Posts

A Crude Problem For Putin’s Russia Western sanctions against Russia that stemmed from the events in Ukraine have not yet put a significant dent in the country’s economy or changed their plans abroad. However, over the last three months, the slumping price of crude oil may be the factor that finally makes Moscow blink. While Brent oil has traded throughout the year at around $110/bbl, it is only recently that the price has dropped to closer to $85....

A 160 Year View of the Gold-Oil Ratio 2020 has ushered in a new era of prices for two historically significant assets—gold and oil. The market has driven the pair in polar opposite directions breaking historical patterns. This year, gold brushed above $2,000 an ounce, while oil futures even went temporarily negative in the spring. The gold-oil ratio tells us how many barrels of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) are needed to buy an ounce of gold, serving as a price-based indicator of the relative value of these two important assets....

Most people might imagine an intricate network of blood vessels or the complex neural circuits of the brain. Or we might picture diagrams from the iconic medical textbook, Gray’s Anatomy. Today’s visualization puts a unique spin on all of these ideas – interpreting human anatomy in the style of London’s transit system. Created by Jonathan Simmonds M.D., a resident physician at Tufts Medical Center, it’s a simple yet beautifully intuitive demonstration of how efficiently our bodies work....

By the end of the 19th century, wind energy took on a whole new meaning as engineers in Scotland, Denmark, and the United States invented the first wind turbines that generated electricity. Many technological improvements have been made since, and now modern wind farms dot the landscapes of countries around the world. Related Topic: What it Would Take to Power New York City Today, wind power is an important element of the green energy mix, and its estimated that 432 GW of wind farms are installed globally....

They say the pen is mightier than the sword. However, what they often fail to mention is that the pen is even mightier when it comes with massive amounts of leverage, influence, and power backing it up on every stroke. How to Win Friends and Influence Countries Every country is interested in gaining influence, and earlier this week we showed you an interactive infographic from the Lowy Institute that compared the strength of Asian powers to the United States....

In the late 20th century, it was the emergence of Design Thinking that upended how architects, engineers, and industrial design organizations made decisions about how to make new things. Now, the rapid pace of technological advancement has brought forth a new design methodology that will again forever alter the course of design history. Computational design, which takes advantage of mass computing power, machine learning, and large amounts of data, is changing the fundamental role of humans in the design process....

It’s no surprise that eSports is often compared to its predecessor, traditional sports. However, eSports certainly has none of the typical confines of a traditional sport—so how does it compare in terms of audience size, market potential, and revenue? An Equal Playing Field? eSports is an umbrella term for competitions played on electronic systems, typically by professional video gamers—with the first competition dating back to 1972. The 16 to 24-year-old audience has increased by 60% since 2017, fueling the rapid growth of this emerging industry....

COVID-19 variants, which are labeled with Greek letters when becoming a variant of concern, normalized their usage. From the Alpha variant in the UK, to the Delta variant that spread from India to become the dominant global strain, the Greek alphabet was everywhere. Seemingly overnight, the Omicron variant discovered in South Africa has now taken the mantle as the most discussed variant. But the Greek alphabet is used in other parts of our lives as well....

While such catastrophes do create upheaval and uncertainty in financial markets, they can also lead to new opportunities for investors, as asset classes react to different environments. Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic on March 11, 2020, the performance of vaccine stocks have been varied—but with some notable winners that notched triple or quadruple digit returns. Here’s how much a $1,000 investment would be worth as of March 31, 2021, if you had put money into each vaccine stock at the start of the pandemic:...

What are the sources of this revenue, and how does it breakdown? Below, we’ll dive into the main ways that these big tech giants generate revenue, and take a look at how much their revenues have increased in recent years. Breaking Down Big Tech’s Revenue Streams As we’ve mentioned in previous editions of this graphic, there are two main ways that big tech companies generate revenue: They either sell you a product Or sell you as the product to advertisers...

