Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Inside The Magical Patch That Gives You A Powerful Anti-Mosquito Force Field | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

Inside The Magical Patch That Gives You A Powerful Anti-Mosquito Force Field | Co.Exist | ideas + impact:
The Kite, developed by scientists at University of California Riverside and commercialized by an impact investing group called ieCrowd, works by confusing the bugs' sense of smell. Usually, they hone in the CO2 we breathe out; the Kite keeps this from happening. As you can see in the video above, when an intrepid scientist sticks his hand into a cage full of mosquitoes, the Kite prevents them from finding him and sucking his blood.
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Samantha Power Takes on the Job of a Lifetime as Ambassador to the U.N.- Vogue

Vogue: "It is a stakeout, her first as ambassador to the United Nations, and she is news herself—Samantha Power, human-rights celebrity and, at 43, the youngest American to ever hold the post. With a rustle of camera shutters and a blare of flash, Power exits the Security Council chamber and looks squarely at the press corps. “Good afternoon—it’s great to be here,” she says. A very brief pause follows, with an off-script eyebrow raise. It’s a small gesture, but to anyone who knows her or has followed her career—as the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide or as a foreign-affairs staffer to a certain young Illinois senator or even as a White House National Security Council member—it’s a typical Power move, a quick hit of charm in a high-stakes moment that says it really is great, even amazing, a dream come true."

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Monday, October 21, 2013

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses | Wired Business | Wired.com

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses | Wired Business | Wired.com: "In 2009, scientists from the University of Louisville and MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences conducted a study of 48 children between the ages of 3 and 6. The kids were presented with a toy that could squeak, play notes, and reflect images, among other things. For one set of children, a researcher demonstrated a single attribute and then let them play with the toy. Another set of students was given no information about the toy. This group played longer and discovered an average of six attributes of the toy; the group that was told what to do discovered only about four. A similar study at UC Berkeley demonstrated that kids given no instruction were much more likely to come up with novel solutions to a problem. “The science is brand-new, but it’s not as if people didn’t have this intuition before,” says coauthor Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley."

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Think Mexican • Paloma Noyola: The Face of Mexico’s Unleashed...

Think Mexican • Paloma Noyola: The Face of Mexico’s Unleashed...: "The clear message in this story is that there are thousands of Paloma Noyolas going to school in Mexico who, just like her at one time, are not being challenged and therefore aren’t very interested in school. This story can, if we want it to, raise enough awareness to shift the discussion from poverty to opportunity."

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Friday, October 18, 2013

Amy Poehler And Tina Fey Taught Us Everything We Know About Being A Woman

Amy Poehler And Tina Fey Taught Us Everything We Know About Being A Woman: "If you need an example of how to be the best person ever, look no further than comedians (and our dream celebrity BFFs), Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. When we learned this morning that the dynamic duo would be hosting the Golden Globes in not just 2014 but in 2015 as well, we practically wept with joy. (This guarantees that the Globes will dominate the awards show circuit, yet again.)

In honor of this most excellent news, here are nine lessons about being a woman we learned from Amy and Tina:"

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Pucker Up, America: Beers Are Going Sour : The Salt : NPR

Pucker Up, America: Beers Are Going Sour : The Salt : NPR: "Move over, bitter IPAs and chocolaty stouts. There's a new kid on the craft brewing block, and it's going to knock your salivary glands into action.

It's called "sour beer." When you take a sip, it's like biting into a Granny Smith apple that's soaked in a French red wine: crisp, refreshing and a bit odd."

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Thursday, October 17, 2013

FAO - News Article: Coordinated efforts in aquaculture needed to meet global demand

FAO - News Article: Coordinated efforts in aquaculture needed to meet global demand: "Over 50 countries endorsed the Global Aquaculture Advancement Partnership (GAAP) programme, which will bring together governments, UN agencies, non-governmental organizations and the private sector to find sustainable solutions to meeting the need for fish products."

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“Presume Competence” – What Does That Mean Exactly? | Emma's Hope Book

“Presume Competence” – What Does That Mean Exactly? | Emma's Hope Book: "In an interview, Douglas Biklen explained:  ”Assume that a child has intellectual ability, provide opportunities to be exposed to learning, assume the child wants to learn and assert him or herself in the world.”

