Bird Nest Hotel – Sleep on a tent hanging from tree

Posted on September 7, 2014September 9, 2014 by 41629066

There is something so attractive about sleeping in the trees; that is probably why theTreeHotel in Sweden is such a hit. Now you can get even closer to nature atWaldseilgarten in Bavaria, where you can hang out over the edge of a cliff or if you are a little bit nervous about sleeping with a mile of air under you, there are trees. Waldseilgarten/Promo image Portaledges were invented for rock-climbers doing multi-day climbs; they are not for people who toss and turn a lot. They ...

Solar windows of tomorrow

Posted on September 7, 2014September 9, 2014 by 41629066

Solar energy that doesn’t block the view A team of researchers at Michigan State University has developed a new type of solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy while allowing people to actually see through the window. It is called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator and can be used on buildings, cell phones and any other device that has a clear surface. And, according to Richard Lunt of MSU’s College of Engineering, the key word is “...

Dry your body after a bath without towel in less than 30 seconds

Posted on September 7, 2014September 25, 2014 by 41629066

Dryer blasts water off your entire BODY in less than 30 seconds This is just like those Dyson Airblades that are used in public restrooms instead of paper towels, only much more ambitious. This dries the whole body. It’s only a little bit bigger than a scale, but the highly-compressed ionized air apparently gets delivered at all the key angles, whisking all the water off your skin in just about 30 seconds. Once the right amount of air has been collected into the pressuri...

Kinect Cart

Posted on August 28, 2014August 28, 2014 by

The quest for a high-tech “shopping cart of the future” is nothing new, but Whole Foods is planning to test a new spin on the concept, using Microsoft’s Kinect sensor for Windows. The motorized cart identifies a shopper with a loyalty card, follows the shopper around the store, scans items as they’re placed inside, marks them off the shopping list, and even checks the shopper out in the end. Microsoft showed the very early prototype, being developed for Whole Foods by a third-party developer, Au...

Tiny Chip Mimics the Human Brain

Posted on August 21, 2014 by 41629066

Cognitive computing is the future of computer processing, or at least, that's what it seems. Researchers earlier this month unveiled a powerful new postage-stamp size chip delivering supercomputer performance using a process that mimics the human brain. The so-called "neurosynaptic" chip is a breakthrough that opens a wide new range of computing possibilities from self-driving cars to artificial intelligence systems that can installed on a smartphone, the scientists say. The researchers...

Forget Waiters: Robots are now serving food at a restaurant in China

Posted on August 21, 2014August 21, 2014 by 41629066

Would you go to a restaurant where you are greeted and served by robots? Science fiction meets reality at a Chinese restaurant that uses robots to cook and deliver food. Mechanical staff greet customers, deliver dishes to tables and even stir-fry meat and vegetables at the eatery in Kunshan,which opened last week. "My daughter asked me to invent a robot because she doesn't like doing housework," the restaurant's founder Song Yugang said. Two robots are stationed by the door to cheerful...

Wharton Students Launch Innovative Social Media Shopping Experience

Posted on August 13, 2014August 13, 2014 by

Wharton MBA students Cherif Habib and Stephan Jacobs wanted to have a business up and profitable before they left school. They launched Kembrel, a daily-deal online store for clothing and gadgets aimed at budget-conscious college students. The twist? You can shop at Kembrel without ever leaving Facebook. The unique marketing approach made them an instant hit with the Millennial set. A beta test snagged 20,000 registered members, and the site is growing at 5,000 new members a week. This site i...

Harvard & MIT Researchers Create Origami Robots

Posted on August 12, 2014 by

For years, a team of researchers at MIT and Harvard University has been working on origami robots — reconfigurable robots that would be able to fold themselves into arbitrary shapes. In today’s issue of Science, they report their latest milestone: a robot, made almost entirely from parts produced by a laser cannon that folds itself up and crawls away as soon as batteries are attached to it. “The exciting thing here is that you create this device that has computation embedded in the flat, p...