Elite university aims to solve world's problems

  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (KGO) -- There is an elite university in Silicon Valley that the best and brightest are fighting to get into. It isn't an accredited university, but many believe it will be the birthplace of future innovations.

Robots that take your place at meetings? Plants that can light up a room? Leather grown in a laboratory? These are all ideas created by students at Singularity University, a school with one goal&to improve the lives of a billion people.

The school is the brain child of Google executive and best-selling author Ray Kurzweil, and X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis.

"We've actually created an institution we're extraordinarily proud about where a level of conversation is taking place unlike any other place in the world," said Diamandis.

Kurzweil added, "When our brains evolved thousands of years ago things were linear - we didn't have technology, so people's intuition about what is possible is really governed by a linear expectation and there is a profound difference 40 steps linearly is 40, 40 steps exponentially is a trillion. "

Singularity University was created in 2009 based on Kurzweil's theory of "technological singularity." He believes that emerging technologies like nanotechnology and biotechnology will massively increase human intelligence over the next two decades and fundamentally reshape the future of humanity.

The school is at the NASA Ames base near Mountain View.

"Today we have about 1,300 hundred alumni in 85 countries, the best and brightest today can be found anywhere on the planet, so we actually cast a wide net," said Rob Nail, CEO and Associate founder of Singularity University.

Singularity University hosts an executive training program like this one to help corporate leaders understand how quick changes in technology will impact tomorrow's businesses. It cost $12,000 a person - it always sells out.

The university uses that money to hosts a 10 week graduate studies program in the summer. Three-thousand people applied this year. Eighty were accepted.

"That program is targeting the next generation of leaders in the world. These are post graduate students, the average age is around 31 - the range has been 18-58, so it's incredibly diverse," said Nail.

Francesco Mosconi went to SU. He said, "You wake up 8, you study or take classes and activities from 9-7, and a little gap for dinner, and then you are back in activities until very, very late at night."

"It really shaped the way I view the world , it really created my world view and going to class there was a multiple paradigm shift," said another Monica Ebert, another Singularity University alumni.

The students who attend the graduate program work together to form real companies. Twenty companies are currently up and running and another 10 are about to launch.

East Bay native Ann Rogan also went to SU after working around the globe. She said, "you are learning first about technology that is moving, very, very fast and that's very cutting edge, and then you are learning to take that and apply it to solving health care in developing countries, or how to think about energy and environmental issues around the world, whether it is the us or elsewhere."

The next class of Singularity University students will arrive next month.

Written and Produced by Ken Miguel

(Copyright ©2013 KGO-TV/DT.

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Fossil fuels making world's oceans more acidic

  ALAMEDA, Calif. (KGO) -- A growing number of top marine scientists say the world's oceans are in crisis. You may have already heard about the extreme threat from over-fishing, but another equally severe problem is just beginning to get attention. The oceans are turning more acidic and it's happening fast. That's bad for animals that live in the water but it could also impact our ability to breathe.

Only 5 percent of the ocean has been explored, but that's enough for scientists to know there's trouble under water. The same fossil fuels polluting the air are also making the ocean more acidic.

"It has incalculable risks associated with it; it may overshadow global warming," marine biologist Sylvia Earle said.

Earle is one of the most respected marine biologists in the world. She's logged more than 6,000 hours underwater and was named by the Library of Congress as a living legend.

Earle founded an Alameda Company that builds submersibles to explore the ocean. She's also a fellow at the California Academy of Sciences.

When it comes to ocean research, Earle is the gold standard, and she says it's time the rest of us start paying attention

"We are messing around with the chemistry of the planet," she said.

At the moment, Earle is focusing on tiny organisms called prochlorococcus. Prochlorocuccus are greenish single cell creatures discovered by MIT professor Penny Chisholm. They're so tiny that a glass of ocean water could hold billions.

"Proclorococcus contributes 20 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere," Earle said.

An incredible one-fifth of all our oxygen comes from the minute species critical to life as we know it.

"It does two important things, it generates oxygen and it takes up carbon, carbon dioxide, transforms that through photosynthesis to carbohydrates, that means food, food for life in the sea," Earle said.

But that fragile ecosystem is being damaged by excess carbon from cars, power plants and factories. The carbon turns the ocean more acidic, making it corrosive to shellfish and coral.

Scientists are not sure of the effect on prochorlorcoccus, but Earle says we can't wait to find out.

"The trend is clear, we are losing elements that keep us alive," she said.

Earle believes the key to saving the ocean is knowing what's happening. That takes exploration and education.

Earle is in her 70s, but she's not slowing down. She's launched an alliance called Mission Blue to ignite public interest and save critical ocean habitats.

"Now that we know, we can do better; we can take actions that will protect procholorococcus, that will protect the kelp forest, that will protect the ocean, that will actually protect human beings," Earle said.

Written and produced by Jennifer Olney

(Copyright ©2012 KGO-TV/DT.

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