A smartphone is a testimony to the power of standardisation. Comprising components from hundreds of suppliers, it can find a signal almost anywhere in the world and connect to a wide array of ancillary devices all because countless companies have subjected themselves to a common set of technical specifications. More
Two things are often said of Ratan Tata, former head of the Tata Group, one of India’s mightiest conglomerates: he was a giant of Indian business, and among its most virtuous figures. For a society as fractious as India, the esteem in which he was held was remarkably wide. More
“Nuclear nightmare”, screamed the headline in Time magazine on April 9th 1979. One of the two reactors at a nuclear-power plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania had suffered an accident. The governor ordered an evacuation of all vulnerable people within five miles of the plant as radioactive gas escaped. More
Soon after Hamas attacked on October 7th last year, around a third of workers at Elsight, an Israeli maker of drone communications systems, were called up to fight in Gaza. A similar exodus took place across Israel’s mighty tech sector, which accounts for over half of the country’s exports, a fifth of GDP—and a fifth of the reservists in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). More
For years shareholders have paid little heed to the thunderbolts hurled at America’s west-coast technology giants by the trustbusting deities of Washington, DC. No longer. Despite expectations of solidly rising profits, the share price of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is wobbling (see chart). More
The Ig Nobel awards, an annual ceremony for laugh-out-loud scientific papers, celebrate the joyfully improbable nature of much academic research. One of this year’s Ig Nobel winners, “Factors involved in the ejection of milk”, was published in 1941 and tests whether fear causes cows to involuntarily drain their udders. Its authors drew their conclusions by placing a cat on a cow’s back and repeatedly exploding paper bags beside it. “Genetic determinism and hemispheric influence in hair whorl formation”, another winner, asks whether hair tends to swirl in the same direction depending on which hemisphere you live in. More
It is hard to imagine a place where Jim Farley, boss of Ford, might feel more comfortable discussing his company’s future than at the wheel of one of his firm’s vehicles. Mr Farley, pictured, whose driving skills have been honed racing Ford Mustangs in his spare time, fields questions with the same assurance that he pilots a Transit van down a winding Austrian mountain road. The three-day road trip in late August, from Ford’s European headquarters in Germany to Italy, in a convoy of four Transits, was arranged by Mr Farley to assess in detail one of the firm’s best-selling vehicles as well as to meet dealers and customers along the way. More
The FaceGym studio in central London looks more like a hair salon than a fitness studio. Customers recline on chairs while staff pummel their faces with squishy balls. They use their knuckles to “warm up” skin and muscles; give it a “cardio” session to improve circulation; and then a deep-tissue massage. Customers, who spend at least £100 ($133), say they leave with less puffy cheeks and more defined jaw lines. More
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