Inside Philanthropy: Jeff Raikes on Philanthropy

Jeff Raikes on Philanthropy

Welcome to my new blog series on Impatient Optimists, where I?ll be sharing my thoughts on the Gates Foundation and philanthropy. Every six weeks I?ll be posting a new blog discussing a pressing issue at the foundation or addressing some of the challenges and opportunities facing the philanthropic community. More than anything else, this is a space for a conversation. So please submit your questions, share your feedback, and let me know if there are any topics you would like to hear about.

For my first post, I want to discuss a challenge at the foundation that?s been on my mind lately. It?s called the ?innovation pile up?. Let me explain.

At the Gates Foundation, we believe in the power of innovation to improve lives. That?s why over the last decade we?ve invested in one of the fattest pipelines of lifesaving technologies the health and development world has ever seen. A new, rapid diagnostic test for tuberculosis that will help reduce transmission of the disease. Better tools to enable women to plan their families. Even improved toilets that provide clean sanitation for the world?s poorest people. In all, the foundation and its partners have developed more than 100 new innovations that are available today or scheduled to be introduced by the end of the decade.

That?s the good news.

Here?s the bad news:? None of these innovations will make a difference if they can?t reach the people we aim to serve.?

Many obstacles stand in their way. Some public health systems in the developing world lack staff, training, or infrastructure to take advantage of these new tools and technologies. Regulatory agencies can be slow to approve new drugs and devices. Market forces may make it difficult to introduce these new products. Then, there are actual roadblocks. Transportation systems and roadways may be so bad ? or nonexistent -- that just getting these new tools safely to the people who need them is a challenge. Finally, even if new drugs and tools arrive in remote villages, cultural practices may dissuade people from adopting them.

That?s why we need to get smarter at delivering these innovations. If we don?t, we risk not improving and saving as many lives as we could.?

At the foundation, this challenge has been dubbed the ?innovation pile-up,? and solving it is one of my top priorities. As part of the re-organization of our global programs, which I outlined in my 2011 Annual Report letter, we are now balancing our research and development efforts with a greater focus on how these innovations will get delivered. Chris Elias, our new president of Global Development, brings decades of on-the-ground experience in heath and development. He is leading our work to better understand the obstacles to introducing and scaling access to new tools and technologies and how we can overcome them.

We?ve already learned a lot about effective delivery from our work on vaccines. We have a better understanding of the best funding mechanisms for new vaccines and the most reliable ways to deliver them safely to the remotest health clinics. Thanks to these efforts we are on track to significantly scale up the delivery of lifesaving vaccines in developing countries and prevent the deaths of millions of children under 5 by the end of the decade.

Now we need to build on this success and ensure other promising technologies reach the people who need them the most. We are exploring ways to integrate some of these new innovations into existing delivery systems. For example, a new, easy-to-use injectable contraceptive that would provide women living in remote areas a simple, effective family planning tool will likely be introduced through family planning programs already operating in these countries.?

Other existing innovations will require new delivery systems and business models to be successful. Consider the challenge of expanding access to a simple, lifesaving product like the mosquito coil. The spiral-shaped, insect-repelling incense has the potential to protect families from malaria-carrying mosquitoes. But the cost ? even at pennies per day ? remains out of financial reach for many of the world?s poorest families. Donors may be able to help drive down the costs for these families, but there hasn?t been much interest in this solution without more data on the impact of wide-scale coil use. That?s why we?re working to fill this knowledge gap by funding new research studies. We?re also exploring next-generation mosquito repellents that would last for months, cost less, and not require burning. All of these solutions will require the cooperation and partnership of governments, the private sector, and consumers to be successful.

These are tough challenges. But I?m confident we can overcome them. We now have a team dedicated to speeding up the delivery of existing innovations and finding new system delivery models for entirely new innovations. More importantly, we will be listening closely to the people who will benefit from these innovations. By understanding their needs, we can design the best solutions and most effective ways of delivering them. Working together, we will realize the full potential of these innovations, and, in doing so, help the people we serve realize the full potential of their own lives.

