iMedia

Back after a brief break

iMedia Kentucky will be back on Monday, July 20 after a brief break.

A Biology for Altruism

[cross-posted from the IdeaFestival web log] Dr. Lee Alan Dugatkin, a professor of Biology at the University of Louisville, has been doing research on the evolution of goodness in humans and non-humans for the last twenty years. As he points out here and in his 2008 IdeaFestival presentation, altruistic behavior can be found throughout the animal kingdom. His forthcoming book, "Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose" is a tale of both natural and American history and will be the subject of talk planned for IF'09.

Wayne

No trust, no wealth

What are the economics of trust? Given the erratic nature of markets, trust, an expectation of fair dealing between individuals, is much more than that. Jim Harford, Forbes:

Being able to trust people might seem like a pleasant luxury, but economists are starting to believe that it's rather more important than that. Trust is about more than whether you can leave your house unlocked; it is responsible for the difference between the richest countries and the poorest.

Hat tip: Jonah Lehrer.

Is the U.S. in the running to win the green technology innovation race?

Is the United States even in the running to win the green energy technology race? Venture capitalist John Doerr asks Stanford President John Hennessy why, of the top 30 companies in solar, wind and advanced batteries, are only six American companies?

Businesses need to think like Designers

Why are so many business schools teaching design? Why are so many top design schools graduates coveted by business start ups? Champion of "integrative thinking," Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, talked about the importance of design thinking to business in a recent interview. Have a listen.

Think like bees: Self-organizing HVAC systems save energy

To save energy in large distributed HVAC systems, think like a bee. From Signtitfic, a science and technology forecasting organization:

A startup based in Toronto says that it has come up with a way to reduce energy use by mimicking the self-organizing behavior of bees. REGEN Energy has developed a wireless controller that connects to the control box on a piece of building equipment and functions as a smart power switch. Once several controllers have been activated, they detect each other using a networking standard called ZigBee and begin negotiating the best times to turn equipment on and off. The devices learn the power cycles of each appliance and reconfigure them to maximize collective efficiency...... Before making a decision, he explains, a node will consider the circumstances of other nodes in its network. For example, if a refrigerator needs to cycle on to maintain a minimum temperature, a node connected to a fan or pump will stay off for an extra 15 minutes to keep power use below a certain threshold.

"What's very dangerous is not to evolve"

In touting his new hit product, Kindle, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos may indeed be channeling his inner Steve Jobs. The device might do for text what the iPod has done for music. But there's a much bigger lesson to be learned, according to Fast Company: "What's very dangerous," Bezos concludes, "is not to evolve."

Synthetic tree uses "coal-fired" technology to collect carbon

Using technology that "is similar to what is used to collect carbon from flue stacks at coal-fired power plants," Fast Company reports on a synthetic tree that captures carbon up to 1,000 times faster than real trees.

It could potentially be most useful at gathering carbon from small, distributed sources like gasoline in cars and jet fuel from planes--places where carbon is otherwise impossible to collect.
The synthetic tree works by collecting CO2 on a sorbent, cleaning and pressurizing the gas, and releasing it. [Professor of geophysics at Columbia University Klaus] Lackner's tree (which looks nothing like a tree) is flexible in size and could fit in the design of industrial facilities or enclosed in barn-like structures in rural locations.
Lackner and his company, Global Research Technologies, have been working on the technology since 1998, and now they have an early model to show for it.

Businesses could learn a lot from a seat at the Poker table

Via Creative Generalist, this Harvard Business Review article asks a particularly relevant question for businesses in an age of fluid markets and information ubiquity. If competitive advantages don't last long, if "hypercompetition" is the rule, the "skill of getting out of things" and refocusing an organization is just as important as being able to recognize opportunity in the first place. I wonder what businesses could learn from Poker pros about letting go of a once-solid position. [Cross-posted from the IdeaFestival]

Harnessing urban windpower

Is urban wind power just a nice idea? Hardly, Wired reports:

The first rigorous, worldwide study of high-altitude wind power estimates that there is enough wind energy at altitudes of about 1,600 to 40,000 feet to meet global electricity demand a hundred times over....

Even better, the best high-altitude wind-power resources match up with highly populated areas including North America’s Eastern Seaboard and China’s coastline.

Estimates from the cited study put the "wind power density" at 16 kilowatts per square meter.