IBM reveals its top five innovation predictions for the next five years

IBM. IBM director of education transformation Chalapathy Neti.

IBM revealed its predictions for five big innovations that will change our lives within five years.

IBM. Bernie Meyerson, vice president of innovation at IBM.

The IBM 5 in 5 is the eighth year in a row that IBM has made predictions about technology, and this year’s prognostications are sure to get people talking. We discussed them with Bernie Meyerson, vice president of innovation at IBM, and he told us that the goal of the predictions is to better marshal the company’s resources in order to make them come true.

“We try to get a sense of where the world is going because that focuses where we put our efforts,” Meyerson said. “The harder part is nailing down what you want to focus on. Unless you stick your neck out and say this is where the world is going, it’s hard to you can turn around and say you will get there first. These are seminal shifts. We want to be there, enabling them.”

In a nutshell, IBM says:

• The classroom will learn you.
• Buying local will beat online.
• Doctors will use your DNA to keep you well.
• A digital guardian will protect you online.
• The city will help you live in it.

Meyerson said that this year’s ideas are based on the fact that everything will learn. Machines will learn about us, reason, and engage in a much more natural and personalized way. The innovations are being enabled by cloud computing, big data analytics, and adaptive learning technologies. IBM believes the technologies will be developed with the appropriate safeguards for privacy and security, but each of these predictions raises privacy and security issues.

As computers get smarter and more compact, they will be built into more devices that help us do things when we need them done. IBM believes that these breakthroughs in computing will amplify our human abilities. The company came up with the predictions by querying its 220,000 technical people in a bottoms-up fashion and tapping the leadership of its vast research labs in a top-down effort.

Here’s some more detailed description and analysis on the predictions.

IBM. In five years, the classroom will learn you.

1). The classroom will learn you. Globally, two out of three adults haven’t gotten the equivalent of a high school education. But IBM believes the classrooms of the future will give educators the tools to learn about every student, providing them with a tailored curriculum from kindergarten to high school.

“Your teacher spends time getting to know you every year,” Meyerson said. “What if they already knew everything about how you learn?”

In the next five years, IBM believes teachers will use “longitudinal data” such as test scores, attendance, student behavior on electronic learning platforms — and not just the results of aptitude tests. Sophisticated analytics delivered over the cloud will help teachers make decisions about which students are at risk, their roadblocks, and the way to help them. IBM is working on a research project with the Gwinnett County Public Schools, the 14th largest school district in the U.S. in New York State with 170,000 students. The goal is to increase the district’s graduation rate. And after a $10 billion investment in analytics, IBM believes it can harness big data to help students out.

“You’ll be able to pick up problems like dyslexia instantly,” Meyerson said. “If a child has extraordinary abilities, they can be recognized. With 30 kids in a class, a teacher cannot do it themselves. This doesn’t replace them. It allows them to be far more effective. Right now, the experience in a big box store doesn’t resemble this, but it will get there.”

IBM. In  years, buying local will beat online as you get online data at your fingertips in the store.

2. Buying local will beat online. Online sales topped $1 trillion worldwide last year, while many physical retailers have gone out of business as they fail to compete on price with the likes of Amazon.com. But innovations for physical stores will make buying local turn out better. Retailers will use the immediacy of the store and proximity to customers to create experiences that can’t be replicated by online-only retail. The innovations will bring the power of the web right to where the shopper can touch it. Retailers could rely on artificial intelligence akin to IBM’s Watson, which played Jeopardy better than many human competitors. The web can make sales associates smarter, while augmented reality can deliver more information to the store shelves. With these technologies, stores will be able to anticipate what a shopper most wants and needs. And they won’t have to wait two days for shipping.

“The store will ask if you would like to see a certain camera and have a salesperson meet you in a certain aisle where it is located,” Meyerson said. “The ability to do this painlessly, without the normal hassle of trying to find help, is very powerful.”

This technology will get so good that online retailers are likely to set up retail showrooms to help their own sales.

“It has been physical against online,” Meyerson said. “But in this case, it is combining them. What that enables you to do is that mom-and-pop stores can offer the same services as the big online retailers. The tech they have to serve you is as good as anything in online shopping. It is an interesting evolution but it is coming.”

IBM. In five years, doctors will routinely use your DNA to keep you well.

3. Doctors will use your DNA to keep you well. Global cancer rates are expected to jump by 75 percent by 2030. IBM wants computers to help doctors understand how to a tumor affects a patient down to their DNA. They could then figure out what medications will best work against the cancer, and fulfill it with a personalized cancer treatment plan. The hope is that genomic insights will reduce the time it takes to find a treatment down from weeks to minutes.

“The ability to correlate a person’s DNA against the results of treatment with a certain protocol could be a huge breakthrough,” Meyerson said. “You’ll be able to look at your DNA and find out” if there are magic bullet treatments that will address your particular ailment.

IBM. In five years, a digital guardian will protect you online.

