The art exhibit is curated by TS + Projects. Probably named with an allusion to a show presented last year by New York’s New Museum entitled ‘Younger than Jesus,’ where all of the featured artists were under the age of 33 (the age at which Jesus died), ‘Younger than Moses’ features artists who are all younger than 120.

Notable artists include Ryan Shultz, who submitted ‘Facebook Pills,’ a three-piece oil-on-canvas painting depicting yellow, blue and purple pills embossed with the popular social networking site’s familiar logo, and Deniz Ozuygur, whose resin sculpture ‘Stuck’ offers a creative take on a common cause of teenage embarrassment. Established artist Travis Childer also contributes to the exhibit. ‘Staplerscape,’ 2010, is an artificial landscape set atop a common stapler using modeling materials usually reserved for constructing miniature railroads.

As a fan of contemporary art, I would say the art exhibit is worth seeing. Some of the artworks can be quite awe-inspiring, and all of them can provide great insight on the condition of today’s younger generation. Some of the artworks, such as the little paper-folded tanks showcased in one of Travis Childer’s installations, are even up for sale, creating an excellent opportunity to patron a young artist.

Catch the art exhibit at the Benrimon Contemporary, located in the Chelsea-Manhattan area.

Through use of the new system being devised, the safety and reliability of essential transportation networks should be secured, making it better for those who make use of it. This is an answer to incidences of train wrecks caused by natural disasters such as the case during the tsunami of 2004 in Southeast Asia, when a Sri Lankan train was derailed. 1700 lives might have been saved.

The team, which includes Prof. Lev V. Eppelbaum of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, hopes to develop a platform using a connection of emerging technologies. This platform is aimed to be able to fit on any railway, passenger or freight carrier. While mainly created for predicting natural disasters, the platform could also be used against possible terrorist attacks.

Among some of the challenges the team faces in creating this platform is the change of climate, soil type and physical geography along the rail route. But the team continues to work towards the development of this platform. Ultimately, the outcome of the team’s work is expected to be adopted by the world’s railway systems. This becomes especially important in the work towards environmental sustainability as the trains serve as a viable alternative to transportation via car or plane. The significance of the work becomes even more apparent as at present, there is no monitoring system against natural disasters or terrorist attacks on the current railway system.

While travel by railway has been viewed by some as an old-fashioned way to get around, I believe that with the efforts of this consortium of researchers, it can be possible to modernize this mode of transportation. Take for instance the Bullet Train of Japan. By developing public transportation systems and making them more efficient and reliable, it can be possible to increase the popularity of this efficient and affordable mode of travel.

One such example comes from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. With its “Good Neighbor, Great University” program, it offers financial aid to incoming freshmen who have graduated from high schools in Evanston and Chicago. Through this program, student loans and the pressure to take on a summer job or a work-study job are eliminated. Barriers on affordability are eased and students will not have to face the challenge of paying a student loan debt, which is one of the significant hurdles to promoting college education.

By offering its “Good Neighbor, Great University” program, Northwestern University acts on a key recommendation of an all-University task force on diversity and inclusion. It hopes to increase diversity in the student population, making it easier for families of low to middle incomes to afford an education.

Also, by focusing on the immediate area of Northwestern’s campus, the program hopes to reach out to the students there. The school plans to begin providing this improved financial aid to 100 students in the Fall of 2011. And hopefully, in the future, this could be increased to 200.

Aside from Northwestern, other private schools have been reaching out to their own locales. Since 2008, colleges and universities have been making the move to offer a more affordable education to those in their areas. One of these is College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, which has been offering free tuition to city residents whose families earn less than $50,000 a year.

This change of attention to local education serves as an answer to merit-based scholarships from comparable and lesser schools which easily plucks away prospective students from institutions such as Northwestern University. But aside from that, I believe that this paradigm shift for colleges and universities is a turn for the better, given the projected dip in high school graduates over the next five years. Changes like these make education worth its salt for the common person.

80 percent of today’s personal computers are branded with an Intel processor. However, despite its rapidly growing popularity, the company opted to stay away from mobile technology. One reason is that Intel has focused too much on the creation of powerful chips, which while effective on PCs, tend to drain batteries quickly – something smart phone makers and their consumers have little use for.

With the purchase of Infineon Technologies’ mobile chip division, Intel can finally join the mobile technology bandwagon without a hitch. The technology gained through the deal would be incorporated in Intel Core processor-based laptops, as well as Intel Aton processor-based devices such as smart phones, netbooks and tablets. With Infineon Technologies, Intel stands to become the fifth biggest suppliers of mobile phone processors.

