10 Upcoming Technology That May Change The World

We have seen great leaps in digital technology in past the past five years. Smartphones, cloud computing, multi-touch tablets, these are all innovations that revolutionized the way we live and work. However, believe it or not, we are just getting started. Technology will get even better. In the future, we could live like how people in science fiction movies did.

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Hans Blix calls on scientists to develop thorium nuclear fuel

Call it the great thorium divide: Thorium supporters and thorium critics do not agree over claims that thorium is an alternative nuclear fuel that could ensure a better future for the planet. Nonetheless, interest continues in thorium as a safer and abundant alternative to uranium. On the side of thorium, the latest call for action has come from Hans Blix, the former UN weapons inspector and former Swedish foreign minister. Urging nuclear scientists to develop thorium as a new fuel, Blix also called on the nuclear industry to start powering reactors with thorium instead of uranium. Blix said that the radioactive element may prove much safer in reactors than uranium and it is also more difficult to use thorium for the production of nuclear weapons.
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Brave transhumanist pioneer self-implants a computer into his arm

With a retail Google Glass on the horizon, and the modern man and woman being glued to their smartphones 24 hours a day, the world is moving ever closer toward literally being attached to their mobile devices. Tim Cannon, a biohacker in the German town of Essen, implanted a small computer and battery inside his arm — without the help of a doctor or even anesthesia.

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Using an ultrasonic headband to control and communicate with devices in your brain

Two of the most important details in putting together a high performance computer are power and cooling. Not surprisingly, those same fundamentals are critical to high performance brains. Yet while we may go to great lengths to ensure gaming bliss — UPS backups, or maybe even a filter for the coolant system — when we one day find ourselves rising in the morning in a quizzical haze, or note a telltale drop in our smile as in stroke, we usually can do little but wait and hope for the best. Fortunately, a device from Cerevast Therapeutics is about to change that situation, and give wetware users a new tool to keep things running smoothly.

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3D Printing Aims to Deliver Organs on Demand

Dying patients could someday receive a 3D-printed organ made from their own cells rather than wait on long lists for the short supply of organ transplants. Such a futuristic dream remains far from reality, but university labs and private companies have already taken the first careful steps by using 3D-printing technology to build tiny chunks of organs.

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Cadence Sensors: What Are They and How Do They Work?

Cadence sensors are a must for bikers and cyclists who want to maximize workout results. These devices allow cyclists to measure energy output in the form of rotations per minute (RPM), akin to a speedometer or pedometer. Many users have attempted to use the pedometer as a way of measuring distance, speed or even effort when cycling, but such a sensor proves inadequate in gauging data during cycling training.

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Record Electric Vehicle Sales Could Have Climate Impact (Op-Ed)

 Don Anair is research and deputy director for the Clean Vehicles program at UCS. Heis an engineer with expertise on diesel, hybrid and battery electric vehicles and related policies. This article is adapted from a post to the UCS blog The Equation. Anaircontributed this article toLiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

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10 Dumbest Smartphone Features

Today's high-end smartphones have a host of whizbang features that differentiate them from their competitors. From Samsung's Multi Window, which lets you view two apps side by side, to LG's QTranslate app, which scans foreign-language text with the camera to translate it in real time, a number of these goodies really do make your life better. 

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New Watch Allows You To Count the Seconds Until You Die

A new watch has put a whole new meaning on the phrase "death watch."

The Tikker is a watch that allows the morbid or motivated to count down the years, months, minutes and seconds they have until they die. The watch also has the handy function of keeping normal time.

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3D Printing Exhibition Showcases Unusual Artwork

Artists, in particular, can get a lot of use out of 3D printing, say advocates. The London Science Museum is putting that claim to the test in its new exhibit, "3D: Printing the Future." The display features 3D-printed sculptures that range from realistic statues to fantastical creatures.

The exhibition, which is free as is entrance into the museum, will take place at The London Science Museum between Oct. 9, 2013 and July 10, 2014.

