Lifeboat Foundation

Japanese researchers have developed a way of not only levitating, but also moving objects three dimensionally using sound waves. The device uses four arrays of speakers to make soundwaves that intersect at a focal point that can be moved up, down, left, and right using external controls. And to human ears the device is completely quiet, as it uses ultrasound.

Occupational exposure to ultrasound in excess of 120 dB may lead to hearing loss. Exposure in excess of 155 dB may produce heating effects that are harmful to the human body, and it has been calculated that exposures above 180 dB may lead to death.^[45] The UK’s independent Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation (AGNIR) produced a report in 2010, which was published by the UK Health Protection Agency (HPA). This report recommended an exposure limit for the general public to airborne ultrasound sound pressure levels (SPL) of 70 dB (at 20 kHz), and 100 dB (at 25 kHz and above).

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Using quantum stealth, the technology provides complete imperceptibility across the visible, infrared, and ultraviolet spectrum by bending light around objects.

View our exclusive interviews with graphic design experts as they discuss where the future of their industry is headed.

“We shape our tools”, the old maxim goes, “and thereafter our tools shape us.” But what if both man and tools could shape and guide each other — as equals?

That’s the dream of the Senior Director of Advanced Technology at InvenSense, a TDK Group Company, Dr. Peter G. Hartwell, who believes we are heading into a profound new age of man-machine collaboration, led by breakthroughs in sensor technology. “Some problems simply can’t be solved using human senses or machine capabilities alone; we need a fusion of the two,” says Hartwell.

The problems which Hartwell targets are at the very core of a life well lived: customized health care, more energy-efficient infrastructure, productive workplaces, safer cities, and improved environmental monitoring.

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Skyscrapers shoot up in most cities, but what are developers to do in growing places where new building construction is limited to less than ten stories tall?

Explore our graphical guide to the advances of the future, from 2013 to 2150.

As we begin a new year, BBC Future has compiled 40 intriguing predictions made by scientists, politicians, journalists, bloggers and other assorted pundits in recent years about the shape of the world from 2013 to 2150.

Get ready to lift your jaw off the floor.

It seems that the intricacies of technology are only speeding up, and every day we get closer to the sci-fi future predicted in so many novels and movies.

In a recent video from Google, we got a look into what that future might look like. Google introduced a new product called Project Soli, which uses radar technology to detect movements to such a detailed degree that you can use subtle finger movements to control it.

Wizebit is proud to welcome Machine Learning guru Peter Morgan to its elite team of blockchain specialists and developers.

Peter is the author of the popular report, “Machine Learning is Changing the Rules: Ways Businesses Can Utilize AI to Innovate”, and brings years of real world experience designing, building, and implementing AI and IP networks for Cisco, IBM, and BT Labs.

As the first company to create a confidential smart assistant on the blockchain, Wizebit officially launched in 2018 with the mission of allowing personal data to be connected while remaining protected.

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Nurdles. The name sounds inoffensive, cuddly even… However, nurdles are anything but. “Nurdle” is the colloquial name for “pre-production plastic pellets” (which is in itself rather a mouthful); these are the raw material of the plastic industry – the building blocks for plastic bottles, plastic bags, drinking straws, car components, computer keyboards – in fact almost anything you can think of that’s made of plastic.

However, nurdles are also covering our beaches. I found that out for myself when Fauna & Flora International (FFI) first started researching this issue in 2009. Having read about them I went looking on my local beach, and was shocked to find so many nurdles in the strandline and trapped in washed-up seaweed. I had never noticed them before, but they had clearly been accumulating for some time.

While pictures of the tide of larger plastics in the ocean are front page news, the issue of nurdle pollution has received much less attention. Recent storms, however, have resulted in higher levels of nurdles being reported from a range of sites around UK coasts, highlighting the numbers of nurdles that are in our waterways, seas and sediments – a level of pollution which we can only see when they are flushed out and onto the beach. The Great Nurdle Hunt (an initiative of our partner Fidra) has mapped nurdle finds from around the UK and Europe, which has identified a number of nurdle hotspots in key industrial estuaries. However, this problem isn’t unique to Europe; nurdles are reported worldwide, but only hit the headlines when there are significant local spills from containers lost at sea, as recently occurred in South Africa. However, such one-off events aren’t the only source of nurdle pollution.