It may sound esoteric, but he hopes that understanding the conditions needed for particular sorts of flake to form will enable meteorologists to give out accurate warnings of air-pockets that pilots should avoid in order to prevent their aircraft icing up.

ECONOMIST: Atmospheric science

He defended his support for the bill, saying it was the only way to avoid sweeping tax increases and prevent the economy from going into a free-fall.

NPR: Ryan Says GOP Need To Pick Its Fights With Obama

Just in the U.S., driverless technologies could save tens of thousands of lives, prevent hundreds of thousands of injuries and avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in accident-related losses each year.

FORBES: Driverless Cars -- Trillions Are Up For Grabs

By making the seats more attractive, airlines think they can win over customers from other airlines that don't have the same perks, avoid some discounts on business-class fares, or at least prevent fliers from abandoning them for competitors that have upgraded.

WSJ: The Many Ways to Catch Shut-Eye in the Sky

And at the same time, much more basically, we must deal with the need of rebuilding Haiti, thanks to an effective decentralization policy -- namely, offering health care, education, jobs to all Haitians, men and women, regardless of where they live in the country, in order to prevent migratory flows towards the big cities, towards Port-au-Prince, and that will help avoid that disaster such as the earthquake would cause so many victims.

WHITEHOUSE: Standing Together with Haiti

This may seem counter-intuitive but the whole point of the gift tax is to prevent people from using lifetime gifts to avoid paying the estate tax.

FORBES: 5 Common Tax Myths About Gifts