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World's Largest Wave Machine Planned

The world’s largest wave-making machine and pool (not counting the world’s oceans) is being planned for Meadowlands in New Jersey, a short drive from Manhattan. According to a surfing industry report, American Wave Machines (AWM) owner Bruce McFarland has announced his company has been contracted to build a pool that will generate seven-and-a-half foot waves and allow surfers rides from 10 to 12 seconds long in a pool about the size of a football field.

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The Ultimate Iron Chef – When 3D Printers Invade the Kitchen (Op-Ed)

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Printing food seems more like an idea based in Star Trek rather than in the average home. But recent advances in 3D printing (known formally as additive manufacturing) are driving the concept closer to reality. With everything from printed metal airplane wings to replacement organs on the horizon, could printed food be next? And how will we feel when it’s served at the table?

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Need for Speed: New Series Explores World's Fastest Things

From building the world's fastest cars, trucks and boats to rooting for Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt, humans are obsessed with speed.

In the premiere of the new NOVA series "Making Stuff," which airs tonight at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT on PBS, host and technology columnist David Pogue takes viewers on a whirlwind tour of the world's fastest things.

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Heads-Up Helmet, Rolling Camera Are an Eyeful

Forty-one tech companies showed up at the DEMO Fall 2013 conference to introduce gadgets and apps that may or may not change your life (a Google Glass app that lets you buy things withBitcoins? really?). A few of these demos stood out among the electronic esoterica on display at IDG Enterprise’s annual gatheringin Santa Clara, Calif.

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Glow-in-the-Dark Spray Could Make Night Driving safer

How can you make roads safer for drivers? One company, known as Pro-Teq, is testing glow-in-the-dark material that can be sprayed onto roadways to help illuminate the way for night drivers.

The U.K.-based company developed a waterproof photoluminescent coating, called Starpath, which absorbs light during the day and gives off an ethereal glow at night, according to Treehugger. The coating is non-reflective and has anti-slip properties, which could reduce the number of accidents on motorways, reported Treehugger. Starpath-covered roads could also help communities save money and energy, since they are bright enough without street lamps. 

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10 Best Breast Cancer Awareness Apps

Seeing pink everywhere? Welcome to Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It's a month for celebrating life, acknowledging the fight against this silent killer, remembering those who've lost their fight, and supporting the survivors and their families. The statistics can be scary: This is a disease that we know more and more about thanks to genetic testing, and yet some 1 in 8 women are still expected to develop “invasive breast cancer” in their lifetime.  

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Bowflex Boost: Fitness Tracker Review

The maker of Bowflex fitness equipment, Nautilus, recently launched an activity tracker called Bowflex Boost. At $49.95, it's one of the least expensive activity trackers on the market (For comparison, the Jawbone Up will cost you $129.99, and the Fitbit Flex goes for $99.95).

But how well does the Boost perform compared to other, more pricey trackers? I tried it out for a few days to see.

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Smart Window Blocks Heat, Generates Electricity

Buildings are going green and so it’s no surprise that researchers are working to develop smarter windows.

Among the smartest is a window designed by researchers at Shanghai University, led by Yanfeng Gao, which does triple duty: It’s transparent, regulates temperature fluctuations and doesn’t require external power to work.

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A Snapshot of High-Speed Photography (And How To Do It) (Op-Ed)

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

High-speed photography in still images and cinema seems to bethe latest rage. And while modern technology has made much of the equipment easily accessible, the basic techniques have been used since the mid-to-late 1800s.

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Get Ready to Start Shopping With Google Glass

Smartphones and tablets aren't the only devices that can process mobile payments. Soon, wearable tech could act as your credit card, too. 

RedBottle Design, a Rochester, N.Y.-based software development and Web design shop, recently introduced GlassPay, a Google Glass and Android app that processes mobile payments using the peer-to-peer online currencybitcoin.

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How to Spot (and Stop) ATM Skimmers

Card skimming at automated teller machines (ATMs) is one of the most "significant problems facing the credit-card industry" today, according to an advisory bulletin posted online by the U.S. Secret Service.

