Validation of Dunbar's Number in Twitter Conversations Climate Progress » Blog Archive » The Tech Transfer Trap By Climate Guest Contributor on January 22, 2009 at 7:32 am If the Obama administration hopes to coax China to take action on global warming — and if the administration wants to give the U.N. climate negotiations a chance of success — it will need to solve the thorny problem of technology transfer. If it does so, however, it may face a quarrel with the clean-tech industry, one of its closest allies in the business community. In the U.N. climate talks last month in Poznan, Poland, technology transfer emerged as one of the key stumbling blocks. Details of this proposal were not fleshed out, but much of the tech transfer discussion centered on China’s proposal for a multi-billion-dollar fund generated by wealthy nations’ contributions of at least 0.7% of their GDP. Less attention has been given to another element of China’s proposal — the demand for a system that would give developing nations low-cost or no-cost access to those patented technologies. – Robert Collier Related Posts:
15 Ways to Reclaim 2 Precious Hours Every Day at Ririan Project “For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.” Do you want to make better use of your time? If so, you’re not alone. Time management is really about managing yourself. Whether you’re a time-tested veteran or a promising rookie, the following tips will help you reclaim some precious hours. 1. Making a list externalizes your worries. 2. BANJO is an acronym for “Bang A Nasty Job Off”. 3. Wading through the latest ‘unmissable’ offers from some pizza delivery or loan companies is the last thing you need when you’re legging it to work. 4. Unless you fancy the cleaner, staying late at the office is a waste of time. 5. Getting on your bike could seriously speed up your commute. 6. Feel like you’re constantly in meetings? 7. When you’re trying to concentrate, is there anything more distracting than a vibrating cell phone or the pinging sound of an incoming email or IM? 8. Most of us now work in teams with overlapping responsibilities. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
Facebook, Dunbar’s Number and current killer apps British anthropologist Robin Dunbar conducted research in the 1990s on the optimum social network size for primates. It turns out that there is a correlation with neocortex volume – the bigger the brain, the bigger the possible social network. This stands to reason, since being able to recognise faces and to know the pecking order for everyone in the group takes brain power. For humans, Dunbar’s Number is approximately 150. This means that to be able to know each member in a community and to know where they fit in that community, we are limited to about 150 as the community size. Throughout history, 150 has appeared as a fairly common social grouping size in cases like villages and army units where there has been a strong reason (like war) to stay in close physical proximity and work together. Read more in The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes (which has some interesting info on the size of online mutliplayer game groups) and Wikipedia’s article, Dunbar’s Number.
Plan agreed to tackle online music piracy | Top News By Kate Holton LONDON Thu Jul 24, 2008 6:34pm BST LONDON (Reuters) - The music and film industries launched a fight back against online piracy on Thursday, persuading the six biggest Internet providers to send warning letters to those suspected of illegal file-sharing. Some 6 million people are thought to engage in illegal file-sharing each year and the trend has cost the music and film industries millions in lost revenue. ISPs had previously argued they were mere conduits and not responsible for content. Analysts said the plan would likely scare off younger users of illegal sites, who download content often without their parent's knowledge, but would need to be just the first step in an escalating battle. "You could quite easily wipe off a million people from illegal file sharing sites in the UK, and if that is achieved, then that would be one of the largest single successes ever against file sharing," Jupiter analyst Mark Mulligan told Reuters. "But that will not be enough."
20 Productive Ways to Use Your Free Time - lifehack.org If you’ve got a big block of free time, the best way to put that to use is to relax, have fun, decompress from a stressful day, or spend time with a loved one. But if you’ve just got a little chunk — say 5 or 10 minutes — there’s no time to do any of the fun stuff. Put those little chunks of time to their most productive use. Everyone works differently, so the best use of your free time really depends on you, your working style, and what’s on your to-do list. Reading file. Got some productive spare-time tips of your own? Read full content
Facebook, Dunbar's Number & Geometry - The Transportationist NPR says: Don't Believe Facebook; You Only Have 150 Friends and discusses Dunbar's number. Dunbar says there are some neurological mechanisms in place to help us cope with the ever-growing amount of social connections life seems to require. Humans have the ability, for example, to facially recognize about 1,500 people. Now that would be an impressive number of Facebook friends. Yet the problem with such a large number of "friends," Dunbar says, is that "relationships involved across very big units then become very casual — and don't have that deep meaning and sense of obligation and reciprocity that you have with your close friends." Wikipedia says of Dunbar's number Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. Christopher Allen writes about "The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes", and posits various sizes are stable, and others unstable, focusing on online communities.
McKinsey & Company - Greater China - China’s green revolution: Prioritizing technologies to achieve energy and environmental sustainability