In my new podcast I take a look at Darwinian agriculture–how farmers can improve their crops by taking advantage of evolutionary history. I talk to Ford Denison of the University of Minnesota, who has done fascinating work plants such as soybeans and the bacteria that live in their roots and supply them with essential nitrogen. It’s a complicated relationship, full of cooperation, conflict, cheating, and punishment. Check it out.
Whether your presentation tool of choice is Keynote or PowerPoint, when you give a presentation on your Mac, the last thing you want is for something to go wrong. Here’s my top 10 list of helpful tips that will help you get the most out of presenting with your Mac.
PowerPoint and Keynote will play together, but they don’t always play well together. If you’re moving presentations between applications or even just between computers, give your presentation a good run through before showtime.
If you’ll be presenting with an external display, using external speakers or something similar, test all of this before your presentation. Your Mac’s screen will flicker as it adjusts screen resolution to match what it’s connected to (if you’re mirroring displays). Test all of this beforehand so you’re prepared and not dealing with unexpected complications.
This one is purely a stylistic suggestion, but you’ll be doing your audience a favor if you simplify the text on your slides as much as possible. Do you enjoy reading a lot of text when it’s displayed on your television? Neither do your viewers.
Make you presentation stand out with a color palette that works well together. If you need some inspiration, visit Adobe’s Kuler website to see a variety of color palettes submitted by users. Search for one that fits your needs or upload and share your own.
When you are presenting, make sure any unnecessary applications are closed. Growl notifications, incoming iChat messages and bouncing dock icons are not appropriate for a presentation. If you’re the type of presenter who uses a few slides but speaks at great lengths on each one, make sure your screensaver and sleep settings (if using a laptop) are disabled to prevent your Mac from accidentally going dark. You can adjust these settings in the Desktop & Screen Saver and Energy Saver panes of System Preferences (subscription required). Remember that portable Macs store energy saver settings differently when you use your battery and when you use your power adapter!
If you’ll be presenting websites alongside your presentation, go ahead and load those beforehand. This will save you from wasting time while the pages load and will still be able to serve its purpose in your presentation even if you are unable to connect to the Internet when you are presenting. Better yet, you could even include screenshots of the website you want to show. That way, if for some reason the pre-loaded version in your browser doesn’t work, you’ll still have something to show. While you’re at it, if you’ll be displaying any other application while presenting, go ahead and have it loaded too. There’s nothing more frustrating than staring at a splash screen for 30 seconds while you and your audience wait for Photoshop to load.
Apple’s 99 cent Keynote Remote app will let you use your iPhone or iPod touch to remotely control your presentation. It can advance slides and return to previous slides and can even show you your presenter notes. The only catch is that you must have a Wi-Fi network to use it. If you do not, you can set up a computer-to-computer network with your Mac.
With this mode (accessible under the preferences of each application), you can customize a view to display your current and upcoming slide, show your presenter notes, view a clock and a timer. With Keynote, you’ll need to make sure that your primary display is set to the projector or whatever device you connect to your Mac. Since Keynote uses the “alternate display,” you will need to make this change so that the Presenter Display will show up on your Mac and not your external display.
So many people overlook this tip, but it’s just about as important as backing up your computer (and we’ve all been guilty of not paying attention to that tip too). If technical difficulties get the best of you, you’ll still have physical copies of your presentation to fall back on. Plus, handouts make a great way to give your audience a leave behind, should you wish to give them out at the end, or they give your audience something to follow along with and add their own notes if you hand them out beforehand.
Saving the best for last, a snazzy PowerPoint or Keynote is nothing if the presenter stumbles their way through. Take the time to be familiar with your slides and be able to speak to them with comfort. You don’t have to be the next Steve Jobs, but take your time and be able to present your actual topic.
Do you present with your Mac? Found any great tips that work for you? Give us and your fellow readers your thoughts in the comments below.
Related TechUniversity Screencast: Keynote Transitions & Effects (subscription required)
Keyboard Upgrade is an iPad app that allows you to split and resize the base iPad keyboard. For a moment, I thought this idea might be neat or even useful, so I dropped $1 to test it. I was wrong. More »
You’re on the subway on the way to work. It’s not a long trip, maybe 15 to 20 minutes long if you’re coming in from an outer borough. You have to kill the time somehow lest you be alone in your thoughts for a few moments. What do you do? If we’re to believe a new survey, then you’ may well whip out your phone to play a video game. Back in the day, people would have had a paperback or magazine handy. Times, they are a….
