City of the future: 8 features Songdo, South Korea has that your city doesn’t have

Drop the trash into a pneumatic tube and the pneumatic garbage removal system sucks it to a central processing facility.

Songdo, South Korea is the city of the future.

When you’re building a new city, there’s plenty of technology and features to consider that either didn’t exist or weren’t practical in the past. These range from in-building technology to the municipal systems, from private perks to public services.

 

 

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Chemotherapy can backfire and cause cancer to grow

Chemotherapy works by inhibiting reproduction of fast-dividing cells such as those found in tumors.

A new study that came out Sunday has found that cancer-busting chemotherapy can cause damage to healthy cells which triggers them to secrete a protein that sustains tumor growth and resistance to further treatment.

 

 

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The challenge of media alignment

Twitter has the opportunity to become extraordinarily aligned with their best users.

Advertisers are the actual customer of the TV networks – not the viewers.  Both of these groups had similar goals for a long time.  Viewers wanted shows they wanted to watch and advertisers wanted lots of viewers to watch these shows.  So the TV networks used ratings as a proxy for advertiser happiness and there wasn’t much of a problem.

 

 

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Americans dropping pay-TV services in record numbers

DirecTV revealed its first ever quarterly customer losses, with some 52,000 homes dropping the service in the second quarter.

High unemployment, a weak housing market ombined with a mature business prone to regular programming blackouts has seen more than 400,000 American homes drop their pay-TV service since the start of the year.

 

 

 

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Music we like is more distracting than music we don’t like

The “Irrelevant Sound Effect”, is all about the way background sounds can interfere with our short-term memory.

A lot of people like to listen to music while they work. Previous research suggests this is probably not a bad thing. In lab studies, people who listen to music they like, generally perform better at mental tasks afterwards, an effect that’s been attributed to boosts in mood and arousal.
 

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Diet vs exercise for weight loss: Two groundbreaking studies

Repeated studies have shown that many people who begin an exercise program lose little or no weight. 

Two groundbreaking new studies address the irksome question of why so many of us who work out remain so heavy, a concern that carries special resonance at the moment, as lean Olympians slip through the air and water, inspiring countless viewers to want to become similarly sleek.

 

 

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Tool-using dolphins have been found to socialize in cliques

Dolphins that use marine sponges to forage for food have been found to socialize in cliques.

In the first definitive example of subculture in animals, Australian bottlenose dolphins that use marine sponges to forage for food have been found to socialize in cliques.

 

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Whatever happened to the chemistry set?

By the 1920s and 30s children had access to substances which would raise eyebrows in today’s more safety-conscious times.

When you talk to people of a certain age about chemistry sets, a nostalgic glaze comes over their eyes.  The first chemistry sets for children included dangerous substances like uranium dust and sodium cyanide, but all that has changed.

 

 

 

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