Buzz

The series of three cities, three nights out includes Pittsburgh this round, from the Warhol Museum to Meat and Potatoes to the Duquesne Incline.

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A myriad of Pittsburgh's not-for-profit organizations learned ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle everything in the "Reduce Your Use For Good," workshop sponsored by Direct Energy and Pop City Media. The event, which took place on February 22, aimed to educate non-profit employees on reducing energy costs through a panel discussion and Q&A that followed.

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Though Silicon Valley still remains the epicenter of tech startups, Pittsburgh made an unexpected (well, maybe for anyone who doesn't live here) appearance on Mashable's list of the top 15 Cities for Tech Startup Investments. Ranking lucky number 13 on the list, Pittsburgh beat Denver and Boulder to make it.

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Eric Koger and Susan Gregg Koger are featured in Under 30 Ceo's list of the 30 Most Influential Young Entrepreneurs of 2012 for Modcloth, a Pittsburgh based online clothing distributor specializing in vintage style apparel. The Krogers are in good company, with Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger of Instagram, and Daniel Elk of Spotify all appearing in the same list.

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You've probably never wondered what it would be like to charge your phone with a hot cocoa or maybe an ice water. Epiphany Labs did. With their new Epiphany onE Puck, the New Castle startup wants you to charge your phone with your beverage--or any other source of hot or cold you can find. A simple heat engine, a drink coaster, and a USB port combined into one device creates what Epiphany hopes will be a solution for people who never have enough time in the day to plug in their smartphones and pave the way for future application of heat engines to places and people in need of electricity.

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Using the recent Heinz acquisition as a backdrop, The New York Times's DealBook featured a brief history of Pittsburgh's economical transition from the industrial powerhouse from which it grew to the diverse mix of small technology and medical companies that dots its landscape today.

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"After inputting raw data from the inventory in i-Tree, Tree Pittsburgh found that the city’s street trees — strictly those planted in sidewalks and medians — provided $2.4 million worth of environmental and aesthetic value every year. (A 2011 analysis of Pittsburgh’s total tree cover, which involved sampling more than 200 small plots throughout the city, showed a value of between $10 and $13 million in annual benefits based on the entire urban forest’s contributions to aesthetics, energy use and air quality.) The values take into account energy savings from shade, impact on the city’s air and water, and the boost in property values associated with leafy neighbors.

"Given the city’s annual expenditures of $850,000 on street tree planting and maintenance, Tree Pittsburgh concluded that the city received $3 in benefits for every dollar it invested in street trees. That math helped convince the city that upfront investment in trees was worthwhile, and so last summer Pittsburgh released a detailed master plan for maintaining and expanding its urban forest over the next two decades."

Read more here.

The Pittsburgh school system has uncovered some unexpected treasure. Henri Le Sidaner’s work was purchased  in the 1930s by a Pittsburgh charity, Friends of Art, that donated it to the school system where the work has survived anonymously for 80 years

The Friends of Art — a long-standing nonprofit group that acquires art and donates it to the district to inspire students — bought the painting after it was displayed in the 1933 Carnegie International art exhibition here.
The artwork was considered “missing” in art circles since.

“It was really great it turned up and we know where it is now,” said Louise “Lulu” Lippincott, curator for fine arts at Carnegie Museum of Art. “There are all these really neat treasures buried all over Pittsburgh, and it’s great when one pops up.”

The district approached Lippincott in the fall about the best way to deal with its collection. That’s how she learned it had “Interior.”

Read the story here.

The Carnegie Mellon University sculpture by artist Jonathan Borofsky, with people walking straight up to the sky, is featured in various perspectives in this short but cool photo feature.

See it here.

Pittsburgh is recognized alongside international treasures Brussels and Madrid in this Forbes article titled 10 Unexpectedly Romantic Cities.

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Pittsburgh was ranked the fourth most literate city in the US by Central Connecticut State University president John Miller, and ranked number ten in Amazon's "20 most Romantic Cities in the U.S.," making it the only city to break the top 10 in both lists.

To read the full story, click here.

"A co-working space in Pittsburgh's poor Uptown neighborhood, beautiful StartUptown, is the result of creator Dale McNutt's determination to give entrepreneurs a place to get started and to give back to the community in which they work."

View the video here.

"The city built on steel and coal might prove to be a diamond in the rough for entrepreneurs. Pittsburgh is looking to become the "new center of innovation in American energy" and putting up the cash to get there. On top of nearly $143 million the area raised in start-up capital during the first nine months of 2012, the area's research and development funding through Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh and other institutions amounts to $3 billion annually.

State-sponsored economic development group Innovation Works provides funding, business guidance and other resources to promising projects. With the Allegheny Conference of Community Development, it formed the Energy Alliance of Greater Pittsburgh to connect local energy entrepreneurs, researchers and investors. It also created tech start-up accelerator AlphaLab, which runs a 20-week program twice a year that provides select companies with funding, office space, mentorships and other assistance to get up and running.

Other entrepreneurial resources in the area: Carnegie Mellon University is home to 118 research institutes and centers, which help launch 15 to 20 new start-ups a year, on average. Nonprofit Idea Foundry assists technology start-ups by providing business advice, investment capital and networking opportunities. The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse focuses its entrepreneurial assistance on companies developing medical devices, therapeutics, biotech services and health information technology."

Read more on why Pittsburgh made the cut and see other cities.

Read about UMPC Children's Hospital here.

"For two thirds of her life, 12-year-old Leah Koller has battled glioma, an invasive brain tumor. Fortunately, Regina Jakacki, M.D., the hospital's director of pediatric neuro-oncology, has been working on a vaccine to stimulate a child's immune system to target proteins unique to tumor cells. Just as Leah's glioma had gotten out of control two years ago -- and her sixth round of chemo at the hospital failed -- the vaccine was open for testing in children. "After nine weeks, the tumor actually seemed worse, and we wondered if we did the right thing," says her mom, Raelene. "But then it started to shrink -- and now 80 percent of it is gone." In the last two years, about three dozen cancer patients have received the vaccine and it's helped more than half of them. Says Dr. Jakacki: "My team and I were hoping to prolong the lives of these kids, but now we're thinking we're onto a cure in some cases."

Read more about UMPC Children's Hospital here.