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A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think
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.
Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.
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Big ideas in the news from around the web
What's the Latest Development? In hopes of FDA approval, the Dutch inventor Adriaan Tuiten is currently testing two different pills that work to increase feelings of sexual desire in women. One, called Lybrido, has a peppermint-flavored testosterone coating that melts in the mouth and, when the ...
What's the Latest Development? New data on age and well-being suggests, despite conflicting conclusions reached by past studies, that happiness does generally increase as we get older. "The new study, published online January 24 in Psychological Science, teased out the answer by examining 30 ...
What's the Latest Development? Using a non-invasive infrared laser, scientists at the University of Texas Arlington have found a way to control the growth of neurons and neuron circuits, essentially learning to rewire the brain, or even create a new one. "This 'neuronal beacon' process generates ...
What's the Latest Development? Nobel prize-winning behavioral psychologist Daniel Kahneman has found that people tend to prefer larger quantities of pain if the experience finishes with a slight decrease in pain, as opposed to a shorter experience of pain which remains constant throughout. In a ...
What's the Latest Development? Paying individuals more money has long been seen as an acceptable and effective way of motivating them to do better work, but recent research highlights the limits of money as motivator. In the case of students, offering financial rewards for scholastic achievement ...
What's the Latest Development? The poet Christian Wiman has written a careful, probing, and spiritual account of his rare, incurable and unpredictable cancer. Wilman's point of view is that of the modern day believer, an rare being in today's literature. "Drawing on his position as someone ...
What's the Latest Development? Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University hope to begin testing an HIV vaccine on humans in just a few years, thanks to an innovative approach which helps the body's immune system target the evasive virus. "The researchers found that cytomegalovirus or ...
What's the Latest Development? A recently uncovered dissertation written at Harvard in 1972, which found genetic causes for the difference in IQ scores between Hispanic and non-Hispanic populations, has led to its author's resignation from a prominent conservative think tank. While the links ...
What's the Latest Development? Since January of this year, when the National Center for Health Statistics published a meta-analysis of 97 health studies, including 2.9 million people, suggesting that overweight individuals are 6% less likely to die than are those of "normal" weight, public ...
What's the Latest Development? Food has become a secondary activity in American life, says Michael Pollan, perhaps the country's most popular food writer. The amount of time we dedicate to eating each day, ironically, has steadily fallen. "The family meal, or 'primary eating', is in decline ...
What's the Latest Development? Silicon Valley companies of all sizes are increasingly cutting employees' landline cords and exhorting them to use mobile phones and tablets in their stead. Google gave Android smartphones to most of its 53,000 workers, and the 15 staff at Schematic Labs are ...
What's the Latest Development? At the end of the 2013 fall semester, the University of Colorado at Boulder will see its first engineering student graduate from its GoldShirt program, which gives selected students an extra year of preparatory courses before admitting them to the regular ...
What's the Latest Development? A Consumer Reports study revealed that last year, 78 percent of parents helped create their kids' Facebook pages, and 7.5 million users were younger than 13, the minimum age requirement for having an account. Amy Jo Martin, CEO of social media strategy and ...
What's the Latest Development? A small but growing number of aging baby boomers, primarily women who don't have or don't live near children and younger relatives, are choosing group housing in which they live together, share expenses, and provide extra social support. Bonnie Moore opened her ...
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 ...