High School's 'Tech Sherpas'
Doran Smestad walks through the empty gym to the office in the back corner. The high school sophomore's mission: to recover an important file that physical education teacher Jim DiFrederico can't seem to open on his new Macintosh laptop. It's a typical call for students known around the halls of Nokomis Regional High School as "tech sherpas." Within a few minutes, Doran has a file open on screen a... posted on Nov 30 2007, 2,195 reads

Social Networking for India's Poor?
When Anirudh Krishna reported that many of India's poor remain in poverty not because there are no better jobs, but because they lack the connections to find them, a light bulb went off for Sean Blagsvedt. He said, "We need village LinkedIn!" and gave birth to Babajob. The best-known networking sites in the industry connect computer-savvy elites to one another. Babajob, by contrast, connects Ind... posted on Nov 17 2007, 2,120 reads

New Strategy to Discourage Driving Drunk
Statistics show that about 13,000 people die each year in car crashes in which a driver was legally drunk. To counter that trend, Mothers Against Drunk Driving has announced a campaign to require offenders to install a device that tests drivers and shuts down the car if it detects alcohol. Last year New Mexico became the first to make them mandatory after a first offense, and the state saw an 11... posted on Oct 30 2007, 2,220 reads

Second Earth Found
Scientists have discovered a warm and rocky "second Earth" circling a star, a find they believe dramatically boosts the prospects that we are not alone. The planet is the most Earth-like ever spotted and is thought to have perfect conditions for water, an essential ingredient for life. Researchers detected the planet orbiting one of Earth's nearest stars, 20 light years away in the constellation ... posted on Oct 20 2007, 3,219 reads

Our Emotional Intelligence Online
Emails can come back to haunt us; few among us have mastered this medium, and only slowly are we realizing its dangers. Psychologist John Suler has suggested that several psychological factors can cause online disinhibition: the anonymity and invisibility that the Web provides; the time lag between sending an email message and getting feedback; the exaggerated sense of self from being alone; and t... posted on Oct 06 2007, 2,499 reads

First Poet of Technology
R. Buckminster “Bucky� Fuller -- designer, architect, engineer, and mathematician. A charismatic genius, Fuller was a global thinker and futurist before we knew we needed global thinking and future vision. To educator and philosopher Marshall McLuhan, Fuller was "the Leonardo da Vinci of our time." Time called him "the first poet of technology," and the Nobel committee short-listed him for its... posted on Aug 18 2007, 2,289 reads

Lighting Up Africa -- By Flashlight
At 10 p.m. in a sweltering refugee camp here in western Ethiopia, a group of foreigners was making its way past thatch-roofed huts when a tall, rail-thin man approached a silver-haired American and took hold of his hands.The man, a Sudanese refugee, announced that his wife had just given birth, and the boy would be honored with the visitor’s name. After several awkward translation attempts of â€... posted on May 25 2007, 2,082 reads

A Concert Interrupted With Heart
It took global-positioning technology for police to track down a 10-year-old boy and get him to a hospital in time for a life-saving heart transplant. John Paul May and his mother were at a university concert when officials got word that the heart was available. Sue May had a cell phone, but the volume was off. When hospital officials couldn't reach the family, they called Pennsylvania State Polic... posted on May 16 2007, 3,770 reads

Free Encyclopaedia Makes Its Mark
One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a much-used resource. "One of the biggest problems of the digital divide is the cost of access to information," says Jimmy Wales, 40, the visionary founder of Wikipedia. "We seek ... posted on May 01 2007, 2,291 reads

Breakthrough In Blood Types
Blood types, for over a century, have been an important classification that have saved many lives; they have also posed major limitations in blood storage, but that may now be history. A scientific breakthrough that can convert Types A, B, and AB blood into Type O -- the universal donor blood group that can be given to anyone -- could help alleviate blood shortages and reduce the danger of acciden... posted on Apr 13 2007, 2,636 reads