The Gender Gap? Older women will rule the world, MIT expert says - by A.Pawlowski

If you're a woman with a bit of life experience, you already know you're the boss.

You're more likely to drive health care decisions in your family, control household spending, care for millennials and elders, start a business and initiate a divorce. You have the longevity advantage over men.

In other words, you rule.

But does the world know it? Older women can sometimes feel like they're invisible to workplaces and businesses, but they're actually the trailblazers others should be watching, says Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the AgeLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the new book, "The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World's Fastest-Growing, Most Misunderstood Market."

As people get older, the future is female, he argues, with women better prepared for life after middle age than their male peers.

"One of the greatest under-appreciated sources of innovation and new business may in fact be women over 50 with new ideas, lots of life ahead of them and with the verve to get it done," Coughlin told TODAY.

He explained why older women will rule the world.

Women do more. They have more education than at any time in history. They're likely to live longer.

A woman is the researcher of the house. Women are far more likely to go online not just to do research for themselves, but be the go-to researcher for millennials, who identify their middle-aged mothers as their best friend.

She is the caregiver-in-chief. Women are caring for more parents than they had ever planned — their parents as well as their in-laws. Getting to 100 is so common now that we see birthday cards in the drugstore for centenarians. There may be three or four generations under the care of one matriarch.

A woman is the chief consumer officer of the house. She's the one who knows what groceries are bought, what bills are being paid, how that house actually works. The majority of car purchases are directly influenced or done by women. If they're luxury cars, the numbers go up even more. Home improvement is directed by the woman. Probably most striking is that 80-90 cents on the dollar of every healthcare decision is made by a woman.

Because of all these factors, she is likely to be the person who is closest to understanding what the new jobs and the opportunities of living longer, better are going to be.\

The number one divorce rate in the country is among the 50-plus, mostly initiated by the woman.

When we talk to men about what they think retirement is going to be, it's almost celebratory: If they've saved their money, they see it as a time to play golf, take that trip, buy that new car. And they often talk about spending time with their wives.

I can't tell you how many women have told me, 'I don't know who this man is on my couch but I wish he would just go and get a job. I have routines, I have things to do and he's always there and he's always asking me what to do next.'

I think men, particularly those of us over 50, need to up our game. We really have to take a lesson from women that life is more than work; that we need to develop new interests and keep that romance going.

The relationship began decades earlier based upon what you brought to the table and what you created together. Suddenly in older age, men get so caught into a routine — partly because of our employment and lifestyle — that they forget that they need to continue to be exciting and delighting.

Read the complete report: Older women will rule the world, MIT expert says | Euronews

Netherlands Company Introduces Plastic Roads That Are More Durable, Climate Friendly Than Asphalt - by Katie Valentine

The Netherlands is already home to the world’s first solar road (or bike lane, technically). Now, the country could soon be the first to use recycled plastic as pavement.

The idea for plastic roads comes from VolkerWessels, a Netherlands-based construction firm. According to the company, plastic roads would be a “virtually maintenance free product” that’s “unaffected by corrosion and the weather.” The roads could handle temperatures as low as -40°F and as high as 176°F.

The company says that this hardiness will make the roads’ lifespans three times as long as typical asphalt roads.

According to the company, any type of recycled plastic can be used. The main goal, the company says, is to keep plastic out of the oceans.

The idea for plastic roads came after the company took a look at all the different road-related problems cities face, said Simon Jorritsma from InfraLinq, a subdivision of VolkerWessels and KWS Infra that works specifically with asphalt. Those problems included a future where oil — the main component of asphalt — is less available, as well as more immediate problems like flooding and road maintenance.

“For contractors, asphalt is a great and sound product to build roads,” Jorritsma said in an email to ThinkProgress. “However, contractors have to meet more and more demands concerning noise reduction, water permeability, and flatness. These questions and conditions were the inspiration which have led to the idea of the PlasticRoad.”

Read more: Netherlands Company Introduces Plastic Roads That Are More Durable, Climate Friendly Than Asphalt | ThinkProgress

Internet: The Debate Over Net Neutrality Has Its Roots in the Fight Over Radio Freedom

t’s almost hard to remember now, but the early years of the Internet were a carnival of crazy, chaotic amateurs.

When the web first went mainstream in the mid-’90s, the early sites weren’t big, glossy ones created by corporations. They were strange, offbeat ones crafted by individuals: diarists posting diaries, video-game fans creating encyclopedias of old arcade titles and discussion boards teeming with “X-Files” arguments.

