Lawyer

Expenses on legal proceedings in the US have risen astronomically. Partly to blame is the costly education process, which could be shortened as it is in many other countries. Law firms are also exclusively owned by lawyers. Allowing outside investors would encourage more efficient operation and lower operating cost.

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Child trafficking

Child trafficking has been a big problem in China due to the one child policy, with gangs abducting children and selling then to orphanages, which put them up for adoption at high fees. Lately, the police and parents have been reaching out to social media to crack down on the practice, but it it's difficult with local officials, especially in rural areas, protecting the criminals and orphanages failing to check the DNA of children they receive.

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Obama

Obama's inauguration speech hints that his second term will mainly focus on domestic affairs and that he values government programs more than attempting to decrease the debt. He also talked about gun control and fighting for gay marriage (first president to use "gay" the in his inauguration speech), indicating that he will be much less timid in this term.

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Cameron

David Cameron is gambling by proclaiming that Britain will hold a referendum to see whether or not it will stay in the EU. However, the prospect of Britain leaving may compell other countries, primarily Germany, to be more lenient when it comes to renegotiating Britain's terms, so the gamble may pay off.

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Sahara

Terrorism and war lords have risen to prominence in the Saharan region, with possibly wide-reaching consequences. Western nations shouldn't let the fear of intervention hold them back from stabilizing the region.

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Merkel

The CDU and FDP may not get the majority in the Bundesrat, forcing the conservative CDU to make a coalition with the liberal SPD. While Mrs Merkel is still likely to win the election, this may make her too cautious to make the aggressive changes that Europe needs to move forward.

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Economy

The world economy is much better off now with US housing recovering, the financial crisis over, and Europe on stronger foothold. A limit on the growth of entitlements rather than rapid austerity is part of the reason why the US fared better than Europe.

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Dna storage

Dna is now being used as a way to store files. It can store massive amounts of data in a tiny space (duh) and will last for thousands of years of stored correctly, but it takes a day to extract the data from Dna and storage costs are over $10000 per mb. Still, this makes it useful for achieving huge files and data that don't need to be constantly accessed.

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Deep Springs

Deep Springs is one of few remaining all-male schools. It is a 2-year college consisting of 26 students, most of whom go on to transfer to Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Stanford, or Oxford. In 2011 they decided to also admit women, but ran into legal troubles as a judge would not re-interpret the trust from their original founder  to allow women into the school.

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Gun Laws

Obama is trying to enact the most sweeping gun changes in twenty years in light of the recent shooting. He will have to go up against stark opposition such as the NRA, whose membership grew by 250000 since the Newtown shooting.

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California Budget

California has gotten rid of its budget deficit thanks to cutting down on state programs and higher taxes through prop 30. It's not out of danger however, as the aging demographic will require a lot in terms of financial support and better education for the current youth.

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Offshoring

Companies are starting to relocate jobs from abroad to back home at labor costs, especially in China, are rising. Many of these jobs require skilled workers, however, and developed countries should make sure not to fall behind the developing countries in that aspect.

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Sankaku / Diaoyu

China and Japan are coming increasingly closer to military confrontation and there are disturbing parallels between what is happening now and what happened 80 years ago.

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Obama's legacy

Obama's legacy will mainly be determined by how he handles three issues in his second term. He will have to control the deficit, improve relations and cooperation with China, and help the spread of democracy started by the Arab Spring in the Middle East.

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Reform in China

There has long been a deal in China between the rulers and the ruled. The rulers would ensure prosperity and in turn, the rules wouldn't ask for too much freedom. Many citizens are going back on the deal now as a growing middle class begins to demand the freedoms guaranteed to them by the Chinese constitution. Leaders in China would be wise to listen.

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Debt limit

The debt limit is an anachronistic remnant from the 40s when all outstanding government bonds were combined into a single debt limit. The result is that the government can pass a budget with a deficit without approving the debt needed to fund it. This creates an unnecessary source of disagreement, as the budget itself is already controlled by Congress. The debt limit should therefore be abolished.

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Innovation slow down

Innovation has declined by many measures over the last 100 years. Life expectancy and productivity increases soared in the first half of the century, but slowed drastically in the second half. Slowing innovation means we will one day no longer be able to support the exponential population growth. Government restrictions and unions should be reduced to decrease the hurdles many face now when trying to promote new ideas.

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Mass

While seconds are now defined by the wobble of a cesium atom and meters by the distance light travels in certain fractions of said second, a kilogram is still defined by the weight of a lump of metal in Paris. This lump has been slowly changing in weight overtime, which is worrying to scientists, so now a new method is being devised to have a more robust measure of mass using a watt balance.

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Aaron Schwartz

Aaron Schwartz, who developed a new version of RSS feeds  at age 14 and later launched Creative Commons and was vital in bringing Reddit to prominence, fought hard to create open access for everyone on the internet to those documents that he thought no one had a right to charge for access. One example is JSTOR, which charges fees for viewing articles that it did not write and not sharing that profit with the original authors. He was in the middle of a trial in which, if convicted, he could have faced up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine. He will be sorely missed, but his passing will no doubt continue the fight for a more open internet.

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Men women age gap

The gap between the life expectancies of men and women is decreasing because men are starting to drink and smoke less than before. Obesity is also harder on women than men. But women still have 2 X chromosomes and longer telomeres. Also, testosterone promotes risky and aggressive behavior and suppresses the immune system. Fuck.

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Biden the negotiator

Joe Biden has been very successful in the past and is now negotiating gun control, but it will take more than him to unite a country in which distrust for the opposition is so deep seated at both the citizen and executive level.

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India's women's rights

The latest rape in India is getting a lot of attention, finally creating a possibility of reform in India where rape and assault of women, especially in villages, are severely under-prosecuted. There's still a long way to go for women's rights to progress along with India's economic development.

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Rice husks

Tires lose energy as heat through rolling friction, which is when a tire compresses. This reduces fuel mileage. Many things have been used to make tires stiffer and reduce rolling friction. The most recent discovery is silica. It's too expensive to extract and process silica from sand, so pirelli has discovered that small grains of silica also exist in rice husks. Rice husks, once a waste product, are now used as fuel. Now the ashes from burning rice husks, which used to be waste, are used for their silica.

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Berlin airport fiasco

Berlin's new airport, planned in 96 to be completed in 2011 is yet to be opened, a big problem for a city that's so big and yet lacks a major airport due to cold war divisions. The new airport is projected to only carry half of the capacity planned and cost twice as much. Shit happens even to Germans.

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Venom as medicine

Plan toxins (such as digitalis) have long been used as medicine and recently there has been a development to explore a new field, reptile venoms, for their curative potential. There have been several positive results from basic research and clinical trials, such as using eritostatin from the Asian sand viper to kill melanoma cells, Crototoxin from the South American rattlesnake to kill cancer cells, and hanalgesin from the king cobra as an oral pain medication 20-200 more powerful than injected morphine. Very appropriate for the year of the snake.

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21569015-snake-venom-being-used-cure-rather-kill-toxic-medicine?fsrc=rss%7Csct

Foreign Universities in China

Universities in US are trying to get a foothold in China given the countries ever-growing role, but they're finding it difficult because cheating and plagiarism in China are rampant. Discussing political topics is also hard to do in China. Oh well.

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21569070-foreign-universities-find-working-china-harder-they-expected-campus-collaboration