The Mexican capital is revamping its international airport, with a new terminal designed by star architect Norman Foster that will double capacity, save energy and dazzle the eyes.
Category: Future
PARIS — The stage is set in the middle of the vast, empty and decidedly cold shed of the Halle Freyssinet, a building formerly used as a shipment hub for trains and trucks near the Austerlitz railway station in Paris. After the presidential lectern is installed, with French and European flags in the background, in […]
A new Swiss study suggests that playing video games, especially first-person shooter games like GTA and Call of Duty, facilitates the kind of learning that could be useful for other tasks.
The former chief of Israel’s elite intelligence unit addresses a technology conference, waxing on privacy, cyber war and a new generation used to documenting and sharing everything.
Referred to as ‘sponsored content,’ it is the Internet’s way of blurring lines between information and advertising – and Outbrain is leading the charge ahead of a reported $1 billion IPO.
More and more Chinese are going under the knife for cosmetic reasons, and many admit that they do it for a very specific quest for a spouse or job.
TURIN — How many times have you shopped at a market and found yourself admiring a bag or wallet, wondering whether it was really made by the famous brand displayed on its label? Thanks to the camera on your smartphone and a forthcoming app, it soon will be possible to verify, in real time, whether […]
MUNICH — For people driving through Germany in a normal car, things couldn’t be easier. With just a single debit card, they can refuel everywhere at anytime. That is not, unfortunately, the case for people who drive electric cars. To travel, let’s say, from Wolfsburg via Stuttgart and Munich to Berlin and back, that person […]
KAAFU ATOLL — The Maldives are slowly sinking, as coral reefs off the coasts of the islands have been destroyed and washed ashore because of warming water temperatures, all of which means sand isn’t propagating as it should. That’s why Thomas Le Berre is dragging an iron frame along the beach of Kuda Huraa. With […]
Generali will be Europe’s first insurer to link use of personal digital applications and ‘big data’ to insurance rates. But in Germany, fears about privacy and ‘atomization’ of insurance.
Reducing the strain on the environment, and opting out of a “growth-at-all-costs” logic, may be the only path forward for the future. And it will require the smartest new ideas.
BEIJING — The Mexican government announced Nov. 4 that it had awarded its first high-speed rail contract to a Chinese-led consortium. But as the exciting news was still buzzing in the Chinese press, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto suddenly canceled the deal five days later. As the media later reported, the consortium led by China […]
BERLIN — The problem weighs nearly 300,000 tons. Tubes, generators, a concrete containment shell. And there is a gigantic volume of steel and scrap material alone at the former atomic power station in Obrigheim in the state of Baden-Württemberg. The most dangerous work on the highly radioactive materials is done by robot. Nine years after […]
BEIJING — The world now produces over four billion tons of waste every year. China buys some of it — mainly scrap metal, plastic and paper — to feed demand from factories and construction companies. Here on Dongzhimenwai, a street in downtown Beijing, people gather to sell their waste. Old ladies line up with carts of plastic bottles, stacks of newspapers and even bits of toys and metal kitchenware they’ve collected. The plastic bottles are melted down to make everything from acrylic clothing to electronics. Buyer Liu Aiguo explains what happens to this so-called trash once it’s in his hands. […]
A 6.6-billion-kilometer space mission flew with the spirit of Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral and some of the old continent’s other great achievements of vision and steadfastness.
Categories
Climate Change Clues From The Ice Age
Studying artifacts from 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, scientists now understand more than before about how climate change affected human behavior.
RADOLFZELL — Biologist Martin Wikelski put sensors on goats living on Italy’s Mount Etna and watched what happened. He found that if you watched their movements, you could predict when there would be volcanic eruptions. So now he wants to do satellite research on how animals roam and escape on a world scale. What happened […]
CAIRO — In February 2014, the Egyptian military announced that it had found a cure for AIDS and hepatitis. This supposed miracle of medical technology was developed by the Armed Forces’ Engineering Authority, which claims to use electromagnetic waves to eradicate the viruses in infected blood. Known as the Complete Cure, or CC for short, […]
The Russian capital has invested in new mobile applications aimed to better aid and involve citizens. The results are mixed: parking app is good, democracy app not so much.
Especially since the breakthrough on the Higgs Boson particle, running CERN in Geneva may be the most influential job in physics. For the first time it will be filled by a woman.
