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I’m sure the model holding the new Samsung Digital Photo Frame 700Z 7-inch OLED photo frame at CES2010 will have a lot less clothing than this one. The frame comes with 4GB of memory and Bluetooth support. [DA via Oled-Display]

The Dunkerque 2010 conference will explore how local sustainability can represent an answer to the current economic, social and climate challenges and how it can be further implemented at the European level under the actual financial and political frameworks. It will also offer a unique opportunity to assess and push forward the progress and achievements of European local governments in the field of sustainable development.

After the conferences of Aalborg 1994, Lisbon 1996, Hanover 2000, Aalborg 2004 andSevilla 2007, more than 1000 local government leaders from all over Europe as well as representatives from European and national networks of local governments, European institutions and NGOs are expected to take part in the largest European conference dedicated to local sustainable development.

More information about the programme and the registration here

In a couple of days, Chrysler and Fiat will take the wraps off of their Fiat 500 electric concept at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show. The duo have said nothing about a production model but we wouldn’t discount the possibility.

According to AutoExpress, the Fiat 500 electric that we’ll see in Detroit will have a more than 5,000 lithium-ion battery cells. It will travel a total of 150 miles on a single charge thanks to a regenerative braking system and new aerodynamic updates. Recharging from a standard household socket should take up to 10 hours.

Since the batteries will increase the overall weight of the car, 0-60 mph will come in around 10 seconds with a top speed of 90 mph.

We’ll try to gather up more details at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show since Chrysler will not be holding a press conference.

Source: AutoExpress

– By: Omar Rana

The next generation Nissan Micra, or, if we are to trust rumors which say this will be the Japanese carmaker’s future "global compact car," has been caught testing, from a distance (and with a shaky hand, apparently), prior to its presumed unveiling in March this year.

The limited information available on the Micra hint to the car being built on a new platform, dubbed V, which will also be used as the basis for a small MPV and a compact sedan. According to a report by A… (read more)

Opera Software hasn’t exactly been flying high lately so the latest shakeup of the company’s management structure may prove to be just what it needed. Cofounder and CEO for the past 15 years at the Norwegian company, Jon von Tetzchner, is stepping down from his position and is being replaced by Lars Boilesen, the company’s chief commercial officer (CCO) so far, with quite a few years at Opera as well.

“Lars Boilesen brings both a very significant industry experience and a deep understanding of Opera to the role as the company’s Chief Executive Officer. In short, Opera’s spirit runs through his veins,” Jon von Tetzchner, the company’s former CEO said in a statement.

“My decision to assume a new role in Opera is based on a lengthy consideration process. As outgoing Chief Executive, I leave confident in the company’s continued leadership in key markets, our strong management team, our ongoing commitment to innovation, and our robust financial foundation,” he added.

Boilesen started working at Opera in 2000 and he served as the company’s Executive VP of Sales until 2005, when the company saw a great shift from being just a browser maker to a web browsing technology provider, offering tools and services to a big number of mobile devices, as well as consumer electronics devices.

He left Op… (read more)

Google has measures in place to ensure that legitimate blogs can’t get mistakenly taken offline as spam, but they’re apparently not enough to prevent certain Blogger sites from being caught in the crossfire. The recent plight of one blogger who had his blog unceremoniously removed after being reported for spam has brought this issue to light, though Google promises that further measures are about to be in place that will help mitigate it.

Blogger user John Hempton wrote an essay on January 2 about Astarra Strategic Fund, a fund management group that Hempton believes is fraudulent. In the post, he explained how Astarra fits into the Australian privatized social security system, noting that he sent a letter to authorities to voice his concerns that eventually got him into the newspapers. One day later, Hempton’s entire blog was no longer available on Blogger, with a note on his end from Google saying that the “spam prevention robots” had detected his blog as spam.

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I started my research career in what may have been the first and only age of science journalism. Newspapers were big and growing, and many had dedicated science sections; magazines like Scientific American and Science News appeared to be flourishing. But, even before I finished my PhD, our technician showed me a sign of things to come: a program called Mosaic that could let you go straight to weather satellite images without waiting for the five o’clock news. Fast-forward to the present day, and the newspaper business is collapsing, taking its science coverage with it, while scientists talk directly to the public through blogs and tweets. Despite all the changes, one thing has remained largely constant: the US public continues to suffer from serious scientific illiteracy.

