Betaenglish: grouth
English: growth
Spanish: crecimiento
1897. Keep your gadgety green fingers clean with the USB greenhouse
And still the crazy USB gadgets keep coming. The latest novelty from Brando is the USB Greenhouse, which lets you grow drugs plants on your desktop without worrying about whether they're getting enough sunlight.
Pros: Your computer keeps tabs on the growth status of your foliage, and you get free Marigold seeds with it. Cons: When future generations look back at the early 21st century, they'll wonder why we were piddling about with USB greenhouses while the rainforests died.
2134. Robot love: South Korea to build robot theme parks
South Korea officials today said they hope to build two robot theme parks for $1.6 billion by 2013, saying they consider robotics to be one of South Korea's key growth industries, emphasizing "service robots" that can clean homes and offer up enterta...
2160. The End of Oil is Upon Us. We Must Move On - Quickly.
The International Energy Agency states in no uncertain terms in its annual World Energy Outlook that "alarming" growth in worldwide energy needs will within a generation threaten energy security, accelerate global climate change and possibly bring wo...
2623. Apple Store 14th Street press preview
Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets
We got a chance to preview the new Manhattan Apple Store this morning before the official unveiling tomorrow at 6PM. The store is nicely situated on W. 14th St. and 9th Ave., and while Apple did its best to blend into the existing early 20th century architecture, it's still a hard one to miss. The store itself is lacking the glass elevator of its 5th Ave. counterpart, but makes up for it with an epic three story glass staircase. It's the second-largest Apple Store in the US, with a full floor dedicated to service -- the genius bar can handle about 30 customers per hour. There are 175 employees total, and the store will be open until midnight every day of the week. We asked Ron Johnson, Apple's Senior VP of Retail, about how the growth of Apple into kiosks at other retail establishments such as Best Buy is impacting Apple Retail, and he responded that there's "plenty of room" for both, since Apple just had its best quarter ever in Mac sales and at Apple Stores simultaneously. He did say the ratio of new stores is going to move a bit more in the international direction, since there's a lot of room to grow there. We also asked about Genius Bar wait times, and he assured us that it's something Apple monitors constantly and continues to add staff to address.
Gallery: Apple Store 14th Street press preview
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2676. Unmanned Aircraft Will Test Air Traffic Control
coondoggie writes "While the skies aren't exactly buzzing with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) just yet, experts are warning their explosive growth will require military and public officials to address the issue sooner than they might think. The four chiefs of service aviation and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) branches told the Army Aviation Association of America's unmanned aircraft symposium last week that the military should crystallize combat air control regarding UAVs, while domestic authorities must work out access and use of UAVs in domestic airspace. "I'm surprised we haven't had a collision yet," said Rear Adm. Joseph Aucoin, director of the Navy's aviation plans and requirements branch."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
2818. Renewables investments seen over $100 bln in 2007
World annual investments in renewable energy will top $100 billion for the first time in 2007, led by wind power, according to a report issued at United Nations climate talks on Saturday. For wind power, growth has been about 25-30 percent a year ...
2819. Immune system can drive cancers into dormant state
A multinational team of researchers has shown for the first time that the immune system can stop the growth of a cancerous tumor without actually killing it. When the cancer can't be killed with immune attacks, it may be possible to find ways to u...
2936. DoCoMo and other Asian carriers eyeing FCC auction?
Filed under: Wireless
Everybody is sworn to silence until the auction is over, so we won't be seeing much more information about this until it's all over in the spring of next year, but for now it's still fun to speculate. Business Week is doing quite a bit of that speculating as well, with word that DoCoMo, KDDI, SK Telecom and even China (through the T-Mobile and Global Tower invested Blackstone Group) could be chipping in a few billion here and there to spice things up for Google and friends in the 700MHz C Block auction. DoCoMo, which got burned in the US a while back with pre-Cingular AT&T Wireless, mentioned to Business Week that it'd be interested in partnering with Google for its wireless network, and the other carrier might not be talking but have to be at least considering the possibility of being involved in US wireless data in a big way, and KDDI has a history of being chummy with Google in Japan. The word is that average North American data service bills are less than $10 a month, and are expected to grow to $38+ a month by 2012 -- and who wouldn't want in on that action? As growth slows in Europe and Asia, it seems only natural for the innovators over there to head over here and kick things into gear, but we'll try not too far ahead of ourselves.
[Via The Inquirer] Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
2959. Keeping at-risk cells from developing cancer
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that cancers arising from epigenetic changes -- in this case the inappropriate activation of a normally silent gene -- develop by becoming addicted to certain growth factors. The research team showed t...