LokLok allows friends to leave messages and drawings on your lock-screen

The LokLok app in use

Your phone's lock-screen is used to keep would-be snoopers out of your messages, but a new app turns this idea on its head. Once installed, LokLok allows friends to leave messages and drawings on each other's lock-screens. Two things seem certain: it will be great fun and it will all end in tears!
There's nothing especially complicated about LokLok as an idea, but giving a user's friends creative access to their lock-screen is certainly an interesting premise. Once installed, users are asked to select a group of friends with whom they'd like to use LokLok. An extra layer is then added to their device's existing lock-screen on which doodles and messages can be exchanged. Users can set up multiple different groups with whom to use the app.
Waking a device from sleep will take a user straight to the LokLok screen. Users can use their finger or a stylus to write messages or draw pictures. A palette menu allows users to choose brush types, sizes and colors. Users can also take pictures straight from the app or import images from their gallery and draw upon them.
Once a user has finished, the final image will be visible on the lock-screens of all users in the "conversation." The drawing screen works like a white board. Once a picture has been created, anyone involved in the group can add to it or erase it and start again as they see fit. Kwamecorp, which has created the app, says that all user groups are private and no that history is saved.
LokLok has already won Best New Application at the UK Mobile & App Design Awards, despite having only gone into open beta today. Individuals no longer need an invite to use it, but there will likely be some bugs and quirks to iron out. Users are invited to provide feedback on what they find.
"Since we launched the first version, we’ve had over 10,000 users trying the app and the feedback that we got was outstanding," says Kwamecorp in a blog post. "We’ve had conversations with our Beta testers, added new features, iterated on existing ones and have seen our metrics evolve as a result. During the last weeks, we put a lot of effort on usability, privacy and stability and we now feel that LokLok is solid enough to be open to everyone."
LokLok is available for Android and can be downloaded at the Google Play store.
The video from the url below provides an introduction to the app.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=patgOkFHOgU

New "dual carbon" battery charges 20 times faster than Li-ion

A Japanese company has announced the development and planned mass-production of a disruptive dual carbon battery that can be charged twenty times faster than an ordinary lithium-ion cell

Japanese company Power Japan Plus has announced the development and planned mass-production of "Ryden," a disruptive carbon battery that can be charged 20 times faster than an ordinary lithium-ion cell. The battery, which is cheap to manufacture, safe, and environmentally friendly, could be ideal to improve the range and charging times of electric cars.

We've seen electric cars and motorbikes make huge strides forward in recent years. Up to a few years ago, electric vehicles were a synonym of peculiar designs, poor performance, and very low range; but now, more and more people associate them with instant torque and high performance. Further improving range, charging time, and cost would make electric vehicles an even more compelling product.
A new battery developed by Power Japan and Kyushu University promises that – and more. The researchers describe their battery as "dual carbon" since both electrodes are made out of carbon. They claim that their design not only has high energy density, but is also economical, very safe, reliable, and environmentally sustainable. Most importantly, it can charge 20x faster than its Li-ion counterpart.

The battery employs carbon for both electrodes (Image: Power Japan Plus)

According to the company, their technology would allow you to charge the battery of a Nissan Leaf in 12 minutes instead of four hours. Because that battery has a capacity of 24 kWh, a back-of-the-envelope extrapolation would give us a charging time of 42 minutes for the 85 kWh battery of a top of the line Tesla Model S.
Power Japan also claims that their battery has energy density comparable to state of the art lithium-ion, with manufacturing costs that are equal or lower. This is because carbon, which is widely available in nature, is the only active ingredient, and the batteries can fit into a standard 18650 cell (the one used in laptops and electric cars), requiring no significant change to existing manufacturing lines.
Further characteristics that make it particularly suitable for electric cars are a long lifetime of 3,000 charge/discharge cycles (Li-ion's life is closer to 1,000 cycles) and the ability to discharge fully without the risk of short-circuiting and damaging the battery. Moreover, the battery doesn't heat up, so it wouldn't require the extensive cooling systems that appear in current electric cars. Thermal stability also makes the battery much safer, because it eliminates the risk of thermal runaway, which can cause explosions. And it would be more powerful than other batteries, operating at over four volts.

