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 Thursday, October 02, 2008
 Posted by Roberto
 10:30 AM   0 comments   

MONEY AS DEBT



Money as Debt is a powerful animated documentary by videographer Paul Grignon. It tries to explain the evolution and functioning of banking, and the international monetary system:
Money As Debt, 47 Minutes Video, by Paul Grignon
Money as Debt Critique, by Verne Warwick

 

 Tuesday, September 09, 2008
 Posted by Roberto
 8:32 PM   0 comments   

BOSTON DYNAMICS

Boston Dynamics is an engineering company that is setting the standard for human simulation technology worldwide and their robots are unparalleled in agility and rough-terrain capability.

Boston Dynamics BigDog Robot:


Boston Dynamics RHex Robot:


Link:
Boston Dynamics Dedicated to the Science and Art of How Things Move

 

 Thursday, June 05, 2008
 Posted by Roberto
 10:24 AM   0 comments   

THE BIG PICTURE

This week I participated to the ESA Emerging Market and Future Application Study, Macroeconomic Workshop, in Zurich, Switzerland. The goal was to jointly create scenarios of future development of ICT using the year 2020 as a time horizon.


I. ORGANIC SOLAR CELLS, ELECTRICITY FROM A THIN FILM
Teams of researchers all over the world are working on the development of organic solar cells. Organic solar cells have good prospects for the future: They can be laid onto thin films, which makes them cheap to produce. At nano tech in Tokyo, The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE has presented a flexible solar module that is as small as the page of a book. It was produced by a method that can easily be transferred to roll-to-roll technology, a vital step en route to mass production.
Article: ScienceDaily.com

Developing organic solar cells from polymers is a cheap and potentially simple alternative energy. New Jersey Institute of Technology's Dr. Somenath Mitra has developed solar cells that use a carbon nanotube complex. Nanotubes are 50,000 times smaller than a human hair, but one nanotube can conduct a current better than any electrical wire.
Video: EngineeringTV.com



II. CLEAN ENERGY TRENDS 2008

1. Biofuels (global production and wholesale pricing of ethanol and biodiesel) reached $25.4 billion in 2007 and are projected to grow to $81.1 billion by 2017. In 2007 the global biofuels market consisted of more than 13 billion gallons of ethanol and 2 billion gallons of biodiesel production worldwide.

2. Wind power (new installation capital costs) is projected to expand from $30.1 billion in 2007 to $83.4 billion in 2017. Last year's global wind power installations reached a record 20,000 MW, equivalent to 20 large-size 1 GW conventional power plants.

3. Solar photovoltaics (including modules, system components, and installation) will grow from a $20.3 billion industry in 2007 to $74 billion by 2017. Annual installations were just shy of 3 GW worldwide, up nearly 500 percent from just four years earlier.

4. The fuel cell and distributed hydrogen market will grow from a $1.5 billion industry (primarily for research contracts and demonstration and test units) to $16 billion over the next decade.

Together, these four benchmark technologies, which equaled $55.4 billion in 2006 and expanded 40 percent to $77.3 billion in 2007, are projected to grow to $254.5 billion within a decade.

Sources:
Clean Energy Trends 2008 Report
Clean Energy Trends 2008 Charts



III. THE VISION
"Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things"
William McDonough, architect William McDonough,
a prophet of the sustainability and clean-technology movements.

