It may look like a toy, but a centrifuge made out of paper could dramatically cut the cost of analyzing blood and diagnosing diseases like malaria in places where standard medical equipment is hard to come by. The device, called the Paperfuge, …Continue reading
Amazon May Be the Next Tech Giant Muscling Into Health Care
At this point, there’s very little that Amazon isn’t involved in, or at least exploring: personal AI assistants, cloud services, TV shows, furniture, groceries … hell, it even finds time to sell the occasional book. So it shouldn’t come…
It Pays to Be Smart
Our economy is increasingly ruled by a few dominant firms. We see them everywhere, from established giants Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Walmart to fast-growing newcomers like Airbnb, Tesla, and Uber. There have always been large companies and…
Improving Global Food Security with a Device That Sweats
An idea over 4,000 years old may hold the key to the future of refrigeration without electricity. A startup called Evaptainers, based in Somerville, Massachusetts, is designing food-storage containers that cool food using evaporative cooling—the same process that keeps us cool when …Continue reading
How Dirty Is Your Air?
I didn’t know it, but the eggs my boys were cooking for themselves each morning were putting me at risk of premature death. The danger wasn’t the eggs per se, but tiny cooking oil particulates that the stove’s heat was launching into …Continue reading
The Chinese News App with 600 Million Users That You’ve Never Heard Of
Inside the offices of Toutiao, it’s hard to tell you’re just outside of Beijing and not in the heart of Silicon Valley. The walls are decorated with stylish graffiti, and there are all the usual perks: a game room, a gym, and …Continue reading
Treating Addiction with an App
Using smartphone data and artificial intelligence to track and interpret behavior, a Chicago startup is attempting something extraordinary: predicting and preventing relapse into drug use. When I spoke to Tasha Hedstrom this winter, she had been sober for more than 61 days. …Continue reading
Actually, Steve Mnuchin, Robots Have Already Affected the U.S. Labor Market
The suggestion that job loss due to automation is 50 years off is laughable—and there’s finally some data to prove it. The idea that automation isn’t harming American jobs is plainly false, according to a newly published analysis of the impact of …Continue reading
Tech Companies Say Trump’s Immigration Ban Is Bad for Business
With the Trump administration’s immigration ban in limbo in federal court, tech companies are taking the opportunity to weigh in. News emerged Sunday night that 97 companies, most of them from the tech sector, had filed an amicus brief opposing the president’s executive …Continue reading
Asia’s E-Waste Problem Is Getting Out of Hand
Asia has an e-waste problem. But it’s not the amount of dead gadgets that’s the issue, really—it’s the ability to process them at the end of their lives. New research from the United Nations University shows that in 2014 Asia generated 16 million metric tons …Continue reading