Impact Lab – Page 847 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Business, Entertainment, Great New Product, Nanotechnology, New Discoveries, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

LG’s TV at the Next Level with the Quantum Dot

December 17, 2014

A new kind of display is about to make TV images appear even more lifelike. LG will show off a TV based on quantum-dot technology at CES 2015 in January, and the company also plans to start selling it later that year.

Quantum-dot tech uses extremely tiny crystals — measuring 2 to 10 nanometers — to generate light. (That’s so small that the tiniest crystals are only about 20 atoms thick.) Different-size crystals generate different colors, and the size of the crystals can be controlled precisely. As a result, quantum-dot displays can reproduce color that’s even better and more accurate than OLED screens, the current leading tech for advanced TVs.

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Crazy Stuff, Energy, Great New Product, Hot Issues, Nanotechnology, New Discoveries, New Inventions, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

The First Lady of Graphene

December 19, 2014

The birthplace of graphene – the one-atom-thick carbon – is Manchester University, where it was created by two physicists. But Cambridge could become the adopted home of the so-called wonder-material.

A vast new facility that can make up to five tons of the ultra-valuable black dust each year is being built in the city and is due to open in 2015.

Cambridge Nanosystems, a university spin-out, led by chief scientist Catharina Paukner, 30, has built the factory with the help of a £500,000 grant from the Technology Strategy Board.

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Science & Technology News

How Online Courses are Changing Education

December 18, 2014

Online courses may not be changing colleges as their boosters claimed
they would, but they can prove valuable in surprising ways

Justin Pope: College education remains out of reach for many people.

A few years ago, the most enthusiastic advocates of MOOCs believed that these “massive open online courses” stood poised to overturn the century-old model of higher education. Their interactive technology promised to deliver top-tier teaching from institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT, not just to a few hundred students in a lecture hall on ivy-draped campuses, but free via the Internet to thousands or even millions around the world. At long last, there appeared to be a solution to the problem of “scaling up” higher education: if it were delivered more efficiently, the relentless cost increases might finally be rolled back. Some wondered whether MOOCs would merely transform the existing system or blow it up entirely. Computer scientist Sebastian Thrun, cofounder of the MOOC provider Udacity, predicted that in 50 years, 10 institutions would be responsible for delivering higher education.

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Big Problems, Health & Fitness, Hot Issues, Latest Trend

Flexibility is critical for young people because ‘whole careers are vanishing overnight’

December 17, 2014

Recent college grads

As the digital sector grows, jobs that rely on older technologies are rapidly becoming obsolete.

According to the census, between 2006 and 2011 there were some occupations where the number of people employed across the country dropped by up to two-thirds in just five years – corporate services managers, for example, fell from 21,804 in 2006 to 7365 in 2011.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1966, 46% of workers in Australia were employed in production industries. 30 years later, that proportion has diminished to 28%.

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Breakthrough Thinking, Energy, Solar Power

How solar powered drones are about to transform your life

December 17, 2014

George Bye at the DaVinci Institute’s “Night with a Futurist” talking about the future of solar powered UAVs

George Bye is the founder of Bye Aerospace, a Colorado company involved in the design of a unique solar-electric powered aircraft that use solar electric energy, stored in batteries, to drive a propeller to both fly and stay aloft for long periods of time. A special combination of technologies and design will enable the current small UAVs to maintain station, with flight endurance of 8 to 12 hours at a time – several multiples of typical aviation gasoline fuel engine UAVs. A more extreme version of this capability will be engineered into Bye’s future aircraft (both civil and defense).

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App, Breakthrough Thinking, Culture, Current Events, government, Great New Product, Hot Issues, Latest News, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Iowa is Creating the Digital Drivers License for Smart Phones

December 16, 2014

Iowa residents may become the first in the U.S. to use a smartphone mobile app as their driver’s license.

The Iowa Department of Transportation wants to let drivers keep an electronic version of a license on an app, in addition (or in lieu of) the traditional plastic one you’d keep in a wallet.

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Artificial Intelligence, Business, Crazy Stuff, Current Events, Economy, government, Hot Issues, Latest News, Report, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Upcoming Events

FAA Drags Feet on Drone Rulings

December 16, 2014

Many new drones are now making their debut – Image by media.salon.com

In August, the Federal Aviation Administration missed a key deadline for developing rules for small commercial drones. That failure has infuriated businesses that want to test and use drones for delivering goods, monitoring crops and doing other awesome things. Some have even threatened to move their drone research overseas if they can’t get permission to operate in the United States.
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Big Problems, Business, Corporate Manipulation, Culture, Economy, Human Behavior, New Viewpoints, Report

Why Left-handed People Make Less Money

December 15, 2014

There’s a stereotype that left-handed people are clumsier, but that might have something to do with the fact that they live in a world of objects optimized for the right-handed: scissors, the computer mouse, surgical tools, and guns, to name a few. The discrimination against the 12 percent of the population who are lefties has disarming historical roots. In the Middle Ages, left-handed writers were said to be the devil’s voice boxes, and the Jewish scholar Maimonides included sinistrality in his list of 100 imperfections that should preclude someone from priesthood.

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App, Crazy Photos, Crazy Stuff, Fashion, Great New Product, Human Behavior, Internet, Latest Trend, Medical Breakthrough, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

Turn Your Skin into a Touch Screen

December 15, 2014

A paris-based design company is looking to take the wearable devices trend to the next level with the visualization of ‘cicret‘, a bracelet that projects the screen of your smartphone directly onto your wrist. currently in the prototype phase, the wristband remotely hooks up to a mobile device and emits the interface onto the wearer’s arm, allowing them to read emails, play games, answer calls and check the weather on the surface of the skin.

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Analysis, Business, Corporate Manipulation, Culture, facebook, Food, Hot Issues, Human Behavior, Internet, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints, Social Media

Facebook is the most Complained about Brand

December 15, 2014

We complain 879 million times/year (and Facebook is our top target)

We complain about brands an astonishing 879 million times a year on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks. A full 10 percent of us find something to be angry about publicly every single day.

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App, Business, Corporate Manipulation, Energy, Environment, Great New Product, Latest Trend, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

Which Smart Home Device will be Under your Tree this Year?

December 15, 2014

Apple’s splash into home automation with addition of HomeKit to iOS 8 is expected to have a huge impact on sales of smart home devices in 2015 according to a Park Associates report that found 37% of U.S. Households plan to purchase one or more devices next year.

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Architecture, Art, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Crazy Photos, Current Events, Entertainment, Famous Inventor, Fashion, Great New Product, Hot Issues, Latest News, Latest Trend, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News, Star Wars

Sneak Peek: George Lucas’ Future Museum

December 17, 2014

Isolated, the words all sound so cliché. Organic. Flowing. Curvy. But set to the backdrop of Chicago’s blocky skyline, they assemble a brash thesis on the city’s future: The new George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is a low-slung knoll inside a landscape of towering Lego, an Egyptian pyramid reimagined for the year 2020.

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