MIT researchers build wearable

Search-and-rescue operations may one day get a boost from a wearable sensor system in development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

MIT researchers built a system that digitally maps the environment where the wearer is moving. Ideally, the gadget will become a tool that emergency personnel could use to coordinate disaster response.

According to MIT News, the machine's sensors wirelessly relay data to an off-site computer, allowing observers to watch the map's creation as the wearer moves through a space – in this instance, an MIT building hallway. The prototype was built using a stripped-down Microsoft Kinect sensor and a laser rangefinder.

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research scientist Maurice Fallon leads the project, which he envisions for use in a hazmat situation, "where people are suited up with the full suit, and they go in and explore an environment," he told MIT News.

"The current approach would be to textually summarize what they had seen afterward – 'I went into this room on the left, I saw this, I went into the next room,' and so on," Fallon said. "We want to try to automate that."

Fallon's research is supplemented by professors John Leonard and Seth Teller, of the department of Mechanical Engineering and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), respectively, as well as EECS graduate students Hordur Johannsson and Jonathan Brookshire.

The system was originally developed for robots but had been adapted for human use. It includes a laser rangefinder, which sweeps a beam in a 270-degree arc, measuring the time it takes for light pulses to return.

While attached to a human, though, the machine is jostled and may not provide as accurate a map as a roving robot could – especially if affixed to an emergency responder who is presumably moving swiftly through a location, and various floors of a building.

As a result, a button attached to the sensors allows the user to annotate the map. In the prototype, it simply serves as a way to mark a point of interest. The developers envision a future system that will add voice or text tags to the map, for emergency responders to mark structural damage or a toxic spill.

"This idea of having a SLAM [simultaneous localisation and mapping] system that is attached to a human's body, for figuring out where it is, is actually innovative and pretty useful," Wolfram Burgard, a computer science professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany, told MIT News. "For first responders, a technology like this one might be highly relevant."

The mobile marketer’s new focus

Mobile marketing has been widely discussed as a channel for achieving a wide variety of marketing goals. And this is indeed true– the mobile channel has great potential to be a game changer for marketers. Mobile can be used to drive awareness, increase brand loyalty, improve or build a database of potential clients. With location services, marketers are now able to tell exactly where customers are and at which times of the day. Instant feedback tools such as QR codes are allowing marketers to tweak their marketing campaigns in real time and with great results. With a tool that can achieve so much, and is so powerful it is easy to get lost in all the possibilities and try to do too much. But one thing that marketers should keep in mind is that all their efforts should be directed towards solely one thing, and that is to increase engagement.

Much has also been said about mobile being the only channel that can successfully integrate all other marketing tools and help to create a unified campaign for a brand, creating even more impact from traditional media. We know that consumers’ media consumption habits are changing and that they spend more and more time in front of their mobile devices than in front of their televisions or personal computers. The great design, functionality and portability of these today’s mobile devices means that consumers have begun to prefer their smartphones and tablets. A recent study conducted in June by O2 showed that voice, or making phone calls, now ranks as the 5th most frequent use of mobile devices, instead of being the primary function. Browsing the internet, checking social networks, playing games, and listening to music all take up a greater proportion of user time on smartphones. By focusing on creating content that increases engagement, marketers will be able ensure that a portion of the consumer time spent on mobile is devoted to their brand.

Let’s take a look at an example where mobile marketing has been successful. The retail sector has been able to take advantage of mobile-based tools beautifully. Retail chains have begun to place QR codes next to merchandise, allowing customers to access more information regarding the product. Supermarkets and grocery stores have developed online stores that allow consumers to shop while on the move, and have their selections delivered home. While consumers are making their purchases at these online stores, data from their past shopping history is used to suggest possible items to customers. All these initiatives have made shopping easier and less of a chore, providing customers with an enhanced customer experience. What’s more, these have given customers a chance to interact with the brand, improving engagement and giving the brand an edge over its competitors.

Today, customers have a great deal of choices and are becoming more and more discerning and fickle. Customer loyalty can be lost in the blink of an eye and once disappointed, consumers tend not to re-consider the same brand again. Higher engagement levels are the only way to make consumers feel invested in their relationship with a particular merchant, service provider, brand, or product. Therefore, by focusing on engagement marketers will be able to focus on retaining a greater number of their customers while continuing to acquire new ones.

As with any other marketing tool, marketers that center campaigns around mobile also need to be able to demonstrate ROI on their media choices. All the tools in the mobile marketers tool-chest, such as SMS, MMS, apps, location-based marketing, QR codes, banner ads etc., need some degree of engagement and involvement from consumers in order to be successful. Therefore, by making applications, websites, stores etc. functional, interesting and easy to use marketers can help to boost ROI even further.

Franklin ships have already been found

Maybe, just maybe, the 160-year dream of discovering one of the lost ships of the Franklin Expedition has already been realized, and the Parks Canada-led team that completed a month-long search last week just doesn’t know it yet.

That’s a slim but real possibility, acknowledges Parks Canada underwater archeologist Ryan Harris, who says a portion of the seabed data gathered during this summer’s high-profile probe of Arctic waters near King William Island still has to be examined for possible traces of HMS Erebus or HMS Terror, the two Royal Navy vessels commanded by Sir John Franklin that famously vanished during his search for the Northwest Passage in the late 1840s.