The survey, carried out by Popcap, the social games company, suggests that today 25 percent of 16-24-year-olds play mobile games to pass the time on public transportation. It was only 10 years ago that 11 percent of respondents would have chosen a game over reading material.
The survey asked some 1,500 Britons of that age group to respond. These 1,500 people speak for us all.
Then you have to take into considering that the survey was carried out by a company that would directly benefit from an increase in mobile gaming.
Anecdotally, I guess those numbers work out. You occasionally see people on the subway in New York reading a newspaper or whatever—I’ve actually seen a few e-readers of late—but then you’ve got all these older people playing some game on their BlackBerry or iPhone.
Me? There’s a 100 percent chance I’m listening to a podcast while on the train. Or plane or automobile, for that mater.
via The Guardian
Our bodies are under siege, constantly fighting back assaults from disease-causing bacteria. But we are also home to many harmless bacterial species that are share our bodies to no ill effects. Now, it seems that these ‘commensals’ could be our hidden allies against their harmful cousins. In one such ally, a group of scientists has just discovered a potential new weapon against Staphylococcus aureus.
S.aureus is incredibly common, colonising the noses of a third of people in the USA, UK, Japan and other countries. Often, these colonies do nothing untoward, but if a full-blown infection sets in, the result can include life-threatening diseases like pneumonia, meningitis, toxic shock syndrome, endocarditis and sepsis. With the rise of MRSA and other staph strains that shrug off our most common antibiotics, the threat posed by this common nose bug has never been greater.
But S.aureus doesn’t have our noses to itself. It has to jostle for space with a close relative called Staphylococcus epidermidis. It’s the most common commensal in our noses and, indeed, the most common contaminating bacterium in laboratory equipment. S.epidermidis is harmless, except in people whose immune systems have been compromised. But more interestingly, it has the ability to stunt the growth of its more infamous cousin. Now, Tadayuki Iwase from Jikei University has isolated the protein it uses to do so.
Iwase swapped the noses of 88 volunteers and found that virtually all of them were colonised by S.epidermidis. However, S.aureus had only set up shop in just under a third. On the whole, the two bacteria seem to be able to co-exist in harmony, but Iwase found that some strains of S.epidermidis are anathemas to S.aureus.
Specifically, they caused problems for S.aureus’s ability to set up biofilms, the bacterial equivalent of cities. Thousands of bacteria swarm within these communities, embedded in a slimy matrix of DNA, proteins and sugars. Within biofilms, bacteria are harder to kill, making them an important public health challenge. But according to Iwase, some strains of S.epidermidis not only prevent S.aureus from creating biofilms, they also destroy existing ones. People who were colonised by these defensive strains were around 70% less likely to be colonised by S.aureus.
To work out the weapon that was keeping the rival bacteria are bay, Iwase let cultures of S.epidermidis cut a swath through S.aureus biofilms and analysed their secretions when the destruction had reached its peak. He managed to isolate a single protein called Esp or ‘S.epidermidis serine protease’ in full. The protein was absent from strains that couldn’t wipe out S.aureus biofilms and present in strains that could. If Iwase gave the latter bacteria them a chemical that negates the Esp protein, or if he removed the esp gene from them entirely, they lost their competitive edge against S.aureus.
Esp even works in tandem with our own defensive proteins, including one called hBD2 (human beta-defensin 2) that’s secreted by our skin cells. Alone, hBD2 can kill bacteria but it’s a bit of a wimp about it, while Esp (for obvious reasons) has no bacteria-killing ability of its own. But together, their powers are far greater, and they effectively kill S.aureus, even when it was under the protection of biofilms. (The idea that the two proteins have co-evolved with one another is an intriguing question for another time.)
As a final test, Iwase introduced the competitive strains of S.epidermidis into the noses of volunteers who were already colonised by S.aureus. Sure enough, these transplanted bacteria eliminated their evolutionary cousins. Even a purified dose of Esp alone did the trick.
These experiments are very exciting. Humans are fighting a pitched (possibly losing) battle against staph and MRSA in particular, and our antibiotic arsenal is falling short. What better source of new weapons than other bacteria that have been fighting the same fight for millennia? Obviously, there’s a lot of work to do to turn Esp into a viable treatment, but this study is a promising first step.
