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Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.
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Big ideas in the news from around the web
What's the Latest Development? Recent class action lawsuits and settlements against major social media sites highlight some of the big problems with typical terms-of-service contracts and the customer's understanding of them. In response, writer Ari Melber, law professor Woodrow Hartzog, and ...
What's the Latest Development? Siyuan Xing and Jia Jiang, graduate students working in the Micro-Nano Innovations Laboratory at the University of California-Davis, have designed a textile that is not only water-repelling but self-draining. It's a combination of a hydrophobic fabric and water ...
What's the Latest Development? At last weekend's 2013 Bay Area Maker Faire, pediatrician and pain researcher Amy Baxter gave a lecture on Buzzy, a bee-shaped device she created that, when applied to a patient who's about to receive an injection, uses its built-in vibrating motor and ice pack to ...
What's the Latest Development? California-based UberMedia has launched UberAds, a platform that sends ads to customers' mobile devices based on their publicly-available social media data -- from sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest -- as well as their (optional) GPS location. Using this ...
What's the Latest Development? US military officials report that hypersonic weapons -- which would fly at more than five times the speed of sound -- could be available as soon as 2025, given current research and development progress. Earlier this month, the Air Force/DARPA experimental X-51A ...
What's the Latest Development? It's a long way from a "Star Trek"-style replicator, but the 3D printer engineer Anjun Contractor used to print a square of chocolate got the attention of NASA, and now he and his company, Systems & Materials Research Corporation, have been given $125,000 to ...
What's the Latest Development? When it comes to accurately observing levels of artificial night sky brightness, also known as skyglow, human eyes are just as good as satellites, according to a new study published in the open access online journal Scientific Reports. Researchers looked at data ...
What's the Latest Development? Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory used forests as their inspiration for a densely-packed collection of nanoscale "trees" that can convert solar energy into oxygen and hydrogen for use in fuel cells. When they absorb ...
What's the Latest Development? A century-old government war on wildfires in the western US has resulted in the growth of several billion excess trees that are negatively impacting ecosystems in several ways, according to Jamie Workman of the Environmental Defense Fund. For example, he says that ...
What's the Latest Development? Researchers from the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory examined current water supplies -- fresh and salty groundwater sources as well as seawater -- to determine how much could be reasonably used by farms dedicated to growing algae for ...
What's the Latest Development? A paper published this week in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US) details the challenges involved in what its authors call "climigration": the resettlement of communities that are losing their land due to the effects of ...
What's the Latest Development? "Ellie" is the name scientists at USC have given to a combination of hardware and software that together presents patients with a highly realistic virtual therapist. While her rendered image appears on the screen, three devices track and record the patient's words ...
What's the Latest Development? With automation invading business sectors in ways that were once restricted to science fiction novels, experts are speculating on what the employment picture could look like for mere humans. For example, while driverless transportation in general would be safer and ...
What's the Latest Development? Once considered a pioneer in digital publishing when he offered a short story solely in e-book format back in 2000, Stephen King has announced that his latest novel, Joyland, will be released solely as a physical book starting June 4. Although Amazon does have it ...
What's the Latest Development? New figures released by the Leichtman Research Group show that for the first time ever, multi-channel video providers -- including cable, satellite, and telephone companies -- lost customers over a 12-month period, in this case the period from April 2012 to March ...