Pacific Standard. Smart Journalism. Real Solutions.

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• Silicon Valley’s New Jersey Problem
• Fireworks Are Pretty Safe
• Putting Group Fitness Classes in the Proper Light
• The Big One

Silicon Valley’s New Jersey Problem Posted: 04 Jul 2013 11:52 AM PDT Allegedly, Silicon Valley is starved for talent. If the region doesn’t get more immigrants, the innovation engine will seize up. Vivek Wadhwa opines about the magic in jeopardy: Soon enough, other regions were trying to copy the magic. The first serious attempt to re-create Silicon Valley was conceived by a consortium of high-tech companies in New Jersey in the mid-1960s. They recruited Frederick Terman, who was retiring from Stanford after having served as provost, professor, and engineering dean. Terman, sometimes called the "father of Silicon Valley," had turned Stanford's fledgling engineering school into an innovation engine. By encouraging science and engineering departments to work together, linking them to local firms, and focusing research on the needs of industry, he created a culture of coöperation and information exchange that has since defined the region. That was the mixture that New Jersey wanted to replicate. It was already a leading high-tech center—home to the laboratories of 725 companies, including RCA, Merck, and the inventor of the transistor, Bell Labs. Its science and engineering workforce numbered 50,000. But because there was no prestigious engineering university in the area, its companies had to recruit from outside, and they feared losing their talent and their best technologies to other regions. (Even though Princeton University was nearby, its faculty generally shunned applied research and anything that smelled of industry.) Emphasis added. Wadhwa describes what makes Silicon Valley unique. It “can’t be copied.” I agree with the cultural explanation. Silicon Valley companies didn’t worry about brain drain. New Jersey companies did. I disagree with just about everything else Wadhwa says in his article. Silicon Valley is now just as dependent, if not more so, on talent produced outside the region. It’s a global magnet for the best and brightest. Concerning immigrants, it has a built in advantage. Everyone knows about Silicon Valley. Few have heard about the nanotech cluster in Albany, New York. Immigration reform won’t help the little guys or growing hotbeds of innovation. Silicon Valley today is the New Jersey of the 1960s. Stanford can’t come close to meeting the needs of local firms. But the issue isn’t immigration. It’s domestic competition. Silicon Valley fears losing its talent and its best technologies to other regions. The culture is parochial, disconnected from reality: Gabriela Dow founded a government technology startup and now consults with tech startups locally. She worked downtown for several years, and now lives in Rancho Bernardo. She knows two tech engineers on her cul-de-sac. She said the claim San Diego won't be able to attract the talent it needs to grow its tech workforce without a hipper downtown is overblown. The county's miles of open space, trails and canyons, while contributing to sprawl, make the county an attractive place for triathletes and long-distance cyclists, for example. And the endurance such sports foster is attractive to hard-working tech companies, she said. "You just go where you have to go to start your company, and San Diego's not a hard place to recruit people to," she said. Dow said she hopes San Diego doesn't lose its sense of distinct, diverse neighborhoods. She said she thinks San Francisco has lost some of its color: "Now it's all become millennial, Google-Yahoo-Facebook." Every place is rushing to become millennial, Google-Yahoo-Facebook. San Diego appeals to a broader talent base. You can live-work-play in the urban core. You can run-bike-hike in the exurbs. San Diego's not a hard place to recruit people to. San Diego, not the federal government (as Wadhwa argues), is the serious challenge to Silicon Valley. Small start-up companies don’t have a team of immigration lawyers  to manage the H-1B visa applications. The talent lottery is rigged in Silicon Valley’s favor. Domestically produced employees are another story. You might know the allure of San Diego from that vacation to Sea World or watching on television a professional golf tournament at Torrey Pines in La Jolla. Comparing another region or another country to Silicon Valley is no contest. But add them up and you have a formidable opponent for scarce talent. Silicon Valley is magic when everywhere else is New Jersey. Not so with the rise of the rest, the San Diegos of the world.

