Jane McGonigal:Reality is Broken. Horrifying New Trend: Posting Rapes to Facebook. Apple iPhone displays the Facebook app's splash screen in Washington.
Japanese Scientists Create Touchable Holograms. To Our Faithful Current.com Users: Current's run has ended after eight exciting years on air and online.
The Current TV staff has appreciated your interest, support, participation and unflagging loyalty over the years. Your contributions helped make Current.com a vibrant place for discussing thousands of interesting stories, and your continued viewership motivated us to keep innovating and find new ways to reflect the voice of the people. We now welcome the on-air and digital presence of Al Jazeera America, a new news network committed to reporting on and investigating real stories affecting the lives of everyday Americans in every corner of the country.
Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore’s law apply to solar cells? How the oceans can clean themselves: Boyan Slat at TEDxDelft. Sharing the Internet: "Commotion Wireless" Technology Lets Communities Create Free Webs of Access. Discovery May Lead to the Creation of Biofuel from CO2 in the Atmosphere. Michael Adams is a member of UGA’s Bioenergy Systems Research Institute, Georgia Power professor of biotechnology and distinguished research professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
Scientists at the University of Georgia have discovered a way to transform carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere into useful industrial products, possibly allowing scientists to make biofuels from CO2 in the atmosphere. Athens, Georgia – Excess carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere created by the widespread burning of fossil fuels is the major driving force of global climate change, and researchers the world over are looking for new ways to generate power that leaves a smaller carbon footprint. Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have found a way to transform the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere into useful industrial products. Researchers create fiber network that operates at 99.7% speed of light, smashes speed and latency records. Researchers at the University of Southampton in England have produced optical fibers that can transfer data at 99.7% of the universe’s speed limit: The speed of light.
The researchers have used these new optical fibers to transfer data at 73.7 terabits per second — roughly 10 terabytes per second, and some 1,000 times faster than today’s state-of-the-art 40-gigabit fiber optic links, and at much lower latency. The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second, or 186,282 miles per second.
In any other medium, though, it’s generally a lot slower. Temporary tattoos could make ‘electronic telepathy,’ ‘telekinesis’ possible. (Credit: mc10) The devices are less than 100 microns thick, the average diameter of a human hair.
They consist of circuitry embedded in a layer or rubbery polyester that allow them to stretch, bend and wrinkle. They are barely visible when placed on skin, making them easy to conceal from others. The devices can detect electrical signals linked with brain waves, and incorporate solar cells for power and antennas that allow them to communicate wirelessly or receive energy. More Good News About The 'Scientific Accident That May Change The World' Graphene supercapacitors | Photo: UCLA That battery life video that had gone viral due to a recent post on UpWorthy (and which we told you about Tuesday) now has an update.
We told you that researchers at Ric Kaner's lab at UCLA had found a way to make a non-toxic, highly efficient energy storage medium out of pure carbon using absurdly simple technology. Researchers break million-core supercomputer barrier. Dan Nocera: Personalized Energy. What holds energy tech back? The infernal battery. WASHINGTON (AP) — As 21st century technology strains to become ever faster, cleaner and cheaper, an invention from more than 200 years ago keeps holding it back.
It's why electric cars aren't clogging the roads and why Boeing's new ultra-efficient 787 Dreamliners aren't flying high. And chances are you have this little invention next to you right now and probably have cursed it recently: the infernal battery. Boeing is the first company to make extensive use in an airliner of technology's most advanced battery — lithium ion.
But a Jan. 7 battery fire aboard a Dreamliner in Boston, followed by a similar meltdown in Japan, led authorities around the world to ground the fleet this month, highlighting a longstanding safety problem that engineers have struggled with. In 2006 and 2007, more than 46 million cellphone batteries and 10 million laptop batteries — all lithium ion — were recalled because of the risk of overheating, short-circuiting and exploding.
3D Printshow Highlights Possibilities of the Technology. The Filabot will revolutionise the home 3D-printing market. Desktop recycler … the Filabot gives plastic waste a new life.
