For a generation of baby-boomers it has been a source of huge disappointment. They grew up believing that one day they would fly to work in their very own sky cars — only to find themselves still very much grounded. More than a century after the Wright brothers first took to the air, personal aviation remains an

Apple and BlackBerry aren’t the only fruit-flavoured brands that can cause a stir with new hardware releases. The UK-developed Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized, bare-bones computer selling in two variations for US$25 and $35 respectively — slightly less than an iPad 2 plastic cover. After the Raspberry Pi’s pre-order

Sunny countries are often poor. It is a shame, then, that solar power is still quite expensive. But it is getting cheaper by the day, and is now cheap enough to be competitive with other forms of energy in places that are not attached to electricity grids. Since 1,6bn people are still in that unfortunate position

Towards the end of the Gulf war in 1991, an American armoured scout unit in Iraq’s southern desert stumbled upon a much larger elite force of dug-in Iraqi armour. Rather than retreating, the nine American tanks and 12 Bradley fighting vehicles attacked. When the battle ended about 25 minutes later, the Americans