Impact Lab – Page 596 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Analysis, Automobiles, City Planning, Transportation

These are the 20 most congested cities in the world

February 18, 2019

The transportation data firm INRIX Research released on Tuesday its annual rankings of the most congested cities in the world.
Cities were ranked based on delays caused by congestion, adjusted for each city’s population.
Moscow was named the most congested city in the world for the second year in a row, and Europe had more cities in the top 20 than any other continent.

The transportation data firm INRIX Research released on Tuesday its annual rankings of the most congested cities in the world.

The company measured the amount of time lost per capita in 2018 due to the difference between traffic at the busiest and least busy commuting times each day. Cities were ranked based on delays caused by congestion, adjusted for each city’s population.

Moscow was named the most congested city in the world for the second year in a row, and Europe had more cities in the top-20 than any other continent.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, IBM

IBM AI fails to beat human debating champion

February 17, 2019

Harish Natarajan triumphed over the bot in a rapid-fire challenge.

After suffering defeat to AI at Go and Dota 2, the battle between man and machine was starting to look a little one-sided. But a human has finally notched up a win against our future robot overlords. Champion debater Harish Natarajan triumphed in a live showdown against IBM’s Miss Debater AI at the company’s Think Conference in San Francisco on Monday. The 2012 European Debate winner and IBM’s black monolith exchanged quick retorts on pre-school subsidies for 25 minutes before the crowd hailed Natarajan the victor. You can watch the debate in full below.

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Energy, Solar Energy, Solar Power

These Origami solar panels generate electricity for apartments

February 16, 2019

Solgami wants to help people living in cities.

A new design of solar panel could help apartment dwellers harvest electricity from their windows without prohibitive installation costs. Solgami, designed by Australian architect Ben Berwick, is a window blind that generates power while bouncing more light into the room using a folded origami design.

“It’s a bit of a reconnection to the natural setting,” Berwick, who founded architecture firm Prevalent, told Fast Company* this weekend. “It’s making your apartment a better place to be.”

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Analysis, Business, Employment

15 top paying IT Certifications in 2019

February 15, 2019

Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect is the highest paying certification of 2019, paying an average salary of $139,529.
Certifications in virtualization and cloud computing pay an average salary of $127,494 this year, up from $112,955 in 2018, a 12.8% increase in just one year.
Five of the top 15 highest paying certifications of 2019 are for cybersecurity expertise, and they pay an average of $115,867.
Project Management Professional (PMP®) certifications increased in value by 18.6%, jumping from a median salary of $114,473 in 2018 to $135,798 in 2019.

The 2019 survey’s findings regarding the most lucrative IT certifications are summarized in the article, 15 Top-Paying IT Certifications for 2019. The study is global in scope, with the top 15 certifications reflecting U.S. market demand and salary levels. A certification had to have at least 100 survey responses to ensure that the data was statistically valid, and the certification exam has to be currently available.

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Farming, Food, Great New Product, Legal Issues

You call that meat? Not so fast, cattle ranchers say

February 15, 2019

Sales of plant-based meat substitutes, like this burger made by Impossible Foods, increased 22 percent to $1.5 billion last year.

SAN FRANCISCO — The cattle ranchers and farm bureaus of America are not going to give up their hold on the word meat without a fight.

In recent weeks, beef and farming industry groups have persuaded legislators in more than a dozen states to introduce laws that would make it illegal to use the word meat to describe burgers and sausages that are created from plant-based ingredients or are grown in labs. Just this week, new meat-labeling bills were introduced in Arizona and Arkansas.

These meat alternatives may look and taste and even bleed like meat, but cattle ranchers want to make sure that the new competition can’t use the meat label.

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2019 Predictions, Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Farming, IBM, Science & Technology News

IBM researchers predict 5 innovations will change our lives in 5 years

February 16, 2019

IBM Research has a long history of inventing the future, so the big tech company’s researchers take their predictions seriously. Today they are revealing their annual “5 in 5” predictions, which detail five innovations that will change our lives in the next five years.

IBM will talk about the predictions at its Think 2019 event in San Francisco on Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time.

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3D Printer, Engineering, Space, Space Flight

Take a look at the world’s largest 3D-printed rocket engine

February 15, 2019

3D printing in one piece avoids the weaknesses of welding.

