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Tulane University invites nominations and applications for The Sacks Endowed Distinguished Chair in Civic Engagement and Social Entrepreneurship. We seek a renowned scholar and/or a uniquely accomplished practitioner who aspires to be a senior academic leader – an individual with a demonstrated interest in civic engagement, public service, and/or social entrepreneurship. The Sacks Chair will join a highly committed team of Tulane faculty and staff who together will create an undergraduate program in civic engagement and social entrepreneurship that will mentor and train a remarkable generation of students that seeks to come to Tulane and move to New Orleans to be part of the most important urban (and regional) renewal effort in American history.

The ideal academic candidate will be eligible for a tenured academic appointment at the rank of associate professor or above. The ideal practitioner candidate will have demonstrated the qualities of leadership, vision, and innovation that will be required of the Sacks Chair.

The Sacks Endowed Distinguished Chair in Civic Engagement and Social Entrepreneurship will benefit from and capitalize on the elevation of public service and civic engagement as a centerpiece of Tulane’s mission post-Katrina, including the creation of the nation’s first and only undergraduate major in social entrepreneurship at a major research university. Tulane’s President, Scott Cowen, for example, recently won the prestigious Carnegie’s Academic Leadership Award for a “commitment to excellence” in the areas of civic engagement and social entrepreneurship in the New Orleans community.

(See http://tulane.edu/news/releases/pr_092109.cfm and http://tulane.edu/news/releases/pr_090809.cfm.)The Sacks Chair will also lead efforts to stimulate and draw young entrepreneurs to Louisiana, help coordinate the efforts of socially-focused enterprises, and leverage extensive public and private social program funding, as well as philanthropy, throughout the Gulf Coast region.

Please send nominations and applications to Professor Charles R. Figley, Chair, Sacks Endowed Distinguished Chair in Civic Engagement and Social Entrepreneurship, c/o Melissa Bender, Tulane University, 200 Gibson Hall, 6823 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70118 or to mbender {at} tulane(.)edu. Applicants should submit a letter detailing their qualifications for, and interest in, the position, along with a curriculum vitae and the names of four references.

Tulane University is committed to diversity and especially encourages applications and nominations from women and minorities. No candidate names will be disclosed save for those ultimately invited as finalists for on-campus visits. Salary and benefits are competitive and negotiable.

Review of applications will begin November 1 and will continue until the position is filled.

Tulane University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer

Slashdot points us to the story of an 11-year-old student who tried to build his own motion-detector system as a science project, and when he brought it to school to show people, school officials thought it was a bomb and freaked out. They called the police, evacuated the school and all of the expected chaos followed. Law enforcement even brought in a robot to examine the device, and the student’s house was searched for explosives (none found, of course). After all of this (and it was said that the student and his parents were “very cooperative” throughout the ordeal) you might think the family deserves an apology. Instead:

The student will not be prosecuted, but authorities were recommending that he and his parents get counseling, the spokesman said. The student violated school policies, but there was no criminal intent….

I’m trying to figure out what “policies” could have been violated, and why it would require that he and his parents get counseling. It wasn’t the kid who did anything wrong. It was the school officials who freaked out. Perhaps they should be the ones to seek counseling?

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Today, Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat is up for grabs in Massachusetts. Shocking as it may seem, polls indicate that the Republican candidate Scott Brown actually has a shot at beating Democrat Martha Coakley. Like Megan, I have my doubts that this will happen. It just seems beyond belief that Kennedy’s seat could fall into the hands of Republicans.

Still, there’s been a lot of speculation regarding what a Brown win could mean for health care reform. But what about the broader business picture? What would a Brown win mean for the market and business?

Last Friday, CNBC investing pundit Jim Cramer proclaimed that the market would celebrate a Brown win. First he explained that if it causes health care reform’s failure, then the stocks of HMO’s, pharmaceuticals and medical device makers would all take a major hit. But then he continues (full video at end of post):

More important, though, I think investors who are nervous about the dictatorship of the Pelosi proletariat will feel at ease, and we could have a gigantic rally off a Coakley loss and a Brown win. It will be a signal that a more pro-business, less pro-labor government could be in front of us.

In general, I wouldn’t be so convinced that the market would be looking for one specific party or the other to lose its rubber stamp. In general, the market loves gridlock, no matter who is in power. And if Democrats lose their 60-seat filibuster-proof majority, then the investors and traders could be very pleased. Gridlock means less legislation and less political uncertainty. Suddenly political risk has a smaller effect in the equation.

