Category: Tech News

• Next in Wearable Computing: A Device for Dogs

  As Google Glass gains momentum, companies and researchers are trying to decide what will be the next big breakthrough in wearable technology.

  We’re just starting to see the early adopters of wearable computing wandering the streets gazing through Google’s head-worn computer or staring down at their Pebble smart watch. But a slew of researchers are already hard at work figuring out what will come next. Among the more outlandish ideas these researchers are experimenting with: sensors embedded in clothing and teeth, and—oh yes—a wearable computer designed just for dogs.

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• Cars Are Fast Becoming Smartphones on Wheels

  Wireless connections in cars are becoming faster and more capable, bringing new features, new services—and new problems.

  Most new cars roll off the production line today with as many sensors, computer chips, and lines of code as you’d find in a trunk-load of smartphones. What’s more, thanks to deals between carmakers and wireless carriers, cars increasingly come with high-speed, always-on, wireless connectivity—setting up both new kinds of services and a higher potential for distraction and malfeasance.

• Beijing’s Great Leap Forward

  One man, Kai-Fu Lee, did more than anyone else to turn the Chinese capital into a technology powerhouse.

  Cities all over the world have tried to duplicate Silicon Valley’s prowess at churning out startups and multibillion-dollar technology companies. But only one has emerged as a serious contender: Beijing.

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• Redesigned Window Stops Sound But Not Air, Say Materials Scientists

  By exploiting some exotic acoustic techniques, researchers have built a window that allows the passage of air but not sound

  

• Once a Joke, Battery-Powered Airplanes Are Nearing Reality

  Aerospace companies are working on hybrid electric airplanes, and the earliest versions will likely arrive before the end of the decade.

  Last month Siemens and EADS demonstrated a new gas-electric vehicle capable of carrying two people and their luggage 900 kilometers—roughly the distance from New York to Detroit—between refuels and recharges. The prototype was not a car, but a small two-seater airplane.

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• Rebelbook: A Mix of Technologies Let Dedicated Citizens Change Egypt

  Protesters rallied behind a printed petition—but modern technology also played a role.

  It started not with a Facebook group or Twitter hashtag but a paper form. The day before what may have been the largest protest in history (and undoubtedly the biggest in Egypt) Mahmoud Badr, spokesman for Tamarod – ‘Rebel’ in Arabic – announced that they had collected 22,134,465 documented signatures on petition sheets calling for President Morsi’s removal and new presidential elections. Although impossible to verify, the numbers Tamarod mobilized on the streets – one military source estimated 14 million Egyptians protested on June 30^th – told their own story.

• Other Interesting arXiv Papers (Week Ending 6 July 2013)

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  Is The CMB Telling Us That Dark Matter Is Weaker Than Weakly Interacting?

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• Why Toyota and GM Are Pushing Fuel-Cell Cars to Market

  Falling costs are making fuel-cell vehicles look like a plausible alternative to conventional cars.

  Hydrogen-powered vehicles have been out of the spotlight for years, but they’re about to make a surprising comeback.  Toyota says it will unveil a hydrogen fuel-cell-powered sedan later this year that will go on sale in 2015; several other automakers, meanwhile, have announced partnerships to commercialize the technology (see “Ford, Daimler, and Nissan Commit to Fuel Cells”), including GM and Honda, which announced such a collaboration this week.

• How Military Counterinsurgency Software Is Being Adapted To Tackle Gang Violence in Mainland USA

  Analysts believe that insurgents in Afghanistan form similar networks to street gangs in the US. So the software for analysing these networks abroad ought to work just as well at home, say military researchers

  

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• How Military Counterinsurgency Software Is Being Adapted To Tackle Gang Violence in Mainland USA

  Analysts believe that insurgents in Afghanistan form similar networks to street gangs in the US. So the software for analysing these networks abroad ought to work just as well at home, say military researchers

  

• Using a Smartphone’s Eyes and Ears to Log Your Every Move

  New tricks will enable a life-logging app called Saga to figure out not only where you are, but what you’re doing.

  Many of us already record the places we go and things we do by using our smartphone to diligently snap photos and videos, and to update social media accounts. A company called ARO is building technology that automatically collects a more comprehensive, automatic record of your life.

• A Battery and a “Bionic” Ear: a Hint of 3-D Printing's Promise

  Laboratory advances hint at how additive manufacturing technology could change the way some electronic devices are made.

