Engineers have happened upon a way to stop the movement of the colorful eddies on the surface of soap bubbles. The results are works of art that could lead to stable engineered foams for medical treatments, personal products and food. (via WSJ Blogs)
By Se Young Lee and Jeffrey Dastin | SEOUL/NEW YORK SEOUL/NEW YORK A U.S. government safety agency on Friday urged all consumers to stop using Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones, which are prone to catch fire, and top airlines globally banned their use during flights. Following reports that the phones’ batteries have combusted during charging and normal use, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission […]
/By Matein Khalid/The oil market has been a rollercoaster in 2016. A global financial panic triggered by China’s yuan depreciation caused Brent crude to fall below $30 a barrel in late January. I was amazed at the sheer scale of the speculative short positions accumulated by oil traders and hedge funds in both West Texas and Brent futures markets, the highest since the oil crash of 2008. The […]
Unveiled at Apple’s special event in San Francisco today, the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus can be ordered starting this Friday and are set to hit the market on September 16. The latest generation of Apple’s smartphones (pictured above) will introduce a number of new features, including water and dust resistance, an advanced 12-megapixel camera and an A10 Fusion chip architecture billed as twice as […]
Apple announced its newest iPhones, the 7 and 7 plus, which are water and dust resistant. Analysts say the new iPhones could help Apple recover modestly from a recent dip in sales. But with few expected dramatic changes from previous models, Apple watchers aren’t expecting the kind of big spikes in consumer demand that the company saw two years ago, when it introduced larger screens. Apple sold […]
By Adam Jourdan and Paul Carsten | SHANGHAI/BEIJING SHANGHAI/BEIJING Judging by the volume of online chatter, there’s a lot less buzz in China ahead of this week’s expected launch of the new Apple Inc iPhone, and people on the street say they’re more likely to “wait and see” what the latest device offers than rush out to buy. Posts on China’s popular Sina Weibo microblogging site show […]
By Laurence Frost and Gilles Guillaume | PARIS PARIS Renault expects diesel engines to disappear from most of its European cars, company sources told Reuters, after the French automaker reviewed the costs of meeting tighter emissions standards following the Volkswagen scandal. The sober reassessment was delivered at an internal meeting before the summer break. It shows how, a year after VW admitted engineering software to cheat U.S. […]
Two new desktop PCs launched by HP today aim to fundamentally change the way users interact with their desktop devices. The Elite Slice is aimed squarely at the enterprise market and seems designed to function primarily as a tool for Skype meetings, while the Pavilion Wave appears to target Amazon’s Echo speaker system. “Today’s desktop customers want sleek, innovative and powerful designs that enable new experiences,” Mike […]
In-depth review charts the scientific understanding of rainbows and highlights the many practical applications of this fascinating interaction between light, liquid and gas. There’s more to rainbows than meets the eye. Knowledge gained from studying these multicoloured arcs of scattered light can be incredibly useful in ways that may not immediately spring to mind. Rainbow effects can warn of chemical contamination in the atmosphere, help to develop […]
By David Shepardson | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Volkswagen AG has agreed to spend more than $1.2 billion to compensate its 650 U.S. dealers for their losses from the German automaker’s diesel emissions scandal, two sources briefed on the matter said on Thursday. The company and a lawyer for VW dealers announced a tentative settlement at a court hearing in San Francisco, but declined to disclose the amount. The […]
Can the woolly mammoth be brought back from the dead? Scientists say it’s only a matter of time. In fact this year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature issued its first official set of guidelines on resurrecting extinct species. What’s more, university research labs and non-governmental agencies have projects in motion to bring back extinct species. But is all of this a good idea? A new […]
A new speech analytics tool announced yesterday by Verint Systems is designed to help customer service professionals get real-time guidance for better managing calls. The software-based system can alert service reps to caller insights as they happen as well as help companies ensure compliance with important policies and regulations, the company said. The Melville, New York-based Verint said the new real-time speech analytics capabilities are natively embedded […]