But thinking about some of the major legislative efforts on Democrats agenda, I can also see where Cramer is coming from when singling out Pelosi & co., in particular. First, there’s health care. Although Congress’ reform push is a boon for the medical industry, it would be incredibly costly for everyone else in business. Cap and trade would put business in a similar situation. Some big firms who benefit from receiving the carbon credits for free from the government would benefit, but essentially everyone else — especially small business — would suffer. Pro-union legislation could also be pushed aside.

So my interpretation of the Democrats retaining their majority would be that big business would mostly be just fine, but smaller firms probably won’t fare as well. They’ll have more trouble competing if health care reform, cap and trade and stricter regulation triumph. If those efforts are in jeopardy, then the market could be pleased. A broader recovery in small business would also likely mean a faster economic recovery, since small business is a more major driver for job creation.

Then, there are taxes. They’ll have to rise before too long, given the nation’s deficit woes, but you can be pretty sure that Republicans will resist any tax increases with all their might. Again, the market would love such an outcome. Lower taxes mean higher corporate earnings, which bring higher stock prices.

But ultimately, I’d be surprised if we really had true gridlock, even with a Brown win. Instead, I think you’ll see legislation get through, but it will have a distinctive Republican influence. In the health care reform debate, Republicans had little voice regarding what the bill looked like. If Democrats lose #60, I’d expect that to change. That’s what we’re already beginning to see with the Senate version of financial reform. Other measures that also eventually pass could, again, be reshaped in order to drum up Republican support.

The market would still appreciate such an outcome. It prefers moderate action, because that changes the equation less, as opposed to strong partisan politics. And a Brown win might result in exactly the kind of inaction or weak action by Washington that investors would celebrate.

Other Great AndroidGuys Posts

• January 14, 2010 — New Ping Feature in waze Due Shortly (1)
• January 15, 2010 — Wikitude 4 Now Available (4)
• December 17, 2009 — Waze Announces Holiday Themed Version of its Free Navigation App, Launches Contest (0)
• December 10, 2009 — The Roads Most Traveled – Rummble Brings Us All Even Closer (7)
• October 27, 2009 — App Radar: Volume 2 (3)

When I traveled in Japan last winter, one of my favorite dishes was matsutake dobin mushi. Matsutakes are wonderfully fragrant pine mushrooms, and dobin (“teapot”) mushi (“steamed”) is a soup steamed in a small teapot. Put these two words together, and you have matsutake dobin mushi, a nourishing mushroom soup.

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RBS analyst Bob Janjuah sent out his predictions on 2010 and what he sees for the coming year.

What he really likes is commodities:

RBS: Not all sovereigns have bad and/or fast deteriorating balance sheets (as a result of highly risky fiscal and monetary paths). Core Europe, much of NJA, Oz, Norway, Brazil all spring to mind. I think that bonds, currencies, credit and equities in such parts of the world will (a) outperform their peer grp equivalent asset classes in the bad and/or fast deteriorating sovereign balance sheet zones, but (B) will do merely OK on an absolute basis.

Elsewhere I think hard assets, most obviously to me GOLD and even CRUDE, will do EXTREMELY well. Over the belly of 2010 I expect to CRUDE up at $100 and Gold up at $1500.

I like commodities, anything which Bernanke and King can’t print at the press of a button.

Q2/Q3 2010 is when we will see the S&P down in the low 800s or lower, Gold at $1500, Crude at $100, the EURO XO Index up at 700/700+. We will see BUNDS massively outperform Gilts and USTs. In the 10yr, I expect the Bund/UST spread to be at least 100bps – ie, 10yr USTs to yield 100bps+ more than 10yr Bunds.

(REMEMBER: None of this has anything to do with actual near term CPI-style inflation – assuming of course YOU still believe the data or believe that the official data tells even a half of the whole story – but rather everything to do with rapidly deteriorating sovereign credit risk/debasement/monetisation/shattered & zero policymaker credibility all being priced into bond yields).

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Don’t Count On OPEC’s Surplus For 2010
• 5 Entrepreneurship Trends To Watch In 2010
• RBS Analyst Andy Chaytor: Forget Treasuries, Check Out Foreign Debt And Commodities In 2010

A newly-completed waxwork figure of First Lady Michelle Obama joined a similar statue of her husband President Barack Obama at Madame Tussauds in London this week.

The wax figure of Mrs. Obama standing in the Oval Office was unveiled at Madame Tussauds’ London museum to mark the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Obama.

The stylish figure sports a sleeveless purple dress and black sweater. Madame Tussauds spokeswoman Liz Edwards says the figure of the President has been extremely popular at the museum and she expects the waxwork of the First Lady will b a big crowd pleaser as well.

