Over the past 50 years – from the Silent Generation’s young adulthood to that of Millennials today – the United States has undergone large cultural and societal shifts. Now that the youngest Millennials are adults, how do they compare with those who were their age in the generations that came before them?
Continue reading… “Millennial life: How young adulthood today compares with prior generations”
Neural networks were inspired by the human brain. Now AI researchers have shown that they perceive the world in similar ways.
In the early part of the 20th century, a group of German experimental psychologists began to question how the brain acquires meaningful perceptions of a world that is otherwise chaotic and unpredictable. To answer this question, they developed the notion of the “gestalt effect”—the idea that when it comes to perception, the whole is something other than the parts.
Continue reading… “Trained neural nets perform much like humans on classic psychological tests”
Tomorrow’s cities are reshaping almost every industry imaginable, and birthing those we’ve never heard of.
Riding an explosion of sensors, megacity AI ‘brains’, high-speed networks, new materials and breakthrough green solutions, cities are quickly becoming versatile organisms, sustaining and responding to the livelihood patterns of millions.
Over the next decade, cities will revolutionize everything about the way we live, travel, eat, work, learn, stay healthy, and even hydrate.
And countless urban centers, companies, and visionaries are already building out decades-long visions of the future.
A team at Harvard has released a study on panther worms which revealed a regenerative master switch called early growth response, or EGR.
Scientists want to know why some fauna, like some species of the humble jellyfish, can regenerate their whole bodies following an injury. In a paper published last Friday, a team at Harvard have made some breakthroughs.
With three-banded panther worms as their test subjects, Harvard’s Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Mansi Srivastava and her team discovered a master control gene that’s activated by noncoding DNA, according to the Harvard Gazette.
Continue reading… “Scientists are discovering the secrets behind whole-body DNA regeneration”
A French inventor took to Kickstarter last week to raise funds for an insect-inspired winged drone called MetaFly. It generated quite a bit of buzz. At the time this article was published, more than 1,850 people had pledged more than $187,500 to bring the drone to market.
Unlike traditional commercial drones, which use propellers to generate lift, winged drones use, you guessed it, wings to take flight. Much like the bees it’s modeled after, MetaFly flaps its wings vigorously, creating a differential between draft and lift — an efficient flight mechanic used by flying animals. Thanks in part to this efficiency, the drone is lightweight and maneuverable, if at times a bit erratic in flight.
“[MetaFly’s] purpose is to allow you to discover and experience this unique way of flying,” Edwin Van Ruymbeke, MetaFly’s inventor, told Digital Trends. “This is exciting at a whole different level compared with usual drones or flying models.”
Continue reading… “Be prepared to bug out over this insect-inspired winged drone”
Sound far-fetched? Clayton Christensen’s argument is based on a premise familiar to successful entrepreneurs.
Similar to the prediction made by Futurist Thomas Frey in 2013, many colleges will soon struggle to survive.
If you’ve ever used the word disruption to refer to innovations that create new markets and displace long-established companies and products, you might have Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and his best-selling book The Innovator’s Dilemma to thank.
More recently, Christensen has predicted traditional colleges and universities are ripe for disruption, arguing online education will undermine their business models (because education is, ultimately, a business) to such a degree that many won’t survive.
Nine more have ended veteran homelessness. It’s part of a national program called Built for Zero that uses a data-based approach to help officials figure out exactly who needs what services. Now it’s accelerating its work in 50 more cities.
In late February, the city of Abilene, Texas, made an announcement: It had ended local veteran homelessness. It was the first community in the state and the ninth in the country to reach that goal, as part of a national program called Built for Zero. Now, through the same program, Abilene is working to end chronic homelessness. While homelessness might often be seen as an intractable problem because of its complexity–or one that costs more to solve than communities can afford–the program is proving that is not the case.
“By ending homelessness, we mean getting to a place where it’s rare, brief, and it gets solved correctly and quickly when it does happen,” says Rosanne Haggerty, president of Community Solutions, the nonprofit that leads the Built for Zero program. “That’s a completely achievable end state, we now see.” The nonprofit, which calls this goal “functional zero,” announced today that it is accelerating its work in 50 communities.
Continue reading… “3 cities in the U.S. have ended chronic homelessness: Here’s how they did it”
Access to clean water remains one of the biggest challenges facing humankind. A breakthrough by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin may offer a new solution through solar-powered technology that absorbs moisture from the air and returns it as clean, usable water.
The breakthrough, described in a recent issue of the journal Advanced Materials, could be used in disaster situations, water crises or poverty-stricken areas and developing countries. The technology relies on hydrogels, gel-polymer hybrid materials designed to be “super sponges” that can retain large amounts of water.
A research team led by Guihua Yu in UT Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering combined hydrogels that are both highly water absorbent and can release water upon heating. This unique combination has been successfully proved to work in humid and dry weather conditions and is crucial to enabling the production of clean, safe drinking water from the air.
Continue reading… “Solar-powered moisture harvester collects and cleans water from air”
French startup Stanley Robotics showed off its self-driving parking robot at Lyon-Saint-Exupéry airport today. While I couldn’t be there in person, the service is going live by the end of March 2019. And here’s what it looks like.
Let’s not forget that billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates all dropped out of college.
Does it matter where a person went to college? Well, it’s a complicated answer, depending on whom you ask.
After Operation Varsity Blues ensnared 50 people in a college admissions scam, including famous actresses and heads of major financial companies, the scandal is raising the question of what matters more: a fancy school name on a résumé, or an education.
“I have no idea where most of the people who worked for me went to college. I just know: Did they get stuff done or did they not?” former President Barack Obama said last week at a tech conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, before news of the arrests broke.
Continue reading… “Does it even matter where you go to college? Here’s what the data says.”
Remember those commercials for kitchen appliances that can do it all? “It slices, it dices, makes julienne fries!” Well, here’s an appliance that actually does do just about everything you could ask for when you’re in the kitchen. The Thermomix TM6, the latest smart appliance from Vorwerk, is here to save you counter space and help you get dinner on the table faster.
If there’s a task you need to do for meal preparation, odds are you can count on the Termomix TM6 to take care of it. It’s built with a stainless-steel bowl, a state-of-the-art blade, a precision heating element, and an embedded scale. Taken together, those features give the appliance the ability to perform 20 different functions and techniques without requiring you to jump from one appliance to another, cluttering the counter as you go. Whisking, caramelizing, browning, chopping, steaming, sautéing, blending, boiling, kneading, emulsifying—you name it and the Thermomix can probably do it.
Continue reading… “Thermomix introduces a small appliance that can do it all”
The Sonic X’s slide-out increases interior space, providing room for a comfy dining lounge with wraparound…
A new style of trailer for an evolving breed of traveler, the Sonic X from KZ Recreational Vehicles adds a little more self-sustainability to the camping trailer world. With its solar-backed lithium battery bank, the 26-footer is designed to run off-grid indefinitely. It also includes lightweight carbon fiber construction, a fresh water harvesting system and insulation-boosting technology for better performance, autonomy and efficiency. Get lost for weeks and months at a time without giving up residential-style comforts.
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.