More power to The New Dorks!

The rats being used in Mozambique’s mine-sweeping operations are African pouched rats; they’re small, lightweight (weighing about 3 pounds), and, according to the BBC, surprisingly cute. Traditionally, mine-detection has been carried out by metal detectors and sniffer-dogs, but the rats are the latest workers to join the team. However, the mine-removal process is still dangerous and labor-intensive: Once a rat discovers a mine it has to be dismantled by a human.

A bunch of these rats have been trained by APOPO, a joint Belgian/Tanzanian organization that taught the rodents to associate the smell of TNT in unexploded explosives with food. So, much like the dogs that Igor Pavlov taught to associate a certain stimuli with a particular response, the rats associate mines with delicious snacks, and are highly motivated to find them.

Read the rest of my post for Discover Magazine, here.

A delegation of six Pakistani politicians, refused to step into a body scanner at Dulles International Airport in Washington, saying it was an affront to them.They chose, instead, to go right back home.

The pols, senators from the National Assembly from the restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), that includes the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan, were in America for a 15-day official visit. The head of the delegation, Senator Abbas Khan Afridi, was quoted as telling Pakistani news channel Geo-TV that they considered the body-scan an insult to parliamentarians of a sovereign country. He said they were informed before their arrival in the US that they would not face any such discrimination during their visit at the invitation of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton (DNA India).

Body scanners were introduced in 19 airports across the United States after a suspected Nigerian terrorist tried to explode an “underwear bomb” on Christmas, last year. The device failed, but the attempt triggered off a wave of heightened security across U.S. airports. Nationals from 14 countries, including Pakistan are on a list that demands that citizens be subject to a full body scan upon their arrival to the States.

In this case, the senators’ tantrums makes one wonder if they had something to hide…or if they were just feeling shy.

That must be why Topeka, Kansas changed its name to “Google” for a month; the city hopes it will be chosen as a test site for Google’s new fiber-optic network, which would give Topeka residents Internet speeds 100 times faster than what average Americans have.

On Monday, the Mayor of Topeka announced that the city shall, henceforth, be referred to as Google, Kansas, through the month of March. Google is accepting entries from communities looking for an Internet upgrade till March 26th, after which it will decide which communities will get a bump up.

Topeka’s new name is just the beginning of the city going ga-ga for Google. The local baseball team decided to step up to the plate too; the Topeka Golden Giants baseball team announced it has changed its name for March to the Google Golden Giants. Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins (R-Kansas) tweeted “Can’t wait to get home to Google this weekend,” and The Topeka Capital Journal reported that even the local barbecue stop, Boss Hawg Barbecue, was renaming itself as Boss Hawg Google-Q.

However Topeka… sorry, Google, Kansas has stiff competition from other communities like Grand Rapids, Michigan, Duluth, Minnesota, and Columbia, Missouri.

Businessweek reports that other cities are planning their own stunts:
The city of Greensboro, N.C., is preparing an “Operation Google” gift package for delivery to Google headquarters and has earmarked $50,000 for promoting a Google broadband effort.

Not just that, the magazine reports that Greensboro plans to launch a channel on Google’s own YouTube to pitch why their town needs a net upgrade. The Assistant City Manager Denise Turner told Businessweek: “The city may even temporarily rechristen itself Googlesboro “if Google were willing to come here and talk to us.”

Read the rest of my piece for Discover Magazine here.

In Queens, the MTA proposed not just eliminating the W subway line and numerous bus routes, but also city-wide cuts in Access-a-Ride and the termination of 585,000 subsidized student MetroCards. Jay Walder, the chairman of the MTA and other board members sat stoically through the hearings as disgruntled commuters held up signs protesting the proposed cuts and chanted “Enough is enough” and “No more tolls.”?

Local politicians, including Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) urged the MTA to consider other alternatives, apart from service cuts and fare hikes — asking the transit authority to make better use of federal stimulus money to bridge the budget gap.

The agency has received more than a billion dollars in stimulus money, but a chunk of that cash has already been earmarked for a variety of projects, including upgrading stations in Brooklyn, completing the Second Avenue line and building the Fulton Street transit center in Manhattan.

Earlier in the day, Quinn and other politicians delivered a petition signed by 41,000 commuters to the MTA, protesting imminent fare hikes and service cuts.  “People are sick and tired of paying more and more and getting less and less,” she said.