Even better, it seems that, for some unclear reason, S.aureus can’t evolve resistance to Esp. With its biofilms under attack, you would expect S.aureus to quickly adapt, but after a year of culturing the two species together, Iwase couldn’t find any evidence that of resistance.
Reference: Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09074
More on Staphylococcus:
Two reports from the Mortgage Bankers Association today — one mixed, one troubling.
First, mortgage loan applications — measured by the MBA’s purchase index, which includes all mortgage applications for single-family homes — dropped 27 percent week-on-week, to 24 percent lower than a year ago. The news is not quite as terrible as it initially sounds. The precipitous drop is due to the sunset of the Obama administration’s homebuyer tax credits at the end of last month. If you were thinking of buying a house this spring, you would have probably rushed to do so before the tax credit expired; in terms of aggregate sales, it means that March and April have stolen from May and June.
“The data continue to suggest that the tax credit pulled sales into April at the expense of the remainder of the spring buying season. In fact, this drop occurred even as rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages continued to fall, and at 4.83 percent are at their lowest level since November 2009,” Michael Fratantoni, an MBA economist, said in a statement. “However, refinance borrowers did react to these lower rates, with refi applications up almost 15 percent, hitting their highest level in nine weeks.” The big question is aggregate housing demand — and all signs are that it is improving, even if it remains weak.
The second report shows that one in ten mortgage holders is now delinquent, meaning late on at least one payment. The first-quarter rate of 10.06 percent is up around 1 percent from a year ago. That is an all-time high. The percentage of loans in foreclosure was 4.63 percent in the first three months of the year, another record high. All in all, around 15 percent of homeowners are either in foreclosure or late on their payments. Before the financial crisis, most financial firms’ asset-backed security models did not factor in levels of delinquency higher than 5 percent. Now, with the foreclosure crisis peaking, we’re talking about numbers three times that predicted upper limit.
One other sour note in the MBA report: States that had relatively stable housing markets are seeing an upturn in delinquencies and foreclosures, implying that the “sand states” of California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona aren’t the only ones banks should worry about.
“The economy has begun to generate jobs and layoffs have declined, although new claims for unemployment insurance remained higher in the first quarter than we expected. The percent of loans behind one payment had been declining as first-time claims for unemployment began falling in March 2009. Those new claims stopped falling during the first quarter of this year, which likely halted the decline in the underlying 30-day delinquency rate. If mortgage delinquencies are not yet clearly improving, it also appears they are not getting worse. However, a bad situation that is not getting worse is still bad.
“For several years, the four states of Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and California have dominated the national delinquency and foreclosure numbers. Florida is still getting worse, but California is showing signs of improvement. However, Washington, Maryland, Oregon, and Georgia showed the greatest overall increases in foreclosures started compared to last quarter,” Brinkmann said.
Niall Ferguson’s speech to the Peterson Institute for International Economics examined the roots of sovereign debt crises, and how they have plagued states since the birth of the bond market. Ferguson also made clear, that such crises have brought down some of the world’s biggest empires, and there is no reason why it won’t happen again.
Peterson Institute for International Economics via Paul Kedrosky:
Join the conversation about this story »
Filed under: Sedan, Performance, Chrysler, Reviews
If the economic downfall of 2008 had happened just a few years earlier, the Chrysler 300C SRT8 probably wouldn’t exist. Think about it: when the nation was on the verge of $4.00/gallon gasoline and people were doing everything possible to get out of their fuel-sucking SUVs and into smaller, more efficient vehicles, a 425-horsepower flagship sedan with a free-breathing 6.1-liter Hemi V8 doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But then again, did it ever?
The 300C SRT8 is the product of a pre-castrated Chrysler. This was a time of Viper-powered Rams, Hemi-powered Jeeps and SRT-badged Neons. “You want it, you got it.” Chrysler wanted the 300C SRT8 to start a new trend of muscle sedans – a land where quarter-mile times reigned supreme, and booming exhaust notes were all that mattered. This trend never really caught on (save the Cadillac CTS-V, which has been honed to be one hell of a machine), and at the end of the day, Chrysler was left with a big, heavy, powerful sedan that didn’t offer much in the way of refinement and carried a near-$50,000 price tag.
