Number of words: 4,106 In statistical terms, this is the golden age of American higher education. More than 1 in 3 Americans has at least a bachelor’s degree, the most ever. Almost 70 percent of high school seniors graduating this spring will go to college in the fall, compared with about half during the mid-1970s. … Read more

Number of words: 542 Going to the bathroom is one thing that ties all of humanity together—even when we’re at cruising altitude. But toilets on planes are often cramp and very loud. While space remains an everlasting issue when traveling 30,000 feet in the air, sound is something science is trying to tackle. After two … Read more

Number of words: 1,924 Imagine you’re in a bar, or a club, and you start talking, and after a while, the question comes up, “So, what do you do for work?” And since you think your job is interesting, you say, “I’m a mathematician.”  And inevitably, during that conversation one of these two phrases come … Read more

Number of words: 2,748 Thank you for being here. And I say “thank you for being here” because I was silent for 17 years. And the first words that I spoke were in Washington, D.C., on the 20th anniversary of Earth Day. And my family and friends had gathered there to hear me speak. And … Read more

Number of words: 959 Do you ask questions that really matter? Conversations between colleagues are an integral part of our offices, and they define much of our workplace experience. In India, as in some other parts of the world, we love speaking. But there is one key aspect of conversations that many of us have … Read more

Number of words: 751 It can be tough to recall that Intel Corp. invented the memory-chip business half a century ago. It gave up on the field for more than a decade, starting in the 1980s, and has struggled since returning in 2006 to match the success of Samsung Electronics Co. in the historically low-margin … Read more

Number of words: 454 Thanks to Stanford researchers, there might be a new recipe for hydrogen fuel: saltwater, electrodes and solar power. The researchers have developed a proof-of-concept for separating hydrogen and oxygen gas from seawater via electricity. It’s far cheaper than the current methods, which rely on creating hydrogen fuel from purified water. Breaking … Read more

Number of words: 113 Many parts of the body can be used as verbs in either a physical or a metaphorical sense. You can “head” a company, but if things go wrong you’ll have to “shoulder” the blame, or “face” your investors. A good leader will “back” his employees, but if you don’t “toe” the … Read more

Number of words: 1076 The No. 1 company in last year’s Fortune 500 was Walmart Inc., with $500 billion in revenue. That would make its chief executive, Douglas McMillon, a pretty important and powerful executive, don’t you think? Can you guess where he went to college? The University of Arkansas. He has an MBA, too. … Read more