Britain’s Royal Mint unveils the most secure coin in the world
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The Royal Mint calls its new £1 coin a “pioneering” design and says that it will be much harder to counterfeit. Having a currency that is hard to counterfeit is not only a matter of national security but it also helps to build confidence...
Inside Ginkgo, the gene factory where robots help make new weird synthetic organisms
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Creating new lifeforms sounds like fun and they taste great too. Raising glasses of genetically modified beer, the synthetic biologists at Ginkgo Bioworks celebrated the launch of their new automated lab last month and you can take a virtual tour of their facility here. By...
Panasonic unveil an invisible TV that doubles as the heart of your connected home
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Invisible TV’s and electronics have been touted for years but now Panasonic have cracked it. Since the arrival of flatscreen TVs back in the early 2000’s there’s not been a whole lot to get excited about in the world of televisions – after all,...
Scientists create breakthrough everything-phobic nanomaterial
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Sadly ANU’s new everything-phobic spray won’t keep children clean but everything else is game. If you have not been able to bag an iPhone 7 or are still looking jealously at your friend’s dunk proof Galaxy, do not worry as scientists have created a...
Google teaches robots to learn from each other using a hive mind
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Robots learning from other robots will ultimately mean robots will learn new skills faster, accelerating the robot revolution. The robots of the world are uniting – and that’s either a great thing or a terrifying thing depending on your view. Google has a plan to...
Scientists discover a way to 3D print bone on the fly
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Doctors will be able to treat people with broken, or missing bones faster than ever before. If you shatter a bone in the future, a 3D printer and some special ink could be your best medicine. Researchers have created what they call “hyperelastic bone”...
Dubai announces plans to put the entire Emirate onto the blockchain
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Dubai wants to become less dependent on oil and the emirate is rapidly becoming one of the most progressive nations in the world. Earlier this week, at an event hosted by the Dubai Future Foundation and the Smart Dubai Office, the Crown Prince of Dubai announced...
New programmable material breakthrough lets plastic flowers bloom
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Who needs to buy real flowers any longer when plastic ones are good enough? Tick tock. Shape-shifting objects can now have their own version of a biological clock, thanks to a new material that transforms at a given time. Morphing materials are interesting because...
Wanxiang announces plans to use Blockchain to underpin it’s $30 Billion Smarter Cities program
WHYTHIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Blockchains momentum keeps rolling on with another company announcing another major push. Another company jumped on the blockchain bandwagon in a big way, with Wanxiang’s $30 billion smart city project. The Chinese electric car maker announced the mega-project at last weeks Global Blockchain Summit. Wanxiang said...
The future of jobs in a Machine World
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are all aware that technology is capable of replacing particular categories of jobs, but often those jobs “belong to someone else” and the impact on our own jobs is minimal. Today though new classes of emerging technologies, from artificial intelligence to machine vision are...
3D printed ovaries help infertile mice give birth
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF 3D printing could give infertile couples new hope. Northwestern University scientists have created a prosthetic ovary using a 3D printer – an implant that allowed mice that had their ovaries surgically removed to bear live young and the results will be presented at the Endocrine Society’s...
Ford rolls out collaborative robots and ringfences workers jobs
We’re used to hearing about how robots will take our jobs so meet the co-bots that help us keep them With factories across the globe filling up with robots, often replacing workers on assembly lines or by transporting packages across the plant, human fears of being substituted by a machine...
Scientists travel to the edge of space to 3D print a heart
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF 3D bioprinting has long held the promise of ending organ donation lists, now there’s an end in sight. A team of scientists working for the NASA and SpaceX contractor Techshot have become the first people in history to successfully 3D print a heart structure in zero gravity using human...
Nano watermarks sort the fakes from the originals
New nanotechnology aims to put a dent in the $745 billion counterfeit goods market Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed a technique for embedding nanoscale photonic crystals into the glass face of a watch so that when it is exposed to UV light, the design...
BAE’s trials a molecular assembler that one day will grow drones in the field
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Growing your own products just became a thing. If you needed to be convinced just how fast technology is progressing then think of this. For Millennia humans have assembled individual, pre crafted components together to make products of every shape and form. In 1986...
Nature, the world’s new factory
Nature has always been more efficient at making products than Man but now we’re harnessing it for our own ends Most people would agree we still have much to learn from nature. Nature is vastly more efficient at recycling and reusing matter than humans have been. The whole field and...
The future of jobs and education
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI and other Robo automation tools and technologies become increasingly proficient it is increasingly clear that more and more jobs will suffer the same fate – automation. Life is a learning experience, or so they say. Broadly speaking educational activities can be split...
Self assembling space stations and the end of flat pack
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF 4D Printing could change how we construct buildings and maintain city infrastructure. Many are only just getting their heads around the idea of 3D printing but scientists at MIT are already working on an upgrade – 4D printing. At the TED conference in Los Angeles,...
CIO Innovation Series: Nick Burton, Head of ICT and Digital at Belron Group
Despite having over 26,500 employees operating out of more than 34 countries in five continents, I’d suggest that Belron® is not a company you’re going to be instantly familiar with; but similarly I’d be very surprised if you hadn’t heard of, or even used the services of their most recognised...
