A 40-year-old Man Proposed To Salamatou When She Was Just 14. Every Year, Tens Of Thousands Of Girls

This Week in Social Entrepreneurship: Weh Yeoh tells us who sets the international development agenda (hint: it's you!)

Come out for the NY+Acumen Happy Hour and Jeopardy Night Wednesday night, October 16th. It will be an exciting evening at Galway Pub where all questions (errr…answers, rather) in the game will be based on a social entrepreneurship related case study. And, as always, there will be time for drinks and conversation.

On Tuesday, October 15th join Be Social Change and the Centre for Social Innovation for NY Social Good. This is a new event series featuring for- and non- profit ventures developing innovative approaches to tackling the toughest problems facing our generation.

Make a Wave is a start-up readiness program aiming to provide 250 women in UK foundational skills to think about social enterprise. They are searching for women based in UK, over 18, and committed to attending a business skills bootcamp, among other credentials. If you are interested, read more about this program and how to apply here.

Learn how, as a student, you can get involved with social enterprises during this live Q&A on Tuesday, October 8th with the Guardian Social Enterprise Network. Learn not only how you can get involved as a student, but also how you can benefit from social enterprise and even how you can start your very own!

Who sets the agenda when talking about international development? We, as ordinary citizens, have the power to collectively shift the government’s agenda. Check out this Huffington Post article written by Weh Yeoh, who is currently running a campaign on StartSomeGood to Bring Speech Therapy to Cambodia. 

Shawn D. Ross

I am a Northwest Native living in Washington State. A graduate of Washington State University and University of Phoenix with degrees in Architecture and Education I write about social, cultural, and personal improvement on the StartSomeGood Blog and SDRinspire. I am also a filmmaker and owner of Giraffe and Penguin Productions, a single daddy of two beautiful children, avid reader, writer, and hat wearer (Not in that picture but believe me, I wear ‘em). I am currently at work on my first feature length documentary. Follow me @shawndross and visit my websites: sdrinspire.tumblr.com and giraffeandpenguinproductions.tumblr.com.

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What good do you want to create? Visit our site to learn about how to start your own campaign.

Do you have a social entrepreneurship news story or an event you’d like to see on the StartSomeGood Blog? Email Nicole (Nicole @ StartSomeGood.com)

YouTube Wants Everyone To Watch This New Movie About Girls Who Code

“Codegirl” will stream for free on YouTube from Nov. 1 - 6.

Turtles Saved From Sudden Death Thanks To New Train Lanes

The Japanese built special pathways to protect the slow-moving reptiles.

New book on the Halley VI Research Center. Halley VI is a string of 8 modules located on the Brunt Ice Shelf floating on the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. These sexy buildings are built on skis to help them move around. Check out the book, here.

How To Build More Resilient Cities

Earlier this year, BioDigital partnered with About.com to provide interactive visualizations for common health conditions. Patients searching for information about Type 2 diabetes, for instance, are presented with a 3D model of a cell’s response to insulin, in which they can explore the process from different angles while toggling between diabetic and normal cell function. 

What’s revolutionary about the API launch, though, is that now developers can personalize the BioDigital human by integrating their own imaging data, movement data collected by wearables, and health record data, among other sources. 

So essentially, instead of clicking around the standard human model on About.com, we could soon be exploring 3D models of our own bodies, constructed with our unique health data. 

For athletes especially, the immediate advantages of virtually replicating a moving body are obvious. If you can see exactly which movements inflict pain or stress on your body, it’s much easier to understand how to avoid them. 

For medical professionals, though, the ability to visualize vast amounts of health data in real time via the BioDigital human has the potential to change the way new information is analyzed and consumed. 

 “The human body is this incredible system of systems, and there’s an infinite amount of detail,” says Sculli. “So we can start mapping cellular mechanisms, and genomic and brain activity, and all of this information that’s being collected in masses from research and wearables, and make it consumable for people.”

(via 3D Modeling Startup BioDigital Launches An API For The Human Body | TechCrunch)

The Moon Parka - A jacket made of synthetic spider silk

Remember the Japanese biomaterials company Spiber? In 2013, they presented a cocktail dress made of Qmonos (from the Japanese word kumonosu meaning ‘spider web’), their present 11-year-10-design-iterations-and-656-gene-synthesis synthetic version of stronger than steel and more flexible than nylon lightweight spider silk.

Snip from geek.com:

The end result of all that research is a method for producing artificial spider silk through a fermentation process using bioengineered microorganisms to produce the silk proteins. A real spider can only produce so much silk, but an engineered cell that does nothing but spit out silk proteins can be used to scale production up quickly.

Now they presented in collaboration with The North Face a new prototype called The Moon Parka, which is currently touring North Face stores across Japan. It’s intended to show that practical applications of spider silk are possible (cost is now 1/53,000 of what it was in 2008). Spiber aims to deliver the final product next year. Presumably only in Japan. But fingers crossed for a worldwide rollout at reasonable prices.

Watch their promo-launch video below:

[North Face x Spiber] [Spiber] [picture by North Face]

The PBL Climate Pledge INDC tool tracks  the emission reduction proposals and policies that countries are submitting in the run-up to the Paris Climate Summit. Updated each time new countries submit their proposals, the tool gives up-to-date information on the effects of these proposals on the projected emissions of greenhouse gases. Data via PBL.