Imagine a robot that finds an object that it's never seen or used before — say, a plastic cup. The robot could simply send an image of the cup to the cloud and receive back the object's name, a 3-D model, and instructions on how to use it.

Davis materials engineer Julie Schoenung and her colleagues subjected nine colors and intensities of 5mm pin-type LEDs to leachability tests that the federal and California environmental protection agencies use to determine if a product is hazardous. The researchers pulverized the LEDs and mixed them with acids to represent the chemical conditions that the LEDs would encounter in a landfill. Using mass spectrometry, they measured how much of various metals escaped into the acid.

Therein lie the frustrations of Kurzweil's brand of tech punditry. On close examination, his clearest and most successful predictions often lack originality or profundity. And most of his predictions come with so many loopholes that they border on the unfalsifiable. Yet he continues to be taken seriously enough as an oracle of technology to command very impressive speaker fees at pricey conferences, to author best-selling books, and to have cofounded Singularity University, where executives and others are paying quite handsomely to learn how to plan for the not-too-distant day when those disappearing computers will make humans both obsolete and immortal.

"Just as drivers have to focus on the road, other cars, and potential obstacles while ignoring other information, modern action games place heavy attentional demands on players," said [lead author Bjorn] Hubert-Wallander. "These games require players to aim and shoot accurately in the center of the screen while continuously tracking other enemies and fast moving objects."

In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing an employee after she criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page.

In-flight Wi-Fi "gives a bomber lots of options for contacting a device on an aircraft", Alford says. Even if ordinary cellphone connections are blocked, it would allow a voice-over-internet connection to reach a handset.

"If it were to be possible to transmit directly from the ground to a plane over the sea, that would be scary," says Alford's colleague, company founder Sidney Alford. "Or if a passenger could use a cellphone to transmit to the hold of the aeroplane he is in, he could become a very effective suicide bomber."

Washington's newly elected U.S. Representative went by the name of Colossus. A villainous computer from science-fiction lore captured the city-council chairmanship. And 15 seconds after voters cast their ballots, they were serenaded by the University of Michigan fight song. The system had been hacked.

In the future, [study leader Fernando Galembeck, Ph.D.] added, it may be possible to develop collectors, similar to the solar cells that collect the sunlight to produce electricity, to capture hygroelectricity and route it to homes and businesses. Just as solar cells work best in sunny areas of the world, hygroelectrical panels would work more efficiently in areas with high humidity, such as the northeastern and southeastern United States and the humid tropics.

Galembeck said that a similar approach might help prevent lightning from forming and striking. He envisioned placing hygroelectrical panels on top of buildings in regions that experience frequent thunderstorms. The panels would drain electricity out of the air, and prevent the building of electrical charge that is released in lightning.

So how important is preventing cheating? How much privacy are you willing to sacrifice in the interests of a level playing field?