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Wednesday, September 29, 2010 — No Region Specified

How Wireless Technology Will Change Global Health

Source: Fast Company

There is a slick new television commercial advertising Apple's iPad. It includes a cool medical application that can be used for medical imaging. The advertisement shows a trend in medicine: in the last two years there has been an explosion of growth in wireless medicine, which includes digestible smart pills, networked implantable devices, and smart phone applications. The United States is an innovator in this technology, which has the capability to connect patients and healthcare provid...

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Wednesday, September 29, 2010 — South Asia

A Maverick Academic with a Hands-On Approach

Source: Financial Times

Reuben Abraham was never really meant to be a business school professor. The maverick academic, whose lofty intellectual nature is grounded by a hands-on business approach, could have easily become India's first Richard Branson. Instead he opted for a different route, one that has given him the chance to shape the country's future in a more radical and entrenched manner. Born in the communist-ruled Kerala, Abraham's love for business is borne out of a deep scepticism of the ...

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Friday, September 24, 2010 — No Region Specified

Silent and Deadly

Source: The Economist

AFTER vaccines and bed nets, could the humble cooking stove be the next big idea to save millions of lives in poor countries? Hillary Clinton, America's secretary of state, hopes so. She was marking the launch on September 21st of a new alliance that aims to raise $250m to supply clean stoves to 100m poor households by 2020. It is headed by the United Nations Foundation, a charity. Among its backers are governments (chiefly America, which has put up an initial $50m), charities (the Shell ...

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Monday, September 13, 2010 — No Region Specified

Making the Grade - Microfinance for Education

Source: The Economist

Funding poor students could be the next big thing in microfinance. "LENDING to get a student through college is a far better way to fight poverty than making small-business loans," says Ganhuyag Ch. Hutagt, until recently boss of XacBank, a Mongolian microfinance lender. Graduates are more likely to take jobs that lift them into a far higher income bracket-which is why, five years ago, XacBank started offering higher-education loans, typically between $700 and $900, to ...

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Monday, September 13, 2010 — No Region Specified

84% of Villagers Unaware of Internet, Says Report

Source: Times of India

NEW DELHI: A seven-state survey that tracked rural internet awareness shows that about 84% were ignorant of the medium's existence. Of those who make use of the net, 85% access emails, 67% watch video and listen to music and 48% conduct educational research. Interestingly about 13% utilize the internet to know about latest farming techniques and 8% to find about fertilizers. ...

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Friday, September 03, 2010 — No Region Specified

Energy in the Developing World: Power to the People

Source: The Economist

AROUND 1.5 billion people, or more than a fifth of the world's population, have no access to electricity, and a billion more have only an unreliable and intermittent supply. Of the people without electricity, 85% live in rural areas or on the fringes of cities. Extending energy grids into these areas is expensive: the United Nations estimates that an average of $35 billion-40 billion a year needs to be invested until 2030 so everyone on the planet can cook, heat and light their premises, ...

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