“It’s possible, because there actually is some AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) data that I haven’t looked at yet, and there is some multi-beam sonar data,” said Harris, who led the Canadian government’s renewed hunt for the ships.

“There were areas of the ocean that were really shallow north of the Royal Geographical Society Islands, so we have a small path that was done with multi-beam because it would have been a bit tricky to tow a side-scan sonar system in those shallow waters,” Harris told Postmedia News. “And that data has to be post-processed at a very high resolution to identify targets in the shallow waters.

“It’s a small chance,” he added, “but there is the outside possibility” of identifying the resting place of one of the ships while processing and analyzing the sea-floor data this fall.

“It has happened to us in the past that in reviewing (data) we have identified wreck sites that we didn’t see in real time,” said Harris, who also led the successful 2010 search off Banks Island in the Western Arctic for HMS Investigator, one of 19th-century British vessels sent to search for Franklin’s lost ships.

While it’s not “outside the realm of possibility” that a Franklin ship could be discovered at a Parks Canada computer lab in the coming months, Harris said: “I imagine we’ll be at this (seabed scanning) again.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in August that the federal government — in cooperation with the government of Nunavut — was launching a new, three-year effort to discover the ships, which have already been declared national historic sites despite their unknown locations.

Franklin, a Royal Navy explorer who had already led two important overland expeditions in northern Canada, embarked on his ill-fated search for a route through the Northwest Passage in 1845. By 1848, after the 130 sailors aboard Terror and Erebus had experienced extreme hardship and little progress through the ice-choked Eastern Arctic, Franklin was dead and his ships were trapped frozen waters near King William Island.

A desperate attempt by the survivors to march south to a fur-trading post on  mainland Canada led to the deaths of all members of the expedition. The ships, probably crushed by the ice, drifted to unknown locations and vanished beneath the waves.

An earlier bid to find the vessels was launched by Harper’s government in 2008. Although Parks Canada conducted searches in 2008, 2010 and 2011, no trace of the ships was found.

Harris described the underwater component of this year’s search a success because his team will at least be able to rule out a significant swath of the Arctic Ocean that had been considered a potential site for the wrecks of the Erebus or Terror.

But there were some notable discoveries earlier this month along the shore of King William Island during the dry-land component of this year’s search, headed by Government of Nunavut archeologist Doug Stenton. Combing an area where more than 100 survivors from Franklin’s abandoned ships traveled by small boats and on foot in the late 1840s — their ultimately ill-fated attempt to reach the mainland after Terror and Erebus had become hopelessly locked in the ice — Stenton’s team discovered bone fragments, nails and screws believed to have been left behind by the Franklin Expedition and, most remarkably, a 19th-century toothbrush that must have belonged to one of Franklin’s doomed sailors.

Harris acknowledged there was “nothing earth-shattering” among the artifacts “in terms of what it’s going to tell us about the fate of the expedition.”

But he said: “I think the value is really in the evocative nature of the artifacts recovered. The toothbrush, which is such a personal item, really reflects this attempt at a dignified retreat from the ships.”

Harris also noted that most of the artifacts recovered from the Franklin Expedition during 19th- and 20th-century searches of the region have ended up at the Smithsonian museums in the U.S. or at the National Maritime Museum in Britain.

“Very few of these materials are available for curation and display in our own country,” said Harris. “So even though these are previously identified Franklin sites, I think the continued archeological examination of these sites is certainly worthwhile, if only to repatriate the Franklin story somewhat, and to share it better and more evocatively with Canadians.”

When Will US Firms Become Agile?

Yesterday in part 1, I began this series by identifying the central role of agility in the 21st Century economy and the fundamental shift in strategy and management needed to make it happen. I discussed the approach of virtual agility that was achieved by alliances with other firms and discussed the example of the Chinese firm, Li & Fung.

Today I take a look at internal agility, also in the retail clothing business, with the Spanish firm Zara, the leading brand of Inditex. Zara also operates in a very agile fashion but very differently from Li & Fung.. Its agility is internal, not virtual. It has embraced a set of managerial practices that are radically different from those of traditional management and that enable it to operate much more nimbly.

To the editors of Harvard Business Review, what Zara does seems “questionable, if not downright crazy”, as the excellent HBR article in November 2004 by Ferdows, Lewis and Machuca “Rapid-Fire Fulfillment” makes clear. The article, on which this post draws, marvels at Zara’s performance: “Zara defies most of the current conventional wisdom about how supply chains should be run..” And yet the performance is there: “The company can design, produce, and deliver a new garment and put it on display in its stores worldwide in a mere 15 days. Such a pace is unheard-of in the fashion business, where designers typically spend months planning for the next season.”

To anyone familiar with Agile software development, Zara’s management practices look neither questionable nor crazy. They are simply the basic principles of Agile software development transposed to the retail clothing sector. I will talk more about those principles tomorrow. But first, let’s take a closer look at Zara.

Zara is the leading brand of the global clothing manufacturer/retailer Inditex. Headquartered in Spain, Zara manufactures around half of its production in-house, with only a quarter of its production outsourced to Asia. Instead of relying on outside partners, the company manages all the functions of design, warehousing, distribution, and logistics itself. Zara deliberately leaves extra manufacturing capacity to be able to respond rapidly to unexpected demand, rather than driving its factories to maximize output.