Indeed, commercial activity was suspect, and anyone trying to make a buck online was shunned. When the lawyers Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel spammed newsgroups with a text-only ad for their green-card services, the outcry was so loud their Internet provider canceled their connection. The Internet, aficionados proclaimed, would always be a Wild West—amateur and proudly uncommercial.

This was naive, of course. By the early 2000s, commercial activity and huge firms boomed, as retailers like Amazon exploded in size and “netizens” began streaming video from services like YouTube and eventually Netflix and Hulu.

Today, it’s the little guy who looks to be in danger. The Internet service providers—like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T—have long pushed to create “speed lanes” online. If you run a website and want to make sure your connection moves swiftly to the end user, you’d need to pay these companies an extra fee.

If you don’t pay? Your signal might not move as fast as you’d like. The Federal Communications Commission this spring drafted rules that would allow for fast and slow lanes. If they take effect, it would be the end of “net neutrality,” and critics worry it would spell doom for amateurs online. Sure, established sites like YouTube or Facebook could pay those fees. But quirky little upstart websites—or even nonprofits like Wikipedia—couldn’t.

If amateurs really do get squeezed out, it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen this happen. Precisely the same thing happened a century ago to the original “people’s medium”: radio.

The idea of transmitting sound waves through the air caught on especially after the experiments of the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in the late 19th century. The technology wasn’t complicated, and by the first decade of the 20th century, American tinkerers began building their own sets to transmit and receive radio signals. With relatively small amounts of power, someone at home could broadcast for dozens of miles.

Magazines printed schematics. “Any boy can own a real wireless station, if he really wants to,” urged The Book of Wireless.

Stations popped up everywhere—run in churches, fire departments and even businesses, when the owner bought a transmitter and started talking into the ether. Much like the first bloggers, early radio adopters were thrilled that they could reach a distant audience. They needed a new word for this; as Columbia law professor Tim Wu notes, they settled on “broadcasting,” which originally meant casting seeds in a field. “This was the first time in the history of mankind that people in different places heard the same thing at the same time,” notes Anthony Rudel, author of Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio.

Read more: The Debate Over Net Neutrality Has Its Roots in the Fight Over Radio Freedom | Innovation | Smithsonian

Carbon Dioxide Emission Reduction: In Europe, Greener Transit on Existing Infrastructure - by Erica Gies

Vienna is employing some old-fashioned technology to run shiny new electric buses wending their way through the narrow inner-city streets. 

The Austrian capital is switching from buses powered by liquefied petroleum gas to a novel, first-of-its-kind fleet of electric buses that run unplugged, go anywhere, and recharge their batteries using the overhead power lines of older trams. Twelve of the buses, each of which can carry 40 passengers, are in service. 

As Vienna shifts to electric buses, it is striving to be a leader in green transportation by testing new systems that can potentially create a cleaner, quieter downtown. Vienna is one of several European cities — struggling to square tight budgets with civic goals to meet climate targets — that are experimenting with new electric vehicles and infrastructure systems for buses and trains. 

With the European Union’s ambitious goals to reduce global warming, these cutting-edge technologies are part of a slow-motion revolution in urban transit. Siemens, which provided technology for the electric buses, is negotiating with at least five cities in Europe and two in South America that have existing tram lines and might adopt the Vienna system, said Andreas Laske, of the eBus program at Siemens Rail Systems in Berlin. 

The electric buses are more expensive, however, said Anna Reich of Wiener Linien, the city-owned transport company. But the city saved money by not having to build new infrastructure for the fleet. 

While electricity itself is not environmentally friendly unless it comes from renewable sources, city officials figure the buses — which are made by the Rampini company in Perugia, Italy — will reduce its carbon dioxide emissions 300 tons a year. 

At night, the batteries recharge fully at the depot. Because the buses have modest range requirements, they use a smaller battery, which makes them lighter and less expensive than those that require larger batteries.

Read more: In Europe, Greener Transit on Existing Infrastructure - NYTimes.com

Why America can’t be more like Scandinavia - by ames Pethokoukis

“I believe in American exceptionalism,” President Obama said back in 2009, “just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world.”

But thinking America is exceptional is not just about expressing a natural civic pride in the home team. America remains an unusually important nation, the Indispensable Nation, really. There is, of course, its role as the planet’s military superpower. In the After America alternate history series, an energy wave disappears most of the USA and almost immediately, as the book’s description aptly puts it, “the forces of order and anarchy wage all-out war for postapocalyptic dominance.”