It’s a long way from taking on Blue Origin or SpaceX, but UK startup Orbex is confident enough to show off its Prime Rocket’s second stage. Inside the engineering prototype’s shell is what it claims is the “world’s largest” 3D printed rocket engine, which is also designed to run on bio-propane, a renewable fuel source. The rocket itself is made of a carbon fiber and aluminum composite that’s supposed to be 30 percent lighter than any other vehicle in its category.

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Clothing, Music, Wearables

A new shirt can help deaf people feel music

February 15, 2019

Tech-infused fashion isn’t just about looking good—it can have some groundbreaking uses too, as a company called CuteCircuit is proving.

The London-based tech-fashion firm, which has recently provided Katy Perry with (literally) flashy outfits, has just successfully tested a shirt that can help deaf people feel the music they cannot hear.

The Sound Shirt is an adaptation of a CuteCircuit concept called the Hug Shirt, of which the company has produced around 100 prototypes over the last decade. A German orchestra, the Jungen Symphoniker Hamburg, commissioned then bought this latest version.

The Sound Shirt is connected to a computer system that picks up the audio from microphones placed at various points around the orchestra’s stage. It is filled with actuators, which are little motors that vibrate in relation to the intensity of the music being played, in real time.

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Energy, Green Friendly, Wind Power

Generator that creates electricity from gravity could revolutionize renewable energy

February 14, 2019

A Dutch inventor has successfully created a contraption that generates electricity from gravity – and it could revolutionize the future of renewable energy.

Dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars, from Universe Architecture, has developed a method to generate free energy in a sustainable way at home. The patent-pending technique, whereby energy is released by perpetually unbalancing a weight, offers an alternative to solar and wind technology.

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DNA, Engineering, Genetics, Hot Issues

The CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species

February 14, 2019

The genetic-engineering tool could help combat malaria and invasive species. But should we use it?

Charles Darwin had no idea what a gene was. If we dropped the father of evolution into 2019, the idea that humans can willfully alter the genes of an entire species would surely seem like wizardry to him.

But CRISPR gene drives — a new, inconceivably powerful technique that forces genes to spread through a population — have the ability to do just that. Gene drives allow us to hone the blunt edges of natural selection for our own purposes, potentially preventing the spread of disease or eradicating invasive pests.

Yet as with any science performed at the frontier of our knowledge, we are still coming to terms with how powerful CRISPR gene drives might be. Playing the game of genomes means we may, in the future, choose which species live and which die — a near-unbelievable capability that scientists and ethicists agree presents us with unique moral, social and ethical challenges.

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Health & Fitness, Latest Trend, Legalized marijuana

Willie Nelson’s new Remedy adds CBD oil to your coffee

February 14, 2019

Turns out Willie Nelson wasn’t kidding when he and Merle Haggard sang “It’s All Going to Pot” in 2015.

In 2016, he launched Willie’s Reserve, his own brand of weed with it’s partner brand, Annie Edibles, featuring his wife, Annie Nelson’s artisanal chocolates and infused hard candies. Last year, they expanded the brand with a new product line dubbed SunGrown.

Now the couple has launched a new wellness brand, Willie’s Remedy, which focuses on non-intoxicating cannabidiol (CBD) oil. Their first product is CBD-infused coffee made from Annie Nelson’s personal recipe. After a soft launch last year, the coffee is now available for purchase online. When properly brewed, the coffee is said to deliver 5 mg of CBD oil per 8 oz cup. Your infused caffeine shots will not be cheap, an 8 oz bag of whole coffee beans retails for $36, but according to the press release, the oil comes from “only the cleanest American-sourced hemp.”

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Breakthrough Thinking, Healthcare, Medicine

Self-Propelling pills could mean the end of needle vaccines

February 13, 2019

These pills work like tiny speedboats.

Open Wide

A new type of tiny motor can help shuttle life-saving vaccines to where they need to go. For infants or those of us who are squeamish around needles, that could mean a future with fewer shots and more effective medicine.

The problem with oral vaccines — ones that take pill form — is that they can sometimes get broken down by stomach acid or get spit right back up by a child. That’s why researchers are interested in tiny, molecular motors that can propel the pills through the body to their target, making orally-consumed medication more effective than ever before.

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