Scientists grow kidney in the laboratory

Laboratory grown rat kidney.

Scientists in the the U.S. say the have “grown” a kidney in the laboratory and it has been transplanted into animals where it started to produce urine.  Similar techniques to make simple body parts have already been used in patients, but the kidney is one of the most complicated organs made so far.

 

 

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Eric Schmidt urges action to regulate mini-drones

Warning of mini-drones’ potential as a terrorist weapon.

Eric Schmidt, the influential head of Google, has called for civilian drone technology to be regulated, warning about privacy and security concerns.  He told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that cheap miniature versions of the unmanned aircraft used by the military could fall into the wrong hands.

 

 

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SolarCopter – world’s first solar powered helicopter

SolarCopter

A team of masters students from the U.K. have built what they call the world’s first “solar copter.”  It is a quadrotor that flies solely on solar power.  It is only capable of short flights at the moment. But once the team adds a storage system they say it should fly longer. (Video)

 

 

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News is bad for your health

Giving up reading the news will make you happier.

Some of us have learned to recognize the hazards of living with an overabundance of food and have started to change our diets. But, did you know that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body? The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike things that require thinking like reading books and long magazine articles, we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-colored candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognize how toxic news can be.

 

 

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How many pages does an average Facebook user like?

Americans like an average of 70 pages.

Facebook wants you to like more pages so they have really been pushing users to like pages and it seems to be working.  As Socialbakers notes, the average Facebook user in 2009 liked 4.5 pages. Now that figure has risen to 40. In the U.S., Facebook users like an average of 70 pages.

 

 

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50 percent of Verizon’s mobile network traffic is video

By 2017 Verizon expects that number to grow to two-thirds.

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam’s speech at the National Association of Broadcasters conference on Tuesday indicated that half of the traffic on Verizon’s mobile networks is now video, FierceWireless reported, and by 2017 Verizon expects that number to grow to two-thirds.

 

 

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“Show me the money!” Top programmers can now get agents

If you are a good coder in Silicon Valley, you are among the pampered elite. You get big paychecks, people bring you free gourmet food, drivers shuttle you around town. Coders in Silicon Valley are treated a lot like talented entertainers would be in Hollywood. It’s a thought not lost on Altay Guvench, a coder himself who has become one of the first agents for software developers.

 

 

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Monitoring People from Space: The Good the Bad, and the Ugly

Futurist Thomas Frey: In the late 1980s, I was an engineer working as part of an IBM team to build a mobile satellite command and control center for monitoring missile launches from space. This contract was part of Regan’s “Star Wars” missile defense system.

 

 

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What is Bitcoin? This video explains it in less than 4 minutes

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/63502573[/vimeo]

Bitcoin, launched in 2009 by an anonymous developer, is an intriguing technological and financial experiment. Quartz reports, there has been a recent spike in value (approximately 1,300% since the beginning of the 2013).  Starting your own currency is “not as complicated as it sounds. All you need is a system other people can understand and, most importantly, trust,” according to The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson.

 

 

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