“Instead of treating Amsterdam as complete and starting again elsewhere, the IJburg plan has managed to find more space in a city that thought it had no more left.”
It’s the ultimate doomsday scenario: Astronomers spot an enormous miles-wide asteroid headed for a collision course with Earth. An impact with our planet means a fiery goodbye to civilization—and life—as we know it, and there are only a few short weeks to rally together a plucky group of oil drillers the citizens of the world to somehow fight this apocalyptic threat.
Fortunately, it’s doubtful we’ll ever be faced with this kind of sudden Armageddon. NASA, other government space agencies, and astronomers across the world have a pretty solid way of tracking huge, civilization-destroying asteroids, mapping their trajectories many years or decades in advance before they might head our way. Such ample warning would give us more than enough time to prepare some kind of deflection strategy. Read more
Robots will one day provide tremendous benefits to society, such as in search and rescue missions and putting out forest fires—but not until they can learn to keep working if they become damaged.
Compilation of robot falls from the DARPA DRC Finals Day 1. Learn more: http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/automaton
The next billion devices may be powered from thin air, according to a team of researchers from the University of Washington
In a leap for robot development, the MIT researchers who built a robotic cheetah have now trained it to see and jump over hurdles as it runs—making this the first four-legged robot to run and jump over obstacles autonomously.
A balanced article on transhumanism and the future in a trendy Hong Kong & Chinese men’s lifestyle magazine. Article in English:
“Automation has already had a substantial impact on Chinese factory employment: Between 1995 and 2002 about 16 million factory jobs disappeared, roughly 15 percent of total Chinese manufacturing employment. This trend is poised to accelerate.” Read more
More research has been done on dung beetles and Star Trek than human extinction. These people want to change that.
Microtransponder’s vagus nerve stimulator uses precisely-timed jolts to help stroke victims relearn movements more quickly
