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In Search of Stupidity is not a traditional business book; rather, it's a high-level analysis of marketing mistakes made by some of the biggest and most well-known high-tech companies over the last 20 years. [Ben Rothke, slashdot.org, Nov 22, 06] Full review Fearless manufacturing prediction for 2007. 8. The United States and China will sign an historic trade agreement that promises to “level the playing field” for U.S. manufacturers. As a result of this agreement, absolutely nothing will change. [David Blanchard, Industry Week, Dec 20] What Is a Start-Up Worth? Andrew Metrick's Reality Check Model assumes its revenues will grow at a rate faster than 75% of similar companies after they went public. In his research, Professor Metrick found that the median start-up does so for five years after going public. Again, to give start-ups the benefit of the doubt, he assumes they can outpace their industry for seven years. [Mark Hulbert, New York Times, Dec 31] Paul Allen Smethers and Alastair France's new book Five Myths of Consumer Behavior: Create Technology Products Consumers Will Love. It's been required reading at the office and for good reason. It's a superb book! Something every marketing student and product designer or engineer should pick up. [Corante Innovation Hub, Dec 18] Lighting a candle. An anonymous reader writes "Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who was fired [as chief economist] by the World Bank blasted drug patents in an editorial in the British Medical Journal titled 'Scrooge and intellectual property rights.' 'Knowledge is like a candle, when one candle lights another it does not diminish its light.' In medicine, patents cost lives. The US patent for turmeric didn't stimulate research, and restricted access by the Indian poor who actually discovered it hundreds of years ago. 'These rights were intended to reduce access to generic medicines and they succeeded.' Billions of people, who live on $2-3 a day, could no longer afford the drugs they needed. Drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research. A few scientists beat the human genome project and patented breast cancer genes; so now the cost of testing women for breast cancer is 'enormous.'" [slashdot.org, Dec 25] Like the workings of government: where you stand depends on where you sit. A few years ago at the AEA annual meeting, Larry Summers, no stranger to controversy, speaking after Stieglitz on a panel opened with "I disagree with everything Joe said." Import penetration, as it is called, worried economists and policymakers when it first became noticeable 20 years ago. .. As imports gained ground, ... the experts shifted the emphasis from production to design and innovation. Let others produce what Americans think up. ... said Stephen S. Cohen, co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, “In order to innovate in what you make, you have to be pretty good at making it — and we are losing that ability.” [Louis Uchitelle, New York Times, Dec 24] So, SBIR is about fostering innovation? Then let the money go to situations where new products and processes have a future beyond filling the federal library with knowledge. Washington need not worry about China's economic boom, much less respond with protectionism. Although China controls more of the world's exports than ever before, its high-return high-tech industries are dominated by foreign companies. And Chinese firms will not displace them any time soon: Beijing's one-party politics have bred a timid business culture that prevents domestic firms from developing key technologies and keeps them dependent on the West. [George J. Gilboy, Foreign Affairs, J/A 2004] What's Coming. No shortage of futurists at year-end. Some guesses from Business 2.0's Chris Taylor: India and China race to the moon (to gain what?), a $100 PC, Wireless USB, you-pay Ad-free news, thin-film silicon solar panels, Big-city Wi-Fi. Academic Nurture The idea that the United States dominates cutting edge science and technology is challenged by the decline in the U.S. share of patents and the growth of corporate spending on research and development (R&D) in emerging countries like China and India. ... Lower R&D cost in emerging economies was not the main reason; market factors, collaboration with university scientists, and quality of R&D personnel were all at least as important as cost ... these results suggest that, for developed economies to maintain an advantage for cutting-edge corporate research, the keys are maintaining excellence and accessibility of research universities [Jerry and Marie Thursby, Science, Dec 8] I’d recommend this book highly to anyone interested in the economics of information technology, or in understanding the future of industries being transformed by IT. [ARUN SUNDARARAJAN reviewing Digital Phoenix: Why the Information Economy Collapsed and How It Will Rise Again. By Bruce Abramson, Journal of Economic Literature, Sep 06]. Researchers, Michael Grätzel, in Switzerland have demonstrated more-efficient water-splitting solar cells based on a cheap, abundant, and long-lasting material: rust. ... by including small amounts of silicon and cobalt, they can grow nanostructured thin films of iron oxide that convert sunlight into the electrons needed to form hydrogen from water. And the iron oxide films do this more efficiently than ever before with this material. [MIT Tech Review, Dec 12] In response to the blurb on Bossel's hydrogen economy paper, one reader said: One must read the whole Proceedings Vol 94, No. 10 before jumping on Bossel's European view of jumbo jets at Frankfurt as the only issue. His physics appear sound but his overall view of energy carrier policy is highly suspect. Solar and wind economies fail too, but for different economical and political reasons. Nuclear electricity may fail also because of wrongly placed environmental safety concerns. A mix of electric and gaseous carriers is a good bet even with R&D in energy at rock bottom now. All that CO2 can be sequestered underground and off peak production of H2 for use in urban areas is very feasible. Don't forget the enormous cost of building electric transmission to all those rural cars! The last paper treats law making issues and suggests it would be stupid to make laws now on a H2 economy. It would be like making internet laws in 1950! Net Energy Minus. “More energy is needed to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds than can ever be recovered from its use,” Bossel explains to PhysOrg.com. “Therefore, making the new chemical energy carrier form natural gas would not make sense, as it would increase the gas consumption and the emission of CO2. Instead, the dwindling fossil fuel reserves must be replaced by energy from renewable sources.” [Lisa Zyga, physorg.com, Dec 11] Hydrogen is only a political asset that lets politicians evade real action on an inconvenient problem. Ulf Bossel published his Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense? in Proceedings of the IEEE. Vol. 94, No. 10, October 2006 Shockley had been given a very vague mission to find a solid replacement for vacuum tubes. Starting in the 1940s Shockley and a band of stalwarts worked on the problem. But they failed repeatedly and spectacularly. So they switched gears and said, 'What are the reasons for our colossal ignorance?' One of Shockley's employees, a guy named John Bardeen, designed a series of incredibly brilliant experiments to diagnose their failures. But one of the experiments was itself capable of amplification, just like the vacuum tubes they were trying to duplicate. Shockley was simultaneously delighted with his group's achievement and frustrated at not having discovered that first device himself. He went, for lack of a better term, transistor-wacky. He withdrew from the group, and in a flurry of activity in 1948, he came up with the junction transistor, which is the origin of everything we see today. So the initial transistor invention was something they stumbled on while they were trying to diagnose their earlier failures to invent a transistor. [Thomas Lee interview, Wall Street Journal, Dec 12] Proud and Ready Graduates. Bigfoot Networks led a graduating class from the Austin (TX) Technology Incubator and raised $4M in VC money. The other grads: BuildForge Inc., which makes tools that help software developers create and test products and was acquired by IBM Corp. in May; Connectione LLC, a mobile solutions provider that helps companies make wireless decisions, reduce wireless costs and save wireless management time; Coupon Logix, which sells software that helps manufacturers and grocery retailers manage coupon promotions; FactoryDNA Inc., which sells software for manufacturing operations; Inventes Inc., which provides information technology service management and governance solutions; LabNow Inc., which is developing a diagnostics system to help monitor the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients in Africa; Solid State Displays Inc., which is developing low-cost, high-performance flat panel display technology; SozoTek Inc., a digital imaging company developing image enhancement technologies. [Austin American-Statesman, Dec 11] Two big technology industry research firms said growth rates in IT spending would slow in 2007. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University believe they have achieved a breakthrough in the reconstruction of three-dimensional models from two-dimensional images (pictured). Their system analyses photographs of outdoor scenes, identifies “sky” and “ground” regions, and looks for visual cues that distinguish horizontal surfaces from vertical ones. It then reconstructs the scene by cutting and folding the original image, taking into account the constraints that apply in the real world: skies are blue, horizons are horizontal and most objects sit on the ground. “In our world things don't just float,” says Martial Hebert, who co-developed the software with his colleagues Alexei Efros and Derek Hoiem. [The Economist, Nov 30] Now some analysts and money managers are hoping the imminent Democratic takeover of Congress will also be bullish for alternative energy stocks by improving prospects for favorable legislation for the industry. One likely initiative, known as a national renewable portfolio standard, would require utilities to derive 10% of their electricity output from renewable sources by 2020. Currently, less than 3% of electricity is generated from such sources. [Norm Alster, New York Times, Dec 10] Except that there is a Bush/Cheney barrier called a veto for at least two years and possible Senate filibusters by the crowd that for the last twelve years denigrated such tactics. Again, where they stand depends on where they sit. If you want additional proof that we’re in a bubble, here it is: young people are trying to get into the venture capital business again. ... here’s my advice to all the Biffs, Sebastians, Brooks, and Tiffanys who want to be kingmakers: Venture capital is something to do at the end of your career, not the beginning. It should be your last job, not your first. [blog.guykawasaki.com] Pause before partnering Most small businesses pine for the opportunity to team up with a large business they think can help them grow. But not so fast. While so-called strategic partnerships can be a boon to small firms, they can also be rife with legal disputes and disappointing results, according to the Kauffman Foundation, a resource center for entrepreneurs. Kauffman just posted a package of articles by legal experts and entrepreneurs and tools to help small businesses thinking about forming partnerships on its Web site, eVenturing.org. The articles offer advice on selecting the right business partners, evaluating the results of a partnership, setting up legal boundaries and rights and co-marketing. There's also a worksheet to help small businesses recruit prospective partners. [Kelly Spors, Wall Street Journal, Dec 7] Although it is still the world's biggest market for capital, America's lead is shrinking fast in almost every area. In some it has been overtaken. The most spectacular collapse has come in the market for IPOs of shares, where the New York exchanges, miles ahead a few years ago, now trail behind London and Hong Kong. [The Economist, Nov 25] Finding Hidden Tumors. Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital are using whole-body MRI to illuminate a tricky disease - neurofibromatosis ... MRI provides detailed anatomical images that crisply map out the location and size of each tumor. [Katherine Bourzac, MIT Tech Review, Nov 14] Great stuff, but like most new technology, who will pay for its general use? What Do The Bios Treasure? With about 300 medical products on the market and nearly 400 more in late-stage tests, Northern California biotechnology companies are on the cusp of a commercial explosion, according to a report by the industry group BayBio. But competition from other states and countries where it is cheaper to operate, with fewer government regulations, could woo many local companies elsewhere, according to several experts [Steve Johnson, San Jose Mercury News, Dec 6] Sure, Kentucky or Chile might seem easier and cheaper for business, but with whom will the bios rap, where will they find venture capital, and how will they replace a lost valuable tech worker quickly? For high tech innovators, cheaper is not the prime location criterion. The study, Here or There? A Study of Factors in Multinational R&D Location, is now available from the National Academies Press ... four factors seem to be most important: output market potential, quality of the R&D personnel, university collaboration, and intellectual property protection. For those who obsess on taxes and the unfairness of paying for all that government, including SBIR pork consider a move to Wyoming. That’s because Wyoming ranks No. 1 in the latest State Business Tax Climate rankings produced by the Tax Foundation. [National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship, Oct 23] For innovative readers. Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox By Charles D. Ellis; Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business WinBy William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre; Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future By Patricia B. Seybold; The Entrepreneurial Imperative: How America's Economic Miracle Will Reshape the World (and Change Your Life) By Carl J. Schramm [The Economist, Nov 18] Scientists combine two molecules that occur naturally in blood to engineer molecular complex that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. [press release Imperial College (London) Dec 1] Stuff Happens. a radar precise enough to track a baseball hurtling through space at 15,000 miles an hour. But the vessel carrying the radar has sprung leaks and blown out electrical circuits. [Jonathan Karp, Wall Street Journal. Nov 28] Everyone's For Innovation, and apple pie. A consortium of high-techers (including Doerr, Chambers, and Levinson) organized by the Congressional Dems called for doubling funding for the NSF and for broadband Internet access over five years, producing 100,000 scientists, engineers and mathematicians over four years and permanently extending and expanding the research and development tax credit. The plan had no price tag, but Bush's similar American Competitiveness Initiative would cost $136 billion over 10 years. [Jim Puzzanghera, LA Times, Nov 26] Of course, no one will have to pay anything just as no one has to pay for Iraq. For the first time since the height of the dot-com bubble, Intel Corp.'s venture-capital arm will reach $1 billion in investments this year. [Jonathan Schieber, Wall Street Journal. Nov 28] Consumer products using extremely small particles of silver to kill germs will need Environmental Protection Agency approval, part of the government's first move to regulate the burgeoning nanotechnology industry. ... Silver is among the most common type of nanomaterials marketed to consumers, of which more than 200 now exist, according to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, [AP, Nov 23] "People are trying to make solar cells that are more efficient," Shapiro told The Lewiston Tribune. "But it's so much cheaper to use fossil fuels, despite all the obvious advantages of solar cell technology." So far, Shapiro's team has created a compound called a "quantum dot" that is made of elements that include copper, indium and selenium. Shapiro said that the quantum dots would be embedded between layers of a solar cell and would absorb energy that is otherwise wasted due to overheating. [Information from: Lewiston Tribune, http://www.lmtribune.com ] The local politicians cheer the need to keep the research dollars flowing, but not one mentioned the second law of thermodynamics about extracting useful work from low quality heat. The nanotube thermal rectifier is the first experimental proof that such a device works. ... Alex Zettl and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), have shown that it is possible to make a thermal rectifier, a device that directs the flow of heat, with nanotubes. If made practical, .... [Pachi Patel-Predd, MIT Tech Review, Nov 22] Now