Instead of producing only the designs it needs, Zara’s designers create approximately 40,000 new designs annually, from which 10,000 are selected for production. Instead of excising all redundant labor, Zara makes a point of running three parallel, but operationally distinct, product families with separate design, sales, and procurement and production-planning staffs dedicated to the specific needs of each clothing line: women, men and children. Instead of separating design from manufacturing, Zara’s designers sit right in the midst of the production process to facilitate communications.

Rather than aiming for economies of scale, Zara manufactures and distributes products in small batches. Zara’s retail stores are required to place orders and accept deliveries in rigid cycles: as a result, regular customers know exactly when new deliveries come and so visit the stores more frequently on those days. Zara has a policy of zero-advertising, relying instead on customer delight and word of mouth.

Instead of shipping clothes as cheaply as possible, Zara ships clothes in racks with price tags already on them, so that they can be displayed immediately. Zara often beats the high-fashion houses to the market and offers almost the same products, made with less expensive fabric, at much lower prices. Zara sometimes leaves large areas of its expensive retail shops empty so that it can respond flexibly to demand. Zara ignores the potential profits to be made from concentrating on its best-selling items, even encouraging its bestselling items to sell out, thus encouraging customers to shop more often and more promptly.

Zara does almost everything that a cost-conscious traditional manager wouldn’t do. Instead of cutting costs in each activity of the firm, Zara optimizes operations for the performance of the firm as a whole.

Zara in fact implements the basic principles of Agile software development–total focus on delighting the customer, working in self-organizing teams, coordinating work in short cycles driven by customer feedback, values of trust and openness, and horizontal communications.

The results have been remarkable. Despite the struggling Spanish economy and an industry characterized by mercurial and quixotic customer demand, Zara is flourishing. Inditex has become one of the two largest clothes retailers in the world. Because Zara can offer a large variety of the latest designs quickly and in limited quantities, it collects 85% of the full ticket price on its retail clothing, while the industry average is 60% to 70%. According to The Economist, “Inditex’s sales have quadrupled to €13.8 billion ($19.1 billion) since the firm’s initial public offering in 2001. Inditex’s operating profits are high and have been more stable over time than its peers.”

An Expat's View

The anniversary of 9/11 affects all Americans, including those who live abroad. I lived in New York City. I now live in Tartu, Estonia, a university town in northern Europe. And so, I also think about this day, and what it means Eleven years have passed, but the effects are so real, and so is the love I feel for all those affected.

On this September 11, I am sitting in the third floor of Tartu's central public library. I see the passing streams of cars. Beyond the rows of tall oak, standing like palace guards at attention, marking the entrance to a parkway lining the western bank of the Emaj?e River. My body is in Estonia. But expatriation is never complete. Go as far as you can, and still a part of yourself remains in your native country. Where your grandparents and great-grandparents are buried, you were born, where you first learned to walk and speak, where you first fell in love and where you first suffered heartbreak -- you can never fully leave such a place.

America is big. Perhaps too big. I cannot feel so much for every part of it, or even most parts. But on this day, I think of that one city in America that means so much to me. Gotham. The Big Apple. Sweet New York City.

I was not there on that traumatic day. I only saw the before and the after. I remember when I first came to live there, how vast it all seemed, a megalopolis, a galaxy rather than a city. How Manhattan was a forest of stone, steel and glass, with skyscrapers reaching heavenwards with infinite striving. And on the streets below, so much life and humanity, moving at least twice as fast as how I lived in California. In that relatively small space, people from every kind of background, every race and ethnicity, every religion and political viewpoint, every kind of story of joy and sorrow. That richness of human life will always impress me even more than Manhattan's Promethean cityscape.

I remember learning to live there, finding my way about in the city. Forming friendships, some of which will survive, I think, for the whole course of lives. I think of the churches I visited, the places where I prayed. Of the little Greek Orthodox church, in a parking lot in the shadow of the World Trade Center. Of how I passed those two towers everyday on my way to work, thinking nothing of them, assuming they would always be there. We always mistake the contingent for the perpetual. And after work, often going to the bookstore at WTC 5, spending a few hours reading and thinking. I mostly read about Central Asia. Ironically, perhaps, the book I remember most was a volume on minerals in Afghanistan.

I remember, too, my first girlfriend. It was in New York City that we met, and came to know each other. That is the main reason I am grateful to that metropolis. I cannot disentangle my memories of bustling Manhattan, of its parks and bookstores and museums and cafes, from my memories of her, of the time we spent together.

I left for California, to pursue my own plans. They did not transpire as I had thought. Human plans never do. But perhaps they were for the best. In any case, we were no longer together, but I kept in touch with her and other friends.

I was asleep on the morning of September 11. I was living in a graduate student house in Berkeley. My neighbour, who was also my friend, classmate, and karate instructor, banged on my door, exclaiming "America is under attack!" I stumbled to the next room, cognitive dissonance mixed with morning drowsiness, to see the news. I saw the footage. Both towers had already fallen. I knew there would be immense damage. I could not believe, however, that they simply disappeared. They were like mountains, as far as I remembered them. And I heard Afghanistan mentioned in connection with them, but not because of lapis lazuli or any other kind of precious stone.

I was worried, of course, for all of my friends in New York. Especially those I had worked with, at a Fortune 500 company a few blocks from the towers. Especially her, because she worked there. I knew she often got out of the subway stops near WTC. I called, and like so many others, could not get through.