What if the concept of waste didn't exist?
The following is an excerpt from "Industrial Revolution, Take Two"
by Matt Tyrnauer, Vanity Fair Magazine.
Source: VanityFair.com/culture/

"If we understand that design leads to the manifestation of human intention, and if what we make with our hands is to be sacred and honor the earth that gives us life, McDonough said that day, "then the things we make must not only rise from the ground but return to it, soil to soil, water to water, so everything that is received from the earth can be freely given back without causing harm to any living system. This is ecology. This is good design. It is of this we must now speak." William McDonough

One of the things that is holding back the environmental movement and its proponents, says McDonough, is the collective burden of guilt about the ills of our society. "They say they want durable products that last a long time. Like a 25-year car. I'll tell you why that's not good. That car will still be made with toxins in the adhesives, compound epoxies. O.K., it amortizes its damage over a longer period of time, but it's still a car that is damaging. You also lose jobs, because people don't buy enough cars. You are using outdated technology on the roads for a longer time. The solution that he and Braungart suggest is a five-year car that allows for industry to "transform the technology at high speed toward the Cradle to Cradle concept. The five-year car is a car whose materials are all coherent and tagged. In fact, all materials in the car have passports. So we know where they come from, and we know where they're going "back to the auto-makers" after five years of utility, so the car could be recycled and updated with the latest in safety and efficiency. All done with the same materials that you in effect lease from the auto company. They keep making the cars out of the same stuff."



IV. THE FUTURE
A Revolution Coming Sooner than Expected
The following is an excerpt from "The Future Is Now? Pretty Soon, at Least"
by John Tierney, The New York Times.
Source: NYTimes.com

Dr. Kurzweil sees biology, medicine, energy and other fields being revolutionized by information technology. His graphs already show the beginning of exponential progress in nanotechnology, in the ease of gene sequencing, in the resolution of brain scans. With these new tools, he says, by the 2020s we'll be adding computers to our brains and building machines as smart as ourselves.

This serene confidence is not shared by neuroscientists like Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, who discussed future brains with Dr. Kurzweil at the festival. It might be possible to create a thinking, empathetic machine, Dr. Ramachandran said, but it might prove too difficult to reverse-engineer the brain's circuitry because it evolved so haphazardly.

"My colleague Francis Crick used to say that God is a hacker, not an engineer," Dr. Ramachandran said. "You can do reverse engineering, but you can't do reverse hacking."

Dr. Kurzweil is accustomed to this sort of pessimism and readily acknowledges how complicated the brain is. But if experts in neurology and artificial intelligence (or solar energy or medicine) don't buy his optimistic predictions, he says, that's because exponential upward curves are so deceptively gradual at first.

"Scientists imagine they'll keep working at the present pace," he told me after his speech. "They make linear extrapolations from the past. When it took years to sequence the first 1 percent of the human genome, they worried they'd never finish, but they were right on schedule for an exponential curve. If you reach 1 percent and keep doubling your growth every year, you'll hit 100 percent in just seven years."

 

 Friday, April 11, 2008
 Posted by Roberto
 10:34 AM   0 comments   

DIGITALLY AUGMENTED OBJECTS AND ENVIRONMENTS

Computers are becoming invisible and integrated into our lives. Our clothes can monitor our heart rate, breathing and motion. Sensors like accelerometers, for measuring acceleration or detecting and measuring vibrations, light detectors, are worn as soft computers "in a noninvasive, non-weight-bearing way".

Tom Igoe, who leads physical computing for the N.Y.U. program said:
"The end goal is not the communication but the quality of life that the communication affords." He offered an example: the Toyota Prius, an electric hybrid, and many other new cars report fuel consumption instantaneously to the driver. Whenever you can help people "measure how they do something, they change how they do it". It becomes a live-in video game, but a live-in video game with a purpose.

Other examples of sensors being integrated into unexpected areas include the PhyTalk system from Phytech. It uses sensors placed on fruit trees or other crops to provide information to farmers. One sensor monitors tiny changes in stem diameter, while another tracks size and growth of fruit. Avi Lulu, the company's chief executive, said: "We are not irrigating what we think the plants need; we're irrigating what the plants really need"

Some plant lovers might be interested in Botanicalls, a simpler project developed by the New York University program in interactive telecommunications. It will measure soil moisture and send a message to the owner when the soil is too dry. When the plant gets the water, it also sends a thank-you note.

