Los Angeles County transportation officials have approved a disputed plan to route a subway tunnel under Beverly Hills High School, but a court battle over the proposed Westside Subway Extension is a virtual certainty. The board of directors of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority heard pleas for further study and threats of lawsuits from Beverly Hills officials and parents, but voted 7-2 Thursday for the extension of the Purple Line. The first segment of the long-sought subway line that would eventually connect downtown Los Angeles with the coast was approved last month, but the board agreed to hold off on the second and third segments to allow for more comment from Beverly Hills' own engineers and geologists Continue reading →

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt speaking at a conference last year. (Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET) Eric Schmidt has some advice for college graduates: unplug for an hour a day. "Take one hour a day and turn that thing off," Google's chairman emeritus told graduates today at Boston University, receiving an approving applause from the audience, according to a Reuters account of the speech. "Take your eyes off that screen and look into the eyes of the person you love. Have a conversation, a real conversation." His remarks came halfway through an address focused on the benefits of electronic tools such as social media. "A distinctive feature of your new world is that you can be unique while being completely connected," which, he said, was a "fulfillment ... Continue reading →

(Photo: D-Lab) “It is conventional wisdom that it is possible to reduce exposure to indoor air pollution, improve health outcomes, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions in the rural areas of developing countries through the adoption of improved cooking stoves,” write Rema Hanna, Esther Duflo, and Michael Greenstone in their new working paper “Up in Smoke: The Influence of Household Behavior on the Long-Run Impact of Improved Cooking Stoves” (abstract; Washington Post coverage). But, as the scholars discovered, what seems like an obvious technology fix doesn’t always work. Because, remember, human behavior can be a lot harder to change than we think. Or, put another way: bummer. More from the paper’s abstract: This belief [of new cookstoves leading to improvement] is largely supported by observational field ... Continue reading →