The Volvo XC90 Lounge Concept removes the front passenger seat in favor of a multipurpose ottoman/storage/television/work tray. IT’S A TOUGH time to be a luxury automaker. The competition is fierce, and the swanky-feature arms race only seems to escalate. Massage seats, custom-designed sound systems, and neck warmers are no longer enough to stand out.Volvo’s latest innovation is a special, fo...

Countries borrowed a lot during the crisis, and kept doing so afterward.Asian countries borrowed heavily to maintain growth during the financial crisis, but couldn’t break the habit even as the global economy healed. Now they are feeling the hangover.Growth is slowing fast across the continent as consumers and businesses focus on repaying debt. Central banks have cut rates, pushing currencies...

Researchers at University of Wollongong are working on a more pleasurable-feeling condom made out of the stuff associated with contact lenses.After receiving a grant of $100,000 last summer, researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia are on a mission to create a new breed of condom. The grant, by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which funds innovative ideas that address ch...

A new wearable sensor can turns a person's thumbnail into a miniature wireless track pad, researchers at the MIT Media Lab say.The device, called NailO, relies on capacitive sensors to register touch; they are the same kind used in the iPhone's touchscreen. It also carries a battery, a micro-controller, a sensor controller, and a Bluetooth radio chip, all in a space no larger than, well, a thum...

When the iPhone started taking over the US in 2008, Nick Walter was in Japan doing Mormon missionary work without a smartphone."When I got home, my dad was super nice and bought me an iPhone 4, and it was my first introduction to apps," the 25-year-old remembers. "I was like, 'These things are crazy! They can do anything!'"Since that first introduction, Walter, who graduated from Brigham Young...

If you find yourself in an unproductive slump due to your open office, here is a cocoon-like space that might be of interest to you. Furniture design company Steelcase is producing this cocoon-like design, named ‘Brody’, to help workers arrive at a total state of concentration. The design originated from the observation that students tend to seek out private spaces within a school library to...

The graphic below tells about the greatest and the most valuable businesses that were launched by students. Did you know that such popular companies as Reddit, Wordpress and Time Magazine were founded by students? Find out more from the new infographic! Full Image : http://img3.essaymama.com/startups_by_students1.png[essaymama]

It is no longer a question of if but when autonomous vehicles (AVs) will hit the road. In the auto industry’s most significant inflection in 100 years, vehicles with varying levels of self-driving capability?ranging from single-lane highway driving to autonomous valet parking to traffic jam autopilot?will start to become available to consumers as soon as mid-2015 or early 2016. Development of...

Piet Mondrian is undeniably one of the great designers who’s work has crossed over into multiple disciplines of design, specifically his artwork Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow.Mondrian believed that “…through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supple...