Pancreatic cancer has laid low Hans Rosling, the Gapminder co-founder and my favorite public health statistician and data edutainer extraordinaire. He has many remarkable TED talks and other videos online, but I personally favor his appearance at TEDIndia speaking on Asia's Rise where he compares global growth over 200 years and predicts exactly when India and China converge with the rich!
Second, look at this seismographic plot from around the world showing the Earth literally ringing from the rupture of the Sunda megathrust off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia...
“Jugaad” is a word that often describes a solution or a product that uses unconventional and generally low-cost methods. Jaideep Prabhu and his co-authors took an idiomatic Hindi term, Jugaad, and used it to explain a growing phenomenon in emerging economies [...] Jugaad Innovation isn’t a concept that is only limited to Asian and African counties; is also spreading in the West particularly through young entrepreneurs. [...] Jugaad Innovation is interesting to study because it provides powerful solutions for unmet needs in education, healthcare etc."
"Vigilantes take to the streets of Mumbai with a water tanker so they can spray anyone caught taking a leak in public. [...] Tanker features enormous water canon and the sign: 'You Stop, We Stop'. Also includes rooftop area, from which masked activists can spray public. It aims to deter those who feel no shame relieving themselves on streets. Vehicle is believed to be manned by anonymous group, the Clean Indian."
"When a global effort to end polio was launched in 1988, the disease crippled more than 200,000 children every year in India. Almost two decades later, in 2009, India still reported half of the world's new cases -- 741 out of 1,604. India has millions of poor and uneducated people. The population is booming. Large areas lack hygiene and good sanitation, and polio spreads through contaminated water. Many health experts predicted India would be the last country in the world to get rid of polio. They were wrong."
"Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was in the university-building business. [...] More than a generation later, MIT is at it again. [...] MIT is not stamping its name on campuses overseas. Instead it has seemed content to be a less-showy, largely silent partner in its international ventures. [...] these upstart institutions are being built in the spirit of MIT's motto, Mens et Manus, or Mind and Hand. They are meant to have real-world impact. [In the words of our new President...] "We cannot replicate MIT anywhere else," says Mr. Reif, a former provost and longtime faculty member. "It took us 150 years to get what we've got."It's a fascinating piece, missing as much as it reveals, including essential history and failures. But read the whole thing!
"...far too many primary school aged children -- an estimated 67 million worldwide -- will never enroll in school. These children are generally the poorest of poor, for whom even a "free" education comes at too steep a price. For these families, sending children to school often means fewer hands laboring to support the family. [...] it is the poor, rural girls who most often stay out of school. Take a look at this new video that shines a spotlight on the role land ownership can play in getting these vulnerable groups into the classroom..."
"Since 1997, Funmilayo Omotosho lived and worked in a market in Ajelogo, a neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria. For reasons it has not made public, the Lagos State Government ordered that the Ajelogo market be destroyed during the early morning hours of March 7, 2010. More than 10,000 residents and vendors were displaced. With her business, home, and community in ruins, and with nowhere else to go, Fumilayo still lives in Ajelogo, amidst the ruins of her home and business."Destroying markets seems like the very last thing one should do in order to improve peoples lives. What the hell is going on here? And here's a similar situation in Mumbai's Dharavi... And in Nairobi's Kibera...
"Founded in 1976, surgeons working for Aravind are among the most productive in the world, with fewer complications than British doctors. But what is truly astonishing about Aravind is that nearly half of the 300,000 procedures it conducts every year are free. Aravind treats everyone from presidents to paupers, regardless of what they can pay."
"Essmart gives rural retail shop owners access to products that improve their customers' lives. We are a technology distributor working with existing retail shops to reach end users. We deliver the goods."
"We completed our first field-ready industrial chiller that we are shipping on Monday to our first customer, India's largest private dairy. The performance is even even better than the prototype thanks to our innovative engineers. I'm very proud to be working with them. Here is a 1-minute video that gives you a quick look at our next gen. chiller. It's really beautiful. In the middle of this shoot the electricity actually went out, which was the perfect opportunity to show how our system continued to chill the milk to below 4 C without a diesel generator thanks to our thermal storage technology."Plus, Holi celebration;-)
