A new initiative is helping to address the global freshwater crisis. The World Economic Forum and multinational technology company HCL have launched the Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative. This collaboration secures funding of $15 million over five years for entrepreneurs to tackle the growing concerns of water scarcity, water pollution and water stress, a situation where not […]
The fact that ground squirrels burn almost no energy when they hibernate – with no loss of muscle mass – has implications for the many millions of people globally who experience muscle wasting as a consequence of various conditions. A decrease in muscle mass can be caused by undernourishment, for instance, which affects almost 830 […]
A cancer study sponsored by drug company GlaxoSmithKline has provided researchers with a surprising result: a 100% remission rate for the 12 participants. All of the study’s participants had a very specific type of advanced rectal cancer – mismatch-repair deficient colorectal cancer – that, due to its genetic traits, made it a good candidate for […]
The Good Times ends our series on new and not so new technologies that benefit mankind with this short video, courtesy of the World Economic Forum, on three ways the world of sports is using artificial intelligence. Featured image: Artificial intelligence (Flickr, Attribution 2.0 Generic – CC BY 2.0)
Batteries power our daily lives. From communications and information technology in phones and laptops, to mobility in cars, motorcycles, and scooters, and beyond, most electronic objects have a battery-powered version. While this has many positive impacts, what we do with the batteries in these objects at the end of their lives still needs some work. […]
The news is full of stories about how plastics are further encroaching into even the most remote regions of the Earth, the latest example being the discovery of microplastics in fresh Antarctic snow, probably the result of traveling through the atmosphere. While the news is indeed dire and the need to curb the production and […]
It looks a bit like a beehive, this 3D printed home located in Massa Lombarda, a town in northern Italy near Ravenna. It took a large 3D printer about 200 hours spaced out over a few months to print this 60-square-meter (645-square-foot) house that looks like no other. Certainly it is not the only 3D […]
Ada Lovelace is largely credited with having written the first computer algorithm. She is also recognized as being the first to understand how a mechanical calculator could actually be used for computing, how it “might act upon other things besides number.” Born from the union between poet Lord Byron and mathematician Anne Isabella Milbanke in […]
Imagine going to your banker to ask for a detailed overview of the bank transactions that took place last week. Your banker might well laugh at this request. Yet this is already a reality in public blockchains, which allow people to see all their transactions since their creation. These transactions are recorded transparently and anonymously […]
In 1900, a group of sponge divers found the Antikythera wreck off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island of Antikythera. Among the wreckage was the oldest example of an analogue computer – a hand-powered orrery, or mechanical model of our solar system that predicts the positions and motions of the planets and moon, including eclipses. […]
