BOSTON — Do you remember Friday nights at the Museum of Science in high school and college? Laser lights, special effects and Pink Floyd and Zeppelin. This summer it's back — but with a local band and a 21st-century touch. 
 
"The technology is video projection, but like video projection on steroids," said David Rabkin, director of the Museum of Science planetarium.
 
To be exact, it isn't actually a laser show.
 
"It's all digital video, there's no lasers involved," he explained. "The range of colors and the detail and the motion that we can do now, there's just no comparison. It's a completely different media."
 
Using the same 3-D digital animation software that engineers at Pixar use, the Museum of Science staff have animated an album's worth of '70s-style rock music by the band Ghosts of Jupiter.
 
The result is a trippy movement through space, the human body and whirling geometric shapes. At times it can even induce a little vertigo.
 
The show is purely entertainment, Rabkin said, in keeping with the previous, popular laser shows.
 
"It was sort of this cultural icon, and I think sort of a rite of passage is a good way to think about it. Sort of a touchpoint in Boston," he said.
 
Rabkin called this the most technologically advanced digital theater in New England, thanks to a $9 million renovation that was completed last year and funded through the Charles Hayden Foundation and private donations.
 
And he was eager to point out that the museum isn't just for children. The new animation and other planetarium shows are attracting lots of adults, including Ghosts of Jupiter guitarist Johnny Trama.
 
"When I first came to town I think I was here every weekend. That's why this is like really cool," Trama said. "Back then it was just a couple of squiggly lines in the dark. Now it's — I mean, you're literally flying through space. It's pretty cool."
 
 
"The Ghosts of Jupiter: Music Experience" opens June 22 at the Museum of Science.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Can anyone make a battery that’s durable and lasts longer than the status quo? A123 Systems thinks it can — and just in time. The Boston-area cleantech company has been struggling with layoffs and lost revenues, but says it has a new lithium-ion battery that is better and cheaper for electric vehicles. The technology could also be used to store energy for the electric grid. A123 plans to hire 400 new workers in Michigan, as it ramps up production in a tough climate for energy companies.
 
In other innovation news…
 
Waltham-based Constant Contact is expanding in Web marketing with its acquisition of New York startup SinglePlatform, which helps restaurants and businesses list their menus and products online. The acquisition could be worth up to $100 million including earn-outs.
 
Our deal of the week goes to Boston-based Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, a developer of drugs for diabetes and obesity. The two-year-old company has raised $25 million in new venture funding.
 
And Ministry of Supply, a startup out of MIT, has launched a campaign on the Kickstarter website to support production of its high-tech, thermal-regulating dress shirts. It joins Blank Label as another local apparel company using crowd-sourced funding to roll out new products. 
 

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the weather warms up and tourists fill the streets, panhandlers appear in droves, asking for spare change at almost every busy square and intersection. The treatment they receive from pedestrians, storeowners and police varies widely, as does their income. Now there's a new effort in Cambridge to get panhandlers off the streets.
 
Please spare change
 
Justin Newton divides his time between two trendy and rather affluent areas of Greater Boston: Harvard Square and Newbury Street. He's 31, tall with shaggy red hair and a beard. He's also a panhandler. For up to 8 hours a day he sits or stands with a cardboard sign, usually scrawled with a funny message — for instance, one day in May, "Too Ugly to Sell My Body, Already Sold my Soul. Please Spare Change."
 
The shelter where Newton usually stays is closed until the fall, he said, so he and friends sleep on the street. You might see them in front of the Coop or in the Pit in Harvard Square. He said on a good day, after about 8 hours, he makes about $75. He spends his money on what he called homeless "gear."
 
"I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t using some of it to buy, like, pot," he said. "But well, I just bought these two foam mattress pads because my back’s been really bothering me and I needed a better surface to sleep on."
 
When asked if he'd tried to get a full-time job, he shrugged. "I was looking for work for 2 1/2 years before I became homeless. If I couldn’t find a job when I had a roof over my head, think of how much harder it is to get a job when you don’t have a roof over your head, when your address is a drop-in center," he said.
 
