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Tim Berners-Lee, the man attributed to the creation of the internet, gave a speech at an MIT symposium and shared his two decades worth of internet knowledge with the crowd. He spoke about a wide variety of issues, from net neutrality, which he is supportive of, to mobile web access. Berners-Lee's words concerning web access raised a couple of eyebrows, and definitely raised the interest of this writer. "Access to the Web is now a human right" he continues, "It's possible to live without the Web. It's not possible to live without water. But if you've got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger."

There is a vitally important national and state-level discussion taking place about how to address the government's frighteningly large deficits while limiting disruptions for all Americans. But while federal and state actions affect us all, much of what concerns Americans most directly and personally happens closer to home and increasingly, this means in our cities. Budget cuts simply can't derail efforts to make our cities smarter. Today our nation's cities are facing a "perfect storm." For many cities, their populations are growing at the same time that their budgets are shrinking. Today, for the first time, more than 50% of the world's population lives in cities. In the last decade large metropolitan areas in the U.S. grew by a combined 10% - nearly double the rate of the rest of the country. Our large metro areas now house two thirds of America's total population. They have become the dominant forces in our economy and society.

Google recently announced that it will help fund groundbreaking research by computer scientists and economists at Tel Aviv University.  The Blavatnik School of Computer Science is attempting to help computers make better decisions using a term they dubbed "regret." Head of the program Professor Yishay Mansour began this project earlier this year at the International Conference on Learning Theory in Haifa, Israel.  He and the other researchers are working on algorithms that would allow computers to learn from their past failures in an effort to make better predictions.  This is referred to as "minimizing virtual regret" by Mansour. "If the servers and routing systems of the Internet could see and evaluate all the relevant variables in advance, they could more efficiently prioritize server resource requests, load documents and route visitors to an Internet site, for instance," says Mansour.

In the growing global battle against substandard and counterfeit medicines, the Promoting the Quality of Medicines (PQM) program has launched a new, public database of medicines collected and analyzed in collaboration with stakeholders from countries in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. Free of charge and available to anyone with access to the internet, the Medicines Quality Database (MQDB) includes information on the quality of medicines collected from a variety of sources. To date, more than 8700 records of tested samples collected from Ghana, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Peru, Guyana and Colombia have been entered into the database.

The University of Connecticut and California State University researchers found that seafloor communities in a restricted fishing area in NOAA's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary showed indications of recovery from chronic fishing gear impacts but is not fully stable. The finding is significant because bottom trawlers, dredges and certain gillnets, for example, can alter the ocean floor and benthic ecosystems that provide food and shelter for fish and other marine species.

Researched and designed by technologist Michell Zappa, Envisioning Technology is a speculative and subjective overview of potential future technologies. Based on personal research and observations, this map is intended to facilitate predictions of where the technium is going, as well as provoke thought and stimulate debate. Due to the intrinsic difficulty of speculation, the visualization is not to be interpreted as a roadmap, but rather as a point of reference for those investigating (or designing) the future of technology. Each hub represents an important area of development to which actual technologies (shown as nodes) belong. The center of the map marks where we are today, and the further out points indicate how far into the future each technology is predicted to become mainstream. The visualization also attempts to distinguish the predicted importance of each area, shown by the relative size of the nodes

It's an unfamiliar neighborhood and you find yourself in the middle of a bunch of streets and buildings you've never seen before. Giving the environment a quick once-over, you make a snap decision about whether you're safe or not. And chances are, that first 'gut' call is the right one, say Binghamton University researchers Dan O'Brien and David Sloan Wilson in an article published in the current issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Your next new car hopefully won't be a lemon. But it could be a pineapple or a banana. That's because scientists in Brazil have developed a more effective way to use fibers from these and other plants in a new generation of automotive plastics that are stronger, lighter, and more eco-friendly than plastics now in use. They described the work, which could lead to stronger, lighter, and more sustainable materials for cars and other products, here today at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

In Innovation Deep Dive, Lisa Strausfeld from Pentagram has contrasted the drivers and the impact of innovation of various countries by way of an interactive line ranking. The visualization uses quite a large set of different datasets, ranging from Gallup and business schools reports, to the usual suspects like the UNESCO and the World Bank. The interface requires some trial-and-error to get used to (e.g. the data categories at the top are clickable), but creates a compelling overview of how different nations actually perform versus how their business executives perceive the same issue.

