Breakthrough Thinking – Page 91

bicycle, Breakthrough Thinking, Great New Product, Historical Perspectives, New Discoveries

Self-Inflating bike tires promise a future free of hand pumps

August 25, 2011

The PumpTire consists of an inner tube, the tire itself, and a special uni-directional air valve that screws into the stem of the inner tube. When the pump is active, it uses the tire’s rolling motion to draw in air from the atmosphere, through the one-way valve and into a lumen that runs along the outer edge of the tire. As the tire rolls, it squishes the lumen flat, forcing air into the main tube and when the weight of the tire is removed, the lumen re-inflates before it’s rolled over again. The system automatically shuts the valve when the desired pressure is reached. The doesn’t require any special modifications or rims…

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

Scientists discovered the “Missing Link” of beer brewing

August 23, 2011

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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Big Problems, Breakthrough Thinking, Globalism, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues

Wikileaks releases thousands more cables Covering China, Taiwan and Libya

August 23, 2011

More Wikileaks released!

Wikileaks just dropped thousands more embassy cables today. These centered around China, Taiwan, and Libya.

The first batch to drop were 2170 cables about Taiwan. Some 3004 cables from China followed quickly behind…

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Breakthrough Thinking, Fashion, Great New Product

Antennas in Your Clothes? New Design Could Pave the Way

August 23, 2011

Freaky Fashions.

The next generation of communications systems could be built with a sewing machine. To make communications devices more reliable, Ohio State University researchers are finding ways to incorporate radio antennas directly into clothing, using plastic film and metallic thread.

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Animals, Breakthrough Thinking, Education, Historical Perspectives, Latest News, New Viewpoints

Android app locates endangered species wherever you are

August 23, 2011

Once they are gone, they are gone.

This is one of those cool-yet-terribly-sad-it-exists apps. The Center for Biological Diversity has created an app for Android users that will tell you exactly which endangered species are living in the area you’re standing in. On the one hand, it’s amazing to know at any point in time which species are living in the area you’re walking though, and especially interesting to know which endangered species are struggling to survive. It could be a way to stay aware of local ecology and how you can help with conservation efforts. However, it’s of course a bummer that there’s an app that will tell you all the species that are thiiiiis close to being found only in history books.

The free “Species Finder” Android app has over 1,000 plants and animals from the endangered species list in its database. Using your smartphone’s GPS, the app generates a list of all the threatened and endangered species living in whichever county you’re currently located in.

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Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Current Events, Great Videos, Historical Perspectives, Latest News

Facebook climbs to no. 3 video site in US

August 23, 2011

Facebook is gaining momentum in the video realm.

Facebook is already the largest photo site in the U.S., and now it is climbing up the charts for online video. Facebook now ranks as the third largest video site on the Web in terms of unique viewers according to comScore, with an estimated 51.5 million people on Facebook watching a video during the month of July. The month before it was No. 6. It passed Microsoft, Yahoo, and Viacom. Only Vevo (with 62 million monthly viewers) and YouTube (158 million) are bigger.

It is only a matter of time before Facebook passes Vevo, but can it ever take the crown from Google/Youtube?

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Latest News, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Quantum entanglement could mean completely secure data transfer

August 21, 2011

Entangled is good?

By tapping into Albert Einstein’s idea of “spooky action at a distance,” researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute have discovered what might be the key to completely secure data transfer — keeping particles “entangled” for up to an hour…

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Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Historical Perspectives, Money Talk

How fake money saved Brazil

August 21, 2011

Brazil has faced hyperinflation in the past.

Twenty years ago, Brazil found itself in the grips of hyperinflation. Its inflation rate hit 80% a month, and the country was in financial free fall.

Economists at the Catholic University in Rio came up with an unlikely – but ultimately successful – plan to rescue the country. And would you believe it, the plan calls for fake money..

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Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Education, Historical Perspectives, Internet

90 percent of US net users don’t know about ‘crtl-F’

August 20, 2011

Did you know about using Control-F?

Dan Russell, one of Google’s anthropologists, conducted a largeish survey of user behavior and discovered that 90 percent of American Internet users don’t know that crtl-F will let them search documents including Web pages. I recently discovered that a smart and technologically literate friend had never heard of alt-tab for application switching; alt-tab being my single most used key combo!

It strikes me that we could probable come up with a list of ten (or even three) things you could teach to the people around you the next time you sit down to help them with a technology problem, “three things every technology user should know.”

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Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Current Events, Entertainment, Globalism, Great Videos, Historical Perspectives, Latest News, New Viewpoints

Google Street View is using canoes and tricycles to map the Amazon

August 20, 2011

Trecking down the Amazon on your computer thanks to Google.

Google has teamed up with Amazon for a new project. Well, not Amazon, as in the company that sells the Kindle. No, we’re talking about the great, untamed wilderness of the Amazon rainforest. In a partnership with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation, Google aims to use its Street View technology to raise awareness of the world’s largest rainforest and its important ecosystems.

To do this, Google is mapping the byways of the Amazon River…

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Breakthrough Thinking, Current Events, Education, Historical Perspectives, Latest News, Latest Trend

Canadian library will Loan out people as well as books

August 20, 2011

A new library approach from Canada.

For centuries the public library has been a great source of knowledge through books. Now one library in Canada is opening up the scope of how you acquire knowledge at the library; by offering up skilled people. Why read a history book when you can talk to a historian?

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Current Events, Education, Famous Inventor, Global Warming, Globalism, Green Friendly, Historical Perspectives, Latest News, New Discoveries, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

Genius 13-Year-Old has a solar power breakthrough

August 20, 2011

Would you believe this could be the new look of solar power?

7th grader Aidan Dwyer was walking in the woods during the winter, and looking up, he noticed something about the bare branches above him. They didn’t appear to be growing randomly. So he took some measurements of the angles of the branches, crunched some numbers, and wouldn’t you know it, he found that the ubiquitous Fibonacci Sequence was behind it all. He suspected there was a reason behind this. That trees were using this pattern to gather more light.

So he did an experiment. Using the same number of solar cells, he built two working models. One was a traditional, flat array will all of the panels on a single plane. The other used the Fibonacci Sequence to create the same spiraled pattern he observed in the trees. The results? The little man himself reports…

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