In baseball, the game’s strategy was forever changed when Oakland Athletics traded in the standard scout’s intuition for a data-driven approach. It was a switch that eventually led the team to an impressive 20-game winning streak, depicted in the movie Moneyball—it also kickstarted a broader revolution in sports analytics. Similarly, successful data patterns are also being discovered by experts in the investing world. One such framework is factor investing, where securities are chosen based on attributes that are commonly associated with higher risk-adjusted returns....

38 Incredible Facts on the Modern U.S. Dollar The Money Project is an ongoing collaboration between Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals that seeks to use intuitive visualizations to explore the origins, nature, and use of money. We’ve previously showed you 31 Fascinating Facts About the Dollar’s Early History, which highlighted the history of U.S. currency before the 20th century. This was a very interesting period in which we looked at the money used by the first colonists, the extreme bust of the Continental currency, the era of privately-issued bank notes, and Congress’ emergency issuance of the fiat “greenback” during the Civil War....

You’ve probably heard of kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, or even terabytes. These data units are common everyday amounts that the average person may run into. Units this size may be big enough to quantify the amount of data sent in an email attachment, or the data stored on a hard drive, for example. In the coming years, however, these common units will begin to seem more quaint – that’s because the entire digital universe is expected to reach 44 zettabytes by 2020....

However, if you are not careful, this change may not be in the positive way that is expected. As more home devices get connected to the internet, new doors get opened for hackers to potentially access your personal information. Any hacking of this data could have dire consequences to your personal life, career, or financial security. Today’s infographic from RefiGuide gives context around IoT hacking, including the range of security concerns created by new IoT devices and suggestions on how you can protect yourself....

Even in 1918, the U.S. military had its first UAV, which acted as a “cruise missile” in combat. Nicknamed the Kettering Bug, it was essentially a flying bomb with 12-foot wings made of cardboard and paper mâché, running off a 40-horsepower Ford engine. As you might imagine, the military has been a catalyst over the years for the development of UAV technology, which has allowed commercial drones to become cheaper, lighter, and more sophisticated....

Though most biological processes happen at the nano level, it wasn’t until recently that new technological advancements helped in opening up the possibility of nanomedicine to healthcare researchers and professionals. Today’s infographic, which comes to us from Best Health Degrees, highlights some of the most promising research in nanomedicine. What is Nanotechnology? Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular level. The field combines elements of physics and molecular chemistry with engineering to take advantage of unique properties that occur at nanoscale....

In the 1950s, scientists built the first video games as instructional tools or to demonstrate the capabilities of new technologies. Academics tested out rudimentary forms of artificial intelligence on games like tic-tac-toe or chess, while showcasing their findings to the public at events like the Canadian National Exhibition or the Festival of Britain. It wasn’t until the incorporation of newly-invented technologies like transistors or random access memory (RAM) that the cost and size of these computers went down....

The Modern Era of Investor Relations How New Media has Ushered In a Better Experience For Investors “Modern Era of Investor Relations” infographic presented by: Dajin Resources The internet’s explosion in popularity is attributed mainly to the invention of the first graphical web browser in 1993. Since then, the way investors have gotten information on companies and financials has changed dramatically. Let’s take a look at how modern company websites and social media create a better experience for investors today....

Today’s visualization is the summary of energy consumption for 2017, but you can see previous years going all the way back to 2010 on their website. Dealing in Quads The first thing you’ll notice about this Sankey is that it uses an unfamiliar unit of measurement: the quad. Each quad is equal to a quadrillion BTUs, and it’s roughly comparable to the following: 8,007,000,000 gallons (US) of gasoline 293,071,000,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) 36,000,000 tonnes of coal 970,434,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas 25,200,000 tonnes of oil 252,000,000 tonnes of TNT 13....

But Winston Churchill had a great quote about facing what seems like insurmountable adversity: “If you’re going through hell, keep going”. This is certainly a maxim that Musk and Tesla will need to live by in order to realize the company’s longstanding mission, which is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Rise of Tesla: The Future Vision (Part 3 of 3) Today’s giant infographic comes to us from Global Energy Metals, and it is the final part of our three-part Rise of Tesla Series, which is a definitive source for everything you ever wanted to know about the company....