Category: Science & Technology News

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Analysis, Plant Life, Science & Technology News

Plants can see, smell, feel and remember but can they think?

plants

Are plants aware?

Are plants aware?  In the new book, ‘What a Plant Knows,” Daniel Chamovitz argues that a plant can see, smell and feel.  It can mount a defense when under siege, and warn its neighbors of trouble on the way. A plant can even be said to have a memory. But does this mean that plants think — or that one can speak of a “neuroscience” of the flower? Chamovitz answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.

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Analysis, Business, Latest Trend, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

Entrepreneurial innovation moving to the inner cities

forgotten

Inner-city Minneapolis teens who screen-print shirts.

Just ten years ago the term “inner city” meant “dead city” and people would picture a city of destruction, dereliction and despair.  But, today inner cities are now a hip hotbed of convenient culture, commerce and connection.  Scholars such as Richard Florida and Edward Glaeser, among others, are showing that although increasing problems accompany increasing density, urban access to the good things of life increases even faster. The centripetal force of today’s cities is pulling the ambitious and educated back in, and increasing cities’ innovative capacity, without sacrificing (at least some would argue) their inclusiveness.

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Business, Globalism, government, Internet, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

U.S. officials warn that United Nations could seize the internet

United-Nations

United Nations

U.S. officials testified on Thursday before the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology saying several emerging countries are rallying behind a campaign to have the International Telecommunications Union, the U.N.’s global standards body for telecommunications, declare the Internet a global telecommunications system. Led by China, Russia, India and now Egypt, which recently launched its own proposal, such a move would allow state-owned telephone networks to expand into VoIP. It would also give them the opportunity to charge fees for Internet service – and put the Internet at the mercy of international politics.

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Analysis, Business, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

New tech boom in San Francisco brings jobs but also worries

tech boom

Twitter and other tech start-ups are gravitating toward San Francisco.

Twitter will be moving into its new headquarters in downtown San Francisco this month.  It will occupy three floors of an 11-story 1937 Art Deco building that has sat shuttered for five years. Outside, its blue bird logo will replace the former main tenant’s sign, whose analog clocks remain frozen at 9:18, 4:33 and other times past.

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Analysis, Brain, Education, Science & Technology News

Making it harder to learn beneficial to students

Making it harder to learn

“Making material harder to learn can improve long-term learning and retention.”

Three researchers, in January 2011, published the results of an experiment in which they showed that students who read material in difficult, unfamiliar fonts learned it more deeply than students who read the same material in conventional, familiar fonts.

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Analysis, Famous Inventor, Historical Perspectives, Latest Trend, New Inventions, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

32 technological innovations that will change your tomorrow

lightbulb

The electric light bulb was a failure.

In the early 1800’s, the British chemist Humphry Davy invented the light bulb but it was a failure.  The light bulb spent almost 80 years being passed from one researcher to another.  Finally, in 1879, Thomas Edison figured out to to make a light bulb that people would buy.  But the technology wasn’t an immediate success.  Another 40 years later the electric utilities were stable and profitable businesses.  The light bulb only happened because the utilities created other reasons to use electricity.  They found a lot of uses for electric motors and the electric toaster and electric curling iron were invented.  They also built Coney Island.  And they installed electric streetcars lines in towns.   All of these other gadgets gave us the light bulb.

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Analysis, Education, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Enrollment in U.S. graduate STEM programs increased 50% over last decade

STEM program

First-time, full-time graduate enrollment in STEM programs registering a 50% increase over the decade.

A new report from the National Science Foundation (NSF) finds that the number of Americans pursuing advanced degrees in science and engineering has risen sharply over the past decade and stands at an all-time high.

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Business, Science & Technology News

Apple turns over its entire inventory once every 5 days

foxconn-ipad

Apple’s supply chain is ranked best in the world.

Apple’s supply chain is ranked best in the world by the technology research firm Gartner.  According to a new report by Gartner. part of the reason is Apple turns over its inventory once every five days.  If you think about that’s pretty amazing.  Apple ells hundreds of millions of hardware gadgets all over the world and yet it doesn’t actually need to stockpile its goods.

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

Computer science majors lacking in Seattle

University of Washington

Students at the University of Washington.

There are thousands of computer-related jobs that are waiting to filled just in Seattle alone.  But the number of bachelor’s degrees in computer science at the University of Washington is the same as it was more than ten years ago.  A lot of students have been rebuffed in their effort to major in computer science or computer engineering.

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Business, Internet, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Majority of large newspaper groups experimenting with paywalls

paywalls

About 20 percent of the 1,400 or so daily papers in the U.S. will charge for online access by the end of the year.

Last week McClathy’s announced it will expand its paywall testing to four more sites and now the Chicago Tribune’s plans to charge readers for some of its online content.  This further proof that a majority of large newspaper companies now believe in some form of paid online content.

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