Photographs: Whitney Trudo/Filabot DIY desktop 3D-printers may be taking off, with basic flatpack models available for as little as £250, but the printing material itself still has a hefty price tag. A 1kg spool of plastic filament – which is heated then squeezed out in layers like icing to create objects – costs around £50, keeping it in reach of only the most enthusiastic hobbyists. But the home-printing revolution may now be on its way, thanks to an invention by American college student Tyler McNaney. The Filabot brings a miniature industrial recycling plant to your desktop, grinding down everyday plastic waste and transforming it into ready-to-use printing material. Everything from water pipes to drinks bottles, plastic wrappers and Lego bricks can be fed into the contraption – which grinds, melts and extrudes the plastic into a filament of either 3mm or 1.75mm diameters.
Model behaviour … the Filabot in action. Gunsmiths 3D-Print High Capacity Ammo Clips To Thwart Proposed Gun Laws. Smartphones, tablets make us think about technology like the Amish do. Photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images This article also appears on As We Now Think, a site edited by the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at Arizona State University.
ASU is a partner in Future Tense with Slate and the New America Foundation. NASA Starts Work on Real Life Star Trek Warp Drive. Magnetic shell provides unprecedented control of magnetic fields. (Phys.org)—A general property of magnetic fields is that they decay with the distance from their magnetic source.
But in a new study, physicists have shown that surrounding a magnetic source with a magnetic shell can enhance the magnetic field as it moves away from the source, allowing magnetic energy to be transferred to a distant location through empty space. By reversing this technique, the scientists showed that the transferred magnetic energy can be captured by a second magnetic shell located some distance away from the first shell. The second shell can then concentrate the captured magnetic energy into a small interior region. The achievement represents an unprecedented ability to transport and concentrate magnetic energy, and could have applications in the wireless transmission of energy, medical techniques, and other areas. Space sailing soon: A one-kilometer-long electric sail tether produced. The electric sail (ESAIL), invented by Dr. Pekka Janhunen at the Finnish Kumpula Space Centre in 2006, produces propulsion power for a spacecraft by utilizing the solar wind.
The sail features electrically charged long and thin metal tethers that interact with the solar wind. Using ultrasonic welding, the Electronics Research Laboratory at the University of Helsinki successfully produced a 1 km long ESAIL tether. Four years ago, global experts in ultrasonic welding considered it impossible to weld together such thin wires. The produced tether proves that manufacturing full size ESAIL tethers is possible. Cyborg America: inside the strange new world of basement body hackers. 120inShare Jump To Close Shawn Sarver took a deep breath and stared at the bottle of Listerine on the counter. “A minty fresh feeling for your mouth... cures bad breath,” he repeated to himself, as the scalpel sliced open his ring finger. TEDxAlamo - David Eagleman, PhD - 10/29/09.
Hubble achieves deepest view yet. 12 December 2012Last updated at 19:58 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Objects like UDFj-39546284 are at the limit of the Hubble telescope's vision Hubble astronomers have observed deeper into space than ever before. FreedomBox Foundation - James Vasile. When It Comes to Security, We're Back to Feudalism. Montgri Castle Photo: SBA73 / FLickr Some of us have pledged our allegiance to Google: We have Gmail accounts, we use Google Calendar and Google Docs, and we have Android phones. Others have pledged allegiance to Apple: We have Macintosh laptops, iPhones, and iPads; and we let iCloud automatically synchronize and back up everything. Still others of us let Microsoft do it all. Or we buy our music and e-books from Amazon, which keeps records of what we own and allows downloading to a Kindle, computer, or phone.
Some of us have pretty much abandoned e-mail altogether … for Facebook. These vendors are becoming our feudal lords, and we are becoming their vassals. Feudalism provides security. How Facebook and Twitter changed disaster relief. Andy Wandilak, owner of Two Boots Pizza FORTUNE -- Here's to Andy Wandilak, the owner of Two Boots Pizza in Park Slope Brooklyn. Scientists See Advances in Deep Learning, a Part of Artificial Intelligence. The highest-resolution immersive visualization facility ever built. Image of Dubai, United Arab Emirates viewed in the Reality Deck (credit: SBU) Forget apps and useless startups: These four African girls have created a pee-powered generator. Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it.
In 2011, the US government rolled out its "International Strategy for Cyberspace," which reminded us that "interconnected networks link nations more closely, so an attack on one nation’s networks may have impact far beyond its borders. " An in-depth report today from the New York Times confirms the truth of that statement as it finally lays bare the history and development of the Stuxnet virus—and how it accidentally escaped from the Iranian nuclear facility that was its target.