But despite its flaws – and there are quite a few – we still think of the 300C SRT8 as a guilty pleasure. It has all the ingredients of an American muscle car wrapped in a four-door, luxury(ish) package. We’d probably never buy one or recommend buying a new one to a friend, but if we’re totally honest, there’s still something about the SRT8 that gets us all giddy when one comes through the Autoblog Garage. Make the jump to find out why.
Gallery: Review: 2010 Chrysler 300C SRT8
Photos by Steven J. Ewing / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.
Continue reading Review: 2010 Chrysler 300C SRT8 remains a guilty pleasure
Review: 2010 Chrysler 300C SRT8 remains a guilty pleasure originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 19 May 2010 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Guess what, my bunless brethren? KFC is reporting that nearly 10 million Double Downs — that “Why mess with bread?” fried chicken sandwich — have been sold and that this, um, sandwich, will remain on the menu past its limited time availability.
Here’s part of the press release, lightly edited (i.e., their words, not mine):
KFC DOUBLE DOWN FANS, REJOICE: YOUR FAVORITE BUNLESS CHICKEN SANDWICH IS STAYING ON THE MENU
Originally Slated as a “Limited Time Only” Offer, Double Down Approaches 10 Million Sales Level
LOUISVILLE, Ky., May 19, 2010 – America has spoken and the Colonel listened. The wildly popular KFC Double Down™ is going to remain on the KFC menu past May 23, when the “Limited Time Only” promotion for KFC’s first-ever bunless chicken sandwich was scheduled to end.
While the launch of the unique Double Down created unprecedented buzz for the brand, it also received a warm reception from KFC customers. Later this month, KFC will sell its 10 millionth Double …
Just over a week ago, NPD Group released its Wireless Market Research report for the United States, which showed BlackBerry devices leading the smartphone market with 36% penetration, then Android-based devices followed with 28%, and then Apple’s iPhone came in third with 21%.
Today, IT research firm Gartner released its first quarter 2010 sales figures for the worldwide mobile device market, and we got a view of how the Smartphone OS market is changing.
Indeed, Android’s explosive growth in the States is having an impact worldwide, but so is the iPhone’s growth outside of the U.S.
“In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707 per cent year-on-year.”
This puts Google’s mobile OS in fourth place globally behind Symbian, BlackBerry OS, and iPhone OS. Android’s rise to this position has placed it above Microsoft’s Windows Mobile for the first time.
Android and iPhone OS were the only two mobile operating systems to globally increase their market share. Symbian dropped by 4.5% year over year, BlackBerry OS dropped by a modest 1.2%, Windows Mobile dropped by 3.2%, and Linux dropped by 3.3%.
Apple managed to increase its mobile device sales by 112% during the quarter too, said Milanesi, “Partly from new communication service providers in established markets, such as the UK, and stronger sales in new markets such as China and South Korea.”
Every smartphone combined still only amounts to 17.3% of the total mobile device market (54.3 million units,) but that market is growing quickly. The same period last year, only 13.9% (36.5 million units) of all phones sold were smartphones.
With a new iPhone expected in the next quarter, and a major Android update coming soon, the smartphone market is poised to continue its growth as long as the two “app-centric” operating systems keep innovating and enticing users to adopt.
Posted by John Byrne at 11:39 a.m.
Mayor Richard Daley suggested Police Supt. Jody Weis should consider taking a pay cut as public negotiations of a new contract for Chicago’s top cop continued today.
"I think it would be up to him, sure, if he’s willing to do it. Sure, everybody should do it," said Daley when asked whether Weis should accept less than the roughly
$310,000 he now gets.
Weis said Tuesday that he is open to talking about a pay cut as part of negotiations to extend his
three-year deal that expires next March.
The mayor said all public officials need to accept less in light of
ongoing economic troubles.
"I don’t think that’s (Weis) alone, I think it’s important that
everybody sacrifice, for the people of our city, our state and our
nation," said Daley, whose mayoral income has dropped due to unpaid days off that are part of budget-cutting moves. The mayor’s salary is set by law.
"If you don’t, then people are living in a different world, they don’t
realize that people are suffering," Daley said at a news conference
about a school health pilot program at Reavis Elementary School on the
800 block of East 50th Street.
A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems….
Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.
The National Academy released three reports today on “America’s Climate Choices.”