The scope of the problem
 
Newton is one of the estimated hundreds of panhandlers in Boston. There's no actual data, and the annual homeless census cannot account for panhandlers. Many of them are just passing through the city. In an informal survey in Harvard Square, those interviewed said they were homeless. On a good day they made about $80, on a bad day about $15. Several said they have caseworkers and collect Supplemental Security Income, the Social Security Adminstration's benefit for people who have disabilities and limited resources. 
 
But even as panhandlers work solo on the streets, they're organized. In Harvard Square, they stagger themselves. John Casey, 59, said he and his friends met each morning to divvy up territory.
 
"We talk in the morning and then we just decide where to go," he said. "I got three other friends who are doing it. We meet at Starbucks. We have our coffee then we head out."
 
What the police think
 
Panhandling is legal. In fact, it's a First Amendment right. But panhandlers can't follow people, touch them or become verbally abusive. It's a fine line, according to Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas. 
 
"We have officers that are just dedicated to working with that population," he said. "And our officers are really good at talking to them, setting some boundaries with them, and oddly enough we've been doing this for 2 1/2 years, they follow these rules."
 
The business perspective
 
The real tension in Harvard Square is between panhandlers and business owners. Haas said Cambridge police have just started a "homeless ambassador program" to train business owners to interact positively with panhandlers and distribute information on local social service agencies. 
 
"What's been really successful is we really have struck a fabulous partnership with the business association and social service providers and we're really working closely together," said Haas.
 
There are efforts to empower panhandlers. For example, for 20 years they've had the option of selling a newspaper called Spare Change News. The police don't take a stance on whether the public should give money to panhandlers; the Harvard Square Business Alliance, however, encourages local residents and tourists to give instead to shelters and other homeless support organizations.

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Can Massachusetts own the emerging field of “big data”? That’s a buzz phrase for systems that make sense of huge amounts of information generated in markets like telecom, retail and social media. This week, Gov. Deval Patrick announced a new initiative that includes forming a big-data industry consortium, creating a matching-grant program for universities and supporting a tech-community space called HackReduce in Cambridge. Intel is also committing $12.5 million to support big-data research at MIT. This could all help revitalize the state’s tech economy — as long as big data doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own hype.

In other innovation news …

Vertex Pharmaceuticals revealed it had mistakenly overstated the benefit of an experimental treatment for cystic fibrosis when reporting on a clinical trial in early May. Vertex stock took a 21 percent tumble on the news but has since made up some of that ground.

Our deal of the week goes to GreenBytes, a data storage company in R.I. that raised $12 million in a round led by Al Gore’s venture firm, Generation Investment Management.

And finally, the startup accelerator MassChallenge has named 125 finalists for its third annual program in Boston, choosing from more than 1,200 applicants. It remains to be seen how many of the eventual winners will end up working on … big data.

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — What’s catching Bill Gates’ attention these days? Liquid Metal Battery, a local startup spun out of MIT. Its technology could help the grid make better use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar and bring electricity to parts of the world that don’t have it, according to CEO Phil Giudice. The startup announced this week that it raised $15 million in new funding from Gates, the energy company Total and Khosla Ventures — a West Coast firm that Giudice says focuses on “clean tech with massive impact.”
 
In other innovation news…
 
It’s the end of an era for a Boston wireless-networking firm that started in 2001. Ember is being acquired by Texas-based Silicon Laboratories for $72 million, but will continue working in the energy and security markets.
 
Cambridge-based Recorded Future raised $12 million in venture funding to help organizations make decisions based on the Web. The company’s software tries to predict everything from the stock market to civil unrest.
 
And last week we told you about Thomas Massie, the MIT entrepreneur running for Congress. Well, he won the Republican primary in Kentucky this week, which means he’s a heavy favorite to make it to Capitol Hill. We’ll be watching to see if other techies follow his lead.
 

