Tuesday, May 4, 2010

8 Sessions You Shouldn’t Miss at Web 2.0 Expo

Tomorrow’s web is being built by a vast community of programmers and designers spread around the globe. They’re all forging new paths on their own, but it’s when they find the occasion to get together and compare notes that the sparks really fly.

Such a gathering is happening this week in San Francisco at the Web 2.0 Expo, a conference put on every six months or so by tech publisher O’Reilly.

Just like other developer conferences, there’s an expo floor and parties at night, but the meat of the event is the mix of talks, hands-on sessions, keynotes and presentations about all things web. There are sessions on browsers, Flash, HTML5, geolocation, JavaScript, advertising platforms, cloud computing and online communities.

It can all be a bit much, so here are our picks for the sessions you simply shouldn’t miss at the Web 2.0 Expo. Certainly, there will be others of great importance to you depending on your area of expertise (and you can view the full schedule here), but these are the sessions that we Webmonkeys are most looking forward to.
All sessions are taking place at Moscone West in San Francisco. The conference sessions start Tuesday and run through Thursday morning. Intensive educational tracks are taking place Monday, May 3. Follow coverage here on Webmonkey and on Twitter under the hashtag #w2e.

HTML5 vs. Flash: Webocalypse Now?

Tuesday, 10:00am, room 2001
Design guru and author Eric Meyer leads this discussion about the future of Flash on the HTML5-powered web. Don’t expect a Flash-bash session, though. It’s true that Flash has been taking a beating lately, but it still has a place in the modern, media-saturated web. Meyer will examine issues central to the Flash vs. HTML5 debate, including openness, security and performance.

A Conversation with Paul Buchheit

Tuesday, 4:10pm, Main Hall
This keynote interview will occur on the main stage, as Web 2.0 Expo program chair Sarah Milstein dishes the tough questions to Facebook’s Paul Buchheit. Now one of Facebook’s lead engineers, Buchheit originally arrived at the social networking giant when it acquired his start-up, FriendFeed (he was also one of the engineers behind Gmail at Google). Facebook has since incorporated many of FriendFeed’s innovations around real-time social publishing into its core product, the constantly-updating News Feed that scrolls down your Profile page. But that’s just the beginning of Buchheit’s story at Facebook. We can expect some discussion around the company’s new Open Graph platform it launched in April.

A Conversation with Kevin Lynch

Wednesday, 9:30am, Main Hall
On Wednesday morning, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch takes the hot seat. He’ll be answering questions about the future of Flash on the open web, on Apple and Android devices, and on developer’s desktops as a programming environment. Lynch often stays close to the Adobe script, but it’s likely that whatever he says will add fuel to the HTML5 vs Flash debate — already a heated topic among browser vendors, mobile device makers, and proponents of open web technologies. Web 2.0 Expo program chair Brady Forrest is the interviewer.

The Search Platform: Friend Or Vampire?

Wednesday, 10:15am, Main Hall
Where do you get your news? If you’re getting it from Google, content providers like Rupert Murdoch are gunning to shut down your favorite delivery system. There’s currently a lot of chatter about whether search providers have the right (via fair use) to reprint excerpts of the news articles they’re linking to, and most of the negative rhetoric is being voiced by news publishers. But on a searchable web governed by the link economy, there has to be a balance between linking and re-publishing for anyone to extract any value. Danny Sullivan of the Search Engine Land blog breaks down what it will take for search engines and publishers to get along.

What to Expect from Browsers in the Next Five Years

Wednesday, 11am, room 2006
This open discussion examines where the browser is headed next. No doubt, it will be smaller (fits in your pocket!) and more powerful. And it will probably handle your identity on social networking sites and play videos without plug-ins, too. Ajaxian editor Dion Almaer moderates the panel, and Yahoo’s Douglas Crockford (a JavaScript guru), Mozilla’s Brendan Eich, Opera’s Charles “chaals” McCathieNevile, and Microsoft’s Giorgio Sardo are the panelists.