I found out later that she, and everyone else I knew, had escaped bodily harm. I visited New York City again, two or three years later. I saw Ground Zero. My eyes confirmed for themselves that that whole complex was gone. Nothing left but a gaping, hollow space. The Greek Orthodox church was gone, too.

I also saw my friends and acquaintances again. I asked one of them what was different now. He said most things stayed the same, but people were quieter. People just didn't speak as loud anymore.

And I met her, too. I was glad to see her. But she had changed. She had seen terrible things on that day. I had always been able to make her laugh. But she could not. For a time, laughter was banished from her heart. And that was far more chilling to me than any architectural destruction.

So much else in America changed, as well. American conservatism changed. It used to be far more hospitable to the idea that the West is a tradition joined with others. All religions may not be equally true, but the numerous expressions of sacredness around the globe deserved some kind of respect. My college was a small, liberal arts Catholic college that is very much part of the American conservative intelligentsia. One of the visiting speakers was Erik von Kuehnnelt-Leddihn, a charming, learned and eccentric Austrian cosmopolitan aristocrat who was part of the founding of American conservatism at National Review. He spoke about his travels through the Muslim world. A devout and orthodox Catholic, he was still open and perceptive to the humanity in this other world. His words painted such a vivid and intriguing picture, that I became interested in understanding Islamic history and thought. And that wasn't such a strange interest to have, as a conservative before 9/11.

I saw American conservatism slowly morph into something else. I do not buy into idealistic "religion of peace" political correctness, but neither do I believe in paranoia, or suspicion, or chauvinism. But I saw my political home succumb, over time, to nationalism. And so, I became homeless to an extent, although neither my principles nor my physical location changed.

ITT Exelis announces new capability in GPS interference

ITT Exelis has announced a significant development in the field of GPS technology. To be known as the Exelis GPS Interference, Detection and Geolocation, it will provide near real-time geolocation of intentional and unintentional GPS jamming sources through a network of sensors and advanced geolocation technology.

“From security to transportation and almost every sector of the economy, the world relies on receiving precise GPS timing and positioning data,” said Mark Pisani, vice president and general manager, Precision Instruments and Positioning, Navigation and Timing Systems, ITT Exelis Geospatial Systems. “As GPS jamming devices become cheaper and more accessible, there is a greater need to protect military, ommercial and industrial systems from a diverse range of threats. This technology is a major step forward in delivering actionable interference intelligence to an array of GPS users.”

IDG technology is based upon a network of threat detection sensors that are networked to a centralized server running Exelis-developed geolocation algorithms. These sensors would be strategically located around high-risk areas, such as airports or utility grids, to instantaneously sense and triangulate the location of the jamming source. Should a threat be detected, users would receive pin-point geolocation information and actionable intelligence in order to respond.

The Exelis solution would benefit a broad range of GPS customers and users. Jamming devices can send out signals capable of disrupting the synchronization of a utility power grid and creating significant infrastructure and economic damage. In each of these scenarios, IDG would detect, analyze and geolocate the hostile signal, sending the intelligence through a secure network in order for the user to mitigate the threat.

IDG builds on the rich legacy Exelis has established in the field of GPS and PNT. Exelis payloads and payload components have been aboard every GPS satellite for almost 40 years. Today, Exelis is involved in building tomorrow's Global Positioning System, developing and integrating the navigation payloads for GPS III. Exelis is also providing navigation processing components, precision monitor station receivers, and key components of the system security design for the GPS Operational Control System, also known as GPS OCX.

ITT Exelis is a diversified, top-tier global aerospace, defense and information solutions company with strong positions in enduring and emerging global markets. Exelis is a leader in networked communications, sensing and surveillance, electronic warfare, navigation, air traffic solutions and information systems with growing positions in cyber security, composite aerostructures, logistics and technical services. The company has a 50-year legacy of innovation and technology expertise, partnering with customers worldwide to deliver affordable, mission-critical products and services for managing global threats, conflicts and complexities.

5 Issues This Acclamation Should Be About

Every acclamation year, the two parties accept the agendas and issues to highlight and ballyhoo. Often it feels as admitting we citizens accept little ability to about-face the chat to the issues we wish addressed.

But that’s not as accurate as it seems. Conversations about the baptize acknowledgment or over the blockade fence echo through society, amplified by amusing media that can accomplish all of us into little newscasters. Campaigns like the address drive launched by the League of Conservation Voters to appeal that Jim Lehrer accompany up altitude change during the presidential debates appearance added agency that citizens can set the agenda.

With that said, actuality are 5 issues we at YES! accept should be at the centermost of this election, and one that should be off the table.

Although the Great Recession is clearly over, the average chic and poor are still struggling. One in four alive families is spending added than bisected its assets just to accumulate a roof over their heads. There are added than bisected a actor Americans who are abandoned on any accustomed night, and one in three families headed by a individual mother is traveling athirst at atomic allotment of the year.

To get the abridgement affective again, we charge to alpha by putting added earning and spending ability in the easily of the poor and average class, starting with a college minimum allowance and accelerating tax policies. Only again can businesses invest, alive they will accept customers.

We charge baby and medium-sized businesses that are abiding in their communities, not behemothic transnational corporations. Government should advice veterans, contempo graduates, and the unemployed to barrage their own businesses and cooperatives, and aback advisers who yield over companies that are aggressive to abutting their doors.

Newly proposed zones of alleged “free trade,” like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, should be chock-full afore added jobs are alien across and accomplishment and ecology protections are breakable even further, all of which allowances transnational corporations, not sustainable, abiding economies.

