Sep 27, 2018
Our society, perhaps more than any other, is obsessed by tech. In it, we place our hope of better, happier, healthier, and more productive lives. However, such things are not for the far distant future. In fact, we are on the very cusp of integrating many such innovations into current society right now. Read on to find out more.
Graphene
First of all, let’s look at a specific material that could revolutionize the way many of us live. It’s called Graphene and made from carbon that is only 1 single atom thick. This is such a big deal because, despite its nano size, it is in fact hugely strong, conductive, and still retains its flexibility.
What this means is that there are almost too many potential applications for graphene to mention. With top uses including scientific research equipment such as these super sensitive GFET Transistors, and bulletproof armor that is lightweight and flexible. There are even folks that are attempting to use graphene for filtering salt water, something that can quickly and simply make it safe to drink. Now that really could revolutionize the world we live in!
Electric cars
The chances are that you spend quite a bit of money on fuel for your vehicle and rely on it to get you to work, the stores, and take the kids to school. However, things are about to change big time in this area, and I’m not just talking about the advent of self-driving vehicles either.
In fact, what I am referring to here is the electric car, something that has the potential to revolutionize all of our lives. The first way it could do this is by reducing a massive amount of the air pollution that dogs many major cities and is known to be damaging our atmosphere currently.
Of course, that is just for starters because field leaders like Tesla believe that they can make refueling entirely free for all customers, shortly via their stations. Imagine that, not having to pay for petrol, gas or diesel anymore, and still being able to travel wherever you like!
Video medical appointments
Imagine having access to a fully qualified doctor or psychiatrist 24/7 no matter where you are? Well, that is the model we seem to be currently working toward with the raft of new medical services offered via the video function on your smartphone.
In fact, the whole system is straightforward and just requires you to log on a few minutes before you need an appointment and talk to a qualified professional on the other end. Of course, it’s only viable for conditions that don’t require a physical examination at this point, but with the advent of VR, who knows how far we could push the tech?
Video medical consultations are mostly a paid service in the UK and USA right now, but some providers are trialing it instead of the traditional surgery consultations. A development that could have enormous ramifications for convenience, time, traffic congestion, and even controlling disease vectors. Life changing indeed!
Sep 27, 2018
We live in the 21st century and the days when armed robbers would steal people’s money are long gone. These days, the biggest threat comes from the internet. The problem is that no matter how hard you try to stay safe and secure, there’s always some risk. And that goes double when your business is in question.
Cybercriminals aren’t too much interested in stealing your personal file stored on your PC. They don’t have any use of your holiday photos or family videos; their goal is to get ahold of your business documents.
In this day and age, most businesses do their work online, which is why they’re always a potential target for hackers. And hacker attacks happen all the time. A recent report has shown that over 4,000 businesses are affected by them every day on average.
This means that if you still haven’t had any experience with it, it doesn’t mean your business is not attractive to them; it only means that it wasn’t your turn yet!
Preventing Cyber Attacks
Better safe than sorry – this should be your rule if you want to ensure the security of your company. And that means that you need to do all in your power to increase your cybersecurity levels. Getting a subscription to a good cybersecurity software goes without saying, but that won’t be enough to keep your business protected. The real threat to your company’s cybersecurity lies within it. We’re talking about your employees!
Don’t worry, we’re not saying that they’re spies planted by some shady organization with the intention to bring your company to ashes. We’re just saying that if they’re not aware of the dangers lurking at every corner of the internet, they may unintentionally open the doors to your company to malicious hackers. The solution is to raise awareness about the dangers of the online world and the best way to do it is to have your employees go through a cybersecurity training!
What Kind of Cybersecurity Training Is Best for Your Staff?
There are different types of cybersecurity training available and it’s up to you to choose the best one for your team. To help you out with making the right decision, here are some of those types together with a few words about each one of them.
- Classroom training – The instructors will come by your offices and teach your employees how to stay safe and secure while browsing the internet.
- Online training – This seems to be the preferred choice for most employees. The reason? They can have their lessons from the comfort of their home, coffee shop, and what not.
- Simulated hacker attacks – Perhaps the best way to see how good your employees actually are in ensuring the cybersecurity of your business is to put them to a test. The instructors will run simulated attacks, which your staff needs to recognize successfully and then deal with them.
If you’re still not convinced that Cybersecurity Training is what your staff needs, make sure to check out the infographic below!
Sep 5, 2018
The eternal question about technology has been first asked by sci-fi authors:
Is technology the surest sign that humanity is going to survive into the future or is technology going to be the end of humanity?
