Outside-the-Box Service
For eight weeks straight, every day of the week, Swiss-born designer and conceptual artist Markuz Wernli Saito carried out 'At-Your-Service', a relational art experiment on the streets of Kyoto: for an hour, he offered citizens a chance to participate in outside-the-box interventions in urban areas. Every Tuesday, for example, was "I Love Trash" day, when people left thank-you notes on trash bags,... posted on Feb 26, 2309 reads

Pedals for Progress
Pedals for Progress operates on the principle that "people need a hand up not a hand out." They work with partners in developing countries who repair used bikes shipped from the US and sell them at steeply subsidized rates to the working poor. The income from sales not only creates jobs for people repairing the bicycles but also provides money for the next shipment of bicycles. Each shipment gives... posted on Mar 3, 2547 reads

Teens Build Soybean-Fueled Car
A car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon would be enough to pique any driver's interest. So who do we have to thank for it. Ford? GM? Toyota? No -- just Victor, David, Cheeseborough, Bruce, and Kosi, five kids from the auto shop program at West Philadelphia High School. The kids, along with a handful of schoolmates, built the soybean-fueled car as ... posted on Mar 2, 3022 reads

21-Day No Complaints Challenge
How long can you go without complaining? A few months ago, the pastor of a Kansas City church told people in his congregation he wanted them to test their limits. "The one thing we can agree on," said Rev. Will Bowen, "is there's too much complaining." And so he asked the group to give up complaining, criticizing, gossiping or using sarcasm for 21 days. People who joined in were issued purple brac... posted on Mar 8, 17654 reads

Pharmaceutical For The People
The pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars fighting Western ailments, but very little on diseases that kill millions in the developing world. Victoria Hale, recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her efforts, is changing that. Hale's San Francisco-based nonprofit, Institute for OneWorld Health, is innovatively partnering around the world to bring these neglected drugs to market. S... posted on Mar 9, 1551 reads

PlayStation To Help Fight Disease
Thanks to a creative usage of cutting-edge technology, anyone with a broadband-connected Sony PlayStation 3 can soon enlist in the fight against diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and a variety of cancers. By allowing users to download optional software designed to distribute computations across many idle gaming systems, Stanford University's Folding@home project harnesses the... posted on Mar 18, 2304 reads

The Principles of Great Groups
Personal leadership is a popular study topic; far less studied is group leadership. And yet, few great accomplishments are ever the work of a single individual. Our mythology, though, refuses to catch up with our reality, as we cling to the myth of the Lone Ranger, the romantic idea that great things are usually accomplished by a larger-than-life individual working alone. In actuality, as they say... posted on Mar 19, 3686 reads

How Green Is My Purchase?
When thinking about their contribution to global warming, concerned citizens might consider the cars they drive, the air miles they log and the energy they burn in their homes. But few would look at the shoes they wear or the food they eat.That is changing. Just as food products are labeled with calorie and nutritional information, consumer products are beginning to bear details about their enviro... posted on Mar 24, 2387 reads

The Blind Mechanic & His Apprentice
Larry Woody shares his automotive know-how twice a week with his apprentice, though he's never seen the young man nor spoken directly to him. Woody is blind. His apprentice is deaf. Woody lost his sight five years ago in a near-fatal accident. With more than 30 years of fixing, racing and restoring cars, Woody vowed to return to work. With help from his wife, Della, and the Oregon Commission for t... posted on Mar 23, 2391 reads

MIT Offers Entire Curriculum Online
MIT looks to reach an epic milestone soon: By the end of the year, its entire curriculum should be available online for free. Scholars and amateurs are coming in droves; this month, the site could receive 1.5 million visits. "It's exceeded our expectations," said Anne Margulies, head of MIT’s online curriculum program, OpenCourseWare. MIT began putting courses online in 2001; more than 1,500 are... posted on Mar 26, 3172 reads

Helping the Needy Get Nerdy
More than 200,000 computer systems become obsolete in the U.S. every day; meanwhile, the gap between people who can afford technology and those who cannot -- the digital divide -- keeps growing. Enter Free Geek, with an elegant solution. It takes unwanted computer systems from local residents and recycles the stuff that's beyond repair; everything is fixed up using volunteer labor and in exchange ... posted on Mar 29, 2096 reads

The Extraordinary Boy Scout
It's not easy making Eagle, the highest honor in Boy Scouts. You need at least 21 merit badges, and only 2 percent of Scouts get that far. A remarkable achievement. So what adjective should be used for James Calderwood, who has earned 121 merit badges? This teenager has every badge available, from American business to woodwork. He even has one they don't give out anymore -- "atomic energy" -- so m... posted on Apr 7, 2570 reads

