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PETMAN Cometh Come on, Boston Dynamic! Who are you trying to kid? You tell us PETMAN is the latest evolution of your human-form android that uses similar tech to your military BigDog, and that he's a development from an earlier prototype that included just legs. You point out that by adding a torso, arms, realistic walking, running, crawling, push-ups, and staggering motions (to avoid a fall if pushed) as well as synthetic sweat glands, he's perfectly designed to test out military clothing and hardware in lab situations

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Flying Dinosaur Bot There's a big debate about how modern bird evolved from flying dinosaurs, and another about how those dinosaurs learned to fly: Did they gradually get better at gliding like a flying squirrel, or did they run-flap along the ground giving them better hunting speed and the ability to easily leap onto perches?

What's a small business to make of Facebook, Google, and HopStop offering up ad space free of charge? Facebook made a splash last week when it announced a plan to offer $10 million in free advertising to small businesses starting in January. The company says the move allows small entrepreneurs test the waters of social media advertising—and simultaneously helps Facebook usher in a new wave of loyal advertisers it hopes will stick around for the long haul.

Science and math won't improve U.S. job prospects

What's the future of solar energy? Fast Company gets Crystal Ballin' with Lynn Jurich, cofounder of SunRun, which is flourishing in a season that has seen a few high-profile bankruptcies in solar energy. For the latest installment in our futurist series of interviews, Crystal Ballin' , we talk to Lynn Jurich, the 32-year-old cofounder of SunRun , which specializes in installing and operating solar panels on residential rooftops.

Ric Elias discusses why fear is bad for business at the Inc. 500|5000 Conference

John Sculley has had a diverse career by any measure--he has served as president of PepsiCo, CEO of Apple (where he famously championed the tablet computer in the 1980s), and more recently, chairman of Watermark Medical, a medical products company that has developed an in-home sleep apnea diagnostic device). Sculley is also working with Audax Health Solutions , a startup that has developed a personal health management platform with a gamification layer that allows users to compete with friends and collect points and badges. We caught up with Sculley at this year's Body Computing Conference --an event that brings together doctors, designers, programmers, entrepreneurs, journalists, and members of the entertainment industry to preview the future of high-tech health care--to learn more about his thoughts on the future of health care technology

The snack giant is investing in a program to help Ethiopian farmers develop a chickpea crop. But it's not altruism: Pepsi wants access to a lot of chickpeas, because that's what they want to sell us.

Undersea vents are providing researchers with a possible view of the future as seawater becomes more acidic due to carbon dioxide emissions. [More]

Communication problems aside, Netflix's decision to break apart the business is part two of its plan for the future, a company spokesperson tells Fast Company. Netflix's announcement that it is splitting its DVD service off into an entirely new business may have some wondering if that decision was a reaction to all the negative response to the announcement earlier this summer that it was raising rates on its hybrid DVD-streaming business

More than 20 Nobel laureates and about 550 young researchers from 77 countries met at Germany's Lindau Island on Lake Constance from June 26 to July 1 to discuss the future of science and innovative thinking [More]

When environmentalists think about what our future might look like, the predictions are often grim and hopeless; even under the best circumstances, they seem to say, we're still screwed. But what if, by some miracle of human ingenuity, the dire predictions don't pan out and we learn how to efficiently manage our resources?

"The Center" will be a city for 350,000, but none will live there. Instead, it will be used to see how the innovations that will power cities of the future will run in the real world.

A new, safer model of skyscraper rises from the site of the attack. Photo by Ofer Wolberger The offices here at Fast Company enjoy a most remarkable view. From our aerie on the 29th floor of 7 World Trade Center, we look out over the New York harbor, Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and the occasional jetliner floating down the Hudson.