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"In the first century of flight, NASA made countless contributions to aviation by improving performance, efficiency and safety. Just as we needed the brightest minds for all those contributions, we need the brightest minds now and in the future to develop, operate and improve our future air transportation system,"

Teams of three to seven high school students from at least 29 states and the District of Columbia will compete to design a more fuel-efficient airplane

(It is safe to say that very few people who love this poem could paraphrase its meaning to satisfaction.)

In other words, the world’s trajectory along the gyre of science, democracy, and heterogeneity is now coming apart, like the frantically widening flight-path of the falcon that has lost contact with the falconer; the next age will take its character not from the gyre of science, democracy, and speed, but from the contrary inner gyre—which, presumably, opposes mysticism, primal power, and slowness to the science and democracy of the outer gyre. The “rough beast” slouching toward Bethlehem is the symbol of this new age; the speaker’s vision of the rising sphinx is his vision of the character of the new world.

These days one witty Tweet, one clever blog post, one devastating video - forwarded to hundreds of friends at the click of a mouse - can snowball and kill a product or damage a company's share price.

It's a dramatic shift in consumer power. But what if companies could harness this power and turn it to their advantage?

At the most basic, these tools measure the volume of social media chatter. Researchers at Hewlett Packard showed that they can accurately predict a Hollywood movie's box office takings by counting how often it is mentioned on Twitter before it opens.

1947   Sound barrior broken U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager becomes the fastest man alive when he pilots the Bell X-1 faster than sound for the first time on October 14 over the town of Victorville, California.

1952   Discovery of the area rule of aircraft design Richard Whitcomb, an engineer at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, discovers and experimentally verifies an aircraft design concept known as the area rule. A revolutionary method of designing aircraft to reduce drag and increase speed without additional power, the area rule is incorporated into the development of almost every American supersonic aircraft. He later invents winglets, which increase the lift-to-drag ratio of transport airplanes and other vehicles.