But skimming at ATMs is as much of a problem for the customer as it is for banks. Unless you keep your money in an old sock or under your mattress, you probably use ATMs on a regular basis.

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'Unmanned: America's Drone Wars' Documentary Premieres in NYC

A new documentary that investigates the impact of U.S. drone strikespremiered Wednesday (Oct. 30) in New York City.

The film, called "Unmanned: America's Drone Wars," made its debut Wednesday evening at the Sunshine Landmark Theater in Manhattan. The documentary features Rafiq ur Rehman, a primary school teacher from a mountainous region in northeast Pakistan, whose 67-year-old mother was killed by a drone strike in October 2012. Two of Rehman's children were also injured in the attack.

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Occipital Promises Mind-Blowing 3D Trickery for Work or Play

Get in on the ground floor as we look at the most exciting crowdfunded tech projects out there right now. This week: Structure Sensor, which is pitched as the world's first 3D sensor for mobile devices. The device is designed to be an attached-hardware add-on for mobile tablets and phones that allows the user to capture spacial models of objects and indoor areas.

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The Emergence of the Super-Smart Classroom

Digital technologies are changing the way students and teachers communicate in the classroom. Devices, apps and software are being developed to let teachers give pop quizzes, check to see how much students comprehend, and determine when they're ready to move on. Students use a mobile app to communicate with the teacher, who can see and respond to their answers to questions.

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Disney Tech Makes Touchscreens Touchy-Feely

A new algorithm can render 3D textures and tactile features on a touchscreen, giving users the sensation of feeling what they see. The new technology could be used in education, medical applications and certain design applications, suggested Tirias Research analyst Jim McGregor, but "probably the most compelling applications will be consumer applications and immersive gaming."

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Smartwatch May Help Keep a Watchful Eye on Kids

Wearable tech may offer one more way to keep children safe and help parents stay connected with them. Kids who don a FiLIP smartwatch will be GPS-trackable. They'll have limited phone capabilities -- calls to and from five contacts -- and they'll be able to receive texts. There's one big catch, though: The kids will have to keep those watches 

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Microfluidic chip to quickly diagnose the flu

During the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009, which spread across more than 200 countries and killed more than 18,000 people, it became clear that flu diagnosis was often taking too long and resulting in frequent false negatives.

Today, researchers from Boston University, Harvard, and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are reporting in the journal PLoS ONE that they have built a microfluidic chip that rivals in accuracy the gold-standard diagnostic test known as RT-PCR but is faster, cheaper, and disposable.

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Early-warning software could reduce false alarms of seizures

Of the 50 million people worldwide estimated to have epilepsy, almost a third do not respond to treatment. Those patients must rely on implantable anti-seizure devices that detect pre-seizure electrical activity and shoot small electrical impulses to the brain to interrupt the seizures.

The downside is that the tech, still early in development, also produces false positives, causing devices to send currents to the brain when a seizure is not actually occurring. One new approach, developed by a biomedical and electrical engineer at Johns Hopkins University, appears to reduce those false alarms.

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Demo Fall 2013: Little Slices of Amazing New Technology

All and all, this year's Demo was a fascinating event. Along with the new technology on display, there were some excellent presentations. Dell's incredible Entrepreneur in Residence Ingrid Vanderveldt gave one on a program funded to empower small businesses run by women and turn them into successes. She works with organizations like the Clinton Foundation to help make this happen.

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These Robots Can Teach Little Kids to Code

There's perhaps no better way to learn than through play, and that's how Play-i envisions children learning computer programming. The company is close to achieving a crowdfunding goal that will enable production of Bo and Yana, two shiny little robots whose actions can easily be programmed by tots. The initiative could even help the U.S. regain some lost ground in computer science education.

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Brain implants let paralyzed woman move robot arm

Jan Scheuermann can't use her limbs to feed herself, but she's pretty good at grabbing a chocolate bar with her robot arm.