Sounds about right. In fact, it sounds like what’s happening across the Middle East right about now.

In short, American-style capitalism generates the innovation needed for economic growth both here and over there. See, it doesn’t really matter so much if your own country is innovative as long as it is open to adopting innovations created elsewhere and to the “creative destruction” innovation brings with it. But someone, somewhere needs to be innovative.

As Acemoglu, Robinson, and  Verdier point out, the U.S., Finland, and Sweden are all wealthy nations, but the U.S is about 30% richer on an income per capita basis (purchasing power parity, 2005 dollars). The United States is also “widely viewed as a more innovative economy, providing greater incentives to its entrepreneurs and workers alike, who tend to respond to these by working longer hours, taking more risks, and playing the leading role in many of the transformative technologies of the last several decades ranging from software and hardware to pharmaceuticals and biomedical innovations.”

Read more: Why America can’t be more like Scandinavia | AEIdeas

Recession "has hit UK innovation" - and innovation is the only way to growth

The UK economy has experienced a "lost decade" of innovation, according to an independent research fund Monday.

Investment in new products and ideas has fallen by 24 billion pounds since the recession hit in 2008 and has not recovered, the report by Nesta (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) found.

The charity said the study showed that businesses had a "crisis of confidence in the 2000s, prioritising cash and concrete over investment in innovation".

It also highlighted a "deep-rooted crisis" in innovation investment. After rising steadily from 1990 to 2000, investment fell by 7% (7.4 billion pounds) between 2008 and 2009, according to Nesta's Innovation Index, compiled following a survey of 1,200 businesses.

It then dropped a further 14% (17bn) from 2009 to 2011. Calling on the Government to take action, Geoff Mulgan, Nesta's chief executive, said: "Everyone agrees that innovation is the only route to long term growth.

Read more: Recession "has hit UK innovation" - middle east north africa financial network - MENAFN

CNET: MIT floats ideas in DARPA balloon challenge (Q&A) | Digital Media

For the complete report from CNET News click on this link

The challenge posed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency asked people to find the coordinates of 10 red weather balloons floating above the U.S. in one day. Since no one individual could plot the location of all 10, participants had to figure out how to work with others to solve the puzzle. Team MIT's strategy was to build a Web site designed to attract more and more followers--people who might know the balloons' locations themselves and those could bring aboard others who knew the coordinates, essentially creating a chain effect. The five-member MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team consisted of group leader Crane and Manuel Cebrian, both post-doctoral research fellows at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rounding off the team were three students--Galen Pickard, Wei Pan, and Anmol Madan.

MIT's Riley Crane only found out about DARPA's red balloon challenge a few days before it started. Yet his team went on to win the contest through its savvy use of the Internet.

Fair Home: Portugal Commits To Huge Electric Vehicle Deal - by Alan Harten

For the complete report from Fair Home click on this link

Portugal Commits To Huge Electric Vehicle Deal - by Alan Harten

Nissan and Renault France have signed a historic agreement with Portugal for the sale of electric vehicles, in order to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emission levels by around 20%. This would assist the country in reaching the European Unions emissions regulations by 2020. The deal calls for the two car manufacturers to begin delivery of large numbers of electric vehicles at the beginning of 2011.

As part of the agreement, Portugal will build over 300 charging stations which will be completed in 2010 before the first vehicles arrive, avoiding the chicken and egg situation that is prevalent in most other countries where electric vehicle sales are held back by a lack of places to charge the cars.

FT.com: - Europe must fight back in the battle for good ideas - by James Harkin

For the complete report from the FT.com click on this link

Europe must fight back in the battle for good ideas-by James Harkin

W hat does it mean to be a "libertarian paternalist" or a "transhumanist"? What is it like to live in an "experience economy"? When people murmur knowingly about something called "the wisdom of crowds", what are they talking about? Is there really a "tipping point" in every field of human endeavour and, if so, where does it come from and how does it work? Ideas are all the rage. Good ideas have always been contagious, but thanks to the internet and the increasingly globalised media, they are now making their way around the world almost as soon as they are invented.

However, America's dominance in the new global landscape of ideas is not only a matter of resources. Americans have also become expert packagers of ideas. American writers and thinkers seem to have acquired the knack of explaining complex ideas in accessible ways for popular audiences. The success of idea books such as The Tipping Point and Freakonomics and a rather depressing glut of books about happiness has signified to cultural commissars a thirst for good ideas clearly expressed.

