http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU
A Contraceptive Implant with Remote Control By Gwen Kinkead The hunt for a perfect contraceptive has gone on for millennia. A new candidate is now on the horizon: a wireless implant that can be turned on and off with a remote control and that is designed to last up to 16 years. If it passes safety and efficacy tests, the device would be more convenient for many women because, unlike existing contraceptive implants, it can be deactivated without a trip to the clinic and an outpatient procedure, and it would last nearly half their reproductive life. Developed by MicroCHIPS of Lexington, Massachusetts, the device will begin pre-clinical testing next year in the U.S. The goal is to have it on the market by 2018.
Damming Tibet: China's destruction of Tibet's rivers, environment and people The wild yak has gone the way of the bison in 19th-century America. Similar to native American peoples like the Blackfoot Indians, Tibetan nomads have become beggars in their own land, with their culture decimated by the Chinese policy of resettlement. Sometimes you just fall right into a story. Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking sound alarm about robots, artificial intelligence Two leading voices in the world of science and technology warn that robots equipped with artificial intelligence could be leading humanity down a dangerous path. Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX and Tesla motors, told a pair of CNBC reporters that he thought robots were “dangerous.” “There have been movies about this, you know, like Terminator.” Despite his reservations, Musk himself has recently invested in an artificial intelligence company. Meanwhile, writing in The Independent, Stephen Hawking warned there are “no fundamental limits” to what machines may be able to accomplish in the future. “One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand,” Hawking writes.
During Fracking Hearing, Nebraskan Challenges Oil And Gas Commission To Drink Wastewater James Osborn pours a mystery concoction into water at a Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission meeting in March 2015. Opposition to a proposal to dump out-of-state fracking wastewater in Nebraska went viral over the weekend, after a community group posted a video of a man offering chemical-laden water to a Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. The commission was hearing public comment on a Terex Energy Corp. application to inject up to 10,000 gallons per day of wastewater from fracking in Colorado and Wyoming into an old oil well on a ranch in Sioux County, in the northwest corner of Nebraska. In the video, James Osborn pours three cups of water for the commissioners, then pours a brown liquid into each cup, asking them, “Would you drink it?” Watch the video by Bold Nebraskahere: During hydraulic fracturing (fracking), large amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, is injected underground to crack shale rock and release pockets of oil or natural gas.
Video: MetaScan 3 - Emerging Technologies Multimedia Help Alternative Format - Metascan3_Web_Eng.wmv Transcript Whose renewable future? In January this year, the energy researcher Jeremy Leggett made a bold claim. He told the Guardian newspaper that we should expect a major oil firm to turn its back on fossil fuels soon and shift to renewable energy. ‘One of the oil companies will break ranks,’ he said, ‘and this time it is going to stick.’ Leggett points to the collapsed oil price, the falling costs of renewable-energy generation and potential government action on climate change as key factors that could persuade an oil corporation to jump ship.
Computers Are Getting Better Than Humans at Facial Recognition - Norberto Andrade Perceiving whether someone is sad, happy, or angry by the way he turns up his nose or knits his brow comes naturally to humans. Most of us are good at reading faces. Really good, it turns out. So what happens when computers catch up to us?
Belo Monte, Brazil: The tribes living in the shadow of a megadam By the Great Bend of the Xingu river in the depths of Amazonia, the Juruna tribe is being drowned by what seems at first sight to be a flood of TV game-show prizes. There’s a shiny new motorboat moored by the old canoe, the latest four-wheel drive parked beside a chicken coop, satellite dishes outside every home and wide-screen plasma TVs inside. But these are not the spoils of victory.
FBI warns driverless cars could be used as 'lethal weapons' Google’s driverless car may remain a prototype, but the FBI believes the “game changing” vehicle could revolutionise high-speed car chases within a matter of years. The report also warned that autonomous cars may be used as "lethal weapons". In an unclassified but restricted report obtained by the Guardian under a public records request, the FBI predicts that autonomous cars “will have a high impact on transforming what both law enforcement and its adversaries can operationally do with a car.” In a section called Multitasking, the report notes that “bad actors will be able to conduct tasks that require use of both hands or taking one’s eyes off the road which would be impossible today.” One nightmare scenario could be suspects shooting at pursuers from getaway cars that are driving themselves. Self-driving cars use lidar (laser ranging), radar, video cameras and GPS technology to build up a digital 3D map of their surroundings, including buildings, roads, pedestrians and other vehicles.