Sweet smell of success: human nose discerns giant array of odors

Sweet smell of success: human nose discerns giant array of odors
2:03pm EDT
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – What does your nose know? A lot more than you might expect.
Scientists studying the breadth of people’s sense of smell said on Thursday the human nose can discern far more than the 10,000 different odors long cited as the outer limit of our olfactory abilities. Read more of this post

Sensors based on a lobster ‘nose’ may someday sniff out landmines

Sensors based on a lobster ‘nose’ may someday sniff out landmines
Tue, Mar 18 2014
By Barbara Liston
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – Scientists in Florida studying the way lobsters sniff around for food on the sea floor say they have found a clue to developing technology that could help soldiers detect landmines and hidden explosives from a safer distance than current technology allows. Read more of this post

Vatican library will digitize its archives and put them online

Vatican library will digitize its archives and put them online

12:33pm EDT
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican library began a project on Thursday to digitize thousands of historical manuscripts, dating from the origins of the Church to the 20th century, and make them available online. Read more of this post

Know your enemy: Elephants are even cannier than zoologists previously realised

Know your enemy: Pachyderms are even cannier than zoologists previously realised
Mar 15th 2014 | From the print edition
ELEPHANTS in Africa have been dealing with people since people existed, for the first humans evolved in that part of the world 2m years ago. And they have been dealing with honeybees even longer—for those insects, which also evolved in Africa, have been around for at least 35m years. People and bees are more or less the only animals a full-grown elephant is scared of, so looking at the nuances of how they react to them is intriguing. Two papers published this week do just this. They show that elephants can recognise the languages of ethnic groups likely to be hostile to them, and of those which are not, and also that the beasts are able to warn each other about bees in a different way from the one they use to warn each other about people. Read more of this post

Doing the ICANN-can: America promises to release its grip on the internet’s phone book-and opens up a debate on how to govern cyberspace

Doing the ICANN-can: America promises to release its grip on the internet’s phone book—and opens up a debate on how to govern cyberspace
Mar 22nd 2014 | From the print edition
IS THE internet about to fall apart? Just a few weeks ago it seemed possible. First Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, said her country would seek to circumvent internet services based in America; then Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, said she would back calls to create a separate European internet. Both were furious that America’s National Security Agency (NSA) had spied on their communications. Read more of this post

Cosmology: Man suddenly sees the start of the universe; The quest to understand reality takes a great leap backwards

Cosmology: Man suddenly sees the start of the universe; The quest to understand reality takes a great leap backwards
Mar 22nd 2014 | From the print edition
IN THE beginning was the word and the word was “inflation”. That is no blasphemy. It is, rather, a celebration of human curiosity, ingenuity and bloody-minded persistence in the quest to try to find out how the universe actually works. Read more of this post

Bill Gates Has An ‘Anti-Paris Hilton’ Plan To Make Sure His Kids Won’t Inherit All That Gigantic Wealth

Bill Gates Has An ‘Anti-Paris Hilton’ Plan To Make Sure His Kids Won’t Inherit All That Gigantic Wealth
DYLAN LOVE TECH MAR. 20, 2014, 9:16 PM
Speaking on stage yesterday at the TED 2014 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Bill and Melinda Gates gave a revealing answer to a question about how they’re raising their kids with respect to money, reports Wired. Read more of this post

9 Weird Things Highly Successful People Do To Be More Creative

9 Weird Things Highly Successful People Do To Be More Creative
DRAKE BAER STRATEGY MAR. 21, 2014, 12:10 AM
If you want to be successful, you may need to get a little weird.
According to Harvard psychologist Shelley Carson, eccentric people tend to be more creative because of something called “cognitive disinhibition.” Basically, creative folks have less of a filter on their thoughts and actions, which makes them more likely to do things that don’t follow the norms of behavior. Read more of this post

Bill And Melinda Gates Think These Are The Two Most Important Charts In The World

Bill And Melinda Gates Think These Are The Two Most Important Charts In The World
RICHARD FELONI SCIENCE MAR. 20, 2014, 11:59 PM
Chris Anderson interviewed Bill and Melinda Gates on March 18 at the TED2014 conference in Vancouver.
Bill and Melinda Gates shared the stage Tuesday night during the TED2014 Conference in Vancouver.
In an interview with TED curator Chris Andersen, who asked each to share the one chart that drives their work with the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation.
Melinda, a champion of women’s reproductive rights, chose an infographic illustrating the struggle some African women have accessing a preferred method of birth control: Read more of this post

Lego builds the year’s first true blockbuster

Lego builds the year’s first true blockbuster
BY JUN HONGO
STAFF WRITER
MAR 20, 2014
Film director Phil Lord has fond childhood memories of days spent playing with Lego’s colorful plastic blocks. He says he would simply dump what he had on the floor and create a huge mess.

