There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• PopTech is heading to Africa! This February 7-11, 2012, we will be hosting our Climate Resilience Lab in Nairobi, Kenya. The Lab will bring together a carefully chosen network of climate researchers, gender experts, social innovators, technologists, designers, and community champions, to explore new possibilities in this domain. Our goal is to move “beyond the white paper” to identify and collaborate on high-potential new approaches that can be tested, scaled, and implemented. Follow along with #poptechlabs.

• Nominations are now open for our 2012 Class of Social Innovation Fellows. Check out the Call for Nominations to help spark your thinking. Our alumni from the classes of 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 also offer great examples of changemakers putting new ideas into action. If you or someone you know is a great fit, head to poptech.org/nominate and submit a nomination. Get it done soon: nominations close this year on April 3, 2012.

• We are thrilled to announce that our Hot Studio designed World Rebalancing iPad app has won an Interactive Media Award for Outstanding Achievement! Haven't had a chance to check it out? Download it for free. 

• Enough about us! How about some pure, unadulterated entertainment for this Friday afternoon. For the kids (or kids at heart) watch OK Go (PopTech 2010), together with Sesame Street teach young viewers about primary colors in stop mo' OK Go style. For the rest of us, the boys have something up their sleeve for the Super Bowl as well; this teaser alludes to a giant car-powered, pianola-style music sequencer. Looks like fun.

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: Peter Durand

White matter fiber architecture of the brain. Measured from diffusion spectral imaging (DSI). The fibers are color-coded by direction: red = left-right, green = anterior-posterior, blue = through brain stem.

Navigate the brain in a way that was never before possible; fly through major brain pathways, compare essential circuits, zoom into a region to explore the cells that comprise it, and the functions that depend on it.

The Human Connectome Project aims to provide an unparalleled compilation of neural data, an interface to graphically navigate this data and the opportunity to achieve never before realized conclusions about the living human brain.

via The Human Connectome Project

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• Interested in exploring if and how mental training involving mindfulness exercises changes attention and emotion in the brain? Take a free, online course on The Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness with 2010 Science Fellow and brain scientist Amishi Jha. 

• This week PBS's IDEA LAB takes a look at how journalists are using FrontlineSMS, founded by 2008 Social Innovation Fellow Ken Banks, to innovate news around the world.

• Kevin Starr (PopTech 2010), Mulago Foundation director, looks for the best solutions to the biggest problems in the poorest countries. In an article published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Starr addresses the hype regarding impact investing.

• Food designer Marije Vogelzang (PopTech 2009) edits Design Indaba “Design:Digest” edition and editorializes the schizophrenia of food today.

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: Articulate Matter

Can mushrooms save the world? In a manner of speaking, yes, according to renowned mycologist Paul Stamets. We must first come to understand the language through which fungal networks communicate with their ecosystem.

Mushroom mycelium represents rebirth, rejuvenation, regeneration. Fungi generate soil, that gives life. The task that we face today is to understand the language of nature. 

My mission is to discover the language of nature of the fungal networks that communicate with the ecosystem. And I, in particular believe nature is intelligent. The fact that we lack the language skills to communicate with nature does not impugn the concept that nature is intelligent, it speaks to our inadequacy of our skill-set for communication. 

We have now learned that there are these languages that are occurring in communication between each organism. If we don't get our act together and come in commonality and understanding with the organisms that sustain us today, not only will we destroy those organisms, but we will destroy ourselves. 

via Ecovative

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• The Atlantic explored how RadioLab is changing the sound of radio, explaining that, "Radiolab is actually post-blog and post-livestream. It’s not aping the oratory of old or the raggedness of the new. It’s a hybrid that takes lessons from the past, recent and deep." Watch Radiolab host and producer Jad Abumrad (PopTech 2010) as he shares examples of how sound has been used not only to tell stories but also to make scientific strides.

• Stephanie Coontz (PopTech 2010, PopTech 2011) contributed to the Los Angeles Times this week to address the question, is marriage going the way of the electric typewriter and the VHS tape? "Not exactly," says Coontz.

• Alan Rabinowitz (PopTech 2010), defender of big cats, appeared on TreeHugger Radio this week. In the interview, Rabinowitz explained why the key to fighting extinction is for humans and predators to share land in peace.
  

• Congratulations to PopTech 2012 Social Innovation Fellow Bryan Doerries, whose Outside the Wire and E-Line Media have received a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Award for the development of Online Graphic Novel/Sequential Art Authoring Tools for Use by Service Members and Veterans.

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: Nite_Owl

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• The School of Visual Arts recently announced a $20,000 scholarship for the Design for Social Innovation program provided by our friends at Ecovative Design, founded by 2009 PopTech Fellow Eben Bayer. 

• Jan Chipchase, head of research for frog Design, talked about the process behind his company’s acclaimed work at PopTech 2011. This week Chipchase responds, at length, to challenging questions participants asked at the conference.