Source: http://philanthropyjournal.blogspot.com/2012/10/jeff-raikes-on-philanthropy_4.html

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'Movie 43' Red-Band Trailer: Watch Every Actor You Know Offend You

Comedy anthology stars Emma Stone, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, among many, many others.
By Kevin P. Sullivan

Halle Berry in "Movie 43"
Photo: Relativity Media

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1694852/movie-43-nsfw-red-band-trailer.jhtml

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Baboon personalities connected to social success and health benefits

ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2012) ? Whether human or baboon, it helps to have friends. For both species, studies have shown that robust social networks lead to better health and longer lives. Now, a team of University of Pennsylvania researchers has helped show that baboon personality plays a role in these outcomes, and, like people, some baboons' personalities are better suited to making and keeping friends than others.

The research was conducted by psychology professor Robert Seyfarth and biology professor Dorothy Cheney, both of Penn's School of Arts and Sciences. They collaborated with the Arizona State University's Joan Silk.

Their work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Seyfarth and Cheney, along with their colleagues and students, have spent the last 17 years observing a group of baboons living in the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana, studying the biological roots of their social dynamics. As with many other primates, baboon societies are strongly hierarchical. Females "inherit" their dominance ranks from their mothers and enjoy priority of access to food and mates. But high-ranking females do not always have greater reproductive success than low-ranking females. This suggests that, when it comes to evolutionary success, the inherited advantage of high rank can't explain everything.

"If you look at a baboon society," Seyfarth said, "and see the ranked, matrilineal families, you would think that whatever traits put an individual at the top of the hierarchy, that's what natural selection is going to favor. But that turns out not to be the case.

"In fact, dominance rank is not as good a predictor of reproductive outcomes as a close network of social relationships and stable relationships over time. So our question became 'What predicts having a strong network?'"

Baboon females actively work to maintain close social bonds, but, like humans, some baboons seemed to be better at it than others. With such traits closely tied to fitness and reproductive success, the Penn researchers wanted to get at the root of this variation.

During seven years of observations in the animals' natural habitat, the researchers measured individual female baboons on their sociability. They measured the number of grooming partners a baboon had, as well her tendency to be friendly or aggressive toward others. They also measured reproductive and fitness benefits they accrued: how long individuals and their offspring lived, as well as their stress levels, as determined by the presence of certain hormones in their droppings.

The researchers found that strength of an individual's social bonds was not fully predicted by seemingly obvious factors, such as the female's rank or the size of the family she was born into.

"Even when a female has a lot of relatives," Cheney said, "sometimes she's a loner, but some females who have no relatives do just fine. It suggests that you have to be both lucky and skilled to have these networks."

And, again like humans, these skills came down to individual personality traits. To determine a female's personality, the researchers paid close attention to grunting behavior. For baboons, grunting greases the social wheels. If a lower-ranking female grunts when approaching a higher-ranking female, the grunt acts as a kind of appeasement, reducing the chance of receiving aggression. Conversely, if a higher-ranking female grunts to a lower-ranking female, the grunt puts her at ease, increasing the chance of a friendly social interaction. And females of all ranks grunt when approaching a mother with an infant, because grunts increase the likelihood that the mother will allow the grunter to interact with her child.

Working bottom up from the trends they found in the baboon's behavior, the researchers grouped the baboons into three distinct personality profiles: "nice," "aloof" and "loner."

Nice females were friendly to all others and often grunted to lower-ranking females to signal reassurance. They formed strong and enduring social bonds with fairly consistent partner preferences over time.

Aloof females were more aggressive and less friendly, and they grunted primarily to higher-ranking females who had infants. They formed weaker bonds but had very consistent partner preferences.

Loner females were often alone and relatively unfriendly; they grunted primarily to appease higher-ranking females without infants. They formed weak bonds with changing partners.

