Westwood, CA

By JONAH LEHRER

Published: December 17, 2010

Geoffrey West doesn’t eat lunch. His doctor says he has a mild allergy to food; meals make him sleepy and nauseated. When West is working — when he’s staring at some scribbled equations on scratch paper or gazing out his office window at the high desert in New Mexico — he subsists on black tea and nuts. His gray hair is tousled, and his beard has the longish look of neglect. It’s clear that West regards the mundane needs of everyday life — trimming the whiskers, say — as little more than a set of annoying distractions, drawing him away from a much more interesting set of problems. Sometimes West can seem jealous of his computer, this silent machine with no hungers or moods. All it needs is a power cord.

http://www.economist.com/node/17388308

For cities to become truly smart, everything must be connected

IN SINGAPORE conversations about water quickly turn political. The city-state no longer wants to depend on water from Malaysia when the current water-supply agreement between the two countries expires in 2061. More than once the neighbour to the north, of which Singapore was part before an acrimonious split in 1965, has threatened to increase prices or even cut off supplies. Yet politics is not the only reason for Singapore’s advanced water system. The information centre at the Marina Barrage features pictures of floods and droughts. “We have either too much water or too little,” explains Yap Kheng Guan, a director of Singapore’s PUB. Even today, despite a sophisticated system of ditches and tunnels, floods can suddenly strike. In July parts of the main shopping district were under water after heavy rainfalls. The problems of scarcity and excess are in evidence on the city-state’s roads too. Singaporeans, who are among the world’s richest people, love to drive, but space for roads is severely limited. When in the early 1970s the central area became too congested, the government introduced the world’s first manual urban road-pricing system. In 1998 it became the first to be automated. “Singapore proves that necessity is the mother of invention,” says Teo Lay Lim, who heads the local office of Accenture. In this special report •It’s a smart world •A sea of sensors •Making every drop count •» Living on a platform « •Augmented business •The IT paydirt •Your own private matrix •Sensors and sensibilities •Horror worlds •Sources and acknowledgments •Offer to readers Now the city wants to become a “living laboratory” for smart urban technologies of all kinds—not just water and transport systems but green buildings, clean energy and city management too. Both local and foreign firms in these sectors will be able to develop and show off their products on the island before selling them elsewhere, explains Goh Chee Kiong, who is in charge of the clean-energy cluster at Singapore’s Economic Development Board. There is strong demand for making cities smarter, not just in China and other rapidly urbanising countries but throughout the Western world. Resources like water, space, energy and clean air are scarce in urban areas, which makes them the natural place to start saving, says Mark Spelman, Accenture’s global head of strategy. “Smart-city” projects have been multiplying around the world. Some of them are not as new as their labels suggest, and in any case what exactly constitutes a smart city is hard to define. But they all have one thing in common: they aim to integrate the recent efforts to introduce smart features in a variety of sectors and use this “system of systems”, as IBM calls it, to manage the urban environment better. The best-known smart city is Masdar, a brand-new development in Abu Dhabi that recently welcomed its first residents and will eventually become home to 40,000 people. It is being built entirely on a raised platform, which makes maintenance and the installation of new gear much easier. Below the platform sits the smart infrastructure, including water pipes with sensors and a fibre-optic network. Above it is to be a showcase for all kinds of green technology: energy-efficient buildings, small pods that will zoom around on paths (no cars will be allowed) and systems that catch dew as well as rainwater. Yet experts see Masdar mostly as a property project: hardware in search of a purpose. What really matters to a city’s smartness, they argue, is the software that runs on it and the network that connects its parts. “It is the common infrastructure for all the smart systems,” says Wim Elfrink, who heads the “Smart+Connected Communities” initiative of Cisco, the networking-equipment maker.

By Solveig Grothe

During a trip to East Germany in 1990, photographer Stefan Koppelkamm discovered buildings that had survived both the war and the construction mania of the East German authorities. Ten years later, he returned to photograph the buildings again. The comparison threw up some unexpected contrasts.

Footsteps echoed on the cobblestones in the narrow street. The photographer carried a large plate camera over his shoulder. Fascinated, his searching gaze wandered over the lavish Renaissance portal entranceways, the balconies with filigree railings and the elaborate stucco facades. The plaques above the doorways bore witness to a brisk business in the neighborhood: “Bicycles and Motorcycles, est. 1907″ read the sign above one of the shops. Others read “Schindler’s Floral Hall” or “Printing Society and Publishing House.” But on the street itself there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

Incredibly, scientists are starting to view New York as an ecological hot spot—more diverse and richer in nature than the suburbs and rural counties that surround it.

Wild turkeys crossing the intersection of Seaview Avenue and Father Capodanno Boulevard, near the South Beach Psychiatric Center in Staten Island.   (Photo: Jason Fulford)

Coyotes are suburban news at the moment. Over Labor Day weekend, a rabid coyote showed up on the lawns of Rye Brook. It lunged at a 14-year-old, attacked a 2-year-old, and killed and beheaded its own pup before being shot under a trampoline by the local police. Nervous homeowners faced the television cameras to voice concern for their children and their pets. “Tonight,” a newscaster reported, “one of the victims who fought off the vicious animal speaks out…”

 But six months ago, a coyote made a high-profile visit to the city. It was a less macabre event, occasioning a long, weird video clip, filmed at about three in the morning, of a bunch of cops standing on the West Side Highway in Tribeca trying to catch the poor thing. It took the cops a long time. The coyote hid in the shrubs of Hudson River Park, then ran along the embankment. It looked pathetic and lost.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,702856,00.html

By Romain Leick, Matthias Schreiber and Hans-Ulrich Stoldt

Photo Gallery: 21 Photos

AP

Germany’s rebirth following the annihilation of World War II is nothing short of a miracle. But the country’s reconstruction was not without controversy and it resulted in cities filled with modernist buildings which have not aged well. Now, a new wave of construction is underway coupled with a new desire to rebuild the old.

It was a curious procession that wound its way up the Fockeberg in the eastern German city of Leipzig in May. The participants pushed strange wheeled contraptions up the 153 meter (500 foot) hill, climbed into them and shot back down again. The event was the 19th Prix de Tacot, an annual soap-box derby that sees daredevil teams race weird and wonderful vehicles to the delight of thousands of spectators. The race has several events and a number of special prizes, including the “‘Long Live Yuri Gagarin’ Special Award,” which this year went to a team calling itself “Stag Party.” A rolling beer-garden umbrella was among the sights.

Perhaps more interesting, however, is the venue where the Prix de Tacot takes place. The Fockeberg wasn’t created by glacial erosion or tectonic movements. Rather, the hill was created entirely from rubble leftover after the bombing of Leipzig during World War II. It is a soap-box derby on the ruins of the Third Reich.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,709180,00.html#ref=nlint

Restoring the Paradise that Saddam Destroyed

By Samiha Shafy

Saddam Hussein drained the unique wetlands of southern Iraq as a punishment to the region’s Marsh Arabs who had backed an uprising. Two decades later, one courageous US Iraqi is leading efforts to restore the marshes. Not even exploding bombs can deter him from his dream.

Azzam Alwash is an anomaly in Iraq, a country devastated by war and terrorism. As he punts through the war zone in a wooden boat, his biggest concerns are a missing otter, poisoned water and endangered birds. Who thinks about the environment in southern Iraq, and who is willing to risk his life to save a marsh?