We charge to breach up the big banks, which about brought down our economy, and instead abutment the bounded banks and acclaim unions that advance in the businesses and homes of our communities.

The bill for two massive wars, Bush-era tax cuts, and the bread-and-butter bailouts of the big banks is advancing due. How will we pay for it while our abridgement is still struggling?

Many empires accept collapsed afterwards overextending their aggressive armament and spending down their resources. The United States, too, runs that risk. By reinventing our aggressive to avert the United States, rather than to activity force abroad, and by putting veterans to plan accomplishing jobs that are bare actuality at home, we could apple-pie our country and our economy, and rein in spending.

Here’s a abode to start. A address by the Institute for Policy Studies shows we could save $252 billion a year after risking our civic aegis by catastrophe the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, acid aback on the hundreds of U.S. aggressive bases about the world, and eliminating careless and anachronistic programs.

While politicians accept commonly been afraid to cut aggressive spending because they are anxious about accident aggressive jobs, it’s important to bethink that every dollar spent on the aggressive after-effects in beneath jobs than one spent elsewhere. If accumulated with educational programs to retrain aggressive cadre for plan in added sectors, channeling aggressive money into added locations of the abridgement agency more, not fewer, jobs.

A individual anniversary during the summer of 2012 saw added than 2,000 temperature annal torn in the United States. Two actor acreage of U.S. acreage austere in July alone, while 63 percent of the country suffered from a crop-destroying drought. Added north, ample portions of Greenland’s ice awning angry to slush, while Arctic ice awning hit a almanac low.

Yet neither of the two presidential candidates is authoritative solutions to the altitude crisis a centerpiece of his campaign, nor alms agency for hard-hit communities to cope.

That’s not to say that the two parties are in lockstep on this issue. The Republican belvedere doesn’t acknowledgment the altitude crisis, except to badinage Obama administering behavior aimed at acclamation it. The Democratic belvedere refers to altitude change as a part of the greatest threats we face, and Admiral Obama drew agog acclaim if he batten of the altitude crisis during his assemblage accepting speech. But the admiral has backed off of the administration he promised in his 2008 campaign.

The altitude crisis ranks a part of the a lot of austere emergencies anytime faced by humanity, and demography actual accomplish should be a top priority. Actuality are 5 behavior that would accomplish a absolute difference. The acceptable account is that demography on the altitude claiming would aswell apple-pie our air and water, accommodate bags of new jobs, and accomplish us healthier.

By hook or by crook

It’s a Saturday morning at a formerly vacant lot in Richmond. The sun warms the ground. Rows of fruit trees bend in the breeze. A raised bed made of cinder blocks harbors vegetable plants. Andromeda Brooks carefully plucks weeds from her raspberry patch, offering the young plants encouragement. This is Happy Lot Farm and Garden.

Once Mayor Gayle McLaughlin got involved, the city council voted to donate the lot to a local non-profit called Self-Sustaining Communities, so it could continue as a community garden tax-free.

“There are residents that have come to me and asked for vacant lots,” McLaughlin says, “and I’ve been able to work with the city manager and provide some of the city lots that we have.”

In Richmond’s Iron Triangle, another urban farm has grown on the parking lot of a former Bank of America building.

“And there’ve been property-owners who have donated, partially or for a period of time, provided some of their space for gardens. So, we think there could be more,” says McLaughlin.

Happy Lot Farm and Garden is a model for how the city can come together. Self-Sustaining Communities supplied fruit trees, and cub scouts planted them. High school students from Richmond and Marin built raised beds and the foundation for a greenhouse.

“And a lot of the materials here is stuff from people who were going to take it to the dump,” Brooks says, “and I said to them, ‘Save your twenty dollars; I’ll take it off your hands.’ And that’s how we’re making the walls for the greenhouse – all the glass over there was recycled, reclaimed.”

Despite the support they offer, city governments often have limited control over what happens with vacated and foreclosed lots. In Richmond, for example, it’s Contra Costa County that takes over a property when the owner has not paid taxes.

Open lots with good soil don’t come cheap in the densely populated Bay Area, and property-owners aren’t always willing to donate - or sell them - for cultivation. So would-be farmers sometimes use other methods.

On Earth Day this year, a group called “Occupy the Farm” took over the fallow research fields at the Gill Tract in Albany and planted more than 70 rows of seedlings.

Ryan Rising, who studies and practices permaculture design and was an occupying farmer, says, “I came here to grow food, so I’m here because of land access. I think that’s very important, that people have access to the land, so that they can grow food and live in balance with the earth.”

The University of California, which owns the land, kicked out the farmers in mid-May. University researchers planted the area with their own crops, though University officials also allowed some of the Occupy plants to remain. The renegade farmers broke in at least three times over the summer, to harvest and distribute the fruits of their labor.

The Gill Tract remains behind a tall fence and locked gates this fall, while researchers continue their work.

Dan Mogulof of the Office of Public Affairs for U.C. Berkeley says they would really like to see “a partnership between the University and the community to sustain urban agriculture, urban farming on that portion of the property that won’t be used for research in coming years.”

But if the University decides to end its research on the tract, “there is a plan in existence that was formulated in close collaboration with the Albany community, with our neighbors there, that would call for that land being used for community space, open-area recreation, and, I believe, a community center,” Mogulof says.

