on Saturday 31 May 2014
Google has revealed its first self-driving car prototype, which as you guessed requires no driver. The prototype accommodates for two passengers and is missing quite a few of the features you'd expect to see in a standard car. With no need for a steering wheel, mirrors or braking and accelerating pedals, the car comes fully equipped with special software and sensors that feed information into an onboard computer, which then drives the car.
on Thursday 29 May 2014
Scientists at Southwest Jiaotong University in China have reportedly built a maglev train that could reach 1,800 mph (2,900 km/h). According to The Daily Mail, a vacuum is used to minimize air resistance. Project lead Dr Deng Zigang claims it could be used for military or space launch systems.
http://extraaeducation.com/school/article_search.php?ondate=2014-05-29
 At Google, artificial intelligence isn’t just a means of building cars that drive on their own, smartphone services that respond to the spoken word, and online search engines that instantly recognize digital images. It’s also a way of improving the efficiency of the massive data centers that underpin the company’s entire online empire.


Augmented reality company Metaio is developing "Thermal Touch," a technology that combines infrared and visible light cameras to detect the heat signature from your fingers and turn any object into a touchscreen. The technology could be embedded in the smartphones and wearable devices of the future to offer new ways of interacting with our environment.
on Tuesday 27 May 2014
Watson, IBM's supercomputer made famous three years ago for beating the very best human opponents at a game of Jeopardy, now comes with an impressive new feature. When asked to discuss any topic, it can autonomously scan its knowledge database for relevant content, "understand" the data, and argue both for and against that topic.
Butterfleye is a wireless home surveillance camera that’s joining the growing ranks of intelligent, smartphone connected webcam systems designed to keep watch while you’re out and about. In addition to allowing you to check in on a live video feed whenever you like via iPhone, this smart camera comes equipped with a thermal sensor, motion detector, and facial recognition technology.
on Monday 26 May 2014
Japanese company Power Japan Plus has announced the development and planned mass-production of "Ryden," a disruptive carbon battery that can be charged 20 times faster than an ordinary lithium-ion cell. The battery, which is cheap to manufacture, safe, and environmentally friendly, could be ideal to improve the range and charging times of electric cars.
on Sunday 25 May 2014
Researchers from the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (CINVESTAV) in Mexico have developed a pair of glasses that use a combination of ultrasound, GPS, stereoscopic vision and artificial intelligence to help the visually impaired to navigate their environment. The device, perhaps the most sophisticated of its kind, is slated to reach mass production early next year and will likely cost up to US$1,500.

on Saturday 24 May 2014
Google is working with Wi-Fi equipment maker Ruckus Wireless to build a large-scale Wi-Fi network in the cloud off of which any business could hang its wireless routers, according to a source familiar with the project who asked not to be named.
The 3D format has had something of a renaissance in recent years, but the technology still has some way to go before the potential of "real-life" multiperspective 3D can be realized. The Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab is developing a new 3D video projection system that doesn't require glasses and provides different users different perspective angles of the same object. The team sees it not as a final answer, but as a transitional system that sits between current technologies and true holographic video.
on Monday 19 May 2014
http://www.touchbionics.com/products/active-prosthesesTouch Bionics has unveiled the latest enhancements to its i-limb Ultra Revolution at OTWorld 2014 International Congress. Users can now set and assign different grips for different objects and configure the prosthetic hand via Android apps.
on Sunday 18 May 2014

A group of researchers from Tufts University, Brown University and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are collaborating with the US Navy in a multi-year effort to explore how they might create robots endowed with their own sense of morality. If they are successful, they will create an artificial intelligence able to autonomously assess a difficult situation and then make complex ethical decisions that can override the rigid instructions it was given.
on Saturday 17 May 2014
By 


extraaeducation.com The chemical tree got a bit of a shake this week with scientists at IBM announcing the discovery of the first new class of polymer materials in decades. Discovered using a combination of lab experiments and computer modelling, the new plastics have properties that could potentially have a huge impact in manufacturing, transportation, aerospace, and micro electronics.
on Friday 16 May 2014
By 

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/events/idoc.ashx?docid=6454e39a-1884-4988-b2ed-f1857bf8c127&version=-1%20%20By%20Lakshmi%20SandhanaGetting a needle into a patient's vein can sometimes be a complicated process, especially if the veins aren't visible. Vein-spotting spectacles that see through a patient's skin could help avoid the damage caused by repeated needle pricks, and that's exactly what researchers at the University Teknologi Petronas (UTP), Malaysia, are developing. Their Smart Veins Locator is a wearable head-mounted display that allows nurses to see the patient's veins in real-time, by overlaying a map of their veins on top of their skin.
on Thursday 15 May 2014
How Anyone Can Fake an ATM and Steal Your Money
By Dario Borghino

Taking inspiration from the defense mechanism of the bombardier beetle, researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a film that, when damaged, instantly releases a hot foam to discourage malicious actions. The technology could be used as a simple, yet elegant and reliable way of discouraging theft and vandalism on ATM machines.
on Wednesday 14 May 2014



Video professionals with the US Army, Red Bull and National Geographic are already using the technology, and you'll soon have your chance. The consumer-ready CENTR Camera aims to make it easy to capture 360-degree HD footage, recording your world in full.

on Tuesday 13 May 2014
Think about it like this: In the Book of Genesis, God is the ultimate programmer, creating all of existence in a monster six-day hackathon.
Or, if you don’t like Biblical metaphors, you can think about it in simpler terms. Robert Moses was a programmer, shaping and re-shaping the layout of New York City for more than 50 years. Drug developers are programmers, twiddling enzymes to cure what ails us. Even pickup artists and conmen are programmers, running social scripts on people to elicit certain emotional results.
on Saturday 10 May 2014
  • Bitcoin may be the future of digital money, but it has a big problem here in the United States: why use it to buy anything when millions of merchants already accept debit and credit cards?
    Today, if you want to buy a bottle of lemonade with bitcoins, you need to scan a QR code with your phone or email a long bitcoin address to the seller. For most people, buying with bitcoins just isn’t as easy as Visa or MasterCard.