High Technology : In The News

The Energy Cooperative wants to increase awareness of bioheat through a video contest, according to Biodiesel Magazine.

The Energy Cooperative, a Philadelphia-based member-owned nonprofit, has launched an initiative to encourage the use of Bioheat. To kick off the Clean Heat initiative, The Energy Co-op is holding a Clean Heat video contest. Members of the group submitted videos of their experiences using Bioheat. The Energy Co-op will use these videos as a way to promote the use of the biodiesel-blended heating oil, as well as create more awareness of the renewable heating fuel. The contest is scheduled to conclude on Oct. 20.

Source: Biodiesel Magazine
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Renmatix, a company that creates biofuel from sugar, is setting up shop in King of Prussia, according to BusinessWeek.

Gov. Tom Corbett traveled to suburban Philadelphia on Tuesday to welcome a biomass energy company that plans to move its headquarters from Georgia and create 150 jobs over the next three years as it tries to develop ways to turn products such as wood and waste into fuel.

Venture capitalist John Doerr moderated a discussion of alternative energy inside the warehouse building that Renmatix -- which has another facility in Kennesaw, Ga. -- will be calling home.

The company is developing ways to access the fermentable sugars that are the foundation of biofuels. The effort, along with other alternative energy efforts, are all part of helping the country become less dependent on foreign oil, Doerr said.

Source: BusinessWeek
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Consumers initially seem to be taking to Philadelphia Media Network's $99 bundled tablet and digital subscription offer , according to News & Tech.

Just weeks after Philadelphia Media Network put its faith in an Android tablet device to help it flex its digital marketing muscle, the publisher said the initiative is gaining traction.

"It's performing well within our expectations," Yoni Greenbaum, PMN's vice president and general manager, digital, told News & Tech.

Source: News & Tech
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Philadelphia's approach to making government data public differs from other efforts around the country, and it's paying off, according to GovFresh.

Several months ago, with the unveiling of the OpenDataPhilly website, the City of Philadelphia joined the growing fraternity of cities across the country and around the world to release municipal data sets in open, developer friendly formats. But the City of Brotherly Love did things a bit differently than most of its contemporaries.

The city actively partnered with outside parties, private firms, not-for-profits and universities to help set the direction of the city’s open data efforts. The OpenDataPhilly website itself, although it’s brimming with data collected and maintained by the city, was developed by the geospatial and civic application firm Azavea, and is not hosted or operated by the city.  The website, and the larger open data effort in Philadelphia, operates under the stewardship of a group made up of both public sector and private sector partners.

Source: GovFresh
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New findings at The University of Pennsylvania may signify a turning point in the long struggle to develop effective gene therapies against cancer, according to The New York Times.

A year ago, when chemotherapy stopped working against his leukemia, William Ludwig signed up to be the first patient treated in a bold experiment at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Ludwig, then 65, a retired corrections officer from Bridgeton, N.J., felt his life draining away and thought he had nothing to lose.

Doctors removed a billion of his T-cells -- a type of white blood cell that fights viruses and tumors -- and gave them new genes that would program the cells to attack his cancer. Then the altered cells were dripped back into Mr. Ludwig’s veins.

Source: The New York Times
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A Philadelphia facility's 40-foot high UNTHA Recycling System can process up to 150,000 used refrigerators a year, reports Gizmodo.

Back in the day, your old refrigerator wasn't thrown away after a new one was purchased. It was refurbished and resold, again and again, until the doors fell off (then it was sold again). Now? Now they get shredded.

As of late, most refrigerators are no longer repaired after their first service run and are simply destroyed—releasing massive amounts of CFCs from the insulating foam—and the other 55 pounds or so of their remains dumped into a landfill. Now, GE and Home Depot are teaming with the EPA and the Appliance Recycling Centers of America (ARCA) to lead the charge to recycle these appliances in the greenest way available—by feeding them to this fridge-shredding behemoth.

Source: Gizmodo
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Despite challenges in court and changes in management, enterprise software giant SAP remains at the top of its game, according to The Globe and Mail.

It’s been a tumultuous two years for German technology giant SAP AG. Its CEO was dismissed in the face of poor numbers, and two new co-CEOS were appointed. It was ordered to pay $1.3-billion (U.S.) in penalties after an SAP unit stole trade secrets from rival Oracle Inc. But now things are breaking SAP’s way. A U.S. judge last week rejected the damages as ‘grossly excessive’ and recommended Oracle get $272-million – or seek a fresh trial. And 39-year old SAP – with annual revenue more than €12-billion ($16.8-billion) – is still on top of the enterprise-software world. At the centre of the whirlwind is co-CEO Bill McDermott, a rangy hoops-shooting U.S. marketer who operates out of suburban Philadelphia. He was interviewed the day before the judge’s decision.

