Network Archives

Guitarist completes first-ever paddleboard journey from Cuba to U.S.

"A Tennessee musician on Friday became the first paddleboarder to cross the Florida Straits between Cuba and the United States, making the 110 mile journey in 28 hours as his father watched from a support boat. Ben Friberg, 35, arrived in Key West dehydrated and exhausted but otherwise in good shape. Before leaving Cuba on Thursday, Friberg said he was 'doing this to promote peace and understanding between Cuba and the United States and to promote a healthy lifestyle.'" Continue reading →

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The 1 Up Fever

"In the Berlin city everyone is going crazy for a viral new app. Anyone with a smartphone can play a sort of Super Mario Bros arcade game in Augmented Reality. In the game a coin corresponds to 0.01 Bitcoins. Citizens' habits are tainted by the game. Coins are hidden all over the city, you can spot them just scanning around with your device, not always they are easy to grab. People started to leave their jobs in order to collect Coins in the streets. All over the city people are jumping and running around with their smartphones, trying to grab as many virtual coins as they can..." Continue reading →

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MIT researches find gold can control blood clotting

"Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists, funded by the US National Science Foundation, have come up with a new technique to control blood clotting by using gold. The method involves small particles of gold and the use of infrared laser light. According to the researchers, who published their findings in the PLoS One journal, one of the main advantages of this method is that coagulation can be turned on or off as needed. Wound healing, surgery and other conditions require handling this process, mainly through the use of anticoagulants such as heparin or warfarin. However, reversing the effects of these drugs is difficult." Continue reading →

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Google’s Sergey Brin bankrolled world’s first synthetic beef hamburger ‘for animal welfare reasons’

"The man who has bankrolled the production of the world’s first lab-grown hamburger has been revealed as Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The internet entrepreneur has backed the project to the tune of €250,000 (£215,000), allowing scientists to grow enough meat in the lab to create a burger – as a proof of concept – that will be cooked and eaten in London on Monday. Brin, a computer scientist who set up Google with university colleague Larry Page, is one of the wealthiest men in the world and has a history of backing projects that sound as though they belong in science fiction movies." Continue reading →

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Woolly mammoth DNA may lead to a resurrection of the ancient beast

"The pioneering scientist who created Dolly the sheep has outlined how cells plucked from frozen woolly mammoth carcasses might one day help resurrect the ancient beasts. The notional procedure – bringing with it echoes of the Jurassic Park films – was spelled out by Sir Ian Wilmut, the Edinburgh-based stem-cell scientist, whose team unveiled Dolly as the world's first cloned mammal in 1996. Though it is unlikely that a mammoth could be cloned in the same way as Dolly, more modern techniques that convert tissue cells into stem cells could potentially achieve the feat, Wilmut says in an article today for the academic journalism website, The Conversation." Continue reading →

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Scientists cook world’s first lab-grown, in-vitro hamburger

"The in-vitro burger, cultured from cattle stem cells, will be fried in a pan and tasted by two volunteers. The burger is the result of years of research by Dutch scientist Mark Post, a vascular biologist at the University of Maastricht, who is working to show how meat grown in petri dishes might one day be a true alternative to meat from livestock. The meat in the burger has been made by knitting together around 20,000 strands of protein that has been cultured from cattle stem cells in Post’s lab. The tissue is grown by placing the cells in a ring, like a donut, around a hub of nutrient gel, Post explained." Continue reading →

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The Best Way to Profit From Private-Equity Crowdfunding

"Instagram and Tumblr are just a couple of examples of young companies that were acquired for hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars, making their earliest investors fantastically rich. Now, thanks to a vocal group of citizens, ordinary citizens will be able to invest a small and affordable amount of money in a company they believe in and in exchange receive an ownership stake. This revolutionary change is called equity crowdfunding, and hundreds of websites called 'funding portals' — sites like CircleUp and RockThePost, to name two — are popping up to help match startup companies with potential investors like you." Continue reading →

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A Helping Hand for Bernanke and Co.

"Especially in the spirit of Mr. Bernanke’s commitment to transparency and accountability, his concluding remarks surely encourage the prospects for passage of the pending legislation introduced by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, to constitute a Centennial Monetary Commission, HR 1176. The legislation’s purpose: 'To establish a commission to examine the United States monetary policy, evaluate alternative monetary regimes and recommend a course for monetary policy going forward.' The duties set forth for the commission fully coincide with Mr. Bernanke’s public call." Continue reading →

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The US student loan problem – facts, charts, thoughts

"The unlimited availability of student loans has allowed colleges to sharply raise tuition and fees over the past few years - often simply because they could (as they kept on hiring). The rising cost of higher education in turn forced students to take out larger loans and in greater numbers, increasing the overall loan balances. This feedback loop is clearly unsustainable, particularly as household income growth remains weak. Higher delinquencies are inevitable and as long as the government funds this program, there really is only one way to arrest rising levels of student debt." Continue reading →

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