Impact Lab – Page 470 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Housing, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

Architects have designed a Martian city for the desert outside Dubai

June 23, 2020

Martian city for the desert outside Dubai

Dubai is a city where firefighters use jetpacks, archipelagos are built from scratch, and buildings climb into the clouds; a slick metropolis in the middle of a vast red desert. First-time visitors would be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled onto a film set for a sci-fi movie.

Now Dubai is set for what must be its most other-worldly architectural project yet.

In 2017, the United Arab Emirates announced its ambition to colonize Mars within the next 100 years. But architects are already imagining what a Martian city might look like — and planning to recreate it in the desert outside Dubai.

Mars Science City was originally earmarked to cover 176,000 square meters of desert — the size of more than 30 football fields — and cost approximately $135 million.

Intended as a space for Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) to develop the technology needed to colonize Mars, architects Bjarke Ingels Group were asked to design a prototype of a city suitable for sustaining life on Mars — and then adapt it for use in the Emirati desert.

Continue reading… “Architects have designed a Martian city for the desert outside Dubai”

Analysis, Coronavirus, Economy, Science & Technology News

Coronavirus caused income loss for nearly half of American households

June 23, 2020

Chief Economist on U.S. recovery and how we’re ‘standing at the bottom of the canyon’

She had been working as a concierge services coordinator at a nonprofit performing arts organization in New York City for four years before the closure of entertainment venues across the city destroyed demand for her skills.

“Job hunting is already incredibly tough without a global pandemic,” she told Yahoo Money.

The coronavirus pandemic and response have left millions of Americans like Laura without a job and caused employment income loss for nearly half of the households across the country, according to research from the Household Pulse Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Continue reading… “Coronavirus caused income loss for nearly half of American households”

2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, Employment, Housing, Science & Technology News

How working from home is changing the way we think about where we live

June 23, 2020

Remote workers have a new found flexibility

Can you remember three months ago? In just 90 days, things have changed dramatically. Just 90 days. Yet, in that short amount of time, the way we think about where we live and how we live has completely changed.

In the latter part of those 90 days, I have heard from many people that the pandemic has forced their hand and has actually inspired investment in new technology or motivated a change in operations. These changes are adding up to huge impacts.

One of the big changes is the work-from-home policy. What started as a way to keep employees safe at home is now turning into the most popular work trend across the country, inspiring companies everywhere to step away from very large real estate construction projects and lease deals.

When office real estate is expensive and the country is facing an economic meltdown, and a work-from-home trend falls from the sky, it would be silly not to take it, right?

This Margins article reports that 40% of all venture capital funding in Silicon Valley actually goes to landlords instead of product development, and admits that even though it’s a big number, it is probably very conservative.

Continue reading… “How working from home is changing the way we think about where we live”

2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, Entertainment, Food, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Travel after coronavirus (COVID-19): Six ways it will change forever

June 24, 2020

Flying with masks, for cabin crew and passengers, will become common practice.

Things might be better, or things might be worse, but if there’s one thing that is certain, travel will never be the same again.

Everything will change. It has to. Even if a vaccine is discovered for the novel coronavirus, the way in which we move around and see the world will be forever altered.

After an initial run of discounted fares, flying is likely to be more expensive post-COVID-19.

The big question is: how?

Continue reading… “Travel after coronavirus (COVID-19): Six ways it will change forever”

Alternative Transportation, Elon Musk, Hyperloop, Science & Technology News, Travel

Dutch study shows hyperloop may be substitute to short-haul flights

June 23, 2020

An artist’s impression of a proposal by Dutch company Hardt Hyperloop to build a hyperloop system linking Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to major European cities is seen in this handout image obtained by Reuters on June 10, 2020.

LONDON (Reuters) – Passenger-packed pods speeding through vacuum tubes linking Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to European cities could prove a viable low-carbon alternative to short-haul flights, according to a study published on Wednesday.

Although hyperloop technology, which uses magnetic levitation to allow near-silent travel at airline speeds, has not yet proven feasible in large-scale operations, the airport said it was seriously exploring it as a potential form of sustainable transport.

