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Innovation Blues

How to Grow Your Own Fresh Air - TED 2009 - GreenSpaces - 0 views

  • How to Grow Your Own Fresh Air
  • With only three varieties of plants, we can “grow our own fresh air” indoors, to keep us healthy.
  • 1. Areca Palm (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens)Works well in the day timeGreat for living areasOne needs about 4 shoulder high plants/personNeeds to be put outdoors once every 3-4 monthsThe leaves of the plant need to be wiped everyday in Delhi and perhaps once a month in a cleaner cityThe soil used should be of vermi manure or use hydroponics
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  • 2. Mother-in-law’s Tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata)Converts CO2 into O2 at nightOne requires about 6-8 such waist high plants per person in the bedroomLeaves need to be wiped in the same way as the Areca PalmThe soil used should be of vermi manure or use hydroponics
  • 3. Money Plant (Epipremnum aureum)Excellent for removing Formaldehyde and other VOC’sBest grown using hydroponic
Innovation Blues

Iceland's Economy Is Mending Amid Europe's Malaise - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Iceland seems to be doing surprisingly well.
  • It has repaid, early, many of the international loans that kept it afloat. Unemployment is hovering around 6 percent, and falling. And while much of Europe is struggling to pull itself out of the recessionary swamp, Iceland’s economy is expected to grow by 2.8 percent this year.
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    Iceland seems to be doing surprisingly well. It has repaid, early, many of the international loans that kept it afloat. Unemployment is hovering around 6 percent, and falling. And while much of Europe is struggling to pull itself out of the recessionary swamp, Iceland's economy is expected to grow by 2.8 percent this year.
Innovation Blues

Creativity Portal® · Transforming through Creativity, Consciousness, Kindness... - 0 views

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    Creativity Portal® inspires creativity, consciousness and kindness through personal expression and the arts, innovation in the workplace, and sustainability in the world. Featuring the voices of today's creativity leaders, Creativity Portal advocates for the growing creativity coaching profession worldwide and has been named one of the 101 Best Web sites for creativity by Writer's Digest magazine. Creativity Portal® is an invigorating online community alive with the voices of creativity coaches, authors, artists, writers, and business professionals sharing their knowledge and expertise, inspiring creativity, consciousness, and kindness in everyon
Innovation Blues

The history, present and future of the Internet - 0 views

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    The Internet breeds innovation it is a growing platform that constantly changes and evolves. We have seen vast changes over the recent years and still there is no stop to the development and growth of the Internet.So let's take a whirlwind tour to se
Innovation Blues

Ben Franklin on Patents; in which he provides a Selfless model for Sharing an... - 0 views

  • Ben Franklin on Patents; in which he provides a Selfless model for Sharing and Cooperation; Inspires us with his Generosity; and Lends Moral Authority to the Principles of Free Culture…
  • in 1742, invented an open stove for the better warming of rooms, and at the same time saving fuel, as the fresh air admitted was warmed in entering, I made a present of the model to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early friends, who, having an iron-furnace, found the casting of the plates for these stoves a profitable thing, as they were growing in demand.
  • Gov’r. Thomas was so pleas’d with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin’d it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
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  • Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
  • Reading about free software specifically and free culture in general causes a dangerous uptick in my idealism index. Idealism in the sense of hoping and even believing that we can all get along. (Somehow. Someday.) That we can help each other. I think I had a healthy share of idealism growing up but gradually over the years I’ve addressed this vulnerability by developing an outer shell of jaded cynicism. It’s much more comforting to have no hope than to have hopes that can be crushed. However, there is a good chance with this strategy that your heart will shrink a couple of sizes.
  • But then I read essays by Richard Stallman, listen to speeches by Eben Moglen, and read and listen to many other hopeful voices, and I start to see something better. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe. Which of course is dangerous. You leave yourself open to ridicule if you believe. You might be dismissed as being naive. To which of course we should say, “So what?” I want to believe that we can do better.
  • The great moral question of the twenty-first century is: If all knowledge, all culture, all art, all useful information, can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone — if everyone can have everything, everywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything? If you could make lamb chops in endless numbers by the mere pressing of a button, there would be no moral argument for hunger ever, anywhere. I see no system of moral philosophy generated by the economy of the past that could evolve a principle to explain the moral legitimacy of denial in the presence of infinite profusion.
Innovation Blues

Forget Mother Nature: This is a world of our making - environment - 14 June 2011 - New ... - 0 views

  • Forget Mother Nature: This is a world of our making
  • Humans have transformed Earth beyond recovery – but rather than look back in despair we should look ahead to what we can achieve
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    A nice one to try and disperse the sure impact of Humans causing climate change. Limestone releases CO2 Antarctica once had palm trees growing. How sure are we that climate change is caused by humans. But really the point is how to deal with it and prepare for man made climate change or natural change.
Innovation Blues

