While O'Keeffe is in search of sponsorship and government funding, the maintenance of the guide is covered by publicly raised funds.
and the Pandemic and All-Hazard Preparedness Act (signed into law 2 years later) allotted billions of dollars in funding for research into medical countermeasures to be used in the case of nuclear, chemical,
#Where GE is putting its latest $10b investment GE announced it will invest another $10 billion into its green energy R&d program with an aim of boosting the output of its wind turbines (while cutting costs), increasing power plant efficiency and perhaps,
#The investment falls under GE's Ecoimagination program, a cross-company business initiative that has used already $12 billion
since 2005 to develop technology that saves money and reduces the environmental impact of its own operations as well as its customers.
That investment has paid off. A whole line of Ecoimagination products which have generated $160 billion in revenue
since the program began has emerged from the R&d program. This additional $10 billion will push the Ecoimagination investment total to $25 billion by 2020, according to#GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt.#
#This latest $10 billion investment will be used to advance research in three areas: natural, renewable energy and power plants.
On the natural gas front an area that many environmentalists would argue is not a green energy source GE will work on developing alternative technologies to replace water in the hydraulic fracturing process.#
which can be volatile in price and availability, according to Laduca. What we're trying to do is just make it commercially feasible to produce isoprene through fermentation,
The price: 50 cents per cubic centimeter. If this worked for my design, I would upload the design to the website where it gives me a price that
I pay right there (no money is exchanged between printer owner and designer). Then, once the printing is complete
I can pick it up or have shipped it to me. Zak Stone reports for Fast Company that people with 3d printers have been eager to sign up:
Not long after the Google announcement, AT&T also announced an investment in a gigabit network in Austin.
and is using the money in part to fund grants, and to encourage proposals for demonstrations of advanced, high-bandwidth applications.
#White house unveils smart grid strategy, $250 million in loans WASHINGTON, D c.--If Thomas Edison could drop into 2011
--and $250 million in loans--for building a 21st century'smart grid'as a catalyst to make power less expensive,
in order to save money and energy. Smart meters are key. New energy: Prepare the'smart grid'to better handle new forms of power--wind, solar, geothermal, etc.
and so there are a lot of different stakeholders who have a say in how things are done. As a result, any sweeping national changes are almost impossible to push.
This doesn't take government money, he said. If we have the clarity, the utilities can raise all the capital.
America cannot build a 21st century economy with a 20th century electricity system. By working with states, industry leaders,
Administration Announces Grid Modernization Initiatives to Foster a Clean energy Economy and Spur Innovation Fact sheet:
A tax will be added to the price tags of electronic products to help pay for e waste disposal. Based on a similar tax in other cities, the cost of home appliances is expected to go up by $12 to $30.
The question now is whether consumers should pay for all of the recycling costs. Some argue that retailers
In California, there is a $10 fee added to the price of electronic products with viewable screens,
but retailers may choose to pay the fee on behalf of the consumer to make its prices more competitive.
Today, the Internet is the backbone for economies, connected technologies of all kinds and free speech.
The many stakeholders that will be in attendance are scheduled to discuss the future of Internet services, specifically around how they are paid for.
--and legislate that payment--a common good when there's no global system of governance? A fascinating and complex challenge for which I'm not sure we yet have an answer.
after shareholders rebuffed Roche s all-cash offers (which have grown to $6. 8 billion). In 2007, Roche purchased next-generation sequencing company 454 Life sciences.
to commodity items such as consumer electronics technologies, said Jordan Socran, vice president of business development. There are even technologies emerging to help small local businesses.
The fact that a firm that produces mobile devices is now more valuable than an oil company is the most powerful repudiation of the sprawling, exurban, oil-dependent old economy
literally represents a wealth transfer from the old economy--cars, oil, long commutes--to a new one built on a desire to capitalize on virtual connectivity by recapitulating it in the real world.
so you can be underwater on your mortgage, have a two-car garage and enslave yourself to lawn care?
Image credit: Apple Insider Related:''Cliff'bill winners: wind, rum, electric scooters and more Can this polystyrene pedal-powered plane break world records?