Elite education for the masses. They included Patrycja Jablonska in Poland, Ephraim Baron in California, Mohammad Hijazi in Lebanon and many others far from Baltimore who ordinarily would not have a chance to study at the elite Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. They logged on to a Web site called Coursera and signed up. They paid nothing for it. New web-based model for sharing research datasets could have huge benefits. The Radicalness Of 3D Printing. Neural implant recovers ability to make decisions - News.
Whoa, Dude, Are We Inside a Computer Right Now? Public Lab DIY Spectrometry Kit by Jeffrey Yoo Warren. Long for this world — teaser. Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore’s law apply to solar cells? The sun strikes every square meter of our planet with more than 1,360 watts of power. Half of that energy is absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back into space. 700 watts of power, on average, reaches Earth’s surface. Summed across the half of the Earth that the sun is shining on, that is 89 petawatts of power. Robots hunt neurons to record brain activity. Robot learns ‘self-awareness’ Breakthrough: Electronic circuits that are integrated with your skin. Daphne Koller: What we're learning from online education.
Oculus Rift: Step Into the Game by Oculus. Google Fiber Is The Most Disruptive Thing The Company's Done Since Gmail. First Ever Complete Computer Model of a Cell Produced. A Scene from the Documentary "Long for this World" Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your brain’s subconscious memory. Ray Kurzweil - "The Sensory Effect" The Evolution of the Web. Teenage Sexting Is Becoming The Norm. Skylar Tibbits: Can we make things that make themselves? Physicist Discovers How To Make Quantum Foam In A Test Tube. Infinite-capacity wireless vortex beams carry 2.5 terabits per second.
Peter Norvig: The 100,000-student classroom. What is the Internet Doing to our Brains? Mind-controlled videogames become reality. A Universe Of Self-replicating Code. Transparent graphene-based material could revolutionize wearable electronics, solar panels. When creative machines overtake man. Crowdsourcing. New leaf: The promise of artificial photosynthesis - physics-math - 16 April 2012. An Open Source Software Is Hoping To Change The Way That Party Politics Work. Could Human and Computer Viruses Merge, Leaving Both Realms Vulnerable?
Marshall McLuhan - The World is a Global Village (CBC TV) Sin-gu-lar-i-ty n. : The moment when technological change become so rapid and profound, it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. Global Proxy Cloud — Building a Safe Route Over the Firewall. Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization. 3-D Printer with Nano-Precision. Intergalactic subway: All aboard the wormhole express - physics-math - 12 March 2012. Behold the Cheetah Robot. The Singularity is nigh! Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a better government. US gov't claims right to seize any .com domain. Super-human brain technology sparks ethics debate. Peter Diamandis: Abundance is our future. Replacing electricity with light: First physical 'metatronic' circuit created. Tiny, implantable medical device can propel itself through bloodstream. Seven equations that rule your world - physics-math - 13 February 2012.
Fake steak may feed the world – Features – ABC Environment. Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus - life - 06 February 2012. Why Cognitive Enhancement Is in Your Future (and Your Past) - Ross Andersen - Technology. You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You. Was Megaupload Targeted Because Of Its Upcoming Megabox Digital Jukebox Service?
Hitler reacts to SOPA. Building Gods Rough Cut. OneThing31: geeks to the rescue . . . again! « itsallonething. Discovery Could Lead to an Exercise Pill. Electric Bubble Car Could Change Our Idea of Electric Cars. Luis von Ahn: Massive-scale online collaboration. Jacque Fresco on Larry King (1974) (summary) Artilectwar.pdf. How to learn things automatically. Forget 3D, here comes the QD TV. The nightmarish SOPA hearings - ComPost. Scientists report first solar cell producing more electrons in photocurrent than solar photons entering cell. Printrbot: Your First 3D Printer by Brook Drumm. Face Recognition Moves From Sci-Fi to Social Media. Facebook Opens Doors To A New Way of Suppressing Information, Activists Constantly Banned. Ionized plasmas as cheap sterilizers for developing world. 1 MILLION pounds of Food on 3 acres. 10,000 fish 500 yards compost.
SXSW 2010: Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age.