Letting Slower Passengers Board Airplane First Really Is Faster, Study Finds
Commercial airlines often prioritize boarding for passengers traveling with small children, or for those who need extra assistance, before starting to board the faster passengers. It’s counter-intuitive, but it turns out that letting slower passengers board first actually results in a more efficient process.
Beyond The Growth Gospel
The Hotel Belvédère du Rayon Vert symbolizes the very empire these adherents of “degrowth,” as the movement is known, wish to overthrow: consumption, wealth, inequality, travel, and cement, the whole modern industrial condition.
The Internet Is Destroying Our Collective Attention Span
The length of time our “collective attention” is on any given event has grown shorter, and topics become popular and then drop out of public view at an accelerating rate. It’s no surprise if it feels harder and harder to dwell deeply on any topic.
Big Tech Takes Aim At The Low-Profit Retail-Banking Industry
After years of timidity Big Tech, with its billions of users and gigantic war chest, at last appears serious about crashing the fintech party. Amazon and Apple introduced a credit card. Facebook announced a new payments system and Google said it would start offering current (checking) accounts in America.
Former Secret Service Agent Explains How to Detect Counterfeit Money
Former Secret Service Agent Jonathan Wackrow explains how the Service keeps counterfeit currency out of circulation. The Secret Service was installed to combat counterfeit money during the Civil War, and the Service still to this day works tirelessly to suppress counterfeits.
In San Francisco, Tech Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness
In the midst of a housing crisis, an injection of cash into the superheated real-estate market seems likely to cause an uptick in evictions and displacement.
How To Keep The Earth As Inhabitable As Possible
We’ve been behind where we need to be for decades now, and the fact that we’ll be living in a hotter, less hospitable world is an inevitability. The only uncertainty left is how quickly we respond and how much damage we’re going to be able to prevent.
Sweden’s Cashless Society Dream Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be
Just one per cent of Sweden’s GDP circulates as cash. As debates over the need for cash rage along lines of age, wealth and location, the country is looking to create a digital currency.
Americans Are Going Bankrupt From Getting Sick
Medical debt is a uniquely American phenomenon, a burden that would be unfathomable in many other developed countries. According to a survey in the American Journal of Public Health, nearly 60 percent of people who have filed for bankruptcy said a medical expense contributed to their bankruptcy.
Radical Hydrogen-Boron Reactor Leapfrogs Current Nuclear Fusion Tech
HB11 Energy is a spin-out company that originated at the University of New South Wales, and it announced today a swag of patents through Japan, China and the USA protecting its unique approach to fusion energy generation. Fusion, of course, is the long-awaited clean, safe theoretical solution to humanity’s energy needs.
The Citizen Scientist Who Finds Killers From Her Couch
CeCe Moore has no scientific degree. Like other prominent figures in the genealogy community, she is self-taught. Moore is, in her own estimation, among the most experienced genetic genealogists in the world. Now she is using her genetic knowledge to expose murderers.
Seven Mysterious Sounds Science Has Yet To Solve
Sounds of unknown origin can be more than unsettling; they can inspire decades of mythos and fear—and obsessive scientific inquiry. From jarring radio broadcasts to harmonious dunes, here are some of the world’s great sonic mysteries.
Sounds of unknown origin can be more than unsettling; they can inspire decades of mythos and fear—and obsessive scientific inquiry. From jarring radio broadcasts to harmonious dunes, here are some of the world’s great sonic mysteries.
3D Printing Ink May Solve The “Toothpaste Problem”
A new kind of ink for 3D printing liquifies when pressed through the nozzle of a 3D printer, but then quickly returns to its original shape, researchers report. The invention paves the way for personalized biomaterial implants, according to new research. As things stand, however, personalized implants remain a long way off.
Alone On A Mountaintop, Awaiting A Very Hard Rain
Decades ago, Armenian scientists built a high-elevation trap to catch and study cosmic rays. Physics has mostly moved on, but the station persists — a ghost observatory with a skeleton crew.
What’s Creating Thousands Of Craters Off The California Coast?
Just off the coast of California, thousands of craterlike depressions, some as big as buses, dot the seafloor. These “micro depressions” are roughly 10 meters across and 1 meter deep—and nearly one-third of them contain garbage.
Sitzfleisch: The German Concept To Get More Work Done
To have sitzfleisch means the ability to sit still for the long periods of time required to be truly productive; it means the stamina to work through a difficult situation and see a project through to the end. Angela Merkel has it in abundance – how do you cultivate this crucial skill?
Newly Found Planet Could Host Primitive Life, Study Suggest
The planet – known as Barnard b or GJ 699 b – is an exciting find given the planet is only six light-years away from Earth, making it one of closest worlds outside of our solar system.
After 30 Years, Hubble Is Still Revealing New Mysteries Of The Universe
Operating far past its expected life span, the telescope captures data that answer some of space’s biggest questions—and make glorious images. “One of Hubble’s lasting achievements will be how it showed the public the wonders of the universe.”
The Everything Town In The Middle Of Nowhere
On any given day, thousands of packages from Walmarts, Targets, and stores around the country travel north along a two-lane road out of Billings, Montana — past the Tumbleweed Saloon, past cows grazing on empty rangeland, past the Busy Bee Cafe and stands of short pines — to the town of Roundup, where they will be unboxed, re-boxed, and sent off to Amazon.
Neuroscientists Reveal The “Dark Secret” Of Smart Decision-Making
Our perceptions—physical and cognitive—are unreliable, so the more people are involved in a decision, the more likely it is that they will reach a conclusion based on a debate over various sensations, challenging each others’ experiences of reality.
China Aims To Launch The World’s First Official Digital Currency
Dozens of central banks have started looking at whether to issue digital currencies. But only a few have run trials and none has gone as far as China, which appears set to become the first country to put a central-bank digital currency (cbdc) into limited use.