In The News

Chester County's Organic Mechanics makes money on dirt

Entrepreneur Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Mark Highland and Organic Mechanics, operating in the tiny Chester County borough of Modena, are achieving success by shaking up the huge specialty soils market.

Founded in 2006, Organic Mechanics is now profitable and will pay off one of its first low-interest business loans this year. The seven-employee firm, which started with just one product, now sells nine different SKUs on the East Coast and in the Midwest at independent garden centers and Whole Foods Markets.

Instead of peat, Organic Mechanics' mixes contain compost, which Highland says requires less watering and is reusable for a second season, another green aspect attractive to serious gardeners.

Original source: Entrepreneur
Read the full story here.

Cipher Prime's Pulse makes list of 2011's top iPad games

Gamezebo Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Philly based game designer Cipher Prime is cited by Gamezebo as building a reputation as one of the top developers in the world of music games.

The studio previously responsible for Fractal and Auditorium released their first iPad-exclusive project back in May, and much to our delight, it seemed to be the kind of game that could only work on a big touch screen like the iPad’s. Players tapped circles as they came into contact with a “pulse” from a set of concentric rings – and we found ourselves tapping up a frenzy.

And the music? Wow. If you’re the kind of audiophile who relishes in finding great new tunes, you’ll only last minutes in Pulse before you head to iTunes and by the soundtrack.

Original source: Gamezebo
Read the full story here.

School District of Philadelphia on USGBC's 2011 Best of Green Schools list

Greenbang Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Greenbang reports on the United States Green Building Council's the potential savings that greener schools could provide, including the School District of Philadelphia's recent successes.

Extended to every new school built and every existing school that’s renovated, improved efficiency could save $20 billion in energy costs alone over the next 10 years.

To recognize US schools that have made an effort to become more efficient, the USGBC and United Technologies Corp., the founding sponsor of the council’s Center for Green Schools, have awarded its first-ever Best of Green Schools list. The 2011 winners in each category include:

Original source: Greenbang
Read the full story here.

National expansion coming soon for Storably's peer-to-peer parking and storage marketplace

Young Upstarts Monday, December 12, 2011

Young Upstarts takes a peek at Philadelphia's Storably, launched in September by Wharton graduates and on the verge of bringing its platform -- likened to Airbnb for storage -- to other markets.

The founders started working in a basement from May this year, putting together mockups and building the site with an off-shore development team. However, the quality wasn’t quite what they expected. Kowitt and Gupta then hired a full-time VP of Engineering, Nick Shiftan, who rebuilt the site from scratch. They later brought on Brendan Lowry as a community manager. The site was formally launched in Philadelphia on September 21, and the startup intends to expand nationally soon.

Original source: Young Upstarts
Read the full story here.

USciences students take aim on rifle teams

Wall Street Journal Monday, December 12, 2011

The Wall Street Journal spotlights the rifle teams at USciences, a college known more for its pharmacy program than marksmanship training.

For the past 35 years, the USciences shooting program was led by coach Paul Klimitas, who is widely credited with spurring the team, known as the Devils, on to numerous victories. It ended last season ranked 15th out of the 38 NCAA teams in the country -- tied with one of the top military academies, Virginia Military Institute.

"They're competing against people who are training to be soldiers and spending hours every day doing military exercises," says Marling "Newt" Engle, a member of the NCAA Rifle Committee, of the UCSciences team.

Original source: Wall Street Journal
Read the full story here.

Jose Garces looks to Revel in Atlantic City

Eater Monday, December 12, 2011

Jose Garces is expanding into Atlantic City, opening versions of his Amada, Village Whiskey and Distrito at Revel, a casino and hotel slated to open in the spring, reports Eater.

These restaurants come in addition to the 38,000 square foot nightclub, handled by some Vegas operators, two other clubs, two theaters, and plenty of retail shops already planned for the space.

