Germ Communities in Our Gut Talk to Our Brain

There are trillions of microbes inside the human body, and University College Cork professor Dr John Cryan’s studies indicate that these germ communities appear to influence both the brain and its behaviors. Since that groundbreaking and contested 2014 announcement, much more research has continued to support the idea that the human microbiome impacts depression, dementia, autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and even Parkinson’s disease. All of this …

Smart Products Abound at CES 2019

From mirrors to coffee machines, assistants are migrating into nearly every product

At this year’s CES, countless products on display promoted their assisted capabilities. Last year’s show delivered us the first glimpses of virtual assistants embedded into everyday devices, but 2019 previewed the phenomenon’s mainstreaming—Google Assistant in a mirror, Amazon’s Alexa taking queries from inside your toilet and more. There is valid skepticism about the possibility of all of your devices listening in on you. Letting the Google or …

Testing ZF’s Autonomous Ride-Hailing Taxi

We try out a robo-taxi at CES, and learn where the industry really is at on the road to autonomous lifts

As Silicon Valley and the car industry continue to converge, we’re seeing an increasing presence of autonomous cars at the Consumer Electronics Show, including an autonomous robo-taxi that we caught a ride in this year. The ZF Autonomous Ride-Hailing Taxi is a prototype that’s meant to preview the experience of a new form of urban mobility, but that technology will actually be put to use this …