Bangladeshi Housewives Overcome TB
Mohammed Salim Sheikh crosses the threshold of a village home. The housewife inside, Zahida Khatun Jharna, rises from her cooking fire, fetches his medication, fills his water glass, ticks off his chart for the day and sends him home. This routine plays out in countless villages across Bangladesh, representing a remarkably simple but effective national tuberculosis treatment program to overcome th... posted on Apr 12, 2369 reads

The Universal Concept Of Ubuntu
There is no English equivalent to the word Ubuntu. The Nguni word from South Africa refers to the capacity to express compassion, justice, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and humanity in the interests of building, maintaining and strengthening community. It is about the self being so rooted in the community, that your personal identity is defined by what you give to the community. 'I am because we a... posted on Apr 14, 3821 reads

The Generous Un-Millionaire
The one suit Hal Taussig owns was purchased from a thrift shop for $14. At age 81, he rides a bike to work and lives in a modest home. At first glance, no one would guess that this man has given away millions. Taussig works three jobs: He cares for Norma, his wife of 61 years, who was crippled by a stroke, he helps run Untours a unique travel service that enables vacationers to experience foreign ... posted on Apr 19, 3751 reads

Guardian of Earth's Trees
For 50 years, Britain's Peter Ashton has been studying –- and trying to preserve –- a wealth of diversity in Asia's tropical forests. An eminent professor of forestry, Ashton has just won $415,000 from a Japanese foundation for a lifetime of work seeking to understand how different trees in the rain forest perform, helping us promote their sustainability. Of all the life on earth, more than ha... posted on Apr 28, 1539 reads

How To Put Time On Our Side
Jon Kabat-Zinn is a professor, best known for his teachings on mindfulness and meditation as a way to help people overcome stress and disease. In this passage, excerpted from his book, "Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through Mindfulness" he explores a thought-provoking question of modern life: Now that we can be in touch with anyone at any time, do we risk being out of touc... posted on May 12, 4193 reads

Kindness Meters
Thirty-six Denver parking meters have been refurbished and redesigned to allow people to easily give spare change to the homeless, thanks to a public-private effort. The change that goes into the randomly placed meters will help with Denver's Road Home project: a 10-year plan to end homelessness in Denver. "You might be asking yourself how much good can spare change really do," Manager of Public W... posted on May 7, 1900 reads

BBC & The Science of Happiness
Defining the factors that contribute to happiness has always been something of a puzzle. According to psychologist Professor Ed Diener there is no one key to happiness but a set of ingredients that are vital. In his view family and friends play the most crucial role - the wider and deeper the relationships with those around you the happier you are. Some studies indicate that friendship has a decid... posted on Jul 13, 3135 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, 3792 reads

Recycling Wizard Helps Kids Learn
As a child, Carlos Macias made a hobby out of inventing his own toys. "I preferred [inventing] to playing or swimming," he says of a childhood full of the explosions, splatters, and sparks of invention. When other children asked to buy his inventions, the young creator offered instead to show them how to make it. While his ethic hasn't made him rich, it has made him a minor celebrity among kids wh... posted on May 17, 1832 reads

Commuting to Inner Peace
Across the world commuters are spending more time and crossing greater distances than a decade ago. In the UK today the average commuting time is 45 minutes. This daily commute is seen by many as the most stressful part of their day. “I've found that the quality of my experience at work is largely being set by my state of mind during the journey from home to my desk," says one woman. And recent ... posted on May 19, 3539 reads

The Threshold Choir
A band of women in the seaside city of Santa Cruz give in an unusual way – they sing for the dying. They call themselves the Threshold Choir, and they perform at the bedsides of the terminally ill, singing in intimate tones, like a mother soothing a newborn. "We think of these as lullabies for ... on the way out," said choir founder Kate Munger. Munger, a minister's daughter, started the singing... posted on May 20, 1887 reads

Endangered Species: 100 Success Stories
The U.S. Senate declared May 18, 2007, Endangered Species Day to encourage people “to become educated about, and aware of, threats to species, success stories in species recovery, and the opportunity to promote species conservation worldwide.” The resolution mentions a few of the Endangered Species Act’s most well known successes, for example -- the bald eagle’s increase from 416 to 9,789 ... posted on May 30, 1766 reads

Taking Social Innovation To Scale
According to Margaret Wheatley, the world changes when networks of relationships form among people who share a common vision of what’s possible. So rather than worry about critical mass, our work is to foster critical connections. We don’t need to convince large numbers of people to change; instead, we need to connect with kindred spirits. Through these relationships, we develop the new knowle... posted on May 22, 2128 reads

Your Personality Can Change
Personality can change. The once accepted idea that an individual's personality is set in stone is, well, changing. "You read about this twin research where these people who have been raised apart have remarkable similarities," said Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University. "The implication there is that it's all programmed in," that personality is permanently stamped into our genes. Say... posted on Jun 13, 3470 reads

