The 21 September 2013 Economist contains an article exploring just how serendipitous science research can be. A group of scientists at Michigan Technological University lead by Lyon King were exploring how to create fuel for very small rockets (details of … Continued
The World Future Society (with whom the futures foundation will have much closer links from 2014 – watch this space) has just published a list of 20 predictions for trends and breakthroughs likely to impact your work, your investments and … Continued
This week’s Economist magazine has a fascinating article about the increasingly sophisticated ways in which scientists are attempting to both understand how the human brain actually works and to simulate this in a computer. The entire article can be accessed … Continued
– In a medical first, doctors used plastic particles and a 3-D laser printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to stop breathing nearly every day. Because of a birth defect, … Continued
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown layer lurking in the human eye. The newfound body part, dubbed Dua’s layer, is a skinny but tough structure measuring just 15 microns thick, where one micron is one-millionth of a meter and more … Continued
When constructing computer circuits, most folks start with silicon and metal, but not the researchers at Stanford. The boffins in Palo Alto want to build computers out of living tissue, and to that end they’ve created a biological transistor, called … Continued
New techniques in making a sprayable liquid that works like a solar panel will make them both easier to install and cheaper to produce. The new method is currently in development at a lab at the University of Sheffield in … Continued
British researchers have introduced a future orientation index to quantify the degree to which Internet users worldwide seek more information about years in the future than years in the past. They analyse Google logs and find a striking correlation between the country’s GDP and the predisposition … Continued
For the eighth time the organisers of the World Economic Form have produced a report examining various global risks which human civilization faces. The 80 page report looks in detail at economic, environmental, geopolitical, techinical, and social risks and how these have changed since … Continued
We may never have our flying cars, but the future is here. From creating fully functioning artificial leaves to hacking the human brain, science made a lot of breakthroughs in 2012. Find a fascinating list of these breakthroughs here:http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2
In the nine short years since Mark Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com, social media has evolved from dorm room toy to boardroom tool. Last year, 73 percent of Fortune 500 companies were active on Twitter, while more than 80 percent of executives believed social media engagement led to increased … Continued
Connecting a human brain to a computer is as much a materials science problem as a biology one. What kind of interface is delicate enough not to damage nerve tissue, but resilient enough to last decades? Researchers have come up … Continued
The Human Brain Project, with its billion-dollar plan to recreate the human mind inside a supercomputer, sounds like a science fiction nightmare. But those involved hope their ambitious goal of simulating the tangle of neurons and synapses that power our … Continued
A team of scientists at the Boston Children’s Hospital have invented what is being considered one the greatest medical breakthroughs in recent years. They have designed a microparticle that can be injected into a person’s bloodstream that can quickly oxygenate … Continued
The impending edition of The Futurist magazine contains some thoughts about how our collective future might evolve, written by Dick Pelletier who is a science and technology columnist and futurist, and editor of the Positive Futurist weekly newsletter and Web site, www.positivefuturist.com/about.html “What … Continued
You may be as amazed as I am that there is a website called PhD comics, and the good folks there have produced an eight minute video explaining what the search for the Higgs Boson is all about. It is … Continued
German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity – equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity – through the midday hours of a Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank … Continued
Springer, the largest publisher of academic journals has expanded its range of open access peer-reviewed journals to include titles such as: Human Centric Computing and Information Sciences, and Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship The full list of open access journals … Continued
One difficulty faced by conservationists is getting hold of reliable statistics on the animals they are looking after. For good reasion, many species of predators are rather shy. In a paper just published in Current Biology a small group of … Continued
Michael Marien, long time editor of Future Search for the World Fuiture Society has created a new website summarising and analysing books focusing on the future. Those who register at the wrebsite can receive a monthly email listing new books. … Continued