I was introduced to gothic literature late in life, but it wasn’t until I read Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla that I really fell in love with the genre. Published about 25 years before Dracula, Carmilla is the story of Laura, a young girl who lives in an ancient castle in Styria. After Laura learns an expected visitor, Bertha Rheinfeldt, has fallen mysteriously ill and died, she and her [...]
Google Glass seems like something out of a Star Trek episode, but, amazingly, this example of augmented reality exists today. Merriam–Webster defines augmented reality as “an enhanced version of reality created by the use of technology to overlay digital information on an image of something being viewed through a device (such as a smartphone camera).” Although Google Glass may have seemed like the only technology of its [...]
Ever since the creation of automated machines, the fears of an artificial intelligence (AI) takeover (or cybernetic revolt, as more professional futurists call it) have been growing. From the minds of science fiction greats Isaac Asimov and Aldous Huxley to 2015’s blockbuster films Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ex Machina, culture shows that people are fascinated with what machines could someday be. This potential future has long [...]
What does have six arms and two legs and a brain in each one? An octopus! Three-fifths of an octopus’s brain is found in its eight appendages. The largest octopus on record, a giant Pacific octopus, reportedly weighed 600 pounds and was nearly 30 feet wide. Think of all that brain room! As if the brains-in-their-appendages fact weren’t strange enough, octopuses have additional unique characteristics that make them truly amazing [...]
My first cell phone was my mom’s old Nokia brick. I wasn’t able to do a whole lot more than make phone calls and play Snake—but then again, what else was a phone supposed to do? When I got my first iPhone, it changed my life. For the first time, I understood that one device could do many, many things. A phone was [...]
Globally, nonnative English speakers now outnumber native English speakers 3 to 1. English has become a global language, leading to more nonnative speakers learning English as a second language (ESL). Teachers are turning to apps, both mobile and on the web, to engage this new generation of English language learners (ELLs). Apps can satisfy all kinds of learning needs, sometimes in ways that a classroom [...]
Did you know a device considered by scholars to be the world’s oldest analog computer was created over 2,000 years ago? The device is officially named the Antikythera (ante-kith-er-uh) Mechanism. It was retrieved from an ancient shipwreck discovered in 1901 off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. The ship is believed to be a merchant vessel that met its end around 60 [...]
The year is finally 2015. Do you know what that means? By October, hoverboards are supposed to be available to the general public, at least according to the 1989 movie Back to the Future II. I’ve been looking forward to this year since first saw the movie, but I’ve been told time and again that it’s impossible for various reasons, including the fact that [...]
In classrooms across America, teachers are being confronted with challenges to accommodate all students. According to a study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the average primary education classroom has more than 21 students. In recent years, the aid of assistive technologies has been brought into the classroom to ensure that all students can keep the same pace—specifically, students with disabilities. Kevin [...]
A tiny energy source that packs a surprising amount of power, nanotech batteries are becoming smaller and more efficient every year. Nanotechnology includes the design of systems and devices on a nanoscale. To put into perspective how small the nanoscale is, one nanometer is a billionth of a meter; there are 25,400,000 nanometers in an inch; and a nanometer is estimated to be about 80,000 [...]