Futurist Thomas Frey: The insurance industry exists as a tool for mitigating the costs and damage associated with a single incident occurring for an individual or organization.
Continue reading… “Transforming the Future of the Insurance Industry”
Recently bankrupt Vallejo, California is now a model for other U.S. cities
Vallejo, CA became the largest city in America to declare bankruptcy in 2008.
The working-class port city of Vallejo, California became the largest city in America to declare bankruptcy in 2008. Crime and prostitution surged as the police force was thinned by 40 percent. Firehouses were shuttered, and funding for libraries and senior centers was slashed. Foreclosures multiplied and home prices plummeted.
Continue reading… “Recently bankrupt Vallejo, California is now a model for other U.S. cities”
Rapid DNA sequencing could soon become a routine part of your medical record
The latest technological competition involves the idea of threading a single strand of DNA through a tiny, molecular-scale eyelet known as a nanopore.
Rapid DNA sequencing can provide enormous amount of information previously sequestered in the human genome’s 3 billion nucleotide bases and soon may become a routine part of each individual’s medical record.
Continue reading… “Rapid DNA sequencing could soon become a routine part of your medical record”
Jonathan Ive – Apple’s quest for simplicity
Jonathan Ive
Jonathan Ive, the London-born head of design for Apple says “design is a word that’s come to mean so much that it’s also a word that has come to mean nothing. We don’t really talk about design, we talk about developing ideas and making products.”
A visualization of airplane flight paths in the U.S.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/5368967[/vimeo]
How may airplanes fly above our heads everyday?
Aaron Koblin knows the answer: It can be more than 19,000 in the United States. And thanks to his wizardry with FAA data, we can see how these aircraft drift from city to city in this mesmerizing computer visualization.
Continue reading… “A visualization of airplane flight paths in the U.S.”
Scientists restore sight to blind mice by regenerating optic nerve
Scientists restore vision to blind mice.
There are three blind men who have an inherited eye disorder that had destroyed the light-sensing cells of their retinas many years ago. Now one of the blind men can walk around at night navigating by streetlight and headlights. Another can read his own name. And the third mean has been able to see his fiancée’s smile for the very first time. All of this has been made possible by the retinal implants they have been fitted with. The implants took over from the broken cells. They sense incoming light by converting it into electrical impulses delivered to the brain. They aren’t close to having 20/20 vision, but they have restored sight to people who have lived without it for years.
Continue reading… “Scientists restore sight to blind mice by regenerating optic nerve”
Inventing Our Next Great Scarcities
Futurist Thomas Frey: Scarcity is defined as an economic condition that arises when people have far greater wants than the available resources. Most often we think about the limited supplies of natural resources, but it includes far more than that.
Continue reading… “Inventing Our Next Great Scarcities”
SpaceX set to launch first commercial rocket to ISS
Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, stands in front of a Falcon 9 rocket at SpaceX’s launch site.
A Falcon 9 rocket will lift-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida tomorrow night. The craft will rendezvous in low-Earth orbit with the International Space Station (ISS) a few days after it has been launched.
Continue reading… “SpaceX set to launch first commercial rocket to ISS”
Pinterest joins the billionaires club with $100 million funding from Rakuten
Pinterest deal values the company at around $1.5 billion.
It seems that every hot startup needs to reach a billion dollar valuation to be taken seriously after the surprising purchase of Instagram by Facebook. It only seems inevitable that the popular image pinboard site, Pinterest would skyrocket in value.
Continue reading… “Pinterest joins the billionaires club with $100 million funding from Rakuten”
Did Yahoo kill Flickr?
Flickr’s tag line used to read “almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.”
Flickr was something that had never been done before on the internet and it changed the shape of the internet as we know it today. But along came Yahoo who bought Flickr and “murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.”
Continue reading… “Did Yahoo kill Flickr?”
What you need to know about what’s inside those breasts
Breasts are getting bigger and arriving earlier. They’re also attracting chemicals and environmental toxins, which are getting passed along in breast milk.
Writer Florence Williams read a research study about toxins found in human breast milk when she was nursing her second child. After reading the study she decided to test her own breast milk and shipped a sample to a lab in Germany.
Continue reading… “What you need to know about what’s inside those breasts”
In-flight cell phone calls to be allowed on Virgin Atlantic flights
Virgin Atlantic
Virgin Atlantic announces that it will let customers make calls with their own cellphones on their flights — provided they’re on the airline’s new Airbus A330 flying between London and New York.
Continue reading… “In-flight cell phone calls to be allowed on Virgin Atlantic flights”
