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Maria Popova
Creator and Author, “Brain Pickings”
Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org), which is included in the Library of Congress archive of culturally valuable materials. She has also written for The New York Times, Wired UK, and The Atlantic, among others, and is an MIT Fellow. She is on Twitter @brainpicker.
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We’ve been covering bike-sharing programs quitea bit over the past few months. And now Mexico City is stepping in with what could easily be the most impactful bike-sharing program of […]
In the age of social networking and digital communities, there’s something to be said for analog art of appreciation – of people, of places, of music, of all the other […]
With advances in humanoid robotics making robots capable of increasingly complex functions, it is only a matter of time until they master domains of artistry and virtuoso ability previously considered […]
In the fight to reduce the estimated 50 billion plastic bottles consumed in the US every year, not all reusable bottles are created equal. Newcomer S’well promises a dramatic upgrade […]
The sounds of nature, from bird song to waves crashing to the white noise of grass blowing in the wind, have an indisputably soothing effect on the human psyche. While […]
Every year, millions of girls and women in the developing world miss up to 50 school and work because they are menstruating and lack access to the proper sanitary products, […]
A couple of months ago, we featured the Plumen, a designer CFL light bulb. Now, a new breed of bulb presents more than an aesthetic upgrade. Safer than CFLs and […]
Several weeks ago, we featured OpenIDEO – innovation consultancy IDEO’s collaborative platform for concepting and implementing social-good projects. Open Planet Ideas, a partnership between Sony and WWF, is using IDEO’s […]
Crowdsourcing has become a hotly contested innovation paradigm in recent months, drawing highly polarized opinions. While its creative merit in design has been publicly decried in the recent GAP logogate […]
Ocean pollution has been a topic of increasing concern lately and its devastating aftermath for marine life has been grimly documented. To raise awareness about the issue, Electrolux has introduced […]
3-D printing and rapid prototyping have been among the hottest trends in design innovation this year. But Urbee, a two-passenger hybrid vehicle whose entire body has been generated using a […]
While reusable bottles and tap water filters are by far the best alternative to bottled water, they can be, to use the highly scientific term, a hassle. To address this, […]
While recent advances in software and technology have made remarkable progress in humanoid robotics, one area consistently lagging in comparison to human ability has been the sensitivity of touch. Now, […]
In another nod to biomimicry as a potent source of design and engineering innovation, researchers at Princeton University have developed a new sensor that can change the way drugs and […]
Sustainable farming is a topic of pressing interest and a domain of growing innovation in agriculture, but it’s an incredibly complex issue involving multiple interrelated factors. A new partnership between […]
The anti-plastic crusade of the past few years has focused largely on bottled water, but the beverage market isn’t the only culprit for the plastic bottle epidemic. Replenish aims to […]
We’ve previously featured innovative ways in which designers are addressing the blind with Braille-inspired design. This direction of creativity was validated at the National Design Awards gala last week, when […]
A bike-sharing programs and cycling infrastructure continue to slowly gain traction in cities, it often becomes a matter of making physical room for the two-wheel lifestyle and reclaiming urban space […]
Getting kids to eat their vegetables has been one of the age-old frustrations of modern parenting. While much has been said about causality – from the enormous advertising budgets poured […]
In another nod to biomimicry as a frontier of design innovation, industrial design student Brian Lee has just won Australia’s Target 2020 competition for envisioning the car of the future […]