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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
“A leading rabbi accused Pope Benedict XVI of ‘insensitivity’ towards Jews yesterday after the head of the Catholic Church moved his controversial World War II-era predecessor Pope Pius XII a step closer to sainthood. Pius XII, who served from 1939 to 1958, is regarded by conservative Catholics as ...
The “Arbeit macht frei” sign stolen from Auschwitz on Friday has been recovered in Northern Poland and five men are now being questioned by police. “The five suspects, aged in their 20s and 30s, were not members of a neo-Nazi group, Krakow police said. The metal sign from the main gate, which ...
Iran’s opposition has seized upon the death of one of the republic’s founding fathers, Grand Ayatolllah Hossein Ali Montazeri, to take to the streets in mourning. “Tens of thousands of Iranian mourners--many chanting protest slogans--joined the funeral procession Monday for Grand Ayatollah Hossein ...
“Democrats won a major victory in their push for health care reform early Monday morning as the Senate voted to end debate on a package of controversial revisions to a sweeping $871 billion bill. The 60 to 40 party-line vote, cast shortly after 1 a.m., kept Senate Democrats on track to pass the bill ...
“A NASA satellite has created a new map of so-called ‘night-shining clouds,’ which form at high altitudes on Earth and glow even after the sun sets. These mysterious clouds, also called noctilucent clouds or Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMCs), appear about 50 miles (80 km) above Earth's surface during ...
Scientists paid a load of young people to get drunk and then analysed the results to find out which alcoholic beverages produced the worst hangover – with interesting results! “A new study finds that, compared with vodka, if you down too much bourbon, you're likely to have a worse hangover. But when ...
“An engineering team has developed a face recognition system that is remarkably accurate in realistic situations. Unlike existing face recognition programs that try to find ‘optimal’ facial features, the new program uses sparse representation. One of the program’s developers, Yi Ma, an associate ...
Aurora borealis, or the Northern Lights, can sometimes collide producing spectacular displays of light according to NASA which deployed cameras around the Arctic to catch the phenomenon. “’Our jaws dropped when we saw the movies for the first time,’ said space scientist Larry Lyons of the University ...
“At age 50, Miles Davis' album Kind of Blue has been officially and unanimously hailedby the US House of Representatives. Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) sponsored H.Res 894, which on Tuesday passed 409 to 0, recognizing the ‘unique contribution’ of the 37-minutes of modal improvisation trumpeter ...
“Just in time for the holidays: a Hubble Space Telescope picture postcard of hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds. The festive portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping ...
“More than 100 hopefuls vied Saturday for the title of India's most beautiful transsexual at the country's first such pageant for members of the marginalised community, an organiser said. The event in the southern city of Chennai was unique in a country where transsexuals live on the fringes of ...
“Yesterday, Thom Yorke got a hold of a press pass and crashed the United Nations Climate Change Conference currently going down in Copenhagen, Denmark. And it looks like Yorke is putting his journalist credentials to good use. The Radiohead frontman has posted reportsfrom the conference on the band ...
“Ted Kennedy thought this moment would come, though by this spring he did not expect to see it. In May he wrote to President Obama that he was ‘confident …that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the president who at long last signs into law the health care reform that is the ...
“As it's a work day for the Senate worth reporting here that Ben Nelson’s vote has been bought for more Medicaid spending for Nebraska and a complex formula for States to opt out of exchanges being able to fund abortions. So presuming there’s no problems in reconciliation we can expect the reform ...
“Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Iran's most senior dissident cleric, has died, official media has reported. Montazeri, 87, was an architect of the 1979 Islamic revolution who fell out with the present leadership. He had been held under house arrest for several years. ‘Hossein Ali Montazeri ...