Solar group to World bank: Give us gas and oil's $12b, and we'll cool planet Siemens:
880m euros'worth of wind power orders since July Google invests $75 million in U s. wind far r
The strong growth can be explained partly by the falling prices of solar panels. Take Walmart for example:
And as prices continue to fall for solar panels and other energy sources it looks like utilities will be forced to innovate e
#Why no one can be a'passive consumer'in today's API economy Increasingly, innovative businesses are being built around application programming interfaces (APIS)
which provide every conceivable function from credit card transactions to finance to procurement to human resource management--whatever it is there's an API for that.
Ross Mason, founder and vice president of Mulesoft, outlined in a recent webcast how the rise of the API economy can be considered to be second digital revolution.
000--also are taking part in the API economy, Mason observes. Nike, Coca-cola, Target, and even the National Basketball Association are leveraging APIS to open up new markets and advance product innovation.
Everyone in the API economy can start springing up and start creating new businesses. For example
when the payments world was dominated by Mastercard and Visa. API technology has opened up this restrictive market,
In this API economy, anyone can do it, Mason continues. Once someone exposes an API, your competitive advantage is how you can stitch all these APIS together to create new advantages.
There is another element of the API economy that separates it from the status quo, Mason adds.
The key thing about the API economy is you can't just consume APIS. It's not just about consuming data, connecting to Amazon or Salesforce.
This is a key part of the economy--you re not just a passive consumer. Innovation starts with an API strategy,
The new National Coordinator for Health IT, David Blumenthal, put together committees that defined meaningful use, eligibility for stimulus money, in terms of
Plus millions of dollars for the software. Enter Medsphere a commercial supporter of Vista software.
And with the first deadlines for getting stimulus money coming in 2011, Hensler found he could suddenly get in line for some of that money,
thanks to open source. It was an incredibly short decision time frame for a county. A lot of our doctors did their training at the VA. We knew we could download it
and then after consulting many startups he raised money from some saavy investors and launched, Docstoc. com. Docstoc has quickly become the web s largest destination for sharing
business forms, financial models, worksheets, conference presentations, diagrams, templates white papers, and legal contracts just to name a few.
and spend way too much money before they get their web product online. As a rule of thumb, don t spend more than 3-6 months building your web product before you put some version of it online,
You Have to Always be Raising Money; The Sales Relationship with Your Investors Does NOT end when you Raise Money;
Be attached to the Problem You Want to Solve not the Solutions You Come up with to Solve Them;
the world's largest crude oil exporter, is launching an ambitious multi-billion-dollar plan aimed at creating an industry around its other abundant resource,
the price of desalinated water rises with the price of crude. The King Adbullah City for Atomic and Renewable energy, the government organization also known as Ka-care that was set up in 2010 to oversee the country's renewable energy strategy,
Stress from the stagnant economy: People are rethinking the relationship between cost and value, Gansky said.
Technically more of microfinance organization than a sharing model, this site supports the creation of artistic projects.
#Why teaching toddlers Mandarin chinese is a smart investment Now that China is the world s second largest economy,
it s no surprise that a booming language immersion program has seen a 300 percent growth in demand for Mandarin chinese.
she says, It s an investment in their future. You have launched dozens of programs in Washington and Chicago.
It s an investment in their future. Tell me more about that. Generally China s emerging market standing makes Mandarin an especially attractive language.
Still, prices are falling, and research and development efforts are gaining momentum. Market research firm IHS predicts that almost 100 million devices that support wireless charging could be on the market by 2015
which adds to the price of manufacturing. From a competitive standpoint, WPC is up against two other notable organizations:
But the U s. economy is growing again, so are people driving more? Doug Short takes a look at the latest data (PDF), on vehicle miles traveled, from the U s. Department of transportation.
car ownership costs rising (high gas prices, insurance, etc.;states making it difficult to get a driver's license;
and gas prices stay highthis is where discussions of eak oilbecome relevant and on how quickly the U s. economy rebounds.
