Meet the concept iPhone Air and iPhone 6C

Here's a new concept video for the next iPhone that takes thinness to an extreme.

The video from Set Solution offers its take on a theoretical "iPhone Air," and another envisions an iPhone 6C (the C here stands for curve, not colour).

The videos offer some beautiful renderings, particularly of the imagined iPhone Air, which it posits would be 1.5 millimetres thin at the top and 3 millimetres thick at the bottom, weigh 70 grams, and feature an edge-to-edge glass display.

The iPhone 6C concept features a number of different colours like the iPhone 5C, but a pronounced curve on the screen similar to that of the LG G Flex, though the back is flat. Some of these videos have been floating around for a while, but are worth a look.

While the videos are impressive, they are no way based in reality, and perhaps a little too good to be true. They also aren't the first concept videos to take a crack at an iPhone Air.

We'll see if Apple comes out with something that looks like the products in these videos -- or perhaps something that looks even better.

NASA unveils 6-foot 'superhero robot' Valkyrie

What if NASA's Robonaut grew legs and indulged in steroids? The result might be close to what NASA has unveiled: Valkyrie is a humanoid machine billed as a "superhero robot."

Developed at the Johnson Space Center, Valkyrie is a 6.2-foot, 275-pound hulk designed to compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC).

It will go toe to toe with the Terminator-like Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics in what's shaping up to be an amazing modern-day duel.

In an interesting twist, Valkyrie seems to be a girl. While officially genderless, "Valkyrie" (a nickname, since the official designation is R5) evokes the goddess-like females of Norse myth.

"We really wanted to design the appearance of this robot to be one that when you saw it (you'd say) 'Wow. That's awesome,'" Nicolaus Radford of the NASA JSC Dextrous Robotics Lab says .Its Iron Man-style glowing chest ring nestles in a pronounced bosom that contains linear actuators for waist rotation.

"When we were designing the robot, we were thinking about the competition from day one, and we wanted a very modular system. Specifically with the arm, we can yank one bolt and one connector, and we can take the arm off. It happens in a matter of minutes."

Valkyrie has 44 degrees of freedom, or axes of rotation in its joints, meaning it's a relatively flexible machine in terms of movement. Its power source is a battery stored in a backpack that can provide it with about an hour of juice.

Its sensors include sonar and LIDAR, as well as head, arm, abdomen, and leg cameras so operators can see whatever the robot is doing from multiple viewpoints.

Developed with the University of Texas and Texas A&M University, Valkyrie can walk around untethered, and pick up and manipulate objects, which are essential skills for the DARPA challenge.

The DRC is designed to help evolve machines that can cope with disasters and hazardous environments like nuclear power plant accidents. Participants will be presented with tasks such as driving a utility vehicle, walking over uneven terrain, clearing debris, breaking through a wall, closing a valve, and connecting a fire hose.

NASA, however, sees the DRC as part of its mission to explore space.

"NASA saw a considerable overlap between what the DRC was trying to accomplish and NASA's goals as an agency," says Radford. "We want to get to Mars. Likely, NASA will send robots ahead of the astronauts to the planet. These robots will start preparing the way for the human explorers, and when the humans arrive, the robots and the humans will work together."

Ford's self-driving car unveils itself

Ford Motor unveiled its first self-driving car this week -- well, a prototype anyway. The Automated Fusion Hybrid Research Vehicle, developed with the University of Michigan and State Farm insurers, will help the storied US auto maker "test the limits of full automation and determine the appropriate levels for near- and mid-term deployment," Raj Nair, group vice president, Ford global product development, said in a statement.

Ford's 2013 Fusion already offers adaptive cruise control, which can bring the car to a full stop, and a lane-keeping system that steers the car back into its lane if a driver lets it drift. It can also parallel park automatically. But the research vehicle takes things to the next level -- according to the statement from Ford, the car:

...adds four scanning infra red light sensors -- named LiDAR (for Light Detection And Ranging) -- that scan the road at 2.5 million times per second. LiDAR uses light in the same way a bat or dolphin uses sound waves, and can bounce infra red light off everything within 200 feet to generate a real-time 3D map of the surrounding environment.

