Showing results by narrator "Joe Knezevich" in All Categories

If the next president intends to improve American infrastructure and expand economic opportunities, there’s no better place to start than with the millions of people who still lack broadband access and computer skills.

Toyota spends $10 billion a year on research, more than any other automaker except Volkswagen. That pays for endless incremental improvements in everything from lithium batteries to seatbelt design, but such tweaks may not be enough anymore if Toyota is to remain the world’s top seller of cars.

Amazon doesn’t have an official presence at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but it’s making no shortage of headlines thanks to its Alexa smart assistant. Don’t assume, though, that the AI butler will be king forever.

Every year, some six million people in the United States break a bone, and each injury is cloaked with a heavy sheath of fiberglass or plaster while it heals - a treatment that’s been the same for generations. But casts are finally getting a modern spin. 3-D-printed casts boast an open-lattice plastic design that’s customized to the individual patient. They’re waterproof, they’re more comfortable, and they may even help the bones heal faster.

Last week, Nintendo launched Pokémon Go. It’s an augmented reality smartphone game that allows you to capture, train, and trade virtual creatures that appear in the real world. Players can roam their neighborhood to find Pokémon, throwing a virtual ball to capture them.

What were you doing exactly a month ago? How about three years ago? “Lifelogging,” the effort by some technorati to record every moment of their lives, may have met resistance, but a new app called Fabric promises to make it relevant again. The app, available for iOS and Android, connects with your GPS, camera roll, Facebook, and Instagram to log where you visit and the photos you take. You can browse the resulting catalog by time, place, or people.

It happens every time James Zadina publishes a new paper or receives a write-up: the phone in his New Orleans laboratory begins to ring. The e-mails flood his in-box. The messages come from people all around the nation telling him how much they hurt.

The tube was out back, 11 feet in diameter, 60 feet long, the unfinished end spiraling into wide ribbons of steel - like a gigantic Pillsbury dough container with its seams gaping open. Behind the tube was a big blue tent known as the robot school, where autonomous welders wheel or crawl along, making the tubes airtight. The goal is to put tracks and electromagnets inside the tube and vacuum most of the air out.

Companies taking advantage of amazing new digital technologies dominate our list of 50 Smartest Companies. But despite impressive advances in artificial intelligence and automation, the economy remains in a troubling slowdown.

Have you ever spent time overanalyzing a certain social or romantic situation longer than you should have and eventually questioned your sanity, or is this the norm for you? In his first book, A Crazy Little Thing Called Love, author Mike Zacchio combines his most meaningful work on the topics of love, sex, dating, and relationships, as told through the male perspective, along with three never-before-seen articles. Zacchio chronicles what it's like trying to date as a man in a world filled with dating apps, social media, "thirst", hook-up culture, and emotional walls.

Mob head Sal Tarantino doesn't want big-time casino gambling to become legal in Rhode Island. His solution is to have the next governor comfortably in his pocket, ready to veto the legislation. That means calling in the debts owed to the mob by some of Rhode Island's most prominent politicians, to clear the way for Doug Fiore, managing partner of the state's largest law firm and soon-to-be reluctant gubernatorial candidate.

Be careful. We are likely nearing the end of the recent boom in innovation, and tech investors are overreaching, says Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Elad Gil. Gil, who’s spent years in key posts at Twitter and Google, and who’s currently invested in or advising private companies including AirBnB, Square, and Stripe, argues that as they search for the next technology wave, investors have begun to apply lofty software-company-level valuations to industries that are traditionally less profitable.

As climate change accelerates, a handful of scientists are eager to move ahead with experiments testing ways to counteract warming artificially. Their reasoning: we just might get desperate enough to use this technology one day.

When Thomas "Skinner" Galt leaves Greenwich Village to volunteer as an ambulance driver with the British Army, he anticipates the adventure of a lifetime. What he fails to understand is that no matter where he comes from or how many books he has read, once he dons a military uniform, his life will cease to be his own.

Seen something strange growing in a petri dish in a friend’s basement? Know an angry graduate student working odd hours in a pathogen lab? You might want to call Edward You.

Smartphones can tell you when to depart for the airport to make your flight, provide voice-guided directions on the way there, and route around traffic jams. But if you wanted to get audio directions to a specific counter at the airport, you’d be out of luck. That requires a phone to understand its position in great detail, all on its own - even when it is deep inside a building, beyond the reach of GPS signals. Even the most sophisticated phones can’t do that.

In any discussion of biohacking, Exhibit A is likely to be the "glowing plant," the wildly successful 2013 Kickstarter campaign that raised $484,013 to create bioluminescent plants visible at night.

Rising temperatures due to climate change will strongly affect economic growth around the world, making some countries richer and some poorer.

Advocates for the visually impaired are talking to companies and legislators about developing vehicles they will be able to drive independently.

"Welcome to You.” So says the genetic test kit that 23andMe will send to your home. Pay $199, spit in a tube, and several weeks later you’ll get a peek into your DNA. Have you got the gene for blond hair? Which of 36 disease risks could you pass to a child?