Councilmembers Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria) and Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) were among the Queens politicians who stressed how their districts were going to be hit.  “How dare you toll and tax our bridges and beaches when you are giving raises and free rides to family and friends,” Vallone said.

Talking about how 7 train service cuts were damaging commerce in Western Queens, Van Bramer said the “continuous disruption of the trains is a window into our nightmare.” Referring to the cuts in Access-a-Ride, he said: “Locking our disabled and senior citizens in their homes is just not right.”

However it was Jimmy Vacca (D-Bronx), chairman of the council’s Transportation Committee, who elicited a raucous response from the crowds as he rattled off zingers like: “Mass transit is no longer for the masses.” “We are headed for a train wreck,” he said as people chanted “Enough is enough.”

However, the hearing took on a more somber tone when commuters went to the microphone. “How do you have the audacity to eliminate student fares,” one resident asked, “when 65,000 MTA employees each gets a free ride?” referring to a newspaper report that indicated the MTA handed out almost 15,000 MetroCards to its retired employees and several thousand more to its current employees, costing the agency millions of dollars each year. The resident complained that with the MTA also reducing the number of personnel at each station, the city was losing its vital “eyes and ears.” “We have had so many foiled terror plots,” he said, adding “why would we even want to think of that?”

Another Queens resident, Julio Mora, sat observing the heated proceedings, clutching a yellow piece of paper that indicated he had signed up to speak at the public hearing. The Flushing resident spends more than an hour and a half each way commuting from Queens to Tribeca every day and was particularly agitated by the proposed elimination of student MetroCards that would affect his family’s finances. Mora’s daughter, who attends Bayside school, was hit by the service reduction on the Q31 bus route. “Who was the genius that wasted 6 million dollars renaming the Triborough Bridge when we could have used the money for the MTA?” he asked.

Jacob Laite, a resident of Rego Park, sat in the back of the room with his buddies — waiting to make his voice heard about the proposal to discontinue the Q74 bus. Recovering after an operation on his spinal cord, Laite said he would often wait long periods for the bus. A political science student at Queens College, Laite said he was often late to class and had started resorting to hitching rides from friends now.

But the most emotional protest was made by 17-year-old Flushing resident, Aleksandr Rozentsuit. Suffering from a speech impediment, he begged the MTA via the sign-language interpreter to reconsider the service cuts, especially in the disability service Access-a-Ride. “I have a few friends who use the service,” he said. “Sometimes the vans are not clean and they get left in places a little short of their destination. They feel very scared,” he added, making it clear that the service cuts would strike a huge blow to anyone looking to get anywhere in the city.

This piece first appeared in Queens Chronicle

I.S 44 building, seen here, is expected to house five schools this Fall (Pic Courtesy: Andrew Schwartz for West Side Spirit)

Despite the urging of District 3’s Community Education Council, the Department of Education said it was not possible to increase the number of grades at P.S. 452, a new school slated to open in the I.S. 44 building on West 77th Street in fall 2010.

The department is planning to start three kindergarten classes at the school, but the parent council wants that number increased to five. The move, the parent council argues, would help ease pressure at nearby crowded schools, especially P.S. 87 and P.S. 199, both of which are far above capacity. The department, however, shot down the proposal, saying at an impassioned Feb. 24 meeting that I.S. 44’s facilities could not support any more children.

Per department guidelines for any significant changes to school buildings, the Panel for Education Policy will have a final hearing to approve the new school April 13.

The new school would at least temporarily share space with four other schools: the Anderson School, which will shrink from three classes a year to two; the Computer School; J.H.S. 44, which is being phased out; and West Prep Middle School, which is expected to relocate in September 2011. Elizabeth Rose, a representative from the department’s office of portfolio planning, stressed at the meeting that the new arrangement would be a tight squeeze.

“Even though we relocated West Prep to another facility, the school’s capacities don’t change,” Rose said. “We can’t open five kindergartens. Three is the maximum capacity we can fit in this building.”

P.S. 452 is not accepting direct applications for the 2010-2011 school year. Families are being instructed to apply to their zoned school and once the March 12 deadline for kindergarten applications passes and schools process new students, the department will work with the parent council to decide how P.S. 452’s seats should be distributed.

Deborah Lopez, a parent with a child at Anderson, agreed that though demand far outstripped supply, the department should limit the number of P.S. 452 classes to three.

“The new school is welcome in this building,” she said. “But please understand that five schools is a lot of schools in this one building and children in all the schools are going to be affected.”

Lopez worried that the arrangement would adversely impact children’s access to the gym, libraries and the playground.

