The Tech Awards is an international program honoring innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. This year’s winners received their awards at a Gala yesterday in San Jose, CA.
The 2009 Tech Awards Laureates represent regions as diverse as Nigeria, Brazil, Great Britain, the United States and Bangladesh. And their work impacts people in many more countries worldwide.
15 innovators were honored for projects that address global issues on the environment, economic development, education, equality and health. A $50,000 cash prize was awarded to one Laureate in each category.
One Nigerian company with its Cows to Kilowatts program lowers pollution from the slaughterhouse, eliminates greenhouse gas emissions, while producing clean, cheap energy. The technology turns animal blood and waste into inexpensive, clean energy for consumers.
An innovation called Ultra Rice addresses the severe vitamin deficiency especially in women and children around the world with its product, which looks, cooks and tastes just like rice.
Watch the video below, and at the bottom read a description of the Laureates and their life-changing work.
The “chocolate cure” for emotional stress is getting new support from a clinical trial published online in the Journal of Proteome Research. It found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in the bodies of people feeling highly stressed. Everyone’s favorite treat also partially corrected other stress-related biochemical imbalances.
Beneficial substances in dark chocolate may also reduce risk factors for heart disease and other physical conditions, according to growing scientific evidence. Until now, however, there was little evidence from research in humans on exactly how chocolate might ease emotional stress.
In the study, scientists identified reductions in stress hormones and other stress-related biochemical changes in volunteers who rated themselves as highly stressed and ate dark chocolate for two weeks. “The study provides strong evidence that a daily consumption of 40 grams [1.4 ounces] during a period of 2 weeks is sufficient to modify the metabolism of healthy human volunteers,” the scientists say.
A plant that converts cow dung into energy for homes opened in the Netherlands last week.
Manure from cows at a nearby dairy farm will be fermented along with grass and food industry residues, and the biogas released during the process will be used as fuel to heat around 1,100 homes.
General Motors Co. is expected to fully repay its $6.7 billion in U.S. government loans by 2011, four years earlier than required. The auto manufacturer reported the news Monday after announcing recent sales exceeded expectations and costs came in lower than expected.
Under the plan, the automaker said it will begin paying the U.S. Treasury Department $1 billion each quarter, beginning at the end of December.
The highly visible success of the stimulus program known as cash-for-clunkers induced a boom in vehicle sales this summer that clearly would not have happened otherwise.
Now, the Obama administration is looking at creating a new version of the program — this time for home weatherization.
One proposal, which would give households money to pay for weatherization projects that help cut carbon emissions, might be called “cash for caulkers.” Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times, “It’s one of the top things (the president) is looking at.”
Two Chicago nonprofits, together with the University of Chicago, unveiled a counseling and sports program Wednesday aimed at stemming chronic youth violence in Chicago’s public schools.
Chicago is employing a growing array of efforts against youth violence – including a new $30 million program that tries to target the 1,200 kids most at-risk for violence.
Bacteria which glow green in the presence of explosives could provide a cheap and safe way to find hidden landmines, Edinburgh scientists claim.
Edinburgh University said the microbes, which forms green patches when sprayed onto ground where mines are buried, could be dropped by air onto danger areas.
Within a few hours, they would indicate where the explosives can be found.
In January, during the final hours of Israel’s three-week war in Gaza, a pair of Israeli tank shells blasted through a bedroom on the third floor of the doctor’s home, north of Gaza City.
The strike ended the lives of three of Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish’s daughters, but he stubbornly refuses to submit to the anger.
Instead, taking advantage of the notoriety that has inevitably come his way, Abuelaish continues to promote peace to Jews, Arabs and anyone who will listen – as many seem eager to do.
“I don’t want any bad feeling to control me and dominate.”
(Continue reading about the newly established Canadian resident in the Toronto Star)
Prisoners are paired with puppies in a ground-breaking program to train service dogs for injured war veterans. The program, Puppies Behind Bars, develops confidence and healing in both the soldiers and convicts.
Inmates in seven different facilities teach 78 different commands to service dogs and also train explosive-detective dogs for use in airports and law enforcement.
