I do love trains, and this thriller movie Unstoppable looks like it'll be a fun one! And Denzel Washington and Rosario Dawson are favorites. Inspired by true story! See trailer...
Emily Hager writes in the NYTimes about Owen Cain in iPad Opens World to a Disabled Boy... "Owen, 7, does not have the strength to maneuver a computer mouse, but when a nurse propped her boyfriend’s iPad within reach in June, he did something his mother had never seen before. He aimed his left pointer finger at an icon on the screen, touched it -- just barely -- and opened the application..."This is just one small step on the path towards being fully enabled.
...the Chinese trade embargo should give pause to any rational human in the free world. What are the unelected, undemocratic, and untransparent Politburo's true intentions? Is so-called "Peaceful Rise" realistic? In any case, HSNW shows where the minerals are... 
Jeanne Whalen writes in the WSJournal that In Quest for 'Legal High,' Chemists Outfox Law, about the blossoming "specialty chemicals" movement. Meet David Llewellyn who has... "...entered the so-called "legal high" business -- aOf course, all drugs and use should be decriminalized.burgeoning industry producing new psychoactive powders and pills that are marketed as "not for human consumption." Mr. Llewellyn and a chemistry-savvy partner started selling something they dubbed Nopaine -- a stimulant they concocted by tweaking the molecular structure of the attention-deficit drug Ritalin. Nopaine "is every bit as good as cocaine," [...] Still, he emphasized, "Everything we sell is legal." [...] Mr. Llewellyn is part of a wave of laboratory-adept European entrepreneurs who see gold in the gray zone between legal and illegal drugs."
Thanks to Stephen Holden in the NYTimes for spotting Waste Land in his review, From a Universe of Trash, Recycling Art and Hope about "pickers of recyclable materials" in Rio... "Their lives are changed forever when they are chosen to collaborate with the artist Vik Muniz, a São Paulo native who is now based in Brooklyn and is well known for his re-creations of famous artworks using unusual materials."See here the trailer...
"Filmed over nearly three years, Waste Land follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of "catadores" -- or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz's initial objective was to "paint" the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both dignity and despair as the catadores begin to re-imagine their lives. Walker has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit."Be sure also to see Garbage Dreams about Cairo's Zaballeen recyclers.
I just saw Nitin Sawhney and Roger Hill at the Re-Imagining Gaza event preview an extended excerpt of their documentary, Tayara Warakiya -- or Flying Paper -- about kids and crafts and creativity and kites and epic events in Gaza, Palestine! Watch as..."...they attempt to break a world record on July 29th, 2010 for the most kites flown simultaneously. The attempt was part of a kite festival organized by UNRWA at the Al Waha beach in Beit Lahiya (northern Gaza), with over 7200 kites flown. The film explores the lives of these children and "Kite Masters", while probing the long tradition and symbolism of making and flying kites in Gaza, despite ongoing obstacles they face. The production involves children trained in photography and video to work as part of a joint team of filmmakers, producers and trainers capturing the touching narratives which emerge during this monumental event."Here's a short sampler of the DIY goodness...
Betty Klinck in the USAToday writes that Planet Green show aims to inspire kids with science... "Dean Kamen, the [Dean of Invention] show's host and inventor of various medical technologies as well as the two-wheeled self-balancing personal transporter, the Segway, says he wants the show to get kids excited about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), although the series is not aimed just at children. [...] In each show, Kamen takes his audience on "field trips" to labs and other research sites to investigate breakthrough inventions, including a trip to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to study robotic prosthetic limbs, a feature on the first episode. "We want the opportunity to present this information in a way that is broadly interesting and accessible from kids to adults. We want kids to say, 'I wanna get involved,' or 'I wanna build that reality.' We want to build the army of kids who are going to be the next generation of saviors," he says."Cool! We need far more STEM superheroes!