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5 destinations to mend a broken heart

The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network | Thu, Mar 20 2014
5 destinations to mend a broken heart
Edna Tarigan
INDONESIA – If you are one of those people who have recently walked out on a heartbreaking relationship and are looking for some quiet time and comfort, or perhaps a little bit of adrenaline to get away from your heartbreak, here are five mood-boosting locations in the country that you can escape to and, hopefully, find the desire to start over and be happy again.

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Not ready for the University of Hard Knocks; In Singapore, leaders who shine academically are finding it tough coping with real life crisis

Updated: Saturday March 15, 2014 MYT 7:10:46 AM
Not ready for the University of Hard Knocks
BY SEAH CHEANG NEE
In Singapore, leaders who shine academically are finding it tough coping with real life crisis.
THE Little India Inquiry has produced an uncomplimentary account of how scho­lar leaders could fare in a major disorder.
Indirectly, the city’s first riot in 40 years provided a chance to test the real capabilities of Singapore’s scholar-police leaders.

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What Would Plato Tweet? Probably less about what he had for lunch. And more about justice and wisdom

MARCH 16, 2014, 9:15 PM 158 Comments
What Would Plato Tweet?
By REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN
It began when a writer friend asked me what my Klout score was. We were sitting at the sushi bar of a Japanese restaurant, the master chef assembling edible origami of torched fish and foam. My husband and I used to patronize this neighborhood place quite a lot, until a restaurant critic ruined it for us by his unrestrained rave, so that now you have to make reservations months in advance. But my friend had magically procured us two seats just like that, and when I asked him for the secret of his influence he responded by asking me about my Klout score.

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Running as Therapy: While pounding out miles in the pouring rain, I was grateful that it was raining so no one could see me cry

MARCH 20, 2014, 6:00 AM 8 Comments
Running as Therapy
By JEN A. MILLER
I started distance running in 2007 because, in the short space of six months, the person I was dating left me for another woman, I bought a house (a rash decision) and my grandfather died.

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Flies That Do Calculus With Their Wings

Flies That Do Calculus With Their Wings
MARCH 19, 2014
ScienceTake
By JAMES GORMAN
There are lots of reasons scientists love fruit flies, but a big one is their flying ability. These almost microscopic creatures, with minimalist nervous systems and prey to every puff of wind, must often execute millisecond aerial ballets to stay aloft.
To study fly flight, scientists have to develop techniques that are almost as interesting as the flies.

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Teaching Children to Calm Themselves; Experiencing neglect, severe stress or sudden separation at a young age can be traumatizing, and inhibit a child’s ability to make good decisions and work through problems

MARCH 19, 2014, 12:00 PM 78 Comments
Teaching Children to Calm Themselves
By DAVID BORNSTEIN
When Luke gets angry, he tries to remember to look at his bracelet. It reminds him of what he can do to calm himself: stop, take a deep breath, count to four, give yourself a hug and, if necessary, ask an adult for help.

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Candour without bruises: how to get a Pixar buzz; Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration, by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace

March 19, 2014 2:50 pm
Candour without bruises: how to get a Pixar buzz
Review by Adam Jones
Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration, by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace, Random House, $28/£20
Pixar uses technology only as a means to an end; its films are rooted in human concerns, not computer wizardry. The same can be said of Creativity Inc, Ed Catmull’s endearingly thoughtful explanation of how the studio he co-founded generated hits such as the Toy Story trilogy, Up and Wall-E.

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Top careers for the next 25 years; Many professions will become obsolete over the next quarter-century – but some will flourish

March 19, 2014 2:38 pm
My top five careers for the next 25 years
By Michael Skapinker
Many professions will become obsolete over the next quarter-century – but some will flourish
What career would you advise a young person to go into today? That was one of the questions addressed by a panel I chaired last week at Mipim, the huge property fair in Cannes that was marking its 25th anniversary.