A key component to presuming competence is to become aware of the prejudice that currently exists regarding autism and how these ingrained beliefs harm not just our children, but ALL Autistic people.   Like any prejudice, based on layers and layers of misinformation, misperceptions, and misunderstandings, we must be willing to acknowledge our own “beliefs” before we can begin to deconstruct them."

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BBC News - Can kindness movements make a difference?

BBC News - Can kindness movements make a difference?: "Picking up litter. Buying someone in need a coffee. Or just dolling out free hugs. There's a growing movement of people doing nice things for strangers, but do they make for a kinder society?"

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Successful Children Who Lost A Parent — Why Are There So Many Of Them? : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR

Successful Children Who Lost A Parent — Why Are There So Many Of Them? : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR: "This is a touchy subject. Nobody wants to say that catastrophe is a career booster; common sense says the opposite, that children with intact families get more love, protection and support, which ought to be an advantage later on. But it's also true that kids with missing parents need extra muscles, grit and self reliance — also ingredients for success.

The surprise here is the proportion of highly successful people who lost a parent early. Their achievements, of course, may have little or nothing to do with how many parents they had at home, but looking through Gladwell's footnotes, it is puzzling to see so many of them at the top of their professions. This suggests, ever so slightly, that pain trumps love at the start of the race. That's a notion that makes me wince."

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BBC News - 100 Women: The jobs Chinese girls just can't do

BBC News - 100 Women: The jobs Chinese girls just can't do: "Six hundred kilometres south of Beijing, at the China Mining and Technology University in China's eastern Jiangsu province, a group of mining engineering students listen intently to their professor.

They're the envy of others at this school, since they belong to one of China's so-called "green card majors", courses that all but guarantee employment after graduation.

But this program has one clear entrance requirement: men only."

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BBC News - US debt ceiling: Senate passes US budget deal

BBC News - US debt ceiling: Senate passes US budget deal: "The US Senate has passed a bill to reopen the government and raise the federal debt limit, with hours to spare before the nation risks default.

The Democratic-controlled Senate's bipartisan compromise won swift approval by 81 votes to 18.

It will now be sent to the House of Representatives, whose Republican leadership has begrudgingly said it will support the measure.

It comes hours before the deadline to raise the $16.7tn (£10.5tn) limit."

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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Lost in Time: Groovy Afghanistan | Messy Nessy Chic Messy Nessy Chic

Lost in Time: Groovy Afghanistan | Messy Nessy Chic Messy Nessy Chic: "A cautionary tale of a vibrant and thriving culture lost in time, these photographs collected on a community Facebook page in Afghanistan are likely to leave you in disbelief. The country we’re so often shown today is comparable to a broken medieval society, but not so long ago, the barren landscape was dotted with stylish buildings, women wore pencil skirts and teenagers shopped at record stores.

As you browse the photos that capture progress, hope and that rock’n'roll spirit in the air, keep in mind the implications of what happened to this culture in just a few decades."

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TED talks are lying to you - Salon.com

TED talks are lying to you - Salon.com: "The writer had a problem. Books he read and people he knew had been warning him that the nation and maybe mankind itself had wandered into a sort of creativity doldrums. Economic growth was slackening. The Internet revolution was less awesome than we had anticipated, and the forward march of innovation, once a cultural constant, had slowed to a crawl. One of the few fields in which we generated lots of novelties — financial engineering — had come back to bite us. And in other departments, we actually seemed to be going backward. You could no longer take a supersonic airliner across the Atlantic, for example, and sending astronauts to the moon had become either fiscally insupportable or just passé."

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Holding Onto The Other Half Of 'Mixed-Race' : NPR

Holding Onto The Other Half Of 'Mixed-Race' : NPR: "Wilma Stordahl, a Seattle resident who's an account manager for a national landscape company, offered one such submission: "Norwegian with Nappy Hair Doesn't Fit."

'What Are They?'

Stordahl is Norwegian, and she and her husband are both white. Together they have a 15-year-old white son, but she also has two older sons, Kevin Stordahl, 25, and Kazon Stordahl, 19, who both have a black father."

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Friday, October 11, 2013

Libyan Prime Minister Is Kidnapped, Then Freed - NYTimes.com

Libyan Prime Minister Is Kidnapped, Then Freed - NYTimes.com: "CAIRO — Libya’s prime minister, Ali Zeidan, was kidnapped from a hotel in the capital, Tripoli, on Thursday and briefly held in an apparent act of retaliation for his presumed consent to the capture of a suspected Qaeda leader by an American commando team."