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Line up at a Whole Foods fish counter these days and you might notice something missing …
 
Fish!
 
Whole Foods has become the first national grocer to stop selling “red-rated” fish. The designation means the species is overfished or caught in a way that harms other marine life.
 
Whole Foods seafood coordinator Matt Mello rattled off the list of local losses: “Grey sole, octopus, Atlantic cod and halibut.”
 
> > What's a "red-rated" fish? Check the SeafoodWatch guide.
 
The demand for fish
 
Mello said this is the latest step in Whole Foods' long commitment to ocean conservation.
 
“There’s been a timeline in our seafood departments, such as the lobsters — moving away from the lobsters,” said Mello. “We were the first retailer to come out with a rating system. Now we’re the first retailer to stop selling red rated fish.”
 
The first, but not the only: BJ’s and Target have made similar commitments. And the trend has only picked up steam after the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization reported that 80 percent of fisheries were fully exploited, overfished or recovering from depletion.
 
“I always say: if you enjoy the ocean and you want it here for future generations, and you want the bounty that the ocean provides for future generations, you really should care,” said Mello.
 
It’s something avid fish consumer Terry Drucker cares about. He said he wouldn’tgo to another supermarket if Whole Foods stopped selling certain fish.
 
“I guess if they’re pulling it, I’d guess there’d be a good reason for that and I’d try to avoid it — like I didn’t eat swordfish for a long time when I thought they were endangered,” he said.
 
The supply side
 
But Gloucester fisherman Russell Sherman wasn’t taking the bait.

 
“This is a corporate move out of Texas. And to me, it’s basically pandering to their customers,” he said.
 
Sherman has been fishing the waters off Gloucester for 41 years. And he’s been selling his catch to Whole Foods for the past 6 years.  He thought Whole Foods’ decision to stop selling “unsustainable” fish was nothing more than a marketing scheme.
 
“The government has just issued a statement where five more stocks have become sustainable. And I believe that all of our stocks are on the upward trend,” said Sherman.
 
Sherman said sustainability is at the forefront of every fisher’s mind, because fish are their livelihood. Plus, he said the U.S. already has the most stringent fishing regulations in the world.  
 
“I think Whole Foods should hold our industry up as a model to the world. We believe in sustainability,” said Sherman. “Each one of us are small businessmen, small entrepreneurs, who depend on the ocean. And I believe that we are the real conservationists in the world.”
 
The checkout line
 
Since launching the program on Earth Day, Whole Foods has pulled more than a dozen species fish nationwide. Those fish include sturgeon, turbot, some rockfish and swordfish and tuna from certain fisheries.  
 
Four types are missing from the colorful fish displays locally: trawl-caught Atlantic cod, Atlantic halibut, octopus and grey sole. But Mello said most can be easily substituted.
 
“Something like grey sole, we’ll get a lot of requests for, so we have a wide variety of fish, different types of sole. One of the types we offer is Pacific Dover sole. Comes from the West Coast and we’ll offer that,” he said.

May 16, 2012
 
BOSTON — The new president of MIT has been out in front on the university's online education initiatives.
 
On May 16, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named provost L. Rafael Reif as its new leader. Reif, a native of Venezuela, joined the MIT faculty in 1980. He has served as provost since August 2005.

In April, Reif won a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award for his work on MITx, the university's online learning intitiative. (A fellow honoree: Justin Bieber.)
 
From there, the university partnered with Harvard to launch edX, a free platform available to all. Reif discussed the project on Greater Boston on May 2, calling it a "new, phenomenal technological tool."
 
Each institution committed $30 million to edX, and Reif certainly saw a potential return on investment. "There are so many revenue stream possibilities. Just the amount of information that one can learn," he said. "I can see a significant interest from employers worldwide. … The opportunity to monetize this is huge."

That said, "the goal is not to make money with this venture. The goal is to do a better job at education. The goal is to learn about online learning," he said.
 
