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Photo of me demonstrating an unuual thermoelectric generator
with NY Times Correspondent Matthew Wald
Futurist Thomas Frey: On Wednesday I was invited to speak on a panel at the 2012 National Electricity Forum, an event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, in Washington DC.
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Skin cancer drug reverses Alzheimer’s in mice, is there hope for humans?
A laboratory study indicates that a drug commonly used to fight skin cancer could start to reverse Alzheimer’s disease in a matter of hours. Researchers have described the discovery as an “unprecedented finding” that holds out “the potential promise of a [...]
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Rapunzel number
The “Rapunzel Number” may have helped British scientists to crack a problem that has perplexed humanity since Leonardo da Vinci pondered it 500 years ago.
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A prediction of the future supercontinent, Amasia.
The Earth has been covered by supercontinents, giant combinations of continents, many times in its past, and it will be again one day in the distant future. The next predicted supercontinent, dubbed Amasia, may form when the Americas and Asia both drift northward to merge, closing off the Arctic [...]
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Everybody lies — even doctors.
Eleven percent of doctors say that they have told a patient or a child’s guardian something that was not true in the past year, and about 20 percent say they have not fully disclosed a mistake to a patient because they were afraid of being sued, according to a new [...]
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Depreciation of all smartphones is not equal. iPhones can be sold for 53% of their original price 18 months after purchase, while Androids can only be sold for 42% and BlackBerries for 41% on average according to a study by Y Combinator second-hand price guide startup Priceonomics.
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Vitruvian Man
At the dawn of the Roman imperial age, the first century B.C., the architect and thinker Vitruvius proposed that the human body could fit inside a circle, symbolic of the divine, and a square, associated with the earthly and secular — an idea that later became known as the theory of the microcosm, and [...]
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Currently cable companies must deliver broadcast channels in a way that enables tuners to display those channels without any extra hardware.
Cable companies are suffering from flat and declining cable TV subscription numbers. So now cable companies are lobbying the FCC to force every cable subscriber to rent cable boxes or cable [...]
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Canadian inventor Rejean Neron’s Safety Sphere concept has to be the most, well, all-encompassing airbag for motorcyclists. Described as an “inflatable crash garment for non-enclosed vehicle riders”, Safety Sphere isn’t so much built into the rider’s suit as it is the rider’s suit. In the event of an accident, the intended results [...]
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The study shows a mountain of accumulated evidence the damage physical punishment can have on a child.
Long-term developmental damage as well as a lower IQ can be a result of spanking children according to a new Canadian analysis that seeks to shift the ethical debate over corporal punishment into the medical [...]
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NASA hopes to be able to fly its astronauts on commercial carriers by about 2017.
Program managers from NASA said they are looking for at least two U.S. firms to design and build space taxis to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
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Stricter security measures n U.S. airports is making air travel less safe.
Ever stricter security measures in place in U.S. airports is making air travel less safe and airports more vulnerable, according to University of Illinois mathematics professor Sheldon H. Jacobson. The reason is too many resources are spent screening passengers [...]
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A new study has found that smoking is bad for the brain, especially men.
Here’s the perfect reason for men to kick the butt – smoking makes men stupid, according to researchers.
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A meadow of the seagrass plant Posidonia oceanica, which spreads by creating clones of itself.
It’s big, it’s old and it lives under the sea — and now an international research collaboration with The University of Western Australia’s Ocean’s Institute has confirmed that an ancient seagrass holds the secrets of the oldest living organism on Earth…
Ancient [...]
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The demand for applications has created 466,000 jobs in the U.S. since 2007.
If you are looking for a promising career in a lousy economy then you are apt to find it in apps — the services and tools built to run on smartphones, computer tablets and Facebook’s online social network, according to a [...]