what is needed is a market agile small business that can convert the new knowledge into useful products. A perfect nursery role for an SBIR, but only for a market-driven company that could and would exploit the technical success. Cry Poverty. The funding outlook for biological sciences in the United States is bleak .. Why Aren't There More Scientists Advocating for Funding? ... Science and our country need us. [Science, Nov 17] Two science-crats write an appeal for bio-scientists to beg more loudly. If you believe that more of a good thing is always better, you can understand why the USG cannot balance its budgets even in peacetime. Every science- or other- crat has three direct defenders in Congress (except those few in DC) who want to be re-elected and have no qualms about helping the locals who elect them. Science Fiction. MIT Tech Review is embarking on an experiment of including an essay, memoir, or short fiction about emerging technology. Global Competition. The new home of 2,000 Chinese entrepreneurs and an army of low-wage workers, 25,000 strong, is growing rapidly in front of the walls of this small city of 180,000. One in five of the workers is undocumented and, officially at least, isn't even here. Meanwhile Prato's citizens look on and curse their new neighbors as sewing machines rattle through the night. ... Luigi is a Chinese businessman from Wenzhou. He calls himself Luigi because it's easier for Italians to remember. Practically every pizza maker in Italy is named Luigi, he says. .. Prato Italy was once the center of the Italian textile industry. [By Fiona Ehlers, translated from the German by Christopher Sultan] Although America also has a lot of invited illegal immigrants, it has become harder for those who can't walk or swim across the Mexican border to get here, thanks to Bin Laden's spur to US INS. Buy Now, Pay Later. The U.S. has stimulated export-led growth around the world while continuing to attract the largest share of foreign direct investment, according to a new Council on Competitiveness report, Competitiveness Index: Where America Stands. The total stock of foreign direct investment in the U.S. is now $1.6 trillion, about twice that of the next largest recipient and more than six times as much as China. Between 1986 and 2004, the U.S. received more annual flows of foreign direct investment than any other country in the world. However, this expansion has been funded primarily through rapidly increasing foreign debt, coupled with high consumption and a return to federal budget deficits, the report cautions. Such imbalances should raise warning flags for the future of American competitiveness and global economic stability, which the study discusses in depth. ... The Council on Competitiveness is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy action group focusing on U.S. competitiveness and economic leadership. Competitiveness Index: Where America Stands is available for purchase at http://www.compete.org. [SSTI, Nov 20] The latest surge in Google's market value put its founders Page and Brin in even richer territory - now worth just south of $16B each for as long as the stock trades north of $500 a share - at 64 times earnings. High Tech. Wanted: Technicians willing to climb to the top of 250-foot towers and spend 12 hours there. Resistance to vertigo required. Interest in alternative power sources a plus. ... The need for technicians increases at a rate of about eight jobs per 100 megawatts of installed power generation capacity. [The Oregonian, Nov 21] Many years ago I ascended 250 foot towers from which I quickly floated back to earth in Army parachute training. genuine mainstream public ownership [of hydrogen powered cars] is years and possibly decades away. ... At present the only commercially viable way to manufacture hydrogen is to extract it from natural gas, a process that itself emits large amounts of CO2. [Andrew Frankel on the BMW Hydrogen 7, The Times, Nov 21] Women in Silicon Valley have a problem. They are MIA in the board rooms and executive suites. ... According to a recent study, among the top 103 public companies here, women make up 6.5%of board directors and 8.8% of company leadership teams. [Michelle Quinn, San Jose Mercury News, Nov 21] In 2000, Indian companies made 50 acquisitions worth a total of $957m, according to Dealogic. So far this year, they have made 146 acquisitions worth a total of $20.2 billion. Chinese companies bought 27 foreign firms in 2000 worth a total of $1.8 billion. So far this year they have bought 85 companies worth $15.5 billion. [Paul Kedrosky, Infectious Greed, Nov 20] Discover's 25 Greatest Science Books From here. The top ten are: 1. and 2. The Voyage of the Beagle (1845) and The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin [tie]; 3. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) by Isaac Newton (1687); 4. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei (1632); 5. De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres) by Nicolaus Copernicus (1543); 6. Physica (Physics) by Aristotle (circa 330 B.C.); 7. De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius (1543); 8. Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein (1916);9. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976); 10. One Two Three . . . Infinity by George Gamow (1947) ... As much as I like Darwin, I think Netwon should probably should have ranked higher. Discuss at your leisure. [Stranger Fruit blog, Nov 20] Bahrain as the science and technology hub of the region, is the dream of the Bahraini government which is putting up $1B for a two million square meter campus will host small, medium and large companies in these and other emerging industries. The campus would be staffed by university type researchers recruited from somewhere to live in a land that lives on oil and has tribal warfare as the basis for power. Which Nobel laureate would come first? [story from SSTI, Nov 20] The US really is a country of contradictions: on the one hand, it has the greatest number of Nobel Prize winning scientists and represents all that is cutting-edge and exciting in scientific endeavour and achievement. On the other hand, this most powerful and advanced nation on earth represents the most backward and medieval ideologies that would not look out of place in an isolated goat-herding community somewhere in Borat’s Kazakhstan. The statistics are amusing and familiar: the number of Americans that have seen UFOs and believe they were put on earth by aliens is legendary. [New Scientist blog, Nov 20] We love contradictions; the certified winning candidate in the Sarasota FL Congressional district said there was no evidence of voting machine malfunction when 17000 voters were recorded as voting for no Congressional candidate at all, a non-voting rate six times the rate in the neighboring counties. His rationalization: they were protesting the negative campaign attacks although he offered no supporting data. Experts say they "can't get much more" out of lithium-ion technology. As people use devices more and longer, new products will be needed. The future may be fuel cells. ... Sony introduced the lithium-ion battery in the early 1990s. .. Energy levels improve about 5 to 10% each year, said Jason Howard, energy technologies manager for Motorola's mobile phone business. ... While 5 to 10 percent gains sound impressive, the speed of microprocessors and the storage capacity of disk drives in electronic devices doubles every 18 months to two years. [Mike Hughlett, Chicago Tribune, Nov 17] Plastic Light. Sandia National Laboratory projects that if half of all lighting is solid-state by 2025--that is, made up of OLEDs and their technological cousin, LEDs made from inorganic semiconducting materials--it will cut worldwide power use by 120 gigawatts. That would save $100 billion a year and reduce the carbon dioxide emitted by electrical plants by 350 megatons a year. And plastic light advanced again into the competitive range as Stephen Forrest at the University of Michigan, increases the light output of the thin, flexible OLEDs by 70%. [Neil Savage, MIT Tech Review, Nov 20] The Semiconductor Industry Association expects global chip sales to expand 9.4% because consumers keep buying more things that use chips. Dangers of high tech. Two armed thugs tried to rob of line of people waiting to buy the new Playstation 3 gaming console early Friday and shot one who refused to give up the money, authorities said. The two confronted a "bunch of people who were in line" outside a Wal-Mart store [in Connecticut] shortly after 3 a.m. Surely some of those folks had camera cell phones for recording