Will the Web ultimately provide a killing blow or the resurrection of science journalism? I’ll be given the opportunity to pontificate on that topic at this year’s Science Online conference in North Carolina, where I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion with Ed Yong, Carl Zimmer, and David Dobbs. All of them have experience with both traditional journalism and new media, and should do a better job of providing perspective on some of the changes than I can.

But from my outsider’s perspective, it looks like newspapers will struggle to find their footing and, even if they do, they’re unlikely to have the resources to return to the golden era of science coverage. What I do expect I’ll do is talk a bit about our experiences with science coverage, and the opportunities and limitations of how things work here, and what they might say about online science reporting in general. To make some of this concrete: providing science coverage at a technology site provides a function similar to coverage in a newspaper: it puts science in front of people who might not otherwise bother to hunt down a dedicated science blog. But we’re doing that without the sorts of resources that a newspaper might have. In their better years, newspapers could afford to ship someone to the Arctic to cover polar researchers in their natural habitat.

I certainly don’t want to be completely Ars-centric, though; I expect I may also wind up discussing some of the material we’ve covered at Ars, such as the role of press releases and press release aggregators, and the potential of open-access science. You might also want to visit the blogs of the other panelists, as they’ve been considering some issues they feel might be worth discussing, as well.

In any case, I’d also like to offer our readers the opportunity to have some say about the discussion: what questions do you think need to be discussed, or what issues do you feel should be highlighted during the panel? (The plan is to record the session and post video, so you should have the chance to actually see some of the answers if your pet issues get discussed).

What is a “Brief” post?”

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Former Renault boss Flavio Briatore has won his legal case against the International Automobile Federation (FIA), the Reuters news agency reported a few minutes ago. The Italian boss contested the definitive ban imposed by the ruling body for his alleged involvement in the greatest race-fixing scandal in the history of Formula One, also known as the crash-gate.

The 59-year old launched his legal case ahead of the Paris’ Tribunal de Grande Instance in late November. When appearing … (read more)

Lois Lee, MD, MPH works in Children’s Emergency Department Injury Prevention Program

Having grown up in Florida, I never understood the appeal of winter sports until my son took up skiing. Now, to keep him and his sister active in the winter, we enjoy skiing, sledding and ice skating. These are great family activities, but they do carry some risk. Read on for safety tips to keep healthy while having fun in the cold!

Head injury

Children and adults are at risk for head injuries when participating in winter sports, either from running into another person or into a stationary object like a tree. Research has shown that wearing sports helmets can decrease brain injury risk. If you or your child has a head injury when skiing, snowboarding, sledding, snow tubing or skating, you should contact your doctor or be seen in the Emergency Department if any of the following symptoms are present:

• Not acting right, or acting “out of it”
• Sleepy or lethargic
• Loss of consciousness
• Vomiting
• Severe headache, a headache that is getting worse or a headache that does not improve with medication

Cold weather injury/hypothermia prevention

It’s important to wear appropriate clothing and to dress in layers to stay not only warm, but also dry. Check in often with your children to make sure they aren’t wet, cold or shivering. Make sure they stay away from lakes or ponds, which may appear frozen on the surface, but may not be strong enough to support even a child’s weight.

How do you keep your children both active and safe during the winter months?

If ESPN, Discovery, Imax, and Sony have it their way, 3D television may actually go from novelty to reality in 2011. I can’t wait for the sensory overload of white sharks trying to eat the pants out of me.

scovery, Imax, and Sony are expected to announce the channel—which will feature a mix of 3D content starting in 2011—at CES. It will be 24 hours, which make it different from the ESPN 3D network, which will only operate when they have any sports event filmed in 3D. [NYT and The Live Feed]

theodp writes “A few days ago, the Toronto Star reported that security experts point to ‘Israelification’ as a possible cure for what ails North America’s security-paralyzed airports. That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel’s, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience. ‘It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago,’ said Rafi Sela, president of a transportation security consultancy. Unless a more sensible approach to security is adopted, Sela warned that North American airports could be crippled by needless airport evacuations. As if to prove his point, Newark Liberty International Airport — which is planning to unleash $160,000 high-tech full-body scanners on travelers to improve security — had to be evacuated Sunday night and flights were grounded after a man walked the wrong way through a screening checkpoint exit to enter the secured side of a terminal. Looks like we may owe Mr. Sela an I-told-you-so on this one.”

