Business, Food, Latest Trend

The Untold Story of Africa’s Farming Boom

Tens of thousands are returning home with money and skills, hoping to cash in on a farming boom that is remaking the continent.

Last year, Kojo Anku left a high-paying job on Wall Street to return to his native Ghana. He didn’t go there to replicate his financial career but to launch an aquaponics farm, raising organic lettuce, tomatoes, and herbs indoors in nutrient-rich vats. His business, in central Accra, is now booming. “I feel I’m making a bigger difference in the lives of others by applying my knowledge and capital to food production,” Anku says. “Sure, my family and I are adjusting, but it’s worth it to help Ghana leapfrog to the forefront of innovative farming.”

 

 

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Analysis, Historical Perspectives, Science & Technology News

Portrait of a New Radical: Hyper-Transparency and the Coming Radicalization of America

Futurist Thomas Frey: Over the past few days I’ve been wrestling with a very troubling thought.

It started with the simple question, “Ten years from now, anyone who is frustrated with those in power, whether it’s a local, national, or international issue, what options will they have for protesting what they see as an injustice, inequities, or outright corruption?”

 

 

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Business, Food, Great Videos, Latest Trend, Robots, Science & Technology News

Domino’s tests pizza delivery drone

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on4DRTUvst0[/youtube]

Is Dominos pizza-delivering drone just a publicity stunt, or a tantalizing look at the future of food delivery? The eight-bladed DomiCopter may be a little impractical given it needs a skilled pilot, but eventually autonomous drones will be capable of delivering a piping hot pizza in mere minutes since they’re able to avoid traffic, stop lights, and speed limits.

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Analysis, Business, Science & Technology News

Google X’s vision of the future

Thomas Edison

Larry Page, CEO and co-founder of Google, wants to be more like Thomas Edison than Nikola Tesla. “If you invent something, that doesn’t necessarily help anybody,” he recently told Fortune. “You’ve got to actually get it into the world; you’ve got to produce, make money doing it so you can fund it.” Edison did that with practical incandescent light, the phonograph, the movie camera, and hundreds of other inventions. Tesla had his grandiose successes, too, but a shrewd businessman he was not. “He couldn’t commercialize anything,” Page added. “He could barely fund his own research.”

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

3D printing is creating a ‘new class of entrepreneurs’

Chris Anderson of 3D Robotics

Chris Anderson is building drones in an industrial park on the outskirts of Tijuana. The former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine readily acknowledges that just a few years ago, he knew almost nothing about the aerospace industry. But after building a small plane out of Lego parts with his kids, and realizing that even children’s toys now come packed with advanced sensors and controls, Mr. Anderson decided to start a company called 3D Robotics Inc. and manufacture his own aerial vehicles.

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Latest Trend

Why Chinese firms have weak branding

David Brooks, in a recent column for the New York Times said that the U.S. has one clear advantage over Chinese competition: branding. He notes that U.S. firms are powered by “eccentric failed novelists” (presumably from agencies and consulting firms that are gifted at brand positioning and execution) and “visionary founders” (think Steve Jobs) who have created exceptional brands.

 

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Analysis, Health & Fitness, Latest Trend

Plastic surgery motivated by the fear of death

Cosmetic surgery

When people who were instructed to think about their own mortality they were more receptive to the idea of having cosmetic surgery than those who weren’t (3.57 versus 2.96 on a seven-point scale). This suggests that fear of death is a motivator behind patients’ decisions to have tummy tucks, says Kim-Pong Tam of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

 

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Analysis, Education, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

Study finds more fresh air in classrooms means fewer absences

The study finds correlation between higher illness absences and lower ventilation rates in California elementary schools.

A new study by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has confirmed that opening windows to let in fresh air might be good for you. Analyzing extensive data on ventilation rates collected from more than 150 classrooms in California over two years, the researchers found that bringing classroom ventilation rates up to the state-mandated standard may reduce student absences due to illness by approximately 3.4 percent.

 

 

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Analysis, Culture, Latest Trend

The 3 biggest myths about marriage today

For most married men and women today, marriage looks pretty good.

Liza Mundy paints a dismal portrait of heterosexual marriage. In the  bleak rendering, contemporary marriage comes across as unequal, unfair, and unhappy to today’s wives. Wives are burdened with an unequal and unfair “second shift” of housework and childcare, husbands enjoy “free time” while their wives toil away at home, lingering gender inequalities in family life leave many wives banging “their heads on their desks in despair,” and one poor woman cannot even have a second child because she does “everything” and her husband does nothing. Mundy also suggests that recent declines in women’s happiness can be laid at the feet of “lingering inequity in male-female marriage.”

 

 

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