The Innovative APIs Fueling Location on the Web

Wednesday, 3:40pm, room 2006
Former Webmonkey contributor Adam DuVander runs down all of the free tools available on the web for creating geodata-driven location-aware applications. Before you go, also check out Adam’s most recent project: Geomena, an open database of wi-fi access points you can use for geolocation.

State of the Internet Operating System

Thursday, 9:00am, Main Hall
Mr. Web 2.0 Tim O’Reilly kicks off the final day of the conference with his keynote presentation on what he calls the “internet operating system,” the collection of technologies and concepts — hardware sensors, identity, mobile phones, location APIs, advertising, cloud-based processing, et cetera — that are shaping the future of computing. Tied to our desktops no longer we are, young Jedis.

Web Fonts: The Time Has Come

Thursday, 1:00pm, room 2001
This panel looks at the state of typography on the web, and as you may be able to guess from the title, these guys think things are looking up. Fonts aren’t as limited as they used to be, thanks to innovations in CSS, JavaScript and web services like Typekit, which dole out really nice-looking fonts across the web using a new licensing model. Jeff Veen of Typekit is the moderator, and panelists include FontShop’s Stephen Coles and JQuery’s Paul Irish. For a preview on this topic, check out the very first episode of The Big Web Show, which discusses web fonts and features Veen as a guest.

By Michael Calore

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Making Rain Clouds With Lasers

Shooting lasers at the sky can make the germ of a rain cloud, a new study shows. In an experiment that smacks of science fiction, scientists used a high-powered laser to squeeze water from air, both indoors and out.

The study is among the first to propose a direct test of how quantum entanglement, an effect that inexorably links two electrons in a way that Einstein called “spooky,” could change the behavior of whole animals.

Although the technique is unlikely to be an instant rainmaker anytime soon, it could plant the seeds for more eco-friendly cloud manipulation.

“This is the first time that a laser was used to condense water from both laboratory experiments and from the atmosphere,” says Jérôme Kasparian of the University of Geneva, a coauthor of the study. The work appeared in the May 2 Nature Photonics.

Atmospheric scientists have been trying to build artificial clouds since the 1940s, with mixed success. The most popular method, shooting particles of silver iodide into the sky, relied on the fact that raindrops need something to condense around.

“It’s just like when you take a shower with hot water — it’s very humid in your bathroom, but it’s not raining,” Kasparian says. Water droplets need a surface to condense on, like a mirror in a bathroom or a speck of dust or pollen in the atmosphere.

Previous experimenters hoped droplets would form around flakes of silver, salt or other materials just like on a bathroom mirror. “The idea is, you provide more condensation nuclei, you get more condensation,” Kasparian says. “It seems obvious, but in practice no one could really prove that it works.”

Kasparian and colleagues took inspiration from a mist-making apparatus that was invented in 1911 to detect cosmic rays, highly energetic subatomic particles that come from deep space. A physicist named Charles Wilson noticed that when cosmic rays strike a sealed container filled with water vapor, they leave a visible trail of water droplets behind them. This works because the cosmic rays knock electrons off the water molecules, leaving behind charged particles that act like specks of dust for water to congeal around.

“Our idea was to mimic what happens in a Wilson chamber,” Kasparian says. “If you get some condensation with cosmic rays, we should get even more condensation with a laser.”

Kasparian and his colleagues tested this idea by shooting a high-powered infrared laser into a cloud chamber. The laser shot extremely short pulses of intense light, which each carrying several terawatts — or a trillion watts — of energy.

The view fogged up immediately. Droplets about 50 micrometers in diameter formed first, and grew to about 80 micrometers in diameter over the next three seconds. “The effect in the cloud chamber was very spectacular and visible by bare eye,” Kasparian says. “We expected an effect, definitely. But that magnitude was pretty much a surprise.”