I had seen the Toronto Star article when it came out, and it’s definitely worth reading. It does appear that the Israelis are a lot more focused on security that works, rather than security theater — though I don’t think any security system is foolproof. I do think that there’s a lot to what Sela says at the end of the article as to why the TSA hasn’t followed Israel’s lead:

“We have a saying in Hebrew that it’s much easier to look for a lost key under the light, than to look for the key where you actually lost it, because it’s dark over there. That’s exactly how (North American airport security officials) act,” Sela said. “You can easily do what we do. You don’t have to replace anything. You have to add just a little bit — technology, training. But you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security. And that is something that the bureaucrats have a problem with. They are very well enclosed in their own concept.”

As for the question on “full body scans,” while not mentioned in the article, it’s worth noting that Israeli airport security apparently doesn’t use such machines either. I saw an interview recently with an Israeli security expert, who said that using such machines (the ones that allow screeners to effectively see travelers naked) would create a much bigger mess, as traditional and religious men would become incredibly offended at screeners seeing their wives naked.

The key difference in the two systems is that the US (and most others) seem intent on scanning what you’re bringing on the plane. The Israelis are a lot more interested in who you are and how you act.

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Canadian heartthrob Justin Bieber is the latest celebrity to bite the Big One on the Interwebs. Teeners across the Globe rose Tuesday morning to find the World Wide Web atwitter with rumors that the “My World” star, 15, committed suicide at his home late Monday evening.

Could it be? Is Justin Bieber dead?

Don’t have a cow, ladies: MTV News snoops have done some investigating and assure us that the bright-eyed singing sensation is alive, well, and looking forward to having the cast taken off his fractured foot in the next few weeks.

You’re nobody ’till somebody kills you on the Internet!

Sony Europe has stated that the latest A-Series Walkman, the NWZ-A845, will be coming to the continent in February. The new A845 is part of a larger NW-A840 series, which initially had a Japan-only debut in late 2009 and has been available there in black and brown and up to 64GB. Unfortunately, it seems that Sony Europe is going to offer only the 16GB model in black, which is odd because I thought they would surely hit the market with a large capacity player – at least 32GB.

UPDATE: It appears that the Asia Pacific region is going to get the 16GB and 32GB Sony A840 series Walkman in February as well.

We have some doubt that the A-Series will show up at CES 2010, but then again the S745 is selling unannounced by Sony Canada so anything is possible.

The reason why I say this is according to one of my contacts, Sony had this set for a CES reveal but I think that the American MP3 player market is too volatile and Sony may not have wanted to make the gamble. This is why we might be seeing region-specific launches. The latest A-Series Walkman is absent from some more recent Sony CES documents I’ve witnessed. So my contact and I are literally betting a beer as to if it is going to launch at CES or not.

If you have forgotten, this simply is the most brilliant Walkman offering from Sony to date – it has all of the features people have been asking for in previous Walkmans while shedding what it needed to. In my opinion, this is the most stylish appearance I’ve seen in a personal media player – and it has a jaw-dropping 2.8 inch WQVGA OLED screen. This is also the thinnest Walkman ever created at only 7.2mm. Sony has also finally come to the table with a better assortment of capacities – with the NW-A845 (16GB, Y24,000), NW-A846 (32GB, Y30,000), and NW-A847 (64GB, Y40,000) all due on October 31st. What’s also new for the first time is a TV-out function, that can output at 720×480 (SD) quality.

We have further pictures and a video of the A840 series in our original exclusive, “Sony’s Gorgeous New A-Series Walkman Features OLED, Up To 64GB Capacity.”

Since 2007, the consensus of the economic establishment—bankers, policymakers, CEOs, stock analysts, pundits—has been catastrophically wrong. They didn’t see the economic storm clouds gathering. When the raindrops began to fall, they failed to forecast the deluge. As a result, throughout 2008, executives, investors, and consumers chased the economy down—cutting back after things unexpectedly got worse; cutting back again when the roof fell in.