The figure of Michelle Obama will be on display in Londo until mid-April, when it will be moved to its permanent home at the Madame Tussauds Museum in Bangkok.

Last week ended with the encouraging cosmological news that the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HiFi), on the Herschel Space Observatory, is once again working. How stars are born, and the influence of the environments in which this takes place is, as you might imagine, an important astrophysical question. Part of Herschel’s mission is to address this issue by using HiFi, which is a high-resolution spectrometer, to provide detailed measurements of the composition of stellar nurseries. This question is also important for cosmology, where we are increasingly interested in the details of how galaxies formed and evolved over cosmic time, in order to be able to separate out the astrophysics from the features of large scale structure that are sensitively dependent on the background cosmology.

Herschel, which was launched along with the Planck satellite, but a few months into operation, HiFi developed an electronics problem and was switched off. This week, after a careful study of the incident, HiFi’s reserve electronics were switched on, and appear to be working correctly. While HiFi was down, Herschel’s other two instruments – Pacs and Spire were able to hog the observing time and do some lovely far-infrared and sub-millimeter science. To make up for this, the plan is now to give HiFi a larger slice of the observing pie for a while, in order to make sure it can accomplish its mission.

All in all this is wonderful news for cosmology and I’m delighted that another of our suite of outstanding experiments is once again up and running. One thing did make me giggle a little though. Speaking to the BBC, Frank Helmich, who leads HiFi, pulls one of my favorite academic tricks, saying

“I don’t watch much television but I know Crime Scene Investigation and this was just such an investigation – but in space! We found out what happened and then we designed all the mitigating measures,”

The CSI angle is a mild attempt to connect with popular culture for the benefit of the large and diverse readership of a BBC story, and I think that isn’t a bad idea at all. But what I find hilarious is the initial qualification. Although irrelevant to the point, it has to be said anyway, to satisfy what I’ve referred to before as the unspoken academic code, which I’ve paraphrased as

“Do not engage in any activity that is part of popular culture. Such activities include, but are not limited to; playing video games, playing card games (bridge excepted), watching movies without a serious social message and watching television (PBS, in particular NOVA, occasionally excepted). Any violation of the above may lead to a stubborn stain on your intellectual reputation, which may only be removed by repeatedly attending highly experimental theater.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to some interpretive dance.

Sergio Garcia thinks it won’t be long before Tiger Woods returns to tournament play.

Woods is taking an indefinite break from golf since his Nov. 27 car accident in Florida and subsequent revelations of extra marital affairs.

He has not been seen in public since the crash, and there has been no word on a date for his return.

“The best thing for Tiger at the moment is to get on the course and do what he knows best,” said Garcia, who had a personal rivalry on the PGA Tour with Woods over the past 10 years.

“Only he knows when he is going to come back. I have got the feeling that it’s going to be earlier that what everybody thinks.”

Garcia spoke Tuesday ahead of the Abu Dhabi Championship in the United Arab Emirates, where the Spaniard will return to action Thursday after a seven-week layoff for treatment of a tendon problem in his right wrist.

“I think he (Woods) is very strong mentally and it’s not like the break he had for injury a couple of years back when he had the knee problem,” Garcia said.

“If you can’t walk you can’t swing. It’s different.”

While Woods’ continued absence might make it easier for Garcia to end his elusive 11-year search for a victory in one of golf’s four majors, he would prefer to achieve that feat playing against the world’s best player.

“There’s nothing better than playing against the best,” Garcia said.

“But there is always an upside and a downside. The downside when he is playing is that you know your chances of winning are a little lower.

“The upside is that when you know you are playing against him and you manage to beat him, it’s always that much sweeter to have beaten the best. So for the game, it is not good that Tiger is out. We hope he gets back as soon as possible.”

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

The Sony VAIO Z is one of the most portable notebooks around with a svelte form weighing in at just over 3 pounds. Sony put a lot of power in that aluminum and carbon fiber frame to round out the offering. The Z is being refreshed in March, and Sony has an intriguing option of four SSDs to offer RAID for the user’s data to the cloud and back. No telling what quad SSDs might cost, but if you have to ask…

Expect two new models in March, both with a 13.1-inch display. The VAIO VPCZ11Z9E and VAIO VPCZ11X9E differ mainly in Core i7 processor speed and available RAM. The two models available for ordering have either 128 or 256 GB SSDs in the basic configuration, as the Z series offers no models with conventional hard drives. The cheaper of the two will reportedly start at around $1,000, which is not too shabby given everything the VAIO Z brings to the gear bag. If that price holds true, it is a big drop from the current VAIO Z that Sony sells.