But many other parents were dissatisfied with the plans, and accused the city of not doing enough to address population growth and subsequent school overcrowding.

“The new school is a stop-gap measure, but it is not really stopping any gaps,” said Noah Gotbaum, chair of the parent council.

He noted that that while 75 families would have access to the new school, there would still be at least 200 other families who won’t be able to send their kids to zoned schools this coming school year.

“Parents deserve to get elementary seats in the zone where they live, or where their kids go to school,” he said.

One idea that has been floated is to relocate the Anderson School, a gifted program that has citywide admissions and could, in theory, be sited anywhere.

But the department rejected the idea of moving Anderson, which was previously housed on West 84th Street with P.S. 9.

“Our recent actions in District 3, including the relocation of the Anderson School, have resulted in a significant gain in elementary school seats for the district. We believe the Anderson School is currently in a facility extremely well suited to the needs of its students and the community, and it would not be productive to move the school twice in such a short period of time,” said Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld, a department spokesperson, in an email.

Eric Shuffler, who is looking for a kindergarten spot for his child, said the overcrowding issue is an “insult to parents.” Marcy Drogin, a prospective parent at P.S. 87, added it was “unacceptable” that the school was crowded and demanded there be enough seats at P.S. 87 to serve all local families.

“I would say that parents have grown weary of the DOE’s opaque processes, poor planning and short term solutions,” said Beth Servetar, co-president of the Parent’s Association at P.S. 87, which functions at 120 percent capacity.

Gary Anthony Ramsay, a former NY1 reporter and prospective P.S. 199 parent, was annoyed at the department’s suggestion that parents be patient, should their child be waitlisted at a school.

“In this economy, no one is going to move away or put their kid in a private school,” he said. “This is our version of the Titanic,” he continued. “The iceberg has already hit the ship—when are we going to make things happen?”

This piece first appeared in West Side Spirit.

Knut, one time awesome polar bear; now reduced to looking like grubby run-of-the-mill polar bear

Life for Knut, the awesome once-so-cute polar bear, seems to always be in the fast lane.

First, his mom rejects him. Sniff.

Then he moves to the Berlin zoo to become an instant celebrity. His furry good looks and tubby charm enthralled TV audiences worldwide.

Life chugs along. He grows up. Becomes substantially un-cute and begins to look like every other standard run-of-the mill polar bear. TV audience interest zips downwards. The events not helped by the death of Knut’s keeper, Thomas Dorflein.

Then, enter Giovanna- a lady bear from the Munich zoo. Interest in Knut perks up.

As Knut and Giovanna share the same enclosure and start canoodling, we wonder if we will see more polar cuteness emerge in the form of babies.

Then BAM! PETA, the animal rights group steps in, breaks up the lovey-dovey scenes by saying that the amorous couple share a common grandparent and that is bad new for polar bears being bred in captivity as inbreeding would literally spell DOOM.

So what should Knut do, we whimper helplessly. “Castrate Knut,” declares PETA. At this point, Knut is probably thinking “WTF, I finally find a lady-friend, and now they want to castrate me?”

Apparently, if there’s going to be any hope for Knut and Giovanna, then Mr. Bear has to say good bye to his crown jewels, as Der Spiegel drily noted. But that is so hard for this bear, who has gone through so much!

But, before you whip out your handkerchiefs to mop away any tears–some good and bad news.

Good news -we have learnt Knut won’t be castrated.

Bad news- castration has been averted because Giovanna is moving away.

Oh! Yet another eventful week in Knut’s life.

Scroll down for a view of Knut’s baby pictures, all courtesy the Berlin Zoo.

Not now, papparazzi, I don't have my make-up on!

Lindsay, is that you?

I haz your finger for breakfast?

Dude, like totally, check me out!

Yeah, a little to the right would work better!

Musssshhhh

The problem is so acute in Kenya’s slums, that people routinely fill plastic bags with feces and discard them carelessly. And it was those bags of flying poop that inspired the creation of the PeePoo, a chemically treated toilet bag that sterlizes human waste and converts it to fertilizer.

PopSci reports on the inner mechanism of the PeePoo bag:
The secret of the PeePoo lies with the urea coating on the inside of the bag. Once its filled and buried, enzymes in feces naturally breakdown the urea into ammonia and carbonate. This raises the pH in the bag, killing any pathogens. Once the urea decontaminates the waste, the bag biodegrades, and the remaining ammonia fertilizes the soil.