Next, the researchers took the laser out in the backyard to try it on the sky. They rolled the laser, called “Teramobile” for its terawatt power and its mobility, onto the lawn behind the physics building at the Free University of Berlin on several nights in the fall of 2008. The clouds, if they formed, would be too distant to see with the naked eye, so the team used a second laser to confirm the cloudy view.

“It also worked quite well in the free atmosphere,” Kasparian says. “That was quite surprising, and a very good surprise.”

Kasparian thinks lasers could provide a more reliable and environmentally friendly way to build clouds. “If you can seed clouds and get some control or at least modulation on the weather, the implications are huge for agriculture, many other economic sectors, many aspects of human life,” Kasparian says. “There are potentially huge consequences.”

“It is a clever technique,” says John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. But he’s skeptical that laser-built clouds could actually make it rain on demand. “Rainfall production requires many conditions to be met,” he cautions.

Image: Jean-Pierre Wolf/University of Geneva
By Lisa Grossman, Science News

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Monday, May 3, 2010

Believing is Seeing: How Mindset Can Improve Vision

PhysOrg.com) -- How you see isn't just about how good your eyes are - it's also about your mindset, according to a study published in Psychological Science. For example, in one experiment, if someone was told that exercise would improve their vision, they saw better after doing an athletic activity - jumping jacks - than an unathletic activity with the same effect on heart rate - skipping.

The researchers, led by Ellen Langer at Harvard University, were interested in how the mind and body connect, particularly how mindset affects the body's performance. Langer has studied this kind of connection for decades. "Many of the things that we think we can't do are a function of our mindset rather than our abilities to do them," she says. In this case, she was interested in whether what we think affects how well we see.

People expect to see only the first few lines on traditional eye charts. Volunteers in an experiment who read a eye chart arranged in reverse order (the letters got progressively larger, with the giant "E" in the last row) saw a greater proportion of the smallest letters than when they viewed a traditional eye chart.

Another experiment took advantage of the belief that pilots have good eyesight. College students in the ROTC were brought into a flight simulator, given army fatigues to wear, and told to fly the simulator. They did simple flight maneuvers, then did an eyesight test by reading markings on the wings of planes ahead - actually lines from an eye chart. A control group of ROTC students was put in the same conditions, but they were told the simulator was broken, and that they should just pretend to fly the plane. The people who had performed like pilots, as opposed to those who just pretended, saw 40 percent better.

These findings suggest that visual acuity is influenced by mindset and might be improved by psychological means. Just being aware of this might help people improve their eyesight, says Langer - if they pay attention to when they can see well and when they can't, for example, or simply believe that they can see better when they aren't sitting in a dark room at the optometrist's office. These findings along with others from Langer's lab lead them to question how many of our limits are of our own making. The research is part of a larger inquiry into the psychology of possibility.

Provided by Association for Psychological Science

Source: http://newscri.be/link/1089861

Comparing China And India

I’ve been traveling around this week giving talks on my new Oxford University Press book, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, and one of the works I took along to divert me on planes and trains (I started it while flying to D.C. on Monday and finished it on an Amtrak ride to New Jersey on Wednesday) was an excellent new Princeton University Press publication by Berkeley economist Pranab Bardhan. As soon as I dipped into Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India, one thing that struck me was how much it had in common with the book I've been promoting--and not just because each is a general interest work by an academic that has been issued by a press linked to a prestigious university.

Here's a rundown of some similarities between the two works:

1) Each is short. (Mine clocks in at 164 pages; Bardhan's at 172.)

2) Each strives to dispel some common misconceptions about China, including the notion that it will inevitably democratize as its economy grows.

3) Each has only a small number of footnotes and tends to steer clear of specialized terminology.

4) Each stresses the dangers of making firm predictions about what is to come, yet ends with a forward-looking chapter. The last one in Bardhan's book is called “Looking to the Future: Through the Lens of Political Economy,” while the “The Future" is the title of the last one in mine.

