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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? A tool that's currently being used in universities is increasing awareness of the connection between hazardous forms of nitrogen and an individual's lifestyle choices. The N-Calculator, originally created by scientists in the US and the Netherlands and recently ...
What's the Latest Development? At this week's Meeting of the Americas, held in Mexico by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), University of Milan researchers reported that Mount Everest is warmer than it used to be: The snow cloak covering the world's tallest mountain has shrunk by 13 percent ...
What's the Latest Development? As part of their Ventus project, a team of researchers at Arizona State University will reward the person who can provide the most usable information about a power plant's location, carbon dioxide emissions, and other operational features with a trophy, author ...
What's the Latest Development? A survey of over 1,500 people in 10 countries suggests that when it comes to automation and the car buying and driving experience, more people are for it than against it. Cisco's Customer Experience Report reveals that 50 percent of respondents would buy their car ...
What's the Latest Development? Software developer Federico Zannier recently launched a Kickstarter campaign titled "A bite of Me" in which he offers up his digital footprint -- including but not limited to "[e]mails, chat logs, location data, browser history, [and] screenshots" -- for sale ...
What's the Latest Development? At a recent SIGCHI conference in Paris, researchers presented their paper describing the effect of password meters on users' choices of passwords. Test subjects who were asked to evaluate the usability of a university computer system were instructed to change their ...
What's the Latest Development? Now that the US State Department has temporarily banned the release of schematics for 3D printed guns -- after they were downloaded over 100,000 times since their publication last week by the firearms manufacturer Defense Distributed -- writer Cory Doctorow wonders ...
What's the Latest Development? Deutsch Telekom, which provides Internet services for over 60 percent of German users, has announced that it will begin restricting data access for all its landline broadband customers starting in 2016. At bottom, once a user reaches the proposed download limit ...
What's the Latest Development? Chinese auto manufacturers are quickly making use of talent that might otherwise go to waste in the heart of America's car sector: Detroit. While mainland Chinese companies already export inexpensive goods like seat belts, wipers and radios, their native engineers ...
What's the Latest Development? Instead of another coffee, maybe you'd rather get a little extra time from your local coffee house. That's the idea behind the Clockface Cafe, a budding series of coffee joints in one of Moscow's fancier neighborhoods near the Kremlin. "It may seem paradoxical, but ...
What's the Latest Development? Estimates suggest that nearly a quarter of the world's youth, aged 15 to 24, are out of work. While South Asian women, representing a quarter of that quarter, do not seek work for cultural reasons, much of the world's youth are the unfortunate recipients of ...
What's the Latest Development? Even securing the most basic humanitarian rights for Syrian refugees would require committing tens of thousands of ground troops and escalating the conflict to global levels, said Markus Kain, an expert in security policy at the German Institute for International ...
What's the Latest Development? Marriage is one of history's most resilient institutions, outliving struggles between political ideologies and the occasional despotic tyrant. But now, marriage is faced with its strongest challenge yet. Freedom and individual choice, coupled with the insatiable ...
What's the Latest Development? The rising field of neuroaesthetics asks whether our brains are structured so that paintings and other artistic productions move us in a certain way. "One neuroimaging study, conducted at University College, London, set out to explain how we experience beauty in ...
What's the Latest Development? A number of new neuroscience projects, combined with an important theory about how the mind works from infancy, may facilitate large advances in artificial intelligence in the years ahead. One new and promising direction is called deep learning. "Basically, it ...