4. A digital guardian will protect you online. We have multiple passwords, identifications, and devices than ever before. But security across them is highly fragmented. In 2012, there were 12 million victims of identity fraud in the U.S. In five years, IBM envisions a digital guardian that will become trained to focus on the people and items it is entrusted with. This smart guardian will sort through contextual, situational and historical data to verify a person’s identity on different devices. The guardian can learn about a user and make an inference about behavior that is out of the norm and may be the result of someone stealing that person’s identity. With 360 degrees of data about someone, it will be much harder to steal an identity.

“In this case, you don’t look for the signature of an attack,” Meyerson said. “It looks at your behavior with a device and spots something anomalous. It screams when there is something out of the norm.”

IBM. In five years, the city will help you live in it.

5. The city will help you live in it. IBM says that, by 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 80 percent of urban humanity and by 2050, seven out of every 10 people will be a city dweller. To deal with that growth, the only way cities can manage is to have automation, where smarter cities can understand in real-time how billions of events occur as computers learn to understand what people need, what they like, what they do, and how they move from place to place.

IBM predicts that cities will digest information freely provided by citizens to place resources where they are needed. Mobile devices and social engagement will help citizens strike up a conversation with their city leaders. Such a concept is already in motion in Brazil, where IBM researchers are working with a crowdsourcing tool that allows users to report accessibility problems, via their mobile phones, to help people with disabilities better navigate urban streets.

Of course, as in the upcoming video game Watch Dogs from Ubisoft, a bad guy could hack into the city and use its monitoring systems in nefarious ways. But Meyerson said, “I’d rather have the city linked. Then I can protect it. You have an agent that looks over the city. If some wise guy wants to make the sewage pumps run backwards, the system will shut that down.”

The advantage of the ultra-connected city is that feedback is instantaneous and the city government can be much more responsive.

ORIGINAL: Venture Beat, IBM

Dean Takahashi

December 16, 2013 10:30 PM 

Light completely stopped for a record-breaking minute

ORIGINAL: New Scientist

by Jacob Aron

25 July 2013

Not so fast (Image: Dougal Waters/Getty)

The fastest thing in the universe has come to a complete stop for a record-breaking minute. At full pelt, light would travel about 18 million kilometres in that time – that's more than 20 round trips to the moon.

"One minute is extremely, extremely long," says Thomas Krauss at the University of St Andrews, UK. "This is indeed a major milestone."

The feat could allow secure quantum communications to work over long distances.

While light normally travels at just under 300 million metres per second in a vacuum, physicists managed to slow it down to just 17 metres per second in 1999 and then halt it completely two years later, though only for a fraction of a second. Earlier this year, researchers kept it still for 16 seconds using cold atoms.

Stripy light To break the minute barrier, George Heinze and colleagues at the University of Darmstadt, Germany, fired a control laser at an opaque crystal, sending its atoms into a quantum superposition of two states. This made it transparent to a narrow range of frequencies. Heinze's team then halted a second beam that entered the crystal by switching off the first laser and hence the transparency.

The storage time depends on the crystal's superposition. A magnetic field extends it but complicates the control laser configuration. Heinze's team used an algorithm to "breed" combinations of magnet and laser, leading them to one that trapped light for a minute.

They also used the trap to store and then retrieve an image consisting of three stripes. "We showed you can imprint complex information on your light beam," says Heinze.

Tens of seconds of light storage are needed for a device called a quantum repeater, which would stop and then re-emit photons used in secure communications, to preserve their quantum state over long distances.

It should even be possible to achieve longer light storage times with other crystals, says Heinze, as they have pushed their current material close to its physical limit.

Journal reference: Physical Review Letters, doi.org/m86

Mobileye Raises $400 Million for Cheaper Self-Driving Car Tech

ORIGINAL: Spectrum IEEE 
Mobileye
By Jeremy Hsu
Posted 10 Jul 2013 | 12:59 GMT

Photo: Mobileye

Self-driving cars that allow drivers to take their hands and minds completely off the road won't come cheap if they go on sale in the next decade or two. But a Dutch and Israeli company called Mobileye envisions its relatively inexpensive driver assistance technology becoming widespread by 2016.

Mobileye has raised $400 million to back its development of semi-autonomous driving technology in partnership with automakers such as General Motors, BMW, and Volvo. The company, valued at $1.5 billion, aims to deploy technology that can take over for drivers during stop-and-go traffic or handle long stretches of highway driving—features that won't cost nearly as much as Google's famous self-driving cars, according to the 0:

"In some ways, the goal is not dissimilar to the already famous Google driverless cars, though the search giant’s systems allow for completely hands-off driving. But Mobileye is aiming to get most of the functionality into cars for much less, with fewer cameras and computer equipment that cost hundreds of dollars, rather than the tens of thousand of dollars that Google’s array of sensors is estimated to cost at the moment."

The existing Mobileye technology can already alert drivers to road dangers and automatically brake when necessary. Future features scheduled for deployment in 2016 include the ability to read traffic and street signs or help cars automatically keep their distance from other vehicles, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Over three million cars will have used Mobileye's technology by the end of this year, says Ziv Aviram, co-founder and CEO of Mobileye, in the New York Times story. He added that fully driverless vehicles would likely not become practical for another 15 or 20 years.