Across the Bay from Albany, in San Francisco, there’s a property bound by the I-280 freeway where cattails and fruit trees wave in the breeze. At four-and-a-half acres, Alemany Farm is unusually large for the space-starved city.

Jason Mark, co-manager, says, “Nobody’s getting paid here, and we’re growing, you know, four tons, eight thousand pounds, of organic fruits and vegetables a year.”

Until recently, none of that produce could be sold, at the nearby Alemany Farmers’ Market or anywhere else, because the farm is a non-profit located on city land. It’s a confusing situation. For example, five years ago, the San Francisco Department of the Environment gave Alemany Farm a grant to sell fresh produce at a city-run farmers’ market dirt-cheap, like a basket of strawberries for a dollar.

“Then, our landlord, the city’s Recreation and Park Department, said, ‘Oh my God, you’re selling the food?!’ ‘Yeah,’ we said, ‘we got a grant from this one city department to sell the food.’ They said, ‘No, you can’t sell the food! You’re a community garden.’ Clearly, the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing,” says Mark.

A new city law passed this summer addresses both the administrative mix-ups and the distribution of urban produce. The ordinance streamlines the permitting process, to make starting new urban gardens in San Francisco easier.

David Chiu, President of the Board of Supervisors and sponsor of the ordinance, says, “What we found in recent years is that we still have enormous waiting lists by residents; in more than two-thirds of our community gardens, we have over two-year wait lists for folks to get access to plots.”

In the past, seven city agencies gave money, while eleven different agencies supplied land.

“But unfortunately the support of all these different agencies has not been coordinated, has been highly understaffed, and frankly, pretty inefficient,” Chiu says.

A big smile can advanced a life

For the endure 37 years, Dr. James L. Strawn has been allowance humans smile. He opened a dental convenance on Seventh Street in Fort Pierce in 1975 and two years after congenital a apartment of offices at Midway Road and 25th Street. But, this mild-mannered, aggressive man has spent a lot of time alfresco of his appointment practicing dentistry.

During the endure two years, James and others accept been alive appear establishing a chargeless dental dispensary for those who can’t allow dental care. His eyes became a absoluteness in March 2012 with the admirable aperture of the HANDS Dental Clinic. The ancestor organization, HANDS of St. Lucie County, is a 501(c)(3) alignment committed to accretion bloom affliction admission for low assets association and was organized in 2008. James spends time alfresco of his clandestine convenance to advance for HANDS, as able-bodied as added projects, to accommodate chargeless dental affliction to able patients.

James isn’t a new-comer to volunteering. Twenty two years ago, he accustomed Project Christmas Smile. He believed that no one should deathwatch up Christmas Day with a toothache. Over the years, Project Christmas Smile has morphed into a tri-county effort. “We now accept 7 locations, including the dental dispensary at Indian River Accompaniment College, to accommodate abundant bare dental affliction to the underserved associates of the Treasure Coast,” says James. “This is a one day accident area 30 dentists action chargeless dental care, mostly to adults.” He aswell participates in a agnate accident alleged Give Kids a Smile Day captivated in February.

Twelve years ago, James accommodating the alpha of a dental dispensary for the St. Lucie County Bloom Department. “After aperture the clinic, I formed with several added dentists, and we volunteered our time to accommodate dental affliction to those who couldn’t allow it,” says James. “But, because this dispensary answerable baby fees and took Medicaid, six years later, it was able to activate hiring dental practitioners.” The dispensary was adapted to a children’s alone dispensary and the allegation for volunteers dwindled.

Because of his accomplished accord with dental programs for low assets residents, James saw the allegation to authorize a year-round dispensary that offered chargeless dental care. He approached the HANDS lath of directors. “They agreed that establishing a dental dispensary would be beneficial,” says James. “They see a lot of humans on the medical ancillary who accept dental problems, but they didn’t apperceive area to advanced them.” The St. Lucie County Lath of County Commissioners donated an added 1,000 aboveboard anxiety to abode the dental clinic.

Once the HANDS Dental Dispensary was accustomed by the board, James was able to get advice from others. “Henry Schein, a medical supplier, advised the dispensary at no charge,” says James. “Then, they put calm an accessories amalgamation and got a lot of it donated. What they didn’t get donated, they gave to us at cost, and they installed everything. They aswell gave us accompaniment of the art medical annal software. We anguish up with a top cleft facility, and we didn’t accept to exhausted the bushes like I anticipation we would be doing.”

The HANDS Dental Dispensary opened in March with four advance dentists, but now they are up to 10 dentists. Each dentist about volunteers two half-days a month. They aswell accept three specialists who advance to see patients in their clandestine convenance offices area they accept specialized equipment. James says that they aswell accept some dental hygienists who volunteer, but they allegation more.

This accomplished July, the HANDS Dental Dispensary provided $25,000 in chargeless dental affliction to 74 patients. “Our ambition is to mostly get humans out of affliction and to amusement their actual dental needs,” says James. But, he tells a adventure of one man who was abashed to smile. “His teeth were so bad that he just didn’t wish to accessible his mouth. We removed his teeth in the foreground and gave him a fractional bridge. A anniversary later, he went out and got a job. We don’t just get humans out of pain, we advice them advanced their lives.” A big smile and a hug goes to Dr. Strawn for putting smiles on people’s faces.

