Blue-green algae sealed within a small container have powered a computer for six months. Similar photosynthetic power generators could run a range of small devices cheaply in the coming years, without the need for the rare and unsustainable materials used in batteries. Christopher Howe at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues built a small enclosure about the size of an AA battery out of aluminium and clear plastic. Inside, they placed a colony of a type of cyanobacteria called Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 – commonly known as "blue-green algae" – which produce oxygen through photosynthesis when exposed to sunlight.

With A.M. Best's initiative to take insurers' ability to innovate into account as an element of its rating methodology, the point couldn't be clearer – technology is part and parcel of the insurance industry, and the work of brokers and agents is no different. Argo Group's recent report, "The Future of Insurance – 2019 Insights: Technology and Climate Change Creating Today's Risks and Opportunities," delved into the minds of brokers and small businesses to reveal expectations around topics that included climate change, cryptocurrency, and autonomous vehicles. The findings showed that, for example, 77% of brokers expect autonomous vehicle usage to reduce the number and severity of accidents, while 59% expect it to help decrease insurance premiums. However, other technologies are not as top of mind. Thirty-nine per cent (39%) of brokers say they are only somewhat familiar with IoT concepts, even as 91% of brokers see IoT as the dominant technology threat over the next 12 months.

Half-price cinema tickets, cycle to work schemes and gym passes have long been part of employee benefits programmes. But with research showing 84% of millennials look to leave their jobs within the first two years, employers want to tailor their perks packages to their employees' needs. Emerging technologies such as data analytics, chatbots, and wearables can help employers know which benefits resonate with employees. And machine learning can monitor take-up and avoid wasting money on unwanted benefits. "From an employer perspective, there is already a lot more emphasis on looking at data to see what benefits employees are using," says Jeanette Makings, head of financial education at merchant bank Close Brothers.

Every time someone in a position of power (for example) says that a cold snap in winter proves that climate change is not a thing, a dutiful chorus responds with a familiar refrain: weather is not climate. Weather happens on the scale of days or weeks, over a distance relevant to cities or states. Climate happens over decades, centuries even, to an entire planet. The problem is, guess what timescale and space-scale people live on? The question of what can make human beings understand climate change is literally an existential one.

SAN FRANCISCO--Toby Ghassemieh is an inquisitive 12-year-old boy with a pet gecko named Coco and the makings of an ant colony in a bedroom cupboard. He built a forge in his backyard with plaster of Paris to melt aluminum into ingots. He wants to be a physicist when he grows up. All that is on hold, though. What he cares about most is the videogame Fortnite. Same for his buddies Matthew Seiden, Max Howe, Jaren Erville and Reed Leidlein, who all live in or near the city's Richmond neighborhood. These seventh-grade pals used to spend their after-school hours together, either at somebody's house or nearby Rochambeau Park. Now, they spend most of their free time apart, sequestered in their respective homes playing Fortnite and chatting through headsets instead of in person.

When you are a world-renowned pioneer in smells, it's somewhat inevitable you will end up sticking your face into peculiar places: the burned rubber tire of a Chevy lowrider, a rotting hunk of wall insulation from an abandoned home, a cupped palmful of cool water from the Detroit River. It's also inevitable that the trailing documentary crew (sent by the local gallery behind your next odor-based installation) and photographer (sent, in this case, by Engadget) will home in on this money shot, jostling ahead of and around you to capture the famous nose in intimate proximity with prosaic, occasionally distasteful, objects. Along with these very words, those images are a critical way to visualize how Sissel Tolaas, who flew to Detroit from Berlin, does the unique fieldwork that has made her a legend in the colossal yet somewhat invisible world of modern olfaction. Yet there's also no denying that the sight of this -- the sniff shot, ubiquitous in casual Google image searches of Tolaas' name -- is not only curious but also comical. The idea of placing one's grown, adult face in close communion with the fluff spilling out of a blighted house to deeply inhale its surely unhealthy molecules and have them wash over you on an emotional level... well, it's something dogs do. But how else are we, with the linguistic and visual tools at our disposal, supposed to communicate what the great Sissel Tolaas is really about to you, the reader? Anyway, Tolaas hates being shadowed by cameras this way, although she's being a terrific sport about it. On her first day in Detroit, she arrives at a former tobacco factory in Poletown.

Even octopuses understand the importance of elbows. When these squishy, loose-limbed cephalopods need to make a precise movement -- such as guiding food into their mouth -- the muscles in their tentacles contract to create a temporary revolute joint. These joints limit the wobbliness of the arm, enabling more controlled movements. Now, researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have shown how a multi-layered structure can allow robots to mimic the octopus' kinematics, creating and eliminating joints on command. The structure can also allow robots to rapidly change their stiffness, damping, and dynamics.

As we kick off a new year, I wanted to take a quick look back to offer some thoughts on the top ten technology books from 2016. Kelly was a founding editor of Wired magazine, and in this book, he offers an optimistic view into what the future of technology holds. His ability to see and interpret the future, as well as connect the dots to the past makes for an especially enlightening read. Alec Ross is a former Senior Adviser for Innovation to the Secretary of State, a post that took him to 41 countries. He draws on that experience to predict which industries will emerge and grow more than others, offering genomics, cybersecurity, robotics, and blockchain (among others) as examples. Ross includes anecdotes and stories from government officials and entrepreneurs alike.

Automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning were key themes at the Structure Security conference in San Francisco. For business tech leaders, the bottom line is that security and automation are blending together. The trick for tech buyers will be to sort through what platforms are legit vs. mere marketing and buzzwords. Jay Leek, chief information security officer at private equity firm Blackstone, said his company started an effort to automate investigations, rote security tasks and other items in a bid to alleviate a security talent crunch and boost productivity. The upshot: Leek's security analysts do more high value work and initial investigations now take 40 seconds.

Just as fintech is transforming the banking world, "insurtech" has set its sights on the insurance industry. There are firms like Trov, which provides insurance on-demand and enables consumers to catalogue insured belongings. Buzzmove uses home removals data to create a new distribution model for insurance – people are more likely to renew or buy insurance when moving house – and helps customers track the value of their assets. FitSense helps employers leverage data from wearable tech, while massUp capitalises on open APIs to connect insurers to retailers. As a consumer, you can cover your gadget at the point of sale – ideal if you know it might not be covered by your household policy. Start listing the players currently in the market, though, and while the added visibility and speed brought by innovative technology is evidently beneficial, "'disruption' can be a misleading word", says Jonathan Howe, UK insurance lead at PwC. "We take that to mean the whole industry has been thrown in the air and we've seen major new players emerge.