31 January 2010

D-Lab Energy ~ New this Spring 2010 @ MIT

D-Lab Energy is the latest addition to the growing MIT D-Lab family of classes. It's targeted at understanding and applying alternative energy technologies in developing countries with emphasis on compact, robust, low-cost systems for generating power. Projects may embrace micro-hydro, solar, or wind and span everything from theoretical analysis, design, prototype construction, evaluation through implementation. One especially cool element is this offering is run in collab with the new Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi.

Afghan Tribal System ~ NYTimes Infographic

Thanks to William Easterly's Aid Watch blog for spotting another lovely NYTimes infographic -- the Five Rungs of the Traditional Afghan Tribal System by Ruhullah Khapalwak, David Rohde and Bill Marsh...

Ending Poverty ~ MIT J-PAL's Duflo @ PopTech

Thanks to MIT Sloan Management Review for spotlighting J-PAL founder and co-director Professor Esther Duflo's talk at PopTech 2009 about her...
"...pioneering research [applying] randomized trials, used extensively in drug discovery research, to development economics. What she discovers are strategies for transforming current approaches to development policy."

30 January 2010

Natural Clones ~ We Call Them "Identical Twins"

Chris van Tulleken asks in The Times Am I my twin brother's keeper?
"From eugenics to twin studies, there are many ways to pin down the complexities of identity as a London exhibition shows"
Religious wingnuts are antithetical to "cloning". But it already happens naturally all the time. We call them Twins;-)

Land Disputes ~ Pervasive, Crucial, Core Issue

Fascinating to read Jina Moore's thoughtful piece in the CSMonitor on Africa's continental divide: land disputes...
"African land reform, plot by plot, may be the foundation for solving so much else – from famine to poverty to genocide."
"Land, at the very heart of security and survival, looms behind most of the African conflicts we've all heard of and dozens of others we have not. The Rwandan genocide, some argue, was as much about the dwindling land availability in Africa's most densely populated country as it was about enmity between ethnic groups. The wars recounted in the movie "Blood Diamond" in Sierra Leone and Liberia saw land grabs by warlords eager to exploit commodities like diamonds and timber. The violence following Kenya's 2007 election reflected generations of dissatisfaction with land policy that favored different ethnic groups over time. Beneath the genocide in Darfur is a broken land tenure system..."
This is an absolutely central, pervasive, core issue...
"The end of land conflict might just mark the ascent of Africa. It's too much to say that land is the cause of all of Africa's wars. But on a continent where villages are impoverished and cities are strained, "it's at the core of almost everything," says Robin Nielsen, a lawyer with the Seattle-based Rural Development Institute (RDI). "Land is the means for livelihood. It's power; it's status; it's security. It's the most powerful asset people have."
So, read more about what might be done.

IMPACT ~ Venture Ecosystems Engineering...

Very interesting to read MIT alumna friend Krisztina "Z" Holly's ideas for IMPACT: A Proposal for Realizing the Economic Potential of University Research...
"...a pilot initiative that would invest a small amount of federal funding to coax existing research results into the U.S. commercial marketplace through ten local demonstration sites. Funding would equal $2 million per year, per university, for five years. These local sites would nurture a culture of entrepreneurship within each university, create and enhance the innovation ecosystem around each university, and provide the resources necessary for researchers to effectively translate their ideas into societal impact. The three key components of each program would be: gap funding, community-building, and mentoring and education, though other aspects are welcome. The results would be measurable, reproducible, and scaleable."
Z actually knows a good bit about this since she's currently Vice Provost for Innovation at USC and runs the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation. And before that co-founded and ran the Deshpande Center at MIT and co-founded a couple MIT-related ventures!

Green Inhabitats ~ Eco-Delights By Design!

More lovely living delights by design from Inhabitat. Click-on these...

Underwater Scope ~ Howtoons in the Pool!

Tide pools and pond life and more are yours to see with this Howtoons upcycled sodabottle Underwater Scope!

29 January 2010

I...You...We...ROBOT ~ Art & Our Inner Geek!