"The unique facility looks and behaves like an actual house, and has been built to U.S. Green Building Council LEED Platinum standards-the highest standard for sustainable structures. The two-story, four-bedroom, three-bath Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility incorporates energy-efficient construction and appliances, as well as energy-generating technologies such as solar water heating and solar photovoltaic systems. "

"What will a warmer, drier climate do to the legendary quality of Swiss cheese? To address this and other questions, researchers from EPFL and Agroscope Changins-Wädenswil had small flocks of sheep graze below plastic greenhouse tunnels in western Switzerland, near Yverdon. The main focus of the experiment was to study the effects of droughts on mountain pastures and their forage production. On Wednesday, September 12th, the organizers are holding an open day to present the campaign to members of agricultural institutions, researchers and the public."

Droughts and floods which devastate crops and rising seas which imperil coastal cities will become potent triggers for famine, disease and homelessness, in turn inflaming tensions and leading to unrest, say experts.

Indonesia has the potential to realize major reductions in national greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, and simultaneously earn significant new income for national and regional governments, if policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) are developed with strong and specific economic incentives, said scientists in a new paper published in the leading scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

The fact that the average American home is slowly but surely shrinking - and will most likely continue to do so if and when the country shakes off its current financial woes - isn't exactly revolutionary news. But when members of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) were asked earlier this year what they anticipate the new home size will be 2015, it's how they think single-family homes will shrink - which standard features of the average home will disappear to compensate for less square footage and which ones will remain or become more popular - that's the most revealing about the shifting needs and wants of homeowners.

A University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science-led study shows a link between large dust storms on Iceland and glacial melting. The dust is both accelerating glacial melting and contributing important nutrients to the surrounding North Atlantic Ocean. The results provide new insights on the role of dust in climate change and high-latitude ocean ecosystems.

Transparency builds trust. The phrase has become so axiomatic in corporate relations that it's inching perilously close to cliché. And while virtues of openness and transparency are well-established in the corporate world, they're even more essential when applied to the operation of city governments. A recent Knight Foundation/Pew Research study shows how important, demonstrating that if citizens believe their city governments behave in a transparent manner and make information easily accessible, they tend to think more highly about their town and its civic institutions.

For more than 20 years, theoretical mathematical models have predicted that a delay built into a negative feedback system is at the heart of the molecular mechanism that governs circadian clocks in mammalian cells. Now, the first experimental proof of this theory has been provided by an international research team led by molecular biologists and information scientists from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe. The demonstration of the feedback delay should lead to a better understanding of how cellular clocks function, and therefore how mammals adjust to the regular daily and seasonal changes in their environment. The work could also open the way to the development of treatments for circadian disorders, such as seasonal affective disorder, jet lag and even bipolar disorder.

Climate scientists have told city planners that based on current trends, Chicago will feel more like Baton Rouge than a Northern metropolis before the end of this century. So, Chicago is getting ready for a wetter, steamier future. Public alleyways are being repaved with materials that are permeable to water. The white oak, the state tree of Illinois, has been banned from city planting lists, and swamp oaks and sweet gum trees from the South have been given new priority. Thermal radar is being used to map the city's hottest spots, which are then targets for pavement removal and the addition of vegetation to roofs. And air-conditioners are being considered for all 750 public schools, which until now have been heated but rarely cooled.

Natural gas is important in many sectors of the economy: for generating electricity, as a heat source for industry and buildings, and in chemical feedstock. Given the abundance of natural gas available through large global resources and the recent emergence of substantial unconventional supplies in the United States, worldwide usage of the fuel is likely to continue to grow considerably and contribute to significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come, according to a comprehensive, multidisciplinary study carried out over the last three years by MIT researchers.

The US president has urged Chinese leaders to implement policies to help create a more balanced economic relationship between Washington and Beijing. Barack Obama also raised concerns about the human rights situation in China in talks with Wang Qishan, the Chinese vice-premier, and the state councillor, Dai Bingguo, at the White House in Washington on Monday. Obama and the Chinese leaders discussed ways of working together to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programmes, the White House said in a statement.