The gradual roll out of smart car technologies makes sense for Mobileye and many other companies: why wait on the fully autonomous car package when driver assistance technologies already exist? But don't count Google out for being obsessed with the self-driving car concept. The U.S. internet giant is well positioned to profit from the rise of smart cars—a $200 billion opportunity—by the end of the decade, says Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray.

IBM's Smarter Approach to Contextual Cities

ORIGINAL: Forbes

Shel Israel, Contributor

6/03/2013

NOTE–I am writing a book called Age of Context with Robert Scoble. It is expected to be complete in October. Following is an excerpt from a chapter called Contextual Cities and the New Urbanists.

Herman Hollerith was born in Buffalo in the late 1800s. He studied to be a mining engineer and wound up teaching at MIT. It is said he tinkered a lot, and in 1890, he invented the first electric tabulating machine.

Finding that it could count heads with unprecedented speed, the US Census Bureau became Hollerith’s first customer. He thought the new machine might provide him with a business opportunity, so he founded the Tabulating Machine Company [TMC].

Over the next few years, TMC merged with several other companies, one the maker of a cheese-slicing device. When Thomas J. Watson became president in 1915, he focused on making machines for businesses worldwide. Watson was fond of the literal and straightforward. He renamed the merged entity International Business Machines, or IBM for short.

IBM, the most enduring of all technology companies, has a long history of reinventing itself as times change. It has transcended from tabulating machines to mainframes, to PCs, to providing software and services for large organizations.

IBM does quite well in its current business, but so do several other companies and to outsiders each seems to closely resemble the other.

Perhaps it was with that in mind that in 2006, the company set up a series of meetings with employees, partners and customers called ‘innovation jams.’ To see its own future, IBM stepped back to look at global issues, such as population, pollution, economics and health.

They started examining how their current team of over 425,000 employees in about 200 countries could use their existing skills to make a better world and in so doing, strengthen the company’s software and services position.

Among IBM’s assets is that it understands data and uses it to devise anticipatory systems that predict unforeseen events. IBM has taken that and is applying it to its Smarter Planet initiative, addressing the complex global issues of health, banking and cities.

The Smarter Cities initiative is now a global business for IBM, with projects all over the world. When they examine urban centers, they watch for emerging patterns from which IBM can glean insights for municipal clients. Pattern recognition lets them identify problems sooner, and resolve them faster.

Although the practice is just a few years old, IBM has already accumulated a few impressive accomplishments. While the company is globally focused, we asked them specifically about US-based projects. Here are our favorites of the ones they submitted:

• Memphis. Police say that IBM’s predictive analytics have helped them identify criminal hot spots that allow them to anticipate where—and when– serious crimes are likely to occur. Based on the data, they reallocated patrol cars and other resources, reducing major and violent crime by as much as 30 percent. Pattern recognition also helps police understand trends that previously went unnoticed. For example, they now know that on rainy nights, car theft rises.
• San Francisco. IBM’s use of data and embedded sensors has reduced pollution emanating from the city’s thousand miles of sewer lines. Public utilities reports that IBM’s preventive intelligence has helped reduce repair costs by 11 percent.
• Chattanooga-Hamilton County. The county uses IBM predictive analytics to understand how adverse patterns develop. This allows them to identify at-risk children earlier, so educators can adjust personal attention and curriculum a factor in increasing the graduation rate by eight percent. One facility, the Howard School of Academics and Technology reported a 200 percent increase in the graduation rate over the program’s first six years.
• Miami-Dade County. IBM has helped the 35 Dade County municipalities to share data, thus making it easier to collaborate in a wide array of areas including water, transportation, and law enforcement. They are also sharing contextual technologies to make government more transparent. A new water project alone is expected to save the county $1 million per year.

Contextual City Startups

IBM has also served as a global recruiter, mentor and partner for startups focused on solving city problems with contextual technology. A few who are associated with IBM to various degrees include:

• Bitcarrier, a Barcelona-based startup has created a contextual traffic platform, comprised of sensors, Wifi, and just a little intelligence,” Ricardo Fernandez, the company’s chief operating officer told us. The platform gathers data from up to 20 million points daily across a city’s grid, shown on municipal traffic ‘heat maps.’ Managers use the information to reroute traffic, simultaneously reducing traffic, noise and air pollution. The sensors replace cameras, increasing privacy and reducing costs by up to 90 percent, Fernandez estimated. Traffic administrators can respond quickly to accidents and other surprises. Bitcarrier also improves public transportation systems. City buses adjust so they don’t drive around half-empty, and extra buses can be dispatched more quickly. Most cities cannot adjust traffic signals to accommodate events such as a concert because they run on data that is up to three-years-old and can’t adjust to current information. When we talked in March 2013, Bitcarrier was in use in Panama City, Helsinki, Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragosa, Spain and in late discussions with several additional cities.   
  