The company is developing its own organic carbon material for the batteries (Image: Power Japan Plus)

The battery would also be highly sustainable, as it is fully recyclable. Power Japan is planning to produce the battery using an organic carbon complex, developed in-house from organic cotton, to obtain a greater control over the size of the carbon crystals in its electrodes.
Power Japan is planning to start production of 18650 dual carbon cells later this year for specialty applications such as medical devices and satellites, and they plan to license the technology to other companies for use in electric vehicles.
The video in the url below illustrates the advantages of the battery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJwZ9uEpJOo

Sand-based anode triples lithium-ion battery performance

Conventional lithium-ion batteries rely on anodes made of graphite, but it is widely believed that the performance of this material has reached its zenith, prompting researchers to look at possible replacements. Much of the focus has been on nanoscale silicon, but it remains difficult to produce in large quantities and usually degrades quickly. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have overcome these problems by developing a lithium-ion battery anode using sand.
When Zachary Favors, a graduate student at UC Riverside working on developing better lithium-ion batteries, noticed that the beach sand he was relaxing on after surfing in San Clemente, California was primarily made up of quartz, or silicon dioxide, it prompted him to delve a little deeper. Researching where in the US sand could be found with a high percentage of quartz, he ended up at the Cedar Creek Reservoir in Texas.
He collected some of the sand and took it back to a lab at the Bourns College of Engineering at UC Riverside where he worked with engineering professors Cengiz and Mihri Ozkan. Favors started milling the sand down to the nanometer scale before putting it through a series of purification steps that gave it a similar color and texture to powdered sugar.
He then ground salt and magnesium into the purified quartz and heated the resulting powder. In this very simple process, the salt acted as a heat absorber while the magnesium removed oxygen from the quartz, resulting in pure silicon. More than that, the pure nano-silicon formed in a very porous, 3D silicon sponge-like consistency. Porosity is one of the keys to improving the performance of battery anodes as it provides a large surface area and allows lithium ions to travel through them more quickly.

The team has developed a coin-sized lithium-ion battery using the new anode that they claim significantly outperforms conventional lithium-ion batteries. They say the improved performance of the nano-silicon electrode could be expected to equate to a threefold increase in battery life for devices such as mobile phones, which would only need to be recharged every three days rather than every day, and electric vehicle batteries that last three times longer, cutting down on expensive replacement costs.
The researchers are now looking to produce the nano-silicon in larger quantities and move from coin-size batteries to pouch-size batteries like those used in mobile phones.

Rocketskates let you walk or "motor"

Back in 2010, we first heard about inventor Peter Treadway's concept for powered wheeled footwear that also allowed the user to walk under their own power when desired. Two years later, the concept was the subject of a Kickstarter campaign, in the form of spnKiX motorized skates. Now, Treadway has returned to Kickstarter with an improved take on the original idea, known as Acton R Rocketskates.

Like spnKiX, Rocketskates are designed to be strapped on over regular FOOTWEAR. When you want to let each skate's two hub motors do the work, you just tip your feet back so that only the rubber wheels make contact with the ground. Should you need to do something like climbing stairs, however, you tip forward and walk on the balls of your feet.

Unlike spnKiX, however, Rocketskates aren't controlled via a remote control unit. Instead users start by picking a "lead" foot (the one that goes in front), turning both skates on, then waiting for them to wirelessly sync up with one another. Once they're synced, the user accelerates by tilting the lead skate forward, and decelerates by putting their heel down. The motors of the non-lead skate simply copy whatever those in the lead one are doing.

