Starbucks could charge you a third more for a cup of coffee and, not only would you pay it, but you’d think it justified, one study of brain waves suggests, opening the door to market testing product pricing using neuroscience. The research, by neurobiologist and former marketing consultant Kai-Markus Müller, took Starbucks coffee as its […]
Qualcomm is developing a new line of Zeroth processors designed to help devices think and sense just like human brains and bodies.
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What took humans millions of years to achieve, Germany’s robotic ape has done in moments, with a research project into artificial spines showing how a quadrupedal ‘bot can evolve into a bipedal one. Three months ago, DFKI’s iStruct robo-ape was wandering around on all-fours as engineers experimented with human-inspired skeletal systems for potential space exploration. […]
Although a number of companies, which include Google, are setting their eyes forward to the future with fully or partially self-driving automobiles, car manufacturers still have their feet planted firmly on the ground of present-day concerns, which, of course, includes road safety. Responding to the need for safer driving and car technologies, Toyota has developed […]
A team of astrophysicists have made an exciting however complex discovery a mere 170 light years away. In their own words, it’s "the first evidence of a water-rich rocky planetary body" outside of our own solar system to have evidence of water. It’s the "rocky" bit that makes it Earth-like.
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Qualcomm is readying a new kind of artificial brain chip, dubbed neural processing units (NPUs), modeling human cognition and opening the door to phones, computers, and robots that could be taught in the same ways that children learn. The first NPUs are likely to go into production by 2014, CTO Matt Grob confirmed at the […]
Google has used some of the most advanced computing technology, quantum chips in the D-Wave computer it has bought with NASA, to address one of the most basic issues in its Glass wearable: figuring out if users are blinking on purpose or involuntarily. The perhaps humdrum implementation, revealed for the first time this week in […]
When it comes to cramming as much data as possible on a platter, hard drive manufacturers will use every trick in the book to maximize capacity. Including turning up the heat as TDK plans to do with a new technique that could deliver 40 terabyte hard drives by 2020.
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When you think of Disney, most typically think of animated movies and theme parks, but Disney also has a research arm that looks into all sorts of future technology. Researchers at Disney have created an interesting and very cheap power generator that uses pieces of paper. This won’t create enough power to run your computer, but it does generate enough electricity to make LEDs glow, make sounds, or turn on an e-book display.
The generator uses sheets of conductive Teflon to create an electrical charge as users rub, touch or tap its surfaces together. Circuits are then able to take advantage of that electric charge and harness it to create power for small electronic devices.
The researchers say the generators are extremely cheap and convenient to produce. Such generators could to add interactivity to just about anything you can think of. Disney sees the potential for such generators to be used to power interactivity in books, papers, magazines, posters, and a number of other places.
Researcher Ivan Poupyrev said, “This simplicity leads to countless applications enabling interactivity everywhere and anytime. My overall goal is to make the whole world interactive, and creating ubiquitous power supplies is a key step in that direction.”
[via French Tribune]
The PC shipment numbers have rolled in for the third quarter of the year, tallying up the number of units shipped globally over the last quarter. Not surprisingly given the gradually declining nature of the market, shipment numbers again decreased, but not as much as analysts had expected. The numbers vary a bit depending on […]
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