  
  
• Libelium was also a Spanish-based finalist in IBM SmartCamp, a global series of IBM-sponsored startup competitions. Libelium is Latin for dragonfly. CEO Alicia Asin explained that the company is focused on the Internet of Things that we described in Chapter 1. The company deploys insect-like swarms of tiny sensors called motes, which report on changes in a wide range of activities impacting safety, efficiency, vegetation growth and sustainability. It is an open sensor platform that was being used by over 2000 developers in April 2013. Libelium technology helps vineyards decide on which varietals of grapes to grow based on environmental conditions. Libelium’s main business is creating smart parking systems, mostly in urban areas, all over the world. Magnetic sensors are installed under pavement to determine whether a car is parked in a space or not. The system sees the GPS of a car looking for parking and can direct it to the nearest open spot via a mobile app. According to Asin, the smart parking system is politically popular because it pays for itself by ensuring cars pay to park or get fined. The efficiency reduces air and noise pollution. ibelium’s most dramatic sensor effort was in Fukushima, Japan following the 2011 nuclear disaster. Upon the government’s request, Libelium designed a sensor panel that was installed in and around areas suspected of radiation contamination. Each panel served as an autonomous, wireless Geiger counter, which then broadcasted realtime information into a cloud-based open network. Citizens published radiation readings from their locations to the site, and those measurements appeared on a map alongside values from inside contaminated zones. “After a couple of weeks, we had a radiation map of Japan. It represented a common thought for people to share and be helpful to all,” Asin said. “It’s where I came to understand the power of citizens in a Smart Cities program.” Moving forward, the system will help the country respond faster and more effectively if another tsunami strikes. 
  
  
  

  

  
  

  Smart Water
  Project in Valencia

  Ensuring quality in
  drinking water

• Nooly, the Israeli-based hyper-local sensor-based weather detection service we told you about in our contextual car chapter, is another early-phase company working with IBM in various cities. Unlike conventional weather forecasts, Nooly covers small distances and sees weather changes one or two hours before they hit, including hurricanes, snowstorms or flooding. According to CEO Yaron Reich, Nooly can warn cities when weather is about to cause traffic snarls and where accidents are likely to happen. Cities can use the short lead-time to make fast routing adjustments. Reich sees places where Nooly sensors could even save lives. The sensors could detect a flash flood and underground crews could be warned to evacuate to avoid drowning. Likewise, Nooly can serve as a tool for first responders such as firefighters who need to understand wind, rain, and other factors. Less dramatically, Nooly can help cities save money and provide more efficient services. While municipal power consumption is usually predictive along seasonal patterns, they cannot account for heat waves or frost where quick grid adjustments can save energy and costs. Likewise, Nooly can predict evaporation rates in public parks during excessively hot days and can adjust watering systems accordingly. 
  
• Waze, the Israeli startup, we talked about in the previous chapter, can help cities get smarter about changing traffic light patterns to reduce traffic. Users help each other route around trouble spots, reducing travel times for people, but also helping urban traffic run more efficiently. By providing realtime data that can help traffic managers reroute traffic around trouble spots and show the best place to find parking, restrooms, or motorist amenities.
  

eCall autos conectados puede ayudar a salvar vidas

From: Ericsson

22/03/2013

Add caption

En 2011, más de 30.000 personas murieron en las carreteras de la Unión Europea. Pero con eCall, miles de vidas podrían ser salvadas cada año. Las llamadas automáticas de emergencia ya son ofrecidas por algunas marcas de automóviles y la UE quiere que eCall sea un estándar en todos los autos 0km en Europa a partir de 2015.

Cada accidente de tránsito es una tragedia y cada vez que sucede, el tiempo es crucial para salvar vidas y tratar las lesiones. Grandes logros se han hecho para mejorar la seguridad vial, pero aún hay mucho por hacer. La iniciativa paneuropea de eCall asegurará que las víctimas reciban ayuda de los servicios de emergencia tan pronto como sea posible. eCall es una llamada de emergencia que se genera manualmente por los ocupantes del vehículo o automáticamente a través de la activación de sensores del vehículo en caso de accidente. Cuando se activa, el sistema establece una conexión de voz-112 y envía los datos directamente al correspondiente Punto de Respuesta de Seguridad Pública (PSAP), que es una autoridad pública o a un centro de eCall privado que opera bajo la regulación y/o autorización de un organismo público.

Ericsson es parte del “Proyecto Piloto Europeo eCall Armonizado” HeERO (por sus siglas en inglés), que prepara, ejecuta y coordina el despliegue de eCall 112 pre-pilotos a nivel europeo, teniendo en cuenta las normas establecidas, y participa en programas piloto en Croacia, Alemania, España y Suecia. El proyecto HeERO es coordinado por ERTICO - ITS Europa, donde Ericsson es un socio activo y de larga data.

