We Are Awake

In 1992, a young CEO named Kurt Herwald apparently gave away half a million dollars of his company’s money. His company, Stevens Aviation, had been   advertising   with the slogan “Plane Smart.” Unaware that Stevens had a copyright on the slogan, Southwest Airlines launched an advertising campaign with the tag line “Just Plane Smart.” At the time,   notes Harvard professor Robert Bordone (link is external) , neither company was particularly large or well-known. A lawsuit would cost Southwest half a million dollars, and Southwest’s campaign wasn’t really hurting Stevens. Whereas Southwest was targeting consumers, Stevens specialized in business-to-business market in aviation sales and maintenance. Herwald ended up handing the slogan over to Southwest, asking for nothing in return. Was this a   wise   decision? Most people say no; a smart person wouldn’t give the slogan away. After all, smart people are shrewd, calculating, and logical—not helpful, carin...

What’s 23 feet tall, eats smog, and makes jewelry for fun? In Rotterdam this week, the designer   Daan Roosegaarde   is showing off the result of three years of research and development: The largest air purifier ever built. It’s a tower that scrubs the pollution from more than 30,000 cubic meters of air per hour—and then condenses those fine particles of smog into tiny “gem stones” that can be embedded in rings, cufflinks, and more. Each stone is roughly equivalent to cleaning 1,000 cubic meters of air—so you’re literally wearing the pollution that once hung in the air around Roosegaarde’s so-called   Smog Free Tower . In the designer’s words, buying a ring means “you donate a thousand cubic meters of clean air to the city where the Smog Free Tower is.” The project has been in the offing for a long time. We   wrote about the idea more than two years ago when the Dutch designer first publicly announced the project, which was originally planned fo...

                                                                            VIDEO While some may associate CO2 pollution mainly with industrial plants and giant chimneys releasing the gas into the atmosphere, the reality is that   emissions from the transport sector  represent about 24 percent of global CO2 emissions and have the highest emissions growth of all. They are also harder to limit and capture. While there are existing technologies for trapping CO2 out of a smoke stack, for example, there haven’t been solutions for capturing the amount already released into the atmosphere (by cars, trucks, and planes) — CO2 that is 300 times less concentrated than the type coming out of a smoke stack. That is until now.  In the beginning of this year, in Squamish,...

While forgiving others protects women from depression, men do not derive the same benefit from being compassionate, suggests new research. The researchers found that older women who forgave others were less likely to report depressive symptoms regardless of whether they felt unforgiven by others. Older men, however, reported the highest levels of depression when they both forgave others and felt unforgiven by others. The researchers said their results may help counsellors of older adults develop gender-appropriate interventions since men and women process forgiveness differently. Forgiving others "appears to help decrease levels of depression, particularly for women", said study co-author Christine Proulx, associate professor at University of Missouri in Columbia, US. The researchers analysed data from the Religion, Aging, and Health Survey, a survey of more than 1,000 adults aged 67 and older. Survey participants answered questions about their religion, h...

Disappointing growth in Africa's two biggest economies has highlighted the role of China in the expansion of recent years, now that China's own economy is slowing. Disappointing growth in Africa’s two biggest economies has highlighted the role of China in the expansion of recent years, now that China’s own economy is slowing. Expectations of more than 4 percent growth in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, are probably now too high, and South Africa’s prospects also look in need of revising. Second-quarter growth for both countries was worse than the most pessimistic forecasts – in South Africa’s case, by the biggest margin in at least half a decade of Reuters polls. Their slowdown is similar to other emerging market economies in Latin America and Asia, and a sign that China’s appetite for raw materials is now waning. On Tuesday, the latest purchasing managers’ data showed the weakest growth in 6 1/2 years for small- to mid-sized China manufacturers an...

A fter China unexpectedly   devalued its currency   last Month, one City economist shrugged despairingly and said: “It’s August.” While it’s meant to be a time for heading for the beach or kicking back in the sunshine with the kids, August has often witnessed the first cracks that presaged what later became profound shifts in the tectonic plates of the global economy — from the Russian debt default in 1998, to what Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth called   “the day the world changed,”   when the first ripples of the credit crunch were felt in 2007; to August 2011, when ratings agency Standard and Poor’s sent shockwaves through financial markets by   stripping America of its triple-AAA credit rating . Taking the long view, last week’s devaluation by China, which left the yuan about 3% weaker against the dollar, was relatively modest — sterling had lost 16% of its value in 1967 when Harold Wilson sought to reassure the British public about   the “po...

Beijing claims that almost the entire South China Sea, rich in energy resources with $5 trillion in shipping passing through it annually, has historically belonged to China and will always be so. These claims have angered neighbors, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, and their citizens as tensions have slowly built over recent years. In 2014, China started building artificial islands and expanding land in the Spratly’s Fiery Cross Reef. As of July 2, 2015, the Chinese government is allegedly creating a 10,000 foot runway, long enough to handle all types of aircraft. The Chinese Foreign Ministry claims that the runway is for civilian aircraft and is “satisfying the need of necessary military defense.” Helipads and satellite communication antennas are also being added to the islands, likely for military purposes. The U.S. media has been filled with updates of Chinese land reclamation, and U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter called for “an immediate an...