Three-quarters of people will live in cities by 2050.
It’s fashionable to attach the ‘smart’ tag to any technological trend today and this is particularly true of our cities. But, digging beyond the hype, what actually is a smart city and what progress are we as a society making towards that vision?
Continue reading… “Connected cities of the future are starting to emerge”
80% of the commercial market for drones will eventually be for agricultural uses.
Drones are moving quickly from the battlefield to the farmer’s field. They are on the verge of helping growers oversee millions of acres throughout rural America and saving them big money in the process.
Continue reading… “The future of drones expected to transform agriculture”
Robotic check-ups
Medical technology companies are focusing more than ever on products that deliver cheaper, faster, more efficient patient care. They are also making inroads with U.S. Food & Drug Administration regulators to re-engineer the complex review and approval process for new medical devices.
Continue reading… “Top 5 emerging medical technologies to watch in 2014”
Musk hopes for flights to Mars to be available through his private space travel company at a cost of around $500,000 per person.
The billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, Elon Must, wants to help establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people by ferrying explorers to the Red Planet for perhaps $500,000 a trip.
Continue reading… “Space X founder Elon Musk eyes huge colony on Mars”
Electric ‘thinking cap’
Cram sessions that are fueled by caffeine are routine occurrences on any college campus. But what if there was a better, safer way to learn new or difficult material more quickly? What if “thinking caps” were real?
Continue reading… “Electric ‘thinking cap’ can help you learn faster and better”
The amount of data collected is expected to swell as more schools use apps and tablets that can collect information.
With the shift to computerized testing, tablets in the classroom and digitized personal records, schools are collecting more data than ever on how children are doing. Now, some educators believe, it’s time to put that data to use.
Continue reading… “Technological advances and privacy concerns clash in the classroom”
Code academies have proliferated the higher education and vocational landscape over the past few years. They are posing big questions on the value of a formal four-year college computer science degree and answering consumer demand with a savvy proposition: come to us for an indispensable skill and we will line you up for a high paying job, without making you incur $100,000 in student loan debt.
Continue reading… “Code Academies Caught in the Government Sausage Factory”
Speedy Shop
Peter Fox, an electrical engineer, has developed the Speedy Shop, a large vending machine that sells a variety of items like toiletries, groceries like milk and eggs, kitchen items, pet food, and more.
Spritz is a new speed reading technology that is set to make its debut in April. The new technology makes it easy for users to read as quickly as 1,000 words per minute by focusing users’ eyes on a single word at a time. The company says its technology places each word at the optimal location on the screen, ensuring users can rapidly recognize them.
Continue reading… “Spritz is a new speed reading technology that lets you read 1000 wpm”
The facial recognition system uses an infrared camera system to identify the driver’s emotions.
Researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne or EPFL are collaborating closely with PSA Peugeot Citroen and developing an in-car emotion detection system designed to watch out for emotions like anger and disgust. (Video)
Continue reading… “In-car facial recognition system can detect road rage”
Cefaly
More than 36 million people suffer from consistent migraine pain in the U.S. alone. Migraine pain is intense, debilitating, and recurring. It usually consists of a throbbing pain on one side of the head, and is often accompanied by other symptoms, including nausea and vomiting, dizziness and a sensitivity to sounds and light. There are both prescription and over-the-counter medications that can help, but some migraine sufferers cannot tolerate these medicines, at least without nasty side effects. The FDA now has good news for these people: the agency just approved a new headband-shaped device that uses electrical stimulation to battle migraine pain. (Video)
Continue reading… “Cefaly – an electric headband that zaps migraines away”
BYD Qin Plug-in Hybrid Electric Car
It’s hard to keep up with the Chinese electric car market — it’s harder to find a good, reliable source for Chinese EV news. But wait, there were hardly any EV sales in China last year — not much has been going on there.
Continue reading… “BYD Qin plug-in hybrid electric car is demolishing the competition in China”