the events. After more than 15 great years, [Michael Miller is] leaving PC Magazine and Ziff Davis. I am going to work for Ziff Brothers Investments, LLC, a private firm run by the Ziff family. While the Ziff family used to own Ziff Davis, neither the family nor ZBI has been affiliated with Ziff Davis for the past 10 years. But after a short break, I expect to be continuing to blog here in a couple of weeks [Miller's Forward Thinking blog] Charles River Ventures new QuickStart program provides loans of up to $250K which convert to equity on a Series A financing. George Zachary explains in a New York Times interview “We think there are going to be a ton of companies that get started with a quarter-million to build consumer services on the Internet,” said George Zachary, a partner at Charles River, which has offices in Waltham, Mass., and Silicon Valley. “In an environment where a fewer number of deals are generating the majority of the gain, we think it is important to see as broad a selection of companies as possible.” Angel Investors, and some VCs, have been doing this for a long time. [Corante Innovation Hub, Nov 7] Andrew Leigh writes "On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise And Fall Of Commodore by Brian Bagnall is fodder for anyone interested in the buried history of the personal computer. Whether you owned a Commodore computer or want to hear a new angle on the early stages of computer development, you'll find this book easy to pick up and almost impossible to put down. Bagnall has gone to a massive amount of effort in telling this tale, researching and interviewing the real personalities involved. It takes readers on an important and often emotional ride that will many times leave you shaking your head at how painfully it all went wrong." [slashdot.org, Nov 15] schnippy writes "Esquire is running an interesting article on the work on adaptive optics and directed energy being done at the U.S. Air Force's Starfire Optical Observatory. This facility was the subject of a New York Times article earlier this year which suspected the facility was conducting anti-satellite weapons research under the cover of astronomy." [slashdot.org, Nov 15] Immigrants have fueled the US entrepreneurial economy, starting one in four venture-backed companies since 1990 and two in five in high technology, according to a study being released today by the National Venture Capital Association trade group. [Robert Weisman, Boston Globe, Nov 15] Haruki Soma writes, "Unearthed: An A to Z guide to security — from antivirus to zero-day. The writer includes the latest on the UK's newly updated Computer Misuse Act. She also pokes around rootkits, IM, and spyware, pens an ode to Gary McKinnon (aka the NASA hacker, in the 'E is for Extradition' entry), probes Google-induced Spear Phishing, and takes a look back at the Love Bug and Jaschan's Sasser." Security pros won't find much new here, but the rest of us might learn a thing or two. [slashdot.org, Nov 15] I’m writing to you on my laptop on a flight across Canada, courtesy of something I’ve never encountered before: full-blown, three-prong, U.S.-style power outlets on every seat back. Not some wacky jack that requires a $70 adapter - we’re talking regular three-prong outlets. Not in first class; in coach. Free, by the way. Why is it, I wonder, that Air Canada is the pioneer here? [David Pogue, NY Times blog, Nov 9] Three-fourths of global corporate spending aimed at innovation comes from a handful of industries: health, high-tech and automotive, according to consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton ... Spending on innovation rose 6% last year among the 1,000 companies that spend most on research and development, ... The payback: Money doesn't buy effective innovation ... 94 companies outperformed peers while spending less than peers on R&D. [Scott Thurm, Wall Street Journal, Nov 13] Most economists believe that, even at a slower growth rate, capital spending will still be relatively strong in 2007. [Timothy Aeppel, Wall Street Journal, Nov 13] Unlike the market for traded securities, a consensus could be right. In trading, if every pundit agrees, the opposite is sure to happen. Time's Euro version named Linus Torvalds to join worthies like Thatcher and Gorbachov as a hero of the past 60 years because at age at age 21 he changed the world. ... Today, 15 years later, Linux powers everything from supercomputers to mobile phones around the world, and Torvalds has achieved fame as the godfather of the open-source movement. No SBIRs. Forbes 2006 list of the best 200 small companies included ATMI, Ceradyne, and ViaSat. Intel confirmed Friday that it will more than triple its initial investment in Vietnam to $1 billion, dramatically expanding the size of a chip assembly and testing plant that it is building in the country's southern business hub. [San Jose Mercury News, Nov 11] What a difference three decades make. During my two years there in the war, business was essentially zero; investment, mostly French and Chinese, had been wiped out; surface traffic was nil. Now Vietnam is peddling shrimp and catfish well below the costs for American aqua-farmers to much activation of the national protectionist gene. Present job preservation always trumps future economic gain or cheaper consumer prices - concentrated loss and diffused gain. It's moral, it's economic and it's life and death. Biotechnology is here to stay, even if humanity, as we know it, isn't. .. we can't stop ourselves. So we try to simplify the oncoming technologies, treating them like issues we already know. On the right, that means equating ESC research with abortion. ... The left treats ESC research like health care. [William Saletan, Slate, Nov 12] Biotech a Tougher Sell. Biotechnology companies spent an average of eight years and $1.2 B to get a new treatment to the market, about 24% more than it cost makers of traditional drugs to develop a medicine, ... partly because it cost more for them to raise capital, according to the report from researchers at Tufts University. ... Study author Joseph DiMasi [Bloomberg News, Nov 10] prostoalex writes "Wired magazine has coined a new term for the massive data centers built in Pacific Northwest by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! Cloudware is, ironically, a return of the centralized data and bandwidth power houses caused by decentralized and distributed nature of the Internet. George Gilder thinks we're witnessing something monumental: 'According to Bell's law, every decade a new class of computer emerges from a hundredfold drop in the price of processing power. As we approach a billionth of a cent per byte of storage, and pennies per gigabit per second of bandwidth, what kind of machine labors to be born? How will we feed it? How will it be tamed? And how soon will it, in its inevitable turn, become a dinosaur?'" [slashdot.org, Nov 9] No Pain, Please, We're Rich. World demand for energy is set to grow by more than 50% in the next 25 years on current trends, meaning that effective action on climate change is likely to require a technological breakthrough, the International Energy Agency warned. [Agence France-Presse, Nov 8] The required breakthrough is a change in the laws of chemistry so that carbonaceous fuels can be burned in air without producing carbon dioxide. Lotsa luck. Or a cheap air cleaner that captures carbon dioxide and turns it into gold, which would then debauch the worldwide gold market. Columnist Robert Samuelson [Washington Post, Nov 10] list three reasons why not much will happen soon: First: With today's technologies, we don't know how to cut greenhouse gases in politically and economically acceptable ways. Second: In rich democracies, policies that might curb greenhouse gases require politicians and the public to act in exceptionally "enlightened" (read: "unrealistic") ways. Third: Even if rich countries cut emissions, it won't make much difference unless poor countries do likewise -- and so far, they've refused because that might jeopardize their economic growth and poverty-reduction efforts. Lighter Than Air...bus. The head of Boeing's 787 program said Monday that the company is confident it can lighten the hot-selling plane by 2 1/2 tons -- enough to fulfill promises that it will be much more fuel-efficient than any similar commercial jet flying today. [AP, Nov 7] If you are thinking of proposing any innovation that will fly, a dominant criterion for the DOD and any other maker of flying things is WEIGHT. One figure-of-merit you should consider in your captivating yadda-yadda is your remarkable advance in performance per unit weight. Bet on