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.

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.

Currently, Japan’s overall economic output totals $1.29 trillion. Its economy grew 0.4 percent during the second quarter, substantially less than forecasted.

Jesper Koll, an economist with JPMorgan in Tokyo, predicts that China’s economy may grow up to 8 percent per year over the next decade. Japan’s underlying growth rate, on the other hand, will be one percent.

Several factors are helping China rise up the world economic ladder. Unlike Japan and other established economies, China has only just started its boom of urbanization. There is a lot of room for growth within the country. It also has a lower standard of living, an aspect that has greatly appealed to outsourcing companies.

According to another economist, Frederic Neumann at HSBC in Hong Kong, if China continues its rapid growth, it may be able to solidify its position as the world’s second largest economy by the end of the year. By 2030, it may even overturn the United States as the reigning economic power. China has already overturned several established European economic powers over the last few years, including Germany, France, and Great Britain.

The implications are not limited merely to economics. The way I see it, as more wealth is distributed to China’s vast population, the quality of life can begin to equalize among its peoples, and relative to the citizens of other, more established, developed countries in the west. If China can become like Japan, Brunei and Singapore, with their excellent poverty ratings, a larger absolute number of people, by far, stand to benefit. And as China’s economy grows, its neighboring countries can also take advantage through trade and human resource exchanges.

Before releasing funds, Venture Philanthropy Partners applies tough evaluation standards and focuses on philanthropic investment endeavors that have the greatest potential to contribute to the improvement of children’s lives, their core developmental and educational needs. Since the late 1990s, KIPP DC has raised the level of public education in underserved communities across the country. Emphasizing extra learning time and support for children, the efforts of KIPP DC have had a huge impact not only on the students that enrolled into its program, but also on the rest of the state’s youth sector.

Charter schools differ from traditional public schools in that they are independently operated and are open to all residents of the District of Columbia, regardless of their neighborhood, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or educational level. There are no admission tests or tuition fees. Many parents opt to send their children to these educational institutions because they promise high quality education at little cost.

Large-sum donations from charitable entities such as Venture Philanthropy Partners are what keep the school operations running smoothly and at par with educational standards. They also take some of the pressure off of public schools that are filled to capacity or experiencing budget cuts. A good education is the foundation for better character and a brighter future. It is projects and partnerships like these that can give today’s children a better shot at success, no matter who they are or where they come from.

For this project, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman announced an award of up to $122 million over five years for the team to establish an Energy Innovation Hub aimed towards the development of artificial photosynthesis. By finding a way to harness this innovative method of generating fuel, it may be possible to cut down dependence on oil and enhance energy security.

According to Senator Feinstein, the award for California’s top scientists would help them along the way to producing a fuel that can be put into cars without further processing, and thus make use of the excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere while at the same time, eliminating dependence on oil. This same project also hopes to generate an innovative industry in the heart of California, a state on the cutting edge of the clean energy movement.

Aside from the Fuels from Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub, there will also be two other hubs that will receive funding for the Fiscal Year 2010. One would be a hub dedicated to the modeling and simulation of nuclear reactors, established by a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The other would be announced over the coming months.

“Finding a cost-effective way to produce fuels as plants do — combining sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide — would be a game changer, reducing our dependence on oil and enhancing energy security. This Energy Innovation Hub will enable our scientists to combine their talents to tackle this bold and highly promising challenge,” said Poneman.

This is not just a push for investments in science and finding breakthrough discoveries, it’s a way to turn theoretical science into practical technology by bringing together great minds from different industries. It’s a catalyst of change.

This line of thought was taken up by Universal, the largest of four major record companies. They believe that perhaps there is room in the Western audiences’ auditory palate for more of the spice of South Asian music. Teaming with Desi Hits!, a New York-based company promoting South Asian entertainment on its website DesiHits.com, Universal plans to create a label for musicians with South Asian roots. Through this label, the record company’s ultimate goal is to give South Asian music and its artists global exposure.

“It’s far from a vanity project for us,” said David Joseph, chief executive of Universal Music U.K. For him, South Asian pop music holds great potential as a relatively untapped art, presenting a huge amount of opportunity.

The new label, called Desi Hits! Universal, would give the music genre a “home,” a way for the music to be shared with Western audiences. According to Anjula Acharia-Bath, chief executive of Desi Hits!, after the success of the 2008 hit, “everyone saw that with some resources some of these songs really popped.”

Although mainstream western acts and Indian music have shown some mingling, the success of Desi Hits! Universal could be an excellent untapped resource for those looking for the next new sound. And, modernizing some of the more traditional South Asian music with elements from pop music can bring it to a wider audience, even within its country of origin. “Jai Ho” showed the ability of good music to transcend cultural affinities. I look forward to more endeavors that get the music of a rich culture reach out to more of the world.

Among these efforts is the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Awards Exhibition, which runs from August 1 at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, where local artists will be given a platform to showcase their works.

The local government has also planned other projects to encourage the blossoming of Hong Kong art culture, such as the creation of a projected $2 billion West Kowloon Cultural District and the development of an empty police station into “a self-sustaining, non-profit site that will be home to designers, art studios and exhibition spaces,” according to a government press release.