• Architect Neri Oxman (PopTech 2009) is the founder of MATERIALECOLOGY, an interdisciplinary design initiative expanding the boundaries of computational form-generation and material engineering. Yesterday, Oxman's recent work creating 3D prints inspired by nature was featured on Mashable. 

• This week 2011 PopTech speaker, author Robert Neuwirth contributed to the Harvard Business Review arguing that the informal economy could help save the American Dream.

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: MIT Media Lab

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• "Sim City" game designer Will Wright, who unveiled "Spore" at PopTech in 2006, is now creating a new game for real life called HiveMind. 

• Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published an article on solar wunderkind Aidan Dwyer. The 12-year-old Dwyer talks about his critics, his solar panel discovery, and his latest research. Watch his PopTech 2011 talk here.

• This week in The Guardian, Ken Banks (PopTech Social Innovation Faculty) outlines his hopes for the information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) community over the next 12 months.

• Finally, we've been following Pieter Hoff's efforts to combat desertification since his 2010 appearance on the PopTech stage. Most recently, Hoff's endeavors were explored in a recent New Yorker feature. If you missed our post earlier this week, here's the scoop.  

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: Spore

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• Inventor Eden Full, who we interviewed last June, has been named as one of Forbes 30 under 30 lists in the energy disruptors category for her innovative work that maximizes the output of solar panels.

• Congratulations are also in order to Heather Knight (PopTech 2010) named to Forbes 30 under 30 list in the science category. Knight and her colleagues at Syyn Labs were behind the Rube Goldberg contraption that opened PopTech 2010. 

• If you live in Miami or Salt Lake City, tickets are on sale now for a live showing of Radio Lab, whose co-host Jad Abumrad shared examples of how sound has been used to make scientific strides at PopTech 2010. If you want RadioLab to come to your town, be sure to let them know. 

• David Eagleman (PopTech 2010)'s Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain was named as one of The Boston Globe's best science books of 2011. The reviews says, "Incognito is popular science at its best; these may not all be original observations, but they’re beautifully synthesized." 

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• When PopTech volunteer Brent Danley prompted his 12-year-old daughter Skye to choose one PopTech speaker who she'd like to meet, she picked 2010 presenter and 2009 Science Fellow Sarah Fortune. Danley, who met Fortune at those two previous PopTech conferences, scheduled a family field trip to Fortunes' lab at Harvard. Read more about their trip here. 

• Erik Hersman (PopTech 2011) wrote a guest blog post on PBS' Idea Lab blog, explaining SwiftRiver, a free and open source intelligence platform that helps people curate and make sense of large amounts of information in a short period of time. 

• Designer Nicholas Felton (PopTech 2009) was recently interviewed by Substratum and divulged how he became a designer/artist, how working in a community influences approach and how his design goals have changed over time. Previous interviews feature PopTech speakers Heather Knight (PopTech 2010) and Zach Lieberman (PopTech 2009). 

• This week The Economist explored what video game technology can accomplish in the real world. Noted in the article is PopTech 2011 Science Fellow Adrien Treuille and his colleagues who are outsourcing research through gaming.

• Using genomes as an archeological record, PopTech 2011 Science Fellow Pardis Sabeti studies the patterns of natural selection. Sabeti is currently leading development of a new massive scientific data-mining tool. 
  

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: SwiftRiver/Ushahidi

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• PopTech 2009 speaker Luis von Ahn invented ReCaptcha, a program that uses squiggly characters that humans easily decipher but blocks spambots – and helped digitize millions of old texts. The CMU professor has also made games like Duolingo, that let you learn a language for free, while simultaneously translating the Web. To learn French or Spanish sign up for the private beta, which just recently opened to the public.

• Congratulations to UCLA professor Aydogan Ozcan (PopTech 2009) who was named one of the top mobile health innovators of 2011 by the mHealth Alliance and Rockefeller Foundation. Ozcan has discovered how to convert cellphones into microscopes by relying on shadow imaging instead of expensive optics.

• If you're in New York, check out this very special production of PopTech 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Bryan Doerries' Theater of War with Tuesday's Children this Sunday, December 10th. 

• What happens when ambitious and talented data scientists are connected with social organizations rife with data but lacking resources to do anything with it? PopTech 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Jake Porway’s Data Without Borders helps bring these two groups together, using data in the service of humanity to design transformative visualizations and decision-making tools. This week FastCo Exist examined a few examples of Data Without Borders at work.

• Jonathan Harris (PopTech 2007) has announced the launch of Cowbird, a community of storytellers, focused on deeper, longer-lasting, more personal storytelling than you're likely to find anywhere else on the Web. Listen to Harris discuss Cowbird in this interview on PRI. 

• The Mesh has released their 2011 holiday gift guide. To learn more about The Mesh and the future of sharing, watch Lisa Gangsky's PopTech 2010 talk.

• PopTech Board Chair Cheryl Heller tells GOOD, "Do your homework," as part of their series with social enterprise leaders. For more, check out this interview with Heller that we published earlier this week on SVA's new Design for Social Innovation MFA. 

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: Dualingo