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Total number of posts: 23558
Beer is good for your brain
Yesterday millions of Americans parked themselves in front of the TV, ate an excessive amount of snacks, cracked open a cold one, and watched the big game. You might not have known it, but while you were watching one of the biggest sporting events of the year that beer you were drinking was helping Read More...
Pennsylvania bans new oil/gas leases on state land
While, hopefully, Obama makes good on his promise to veto the Keystone XL bill, Pennsylvania has taken conservation into their own hand and have banned all new oil and gas leases on state property. Pennsylvania is rich in natural gas—made notorious by the detrimental fracking process used to Read More...
Bangladesh wants to be the first solar powered country
In Bangladesh, much like in India, houses connected to the national power grid face rolling, regular blackouts. That’s why solar power is such an appealing technology to those in developing nations—creating your own energy source eliminates national grid driven blackouts. Now the Bangladeshi Read More...
TV dramas make you smarter
Here at The Intelligent Optimist we love books and most of us usually try to abstain from long bouts of TV watching. While we all indulge ourselves every once in a while, it turns out that watching a little TV isn’t that bad for you—as long as you’re watching TV dramas. Complex TV dramas are Read More...
Researchers close to peanut-allergy cure
Scientists say they are one step closer to a cure for those who suffer from severe peanut allergies. A recent study took a group of 30 children and gave them a mixture of a peanut protein and a probiotic. After 18 months 80 percent of study participants reported being peanut allergy attack free. Read More...
The science of behavior
In the mid 1930s a psychologist named Kurt Lewin came up with an equation that described behavior as a function of a person in their environment; B= ƒ(P,E). Yes it is true that characteristics we are born with do play a large roll in our behavior, but the environment we are in plays just as Read More...
Largest palm oil producer makes supply chain transparent
Palm oil is in half of the products the average person uses, seriously. Many palm oil farmers cut down swaths of rainforest to plant their palm oil trees, often in protected habitats. Additionally, palm oil supply chains are difficult to follow—once a bucket of palm oil is dumped into a giant Read More...
Carlsberg is making a biodegradable beer bottle
Beer bottles are recyclable, but they have never been biodegradable. That might soon be changing because the Danish beer maker Carlsberg has announced plans to make a completely biodegradable beer bottle from wood and paper pulp. The bottles will have a texture similar to that of an egg carton. If Read More...
Treadmill desks boost memory recall
Study after study tells us that sitting all day is slowly killing us. One solution is the treadmill desk, which is what it’s name implies—a treadmill under your desk. Some might think that walking while your work would be distracting but a new study has found walking while you work actually Read More...
Brazilian bank raises over $400 million for renewables investment
Brazilian bank Itau Unibanco Holding SA has raised a record $408 million to invest in renewable energy. The investment is the largest ever made by Brazilian bank to invest in renewables in Latin America. Most of the $408 million comes from a loan from a 5-year loan from Bank of America, and from Read More...