The initiative also aimed to transform the on-campus experience. "Right now we offer the content in the classroom. For many subjects in the near future, the content will be delivered partly in the classroom ... and partly online," he said. "The online version, what we call the X version, is the one we will offer to the world."
 
Departing MIT president Susan Hockfield praised Reif's role in online learning and beyond. "I and the global MIT community have benefited immensely not only from his brilliant leadership of major initiatives, such as our international engagements and the MITx and edX launches, but also from the vital role he has played in stewarding the Institute’s finances and capital planning during a time of global financial uncertainty," she said in a statement.
 
Reif starts the new job on July 2.
 

May 15, 2012
 
BOSTON — Those used to tracking the bus or train on their smartphones now have a new tool to help with the T. Last week, the MBTA announced that Google Maps now offers interior views of 24 stations on Android phones.
 
"One of our best partners has been Google and obviously they have incredible reach," said Josh Robin, director of innovation at the MBTA. "They approached us about being their first transportation partner" for station maps in the U.S.
 
Indoor maps were already available for a number of U.S. and Japanese airports and shopping centers. See [potentially not entirely up-to-date] list.
 
All the MBTA had to do was hand existing CAD drawings over to Google. "They do the cool part," Robin said. Cost to the MBTA: $0.
 

So they're cool. But are they useful?

"People that are new to the stations … will obviously use something like this more," Robin said. He thought they would also help people who need accessible paths and noted that some stations are particularly complex. "Downtown Crossing — you can go two to three blocks underground," he said. "You can see where the bathrooms are in South Station."
 
Two fans of the transportation/internet nexus came down on opposite sides of the question.
 
"I honestly think they're of limited usefulness," Laurie Deitemeyer said in an email. She tweets as @RideLikeCharlie and hadn't been able to get the feature to work on her Android phone yet.
 
Lower-tech wayfinders made more sense to her. "I think it would be much more effective to have station maps posted," she said. "That would be easier than taking out your phone and waiting for maps to load with limited underground service."
 
Indeed, this reporter's stab at viewing Harvard Station from its bus tunnel yielded nothing but a spinning beach ball. (InSite Wireless provides underground service, Robin said; individual carriers make their own deals with the company.)
 
However, Jason Bereza, who moved to the area in mid-January and blogs at The T Adventure, thought the maps would help "in the cases of stations with multiple exits and for finding things such as restrooms and customer service windows such as the time I got lost trying to find the one at Downtown Crossing," he said in an email.
 
Bereza would like to see additional labels where stations have multiple levels and different entrances for inbound and outbound trains, and to indicate which bus routes stop where. The latter "would've saved me the time I spent 15 minutes walking around Harvard Square trying to find the 1."
 
And perhaps there's a use above and beyond the prosaic commute. "If the purpose is not for people to find their way, but instead for people like me to look at station maps for fun so I can visualize them better, then they're probably awesome," Deitemeyer said.
 

 
BOSTON — A Harvard Law School professor and former Reagan administration official is calling "false" and "complete nonsense" any suggestion that Elizabeth Warren enjoyed an affirmative action advantage in her hiring as a full professor.
 
Harvard Law School professor Charles Fried told WGBH that the Democratic Senate candidate was recruited to be a tenured professor because she was preeminent in the fields of bankruptcy and commercial law, saying, "The suggestion that Elizabeth Warren was an affirmative action hire or that somehow minority status played any role in her hiring, displays a profound ignorance both of the hiring process at a major law school and also of her particular qualifications.”
 
Fried was a member of the appointments committee that reviewed Warren. He said the subject of her Native American ancestry never came up.
 
“She was hired because she is a superstar in her field. She’s at the very top of her profession as a scholar. She was one of the two or three best in the country," he said. Glowing student evaluations have continued to show her abilities in the classroom, he added.
 
