Category: Analysis

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Analysis, Business, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

75% of Chinese consumers interested in buying wearables devices

The market size of Chinese wearable devices could reach $1.87 billion by 2015.

One of the most anticipated digital products, after smartphones and tablets is wearable devices, even though manufacturers still have a long way to go to commercialize them.  This anticipation is demonstrated in a report recently released by Baidu with 93.1 percent of the interviewees familiar with the concept of wearables — and 70 percent to 75 percent are willing to purchase one.

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Latest Trend, Money Talk

Cost of child care more than college in much of the U.S.

Putting a baby and a 4-year-old into a child care center cost more than the annual median rent in every single state.

It is no surprise to parents that child care costs are getting costlier and costlier, according to a new report.  It costs families more to put an infant in a child care center than to cover tuition and fees at a public college in more than half of the states, according to a new analysis by Child Care Aware of America, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on child care access.

Analysis, Business, Internet, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Internet of Things will be the ‘biggest business in the history of electronics’

Imagine a world filled with hyperlinked smart objects that are constantly interacting over a network to improve user experience IRL. The ‘Internet of Things’ is perhaps the buzzwordiest buzzword in all of the tech sector right now, as it promises to produce a sleek, futuristic, friction-free—and lucrative—environment for all of us to live and consume products in. Which is probably why it’s relentlessly being heralded as the next big thing in consumer electronics: Recent projections from some of the industry’s biggest players say the IoT could be a $15 trillion market in just six years.

 

 

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Latest Trend, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

Have we reached peak employment? 24 future industries that will lead to an era of super employment!

Futurist Thomas Frey:  It’s easy to spot signs of desperation in people’s eyes. With unemployment rates at persistently high levels and young people unable to find jobs from one year to the next, we have become a society seething with anxiety.

 

 

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Analysis, Great Videos, People Making a Difference, Recycling, Science & Technology News

Japanese inventor finds solution to global trash problem by converting plastic to oil

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Lg_kvLaAM[/youtube]

This YouTube video about the invention of a plastic-to-oil converting machine went viral and exceeded 3.7 million views. This shows that concern over “the plastic problem” is certainly not going away, despite encouraging bans on and decreases in the use of plastic shopping bags.

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Energy, Science & Technology News

Electric power without transmission lines

Hundreds of companies are investing in electricity transferred through magnetic fields.

Nikola Tesla, the inventor and rival to Thomas Edison, in the early 1900’s built the Wardenclyffe Tower, a 187-foot-high structure on Long Island, which he said could transmit electricity wirelessly. Financier J.Morgan backed the Wardenclyffe Tower. The project failed, and Tesla ended up broke. (In an earlier experiment in Colorado, Tesla had wirelessly lit up 200 lamps over a distance of 25 miles, but pedestrians witnessed sparks jumping between their feet and the ground, and electricity flowed from faucets when turned on. Oops.)

 

 

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Analysis, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Couples who text together don’t stay together: Study

Too much texting can disconnect couples.

Two researchers who study the societal effects of text messages, Lori Schade and Jonathan Sandberg of Brigham Young University, just released a new study claiming that too much texting can disconnect couples. Their research, published behind a paywall in the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy, links too much texting to the stripping of nuance from a relationship.

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Energy, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

11 major trends in mass energy storage

What are energy CEO’s thinking?

Grid-Scale Energy Storage in North America 2013: Applications, Technologies, and Suppliers, author Chet Lyons spoke with dozens of energy storage CEOs and summarized their thoughts in a recent report. Below is an excerpt of his 311-page report, highlighting eleven common threads shared by energy storage executives.

 

 

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Analysis, Education, Globalism, government, Internet, Science & Technology News

U.S. State Department and Coursera partner to support free education in over 30 countries

The State Departments’ goal is having more foreigners learn English and experience the U.S. education system.

U.S. embassies around the world this fall are hosting weekly discussions for students enrolled in free online courses, called MOOCs, in partnership with Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based platform with over 5 million users. Embassy employees and Fulbright fellows (Fulbright being an academic exchange program sponsored by the State Department) will volunteer to host the discussions. There will be over 30 sites to begin with, in countries like India, China, and Bolivia. Topics include English, science, technology, engineering, business, and U.S. civics.

 

 

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Analysis, Business, government, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

More than 20% of government organizations will have appointed a chief digital officer by 2014

The government CIO  role is increasingly under pressure due to the development and implementation of digital government strategies, leading to the creation of new roles, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner predicts that by 2014, more than 10 percent of government organizations will have appointed a chief data officer and over 20 percent will have appointed a chief digital officer.

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Food, Science & Technology News

5 trends for the future of food packaging

Sensors that indicate when a product is no longer good will replace the ‘best before’ print.

Sometimes, packaging may appear very wasteful to people. The packaging is used only temporarily and the act of throwing it away does not feel good. The ‘throw away society’ has given way for a society that shares and reuses as much as possible. However, packaging, even for one time use, is still vital in our way of live. As a fact, packaging design can help make sustainable lifestyle choices. Here are five trends in the future of food packaging which we will see in the coming years.

 

 

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