Thanks to the MIT Media Lab's Andy Cavatorta for a pointer to tonight's opening of I...You...We...ROBOT: A Visual Homage To Our Inner Geek! Images above are "We Come in Peace" by Scott Burns, "Sid's Toy" by Alex Carlson, and "Self Destruct" by Jeff Bartell. And WBUR's Andrea Shea stitched together this docuvid...

28 January 2010

Media Ventures ~ Thur 10a-12n Spring 2010

Media Ventures ~ The MIT Media Lab Enterprises & Digital Innovations Seminar is the new Spring 2010 flagship course within the Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program. We first survey a broad landscape of emerging media technologies, followed by live- and historic-cases of inter- and entrepreneurship-based on Media Lab ideas, culminating in a term project.The core goal is to gain increased understanding of how emergent media and digital innovations translate into commercial reality and transform society. We survey case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapple with the difficulties of deploying and diffusing products and as a means of exploring a range of business models and opportunities enabled by emerging Media Lab innovations. This year we will be focusing especially on personal health care, financial service innovations, mobile transactions, and social media generally. Please spread the word to those you think might be interested. First class Thurs morning February 4th, 2010.

Imaging Ventures ~ Tue 6-8p Spring 2010

MIT Imaging Ventures ~ Cameras, Displays, and Visual Computing is a Spring 2010 Action Lab on the opportunities and challenges for businesses based on emergent imaging innovations. We study the landscape of imaging developments, plan business strategies and brainstorm towards a startup, business unit, non-profit or citizen sector organization. To bring imaging research to the real world, the students will be encouraged to build teams and craft a business plan. The class will include live case studies of established and emerging businesses, through talks by invited business speakers, as well as surveys of commercialization and the innovation landscape in every arena of imaging including Mobile Camera Phones, Cameras in Developing Counties, Image-Search, Scientific Imaging, Medical Devices, Online Photo Sharing, Portable Displays, Large format visual interfaces, Computational Photography. Please spread the word to those you think might be interested. First class Tue night February 2nd, 2010.

$ustainability ~ KPCB's Ray Lane @ MIT 2/10

The MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge's Innovation Series chaired by Pearl Freier is hosting keynote speaker Ray Lane from top-tier VC Kleiner Perkins at their February 10, 2010 6pm+ session on...In addition to Lane, there's a panel discussion with Philip Giudice, MA Commissioner of Energy Resources, Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres, Dan Schrag, Harvard Professor of Geology all moderated by Dan Goldman of Great Point Energy.

Flexible Delivery ~ In Absence of Ports, What?

As part of actually delivering containerized urgent solutions, the seaports, roadways, and other key infrastructure are also needed. When those too are gone, as in Port-au-Prince......we need more flexible delivery approaches. Thanks to gCaptain for spotting this US Marines amphibious landing element at Leogane in an image plus story on the CargoLaw site......plus another gCaptain spot, the Atlantic Caribbean Lines' Caribe Star 1, an ocean-going landing barge being loaded with $3M of supplies by Samaritan's Purse in Fort Pierce...

Rapid Shelter Solutions ~ Tempohousing Delivers!

I'm delighted to see that one of my favorite urban ventures -- Tempohousing -- has pulled together a suite of Rapid Shelter Solutions for Haitian-reconstruction (and for recovery-and-regeneration zones, in general), and offers a...
"...fast solution to build new homes for displaced families [...] The system anticipates an extreme short set up time with complete packages shipped from our factory in China. Solid structures that are storm and earthquake proof and provide safe and comfortable shelter at the lowest cost is essential in this stage of helping the victims. [...] What Tempohousing offers is so called 2nd stage support that comes after the first aid with tents, food and medicines. In the 2nd stage the rebuilding of the country has priority. Download the brochure with technical details, pictures and pricing..."
This is a great initiative, and I hope a commercially viable and socially responsible venture! As I wrote about immediately post-quake, Haiti needs a whole family of containerized urgent solutions that are fast, flexible, and scalable.

27 January 2010

Hayek vs Keynes ~ Fear the Boom and Bust Rap!