He said that calls for Harvard to conduct a review of Warren’s hiring, as suggested by State Republican Party chairman Bob Maginn, were wrong-headed. Maginn did not return our emails.
 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — If you think there’s a bubble in higher education, well, it just might burst in Boston. Harvard and MIT have started a $60 million project, called edX, to offer free courses online and to study how students learn on the Web. It’s one of several big efforts around the country aimed at lowering barriers to top-tier education. And it fits with Boston’s growing ed-tech cluster, which includes companies like Alleyoop, Boundless Learning and TenMarks. Time will tell whether the Web causes radical changes in universities; but tuition costs aren’t going down anytime soon.

In other innovation news...

Jennifer Chayes, the managing director of Microsoft Research New England, will also lead the company’s newest lab in New York. Three former Yahoo scientists are founding researchers at the new lab, and will study the intersection of computer science and social science.

Our deal of the week goes to Hologic, a Bedford-based women’s health company that’s acquiring San Diego’s Gen-Probe for $3.7 billion.

And finally, all eyes are on Silicon Valley as the tech world prepares for Facebook’s IPO. But Boston-area investor Bill Warner, talking about the significance of the local innovation community, says our nation’s first social network was launched on the East Coast and now has 300 million users. That network was created by the U.S. Constitution.

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — From anywhere in the world, you’ll soon be able to receive a Harvard or MIT education for free. The two Cambridge institutions announced on May 2 that they've teamed up for a $60 million online initiative making higher education available for all — and school officials are saying it's a game-changer.
 
The project, named edX, will offer as-yet-unknown courses on-ine and free of charge. “Anyone with an internet connection, anywhere in the world can have access,” said Drew Faust, president of Harvard University, at the announcement. Joining her was MIT president Susan Hockfield, who said, “You can choose to view this era as one threatening change and unsettling volatility or you can see it as a moment with the most exciting possibilities presented to educators in our lifetimes."
 
Acknowledging that higher education has alreadymoved well beyond the confines of traditional classrooms, the universities will also use edX for their own research purposes to study how students learn. “We can begin to ask questions about how well [students] acquire and apply the information months after a course has ended,” said Harvard provost Alan Garber.
 
Enthusiastic as MIT and Harvard were to launch edX, they were still surprised to see how many participants their prototype class drew. That was roughly 120,000 registrants —slightly less than the number of living MIT alumni, Hockfield said, concluding, “MIT students, students at campuses all over the world, are using online materials to supplement what they’re learning through this more standard residential learning environment.”
 
Each enrolled student who passes an edX class will receive a grade and a completion certificate. And while there may be few classes to start, both universities hope other colleges around the world will jump in and join them on the edX platform. Which means access to education could be about to reach unparalleled heights.
 
 

 
BOSTON — Bay State Bike Week is coming up, the Hubway bike share stations have reopened for business and inaugural Boston "bike czar" Nicole Freedman is departing to plaudits: In the last 5 years, Boston has added over 50 miles of bike lanes and cycling has increased by 50 percent.
 
But there's a downside to the bike craze: increased tension, frequently, between drivers and bicyclists.
 
Traveling down the old cow paths
 
No one knows that better than bike commuter John Aslanian. Rain or shine, he puts on his helmet and rides from his home in Brookline to his office in Cambridge.
 
"I ride a bike for ease of commute. It’s a faster way to get from my house to my office," he said. Plus, "there is the fitness aspect."
 
But with the gain comes pain — or at least, some aches. Even with many new bike lanes, Aslanian still has to deal with streets that aren’t bike-friendly. And his biggest frustration is drivers who think the road is meant just for them.
 
"The roads were actually meant for horses and then they were meant for trolleys. So we’re all kind of using the same space," he said.
 
Other cyclists agree: Bikes and cars fighting over limited space leads to limited patience. Said cyclist Morgan Staples, "The infrastructure for Boston is dated and was made 100 years ago and not really made for today’s amount of traffic, so everybody kind of fighting for their space leads to a lot of tension."
 
Red light, green light, 1-2-3
 
The biggest complaint to WGBH was riders who don't follow the rules of the road.
 
