"Designing Web 2.0: Here Come The Anthropologists"

The World's First $99 Laptop

Can a $99 laptop help save the world's poor?
For years now we've been hearing about the "$100 laptop" - a standard, low-power portable that meets the educational needs of children in developing nations. But until now, the most affordable has been from the non-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, where benefactors can purchase $199 OLPC portables, which the OLPC then ships to students in developing nations.

Cherrypal has recently launched a $99 portable (cutting the competition in half) the Cherrypal Africa, a "mini-netbook" built to bring Internet access to the world's poor. A great price for a great cause but can this laptop stand up to the challenge?
read more.

10 Ways to Support Charity Through Social Media (MASHABLE)

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media. Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you.

1. Write a Blog Post
2. Share Stories with Friends
3. Follow Charities on Social Networks
4. Support Causes on Awareness Hubs
5. Find Volunteer Opportunities
6. Embed a Widget on Your Site
7. Organize a Tweetup
8. Express Yourself Using Video
9. Sign or Start a Petition
10. Organize an Online Event
read more.

How to Use New YouTube Annotations for Nonprofit Partners

The New Era of Philanthropy & Technology

Philanthropic efforts, when combined with the possibilities of social media and the internet, are producing exciting hybrids, and crowdsourcing ideas for development is one of them.

The Peace Corps is testing such an approach with Africa Rural Connect (ARC), an online community where creativity and global collaboration are the goals, and the best ideas can win $20,000 in funding. Today, Oct. 15, is the deadline for submitting projects for the current contest.

Here are the current top 10 ideas:
1 Rainwater Harvesting In Rural Tanzania
2 Bamboo Lota: The Dream For A Sustainable Malawi
3 The Ndekero Challenge: A Systems Approach For Rabbit Keeping By A Rural Community In Partnership With A Commercial Rabbit Farm
4 Re-Designing Africa's Ox-Powered Farm Tools
5 CreditSMS: The Future Of Microfinance (www.creditsms.org)
6 Ecological Sanitation System Using Human Urine As A Fertilizer To Replenish Nutrient-depleted Agricultural Soil
7 Open Educational Resources On Rural Development Via Mobile
8 Village Power - The Community Charging Station
9 We Have The Opportunity For Africa To Awaken The Full Potential That We See In Ourselves
10 Schools For Salone Builds Schools And Wells In Sierra Leone
read more.

Human's Oldest Relative Found

Follow Mountain Gorillas on Facebook & Twitter

An article in USA Today explains how even a mountain gorilla can utilize a Facebook and Twitter account.

"In Kampala, Uganda, Facebook has long been the place to keep up with your favorite party animals, but soon it'll help you keep up with real ones, too: Africa's endangered mountain gorillas. The Uganda Wildlife Authority is launching a program on Saturday to let people use www.friendagorilla.org or the social networking sites Facebook or Twitter to follow one of the gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park."
read more.

Evidence of contemporary political campaigning in Afghanistan: as President Hamid Karzai speaks to an audience of women ahead of imminent elections, many record the speech on their cell phones.
read more.

Orangutans Lower Voice to Intimidate

A new study finds that wild orangutans in Borneo hold leaves to their mouths to make their voices sound deeper than they actually are. It seems that they do this when predators are approaching to make them seem bigger than they actually are.

Co-author Madeleine Hardus, from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, told BBC News: "This study clearly indicates that the abilities of great ape communication have been traditionally undervalued and that there may be traces of language precursors in our closest relatives, the great apes."
read more.

Monkey Music

New experiments suggest that chimpanzees prefer consonant music over dissonant music.

[ Watch the Video ]

"...until now, this was thought to be a universal human trait, but the new finding suggests it evolved in the ancestors of humans and modern apes. Tasuku Sugimoto and Kazuhide Hashiya of Kyushu University in Hakozaki and colleagues in Japan tested how a young captive chimpanzee named Sakura responded to music as she aged from 17 weeks to 23 weeks old."
read more.

Hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslim pilgrims have thronged northern Baghdad for the festival marking the death of the seventh Imam, Moussa al-Kadhim.

Bacterial Computers

A research team from the biology and mathematics departments at Missouri Western State University in Missouri and Davidson College in North Carolina engineered the DNA of Escherichia coli bacteria, creating bacterial computers capable of solving a classic mathematical problem known as the Hamiltonian Path Problem.

"...the findings of the research demonstrate that computing in living cells is feasible, opening the door to a number of applications. The second-generation bacterial computers illustrate the feasibility of extending the approach to other computationally challenging math problems."
read more.

The Taller They Are, The Faster They Run

A new study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology suggests that size and speed have a constant positive correlation: "...over the next 50 years, the rate of increasing speed in swimming’s 100 meters will remain constant, about 6%, and the increasing mass of champion swimmers will likewise remain constant at about 40%. In running the rates for the past and future half centuries have been and will be 2% for speed and 13% for mass."

Two theories seem to be responsible for this constant seen throughout the natural world:

1) Constructal Law: as a moving physical being evolves, it changes its environment to allow for more efficient and faster movement.

2) Animal Locomotion: the smaller the body, the higher the frequency of motion and the slower the speed.

- Exceptions: Cheetahs sprint faster than elephants, but whales swim faster than tuna, and horses are faster than mice.

read more.

Indian children gather trash for recycling in the Ganges river, Calcutta.
read more.

The Hungry Rhesus Monkeys

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin recently published a study suggesting that when the caloric intake of a group of rhesus monkeys is cut by 30%, age-related deaths declined while overall health improved.

A proponent of this study: Brian Delaney, president of the Calorie Restriction Society, claims that: "Any degree of restriction beyond what you're currently eating will confer health benefits and will slow the aging process"

A skeptic of this study: "Richard Weindruch, a professor from the University of Wisconsin, described himself as an imperfect adherent to calorie restriction: 'I found it difficult to adhere to such a diet, despite studying it for so many years, I'm not the poster child for human application' he said, adding he had been able to cut his calories by about 20% for only a few months."
read more.