How to defended the absolute home for your retirement

Going aback into the apartment bazaar can feel a bit like accepting an astronaut re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere: bumpy, annoying and risky. We all apperceive that affective abode is generally ranked as the additional a lot of demanding activity we can do, afterwards accepting divorced. And if you haven’t bought a home for a while, and are out of practice, it can be even added difficult.

What’s more, if you are at the end of your alive life, you wish to get this transaction right, so your retirement is aggregate you hoped it would be. The acreage bazaar has afflicted over contempo decades. Thirty years ago, it was a accommodating affair. You rang two or three bounded acreage agents, looked at bisected a dozen agnate homes, befuddled easily with the bell-ringer and voilà. Now it is abundant tougher. Acclaim is deficient and humans are anytime added advancing in their following of profit.

We are actuality to admonition you retire in style, and acquisition your country cottage, city-limits accommodation or beach escape. Actuality is our foolproof adviser to house-hunting, from browsing pictures on the internet and anecdotic advancing areas to bridge the “t’s” and dotting the “i’s”

“We try to barrage a acreage on a Friday,” says Barbara Pentecost of Northumberland agents Smiths Gore. “We amend our websites for Saturday, if humans accept added time.” Other firms differ. “We accept a 'Hamptons Tuesday’ to amend applicants with a analysis of backdrop available, and to accommodate vendors with feedback,” says Aisling Gray of Hamptons International. Savills avoids Fridays, and alerts buyers at the alpha of the week.

Or, as acreage top priestess Kirstie Allsopp puts it, “Make abiding you accept your ducks in a row. Don’t try to buy a abode until you accept your mortgage agreed.” If you accept been out of the bazaar for a while, your acclaim appraisement may charge afterlight with contempo banking information. Check your account with Experian or ask your coffer for advice. The minimum drop appropriate by a coffer or architecture association is nominally 10 per cent. In practice, however, they are added acceptable to ask for 20 or 25 per cent. The college the drop you can put down, the afterpiece the claim amount will be to three per cent. The abate the deposit, the afterpiece to six per cent. Go to telegraph.co.uk/personalfinance to acquisition out added on how to accession a mortgage deposit.

One fast-changing aspect of the bazaar is technology, which may bolt you by abruptness if you’re not assured it. You acclimated to delay two or three canicule for the abettor to forward you a area of details. Now, abounding agents’ signs and bi-weekly advertisements affection QR (Quick Response) codes, those funny-looking aboveboard bar codes. With abounding new phones, you can artlessly yield a account of this cipher to accretion burning online admission to all the accordant admonition about a property.

Technology can alone yield you so far. You charge the central admonition that alone claimed acquaintance can bring. Target up to bisected a dozen top artery acreage agents, and barrage a agreeableness offensive. You charge allies, who will accumulate their eyes and aerial open, again active you to acceptable admission backdrop advanced of your rivals. Issue anniversary abettor with a conference sheet, advertence what you are searching for and how abundant you are accommodating to pay. Also cover data about your affairs – are you a banknote buyer? What is your high limit?

“You charge to angle arch and amateur aloft the competition,” stresses Phil Spencer, television’s Mr Acreage and columnist of How to Buy Your First Home. “Prospective buyers are a dime a dozen to an acreage agent, decidedly if they are affairs a appropriate property.”

Many apartments and houses, decidedly in prime city-limits spots, will be offered on a leasehold rather than a acreage basis. If this is the case, accomplish abiding the charter is for at atomic 100 years, and anticipate anxiously about what you are entering into. As a freeholder you accept complete ownership, while as a addressee you artlessly use the acreage for a set period. As a leaseholder, you run the accident of accepting into adversity if you try to advertise the acreage with a actual abbreviate lease.

Obamacare isn't the fix America needs

Government allowable bloom care, as alleged for in the Affordable Affliction Act, would accommodate bloom allowance for a lot of Americans, but it does not break our admission problem, nor will it drive down costs. We actually charge bloom affliction ameliorate in America. Our per capita bloom affliction spending, both attainable and private, exceeds all added developed countries'. Despite this, we do not accomplish bigger outcomes on abounding important bloom measures.

During this acclamation year, Americans should be ambitious the accomplished solution: allowance for all, bigger access, with incentives to reside convalescent and accommodate costs.

Health affliction in America is so big-ticket because it is a controlled and inefficient bazaar that is bedridden by middlemen ("third party") allowance and government oligopolies. Both providers (doctors) and consumers (patients) accept few choices with whom to adjustment and little ability of the money alteration hands. This opaqueness and decoupling of the burning and supply of affliction makes it inefficient and costly. That is, it is simple to absorb added people's money; you don't affliction if your doctor orders a third MRI on your knee above-mentioned to your knee arthroscopy.

The ACA compounds this by accretion this cher third affair adjustment and giving Americans beneath best for care. The Congressional Budget Office is already accretion its estimates on the amount of the affairs to $1.76 abundance over the aboriginal 10 years. This is partly because added active Americans will be placed into government managed Medicaid programs. Additionally, Americans will accept beneath best because, to administer costs, the law re-introduces the broadly alone bloom aliment alignment archetypal that is now alleged the ACO or "Accountable Affliction Organization," area your bloom affliction will be directed by a gatekeeper. Do Americans charge to admonish our legislators of the "Patients' Bill of Rights" alien in 2001?

