Tag: XXVII72

As reported in last week’s Trends Journal, millions of Bolivians were infuriated after President Evo Morales initiated a blackout of the vote count in a very close election and then claimed victory.   Last Thursday, a sizeable part of the country was slowed down by large demonstrations, including strikes and blockades.   A letter addressed...

Last week, the Pentagon signed the largest contract yet for America’s most expensive weapon, the Lockheed Martin F-35.  Despite being rated by critics as one of the “5 Worst Fighter Jets Ever Made,” and suffering huge cost overruns, the Pentagon will take $34 billion of taxpayer money to buy some 500 stealth F-35 jets. Playing...

Forget “Big Brother.” Orwell didn’t come close. They know who you are, where you are, what you look like, what you’re thinking, what you want, and what you’ll pay for.  In one of the many latest twists, Facebook, Netflix, and Google track your viewing habits to deliver more targeted ads to your brain. They’re in...

A few weeks ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration notified Tesla informing them of plans to study suspected defects in its electric cars manufactured between 2012 and 2019. The company has been challenged by the negative publicity of three of its lithium-ion battery cars spontaneously bursting into flames last August. This news comes on...

As we’ve been reporting, Americans are fattening up, ditching their morning bowl of cereal for junk food… or what the “marketers” label “high-protein items” that they gobble down at fast food joints.  Kellogg, the giant manufacturer of such familiar cereals as Frosted Flakes, Special K, and Rice Krispies, reported that cereal sales in North America...

A retired British naval engineer claims to have solved a decades-old battery problem with an invention that quadruples the range of today’s best electric vehicles. Aluminum-air batteries have been on the drawing board for decades: a piece of aluminum is immersed in an electrolyte and generates current simply by having one end exposed to air....

There’s a silver lining for Baby Boomers who can’t afford to retire: giving up work seems to aggravate cognitive decline. A recent study in China confirmed similar findings in other countries. Almost a decade ago, China introduced a pension system for elders in its rural areas where multi-generational family care had collapsed as young adults...

The human microbiome – the ecosystem of bacteria that lives in your gut – has been shown to affect everything from asthma to depression to anxiety disorders.  Knowing those bugs’ state of health is becoming key to diagnosing and treating a range of illnesses. Currently, physicians do that by analyzing a poop sample. But that...