After its annexation of Crimea, Moscow is hoping to accelerate a long dormant project to build a bridge connecting Russia across the Kerch Strait. But there is the Sochi lesson to consider.
Laughter in hospitals can actually help ease pain for patients, particularly children. Experts in the field, from doctors to red-nosed clowns, gathered in Florence to trade notes … and gags.
REGENSBURG — A day in the life of Sister Lydia: 4:45 a.m.: get up. 5:40 a.m.: prayer, 30 minutes. 6:15 a.m.: Divine Office, 30 minutes. 7 a.m.: Holy Mass. 7:45 a.m.: breakfast. 8 to 11 a.m.: work. 11 a.m.: Divine Office, 30 minutes. 11:30 a.m.: Lunch followed by kitchen work and rest. In the afternoon: […]
LEIMBACH — At first glance, nothing distinguishes this apartment building on the outskirts of Zurich from those around it. Located on the upper reaches of a peaceful neighborhood in Leimbach, Switzerland, its sandy-colored walls are surrounded by a wild and vast garden. The tall trees of the Entlisberg Forest, perched on the nearby mountain, cast […]
BERLIN — Worldwide researchers are experimenting increasingly with moss, algae and potted plants as a way to turn houses into multifunctional buildings. The question is “how a facade in a city neighborhood can generate additional value,” says Steffen Braun of the Stuttgart Fraunhofer Institute’s Urban System Engineering. Behind that lies “a whole new approach to […]
Unlike with Washington, Moscow and Beijing agree on how the state can monitor the Internet. Kommersant reports on a new Sino-Russia partnership set to be signed next month.
Looking at the business fundamentals, there are both very good and very bad signs for Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella. Is there a (positive) lesson in IBM’s evolution?
DALLAS — Greg Lucas wasn’t feeling at the top of his game. He’d gained weight, and the machines at the gym filled him with apprehension. “Sex wasn’t tops, but that wasn’t the problem,” he says. “I felt tired. I was dragging myself around.” Lucas was then 25 years old. He decided to go and see […]
MUNICH — Tobias Fröhlich no longer wears a suit and tie to work. The former BMW salesman dons a white polo shirt and blue trousers for his job at a new branch of the Munich firm where he greets customers with a smile, iPad in hand. Fröhlich is a “product genius” and as such is […]
German wildlife authorities worry about the rapid spread of contagious diseases along the North Sea, especially since seals lie so close to one another when they rest on sand banks.
The only way to eradicate the destructive lionfish, non-native to the Atlantic Ocean and now endangering prey species along the U.S. coast, may be to eat it. But mind the venom.
Latin America is the latest battlefield for the billions in the global showdown between smaller generic labels from the developing world and the major U.S. and European firms.
TEL AVIV — An Israeli company says it has developed an easy and accurate new method for detecting breast cancer. The technique, developed by the company Eventus Diagnostics, involves a simple blood test measuring how the body’s immune system reacts to the presence of a cancer tumor. Eventus Diagnostics, located near Jerusalem in Moshav Ora […]
VENICE — The delicate balance between preserving the beauty of a place and allowing a fruitful tourist business is particularly tricky when it comes to the question of cruise ships in Venice. The Italian government has announced that beginning in 2015, large cruise ships (those weighing more than 96,000 tons) will be banned from St. […]
Villagers in the mountain outpost of Melung are among the few in rural Indonesia who can solve daily problems – and sell their products – thanks to an onsite Internet connection.
Clinics and industrialists are trying to make use of the unique fibers of spider webs. But producing the precious molecule that forms it in sufficient quantities isn’t easy.
Categories
The Ebola Risk In Europe Is Very Real
BERLIN – Ebola has reached Europe. No, it is not just here via patients brought to isolation wards under strict security conditions to be saved from an otherwise relatively certain death by high-tech Western medicine. Now the virus has arrived in a Spanish hospital, having managed to pass from a priest infected in West Africa […]
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, people have come to rely on the ability to do basic financial transactions anywhere. The downside is when cellular connection crashes.
TEL AVIV — Vincent van Gogh’s famous oil painting “Starry Night Over the Rhone” displays a wonderful enchantment technique. Occupying two-thirds of the canvas, the night sky is dotted with moon and stars, creating an illusion of movement, as if they were trying to burst out of the canvas. It’s not just a masterpiece. It […]
Like manufacturers globally, the world’s largest carmaker uses robots to help build its cars. But they are “trained” by a small group of human experts the brand nurtures to be the very best.