New Florence. New Renaissance.

Microwaved Diamonds

The manufactured variety accounts for about 5 percent of stones sold at the Gem Lab, a Rochester, New York jewelry store. A 1-carat synthetic diamond fetches about $6,000 there, compared with $10,000 for a similarly sized natural stone, according to Vice President Paul Cassarino. Singapore’s IIA Technologies, the biggest producer of lab-grown diamonds, is asking $23,000 for a 3.04-carat diamond it synthesized; a mined gem of similar size and quality would cost about $40,000. “We are creating a new industry,” says Vishal Mehta, the CEO of IIA, which doesn’t disclose how much it costs to make a diamond in the lab. “Consumers today really resonate with the idea of an eco-friendly and a conflict-free choice for diamonds. That’s been a sticking point.”

Businessweek

China’s taxi apps

The combined company, Didi Kuaidi, accounts for 99 percent of the country’s online taxi business and 78 percent of its private car business—a total of 8 million rides a day, according to researcher Analysys International. In July the company raised an additional $2 billion from investors including Alibaba, Tencent, and Temasek Holdings, the investment arm of the Singaporean government, and boosted its value to $15 billion. This latest funding round has one clear purpose: keeping Uber in Didi’s rearview mirror.

Uber has 11 percent of the country’s private car business and is raising $1 billion to claim more. In a June message to investors, Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick said expanding in China is Uber’s top global priority and that he plans to put Uber in more than 60 Chinese cities, up from 11, within a year.

BusinessWeek

Engineered Cotton

Chemical and biomolecular engineer Juan Hinestroza and his team in the textiles nanotechnology lab are adding tiny bits of metal into fibrous material like cotton. When woven into a textile, the augmented yarn can produce light, kill disease-causing microbes or act as a filter to trap harmful gas. In addition, the metal oxides allow the yarn to be fashioned into conductive components like transistors for electronics.

“We want to transform traditional natural fibers into true engineering materials that are multifunctional and that can be customized to any demand,” Hinestroza said. “We are chemists, we are material scientists, we are designers, we want to create materials that will perform many functions, yet remain as flexible and as comfortable as a t-shirt or an old pair of jeans.”

Txchnologist

 

 

All the coffee that’s fit to drink

Beginning early next year, Starbucks’ loyalty club members (of which there are millions) will be able to read theTimes’ top news of the day as well as some select articles for free on the Starbucks mobile app. In effect, Starbucks becomes a kind of publisher.

Not that the Times is exactly new to Starbucks.

“We have proudly sold millions of copies of the paper in Starbucks stores for more than a decade, and are excited to bring this experience to the next level by enabling Starbucks loyal customers to take the best of The New York Times with them wherever they go, whenever they want it,” Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks, said in a statement.

Wired

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Robotic Musician

Way beyond Daft Punk…an algorithm called Kulitta

“The program creates music in four main steps. First it learns from a corpus of existing compositions. Then it generates an abstract musical structure. Next it populates this structure with chords. Finally, it massages the structure and notes into a specific musical framework. In just a few seconds, out pops a musical piece that nobody has ever heard before. The result of this top-down approach is that Kulitta becomes discerning, throwing out musical elements it thinks do not help the composition.”

Txchnologist

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The papal US visit and technology

Yesterday, as CNN showed the Pope’s flight take off from Andrews to New York JFK, I started tracking “Shepherd One”, his chartered 777 on Flightaware. The day before while in midtown Manhattan, I wondered about all the surveillance and security technology which was in use to secure his visit.

For a Pope who is much more about the human touch and has been ambivalent about technology, his visit to the US is being supported by a huge amount of technology

Fortune writes

“According to some estimates, over 1.5 million people will take to the streets of Philadelphia later this week to see the Pope. Many in attendance will be holding up their smartphones and tablets, hoping to snap a photo of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Expecting significant demand for their networks, Verizon VZ 0.70% and AT&T T 1.62% , the two largest carriers in the U.S., announced last month that they have invested $24 million and $23 million, respectively, to enhance network infrastructure in the area to ensure spectators have cellphone service.”

Of course, his little black Fiat with windows rolled down is relatively low tech compared to the armored vehicles that ferried US leaders to meet with him at various locations. But then it reflects more of the Holy See’s human touch.

Photo credit below

Stampedes and Science

After one (stampede) in 2006, Saudi authorities instituted single-direction pathways, visitor counts, and theme park-like scheduling of visits. The Jamarat Bridge, location of three pillars that represent the devil, at which pilgrims are supposed to throw stones, was the site of a stampede that killed over 1,000 people; today it’s a multi-level, multi-exit complex designed to keep people moving. In the past decade or so, the Saudi government has worked with a wide variety of architects and designers, including the famed international firm Gensler, to improve flow and safety at all of the hajj’s major sites, from the central mosque to the tent city.

Put that many people in so confined a space, though, and preventing stampedes will always be a challenge. Part of the problem is fluid dynamics—except people are the fluid.

According to Helbing’s (a computational social scientist who studies crowd dynamics at ETH Zurich) model, pedestrians are essentially just trying to avoid obstacles—including other pedestrians—while making their way to a given destination as quickly as possible. At low densities, which is to say no crowds, you get laminar flow, as smooth as a flat-bottomed, fast moving river.

Wired

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Polymath Panel

“What does it take to be successful in science and technology? Popular Science asked 13 experts from a variety of fields, including our guide, astrophysicist and television host Neil deGrasse Tyson.”

Profiled are thoughts from the following – nice to see so many ladies pioneering a variety of STEM fields. 

• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Heather Knight
• Limor Fried
• Jennifer Doudna
• James Gosling
• Felicia Day
• Dean Kamen
• Nate Ballou
• Lindsey Hallen
• William Borucki
• Peter Thiel
• Ellen Futter
• Megan Smith

Tencent as VC

In this land rush no company has been more aggressive than Tencent. Last year the company invested in four of China’s 10 largest tech venture deals and took part in a total of 48 deals worth $6.3 billion, according to Preqin, an alternative-assets data company; by that measure, Tencent was a bigger venture capital player than Alibaba or Baidu or, for that matter, Google. The deluge continued this year: Through April, Tencent had joined another $4 billion worth of deals.

Fortune

Cyberattack insurance

K2, founded by corporate investigators Jules Kroll and his son Jeremy, has been bulking up its cyber-response unit with former FBI agents. AIG, one of the first firms to offer insurance for property damage caused by hackers, is counting on Berglas' team to investigate attacks on policyholders. It's also asking K2 to provide data on threats to protect clients from events that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

"We'd like to aggregate that data to use for ourselves, but also to use for our clients so they know what industries are being targeted by what type of attackers, what the motivation is, if it's on the rise," said Tracie Grella, who oversees cybercoverage at AIG for clients including retailers, banks and energy companies.

Grella said AIG will offer coverage limits of as much as $100 million for property damage and $100 million in bodily injury caused by a cyberattack. She predicts the market could balloon to $10 billion in annual premiums by 2020, compared with about $2 billion this year, as more companies buy policies.

Bloomberg News

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