The sensors can track anything dense enough to redirect light -- whether stationary objects, or moving objects such as vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists. The sensors are so sensitive they can sense the difference between a paper bag and a small animal at nearly a football field away.

Amazing Batman graffiti discovered inside abandoned nursing school

A Redditor exploring the streets of Ronse, Belgium stumbled across some spectacular art. Hidden inside an abandoned nursing school were walls full of Batman graffiti, featuring various incarnations of the Dark Knight alongside the Joker, Bane, and many others from the DC universe. The Redditor, sneakylawyer, says the school has been abandoned for about a decade — plenty of time for it to be reclaimed by an enterprising artist. The Batman graffiti is the work of Pete One, and you can see more of his graffiti at this online gallery.

NEW METHOD OF SNIFFING OUT WEED:CHECK OUT THE NASAL RANGER

As governments across the United States and around the world relax their laws against the possession and use of marijuana, a whole new crop of problems related to weed are sprouting up.

Take, for example, the smell of marijuana: Not only are some people offended by the odour of marijuana smoke, but industrial-scale growing operations also perfume the air with the sweet — or skunky, depending on your point-of-view — scent of marijuana plants.

That's become an issue in places like Colorado, which not only legalized recreational use of marijuana last year, but this month passed a state-wide measure to tax marijuana sales. To combat the rising tide of complaints about the smell of pot, officials are turning to a high-tech weapon: the Nasal Ranger. Looking like a narrow bullhorn, the Nasal Ranger — sometimes called a "nose telescope" for its ability to suss out odours — works by pressing the narrow end up to the user's nose. The interior is coated with Teflon to resist residual odour build-up. When the user inhales, air enters the device through carbon filters at increasing degrees when a dial is turned up at the wide end.

When the user detects a stench, the numerical reading on the dial is noted. In Denver, a violation occurs when the offending odour is at a 7:1 ratio, i.e..., when one unit of odour is detectable per every seven units of air in the Nasal Ranger.

The Nasal Ranger has been used to investigate odour complaints against landfills, manufacturing plants and oil refineries. Users must first pass an odour sensitivity test, which uses "sniffin' sticks" — small pens that contain different concentrations of odours — to make sure a prospective Nasal Ranger user has a sufficiently sensitive sniffer.

"I had an old guy call, complaining about this unusual odour whenever he drove past Mississippi [Avenue] and Santa Fe [Drive]," Siller told the Post. "I knew right away what it was, and told him that it was marijuana. His reaction was, 'What?'"

Mood Sweater Automatically Shows Your Feelings

If you've ever wondered how someone is truly feeling, maybe you can convince her to don this mood-changing sweater. Embedded with sensors, the GER Mood Sweater has lights around the collar that change with the wearer’s emotions.The Mood Sweater‘s technology is based on the classic lie detector test, which uses a Galvanic Skin Response or GSR for short, according to Sensoree, the design lab that created it. Hand sensors connected to the sweater read excitement levels and translate that data into different colors on the LED collar

HOW TO TAKE A GOOD SELFIE

Now that the term "selfie" has been added to the dictionary and declared word of the year, it's clear that internet self-portraits aren't going anywhere. And while they can become repetitive and obnoxious, selfies are an easy and fun form of self expression. If you're an Instagrammer-in-training and want to start getting your best selfies out to the world, here are some tips. 

Step 1:Open your phone's camera app. 

Step 2:Tap the Camera Switch icon to activate your front-facing camera

Step 3:Move to a well-lit area. Since front cameras lack a flash, we recommend a bright area, preferably with natural light

Step 4:(Optional) Apply a filter. Filters are an easy way to make your selfies look like they came out of a photo studio. iOS 7 has filters built-in to the bottom right of its camera interface. Alternatively, you can apply filters via the free Instagram app for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows.

Step 5: Make your best face. Bonus points for animals or cool things happening in the background.

Step 6:Share your work by tapping your camera app's Share button. It's time to show your face to Facebook, Twitter, or any medium-in between.

                                         HOW TO TAKE A BAD SELFIE

Step 1: Do this

Is Katy Perry's Album a Bio-hazard?

