… “Height does matter! Women prefer taller men”
Smartphone-enabled, security-minded, and no monthly fees.
Homeowners in the U.S. would prefer a smartphone-enabled, do-it-yourself platform for home automation over a closed, subscription-based system. They also care a lot more about security and peace of mind than they do about saving on their energy bills.
Continue reading… “What do Americans really want from their smart homes?”
Small weaponized robots, swarm into the human body, hunt down malignant tumors and destroy them.
An army of tiny weaponized robots traveling around a human body, hunting down malignant tumors and destroying them from within sounds like a scene from a science fiction novel. But research in Nature Communications today from the University of California Davis Cancer Center shows the prospect of that being a realistic scenario may not be far off.
Continue reading… “New nanobots hunt down and destroy cancerous tumors”
A ban on office communications in the evening and during vacation time could even become law.
Some German companies such as BMW, Volkswagen and Deutsche Telekom, in the last few years, have banned after-hours calls and emails to workers. The point of the ban is to actually let people take time off in the evening, rather than effectively being half-working all the time.
Continue reading… “Germany considers ban on after-hours office communications to workers”
Electric vehicles will yield big environmental improvements in China.
China is supposedly about to invest a hundred billion yuan (equivalent to about 16.3 billion US dollars at today’s exchange rate) into electric vehicles and the infrastructure to support them, like public charging stations, according to “two people familiar with the matter”, says Bloomberg.
Continue reading… “China to invest $16.3 B in electric cars”
Does a greater number of years in school mean more learning?
When you compare education systems around the world to see what’s working and what isn’t, one of the metrics we often see is ‘school life expectancy.’ This is known as how many years students go to school. We most often assume that students go to school for at least 13 years (K-12), plus “some” college or post high school education in the U.S. In schools in developing countries, we hear about children who can’t go to school past a young age (sometimes around 8 years old) because they need to make money for their family’s survival, because they don’t have the opportunity to do so, because of their gender, or because it would be dangerous or prohibitively expensive to do so.
Continue reading… “How much time do students spend in classrooms worldwide?”
Private investment in electric transmission has quintupled from $2.7 billion in 1997 to $14.1 billion in 2012.
Private electric utilities in America have been doing something surprising over the past ten years – they have been investing a lot of money in power lines and other electric-transmission infrastructure. (Chart)
Library vending machine in China.
By Zach Hyman: There seems to be sufficient demand and interest in China for enabling people to check out books 24 hours a day. The not-so-cheap library vending machines have taken root across both urban and rural areas, each with a very different set of needs and each bearing vastly different reputations for serving their citizens. (Pics)
Continue reading… “Introducing the Library Vending Machine”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.