Researchers claim older people deliberately take longer to make decisions – to improve their chances of making the right choice.
Think again if you thought that people of 70 aren’t as mentally quick off the mark as they used to be. They can have reactions as fast as 25-year-olds, a study reveals.
Brominated vegetable oil is patented as a flame retardant and it’s banned in food all over Europe and Japan, but it’s on the ingredient list of about 10 percent of sodas in the U.S. It’s not in Coca-Cola, but is in Mountain Dew, Fanta Orange, and in some flavors of Powerade and Gatorade.
What brominated vegetable oil (BVO) does to soda is, Coca-Cola explains, “prevent the citrus flavoring oils from floating to the surface in beverages.” The fruit flavors that are mixed into a drink would otherwise settle out. What BVO does when it’s acting as a flame retardant is not much different: It slows down the chemical reactions that cause a fire…
Continue reading… “Is that Flame Retardant in your Soft Drink?”
The Internet search giant is adding 625,000 new users a day to the service and will finish 2012 with 400 million.
How many users does Google+ social networking service have? How actively are users using Google+? Only Google has the real answers.
Continue reading… “Google+ could reach 400 million users by end of 2012”
A game using augmented reality.
2012 will be a very busy year in all things digital, but there will be just a handful of big, memorable trends. Here are five such movements that are likely to make a big impact in our technologically-enhanced lives.
Continue reading… “5 technology trends to watch in 2012”
Educational borrowing has grown far more quickly among those between 35 and 49.
According to a new analysis obtained by Reuters, middle-aged borrowers are piling up student debt faster than any other age group.
Continue reading… “Middle-aged racking up student debt faster than any other age group”
Today’s super-rich are different from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity.
If you were watching television on the first Sunday morning in August last summer, you would have seen something curious on NBC. David Gregory, host of Meet the Press, was interviewing a guest who made a forceful case that the U.S. economy had become “very distorted.” In the wake of the recession, this guest explained, high-income individuals, large banks, and major corporations had experienced a “significant recovery”; the rest of the economy, by contrast—including small businesses and “a very significant amount of the labor force”—was stuck and still struggling. He argued that what we were seeing was not a single economy at all, but rather “fundamentally two separate types of economy,” increasingly distinct and divergent.
Continue reading… “The rise of the new super-rich”
China is now one step closer to become the top economic and military superpower in the world: their Beidou geo-positioning system is now fully armed and operational.
But why is this important?
Continue reading… “China has its own GPS now—and it’s better than yours”
What good advice does your future self have to offer?
In an episode of the popular sitcom “30 Rock,” television CEO Jack has a hallucinatory encounter with his future self, from whom he receives life advice that helps him avoid major mistakes.
Most of us would also like to know which choices and decisions we make as young people will benefit us later on — or come back to haunt us. Although there’s no way to step into our own futures, we can get a very good sense of what mistakes younger folks should avoid. We can ask our “future selves”: our elders…
Continue reading… “Six tips from your future self”
Purdue associate professor of biological sciences Zhao-Qing Luo, at right, and graduate student Yunhao Tan look at the growth of Legionella pneumophila bacteria in a petri dish.
Bacteria are able to build camouflaged homes for themselves inside healthy cells — and cause disease — by manipulating a natural cellular process.
Purdue University biologists led a team that revealed how a pair of proteins from the bacteria Legionella pneumophila, which causes Legionnaires disease, alters a host protein in order to divert raw materials within the cell for use in building and disguising a large structure that houses the bacteria as it replicates…
Continue reading… “How bacteria build homes inside healthy cells”
Eating less turns on a molecule that helps the brain stay young.
Overeating can cause brain aging while eating less turns on a molecule that helps the brain stay young. Researchers at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Rome have discovered that a molecule, called CREB1, is triggered by “caloric restriction” (low caloric diet) in the brain of mice. They found that CREB1 activates many genes linked to longevity and to the proper functioning of the brain.
Continue reading… “Eating less helps the brain stay young: study”
Top Secret for years after the project was completed.
In the 1970s, during the heights of the Cold War, more than 1,000 engineers worked on a project so secret that they couldn’t tell their wives and children decades after it was over.
In September 2011, the project – a series of spy satellites so advanced that it could see objects about 2 feet wide from space (mind you, this was in the 1970s before the ubiquity of computers so the satellites were built with slide rules), was declassified and with it, the stories of the men who kept their secret for 45 years…
Continue reading… “Secrets of the Hexagon Spy Satellite”
Bringing Air-Traffic Control in the 21st Century could really save CO2.
If you are going somewhere in a vehicle that burns a lot of fossil fuels, it’s never a good idea to take unnecessary detours. Sadly, most airplanes can’t take the most elegant and efficient route to their destinations because of the limitations of the air-traffic control system that guides them. It’s not the fault of the traffic controllers – they do a good job – but rather of the technology with which they have to work; the foundations of the system are 50-60 years old and produce flight paths that are far from optimal when it comes to saving fuel (and thus reducing CO2 emissions), saving money, and saving time for passengers. So what can we do about it?
Continue reading… “Computerized air-traffic control could save CO2 equivalent of Denmark’s economy”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.