All this could suggest that I would have trouble enjoying Bardhan’s book because of a sense that it was in direct competition with mine. This was not, however, the case. I was able to take pleasure in reading and learning from it without any niggling worry that people who buy it won’t be tempted to purchase China in the 21st Century. This is because, for all the similarities between the two books, there are a pair of crucial differences between them.

The first relates to topical focus. Bardhan is an economist, so not surprisingly he is primarily concerned with economic issues. Those are not the sole focus of my book, which explores topics ranging from Confucian thought to consumer culture, from generation gaps to the World Expo. Bardhan has valuable things to say about non-economic topics (politics, the environment, etc.), but his attention remains fixed throughout on the dynamics of development.

The second contrast between our books is even more important: his is equally concerned with two different countries, whereas I concentrate on just one (albeit with a variety of brief forays into comparison). Bardhan makes his interest in a pair of countries clear in his book’s title and subtitle: Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India. (One thing I like about that title is that it is refreshingly free of any allusion to a totemic animal. No cliched “dragon” vs. “elephant” word play for him.)

Bardhan writes with remarkable clarity about complex issues, such as the widely varying ways that corruption can affect the economy, and the positive as well as negative legacy of the Maoist era for China in terms of its recent trajectory. (For example, he stresses the importance of the upsurge of literacy during the pre-Reform era, which meant that a relatively well-educated pool of workers were ready to contribute to the country's take-off after Deng Xiaoping came to power.) He also shows some welcome stylistic flair, quoting poetry to good effect in one section (how often do economists do that?) and slipping a lovely bit of alliteration into the title of a chapter: “Infrastructure: The Dazzling Difference.”

One thing that I was relieved to discover when I reached the end of the book was that, while I certainly gained new insights into many specific issues from reading it, nothing I came across in Awakening Giants caused me to wish I could go back and alter fundamentally anything about my own brief treatment of China-India comparisons in China in the 21st Century. This is hardly surprising, though, since one person I read to prepare to write that part of the book was Bardhan--a fact I acknowledge by listing one of his recent articles (that is available free online) in my book's “further readings” section.

There’s a final contrast between our two books worth noting. Only mine was written in a question-and-answer format, a hallmark of the “What Everyone Needs to Know” series of which it is part. And yet, when I got to the end of Awakening Giants, I definitely felt that most of the questions I had about the Chinese and Indian political economies (and I suspect these are ones that other Americans interested in Asia are likely to have as well) had been answered very effectively.

Jeff WasserstromBio
Professor of History, editor of the Journal of Asian Studies, author, most recently, of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know

Source: http://newscri.be/link/1089853

Sunday, May 2, 2010

AMD risk on the rise for Asians; retinal vein 'bypass' may help many CRVO patients

The May issue of Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, includes a surprising, first report on increasing rates of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) among Asians, and describes an innovative "bypass" laser surgery that may help many people with central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) avoid serious vision loss.

Are Asians as Vulnerable to AMD as Caucasians?

A major review by Tien Yi Wong, MD, MPH, PhD, and Singapore Eye Research Institute colleagues concludes that Asians may be just as susceptible to age-related macular degeneration as Caucasians. Asians have long been considered a low risk group for AMD, which is a leading cause of vision loss in older Caucasians. Since the number of elderly people is increasing in Asia, Dr. Wong's study suggests that health systems there need to prepare for an onslaught of AMD.

Pooling results from nine standardized-diagnosis studies in five Asian populations (Japan, China, South Korea, India and Singapore), Dr. Wong's group confirmed prevalence of early-stage AMD as 6.8 percent and late-stage as 0.56 percent, comparable to Caucasians at 8.8 percent and 0.59 percent, respectively. All rates pertain to people aged 40 to 79 years. Also, among those with late AMD, the "wet" (neovascular) form appeared to be more prevalent in Asians than in whites. Asian men were more likely to develop late AMD than white men and much more likely than Asian women.