Posiciones GPS e identificador de vehículo

El eCall paneuropeo velará porque las víctimas reciban asistencia de los servicios de emergencia tan pronto como sea posible. Datos como la localización satelital, la dirección e identificación del vehículo llegarán a la central de alarmas, incluso si la víctima está inconsciente. Como el accidente se detecta en segundos y se puede conocer su posición exacta, los actores de la cadena de rescate son capaces de responder de manera inmediata a la emergencia, aprovechando “la hora de oro de la atención de emergencia”, aumentando las posibilidades de supervivencia de la víctima o mitigación de las lesiones. eCall también se asegurará de que el lugar del accidente se pueda despejar tan pronto como sea posible, ya que los equipos de rescate, policía, centros de gestión del tráfico y las empresas de remolque son notificados inmediatamente.

Add caption

Todos los automóviles en la UE se conectarán a partir de 2015

La regulación de la UE volverá al eCall obligatorio para todos los automóviles 0km a partir de 2015. Esta es una de las medidas incluidas en la Directiva para ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems), un mandato para aumentar la seguridad, y hacer más limpio y eficiente el tráfico en la UE. La homologación de la UE de los vehículos de motor regularán los coches; un acto delegado regulará Puntos de Respuesta de Seguridad Pública (PSAP).

¿Todos los automóviles se podrán conectar? Sí y no. Las regulaciones finales probablemente requerirán que todos los coches nuevos en todos los Estados miembro deban estar equipados con eCall o una solución de terceros compatible. Con eCall sólo los estándares paneuropeos eCall se utilizan, el módulo en el coche tiene una tarjeta SIM (para lo que se abona una pequeña cuota única), pero la tarjeta SIM no está registrada en ninguna red hasta que un sistema eCall se activa. Esto es para evitar innecesarias actualizaciones de señalización de tráfico y localización de millones de automóviles y para proteger la privacidad del conductor. En el caso de las soluciones de terceros que pueden confiar también en la solución propietaria del dueño del vehículo, tiene una tarjeta SIM normal y una suscripción andcan que utiliza una amplia gama de otros servicios.

Para Ericsson esto es muy importante ya que coincide con nuestra visión de una sociedad en red en la que todo lo que se pueda beneficiar por estar conectado, se conecte, para el progreso de las personas, las empresas y la sociedad.

SOS Alarma en Suecia

El éxito de las pruebas de conducción con miles de coches equipados con eCall se han realizado en conjunto con SOS Alarma en Suecia que proporciona soporte a 9 millones de ciudadanos de Suecia a través del número de servicio de emergencias 112.

NOTAS A LOS EDITORES

Ericsson antecedentes de prensa: www.ericsson.com/thecompany/press/backgrounders

Croacia para estar listo para eCall a tiempo: 

www.ericsson.com/hr/press/news/2011/heero_pilot_project.shtml

Acerca de HeERO

HeERO se refiere al servicio de llamadas de urgencias pan-europeo de los vehículos “eCall”, que se basa en el 112, el número común de urgencias europeo. Desde enero de 2011, los nueve países europeos que conforman el consorcio HeERO (Croacia, República Checa, Finlandia, Alemania, Grecia, Italia, Países Bajos, Rumania y Suecia) han llevado adelante un programa de tres años de experimentación y despliegue de eCall.

La segunda fase de HeERO - HeERO 2 - comenzó el 1ro de enero de 2013 y tendrá una duración de 2 años. 6 nuevos países (Bélgica, Bulgaria, Dinamarca, Luxemburgo, España y Turquía) se han unido a los 9 países piloto de HeERO1. Además, el proyecto dará la bienvenida a los nuevos miembros asociados, tanto comerciales como públicos, que sienten que van a poder beneficiarse de la experiencia de HeERO1 y 2 (Estado asociado no proporciona acceso a fondos de la UE).

El consorcio HeERO actualmente está probando y validando, en los pilotos bajo condiciones reales, las normas comunes europeas eCall definidos y aprobados por los organismos europeos de normalización. El proyecto está parcialmente financiado por la Unión Europea a través del programa CIP - ICT PSP.

www.heero-pilot.eu/view/en/heero/consortium/sweden.html

www.ertico.com/heero/

Para descargar videos y fotografías en alta resolución: www.ericsson.com/press

Ericsson es un proveedor líder mundial de tecnología y servicios de comunicaciones. Estamos habilitando a la Sociedad Conectada con soluciones eficientes en tiempo real que nos permitan a todos estudiar, trabajar y vivir nuestras vidas con mayor libertad, en sociedades sustentables de todo el mundo.

Nuestra oferta incluye servicios, software e infraestructura en Tecnologías de Información y Comunicaciones para los operadores de telecomunicaciones y otras industrias. Actualmente, 40% del tráfico mundial de telefonía móvil pasa a través de las redes de Ericsson y damos soporte a las redes de nuestros clientes, atendiendo a más de 2,5 mil millones de abonados.

Somos más de 110,000 personas trabajando con clientes en más de 180 países. Fundada en 1876, Ericsson tiene su sede central en Estocolmo, Suecia. En 2012 la compañía tuvo ingresos por 227.8 millones de coronas suecas (USD 33.8 mil millones). Ericsson cotiza en NASDAQ OMX de Estocolmo y NASDAQ, bolsa de Nueva York.