Why are so many lovely ideas absolutely destroyed by greed?

Take Rethink’s extremely clever clothing hangers. They save manufacturing plastic by allowing you to beef up their structure by screwing in always-plentiful used water bottles—plus, these small hangers are portable to boot.

Simple, right? Kinda awkward in practice, sure, but A for eco-Utopian effort.

Each Rethink hanger costs $7.99.

10% goes to some sort of charity, but really, that donation is pretty much blood money. $7.99. For more plastic. Even from a small manufacturer, that pricing is ludicrous. [Rethink via stilsucht via OhGizmo!]

Erin Kutz wrote:

Boston-based HLM Venture Partners has closed a $65 million first fundraising round for its third fund, Dow Jones VentureWire reported today. The firm, which focuses on investments in medical-device firms and healthcare information technology and services, hopes to raise a total of $200 million for its HLM Venture Partners III LP fund. The first round, closed late last year, came from some of the firm’s existing limited partners, HLM partner Edward Cahill told VentureWire.

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So after hearing about some amazing specifications that appeared not long ago on SonyStyle Japan website for VAIO Z model, Europe followed suit and presented its spec’ed out version – which pretty much blows our minds. We have handled VAIO Z at the CES and were pretty pleased with its build and of course the backlit keyboard was an awesome addition to it. However we were not able to get any details about available configurations for the US market. Current US offering still listed on SonyStyle.com (customized) is:

• 512GB (256GBx2) SATA Solid State Drive with RAID technology
• 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P9700 (2.80GHz)
• Blu-ray Disc™ playback/burning

That configuration will hit your wallet for about $4000. Here is what the European and soon US configuration will offer:

• Intel® Core i7-620M 2.66GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology (max. 3.33 GHz)
• Quad SSD (RAID 0) 256GB
• 6GB DDR3 SDRAM (1066 MHz)
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M GPU + Intel® HD Graphics with 1GBB GDDR3 VRAM

Not a bad offering, although Bluray drive was not mentioned, just a regular DVD-RW. Check out video below as well!

Graceful, perfectly flat surfaces show you just how marvelously thin the VAIO X is, at about 13.9 mm. Attention to design is evident in every detail. Many pleasant surprises await you in this new VAIO. What’s behind this Sony success story? Read on for some insight from the people behind the magic, courtesy of Sony Design.

Tsuge:I’ve supervised development of many different notebooks, coordinating VAIO design, but this project stands out from the rest. Unlike other projects, before any plans for commercialization, some of our engineers took the initiative and explored the kind of VAIO they truly wanted to make. They even created a mock-up. By the time we first saw the mock-up in the design group, it had already persuaded project planning to go ahead with commercialization.

The model was about 13.9 mm thin. At that stage, the engineers knew the general approach for the main components, and they were confident about somehow working out the details later. Now I’ve been involved in VAIO design for many years, and I could tell right away that development wouldn’t be easy. I knew that without hard work, we would never turn this model into a real product.

But once commercialization had been decided, based on the mock-up, we couldn’t very well go back and request to make it thicker for a little leeway. Our success would depend on designers capable of in-depth discussions with the engineers who had developed the blueprints for this notebook. Fortunately, just the right person stepped forward: Yujin Morisawa, a contributor in VAIO 505 Extreme design (seen above) a few years ago.

Morisawa:When designing the 2003 VAIO 505 Extreme, we faced technical limitations and a tight development schedule, and we had to resort to external network and display adapters. I regretted this and wished we could have offered built-in interfaces. I saw the new VAIO X as a good opportunity to overcome the limitations we faced last time.

First, we focused on the Ethernet and VGA ports. In both interfaces, we could not use standard components, which were thicker than the body itself. Should we make the body thicker at these positions? Or should we require adapters, as we did for the VAIO 505 Extreme? Both options were unacceptable to me.

The only real solution was to develop new parts. Working with our engineers, we incorporated an Ethernet port that opens and closes. It’s noteworthy that the cover itself forms part of the interface. When closed, the cover conceals the gap that would otherwise be exposed, and when open, it reveals the port so you can connect a cable. I was concerned about the strength of the cover, but we avoided problems by having the cover detach before the breaking point (a tip from our engineers). And with that, we had redesigned the Ethernet port.

The VGA port was also difficult to design. These components are normally encircled by metal bands that are crimped, which sometimes leaves ugly wrinkles or warped edges. Because we insisted on a perfectly flat surface, there was no room to conceal the VGA port in the body. So we decided to develop a port that’s beautiful and sleek despite being exposed. We took a cue from HDMI port design and studied how to wrap a metal band around the interface. As for the result, I invite you to see for yourself. Only Sony would see it as a second chance to develop an older but still important legacy interface.

