America's 100 Most Promising Companies
It's Boosting the Worldwide Economy Image via Flickr by roger4336 The massive oil and gas reserves freed for consumption by the new techniques of fracking could soon account for 12 percent of global production. This, in turn, could drive oil prices down by as much as 40 percent. The typical consumer rarely realizes how much oil prices contribute to the prices they pay everywhere from the...
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When most of us think of recycling, we think of plastic bottles and aluminum cans. Consumer and business recycling has slowly picked up steam in recent years as the materials have become more valuable. Recycling (better known as re-manufacturing) is becoming increasingly common on an industrial scale, as well. Machinery-and the metal with which it is built-is too valuable to be discarded after...
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Quick question: What did the light bulb say to the generator? "I really get a charge out of you!" This joke may be old, but its kernel of truth makes it a winner, no matter what. I came across it recently on the same day that I read an article about Germany’s phasing out of its nuclear power plants. It made me wonder whether other countries are doing the same, and how that decision might...
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In 1953, when Marilyn Monroe sang, "Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” she only confirmed what a lot of couples already believed―that diamonds are a valuable symbol of love. However, diamonds didn’t always symbolize such devotion. Certainly, they were popular with monarchs and other royal figures prior to the mid-1800s, because they were very rare. But when the South African diamond rush...
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With the NBA season starting back up, I read an article by sports writer Bill Simmons about Tracy McGrady, or T-Mac, written right after the player retired in late August, 2013. In the article, he explored and analyzed the career of T-Mac, which he lamented as a wasted opportunity for a really, really great technical player to become a really, really big superstar. Simmons determined that a...
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I saw an article recently about a breakthrough from Disney Research(with school-age children at home I spend a lot of time on all-things Disney), where they have engineered generators out of paper. These ingenious inventions generate electricity with friction, in the same way that industrial generators do. In this case, the friction comes from common hand motions that create interactions between...
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At midnight, September 30, as many political experts predicted, the U.S. government started a partial shutdown of its operations. Nonessential employees woke up to the realization they are will be placed on an unannounced, non-specific furlough. In addition to this, things are getting interesting (and not in a good way) in some European nations, now. While these developments are not big news...
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