Ericsson está presente en América Latina desde 1896, cuando estableció un acuerdo en Colombia y por primera vez entregó equipos en la región. A principios de 1900, Ericsson incrementó su presencia en América Latina firmando acuerdos comerciales en Argentina, Brasil y México. Actualmente, Ericsson está presente en 56 países de Sudamérica, Centroamérica, México y el Caribe, que comprenden una de las regiones con instalaciones completas de Ericsson, formadas por la Unidad de Producción, el Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo (I+D), y el Centro de Entrenamiento. Ericsson es el proveedor líder de telecomunicaciones con más del 40% de cuota de mercado en América Latina y más de 100 contratos de servicios de telecomunicaciones en la región.

www.ericsson.com/mx

www.ericsson.com/mx/news

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PARA MÁS INFORMACIÓN, POR FAVOR CONTACTE A:

México, Colombia y Venezuela:

Luis Javier Flores

Public and Media Relations

Phone: +52 55 1103 0442

E-mail: luis.javier.flores@ericsson.com

Centroamérica y Caribe:

Paola Torres

Brand Experience Manager

Ericsson 

Phone: +506 25190800

E-mail: paola.a.torres@ericsson.com

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Phone: +56 2 372 5048

E-mail: karina.martini@ericsson.com

eCall autos conectados puede ayudar a salvar vidas (PDF)

FireFly. El Triciclo del siglo XXI

ORIGINAL: Ecoinventos
by DAVID
27 MARZO, 2013

El clima a partir de ahora no será un impedimento para andar en bicicleta, independientemente de la estación o mes del año, ya que desde Geospace Studio nos llega este vehículo de tracción humana habilitado para cualquier tipo de clima.

El clima a partir de ahora no será un impedimento para andar en bicicleta, independientemente de la estación o mes del año, ya que desde Geospace Studio nos llega este vehículo de tracción humana habilitado para cualquier tipo de clima.

Bautizado como FireFly, este vehículo es un triciclo con una estructura que protege al conductor de la humedad, el frío, gracias a su chasis protector, y también de la noche gracias a sus luces.

Así los ciclistas podrán montar en bici todo el año sin importar la estación del año, el tiempo y también aumentando su seguridad.

FireFly es un transporte ecológico, mas cómodo y seguro, que nos muestra hacia donde debe tender el diseño de vehículos más ecológicos.

Visto en: elsafari.cl

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Silt Lake City: Floating 'Hydropolis' Could Ride the Tide of the Nile River in Egypt

ORIGINAL: Inhabitat´

by Bridgette Meinhold, 01/21/13

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In ancient times the Nile valley was subject to periods of flooding that provided people with the irrigation and fertile soil needed to grow crops. Modern dams have radically altered that natural system, but a new proposal by architecture students in Nantes sees a different way of providing flood control while sustaining the environment. Silt Lake City is a "hydropolis" - a series of modular floating structures that take advantage of the rise and fall of the waters. Agriculture, residences, businesses and energy generators all float on the water and rise and fall with the tides.

Silt Lake City is a student architecture project by Margaux Leycuras, Marion Ottmann and Anne-Hina Mallette that won a prize in a competition organized by the Foundation Jacques Rougerie. Before the construction of the Aswan dam, the Nile valley was subject to a natural cycle of flooding, which provided water for irrigation and nutrients in the form of silt. However the floods could be devastating and the dam was built to help regulate the Nile. Unfortunately, the dam radically changed the ecosystem with silt accumulating behind the dam and salt water from the sea causing erosion.

To solve this problem, the team proposed a solution that combines some flood control with a series of modular cities along the river. The project would divide Lake Nasser into city-modules set within a 200-meter-deep reservoir lake. These floating cities would be protected by an enveloping sea wall that acts as a barrier while providing connections to the shore. During the wet months, the dam is opened and the river floods the land as it used to, providing water and nutrients. Then the dam is closed to maintain water level during non flood times. The result is a more natural system that protects the region from devastating flooding, but still allows the river to provide life.

+ Silt Lake City

Via ArchDaily

Read more: Silt Lake City: Floating 'Hydropolis' Could Ride the Tide of the Nile River in Egypt | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

Massive Genomics Center Set to Open in Lower Manhattan

ORIGINAL: Scientific American

By Robin Lloyd

An artist's rendition of the New York Genome Center exterior at 101 Avenue of the Americas, Manhattan.

NEW YORK—For a spot news junkie, the sight of a podium-studded dais surrounded by people holding up recording devices is irresistible, especially on a hot summer day. So, I was delighted to happen this morning upon such a press conference on my way to the Scientific American office. The event was held to announce a 20-year lease location for the New York Genome Center—101 Avenue of the Americas. Call the area SoHo. Call it Hudson Square. The area could use some stronger economic juice, and New York City lately is also angling for greater leadership in the life sciences and tech sector.