Pop star Katy Perry — or, more precisely, her latest album — has been declared a potential bio-hazard by Australian authorities. The deluxe version of the album, named "Prism," contains seed paper that fans are encouraged to plant to grow flowers.

In-store versions of the album sold in Australia contain locally harvested seeds of the native Swan River daisy (Brachyscome). Versions that are ordered on-line and shipped from overseas, however, may contain non-native seeds or biological contaminants, according to the Australian Department of Agriculture.

"Seeds or plant material of international origin may be a weed not present in Australia, or the host of a plant pathogen of bio-security concern," a department representative told the Sydney Morning Herald. "The Australian government has a strong system in place to detect and respond to material of bio security concern. This includes the inspection of mail, cargo and baggage."

Mysterious Glowing Sea Creature Explained

Strange and wondrous creatures fill the seas, and even after aeons of living near and travelling across the world's oceans, people are still amazed by the seas' rich biological diversity.

Take, for example, the recent sighting of a mysterious glowing sea-beast — the video of which is now making its way across the Internet — that brought considerable delight and wonder to the people who witnessed the odd-looking creature moving through the harbour in Bristol, England.

Adding to the mystery is the fact that nobody could determine what exactly the luminous object might be. Was it another cheap on-line hoax? Or a shimmering example of bio luminescence, the ability of some animals to convert chemical energy into light?

                                                        click for full story

CHECK OUT MICROSOFT'S SMART BRA

Showing an almost shocking lack of sensitivity for gender stereotyping, Microsoft Research has developed a smart bra that prevents women from emotional and stress eating. Microsoft posits that by reducing emotional and stress eating, the bra wearer’s overall health can be improved. The jury is still out on whether stress eating is actually that big of a deal health-wise, mind you — and also whether it’s really an occupational hazard of being female, or whether it’s just a delightful case of media stereotyping.

The high-tech bra, developed by Mary Czerwinski at Microsoft Research in Redmond, is essentially a wearable stress sensor. The bra has two sensors — an EDA sensor and EKG — for detecting when the wearer is stressed out. A built-in computer (in the middle between the cups) then sends an alert to the girl’s smartphone, telling her that she shouldn't get her panties in a bunch. Just kidding — it tells the wearer that they’re stressed out, which is usually enough for them to break the habit of emotional eating. The whole thing is powered by a small 3.7-volt battery, which is only good enough for a few hours of sensing — something that will need to be improved if Microsoft plans to commercialize the smart bra.

An EKG, or electrocardiogram, measures heart rate. The EDA, or electrodermal activity sensor, measures skin conductance (moisture) and movement (respiration rate). All of these metrics can be combined by the on-bra computer for a fairly good idea of the wearer’s stress level. If your heart rate respiratory rate increases, and your skin gets a bit clammy, you are probably stressed. (A polygraph, or lie detector, uses very similar bio metrics incidentally.) This is when the computer sends an alert to a companion smartphone app, which presumably tells you to stop what you’re doing and take your hand out of the Oreo jar.

Czerwinski said that her team did try to develop a version for men, but that male underwear is too far away from the heart for an accurate EKG reading. (Insert lewd joke here.) As for the actual science behind emotional overeating — whether women are exclusively at risk, and whether we should try to curtail stress eating in the first place — the jury is still somewhat out. There doesn’t seem to be any definitive proof that only women suffer from stress eating — that’s just how the media portrays women (who are already under a lot of pressure to look beautiful and slim, don’t forget). People react differently when stressed, too — if you’re over-stressed, you tend to eat less, and generally healthy eaters generally binge on healthy food.

There’s also the matter of whether stress eating is inherently bad for our health, anyway. Recent research suggests that, if you only stress eat on occasion, and your normal diet is healthy, there’s no real risk — plus, more importantly, the stress eating will make you feel better, which is really the whole point of it in the first place.

The 'Death Watch': Gadget counts down how much time left until you die

A company is sourcing funds for a gadget dubbed the 'Death Watch' which counts down each second to the estimated date that you will pass away.

The device, called the Tikker watch, bases the date of your death on a series of medical questions in the hope of inspiring people to make the most of their remaining time.

