In a move welcomed by conservationists, the executive arm of the European Union (EU) on Monday proposed a ban on 10 common single-use plastics that, together with fishing gear, account for about 70 percent of marine litter across Europe. European Commission 500,000 tonnes of EU plastic waste end up in the sea every year. Building on our... Continue Reading →

How many whales have died as a result of ingesting plastic? Who really knows, but one thing we do know for certain is that the number is quite high, and there is no shortage of examples to prove that. A couple of months ago, a sperm whale was found dead. Again, it’s not the first... Continue Reading →

The idea of a universal basic income has already become a major debate all around the world, including the United States. California Stockton is a city outside of Silicon Valley that is testing a universal basic income trial program  to a group of its low-income residents in a pilot version of universal basic income. Universal basic income... Continue Reading →

Finally, Walmart got the message: no one likes self-checkout machines. Forbes reports: "Walmart has given up replacing store cashiers with machines. That’s according to a recent Bloomberg report, which reveals that the retail giant is getting rid of 'Mobile Scan & Go' technology, which allowed customers to ring up their own purchases. Apparently, the technology... Continue Reading →

Ingestible sensors—pill-sized electronics that ping your smartphone with data after you pop and swallow—have started to arrive on the market. They don’t do much yet: Mostly they measure pH, temperature, and pressure or monitor whether or not patients have taken their meds. But researchers are cooking up novel sensing technologies to detect a much broader... Continue Reading →

Do you think you have a pretty good idea of what the world looks like? Most people can draw a general globe or map, with some blue bits for the water, and some patchy green bits for the land. But have you ever wondered what the world looked like 300 million years ago? You couldn’t... Continue Reading →

To realize unlimited possibilities, a cobot needs to be free. Sawyer’s arm has seven degrees of freedom, enabling manufacturers to deploy the robot to a wide range of tasks. What if that same level of freedom could stretch to other areas of the robot? Imagine the possibilities… Now you don’t have to use your imagination.... Continue Reading →

Every year since 2002, there is a North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress held in either the US or Canada. On the eve of this year’s NABIG in Hamilton, Ontario, I’d like to share with you my favorite presentation from 2017. It was a talk given by Ken Burak and it centered around the Pixar... Continue Reading →

Japenese researchers have created a stretchy, ultrathin electric “skin” that can read and display the wearer’s heartbeat. Using built-in electrode sensors and wireless communication, the breathable nanomesh sensor fits flush against the wearer’s skin and records information (like the waveforms of an echocardiogram, for example). It then sends the information its gathered directly to a... Continue Reading →

In brief A new discovery about a drug developed for Alzheimer's patients might replace fillings for cavity repair. Tideglusib stimulates stem cells in the pulp of teeth, promoting new dentine production and natural tooth repair. Goodbye, fillings Dental fillings may soon be left in the ash heap of history, thanks to a recent discovery about... Continue Reading →