Not alone is the ACA cher and constraining, it will acceptable accomplish bloom affliction beneath accessible. The accompaniment of Massachusetts allowable a agnate bloom ameliorate bill in 2006. Now, the majority of doctors in Massachusetts are not accepting new patients in the accompaniment allowance plan, and in some areas, it may yield added than a year to see a doctor. Equally apropos is the actuality that the ACA calls for added than $500 billion in Medicare cuts just as babyish boomers are axis 65. What is the likelihood doctors will see added Medicare patients in that scenario?

Americans should appeal absolutely altered bloom affliction ameliorate that is acceptable and solves not alone the allowance botheration but aswell our amount and admission problems. A bigger accomplished band-aid would be a consumer-driven archetypal as declared by Regina Herzlinger of the Harvard Business School: Accord American consumers ascendancy of their bloom affliction spending like tax-free bloom accumulation accounts, abbreviate the third-party middlemen and accomplish bloom affliction added retail. Increase bazaar accuracy and accord consumers greater choices. Let doctors and hospitals attempt for your affliction and trust. Let's chase the examples of Switzerland and Singapore that accept auspiciously adopted agnate programs — active down bloom affliction costs while accouterment advantage and access.

The band-aid is easy, but it is cryptic if we accept the political will to get it done. That is, can Americans win out over the interests that wish to advance this bizarre, third party-driven bloom affliction market? I assumption we will acquisition out in November.

My journey across West

Dear readers, Few of my friends who had access to some of my travel journals insisted I post some of them as they make interesting read and offer some wonderful travel insights. I don’t know if there’s any truth to that but I will leave that to your judgment. I will try to post my journal entries on this particular adventure and add a little commentary in the coming weeks. I am sorry that this may not interest you; I suspect however it may be of extreme interest to others. The journal entries contain time, dates and details of the time I was writing them. They also contain my dialogues with some of the people I met, my endless thoughts and the questions I often pose to myself whenever I am faced with contingencies. So you should find as many questions and few answers as you read them. This is the Pilot of the episodes. I always thought it would be a great adventure to venture into the wilds of West Africa, to explore the deep isolated communities, cultures, people, cities, food, music and country in general. I finally made up my mind November of 2011.

My backpack weighed about 5 pounds. The contents were: hiking boots, casual clothing, towels, sandals, Survival kit, books, notepads, socks, first aid kit, travel documents and some other miscellaneous. I didn’t put very much plan into this adventure not because I was careless but because I didn’t want to. I actually didn’t feel like heading out until the morning I decided to leave. I suddenly became so sick and tired of Accra that I just wanted to go away. Spontaneity; it’s my leap in the dark. It reveals my spirit and the ability to survive in my new environment. True adventure comes from spontaneity. What is the point of life if we have to plan everything to the last detail without leaving any room for wonder and curiosity? It was nothing but curiosity that led me to venture into the remotest parts of West Africa. What is it like out there? How does the food taste?

The first entry above reveals how unprepared I was. I arrived at the lorry station late. I didn’t even think for a minute about the time I could make it pass the border. My ipod, map and books were my consolation. I could entertain myself with them at anytime and anywhere so didn’t bother much about how long I was going to wait to cross the border.

My plan was to head out West towards Ivory Coast and then continue towards the border with Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Senegal and through to Gambia. I could then try to catch a yacht or any means possible to The Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Return back to Senegal and continue East through Kayes to Bamako. I will continue further East to Burkina Faso and then onwards to Niger. I will then come South through Northern Nigeria all the way South and then head out west to Benin, Togo and then finally back home. But this isn’t as easy and accessible as I had thought. But as it turned out, the unplanned rather gave birth to more fun and adventure as I went along.

It was a frustrating night at the Elubo border waiting to cross into Ivory Coast the following morning. The sanitation at our side of the border is terrible. There was dirt everywhere, even inside the border posts. Shouldn’t border towns be as clean and well kept as the capital? Border towns are your first impression of a country. Unfortunately that was not the case in Elubo. Hopefully the area has been demarcated these days and all the structures leveled down as they did in Aflao.

A Ghanaian Gestapo immigration officer prevented me from taking photos of the Tano River as I make my final walk out of Ghana. He was very aggressive and threatened to confiscate my camera if I go ahead. I complied as I didn’t want any brouhaha with those gestapos. I obliged to his orders because I was ignorant of the regulations of the area. He didn’t offer any explanation; neither did I bother to seek one due to his unwelcoming manners. They normally would round up non-Ghanaians and extort money from them. We shouldn’t treat other ECOWAS citizens in that manner if we don’t expect their side to reciprocate. The ECOWAS treaty must be respected and regulations observed. The harassment by GIS must stop. At least we can lead the way by treating other nationals humanely.

I arrived in Elubo around 10PM after about 6 hours on the road. I met 3 Ivorians on the bus from Kaneshie who were also traveling to Abidjan. Sherif is an interesting fellow in his early thirties, Michelle and Maggie, siblings, attractive, in their mid twenties. They turned out to be very helpful.

Sherif could not understand one word in English, Michelle however is articulate in English so she served as the interpreter. Michelle is of middle height, fair, attractive and blossom. She speaks calmly but with intense expression. She was smart and articulate. We conversed very often whilst en route to Elubo. They all were very interested in my adventure, especially Sherif. Sherif became more interested after he learned I have traveled through the Middle East as he has. We were both familiar with some unique landmarks and areas. So our friendship began on the basis of our interests.