The creator of the watch, Swedish inventor Fredrik Colting, says the device is not morbid and it is designed to make people who own it happier and give them a better life.

He said: "The occurence of death is no surprise to anyone, but in our modern society we rarely talk about it. 

"I think that if we were more aware of our own expiration I’m sure we’d make better choices while we are alive."The Tikker watch shows the amount of time you are estimated to have left in years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds.

Mr Colting said he devised the idea for the Tikker after his grandfather passed away and that it made him realise how important it is to enjoy life while we are alive,

He said: “It made me think about death and the transience of life, and I realised that nothing matters when you are dead. 

"Instead what matters is what we do when we are alive.”

A Kickstarter fund was set up for the gadget last week and the developers need to raise over £15,000 by November 1 for the project to go into development.

So far it has raised just over £3,500 in the space of a few days.

well what do you think....post your comments below

WHAT KIND OF SOCERY ILLUSION MAKES THIS TWO BLOCKS THE SAME COLOUR

One is dark, one is light. One is gray, one is white. These are obviously two different blocks with two different colors right? Wrong. The two blocks are the same color. Seriously, they're the same shade of gray. Just place your finger across the seam (where the blocks meet in the middle) to reveal the illusion. Just crazy.

This illusion, pointed out by David Smith and Kottke, makes me never want to trust my eyes again.

ORIGIN OF THE MOST VIEWED PICTURE OF EARTH

On this day in 1972, the Apollo 17 crew snapped this photograph, later dubbed "The Blue Marble." Photographed using a 70-millimeter Hasselblad camera with an 80-millimeter Zeiss lens, and credited to all three Apollo 17 astronauts (Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Jack Schmitt), this rare image of a fully-illuminated Earth has become one of the world's most recognizable photographs. No human has since traveled far enough into space to see such a full view of earth, though similar shots have since been taken by unmanned spacecraft. [NASA History Office; image: Wikimedia]

REVIEW: HP UNVEILS CHROMEBOOK

Colourful gadgets are mostly a ploy, I'm told. Best Buy shoppers may be drawn in by a purple camera or a shimmering orange laptop, but they leave the store with something in black. I've heard the same thing from a number of manufacturers across plenty of product categories. And looking around my apartment, I'm as guilty as anyone.

But the HP Chromebook 14 doesn't come in black, so I was left with no choice but to buy the gadget that first caught my eye — a big, gaudy, matte pink notebook. It’s the biggest, loudest Chromebook yet, and at $299 it’s a remarkably affordable device for what it offers: a big 14-inch screen, a brand-new Intel processor, and all the ports and options you might not expect from a Chromebook.

Chrome OS is having a moment. Manufacturers around the world are starting to make Chromebooks, and many have promised to bring them out of the bargain basement. A Chromebook could soon become a truly viable notebook, and not just a living room companion or your family’s fourth laptop. On paper, the HP Chromebook 14 is the best attempt yet — not to mention the most colourful.HP’s tiny Chromebook 11 feels like a toy — it’s thin, light, and cheap, and it’s almost surprising that there’s a working laptop inside. The larger Chromebook 14, on the other hand, feels like a computer. It’s made of grippy, rubbery plastic that is comfortable in my hands and on my lap but feels like something of a wholly different class than the sleek, metallic MacBook Air or Acer Aspire S7 — but then, it is of a wholly different class.

At 4.08 pounds and 0.81 inches thick, there’s nothing particularly portable about the Chromebook 14. $299 rarely buys much in the way of fit and finish, and with seams and ridges everywhere you look there’s nothing particularly high-end about it either. But it’s solid and sturdy, having already survived one drop off the edge of my coffee table and plenty of trips in my bag. It feels well-made and carefully assembled, which in some ways matters even more than the raw materials.