Thanks to GeekPress for spotting Fear the Boom and Bust rap by Econstories.tv featuring economists John Maynard Keynes and F A Hayek and their competing explanations for cycles...

iPad ~ iWant Apple's Latest Offering!

iWant! See Joshua Topolsky lifestream at Engadget... iSpecs... PS Caveats: Lack of multitasking is stupid. Lack of camera(s) is stupid. Missing built-in USB and SD slots are stupid. But we'll see how well it does. I'm also a champion of a competitive landscape of devices all able to tap into "OpenStores" vs Apple lock-in stores...

Ghonsla ~ Invest Via Unreasonable Marketplace!

Ghonsla, a South Asian building insulation business -- and one of our MIT Development Ventures alumco's -- is a finalist at the Unreasonable Marketplace! These 35 Unreasonable Finalist...
"...entrepreneurs could change the world. You decide which 25 will receive the training, mentorship, and access to capital they need to take flight."
Read more about Ghonsla and about lead entrepreneur Zehra Ali, and perhaps you too will invest! See here their pitchdeck...

Crapper's Day ~ Homage to a Loo Innovator !-)

Thanks to the BBC for Remembering Thomas Crapper, the godfather of toilets, proper plumbing for both water and sanitation being a key element making modern civilization possible! While others invented earlier toilets, Thomas Crapper was a loo innovator whose high quality products, key improvement inventions, and promotional methods lead to widespread adoption! See here a piece on the National Trust commemorating lavatory legend centenary and the BBC's homage...

26 January 2010

MADFAB ~ New Furniture Design Competition

"MADFAB is a new design competition in which students design a piece of furniture that becomes a permanent part of the campus. This year's challenge: design a digitally fabricated low table or bench for the MIT Student Center."
Cool! I love competitions which inspire creativity! Great spinonym;-)

25 January 2010

Kando Project ~ Exploring Creativity in Children!

Lovely to see my MIT Media Lab colleague Sanjli Gidwaney's Kando Project where she explores creativity in children! Sanjli is quite keen on shifting kids away from rote learning and helping them to develop more creative and problem solving skills through hands-on interaction with low cost tools, crafts, and immersive rapid prototyping methods. She's been doing Creativity Workshops featuring Scratchlets and E-Textiles in both the US and currently India and visiting Agastya and more! Very cool.

Geo-Medicine ~ Davenhall on Data @ TEDMED

Bill Davenhall at TEDMED on improving diagnostics by merging patient geographic and environmental data with their classic medical records...

24 January 2010

BUILDS ~ BU's DIY Hackerspace Inauguration!

Great to see that Boston University (BU) is inaugurating BUILDS, the BU Information Lab & Design Space. BUILDS is a student-run research lab and workshop giving motivated undergrads tools and resources for conducting their own student-led DIY tech projects. They open this Wednesday...

23 January 2010

New Songdo ~ Building Smart, Green Cities...

Thanks to Brandon Fuller at Charter Cities for spotting Greg Lindsay's piece in Fast Company on Creating Cities From Scratch about New Songdo, a purpose-built international city in South Korea...
"It's going to be a cool city, a smart city. We start from here and then we are going to build 20 new cities like this one, using this blueprint. Green! Growth! Export!" [...] "China alone needs 500 cities the size of New Songdo," [...] 500 New Songdos at the very least. One hundred of those will each house a million or more transplanted peasants. In fact, while humanity has been building cities for 9,000 years, that was apparently just a warm-up for the next 40. As of now, we're officially an urban species. More than half of us -- 3.3 billion people -- live in a city. Our numbers are projected to nearly double by 2050, adding roughly a New Songdo a day; the United Nations predicts the vast majority will flood smaller cities in Africa and Asia."
Yes! We need smart, green, vital and responsive cities! See here simulation of New Songdo districts and phases of development...

Blue Zones ~ Dan Buettner @ TED on Longevity

National Geographic explorer Dan Buettner describes Blue Zones...
"...communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. At TEDxTC, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100."

Peekaboo ~ Eugene Lin's iPhone Kingdom !-)

Thanks to MIT alum and Visible Measures founder Brian Shin for spotting this hilarious presentation by Eugene Lin about iterating his iPhone app ideas...