More recently the late Stephen Hawking also shares his worried about the future of mankind, stating that the end might be coming a lot sooner than expected as a result of our love of technology. While it would be unfair to dismiss technology as the evil of all root – after all, don’t you rely on technology right now to read this article? –, it is also important to be realistic about the use we make of it. For better or for worse, technology is a part of everybody’s life. Without denying the increasing risks of creating machines that capable of self-learning, it can be useful to explore how people can make technology a tool of self-improvement, rather than a gadget that thinks for you.
Google driverless car
Are high tech cars better drivers?
When still recently the news related fatalities as the result of self-driving vehicles, , it can be tricky to talk about safety in the car. However, it wouldn’t be fair to reject the idea that cars can’t be equipped to look after their passengers in the best possible way. In fact, modern vehicles are already packed with gadgets and high tech features that make sure to reduce the risk of accidents for drivers. The process of creating a driverless vehicle is still to reach a positive and satisfactory conclusion. However, you can expect current trials and errors to feed the inventions of tomorrow. The idea is that the mistakes of today can be the success of tomorrow, as long as it pushes people to become more innovative and adaptive. In the long term, in a world where all cars are driverless, mobility, traffic jams, and road rage could be eradicated from the planet.
Increasing kids curiosity
Does technology make people more intelligent? Perhaps not exactly. But tech gadgets can encourage user’s scientific curiosity. A child playing with remote-controlled toys can gain an interest in electronics. A child who is introduced to remote drones – you can find here the best beginner guide for drones – can explore the marvels of physics as well, as it’s a natural thing that to wonder how to toy can fly. There is no guarantee that every kid who plays with tech items will learn from them, but an early introduction can lead to a desire to find out more.
Pique kids’ curiosity
Solving problems by yourself
You might not be an IT genius, but there is no age to take on a hobby. Raspberry Pi, for instance, has developed a child-friendly computer to encourage the young generation to get creative. However, as more and more adults are buying starting kits and discovering a new passion, the world is flooded with cool and creative inventions. In 2017, a developer set with his Raspberry Pi a one-click button to start playing your favorite playlist – perfect for a children’s party.
Is tech a blessing or a curse? It’s an open question. But the introduction of technology into our lives has helped more and more people to learn new skills and improve their knowledge. In that sense, tech is indeed making us better.
Sep 3, 2018
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Technology is changing everything in our lives, including transport. Every week there is something in the media about the progress that is being made. With most countries now having a time limit on the use of petrol and diesel cars, finding other modes of transport is a problem that many developers are trying to solve.
Electric Road Vehicles
Electric vehicles for the roads could be one solution, and they are already here. As more charging points are being installed, more people are turning to electric vehicles. They are quieter and more economical. The first best-seller will be the one that comes up with a way of making the charge last a lot longer than they do at the moment.
Self-Driving Vehicles
There has been a race among vehicles makers to be the first to produce a safe self-driving vehicle, and many of them are in the late stages of development. Unfortunately, there have been several high profile crashes that have not inspired the confidence of the public. So far, these crashes have involved self-drive cars, but how much worse could they have been if the self-drive vehicle is a bus, for example, like the one Mercedes are developing.
Concept Planes
Taking to the sky’s to get out of the heavy traffic in the big cities is a dream many people have when they are sitting in the rush hour each morning. Several solutions are being offered for this one, including the Volante Vision Concept being developed by Cranfield Aerospace in partnership with Rolls Royce and Aston Martin. Flying cars is another option, although the development of those is in its very early stages. Toyota is just one of the companies looking at this possibility.
Monorails
Monorails are not a new technology, but the autonomous SkyTran is. It can cut a two-hour car journey to just 10 minutes because of its 155 mph capabilities. This high=tech system will predict where and when extra pods are needed and will make sure they are there at that time. Using it is easy too. You just go to a station, punch in the destination you want to reach and it assigns you to a pod that is heading there.
Unlike railways stations, the stations needed for SkyTran are quite small, so building plenty of them will not be such a huge challenge.
Hyperloops
Hyperloops are still a dream at the moment but there are two companies racing to be the first success with them. They involve pods traveling through tunnels by speed as much as 500mph. They will make travel quicker, more efficient and as they will be in an enclosed environment, will not have delays caused by the weather.
Reusable Rockets
Reusable rockets have attracted much media attention in the last few months, but as yet it is not certain how many people would actually use them. Elon Musk has said he wants to use them to land people on Mars in just 9 years time, but at the moment there is some doubt if people will want to travel on the first few. They need to see they are safe first of all, and that they are not just abandoned on Mars.
These are just some of the likely vehicles for the future. There will no doubt be many more, some we will love and some we ill hate, but that will not stop the developers from having a go.
Sep 3, 2018
Car accidents happen far more often than we like to admit. If you’ve never been in one, then you’re probably in the minority. Since the very first car accident, people have been working on ways to reduce their frequency and make the roads a safer place.