Not just for profit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • The concept of NJFP draws heavily on the outcomes defined and measured through triple bottom line reporting - demanding that a company's responsibility be to stakeholders rather than shareholders. In this case, 'stakeholders' refers to anyone who is influenced, either directly or indirectly, by the actions of the company. According to the stakeholder theory, the business entity should be used as a vehicle for coordinating stakeholder interests in a sustainable manner, instead of maximising shareholder(owner) profit. "People, Planet and Profit" are used to succinctly describe the triple bottom lines and the goal of sustainability.
  • Profit Profit is an aspect shared by all commerce, conscientious or not. Arguably, from the perspective of sustainability, profit is the most critical part of the triple bottom line. If a strong focus is not maintained on the value proposition for the product or service for sale, profits will be affected and consequently a business’s ability to have any impact through its purpose (people and planet) will be eroded.
  • People "People" (human capital) pertains to fair and beneficial business practices toward labor and the community and region in which a corporation conducts its business. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has developed guidelines to enable corporations and NGO's alike to comparably report on the social impact of a business. [edit]
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  • Planet "Planet" (Natural capital) refers to sustainable environmental practices. Generally, sustainability reporting metrics are better quantified and standardized for environmental issues than for social ones. A number of respected reporting institutes and registries exist including the Global Reporting Initiative, CERES Community Environment Park, Institute 4 Sustainability and others. [edit]
  • In terms of a long-term investment proposition, socially responsible investment (SRI) funds are one of the fastest growing prospects in the City of London. This is important not only because blue chip stock valuation is biased two-thirds towards long-term prospect, but also because the City of London is home to many of the world’s largest institutional funds. The City is now managing institutional SRI assets, for the UK market alone, of around $1trillion and it continues to grow fast. When Friends Provident launched the first UK ethical unit trust 'Stewardship Fund' in 1984, city analysts predicted that consumer SRI funds in the UK would eventually (within 20 years) reach a maximum size of £2 million. By 2001, consumer SRI funds had reached to over £4 billion and over £6 billion in 2005 – 3,000 times the original estimate.
  • . This increased awareness has promoted SRI and ethical activity amongst consumers, spurring the success of ethical corporations, such as the Co-operative Bank and the popularity of fair trade and organic products.
Innovation Blues

Human cycles: History as science : Nature News & Comment - 0 views

  • Advocates of 'cliodynamics' say that they can use scientific methods to illuminate the past. But historians are not so sure.
  • Turchin has been taking the mathematical techniques that once allowed him to track predator–prey cycles in forest ecosystems, and applying them to human history. He has analysed historical records on economic activity, demographic trends and outbursts of violence in the United States, and has come to the conclusion that a new wave of internal strife is already on its way1. The peak should occur in about 2020, he says, and will probably be at least as high as the one in around 1970. “I hope it won't be as bad as 1870,” he adds.
  • Cliodynamics is viewed with deep scepticism by most academic historians, who tend to see history as a complex stew of chance, individual foibles and one-of-a-kind situations that no broad-brush 'science of history' will ever capture.
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  • Most think that phenomena such as political instability should be understood by constructing detailed narratives of what actually happened — always looking for patterns and regularities, but never forgetting that each outbreak emerged from a particular time and place. “We're doing what can be done, as opposed to aspiring after what can't,” says Daniel Szechi, who studies early-modern history at the University of Manchester, UK. “We're just too ignorant” to identify meaningful cycles, he adds.
  • Goldstone has searched for cliodynamic patterns in past revolutions, and predicts that Egypt will face a few more years of struggle between radicals and moderates and 5–10 years of institution-building before it can regain stability. “It is possible but rare for revolutions to resolve rapidly,” he says. “Average time to build a new state is around a dozen years, and many take longer.”
  • it seems that indicators of corruption increase and political cooperation unravels when a period of instability or violence is imminent.
  • they call the secular cycle, extends over two to three centuries. It starts with a relatively egalitarian society, in which supply and demand for labour roughly balance out. In time, the population grows, labour supply outstrips demand, elites form and the living standards of the poorest fall. At a certain point, the society becomes top-heavy with elites, who start fighting for power. Political instability ensues and leads to collapse, and the cycle begins again.
  • What is different is the scale — Turchin and his colleagues are systematically collecting historical data that span centuries or even millennia — and the mathematical analysis of how the variables interact.
  • when it comes to predicting unique events such as the Industrial Revolution, or the biography of a specific individual such as Benjamin Franklin, he says, the conventional historian's approach of assembling a narrative based on evidence is still best.
  • “You certainly can't predict when a plane is going to crash, but engineers recover the black box. They study it carefully, they find out why the plane crashed, and that's why so many fewer planes crash today than used to.”
  • “We can tell you in great detail what the grain prices were in a few towns in southern England in the Middle Ages,” he says. “But we can't tell you how most ordinary people lived their lives.”
  • Turchin's approach by throwing light on the immediate triggers of political violence. He argues3, for example, that for such violence to happen, individuals must begin to identify strongly with a political group. One powerful way for groups to cement that identification is through rituals, especially frightening, painful or otherwise emotional ones that create a body of vivid, shared memories. “People form the impression that the most profound insights they have into their own personal history are shared by other people,”
  • Elites have been known to give power back to the majority, he says, but only under duress, to help restore order after a period of turmoil. “I'm not afraid of uprisings,” he says. “That's why we are where we are.”
Innovation Blues