Intel plans to further expand its influence within the mobile market by purchasing more established enterprises. It had already bought mobile software maker, Wind River Systems last summer for $884 million. Its first project is the development of Mobin software, an open-source program designed to run on mobile devices that use Intel chips.

With the rising popularity of mobile technologies comes the looming threat of mobile hackers. Intel is already thinking ahead, as it also plans to purchase anti-virus software company McAfee. With this acquisition, Intel would be able to integrate security with its chips.

Intel used to have a division that created chips for smart phones, but it was sold off several years ago to cut costs and redirect efforts toward its core business. Now that Internet use on mobile phones has boomed, and with so many companies already lunging at the opportunities it has opened up, it is high time that Intel catch up.

Managing medical data has proven to be a challenge in any place, but in China, mastering the system is a step more challenging given the current state of its data management in hospitals. In some of the hospitals in the country, patient records are still handled in paper, making it easy to create redundancies. It also makes it difficult to track patient history and discern whether Western or Chinese medicines work best.

At a group of hospitals in China’s southern Guangdong province, IBM has deployed technology to standardize patient records and use it to create statistical analyses of traditional Chinese medicine treatments. Through the technology, the company aims to provide a solution for doctors to identify treatment using both Western and Chinese medicine. This treatment would be drawn from the standardized patient records. The team behind this system, the IBM Healthcare Solutions Lab, is a finalist for the Wall Street Journal’s Asian Innovation Awards.

Using this innovative technology, IBM aims to provide evidence for the effectiveness of non-Western remedies. If the developed technology proves successful, it could be replicated in other parts of the world that still hold fast to their own form of medical treatment, such as in India.

According to Janet Chiew, an analyst for the research firm IDC, China’s healthcare IT market will see remarkable growth in five years, triggered in part by the three year healthcare reform program.

As a brand new market, the healthcare infrastructure of China poses as an area ripe for new things in the data storage and solutions industry. I believe this is a good opportunity for businesses there. Creating a system that can handle the large mass of patients daily while working with a unique set of treatment that covers both Western and traditional methods opens up a chance for innovation that can benefit healthcare infrastructures all over the world.

According to a March 2010 report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory financed by the Energy Department, the sector devoted to energy efficiency has an estimated growth of as much as fourfold in the next decade to some 1.3 million people. Already, the federal government has poured $500 million into training for the industry. Educational institutions have picked up on this growth as well.

At community colleges, managers can look into programs to train them for the industry. Among those available are two-year degrees in environmental management and certificates for those who want to include green qualifications into their resumes. Depending on the college, these courses and other similar ones are available both on campus and online.

One such college offering training in the green industry is Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. Among its offerings are two year programs for associate degrees in applied sciences. These degrees include a choice of energy management, renewable energy or water conservation. The college also offers other continuing education courses that include cross-disciplinary ones such as natural resource economics, global ecology and environmental politics.

Last year, the federal government awarded grants to Lane Community College and 10 other community colleges across the country to begin or enhance their programs in energy management over a three year period.

But it isn’t only colleges in the city that are offering these training courses. Rural areas also provide training through online environmental degrees and certificates. Four year degrees directly relevant to the energy efficiency sector are also available in about two dozen colleges and universities across the country.

With the growing strength and importance being placed on environmental sustainability, I believe it is only natural that training and education has developed to follow suit and prepare managers to handle the changes that science has uncovered. Through training programs such as these, I think that today’s managers are able to adapt and begin thinking with an environmentally-conscious mindset, making it possible for industries to make the full shift to greener practices.

While quitting the stick is still the most important and effective way to decrease lung cancer risk, H. Bas Bueno-de-Mesquita of the Netherlands-based National Institute for Public Health and the Environment says that consuming a mix of different types of fruits and vegetables may also reduce risk, independent of the amount.

After observing more than 450,000 people residing in Europe, 1,600 of whom were diagnosed with lung cancer, Bueno-de-Mesquita and his team concluded that it wasn’t so much the quantity of vegetables and fruits that mattered, but rather, the variety. The researchers studied 26 commonly eaten vegetables and 14 commonly eaten fruits, including fresh, canned, and dried products.

Fruits and vegetables contain various bioactive compounds. To ensure the body contains a rich mix of these substances, Bueno-de-Mesquita suggests that one consume a variety of their sources. It is not enough to simply eat the recommended dietary amounts.