The Great Panic of 2008 may have destroyed blind optimism. But if excessive optimism was the near-fatal pose in 2008, blind pessimism has emerged as the reflexive post-bust crouch…

Virtually all the market geniuses who hung on as the Dow was scythed in half between October 2007 and March 2009 failed to call the market turn. Most hedge-fund managers have chased the 60 percent rally since March, not led it. Economic forecasters similarly missed the dramatic turn in the overall economy this spring. Having failed to forecast that the economy would shrink at a 6 percent annual rate through the first quarter of 2009, economists also failed to project it would start growing again at a decent pace in June. And they’re still behind the curve. My bold prediction for 2010 is that the consensus of the forecasters surveyed by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve, which projects the economy will grow only 2.4 percent in 2010, is too pessimistic, perhaps by half.

Read the whole thing at Slate >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Jim Grant: The Economy Will Surge Back, We Just Don’t Know How
• We’re About To Make The Same Mistake We Made In 1937

That was the question that Tyler Cowen posed to Moodys’ chief economist Mark Zandi in an interview posted last week for the Big Think’s “What Went Wrong” series. If you follow my writing, then you know that I would love to see investors rid themselves of their dependence on the rating agencies. Since Zandi works for Moodys, I was very interested to hear his response. I don’t entirely agree.

First, let me say that I really like Zandi. I’ve talked to him a few times for articles, and he’s good at what he does, a nice guy and quite smart. He’s also one of those rare people who prefers to get things right, rather than bend himself into pretzels to fit into some political ideology. So I don’t think he’s just speaking the company line here, but expect that he really believes what he’s saying. Still, I disagree. He replies:

I think there’s a function for rating agencies because in a sense, there is a lot of despaired information and bringing it altogether is very costly and doing good analysis is difficult and you need scale to do it. Some bond houses are gaining that scale and doing that on their own. There’s the PIMCO’s of the world and other big bond houses that have the skill necessary to put together the staff to do the kind of analysis that needs to get done. But many other investors don’t have that scale and the rating agencies, in a sense, provide that for them. And so, there are scale economies in that kind of analysis and in a sense the rating agencies provide that.

Also, there’s a lot more esoteric kinds of bonds and securities that are issued and it always will makes sense to have, I think, something like a rating agency providing an opinion as to the quality of that particular bond or that security. So, I think there’s an economic reason for rating agencies, so I think they will always be around, obviously the role is going to change as a result of events, but I think there will always be a role for them.

I see things differently for two reasons.

First, how about the stock market? There’s plenty of information to analyze when evaluating a stock, but investors do that without an over-reliance on rating agencies. For that matter, banks and investment houses could develop fixed income research teams for bonds that serve a purpose similar to the equity research groups that exist today to look at stocks. That would provide a diverse spectrum of ideas, rather than a government-sponsored oligopoly of agencies charged with this task.

Second, maybe it’s good that full analyses of complex bonds are costly. I don’t know about you, but I think that there were entirely too many mortgage-backed securities in the market during the housing boom. Maybe if investors had to bear the cost involved with doing the analysis themselves, they would have been a little less eager to scoop up those bonds. Maybe then, demand for MBS would have been more restrained. Consequently, there would have been far fewer mortgage originations. The housing bubble might not have been nearly as severe, and we would have saved ourselves from a lot of trouble.

The point is that complex securities should be costly. When a market has a staggering demand for complexity, then there’s probably a market failure lurking in the shadows, particularly when investors aren’t doing the work. By having a few rating agencies that claim to understand these puzzling products, and the market accepting their declarations as gospel, investors will fail to assign the right cost to abstruse bonds. I think the market would ultimately benefit from a complexity premium.

I just wanted to post this graph, which I found while researching vaccinations.

Antivaxxers: bite me^*. We win.

Assisted living has rapidly emerged over the past decade as the long-term care of choice for older Americans, but a Harvard Medical School study reveals that in Massachusetts, this type of housing is far less available than it is nationwide.

The research, published today in the journal Health Affairs, also finds that assisted-living facilities – one of the fastest-growing forms of senior housing because they offer more privacy, freedom, and flexibility than nursing homes – are disproportionately located in more upscale areas…

Read more here (The Boston Globe)