Today I’ll focus on their review of climate science, Advancing the Science of Climate Change (news release here, Report in Brief here, Read/purchase full report here).
The report is a typical NAS product, which means it is uber-conservative from a scientific perspective, much like the IPCC. So that means whenever it actual makes a strong assertion, like the ones above, it is doubly impressive. Those who continue to attack what are essentially ’settled facts’ deserve the label that I and others have been using — ‘anti-scientific’.
The report has same fatal failing as the IPCC report: It fails to spell out clearly to policymakers, the public, and the media what the likely impacts are if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path, including both business-as-usual and plausible worst-case scenarios.
The report does note, “A separate NRC report, expected in summer 2010, provides an analysis of impacts at different magnitudes of future climate change.” So that presumably will be the report to watch for. It also notes:
Some of the greatest risks posed by climate change are associated with these abrupt changes and other climate “surprises” (unexpected changes or impacts), yet the likelihood of such events is not well known. Moreover, there has been comparatively little research on the impacts that might be associated with “extreme” climate change—for example, the impacts that could be expected if global temperatures rise by 10 °F (6 °C) or more over the next century.
Well, 10F might be “extreme” climate change to scientists who can’t imagine why the world basically keeps ignoring their calls to action — but right now, it isn’t close to the plausible, “extreme,” worst case:
No, 10F warming is merely the high end of business-as-usual emissions projects (and I think we are getting a better understanding of what this Hell and High Water means):
The chapter on sea level rise does do a pretty good job summarizing the post-IPCC science (click here). And it reproduces this figure (see “Sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated, could hit 6 feet by 2100“):
But it refuses to draw any conclusions or even present its own range of SLR by 2100. I’m hopeful the summer report will be clearer on this.
The best thing about the report is the unequivocal defense of our basic scientific understanding that the climate is changing and that humans are a primary cause. Here is the discussion of how we know humans are responsible for most of the observed warming in the last century and especially the last several decades (from page 29):
The climate is changing, humans are causing it, and the time to act is now.
Note: I’m in meeting the rest of the day, so I welcome readers identifying any choice nuggets in the report good or bad.
Sandinista had a strong Autumn/Winter 2010 collection that definitely got our attention here at SwipeLife. With the Summer days soon upon us, the label comes out with a Summer Holiday collection that brings in comfortable looks with unique contemporary styles. Entitled, “Another Day Behind the Counter,” the range exhibits relaxed styles that include signature pieces such as vests, cropped trousers, 3/4 sleeve shirts, tees, and more.
Continue reading for more images.
Update: 11am
Out of the 208 people who signed up to speak at the Texas Textbook board meeting, 73 have registered as for the Board of Education’s changes to the curriculum; 56 against. The remaining 79 declined to state their opinion in advance.
Two speakers have taken to the podium. Rev. Stephen Broaden, an African American minister, steadfastly expressed his support for the Board’s changes to the curriculum, saying that Judeo-Christian principles should be focused on when students study the nation’s Founding Fathers.
Following Rev. Broaden, Former Superintendent of Education in Houston and former U.S. Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, an African American man, expressed his concerns of political agenda having too great an influence on what students will learn.
Gold spiked down big earlier in the day, and has only deteriorated since then.
Remember gold $1250?
Join the conversation about this story »
By Sommer Saadi
Green Right Now
Five farmers in Brooklyn are out to set a record: to plant the largest commercial rooftop farm in New York City.
Last week, the Brooklyn Grange team, with the help of volunteers and a rented crane, hauled 1.2 million pounds of a soil and compost shale mix from Pennsylvania to the top of a six-story warehouse building in Long Island City, Queens. The nearly one-acre rooftop space is the first of its kind in the city, and the Brooklyn Grange team hopes it will be the first of many.
“The long term plan for the Brooklyn Grange is to put a farm on every structurally sound roof in New York City and beyond,” said Gwen Schantz, head farmer at Roberta’s pizzeria in Brooklyn and key player in the Brooklyn Grange project.
A farm grows in Brooklyn from VideoProfiles2010 on Vimeo.
Finding a structurally sound roof, and a willing landlord, however proved to be fairly difficult tasks for a project that has been in the works for nearly a year. The team lost a major investor and a roof space in late March pushing back plans to plant seedlings.
