Jan 25,2013

UP Links 25 January 2013

+ Kari Kohn

The Start-Up Visa Program will link immigrant entrepreneurs with private sector organizations in Canada that have experience working with start-ups and who can provide essential resources. The Program is part of a series of transformational changes to Canada’s immigration system that will make it faster, more flexible and focused on Canada’s economic needs.

Food Technology & Health: ”How Forks Gave Us Overbites and Pots Saved the Toothless”

The big dental change that was seen with pots happened with the initial adoption of pottery for cooking around 10,000 years ago. Until the cooking pot was invented, no one who had lost all their teeth would survive into adulthood. There are no traces of edentulous — toothless — skeletons in any population without pottery. Pots made it possible for the first time to cook nourishing stew-like meals that required no chewing but could, rather, be drunk. So having teeth was no longer necessary for survival. This is another clear example of how utensils have acted as a kind of robotic extension of the human body.

Ed Glaeser on “The GOP and the City”

Among the innovations that it could promote is New York’s justly renowned Compstat system, which makes a police force more accountable by mapping crime, identifying hot spots, and demanding that the precinct commanders responsible for those areas make them safer. Simply hiring more cops also helps. And Boston and Los Angeles have achieved results by building connections with leaders in local minority communities, who came to see the police as friends rather than as outsiders (see “The LAPD Remade”).Flourishing urban life depends on keeping the peace, and every American deserves to be able to walk down the street without looking over his shoulder.

Martin Baily and James Manyika on Global Manufacturing

Exploding demand in developing economies and a wave of innovation in materials, manufacturing processes, and information technology are driving today’s new possibilities for manufacturing. Even as the share of manufacturing in global GDP has fallen – from about 20% in 1990 to 16% in 2010 – manufacturing companies have made outsize contributions to innovation, funding as much as 70% of private-sector R&D in some countries.

Michael Spence on “Technology and the Employment Challenge”

In fact, it is possible that we are entering a period in which major adaptations in employment models, work weeks, contract labor, minimum wages, and the delivery of essential public services will be needed in order to maintain social cohesion and uphold the core values of equity and intergenerational mobility.

Alan Berube and “The Return of the Trading City”

In the age of the WTO, free-trade agreements, and currency wars, why would a city have a trade strategy? The answer is simple: as Portland’s initiative – one of a growing number of metropolitan-led trade efforts worldwide – recognizes, cities, not countries, are the real centers of global trade.