Cities As A Lab: Designing The Innovation Economy demonstrates How Design Can Foster Innovative Approaches

Check in: The Tokyo hotel where guests can curl up with 1,700 good books

Book and Bed, a new Tokyo hotel, has created the sort of space that is impossible to leave. It is a cheap and cheerful dorm with a difference: guests’ bunk beds are hidden behind library shelves filled with hundreds of books in Japanese and English. | Read more

 This is just great.

Facebook UK made £105M in 2014, paid £35M in bonuses, and will pay £4,327 in tax

Which is a notable improvement on its tax bill for 2013, which was £0 on earnings of £223m.

The company says it made an accounting loss of £28.5m in the UK for 2014. Facebook says that it “compliant with UK tax law” and adds that its employees usually choose to pay tax on their income rather than availing themselves of the kinds of tax dodges Facebook itself uses. Meanwhile, UK-based companies pay tax, as do their employees, meaning they have less income from which to return dividends to their investors, making UK-based business less profitable and less attractive.

The UK Tory chancellor, George Osborne, has announced swingeing cuts to tax credits for the UK’s working poor, who are at record levels, with many children living in food poverty, because the country allegedly can’t afford to top up the accounts of working people who are literally starving.

George Osborne has repeatedly cut corporate tax rates.

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Bill Nye Explains The Connection Between Climate Change And Terrorism In Paris

President Obama made headlines Monday when he said during his remarks at COP21 that the climate change conference taking place in Paris is an “act of defiance” against terrorists who attacked the city earlier this month. Later on the same day, Bill Nye took that link a step further, explaining to HuffPost Live that the brutality in Paris was “a result of climate change.”

“This is just the start of things.”

That is the course that world leaders set when they met at the United Nations in New York on September 25 to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 17 goals range from ending poverty and improving health to protecting the planet’s biosphere and providing energy for all. They emerged from the largest summit in the UN’s history, the “Rio+20” conference in 2012, followed by the largest consultation the UN has ever undertaken.

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Unlike their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals, which focused almost exclusively on developing countries, the new global goals are universal and apply to all countries equally. Their adoption indicates widespread acceptance of the fact that all countries share responsibility for the long-term stability of Earth’s natural cycles, on which the planet’s ability to support us depends.

Johan Rockstrom goes all in on poverty reduction and climate change.

Turns out, in addition to leaving our mark on surfaces, we’re also emitting a bacterial signature into the air—what scientists call a “microbial cloud.” And according to a new study conducted by the Biology and the Built Environment Center at the University of Oregon, this invisible aura is so specific that it can be used to distinguish between individual people.

Our Bodies, Our Microbial Clouds

[Graphic: Viputheshwar Sitaraman/Draw Science]

Researchers at MIT have developed a new method for harnessing energy generated by very small bending motions, which could be capable of harvesting power from a broader range of natural human activities such as walking and exercising.

Yale Environment 360: New Device Harvests Energy From Walking and Exercising, Researchers Say