The Innovations Making Africa a Leader in Off-Grid Solar

In Africa, roughly 600 million people live without electricity. This glaring lack in gridded power has attracted the attention of various outside companies, many of which to look to the continent to test cutting-edge technical innovations. Now, some African countries have flexible, renewable electricity infrastructures that are unseen anywhere else in the world, making Africa the leading continent in off-grid solar power. Read more on …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

How an NYC rat made it in show biz, "megatall" skyscrapers, what "Australia Day" means to Aboriginal people and more in this week's look at the web

1. Marvin Minsky, Artificial Intelligence Pioneer, Has Died Marvin Minksy, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and one of the first people to begin imparting common-sense reasoning to computers, died on Sunday at the age of 88. A true innovator of the now-booming industry, he’s described as “one of the very few people in computing whose visions and perspectives liberated the computer from being a glorified …

The Unexpected Force Keeping NASA’s Mars Rover Alive

12 years go, NASA landed the rover Opportunity on the surface of Mars, with the intent of exploring the Red Planet for 90 days before the vehicle’s solar panels became covered with dust. Fast forward to today, and Opportunity is still going strong, thanks to the unforeseen “dirt devils” present on Mars. These swirling gusts of wind periodically blow dust off the rover’s panels, which—combined …