China has created genetically modified monkeys using a new method of DNA engineering known as Crispr. The infant macaques show that targeted genome editing is feasible in primates—a potential boon for scientists studying complex diseases, including neurological ones, and an advance that suggests that the method could one day work in humans. The new study …
Elon Musk thinks there are five innovations that will change our lives in the decades ahead. * the Internet, an astonishing invention by which people can access knowledge from anywhere. * the transition to the sustainable production and consumption of energy. * the extension of human life to other planets, depending on how rapidly we …
At Davos in 2014, forecasters were focused on the pace of the U.S. economy and Federal Reserve tapering of monetary stimulus, the dizzying heights the U.S. stock market has reached, and the impact of those on the rest of the world, including widely expected tough times in emerging markets. There’s the future of China’s economy …
Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group, the leading global political risk research and consulting firm. Here he gives the talk “The Rise of the Different: Why the Global Order Doesn’t Work and What We Can Do About It.” His analysis focuses on global macro political trends and emerging markets, which he defines as …
One research paper could help make the algorithms that used on DWave’s adiabatic quantum annealing system faster. Arxiv – Diff erent Strategies for Optimization Using the Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm We present the results of a numerical study, with 20 qubits, of the performance of the Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm on randomly generated instances of MAX 2-SAT …
(Journal Nature) Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, is spewing water vapor out into space. In fact, Ceres might hold more water than Earth does. Over the next 2 years, NASA’s Dawn mission, which has already visited big asteroids such as Vesta, will arrive at Ceres to map the dwarf planet’s surface. And …
A Rice University wireless antenna rig, known as Argos, represents the largest such array yet built and will serve as a test bed for a concept known as “Massive MIMO.” MIMO, or “multiple-input, multiple-output,” is a wireless networking technique aimed at transferring data more efficiently by having several antennas work together to exploit a natural …
97 million Chinese tourists that traveled abroad in 2013. The UNWTO states that Chinese tourists saw an increase in travel expenditure of 28 percent in the first three quarters of 2013. A new report by Asia brokerage group CLSA predicts that the number will double in six years, hitting 200 million by 2020. The company …
China Mobile is expected to build out 13-14 thousand fiber lines between 400 cities across China. It is planned to be world’s largest 100Gigabit backbone deployment. Huawei is the biggest beneficiary of the 100G backbone build, with Alcatel-Lucent also participating in the project as the only non-Chinese vendor. 400 gigabit technology should be ready in …
The Eurasia Group lists its top ten geopolitical risks for 2014 In 2014, big-picture economics are stable if not yet comforting. The EU has clawed its way out of recession. Japan has, improbably, discovered economic leadership. The economic performance of China’s new government is strong. And the US re- bound is sufficiently robust for the …
Iceland let its banks fail in 2008 because they proved too big to save. Now, the island is finding crisis-management decisions made half a decade ago have put it on a trajectory that’s turned 2% unemployment into a realistic goal. The island’s sudden economic meltdown in October 2008 made international headlines as a debt-fueled banking …