Their maximum speed is 12 mph (19 km/h), and the range depends on the model chosen. The R6 will get you around 6 miles (9.7 km) or 45 minutes of use, the R8 is rated for 8 miles (12.9 km)/70 minutes, and the R10 is reportedly good for 10 miles (16 km) or 90 minutes. For all models, a full charge of the lithium-ion batteries takes 1.5 hours.
Users can also do things like monitoring battery life, tracking routes and checking total mileage via an accompanying app.
If they seem like your cup of tea, a pledge of US$249 will get a pair of R6s, with the R8s going for $499 and the R10s for $599 – when and if they reach production. Treadway's Acton company, incidentally, also brought us the collapsible electric M Scooter.
The Rocketskates can be seen in action, in the pitch video url below.
https://d2pq0u4uni88oo.cloudfront.net/projects/1048300/video-408098-h264_high.mp4

20 Things You Didn't Know About... 3-D Printing

1. We’ve heard so much hype about the wonder of 3-D printers, but they aren’t really printers at all. They’re “additive manufacturers” more akin to Star Trek’s replicators, building incredibly complex three-dimensional objects by spraying materials in successive layers through special nozzles.

2. Unlike Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, you can’t yet order “tea, Earl Grey, hot,” but several foodstuffs are already in testing, including scallops, cookies and burritos.

3. Mmmmm, burritos. Thingiverse, an online community for sharing 3-D designs, has dozens of templates for print-at-home bongs, bubblers and other items that elicit the munchies.

4. From spaced-out to space itself: NASA is sending a 3-D printer to the International Space Station so its crew can build spare parts .

5. Speaking of MacGyver, the TV character hated guns, hence his reliance on a pocketknife as sharp as his wits. He would have been dismayed to learn about the The Liberator — a plastic, single-shot pistol made on a 3-D printer — which easily gets past metal detectors.

6. Should you prefer making love, not war, the following will help: The sex toy industry has embraced 3-D printing with such gems as a toy shaped like Justin Bieber. Don’t ask.

7. It’s not only Beliebers rejoicing in their heroic figures. Engineers at Loughborough University in the U.K. used a 3-D printer to rebuild the skeleton of King Richard III.

8. Even more exciting than entire skeletons are individual bones. Replacement jawbones and hips are among the medical uses of 3-D printing.

9. Fitting, considering the fumes from 3-D printers may necessitate a new set of lungs. Research in the journal Atmospheric Environment shows many desktop 3-D printers produce emissions linked to health issues ranging from asthma attacks to strokes.

10. Some emissions come from certain plastics used as printer feedstock. But 3-D printers can use many other base materials: metal alloys, paper and even soil.

11. Not bad for technology that can cost as little as $300.

Fireflies Inspire Brighter LEDs

By mimicking the design of a firefly's light-emitting organ, researchers                  built an LED that shines 55 percent brighter.

Fireflies in a jar focused with diffusion (enhanced photo). 

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are far more energy efficient than incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs. Unfortunately, much of the light LEDs produce remains trapped within the inner surfaces of the diode. Engineers tried to build a brighter LED, but when modifications hit a plateau, they sought inspiration from the bugs that light up many a summer night.
An international team of researchers led by Annick Bay at the University of Namur in Belgium examined the light-emitting organ of Photuris fireflies under ascanning electron microscopeand identified seven structures that showed promise for boosting LED output. Using computer simulations, the scientists determined that the most influential aspect was misfit scales on the organ’s surface that give it a rough, shingle-like quality. The multiple abrupt edges scatter light rays to increase the amount of light that escapes the glowing organ.
Led by Bay, a second team then etched a similar shingle-like surface and added it to existing LED bulbs, boosting their light output by 55 percent. Now the researchers are using computer models to further refine the firefly-mimicking surface and maximize light output.

Jagged scales on a firefly's lantern help the bug shine brighter. Scientists designed synthetic scales based on this model and applied them to LEDs to make them emit one and a half times their normal light.

3-D Printed Shark Skin Boosts Swimming Speeds

Artificial shark skin with rigid denticles attached to a flexible membrane.

