Category: People Making a Difference

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App, Great New Product, Great Videos, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

Google’s Captioning on Glass app is a boon for the hearing impaired

Brian Ho

A new app for Google Glass provides text captions from the spoken word.

Life can be a little bit easier for those who have lost some or all of their hearing thanks to a new application for Google Glass. The free Captioning on Glass app was created by a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology and does precisely what it sounds like: It provides text captions of the spoken word on the small screen of Google’s wearable display. (Video)

 

 

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, New Viewpoints, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

New technologies will be key for job growth: Futurist Thomas Frey

summit

Futurist Thomas Frey speaking at Steamboat’s 20th Economic Summit.

Futurist Thomas Frey took an audience of Steamboat Springs business leaders last week into a future where 3-D printers are printing clothes and food, cars no longer need drivers and drones deliver packages.

 

 

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Great New Product, Health & Fitness, New Inventions, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

The Cuff – a revolutionary pain relief device

Quantum Cuff

The Cuff

The Cuff stretches the connective tissues in a balanced way that removes painful conditions in the body. Everything from back pain to shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands, necks, knees and feet.

The Cuff is one of the featured exhibitors at the DaVinci Inventor Showcase. The Inventor Showcase will take place November 14-15, 2014 at the Denver Mart. You will have a chance to take a look at The Cuff and many other amazing inventions.

 

 

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3D Printer, Great Videos, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

3D printed hands turn kids into superheroes

WOLVERINE-HAND

Prosthetic Wolverine claws

Prosthetic hands are great. But when you’re designing and building them for children, as Arron Brown does, prosthetic Wolverine claws are even better. Brown, a 3D printing enthusiast in Grand Rapids, Michigan, volunteers for a global organization called Enabling the Future, which designs and prints prosthetic fingers and hands for people in need. (Video)

 

 

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Analysis, Brain, Health & Fitness, Medical Breakthrough, New Discoveries, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

Novel treatment may reverse memory loss in Alzheimer’s patients

alzheimers

Nine out of ten patients with memory problems showed improvements with this novel multi-systems approach.

A small exploratory study has found that memory loss in patients with Alzheimer’s disease may be reversed — and the improvement sustained — using a novel treatment approach.

 

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Architecture, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, People Making a Difference, Photo Perspectives, Science & Technology News

Calgary’s Snøhetta-designed public library will be the Apple Store of libraries

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Library designed by architectural firm Snøhetta.

Shaunacy Ferro:  Hanging out at the library might just become cool as Calgary, Canada has plans to build a new lending library. The library will be designed by Snøhetta, an architecture firm. The library will have a  240,000-square-foot center and will be more than just a repository for plastic-protected books. Twice as large as Calgary’s existing public library, it’s designed to be both a circulating public library and a community gathering space, a combination bookstore/computer lab/cafe/event space/social hub that provides a pathway between two disconnected neighborhoods. (Photos)

 

 

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Analysis, Brain, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

Computing’s Next Big Transformation – Semantic Intelligence

Semantic-Intelligence-1

Futurist Thomas Frey: I had great difficulty completing this column. This is partly due to the complex nature of the technology and partly because its implications may indeed be so far reaching that I’ll sound over-reaching in describing it.

 

 

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Business, Energy, Great Videos, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News, Solar Power

Airlight Energy and IBM’s new sunflower-shaped solar concentrators produce energy and fresh water

IBM-solar-concentrator

High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT)

A cutting-edge solar system that resembles a 10-meter-high sunflower has just been unveiled by IBM Research and Swiss solar technology company Airlight Energy. The High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system can concentrate the sun’s radiation 2,000 times and convert 80 percent of it into useful energy, generating up to 12 kilowatts of electrical power and 20 kilowatts of heat on a sunny day—enough to power several average homes. It can also produce clean, fresh water as a result of the process used to cool the solar cells. (Video)

Analysis, Great Videos, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

Progress in technology is driven by our growing addiction to ‘cognitive ecstasy’

pleasure-of-discovery

“Cognitive ecstasy” is one reason humans persevere in science, art, and invention.

Humans are curious because discovery is pleasurable. In Jason Silva’s latest video. he says humans don’t care about spectacle—what we care about is ecstatic understanding: “In other words, cognitive ecstasy defined as an exhilarating neurostorm of intense intellectual pleasure.” (Video)

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Analysis, Great Videos, Latest Trend, People Making a Difference

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge hits 1 billion YouTube views

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Rita Ora does the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

We can call this the summer of the Ice Bucket Challenge with videos of shivering people flooding social feeds around the world. And what a summer it was: we saw epic stunts, epic fails, quirky twists and a whole lot of celebrities. We learned a lot about the strange connections between famous people (Bill Gates knows Ryan Seacrest?). The IBC craze even resulted in a couple of marriage proposals. And it’s all in the name of charity: Since July 29, 2014 the ALS Foundation reported more than $115 million in Ice Bucket Challenge donations.

 

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Analysis, New Discoveries, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

A new discovery about prime numbers and what it means for the future of math

numbers

Physicist Ed Copeland explains Yitang Zhang’s finding on bounded gaps between prime numbers.

Yitang “Tom” Zhang, a popular math professor at the University of New Hampshire, stunned the world of pure mathematics this month when he announced that he had proven the “bounded gaps” conjecture about the distribution of prime numbers. This is a crucial milestone on the way to the even more elusive twin primes conjecture, and a major achievement in itself.

Discover the Hidden Patterns of Tomorrow with Futurist Thomas Frey
Unlock Your Potential, Ignite Your Success.

By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.

Learn More about this exciting program.