Copyright Criminals ~ Indy Lens on Sampling...

Surfing the 'tube I found Copyright Criminals on PBS's Independent Lens show. See here the trailer... Lovely stuff, sampling both great and obscure works of the past and recrafting them anew. But contentious. Who owns? Is this legal? Do you have permission? And so forth. My own opinion is that anything recorded for public consumption can rightfully in turn be remorphed by the public -- but credit should be conveyed. Straight copying is one thing, but modifying is another. If anything, there ought to be an automatic copyright payments formula. Something simple like a fraction of the % of the total time a sample is played. But part of the copyright deal has got to be automatic reuse rights -- once available, people should be compensable for uses but shouldn't be able to insist upon or dictate non-use. In any case, a fascinating thought-piece!

19 January 2010

Project H Design ~ Humanitarian on Colbert!

Thanks to my MIT colleague Lars Hasselblad Torres for putting the shout out about humanitarian designer Emily Pilloton and her Project H Design appearance on Colbert! Project H stands for Humanity, Habitats, Health, and Happiness and the power of great design to have triple-bottom-line impact on People, Planet, and Profit!
The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Emily Pilloton
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorEconomy

18 January 2010

Inspirational Resilience ~ Kids After Combat...

Warfare is perhaps the most catastrophically depraved of human foibles, especially when young kids are clobbered by combat or "terrorist" acts -- I know there's a difference, but can they tell? These all -- especially indiscriminate crusades and jihads -- are instantiations of irrational religious fervor in its most cult-like horror-mode. Amazingly enough, many of these brave boys and girls show the rest of us how to be resilient in the face of horror. Please join me in admiring here these truly inspirational heroes and heroines! Starting with Hajar, an 11-year-old Iraqi girl injured during the Iraq war... Muhammad, a 12-year-old Iraqi boy who was hit during the Iraq war... Hussein, a 7-year-old Iraqi boy who was burned during the Iraq war...
Phan Thị Kim Phúc after South Vietnamese bombed her village...Baby Baylee Almon hit by fundamentalist Christians in Oklahoma... Alas, for too many it's R.I.P. too soon. This surely is evil incarnate.

Cocktail Therapy ~ Combination Solutions...

From the world of AIDS treatment comes the term Cocktail Therapy referring to several medications taken in combination to treat retroviruses, primarily HIV, an approach known as Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy, or HAART. As John Henkel writes in Attacking AIDS with a 'Cocktail' Therapy, such treatment often leads to the...
"...so-called "Lazarus Effect," named for the biblical figure who was raised from the dead, [which] has occurred with many AIDS patients who take the triple therapy. "It returns many who were debilitated and dying to relatively healthy and productive life," says Richard Klein, HIV/AIDS coordinator for the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Special Health Issues. Many health experts, in fact, credit the powerful HAART therapy with helping the domestic AIDS death rate to drop [dramatically.] So far, the combination HAART treatment is the closest thing medical science has to an effective therapy. The key to its success in some patients lies in the drug combination's ability to disrupt HIV at different stages in its replication."
But scientists and doctors and biomedical engineers still don't really know how it works. What's key is that it works! Given this, what other similar "cocktail" solutions might serve as compelling "therapies" for social, economic, political, or even other physiological ailments?

iShades ~ Feld's Heads-Up Display Vision...

Witness here some baby-steps towards a glorious iShades personal heads-up display (HUD) future! Here MIT alum VC Brad Feld records while wearing camera-enabled sunglasses... Beyond recording, imagine HUDs encompassing hi-res displays, wearable augmented reality, 3D VR, relevant search results and other PIM info!

