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Sociologists from Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), avoid using the term “middle-class”, explaining that a mechanical transfer of terms used in most developed countries standards only distorts the picture. Other researchers claim that if the middle-class does not exceed 25%-30 % of the population (the highest figures obtained for Russia), it is useless to discuss the phenomenon, since this figure is around 60% and over in developed societies! It is not just a matter of statistics; it means quality difference for middle-class role in society in general and its consumer aspect in particular.

‘The Russian middle-class is growing not due to entrepreneurs and people from free business, but due to government employees or state corporations. Furthermore, gradually this tendency is becoming more vivid and changing the mentality of what the middle-class is

- Honda Motor plans to offer cars that can drive themselves on highways by around 2020

With Toyota Motor and Nissan Motor having announced their plans, the three largest domestic carmakers now have timelines for self-driving vehicles.

Honda this year started adopting what it calls Sensing technologies

body of the concept car is designed to maximize aerodynamic efficiency and is constructed primarily out of recycled materials

BMW has also eliminated to wood and leather from the its interiors to promote sustainable manufacturing.

The BMW design study also incorporates full autonomous and manual driving modes, called "Ease" and "Boost" modes.

The 12 year old used the internet to stop, rewind, and watch videos of the best dubstep music dancers in the world like Marquese Scott (youtube.com/user/WHZGUD2), something she admits a traditional dance class wouldn't allow her to do.

Adilyn Malcolm mastered dubstep dancing by just using YouTube as her teacher.

Experience a world première: On Saturday, 8 October 2016 ETH Zurich is organising the very first Cybathlon! Individuals with physical disabilities will compete side by side in six demanding disciplines, using the latest assistive technologies.

There are races for athletes with powered arm and leg prostheses, for those wearing a robotic exoskeleton and for powered wheelchairs. There’s also a race for cyclists using electrical muscle stimulation and even a brain-computer interface race.

Cybathlon provides a platform for the development of novel assistive technologies that are useful for daily life. Through the organisation of the Cybathlon we want to remove barriers between people with disabilities, the public and technology developers.

The University of Canterbury team, led by Christoph Bartneck of the university's Human Interface Technology Lab, wanted to explore one way Lego might be influencing children through play. Toys, and play time, are considered vital to the development of emotional understanding in children, and with an average of 75 Lego blocks per human on Earth it makes sense to see what kinds of emotions Lego is presenting to children

On average, heads displayed 3.9 different emotions, which means that for a lot of the faces their emotional state is reasonably complex and ambiguous.

We cannot help but wonder how the move from only positive faces to an increasing number of negative faces impacts how children play

Cognitive Apprenticeship: To engage students to participate in a community of practice can provide the following advantages: Legitimacy on the apprentice and available of community resources Strong goals and motivation Development of understanding of the enterprise through engagement in practice Communication among peers and near-peers.

Learning-in-practice (Lave, 1990): Learning is conceived as increasing participation in communities of practice

Knowledge accrues through the lived practices of the people in the society

Waverly Labs says they will soon release the Pilot, a pair of in-ear translators designed to let people who speak different languages understand each other in real-time

The technology makes use of an embedded app that does the translating, which is delivered to the earpiece that is shared by two people. The Pilot is also supposed to come with an additional earpiece for wireless streaming music and an app that allows people toggles between languages.

The company intends to develop support for European and Germanic languages first, but the Slavic Semitic, Hindi, and East Asian languages are not too far behind.

Cheapest Labor Since Tsars Ruled Russia a Draw for Samsung, Ikea

A combination of the country’s worst currency crisis since 1998 and an unprecedented slide in real wages for most of the past two years has resulted in salaries that have become “broadly competitive” with China’s for the first time since the tsarist era ended a century ago, according to Renaissance Capital.

“It won’t be an exaggeration to say that Russia may become the region’s factory,” said Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief economist at the Eurasian Development Bank. “The goal of our manufacturers in Russia is to create alliances with foreign companies, to become part of regional and global chains of added value and thus to increase not only the country’s competitive potential, but also its export potential.”

a new generation of even more ambitious theaters — possibly even including cinema's first holodeck — is waiting in the wings.