The researchers speculate that Asian men may be more susceptible to polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV), abnormal development of blood vessels in the deeper layers of the eye. Whether PCV is a sub-type of AMD or a separate disorder remains controversial; it is also unclear whether PCV responds well to medications that inhibit abnormal blood vessel growth (anti-vascular endothelial growth factor drugs such as Avastin and Lucentis) that help many wet AMD patients keep their vision.

"Future studies should evaluate whether there are 'Asian forms' of AMD and discern other racial/ethnic differences in Asian susceptibility," Dr. Wong said."Our meta-analysis could not adjust for important risk factors like smoking, common among many Asian men; nor did this study include all relevant Asian racial/ethnic groups," he added.

"Bypass" May Lead to Vision Gains for CRVO Patients

Central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) affects one to four percent of Americans older than 40 and very often causes severe vision loss, including "legal blindness" (20/200 vision). While current treatments reduce CRVO symptoms such as macular edema-swelling of the center of the eye's light-sensitive retina-none address the underlying problem, the blocked retinal vein. Ian L. McAllister, MD, Lions Eye Institute, Australia, and his research team took direct aim at the problem, using lasers to create a "bypass" around the constricted retinal vein with the aim of restoring near-normal blood flow to the retina.

In three-quarters of the eyes treated the "bypass" was successful, and patients achieved significant vision gains by the 18 month follow-up. This study was also the first prospective, randomized trial to compare the bypass approach, called laser-induced chorioretinal venous anastomosis (L-CRA), with conventional treatment.

L-CRAs were successfully created in 76.4 percent of the 58 patients in whom the procedure was attempted. Overall, bypass-treated patients achieved significantly better visual acuity and were more likely to gain 20/40 vision (the legal standard for drivers in many countries) than were control group patients. Bypass patients were significantly less likely to have moderate or severe vision loss. While about 18 percent of L-CRA-treated patients developed a significant complication-abnormal blood vessel growth at the surgery site-the researchers report that due to close monitoring and effective management, negative consequences from this and other complications were minimal.

"The risk of complications from L-CRA should be weighed against the substantial vision loss faced by CRVO patients with standard treatments," Dr. McAllister said. "In future studies of L-CRA, optical coherence tomography (not widely available when our study began) would be another useful outcome measure for L-CRA effectiveness," he added.

Provided by American Academy of Ophthalmology

http://newscri.be/link/1089328

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Macular Degeneration - New guide! Tips, treatments, resources, and questions to ask. - www.afb.org/seniorsite
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Shanghai World Expo throws open doors

Shanghai World Expo throws open doors

Visitors queue to enter the India Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo site in Shanghai May 1, 2010

May 1, 2010 (AFP) - Hundreds of thousands of people flooded into Shanghai’s World Expo Saturday at the start of a six-month showcase of culture and technology seen as the latest sign of China’s growing economic might.

Organisers have said all 500,000 tickets are sold out for opening day at the massive Expo park along the Huangpu river, where visitors will wander through the exhibits of 189 nations, as well as dozens of companies and organisations.

"Everything is very colourful," Cui Yan, a 23-year-old Chinese university student, said outside the Mexican pavilion. "The architecture is amazing."

"There are so many highlights — I’m worried I can’t see all of them on this trip," said Cui, who travelled from Ningbo, in neighbouring Zhejiang province, to be one of the first to catch a glimpse of the Expo pavilions.
A sea of people waited to visit China’s red inverted pyramid — the centrepiece of Expo park — with 50,000 tickets handed out within five minutes of the park opening.

Queues were long at all pavilions but by 4:30 pm about 200,000 people had entered the park — less than half the number of tickets sold.

Eager visitors used umbrellas to shield themselves from the blistering sun as they waited patiently, the long queues doing nothing to dampen their enthusiasm.