"This orgy for lawyers is partly a result of the explosion of the market for smart-phones. IDC, a market-research firm, expects that 270m smart-phones will be sold this year: 55% more than in 2009. “It has become worthwhile to defend one’s intellectual property,” [...]That's just great. The prime profits from smart phones are made by... the lawyers. I'm with Shakespeare here.Yet there is more than this going on. Smart-phones are not just another type of handset, but fully-fledged computers, which come loaded with software and double as digital cameras and portable entertainment centres. They combine technologies from different industries, most of them patented. Given such complexity, sorting out who owns what requires time and a phalanx of lawyers. The convergence of different industries has also led to a culture clash. When it comes to intellectual property, mobile-phone firms have mostly operated like a club. They jointly develop new technical standards: for example, for a new generation of wireless networks. They then license or swap the patents “essential” to this standard under “fair and reasonable” conditions. [...] Not being used to such a collectivist set-up, Apple refused to pay up, which triggered the first big legal skirmish over smart-phones."
Thanks to TIME for spotting the US National Building Museum's Intelligent Cities initiative... "Our 100 largest metropolitan areas constitute a new economic geography, seamlessly integrating cities and suburbs, exurbs and rural towns. Together, they house almost two-thirds of our population, generate 74% of our gross domestic product (GDP) and disproportionately concentrate the assets that drive economic success: patents, advanced research and venture capital, college graduates and Ph.D.s, and air, rail and sea hubs. This intense concentration is the magic elixir of modern economies. It explains why Silicon Valley and Boston lead the world in technological innovation, why San Diego and Indianapolis are global players in life sciences and why Wichita, Kans., and Portland, Ore., specialize in advanced manufacturing and exports. This dynamic holds not only for the U.S. but also around the globe. The rise of Brazil, India and China is a direct product of their rapid urbanization and the growth of supersize metro economies like São Paulo, Mumbai and Shanghai."Indeed! Let's go exponential with greener, cleaner, smarter and ever more intense, vibrant, and vital cities!
Great to have Dr Dan DiLorenzo join us again in MIT Neurotechnology Ventures 
to share lessons from his experience in founding and building NeuroVista. His talk, A war story behind the founding of NeuroVista (f.k.a. BioNeuronics) -- Conceptualization to commercialization of a novel technology to treat Epilepsy revealed to our students some really crucial tips and to-do's. Dan's a real renaissance man -- medical device entrepreneur, physician-scientist, and inventor of multiple technologies for treating neurological disorders. He earned several degrees from MIT and Harvard -- at least SB, SM, MBA, MD/PhD -- plus many honors including the TR100 and Lemelson-MIT Student Inventor Prize. After he first got interested in control systems and robotics in Junior High, Dan ended up at MIT working on neurostimulation and rehabilitation and even launched his first commerical product, Sleep-Dry, to help kids avoid bedwetting. Today a Neurosurgery Resident at University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), he has most recently founded Barinetics and DiLorenzo Biomedical, both still largely stealth-mode ventures. Stay tuned!
Plus see the crash test dummy get the treatment...
Congratulations to our MIT Development Ventures alumco Sanergy -- spearheaded by Ani Vallabhaneni and colleagues here in Cambridge, MA and Kibera, Kenya -- for winning the MIT Global Challenge video pitch contest!
"In Orlando, kids are taking the lanes with their bikes and passing on their local school bus rides..."
I especially love the canals, both main and minor... 
Reliance Industries Chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani and family move into Antilia, their opulent new 27 story home in Mumbai, India. 
the publisher of some of my favorite magazines as a kid, including especially Omni and Longevity, among others, has passed away at age 79. After considering, but rejecting, entering the priesthood, Bob launched into a career as painter and photographer. This latter passion inspired his more notorious publications, but his interest in science and science fiction inspired Omni, "arguably the first magazine aimed at "armchair scientists" who were nevertheless well informed about technical issues."
The Globe posts Katrin Bennhold's piece For French students, protest a sacred rite... "It has practically become a rite of passage for a generation to be initiated into political life through protesting. Many of the young people marching yesterday said they have often been told nostalgic tales by their parents and teachers who had taken to the street before them. And some of those parents and teachers marched again yesterday. “This tradition of protest is a marvelous specificity of French culture and a very good political education,’’ said Pascal Boldini, 51, a mathematics professor at the Sorbonne [...] French students, like their parents and teachers, still subscribe to economic concepts that no longer make sense to people in most other Western countries."Right. How quintessentially French. Here's more Big Pictures...