Chromebooks exist in an awkward performance bracket. They’re typically used for less-intensive activity — "it’s just a web browser," or so goes the common refrain — and as such don’t really need high-end processors. But high-end processors would enable more powerful activities, and particularly with Intel’s latest Haswell chips there’s a huge boost in battery life and efficiency too. The Chromebook 14’s Celeron 2955U chip (the same as in the Acer C720) is for now a decent middle ground: it’s based on Haswell, but is designed explicitlycheaper, lower-end devices like this one.At this point, Chrome OS is still a limited operating system, but it’s not raw functionality that’s the problem. There’s almost nothing you can’t do with the Chromebook 14, other than heavy-duty video editing and PC-class gaming. But for everything it offers, Chrome OS is still in places an awkward and unintuitive platform. If you have more than one window open, navigating between them is needlessly difficult: there’s no easy way to see all your windows at once, or even scroll through them in an obvious way. The local file manager is still too basic, and as soon as you have more than a few apps installed they become cumbersome to organize and find.

More than its spec sheet or feature list, that’s what holds Chrome OS back — there’s plenty here for both novices and power users, but the UI balks at anything beyond the basics. Chrome OS is great for email and web browsing, but even as HP seems to make the case for a Chromebook as a full-featured laptop, Google holds it back. There are signs of that changing, as Google works on a better notification system and a better platform for offline usage and native apps, but it’s not there yet.

CHECK OUT APPLE'S iBEACON

Apple today quietly switched on what many consider to be a secret weapon of iOS 7: iBeacons. The technology allows your iPhone to provide a location-aware shopping experience whenever you walk into any Apple Store in the US. It does this by communicating with tiny, low-power Bluetooth transmitters hidden above shelves and under product display tables. These transmitters reveal your precise location to the Apple Store app, enabling it to instantly ping you with notifications about hardware you're toying with at any given moment. Perhaps more importantly, it also highlights features of the Apple Store app you may not have known about. For instance, approaching the iPhone section will result in a prompt asking if you'd like to check your upgrade eligibility.

But Apple's stores are just the first step; iBeacons could start popping up at retailers, museums, sports arenas, and countless other destinations in the months to come. Macy's is already conducting a private iBeacon trial through a partnership with Shopkick. (An authorized app is necessary to make iBeacon work. Nothing happens if you don't have an app capable of "listening" for the transmitters installed.) Since the potential here is so big, we decided to waste no time testing the technology at Apple's stores. To put it lightly, we came away with mixed results.

REAL LIFE IRON MAN SUIT COMMISSIONED BY US MILITARY

The technology in Iron Man is getting a step closer to reality thanks to the United States military. The Army has commissioned a Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, which would provide the wearer with superhuman abilities like night vision, enhanced strength, and protection from gunfire.

IT WOULD ALLOW THE WEARER TO LITERALLY WALK THROUGH A STREAM OF BULLETS

Each suit would have an on-board computer that would be able to instantly respond to certain situations and provide the user with enhanced situational awareness. According to the press release, the suit may use liquid armor, currently under development at MIT, which has the ability to transform from a "liquid to solid in milliseconds when a magnetic field or electrical current is applied." The goal is full-body ballistic protection, theoretically allowing the wearer to literally walk through a stream of bullets. A panel that rests against the skin would be able to detect and respond to the body's core temperature, skin temperature, heart rate, and hydration levels. The suit would also provide basic life support such as heat, air, and oxygen.

The Army isn't the first to be inspired by the technology in Iron Man. Elon Musk created a lab based on the movie using a Leap Motion controller, an Oculus Rift, and a projector. While he admits that the setup doesn't yet have much practical value, he believes that we're on the cusp on major design and manufacturing breakthroughs. If the new Army commando suit comes to fruition, it could be a big step forward for defense technology.

WORLD'S FIRST GLASSES FREE 3D TABLET

                                                             3D might not have revolutionised TV viewing, as it promised, but now it's coming to tablets.US ret.It's similar to the effect on the Nintendo 3DS.Android 4.1 Jelly Bean comes as standard. On imaging duties, there's a 2-megapixel camera, as well as a 0.3-megapixel front-facer.It has 16GB of storage, though you can expand that with a USB ftailer Hammacher Shlemmer has announced a tablet that's packing a 8-inch 3D screen. And you won't need to wear glasses to see into the third dimension, either. Which is good news, as we don't fancy venturing out in a pair of 3D specs.The No Glasses 3D Tablet works in 2D mode as well. Its 1,280x800-pixel resolution screen has a parallax barrier on top of it, which sends a different image to each eye. This creates the illusion of depth, so images seem to come out of the screen, or go further into ilash drive or SD card.There's no word on what the processor is like, or how much RAM in inside. Battery life is an uninspiring 5-7 hours, which is about half what you'll get from theiPad Air.It's nowhere near as expensive as the iPad Air though. It costs just $349.95 (£214). Which isn't much more than Google's Nexus 7. So if you fancy 3D on the go, it might be worth a look.

