Category: Analysis

Impact Lab > Analysis
Analysis, Big Problems, Crazy Stuff, Current Events, Globalism, government, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, New Discoveries

Brazil builds $127 billion “Offshore City” to harvest oil in the deep sea

brazil-offshore-oil-city

Brazil is set to start gathering oil in new places.

Want to get a feel for how crazy the post-peak oil fossil fuels industry is getting? Here’s as good an example as any: Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras is about to embark on an unprecedented oil-gathering mission. It’s about to attempt to extract 30 billion barrels of oil from reserves that are locked in deepwater sub-salt fields at least 60 miles off the coast and up to five miles underwater. In order to get at the incredibly hard-to-get oily good stuff, Brazil is spending an estimated $226 billion — and $127 billion will be spent on exploration and production alone.

The product of that venture is already taking shape: a veritable floating “offshore city” has sprung up over 100 kilometers (62 miles) off the coast of Brazil, and it will lead the effort to drill into the deep sea sub-salt…

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Analysis, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Latest News, Medical Breakthrough, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints

Going Under: What we don’t know about anesthetics

anesthesiaaaaaaaaaa

Are anesthetics as safe as we think they are?

The majority of people reading this sentence will, at some point in their lives, undergo a medical treatment that requires general anesthesia. Doctors will inject them with a drug, or have them breathe it in. For several hours, they will be unconscious. And almost all of them will wake up happy and healthy.

We know that the general anesthetics we use today are safe. But we know that because they’ve proven themselves to be safe, not because we understand the mechanisms behind how they work. The truth is, at that level, anesthetics are a big, fat question mark. And that leaves room for a lot of unknowns. What if, in the long term, our anesthetics aren’t as safe for everyone as we think they are?

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Analysis, Health & Fitness, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Unplanned pregnancies increase among low-income women

unplanned pregnancy

The unplanned pregnancy rate among women with incomes below the federal poverty line jumped by 50 percent between 1994 and 2006.

Nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned and they are increasingly concentrated among low-income women, according to a new study.

 

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Analysis, Education, Latest Trend

64% of Americans say parents do not put enough pressure on students

parents and students

Most Americans (64%) say that parents are not putting enough pressure on their children to do well in school as U.S. students are underperforming on international tests.  By contrast, 68% of the Chinese public take the opposite position and say that parents in their country are putting too much pressure on their children to succeed academically.

 

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Entertainment, Food, Historical Perspectives, New Discoveries

Scientists discovered the “Missing Link” of beer brewing

beech-gallssssssss

Beech galls in Patagonia inhabited by Saccharomyces eubayanus, the species
researchers think combined with domesticated yeast to create a lager-producing hybrid.

Mystery solved! Scientists have discovered the “missing link” in beer brewing. Ladies and gents, take a good look at the orange-colored galls on the beech tree to your left: they were found to harbor the specific strain of yeast that makes lager beer possible.

How did lager beer come to be? After pondering the question for decades, scientists have found that an elusive species of yeast isolated in the forests of Argentina was key to the invention of the crisp-tasting German beer 600 years ago.

It took a five-year search around the world before a scientific team discovered, identified and named the organism, a species of wild yeast called Saccharomyces eubayanus that lives on beech trees…

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Analysis, Big Problems, Crazy Stuff, Food, Globalism, Health & Fitness

Researchers identify food price tipping point linked to rioting

algeria-riot 2345

Rising food costs are a key reason behind rioting.

There’s no doubt that rising food prices in a specific area can lead to rioting. We have plenty of current and historic examples of that. But some interesting new research highlighted in Technology Review shows that once average global food prices cross a certain threshold a tipping point is reached after which “almost anything can trigger a riot, like a lighted match in a dry forest.”

Check out this graph which plots the UN Food Price Index against the dates of riots around the world…

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Analysis, Business

Franchising is still an option to own and operate a business

mcdonalds

McDonalds is one example of 6,000 franchise concepts offered in the United States.

Karl Dakin:  In this recession, one of the long-standing approaches to becoming a business owner is to buy a franchise. The topic of franchising was presented on Monday night at the Startup Junkie program of the DaVinci Institute. With over 6,000 franchise concepts within 40 industries currently being sold in the United States, it is quite possible for an individual to find a business that matches their passion and their pocketbook.

 

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Analysis, Internet, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

92% of online adults use email and search engines

online actvities

The most popular online activities are search and email remain and are nearly universal among adult internet users, as 92% of online adults use search engines to find information on the Web, and a similar number (92%) use email. Since the Pew Internet Project began measuring adults’ online activities in the last decade, these two behaviors have consistently ranked as the most popular, even as new platforms, broadband and mobile devices continue to reshape the way Americans use the internet and web. Even as early as 2002, more than eight in ten online adults were using search engines, and more than nine in ten online adults were emailing.

 

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Analysis, Education, Science & Technology News

50% of female graduates see value and benefits of college

education

Fifty percent of all women who have graduated from a four-year college give the U.S. higher education system excellent or good marks for the value it provides given the money spent by students and their families but only 37% of male graduates agree. Also, women who have graduated from college are more likely than men to say their education helped them to grow both personally and intellectually. These results of a nationwide Pew Research Center survey come at a time when women surpass men by record numbers in college enrollment and completion.

 

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