Fantastic self-healing material regenerates after suffering “catastrophic damage”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There are lots of dangerous industrial applications, and other use cases, where equipment of all kinds suffer extreme wear and tear, this new material could extend the life of products by multiples of time. The idea of creating self-repairing machines has been a popular...
Stab these soft robots and they’ll self-heal instantly
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Materials are an integral part of many products, and ones that can self-heal will help extend the life and usefulness of the products they’re used to make. Robots already seem to have a great bag of tricks to draw on. They can balance, run,...
Futurist in Reading: Adapt or Die, Cherwell European Conference
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The pace of change, and disruption, is accelerating. In this presentation I show just how fast, and how crazy, the world’s business environment is getting, it’s impact on every sector, and what you can do to future proof yourself. Firstly, I’d like to thank...
UC Berkeley’s atom thin display paves the way for truly invisible displays
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We’re traditionally used to displays being bulky and stiff, but increasingly scientists are finding new ways to create new types of displays that break the status quo, and which will open up millions of new use cases, from health monitoring to way beyond. We’ll...
Semi-synthetic cells could revolutionise everything from sensors to healthcare
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The ability to create semi-synthetic cells that have both organic and inorganic properties opens up a whole world of new use cases that span everything from biotech to new forms of manufacturing. The more we study natural biological cells, the more we learn about...
Under Armour’s new clothes help heal your body while sleeping
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As we develop new materials, and find new ways to use them for our benefit, one day in the future we’ll suddenly discover that clothes can do much more than clothe us. Could the right clothes, in this case pyjamas, help athletes, and the...
MIT invents a 3D printed dye that lets objects change colour on demand
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There is nothing to say that tomorrow’s products can’t change their colour, or even their functionality, on demand, and this is one of the first steps in helping achieve that goal. Do you remember the colour changing dress that took the internet by storm and went...
Blackberry’s AI Robo-hacker gets to work finding bugs in connected cars code
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As more products become reliant on software to function, and as programs get increasingly complex, human developers are finding it increasingly difficult to find and patch all the bugs and vulnerabilities. As cars, especially self-driving ones, become more reliant on software it’s critical automakers...
Molecular programming breakthrough could create better molecular assemblers
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As we learn how to create and build new, smaller molecular sized machines and robots being able to manipulate matter at the molecular scale will become increasingly important. Over the past couple of months there have been world firsts in the creation of DNA...
Chinese scientists unveil a new material that heals itself like human skin
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Up until now most self-healing materials have either been hard, or soft, and that narrows their number of applications, this new material is the first to have the best of both worlds. Imagine a smartphone, or window, that can heal from cuts and scratches...
Harvard’s Metalense breakthrough could pave the way for real invisibility cloaks
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Our ability to manipulate light is improving with every passing month, now a new Metalense breakthrough could help scientists create the first generation of genuine cloaking devices. For as long as human beings have been writing science fiction the dream of being able to...
Bioengineers hack biology to turn living tissue into any shape they want
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF One of the largest ascending mega trends is Synthetic Biology, and as our command and understanding of the natural world increases it will help transform our world in ways you never thought possible. It turns out that many of the complex folded shapes that...
World first as scientists manage to make carbon fiber using plants, not oil
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The knock on impact of being able to produce cheap carbon fiber at scale could help us create stronger, lighter drones, prosthetics and robots, as well as improve the fuel economy of all manner of vehicles, from aircraft to cars. Carbon fiber is the...
Scientists use sound tornadoes to create the world’s biggest tractor beam
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to levitate, move and manipulate objects without touching them will be especially useful in the fields of healthcare and manufacturing, and it’s also awesome. In the past researchers thought that acoustic tractor beams were limited to levitating only small objects because all...
LG unveils their giant rollable 65 inch and 88 inch Crystal Sound OLED TV’s
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Display and sound technology are starting to progress, and the fixed formats we’re used to are going to one day be replaced by more flexible, integrated systems. Last year Samsung showed off their new 11k display with naked eye 3D effect, and Panasonic showed...
America’s most powerful supercomputer is building superior AI’s
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF It normally takes human data scientists and the best AI’s weeks to build neural network software, but ORNL’s Titan supercomputer is building them in a day, and the AI’s it’s producing are far superior to anything humans can create. Last year, in a world...
Harvard revolutionises camera technology, invents Metalense
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Centuries after they were first invented most lenses are still made of plastic or glass and Harvard’s new metalense will revolutionise the industry and let us make cameras and lenses that, eventually, will be just atoms thick. Metalenses, flat surfaces that use nanostructures to...
MIT’s new Smart Tattoo is like having a doctor on your arm
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Wearables might not have taken off as much as anyone hoped but companies are still experimenting with new technologies that help us monitor and track our health better than before. Apparently there’s a common problem with health-tracking devices like smart watches and the other things that...
MIT’s Rapid Liquid Printing technology could be the future of furniture
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF 3D printing will undoubtedly change how the world makes goods, but it’s still expensive and slow, now we’re seeing a slew of new technologies that are trying to speed up manufacturing and change the game. Coming hot on the heels of another new 3D...
3D printed living inks breakthrough could revolutionise manufacturing
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Bacteria have some amazing capabilities and soon we’ll be able to harness them to help us 3D print and create new exotic materials and products like never before. This week researchers unveiled a new kind of 3D Printing platform that, rather than using the...