The goal is to make the site the largest genomic research center in North America.

Construction is under way at the LEED Silver-certified building to house seven stories of labs and offices to support genomic sequencing and analysis with Illumina technology, bioinformatics, data mining and translational medicine (transforming discoveries into drugs and devices into treatments). A total of 11 mostly New York-area academic institutions, and some pharmaceutical and tech firms, will collaborate on the center. About $115 million has been raised so far. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is among the donors, along with the Simons Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Russell L. Carson, Anthony B. Evnin, and WilmerHale, but apparently the center will just get the city’s name as its moniker. No egos.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Thomas Kelly of the NYGC Executive Committee 

The labs are set to open in spring 2013 (initially they were to open this year), giving the city a chance to start competing more aggressively with Boston and other U.S. small cities (not to mention China) in genomics research, a bit late to the party. Within a year, the center will generate 100 new jobs, said Mayor Michael Bloomberg at the event.

“Five years from now, this will grow to 500 new research jobs and the startups resulting from work here, work that could do so much to vanquish disease and reduce suffering around the world. It really is going to be amazing,” he said.

“And we’ll also produce thousands more jobs for New Yorkers and continue the ongoing revitalization of Lower Manhattan,” he added. “I think we can talk about the effects here but really the effects on the whole world are what’s most important.”

The involved research institutions include Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Columbia University, Cornell University/Weill Cornell Medical College, The Jackson Laboratory, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York University/NYU School of Medicine, North Shore-LIF Health System, Rockefeller University and Stony Brook University.

Data warehousing will be provided at a biometric- and key-access-only site called the Sabey Intergate. Manhattan facility at 375 Pearl Street, guarded by NYPD and Homeland Security personnel. A pilot site for the Genomics Center currently is housed at Rockefeller University.

The center will soon undertake a large-scale whole genome sequencing project to study the genetic basis of susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease in at least dozens of patients’ samples, with the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, part of North Shore-LIJ. The data from this effort will be made open access to the scientific community.

“Our data mining capabilities both at this site and in connection with the Sabey data storage capabilities are key to navigating…datasets for new insights into how variations and patterns amongst regulatory networks in human cells cause disease,” said Nancy Kelley, founding executive director of the Genome Center.

“Data mining may also be key to identifying the reasons for adverse drug reactions and why some patients do not respond to currently available treatments. While genomics is a relatively new field, the recent discoveries in this area have been remarkable. They have had enormous impact for patients with cancer, Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disease, psychiatric disorders and type 2 diabetes.”

Below are some more pics from the Genome Center’s Web site that have the usual futuristic and social oddness to them of architectural renderings.

About the Author: Robin Lloyd is responsible for editing and assigning stories for ScientificAmerican.com. She also manages Scientific American's Twitter feed, @sciam. Follow on Twitter @robinlloyd99.

Al por mayor

ORIGINAL: El Espectador

Por: Alfredo Molano Bravo
1 Jul 2012

Mientras en el Congreso de la República se cocinaba un operativo de fuga constitucional de los parapolíticos, de sus protectores y de sus financiadores, el presidente Santos anunciaba muy orondo, en Río+20, que añadía en números redondos 17 millones de hectáreas a las áreas de reserva estratégica para minería existentes, para un total de 22 millones de hectáreas.

Es decir, cuatro veces más de la superficie dedicada a la agricultura en el país. A su regreso de Río se encontró con que un mamut gigantesco se había entrado a la Casa de Nariño y había vuelto trizas la cristalería, sin que nadie se diera cuenta. El jueves recogió los vidrios y hoy está dedicado a pegarlos uno por uno.

Mientras tanto, miles de mineros grandes y pequeños preparan expediciones para posesionarse de las “áreas de reserva estratégica” situadas en las pocas regiones en que aún se conservan culturas indígenas y negras, matas de monte y selvas, ríos y humedales.


¿Quién va a impedir que esa masa de mineros invada las 22 millones de hectáreas y comience a descapotar, contaminar ríos y caños con mercurio y cianuro, a comprar autoridades indígenas y municipales?


Más aún, cuando lleguen ya estarán allá puntas de guerrilla o comandos paramilitares esperando a los mineros para prestarles el servicio de seguridad.


Las áreas estratégicas para la minería —decretadas por la Resolución 0045 del 20 de junio pasado de la recién creada Agencia Nacional de Minería— se extienden a lo largo y ancho y hondo de los departamentos de Vichada, Guainía, Vaupés, Amazonas y Chocó. Son 202 bloques específicos o polígonos alinderados que pueden ser pedidos en concesión por particulares. (Un par de ejemplos de la precisión con que han sido publicados en el Diario Oficial: Bloque N° 191 en Cumaribo, Vichada: 0.1225 hectáreas —ni siquiera una hectárea—, Bloque N° 96 en Puerto Colombia, Guainía, 28.002 hectáreas). Son áreas donde hay sólidos indicios de la existencia de oro, metales del grupo de los platinoides, cobre, hierro, coltán y minerales asociados, minerales de fosfatos, minerales de potasio, minerales de magnesio, uranio y carbón metalúrgico y térmico. Mejor dicho, todo lo que en el subsuelo existe. La mera publicación de la resolución atraerá a barequeros, mineros de retroexcavadora, draga, dragueta, manguera y, claro está, geólogos, abogados, ingenieros y políticos a sueldo de las grandes multinacionales de la minería, con el objeto de catear, explotar y defender los bloques.


