Difference between Focusing on Problems and Focusing on Solutions

A couple of days a go I received an interesting e-mail from a freind, and i thought it would be nice to share it, read it below.

"Case 1

When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (ink won't flow down to the writing surface). To solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C. And what did the Russians do...?? They used a pencil.

Case 2

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soapbox, which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soapbox that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly! line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soapbox went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soapboxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent a whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc., but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soapbox passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line."

It's true isn't it, we always work really hard to solve a problem, sometimes we come up brilliant ideas to solve it, but most of the times you don't need a brilliant solution, we just need a solution.

Fun Facts

1- 30 years ago: The computer mouse was invented.

2- The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year.

3- The ears of a cricket are located on the front legs, just below the knee.

4- The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

5- No matter its size or thickness, no piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.

6- When glass breaks, the cracks move at speeds of up to 3,000 miles per hour.

7- Starfish don't have brains.

For more please visit http://www.hightechscience.org/funfacts.htm

2 New Cell-Phone Uses

Once again cell phones prove to be useful for more than just making late night calls or sending funny messages. Scientists have added to more uses to the cell-phones.

The first invention was what the inventors called Key2safty. This new feature in the cell-phones, connects the car key and the phone using the Bluetooth and the wireless technologies to prevent talking or texting using the cell-phone while driving.

The second one is a system that gives people the ability to turn the street lights on when they need it, in order to save electricity costs. Three German towns have already started testing it by turning off street light late at night and require people to make a chargeable call to turn it on; the town of Legmo is one of these towns.

Isn’t that amazing? Whenever you wonder what’s next, the scientists are ready to answer your question. I just hope one day one of our scientists will be able to answer one of these questions, not working in the USA or Europe, but from one of the Arab universities.

Fun Facts

1- According to an old English system of time units, a moment is one and a half minutes.

2- By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.

3- Ten minutes of one hurricane contains enough energy to match the nuclear stockpiles of the world.

4- Hawaii is moving toward Japan 4 inches every year.

5- Hummingbirds are the only animals able to fly backwards.

6- A cockroach can live for several weeks without its head.

7- Ants do not sleep.



For more, please visit

http://www.hightechscience.org/funfacts.htm

First fuzzy photos of planets outside solar system

by SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer – Thu Nov 13, 6:21 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Earth seems to have its first fuzzy photos of alien planets outside our solar system, images captured by two teams of astronomers. The pictures show four likely planets that appear as specks of white, nearly indecipherable except to the most eagle-eyed experts. All are trillions of miles away — three of them orbiting the same star, and the fourth circling a different star.
None of the four giant gaseous planets are remotely habitable or remotely like Earth. But they raise the possibility of others more hospitable.
It's only a matter of time before "we get a dot that's blue and Earthlike," said astronomer Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He led one of the two teams of photographers.
"It is a step on that road to understand if there are other planets like Earth and potentially life out there," he said.Macintosh's team used two ground-based telescopes, while the second team relied on photos from the 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope to gather images of the exoplanets — planets that don't circle our sun. The research from both teams was published in Thursday's

Photo from AP, by NASA

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081113/ap_on_sc/sci_new_planets