That company returned to the United states earlier this year as part of an investment round from Partners 1993,
With protective packaging, anything that weighs more 10 pounds. Anyone that uses plastic foam, we d like to replace it.
but we re also recognized for our price point. The key is the mycelium the whole organism
Chief scientist and cofounder Gavin Mcintyre just won a half a million dollar proposal to adopt this same platform for automobile interior trim parts and cushions.
image credit: Google maps, David Worthington) Related on Smartplanet: What the NRC really knew about Fukushima Fukushima ocean radiation could pose sleeper threat Nuclear meltdowns nearly made northern Japan uninhabitable do need we to worry about radiation in our milk?
Based largely on data from the UK's Stern Review on the Economics of Climate change report,
the REDD program plans to offer money in exchange for the prevention of the destruction of forests deemed significant to curbing global climate change.
but Google. org plans to make it available within the year, perhaps as a"not-for-profit service"for only scientists, governments,
It uses a CO2 powered piston that launches the 11-pound machine into the air.
"The present solution is to have a switchable filter bank along with switchable and/or multi-band antenna, ays Jacob Adams,
Earthquake-warning systems come at a high price, though, too high for countries like Nepal and others in quake-prone zones in South Asia,
and Samsungpent millions of euros on human listening tests. Full-HD Voice quality was possible even at data rates as low as 9. 6 kb/s. The processing power of modern smartphone chips is a key enabler for the new codecs.
The information can also be used to prove to insurers that the money they spend on health care is producing results. ealth care providers are more and more being paid for outcomes,
funding organizations appeared to have doubled down on the simpler one-hormone system in the hope that it will get approved more easily.
and we want to put all our money on bringing the closed loop to market. What next?
"That translates into millions of dollars per power plant per year, "said Daniel Preston, one of the MIT authors of the paper, in a press release.
thanks to elimination of the gear box and the use of lightweight aluminum blades that cost less than 10 percent the price of traditional composite blades.
But it would take a lot more money and power than someone would be willing to supply.
he says. t comes down to money. It not a question of anything else but funding.
Other laboratories could reach the performance of the number one supercomputer, Tianhe-2 if they want to pay US $390 million for the same technology,
Dongarra predicts that the China Tianhe-2 will remain at the top of the supercomputer pyramid for at least two more lists because of the lack of funding for new systems.
having arrived at the ISS thanks to a Spacex Falcon 9 rocket launched in April. ur team is developing the technology that will enable humanity to create an off-planet economy that will fundamentally change the way we live on Earth,
#Baidu Maker Of China s Largest Search engine Confirms Its Strategic Investment In Uber It s official:
Chinese Internet giant Baidu has confirmed that it is Uber s latest investor as Techcrunch reported last week.
The companies did not disclose the amount of the investment. Bloomberg previously reported that Baidu had taken the entire $600 million surplus that Uber built into its most recent funding round
however a source at Baidu told Techcrunch that this is untrue. If there is further capacity in the round
which was earmarked towards developing Uber s market position across Asia Pacific then it stands to reason that other strategic investors from Asia may make similar deals with the U s. company.
and Baidu is more significant than the investment because Baidu Maps will be able to integrate Uber This is similar to Google maps Uber integration after Google Ventures invested in the car-calling app.
The Baidu investment comes just a few weeks after Uber announced that it had raised $1. 2 billion in funding at a $40 billion valuation with##a portion of the capital earmarked for expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.
Silicon valley Postsecondary education And A Half-Trillion Dollars It easy to forget that these are early days for the Internet.
I get a giant bear hug and the credit for getting them there, and other educational tools are sidelined.
and 2012 kicked off three back-to-back State of the Union addresses pushing universities to reduce student debt
and has its eye on the postsecondary education market worth a half-trillion dollars every year. Read on for a sneak preview of the next few years,
The source of college funding changed from family wealth to federal loans. Most importantly, the goal of attending college moved from holistic education and a future in academia and research to career development and jobs.
and o be able to make more money (No. 4). Opinions differ as to whether the higher education system is meeting those studentscareer goals
which drove a much higher price point and a number of other major product changes.