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Book Review: ‘The Adventures of Henry Thoreau’ by Michael Sims; Mother nature, and the father figure of Ralph Waldo Emerson, shaped the author of “Walden.”

Book Review: ‘The Adventures of Henry Thoreau’ by Michael Sims
Mother nature, and the father figure of Ralph Waldo Emerson, shaped the author of “Walden.”
BRENDA WINEAPPLE
March 19, 2014 7:12 p.m. ET
Although Henry David Thoreau documented in detail his sojourn at Walden Pond, we don’t really know the young man who will later become a canonical author, or so Michael Sims argues in “The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man’s Unlikely Path to Walden Pond.” “I didn’t want to applaud Thoreau,” Mr. Sims explains. “I wanted to find Henry.” The title of Mr. Sims’s book echoes Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ” but unlike those of Huck, the so-called adventures of Thoreau are largely internal.

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Free Isn’t Easy for Higher Ed; Private Schools Push Back at Tennessee Plan for No-Cost Community College

Free Isn’t Easy for Higher Ed
Private Schools Push Back at Tennessee Plan for No-Cost Community College
CAMERON MCWHIRTER and CAROLINE PORTER
March 19, 2014 7:40 p.m. ET

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam wants every high-school graduate in his state to be able to attend a community or technical college free of charge, a goal he says will strengthen the workforce and attract investment.

To fund the “Tennessee Promise” plan, estimated to cost about $35 million a year when fully implemented, the governor wants to trim the money Tennessee spends on scholarships at four-year colleges. Read more of this post

Why “Grit” Is the Key to Success in Business

Published: February 11, 2014 / Spring 2014 / Issue 74
Angela Duckworth’s Gritty View of Success
A psychologist and new MacArthur Fellow says you need employees with stamina and tenacity above all else.
by Laura W. Geller
If someone asked you to define grit, what images would come to mind? Windburned cowboys? Pioneers on the open plain? Grit has long been used in describing those who dig in their heels in the face of hardship, who persevere in even the most challenging circumstances and emerge victorious.

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Organize Like a Startup: Legacy companies looking to increase agility and collaboration can take a few lessons from new firms

Posted: March 17, 2014
Eric J. McNulty is the director of research at the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative and writes frequently about leadership and resilience.
Organize Like a Startup
Organizational dysfunction. Failure to align strategy and execution. Resistance to change. Distorted communications. These are common maladies that leaders wrestle with every day. I’ve written before about complexity—and the importance of understanding its impact on organizational design and function. Recently, I read a new book on the subject: Startup Leadership by Derek Lidow, the founder of iSuppli, which provides data and analysis to the electronics industry. Lidow led the company to a successful sale, and he has insights from his entrepreneurial endeavors that are equally applicable to startups and legacy firms.

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George Harrison: Now That Guy Knew How to Listen; Just like musicians, executives must hear themselves and others at the same time

Posted: March 18, 2014
David Silverman is an author, teacher and senior executive at a Fortune 100 firm.
George Harrison: Now That Guy Knew How to Listen
“Start again,” Hector, my guitar teacher, said patiently. He’s half my age, but that’s not stopping him from making me get the 83-note solo in Let It Be right. When he leans over and highlights in red note number 60, where I blew it (again), I’m reminded that listening—intently listening—is among the critical skills in life.

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Managing the Intangible Aspects of a Project: The Affect of Vision, Artifacts, and Leader Values on Project Spirit and Success in Technology-Driven Projects

Managing the Intangible Aspects of a Project: The Affect of Vision, Artifacts, and Leader Values on Project Spirit and Success in Technology-Driven Projects

Zvi H. Aronson
Stevens Institute of Technology – Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management
Aaron J. Shenhar
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey – Rutgers Business School at Newark & New Brunswick
Peerasit Patanakul
Stevens Institute of Technology – Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management
November 1, 2013
Howe School Research Paper No. 2013-22
Abstract:
Successful projects are often characterized by a unique spirit. Phase one results, based on 193 employees partaking in 60 projects across organizations, support a model positing that leader building activities affect employees’ emotions, attitudes, and behavioral norms that are focused on expected project outcomes, termed project spirit. Spirit affects employees’ contextual performance behavior, which in turn affects success as proposed. Phase two cases, designed to ground these results in technology driven project contexts, highlight the value of managing the project’s intangible aspects captured by spirit. Quantitative and qualitative findings imply that leaders can be coached to execute behaviors that generate a project’s spirit, which boosts contextual performance behavior and increases project success.

