A Dramatic transformation.
It’s conventional wisdom that women wear make-up to appear more beautiful, but according to a new study, there’s another effect: they appear more competent.
Here’s the intriguing study by Pyschology professor Nancy Etcoff and colleagues…
Monopolies are a unbeneficial to overall businesses world.
The pace and power of web-fueled innovation is stunning. One day we’re swearing by Outlook, the next, we can’t live without Gmail. These changes exemplify the beauty of the Internet — the possibility that greener pastures are but a click away.
On the other hand, the list of tech innovations that could have been is quite long. Before we get into those, a few caveats…
Continue reading… “Why no one company will ever Monopolize the Internet”
Behold nature and its wonders! Tobias Lunchbreath understands that true happiness lies in the Oreo-fueled cycle of life.
Crowdsourcing for innovation.
Numerous studies demonstrate that 70-80% of all new products fail. Lack of relevance, lack of differentiation, inappropriate pricing and muddled messaging all factor into a brand’s struggle when launching a new product.
However, the ultimate judgment of new products falls to consumers, who, ironically, are often absent from the development process. That development stage stands the greatest chance of generating transformative new ideas early on, before the brand has made a significant investment…
Where do passwords go when you die?
I have pretty secure passwords, as much to keep would-be miscreants at bay as to keep my friends and family from finding out just how horrible a life I’m living. But according to a study, a full 11 percent of Brits plan to leave their passwords in their will.
There’s some sense to that, actually…
Continue reading… “Will you leave your passwords for your loved ones when you die?”
A new cultural perspective of time.
A huge early Celtic calendar construction has been discovered in the royal tomb of Magdalenenberg, nearby Villingen-Schwenningen in Germany’s Black Forest. This discovery was made by researchers at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum at Mainz in Germany when they evaluated old excavation plans. The order of the burials around the central royal tomb fits exactly with the sky constellations of the Northern hemisphere…
Continue reading… “Early Celtic ‘Stonehenge’ discovered in Germany’s Black Forest”
Death around the bacterial corner.
Turns out the Black Death really was the granddaddy of them all. Scientists have mapped the genome of the bacteria that caused the bubonic plague and traced it to all modern incarnations of the disease.
Scientists recently pinpointed Yersinia pestis as the bacteria that killed 50 million people in the 14th century…
Continue reading… “Scientists find relatives of the Bubonic Plague still lurking the earth”
A real walk about.
This week Der Spiegel has an article commemorating the 50th anniversary of the introduction of pedestrian Don’t Walk/Walk signals to East Germany…
Continue reading… “Pedestrian signals from around the world”
Using corn as fuel is Madness! And not the British band…
The corn ethanol supporters are probably not very familiar with the concept of opportunity cost. Either that, or the subsidies and high corn prices are just to juicy to give up. Only about 20% of all the corn grown in the U.S. now goes to feed humans directly, and more than half of what remains is now being turned into ethanol fuel while the other half goes to feed livestock. The problem is that life-cycle studies show that corn ethanol ranges from barely better than fossil-fuel gasoline to significantly worse, especially if you take into account land use issues and the impact of higher food prices on the poor. Many would agree that corn ethanol is a net loss for society, yet this industry keeps growing…
Continue reading… “The U.S. now uses more corn for fuel than feed!”
Taking off like a rocket.
Popular crowd funding platform Kickstarter has announced that more than 1 million people have backed at least one project, resulting in more than $100 million dollars in pledges.
Kickstarter allows users to post their projects and find funding for them from the Kickstarter community. Everything from the iPod nano watch to indie films have gotten their start on the crowd funding website.
It took Kickstarter just under two-and-a-half years to reach the 1 million backers milestone, according to a plethora of stats the company published on its blog…
Continue reading… “Kickstarter surpasses $100 million in pledges”
How hot is your house?
Scosche’s RDTX is a radiation detector for your iPhone. Seriously, it turns your iPhone into a Geiger counter—you just attach the wand to your iPhone and the RDTX will tell you the radiation levels around you…
Continue reading… “iPhone peripheral turns phone into Geiger counter”
The laws of light speed still apply.
Last June, researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology published the results of an experiment that proved that light does not move faster than light—specifically, that single photons can’t move faster than the official speed of light under certain conditions.
Today, Skulls in the Stars—the nom de Internet of a UNC Charlotte physics professor—hasa really great blog post up about this paper. It’s very much worth a read. After all, this was basically a test to double check something we were already pretty sure was true. And what’s the benefit to proving something you already knew?
Continue reading… “What we don’t understand about the speed of light”