Author: Nigel Pereira

With a background in Linux system administration, Nigel Pereira began his career with Symantec Antivirus Tech Support. He has now been a technology journalist for over 6 years and his interests lie in Cloud Computing, DevOps, AI, and enterprise technologies.

While many say a water-fueled car is impossible, the guy who built the first internal combustion engine thought otherwise. A car that runs on water would change the world, period. From an economy that practically runs on the petrodollar to the oil-rich countries that have grown wealthy beyond measure, a lot would change. That’s probably why many people believe the industrialists and oil tycoons of the world keep suppressing this invention every time it comes out. Stanley Meyer’s Water fuel cell concept. (Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons) The fact that Stanly Meyer, one of the first people to achieve fame by…

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True brilliance is always found in the most unsuspecting places, like who would think a slime mould could design a railroad? The world of microbiology is like an entire other planet that exists alongside us but is just too small to see. If you’ve watched the Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi or the hit post-apocalyptic show The Last of Us, you know exactly how beneficial or deadly this world can be. Image Credit: Netflix We don’t often think about microorganisms when we talk about intelligent creatures, in fact, most of us don’t think about microorganisms at all. What’s interesting about this…

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The problem, however explains Nigel, is that when you mess around with the genetic sequences of a human embryo, you could be causing a number of unknown mutations at the same time. Can you imagine a future where you could edit your genes to remove unwanted inherited diseases, conditions, or traits? While one scientist has already spent three years in jail for editing genes in human embryos to create “designer babies,” a future where this practice becomes commonplace is not unthinkable anymore. Gene editing is the process of using “molecular scissors” to cut away an unwanted strand of DNA and…

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Fionn Ferreira,an 18-year-old Chemistry student, discovered a new way to clean plastic from the ocean using Ferrofluid. A study in October last year revealed that the average person consumes about a credit card size worth of microplastics weekly. If that thought causes you anxiety, you’re not alone. Fionn Ferreira, an 18-year-old Chemistry student at Groninger University in the Netherlands at the time, was quoted stating ” I got really anxious when I found out about microplastics,” and explained how these pollutants will stay in our environment long after we stop using them. Anxiety can be a good thing sometimes, like…

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A parliamentary panel has recommended the use of AI and “tiny robots” to help offset the uphill economics of agriculture on small farms in India. If any of you have ever tried your hand at farming or even just growing vegetables in your backyard you would know that controlling weeds is a major part of the battle, especially if you’re growing organically in soil. While there are a lot of ways to mulch the soil and even use fabric to prevent weeds from eating your plant food, the whole process can be quite expensive as well as labor intensive depending…

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While technology isn’t at a place where it can resurrect our pets just yet, it is at a place where it can create genetically identical clones of them. Losing a pet is arguably the hardest day of a pet owner’s life and it doesn’t end there. What follows is often months and even years of longing and a sense of loss that isn’t easy to deal with. While technology isn’t at a place where it can resurrect our pets just yet, it is at a place where it can create genetically identical clones of them, provided of course that you…

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“All you have to do is internally articulate words as if you were silently reading and the device, wearable like a headset, picks up signals from your brain and converts them back to natural language”. The definition of telepathy is to be able to communicate with someone using only your mind. While we haven’t achieved that yet and are still restricted to either the written or spoken word or in some cases sign language, we can now communicate telepathically with computers. Designed by an Indian MIT student Arnav Kapur, the AlterEgo enables users to communicate with machines, AI assistants, online…

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“Yes, a simple WiFi signal can be used to spy on us through walls, a scary thought for people who value their privacy”, Nigel elaborates. Seeing through walls is an ability most people associate with Superman’s X-ray vision or James Bond’s X-ray sunglasses but scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have come up with a way to see through walls using a neural network and WiFi signals. While previous efforts by MIT researchers used radio waves to see through walls, the images were typically low resolution and difficult to use to identify people. WiFi signals, however, are apparently even better than…

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Chicken grown in a lab from cultivated cells has been approved for sale in the US, and no, we’re not talking about chickens raised in labs, says Nigel. It’s been over a month since everyone and their grandmother became experts on submersibles with the implosion of the Titan. While that was happening, however, one headline that quietly slipped by most people’s attention was the FDA’s approval of lab-grown or “guilt-free” meat. Yes, chicken grown in a lab from cultivated cells has been approved for sale in the US, and no, we’re not talking about chickens raised in labs. The process…

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While Jetpacks have mostly been part of science fiction till now, Domino’s Pizza seems to have made it a reality. From Mario to Dangerous Dave, Grand Theft Auto, and Subway Surfer, Jetpacks are part of life in the gaming community, and you don’t need to explain to a gamer how they work. For everyone else, however, Jetpacks are jet-powered devices that are wearable like a backpack and give the user the ability to fly. While Jetpacks have mostly been part of science fiction till now, Domino’s Pizza seems to have made it a reality. In a video that has since…

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