AirMule – flying ambulance drone
Every second counts in a medical emergency. That’s why Urban Aeronautics, an Israeli startup, is developing an unmanned flying ambulance called the “AirMule” that combines the in-and-out agility of a helicopter with the ability to perform rescues in dense urban environments that are difficult to manuever through in a rotor-based vehicle. (Video)
Continue reading… “AirMule – an unmanned flying ambulance”
Academics at MIT have dreamed up something straight out of the pages of science fiction: a “wearable” book, which uses temperature controls and lighting to mimic the experiences of a story’s protagonist.
Continue reading… “MIT researchers develop a book that lets you feel the protagonist’s pain”
Bill and Melinda Gates
Bill and Melinda Gates have released a letter in January outlining the work the foundation has done in the last year and they have done this for the past five years. This year, they took a bit of a different approach. They were concerned by virulent myths that programs funded by the Gates Foundation are useless, are not effective, or are potentially dangerous, the couple’s letter focuses on dispelling what they call the three main myths of foreign aid. (videos)
Continue reading… “Bill Gates crushes 3 myths about foreign aid”
Is there a doctor in the house? The answer may always be, “yes.”
Many people are searching for new ways to get medical care and gone may be the days of waiting in the doctor’s office thanks to the new mobile app age. The new Doctor On Demand app for Android and iOS will allow you to see the doctor from wherever you are.
Continue reading… “Doctor on Demand app lets you see a doctor from wherever you are”
The Internet affects the economy differently than the new businesses of the past did.
John Doerr, a venture capitalist, predicted in the 1990’s that the Internet would lead to the “the largest legal creation of wealth in the history of the planet.” The Internet has created a tremendous amount of personal wealth. Just look at the rash of Internet billionaires and millionaires, the investors both small and large that have made fortunes investing in Internet stocks, and the list of multibillion-dollar Internet companies—Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Amazon. Add to the list the recent Twitter stock offering, which created a reported 1,600 millionaires.
Continue reading… “The Internet is the greatest facilitator of inequality in history”
A new wrinkle in the control of waves.
Flexible, layered materials textured with nanoscale wrinkles could provide a new way of controlling the wavelengths and distribution of waves, whether of sound or light. The new method, developed by researchers at MIT, could eventually find applications from nondestructive testing of materials to sound suppression, and could also provide new insights into soft biological systems and possibly lead to new diagnostic tools.
Continue reading… “Flexible materials could provide new ways to control sound and light”
Bitcoin
What should we be thinking about a currency like Bitcoin? The first thing we should remember is that money is a sort of collective fiction. What money we choose to trust says much about how we see the world.
Continue reading… “Bitcoin and other money fictions”
Time to change the weather!
Quote of the Day: “Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.” – Robert Bloch
Continue reading… “Top 14 Photos of the Week”
A map was created by Redditor atrubetskoy that shows how much snow, on average, it takes to cancel school across the United States. Atrubetskoy also shared a few helpful facts about the map’s limitations and inaccuracies on reddit:
Continue reading… “Map: How much snow does it typically take to cancel school in the U.S.?”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odQw5BDnCRs[/youtube]
Harvey Milk understood the power of human empathy when he famously advised his “gay brothers and sisters” to come out, but “only to the people you know, and who know you.” It is hard to hate people you know and who know you.
Continue reading… “How human empathy will shape the design of artificial intelligence”
Nearly all technological advances in the past century or more have depended on our ability to produce and manipulate the vast variety of materials that nature has given us. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of electronics. From a smorgasbord of semiconductors, polymers, and metals, we’ve been able to create a dazzling array of circuitry that now underpins pretty much every aspect of modern life.
Continue reading… “Making a better invisibility cloak with lasers”
One way to improve life for the new student majority is to raise the quality of the education without raising the price.
Interest in using the internet to slash the price of higher education is being driven in part by hope for new methods of teaching, but also by frustration with the existing system. The biggest threat those of us working in colleges and universities face isn’t video lectures or online tests. It’s the fact that we live in institutions perfectly adapted to an environment that no longer exists.
Continue reading… “Is this the end of the golden age for higher education?”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.