Now, with rapid advancements in modern technology, there’s one fundamental question; can tech put an end to auto accidents for good?
We know there are already vehicle safety systems and other things in place to help prevent accidents or make them less deadly. But, will we ever reach a point where there are barely any accidents on the roads?
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What causes car accidents?
So many things can cause one car to crash into something else. Speeding is a major one, as is reckless driving or driving while drunk. But, if you speak to a car accident lawyer, they tend to say the main cause is distracted driving. If you’re not fully attentive – because you’re texting or singing along to some tunes – then there’s a high chance an accident will happen.
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How can technology help?
By looking at some causes, we can try to see ways technology might help prevent accidents. As mentioned before, we have vehicle safety systems that are already trying. They have things like automatic braking sensors that help a car come to an emergency stop if the driver isn’t paying full attention. Surely, as time goes by, this technology will get even better and can help negate some of the accidents caused by distracted driving.
Likewise, we could maybe see things like lane control or assisted steering technology that kicks in when someone swerves out of a lane and corrects it for the driver. Again, this can stop distracted driving accidents, and reckless driving as well.
To add to this, there is already a piece of technology out there that’s used to restrict the speed a car can reach. Things like this can easily prevent speeding and reduce accidents caused by that factor.
Thinking further into the future, what if someone developed a sensor that worked like a breathalyzer test and locked a car down if high levels of alcohol were detected in the driver. This would be potentially revolutionary as it stops drunk people from driving and causing fatal accidents.
Then, we have the idea of humans not even driving cars at all. Autonomous car technology is kind of the big thing right now, but would an AI controlled car be safer or not? If all cars ended up controlled by AI, then it’s possible.
Will technology put an end to car accidents?
I doubt we’ll ever live in a world where there are no car accidents. But, if car safety technology keeps advancing at the current rate, then we’ll 100% see fewer auto accidents. It’s all about coming up with technological solutions to address the main causes of accidents. Think about how much money and how many lives are lost to car accidents all over the country. This is definitely something car manufacturers should be focusing on, and I look forward to seeing what lies ahead.
Aug 31, 2018
With summers seemingly getting longer and hotter, and more turbulent weather than we have ever experienced on record, it’s no wonder people are thinking about the climate. However, our impact on the environment goes a lot deeper than we might imagine. Here are the major crises we’re facing and what we can do about them.
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We have a growing plastic crisis
Pollution is a huge issue right now and plastics are one of the greatest contributors to that issue. Out of all the plastic we use, we use 50% once before throwing it away. This has led to billions of pounds of plastic floating in over 40% of the ocean’s surface. Green businesses are turning away from plastics, such as no longer using or selling plastic straws, or offering renewable materials for packaging. Changing how we consume could make a huge dent in the plastic pollution we produce.
We’re endangering our ecosystem
An estimated 150-200 species go extinct every 24 hours. We may not notice many of them, but almost everyone is noticing that bees are dying at an alarming rate. Bees have become the de-facto mascot of our growing biodiversity issue. As we encroach on the natural environment more and use pesticides and fertilizer, our native pollinators are some of the species at greatest risk. However, The Unfolding Earth highlights some examples of how you can create a safe haven for your own environment’s wildlife in your own garden.
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We’re poisoning our water
The use of pesticide and fertilizer impact not only the animals around us, but the water we drink, too. Furthermore, as WHQR shows, there are more and more reports surfacing about highly dangerous contaminants like GenX being found in our water supplies thanks to unregulated chemicals in industrial use. Besides limiting your own use of chemicals that can infiltrate our groundwater, you can make sure you and your family have safer water to drink and cook using reverse osmosis filters on your sinks.
We might even be making hurricanes worse
There is proof to suggest that Hurricanes Harvey and Irma were made worse thanks to our own impact on the water. Rising water levels and temperatures may have played a part in the devastation of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. A year later, these communities are still rebuilding thanks to the efforts of volunteers and local businesses like Cane Bay Partners starting initiatives to provide generators, clean drinking water, and more. While doing our part to reduce our use of the resources that play a hand in climate change, it’s important to donate what time and money we can to rebuild, too.
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Our forests keep shrinking
A major contributor to not only the shrinking biodiversity of our ecosystems but also climate change, deforestation continues to represent a growing threat to life on Earth as we know it. As One Green Planet shows, one of the efforts taken to combat this is volunteer vacations to rainforests around the world that include protecting endangered species and helping to study the impact of logging.
It might all seem like doom and gloom. Individually, we can only contribute a little towards decreasing the impact we’re making on the planet. However, by being informed, we can be more aware of the greater change we can affecting when it comes to how we vote towards environmentally-friendly policy.
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