So far, the program, founded by Gloria Gilbert Stoga, has graduated hundreds of animals since 1998. On her Website, she writes about Dr. Thomas Lane, a veterinarian in Florida, who first thought that prison inmates would make excellent puppy raisers, and started the first guide-dog/prison program.
“Not only do inmates have unlimited time to spend with the puppies, but they benefit from the responsibility of being puppy raisers in ways that are especially important to their rehabilitation: they learn patience, what it is like to be completely responsible for a living being, how to give and receive unconditional love, and — since puppy raisers take classes and train the dogs together — how to work as a team.”
Watch the videos below, including a report by Glenn Close featured on Oprah in June…
Prisoners are paired with puppies in a ground-breaking program to train service dogs for injured war veterans. The program, Puppies Behind Bars, develops confidence and healing in both the soldiers and convicts.
Inmates in seven different facilities teach 78 different commands to service dogs and also train explosive-detective dogs for use in airports and law enforcement.
So far, the program, founded by Gloria Gilbert Stoga, has graduated hundreds of animals since 1998. On her Website, she writes about Dr. Thomas Lane, a veterinarian in Florida, who first thought that prison inmates would make excellent puppy raisers, and started the first guide-dog/prison program.
“Not only do inmates have unlimited time to spend with the puppies, but they benefit from the responsibility of being puppy raisers in ways that are especially important to their rehabilitation: they learn patience, what it is like to be completely responsible for a living being, how to give and receive unconditional love, and — since puppy raisers take classes and train the dogs together — how to work as a team.”
Watch the videos below, including a report by Glenn Close featured on Oprah in June…
According to a Gallup poll that measures happiness through the years, when the markets tanked last fall, happiness did too, but here’s the funny thing: by this past summer, overall well-being was higher than it was in the summer of 2008, before the Apocalypse. In fact, the latest report finds America’s cheeriness at an all-time high.
It seems that many people are finding the upside in the downturn.
Remember last year when the heroic girl’s softball teammates volunteered to carry an injured player from the opposing team around the bases helping her to score after she hurt her knee in the championship playoffs? Here is an update on the girls from different teams who have formed a nonprofit organization, the Mallory Holtman and Sara Tucholsky Sportsmanship Defined Foundation…
Small grants given directly to villagers have brought important changes to this corner of Afghanistan, offering a model for the country.
In Jurm, people have taken charge for themselves — using village councils and direct grants as part of an initiative called the National Solidarity Program, introduced by an Afghan ministry in 2003.
Before then, this valley had no electricity or clean water, its main crop was poppy and nearly one in 10 women died in childbirth… Today, many people have water taps, fields grow wheat and it is no longer considered shameful for a woman to go to a doctor.
No longer locked in one big war, Iraq has become a land of a hundred little wars — tribal disputes that lead to bloodshed. But, victory through negotiation is becoming more common, thanks to the mediation movement spawned by Harvard Law School guru Roger Fisher, coauthor of the 1981 book “Getting to Yes.’’ The Boston area has become a global hub for teaching conflict resolution theory and practice for uses in law, diplomacy, and business in farflung places.
A total of 73 municipal officials and tribal sheiks from across Iraq underwent intensive training from Conflict Management Group, the nonprofit consulting firm launched by Fisher in 1984 that is now part of the international development and relief group Mercy Corps.
TOMS Shoes was founded on a simple premise: With every pair you purchase, TOMS gives a pair of new shoes to a child in need. Using the purchasing power of individuals to benefit Ethiopian children in need.
Since its founding in May 2006, American internet entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie has given over 150,000 pairs of shoes to children through the One for One model.
The business plan calls for giving over 300,000 pairs of shoes in 2009.
TOMS Shoes was founded on a simple premise: With every pair you purchase, TOMS gives a pair of new shoes to a child in need. Using the purchasing power of individuals to benefit Ethiopian children in need.
Since its founding in May 2006, American internet entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie has given over 150,000 pairs of shoes to children through the One for One model.
The business plan calls for giving over 300,000 pairs of shoes in 2009.
A low-cost health care clinic in Goshen, Ind., has come up with a business plan that allows patients to pay for treatment with something other than money. At the Maple City Health Care Center, patients can help pay off their medical bills by performing community service.