"I want to see the Canada pavilion first. So many of my relatives have emigrated to Canada and I want to get an idea of what kind of life they’re living," retiree Huang Huifang, 58, said as she ran towards the building.
Shanghai kicked off the Expo on Friday night with a star-studded music and fireworks extravaganza, signalling it would be bigger and brighter than the more low-key World’s Fairs in recent years.

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, Hong Kong action film star Jackie Chan and Chinese pianist Lang Lang performed for thousands of guests including Chinese President Hu Jintao and about 20 other world leaders.

A record number of countries are participating in the event, which is expected to attract at least 70 million visitors — the vast majority of them Chinese, many of whom have never travelled outside the country.

Li Huahe, a 47-year-old telecoms company employee from Urumqi in far-western Xinjiang, said he bought his ticket months ago but could only stay a few hours before heading home.

"I woke up at 5:00 am and I have a 2:00 pm flight. I’m worried about the crowds. I want to see at least one pavilion today," Li said outside the Swiss pavilion, which boasts a chairlift that soars over a three-storey-high meadow.

Nations with an eye on China’s consumer market of 1.3 billion people are pulling out all the stops to attract the attention of Expo visitors.

"I really hope people will discover the attitude of the Netherlands. We want to have friendly relations with China," Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told AFP as he surveyed the grounds from the top of the "Happy Street" pavilion, which aims to capture the feel and creativity of Amsterdam.

Denmark has made a splash by bringing its "Little Mermaid" statue out of Copenhagen for the first time, France has Impressionist paintings and India is bringing in a cast of Bollywood stars.

Li Kai, seven, was stunned when he was told the statue was real.
"It’s shocking. I thought it was fake. We should treat her well because she travelled so far," said Li.
The hamburger and ice cream cone debuted at past Expos and food is once again playing a major role in attracting Chinese visitors to pavilions.

Belgium was promoting fries with mayonnaise, Australia was serving meat pies and France featured champagne tasting.

"This is the first time I’ve eaten foreign specialty food, I will try more," visitor Yang Wei said, sampling Uruguayan barbecued beef.

In Shanghai, the spotlight will be on the cutting-edge design of the national pavilions, all embracing the theme of "Better City, Better Life".

Highlights include Britain’s stunning dandelion-like "Seed Cathedral", Spain’s "Big Basket" made of 8,500 wicker panels, and Switzerland’s pastoral pavilion.

Du Yuping, a 52-year-old steel company employee from Shanghai, came prepared for the queues with a folding stool.

He said he came to Expo park last week on a trial opening day and ended up waiting up to three hours to see one pavilion, but was pleased to see that operations were running more smoothly on Saturday.

"I want to visit Expo at least six times," Du said, sitting on his chair in the queue outside the Norwegian pavilion.

"I’m focusing on European pavilions today."

By D’Arcy Doran, AFP

Expo extreme

China, in its neverending chase after superlatives in all spheres, is offering the world the biggest fair we’ve ever seen.

IT is the biggest and most expensive party to which you have ever been invited, and almost certainly the oddest – with buildings shaped like rabbits and apples, Copenhagen’s famous Little Mermaid on show, and violin-playing robots to serenade you.

With Shanghai’s 2010 World Expo opened yesterday and set to continue until October, the city will welcome an estimated 70 million visitors to the US$4bil (RM12.88bil) six-month event, as hyped in China and Asia as it is mostly unknown in Europe and most of the West.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has described it as the fulfilment of a 100-year-old dream.

Some speculate that the Expo could have an effect at the highest levels of the communist power structure, with a triumph benefiting the so-called “Shanghai Faction”, the group of high-level cadres allied to former president Jiang Zemin.