Employment, Not Just Education In order for Udacity to support the higher price point required by their new quality bar,
but how would they make money from the millions of users that they taught? Pushed by the same forces as the rest of us,
The firm is an investor in Boxbee. The generational shift occurring as millennials come of age and baby boomers just keep aging has massive implications for both technology and society.
wee experiencing an berficationof the economy. Alongside this movement to an n-demandeconomy (discussed in detail by the team at Sherpa Ventures),
Another consequence of this shift is the rise of the sharing economy, or ollaborative consumptionas many call it.
#Apple Pay Now Supports Cards That Make up 90%Of U s. Credit Purchases Apple Pay is gaining steam just months after launch with the company revealing to the NYT that it now supports cards from providers that make up 90 percent of the credit card
. In addition to ten new banks that are coming on board today It s now accepted in more places than ever before with Staples Winn-dixie Albertson and the Amway Center turning on support in the latest wave.
Mcdonald s has said that 50 percent of its NFC-based tap payments are already Apple Pay as of November
and advocating their alternatives. 50 percent of tap-to-pay transactions even at a large-scale national chain like Mcdonald s still doesn t amount to a huge number of payments relative to the general pool;
cash and traditional card-based payments still greatly outweigh any and all mobile payment initiatives Apple Pay included.
Apple s mobile payments system is still by far the most successful individual initiative we ve seen in the field so far
One such newcomer competitor may be Samsung which is in talks to launch an Apple Pay-style payments mechanism of its own according to Re/code.
I m sure they would never ever never be building a mobile payments solution (longest eye-roll of all time).
Regardless of who else throws their hat in the ring it looks likely at this stage that Apple Pay will be the prime mover in terms of mobile payments industry growth over the next few years s
#With $2. 5m In Seed Funding Digit Saves Money For You So You Don t Have To Think about It Over the years wee seen the emergence of a number of personal finance apps,
better understand their finances, and make positive decisions with their money. Those apps were great for the small percentage of users who were interested already ultra in examining the minutiae of where their money was goingbut for those of us who don want to deal with the cognitive overhead
and depression that comes with knowing youe spending more than you should on things you don need,
they weren very helpful. That why over the past few months Ie become such a big fan of a little startup called Digit.
by helping them to put money away without having to think about it at all. To do that, the company has raised $2. 5 million in seed funding
and is working on an integration with a banking partner that will make its savings happen even more seamlessly.
give Digit access to your online banking account credentials, and over time the company gradually transfers funds from your checking account and into a non-interest bearing but FDIC-insured Digit savings account.
The service does so seamlessly, without asking you how much you want it to transfer beforehand.
taking into account a number of factors it knows about your payment history and spending habits to do so.
if it safe to move money out of it. Then, among other things, it takes into account a user regular salary
or payment schedule and how far away they are from their next payday. It also looks at someone daily spending habits to determine how much it can transfer without them really noticing
or web site with detailed statistics about your spending habits where your money went, or how you could better budget for the future.
How much money is currently in the account, how much has been saved over time, what the average transfer amount is,
Most days it provides users with the balance of their checking account, but occasionally also updates them on how much theye saved with Digit over the course of a week or a month.
For example, type ecentand Digit will text back the last three transactions to be recorded by your checking account.
Type ithdrawand you can move money back from your Digit account to checking at any time.
Most importantly, users should know that the money that is transferred into your Digit avings accountisn really bearing any interest,
the way a normal savings account would. That will no doubt cause some skeptics to complain that any Digit user would be better off just putting aside the money themselves into their own savings account.
Or better yet those users should be putting their money into stocks or bonds or basically anything with a better financial return than a sub-1%APY savings account.
But those people are missing the point: Digit exists because the majority of people in the world aren good at saving money
and wouldn do so on their own. It puts money aside so that they don have to, and does so in a way that requires very little foresight.
It hoping for a maximum amount of gain for the least amount of pain. That is, if Digit is saving on your behalf
and you don really notice any money has gone missing from your checking account, well then, the team at Digit believes it doing its job well.