Ask Cambridge driver Michael Purcell who the true road rebels are, and he points the finger at cyclists: "They don’t stop at red lights. They pretend that they are different than cars. So what are they? They are vehicles and yet—it’s hard to treat them exactly like vehicles."
 
"It's definitely an issue. We strongly believe that everyone should be following the rules on the road," said MassBike executive director David Watson. "But you have to keep it in perspective ... it's happening with everybody. We have a culture of incivility on our roadways."
  
However, Watson thought one typical driver complaint was tired. "The time is past where motorists can say 'I didn't expect anybody to be there' because we're there in growing numbers, and so there's a greater responsibility on everybody, not just the bicyclists, to pay attention to what's going on around them," he said.
 
One cyclist told WGBH that he doesn’t always follow the law — but that it’s actually out of courtesy.
 
"Sometimes I don’t come to a complete stop at a stop sign," said Lance Stephens, because it's easier for drivers "if I just keep moving rather than them having to deal with a cyclist who has stopped and is restarting."

Former Boston city councilor Tom Keane uses the Hubway system and pointed to the issue of awareness. "Between a bike and a car, bike loses, every time," he said.
 
Serenity … soon?
 
Even though plenty of locals own both bicycles and cars, peace can be a hard sell to the frustrated and angry. One woman told WGBH, "The cyclists are flat-out evil." We started gathering comments from Twitter on the bikes vs. cars debate but dropped the attempt due to the amount of profanity from drivers.
 
Aslanian admitted that some cyclists embrace a rebel image, but he keeps it in perspective: "A few decades it was popular to have a muscle car and go out on the drag strip."
 
He'll continue riding to work in his business suit, which he thinks is the best way to show that not all cyclists are rebels ... some just want to get to work.
 
"The more regular people like myself, that bike on a daily basis — the less appeal [there is] for it to be a rebel activity," Aslanian said.
 
And maybe they can unite against a shared foe. Said Keane, "Pedestrians, I think, are the bane of both drivers and cyclists."

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — While the T faces a budget deficit, a massive debt, political maneuvering and an aging system, some outside experts are working, largely unknown, on a new way of looking at mass transportation. They hope to increase ridership by creating new tools that rely on your smartphone and maybe even folding cars to get you to the nearest station. Also: Read about some of your innovative ideas for fixing the T.

 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A couple of Cambridge companies are gaining ground with their regenerative medicine technology, which uses living cells and other natural materials to promote healing. InVivo Therapeutics says it will soon get the FDA go-ahead to start human trials of its implant for healing spinal cord injuries. Meanwhile, Pervasis Therapeutics, whose technology might help dialysis patients better withstand their treatment, is being acquired by the Irish pharmaceutical giant Shire. Both companies come out of the lab of MIT professor and prolific inventor Robert Langer.
 
In deals news, the venture capital numbers are in from the first quarter of 2012 and Bay State startups continue to outdo their rivals down the coast. In the last three months, VCs invested $650 million in 76 Massachusetts companies compared to just $333 million in 81 companies in New York state. Both states still trail California in VC investment, however.
 
And finally, what’s with all these companies looking to be Facebook killers? The social network is looking a bit vulnerable ahead of its rumored IPO next month. One local startup getting in on the action is Cambridge-based PowerInbox, which is trying to turn email into an interactive platform where you can access social media. Now if it could just get all of our inboxes down to a manageable size. …
 

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — While most of the tech world is talking about Facebook’s billion-dollar acquisition of Instagram, a couple of local startups in mobile and social apps are making some noise of their own. Boston-based AisleBuyer, a maker of mobile commerce apps, is being acquired by California giant Intuit, for a rumored price of around $100 million. And Charlestown-based Springpad has released a new version of its smart notebook app. The software lets you share and discover things like books, movies, and restaurants with your friends. It’s all part of a wave of companies trying to build more useful ways to navigate the Web — and the real world.
 
In other innovation news…
 
Cambridge-based Flagship Ventures and the Merck Research Ventures Fund formed a new partnership to bankroll startups that are developing drugs for unmet medical needs. 
 