Business in Haiti ~ Continuing Trade & Tourism

Robert Booth of the Guardian reports Royal Caribbean is committed to continuing cruise ship visits to their private complex in Labadee, Haiti -- a location on the other side of Hispaniola from the Port-au-Prince earthquake zone. Multiple commentators have expressed "horror" at this decision, calling it an "ethics void" among other disparagements, arguing everything from "callous, aloof" to distasteful "business as usual" and "misuse of resources" to "social injustice". The anti-commercial ethically-myopic irrational righteousness of such comments is really quite saddening. What's unethical about this enterprise? Absolutely nothing. Indeed, it took courage on the part of the cruise company to realize that their northern Haitian employees still need jobs and income, that neighboring resorts in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico remain open, that operating and remaining profitable is what allows them to donate millions to relief, and that they can also open their port to relief supplies in addition to cruise customers. They add to what Haiti needs most right now: A combination of immediate aid -- which governments, civic institutions, and aid organizations are pouring in like a tidal wave, deceptively slow to build up, but ultimately huge -- and urgent solutions for systematic rebuilding, and continued longer-term economic development and regeneration. As Booth quotes Royal Caribbean saying...
"In the end, Labadee is critical to Haiti's recovery; hundreds of people rely on Labadee for their livelihood," said John Weis, vice-president. "In our conversations with the UN special envoy of the government of Haiti, Leslie Voltaire, he notes that Haiti will benefit from the revenues that are generated from each call. "We also have tremendous opportunities to use our ships as transport vessels for relief supplies and personnel to Haiti. Simply put, we cannot abandon Haiti now that they need us most." "Friday's call in Labadee went well," said Royal Caribbean. "Everything was open, as usual. The guests were very happy to hear that 100% of the proceeds from the call at Labadee would be donated to the relief effort."
Who else is on-board helping build up Business in Haiti?

The Promised Land ~ Towards King's Vision...

Whether you are religious or secular, you can appreciate the powerful oratory of this great man and the need to keep striving towards the promised land of Liberty, Prosperity, and Vitality here on Earth... And as William Easterly notes, King would not have used PowerPoint!

Penny Shooter ~ Another Cardnetics Tool!

Thanks to UniqueDaily for spotting this Penny Shooter, one more in the growing family of card tools by Bryce Bell at Cardnetics!

Deadline ~ Post-It Stop-Motion Anime!

Thanks to Paul & Diana Hsieh from GeekPress for spotting Deadline, Bang-yao Liu's lovely Post-It stop-motion anime! And here's the "Making of..."

Offshoring Surrogacy ~ Indian Infertility Help...

Building on the Medical Tourism story I wrote about a couple weeks ago, see this Radio Netherlands Worldwide story on Western babies ~ made in India...
"More and more Westerners are hiring women in India as surrogate mothers. [...] At an infertility clinic in the state of Gujarat, there are over 50 active surrogates. The surrogacy team has an average of three babies a month. The surrogates are implanted with the client's embryo. They carry under contract until delivery. The surrogate mothers rent out their wombs for around 5000 euros, the equivalent of 10 years of wages in India. Dr Nayna Patel started the clinic five years ago. She requires surrogates to already have their own children and limits each to three tries. She cringes at anyone who calls this exploitative. "As soon as you come to a poor country," she says, "you say that it's exploitation. But I know what it means to be a surrogate and how the compensation changes these women's lives."
See here the full VJmovement videoreport by Linda Blake...

17 January 2010

Global 911 ~ Better, Faster First Response?

In developed world urban settings with functioning firestations and ambulance services and with emergencies mostly limited in scale, we have high confidence in rapid first response to an alert. Fire trucks, police, and EMT's arriving in timespans measured in minutes is often the difference between life and death. In Port-au-Prince it has now been nearly a week and still the majority of the affected Haitians have not seen aid, those buried alive are no longer being heard from, and treatable critical injuries are largely unaddressed. Those doctors and nurses currently in situ are flat-out totally overwhelmed. The Globe's Maria Sacchetti writes of Saving lives with just the tools at hand: No water, no power as surgical mission starts in on the endless line of need and reports... 60 Minutes Byron Pitts reports from Haiti... Finally, CNN's Cooper and Watson report on "needless, stupid death"... Can we figure out a more effective Global 911 for better, faster first response to international emergencies? I'm impressed with this CNN story about Tad Skylar Agoglia's First Response Team of America and wonder if that's scalable and replicable?

Restless Planet ~ Earth's Natural Violence...

Ours is a restless planet. Here's history of earthquakes... Cyclones, Hurricanes, Typhoons... Wildfires -- click thru for animation...