Technological advances in specific areas, such as virtual reality or optics, are moving to market quickly. They are being introduced feature by feature each year in new model vehicles.And in commercial trucking and public-transportation arenas, driverless vehicles are more and more a reality.By 2025, every major automaker will sell driverless vehicles.
Smart glasses combine virtual reality with artificial intelligence on the assembly line
Lenovo, the Chinese company that bought IBM’s personal-computer business, has announced that its combination of virtual reality and artificial intelligence will hit the market this June. The New Glass C200 uses a single-eye lens to augment reality by projecting images onto the lens that relate to what the user is seeing. The system’s AI software then can identify and label...
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Thirty-nine percent of companies report using some form of augmented reality already, with 67 percent of the remainder saying they’re thinking about it. Smart glasses are among the earliest iterations, with Apple about to introduce a version to compete with Epson, Vuzix and other companies already marketing their own.
Will your kid excel? DNA marker predicts academic success
Using a complex DNA analysis and scoring method, researchers at King’s College London have accurately predicted which 16-year-olds will do better than others with schoolwork. The genetic marker was more accurate in its predictions than other measures, including perseverance. The marker also was a strong indicator of which students went on to advanced education.
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The genetic marker is made up of a range of individual indicators; no one knows exactly how each influences the others. But the discovery adds to concerns that parents will, when genetic manipulation becomes common later this century, “place orders” for children with certain traits, ranging from small noses to school smarts. That, in turn, raises the question of whether...
Techno farming brings incubator to table in record time
The CellPod, created by scientists at Finland’s VTT Technical Research Centre, is a countertop food incubator that can grow a harvest from plant cells within a week. Although growing produce in a bioreactor isn’t a new idea, this is the first announcement of a device that’s scaled for home use and yields such quick results. The CellPod doesn’t grow an...
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As weather becomes less dependable and water and land become scarce, devices like the CellPod will take on greater importance in producing food, especially for the growing number of people living in cities.
Charging your vehicle on the fly
Colorado’s transportation department has partnered with a private developer to test a highway that charges electric trucks wirelessly while they’re moving.The project will bury an electric transmission system under a stretch of highway. The system will beam power to electric engines in trucks that travel in this special “charging lane.”AECOM, the private partner, helped create the technology with the Sustainable...
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21st-century cars driving on century-old roadbeds waste opportunities. If future vehicles will be powered electrically, millions of hours of productivity — and driving — can be gained each year by eliminating static charging stations and enabling vehicles to fuel as they drive.
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A meat-industry study reports that it takes 441 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. As the world’s increasing number of humans demand more water and more land, food makers will look for meat alternatives that still please the palate. Synthetic foods that can pass for the real thing will be readily available by 2025.