Userful to Demo Ultra-Low-Cost School Computing Solution at BETT 2012

http://userful.com/press/bett-multiseat-linux

Userful, "the world leader in Linux desktop virtualization", will be demonstrating the next generation of their Userful MultiSeat™ solution which turns one Linux computer into multiple high performance independent computer stations using the HP t200 thin client device, a multiseat device that can be connected either via USB or Ethernet using Userful's software. Userful MultiSeat enables schools to deploy more than twice as many computers for the same cost, while enabling multiple users to use different applications at the same time from one host computer, each with their own monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The new product truly redefines the cost of a full featured high performance computer.

Userful MultiSeat enables schools to quickly deploy large numbers of computer stations for a very low cost, whether in the classroom, computer lab, or school library. It is easy to set up, use and maintain, and provides teachers with the tools they need to give their students a high quality computer-based education. It dramatically reduces electricity use, paying for the computers in power savings alone in 4 years or less, and reduces environmental heat, noise and pollution at the same time. It also reduces infrastructure costs, by requiring fewer cables and fewer electrical outlets, and enables schools to reinvest by starting new computer labs with the computers recovered as a result of a MultiSeat computing upgrade.

"Userful is shaping the future of economically and environmentally sustainable educational computing," said Tim Griffin, President of Userful. "We've already done the world's largest ever desktop virtualization deployment, and one of the largest digital inclusion initiatives in the world. Userful is the perfect solution for anyone who wants the benefits of desktop virtualization, without the price tag."

More than 50,000 schools worldwide are already using Userful MultiSeat to provide millions of students with computer access. Userful has proven to be the computer solution of choice for governments with digital inclusion mandates to provide school age children with computer access, on limited budgets. Countries such as Brazil, who have already successfully deployed over 500,000 Userful computer stations to schools in every municipality, have shown that with the combined cost savings of Userful MultiSeat, Linux, and open source software, it is feasible to provide every student with a comprehensive education using computers, regardless of whether they live in a city or a remote indigenous village with little infrastructure. The Brazilian Ministry of Education has reported saving 60% in up-front costs, and 80% in annual power savings as compared to their previous PC-per-station solutions.

Userful MultiSeat Linux allows each student to individually control their own computer station and applications. To the students, it seems like they each have their own dedicated computer. In reality they are all sharing the resources of a single host computer. It's high performance, and set up is Plug-And-Play. Ten students can engage in multiple activities such as watching a full-screen video, exploring Google Earth, conducting research on the internet or using a word processor. It is easy to add new computer stations and teachers can easily expand the number of stations in their lab or classroom in minutes. Since it's Linux based, hundreds of educational software applications are available at no charge, including classroom computer management software for teachers. Teachers also don't need to worry about downtime. In the event that a host computer fails, teachers can simply move (hot-swap) the station cable to one of the other computers in the lab/classroom and the students can resume working.

Every ministry of education worldwide is eligible for a free 90 day pilot so that educators can easily experience first hand the high performance, and ease of use of the solution.

To arrange a demo, meeting, or interview at BETT, please e-mail karl@userful.com, or phone +1.403.289.2177 x218

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For more information, visit http://userful.com/products/userful-multiseat-linux

For more information on the HP t200 multiseat device, visit: HP t200 Product Information
http://userful.com/press/bett-multiseat-linux
Press Release dated January 3, 2011

Nature’s Economist Calculates the Need for More Protection

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/science/09profile.html

COTO BRUS, Costa Rica — Dawn is breaking over this remote upland region, where neat rows of coffee plants cover many of the hillsides....An invasive African insect known as the coffee berry borer is threatening the area’s crops.

... Gretchen Daily, a Stanford University biology professor, is already at work studying this complex ecosystem.... Dr. Daily and her team are conducting experiments that demonstrate the vital connection between wildlife and native vegetation. Preliminary data from new studies suggest that consumption of insects like la broca by forest-dwelling birds and bats contribute significantly to coffee yields.
...
“We are working to very specifically quantify in biophysical and dollar terms the value of conserving the forest and its wildlife,” she said.

... Daily is one of the pioneers in the growing worldwide effort to protect the environment by quantifying the value of “natural capital” — nature’s goods and services that are fundamental for human life — and factoring these benefits into the calculations of businesses and governments....

... She became intrigued with an innovative government initiative known as Payment for Environmental Services. The program, initiated in the 1990s, pays landowners to maintain native forest rather than cut it and has contributed to a significant reduction in Costa Rica’s deforestation rate.

The Costa Rican program helped inspire Dr. Daily to co-found the Natural Capital Project in 2006. NatCap, [at www.naturalcapitalproject.org] as the program is known, is a venture led by Stanford University, the University of Minnesota and two of the world’s largest conservation organizations, the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund. It aims to transform traditional conservation methods by including the value of “ecosystem services” in business, community and government decisions. These benefits from nature — like flood protection, crop pollination and carbon storage — are not part of the traditional economic equation.

“Currently, there is no price for most of the ecosystem services we care about, like clean air and clean water,” said Stephen Polasky, professor of ecological/environmental economics at the University of Minnesota. He says that because economic calculations often ignore nature, the results can lead to the destruction of the very ecosystems upon which the economy is based.  “Our economic system values land for two primary reasons,” said Adam Davis, a partner in Ecosystem Investment Partners, a company that manages high-priority conservation properties. “One is building on the land, and the second is taking things from the land.”  “Right now, the way a forest is worth money is by cutting it down,” Mr. Davis said. “We measure that value in board-feet of lumber or tons of pulp sold to a paper mill.” What has been missing, he says, is a countervailing economic force that measures the value of leaving a forest or other ecosystem intact.