Commodities or Technology? The world oil industry has barely increased its investment in oil and natural-gas production during the past five years after accounting for inflation, a new study finds, suggesting global energy prices are likely to face upward pressure in the years ahead. [Bhushan Barhee, Wall Street Journal, Nov 7] Isn't oil investment a sure bet? Not if prices fluctuate wildly. At least with oil, only the price will vary for at least the life of the youngest present investor. With technology, the entire demand could disappear in less than a decade. OK sure, need a safe return? Buy Treasury bonds with or without inflation protection. Actually, investing a bonds will give a higher total return than many investments in technology, which is why innovations struggle to find financing. For SBIR, the government would be a whole lot wiser putting the SBIR money in Treasuries than in the bulk of what it "invests" in now. silicon and other inorganics self-assemble into working electronics in the same way that the [Venus's flowerbasket] sponge assembles silica into complex shapes (see "Others in Bio-Inspired Materials,"). Energy-intensive, billion-dollar semiconductor fabrication facilities might then be replaced by vats of reacting compounds. But while practical industrial processes are still some way off, scientists are coming to understand how sponges and other sea creatures perform their microengineering miracles. [Kevin Bullis, MIT Tech Review, Nov 8] Data Die Hard. Intermountain Healthcare is accustomed to touting its sophisticated electronic records system. But now the health care giant is having to explain how an old laptop containing the names, job titles, Social Security numbers and telephone numbers of 6,244 employees was donated to a secondhand store and sold for $20. The 14-year-old machine, supposedly scrubbed of all its information, was given to Deseret Industries and sold six weeks ago to a customer. [Salt Lake Tribune, Nov 4] Meanwhile, Starbucks said Friday it had lost track of four laptop computers, two of which had private information on about 60,000 current and former U.S. employees and fewer than 80 Canadian workers and contractors. [The Oregonian, Nov 4] Captivate Them. Richard Doherty got an early glimpse of Sony Corp.'s forthcoming PlayStation 3 video game console a few months ago as it whizzed through a demonstration of a road-racing game featuring Manhattan street scenes in brilliant cinematic detail. "My jaw dropped when I saw the high-definition rendering," said Doherty, a technology analyst who works for Envisioneering Group. "The detail was fantastic. It will captivate people." PlayStation 3 makes its debut in U.S. stores Nov. 17 [Austin American-Statesman, Nov 5] Underwriters Laboratories, a not-for-profit firm that sets product safety standards, is re-evaluating lithium ion battery guidelines. The effort was kicked off with a meeting with PC- and battery-makers last week. IPC, a computer component trade group, has pledged to release a set of battery manufacturing standards by June. And the IEEEis reviewing its battery technical guidelines. [Michelle Kessler, USA Today, Nov 6] AN ARTIFICIAL pancreas that continuously monitors blood sugar levels and provides insulin automatically could free children with diabetes from their reliance on blood tests and injections. ... The new device uses a computer to monitor the patient’s blood sugar levels and administers insulin when levels rise too high. By delivering the correct amount of insulin as soon as it is needed, it should reduce long-term complications ... Clinical trials will start in January [Nigel Hawkes, The Times, Nov 6] prostoalex writes "HBO's controversial special 'Hacking Democracy' on issues with Diebold voting machines is now available in full on Google Video." Covered earlier on Slashdot, the documentary seems to have gathered quite a bit of heat from Diebold in addition to the one that didn't air. [slashdot.org, Nov 6] Of course price matters. Faced with rising tuition fees and fears about standards at home, more and more British students are heading off to college in America. ... The "early estimator" on Princeton University's website, which works out aid entitlement, shows that an applicant from a family with an income of £52,000 a year, that has other children in college and £100,000 in the bank, would have to contribute only about £3,000 a year to the £25,500-a-year cost of tuition and upkeep. "We are in the very strong position of being able to offer financial assistance to everyone who needs it," says Janet Rapelye, the dean of admissions. [The Telegraph, Nov 6] And with the pound strong against the dollar [thanks, profligate US government!], plus a nearly common language, US universities look good to Brit scholars who would otherwise have to pay a stiff top-up fee to what used to be a free college education for those who qualified. Insourcing Manufacturing. Spurred by America's relentless appetite for anything that will slow the aging process, a Japanese pharmaceutical company has picked Pasadena (a Houston TX burb)as its U.S. base to manufacture a health supplement that is a hit in Japan. Earlier this week, Kaneka Corp., based in Osaka, opened an $80 million plant and hired more than 70 employees next to the Kaneka plastics complex in Pasadena to make Coenzyme Q10. The antioxidant is a key ingredient in a variety of products that claim to alleviate the signs of aging and to boost energy levels. [Anastasia Ustinova, Houston Chronicle, Nov 4] new business models and cash. Gary Pisano of HBS argues in a new book that the drug industry is also in desperate need of a new business model. ... Large pharmaceutical firms used to be engines of innovation, but a big fall in share prices, the onslaught of generic drugs and bureaucracy from recent mega-mergers has tripped them up. Research productivity and approval rates for mass-market drugs aimed at rich consumers are falling (see chart). Big firms have grown risk averse, developing lots of imitations of blockbuster drugs and fewer novel ones. ... Nimble biotech firms, however, have a good record of innovation. But the bursting of the biotech bubble has left them starved of cash. ... Care Capital, a $175m investment fund; Kleiner Perkins, a $200m fund; Symphony Capital, $315m; Cure Alzheimer's Fund. [The Economist, Nov 4] IEEE polls its members. Will fusion reactors be a commercial success? Unlikely 57.8%, Equal chances 23.3%, Likely 14.4% . Will a quantum computer reach the market? Unlikely 42.7%, Equal chances 25.1%, Likely 22.1%. Will a universal language translator become commercially available? Unlikely 15.1%, Equal chances 20.1%, Likely 64.8%. Which suggests the question: Should it be government's role to fund the unlikely but societally highly useful stuff and leave the likely stuff to the private market? And if so, should that be SBIR's main role? US Trailing. In the largest such survey ever conducted, 86% of a group of more than 1,000 experts on the next-generation Internet say they worry that the head start of other nations will hurt the US. They fear that China, India, and many European and Asian countries are moving faster to implement the addressing scheme known as Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6. ... 70% said that they are worried that the slow pace of the U.S. rollout so far would affect this country's technological leadership. As for the central issue of national security, 62% thought the head start of other countries would hurt the United States. And 58% worried that the slow start in the United States puts the stability of the Internet here at risk.[David Kirkpatrick, Fortune, Nov 3] Companies are moving engineering, design and other advanced jobs overseas because they can't find enough talent here, a new Duke University study found. ... Companies worldwide are scouring the globe for the best programmers, engineers and other professionals. Smaller companies are more likely to offshore jobs that require advanced skills. [Jonathan Cox, Raleigh News and Observer, Nov 4] Super-vivid, super-efficient displays. New OLED displays for mobile gadgets are poised for debut in U.S. and European markets. [MIT Tech Review, Nov 6]
Roland Piquepaille writes, "Researchers in
California are now using light to control biological
nanomolecules and proteins. They think it can help
them to develop treatments for eye diseases, such as
the loss of the light detectors in the retina
that is a major cause of blindness. They envision
putting some of their nano-photoswitches in the cells
of the retina,
restoring light sensitivity in people with
degenerative blindness such as macular degeneration.