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Thursday, October 10, 2013

FBI Arrests 29 Year Old Mastermind Of Billion Dollar Internet Drug Blackmarket | The Top Information Post

FBI Arrests 29 Year Old Mastermind Of Billion Dollar Internet Drug Blackmarket | The Top Information Post:
If you want to buy a book online, at this point pretty much everyone goes to Amazon.com. Right? If you want to buy shoes? Zappos. Domain name? Godaddy. An 18 year old Brazilian girl’s virginity? eBay. A one way flight to Brazil? Kayak. But where do you go if you want to anonymously buy illegal drugs like heroin, cocaine, meth, molly, LSD etc… all from the privacy and comfort of a web browser? Well, up until 3:15pm on Wednesday October 2nd, for all these illicit purchases and more you could have gone to a website called SilkRoad.
What happened Wednesday at 3:15pm? After months of painstaking investigation, the FBI swooped in and arrested the long sought-after mastermind of this highly illegal anonymous drug marketplace. Who was this mastermind? Was it a secretive Russian hacker living in Moscow? A Chinese internet tycoon operating from a private yacht in international waters? Actually, it was a 29 year old American named Ross Ulbricht who operated most of his empire out of a San Francisco coffee shop. When he was arrested, he was actually using the free wifi at a public library.
This story is long, but completely insane, totally worth reading all the way through. In case you need some teasers, this story involves billions of dollars worth of drug transactions, an enormous illegal fortune made entirely out of Bitcoins, fake passports and even a couple of hitmen.
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Tuesday, October 1, 2013

A Wave of Sewing Jobs as Orders Pile Up at U.S. Factories - NYTimes.com

A Wave of Sewing Jobs as Orders Pile Up at U.S. Factories - NYTimes.com: "Initially Airtex paid $3 an hour on average for its Chinese workers; now, it pays about $11.80 an hour, including benefits and housing.

Its American factory-floor workers make about $9 to $17 an hour, though Airtex estimates benefits add another 30 percent to those figures.

As costs were rising in China, Airtex was also getting a new message from some of its clients: They wanted more American-made products.

Health care clients wanted medical slings and other sensitive medical products made domestically to ensure quality. Retailers did not want to pay overseas freight costs to import bulky items like pillows, and they wanted more flexibility in turning around designs quickly. As Airtex considered production in Vietnam and elsewhere, it became concerned about safety and quality issues — and increasingly interested in the American alternative."

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BBC News - US shutdown has other nations confused and concerned

BBC News - US shutdown has other nations confused and concerned: "Now, as the latest shutdown crisis plays out, policymakers in other nations are left to ponder the worldwide impact of the impasse.

"Globalisation … means every country is in it together," writes David Blanchflower in the Independent in the UK. "Americans sneeze and Brits catch the flu."

"Canadians can only pray their economy won't be collateral damage," writes John Ibbitson in Canada's Globe and Mail. "Anything that drags down the American economy drags the Canadian economy down with it."

And this could be another reason why the United States has shutdown crises and other countries don't - because the United States can afford to. At least up until now, the American economy has been able to continue to grind along despite shutdown disruptions that would stagger other nations.

"Constant-shutdown, permanent-emergency governance is so destructive that no other serious country engages in or could tolerate it," James Fallows writes in the Atlantic. "The United States can afford it only because we are - still - so rich, with so much margin for waste and error.""

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Shutdown Begins After Congress Fails In Spending Compromise : The Two-Way : NPR

Shutdown Begins After Congress Fails In Spending Compromise : The Two-Way : NPR: "House Republicans and Senate Democrats could not reach agreement by the midnight deadline on a spending bill to keep the government operating, triggering an immediate shutdown of nonessential services and the furlough of nonessential personnel potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of federal workers."

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Federal government shuts down after Congress fails to pass funding - U.S. News

Federal government shuts down after Congress fails to pass funding - U.S. News: "After a long debate and tense partisan standoff, the first federal government shutdown in 17 years has begun. Check in here for the latest updates."

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Giving money to child beggars: Don’t do it.

Giving money to child beggars: Don’t do it.: "The imperative to not give money or gifts to child beggars doesn’t mean we have to turn our backs on them. Donate to responsible NGOs, and look for creative new ways to be kind to children that won’t disrupt familial dynamics, encourage long-term poverty, undercut local businesses, or abet human trafficking. Be generous: Leave those coins in your pocket."

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