Iceland Recovery 2012 a Trend That Differs Elswehere - 0 views

    • Innovation Blues
       
      Gordon Brown called Iceland a terrorist!
  • . Unemployment is hovering around 6 percent and falling, whereas in the UK the figure is around 8 percent. Iceland's economy is expected to grow around 2.8 percent this year.
  • Iceland
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  • ources are reporting a strong improvement in Iceland's financial situation
  • Iceland is a small country with a population of 319,000, according to the World Bank.
  • rdon Brown, the short-term UK prime minister, specifically pointed the finger, despite many years of Iceland supporting peace and NATO, and serving as an ally of Britain in World War II.
Innovation Blues

Caffeine: A User's Guide to Getting Optimally Wired - Developing Intelligence - 0 views

  • Caffeine: A User’s Guide to Getting Optimally Wired
  • Caffeine is the most widely used stimulant in the world, but few use it to maximal advantage. Get optimally wired with these tips.
  • 1) Consume in small, frequent amounts. Between 20-200mg per hour may be an optimal dose for cognitive function. Caffeine crosses the blood-brain barrier quickly (owing to its lipid solubility) although it can take up to 45 minutes for full ingestion through the gastro-intestinal tract. Under normal conditions, this remains stable for around 1 hour before gradually clearing in the following 3-4 hours (depending on a variety of factors). A landmark 2004 study showed that small hourly doses of caffeine (.3mg per kg of body weight [approx 20 mg per hour; thanks digg!]) can support extended wakefulness, potentially by counteracting the homeostatic sleep pressure, which builds slowly across the day and acts preferentially on the prefrontal cortex (an area of the brain thought responsible for executive and “higher” cognitive functions).
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  • 2) Play to your cognitive strengths while wired. Caffeine may increase the speed with which you work, may decrease attentional lapses, and may even benefit recall – but is less likely to benefit more complex cognitive functions, and may even hurt others. Plan accordingly (and preferably prior to consuming caffeine!)
  • Recall from memory may be improved by caffeine (here and here), possibly due to enhancements in memory encoding rather than retrieval per se. Another study shows caffeine can actually impair estimates of “memory scanning” speed (in the Sternberg paradigm), so the failure of many studies to find recall-related effects of caffeine may reflect a speed-accuracy tradeoff at the time of retrieval.
  • 3) Play to caffeine’s strengths. Caffeine’s effects can be maximized or minimized depending on what else is in your system at the time. The beneficial effects of caffeine may be most pronounced in conjunction with sugar. For example, one factor analytic study has shown caffeine-glucose cocktails provide benefits to cognition not seen with either alone.
  • Withdrawal symptoms can onset within 12 to 24 hours of caffeine consumption and last between 2 and 9 days.
  • some studies show grapefruit juice might keep caffeine levels in the bloodstream high for longer, though others have found no such effect
  • Similarly, nicotine may speed the metabolism of caffeine.
  • 4) Know when to stop – and when to start again. Although you may not grow strongly tolerant to caffeine, you can become dependent on it and suffer withdrawal symptoms. Balance these concerns with the cognitive and health benefits associated with caffeine consumption – and appropriately timed resumption.
  • Long-term ingestion of large quantities of caffeine (by way of coffee) is associated with a variety of health benefits – not only cognitive enhancements but also reduction in risk for type 2 diabetes (c.f.), Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s . These beneficial effects may be related to the neuroprotective role of adenosine.
  • Caffeine’s effects might be masked by green tea extract, Kava Kava or St. John’s Wort – all of which contain theanine and are associated with subjective feelings of relaxation – but other preliminary evidence indicates the opposite effect: theanine might actually potentiate the benefits of caffeine on some tasks (reported in longer format here).
  • In addition, there are well-established cognitive effects where recall is best when it matches the context of encoding – so if you’re caffeinated when you study for the test, you better be caffeinated when you take it.
  • 5) Finding good sources of caffeine Despite the huge variety of sources of caffeine – including caffeinated soap, candy, and of course chocolate – the optimal use of caffeine is likely to involve small, hourly doses along with some cardioprotective agent. Given the high solubility of caffeine, absorption time should not be an issue (but if for some reason it is, try gum). Otherwise, why not enjoy a cup of green tea (coffee-flavored, if you must), as the Chinese have for nearly 5000 years? It’s hard to come by a better longitudinal study than that.
Innovation Blues

Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science : Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science... - 0 views

  • Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science is the world's longest running and best known series devoted exclusively to the philosophy of science. Edited by members of the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science (MCPS) since 1956, the series brings together original articles by leading workers in the philosophy of science. The ninteen existing volumes cover topics ranging from the philosophy of psychology and the structure of space and time to the nature of scientific theories and scientific explanation. Minnesota volumes typically grow out of intensive workshops focused on specific topics. The participants are invited to contribute because they represent the leading viewpoints of the time. The volumes thus have a coherent focus enhanced by the authors' considerable face to face interaction before their papers are revised for publication.
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