La resolución es un acto administrativo que de hecho afecta a la gran mayoría de comunidades negras e indígenas del país y, por tanto, supone la consulta previa. Norma que, por supuesto, se birló.

En los 22 millones de hectáreas el Gobierno —tan ajeno a la corrupción— piensa transformar la feria de concesiones con cédula, según palabras del ministro de Minas, por rondas mineras a las que, como es bien sabido, sólo podrán asistir las grandes empresas que puedan cumplir con las exigencias de una “minería sostenible”. ¿Podría explicar el Gobierno cómo hacer para al mismo tiempo que de una mina se saca oro, se mete? Y, para completar, la minería debe ser “amigable”. Del Gobierno, sin duda.

Si bien esos bloques no están dentro de zonas mineras indígenas, según se lee —en pésimo castellano—, nada impide que una multinacional china, digamos, firme con un resguardo indígena —o con su capitán— una especie de consorcio para la explotación de coltán, donde los indígenas tengan el 1% de participación en la empresa. Esa sociedad haría de hecho legal la explotación y aseguraría el resultado de la consulta.

Más allá del destrozo ambiental que traerá la minería “sostenible”, lo que nunca se podrá remediar es la división de las comunidades indígenas y negras, la compra de consultas, la corrupción de capitanes, a imagen y semejanza de lo que ha hecho el Gobierno con el Congreso, el Congreso con las cortes y las cortes con el Gobierno. 

Elespectador.com| Elespectador.com

La minería ilegal mueve 1600 millones de pesos semanales sólo en Condoto

ORIGINAL: CARACOL Radio
Mayo 15 de 2012

El reto está en el Chocó y es en torno a la minería ilegal, dijo el general Oscar Naranjo el día en que se confirmó su renuncia. Diana Calderón con Jair Mosquera viajaron y se internaron en la zona del San Juan chocoano encontrando un negocio que mueve 1600 millones semanales solo en el municipio de Condoto. 

Un recorrido por la zona de el San Juan chocoano, saliendo de Quibdó, invadido por más de 14 mil rapimotos, que se han convertido en la única opción de transporte masivo, a Istmina y Condoto, muestra no solo el alto impacto ambiental de la minería ilegal o informal en el mejor de los casos – son 62 mil hectáreas afectadas- sino la dinámica perversa de dónde sacan provecho:

• grupos armados, 
• extranjeros -algunos provenientes de Brasil con sus dragas-,
• multinacionales que ofrecen dádivas a las comunidades,
• médicos que atienden a mineros y joyeros contaminados con mercurio,
• los dueños y señores del lavado de activos que van y vienen de Panamá y Suráfrica y
• un Gobierno que aplaza las decisiones ...

Así lo explica Helcias Ayala, investigador del Instituto de Investigaciones del Pacífico

“Pero lo que se cree es que en algunos momentos se ha traído oro de Panamá y de Suráfrica, para hacerlo pasar por extraído en el Chocó y lavar dinero de procedencia ilegal, dice Helcias Ayala, 

El negocio del oro se explota en el Chocó en casi 250 entables, según cifras oficiales que Ariel Quinto, presidente de la Federación de mineros del Chocó, quien explica que está cada uno conformado por mínimo dos retroexcavadoras y 25 trabajadores que producen aproximadamente 1 libra de oro aproximado en un terrero de entre 2 y 4 hectáreas, y que equivale en el lenguaje de la minería a 100 Castellanos.

“Una empresa minera está constituida por un entable minero, y éste por dos maquinas excavadoras, dos motores de ACPM de alto cilindraje, un clasificador de mineral, un operador se gana 2 millones de pesos libres y un trabajador raso, alrededor de un millón de pesos mensual”, Ariel Quinto, presidente de la Federación de Mineros del Chocó

El patrón de Celsa

La libra de oro la primera semana de mayo se cotizaba a 32 millones de pesos. Celsa Ramos lleva 25 años en el negocio. Es una mujer afro, de rasgos definidos, con joyas de oro en las manos. Es una de las 8 personas conocidas que en Condoto que le compran el oro a los mineros, quienes también lo negocian en compraventas y con empresas fundidoras de las que pululan en Istmina y que reciben recursos de empresarios antioqueños, que se movilizan en camionetas de alta gama de todas las marcas. 

“Yo tengo un patrón que me da la plata para que compre el oro. Es antioqueño, pero hace años vive en Condoto. El precio actual es de 32 millones de pesos. Se pueden comprar a la semana, 6 libras, depende”, explica Celsa.