focus on the theings that matter and that we can do something about....

Climate Change
1. make better cities
2 make better buildings
3. enhance transportation
4. electricity
5. improve basic materials

walkscore.com
check our your house/home do it.

resource depletion
PEAK MINERALS - see http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3086

etech, San Jose 10.03.2009 Maureen McHugh

if Edison would wake up today and look at the grid, he would say, 'that's where i left it' [IBM]

95% of people are interested in receiving detailed information on their energy use. [ORACLE]

data on your personal energy use belongs to you.....in a standard non-propriety format [Google]

Unlock all your raw data. [TIM BERNERS-LEE]

a huge land grab going on in this area.

AMEE [http://www.amee.com/about] is working to pull this eco-system together.

i did not sign up for TED 2010. i wanted to wait and see what long beach was like. would it work for TED? would it be the 'same'? would it still be TED? i arrived at long beach with big white banners flying on all the lampposts with the big red TED on them. a very festive look. within ten minutes of arriving at the hotel i had already met another TEDster, Jim, who was working on a great publishing project entitled 2030. his focused on kids and their vision of what 2030 would look like. this totally resonated with our UrbanLife2030 project. we spent the next hour together talking about our projects. i went up to my hotel room and signed up for 2010. how could i not? TED is about half content and half being there. the talks were excellent. the networking even better. i look forward to reviewing some of the talks again and again. i look forward to tracking some of the cool stuff. and, most importantly, i look forward to keeping in touch with those folks whom i met who are trying to change the world.

10 to the 31st power of varieties of virus on the planet.

human viruses have animal origins [Rabies, Yellow Fever, Dengu ever, SARS, Ebola, Influenza, HIV...]

he talked about the transmission of the various viruses from the bush hunters thru the contact with the animals blood. he pointed out that it is not the responsibility of the hunter; rather of us all. their work is really interesting. he posits that they can actually monitor the new flow of viruses into the flow of the human population.

good talk. informative. good style.

http://faculty.jhsph.edu/default.cfm?faculty_id=763&grouped=false&searchText=&department_id=0&departmentName=Epidemiology
http://gvfi.org/

quorum sensing in bacteria. there are 10x more bacteria cells on or in humans at any time than human cells. she is interested in simply how bacteria work at all. she talked about a squid that has bioluminescent bacteria in their bodies. the squid can use the light from the bacteria to eliminate its shadow.

she has shown that bacteria do indeed communicate. she went on to talk about all sorts of bacterial communities. bacteria can differeniate between 'me' and 'you' - they can distinguish between themselves.

she has proposed a new way to fight bacteriological infections based on quorum sensing.

great presenter style. fascinating message. worth seeing again. excellent graphics. standing ovation. excellent communicator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum_sensing
http://www.molbio.princeton.edu/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=27

great short.