Category: Latest Trend

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Analysis, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Does higher intelligence mean higher income?

household income

What is the correlation between intelligence and income?  Razib Khan, Gene Expression, used the GSS’s WORDSUM variable to indicate intelligence, which has a ~0.70 correlation with IQ. He used REALINC for income, which is indexed to 1986 values (so it is inflation adjusted) and aggregates the household income.  and then Razib limited his sample to non-Hispanic whites over the age of 30 ( this also limited the data set to respondents from the year 2000 and later).

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Analysis, Business, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

The Disruptive Underground Vs. the Banking Industry

Mobile-Wallets-357

Futurist Thomas Frey: In 1997 Reed Hasting returned his copy of “Apollo 13” to the video store and was hit with a late fee so big that he was embarrassed to tell his wife about it. Out of this moment of humiliation the idea for Netflix was born, a business that would eventually take down the entire video rental industry, and its excessive fee-charging practices in the process.

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

Babysitting goes digital with credit card payments and online bookings

babysitting

Growing startups in the digital babysitting space allow parents to book, review, and often pay babysitters online.

There are few areas of life that haven’t been changed by the mobile and Internet revolutions for the young, urban smartphone owner. We can book restaurant reservations through OpenTable, take a cab without swiping a credit card on Uber, or crash at someone’s house in a foreign city through AirBnB. Life has moved online, and commerce is moving with it.

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Analysis, Business, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Redbox video game rental stats (Infograph)

redbox games

Redbox says that families are hitting the rental machines the most.

Redbox, owned by parent company Coinstar, the DVD and game rental kiosk chain has been so disruptive in the entertainment industry that it helped Netflix hammer the final nail in Blockbuster’s coffin. They has doubled their annual revenue year after year, cutting so deeply into Hollywood’s piggybank that several movie studios attempted legal action, eventually settling to impose a 28-day delay before new releases hit Redbox machines.

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Business, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Startup scene is thriving in Omaha, Nebraska

omaha

Omaha, Nebraska

Bob Grinnell, the owner of the building where a former furniture factory once occupied in North Downtown Omaha, Nebraska explains to Eric Markowitz of Inc.com,  how this factory, The Mastercraft, takes its name from the furniture brand that had originally inhabited the space.  The furniture company opened in 1941 and manufactured furniture for the better part of the 20th century.  But 10 years ago, the furniture business failed and investors in Iowa bought the company.  The building was abandoned.

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

Biggest challenge for colleges isn’t price, it’s students’ attention

college classroom

As colleges try to deliver more education at the same price, schools will move into the crowded and distractable world of the Web.

Last year, the University of Phoenix enlisted renowned Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen to record a lecture. The university reserved a harbor-view room for Christensen and populated it with young people, so that the camera operators could record their reactions.

Before he began to speak, Christensen noticed that the audience appeared unusually engaged and attractive.

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Analysis, Education, Health & Fitness, Latest Trend

Is there really an epidemic of teens taking ADHD drugs to get good grades?

students

Data shows clearly that we are not even close to the all time peak of misuse of prescription stimulants by high-school students.

According to a front page story in Sunday’s New York Times, there’s an epidemic in America’s selective high schools: high-achieving students under pressure to succeed are increasingly abusing stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall, which they consider as essential as SAT tutors for getting into an Ivy League college.  But the data from national surveys on stimulant use tells a very different story.

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Analysis, Globalism, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Most Africans will have smartphones within 5 years

africa-penetration-chart

Feature phones are not the future. Of course that verges on tautology; of course everyone will have a smartphone, until everyone has something smaller and better and even more integrated into the fabric of our lives, like Google Glasses or cybernetic jawbone/retinal implants or whatever Charles Stross dreams up next. But when, exactly?

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