Europeans thinkers, who were so formidable at producing practical ideas during the age of ideology, need to think about catching up.

TheStar.com - Denmark - Inventor helps others put their best foot forward - by Barbara Turnbull

For the complete report from TheStar.com click on this link

Denmark - Inventor helps others put their best foot forward - by Barbara Turnbull

A Montreal industrial designer has walked away with a 100,000 Euro ($143,000 Cdn) prize for the creation of a cheap artificial foot that could help untold numbers of land-mine victims move freely again. Mobility for Each One, designed by Sebastien Dubois as a university project, won one of five prizes yesterday in Copenhagen at the biannual INDEX awards – considered the world's biggest design prize. The prosthetic foot can be made for less than $10 in developing countries.

An electric sports car, a prosthetic foot for land mine victims, the XO'' portable computer, and a potentially lifesaving device known as the ``Tongue Sucker'' were among the winners Friday of an international award honoring innovative designs.

The INDEX prize, which is given out in five $136,000 categories, also awarded an inexpensive laptop designed for children in the developing world and a water purification bottle. The award, which is funded by private and public companies in Denmark, was first given out in 2005 ``to celebrate design that not only looks good but also improves lives of people all over the world,'' said Kigge Hviid, manager of the award foundation.

Peterborough Examiner - A new and vital Europe - by David Crane

For the complete report in the Peterborough Examiner

A new and vital Europe - by David Crane

With its many museums and beautiful old buildings, Europe is too often dismissed as a quaint tourist destination that is no longer of much relevance to the modern world, and the United States, China and India are seen as representing the present and the future. Europe, instead, has been seen as a symbol of the past, bogged down in high unemployment, slow growth, bureaucratic rigidity, unaffordable social benefits and paralyzed institutions. This was never an accurate picture.

But what's important today is that Europe is reasserting itself, shedding regulations, making social and workplace changes, and becoming much more innovative. Its focus is on becoming a 21st-century economy in a society that is equitable, sustainable and ready to play a larger role in world affairs, especially with regard to international development.
Merkel, Sarkozy and Brown are all committed to better relations with the United States through the pursuit of the new Transatlantic Economic Partnership, focusing on improving regulatory convergence and deepening cooperation in energy and the environment. It is not clear where Canada will fit in with this. But Merkel and Sarkozy, in particular, have made it clear that while they admire the Americans they will challenge them when they disagree, on climate change, for example. They will be partners, not followers.

FreshPlaza:Exporting to Europe - Innovation key to success in European Union

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Exporting to Europe - Innovation key to success in European Union

The key to successfully exporting your products to the European Union (EU) is through innovation and quality said Jeff King, General Manager, Fruitways (Pty) Ltd, a leading marketing company that supplies premium quality apples, pears and citrus fruit from South Africa to the EU. Fruitways has managed to capture a significant portion of the premium apple and pear market in the United Kingdom, Central and Northern Europe, the Far East and North America. Speaking at Wesgro’s Exporters Networking session held in Stellenbosch recently, King said that in order to succeed internationally it is imperative that you understand your customers’ needs and ensure that your product meets them.

King further hinted on how to tap into the convenience food market in the EU;
* exporters should strive for innovation in their product packaging as consumers seek products that are aesthetically pleasing
* exporters should highlight the unique history of the origin of the product in order to differentiate it from similar products.

NYT: Airbus Superjumbo 380 Takes a Lap Around America - by Leslie Wayne

For the complete report from New York Times click on this link

Airbus Superjumbo 380 Takes a Lap Around America - by Leslie Wayne

The largest passenger plane in the world begins its United States tour this week. It arrived at Kennedy International Airport today, touching down gently before a pilot opened a cockpit window to wave an American flag to a crowd of reporters and photographers, including those aboard three helicopters hovering nearby. On Wednesday, the plane will take a celebratory “flight to nowhere” and circle over Manhattan. It will also stop at Dulles in Washington and O’Hare in Chicago, while another A380 flew into Los Angeles International Airport this morning.

“When you see it fly, even hardened airplane hands stop and look,” said Edmund S. Greenslet, publisher of the Airline Monitor, a trade publication. “It will be noticed. It is dramatic. To see it is to be impressed at its sheer magnitude.”