Expert swimmers may want to rethink their choice of swimwear. While many a swimmer dons smooth, high-tech spandex, it turns out that one of nature’s fastest swimmers—sharks—actually have rough skin. And now, swimmers will be happy to hear, researchers have developed a fake shark skin.
It’s been known that shark skin is comprised of millions of microscopic, overlapping scales. Called denticles, they disrupt the flow of water over the animal’s body, reducing drag. But to figure out exactly how these denticles boost speed, researchers needed to test how altering the skin affects how water moves across it. So they built a synthetic one.
Synthesizing Shark Skin

“You can’t modify real shark skin,” explains George Lauder from Harvard University, one of the authors of the study, published Wednesday in theJournal of Experimental Biology. Lauder found a piece of mako shark at a local fish market, and scanned the skin to create a high-resolution view of the surface. Next, he and his team zoomed in on a single denticle to build a detailed model of its structure, and then reproduced it thousands of times in a computer model.
But they needed to build a real model. To do that, they constructed a realistic artificial skin using a 3-D printer, which allowed them to embed hard denticles in a flexible substrate—after some trial and error.
“The denticles are embedded into the membrane and overlap, which posed a key challenge for 3-D printing,” Lauder says. Finally, after a year of testing different materials, sizing and spacing, the team produced a convincing fascimile.
“Seeing the SEM [scanning electron micrograph] of the curved membrane with the denticles was a great moment for us,” Lauder says.
Deep Dive

After printing the artificial skin, they put it to the test in a water tank. A flexible paddle fitted with the new skin delivered a 6.6 percent boost in swimming speed compared to one with a smooth membrane. Further, the shark skin allowed the paddle to travel the same simulated distance using 5.9 percent less energy.
But don’t expect to see swimmers sluicing through the water in denticle suits anytime soon. Says Lauder: “The manufacturing challenges are tremendous.”

New Smartphone Battery Recharges in 30 Seconds Flat !

Today’s smartphones are well-equipped to satiate our appetites for instant gratification. We stream live video, look up facts on a whim, receive breaking news alerts and stay connected to our friends via social media. But one thing has lagged behind this culture of immediacy: smart phones’ batteries.
Now, it looks like recharging our phones could finally keep pace with the demands of our fast-moving culture. Yesterday an Israeli company called StoreDot unveiled a new smartphone battery that fully recharges in just 30 seconds. In contrast the couple hours it takes for a typical smartphone to fully charge, seems hopelessly outdated.
The battery manages such a speedy charge by utilizing quantum dottechnology. Quantum dots are tiny bio-organic nanocrystals made of semiconducting materials. The battery is just a prototype at this point, and it’s still big and clunky — about the size of a laptop charger. However, the company plans to scale down its size and begin mass production of the device in 2016, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Check out this video of the battery recharging in real time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DhJZAhjbcI

Super-Thin Electronics Can Wrap Around Single Hair—and Still Work !!

The electronic circuit draped over human hairs.

In another advance for biological electronics, researchers have developed a transparent ultrathin circuit flexible enough to wrap around a single human hair and still function. In a proof-of-concept the scientists deployed the circuit in a contact lens where it could someday measure changes in pressure as a monitoring tool for glaucoma.
The team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich reports today in Nature Communications that they were successful in creating a viable electronics circuit with a thickness of just 1 micrometer—or one-sixtieth the width of a human hair.
The team built the tiny electronics out of two layers of polymer, etched with circuitry, backed by a silicon chip. When the chip was placed in water, the middle polymer layer dissolved, leaving just the electronic film.
The electronics are super-thin and super-flexible. Even when they are crumpled up, six of 10 electronic devices continued to work. The researchers showed that the prototype electronics could function after they were transferred onto skin, plant leaves and fabric. They also added strain sensors to the circuitry and affixed the film to a contact lens on a fake eye, as a proof-of-concept for a pressure-monitoring contact lens for glaucoma sufferers.

The circuit, affixed to a contact lens, is displayed on a fake eye.

The applications are much broader than just contact lenses, lead author Giovanni Salvatore told Smithsonian Magazine:
“I believe this technology can have important impacts inmedicine and health monitoring… It could be used for very wearable and minimally invasive devices, for ultralight solar cells, and most importantly, for very conformable and implantable devices which can serve to monitor biometric parameters in the human body.”

The Flying Car That Could Expedite Your Morning Commute

An artist’s rendering of the TF-X in flight. 