Okay, maybe there's some romance amidst all their idiocy;-)
And let's appreciate that there are many French delights...
"The work of the mathematician who disproved the precepts of the efficient markets model half a century ago, well before financiers had started to bet huge sums on products derived from that model, suddenly regained attention once those bets failed in 2007 and 2008. His insights should have been devastating. The efficient markets hypothesis, and with it modern portfolio theory and the Black-Scholes model for pricing options, all assume that markets reflect all known information and follow a “random walk”,like coin tosses or Brownian motion. That implies that returns should follow the “bell curve” distribution often found in the natural world. But, as the charts show, extreme outliers in currency and stock markets are far more common than the coin-toss model would predict. These outliers make up the bulk of long-run returns. [...] His idea that markets could only be modelled with complex mathematical techniques that do not yet exist. In the absence of more research, his ideas imply an imprecise approach to risk management. Markets do indeed behave as if they are efficient for long periods. Investors can be excused for ignoring Mandelbrot’s ideas but in future they must accept that risk cannot be measured precisely and that “fully invested” will mean holding a higher proportion of cash. Academic economists’ refusal to acknowledge him was scandalous. He believed this was because his ideas meant “a great amount of work, trouble and effort”, while the efficient markets literature promised “capital on which one could live for a while”. Several economists won Nobel prizes by living on that capital: assuming market efficiency."
Very compelling to see the women behind TEDxHolyLand... "Palestinian Hanan Kattan and Israeli Liat Aaronson are ostensibly from two very different sides of the spectrum. But during one short week at the TEDIndia conference two women, whose backgrounds define them as enemies, found their common values and humanity. TEDxHolyLand is not an attempt to forget the past or brush over it. But it is an acknowledgment that the future can only improve with vision and the courage to think differently [...] The focus of the day will be on empowerment of women. [...] The conference is built on a series of 18-minute talks by women on both sides of the divide, interspersed throughout the morning with shorter talks and musical pieces. Following the TED tradition, the speakers list will be unveiled in the last week before the conference. TEDxHolyLand has a special mission: to bring this inspirational tool to one of the world’s most troubled regions, and leverage it for productive, fruitful communication among people on opposite sides of the divide. It’s time!"
the Executive Director of Rickshaw Bank, an initiative of the Centre for Rural Development, India. The Bank is an award-winning example of a microfinancier of income-earning assets, in this case a transportation vehicle, a cycle rickshaw or pedicab. Their asset-based loan to the rickshaw driver is repaid daily over a one-to-two year loan duration. Full and timely repayment leads to ownership by the driver. The Bank have made some 10,000 loans to-date and over 4,000 of the drivers are now full owners. Growth opportunities are huge, given that there are 8 million drivers in India alone, most of whom simply rent their vehicles and never become owners. While this example is in India and is about a specific vehicle-type, there are many compelling lessons to be learned about building and/or operating a microfinance venture, payment systems and practices, asset manufacturing, distribution, and repair, and more. Dr Sarmah's visiting MIT for two weeks and will speak again together with D-Lab Cycle Ventures instructor Gwyn Jones next week in a discussion I'm moderating...
Delightful to have visiting professor of ergometrics and design Daan van Eijk from TUDelft --
the "Dutch MIT" -- join me on MaximizingProgress.tv tonight! Daan's newly responsible for being Director of Education for their 2,100 student school of Industrial Design Engineering. So he decided to go on a study-tour of peer universities -- Stanford, CMU, Northwestern, MIT, Harvard, etc -- to compare and contrast. He connected with the incomparable Barry Kudrowitz at MIT and thence to a fantastic pool of MIT design-engineering-media faculty and students. After graduating from the groundbreaking TUDelft industrial design program during its early days, Daan co-founded an engineering design consultancy which he built and ran for 15 years. Lured to a faculty role at TUDelft some 6 years ago, he has both run compelling living lab testbeds and other research projects as well as his department overall. His latest role demands thinking holistically about the student experience in toto and about international and collaborative ties. Very interesting indeed! We also talked about how a good technology university can become top-tier, a great topic in this time of new uni development in the BRIC countries and beyond. Finally we considered the potent collaboration between Europe's top TU's -- the IDEA League -- and how they can together disrupt the global league tables and achieve top-tier effectiveness. 
