Boston Dynamics have been working on incredible robotics technology.  This one runs through the forest.  To be fair, it runs like a toddler needing to use the restroom...for now.  But as the technology progresses, it will lose the tether & will run around like a teenager.  Yikes!
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"...presentation featured some video that we’d never seen before as well as tantalizing hints of what Boston Dynamics has been working on.

Here’s the clip that’s been going around, with Raibert showing some footage of Spot (an agile autonomous quadruped) opening a door with a manipulator mounted on it’s um, face (not nearly as scary as this), followed by ATLAS doing some dynamic walking outside, which is definitely new..."

Read more @ IEEE Spectrum

Our advances in technology have allowed us to dream about a fusion plant.  Can this be another "power" industry that our students will help develop?
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"It’s an old joke that many fusion scientists have grown tired of hearing: Practical nuclear fusion power plants are just 30 years away — and always will be.

But now, finally, the joke may no longer be true: Advances in magnet technology have enabled researchers at MIT to propose a new design for a practical compact tokamak fusion reactor — and it’s one that might be realized in as little as a decade, they say. The era of practical fusion power, which could offer a nearly inexhaustible energy resource, may be coming..."

Read more @ MIT News

At Milpitas Unified, we're at the beginning phases of incorporating 3D printing into our learning process.  One of 3D printing pain points is the removal of support material.  This solves that issue.

Explore more @ Cubify

If you ever wanted an inside view on Hackathons, this is a good read.  Milpitas students have participated in several Hackathons around Silicon Valley.
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"On the third day, half the people on the Startup Bus got motion sick. We hadn’t slept for two or three nights, the roads through the Smoky Mountains were perilously curved, the tour bus was traveling at top speed, and we had all been staring at our laptop screens for far too long.

Someone on my team bumped the table where we sat and it collapsed on our laps for the third or maybe 10th time that day. Alicia Hurst, my team’s designer, grabbed her computer before it fell, but her giant water bottle hit the floor. Again. Emma Pinkerton, our business strategist, held up the table while I scrambled to..."

Read more @ The Atlantic

Although space policy and international affairs is not a commonly talked about majors in K-12, it will be important for our students and teachers to build a greater awareness towards space topics.
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"Henry Hertzfeld, a professor of Space Policy and International Affairs at George Washington University, has taught a space law course for 11 years (before that, his background was in economics—the regular Earth kind). Even though the laws that govern space were drawn up back in the 1960s and 1970s, they’re still very good, he says. “The whole idea is freedom of access and using space for..."



Read on @ Gizmodo

Imagine the utility of these non tin-man robots. Some of our students will be working with this technology in the future.

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"Microscale soft-robots hold great promise as safe handlers of delicate micro-objects but their wider adoption requires micro-actuators with greater efficiency and ease-of-fabrication. Here we present an elastomeric microtube-based pneumatic actuator that can be extended into a microrobotic tentacle. We establish..."

Read on at Nature

How many of these companies are you familiar with?  If these companies still exist, our students may develop and market their next generation products.

Read more at CB Insights

"At the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago, Local Motors 3D printed a plastic car called the Strati.  Local Motors printed the car's chassis and body all in one piece, and also printed the fenders separately. The first phase of the process took just 44 hours. 

Then the non-printed components (engine, seats, steering wheel, etc.) were..."

Read more at Business Insider

Magnetic electronic blocks.  What an interesting and easy way to create circuits & build STE(A)M skills.  We're thinking about incorporating this in our classrooms in the near future.

http://littlebits.cc/