It will be a while before this technique emerges from
the laboratory. ZDNet has
additional references and pictures of what you
can do with these photoswitches." [slashdot.org,
Nov 5]
It's the classic biotechnology story. One day, you're a Kendall Square start-up with no products and an unproven idea. The next day, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies buys your sole competitor for more than $1 billion -- and suddenly everyone is wondering if you're the next big thing. That's what happened to local biotech firm Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. last week. The four-year-old company's stock has been trading at an all-time high since last Monday, when drug giant Merck & Co. said it would buy rival Sirna Therapeutics Inc. for $1.1 billion in cash. [Steven Heuser, Boston Globe, Nov 6] When CIO magazine said podcasting may be a fad, PodShow chief executive Ron Bloom shot back, ‘‘We believe in Fart’s Law: the likelihood of an innovation succeeding increases exponentially with the number of old farts who refuse to endorse it.’’ [Maura Welch, Boston Globe, Nov 6] Are You Economically Literate? Take the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank's Economic Literacy test - there are 13 multiple choice questions. [Carpe Diem, Nov 3] Immediately after the Civil War, there were perhaps 2,000 scientists in the United States. Today American universities award roughly 14,000 science doctorates per year, forming a sea of competence that engulfs even the most distinguished researchers. ... Today’s insights are not so much perceived from the shoulders of giants as glimpsed from a mountain of jointly authored papers announcing results from large labs, and rapidly circulated through journals, conferences and the Internet. [Peter Dizikes, New York Times, Nov 5] Rumor, Innuendo, and Occasional Fact. As soon as an item goes up on his site - regardless of the fact that Drudge himself admits that 20% of his reporting is wrong - it becomes controversy. And though covering the salacious details of a slime tactic might be beneath the Times or the Post, they act as if covering the "controversy" over it rises to the level of a duty. [Columbia Journalism Review Daily, Oct 30] Whatever sells is news? Shipping Capital. FedEx, for instance, has quietly become the nation's second-largest producer of signs and banners, and it's about to unveil a service aimed at helping entrepreneurs get into the direct-mail marketing industry. DHL has launched a small-business magazine and is funding micro-enterprise efforts such as Mays'. And UPS has become one of the top providers of Small Business Administration-backed loans in the country. ... Ramiro Cardenas got a UPS loan for 75% of enough to buy a meat distribution company and he got a lot of business advice "They're more than a bank; they're a partner." [Jim Wyss, McClatchy News Service reprint in Minneapolis Star Tribune News, Nov 2] Four young companies [got] a "Rising Star" trophy for their presentations in the Wisconsin "Elevator Pitch Olympics." : Colby Pharmaceuticals, Madison; Luminary Biosciences, Elm Grove; Ratio Drug Delivery, Madison; Transitions Inc., Verona. 25 state companies seeking outside funding made 90-second pitches to a panel of VCs and angels. [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Nov 3] None did SBIR. Does your SBIR proposal make its elevator pitch in the first paragraph before the reviewer gets lost in your tangled presentation and jargon? Does your Phase 1 Objectives repeat the elevator pitch? Though a billion people use it, nobody fully understands the World Wide Web -- not even Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented it. So Berners-Lee and his colleagues at MIT are teaming up with the University of Southampton in Britain to launch the Web Science Research Initiative. It's the first academic effort to develop a scientific understanding of how the Web works today and may work in the future. [Boston Globe, Nov 3] Spreading Almost as Good as Inventing. Genghis Khan and his immediate successors created and sustained an empire that for about a century allowed, indeed promoted, the diffusion of technologies, mostly from the east to the west. While the Mongols themselves were not the originators of innovative technologies, Weatherford argues that they had a great interest in utilizing them for economic development, thereby increasing the wealth of their empire. ... They improved the status of merchants, developed ways of pro-moting safe travel over long distances, and promoted the manufacture of desirable trade goods. [Darwin Stapleton reviewing Weatheroford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Technology and Culture, Oct 06]
Phished Employees.
alphadogg wrote in with a Network World story
that begins: "Last week, a handful of employees at
Dekalb Medical Center in Decatur, Ga., received
e-mails saying they were being laid off. The subject
line read 'Urgent: employment issue,' and the sender
listed on the message was at dekalb.org, which is the
domain the medical center uses. The e-mail contained
a link to a Web site that claimed to offer
career-counseling information. And so a few
employees, concerned about their employment status
and no doubt miffed about being laid off via e-mail,
clicked on the link to learn more and
unwittingly downloaded a keylogger program that
was lurking at the site. Score another one for
spammers." [slashdot.org, Nov 3]
No Interest Like a Vested Interest. An anonymous reader writes, "Karl Bode of Broadband Reports takes aim at supposed telecom experts and think tankers who profess to love the 'free market,' but want to ban the country's un-wired towns and cities from offering broadband to their residents. If you didn't know, incumbent providers frequently determine towns and cities unprofitable to serve (fine), but then turn around and lobby for laws that make it illegal to serve themselves (not so fine). They then pay experts to profess their love for a free market and deregulation — unless that regulation helps their bottom line. A simple point: 'Strange how such rabid fans of a free-market wouldn't be interested in allowing market Darwinism to play out.'" [slashdot.org, Oct 31] essiej writes, "Even though copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), a newer type of solar panel, is less efficient than its silicon counterpart, millions are being invested in manufacturing. From the article: 'CIGS panels use far less raw material than silicon solar panels and the factories themselves cost less to build,' $25 million compared to $230 million in one example. These types of panels could even be made into a t-shirt logo." [slashdot.org, Oct 30] 2016 What’s next? That was the subject of a symposium in Washington this month held by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, which is part of the National Academies ... most talks touched on two broad themes: the impact of computing will go deeper into the sciences and spread more into the social sciences, and policy issues will loom large, as the technology becomes more powerful and more pervasive. [Steve Lohr, New York Times, Oct 31] clndnng writes "Roughly 90% of web content consists of discussions of software patents, so it's a little surprising that Ben Klemens has written what may be the first dead-trees book analyzing their validity. It has a lot of ground to cover: you could approach the topic from the perspective of the geeks, the lawyers, the economists, or the businessmen. Klemens is equal-opportunity, addressing every perspective." ... You can purchase Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright and Software from bn.com [slashdot.org, Oct 30] So, who was right? Darwin or Gould? A recent paper in Science published by Mark Pagel and his colleagues from Reading University has now addressed the question. ... [Pagel] found, as so often in disputes in science, that both Darwin and Gould were right. Evolution is, indeed, a continuous phenomenon, and the DNA of old species such as the coelacanth do show much change. But nonetheless they display only about 80% of the change seen in species such as ourselves that has undergone intense species turnover. [Terrance Kealy,The Times (London), Oct 30] Kealy wrote another interesting book that should be required reading for S&T policy wonks The Economic Laws of Scientific Research on why science doesn't need infinite government funding. eldavojohn writes "The entire works of Charles Darwin have been made available online. It includes scanned works that were owned by his family — many of which were signed by the author. The University of Cambridge hopes to have this completed by 2009 and is only estimated to be about half way done. If you have any love for books whatsoever, I suggest you take a look at how they present the user with each book. Take the very first edition of On the Origin of Species, for example, where they use frames to display the text on the left with the original image on the right. From the Reuters article: 'Other items in the free collection of 50,000 pages and 40,000 images are the first editions of the Journal of Researchers, written in 1839, The Descent