“Creativity is the key to a brighter future,” say education and business experts. Here is how schools and parents can encourage this important skill in children.

If Dick Drew had listened to his boss in 1925 , we might not have the product that we now think of as great importance: a new type of tape. Drew worked for the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. At work he developed a kind of material strong enough to hold things together. But his boss told him not to think more about the idea. Finally, using his own time, Drew improved the tape, which now is used everywhere by many people. And his former company learned from its mistake. Now it encourages people to spend 15 percent of their working time just thinking about and developing new ideas.

Creativity is not something one is just born with, nor is it necessarily a character of high intelligence. The fact that a person is highly intelligent does not mean that he uses it creatively. Creativity is the matter of using the resources one has to produce new ideas that are good for something.

Unfortunately, schools have not tried to encourage creativity. With strong attention to test results and the development of reading, writing and mathematical skills, many educators give up creativity for correct answers. The result is that children can gain information but can’t recognize ways to use it in new situations. They may know the rules correctly but they are unable to use them to work out practical problems.

It is important to give children choices. From the earliest age, children should be allowed to make decisions and understand their results. Even if it’s choosing between two food items for lunch, decision­making helps thinking skills. As children grow older, parents should try to let them decide how to use their time or spend their money. This is because the most important character of creative people is a very strong desire to find a way out of trouble.

Scientists claim to have developed a revolutionary new giant 3D concrete printer that can build a 2,500-square-foot house in just 24 hours.

The 3D printer, developed by Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis from the University of Southern California, could be used to build a whole house, layer by layer, in a single day.

"It is basically scaling up 3D printing to the scale of building," said Khoshnevis.

The giant robot replaces construction workers with a nozzle (喷嘴), which can quickly build a home based on a computer pattern, MSN News reported.

Contour Crafting, as it is named, is a layered fabrication (构造) technology. Using this process, a single house or a colony of houses, each with possibly a different design, may be constructed in a single run, embedded (嵌入) in each house all the wires and pipes for electrical, plumbing and air-conditioning.

The potential applications of this technology are far-reaching including in emergency, low-income, and commercial housing.

"Our research also addresses the application of Contour Crafting in building habitats on other planets. Contour Crafting will most probably be one of the very few feasible approaches for building structures on other planets, such as the Moon and Mars, which are being targeted for human habitation before the end of the new century," researchers said on the project website.

The technology may potentially reduce energy use and emissions. And the main advantages of the Contour Crafting process over existing technologies are the superior surface finish that is realized and the greatly increased speed of construction.

Crime fighters could have a new tool at hand. Researcher have developed a cutting-edge technique to identify human hair. Their test is quicker than DNA analysis techniques currently used by law enforcement.

DNA testing is commonly used for identification because DNA is unique to each individual(个体). However, environment and chemical processes can degrade DNA, limiting its usefulness over time. Protein(蛋白质) in hair, on the other hand, is more stable than DNA but can also have variations(变异体) that may be unique to be the individual.

“Our analysis process can be used universally,” says Ms. Huang. “One of our samples(样本) even included dyed hair and the test was 100 per cent accurate. The test was able to distinguish East Asians, Caucasians and South Asians.”

Dr. Beauchemin says she has got in touch with law enforcement agencies about using the new technology. She is also planning to collect more hair samples and continue her research with a goal of finding where exactly in the world the hair sample is form, to look for more races and determine specific age.

“We are in a very similar place with protein-based identification to where DNA testing was during the early days of its development,” said chemist Brad Hart.” This method will be a game-changer, and while we’ve made a lot of progress toward improving it, there are steps to go before this new technique is able to reach its full potential.”