The bags are not just environmentally friendly, but also incredibly cheap to produce, costing less than 3 cents each.

The makers are hopeful that in areas without access to clean toilets, the PeePoo bags would do the trick.

While we shudder to think how one would work the poop bag, it would help prevent almost one and half million cases of dysentery each year.

Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says he has done the calculations. Gross says the earthquake, which measured 8.8 on the Richter scale, moved large amounts of rock, altered the distribution of mass on the planet, and moved the Earth’s axis by about 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches). The change in axis directly impacts Earth’s rotation, and the rate of the planet’s rotation determines the length of a day.

To explain this phenomenon, scientists used an ice skating analogy: When a skater spins on ice, he draws his arms closer in to his body to spin faster, because the speed of his rotation is dependent on the way mass is distributed across his body.

Read the rest of my post for Discover Magazine here.

REchirp.com works with a similar concept: Interested buyers or renters go to the website, browse the listings and make a bid or a “chirp.” If your chirp is accepted by the owner, you get to start negotiations.

REchirp creators Marc Blum and Andrew Green came up with the idea after years of living in New York and moving from apartment to apartment.

“It was always a tedious process to find an apartment—dealing with brokers, Craigslist, the New York Times. And we thought there should be an easier process of finding real estate in the city,” said Blum, who has a background in both online and traditional advertising.

The childhood buddies were raised on the Upper East Side and currently live at Normandie Court, on East 95th Street, with their families. Figuring that people bid to get the best rates on insurance, hotel and car prices, the duo guessed that people would probably also be willing to bid to buy or rent an apartment.

Combining Blum’s background in advertising with Green’s previous work in technology and consulting, they came up with the idea for the real estate website. After working on the start-up for almost two years, REchirp went live a few months ago. The site, now Green and Blum’s primary endeavor, has four full-time employees and is run out of an Eighth Avenue office.

“The biggest differentiator of www.rechirp.com is that when a user searches for a property, they do not search by price,” Blum said. “The idea behind the site is that when a user sees a property they are interested in, they submit a ‘chirp,’ which is a dollar amount they would be willing to pay for that apartment.”

The creators hope that users can submit chirps anywhere from 10 percent to 40 percent below the listed price. This would give the broker an incentive to work with the bidder and start negotiations at the chirp amount.

Unlike Bid on the City, the bids at REchirp are non-binding, and people can make as many bids as they want on different apartments. Thirty days after the property is listed, the site holds an auction—the first of which took place this month—in which buyers have to make a winning bid in half an hour. The bidding increments increase from $50,000 to $250,000 and the site gives the winning bidder 48 hours to make a down payment in escrow. Bid on the City also positions itself more as a high-end marketing firm for properties, rather than an auction house, and it is geared toward foreign buyers.

REchirp, meanwhile, hopes to cater exclusively to New Yorkers.

“I think the true distinction between us and them is that our chirps are not binding,” Blum said. “Moreover, we have thousands of listings that a home seeker can submit a chirp on, while there are never more than just a handful at a time with Bid on the City.”

So far, REchirp has almost 4,000 listings, mostly from Manhattan, and Green and Blum hope to add properties from across the city as the business grows. They are already working with nine brokerage firms.

Real estate brokers, meanwhile, are eyeing the new service with some skepticism.

“If people are putting bids without any financial commitment,” said real estate broker Joel Maskovitz, “they are not locked in. If thousands of people bid for fun, I am not going to pay to download false leads,” he said.

Brokers, he argued, already work to negotiate the best prices for owners.

“It would be bad for me to talk to anyone who is bidding low,” he said.

Michelle Araujo, a broker who works with NYC Vertical, pointed out that for the minimal fee of listing one property on Craigslist, she often gets hundreds of queries, many of which turn into customers or good leads. Without an in-depth knowledge of the city real estate market, she added, most bidders would be shooting in the dark on a site like REchirp.

Blum and Green, meanwhile, agree that their users have to have a certain sophistication to use the website. They say the service has been designed by New Yorkers for New Yorkers, and caters to savvier renters. They declined to specify exactly how many deals have been made through the site so far, but said that REchirp has helped a few home-seekers find an apartment of their liking.

“Our goal is not to replace Craigslist, New York Times or anyone,” Blum said. “Anyone who is online will go to a bunch of sites [while apartment hunting]. We are hoping REchirp is one of them.”

This piece first appeared in Our Town

You might also like:
Upper East Side Apartments Get Cheaper