Our deal of the week goes to Waltham-based Harvest Power, which raised $110 million in venture funding for its technology that converts organic waste to energy.
 
And in our “distinguished visitor” category, Web startup GrabCAD hosted Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president of Estonia, at its new Cambridge office this week. GrabCAD has operations both here and in its native Estonia; to stay connected, the teams use another Estonian-born service called Skype.

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — I arranged to meet Helen Bryant at the 1369 Coffee House in Central Square, an independent business in a neighborhood that’s arguably one of the last traces of Cambridge’s less-prosperous past.

A tale of two cities ... in one neighborhood
 
Sandwiched between the Sublime Salon and the Hair Collage on Massachusetts Avenue, the coffee shop is just a few doorways away from Pill Hardware with its flaking and peeling red storefront. Rodney’s used bookstore, ABC Pizza and the divey Cantab Lounge are across the street. On the next block west toward upscale Harvard Square is City Hall, the Cambridge Senior Center and the central post office and Y. East about a block toward the Massachusetts Institute of Technology you’ll run into Starbucks, a café that provoked outcry when it arrived in the mid-90s, and that now seems an early indicator of the changes on the way.
 
The 1369 Coffee House is crowded with students and neighborhood locals. Helen is an attorney in private practice, mostly children and family law. Over a cup of strong coffee, she tells me she was born in Cambridge like her three brothers and her father and, except for college, she’s lived here all her life.

“When I was growing up Central Square was just a square full of little shops that you walked through," Bryant said. She remembers Woolworth’s, and the Harvard Doughnut Shop where Starbucks is. "You knew who would be in these places. You knew who worked there. It was either your friends' parents worked there, or you knew who’d be sitting at the counter at the Harvard Doughnut Shop."
 
That was the story, Bryant said, until the 1990s. Then, "these little family-owned businesses started to disappear and were replaced not with another family-owned business but more likely a big chain.”
 
The downside of the old community
 
While the small shops and friendly neighbors made growing up here a pleasure, the Square of the past also had a dark side. Minka vanBeuzekom is a newly elected member of the Cambridge City Council.
 
“When I moved into Central Square in 1990 I was walking down the street and I heard a voice behind me say ‘Get out of the way, lady,'“ she recalled. "I turned around and this guy was coming toward me with a gun drawn and there were three policemen chasing after him."
 
Over the 20 years she's lived in the neighborhood, she's had police in her backyard looking for weapons, and known of "shootings and stabbings and lots of not very nice things," she said. But "that activity’s really plummeted.”
 
For vanBeuzekom, the promise of Central Square renewal is long overdue. After all, the square is where the seat of city government lies. It’s a major transportation hub, not just for Cambridge but for the whole metro Boston area. And it’s an astonishing center of activity.
 
“Those are all the pluses," vanBeuzekom said. "And then, if you actually walk around and you see the condition of some of the buildings, the condition of the sidewalks, the condition of the public spaces, how some of the streetscape is being handled, how vital or not vital it is — that’s where the disconnect lies.”

A moment of change
 
Efforts to revitalize Central Square have gone on for decades — and failed. But for vanBeuzekom, the urban renewal stars are aligned as they’ve never been before, thanks to big pharma.
 
“There’s much more of an urgency because of what’s going on at the eastern end of Mass. Ave., closer to MIT where Novartis is expanding," vanBeuzekom said. "It’s going to be a breathtaking building but mind-boggling development that’s happening — especially when you couple that with Pfizer, which is just on the back side of almost that same block, which will be another large building. So I think there’s a new urgency to solve the Central Square problem.”
 
That urgency is being driven by massive new development projects already begun just blocks away. A quarter-mile east down Mass. Ave., Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis has already broken ground on a Maya Lin–designed park and tower complex. And right across the street, the two blocks of small shops, restaurants and apartments will be replaced by a 240,000-square-foot MIT research facility.
 
