Feelings Beat Thoughts For Fast Complex Decisions Think or blink? The debate continues with new research on quick, emotion-based decision-making. We have to make a lot of complicated decisions in life. Surgeons have to make split-second decisions in emergencies and fire-fighters have to decide which route is safest. These are complex decisions in which time is short. A new study by Mikels et al. (2011) supports the power of gut instincts for quick decisions. Overall they found that compared with trying to work out the details, using the emotions led to much better outcomes. This held for both objective and subjective aspects of a decision (this covers the car that’s objectively best overall and the best car taking into account your preferences). For quick decisions, then, this looks like good evidence that you should focus on feelings rather than thoughts. On the other hand, if you’ve got more time—more time than it takes to just understand the problem—then a detail-focused approach is likely to be better. Image credit: Julia Manzerova
Pour les agriculteurs, ressemer sa propre récolte sera interdit ou taxé Une découverte significative de l’Université de l’État de Washington montre que l’ail est 100 fois plus efficace que deux antibiotiques populaires pour combattre des maladies causées par des bactéries responsables de toxi-infections alimentaires. Leur travail a été publié récemment dans le Journal de Chimiothérapie Antimicrobienne, une suite des précédentes recherches de l’auteur dans Microbiologie Appliquée à l’Environnement qui a démontré de manière concluante qu’un concentré d’ail était efficace pour inhiber la croissance de la bactérie Campylobacter jejuni. L’ail est probablement l’un des plus puissants aliments naturels. « Ce travail me passionne beaucoup parce qu’il montre que ce composé a le potentiel de réduire des bactéries pathogènes de l’environnement et de nos aliments » a dit Xiaonan Lu un chercheur docteur en sciences et auteur principal de l’article. L’une des découvertes les plus intéressantes est que l’ail augmente le niveau global d’antioxydants dans le corps. Source
MIT Creating 24-Hour Solar Power on the Cheap? By Stephen Lacey on August 2, 2011 at 3:14 pm "MIT Creating 24-Hour Solar Power on the Cheap?" Researchers at MIT are designing a new method of building concentrating solar power plants with thermal storage that they say could lower the cost of energy by 50% compared with existing technologies. Last month, a 19.9 MW power-tower concentrating solar power plant in Spain became the first to generate electricity for 24 hours using molten-salt storage. But the cost of building that demonstration plant is higher than most CSP technologies – around $18 per watt, putting the cost of electricity somewhere around 30 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. The company developing the plant, Torresol, wasn’t building it to prove the design could be the cheapest. Rather than use a complicated plumbing infrastructure to heat and pump the molten salt for storage, Slocum’s design puts the salt storage and water heating in a single tank mounted on the ground, rather than on a tower far above the field of mirrors.
5 Steps to Thinking Outside of the Box A few years back our litigation team was faced with a seemingly insurmountable task: how to defend our client’s trademark rights against a Fortune 500 company with a massive litigation budget. They had the facts on their side. Moreover, they had money. Worst of all, they had a gaggle of lawyers that just made the case down right unpleasant. In spite of this, as luck would have it, they were missing one very crucial thing that they had never learned in law school. Looking beyond conventional defense methods, we deconstructed every element of the case until we discovered a plan to turn the tables. In thinking beyond the realm of traditional defenses, we wondered what if we could find someone else who had priority of use associated with their own trademark that preceded that of the opposing party? Well, not only could it, it did. How did we do it? People often speak about thinking outside the box, but how do you really do it? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 1. 2. 3.
Imprimantes 3D : illusoire émancipation par la technologie, par Johan Söderberg Ce serait la révolution industrielle du XXIe siècle : ce qui devait auparavant être acheté en magasin pourrait désormais être fabriqué chez soi grâce à des outils comme une découpeuse laser, une imprimante 3D, une fraiseuse à commande numérique, etc. (1). Ces machines suivent toutes un même principe technologique : guider les mouvements d’un outil mécanique à l’aide d’un logiciel. Les plus célèbres d’entre elles fonctionnent comme des imprimantes, mais en trois dimensions : passage après passage, une buse se déplace sur trois axes et superpose des couches de matière (le plus souvent une résine synthétique) en suivant un modèle numérisé, jusqu’à obtention du volume désiré. De la poignée de porte au vélo, les objets ainsi produits se multiplient. Même si cette technologie suscite un foisonnement de petites entreprises créatives, son développement est essentiellement l’œuvre d’amateurs, qui se définissent comme des makers. Détecter les ouvriers paresseux Vers une baisse des salaires ?
Global Energy Network Institute - GENI - Electricity Grid Linking Renewable Energy Resources Around the World 9 Things Every Entrepreneur Needs to Learn From Woody Allen Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest book is I Was Blind But Now I See. You can follow him @jaltucher. I hate Woody Allen. This only happens in Woody Allen movies. And people believed it. (Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan when Woody Allen is breaking up with her) Allen puts out a new movie or two every year. So he’s built up a substantial body of work that we can learn from. (Juliette Lewis in Husbands & Wives) Here’s some of the things I’ve learned from him: 1. He elaborates further. One of my earliest memories is having a babysitter while my parents went to a movie. (Scarlett Johansson in Match Point, one of Allen’s best movies) Woody Allen has also failed spectacularly, in every way we can imagine – personally, professionally, etc. 2. 3. (Winona Ryder in Allen’s “Celebrity”) The entrepreneur, the entre-ployee. 4. 5. 6. That said, he doesn’t give up. 7.
Convertibilité du rouble: les banques étrangères doivent créer des réserves en roubles | Économie MOSCOU, 18 mai - RIA Novosti. Le rouble ne sera convertible que si les banques étrangères ont besoin d'accumuler des réserves en roubles, a estimé Alexandre Chokhine, président de l'Union des industriels et des entrepreneurs de Russie. "Les banques doivent avoir besoin d'accumuler des réserves en roubles", a-t-il indiqué lors d'un point de presse mercredi. Il importe également que les ressortissants de la Fédération puissent échanger librement leurs roubles à l'étranger, a ajouté le chef du patronat russe. La convertibilité totale du rouble dépend également de sa présence dans le panier des monnaies à partir duquel sont calculés les SDR (unités de compte du FMI - "Special Drawing Rights" - utilisées pour couvrir les déficits des balances des paiements de ses membres). Le 10 mai, dans son Message au parlement fédéral, le président Poutine a insisté sur la nécessité de parvenir à la convertibilité du rouble avant le 1er juillet prochain.
The Lost World of Lake Vostok It sometimes seems as if our planet has no secrets left - but deep beneath the great Antarctic ice sheet scientists have made an astonishing discovery. They’ve found one of the largest lakes in the world. It’s very existence defies belief. Scientists are desperate to get into the lake because its extreme environment may be home to unique flora and fauna, never seen before, and NASA are excited by what it could teach us about extraterrestrial life. In 1957 the Russians established a remote base in Antarctica - the Vostok station. But 20 years passed before their suspicions were confirmed, when satellites finally revealed that there was an enormous lake under the Vostok base. Watch the full documentary now -