Economists have a different way of viewing the world. Take the Italian economist, engineer and philosopher Vilfredo Pareto, who lived from 1848 to 1923. Among his other accomplishments, he discovered what is known today as Pareto’s Principle, or Pareto’s Rule. He realized that 20 percent of the people controlled 80 percent of the wealth in
Have you ever wondered why zebras have stripes? I was catching up on my reading during my recent trip to California, and I ran across a blurb in the July 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine entitled “Patterns Puzzle Predators”. It begins by saying — “If a zebra zigs, with its stripes make a predator
July 10 was the birthday of Nikola Tesla, born in 1856 in what is now Croatia. You may have heard of the Tesla coil, but he also was responsible for alternating current. Unfortunately, his business ventures weren’t always successful, and he died alone and impoverished in 1943. The PBS Newshour website has a feature “8
According to Science magazine, (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768), eight million metric tons of plastic waste enter the oceans every year. The ocean now has at least 700 pieces of plastic for every person on earth. Is there any way we could ever clean up this mess? A twenty-one-year-old man from the Netherlands has an idea. Realizing that plastic
I’ve always heard of the “dog days” of summer, and I always thought, somewhat logically, that the expression came from the propensity of dogs to rest in the midday heat. But that’s not the case. According to National Geographic, the saying has nothing to do with dogs. Rather, it refers to Sirius the dog star.
Can you imagine an elephant sanctuary in Siberia? Wheat that is practically immune to mildew? Microbes that eat plastic? These may now be possible, thanks to a new tool called CRISPR-Cas9 (or CRISPR for short) that gives us the ability to literally rewrite genetic code for just about anything on our planet that has DNA.
I think I know what a good career field will be in the future — flood mitigation. As the world’s climate warms and sea levels rise, more and more coastal areas are going to be in jeopardy. So people are going to be calling on experts to help them protect their property. If you live
Did you hear about the German priest, rabbi, and imam? It’s not a joke. In the city of Berlin, they are cooperating to build the first church-synagogue-mosque complex. There have been times in the past where a faith has moved into the house of worship of a different faith. For example, mosques in Spain were
Catching up on the world, I just realized the first Harry Potter novel was published on June 26, 1997 in Great Britain. The British title was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone; we know it as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I never understood the reason for the change, but we and the British
It certainly seems that being handsome/pretty is an advantage for adults, but what about babies? Can cuteness give them an evolutionary advantage? The latest research suggests yes, at the brain level, attractive infants seem to have a definite edge. In an article on the New York magazine website (http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/06/cute-babies-have-an-evolutionary-advantage-in-life.html?) — “Cuteness in offspring is a