The study concludes that diversifying one’s vegetable and fruit consumption substantially decreases the risk of Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC), a common skin cancer that may also affect the lungs, mouth, esophagus, urinary bladder, or genital area.

Despite this, I wouldn’t advise smokers to simply load up different kinds of fruits and vegetables. Of course, the only sure and proven way to reduce the risk of cancer remains to be the avoidance of tobacco in all its forms.

As always, be sure to consult a physician or nutritionist before making drastic changes to your diet.

Having an official fan page on Facebook is great for creating a niche for students, faculty, alumni and other members of the school population. However, these sites are hard to monitor and actively maintain, and they may not have all the features that a school might need. One new app from San Francisco-based firm Inigral, Inc., allows colleges to create student-oriented social networks within Facebook. The application, called “Schools on Facebook,” is currently free for users.

“Schools on Facebook” enables colleges and universities to form private online communities that give students school-specific profiles that are separate from their original Facebook accounts.

Another budding web-based service called Foursquare is also providing an aid for educational institutions. It provides a mobile app that allows students to keep up to date with the latest events going on around campus as well as find other students.

Many schools see the integration of social networking tools into their campus culture as an effective way to increase enrollment and retention. A student that has been accepted into a college can be given access to the app even if he or she is still deciding whether or not to enroll there. This can allow the potential student to interact with other students and build friendships before fully committing to study in that particular institution.

Currently, 16 of the country’s colleges and universities are using the “Schools on Facebook” app, including Arizona State University, Columbia College Chicago, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Harvard University, once home to Facebook’s creator Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the first to integrate Foursquare as a tool for student updates and campus communication. Schools will undoubtedly save on other communication costs when the trend solidifies.

During the International Tiger Summit Partners Dialogue and Meeting recently held in Bali, Indonesia, it was announced that the Sumatran tiger population is slowly increasing. According to Bengkulu Natural Resources Conservation Board (BKSDA) Chief Andi Basrul, numbers are expected to increase by 20% by 2014.

Constant promotion of environmental conservation as well as local and international efforts to save the Sumatran tiger are starting to pay off. Stricter enforcement of laws against illegal poaching has also kept the endangered species protected from deliberate harm or malice.

The Sumatran Tiger is not the only species with a hope to make it onto future centuries. All tiger populations in the wild are steadily increasing. During the summit, 13 countries that serve as natural habitats for various tiger species vowed to take more aggressive action toward the conservation of the remaining big cat population. These countries are China, Bangladesh, India, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Russia and of course, Indonesia.

Chief Basrul claims that hunting remains the leading threat to the Sumatran tiger species’ survival. The big cat’s vibrant striped pelt fetches a handsome price in the black market. Conflicts with humans in the forest also pose a great threat. Several communities in Indonesia, such as the Seluma and Kaur districts have houses and plantations that located close to the tigers’ habitat. As a result, it is common for tigers to enter the residential areas, lured by the livestock, which they prey on.

Luckily, the local government seems to have matched its efforts with the level of urgency felt by environmentalists and conservationists world-wide. Endemic to the Indonesian island of Sumatra, this unique tiger is not only a tourist drawer, but a cultural heritage that the country has been given the responsibility to protect.

It took the young product designer eight months cooped up in a lab to create BRGP (Bullus Recycled Gum Polymer), a form of rubber that can be molded into anything from toys to a pair of Wellington boots. The Gumdrop Bin is a project that has stemmed from this innovation. Several areas in the UK, including Orpington College in Kent and Legoland in Windsor, as well as the famous Six Flags Theme Park in the US are dotted with these bright pink bubble bins, specifically put up as disposal containers for discarded gum.

The idea behind the campaign is simple. When the gumdrop bins are already filled with chewed up gum, they can be taken out and recycled into new BRGP. Since the gumdrop bin is also made of recycled chewing gum, there is no need for tedious extraction.

In July, 2010, Anna Bullus was selected by Management Today as one of the ‘35 Under 35 to Change the Future’ for her innovation. She now runs her own design company and continues to promote the Gumdrop Bin campaign through www.gumdropbin.com.

More than 3.5 billion pieces of chewing gum are discarded every year, defacing public property and causing varying degrees of annoyance among the people. If this campaign becomes widespread, not only will the streets be less littered with sticky used gum, but we may also be seeing a plausible environment friendly replacement for plastic.