She's become the first to demonstrate that people with a long history of quadriplegia can successfully manipulate a mind-controlled robot arm with seven axes of movement. Earlier experiments had shown that robot arms work with brain implants.

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When the wind blows: New wind energy research focuses on turbine arrangement, wind seasonality

The University of Delaware's Cristina Archer and her Atmosphere and Energy Research Group found that staggering and spacing out turbines in an offshore wind farm can improve performance by as much as 33 percent.

"Staggering every other row was amazingly efficient," said Archer, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering and geography in UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment.

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Get round internet censors using a friend's connection

People living under repressive regimes will soon be able to access the web using the internet connection of friends in censorship-free countries

FOR people living under repressive regimes censorship is an everyday reality, and browsing the internet freely is impossible without some serious technical know-how. This week Google threw its weight behind an idea that lets people circumvent censorship by using the internet connection of a friend in a non-censored country.

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Smart glasses that help the blind see

These specs do more than bring blurry things into focus. This prototype pair of smart glasses translates visual information into images that blind people can see.

Many people who are registered as blind can perceive some light and motion. The glasses, developed by Stephen Hicks of the University of Oxford, are an attempt to make that residual vision as useful as possible.

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Will Self-Driving Cars Mean The End Of Highway Fatalities?

Autonomous cars are coming, slowly but surely. Over the past several years, automakers (and Google, of course) have unveiled an array of self-driving technologies, with some promising to deliver partially self-driving vehicles by the "mid-2010s".

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This Portable Blowtorch Uses Only Water As Fuel

Researchers from   ITM Power, a UK-based clean energy company, say their new blowtorch prototype produces fire using only water as fuel. The electrolyser system turns hydrogen and oxygen gases from water into fuel for the torch using electricity.

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New fingerprint-lifting compound could make life easier for CSIs

If you regularly watch any police forensics TV shows, then the word "Luminol" is probably already part of your vocabulary. Now, however, you might also want to add the word "Lumicyano." That's the name of a new product that is said to reveal latent fingerprints faster, cheaper and better than other methods.

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Inside The Machine That Chills Your Beer In One Minute

How can you turn lukewarm lager to ice-cold beer in under a minute? A startup has developed a nifty gizmo which does just that, saving both energy and embarrassment at parties. Manufacturer Enviro-Cool claims that chilling on demand with a V-Tex could save retailers €1000 per fridge per year, and of course help to keep the planet cool too. So how does the device actually work?

Media reports have dubbed the device a “reverse microwave”, but that analogy would receive a chilly reception amongst physicists. Unfortunately, you can’t simply wire up a microwave oven backwards and suck the heat from an object.

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Teddy Bear Could Help Kids Cope with Diabetes

NEW YORK — For young children with type I diabetes, days are filled with constant monitoring, finger pricking and insulin injections.

But one inventor is aiming to bring these children a bit of comfort during these activities, as well as to teach them the importance of staying healthy — he created a teddy called Jerry the Bear, who also has diabetes.

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MultiTouch begins taking pre-orders for 84-inch 4K interactive display

Only a few weeks after attendees at the annual developer conference of Finland's MultiTouch Ltd got a first look at the company's latest MultiTaction monster, it's gone up for pre-order. Currently a working prototype, the new 84-inch unit is claimed to be the world's first fully integrated, 4K resolution interactive display.

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Underwater Gliders Gather Data To Help Predict The Next Big Storm

When Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast in the summer of 2011, it was supposed to be a doozy. The subways were closed, people evacuated and stores boarded up. But although there wassignificant damage, the storm wasn't anywhere near as strong as predicted. But a year later, as Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey on Oct. 29, 2012, scientists realized they had the opposite problem: They had severely under-predicted the amount of water it would bring with it.

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Science Confirms The Obvious: 3-D Movies Aren't All That Or Thor just wasn't that cool. By Shaunacy Ferro Posted 10.31.2013 at 3:45 pm

Anyone who's ever grumbled about dropping an extra five or 10 bucks to see a 3-D movie, rest assured: It probably wasn't worth it. A forthcoming study says what those of us who secretly hate 3-D movies (wearing 3-D glasses over your regular glasses sucks) have been thinking all along—people aren't more satisfied after watching a 3-D movie than they would be after watching the same movie in 2-D.