Appalled by the recent American epidemic of suicides by young teens overwhelmed by bullying, Texan Councilman Joel Burns makes an impassioned and quite personal plea to youth, parents, and us all... "Burns represents District 9 on the Fort Worth City Council. During the announcement portion of a council meeting on Tuesday night, he delivered an incredible, awesome, moving speech describing how he was bullied in high school and promising teenagers that "it gets better."Thanks to Salon for spotting this "act of clear thinking". While I'm not of his creed, I absolutely 100% support his message. And having been both a bully of others and been bullied myself, I too wish I could -- knowing what I know now -- reach back in time and have a meaningful chat with myself as a young teen. Since that's currently impossible, the next best thing is having an authentic conversation with the current teens in your circle...
Wonderful to have Harvard-MIT alumnus entrepreneur Shai Gozani
join us in MIT Neurotechnology Ventures to share his experiences in founding and building NeuroMetrix, the now publicly-traded builder of medical systems which assist physicians in assessing and treating peripheral nerve disorders and other ailments. We've known each other since back in his exploratory days as an Health Science & Technology (HST) researcher. Plus he was winner of the very first MIT $100K Executive Summary Contest back in 1995! Shai emphasized both the historical and technical side of things, including the larger landscape of business-related issues he has dealt with over the years before IPO. And about the current activities of the company, including new market opportunities and internationalization -- and also their US market challenges -- he shared their public investor presentation.
"Developed by two physicists from the University of Norway, the new super microphone can pick out single voices in a mob of people. [...] hundreds of smaller microphones collected together in the same carbon fiber disk. Measuring about a meter across, the AudioScope array contains 300 individual mics and a camera with wide angle lens. Visual cues from the camera help the system estimate distances, which allows it to precisely time when sounds should arrive at each microphone. “Sophisticated signal processing algorithms” then combine the hundreds of feeds into one audio stream. With pinpoint targeting, AudioScope can listen to specific areas in its field of view, amplifying quiet sounds to audible levels."Cool!
Swiss engineers have broken through the last stretch of the 35-mile-long Gotthard Tunnel...
MIT alumnus entrepreneur Cory Kidd shows off his latest Autom weight-loss robotic assistant at the MIT Media Lab in front of a rack of the original Automs at the Personal Robots group! Today reused as a server-farm, these early coachbots helped articulate the tremendous value of anthropomorphic health and wellness advisors and inspired Cory's newco Intuitive Automata now based in Hong Kong!
"In a seminal book, “The Fractal Geometry of Nature,” published in 1982, Dr. MandelbrotThere are endless fractal images, but the Mandelbrot Set remains among the most epic. Here's just one select sampling...defended mathematical objects that he said others had dismissed as “monstrous” and “pathological.” Using fractal geometry, he argued, the complex outlines of clouds and coastlines, once considered unmeasurable, could now “be approached in rigorous and vigorous quantitative fashion.” For most of his career, Dr. Mandelbrot had a reputation as an outsider to the mathematical establishment. [...] Dr. Mandelbrot traced his work on fractals to a question he first encountered as a young researcher: how long is the coast of Britain? The answer, he was surprised to discover, depends on how closely one looks. On a map an island may appear smooth, but zooming in will reveal jagged edges that add up to a longer coast. Zooming in further will reveal even more coastline. “Here is a question, a staple of grade-school geometry that, if you think about it, is impossible,” Dr. Mandelbrot told The New York Times earlier this year in an interview. “The length of the coastline, in a sense, is infinite.”
And here's a wonderful Zoom!