Of the three, the loners had the highest stress levels, the weakest social bonds and the least stable social partners over time. Both of these measures were correlated with lower offspring survival and shorter lifespans. Both nice and aloof females showed the health and reproductive benefits associated with strong social bonds.

"This belies the idea that everything is competition and conflict," Cheney said.

While the mechanisms that make both "nice" and "aloof" effective strategies remains unclear, the study shows that cooperative personalities are adaptive.

"These results have allowed us to, for the first time in a wild primate, link personality characteristics, social skill and reproductive success," Seyfarth said. "By being a nice baboon, you increase the likelihood of having strong social bonds, which in turn translates to a better chance of passing on your genes."

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, Leakey Foundation and National Geographic Society.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/NuFP-3DKu3s/121001151955.htm

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Iran Relents to Pressure, Reopens Gmail Access

The Iranian government is reportedly reopening access to Gmail agter taking flak for its decision to block Google's email service. Even members of parliament have complained about the Gmail block. A member of parliament was quoted in Iranian media saying that the minister of telecommunications would be summoned for questioning if the Gmail ban wasn't lifted.

Source: http://ectnews.com.feedsportal.com/c/34520/f/632000/s/240234c0/l/0L0Stechnewsworld0N0Crsstory0C762840Bhtml/story01.htm

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Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly thanks employees for hard work, extends vacation

Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, has reportedly sent out a memo thanking employees for their hard work and extending their Thanksgiving vacations so they can spend an entire week relaxing and recharging with their families. 9to5Mac's ace reporter, Mark Gurman, scored a copy of the memo, which includes in part:

In a little over six months we?ve launched outstanding new products in each of our major categories, starting with the new iPad this spring. The response was incredible, and continued to show Apple?s unrivaled leadership in this post-PC era. Over the summer we introduced the radically thin and light 15? MacBook Pro with Retina display, and shipped Mountain Lion, the fastest-selling update to OS X ever. Today, iPhone 5 is taking the world by storm. And in the next few weeks we?ll ship the new iPod touch and completely redesigned iPod nano with innovative designs that our customers are going to love this holiday season.

Those products listed above have been released at a breakneck pace, even for Apple. Staff has been hunkered down, some working around the clock, for weeks if not longer leading up announcement events and launches. From executives to engineers, it's been a Herculean effort, and one not made any easier by problems associated with iOS 6 Maps. Hopefully this lets everyone take a break, take a breath, and come back better energized and better focused.

Retail staff, of course, will have to keep working, especially with Apple's only annual sale, Black Friday, immediately following Thanksgiving. Cook, however, says their extra days off will be scheduled sometime thereafter.

Read the rest of the memo via the link below.

Source: 9to5Mac

Tom Cook

Apple

News

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/Chhjkw0gP4U/story01.htm

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WHY IT MATTERS: Social Security

The issue:

Unless Congress acts, the trust funds that support Social Security will run out of money in 2033, according to the trustees who oversee the retirement and disability program. At that point, Social Security would collect only enough tax revenue each year to pay about 75 percent of benefits. That benefit cut wouldn't sit well with the millions of older Americans who rely on Social Security for most of their income.

___

Where they stand:

President Barack Obama hasn't laid out a detailed plan for addressing Social Security. He's called for bipartisan talks on strengthening the program but he didn't embrace the plan produced by a bipartisan deficit reduction panel he created in 2010.

Republican challenger Mitt Romney proposes a gradual increase in the retirement age to account for growing life expectancy. For future generations, Romney would slow the growth of benefits "for those with higher incomes."

___

Why it matters:

For millions of retired and disabled workers, Social Security is pretty much all they have to live on, even though monthly benefits are barely enough to keep them out of poverty. Monthly payments average $1,237 for retired workers and $1,111 for disabled workers. Most older Americans rely on Social Security for a majority of their income; many rely on it for 90 percent or more, according to the Social Security Administration.