Jonathan Ive Designs Tomorrow: Apple’s design chief helped transform computing, phones and music. The company’s secrecy and Ive’s modesty mean he has never given an in-depth interview-until now

Apple’s design chief helped transform computing, phones and music. The company’s secrecy and Ive’s modesty mean he has never given an in-depth interview—until now.
John Arlidge
March 17, 2014
Hello. Thanks for Coming’
We use Jonathan Ive’s products to help us to eat, drink and sleep, to work, travel, relax, read, listen and watch, to shop, chat, date and have sex. Many of us spend more time with his screens than with our families. Some of us like his screens more than our families. For years, Ive’s natural shyness, coupled with the secrecy bordering on paranoia of his employer, Apple, has meant we have known little about the man who shapes the future, with such innovations as the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. But last month, he invited me to Cupertino in Silicon Valley where Apple is based, for his first in-depth interview since he became head of design almost 20 years ago.

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Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview; The richest man in the world explains how to save the planet

Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview
The richest man in the world explains how to save the planet
by JEFF GOODELL
MARCH 13, 2014
At 58, Bill Gates is not only the richest man in the world, with a fortune that now exceeds $76 billion, but he may also be the most optimistic. In his view, the world is a giant operating system that just needs to be debugged. Gates’ driving idea – the idea that animates his life, that guides his philanthropy, that keeps him late in his sleek book-lined office overlooking Lake Washington, outside Seattle – is the hacker’s notion that the code for these problems can be rewritten, that errors can be fixed, that huge systems – whether it’s Windows 8, global poverty or climate change – can be improved if you have the right tools and the right skills. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the philanthropic organization with a $36 billion endowment that he runs with his wife, is like a giant startup whose target market is human civilization.

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Keynes and Hayek: Prophets for today; Keynes’ interpretation of Hayek is stillr relevant for economic policy makers

Keynes and Hayek: Prophets for today
Mar 14th 2014, 16:43 by C.R. | LONDON
ON MARCH 10th 1944, seventy years ago this month, a relatively-obscure Austrian émigrépublished a book that would become one of the great classics of 20th-century economic literature. The new economic ideas of John Maynard Keynes were much in fashion in that period; this new book judged them rather harshly.

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Wealth Management Of The Body Snatchers

Phil DeMuth, Contributor
3/17/2014 @ 11:00AM |4,974 views
Wealth Management Of The Body Snatchers
On my desk is a 76-page investment proposal from the wealth management department of a world-famous financial services firm. Having reviewed it, I can tell you this much: these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

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Succession Psychologists

March 17, 2014, 5:12 P.M. ET
Succession Psychologists
By Robert Milburn
What do bankers do to help a take-no-prisoners entrepreneur pass the reins on to his or her younger family members? If the clients are at Abbot Downing, a Wells Fargo unit for ultra-wealthy clients with $37 billion in assets, the bankers increasingly call Arne Boudewyn, head of the firm’s Family Dynamics and Education office.
Boudewyn, a clinical psychologist, works closely with super wealthy clients on their family governance issues; how to pass on wealth to the next generation in a healthy way; their interpersonal family relationships; and articulating the family’s long-term goals.

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Shirtmaker sees global success from ‘old-fashioned values’; Top-notch customer service helped Nick Wheeler grow Charles Tyrwhitt, the online shirt and suit retailer, into a £160m-turnover business

Shirtmaker sees global success from ‘old-fashioned values’
Top-notch customer service helped Nick Wheeler grow Charles Tyrwhitt, the online shirt and suit retailer, into a £160m-turnover business

Nick Wheeler, founder of shirtmaker Charles Tyrwhitt, has grown his business 25pc year-on-year for 25 years. Photo: Copyright Alex Rumford.
By Rebecca Burn-Callander, Enterprise Editor
7:00AM GMT 19 Mar 2014Nick Wheeler has been running Charles Tyrwhitt for more than 25 years. He has survived two recessions, one administration and grown his online shirtmaker into an international £160m-turnover business.
There’s no secret to his success, he claims, other than a rigid adherence to “old-fashioned values”.

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