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December 2006 |
Volume 7, Issue 12, Part 2 |
 For this edition of News You Can Use, we looked to the December 10th issue of the New York Times Magazine which highlighted “The Year in Ideas.” The editors and writers of the New York Times commented on the highs and lows of ingenuity in areas ranging from art to politics, from science to entertainment, from yodeling to covert beer drinking. Franchisehelp has selected a few of our favorite ideas from this New York Times end of the year roundup for 2006.
Meet you at the Aerotropolis
In September, Bangkok witnessed the opening of the Suvarnabhumi Airport, which when finally completed will include virtually all the components of a major metropolis: shopping malls, office buildings, hotels, hospitals, an international business center, conference and exhibition spaces, warehouses and even a residential community. Traditionally, airports have served cities, but in the past few years airports have started to become cities unto themselves, giving rise to a new urban form: the aerotropolis. Thanks to an increasing number of amenities that airports provide for both work and play, a growing number of travelers are doing business on the premises of an airport city. For example, they can hold meetings and attend conferences by day and relax at restaurants and clubs by night without once ever venturing into the old fashioned "downtown."
Bigger not always better; Shrinking is in
For decades, depopulated Rust Belt cities in the U.S. have tried to grow their way back to prosperity. Youngstown, Ohio is trying a new approach by shrinking its way into a new identity. At its peak, Youngstown had a population of 170,000 residents but now with less than half that number living amid shuttered steel factories, the city and Youngstown State University are implementing a blueprint for a smaller town that retains the best features of the metropolis Youngstown used to be. The new mayor of Youngstown has set forth a strategy that calls for razing derelict buildings, eventually cutting off the sewage and electric services to fully abandoned tracts of the city and transforming vacant lots into pocket parks. The city has also placed a moratorium on the construction of new dwellings financed by low-income-housing tax credits and encouraged the rehabilitation of existing homes. Instead of trying to recapture its industrial past, Youngstown hopes to capitalize on its high vacancy rates and underused public spaces in the hopes of becoming a culturally rich bedroom community serving Cleveland and Pittsburgh, both of which are 70 miles away.
In a study published in June, the Columbia University economist Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel of the University of California at Berkeley argue that culture plays a powerful role in the decision to act for or against the public good. The two scholars studied parking tickets that were racked up in Manhattan by diplomats from 146 countries who were posted to the United Nations. In a situation in which every diplomat essentially received an invitation to be corrupt, diplomats from nations with "clean" governments said, "No, thanks." If incentives trumped culture, you would suppose that diplomats from every nation would cheat. But in fact, attaches from Canada, Ireland, Scandinavian nations and Japan evidently drove around the block until they found a spot. The worst offenders, meanwhile, came from Kuwait, Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Bulgaria, Mozambique, Albania, Angola and Senegal. This behavior correlated strongly with the scores of diplomats' home countries on a measure of public corruption compiled by World Bank researchers. The study concluded that diplomats "bring the social norms or corruption culture of their home countries with them."
With the recent outbreak of E.coli at Taco Bell, a wipe that can detect E.coli could not come at a better time. Developed by scientists at Cornell University, this new E.coli detecting wipe is a napkin made up of tiny, superabsorbent nanofibers containing antibodies. When swiped across a surface contaminated with E.coli bacteria, the antibodies activate dyes and turn the wipe red, signaling the presence of microorganisms. Though not ready for the local drugstore, the inexpensive, easily portable and consumer-friendly wipe has successfully identified one E.coli strain, O157.II7 in the laboratory. The developers of this wipe also have their sights set on a wipe that spots a wide spectrum of biohazards, responding with a variety of colored dyes. Since the wipe made its debut in The Journal of Membrane Science in August, several heavily centralized, pathogen-wary industries have shown interest, including hospitals, water-treatment facilities and meat-processing plants.
The average human being generates about eight watts of energy with each step, most of which is expended as vibration. If you take the 30,000 or more people who pass through a major city subway hub at rush hour, you’ve got a significant amount of energy which the Facility, a London architecture firm, sees as an opportunity. The company proposes putting small hydraulic generators in floors to capture vibration and convert it into electricity. The Facility will roll out a prototype energy-harvesting staircase next year and ultimately use the technology, dubbed the Pacesetter, as part of a larger project to revamp London’s South Central subway stations. The company is also developing a similar unit to be placed in train tunnels – essentially, a “microgenerator that resonates in tune with passing trains and that will generate power that will then power a series of wire-free L.E.D. light units, such as street lamps.”
In not so surprising news, a new study shows that celebrities are more narcissistic than the general public. Over the years, Drew Pinksy, the University of Southern California psychiatry professor and host of “Loveline”, a syndicated talk show, surveyed 200 celebrities using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a widely respected questionnaire that measures narcissistic tendencies and ranks individuals on a scale 1 to 40, with 40 being “extremely narcissistic.” Pinksy and Young found that on average, celebrities scored 17.84 – about 17 percent higher than the general public – with females ranking significantly higher than males. Interestingly, celebrities with the most skill (musicians) were the least narcissistic; those with no skill (reality-show stars) were “off the narcissism charts.” But Pinksy points out that narcissism is not essentially about self-love but a clinical trait that belies a deep sense of emptiness, low-self-esteem, emotional detachment, self-loathing and extreme problems with intimacy. The way Pinksy sees it, celebrities have a huge influence on us and it’s important to know whom we’re modeling ourselves after.
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