World
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What's the Latest Development? Since 2010, an estimated 10 million bank accounts have been moved from multinational financial institutions to community credit unions and other kinds of cooperative, ethical banks. For the first time ever, credit union assets have risen over $1 trillion, reports ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? Having successfully launched the world's first private space vehicle, the company SpaceX has secured a $1.6 billion NASA contract and will one day carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Other space ventures are close on its heels. The company ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? Last month, a team of researchers found dark matter mysteriously absent in the region around our sun. Having mapped more than 400 stars, spanning a region roughly 26,000 light years in diameter, the European Southern Observatory identified a quantity of material ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? China's economy is much more than state-built housing and widgets made with cheap labor, or at least it could be. Mobile technology has been booming in China--analysts say the one billionth Chinese mobile customer recently switched on his or her new cellphone--and ... Read More
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Slavoj Zizek answers the question, "Do you think science has replaced philosophy in discovering the bigger questions of life?" Philosophy is not dying, he says -- in fact, we need it more now than ever. Read More
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The blind 40-year-old Chinese dissident who escaped from house arrest in April — improbably evading guards, finding his way to the U.S. embassy in Beijing and, after a diplomatic fracas, acquiring a visa to study law in the United States — landed at Newark Liberty airport on Saturday. Less than a ... Read More
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Article written by guest writer Rin Mitchell What’s the Latest Development? The United States will sell unarmed surveillance drones to Iraq in order to protect oil terminals. Since the departure of U.S. Troops last December, the United States will now have a presence in Iraq. The deal is not ... Read More
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Article written by guest writer Rin Mitchell What’s the Latest Development? The activity in derivatives trading among federally insured banks is an ongoing problem. Derivatives are a credit vehicle created by JP Morgan years ago as a way for banks to diffuse their risks and heighten leverage ... Read More
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What is the Big Idea? Step into a classroom in North Korea and you will find very little that differs from a classroom in New York City - chalkboard, rows of desks, chairs, desktop computers and bulletin boards full of text and pictures. But stay a little longer and you might notice something ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? While the Kepler space telescope continues to find planets outside our solar system, the debate over extraterrestrial life, so to speak, rages on. Paul Davies, physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University, argues that even given recent discoveries, the ... Read More
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Medic Mobile integrates technologies to connect and train health systems. The company uses technologies such as FrontlineSMS, OpenMRS, Ushahidi, Google Apps, and HealthMap to allow healthcare workers to communicate with each other using only $15 phones. Their SIM apps allow large groups of ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? Living in poverty exacts a big mental tole but new research indicates that the positive effects of anti-poverty programs often go beyond their immediate material consequences. When MIT economist Esther Duflo investigated a micro-finance operation in the Indian ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? A grim photo recently taken at a Chinese high school in Hubei Province shows about 50 students connected to intravenous drips of amino acids while preparing for college entrance exams. Following the advice of the school, students agreed to accept the protein ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? An expert committee at the Food and Drug Administration has recommended that an antiviral drug trade-named Truvada be offered daily to uninfected people to prevent them from catching HIV. The drug, which combines two antiviral drugs called tenofovir and ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? Scientists estimate that within the next decade, there is a 12% chance a solar storm will cause massive power outages on Earth, yet our electrical systems remain woefully unprepared for this eventuality. The last solar storm to do significant damage occurred in ... Read More
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What is the Big Idea? Vladimir Putin is officially back for his third term as president of Russia, but this time he faces a different political climate than he did in his first two stints, writes former Belgium prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, for The New York Times. "Even he cannot prevent ... Read More
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Senator Bill Bradley sits down with Big Think to discuss his latest book, We Can All Do Better, out in hardcover today, May 8, 2012. He talks about what it means to be American, and how that has changed since his grandfather's time. "The middle class has really taken it on the chin," he says ... Read More
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The troubling chronicle of blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has me thinking about the trial of another dissident who faced a life-changing dilemma of his own 2411 years ago in ancient Athens. Chen, like Socrates, is a gadfly on the hide of his polity. Where Socrates was condemned for ... Read More
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What is the Big Idea? Dominique Moisi, a special advisor at the French Institute of International Relations, published a few words of advice for president-elect François Hollande in Los Echos. His first plea: Let's not waste the next five years. It has been a tough ride, but you've won ... Read More
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