What will it do to kids to have digital butlers they can boss around?When it comes to digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, my four-year-old niece Hannah Metz is an early adopter. Her family has four puck-like Amazon Echo Dot devices plugged in around her house—including one in her bedroom—that she can use to call on Alexa at any moment.“Alexa, play ‘It’s Raining Tacos,’” she commande...

U.S. employers planned to pay high-skilled foreign workers with H-1B visas a median salary of $80,000 a year in fiscal year 2016, up from about $69,000 a decade earlier, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.This is the first time the U.S. government has made salary information about H-1B applicants publicly available. Most H-1B applic...

Body organs such as kidneys, livers and hearts are incredibly complex tissues. Each is made up of many different cell types, plus other components that give the organs their structure and allow them to function as we need them to.For 3D printed organs to work, they must mimic what happens naturally – both in terms of arrangement and serving a biological need. For example, a kidney must process...

CBD Living's Water Was Made Possible Through New Technologies. CBD water promises to bring together the best of what pure water and CBD have to offer.A handful of cannabis companies are coming up with innovative new ways to tap into the health benefits of cannabidiol (CBD). In particular, CBD-infused water is the latest product to hit the market. Now, CBD water could be the next trend to sweep...

When you’re putting in your blood, sweat, and tears, to attain those little tears of happiness, it’s easy to forget that happiness is a path and not just the end goal. If you’re feeling a little down and out lately, try taking a leaf out of the books of people around the world, who have turned little activities into traditions that keep them happy. The Norwegians, for instance, practice the...

Speak Easy is a trends and insight report, carried out in equal partnership between J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group London and Mindshare Futures, which explores voice technology and its implications for brands. Our research comprised several methodologies and covered the period January 2017 to March 2017.NEUROSCIENCE EXPERIMENTIn partnership with Neuro-Insight, we used Steady-State Topograp...

Video cameras? Pfft. Toyota's solution is simpler and less expensive.You'd think that an automaker receiving a patent for a "cloaking device" would run counter to the interconnected ideas of visibility and safety, but Toyota's latest patent wants to use such a device to help improve safety.Toyota received a US patent for "Apparatuses and methods for making an object appear transparent," or as t...

Amazon has been doubling down on its private label business in recent months, though many of its own brands aren’t easily identifiable to consumers as they don’t indicate they’re Amazon-made products. But these private labels have been gaining steam, according to a new report out this week from 1010data. Several Amazon brands have been seeing tremendous growth, it found, including AmazonBasi...

A new robot is scuttling into the uncanny valley. Hexa has six legs, looks like a bug, and moves with bizarre confidence. And it just might bring robot hacking to the masses.Hexa uses a variety of sensors to find its way around, including a camera and distance sensor. You control this bot with your phone, and it scales steps and uneven terrain with ease. You don't have to control individual leg...