Homeless Children: Their Stories Told
As the children projected onto the screen describe what it's like to be homeless, Bambi Jackson wipes tears from her eyes. She works with families in Boston every day who face housing crises. But there's something about these -- a boy's complaint that a shelter is "just not cozy" or a girl's description of how scary it is to start over at a new school -- that strikes deep. The short documentary, "... posted on Jun 5, 2824 reads

10 Steps to Peace
"Since we seem to be living in an increasingly violent world, I would like to suggest a summer peace plan. Every day -- or least every week -- we are confronted with a new wave of senseless and reckless violence. (...) I'm tired of it, and I know you are, too. Here is my plan. Feel free to add to it as you enact your own plan." So begins student Dwayne Lee's "10 Steps Towards A Peaceful Summer", p... posted on Jun 16, 4368 reads

Finding Gold in the Garbarge
Patrick Fitzgerald found himself distracted as he studied for the bar exam at Fordham University five years ago. New York City was debating the merits of continuing its recycling program and Mr. Fitzgerald wondered why that was a question at all. "I wasn't an overt tree-hugger, but I thought it was odd," he said. He began poking around Web sites and news articles about the economics of recycling, ... posted on Jun 21, 2837 reads

High School Friends Help Darfur
High school students Nick Anderson and Ana Slavin of Gill, Mass., knew they could raise some money at their school to help the people of Darfur. But they knew they could raise a lot more by enlisting the help of high school students all over the country. They didn't have friends at every school, but they did have a powerful tool for reaching out to young people -- social networking sites. Six mont... posted on Jul 8, 948 reads

Kids Practice Classroom Mindfulness
The lesson began with the striking of a Tibetan singing bowl to induce mindful awareness. With the sound of their new school bell, the fifth graders at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School here closed their eyes and focused on their breathing, as they tried to imagine “loving kindness” on the playground.“I was losing at baseball and I was about to throw a bat,” Alex Menton, 11, reported to hi... posted on Jun 24, 2509 reads

The Making of a Good Decision-Maker
Good decision-makers may be made, not born, says a Carnegie Mellon University and RAND Corp. study. People who do well on a series of decision-making tasks involving hypothetical situations tend to have more positive decision outcomes in their lives, according to decision scientists. The results suggest that it may be possible to improve the quality of people's lives by teaching them better decisi... posted on Jun 19, 2359 reads

Beyond Human Altruism
Altruism may be far more widespread than had been realized. A new study shows that chimpanzees are capable of helping others without any thought of personal reward, demonstrating that young chimpanzees spontaneously and repeatedly helped humans who appeared to be struggling to reach sticks within the animals' enclosure. Elsewhere in the animal world there are many examples of apparent altruism. Do... posted on Jun 27, 3968 reads

A Plane Called Inspiration
Barrington Irving kept his fans in suspense as he circled the skies in a plane dubbed "Inspiration". After a journey that lasted more than three months, the 23-year-old landed his single-engine plane, built from $300,000 worth of donated parts, to a hero's welcome. Hundreds gathered at the airport hangar to welcome Irving and celebrate his record feat as the youngest pilot and the first person of ... posted on Jul 4, 1733 reads

$10,000 Tip At Pizza Hut
It was just a typical day on the job at Pizza Hut for 20-year-old Jessica Osborne when out of the blue, the waitress received a gift that would change her life: a $10,000 tip. Always ready with a smile for her customers, Jessica had been forced to withdraw from college because of a lack of financial aid. She told Becky, one of her regular customers about the textbooks she had bought and kept in th... posted on Jul 14, 2889 reads

The Power of Paying it Forward
Because so much of human life is about giving, receiving, and repaying, gratitude is a pivotal concept for our social interactions. The famed sociologist Georg Simmel declared that gratitude is "the moral memory of mankind." If every grateful action, he went on to say, were suddenly eliminated, society would crumble. After years of ignoring gratitude -- perhaps because it appears, on the surface, ... posted on Jul 16, 2593 reads

Taking a $5 Billion Stand
The shy, 36-year-old sole member of the Djok clan and senior custodian of the Koongarra uranium deposit in Australia has decided never to allow the ecologically sensitive land to be mined. Jeffery Lee is not interested in the soaring price of uranium, which could make him one of the world's richest men. "This is my country, look, it's beautiful and I fear somebody will disturb it,” he said, wavi... posted on Jul 17, 2407 reads

Daisies Made All The Difference
Sometimes our simplest gestures have far-reaching effects. One writer for the Christian Science Monitor tells this story,"Each year when the oxeye daisies bloom on our Michigan farm, I pick bouquets for our home. My husband, John, planted the acres with red Flanders poppies, blue bachelor's buttons, and daisies ... Over the years, the perennial daisies have spread throughout the farm; and in the h... posted on Jul 18, 2324 reads

