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.

The keynote speakers promise to maintain a future-oriented perspective, as each will explore a different aspect of next-generation displays. The keynote addresses will kick off on Tuesday, May 25. This year’s speakers will be:

• Dr. Sang-Soo Kim, executive VP, Samsung Mobile Display along with Samsung Fellow and SID Fellow
• Mike Sinnett, vice president/787 systems chief engineer, The Boeing Company
• Steve Bathiche, director of research, Applied Sciences Group, Entertainment and Devices Division, Microsoft Corp.

Another exciting event attendees won’t want to miss is the annual SID luncheon, being held on Wednesday, May 26. Terry Schmidt, chief scientist, Christie Digital Systems, Inc. will reveal what happened “Behind the Screens at the Beijing Summer Games.” Schmidt will walk attendees through the challenges of the high-tech setup in an outdoor venue of this immense scale, and explain how these displays contributed to the overall spectacle of this memorable event.

This is just a sampling of the exciting presentations attendees can expect at this year’s Display Week. More information on the program will be announced soon. You can visit www.sid2010.org for additional information, or follow SID’s Twitter at @DisplayWeek.

What makes Display Week so exciting to me is that it’s kind of like the electronics industry’s crystal ball, previewing display technologies that will enable the commercial products of the future.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Hi Technology

Last year, U.S. clean tech investments dropped to a five year low, from 72 percent of the worldwide total in 2008 to 62 percent, while Europe and Israel’s percent of the global clean tech market climbed to an all-time high of nearly 30 percent.

According to the CleanTech Group, an investment advisory service provider, despite the solar sector being the largest recipient of clean tech funding, concentrated solar thermal investment declined 90 percent.

In the absence of funding, utilities continued to bring capital and access to credit to the clean tech sector and are playing a fundamental role in getting more projects off the ground.

“North America still attracts the largest percentage of clean tech venture capital, but the fact that it is slightly down is worth noting,” says Dallas Kachan, a managing director at CleanTech Group, a consultancy that pioneered the word clean tech and owns it as a registered trademark. “It underscores that clean tech innovation continues to globalize.”

“As for overall growth in private capital, we believe we’ll actually see a recovery and record year in 2010 for cleantech fundraising,” says Kachan. “Not necessarily in actual venture investments in 2010, but we expect to see record funds raised aimed at clean technologies.

In the absence of a mandatory national cap-and-trade scheme, will voluntary carbon markets bear enough influence to generate greater price alignment between fossil fuels and renewable energy?

I personally don’t think so. While voluntary efforts will continue on a small scale, it will take government intervention in the form of creating and cap and trade market or implementing carbon emissions-related taxation to actually get the business environment to change.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about environmental legislation

Faced with California’s budget crisis and soaring unemployment rates, the state’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency (BTH) has launched the California Innovation Hub (iHUB) initiative, a program designed to enhance the state’s competitiveness on a national and global scale by stimulating partnerships, economic development, and job creation around specific research clusters.

The six inaugural iHub members are Orange County, Sacramento, Coachella Valley, Northgate, i-GATE (Innovation for Green Advanced Transportation Excellence), and San Francisco Biotech.

The main component of the iHUB program is collaboration. By building a network of cutting-edge companies, forward-thinking organizations, and research institutions across the state, California will benefit from greater exposure, smarter partnerships, more jobs and a fusion of new ideas that would establish the state as a global innovation powerhouse.

The lead organization for the Orange County iHub is OCTANe, a nonprofit organization that fuels the area’s technology sector through educational programming, business acceleration, job connections, and university partnerships.

OCTANe felt the impact of the recession last year as the amount of sponsorships decreased. But at the same time, the organization’s memberships increased, and the unemployment rate created a demand for job support and financial strains motivated universities to turn to OCTANe to help license technology.

I really believe that technology and innovation will ultimately be what helps the state recover from the economic recession. California needs that more than anybody.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about innovation in California

“Respected companies aren’t going to fall as far in the bad times, and they come back better,” says David Hartzell of Cornell Capital Management, a participant in the survey that helped produce Barron’s list.

In 2009’s roller coaster market, the top-ranked stocks generally experienced lower volatility and outperformed during the bear leg. And now, even after the market’s rally, the value of respect is still understood: For the most part, shares of the most respected companies are either above or not much below their bankruptcy levels, and have beaten the market since that crisis erupted. Indeed, Apple, which topped Barron’s list, is above its pre-crisis stock price.

It’s not uncommon to see a few changes at the top of the list’s annual rankings, and this year is no different. Johnson & Johnson, a perennial leader, slipped from No. 1 to No. 2, and Berkshire Hathaway dropped to fifth place from second. The ever-steady Procter & Gamble remained at No. 3, while IBM jumped 10 notches to fourth place.

Survey participants say respected companies have strong management, good governance, valuable products and services, and strong stock returns. They act ethically and treat their shareholders, customers, and employees well. And while some money managers name respect as the first cut in their investment process, others say respect is more often the result of a sound investment process.

For my part, respect answers the question ‘Is management going to be a good steward of the clients’ money?’ In my experience, I have seen that respect takes a long time to build and can quickly be destroyed.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about innovation in business

But there is another set of winners from the Games that will be honored: Game partners, sponsors, and organizer VANOC for initiatives that demonstrate positive and measurable social, economic, and environmental impacts through the Vancouver 2010 Sustainability Stars program. This showcase will demonstrate to other parts of the world innovations and methods that could help them achieve an improved quality of life while making a difference in the Vancouver area.

To be awarded a Sustainability Star, an innovation must demonstrate two or more sustainability features, be directly linked to the Olympic Games, and produce a measurable outcome. It must also be new to the Vancouver 2010 Games.

Some key green Sustainability Stars recipients include:

• Avaya and Bell Canada – for Nortel’s IP network equipment that Bell Canada is deploying for the games. The VANOC network will be the first ever all-IP converged network used in the Olympics, one involving less equipment to deliver equivalent or superior performance than previous ones.

• Canadian Pacific – for using 20 GE Evolution Series locomotives to move equipment and goods. On average, each train reduces the associated emissions of approximately 280 trucks from highways.

• Government of Canada, Province of British Columbia, City of Vancouver, and Vancouver Airport Authority – for the Canada Line rapid transit. The Canada Line links downtown Vancouver with Vancouver International Airport and the city of Richmond.

• Ricoh – for its specialized applications for output devices (print, fax, and copy), providing the economic and environmental benefits of reducing paper and energy consumption. These applications are new to the Games, have involved unique partners such as PrintAudit and DigitalStoreFront, and will be used on an unprecedented scale during the 2010 Winter Games.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about sustainability