Tag: future

Impact Lab > future
Analysis, Business, Ecological Products, Green Friendly, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

What is the future for biofuels?

What happened to biofuels?

Everybody was talking about biofuels a few years ago. Politicians in the U.S. saw corn ethenol as a path to “energy independence,” while greener folks preferred biodiesel made from waste cooking oil. Fans of biofuels said that these were supposed to be just a bridge to second-generation biofuels like cellulosic ethanol and algae biodiesel; these wouldn’t be made from food crops or limited feedstocks, and they would be much greener overall.

 

 

Continue reading… “What is the future for biofuels?”

Analysis, Business, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Life as a Teenager in 1994, 2014, and 2034 – What a difference a generation makes! – Part 2

Futurist Thomas Frey: Our teenage years have always been a time of great awkwardness, super hormones, and bad decision-making. But lately these years have moved even further down the path of supreme weirdness.

 

 

Continue reading… “Life as a Teenager in 1994, 2014, and 2034 – What a difference a generation makes! – Part 2”

Food, Plant Life, Science & Technology News, Space

NASA plans to grow vegetables in space

NASA is organizing the Vegetable Production System (VEGGIE) program that will send packs of seed material to the ISS.

When humans begin colonizing space there is one challenge we’ll be facing, how to get food to those colonies. The idea of farming in space is hardly a new one.  Astronaut Don Pettit successfully grew a zucchini, broccoli, and sunflower on the ISS, but NASA is now researching how vegetables may be grown in space for consumption.

 

 

Continue reading… “NASA plans to grow vegetables in space”

Business, Internet, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

BMW to have 10 million connected cars within 5 years

More than 90 percent of BMW’s cars will have connectivity built into them.

BMW has around 3 million vehicles that are directly connected to their data centers, according to BMW’s VP of IT Infrastructure Mario Mueller at GigaOM’s Structure Europe conference in London. That number will grow to 10 million connected vehicles by 2018, meaning BMW will increasingly be operating as an IT and cloud-focused company,

 

 

Continue reading… “BMW to have 10 million connected cars within 5 years”

Analysis, Business, Energy, Science & Technology News, Solar Power, Wind Power

The future of the energy infrastructure in the U.S.

The U.S. has massive renewable energy potential.

Transmission lines hold much of the same challenge and promise of the interstate highway system a century ago. The transmission network – the high voltage, long distance power lines that carry electricity from power facilities and into communities – is currently a patchwork system, lacking centralized organization or planning. Assuming that America cannot achieve 100% clean energy with distributed resources, the transport of renewable electric energy across state lines is a major hurdle to realizing a future without fossil fuels.

 

 

Continue reading… “The future of the energy infrastructure in the U.S.”

Brain, Science & Technology News

Are we close to making human-to-human mind control a reality?

University of Washington researcher Rajesh Rao, left, plays a computer game with his mind. Across campus, researcher Andrea Stocco, right, carries out the command.

With one tap on his space bar, Andrea Stocco fires the cannon on his computer game and blows a rocket out of the sky with one tap of his space bar. The game itself is unremarkable – in fact it looks like a relic of the 1980s.

 

 

Continue reading… “Are we close to making human-to-human mind control a reality?”