At the Intel Corporation's Digital Health Group, Eric Dishman, director of product research and innovation, said he saw many opportunities for making embedded computers that could help people. His group is focusing on preventing falls, social health and cognitive assistance. Sunny Consolvo, at Intel, has been working to create a system using similar sensors that gives feedback to users about their degree of physical activity with subtle and often coded metaphors. What she calls a "glanceable" display converts distances of walking and climbing stairs into a picture of a garden. "As you work through the week, the garden blooms. And if you meet your goal, a butterfly flies" she said.


Article's Source:
The New York Times, My Life in a Video Game (Batteries Not Included)

Links:
Sparkfun, online store catering to developers and prototypers
Phytech, Monitoring Growing Plants
Botanicalls, The Plants Have Your Number
MIT, Things That Think Consortium

 

 Wednesday, April 02, 2008
 Posted by Roberto
 1:17 AM   0 comments   

WALL STREET CASTLES MADE OF SAND



Story Link:
Wall Street Castles Made of Sand

 

 Friday, March 14, 2008
 Posted by Roberto
 8:36 PM   0 comments   

THE SUB-PRIME CRISIS



The fickle finger of blame has shifted from the large household name rating agencies to a formerly obscure benchmark index called ABX. Without getting into the gritty details, here's the essential story: banks and other institutions holding sub-prime debt need to value them for accounting purposes on a "mark to market" basis, ostensibly the market value at the time. So how do you place a market value on obscure and often opaque debt? Well, the practice, particularly with big banks, has been to use the ABX benchmark.

ABX is maintained by a London-based company called Markit Group. ABX exists not for valuation purposes, but rather as something that speculators can bet on -- a way to gamble on sub-prime debt without actually owning any. ABX is based on pricing for just 20 specific bond deals. And there you have it: a market that is estimated in the trillions of dollars is being valued based on the prices of a very thin benchmark.

What we have here is a case of unintended consequences from unintended use. With so much money at stake, one would think it would be in the common interest to develop a robust, dependable benchmark index. Apparently, it was easier to press the already existing ABX index into double-duty, and the consequences speak for themselves. It's an object lesson for data publishers: just because your data may have multiple uses doesn't mean you should necessarily encourage them. As commercial databases become increasingly integral to the customers and industries we serve, we all take on more responsibility along with our enviable market positions.

You may be wondering who owns Markit Group. Well, in a little bit of parting irony, it turns out Markit is largely owned by a consortium of banks, including, well, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, UBS, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, among many others.

Article's Source:
InfoCommerce Group: The Deep Dangers of Double-Duty Data

The Markit Group:
Markit was founded in 2001 as the first independent source of credit derivative pricing. As a private company with privileged relationships with 16 shareholder banks, Markit has unparalleled access to a valuable dataset spanning credit, equities and the broader OTC derivative universe. Markit customers (close to 1,000) are investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers, central banks, regulators, rating agencies and insurance companies.
Markit, Benchmark Financial Data and Services

 

 Friday, February 08, 2008
 Posted by Roberto
 5:39 PM   0 comments   

ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE INDEX

EPI

The 2008 EPI (Environmental Performance Index) was released by the World Economic Forum in Davos, created by the Yale Center for Environmental law and Policy (Yale University) and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (Columbia University).

The full information is available at:
EPI Homepage
Summary for Policymakers (.pdf)
Main Report (.pdf)
EPI 2008 Data File (.xls)
EPI 2008 Rankings (.pdf)

 

 Thursday, January 17, 2008
 Posted by Roberto
 10:20 PM   0 comments   

CRAMER ON FINANCIALS: THE TRUTH IS TOO PAINFUL!

Wall Street extended its 2008 plunge today, sending the Dow Jones Industrials down 306 points after a regional Federal Reserve report showed a sharp and unexpected decline in manufacturing activity...

Check out the following Two Videos:
Jim Cramer discusses doomed financials and the Fed
Jim Cramer CNBC Meltdown Video

 
NERO wearing the Adidog shirt
 
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