iPhone 6 will have 5-inch display, says new report

Apple’s next-generation iPhone 6 will finally match up to its key Android rivals and pack a 5-inch, Full HD 1080p display. That’s according to new rumors emerging from Japan, published in Mac Fan magazine.

The move to a larger screen would not be a huge surprise. Apple is said to have been testing larger, phablet-style phones for months, with a slew of stories of 6-inch devices emanating from supply-chain sources throughout the summer.

This new piece of tittle tattle, though, says a 5-inch number is nailed-on. While Mac Fan’s sources' credentials as sources of juicy info remain unclear, it's undoubtedly fair to say that a device of that size wouldn’t be seen as too large by most consumers.

The magazine also claims the iPhone 6 will launch in September 2014. That seems almost a given, what with the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5 arriving in the same timeframe in the past two years.

Expect to hear plenty more gossip about Apple’s next iPhone as 2014 looms into view.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5 TO PACK 16-MEGAPIXEL CAMERA

Over recent weeks, a slew of reports have attested that the Galaxy S5 will pack iPhone 5S-style bio metric security technology. But that it will scan users’ eyeballs and not fingerprints to determine their identity.Depending on who you believe, the S5 is also rumored to feature a f aux-leather, Galaxy Note 3-style back, an aluminium unibody construction and possibly even a flexible display. Oh and could sport the octa-core Exynos processor that some expected to debut in the S4 too.

Today, we’ve been graced with some details about the S5’s camera. And assuming they’re on-point, it sounds like it could be one of its standout features.

According to Unwired View, which picked up the story from ET News, the S5 is almost certain to pack a 16-megapixel camera – up from the 13-megapixel snapper that features on the S4.

What’s less clear is who’ll be making it. The site claims that Samsung’s LSI wing and Sony are competing to get the nod, with obvious benefits and disadvantages either way. Not least the depth of experience with SLRs that Sony would bring.

Assuming Samsung LSI wins out, though, and that’s the most likely outcome if Samsung is trying to keep the phone’s asking price down, the camera will probably pack the ISOCELL and improved image stabilisation technology. Both of which were recently announced by the gadget-maker.

World’s fastest wireless network hits 100 gigabits per second, can scale to terabits

German researchers have combined photonics and electronics to create a world-record-breaking wireless network that can send and receive data at a heady 100 gigabits per second (Gbps). This beats the same team’s previous world record of 40Gbps. At 100Gbps, or a transfer rate of 12.5 gigabytes per second — ten times faster than Google Fiber — you could copy a complete Blu-ray disc in a couple of seconds.

To achieve such a massive data rate, researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) used a massive swath of bandwidth at around 240 GHz — close to the terahertz frequency range. To create the signal, two laser beams (carrying the data) are mixed together (using a photon mixer made by NTT Electronics). An electrical signal results, where the frequency of the signal (237.5 GHz in this case) is the difference between the two optical signals. A normal antenna is then used to beam the signal to the receiver, where a fancy chip fabricated out of fast-switching III-V transistors (pictured below) is required to make sense of the super-high-frequency signal.

KIT’s 100Gbps wireless network is exciting for two reasons. The first is the most obvious: Yay, faster download speeds! Second, because the wireless signal is generated by a laser signal, it’s an ideal technology to tack on the end of a fiber network. For example, if you have high-speed fiber coming into a telephone exchange or mobile base station, you could then use KIT’s wireless tech to cover the last mile to your home. So far, KIT has only created a 100Gbps network over a distance of 20 meters in the lab — but last year’s 40Gbps world record was set using similar hardware over a range of one kilometer, across the rooftops of the city of Karlsruhe, Germany.

