Category: New Viewpoints

Impact Lab > New Viewpoints
Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Historical Perspectives, New Viewpoints

Scientists discover the best skiing In the Solar System

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Serious powder!

…and it’s only a few hundred million miles away. Better fuel up your rocket and get started today, however, because we’re talking about Saturn’s moon Enceladus and the incredibly fine, snowy powder that covers its surface:

“The particles are only a fraction of a millimeter in size … even finer than talcum powder,” study leader Paul Schenk, a planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, said in a statement. “This would make for the finest powder a skier could hope for…”

Continue reading… “Scientists discover the best skiing In the Solar System”

Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Education, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, New Viewpoints

Blind man trained to be a scuba diver along with his white stick

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Underwater exploring in a whole different way.

Despite being blind from birth, Robert Ainsley-Raffel has never let his disabilities stop him achieving his ambitions. He is already well on the way to becoming a qualified plumber, and even trains his own greyhound. Now the 25-year-old from Hexham is training as an underwater diver. Robert passed his dive theory test with a flying 100% mark and is now looking forward to his first open water dives en route to a full Ocean Diver qualification…

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Animals, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Crazy Stuff, Historical Perspectives, New Viewpoints

This dog food commercial has sounds only a dog can hear

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What’s that sound?

Commercials have become so effective at focusing on what us human people want that we can’t stop watching them. Oh scantily clad women. Oh short attention spans. Dogs can join in the braindead fun now too, there’s a commercial made with sounds only a dog can hear…

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Big Problems, Brain, Breakthrough Thinking, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Human Behavior, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Alzheimer’s might be transmissible in similar way as infectious prion diseases, research suggests

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Could Alzheimer’s be transmissible?

The brain damage that characterizes Alzheimer’s disease may originate in a form similar to that of infectious prion diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob, according to newly published research by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

Continue reading… “Alzheimer’s might be transmissible in similar way as infectious prion diseases, research suggests”

Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Historical Perspectives, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The billion dollar ALMA observatory can spot a golf ball from 15 Kilometers

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ALMA

The windswept, sunburned Chajnantor plateau in Chile rises 16,500 feet above sea level and has some of the driest air on Earth. That makes it the perfect location for the world’s biggest, most sensitive, and most complex ground-based telescope…

Continue reading… “The billion dollar ALMA observatory can spot a golf ball from 15 Kilometers”

Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Human Behavior, New Discoveries, New Inventions, New Viewpoints

Researchers design locks that can be opened with certain hand gestures

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Hand gestures have a whole new meaning.

Researchers from Taiwan have developed a machine that reads people’s hand gestures and thereby permits them to open doors by waving a few fingers:

“In the future, you won’t have to worry about losing or forgetting your keys,” said Tsai Yao-pin, who teaches at the Technology and Science Institute of Northern Taiwan…

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Analysis, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Current Events, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints, People Making a Difference

Is digital money the new way to buy drugs?

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Are ones and zeros gonna pay for doobies and lines now?

I’m not gonna name names, but someone just mentioned paying for weed with a Square account. It’d be equally easy to use Paypal, Venmo, Bitcoin (RIP) or any of the myriad mobile payment systems that allow you to send money from your phone…

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Analysis, Crazy Stuff, Education, Entertainment, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Human Behavior, New Viewpoints

12 Books that have (ironically) been banned in the U.S.

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September 24th through October 1st is Banned Books Week.

Talk about an easy subject to research! It might have been easier to write up a “books that have never been banned anywhere” list. The banning of books seems so ridiculous, simplistic, and stupid to most of us. But man, in all his Jeckyll and Hyde glory, will all-too-often, when trying to solve a problem, come up with a solution much worse. This is “the 29th annual Banned Books Week” The week is used to condemn censorship and “thought police.”

O.K., let’s take a look at a brief (in the scheme of these things) list of books that have been (ironically) banned here in the U.S….

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Analysis, Big Problems, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Historical Perspectives, New Viewpoints

Meltdown – The men who crashed the world

“The first of a four-part investigation into a world of greed and recklessness that brought down the financial world.”

From Open Culture:

Doc Zone, a documentary series produced by CBC Television, is now airing a four part investigation into the great financial meltdown of 2008…

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Analysis, Architecture, Art, Award Winner, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints, Recycling

Reused tires make a squid-like playground for refugee children

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When Go Play! announced a competition to design an innovative playground for 1,000 refugee children along the border of Thailand and Burma, Dutch designer AnneMarie van Splunter thought of old car tires. To be specific, she thought of a playground made entirely out of reused tires on a bamboo frame, made in the shape of a tree with expanding roots…

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Analysis, Animals, Breakthrough Thinking, Entertainment, Historical Perspectives, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints

The purpose of bird-egg coloration

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Look at all the colors.

Want to see an enduring source of scientific dispute and perplexity? Go to your refrigerator, open a carton of eggs, and look at their speckles. Bird-egg coloration has been studied for more than a century. In a review in the Journal of Avian Biology, biologists Golo Maurer and Phillip Cassey present no fewer than seven possible explanations for eggshell color. Each focuses on how colors might shape an embryo’s fate by modulating sunlight hitting its shell…

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Discover the Hidden Patterns of Tomorrow with Futurist Thomas Frey
Unlock Your Potential, Ignite Your Success.

By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.

Learn More about this exciting program.