SID's World

Artificial-leaf technology converts carbon dioxide to fuels and more The notion of an artificial leaf makes so much sense. Leaves, of course, harness energy from the sun to turn carbon dioxide into the carbohydrates that power a plant’s cellular activities. For decades, scientists have been working to devise a process similar to photosynthesis to generate a fuel that could be stored for later. This could solve a major challenge of solar and wind power—providing a way to stow the energy when the sun is not shining and the air is still. Many, many investigators have contributed over the years to the development of a form of artificial photosynthesis in which sunlight-activated catalysts split water molecules to yield oxygen   and hydrogen—the latter being a valuable chemical for a wide range of sustainable technologies. A step closer to actual photosynthesis would be to employ this hydrogen in a reduction reaction that converts CO 2  into hydrocarbons. Like a real lea...

AI now matches or exceeds the ability of experts in        medicine and other fields to interpret what they see Credit: World Economic Forum For most of the past 30 years, computer vision technologies have struggled to help humans with visual tasks, even those as mundane as accurately recognizing faces in photographs. Recently, though, breakthroughs in deep learning, an emerging field of artificial intelligence, have finally enabled computers to interpret many kinds of images as successfully as, or better than, people do. Companies are already selling products that exploit the technology, which is likely to take over or assist in a wide range of tasks that people now perform, from driving trucks to reading scans for diagnosing medical disorders. Recent progress in a deep-learning approach known as a convolutional neural network (CNN) is key to the latest strides. To give a simple example of its prowess, consider images of animals. Whereas humans can e...

These technologies all have staying power. They will affect the economy and our politics, improve medicine, or influence our culture. Some are unfolding now; others will take a decade or more to develop. But you should know about all of them right now. 10 Breakthrough Technologies The List  Years  Reversing Paralysis Scientists are making remarkable progress at using brain implants to restore the freedom of movement that spinal cord injuries take away. Self-Driving Trucks Tractor-trailers without a human at the wheel will soon barrel onto highways near you. What will this mean for the nation’s 1.7 million truck drivers? Paying with Your Face Face-detecting systems in China now authorize payments, provide access to facilities, and track down criminals. Will other countries follow? Practical Quantum Computers Advances at Google, Intel, and several research groups indicate that computers with previously unimaginable power are finally w...

President Donald Trump recently visited the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as his first overseas visit in his current presidential term. More than half of Saudi residents (57%) believe Trump’s visit to the kingdom has had a positive impact on US Saudi ties and it will strengthen them going forward according to the latest YouGov Omnibus study. To better understand how this visit was perceived by residents of Saudi Arabia, global research firm YouGov ran a short online survey using their Omnibus Express service from the 25 th  to the 29 th  May 2017 amongst 507 Saudi residents, to gauge their opinion around Trump’s visit to their country. Most notably although over half of respondents claimed that Trump’s visit hadn’t changed their impression of him, it seems to have had a large impact on his candidacy as US president; when given the choice now to vote between Trump and Clinton as US president 23% of Saudi residents would vote Trump compared to 22% for Clinton,...

With the recent acquisition of Souq.com by online giant Amazon and the anticipated launch of the new local ecommerce site Noon.com, the shift to online shopping in the GCC has become more apparent than ever. A recent study from YouGov has found that 83% of Local GCC Millennials have shopped online in the past 6 Months, with 42% shopping on local websites and 41% on international sites. The research found that the most likely items to be purchased online by GCC millennials are mobile phones (20%) and computer software/hardware (20%), followed by electronic equipment (19%), games (17%) and e-books (13%). The least likely items to be purchased online are flowers (3%), pet related products (3%), music (4%), sporting goods (6%), hardcopy books (6%) and health products (7%). YouGov found that the most common barriers to online shopping were related to not being comfortable with making online payments (41%), high shipping charges (37%) and long delivery times (34%). Among female GCC m...

The crisis over Qatar has created deep diplomatic tensions in the Arab world, and they are now playing out onto an international stage. The US is, of course, a hugely significant influence on the region so it is valuable to understand how the disputes have been understood by the American public. As part of our partnership with Arab News to research and analyse an international perspective on the Arab world, YouGov surveyed a representative sample of over 2,000 Americans between July 19-21, 2017. We tested American perceptions of six Arab states in terms of whether they were seen as allies or “enemies.” Egypt was considered an ally or friend of the US by 47 percent of respondents, compared with 39 percent for the UAE and 37 percent for Saudi Arabia, ahead of Qatar at 27 percent, Iraq at 19 percent, and Syria at 8 percent. Qatar was the least known of the six, with 43 percent unable to express a judgment on the country. Of those that do claim knowledge of Qatar, the picture the...

Politics From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For other uses, see  Politics (disambiguation) . Part of  a series  on Politics Primary topics [show] Political systems [show] Academic disciplines [show] Public administration [show] Policy [show] Organs of government [show] Related topics [show] Subseries [show] v t e [ hide ] This article has multiple issues.  Please help  improve it  or discuss these issues on the talk page .  ( Learn how and when to remove these template messages ) This article  needs additional citations for verification .  (June 2017) This article  possibly contains  original research .  (June 2017) Politics  (from Greek :  Politiká:  Politika , definition "affairs of the cities") is the process of making  decisions  applying to all members of each group. More narrowly, it refers to achieving and exerc...