WHAT HAPPENS TO "FAST AND FURIOUS 7" FOLLOWING PAUL WALKER'S DEATH

The fate of "Fast & Furious 7" is up in the air.

Following the sudden death of Paul Walker, executives at Universal — the studio behind "The Fast & Furious" franchise — met on Sunday to discuss the future of the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Reportedly, there will be a delay in production, but the movie will not be abandoned entirely.

Production was on hiatus over the Thanksgiving holiday and was set to resume this week in Atlanta, Georgia, sources confirm to Yahoo Movies, but will be halted in the meantime. THR reports "Fast & Furious 7" director James Wan met with Universal to discuss the future of the project, how to re-work the script, and "how to proceed in a manner that would be respectful to Walker's death."

Walker, who reprised his role as Brian O'Conner, had been filming the seventh installment since September.

Variety reports it is unclear how much of Walker’s footage had been shot, while The Wrap alleges production is already more than halfway done. Meanwhile, THR claims a large part of the movie had been shot, but additional scenes were to be filmed in January in Abu Dhabi with Paul and the main cast.

On Saturday, Universal released their only statement thus far following the tragedy: "All of us at Universal are heartbroken. Paul was truly one of the most beloved and respected members of our studio family for 14 years, and this loss is devastating to us, to everyone involved with the 'Fast and Furious' films, and to countless fans. We send our deepest and most sincere condolences to Paul's family."Franchise favorites Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, and Dwayne Johnson are all back for "Fast & Furious 7," which was scheduled for release on July 11, 2014. The “Fast” franchise has grossed more than $2.3 billion at the worldwide box office. 

On Nov. 30, Paul Walker passed away at the age of 40 in a fiery one-car collision just outside of Los Angeles. The actor was attending a charity event for his organization Reach Out Worldwide. Paul's longtime friend and CEO of his company Always Evolving, Roger Rodas, has been identified as the driver of the vehicle.

FAST AND FURIOUS STAR DIES IN CAR CRASH

Fast and Furious star Paul Walker died in a car accident on Saturday afternoon at the age of 40. Walker's official Facebook page confirmed the news this evening.
TMZ reports that the actor was riding in a Porsche in Santa Clarita, California when the driver lost control of the vehicle and slammed into a tree. The car burst into flames and both driver and passenger were killed in the single-car accident. Walker had been in Santa Clarita for a car show to support relief efforts for victims of the Philippines typhoon.
Walker, who joined the Fast and Furious franchise as Brian O'Conner with its first installment in 2001, initially broke out in Hollywood with roles in Pleasantville, Varsity Blues and She's All That. He had just begin work on the seventh Fast and Furious movie, and was awaiting release of the drama Hours, which is due out on December 13th, as well as Brick Mansions and Vehicle 19.
The Glendale, California native is the father of a 15-year-old daughter.Within a few hours, "Fast and Furious" was trending on Twitter, followed later by "RIP Paul Walker." As news of his death spread, thousands started following the actor's Twitter account.

Throughout the evening, Walker's fans, especially those of the long-running Fast and Furious films, as well as celebrities expressed shock and sadness.more pics after the cut

Japanese firm plans 250 mile-wide solar panel belt around Moon

A Japanese construction firm is proposing to solve the well-documented energy problems facing Japan - and ultimately the entire planet - by turning the moon into a colossal solar power plant.

Tokyo-based Shimizu Corp. wants to lay a belt of solar panels 250 miles wide around the equator of our orbiting neighbour and then relay the constant supply of energy to “receiving stations” on Earth by way of lasers or microwave transmission.

The “Luna Ring” that is being proposed would be capable of sending 13,000 terawatts of power to Earth. Throughout the whole of 2011, it points out, the United States only generated 4,100 terawatts of power.

“A shift from economical use of limited resources to the unlimited use of clean energy is the ultimate dream of mankind,” Shimizu says in the proposal on its web site. “The Luna Ring ... translates this dream into reality through ingenious ideas coupled with advanced space technologies.”

Until March 2011, and the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan had relied heavily on nuclear power.