BARCELONA, SPAIN – Newfound enthusiasm for the latest technologies, such as drones and smartphones, to improve the way aid is provided to people in disasters may be overblown, experts warn. The annual World Risk Report from the United Nations University (UNU) highlights the growing interest in new technologies to improve emergency response -- from drones that can survey crisis-hit areas to social media networks that allow survivors to communicate with the wider world. These can provide important information to the logisticians who organize aid delivery or health workers trying to track deadly diseases like Ebola in no-go areas, the report said. But Matthiasƒ Garschagen, a risk management expert with the UNU Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), said it could not substitute for the basic infrastructure some countries have lacked for decades. "Too many people see technology as the main panacea for solving all the problems you have after disasters strike," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Rubins and Williams plan to conduct a spacewalk on Friday, Aug. 19, 2016, to install a new docking port that will enable the future arrival of U.S. commercial crew spacecraft. MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Astronauts ventured out Friday to install a ring on the International Space Station to receive astronauts in commercial spaceships expected to launch from Florida within the next 18 months. Expedition 48 commander Jeff Williams and flight engineer Kate Rubins hooked up the docking port in just a few hours. The port is slated for Boeing and SpaceX capsules now being developed under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Friday's success paved the way for future spaceships.

Alex Honnold has his own verb. "To honnold"--usually written as "honnolding"--is to stand in some high, precarious place with your back to the wall, looking straight into the abyss. The verb was inspired by photographs of Honnold in precisely that position on Thank God Ledge, located 1,800 feet off the deck in Yosemite National Park. Honnold side-shuffled across this narrow sill of stone, heels to the wall, toes touching the void, when, in 2008, he became the first rock climber ever to scale the sheer granite face of Half Dome alone and without a rope. Had he lost his balance, he would have fallen for 10 long seconds to his death on the ground far below. Honnold is history's greatest ever climber in the free solo style, meaning he ascends without a rope or protective equipment of any kind. Above about 50 feet, any fall would likely be lethal, which means that, on epic days of soloing, he might spend 12 or more hours in the Death Zone. On the hardest parts of some climbing routes, his fingers will have no more contact with the rock than most people have with the touchscreens of their phones, while his toes press down on edges as thin as sticks of gum. Just watching a video of Honnold climbing will trigger some degree of vertigo, heart palpitations, or nausea in most people, and that's if they can watch them at all. Even Honnold has said that his palms sweat when he watches himself on film. All of this has made Honnold the most famous climber in the world.

Images have emerged of a strange drone shaped like a real bird that was found crashed in Somalia, leading to claims it was being used to spy on targets. The metal bird, which is shaped to mimic a large bird of prey with'feathered' wings, is reported to have been recovered in an area of the capital, Mogadishu. According to local reports, the unmanned vehicle, which has two propellers attached to its wings, may be a surveillance craft used by the Somali intelligence agency, NISA. The drone is reported to have crashed in Mogadishu, Somalia earlier this week. Low quality images show it to resemble a large bird of prey.

The US military have launched their first experimental, fully autonomous self-driving warship, dubbed Sea Hunter, and representing a major advance in robotic warfare, which is increasingly forming the core of America's strategy to counter the Chinese and Russians, it's designed to hunt enemy submarines. The 132ft unarmed ASW Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) prototype is the naval equivalent of Google's self-driving car. Designed to cruise on the ocean's surface for two or three months at a time and with a range of over 10,000 miles it has neither a crew nor anyone controlling it remotely. And that kind of endurance and autonomy could make it a highly efficient submarine stalker at a fraction of the cost of the Navy's manned vessels. "This is an inflection point," Deputy US Defense Secretary Robert Work said in an interview, adding he hoped such ships might find a place in the western Pacific in as little as five years.

In his quest to transform the way the Pentagon wages war, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has turned to Silicon Valley, hoping its experimental culture, innovation and sense of urgency would rub off on the rigid bureaucracy he runs. Carter has made several trips to the region and appointed Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google's parent company to an advisory board. And recently he sat down at the Pentagon with Elon Musk to see what suggestions the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX might have to make the nation's military more efficient and daring. "Having an incentive structure that rewards innovation is extremely important," he said in an interview after the meeting. Whatever you reward will happen." The Pentagon finds itself in a new arms race, struggling to keep pace with forms of combat that are fought with bytes as well as bullets. The technological advancements disrupting established business sectors are now shaking up the world of war - where robots, swarming drones and ...

In the land rush to digitize the world, the home is the new frontier. Over the past few years, practically every household item within reach has been technologically upgraded and rendered "smart": toothbrushes, cutlery, baby monitors, refrigerators, thermostats, slow cookers, sprinkler systems, sex toys, even the locks in doors. Before they achieved enlightenment, they could perform only their rote, mechanical duties; now they can do so while connected to the internet. In the case of the telephone, this has been nothing short of revolutionary, but no other "smart" object has managed to replicate its success. The absurdity of the phenomenon was made unavoidably apparent in May, when a start-up unveiled a "smart tampon," called my.Flow.

In his quest to transform the way the Pentagon wages war, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has turned to Silicon Valley, hoping its experimental culture, innovation and sense of urgency would rub off on the rigid bureaucracy he runs. Carter has made several trips to the Valley and appointed Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google's parent company to an advisory board. And recently he sat down at the Pentagon with Elon Musk to see what suggestions the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX might have to make the nation's military more efficient and daring. "Having an incentive structure that rewards innovation is extremely important," he said in an interview after the meeting. Whatever you reward will happen." The Pentagon finds itself in a new arms race, struggling to keep pace with forms of combat that are fought with bytes as well as bullets. The technological advancements disrupting established business sectors are now shaking up the world of war -- where robots, swarming drones ...

Their squishy robotic hands can gather coral samples more delicately than robots, and in places humans can't reach. Developed with support from a National Geographic Innovation Challenge Grant, the hands were first tested in tanks in March 2015 and then taken to the Red Sea in May. After a successful expedition, Wood and Gruber hope the technology may have even broader applications.

Seven swimming robots will take to the sea later this month to help scientists investigate unanswered questions about India's monsoon season. After departing from the southern port city of Chennai, researchers will spend a month at sea releasing the torpedo-shaped underwater robots across a 400-kilometer (250-mi.) The robots, which will navigate to a depth of 1,000 meters, are programmed to transmit data measuring water salinity, temperature, and current via satellite. Lead researcher Adrian Matthews describes the Indian monsoon as "notoriously hard to predict." "It is a very complicated weather system and the processes are not understood or recorded in science," Dr. Matthews said in a press release.