Flying cars have long been the unofficial signpost that will mark our entrance into The Future. Now, it appears, that key moment could be soon approaching.
Flying car prototypes are nothing new. The U.S. Patent Office in 1918 issued Felix Longobardi the first patent for a flying vehicle, which was also submersible in water. Subsequent attempts at the flying car, though they flew, weren’t very practical. However, a team of Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology alumni is working with a company called Terrafugia to develop a prototype that could make flying to work a reasonable proposition.
Fully Loaded
The developers are the same MIT alumni that developed the Transition car-plane, which still requires a 1,700-foot runway to take to the skies. To eliminate the need for runways, their new vehicle, dubbed the TF-X, would be capable of vertical takeoff and landing — a crucial maneuver in urban environments. Based on designs, its flight mechanics would be similar to themilitary’s V-22 Osprey, based on a video released by developers that simulates flight in the TF-X (below).
The TF-X is designed to seat four passengers, fit inside a standard single-car garage, travel 500 miles on one trip, and reach speeds of 200 miles per hour, according to specifications listed on the Terrafugia website. It would take just five hours of training for the average car driver to learn how to safely operate the craft.
And fortunately for future airborne commuters, the TF-X would feature automatic systems that avoid mid-air collisions, detect bad weather, and automatically implement an emergency auto-land procedure if the driver becomes unresponsive.
But the biggest feature to brag about to your friends if you someday get your hands on a TF-X: It’s a hybrid.
Development Timeline
You’re going to have to wait a while before you get behind the wheel of a TF-X. Development is expected to take roughly 8 to 12 years. If the TF-X finally goes to market, it’s estimated to cost about as much as a very high-end luxury vehicle.
However, if you can’t wait that long, the Transition flying vehicle, mentioned earlier, is nearly ready for sale. Designers are still working through product development and the federal regulatory process. If you can spare about $280,000, the Transition could be yours.
Here is the url of the simulation video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp2TWNpTA7s

Your Friends’ Faces Could Be Your Future Password !!

One of the problems with using passwords to prove identity is that passwords that are easy to remember are also easy for an attacker to guess, and vice versa.
Nevertheless, passwords are cheap to implement and well understood, so despite the mounting evidence that they are often not very secure, until something better comes along they are likely to remain the main mechanism for proving identity.
But maybe something better has come along. In research published in PeerJ, Rob Jenkins from University of York and colleagues propose a new system based on the psychology of face recognition called Facelock. But how does it stack up against existing authentication systems?
Exploiting the Power of Recognition

Our brains may not be wired to remember long strings of arbitrary characters, but they are wired to remember and recognise faces.
Our ability to recognize people we know – even when we haven’t seen them for a long time, even in a grainy photo with them looking the other way, even in sunglasses with a hat pulled low over their face – is quite extraordinary. Facelock tries to integrate this ability into an identity authentication system.
If we know someone well we can usually recognize them easily from an image,regardless of how poor the image is. However, this ability does not extend to unfamiliar faces. If we don’t know the person, we find identifying two different images of the same person very difficult.
This is the basis of the proposed authentication system. Someone seeking to authenticate their identity (the “subject”) is presented with a succession of pages, each containing nine faces of which one is a person well known to the subject. To prove identity, the face of the familiar person in each grid is clicked.
It is worth pointing out that systems such as Passfaces already do something similar. In Passfaces, during the set up phase, the user selects a number of faces that are presented to them. When logging in, the faces previously selected must be chosen.
Facelock differs in that it allows the subject to choose familiar faces that others are unlikely to recognize. The subjects in this study were told to choose “Z-list celebrities” via Google Image Search, such as obscure musicians, sportspeople or otherwise little-known people but who are of interest to them.
So Does it Work?

The authors present impressive statistics to support their Facelock approach: subjects detected familiar faces with 97.5% accuracy, compared to less than 1% for would-be attackers.
Both our ability to recognize faces of people we know and our inability to identify faces of the same person when we do not know them are confirmed by the study.
But the study went further. By choosing faces of people of interest to the subject, even a year later subjects were able to recognize them with an 86% success rate.
A possible weakness of the approach was also tested. It might seem that if someone knows us well, they might also know many of the same faces.
Interestingly, this was not the case. Partners and close friends were surprisingly poor at identifying faces known by the study participants (a 6.6% success rate). Colleagues of the subjects and people looking over their shoulder at their selections were even worse.
So this ability seems to satisfy the other requirement for an authentication mechanism, that of being unique to each person. That is, not even the people closest to us will be able to recognize the same faces that we can.
But There are Downsides