Last fall, when the unemployment rate in Elkhart County, Indiana, topped 10 percent, clinic workers began noticing that patients weren’t showing up for appointments. Turns out they couldn’t even come up with a few bucks for an office visit.
So James Gingrich, the clinic’s medical director, decided to tap his patients’ skills and resources instead.
Peugeot last week unveiled in London its radical rethink on electric urban cars, the BB1, during a 5-stop world tour, saying the car’s inspiration is a zippy Vespa scooter.
The four adults are positioned with the rear seat occupants’ legs wrapping around the front seat, in the same way that a passenger sits behind the driver of a motorbike.
The small car, not yet in production, has a solar cell-covered glass roof to power the AC and innovative reverse opening doors.
With a turning radius of just 3.5 meters and a mere 8 foot in length, it zooms about in traffic — and into parking spots — with great agility.
Read more in this UK Sun story, and watch the promo video below….
For a cyclist, getting “doored” by a parked car is a usually painful and sometimes expensive collision, occuring when someone in a parked car opens the door in the path of a bike.
In an attempt to minimize such accidents, the District of Columbia has fortified the invisible line that separates drivers and cyclists on its busy 15th Street in Northwest, with more than a half-mile of yellow posts, in the city’s first attempt at walling off a bike lane from cars.
A Harley-riding Wisconsin senior has been given the National Franciscan Peace Award for 2009, an honor previously given to Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. Don Ryder works as the Wausau city safety director, but it is his work on a life-saving water project in drought-ridden Africa that earned him the prestigious prize.
Women no longer need to trek 15 miles to collect dirty water from a stream, thanks to Mr. Ryder, the Secular Franciscan church-goer who raised money and coordinated the digging of new wells to provide clean, fresh water for their tribes in Kenya.
The Maasai village of Saikeri accepted Don’s first gift of water and watched as the workers drilled down 400 feet to strike water for the first time.
“The people were jubilant,” said Ryder, who the proud Maasai warriors named “Lemayian,” the Blessed One.
It has made a tremendous difference in their lives. Now the tribes can plant seeds rather than rely on livestock as their main source of food. To ensure future success, two young men from the village were sent to school to learn how to maintain the diesel engines and pumps, and to learn drip-irrigation farming.
Several wells have already been drilled, at a cost of between $45,000 and $65,000 each — the first one delivers water to 5,000 Maasai and their 100,000 cattle. The second well is providing running water for a school, and soon for a clinic, but more wells are needed.
The long journey that women walked, 15 miles one way through dangerous wilderness, is now relegated to storytelling elders for sharing in song and dance the tales of earlier hardship. The stories will someday include the birth of a hospital, if Ryder’s mission continues.
Ryder and his wife, Yvonne, have a long history of working with the poor and marginalized. Volunteering with the Catholic diocese, the couple helped build a church and repair homes in Kenya. After returning home, they heard about the worsening drought that was hitting hard the Maasai people.
“The lack of rain over several years was devastating herds of cattle and the people whose livelihood depended on the livestock,” said Ken Beattie, a minister from Wisconsin’s La Verna Secular Franciscan Region who nominated Ryder for the award.
The problem worried Ryder for a time until he finally decided to do something, after opening the Bible to get an answer about his discontent regarding the drought. His finger fell to a passage in the Gospel of John, where Jesus says, “I was thirsty and you gave me drink.” His church parish offered to help make his vision a reality so he and his friend Romey Wagner set about raising the money to build a well.
He told more Secular Franciscans, who jumped on board, and soon they were booking speaking engagements to talk to schools, churches, and Rotary Clubs. A young couple donated $2,000 while school children collected coins. Donations started pouring in from coast to coast, he said.
The Tech Awards is an international program honoring innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. This year’s winners received their awards at a Gala yesterday in San Jose, CA.
Ryder and his wife, Yvonne, have a long history of working with the poor and marginalized. Volunteering with the Catholic diocese, the couple helped build a church and repair homes in Kenya. After returning home, they heard about the worsening drought that was hitting hard the Maasai people.