“We are genuinely interested in where hyperloop could go,” said Hassan Charaf, head of innovation at Royal Schiphol Group, which owns and operates the airport, one of Europe’s busiest.

Continue reading… “Dutch study shows hyperloop may be substitute to short-haul flights”

brain hacking, Engineering, new technology, Science & Technology News

Engineers put tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses on a single chip

June 23, 2020

A new MIT-fabricated “brain-on-a-chip” reprocessed an image of MIT’s Killian Court, including sharpening and blurring the image, more reliably than existing neuromorphic designs.

MIT engineers have designed a “brain-on-a-chip,” smaller than a piece of confetti, that is made from tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses known as memristors—silicon-based components that mimic the information-transmitting synapses in the human brain.

The researchers borrowed from principles of metallurgy to fabricate each memristor from alloys of silver and copper, along with silicon. When they ran the chip through several visual tasks, the chip was able to “remember” stored images and reproduce them many times over, in versions that were crisper and cleaner compared with existing memristor designs made with unalloyed elements.

Their results, published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, demonstrate a promising new memristor design for neuromorphic devices—electronics that are based on a new type of circuit that processes information in a way that mimics the brain’s neural architecture. Such brain-inspired circuits could be built into small, portable devices, and would carry out complex computational tasks that only today’s supercomputers can handle.

Continue reading… “Engineers put tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses on a single chip”

Business, City Planning, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Shopping

How an Exodus from cities will reshape retail

June 22, 2020

The work-from-anywhere revolution will accelerate the coming of a post-digital age for shopping, argues Doug Stephens of Retail Prophet.

Throughout history, cities have played a central role in the evolution of retail. From the grand bazaars of ancient times to the opulent department stores of the 1800s to the venture-backed start-ups of the 2000s, cities have offered the stage, the audience, and ultimately, the financial prosperity to power retail through the ages.

But in major developed economies like the United States, we are set to see an outbound migration from cities the likes of which we have not experienced since the 1950s. Just as the IBMs and Microsofts of the world did 40 years ago, migrating to the boundlessness of the suburbs, today’s corporate giants are rethinking location once again, except this time encouraging their employees to live and work wherever they like.

On May 21st, Facebook announced that it would give its employees not only the freedom to work from home permanently, but also to spin a globe and point to wherever they’d like “home” to be. Mark Zuckerberg told The Verge, “We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale… I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently.” That same day, Shopify and Twitter both made similar announcements. Shopify founder and CEO Tobias Lütke said he expects most of the company’s employees to choose the work from home option, adding: “The choice is really, are we passengers on this tidal wave of change? Or do we jump in the driver’s seat and try to figure out how to build a global world-class company by not getting together that often?”

Continue reading… “How an Exodus from cities will reshape retail”

Business, Coronavirus, Health & Fitness, Robots, Science & Technology News

The most intimate areas of your vacation will be deep-cleaned by a freaky robot

June 22, 2020

Hotels, planes, and restaurants want your dollars back. Here are some of their plans to make it safe.

It’s something we look forward to all year: summer vacation. This time-honored tradition is an opportunity to get away from the stress of our daily lives and see new places, dip our toes in cool waters, or simply tune out the rest of the world for a few days. But this year, the continuing threat of Covid-19 has thrown that grand tradition for a loop, threatening to cancel it like a pool with bad pH levels.

And it’s not just wannabe-tourists who are suffering the loss of their vacations. As a result of Covid-19, 4 million people in the hospitality industry have lost their jobs. More than $21 billion in revenue has also been lost.

The question of “Is it safe to travel this summer?” is on the minds of many, and while there isn’t a clear answer yet, freaky googly-eyed robots are here to help us whenever we arrive.

Continue reading… “The most intimate areas of your vacation will be deep-cleaned by a freaky robot”

Automation, New Inventions, Robotics, Science & Technology News

This wearable robotic arm can hold tools, pick fruit, and punch through walls

June 22, 2020

Doc Ock, is that you?