It not a ton of money, but it $1, 000 more than I would probably have had if
About That Funding Bloch is the former CEO of social marketing startup Flowtown. That company was acquired by Demandforce in 2011,
coincidentally, also led the investment in Flowtown. Also participating in the round are Freestyle Capital, Upside Partnership, Google Ventures, Operative Capital, Garry Tan, Alexis Ohanian, Aaron Harris, Rick Berry, Nate Bosshard, Eric
That money will be used to grow the team slightly, as the company works to integrate with a major banking partner.
Doing so will lower the cost of processing its ACH transfers to more favorable rates,
In addition to the funding Digit is also announcing a number of advisors to the company, including Braintree founding CTO Dan Manges, early Square team member Randy Reddig, Airbnb global payments general counsel Sharda Caro-del-Castillo,
and Paul Hastings partner Tom Brown. With their help, Digit hopes to make savings more seamless for a whole bunch of users a
#Adyen Raises $250m From General Atlantic To Expand Its International Payments Platform International payments startup Adyen is growing fast,
doubling the number of payments processed over the last year as well as revenues over that time.
The new financing was led by growth equity firm General Atlantic with participation from existing investor Index Ventures,
Also participating were Silicon valley Felicis Ventures and Asian investment firm Temasek Holdings. Over the last several years
Adyen has worked to enable payment solutions for companies seeking to offer their goods in an increasingly global marketplace.
Rather than relying on a combination of different banks and other payments processors for individual markets,
To enable that, Adyen has created a platform that allows companies to accept payments from basically anywhere.
It has partnerships with all the major credit card companies, as well as local payment processors around the world.
Its platform works in nearly 200 countries, allowing partners to get paid in virtually any currency and through a wide variety of payment methods.
Finally through its platform payments can be accepted either online, via mobile devices, or even in store for businesses that have operations in multiple countries.
Due to the increasingly global nature of business, that attracted huge interest from a wide range of companies.
For companies using its payment network, it can simplify the process of accepting payments in multiple territories.
At the same time, it can also improve conversion rates in places where it supports local forms of payments
according to cofounder and CEO Pieter van der Does. That flexibility has led even some clients to sign up to address specific markets where they hoped to grow,
In addition to its payment network, Adyen has also been investing in offering a mobile point-of-sales system called Shuttle.
By growing both the size of its customer base and the number of payments it processes for them
Adyen will process nearly $30 billion in payments, van der does told me. That means revenues have doubled also in that time, to $185 million.
Since it previously only raised $16 million, with its last money raised in 2011, the mega-round it announcing signals a huge commitment to growth.
The company, which is headquartered in Amsterdam and San francisco, has 240 employees spread across a number of international offices,
That why it took money from Temasek, according to van der Does. Given its clients and the size of Adyen existing business,
Over the last few months, its profile has been raised by several major funding rounds, including those of e-commerce site Coupang;
These include isolation from startup ecosystems in other countries, lack of early-stage funding opportunities,
while the administration of Seoul mayor Park Won-Soon has launched the Seoul Social Investment fund, which supports companies that solve social problems.
He adds that the organizers of Global Hackathon Seoul will work with the most promising teams after the event to provide them with mentorship and opportunities for funding.
Over the past several years, hackers have stolen consumerspersonal information and credit card numbers from some of the largest retailers.
Large companies like Adobe and ebay have seen emails and other personal account information stolen. And whistleblowers like Snowden have revealed the most private and devastating aspects of government spying agendas.
301m Smartphones Sold In Q3 As Xiaomi Muscles Into The Top 5 At Samsung s Expense Smartphones now account for 66%of all mobile phones worldwide
but rather says it because of the narrowing price difference between them and basic devices. Smartphones are already 66%of the world total mobile market
and that was one of the key components in a reported investment deal that Baidu is making in car service Uber.
According to the China National Tourism Association (via China Travel Guide) the number of Chinese travellers visiting foreign countries have grown drastically over the last several years as China economy has expanded its number of moneyed citizens
up 18%on 2012 and totalling $128. 7b in expenditures (up 27%on the year before).
It estimates that in 2014 that number will have risen to 114 million with total expenditure of $140 billion. very day,
Here posted net sales of#236 million on an operating profit of zero out of total net sales at Nokia of#3. 3 billion
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