of Man, The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle, which includes his observations during his five-year trip to the Amazon, Patagonia and the Pacific, and the first five editions of the Origin of Species.'" [slashdot.org, Oct 19] Another Open Archive. Since it began publishing in 1665, Britain's Royal Society has run works by Newton, Robert Hooke, Michael Faraday, Watson and Crick, and plenty of other scientific giants. For the next 2 months, visitors can troll the Royal Society's complete journal archive and download articles for free. Intel is the big Kahuna now, but Texas Instruments is all over the digital future ... TI's move into health care is evidence of its ability to find new applications for existing chips ... One low-power processor originally designed to read meters electronically for a German utility found a home at biotech company [Business Week, Nov 6] The I.B.M. factory runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, employing more than 2,000 people, including maintenance and administrative workers. The few hundred people on the factory floor at any one time often have skills seemingly more suited to a research lab than a production line. Ph.D.’s are thick on the floor, and even machine operators with two-year degrees from technical schools must constantly upgrade their skills. ... The United States remains the world’s top manufacturer in terms of the value of goods produced. But the gains, especially in high-tech products, have come from more efficiency. From 1990 to 2005, the number of manufacturing jobs in New York State fell by 41 percent, to 580,000 [Steve Lohr, New York Times, Oct 28] There’s no case anywhere in the world of any previously dominant manufacturer retaining much more than 20 percent once the market is opened to full global competition, said G.M.’s vice chairman, Robert A. Lutz. The ebullient and charismatic Ballmer, who was appointed Microsoft's president in 1998 and CEO two years later, won't settle for enduring a siege: lower the drawbridge and unleash computer programming intellect, he says, and attack. "Microsoft thrives on innovation. As its leader, I have to be a champion of innovation," Ballmer said in an e-mail interview [Salt Lake Tribune, Oct 27] Bigness Required. The rise of big business is one of the seminal events in American history, and if you want to think about it intelligently, you consult historian Alfred D. Chandler Jr. ... It began with railroads. In 1830, getting from New York to Chicago took three weeks. By 1857, the trip was three days (and we think the Internet is a big deal). From 1850 to 1900, track mileage went from 9,000 to 200,000. But railroads required a vast administrative apparatus to ensure the maintenance of "locomotives, rolling stock, and track'' -- not to mention scheduling trains, billing and construction... a plant would be hugely wasteful if raw materials did not arrive on time or if the output couldn't be quickly distributed and sold. Managers were essential; so were statistical controls. [Robert Samuelson, Newsweek] If you intend to start an industry, plan to be pushed aside by big capital to build the required big business. You will be "asked" to retire with a well-rewarded settlement (unless you are Bill Gates re-born) so you can start another industry (or play better golf). `VCs spread their risk across numerous companies,'' said Rafer. ``Why shouldn't we?'' But, Said the CEO of two start-ups who asked not to be named, ``It's hard to lead two separate constituencies. People are giving their workaday life for you. They want to look at you and think, he's mine; he's got my back.'' ... The good news for hyper-entrepreneurs: That second challenge sometimes proves the better bet. [San Jose Mercury News, Oct 24] For SBIR, the government imposes a hard rule that the project leader must be a full-time employee of the SBIR awardee company. But that rule was not to block diversity, it was to prevent small companies, the favored class, from fronting for large companies or universities. Need a laser? Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. A line from Jurassic Park used by Derek Rice [mainetoday.com, Oct 24] to mark advice to Stop thinking like the "Jurassic Park" scientists and start thinking like your customers. On the other hand, real innovators think beyond present customers to making a big profit by changing the customers' world. What customer needed a laser in 1960? Of course the bad news about such change is that the first inventors don't usually reap the profits that come only after years of improvement and customer development. Biggie Sees Silicon. Over the next 10 years, BP Solar believes that a silicon-based cell technology will continue to drive cost efficiency. ... When we talk about efficiency within BP Solar, it is the dollar-per-watt cost to convert sunlight into electricity. The Mono2 module can produce 8 percent more power for the same price as a module made from multicrystalline silicon modules on the market today. [Kate Green, MIT Tech Review, Oct 19] Keeping In Touch. FIBER networks cross the world. Data bits move at light speed. ... Yet in Silicon Valley, the one place that is responsible more than any other for creating the network technology that supposedly renders geography irrelevant, physical distance is very much on the minds of the investors who provide venture capital. ... many venture capitalists who adhered to this doctrine: if a start-up company seeking venture capital is not within a 20-minute drive of the venture firm’s offices, it will not be funded. [Randall Stross, New York Times, Oct 22] With its deep pockets, the Gates Foundation is becoming a leader in underwriting research, luring even applicants that don't specialize in its core areas of education and healthcare ... It has shown a willingness to back long-term research at a time when many funding sources, like corporations and government agencies, have shifted their focus to shorter-term projects. [Robert Weissman, Boston Globe, Oct 22] Ram Shriram, the guy who invested early in Google and made at least a billion, has in part switched his attention to Indian investment possibilities. Now he's decrying the dearth of skills there. Surprising, given all the hand-wringing and publicity in the U.S. in recent years about the never ending supply of talented labor there. First comes this story from the NYT, which cited studies saying that only one in four engineering graduates in India are employable, due to lack of required technical skills, fluency in English or ability to work in a team or deliver basic oral presentations. [Matt Marshall, venturebeat.com, Oct 18] More Valley Sunshine. The four-day [Solar Power 2006] drew more than 7,000 registered attendees and an additional 2,000 people who dropped into the free night of exhibits, said Julia Judd, executive director of the Solar Electric Power Association. Last year's event in Washington, D.C., drew 1,200 participants total. [San Jose Mercury News, Oct 20] Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes, said Oscar Wilde. The Lancet, the leading medical journal, venomously denounced the waterborne theory and its dogged proponent, John Snow. ... What Mr. Johnson shows us is that the crucial test of a mega-city is whether it can digest its own waste. [Ferdinand Mount reviewing Steven Johnson's unputdownable tale: The Ghost Map, Wall Street Journal, Oct 21] For a good fictionalized version of the London cholera problem, read Matthew Kneale's Sweet Thames. InSourcing. A Spanish company that makes train components plans to expand its operation in Schenectady NY, a decision that comes just months after it moved [there] ... SEPSA Corp. of Madrid has filled 17,000 square feet and plans an expansion to 50,000 square feet by next year. [Mike Goiodwin, Albany Times Union, Oct 19] Producers v. Nativists. Growers simply can't find enough workers. According to The Washington Post, 30 percent of the pear crop in California was lost. More than a third of Florida's Valencia orange crop ... Potatoes in Idaho, apples in New York , and grapes in California ... Many employers, including Maine, have tried unsuccessfully to get H-2B visas for seasonal low- or semi-skilled workers. But only 66,000 workers are permitted entry per year for the entire country and the visas can take six to eight months. [Louise Rocha-McCarthy, Portland Press Herald, Oct 19] The nativists, who argue crime, social costs, and degradation of culture (the part that hasn't degraded already), are the classic posture of people in the lifeboat pulling up the ladder. It's Still Silicon. TJ Rodgers disses nano-science solar companies TJ Rodgers is chief executive of Cypress Semiconductor, which is the primary shareholder of the fast-growing silicon panel company, SunPower. ... Rodgers, an outspoken Ayn Rand adherent, says silicon has been studied so much in recent decades, and is therefore so reliable, that his company will wipe out newcomers like Nanosolar, which is unveiling a product based on CIGS. [Venture Beat, Oct 15] most of the trends that will limit American power and influence in the next decade are long-term phenomena produced by