Technical challenges are unlikely to limit such a system. As noted, systems such as Passface have been available for many years. But there are other issues that need solutions before such a system becomes a practical alternative to passwords.
The main issue is that setting up such a system will likely be very labor intensive. How would images be selected for the system? Images of well known figures would be unsuitable; they would have to be people who are not widely known.
Additionally, images of the same person would need to be sufficiently different that identifying the person is a challenge for anyone unfamiliar with the faces. How could we determine if they are different enough?
It is hard to see how such a system could be set up with anything like the ease that a password is created.
There are other issues as well. Would the system be susceptible to a brute force attack where every combination is tried until the correct one is found?
Some systems force regular password changes on users – should images be changed frequently as well? How would the images be secured? Password files make use of many security features to secure them – what would be necessary for image files? Could face recognition software be used to defeat such a system?
So has something better than passwords finally arrived? The idea certainly sounds interesting and the technical challenges in implementing such a system do not seem great. But there are difficult questions regarding cost, selection and security of images that need to be answered before it becomes a practical alternative to passwords.

Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century

In 2003, the National Academy of Engineering in the United States published A Century of Innovation: Twenty Engineering Achievements that Transformed our Lives.This work detailed historical information on the following list of what the authors consider to be the top twenty engineering achievements of the 20th century, or those achievements which had the greatest impact upon life during and following this period.
The list was published as follows:
Electrification
Automobile
Airplane
Water Supply and Distribution
Electronics
Radio and Television
Agricultural Mechanization
Computers
Telephone
Air Conditioning and Refrigeration
Highways
Spacecraft
Internet
Imaging
Household Appliances
Health Technologies
Petroleum and Petrochemical Technologies
Laser and Fiber Optics
Nuclear Technologies
High-performance Materials

Science, Engineering and Technology

The distinction between science, engineering and technology is not always clear. Science is the reasoned investigation or study of phenomena, aimed at discovering enduring principles among elements of the phenomenal world by employing formal techniques such as the scientific method. Technologies are not usually exclusively products of science, because they have to satisfy requirements such as utility, usability and safety.
Engineering is the goal-oriented process of designing and making tools and systems to exploit natural phenomena for practical human means, often (but not always) using results and techniques from science. The development of technology may draw upon many fields of knowledge, including scientific, engineering, mathematical, linguistic, and historical knowledge, to achieve some practical result.
Technology is often a consequence of science and engineering — although technology as a human activity precedes the two fields. For example, science might study the flow of electrons in electrical conductors, by using already-existing tools and knowledge. This new-found knowledge may then be used by engineers to create new tools and machines, such as semiconductors, computers, and other forms of advanced technology. In this sense, scientists and engineers may both be considered technologists; the three fields are often considered as one for the purposes of research and reference.

The exact relations between science and technology in particular have been debated by scientists, historians, and policymakers in the late 20th century, in part because the debate can inform the funding of basic and applied science. In the immediate wake of World War II, for example, in the United States it was widely considered that technology was simply "applied science" and that to fund basic science was to reap technological results in due time.  The issue remains contentious—though most analysts resist the model that technology simply is a result of scientific research.

TECHNOLOGY-THE TERM

Technology is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a pre-existing solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, including machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures. Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species' ability to control and adapt to their natural environments. The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include construction technology, medical technology, and information technology.

The human species' use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The prehistorical discovery of the ability to control fire increased the available sources of food and the invention of the wheel helped humans in travelling in and controlling their environment. Recent technological developments, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale. However, not all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the development of weapons of ever-increasing destructive power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.

Technology has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. Many technological processes produce unwanted by-products, known as pollution, and deplete natural resources, to the detriment of Earth's environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and new technology often raises new ethical questions.

Philosophical debates have arisen over the present and future use of technology in society, with disagreements over whether technology improves the human condition or worsens it. Indeed, until recently, it was believed that the development of technology was restricted only to human beings, but recent scientific studies indicate that other primates and certain dolphin communities have developed simple tools and learned to pass their knowledge to other generations.