Perhaps as a result, though underrepresentation of Hong Kong art seems like common knowledge among influential names in the art scene, some acknowledge that, slowly but surely, Hong Kong’s own local talents have begun to rise up. “Arguably, it is this freedom from market pressure that has seen the emergence of a group of artists in Hong Kong whose works are conceptually very strong. You won’t find any grinning faces staring back at you,” says Claire Hsu, founder of the Hong Kong-based Asia Art Archive.

Hong Kong style art is strikingly different from Mainland Chinese art but with the global art community already flocking to Hong Kong for its art galleries, the gap won’t be very hard to bridge. Hong Kong culture may rise in the wake of China’s recent cultural success and attention gained in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.

A recent survey by Harris Interactive showed that online coupon use has increased dramatically among an unexpected demographic. Oddly enough, according to the survey, it’s well-to-do families with household incomes over $100,000 who are using more coupons. Four out of 10 people from families within this income bracket say that use online coupons – nearly twice the number of respondents with an annual income of $35,000 or less.

They make use of sites like Coupons.com, which offers free coupons that can be printed out or used with a savings card, Foursquare, which offers specials to users who frequent a certain location, or Groupon.com, which lets users take advantage of group discounts of up to 90% on local products or services.

The users of these services are well-to-do and tech-savvy, and live in urban areas. It’s not just a matter of discounts for them. Groupon.com encourages users to go to places they’ve never been to before in order to take advantage of the excellent discounts. Foursquare provides an entire mobile online community where people can find out where their friends have been, and what they think about a particular place.

It makes sense that these products cater to the well-appointed who have the gadgets and services needed to best take advantage of them. Gowalla, for example, uses a Google Map-like application and works best if you’re constantly online while on the go.

“The holy grail is, ‘how can we make e-commerce social?’” says Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon.com. “Usually, [a coupon] is a pretty solitary, one-to-one experience. But we’re helping consumers discover things.”

Services such as these constitute a new age in how we experience commercial settings. If social media sites help to foster social interaction among users, then services like these can help to push economic activity, as users are encouraged to try out new products and services offered by small, little-known, local businesses.

Just as the number of people who contract Alzheimer’s disease is expected to spike dramatically, scientists are on the verge of discovering new treatments and means for early detection of the disease. The two go hand-in-hand for this illness, and a breakthrough in one area could make the other advance.

The problem with trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s is that, by the time that it can be identified through its symptoms, the patient is already in the late stages. And scientists believe that some treatments that were deemed not to have any significant effects on patients could have been more effective during the earlier stages of Alzheimer’s.

William H. Thies, chief medical and science officer for the Alzheimer’s Association, told HealthDay.com, “there’s no doubt in my mind that, as an effective therapy emerges that slows down the course of the disease, we will find the marker for it.” Ironically, in order to find out which therapies work, an indicator of the disease needs to be proven.

“The two are linked almost arm-in-arm and will develop together. Advances in one will drag the other along,” says Thies. And, a large slate of Alzheimer’s drugs is now undergoing human trials. But advances are being made on both fronts.

Much of the research for Alzheimer’s is focused on amyloid, a protein that clumps in the brains of patients. The drugs that are being produced to treat Alzheimer’s are targeted at reducing amyloid accumulation. On the other hand, the disease is now identifiable using substances that bind to amyloid, which can be seen using PET scans, to identify the disease. Previously, the only way to identify amyloid clumps was during an autopsy.

Mr. Thies is excited and challenged by this dilemma, rather than succumbing to frustration. Despite this, I feel that more funding should go to research on Alzheimer’s disease. At the moment, it gets a fraction of what better known diseases like HIV/AIDS and heart diseases get from the government. As we learn more about Alzheimer’s and gain a better understanding of its symptoms and the course of the illness, science will surely find a way to prevent and treat the condition before it becomes too late for those who have the disease.

“There has been no delay with the project, which is running on schedule, and no recent issues have emerged that affect its delivery,” a spokesman for the Department of Education said. Fewer than 30 of the estimated 2400 schools and Technical and Further Education sites left to be connected to the network.

The project will be a good complement to the $158m Connected Classrooms program, which is part of the Building the Educational Revolution (BER). BER is a national program sanctioned by the Australian government and administered by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations that is projected to cost AUD16.1 billion. BER is part of an economic stimulus package meant to address the recent financial crisis, which largely entails the refurbishing of school facilities and the funding of other environmental programs.

According to The Australian, NSW is already experimenting with virtual classrooms with students in the state’s central and western regions. NSW Education is also looking into other interactive learning methods involving electronic whiteboards and video-conferencing, a technology that Telstra will get to showcase as a part of the Connected Classrooms program. Even blogging is being considered as a potential tool for online collaboration that could be capitalized upon thanks to the new fiber optic network.

In the larger scheme of things, Telstra also agreed to decommission its old copper and HFC broadband networks and transfer all customers to the National Broadband Network for AUD11 billion.

The improvement of infrastructure is usually the solution in dealing with problems that plague the entire nation, even as a part of a global economic slowdown. I think this was a smart move by the Australian government, and now that the world is in recovery, they have only to reap the benefits.