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The Volcano Bluetooth speaker lets you plug into the bass, when you want it

There are certainly a multitude of compact, portable Bluetooth speakers out there, although many of them don't feature the satisfying bass response of larger models. That's where the two-part Volcano comes in. Its top speaker can be toted around and used on its own, or plugged into the sub-woofer base unit to deliver the full "oontz-oontz-oontz" experience.

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Lenovo's new tablets bring the Yoga brand to Android

Most tablets look pretty similar. You could argue that this is because their iPad-like form factor makes the most sense. But Lenovo thinks there's still some room for variety. Take the company's new Yoga Android tablets, which add a cylindrical bulge and kickstand to the traditional tablet design.

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BASF updates 1953 BMW "bubble car" with modern materials and electronics

It must get boring and lonely spending your days in a lab, mixing up slightly different plastics, epoxies and composites. Perhaps that's why BASF is making a push to get out in front of the world and show what these materials can really do. Prior to the Concept 1865 plastic bike, the German company updated a 1958 BMW Isetta "bubble car" with some of its materials and coatings. The car, which makes the Smart ForTwo look rather roomy, also gets a unique home entertainment system.

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neurocam automatically shoots whatever its user finds interesting

Perhaps you know someone who's a member of the "lifelogging" community – these are people who record pretty much all of their waking hours, typically using small, wearable video cameras. The problem is, they inevitably end up with a lot of footage that's just ... well, boring, even to them. That's where the neurocam comes in. It's a prototype headset camera, that only records when it detects that its wearer is interested in what they're seeing.

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Fuelmatics and Husky develop petrol-pumping robot

There was a time when pulling into a service station would coincide with an attendant in a pressed uniform and a peaked cap running up to your car to ask if you’d like to fill ‘er up. That scene may be relegated to Mad Men, but a robotic replacement has arrived. At this month’s 2013 PEI Convention at the NACS Show in Atlanta, the Husky Corporation’s booth played host to a robotic fuel attendant called the Fuelmatics Automatic Refueling System (ARS) that the company is developing in collaboration with Stockholm-based Fuelmatics Systems AB.

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Cyclops cap with LCD screen brings video and photos to a (literal) head

If you’ve ever wanted more ways to show the world your logo, your dance skills, your business’s lunch special, or your funny cat videos, the Cyclops could be for you. It’s a snapback hat kitted out with an LCD display that syncs with a mobile app.

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Tech savvy driver wearing Google Glass gets a ticket for speeding and wearing the super specs

GOOGLE'S hi-tech frames may make it easier for users to email and surf the web, but they can also earn the ire of traffic police as one woman discovered.

Californian blogger Cecilia Abadie was pulled over by police in San Diego and given a ticket for speeding and driving while wearing Google Glass.

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CyArk: Preserving world heritage sites with the latest 3D laser scanning technology

Hanging off the nose of one of the massive granite US presidents at Mount Rushmore is something we normally associate with an Alfred Hitchcock movie. But these are the lengths you must go to if you want to save the world’s most stunning heritage sites.

The combination of a hammer and chisel is no longer the best way to preserve the minute detail that has made these monuments so great. An ambitious plan to scan hundreds of the planet’s best cultural spaces with a 3D laser is a plot old Hitch himself would have been proud to put on the big screen.

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Dell customers rejoice: Your laptops no longer smell of cat urine

Dell has moved to reassume customers that laptops bought from the company will no longer smell of cat urine.

The company had received complaints about a stench coming from Latitude 6430u Ultrabooks as far back as June.

Forum user Three west had written: ‘The machine is great, but it smells as if it was assembled near a tomcat’s litter box. It is truly awful! It seems to be coming from the keyboard. Anybody got any advice on removing the smell?

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