Fireworks Are Pretty Safe Posted: 04 Jul 2013 09:20 AM PDT The Consumer Products Safety Commission has released its annual study of fireworks safety. The rockets’ red glare is pretty unlikely to hurt you seriously, it turns out. Last year, six people died in fireworks-related accidents. Sixty percent of the nearly 9,000 annual firework injuries happened around Independence Day, unsurprisingly. Still. No census of how many people actually light fireworks off each year exists, and sales figures are generally corporate secrets. But a lot more people die swimming over the summer, for example. Or driving to barbeques. The key to avoiding fireworks injury appears to be, broadly, not treating gunpowder like it’s barbeque sauce. The bulk of injuries came from various homemade firecrackers and misuse of powerful rockets. Reading the directions, and not trying to re-invent something the Chinese had pretty much nailed 2,000 years ago, appear to be the trick to avoiding injury, according to the CPSC report: In the first incident, a 17-year-old male died of injuries sustained when a sparkler bomb that he and his friend made exploded. In the second incident, a 30-year-old male died of severe facial injuries six days after a mortar-type of firework ignited in his face. In the third incident, a 26-year-old male perished when an illegal 1.3G aerial firework device exploded. In the fourth incident, a 60-year-old male died of blunt force trauma when a homemade firework detonated unexpectedly. In the fifth incident, a 30-year-old male suffered severe injuries when explosions destroyed his house while he was making illegal fireworks, and he succumbed five days later. In the sixth incident, a 61-year-old male died at the scene when he ignited a professional-grade firework device while holding its fuse. Reporting of fireworks-related deaths for 2012 is not complete, and the number of deaths in 2012 should be considered a minimum. Without minimizing the tragedy of those deaths, in each case it does seem like someone was using an explosive device in a manner your average sapper wouldn’t advise. What was either end of a “mortar-type of firework” doing anywhere near someone’s face? In total, American emergency rooms treated 8,700 firework-related injuries in 2012. “There is not a statistically significant trend in estimated emergency department treated injuries from 1997 to 2012,” the study found. The National Safety Council’s 2011 “Injury Facts” study found that by comparison, virtually anything that isn’t a firework is likely to hurt you today. More than 42,000 people were injured by first aid equipment itself, according to the study. (Tragically, details were not provided.) Slightly fewer, 40,000-plus, were injured in refrigerator-related accidents. An estimated 23,866 were injured by “hair grooming equipment and other accessories” (we’re going with electrocution while drying one’s hair in the shower on that one). A similar 23,808 were sent to the emergency room because of injury by luggage. (For the last time: keep it under the bed, empty. Not up in the closet with your old comic book collection inside.) Fifty-one thousand aquarium-related injuries were recorded, making small amounts of water, or at least fish, more than five times more dangerous than toy explosives. Six hundred thousand people were injured by their own beds. If only they’d slept with some fireworks under the pillow. So enjoy your BBQ, and read the damn directions on the sparklers, and you’ll be fine. Now here’s Katy Perry:

Putting Group Fitness Classes in the Proper Light Posted: 04 Jul 2013 08:00 AM PDT Fitness experts are shining a new light on group classes from Zumba to yoga because they believe the right lighting can transform the four walls of a fitness studio from a dance party to a meditation space, and back again. “Because of the theatrical nature of group fitness classes, lighting is key to differentiate programming,” said Donna Cyrus, senior vice president of programming at Crunch fitness centers. Yellow or orange light boosts high-energy workouts, such as rebounding mini trampoline routines, circuit classes or sculpt programs, Cyrus said, while for yoga the light should be soft and soothing. One reason light affects mood and alertness is that it cuts down on the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. Lighting also enhances the musical experience, Cyrus said. In a cycling class, accents of “club type” lighting pulse to the beat of the music, creating what she calls “a choreographed show.” According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) guidelines, adjustable light sources should be provided in group exercise areas. Generally, the more hand-eye coordination an activity demands, the more illumination is required, according to Grace DeSimone, national director of group fitness at Plus One Health Management, which designs and manages fitness centers for corporations, hotels, and community centers. “If you’re going to be moving around a lot you’ll need a lot of light,” DeSimone said. “You’re not going to do a boot camp workout in a dark room.” But indoor cycling classes often combine high energy and low lighting. “Spinning goes against the grain,” DeSimone explained. “You can do some pretty cool things—make the room look like a night-time sky or light a disco ball—because once you’re on that bike you’re not going anywhere.” In a multi-purpose fitness room, she said, the lighting has to be able to change based on what’s going on. “With Pilates you want the lights on, but with yoga you can do a lot with colored lights,” she said. One reason light affects mood and alertness is that it cuts down on the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin, said Gregory Chertok, a sport psychology consultant for ACSM. “In a dark room, the brain secretes melatonin,” he explained. Chertok, the director of mental training at The Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Center in Englewood, New Jersey, said studies of factory workers have found that rooms with greater lighting will often yield greater productivity. He also cited research that found some blue lighting, which is favored in some yoga and meditation classes, can be even more effective than white fluorescent light in suppressing melatonin. “Sustaining blue-enriched light seems to help with concentrating on something for a long period,” he said. ACSM guidelines suggest efforts should be made to use natural light. “We like to feel the sun,” Chertok said, “so it’s natural for gyms to try to simulate that.” Daylight not only brightens a room, he suggests, it conveys information. “Perhaps daylight and natural lighting provide gym-goers with accurate weather and time information, which may be helpful in planning the length and duration of the workout,” he said. Chertok said research has demonstrated that the mind is generally sharper during daylight hours. “A study in the late ’90s found that even sleep-deprived people were sharper during the daylight hours,” he said, adding that in another study, students in schools with natural lighting did better on performance tests. Darkness, Chertok said, is more associated with letting go. “Think of restaurants,” he said. “Darkness can contribute to ordering more.”

The Big One Posted: 04 Jul 2013 06:00 AM PDT • One percent of all the world’s commercially used wood—totaling 17.8 million cubic yards in 2012—is used to make IKEA products. • One in two babies in America today is born to an unwed mother. In 1980, the number was one in five. • One percent of Americans live in Iowa; so do 31 percent of American pigs. • One disease—diabetes—accounts for 13 percent of all U.S. medical-care spending, a total of $176 billion last year. • One counselor is employed for every 1,016 public-school students in California. That is the highest ratio in the U.S., and more than double the national average. Sources: IKEA; National Center for Family & Marriage Research; U.S. Census Bureau; U.S. Department of Agriculture; American Diabetes Association; American School Counselor Association.

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