Photovoltaic solar panels
The drop in cost of solar panel prices will help make solar affordable to more people and it will increase the size of the solar market. But this ongoing cost reduction means much more than that.
Continue reading… “Cost of photovoltaic solar panels to drop $0.36/watt by 2017”
80% of us manage between six and nine hours a night; the other 20% sleep more or less than this.
A third of our lives is wasted sleeping – at least that’s how some people see it. There doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day sometimes. When you feel that way do you yearn to be like the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was said to get by on just four hours sleep a night, or the artist Salvador Dali who wasted as little time as possible slumbering?
Continue reading… “Can you train yourself to need less sleep?”
Vertical Harvest’s three-storey-tall hydroponic greenhouse.
By 2050, there will be billions more hungry people in the world. Growing our food on vertical farms or under radical new lighting systems may be key to ensuring they have enough to eat. (Pics)
Bitcoin
What will the next big thing in technology be? Depends on who you ask. At Bloomberg’s Next Big Thing conference in Half Moon Bay, California, a number of industry thinkers and innovators did some crystal ball-gazing.
Here’s a round-up of some of their more interesting predictions.
Continue reading… “Top 5 expert predictions on the next big thing in technology”
The project’s creators say their “holograms” are more memorable than two dimensional slides.
Two London-based junior doctors have pioneered a system which uses an illusionary effect to help medical students master their subject.
Continue reading… “Giant holograms offer medical students more memorable classes”
Masdar City will use solar energy and other renewables , and will be car-free.
Mankind is rethinking how we build the structures we live and work in which is changing the way our cities look and feel. According to architect Philip Beesley, our cities of smooth stone and steel may become more like floating forests – with buildings that can think and breathe and cool themselves.
Continue reading… “Future cities will have buildings that can think and breathe”
The project involves putting two power lines directly into the road.
The recent innovations in wireless charging for electric vehicles could mean losing the need for batteries altogether. A Swedish project being tested is a system designed to power EVs along the highway.
Continue reading… “Volvo tests road that will charge electric cars”
Apple’s WWDC 2013
The conference that Apple hosted in San Francisco last week for 6,000 developers was a face-off between CEO Tim Cook and Jony Ive, his Senior VP for design. (Infographic)
Continue reading… “Apple’s WWDC 2013 as seen through 417,336 tweets”
Labor’s share of the world’s income is plunging, and the technology boom is to blame.
For the past thirty years, wages have evaporated as a share of the economy. Meanwhile, the proportion of national income consumed by profits, dividends, and capital gains has steadily grown. Capital 1, Labor 0.
Continue reading… “Robots are already stealing our paychecks”
AmazonFresh
Webvan, the online grocery start-up, may have been the single most expensive flame-out of the dot-com era, blowing through more than $800 million in venture capital and IPO proceeds in just over three years before shutting its doors in 2001.
Continue reading… “Webvan rising from the dead, Amazon builds a grocery business”
Flying robots are going to become a lot more common in the U.S.
Investors and entrepreneurs are betting on a future full of flying robots that can be programmed to do anything from survey crops or wildlife to delivering vaccines to remote villages in Africa.
Continue reading… “Entrepreneurs and investors bet on the future of the drone economy”
Google is working on fighting child porn on the web with new technology.
Google, the search and mobile superpower, is working on new technology that would effectively purge all images of child pornography and abuse from most of the Web.
Continue reading… “Google is working on new technology to eradicate child porn from the internet”