Early on, Dr. Daily recognized that new tools were needed to quantify nature’s value. “We began by developing a software program called InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs) to map and value nature’s goods and services that are essential for humans,” she said.

The software, which is available as a free download [at www.naturalcapitalproject.org/toolbox.html], enables the comparison of various environmental scenarios. What is the real cost of draining a wetland or clearing a coastline of mangroves? InVEST models the trade-offs and helps decision makers better understand the implications of their choices.
...
The Natural Capital Project now works in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Pacific and North America. In China, NatCap is working with the government on an ambitious program to protect natural capital. After deforestation caused extensive flooding in 1998, China committed $100 billion to convert vast areas of cropland back into forest and grassland. The government is building on this success by helping to develop and test the InVEST software to put in place a new reserve network that is projected to span 25 percent of the country. The reserves will help with flood control, irrigation, drinking supply, hydropower production, biodiversity and climate stabilization.

At a NatCap site in Hawaii, Kamehameha Schools, the state’s largest private landowner, used InVEST to evaluate future land use for a 26,000-acre site on the North Shore of Oahu. In the past, the landholding had been used for aquaculture, crops and habitation. After examining the alternatives modeled by InVEST, Kamehameha Schools selected a diversified mix of forestry and agriculture intended to improve water quality, sequester carbon and generate income.

About seven months ago, Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google.com, unveiled a powerful new tool that enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the earth’s environment. Called Google Earth Engine, it features a huge trove of satellite imagery of the earth’s surface. NatCap is now moving the InVEST software onto the Google Earth Engine platform.
...

by John Moir
FOR FULL STORY GO TO:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/science/09profile.html
The New York Times www.NYTimes.com
August 8, 2011

Using Frontier Models to Mitigate Omitted Variable Bias in Hedonic Pricing Models: A Case Study for Air Quality in Bogotá, Colombia

Abstract: Hedonic pricing models use property value differentials to value changes in environmental quality. If unmeasured quality attributes of residential properties are correlated with an environmental quality measure of interest, conventional methods for estimating implicit prices will be biased. Because many unmeasured quality measures tend to be asymmetrically distributed across properties, it may be possible to mitigate this bias by estimating a heteroskedastic frontier regression model. This approach is demonstrated for a hedonic price function that values air quality in Bogotá, Colombia.

Coefficient estimates for the second (heteroskedastic) frontier model (HFM) for structural characteristics are of expected signs. Apartments located in neighborhoods with higher socioeconomic stratum rent for more. Apartments located at higher elevations rent for more. Apartments far away from main roads rent for more. The estimated coefficient for distance to drainage ditches is negative, but not statistically significant. Drainage ditches in Bogotá are generally unattractive, and may be viewed as a disamenity. Apartments near metropolitan (large) parks rent for more than apartments located far away. Zonal (small local) parks did not have a significant impact on rents. Apartments located closer to the central business districts (as measured by commute time) have higher rents. Apartments located in areas with higher crime rates have lower rents. Of particular interest is the estimated coefficient on PM10 (particulate pollution) was -0.0908. This was negative and significant at all conventional levels, implying that higher PM10 concentrations are a disamenity.

Some effort was made to determine which neighborhood characteristics were most important for explaining variation in the variance of the asymmetric error component. In particular, we searched for neighborhood characteristics that were correlated with air quality. We found a strong negative correlation between elevation and environmental quality (-0.5447). When elevation and its interaction with PM10 are included as variables that explain the variance of the asymmetric error component, these variables were not significant in the HFM specification.

The coefficient for Crime was -0.0039, Elevation 0.0604, the log of distance from a drainage ditch -0.0018, the log of distance from the main road 0.0232 and the log of commuting time was -0.0643.

by Fernando Carriazo, Richard Ready and James Shortle

Universidad de los Andes–Facultad de Economía–Cede http://economia.uniandes.edu.co

Document 2011-1; 2011

An optimized policy for the reduction of CO2 emission in the Brazilian Legal Amazon

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.05.003
The Brazilian government has already acknowledged the importance of investing in the development and application of technologies to reduce or prevent CO2 emissions resulting from human activities in the Legal Brazilian Amazon (BA). The BA corresponds to a total area of 5 × 10⁶ km² from which 4 × 10⁶ km² was originally covered by the rain forest. One way to interfere with the net balance of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions is to increase the forest area to sequester CO₂ from the atmosphere. The single most important cause of depletion of the rain forest is cattle ranching. In this work, we present an effective policy to reduce the net balance of CO₂ emissions using optimal control theory to obtain a compromising partition of investments in reforestation and promotion of clear technology to achieve a CO₂ emission target for 2020. The simulation indicates that a CO₂ emission target for 2020 of 376 million tonnes requires an estimated forest area by 2020 of 3,708,000 km², demanding a reforestation of 454,037 km². Even though the regional economic growth can foster the necessary political environment for the commitment with optimal emission targets, the reduction of 38.9% of carbon emissions until 2020 proposed by Brazilian government seems too ambitious

Highlights:
► We model the optimum investments in reforestation and clean technology for the Brazilian Amazon.
► A mathematical model tries to keep carbon emissions close to a reference by a Linear Quadratic Regulator.
► The projected cumulative costs are high.
► Reduction of carbon emission should be lower than proposed by the government."

by Marco Antonio Leonel, Caetano^a, Douglas Francisco Marcolino Gherardi^b and Takashi Yoneyama^c
a INSPER Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa, São Paulo, Brazil
^b Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, São José dos Campos, Brazil
^c Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, São José dos Campos, Brazil
Ecological Modelling via Elsevier Science Direct www.ScienceDirect.com
In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online June 9, 2011