Best of the New: People & Ideas
Using peppers to block pain, and the end of a serious case of writer's block. Plus: New at Harvard and BC.
$10 TICKETS. TO FLORIDA.
When Skybus Airlines (skybus.com) started flying out of the Portsmouth International Airport in May, it was hard to get excited about its only destination: Columbus, Ohio. Even if the first 10 seats on each flight were sold for a mere 10 bucks each. But now that the micro-airline has added two Florida destinations to its routes to and from Portsmouth, you can bet that snowbirds are flocking. All of the airline's low-cost tickets are one-way and do not include taxes, fees, checked baggage ($5 per bag), drinks, food, or an assigned seat. But so what?
PROFESSOR OF BALL
It's not every day that Harvard University lands a Big Name coach. But that's exactly what happened last April when it hired former Duke University star and University of Michigan coach Tommy Amaker to lead its men's basketball program. Already, Amaker appears to be making a difference. In a game last month against Amaker's old school, Michigan, the Crimson beat the Wolverines 62 to 51.
BACKGROUND-CHECKED BABY SITTERS
You can go to Craigslist to find a nanny for your baby, a dog walker for your pooch, or an aide for grandma. Or you can go to Care.com, founded in Waltham by Sheila Lirio Marcelo, a mother of two and Internet entrepreneur, where every advertisement gets vetted by a team of mothers and every would-be caregiver's name gets run through a national criminal records database. Basic access is free, but unlimited access and background checks costs $25 for a month - a bargain for a little peace of mind.
INVESTING IN THE ARTS
Glitzy new theaters are nice, but what about the old, crumbling spaces? Give arts advocate Dan Hunter props for pushing legislators to hand out $16.7 million as part of Massachusetts's first Cultural Facilities Fund. The money helps pay for fix-it projects throughout the Commonwealth, from a theater at Jacob's Pillow in Becket to the Days Lumber Yard building at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
MADAM PRESIDENT
She is a highly regarded historian who is now making history herself as the first female president of Harvard University. In her first months, Drew Gilpin Faust set about calming the waters roiled by her abrasive predecessor, Larry Summers, promising a more consultative style of leadership. She revamped financial aid, eliminating loans and beefing up grants. Next stop: Allston.
HE'S ON SECOND
There were rough patches, sure, and only true Sox fans stuck with the gritty second baseman when he was hitting a buck-fifty and looking like an over-matched high schooler. But then Dustin Pedroia started to do what Red Sox brass swore he could always do - hit - and with that big ol' swing and by ignoring all the cynics out there who called him too this or too that, the kid became a ballplayer. Oh, and Rookie of the Year, too.
BUILDING A BETTER BRA
While most bra designs offer variables in only band and cup sizes, entrepreneurs Christi Andersen and Derek Ohly take nine additional measurements in their quest for a perfect fit. The selling strategy for their $98 Zyrra custom bras (zyrra.com) is as personal as the construction: Women get measured individually while enjoying the company of friends at house parties, a la Tupperware.
STEM CELL SUCCESSES
It was a huge year for stem cell research, with the most glory going to Japan's Shinya Yamanaka, who "reprogrammed" adult skin cells into embryoniclike stem cells, capable of morphing into any of the human body's other cell types. But Boston also scored big, with Mass General biologist Konrad Hochedlinger inducing cells taken from the tails of mice to regress to the embryonic stem cell stage. Meanwhile, Kevin Eggan of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute showed that fertilized eggs, if frozen before they start to divide, can be cloned into a new entity, a potential source of human embryonic stem cells that can be used for therapy. Finally, Jacob Hanna and Rudolf Jaenisch of the MIT-affiliated Whitehead Institute demonstrated that genetically-altered stem cells, made without tissue from human embryos, can cure disease - they used the cells to successfully treat sickle cell anemia in laboratory mice.
FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE
At Harvard Medical School, researchers are POURING PEPPER ON PAIN in a way that could revolutionize anesthesia. Dr. Clifford Woolf, a Mass General specialist in pain management, and Harvard neurobiologist Bruce P. Bean invented a new approach to anesthesia that employs capsaicin - the stuff that makes chili peppers hot - to remove the pain from surgery without causing the numbness, wooziness, and partial paralysis that are unwelcome side effects of many procedures, from tooth extractions to childbirth.
TREES, PLEASE
Boston Mayor Tom Menino says he loves tree cover. "It's great for your city," he says. "Additional trees change neighborhoods." That's why, in April, he unveiled a plan to plant 100,000 TREES in Boston by 2020. The mayor says the city started small - with 100 trees - last summer. But with $2.5 million proposed for tree planting the next five years, more green is on the way.
TECH, WRITER
JUNOT DIAZ had writer's block something fierce as he tried for 11 years to finish his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. But now the pressure's off for the Dominican-born MIT writing professor. The novel, published in September by Riverhead Books, is widely considered one of the best works of fiction from 2007. And Diaz, 39, says the accolades have him "shellshocked." "It's fun," he says. "I'm just astonished."
AN A+ AT BC
It was a moment of spontaneous joy. When Boston College scored to beat Virginia Tech late in an October game, new BC head coach JEFF JAGODZINSKI celebrated by jumping up and trying to chest-bump quarterback Matt Ryan. Ryan knocked Jagodzinski down. But "Coach Jags" got up, all smiles, winning over Eagles fans in his first season in town.
DRIVING YOU CRAZY?
The landscape of meters, lots, car pools, and ticket-avoidance got a lot easier to navigate in 2007.
Last summer, 19-year-old New Yorker Ben Sann biked the city of Boston. The entrepreneur was gathering data for his website, BESTPARKING.COM, a searchable catalog of monthly and hourly parking-garage rates. Here's what the free service can do. Say you want to leave your car near Fenway Park from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on a Wednesday in January. Using the site, you can easily see how to slash your parking costs in half - from $20 to $10 - simply by heading to 60 rather than 5 Kilmarnock Street.
Car poolers and ride sharers have another free resource. GOLOCO.ORG is the new nonprofit project of Robin Chase, the Cambridge-based entrepreneur who started car-share service Zipcar. With Goloco, Chase's goal was to help lower the cost of car ownership for people in vehicle-dependent locations while also reducing carbon emissions. Drivers can post trips they plan to take, and anyone looking for a ride can search for matches and even prepay any fees online.
You know the uneasy feeling: You're not quite sure that you've parked legally, but you're already 10 minutes late for dinner, and you just don't have the stamina for one more go around the block. WHERETOFINDPARKING.COM subscribers in Boston can calmly pull over, launch an Internet browser from a cellphone, and check if a certain spot is in the clear or look up other area parking options. The site's cheapest monthly subscription package costs $12, which seems expensive only until you return from your meal to confront another $40 ticket.
(Correction: Because of an editing error, the fee explanation for the Wheretofindparking.com website was incomplete in Sunday's "Best of the New" issue of the Globe Magazine. The article should have specified that the cheapest monthly subscription package to the website that includes cellphone access costs $12.)