“It’s been difficult for landlords to cope with the idea of putting more than a million pounds of soil on top of the roof,” Schantz explained. “You call a landlord and you say, ‘I want to put a farm on your roof.’ And they say, ‘What? You want to do what on my roof?’”
The team continued to search for over-engineered buildings that could hold the weight of the soil, and found one that the structural engineer approved of and the team was excited about. With a space confirmed last week and plans to get the seedlings in the ground by the end of the month, Schantz believes they’ll still be able to grow enough for the markets, local restaurants and supper clubs this season.
Being financially viable is a primary goal for the project, which is estimated to cost just under $200,000. Each of the partners invested in the start-up, and money also was raised through several equity investors, a bank loan and fundraising events, including a page on the fundraising website kickstarter.com.
“I think that if we can prove to capital investors that the farm can actually generate profits then we can get people with serious money interested in funding these kinds of projects,” said Chris Parachini, project manager for the Brooklyn Grange and co-owner of Roberta’s pizzeria.
“We really just want to make something that can stand on its own two feet.”
Brooklyn Grange head farmer Ben Flanner first ventured into urban farming last April in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, when he and Annie Novak, Children’s Gardening Coordinator at The New York Botanical Garden, helped begin a 6,000 square foot rooftop farm. Flanner, 28, previously worked a desk job at E-Trader online.
Flanner teamed up with Chris Parichini and Brandon Hoy, co-owners of the pizza place Roberta’s in Bushwick, after selling them some locally grown tomatoes. Parichini and Hoy were already venturing into their own version of urban agriculture by starting several greenhouses in the back lot of the restaurant on top of old shipping containers. The three brought on Gwen Schantz who was working in the pizza kitchen of Roberta’s, and Anastasia Cole, an urban-agriculture enthusiast who helps with the public relations of the project.
“I think all of our skills work well together,” Schantz said. “This is something that we’re all invested in and we’re not going to give up on it. The idea is just too good.”
Schantz says the team is motivated by the advantages of growing food locally. Farming in the city will remind people where their food comes from and help them better understand how difficult it is to grow. Rooftop farms also absorb rainwater, which helps minimize the amount of water that must flow through the often-overwhelmed city sewage system. Rooftop farms reduce the amount of heat that is absorbed by roofs and released into the city, minimizing heating and cooling costs. The farm’s compost system will help reduce waste.
For the Brooklyn Grange, the farm in Queens is just the start. The goal is to expand and encourage farms on every rooftop that can carry one.
“We really are the dream team,” Schantz said. “Not because we’re the dreamiest people that should be doing this, but because we really do have a dream and we want to see it a reality.”
Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network
SACRAMENTO – The Civil Justice Association of California today announced its support of Proposition 14, the open primary measure, on the June 8 primary election ballot.
“Proposition 14 will help Californians elect lawmakers who will spend less time squabbling with one another and more time putting our state back on financial track,” said CJAC President John H. Sullivan.
“The Civil Justice Association is supporting Proposition 14 because it will enable more candidates to run who cannot be captured by narrow, special interests such as the personal injury lawyer industry.”
He said the Proposition 14’s benefits are well-summarized in a Ventura County Star editorial supporting the measure: “Memo to California voters: If you’re tired of dysfunctional government where ideology trumps good public policy, vote yes on Proposition 14 in June.”
Combined with an existing new law that charges a neutral, independent commission with redrawing legislative district lines, Sullivan said Proposition 14 will better enable the Legislature to find balanced solutions to the state’s problems. California’s courts, as well as an array of schools and state and local government services, will benefit from a realistic, responsible funding and expenditure plan, he said.
To learn more, visit www.yeson14openprimary.com.
It’s official. Army Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the director of the Joint Staff and a former corps commander in Iraq under Gens. David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno, has been nominated to command the final phase of the Iraq war. The respected Austin’s confirmation is pretty much certain.
If and when Austin returns to Iraq, he’ll be tasked with executing the total withdrawal of 50,000 U.S. forces by December 2011, in line with the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement. By September, the war will be officially renamed Operation New Dawn to reflect the massive change in focus. There’s a chance there still won’t be a new Iraqi government for Austin to partner with, but his primary mission aside from the withdrawal will be advising and assisting the Iraqi army and police, even as insurgent violence against U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians persists. His confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee — not yet scheduled — will probably be the most fulsome discussion so far of how national leadership views the end of the U.S.’s long and unhappy presence in Iraq.
