Pentagon: Hacking Can Count As An Act Of War

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Hacking an act of war?

The Wall Street Journal broke the news yesterday that the Pentagon has concluded that hacking and other forms of digital sabotage that originate from other countries can be considered an act of war. This means that for the first time, the U.S. is in the position of possibly responding to an online attack with offline “traditional military force.” Guns, troops, drones, bombs…

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Engineering Students Design Robot Rubik’s Cube Solver

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If you were around in the 80’s, you had a Rubik’s Cube puzzle. I hated those things and always resorted to pulling the stickers off to win in frustration. Some students from Swinburne University of Technology created a robot that can solve the puzzle in 10.69 seconds…

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Complex Composite Materials to Order

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A sample of a co-continuous polymer composite material.

A team of researchers at MIT has found a way to make complex composite materials whose attributes can be fine-tuned to give various desirable combinations of properties such as stiffness, strength, resistance to impacts and energy dissipation.

The key feature of the new composites is a “co-continuous” structure of two different materials with very different properties, creating a material combining aspects of both. The co-continuous structure means that the two interleaved materials each form a kind of three-dimensional lattice whose pieces are fully connected to each other from side to side, front to back, and top to bottom…

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Smoking Death Toll Could Reach 8 Million a Year by 2030

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Tobacco will kill 6 million people this year.

Nearly six million people, including 600,000 non-smokers, will die this this year from tobacco. Governments are not doing enough to persuade people to quit or protect others from second-hand smoke, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

 

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Twitter Is Launching Its Own Photosharing Service

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A new view is coming to Twitter

Twitter has been completely emphatic about where developers should stake a claim, with Twitter Platform Lead Ryan Sarver warning the ecosystem to stay away from building “client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.”

Well if Sarver stays true to his word the Twitpics and Yfrogs of the world can just give it up now. According to multiple sources, Twitter is on the verge on announcing its own built in Twitpic competitor…

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Get Your Steam On Anywhere: Portable Bike Sauna

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Anywhere can be a good place to steam.

We’ve seen prefab saunas, houseboat saunas and secret saunas, so what about mobile saunas? Czech design team H3T Architects put together this sweet little sweat-pod that can be towed anywhere you please by tandem bike. Enveloped in translucent panels, the Bike Sauna allows users to park it in various locales, transforming any spot into a relaxing haven. But don’t let its small appearance throw you off, apparently it can seat up to six people (granted, in probably somewhat close quarters). But inside there’s everything that makes it cozy, like a real wood-fired stove. Take a look…

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Living in a Billboard

billboardhouse

A room with a view.

This has got to be recycling at its best. Why throwout perfectly good billboards when you can reuse them as a living space? I don’t know about you, but how many billboards have you seen that would make a good one bedroom apartment? This may be the idea, but we shall see if it comes into practical use. Check out the images of billboard residences in different settings…

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Systems Thinking and the Future of Education

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1jek4U7vbg&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Short video clip on “Systems Thinking”
recorded at the Plan Fort Collins event on March 3, 2010

Futurist Thomas Frey:  A recent article in iLibrarian explained it this way.

Online education seems set on its course to overtake traditional colleges within the next few decades, especially as our society becomes ever more dependent on the internet to get our work done. Thomas Frey, an expert on online education, compares our growing reliance on the education system to the reliance of ancient Romans on their numeric system. He indicates that much like the Romans, we have become increasingly reliant on our education system which is meant to pass on information from one generation to the next, hesitant to any change that may occur (explaining the rough transition to online education).

 
Online education seems set on its course to overtake traditional colleges within the next few decades, especially as our society becomes ever more dependent on the internet to get our work done. Thomas Frey, an expert on online education, compares our growing reliance on the education system to the reliance of ancient Romans on their numeric system. He indicates that much like the Romans, we have become increasingly reliant on our education system which is meant to pass on information from one generation to the next, hesitant to any change that may occur (explaining the rough transition to online education).

Continue reading… “Systems Thinking and the Future of Education”

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.