Social Security is already the largest federal program and it's getting bigger as millions of baby boomers reach retirement. More than 56 million retirees, disabled workers, spouses and children get Social Security benefits. That number that will grow to 91 million by 2035, according to congressional estimates.

Social Security could handle the growing number of beneficiaries if there were more workers paying payroll taxes. But most baby boomers didn't have as many children as their parents did, leaving relatively fewer workers to pay into the system.

In 1960, there were 4.9 workers for each person getting benefits. Today, there are about 2.8 workers for each beneficiary, and that ratio will drop to 1.9 workers by 2035.

Nevertheless, Social Security is ripe for congressional action in the next year or two, if lawmakers get serious about addressing the nation's long-term financial problems. Why? Because Social Security is fixable.

Despite the program's long-term problems, Social Security could be preserved for generations to come with modest but politically difficult changes to benefits or taxes, or a combination of both.

Some options could affect people quickly, such as increasing payroll taxes or reducing annual cost-of-living adjustments for those who already get benefits. Others options, such as gradually raising the retirement age, wouldn't be felt for years but would affect millions of younger workers.

Fixing Social Security won't be easy. All the options carry political risks because they have the potential to affect nearly every U.S. family while angering powerful interest groups. Liberal advocates and some Democrats oppose all benefit cuts; conservative activists and some Republicans say tax increases are out of the question.

But Social Security is easier to fix than Medicare or Medicaid, the other two big government benefit programs. Unlike Medicare and Medicaid, policymakers don't have to figure out how to tame the rising costs of health care to fix Social Security.

Social Security's problems seem far off. After all, the program has enough money to pay full benefits for 20 more years. But the program's financial problems get harder to fix with each passing year. The sooner Congress acts, the more subtle the changes can be because they can be phased in slowly.

EDITOR'S NOTE _ One in a series examining issues at stake in the election and their impact on people

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/why-matters-social-security-153155043--election.html

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Miami-based Venezuelans to vote in New Orleans

In this June 26, 2012 photo, Beatriz Olavarria smiles during an interview in South Miami, Fla. Olavarria, who has done election work in the last eight Venezuela elections in Miami, leads a commission to send information to voters and mobilize volunteer observers for the polling stations, as well as volunteer ushers outside the convention center. Venezuela's government closed the Miami consulate and told Venezuelans to vote in New Orleans in the Oct. 7 presidential election. Olavarria is hoping that at least half of the 20,000 Venezuelan voters will make their way to New Orleans. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

In this June 26, 2012 photo, Beatriz Olavarria smiles during an interview in South Miami, Fla. Olavarria, who has done election work in the last eight Venezuela elections in Miami, leads a commission to send information to voters and mobilize volunteer observers for the polling stations, as well as volunteer ushers outside the convention center. Venezuela's government closed the Miami consulate and told Venezuelans to vote in New Orleans in the Oct. 7 presidential election. Olavarria is hoping that at least half of the 20,000 Venezuelan voters will make their way to New Orleans. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

MIAMI (AP) ? By bus and car, commercial flight and charter, U.S.-based Venezuelans are traveling en masse to New Orleans in the coming days, spending hundreds of dollars and in some cases more than a day of their time to cast a vote in their country's presidential election.

The government of President Hugo Chavez earlier this year closed the country's consulate in Miami, where most Venezuelans living in the U.S. have cast ballots in the past. It later said voters would have to travel to New Orleans if they want to participate on Oct. 7.

It's a hardship in terms of time and money for many potential voters. But some, especially those who want to stop Chavez from being re-elected after 13 years in power, are determined to make the trip anyway.

Carolina Guevara, a 21-year-old college student, plans to take the 15-hour bus ride from Miami to the Louisiana capital, an 870-mile (1,400-kilometer) trek.

"We want to demonstrate to the government that even if they put obstacles in our path, we will practice our right to vote," said Guevara, who hopes to return to Venezuela after completing her political science studies at Miami Dade College.

