Your bag of potato chips can hear what you're saying. Now, researchers from MIT are trying to figure out a way to make that bag of chips tell them everything that you said — and apparently they have a method that works. By pointing a video camera at the bag while audio is playing or... Continue Reading →
Denmark’s cage-free zoo will put humans in captivity
He’s designed apartment blocks in the shape of mountains and a power station with a ski-slope on the roof. He’s made museums that erupt from the ground with cartoonish glee, and proposed a viewing tower like a gigantic spiralling lollipop. Now the Danish architectural wunderkind, Bjarke Ingels, has reinvented the zoo – by making humans... Continue Reading →
Charging with ultrasound: uBeam has functional prototype
uBeam on Wednesday announced its first "fully functional prototype," ready to build for consumers. This is a company that on its Careers page tells visitors, "We're on a mission to untether the world," and that they seek people "looking to make tectonic shifts in the world of electricity." The Wednesday announcement has attracted attention in... Continue Reading →
MIT Intelligent Wheelchair Project: A Voice-Commandable Robotic Wheelchair That Climbs Stairs
New engineering developments offer opportunities to develop smart wheelchair assistive technology that can improve the lives of many people who use wheelchairs. In our work, we are designing tomorrow's intelligent wheelchairs: we are developing a voice-commandable intelligent wheelchair that is aware of its surroundings so that it can assist its user in a variety of... Continue Reading →
Russian hackers steal over 1.2 billion usernames and passwords
Russians hackers stole more than 1.2 billion usernames and passwords in a series of attacks on about 420,000 websites, the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials.So far, the stolen information did not seem to have been sold. Most of the accounts hav been used to deliver marketing schemes and other viral messages.The breach was... Continue Reading →
Monsanto Ordered to Pay $93M for Poisoning Town
Big wins can happen in small places.The West Virginia State Supreme Court finalized a big blow to the biotech giant Monsanto this month, finishing a settlement causing Monsanto to pay $93 million to the tiny town of Nitro, West Virginia for poisoning citizens with Agent Orange chemicals.The settlement was approved last year, but details were... Continue Reading →
ROBOTIC BEES DESIGNED TO POLLINATE CROPS MAKING SIGNIFICANT STRIDES
In Harvard researcher Robert Wood’s lab, a robot the size of a quarter lifts off the ground, its wings a blur. This micromachine, or RoboBee, is a marvel of modern robotics, able to hover and steer by independently flapping its wings 120 times a second.RoboBee’s inventors think it might one day pollinate crops, supporting bee... Continue Reading →
Robotic suit gives shipyard workers super strength
At a sprawling shipyard in South Korea, workers dressed in wearable robotics were hefting large hunks of metal, pipes and other objects as if they were nothing. It was all part of a test last year by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, at their facility in Okpo-dong. The company, one of the largest shipbuilders in... Continue Reading →
US officials say someone else is leaking documents in the wake of Snowden
Almost a year since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaked information was first revealed to the world, US officials today confirmed to CNN a new leaker is responsible for providing additional secret documents to The Intercept. The Intercept is an investigative website cofounded by Glenn Greenwald, the reporter to whom Snowden entrusted the bulk of... Continue Reading →