  Today’s 3-D printers can generally only build things out of one type of material—usually a plastic or, in certain expensive industrial versions of the machines, a metal. They can’t build objects with electronic, optical, or any kind of functions that require the integration of multiple materials. But recent advances in the research lab—including a 3-D printed battery and a bionic ear—suggest that this might soon change.

• A Second Artificial Retina Option for the E.U.

  A sight-restoring implant approved for sale in the European Union on Wednesday is the second artificial retina to become available in the region.

• The Word "Visionary" is Overused, But It Really Applied to This Man

  Back when computers were still just number-crunching machines, Douglas Engelbart foresaw their more powerful application in helping humans collaborate.

  One summer day in 2000, I was in the Silicon Valley offices of the computer peripherals maker Logitech for a demonstration of a gimmicky new mouse. It was only mildly interesting, until a soft-spoken older gentleman came into the room. It was Doug Englebart. Because he is credited with inventing the computer mouse, Logitech’s public-relations people were hoping he could help illustrate just how far the device had come since he conjured one out of a block of wood in the 1960s.

• How Energy Consumption Has Changed Since 1776

  The U.S. Energy Information Administration reviews big changes in energy use since the Declaration of Independence.

  It’s easy to forget just how recently we started using fossil fuels in large amounts. In honor of the July 4^th holiday, the U.S. Energy Information has produced a chart showing how rapidly the country shifted from using wood almost exclusively as an energy source to using first coal, then petroleum and natural gas.

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• A Proto-Liver Is Grown from Stem Cells

  A mixture of three cell types self-assembles into a liver bud that can be seen with the naked eye.

  In work that will raise hope that organs could be repaired or even grown from scratch using a patient’s own tissue as the raw material, Japanese researchers have created functioning liver tissue from stem cells and successfully transplanted them into mice.

• Google Glass Teaches Sergey Brin the Value of SnapChat

  Google cofounder Sergey Brin says the wearable computer Google Glass has taught him the value of communicating using only photos

  Can it be long before Google adds photo-based messaging to its wearable computer Google Glass? The New York Times reported this week that after recently snapping a photo of his food using Glass, Google cofounder Sergey Brin began to think about the value of sending messages that comprise only of photos:

• The Incredible Dark Matter Mystery: Why Astronomers Say it is Missing in Action

  Astrophysicists believe that our galaxy must be filled with more dark matter than ordinary matter. Now astronomers say they can find no evidence of dark matter’s gravitational influence on the planets. What gives?

  

• Silicon Valley Can’t Be Copied

  For 50 years, the experts have tried to figure out what makes Silicon Valley tick. The answer is people.

  By 1960, Silicon Valley had already captured the attention of the world as a teeming technology center. It had spawned the microwave electronics industry and set a pattern for industry-academic partnerships. French president Charles de Gaulle paid a visit and marveled at its sprawling research parks set amid farms and orchards south of San Francisco.

• Flexible Glass Could Make Tablets Lighter and Solar Power Cheaper

  NREL shows that Corning’s Willow glass can be used to make flexible solar cells that could be installed in place of roofing shingles.

  Researchers at the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have built flexible solar cells using a thin and pliable kind of glass from Corning, the company that makes the glass that covers iPhone screens. The new solar cells could make rooftop solar power far cheaper.

• From Kickstarter to Best Buy: A Smart Watch's Journey

  The Pebble smart watch has risen from being reliant on crowd-funding to appearing on shelves at a mass-market retailer.

• 2013 Global Innovation Index

  The 2013 Global Innovation Index looks very similar to last year’s, but its ranking of the most efficient innovators features several new names.

  What makes a nation innovative? A series of factors that probably do not change much from year to year.

• Intel’s Justin Rattner on New Laser Chip Business

  Justin Rattner, who just stepped down as Intel CTO, discusses mobile computing and the future of Moore’s Law.

  Intel came to dominate computing by consistently beating others at packing transistors ever more densely onto chips for desktop computers and servers. Today, even as the PC market shrinks and the giant company struggles to convince phone and tablet makers to use its chips, Intel spends $10.1 billion on research annually. Justin Rattner, who has been the company’s CTO, recently met with Tom Simonite, MIT Technology Review’s senior IT editor, to argue that this investment will help Intel’s mobile chips overtake those of its competitors and create new businesses. Last Thursday, Rattner announced he was stepping down as Intel’s CTO to take personal leave. He plans to return to the company in a different position.