The Venezuelan government closed its Miami mission after the State Department expelled consul Livia Acosta amid an investigation into recordings that seemed to implicate her in an Iranian plot for a cyber-attack against the U.S.

The closure affected nearly 20,000 Venezuelan voters living in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina who had registered to vote at the Miami consulate. Most Venezuelan voters in the United States live in the Miami area and the vast majority of those are critical of the Chavez government.

After the Miami mission closed, Venezuelan election officials said that voters registered there would have to cast ballots in New Orleans, where the next-nearest consulate is located. Venezuelan opposition leaders accused the government of trying to disenfranchise voters, a charge officials denied.

"They tried to do everything possible to prevent us from voting," said Gisela Parra, a former judge who left Venezuela in 2005 after being accused of conspiring against Chavez. "The pressure was such that they had to open a voting center far away, in New Orleans. It's like punishing us."

Parra, who plans to volunteer at the New Orleans voting center, said Venezuelan electoral officials "had the obligation" to make another Miami location available.

But Tibisay Lucena, president of Venezuela's Elections Council, countered that voters registered in Miami "were relocated using the same criteria used inside the country, telling them to go to the nearest polling station."

About 15,800 Venezuelans in the U.S. voted in their country's Dec. 2006 presidential election, three-quarters of them in Miami.

Of the 10,800 Venezuelans voting in Florida, 98 percent cast ballots for the opposition candidate and 2 percent for Chavez. Thirty-four percent of registered voters did not participate, according to figures from Venezuela's Elections Council.

Most Venezuelans in the U.S. are professionals or businesspeople who left their country after Chavez became president in 1999. The number of Venezuelans in the U.S. burgeoned from 91,500 in 2000 to 215,000 in 2010, according to the 2010 Census, with 57 percent of them living in Florida.

Numerous groups surfaced to assist U.S.-based Venezuelan voters, with information distributed on the Internet and social media, as well as at coffee shops and bookstores frequented by Venezuelans.

The groups include Voto Joven and Voto Donde Sea, comprised mostly of young people, and the Mesa de la Unidad Democratica, or Democratic Unity Table, a coalition of political parties backing opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles.

Beatriz Olavarria, who leads a commission created by the opposition alliance to distribute voter information and mobilize observers, said she hopes at least half of the voters registered in Miami will cast ballots in New Orleans. "Something tells me that many people will get on board at the last minute," she said.

Olavarria, who has volunteered in Miami during past Venezuelan elections, created the website www.Miami7octubre.com, to provide information about the New Orleans vote.

The group's major push now is figuring out how to get registered voters to the Louisiana city, where balloting will be held in a convention center. Opposition members complain that voting will not occur inside the mission itself, but Lucena, the electoral council president, said "the rules state that the polling center must be as near as possible to a consulate."

In most cases, traveling from here to New Orleans to vote would require at least one night away from home.

With travel costs a major obstacle for many potential voters, financial adviser Andres Casanova and his childhood friend Andres Morrison are collecting donations to pay for charter planes to ferry Venezuelans to New Orleans.

So far, they have received almost $355,700 in donations, enough to pay for trips for 1,100 voters. But far more people ? as many as 3,000 ? have registered on the organization's website, www.aerovotar.com , for seats assigned on a first-come, first- served basis.

Voto Donde Sea, meanwhile, is collecting donations to subsidize bus fares for voters, said group leader Vanessa Duran.

Milagros and Fernando Nunez Noda are renting a car with another couple to make the trip from Miami.

"We're going no matter what," said Nunez Noda, a journalist and businessman.

"It's like they threw down a challenge," he said of the government's decision to move the balloting to New Orleans. "We will prove our strength."

____

Associated Press writer Jorge Rueda contributed to this story from Caracas.

____

Gisela Salomon at http://www.twitter.com/giselasalomon

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-09-30-Venezuelan%20Voters/id-3ecc50055ea341e492eb401552af4c3b

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