We’ve always had a soft spot for supernumerary robotic limbs here at The Verge, but this latest example of the genre is one of the most impressive we’ve seen to date. Designed by researchers at the Université de Sherbrooke in Canada, it’s a hydraulic arm that sits on the wearer’s hip and uses a three-fingered manipulator to carry out a range of tasks.

Continue reading… “This wearable robotic arm can hold tools, pick fruit, and punch through walls”

Coronavirus, Economy, Money Talk, Science & Technology News, Shopping

The rich have stopped spending and that has tanked the economy

June 22, 2020

A worker paints over a Louis Vuitton storefront, boarded up after the coronavirus outbreak, on March 30 in San Francisco.

The wealthiest American households are keeping a tight grip on their purse strings even as their lower-income counterparts are spending a lot more freely when they emerge from weeks of lockdown. That decline in spending by the wealthy could limit the whole country’s economic recovery.

Researchers based at Harvard have been tracking spending patterns using credit card data. They found that people at the bottom of the income ladder are now spending nearly as much as they did before the coronavirus pandemic.

“When the stimulus checks went out, you see that spending by lower-income households went up a lot,” said Nathan Hendren, a Harvard economist and co-founder of the Opportunity Insights research team.

However, the wealthy are not matching them. “For higher-income individuals, that spending is still way far off from where it was prior to COVID and it has not recovered as much,” Hendren said.

That’s potentially crippling because consumer spending is a huge driver of economic activity. In fact, so much of the country’s economy depends on shopping by the top income bracket that the wealthiest 25% of Americans account for fully two-thirds of the total decline in spending since January.

Continue reading… “The rich have stopped spending and that has tanked the economy”

3D Printer, Environment, Green Friendly, Housing, Science & Technology News

This 3D printed house reduces carbon emissions and takes 48 hours to build!

June 21, 2020

The construction industry contributes to 39% of global carbon emissions while aviation contributes to only 2% which means we need to look for alternative building materials if we are to make a big impact on the climate crisis soon. We’ve seen buildings being made using mushrooms, bricks made from recycled plastic and sand waste, organic concrete, and now are seeing another innovative solution – a floating 3D printed house!

Prvok is the name of this project and it will be the first 3D printed house in the Czech Republic built by Michal Trpak, a sculptor, and Stavebni Sporitelna Ceske Sporitelny who is a notable member of the Erste building society. The house is designed to float and only takes 48 hours to build! Not only is that seven times faster than traditional houses, but it also reduces construction costs by 50%. No bricks, cement, and concrete (responsible for 8% of CO2 emissions alone!) are used which means it reduces carbon emissions by 20% – imagine how much CO2 could be reduced if this was used to build a colony. A robotic arm called Scoolpt designed by Jiri Vele, an architect and programmer, will be used in 3D printing and can print as fast as 15 cm per second.

The 43 square meter home will have all the essentials – a bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. It will be anchored on a pontoon and is designed in a way that owners can live in it all year round. Prvok is partially self-sufficient and is equipped with eco-technologies that enable it to recirculate shower water, use a green roof, and host reservoirs for utility, drinking, and sewage water. Each detail and element of the house has been thoughtfully added after making sure it can last for 100 years in any environment. Prvok is an example of what the future of hybrid houses that work for you and the environment could look like.

Continue reading… “This 3D printed house reduces carbon emissions and takes 48 hours to build!”

Coronavirus, Economy, Employment, Science & Technology News, Trending

Say goodbye to six-figure starting salaries – with these exceptions

June 21, 2020

KEY POINTS

Starting salaries for newly minted college graduates are lower almost across the board as a result of the economic fallout from Covid-19.
However, some entry-level positions in tech still pay near six figures, according to new data from Glassdoor.
Some entry-level job offers and internship opportunities are being rescinded, another survey found.

Those armed with a newly minted college diploma are entering the worst U.S. job market in modern history, with unemployment spiking to levels not seen since the Great Depression.

Continue reading… “Say goodbye to six-figure starting salaries – with these exceptions”