Triple Amputee Earns Medical Degree
Kellie Lim knows all too well what it is like to be a very sick child. Struck with a ravaging bacterial infection that destroys limbs, she became a triple amputee at age 8 and soon faced a life of prosthetics, wheelchairs and often-painful rehabilitation. But from that suffering, Lim forged a life of achievement. A graduate from UCLA's medical school she is set to begin a residency program at the ... posted on Jul 24, 2673 reads

Do The Right Thing
A year ago management consultant Rick Mickle bought a lottery ticket. While jotting down all of the things he would do with the winnings, from spending more time with family and friends to making a real difference in the world, Mickle began to take stock of his life. He was earning a lot of money but was giving very little of himself. And he was the one who was poorer for it. "I won the lottery th... posted on Jul 30, 2626 reads

Cake But No Presents Please
At Gavin Brown’s 4th birthday party, there were 44 guests and an elaborate ice cream cake adorned with a fire truck. Glenn Johnson lifted his daughter Mia, 3, up to drop money into a donation box. But the only gift in sight was a little red Matchbox hook and ladder rig. All the bounty from Gavin’s birthday — $240 in checks and cash collected in a red box next to a plastic fire helmet — wen... posted on Jul 31, 3775 reads

Teaching From Outer Space
It's a lesson that’s been taught for generations: All good things are worth the wait. Now, that lesson - one of many - is about to be delivered from 140 miles above Earth. "I want to go on the space shuttle," wrote schoolteacher Barbara Morgan to NASA in 1985,"I want to get some stardust on me." At age 55, after 22 years of training and waiting, in the wake of two shuttle catastrophes, Morgan is... posted on Aug 5, 1294 reads

Random Kid: The Power of Anyone
It all started with a feisty ten-year-old named Talia Leman, who watched the Katrina devastation on TV and decided to do something about it. She launched an online campaign to convince kids just like her to give up candy for Halloween and instead, collect money door-to-door.The idea took. Plastic pumpkins overflowed with small change. Dollar bills filled former candy sacks. In three months, random... posted on Aug 9, 2667 reads

Harvard Professor Resolves Ethiopian Crisis
As the gray-haired man strode into the posh restaurant in Ethiopia, patrons stood up and applauded. Professor Ephraim Isaac, a retired Ethiopian Harvard scholar had just helped resolve his country's two-year political crisis using traditional Ethiopian problem-solving methods. Just weeks ago, 35 opposition members had been sentenced to life in prison, despite widespread pressure from human rights ... posted on Aug 15, 1774 reads

The Boy Who Built Windmills
William Kamkwamba left school at 14 as his family was unable to pay the school fees, but that didn't stop him from doing something remarkable. Armed only with his intelligence, a book on electricity, some plastic piping and found objects, Kamkwamba built his first windmill, which generated enough power to run a light in his room. His second windmill used a bicycle to increase efficiency; it was ab... posted on Aug 20, 3808 reads

Designing A Better World
You probably haven't heard of CEO Tim Brown or his 500-member team at IDEO. But if you've swept your floor with a Swiffer, clicked on your PC's mouse or even banked recently at Bank of America, then you're familiar with their work. In the 15 years since the company was founded, it has been churning out disruptive product designs for everyone from Apple to AT&T. Now the company is also working on ... posted on Aug 26, 675 reads

18-Year-Old Sets Hugging Record
Kneeling for children and stretching to embrace taller people, a college student believes she’s hugged her way into the record books. Jordan Pearce, 18, said she hugged 765 people in less than an hour Saturday and plans to send the results to Guinness World Records. "I feel like I’m on cloud nine," Pearce said after the last hug Saturday. By the way, Jordan Pearce is not only a record breakin... posted on Sep 1, 2297 reads

Why Tell Stories Today?
"Meaningful stories are one of the essential ingredients of any culture. Our minds hunger for a good story from the time we are young. It is as if they hold a wisdom in them that our unconscious needs; tales contain certain nutrients that nurture the depths or the soul of a human being. There are parts of us that cannot mature without stories: in this way, they are food. And there a times when a s... posted on Sep 4, 2103 reads

The Science Of Sleep and Scent
Scientists studying how sleep affects memory have found that the whiff of a familiar scent can help a slumbering brain better remember things that it learned the evening before. The smell of roses -- delivered as people studied and, later, as they slept -- improved their performance on a memory test by about 13 percent. The results of this rigorous new study, whether or not they can help students ... posted on Sep 9, 3265 reads

Yawning: A Sign of Empathy
A susceptibility to contagious yawning may actually be a sign of a high-level of social empathy. Although many species yawn, only some humans and possibly their close animal relatives find yawning infectious, suggesting the reason is psychological. "Contagious yawning is a very interesting behavior," said Dr Catriona Morrison, a lecturer in psychology who is leading the work."You don't need a visu... posted on Sep 12, 1976 reads