Each of the tiny flexible rods that cover the ‘Seed Cathedral’ holds an actual seed to represent the diversity of nature and potential of life. Almost 4,000 people created a near riot rushing to be photographed in front of Britain’s amazing pavilion during a trial opening of Shanghai’s World Expo last month. – AP

Others say China will take this opportunity to improve fractured foreign ties. The country’s relations with the outside world have been strained of late, with issues like the value of the yuan, a fight over censorship with Internet browser giant Google and the trial of four executives of mining company Rio Tinto for bribery and commercial espionage casting a pall over the country’s efforts to present itself as a respected international player.

But for Shanghai itself, China’s only truly global city, it is time to celebrate and put the politics aside for a while.

She surely does so gladly: After Mao Tse-tung came to power in 1949, Beijing’s hardline party bosses never trusted the Shanghainese, correctly judging them to be more interested in money than Marxism. Purged of its banks and international trading houses, Shanghai was kept on a tight leash and fell into an icy hibernation for decades. Now, the city’s 20 million inhabitants are firmly back in favour.

And the city itself has had a makeover that has cost an estimated US$45bil (RM144.9bil) – more than Beijing’s pre-Olympics transformation.

In a matter of weeks the city unveiled three subway lines – Shanghai didn’t have a metro system 15 years ago and now has the world’s biggest underground train system. It also opened a new airline terminal and revamped its waterfront. The facelift for the latter, the historic Bund, alone cost US$700mil (RM2.254bil).

Even by China’s frenetic pace of construction, the speed has been incredible – Pan Haixiao, an urban planning expert at China’s Tongji University, estimates that without the event the changes would have taken three times as long.

Perhaps this expo of superlatives will resuscitate the once-grand tradition of international gatherings that began with London’s Great Exhibition in 1851, gave Paris the Eiffel Tower and drew tens of millions of Americans to the landmark world’s fairs.

A close-up of the delicate, lace-like exterior of the Polish pavilion that is inspired by traditional paper-cutting. – AP

“They were the entertainment event of the year wherever they took place,” says Prof John Findling, author of the Encyclopedia of World’s Fairs and Expos, who suggests they had the kind of impact the Olympics do today. In their heyday, he points out, they were not competing with television, theme parks or the Internet.

“Visitors were anxious to see people from exotic places, the latest in science, invention and fine art, and to enjoy themselves.... There was nothing else in the way of amusement that was like it,” he says.

These days, few can recall recent hosts – such 2005’s Aichi in Japan – and the events have less razzmatazz and a more earnest tone. Their purpose “is to allow a global dialogue on important issues facing the international community,” says Vicente Gonzalez Loscertales, secretary general of the Bureau International des Expositions – the world’s fair equivalent of the International Olympic Committee.

But few outsiders believe that the opportunity to discuss urbanisation – this year’s theme is “Better City, Better Life” – is why 192 participating countries are laying out jaw-dropping sums to appear in Shanghai’s expo. Instead, they point to the thousands of companies hoping to cut lucrative deals and find new customers.

“It’s the 21st century equivalent to the old tribute to the emperor – we’ve all always had to pay to play in China, but wind-up clocks and oompah bands are old hat so now we have to build pavilions, sponsor things, cut cheques to official charities,” argues Paul French of the Shanghai-based consultancy, Access Asia.

There is certainly excitement among many Shanghai residents: 200,000 people attended a trial run early last week and even on cold, drizzling weekdays this past week, inhabitants have been gathering to peer through the 3m-high fence towards the distant Chinese pavilion.

“We have waited 150 years for the chance to hold the expo in our country. Now we have succeeded in two big events: the Olympics and this,” says 77-year-old Wang Xinghua. “I feel even happier when people from other countries come to visit – it represents China standing up in the world.”

Nearby, Song Mi, 47, is expecting officials to clear away her sugarcane cart in case it gives visitors a bad impression – and probably rightly, she thinks.

“I’ve been counting down the days until the expo opens. I want to see everything,” she says. “It’s the biggest thing that’s happened in my lifetime.” – Agencies

By TANIA BRANIGAN

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