May 2012 – Page 2 – Impact Lab

Analysis, Business, Education, Money Talk

Graphic: The price of college tuition

May 26, 2012

The average sticker price and average net price for tuition and fees at public and private colleges in the U.S. over the past 15 years.

There are two ways to think about college tuition price:

Sticker price is the full price colleges list in their brochures and on their websites.
Net price is the price students actually pay. Net price accounts for the fact that many students receive grants or scholarships. So it can be considerably lower than sticker price.

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Analysis, Business, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Transforming the Future of the Insurance Industry

May 25, 2012

Futurist Thomas Frey: The insurance industry exists as a tool for mitigating the costs and damage associated with a single incident occurring for an individual or organization.

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Animals, Art, Crazy Photos, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Humor, Photo Perspectives

Top 10 Photos of the Week

May 25, 2012

You took the yellow pill didn’t you?

Quote of the Day – “I like American women. They do things sexually Russian girls never dream of doing – like showering.” – Yakov Smirnoff

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Analysis, Entertainment, Latest Trend

‘American Idol’ finale sees all-time low ratings with only 21.5 million viewers tuning in

May 25, 2012

American Idol

The “American Idol” finale hit a new low this week with nearly 22 million TV viewers tuning in to watch, down 31% from last year.

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Analysis, Business, Economy, Latest Trend

31.4% of homeowners in the U.S. are underwater on mortgages

May 25, 2012

American homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages actually are only running a “paper loss.”

According to real estate site Zillow, nearly 16 million homeowners – not quite a third of people with mortgages – owe more on their home loans than their properties are worth.

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Business, Economy, government, Science & Technology News

Recently bankrupt Vallejo, California is now a model for other U.S. cities

May 24, 2012

Vallejo, CA became the largest city in America to declare bankruptcy in 2008.

The working-class port city of Vallejo, California became the largest city in America to declare bankruptcy in 2008. Crime and prostitution surged as the police force was thinned by 40 percent. Firehouses were shuttered, and funding for libraries and senior centers was slashed. Foreclosures multiplied and home prices plummeted.

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Analysis, Health & Fitness, Nanotechnology, Science & Technology News

Rapid DNA sequencing could soon become a routine part of your medical record

May 24, 2012

The latest technological competition involves the idea of threading a single strand of DNA through a tiny, molecular-scale eyelet known as a nanopore.

Rapid DNA sequencing can provide enormous amount of information previously sequestered in the human genome’s 3 billion nucleotide bases and soon may become a routine part of each individual’s medical record.

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Analysis, Business, Internet, Latest Trend

Average web page surpasses 1MB in size

May 24, 2012

Bigger isn’t always better. The average web page is now more than 1 megabyte (MB) and that’s bad for site owners and for mobile users.

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Analysis, Globalism, Health & Fitness, Latest Trend

Do women in the U.S. have the best quality of live?

May 24, 2012

Australia gets top honors for overall wellbeing.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has recently released the Better Life Index and according to the index women in the United States have the best quality of life of any developed nation.

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Analysis, Education, Latest Trend

Has college become too easy?

May 23, 2012

Amount of time students study has dwindled.

Is college too easy? Survey data shows that over the last 50 years, the amount of time college students actually study — read, write and otherwise prepare for class — has dwindled from 24 hours a week to about 15.

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Analysis, Business, Science & Technology News

Jonathan Ive – Apple’s quest for simplicity

May 23, 2012

Jonathan Ive

Jonathan Ive, the London-born head of design for Apple says “design is a word that’s come to mean so much that it’s also a word that has come to mean nothing. We don’t really talk about design, we talk about developing ideas and making products.”

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Alternative Transportation, Analysis, Great Videos, Science & Technology News

A visualization of airplane flight paths in the U.S.

May 23, 2012

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/5368967[/vimeo]

How may airplanes fly above our heads everyday?

Aaron Koblin knows the answer: It can be more than 19,000 in the United States. And thanks to his wizardry with FAA data, we can see how these aircraft drift from city to city in this mesmerizing computer visualization.

Continue reading… “A visualization of airplane flight paths in the U.S.”