Miscellaneous
The art of receiving
During a visit to Paris, my mother bought me a gift and dropped it in the mail. I didn’t receive it very well. I tore away the brown paper packaging and, at the first sign of pink, let the package fall to the floor. She had sent me a gray cotton scarf with pink flowers. Pink. When I told my Read More...
Gecko inspired grippers to clean space
There’s human debris floating around the earth, and cleaning it up is posing to be a challenging task. Researchers from NASA’s laboratory in Pasadena, California have come up with a gripping device that could be affixed to robots to clean space. The gripping pads work the same way a gecko Read More...
Progress made on Elon Musk’s Hyperloop
Last year Elon Musk, Founder and CEO of Tesla Motors, released a 50 plus page white paper about a ‘Hyperloop’—essentially a high-speed train that travels around 800 miles per hour. Along with the release was a note saying he didn’t have the time to take on such a project, but anyone who Read More...
Why we need disruptive digital currencies
Uber, Lyft and Airbnb have opened the rapidly expanding sharing economy empowering citizens and at the same time shaking fundamental services providers like the hotel and taxi industries to their bones. How far does the sharing economy reach? Could money become a citizens’ tool too—like it was Read More...
Back from ancient times: The Silk Road, by train
The ancient Silk Road was a trade route that connected China to the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Now the 21st century Silk Road spans even farther. There are now train tracks that link Yiwu—a coastal city in China—to Madrid, Spain, some 8,000 miles away. The 21st century Silk Road is longer Read More...
Smart bike will reduce elderly deaths
The Netherlands is a bicycle loving country. But for the elderly riding a bike can be difficult and dangerous. The Dutch have a high rate of bicycle related senior mortality. Now a new bike has been designed specifically with seniors in mind to keep them safer. The bicycle was developed by the Read More...
The first mosque designed by a woman
In Turkey, there are more than 80,000 mosques, which are all built by men, except one. That one is the Şakirin Mosque in Istanbul, designed by Zeynep Fadillioglu. It’s not illegal for a woman to design a mosque in Turkey, but it’s a cultural taboo, Fadillioglu is the first woman to challenge Read More...
Smart skin to cover prosthetic limbs can “feel”
This is something you wish nobody would ever need. Still it’s a great invention, just in case. Korean researchers have developed a new type of prosthetic limb that is capable of feeling temperature, humidity, pressure, and strain. The new limbs are wrapped in a “smart” skin that is covered in Read More...
Windmills of tomorrow could be underwater
Cold and grey with not much sun, the United Kingdom is rarely thought of as a pioneering hub of renewable energy innovation. However, the UK has thousands of miles of coastline, and new developments in underwater turbine technology could bring in a new wave of ocean harnessing power. A test project Read More...
Amazon uses bike messengers to deliver within the hour in New York
The most daring of Amazon’s distribution dreams is, of course, the drone that flies to your home and drops a package before the front door. That’s still future—and perhaps less “distant” than we now think. In the mean time the online shopping giant tries to speed up her distribution in Read More...