City officials and other community interests see the resulting property tax revenues as a historic opportunity to accomplish what others have chronically failed to achieve in the past.
 
"The solutions that came out of the Red Ribbon Commission were middle-income housing, [a] day care center, public space that could be a year-round arts and crafts or farmers market," vanBeuzekom explained."There’s also an effort led by urban planners who helped with the East Cambridge planning team for Kendall Square. And then there’s a third effort going on simultaneously by Community Development, they’re calling that K2C2. So that’s why it seems like we’re going to solve it this time.”
 
Gentrification?

But area residents and small shop owners who have already seen stores and neighbors pushed out by high-tech expansion don’t have much faith in the good will of institutional encroachers or city planners.  They’ve formed coalitions and committees to make sure their interests are heard. And while most would like to see the neglect apparent in some parts of Central Square remedied, there’s deep concern that gentrification pressures will drive poor and middle-class residents out of a once affordable neighborhood.
 
Tim Love is associate professor at Northeastern University’s School of Architecture and a founder of a firm specializing in complex urban projects.  “It’ll be interesting to see how those real estate pressures effect both the mix of people and the kinds of businesses that survive maybe as rents go up," he said. "That’s the big question.”
 
In an area as unique as Central Square, institutional neighbors, he told me, have a particular obligation. Universities have a different kind of responsibility when they’re building on a public street like Mass. Ave. As a positive example, he cited the MIT Broad Center, which has a gallery on the ground floor that mimics the typical Central Square scale.
 
"I think there are ways to mitigate between the needs of life science companies that need big buildings, and the need for those institutions, of companies, to make and contribute to a kind of healthy sidewalk life, which is what Central Square is about," Love said. "It’s one of the most vital, healthy, interesting, active, sidewalk kind of urban environments in the Boston area.”
 
Forces that keep organizations in the square

Beyond institutional goodwill and efforts to hold MIT and big pharma in check, vanBeuzekom believed the organizations that own property in Central Square, like the YMCA and YWCA, will likely moderate the worst of the gentrification pressures.
 
“The YWCA is just embarking on a big expansion project to increase the number of single residency occupant units. And the YMCA is also going to be improving the housing that they have right there," she said.
 
In addition, the Salvation Army has a shelter that provides services to a low-income population, and many social service organizations own their buildings and thus can't be pushed out by rent pressures. "So I think it’s going to be a very interesting juxtaposition of the eastern end of the Avenue that will have the highest high-tech that you can possibly imagine right next to these service industries that are helping the poor and the disenfranchised,” vanBeuzekom said.
 
A tale of two cities ... in harmony
 
Time will tell. But the promise of a uniquely Central Square solution that serves the needs of industry and the people is an enticing aspiration.
 
"We’re going to have the 99-cent McDonald’s and we’ll have the $5.99 carrot-beet juice with boosters from Life Alive. Both of those things will co-exist in Central Square," vanBeuzekom said, laughing.
 

 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A local tech startup is drawing the attention of some big educational publishers — and not necessarily in a good way. Boston-based Boundless Learning is being sued in U.S. District Court by Pearson Education, Cengage Learning and Macmillan, over alleged copyright infringement. Boundless makes a software platform designed to let college students access free online course materials. The young startup has just raised an $8 million venture round and is looking to disrupt the entrenched textbook industry, but it’s now clear that publishers are not going down without a fight.
 
In other innovation news...
 
Local video-game companies such as The Tap Lab, Harmonix and Fire Hose Games will be showing off their wares this weekend at PAX East, the big gamer expo that’s in Boston for its third year. 
 
Our deal of the week is a $37 million funding round raised by OvaScience, a biotech startup using stem-cell science to treat infertility.
 
And on a sad note, Boston-area life sciences entrepreneur Norman Priebatsch is missing and presumed dead after an April 1 hiking accident on Mount Washington. Priebatsch leaves behind a wife, Suzanne; his son, Seth, who runs Boston tech startup SCVNGR and his daughter, Daniella, who works at Google. He was 67.

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.