Garces will join restaurateur Steve Hanson (Bill's Bar & Burger, Dos Caminos), Geoffrey Zakarian, and Bobby Flay in taking the South Jersey plunge. After all, it's just a quick hop for his Philadelphia fan base.

Original source: Eater
Read the full story here.

Entrepreneur, Philly native has plan for more STEM opportunities in city schools

Technically Philly Monday, December 12, 2011

Technically Philly sits down with Dr. Chad Womack, a nanobiomolecular entrepreneur who is trying to increase opportunities in science, technology, education and mathematics (STEM) for city children.

Womack’s America21 Project is focused on empowering urban centers and communities through STEM education and workforce development, high-growth entrepreneurship and access to capital. With his new venture, he’s still actively engaging the District around STEM priorities.

Original source: Technically Philly
Read the full story here.

CHOP study links gene variations to ADHD

USA Today Tuesday, December 06, 2011

A study at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and published in this month's Nature Genetics has proved significant, identifying gene variants associated with 10 percent of all ADHD cases, reports USA Today.

"Members of the GMR gene family, along with genes they interact with, affect nerve transmission, the formation of neurons, and interconnections in the brain, so the fact that children with ADHD are more likely to have alterations in these genes reinforces previous evidence that the GMR pathway is important in ADHD," study leader Dr. Hakon Hakonarson, director of the Center for Applied Genomics at Children's Hospital, said in the news release.

"Our findings get to the cause of the ADHD symptoms in a subset of children with the disease," he added.

Original source: USA Today
Read the full story here.

Drexel Nanotech leader calls for standardized energy storage metrics

Nanowerk Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Drexel University researcher Dr. Yury Gogotsi believes figuring out why cell phone and laptop batteries die prematurely will help create a sustainable energy grid, reports Nanowerk.

"A dramatic expansion of research in the area of electrochemical energy storage has occurred over the past due to an ever increasing variety of handheld electronic devices that we all use," Gogotsi said. "This has expanded use of electrical energy in transportation, and the need to store renewable energy efficiently at the grid level. This process has been accompanied by the chase for glory with the arrival of new materials and technologies that leads to unrealistic expectations for batteries and supercapacitors and may hurt the entire energy storage field."

The main type of energy storage device addressed in the article is the supercapacitor. Supercapacators, which are built from relatively inexpensive natural materials such as carbon, aluminum and polymers, are found in devices, ranging from mobile phones and laptop batteries to trams, buses and solar cells.

Original source: Nanowerk
Read the full story here.

Moss Rehab, Penn lead large-scale study of sleeping aid's impact on consciousness disorders

The New York Times Tuesday, December 06, 2011

The New York Times follows a young man's journey from coma to consciousness as aided by Ambien, and how two Philadelphia institutions are uncovering why.

This year, scientists at Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute and at the University of Pennsylvania, both in the Philadelphia area, began the first large-scale clinical study of zolpidem as a treatment for disorders of consciousness. (Amantadine, a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease, and the anti-anxiety medication Ativan also show promise in increasing awareness in minimally conscious patients.) So far, the evidence suggests that less than 10 percent of brain-injured patients will experience the drug’s paradoxical effects, and that among those, only a few will respond as profoundly as Viljoen did. For families like the Coxes, such odds provide a tortured kind of hope. For doctors, they bring questions. Why does a sleeping pill induce awareness in some patients but not others? And what can these bizarre awakenings tell us about the brain’s ability to heal?

Original source: The New York Times
Read the full story here.

Mixed reviews for DreamIt grad Spling's content sharing network

TechCrunch Tuesday, December 06, 2011

TechCrunch bemoans the spate of content-sharing startups when Facebook and Twitter have it on lockdown, but likes the different route DreamIt Ventures graduate Spling takes.