Source: The Globe and Mail (Canada)
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Rutgers School of Law-Camden librarian and Philadelphia resident John Jorgensen has been honored for moving legal research into the digital age, according to Fastcase.

John Joergensen is a proponent of the free digital law movement. John, a Reference Librarian at Rutgers School of Law, is working to digitize and make law available online. As the publisher of the New Jersey Courtweb Project, John is publishing online the decisions of the New Jersey state appellate courts, tax court, administrative law decisions, U.S. District Court of the District of N.J. decisions, and the N.J. Supreme Court's Ethics opinions.

Source: Fastcase
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Former New Jersey state CTO Adel Ebeid moves into the newly created post of Chief Innovation Officer of the City of Philadelphia, according to Technically Philly.

Described as "the perfect immigrant story" by the city's Managing Director Rich Negrin, Ebeid, who was born in Egypt but raised in Jersey City after losing as a teenager his father to cancer, rose through the ranks of New Jersey state government to become among the only cabinet level leaders that fiery Governor Chris Christie kept on. Now, after 'flatly' turning down the offer, the soft spoken and succinct Ebeid is preparing to move his wife and new daughter to a city he admits he doesn't know well to help inject innovation into the City of Philadelphia.

Source: Technically Philly
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City Councilman Bill Green writes in Government in the Lab about bringing Philadelphia government into the digital age.

Open Government Philadelphia � both as a philosophical approach to how government should work and as a series of concrete actions � is aligned with the City's current needs, its upcoming challenges, and, importantly, its available resources. The city is poised to spend $120 million on technology upgrades over the next six years. For this investment to yield the return we hope for and desperately need � i.e., innovation that increases city government's effectiveness, while reducing its size and cost � we must proceed with purpose, foresight, and a bold vision. Open Government is designed to catalyze this dynamic change.

Original source: Government In the Lab
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Where will your future tech workers come from? A Philadelphia non-profit encourages math and science training for future careers in technology, according to CIO.com.

In the Philadelphia metro area, there's TechGirlz, a two-year-old non-profit group that works with young girls, encouraging them to study math and science in school so they can pursue careers in technology. The problem, according to TechGirlz, is that girls are often choosing to opt out of technology at a relatively young age because they're not being encouraged and mentored.

Source: CIO.com

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Bio IT delves into the partnership between Fox Chase Cancer Center, Ignite Institute and Life Technologies that has formed the Cancer Genome Institute.

Following the widely publicized demise of plans to locate the Ignite Institute for Individualized Health in northern Virginia, the institute has found a new home as part of a three-way partnership at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. Only it won't be called Ignite anymore.

Ignite has been rolled into pre-existing plans at Fox Chase to build a center for personalized medicine, says Jeff Boyd, senior vice president of Molecular Medicine. "The Ignite Institute and Fox Chase are working together with Life Technologies to launch what is now the Cancer Genome Institute at Fox Chase," says Boyd. Ignite's founder, Dietrich Stephan, serves as consulting chief scientific officer of the new institute.

Source: Bio IT World
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The Los Angeles Times digs into the implications of last week's announcement by Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., publisher of The Inquirer and Daily News, which will offer deeply discounted Android tablets for reading news.

Philadelphia's two largest newspapers -- the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News -- are planning on launching a low-priced Android tablet for subscribers later this year.

Greg Osberg, chief executive of the Philadelphia Media Group, which is the company that oversees both papers and their joint website Philly.com, said in announcing the plan that the move to bundle tablets with content from a newspaper company will be the first of its kind.

Source: Los Angeles Times
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Philadelphia Science Leadership Academy principal Chris Lehmann is among those educators calling for a redefinition of how technology is used in education, according to TMCNet.

As Chris Lehmann closed the recent International Society for Technology in Education's annual conference, he implored the audience at his keynote address here to redraw the educational technology battle lines.

"No one is arguing we shouldn't use technology in education anymore," said Mr. Lehmann, the founding principal of Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy, a public high school devoted to inquiry-based, project-driven learning. "The question is how." The call for redefining debate echoed throughout the formal sessions at the conference last month and at informal events at nearby hotels, restaurants, and bars, and even in casual conversations among the more than 20,000 estimated attendees. And, perhaps more important, it was expressed in data released by Project Tomorrow, the Software and Information Industry Association, and technology company CDW-G.

Source: TMCNet
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A bulb literally goes on when students work out at Drexel, according to NPR.

If only all the speed and strength of youth could be channeled into power. Turns out, it can. Some colleges and universities have started converting energy from exercise equipment into electricity.

One of those schools is Drexel University in Philadelphia, where student power runs straight into their buildings' power grids. Dan Simmons, director of recreation at Drexel, says a typical 30-minute workout on a treadmill can generate enough energy to hold a light bulb for 2.5 hours.

Source: NPR
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