• Physicists Discover the Secret of Quantum Remote Control

  The ability to control one quantum particle by manipulating another somewhere else sounds like the stuff of science fiction. Now physicists say they know how to do it

   

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• The Anatomy of the Occupy Wall Street Movement on Twitter

  A study of the social network behind the Occupy movement shows that the most vocal participants were highly connected before the protests began but have now largely lost interest, say social network researchers

  

• Why Google Glass Is Just the Beginning

  In Google’s backyard, a startup has its eyes on glasses that offer more ways to interact with the digital world.

  While Google toils to perfect the head-worn mobile computer known as Google Glass, a startup located literally down the street from its Silicon Valley campus is hard at work on a similar system that it believes will let users touch and move virtual objects instead of just viewing them.

• Facial Analysis Software Spots Struggling Students

  A computer can learn to recognize, and respond intelligently to, users’ emotional state.

  Even a good teacher may not always be able to tell, at a glance, which students are quietly struggling and which need more of a challenge. Fortunately, laptops may soon come with enough emotional intelligence built in to do the job for them.

• In Innovation Quest, Regions Seek Critical Mass

  What’s the secret to becoming the next technology hot spot?

   

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• Other Interesting arXiv Papers (Week Ending 29 June 2013)

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  mpossibility of Spontaneously Rotating Time-Crystals: A No-Go Theorem

• Stories from Around the Web (Week Ending June 28, 2013)

  A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.

  ISSUE 81: The Revolution Will Be Solarized
  The name says it all: the Sunbelt of the United States ought to be ideal for solar power. Slowly the South is getting on board.
  —Brian Bergstein, deputy editor

• 700,000-Year-Old Horse Genome Pushes Limits of DNA Survival

  Genetic material suitable for sequencing could persist for as many as one million years, predict scientists.

  Small pieces of a horse’s foot bone that were frozen for approximately 700,000 years in the Yukon Territory of Canada have yielded the oldest genome sequence of any species to date.

• Seven Must-Read Stories (Week Ending June 28, 2013)

  Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review.

• The Future of Solar and Wind Powered Shipping

  Solar and wind power could reduce fossil fuel consumption in shipping.

   

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• Renewables Sources of Electricity Are Coming Into Their Own

  The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2016 more electricity will come from renewables than from natural gas.

  Wind and solar power keep getting cheaper, and that’s encouraging their adoption even as government subsidies falter, a new report from the International Energy Agency concludes. In just a few years, more power will come from renewables than from natural gas, the report said.

• Will Obama’s Climate Policy Spur New Energy Technologies?

  The impact of proposed carbon-emissions regulations on energy innovation could be small without direct R&D funding.

  This week, when President Obama announced his new plan to address climate change largely through new regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, he sang the praises of technological progress, arguing that in the past, regulations spurred innovation that in turn helped the economy (see “Obama Orders EPA to Regulate Power Plants in Wide-Ranging Climate Plan”).

• Marc Andreessen: Too Many Startups Is a Good Thing

  Accelerators are churning out too many startups, but it’s a good thing, Andreessen Horowitz cofounder says.

  Startup accelerators like Y Combinator (see “The Startup Whisperer”) and 500 Startups are creating too many companies vying for investment dollars, and they can’t all survive, but that’s a good thing, according to Marc Andreessen, cofounder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and of the early Web browser company Netscape Communications.

• The "Startup Whisperer" Tells VCs Not to Expect Such Big Stakes

  Y Combinator founder Paul Graham says venture capitalists should listen to entrepreneurs’ complaints.

  Paul Graham, founder of the influential startup accelerator Y Combinator, gave some advice to venture investors at an event in San Francisco this morning: if you want to find the best opportunities for investing, start listening to what founders are complaining about.

• Startup Plans Constellation of Tiny Monitoring Satellites

  A San Francisco company called Planet Labs aims to launch 28 mini-satellites that will provide frequent snapshots of Earth.

  A San Francisco–based company called Planet Labs announced plans yesterday to launch 28 mini-satellites in a ring around Earth as early as December of this year. The company aims to provide frequent snapshots of the planet, allowing users to track changes—from traffic jams to deforestation—in close to real time.

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