Just months after its public launch, the self-driving truck startup Otto has been purchased by the ride-hailing giant Uber for an undisclosed amount. According to a Bloomberg estimate, the deal could be valued at about $680 million. Uber, whose “anyone-can-be-a-cabbie” business model has already shaken up the taxi industry, is also looking to provide autonomous car services in cities. Later this month, the company plans to begin […]
Researchers at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, using the liquid crystal elastomer technology, originally developed in the LENS Institute in Florence, demonstrated a bioinspired micro-robot capable of mimicking caterpillar gaits in natural scale. The 15-millimeter long soft robot harvests energy from green light and is controlled by spatially modulated laser beam. Apart from travelling on flat surfaces, it can also climb slopes, squeeze […]
A new certification program is aimed at assuring users that USB Type-C chargers won’t damage their devices or fail to provide adequate charges. Announced yesterday by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the program sets compliance standards for original equipment manufacturers of USB-C products. Introduced in 2014, the USB-C standard for universal serial bus connections is a more compact type of connector that’s easier to plug in and […]
At some point in their lives, 15 percent of people with diabetes will develop a painful and hard-to-treat foot ulcer. Twenty-four percent of those affected will require a lower-leg amputation because of it. And, in some instances, what seems like a harmless sore might even lead to death. A Northwestern University team has developed a new treatment for this severe and potentially deadly complication of diabetes. Called […]
Scientists sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) have genetically modified a common soil bacteria to create electrical wires that not only conduct electricity, but are thousands of times thinner than a human hair. As electronic devices increasingly touch all facets of people’s lives, there is growing appetite for technology that is smaller, faster and more mobile and powerful than ever before. Thanks to advances in […]
Engineers at the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland (UMD) demonstrate in a new study that windows made of transparent wood could provide more even and consistent natural lighting and better energy efficiency than glass. In a paper just published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Energy Materials, the team, headed by Liangbing Hu of UMD’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and […]
For more than 120 years the Venus Table of the Dresden Codex — an ancient Mayan book containing astronomical data — has been of great interest to scholars around the world. The accuracy of its observations, especially the calculation of a kind of ‘leap year’ in the Mayan Calendar, was deemed an impressive curiosity used primarily for astrology. But UC Santa Barbara’s Gerardo Aldana, a professor of […]
While it already offers several ways for users to make video calls over various platforms, Google today launched a new phone-based app called Duo that’s designed for simplicity. Available for both Android and iOS smartphones, Google Duo doesn’t require anything more than a phone number to launch once the app is downloaded. Unlike Google’s Hangouts messaging, voice and video calling tool, people don’t even need Google accounts […]
Now, all you need is a phone number to start a video call with any contact who uses an Android- or iOS-based smartphone. Google on Tuesday launched Google Duo, pitting it directly against Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) FaceTime, which allows video calls only between Apple devices. Duo will also compete with Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O) video-calling app Skype, Facebook Inc’s (FB.O) Messenger and even its own Hangout app. Duo […]
Researchers from Polytechnique Montréal, Université de Montréal and McGill University have just achieved a spectacular breakthrough in cancer research. They have developed new nanorobotic agents capable of navigating through the bloodstream to administer a drug with precision by specifically targeting the active cancerous cells of tumours. This way of injecting medication ensures the optimal targeting of a tumour and avoids jeopardizing the integrity of organs and surrounding […]
Apparently, Google is working on a new operating system called Fuchsia but not much is known about it. Early evidence indicates that the new operating system might be a catchall OS that can run on computers, mobile devices and even Internet of Things devices. So far, Fuchsia consists of some work on Google’s code repository and on the GitHub code-sharing Web site. News of the new OS […]
UAE. Based on a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) titled Self-Driving Vehicles, Robo-Taxis, and the Urban Mobility Revolution—and prepared in collaboration with the World Economic Forum—consumers around the world are surprisingly knowledgeable about Self-Driving Vehicles (SDVs) and their potential benefits, and, by and large, they are more than willing to give them a try. In fact, the study shows that 70% of consumers in […]
