There are now almost as many cell phone subscriptions as people.
A new report on global technology development by the International Telecommunication Union found that there were 6 billion mobile subscriptions at the end of 2011 — 7 billion people inhabit Earth. China and India each have around 1 billion subscriptions.
The number of mobile subscriptions is double the number of Internet subscriptions — there are 2.3 billion.
Holedeck, created by Spanish architects Alarcon + Asociados, offers an alternative. The system allows for all of the unsightly but vital elements of a busy building, from pipes to cables to ventilation ducts, to be incorporated within the floor structure itself. This means that space can be saved: according to the designers’ product website for Holedeck, between a foot to 20 inches can be saved per floor. That’s significant in terms of big buildings. Design site Dezeen analyzed that such calculations could mean that a structure that would normally require six stories could fit within the volume of a five story building if Holedeck were used.
Robertson described that Vancouver, the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada, is constrained by land between the North Shore Mountains, the Pacific Ocean and the U.S.-Canadian border. Thus, as the city grows exponentially, that requires some creative thinking about how to sustain that growth without wasting and running out of resources.
3D printing (or “additive manufacturing,” as it’s called in industrial circles) takes offshore manufacturing and brings it back close to the consumer. It has enormous potential to shift the trade balance. Goods will be cheaper to reproduce within the domestic market, versus manufacturing and then shipping them from a distant low-wage country.
The report, authored by John Manners-Bell of Transport Intelligence and Ken Lyon of Virtual-Partners Ltd., points to the growing role of automation in production resulting from 3D printing:
Air, that invisible ampleness all around us, could hold on to energy from wind turbines that spin at night when we don’t need the electricity, and then release it later, the BBC reports.
All you have to do is first turn the air into a liquid state, using technology adapted by a British company called Highview Power Storage.
. . . . . . . . .
Highview uses night time electricity generated by wind turbines to chill air down to -190 degrees C (-310 degrees F), at which point it becomes liquid nitrogen. (I assume the process could also store excess daytime solar energy, although the BBC article only discusses wind).
Store that liquid in a giant vacuum, heat it back into a gas some other time, and the rush of air will drive a turbine. Feel good that renewable energy, not dirty old coal, will power your coffee maker in the morning. Except possibly for one thing – some external energy source has to help warm things up, and that source might not be renewable.
Building walkable cities cuts emissions more than fuel taxes, study says
New Urbanists have advocated walkable cities and shorter commutes for years. But does investing in this approach — what behavioral economists call “smart growth” — simply look good on paper, or does it produce tangible results?
It does, according to a new study published in the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy.
The study, conducted by Sudip Chattopadhyay and Emily Taylor of San Francisco State University, looked at the ways travel demand were impacted by the degree of “smart growth” in a given city. Their findings indicate that people are not as dependent on their cars as common wisdom might suggest. Instead, urban car use patterns are rather elastic. Just a 10 percent increase in “smart growth” amenities can reduce the number of annual vehicle miles traveled by 20 percent.
“We found that changing the way cities are designed would significantly reduce travel demand,” Sudip Chattopadhyay, professor and chair of economics at San Francisco State, said Sept. 13. “People’s travel habits would change, and they would drive less.”
The study provides important insight for urban areas interested in reducing their carbon emissions.
Until now, automobile efficiency standards and carbon taxes have dominated the debate around carbon emissions in the United States. In August, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a new mandate requiring all automobiles to travel 54.4 miles per gallon by 2025. On a parallel front, John Voelcker of the Christian Science Monitorsuggested last week that fuel prices should be brought in line with other Western nations:
“Until now, one of the most common means of reducing carbon emissions is implementing a fuel tax hike. “If gasoline prices in the U.S. were in line with those in almost every other industrialized country–closer to $8 a gallon than $4–consumers would be incentivized to cut their consumption, both by buying different cars and by driving less.”
Chattopadhyay and Taylor’s study indicates that smart growth might provide a third, and perhaps more effective, means of cutting carbon emissions. According to the study, a 10 percent increase in the cost of driving one mile only reduces annual miles driven by 18 percent: two percent less than implementing “smart growth” techniques.
As it turns out, then, walkability isn’t just a best practice on paper. It does well in the real world as well.
College tuition is rising faster than most people can keep up, especially those in developing countries. Enter the University of the People, touted as the first tuition-free, online university. With only a one-time application fee and a $100 fee for final exams, students can earn Associate or Bachelor degrees in business administration and computer science for less than the cost of a single course in more traditional settings.
In a recent chat, I asked founder Shai Reshef about his commitment to nonprofit education and the institution’s long-term sustainability plan. Below are excerpts from our interview.
What’s the mission of the University of the People?
The University of the People is the first ever nonprofit, tuition-free, online university dedicated to bringing democracy to higher education. There are millions of people around the world who are deprived from higher education. Unesco stated that in 2025, close to 100 million students will not have seats in existing universities. Others are deprived of education for cultural reasons. Women in Africa would be an example. For all of these people unable to attend higher education, we created the University of the People to deliver knowledge and enable them to study online.
In May, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced their joint plan to “explore the frontiers of digital education” by offering free online courses to learners around the world. As a result, their new online learning platform edX entered the burgeoning world of MOOCs — that is, massive open online courses— backed by a hefty $60 million pledge from the prestigious institutions.
With the fall slate of classes starting soon and the University of California—Berkeley now on board, we spoke with edX’s president and first professor, Anant Agarwal, about MOOCs in general and edX in particular.
What are your main goals for edX as its president?
We really want to reinvent education. We want to offer education on a planet scale to people all around the world. Anybody who has an interest and the capability to master the material should be able to access the content for free. We also really want to revolutionize campus education. We’ve been finding that online technologies can be applied on campus to create new blended models of learning.
What do those blended models look like?
In a blended model, you do what is called flipping the classroom. Flipping involves having students do video [lecture] sequences and some concept exercises at home before they come to class. Then, you can ask the students to come into the class for interactive sessions where they can sit down and have discussions, ask questions, do interactive laboratories, solve problems. It kind of reverses what is done today and it can be very effective.
You taught the first edX class, Circuits and Electronics, from March to June this year. What did you learn about online education and MOOCs?
The whole area of MOOCs and planet-scale learning is in its infancy. Very little is known about it, so a lot of what we did was guesswork. When we began the course, we were really concerned about the large number of students enrolled. We had 154,000 students sign up and our staff was about six or seven people, which is the kind of staff that we have for a 100-person on-campus class. We didn’t know how we were going to deal with all the questions and so on that students usually have, but through our online discussion boards, we saw the students answering each other’s questions. There were no repeat questions because once someone asked a question everybody could see the response. In that way, we were able to serve 154,000 students with a very small staff. I think that was clearly our biggest learning experience and the biggest surprise we had.
There are now almost as many cell phone subscriptions as people.