Can Google improve green technology?
Well-known cleantech investor Google is looking further afield – all the way to Europe – for green energy opportunities, according to its head of green business, Ben Kott.
Kott told Reuters at a briefing in London that Google was looking at power generation projects in Europe. Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm, has been branching out from investments near its California base to a $39 million bet on a North Dakota wind farm and now, possibly, to Europe.
Is there a strategy here?
It’s difficult to discern.
Google.org has broadly outlined its green principles through the slogan RE<C (develop renenewable energy cheaper than coal) and has a three-step plan.
1) make grants and investments in renewable energy
2) advance public policy to accelerate development of renewables
3) use Google products to enable innovation and raise awareness
Parts 2 and 3 of the plan are easy enough; company executives have been vocal in their support of green energy policies and are trying to cut energy waste through its smart metering application, PowerMeter.
But the company, which has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on green energy ventures, has been all over the place with part 1.
Google started off with venture capital-style investments in companies with promising technology such as BrightSource Energy, eSolar, SilverSprings Networks and AltaRock Energy.
The investments have met with varying degrees of success – BrightSource scored a $1.37 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy for its Ivanpah Solar Power Complex in February and has overcome regulatory and conservation hurdles.
Meanwhile, Geothermal developer AltaRock abandoned its Geysers drilling project near San Francisco amidst (though not necessarily because of ) concerns about whether digging deep into the earth could trigger earthquakes.
Having dabbled in emerging technologies, Google’s Green Business Operations Manager Rick Needham said the company’s next step is investment in the 169.5 megawatt wind farm, developed by NextEra Energy Resources.
This is where it gets confusing.
Needham, in his blog post on the investment, talks about the need to
accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects.
But is there any particular reason to invest in a project in North Dakota, other than a general commitment to corporate responsibility? What about Europe?
It seems that Google.org is mired in an internal debate that mirrors the biggest dispute in green energy – what we might call the Revkin/Bell Labs vs. Romm/deployment split.
Does Google devote its resources to funding a greentech Bell Labs for the next millennium that will create the technological innovations necessary to supplant coal?
Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin, among others, advocates this approach to green energy.
On the other side, we have Climate Progress blogger Joseph Romm, who believes that the technology necessary to save mankind already exists and simply needs to be deployed. We don’t have time for whiz-bang innovations, Romm says, which will take 25 years to gain just 1 percent of the market.
Google’s wind farm bet follows this strategy.
The implications of this split are clear for Google: it can double down on innovation in the hope that its bets on technology can make green energy affordable and scalable or it can devote resources to proven technologies that will deliver real megawatts to customers – and perhaps even become carbon neutral in the process.
Put another way, should Google build a better windmill or build lots of them? It can’t do both effectively with only.
A few investments in promising technologies and in wind farms scattered around the globe is not going to change the world.
And isn’t changing the world what Google is about?
Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
Score one for materials science. Arlington, WA-based MicroGreen Polymers said today it has raised $6.9 million in Series B funding, including a new strategic investment from Waste Management (NYSE: WM), based in Houston, TX. Existing investors WRF Capital, Northwest Energy Angels, and other private investors also participated. MicroGreen says the money will be used to hire more engineering, sales, and marketing staff, and to expand the company’s commercial production capabilities for consumer products.
MicroGreen Polymers spun out of the University of Washington in 2002, the brainchild of graduate students Greg Branch and Krishna Nadella. The idea was to use high-pressure liquid carbon dioxide to generate tiny microbubbles in plastics to expand the material and allow manufacturers to maintain most properties of regular plastic, while using a lot less of it. The MicroGreen technique also creates an insulating layer of air inside the plastic, which can protect people from burning themselves while holding their morning coffee, among other applications.
The company raised $1.6 million last July. But the new money means MicroGreen can accelerate its entry into the consumer market. Later this year, the company says, it will begin selling sheets of its material for food-service applications like packaging. It will also sell a thermally insulated beverage cup that is recyclable and made from recycled material.
“We’re excited to accelerate our growth plans for the commercialization of our technology and products,” said Tom Malone, CEO of MicroGreen, in a statement. He cited the potential of MicroGreen’s technology to “dramatically reduce the environmental footprint of plastics, help our customers reduce raw material costs and transition to more post-consumer recycled materials, and generate value for our company.”
UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS
