Tango: Beautiful

Dedicated to my Tango-dancing professor friend… Keep it up, my man!

Picture(s) of the day: 4 on a motorcycle?

Now this just totally cracks me up….except that it also shows how people of Karachi (Pakistan) take the idea of livin’ on the edge just a tad bit too far. This is dangerous, not just for the 4 people on the bike, but also for others. Mind you, this is not kids playing around in an isolated alley. This is on a major road in the middle of very busy city traffic. Unbelievable.

Source: Karachi Metroblog

NY Times: Branded a radical by hate-groups, a Muslim educator loses her school

Apalling…..When something like this happens, we all suffer. Americans, Jews, Muslims, Christians…Everyone.

From The New York Times

April 28, 2008

Battle in Brooklyn | A Principal’s Rise and Fall

Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School

By ANDREA ELLIOTT

Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”

Things have not gone according to plan. Only one-fifth of the 60 students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy are Arab-American. Since the school opened in Brooklyn last fall, children have been suspended for carrying weapons, repeatedly gotten into fights and taunted an Arabic teacher by calling her a “terrorist,” staff members and students said in interviews.

The academy’s troubles reach well beyond its cramped corridors in Boerum Hill. The school’s creation provoked a controversy so incendiary that Ms. Almontaser stepped down as the founding principal just weeks before classes began last September. Ms. Almontaser, a teacher by training and an activist who had carefully built ties with Christians and Jews, said she was forced to resign by the mayor’s office following a campaign that pitted her against a chorus of critics who claimed she had a militant Islamic agenda.

In newspaper articles and Internet postings, on television and talk radio, Ms. Almontaser was branded a “radical,” a “jihadist” and a “9/11 denier.” She stood accused of harboring unpatriotic leanings and of secretly planning to proselytize her students. Despite Ms. Almontaser’s longstanding reputation as a Muslim moderate, her critics quickly succeeded in recasting her image.

The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 anxieties. But Ms. Almontaser’s downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life. The fight against the school, participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle.

New England Clean Energy Council to ‘train’ and teach former IT/life sciences entrepreneurs

The New England Clean Energy Council is working hard to both create a cluster of energy and cleantech executives/entrepreneurs/enthusiasts in the New England region, and to increase the profile of the nascent energy industry in the region so dominated by IT/life sciences companies.

Among other things, they have done an excellent job in starting to gain visibility into the Massachusetts legislature and to push for an agenda to promote and support the clean energy entrepreneurs and their startups. Energy industry is unlike other industries - it is even slower moving than the automotive industry - and there is a lack of experienced/repeat entrepreneurs who can bring their knowledge of old war stories to bear down in tough times.

Hence, the initiative recently announced by the NECEC to create fellowships for training and transitioning of former IT/life sciences executives into the energy industry so they can become better acquainted with and knowledgeable in the management of cleantech industry. It is an excellent proposal, though not surprising given that a large number of NECEC members and even leaders fit the profile of those who can use this training themselves (notice the NECEC logo - looks familar?)….but more importantly, while I do think you cannot train an entrepreneur in a short crash program, such as the 3-month program NECEC proposes, it will go a long way in making enthusiastic entrepreneurs looking to enter the cleantech industry feel less intimidated, better networked, more familiar with the background info on the incumbent energy industry, and clustered together for support from each other.

Kudos to NECEC for organizing this!

Edward Lorenz, father of chaos theory and butterfly effect, dies at 90

I have been fortunate in my life to meet some great people. People who have accomplished so much, and have made such vast and lasting impact on humanity, and the sum-total of human knowledge, that I can only say I am left in total awe. By simply being in their proximity and company I have learned how humble and inconsequential my own work has been. Edward Lorenz was one of those figures. Ed died today at age 90.

Ed was a professor of Meteorology at MIT who was already in his late years when I completed my Ph.D. there. Even though i did my Ph.D. in the chemistry department, my thesis advisor had his office and labs in the EAPS (Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences), which was also home to Ed. He walked our hallways, he joined us at the daily 3PM coffee hour, and he provided kind, generous, and insightful comments on elevator rides with him. I remember hearing about him as the pioneer of chaos theory and then read a bit on him and his work. I can safely say it was more mathematical than I could comprehend, but the power and importance of his work was not lost on me. I was in awe, and remain. Great people impact generations to come. He was one of them and I consider myself so lucky to have experienced his company, even if just via casual conversations an elevator rides. May his soul rest in peace.

Here is news item on his passing from the MIT News.

Edward Lorenz, father of chaos theory and butterfly effect, dies at 90

April 16, 2008

Edward Lorenz, an MIT meteorologist who tried to explain why it is so hard to make good weather forecasts and wound up unleashing a scientific revolution called chaos theory, died April 16 of cancer at his home in Cambridge. He was 90.

A professor at MIT, Lorenz was the first to recognize what is now called chaotic behavior in the mathematical modeling of weather systems. In the early 1960s, Lorenz realized that small differences in a dynamic system such as the atmosphere–or a model of the atmosphere–could trigger vast and often unsuspected results.

Early stage VCs raising later stage funds, including private equity/hedge fund

Cleantech companies typically require a lot of capital before they become profitable and bring success to their investors. Investing in them can be rather strange business for all the IT/media/tech investors (which is a majority of the the VCs out there) who are used to deploying smaller capital amounts to reach commercial success. John Doer told us (again) just last week that Google required a total investment of merely $25million!

So what are early stage cleantech venture investors to do when their portfolio companies require >$100 million before scalability of technology is proven and reached? To prevent dilution VCs have to keep on investing in subsequent rounds. But doing so might require slightly difference investment vehicles, and probably a different set of professionals.

So that is exactly what they are doing! Many major VC firms are raising large funds solely focused on later stage financing of energy/cleantech companies. Private equity investors and investment banking professionals are in demand and they are joining leading firms in large numbers. Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, etc…‘they are all doing it’, as a VC remarked to me. Interesting!

Here’s the news on Seqouia Capital from the PE Week Wire.

Asset diversification has become business as usual in private equity, as many top-tier firms have launched distressed funds, real estate funds, hedge funds, sub-debt funds and other things that don’t involve privacy or equity (let alone both). Venture capital firms, on the other hand, have mostly stuck to their knitting. Sure, you can argue the demerits of certain firms moving toward later-stage deals or raising country-specific funds, it most of it still falls within the conventional rubric of venture capital.

Masdar City: Not a showcase, but an ‘Entrepreneurial Eco-system’

Here is an article I wrote for Dinar Standard. Check out this new publication that aims to discuss business issues in the Muslim world.

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Masdar City: Not a showcase, but an ‘Entrepreneurial Eco-system’

By Bilal Zuberi, Ph.D. , Guest Contributor Co-founder, GEO2 Technologies, Inc. Posted Apr 8, 2008

The world today runs on fossil fuel. Our food, water, transportation, and quality of life are all dependent on fuel that is primarily concentrated in a few geographic regions. Middle East has been endowed with vast reserves of oil and gas which have been the primary source of the economy of the region for the past few decades. It is estimated that in 2007 the world consumed greater than 446 quadrillion BTUs of energy (EIA estimates), more than 85% of which came from fossil fuels. This natural resource has brought a boom to Middle East economies. With oil prices above $100 per barrel, Abu Dhabi for example collects oil revenue greater than $200 million a day, giving it the 2nd highest GDP in the region (after Qatar).

Image source: www.masdaruae.com

But here’s a problem that all smart policy-makers in the oil producing countries are faced with: not only are their oil reserves expected to eventually run out (EIA estimates peak oil to be reached in year 2037), but they face also a mounting awareness around the world of the negative impact of continued dependence on fossil fuel. The 446 quadrillion BTUs of energy used to fuel the global economy also generated approximately 26,000 million metric tons of CO2, a greenhouse gas that is considered to be the primary culprit of global climate change. (Abu Dhabi is estimated to have a CO2 emissions intensity of 34 metric tons per capita, compared to a global average of 4.3 metric tons per capita. Source: EIA).

Global warming would bring a disruption of geological, climate and natural cycles that would put the lives of billions of people at risk due to changes in land temperatures, sea-water levels, rainfall patterns, biodiversity erosion, agricultural decline, spread of infectious diseases, and increased intensity of extreme weather events. It has become obvious that our fragile earth cannot continue to depend on fossil fuels and sooner or later, a sustainable energy source must be found.

“Abu Dhabi is estimated to have a CO2 emissions intensity of 34 metric tons per capita, compared to a global average of 4.3 metric tons per capita. Source: EIA” Image: www.abudhabi.ms

So what is a country that is dependant on extracting value from oil and gas to do? Abu Dhabi, it seems, has found a path towards a sustainable and profitable future. The Masdar Initiative is Abu Dhabi’s way of investing in their future, experimenting with technology and business innovations that can lend to a sustainable way of living for its residents, and for the rest of the world.

The Vulcan Project: High resolution mapping of fossil fuel based CO2 emissions in the USA

This is a cool video on CO2 emissions from the USA. It is from Purdue University, where a group of researchers have developed a tool for high resolution mapping and analysis of fossil fuel based CO2 emissions from power plants, traffic, industrial activity, and the residential/commercial energy consumption.

The technical significance of the work is probably best stated by Kevin Gurney, a leader of the project (source: Green Car Congress):

Before now the only thing policy-makers could do was take a big blunt tool and bang the US economy with it. Now we have more quantifiable information about what is happening in neighborhoods, on roads and in industrial areas, and track the CO2 by the hour. This offers policy-makers something akin to a scalpel instead.
—Kevin Gurney, assistant professor of earth and atmospheric science at Purdue University and leader of the project

MIT’s burgeoning role in the green movement

Under its new President, Susan Hockfield, MIT has taken a leadership role in the discussions regarding science, technology, business, entrepreneurship and policy in energy and the environment. Here is an op-ed from her in today’s Boston Globe. I look forward to attending the MIT Energy Conference this coming weekend. I invite you to visit GEO2’s booth on the friday night’s Energy Showcase.

MIT’s burgeoning role in the green movement

by Susan Hockfield

April 7, 2008

BOSTON MAGAZINE has ranked MIT’s work on energy and the environment as No. 2 on its list of “61 Best New Things About Boston.” It’s unusual praise for MIT; our research is more often noticed in academic journals. But the magazine’s listing says something important: people beyond the university research community and the green movement are eager for answers to our energy and environmental challenges.

The challenges are many. How do we meet the aspirations of people around the world for a healthy, comfortable, productive life, without irreparably damaging the planet? How will we in the developed world preserve our quality of life, while shifting to renewable technologies? At the same time, how do we enable the developing world to reach a standard of living that grants access to modern comforts? How, for example, will we get electricity to the 1 billion people who don’t yet have it?

At MIT we are inventing real energy and climate solutions - from large-scale technologies that capture carbon emissions and dramatic new ways to tap deep geothermal energy, to smaller-scale ideas such as lithium-ion batteries to revolutionize the electric car and new materials that could make solar energy as cheap and dependable as coal.