Need to Know

Craig Barrett Takes On Vivek Wadhwa In The Tech Education Debate

Editor’s note: The most valuable employees of any technology company are the engineers and scientists, which is why everyone in Silicon Valley does whatever they can to ensure the continuous supply to this talent pool. The size of the talent pool is ultimately determined by the number of people who [...]

Tags: colleges and universities, improvements in education, math and science, math students, science degrees, science skills, talent pool, talented workers
Posted in Civilization, Consider This, Innovation Needed, Need to Know, Shape of Things to Come?, TechCrunch, economics | No Comments »

Monitoring greenhouse gases

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Highs and lows
You might think that measuring the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would be a priority. If you did think that, though, you would be wrong.
IN NEGOTIATIONS on nuclear weapons the preferred stance is “Trust but verify”. In negotiations on climate change there seems little opportunity [...]

Tags: climate change, fate of carbon dioxide, greenhouse gas, greenhouse gases, monitoring greenhouse gases
Posted in Consider This, Economist, Innovation Needed, Need to Know, climate change, environment | No Comments »

Tree seeds could provide low-cost water purification for developing nations

“In the developing world, more than 1 billion people cannot get clean drinking water…
The United Nations says that dirty water causes 80 percent of diseases in the developing world, and kills 10 million people annually.” Those sobering lines are from the United Nations’ website, and underscore just how urgently needed water [...]

Tags: clean drinking water, drought, moringa oleifera, Moringa seeds, tree seeds, water crisis
Posted in Consider This, FYI, Innovation Needed, Need to Know, Shape of Things to Come?, climate change, environment, learning | 1 Comment »

Building a Better Teacher

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ON A WINTER DAY five years ago, Doug Lemov realized he had a problem. After a successful career as a teacher, a principal and a charter-school founder, he was working as a consultant, hired by troubled schools eager — desperate, in some cases — for Lemov to tell them [...]

Tags: better teacher, better teaching, charter school, parental involvement, poor performance, rigorous academic standards, standardized testing, strengths and weaknesses, student test scores
Posted in Civilization, Consider This, Dire Warnings, Innovation Needed, Innovation in Society, NY Times, Need to Know, Shape of Things to Come? | No Comments »

China’s Cyberposse

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The short video made its way around China’s Web in early 2006, passed on through file sharing and recommended in chat rooms. It opens with a middle-aged Asian woman dressed in a leopard-print blouse, knee-length black skirt, stockings and silver stilettos standing next to a riverbank. She smiles, holding [...]

Tags: chinese internet, detective work, human flesh, human flesh search engine, internet citizens, internet forums, netizen
Posted in Communications, Consider This, Democracy, FYI, Innovation in Society, NY Times, Need to Know, Shape of Things to Come?, Worth Repeating | No Comments »