The first Escape theaters — which will include the Cinemark 18 & XD at the Promenade at the Howard Hughes Center in Los Angeles — will open Sept. 19, showing a special edition of Fox's new young adult thriller The Maze Runner

Escape theaters showing The Maze Runner will project the live-action movie on to the center screen, and the side screens will feature additional visual effects

Государство выделит 2,2 млрд руб. до конца 2016 г. на обустройство кинозалов в малых городах с населением до 100 000 человек, сообщил министр культуры Владимир Мединский

Сейчас в малых городах работает около 500 кинозалов, рассказал Мединский. Он рассчитывает, что государственные субсидии помогут удвоить это количество

Это безвозвратные деньги, они могут быть потрачены на закупку, транспортировку и установку оборудования для кинозалов (экран, проекторы, кресла и т. д.), но не на ремонт или строительство; на каждый зал может быть потрачено не более 5 млн руб

В 2012 году доля российского кино [в прокате] составляла 16 процентов. Нам удалось за три года поднять её до 18 процентов

Это ключевой показатель эффективности отрасли. Наша цель, которую мы ставим на 2018 год, – это 25 процентов.

Например, ночь кино. С этого года это бесплатный показ российских кинофильмов на улицах, площадях и в парках, которые мы будем осуществлять для населения. Например, Дворцовая площадь во время Экономического форума [в Санкт-Петербурге] – несколько дней показа российского кино в живом сопровождении оркестра Мариинского театра

With huge-flat screen TVs becoming more affordable — and more original TV content being produced — cinemas have to step up their game to keep pace in the arms race with home theaters. That’s why theater chains are coming out with better food, reclining chairs, and more supersized screens like Imax to take full advantage of the special effects in many tentpole blockbusters.

The theater, which opens to the public Friday night, now has a lobby that’s part of the show (and soon, a camera-based audience data gathering tool to go with it), and a cinema equipped with the showpiece Barco Escape, which combines three screens in a U-shaped pattern that gives the viewer almost a cockpit-type perspective of the action.

“The Maze Runner” and its sequel, “Maze Runner: Scorch Trials,” were the first — and only — two films with scenes optimized for Barco Escape, but with dozens of Imax films coming out every year, there needs to be a much broader pipeline of content to compete with other large format

Unlike films made for the silver screen, an internet film doesn’t need to contain something for everyone

But the internet is different. As viewers are watching alone, films can be made exclusively for certain fanbases and still be confident of finding an audience.

in the eyes of a conservative family, the company should stand for wholesome entertainment, but to a 20-year-old city-dwelling college graduate, it should be more edgy. It’s unlikely these two demographics would go to the cinema together, while they almost certainly won’t be streaming the same content.

By 2020, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will have brought us advanced robotics and autonomous transport, artificial intelligence and machine learning, advanced materials, biotechnology and genomics. These developments will transform the way we live, and the way we work. Some jobs will disappear, others will grow and jobs that don’t even exist today will become commonplace. What is certain is that the future workforce will need to align its skillset to keep pace.

Creativity will become one of the top three skills workers will need.

negotiation and flexibility are high on the list of skills

As America switches from an industrial economy to a digital one, its bluest collar workers are facing the toughest challenge of their lives. Can miners really learn how to code?

Say what you will about the long-term environmental effects (Justice, for one, is very pro-coal) but the impact on the area’s one-source economy has been brutal.

The Rusty Justice seminar concludes for today. The coders swivel back to their computers, and Michael announces weekend plans to no one in particular: “Looks like I better learn C#.”

Singapore had the foresight to realise very early that they didn’t have resources. They didn’t have water, they didn’t have energy. So they were forced from the start to include sustainability in their thinking. They understood that economic sustainability for them was tightly linked to environmental sustainability

The infamous traffic in Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta, led to the first phase of a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) rail system to alleviate the strain on roads, to be announced this year

Russia’s economy is at a turning point. Following a decade of spectacular growth fueled by high energy prices, the country could either use its newfound riches to finance much-needed modernization and become a driver of innovation and growth, or muddle through by continuing to rely on its large yet maturing hydrocarbon base.

Ranking the importance of different drivers for Russia’s economic development in terms of impact and uncertainty over the way in which they may evolve over time, the group highlighted oil and gas prices as well as economic diversification and competition as critical uncertainties (see exhibit).