A new manufacturing process developed by Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) will increase the energy a lithium-ion battery can store by 40%. The technology is similar to that of printed solar cells…
Continue reading… “Researchers Create Printed Battery That Stores 40% More Energy”
Marks on a clay tablet fragment found in Greece are the oldest known decipherable text in Europe, a new study says. Considered ‘magical or mysterious’ in its time, the writing survives only because a trash heap caught fire some 3,500 years ago, according to researchers…
Continue reading… “Oldest Readable Writing In Europe Discovered”
Tajikistan’s Council of Ulema is set to issue a fatwa banning a so-called SMS-divorce, the state religious committee have announced. The move comes amid growing complaints that some Tajik men – working as migrant laborers in Russia – divorce their wives by sending a mobile-phone text message or just making a phone call.
Sunni Islamic traditions allow men to divorce their wives by merely saying “talaq,” an Islamic term for a declaration of divorce. Tajik religious leaders, however, insist that ending a marriage is not such a simple matter…
Continue reading… “Authorities In Tajikistan Plan Ban On Divorce By Text Message”
Last week there were used battleships for sale on e-bay, this week we’ve got used space shuttles. But not going as cheaply as the warships and not being turned into pots and pans either.
NASA has been trying to flog these space shuttles for a while now; they have already been marked down from $42M to $28M. And it looks like they may have finally found a new, earth-bound, home.
Continue reading… “Sold to the Highest Bidder: 3 Used Space Ships”
Plants only need a specific wavelength to grow, not the full spectrum of the sun.
If we were to prevent a Malthusian catastrophe, we’d better figure out a way to boost crop yield to keep feeding the planet’s growing population. Gertjan Meeuws and other bioengineers of PlantLab have found an answer: a greenhouse where every aspect of the growing condition is controlled, where climate (or even the Sun) is not a factor at all…
Continue reading… “Sunless Farming of the Future”
Do you use Gmail or other email cloud service? Then you’d be surprised to learn that according to the law, the government can get your email without a warrant if it’s older than 180 days. David Kravets of Wired’s Threat Level explains…
Continue reading… “Big Brother Needs No Warrant to Snoop at Your Cloud Emails”
A brief update on a story from a year ago: Bolivia is about to pass laws granting all of nature equal rights to human beings. The laws were first proposed after the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth and show the deep differences in zeitgeist between Bolivia and, well, pretty much every other nation-state on the planet…
Continue reading… “Mother Earth To Be Given Rights Equal to Humans In New Bolivian Law”
Look out people of the Internet, there’s another social network on the horizon! But this new network isn’t designed to compete with Facebook, Twitter or MySpace; instead, it’s intended for the people who build these services.
Fowndr, pronounced founder, is a new private network that hopes to offer creators of technology start-ups a place to discuss new projects and share learning, resources and files with other like-minded technologists.
“It’s basically a safe place for entrepreneurs and founders to share ideas, projects and files,” said Stu Green, founder of Fowndr. “The service is designed for people who have been involved in setting up businesses in the past and love new enterprise.”
Continue reading… “Fowndr Offers Private Social Network for Start-Ups”
At last year’s Google I/O we were tantalizingly teased with the idea of music streaming to our mobile devices. Since then, there have been hints and leaks, but nothing official from Google on when or how this new service would be rolled out. Well, now we can add a big piece to that puzzle with the news that Google has acquired mobile entertainment company PushLife, which has been developing a music app of its own for the Android and BlackBerry platforms…
Continue reading… “Google Snags PushLife (for music on your Android phone?)”
The next time you get an Indian talking from a call center on your customer service call, don’t get too upset. Instead, have pity as your counterpart may soon be talking from jail!
For a man serving a life sentence for murder, Pradeep Deburma has a slightly unlikely dream: to work in a call centre like hundreds of thousands of other young ambitious Indians. Even more improbably, he has every chance of realising it while still behind bars…
Sex selection is now invading parts of India that didn’t used to practice it
The news from India’s 2011 census is almost all heartening. Literacy is up; life expectancy is up; family size is stabilising. But there is one grim exception. In 2011 India counted only 914 girls aged six and under for every 1,000 boys.
Continue reading… “Sex Ratio Widens in India”
Wassonite discovery.
NASA and co-researchers from the United States, South Korea and Japan have found a new mineral named “Wassonite” in one of the most historically significant meteorites recovered in Antarctica in December 1969…
Continue reading… “Scientists Find New Type of Mineral in Historic Meteorite”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.