This quick access to a history of your shares may be the most valuable piece to Spling, because, unfortunately, there are a lot of similarities between this new startup and its competition. It introduces the idea of Circles, for example, which Spling claims to have launched (via its private beta) before Google+. The Circles essentially function just like Google+ Circles, too, except that they are symmetric (everyone in a Circle is accessing the same Circle). And since Circles can be private, they can function as a way to share links with friends which you might not want to post to Facebook for some reason. (Ahem. You know what I mean).

Original source: TechCrunch
Read the full story here.

DuckDuckGo partners with fourth most popular operating system

Linux Mint Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Philadelphia search startup DuckDuckGo has signed a partnership to become the default search engine for the five year-old, free and open source Linux Mint operating system, the fourth-most used OS in the world. From Linux Mint's blog post:

In other search engines, search results are personalized based on your Web history and personal profile. In other words, if two people search for exactly the same thing, they won’t necessarily see the same results. Based on the personal information the search engines have on them, different customized results will be shown.

DuckDuckGo does not gather such personal information and does not customize search results. So if two people search for the same thing, they’ll get the same results.

It’s interesting for Linux Mint and DuckDuckGo to join forces and do something together. Both projects are extremely successful but relatively small in their respective markets. If you compare DuckDuckGo to Google and Linux Mint to Windows, you can see a lot of similarities. Both projects have a small market share but they’re growing rapidly, both projects are run by very small teams who are easy to contact and eager to get things done, innovation and pragmatism are high on both sides, and the list of similarities goes on.

Original source: Linux Mint
Read the full story here.

$1B in federal funds announced for healthcare innovation; Mt. Airy doc to play role

American Medical News Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Philadelphia's Dr. Richard Baron and his Greenhouse Internists practice in Mt. Airy are cited as pioneers of adopting electronic medical records and advocating for the kinds of innovations sought through $1 billion in federal funding, reports American Medical News.

The Health Care Innovation Challenge program was announced on Nov. 14 by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. The center will provide grants of $1 million to $30 million to physicians and other health professionals, payers, local governments, community-based organizations. Priority will be given to public-private partnerships and multi-payer groups, as well as for proposals targeting patients with complex health care needs.

It is not yet clear whether the best way to achieve CMMI's goals is to change health care payment or to change the delivery system, said Dr. Baron, speaking at a Nov. 16 event on clinician leadership in health reform at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Dr. Baron, who joined the center in March, is overseeing efforts to implement Medicare accountable care organizations, among other duties.

Original source: American Medical News
Read the full story here.

Vacant lots study: Philly green spaces reduce crime rates, stress and cholesterol

The Atlantic Tuesday, November 29, 2011

A University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine study found that converting vacant lots into small parks or community green spaces can reduce crime in distressed neighborhoods, reports The Atlantic.

Vacant lot greening was associated with significant reductions in gun assaults across all four sections of Philadelphia in the study and with significant reductions in vandalism in one section. Greening was also associated with the reporting of significantly less stress in one of the sections of the city and with more exercise in another. Cholesterol numbers were lower to a statistically significant degree for the greened areas across all four city sections.

Original source: The Atlantic
Read the full story here.

Free Library of Philadelphia among 12 grant winners to establish teen learning labs

The Digital Shift Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Free Library of Philadelphia and Allentown's DaVinci Discovery Center of Science and Technology are among 12 winners of a combined $1.2 million in grant funding to establish teen learning labs, reports The Digital Shift.

The 12 winners-four museums and eight libraries-selected from a pool of 98 applicants from 32 states, will receive a total of $1.2 million in grants. They include the New York Hall of Science and the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), which are among a growing number of schools and libraries that are slowly embracing the idea of learning labs and the self-directed style of instruction they add to support the curriculum. The labs will connect teens to mentors and peers, as well as offer them 24/7 access to information through online social networks so they can pursue their interests more deeply There are usually no tests. They’re often after-school. And students are often encouraged to play, in a sense, with the materials and technology around them in an informal way, acting as co-teachers in their own education.

Original source: The Digital Shift
Read the full story here.