Emerging trends in technology and new developments in science will affect the way we live. Chris Jablonski selects and analyzes news about our future that you'll almost never find anywhere else.
Christopher Jablonski is a freelance technology writer.
Finding extrasolar planets is quite difficult mainly because of three basic facts: planets don't produce any light of their own; they are far from us; and they are lost in the blinding glare of their parent stars. But now, NASA engineers have found a way to eliminate this blinding light, and this is "a giant step toward finding Earth-like planets."
The U.S. DARPA Agency is starting a new project to develop computer software able to learn and reason in complex military planning jobs by being shown how to perform a task only once. The goal is to replace some military decision by software technology within four years.
Researchers at the University of Manchester have studied the fungal contamination of our pillows for the first time in seventy years and discovered that they were hot beds of fungal spores, with some species able to cause diseases and even death.
A robot built by the University of Singapore is about to drill inside the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Giza, Egypt, to discover if King Khufu's burial tomb is still hidden inside the pyramid.
A collaboration between computer scientists and researchers in their labs has lead to some virtual experiments which are improving combustion efficiency by simulating the combustion process with unmatched accuracy. Will it be enough to reduce the cost of filling your tank? Probably not.
A team of Israeli scientists has discovered a very innovative way to detect people suffering from anxiety disorders: a simple and inexpensive blood test which should be available next year.
A Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) computer scientist has developed a new method to simulate collisions of objects which is a thousand times faster than previous ones. This method could be used for applications in computer-generated animation and video games, but also for surgical simulations or drug design.
Two professors of the University of Texas at Arlington have developed a computer program that can find patterns in data represented as graphs. But what's more important is that this program can learn from its own discoveries. The first potential application is about counter-terrorism.
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have used a laser amplifier to slow light at room temperature at a speed slower than sound in air. This could lead to faster communication networks and change the world of optical memories and storage.
A U.K. startup company, Omneta plc, is about to build a distributed supercluster able to reach a peak performance of 120 teraflops for a sustained performance of about 70 teraflops. This supercomputer, which would become the most powerful in Europe, will be made of several thousands of Apple Xserve G5 servers and should be commercially available next year.