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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
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 ...
“The number of death sentences imposed by US courts has fallen because of a growing number of exonerations through DNA testing, according to a report by a prominent anti-death penalty group. The Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington says judges and juries imposed fewer death sentences over ...
“Battalions of salt trucks and snowplows maneuvered through an East Coast snow storm this morning with one mission: Save Christmas! (Or at least the Christmas shopping season.) The prospect of socked-in consumers playing in the snow instead of braving slippery roads to head to the mall helped to ...
“When the U.S. Congress passed the massive stimulus package earlier this year, California Governor Arnold Swarzenegger created a state-level inspector general to insure that the stimulus funds for California would not be used wastefully or improperly. This is a big job for any auditor, because ...
Though climate change science and African nations most affected by global warming support limiting air temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Copenhagen conference ended yesterday with no legally binding commitments from countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. “President Obama ...
“After marathon talks, the Obama administration and Democratic leaders appeared near agreement with Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson late Friday night to provide the crucial 60th vote needed for Senate passage of health care legislation. Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to unveil a final package of ...