Tsuge:By notebook standards, 13.9 mm is quite thin. But if we left the edges looking crude and boxy, the unit wouldn’t look as thin as this measurement tells us it is. It would lack impact. We needed to make the thinness apparent, somehow, but with no leeway in the length and width headquarters expected, we seemed to have no recourse.

At this point, we created two mock-ups for a meeting with management to evaluate the design. One was as compact as possible, with boxy profile. The other was slightly longer and wider to demonstrate what we wanted to try—rigid arc design.

Morisawa:We can make products look thinner with tapering, metallic edges. This is effective, but it’s so common that it has become rather stale. Above all, the style would be uninspiring if the surfaces you see most often when opening the lid are all flat.

There’s also an opposite approach, which involves carving out the sides, so to speak. Lids designed this way resemble the capital Greek letter sigma (S) when closed. Viewed from an angle, the lids seem to float in space, which can emphasize thinness. It’s a good idea, but ultimately we were unsatisfied with the appearance when open. Light reflected from the part carved away, along the edge, even makes the body look thicker.

We needed to find a new approach. After a series of attempts, we found the answer in curved edges. As with S-shaped edges, we “carve out” the sides, but the difference is that these surfaces are not simply beveled but curved. Light reflecting off flat, beveled surfaces looks rectangular, but reflections from curved surfaces look linear. This accentuates the slim body more than regular edge shapes do and subtly updates the style.

We call this new edge shape “rigid arc” design. “Rigid” because this element of design also makes the body tougher. It has higher torsional rigidity than plain, flat edges. When the body is 13.9 mm thin, you do all you can to ensure structural rigidity, because you can’t add any reinforcements inside. In this sense, rigid arc design also fulfills a key structural role in this model.

But I must admit, the engineers weren’t very happy about this edge shape. Special care is required to prevent the aluminum panel from warping when fabricated this way. It would take time to verify that the design was sound. Which should we prioritize—the development schedule or our ideal design? In the end, Sony management and engineers supported the rigid arc approach, and we were prepared to invest the time required to make it happen.

Morisawa: We had just reached the final stage of development when we were suddenly requested to design the extended “X battery.” Everyone in design and engineering was taken by surprise, and normally, we would have declined this kind of request. Nevertheless I knew that a maximum runtime of nearly 20.5 hours would appeal to people, and we decided to take on battery design.

Battery life is affected by thermal diffusion, and the structure we chose to dissipate heat was partly inspired by high heels. Ultimately, it was given a more massive appearance, like aerodynamic sports car parts. We thought people might like how the notebook gives a different impression depending on the battery used—light or heavy-duty. It’s also easier to type with the notebook propped up in back, after the X battery is attached. The notebook is supported at five positions on the bottom to prevent it from being bent by forceful typing.

We originally considered having the battery attached by means of a latch, but that would require drilling large holes on the bottom. But for owners who don’t use the X battery, the holes would have been meaningless. That was unacceptable to me, so I suggested screws instead. Installation of the X battery involves two small parts, already used on the notebook for other purposes. I think it was the logical decision, based on cost, ease of implementation, and design.

Morisawa: The rose gold VAIO logo also distinguishes this as special model, and we hoped the gold body color option would tempt more women to pick one up.

It’s harder than you might imagine to ensure a smooth, even finish in rose gold coloring of the metal logo. And it’s not easy matching the gold of the aluminum body to that of the carbon fiber lid. Achieving exactly the right color was a painstaking experience.

Redeveloping interface ports, incorporating our rigid arc design, and signing our work with a rose gold VAIO logo. All of this is costly development. But to make up for it, we carefully studied the production line in advance and tried to reduce the quantity and types of parts to streamline production. We also investigated paints that would bring out rich hues in fewer steps. Countless close collaborations of this kind, between designers and engineers, helped keep the total cost under control. Our parts and paint suppliers also supported us and accepted our exacting needs. It took the coordinated effort of everyone in development to make the VAIO X a reality.

Tsuge: Over the course of this project, we encountered many difficulties, and frankly, I wondered several times if we had reached a dead end. What helped us overcome the challenges was a shared awareness that this project was very important for Sony. Ultraportables still don’t dominate the computer market. But as an opportunity to demonstrate what sets Sony apart, this is the most critical category for us.

The VAIO X is as thin and light as a paper notebook, and anyone can easily take it with them. We haven’t compromised on performance, either; it will stand up to rigorous business use. The same Atom processors, yet Sony models are different. I know you’ll see what I mean when you pick one up yourself.