economic, demographic and ideological developments beyond the power of the US or any government to influence. The rise of China, the shift in the centre of the world economy to Asia, the growth of neo- mercantilist petro-politics, the spread of Islamism in both militant and moderate forms—these trends are reshaping the world order in ways that neither the US nor any of its allies can do much to control. [Michael Lind, Prospect, Nov 06] Interesting discoveries are reported from Italy. Near Este, in the Venito, at the foot of the Eugancian Mountains, Prof. Prosdocisnmi discovered a prehistoric burial ground with many bronze and clay vessels. Eighty-two tombs were found, of which forty-four seemed to have been opened already by the Romans, while the contents of the others seemed untouched. [Science, July 3, 1880, the first issue] Science Classic free to AAAS members with Science Online. This fall has a bonanza of archives suddenly briefly open to the public. Science in Science Class. I.D. Deception: "Critical Analysis" Intelligent design advocates in Ohio are expanding their campaign for "critical analysis" of evolution to other politically sensitive issues, such as embryonic stem cell research. This new attempt to inject a narrow religious doctrine into the state’s science curriculum was rebutted by AAAS CEO Alan I. Leshner in a mid-September commentary in the Akron Beacon-Journal. Dr. Leshner urged voters in Ohio’s state Board of Education races to be wary of the ruse that would turn the scientific method upside-down, providing no hard evidence and threatening the integrity of the science classroom. Read the commentary: http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2006/0913id.shtml The technology sector is back. Massachusetts' economic recovery has gathered momentum in recent months, ... Makers of technology products are bucking the trend of job losses in manufacturing and adding jobs .... tech exports are surging; foreign sales of semiconductor manufacturing and testing equipment nearly doubled in the past year. Not all the way back, to be sure. Professional and business services so far have regained only about half the nearly 70,000 jobs the sector lost in the last recession. Tech manufacturing, which also shed about 70,000 jobs, has recovered only about 5%. [Robert Gavin, Boston Globe, Oct 17] Silicon Valley was largely built by networks of people and companies whose interlocking relationships help to spawn new start-ups. ... “PayPal may have the highest ratio of individuals going off to start or finance new start-ups in the Valley,” said Scott Dettmer, a founding partner of Gunderson Dettmer, ... YouTube, LinkedIn, Slide, Room 9 Entertainment, SpaceX [Miguel Helft, New York Times, Oct 17] Back Home. Meanwhile, the outsourcing companies are competing for the business and often aren't doing the due diligence on the customer to see if their objectives are realistic and their expectations can be met. [Robert Weissman, Boston Globe, Oct 14] on the growing reversal of outsourcing. McKernan and his two brothers founded a biotechnology firm in Beverly, Mass., with $40,000 in start-up money. Last year, they sold Agencourt Biosciences -- which had 100 employees and $30 M in annual sales -- to Beckman Coulter in a $140 M deal. Earlier this year, they sold another business, Agencourt Personal Genomics, to Applied Biosystems Group for $120 M. .. McKernan was named the 2006 William F. Glaser '53 Rensselaer Entrepreneur of the Year by RPI. ... the youngest person to ever win the RPI award. .. also the first winner who is a graduate of [RPI's]MBA program. Past winners include Fred Smith, CEO of FedEx, and James Crowe, a 1972 RPI grad who is CEO of Level 3 Communications. [Larry Rulison, Albany Times Union, Oct 14] NanoSafety. "The government needs to establish a clear, prioritized research agenda and fund it adequately. We still haven't done that, and time is a-wasting," says committee chair Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) about the safety of people and environment with nanomaterials. More than 200 nanotechnology products are already on the market, including sunscreens and cosmetics, lightweight bicycle frames, and car wax Competing for any new money is a sprawling, bipartisan bill that would authorize $20 billion in new spending over 5 years to strengthen science and math education and expand federal research programs. [Science, Oct 6] Aren't such things wonderful to do and vitally essential? But where will the new money come from? From you the taxpayer and the Chinese loan treasury because no present beneficiary of any other vitally essential program will concede a lesser need. Internet Bubble 2.0. .. Can you spell "irrational exuberance"?, asks Steve Pearlstein (Washington Post, Oct 15) about the latest rage of rich purchases of young profitless .com outfits like YouTube, Skype, and MySpace with purchase prices on the basis of page views and synergy rather than the more traditional metrics of sales and profit. Today's analysis of the Blogger SAT Challenge results is the one I've been looking forward to the most. After subjecting 109 people to a sample question from the SAT writing test, we've learned that bloggers are dumber than high school kids (though there's some reason to question that analysis). .. But bloggers have all sorts of excuses to explain their poor results: They were multitasking at the time; they hadn't spent 18 months in an SAT prep course like the high schoolers; the judges don't "get" sarcasm. [Cognitive Daily, Oct 12] Space Available. Downtown San Jose has the nation's third-highest office vacancy rate, 26%. Where is the vacancy rate low and buildings rising? Where lobbyists congregate to ply a shrink-the-government majority party for endless favors. Steven A. Ballmer of Microsoft said, “The truth of the matter is that some big innovations can’t happen in under a certain amount of time.” [Steve Lohr, New York Times, Oct 14] Doing Your Part. A platoon of economists found that R&D's contribution to Gross Domestic Product is 6.5%, half again as high as for the second half of the 20th century. BEA's report. But your part's not doing much good if it doesn't generate downstream economic activity. Smart People: Necessary but Not Sufficient. WHICH country is best at fostering and using knowledge and skills? ... Germany, perhaps the most striking failure among countries in the study. It continues to churn out highly trained people (it comes fifth on the endowment ranking). But it is not to putting them to work: the average age at which Germans graduate from university (at master's degree level) is 28 years, one of the highest in Europe. And its demographic indicators are flashing red: Germany and Italy between them account for 70% of the total decline in western Europe's workforce in the next 25 years. [The Economist, Oct 14] In real terms, spending on American biomedical research has doubled since 1994. By 2003, spending was up to $94.3 B (there is no comparable number for Europe), with 57% of that coming from private industry. [Tyler Cowen, New York Times] Most dangerous words in business: Everybody else is doing it. -- Warren Buffet. SBIR contractors, beware of dishonesty of downright cheating in proposing or contracting. The government is offering a big reward for informers. Oil is still cheaper than Coca-Cola, about $60 per barrel for oil, vs. $120 per barrel of Coca-Cola, and a gallon of gasoline (national average now $2.25) is cheaper than the national average price of milk, $3.03 per gallon. [Mark Perry,Carpe Diem blog, Oct 15] "vapor-sci" -- news stories based on conference presentations, with no paper to look at -- John Hawks Weblog High technology in this country represents about 15% of GDP, up from 1% in 1970. [Fred Smith, FedEx founder] Not Just Drug Companies. nano-particles are being incorporated in the thousands of products overseen by the FDA, including drugs, foods, cosmetics and medical devices. Those products account for roughly 20 cents of every dollar spent each year by U.S. consumers, giving the FDA a key role in both safeguarding the public and guiding the future development of nanotechnology. [Andrew Bridges, AP, Oct 10] Ray Noorda, the Novell founder and the so-called Father of Network Computing died at 82. He became chief executive of Novell in 1983 and made it a software powerhouse, dominating the market for products that manage corporate networks and let individual computers share files and printers. But Microsoft caught up by the mid-1990s. ... Family members said Mr. Noorda was motivated by the Depression to create as many jobs as he could support. Novell eventually grew to 12,000 employees from 17 when Mr. Noorda arrived. [Paul Foy, AP, Oct 10] To most technologists, depression is the post-2000 era of the NASDAQ decline where the IT stocks actually declined in percentages like the industrials of the real Depression. Let All Flags Wave. the pluralism of knowledge and experience that managers and consumers bring to bear in deciding which innovations to try, and which to adopt, is crucial in giving a good chance to the most promising innovations launched. Where the Continental system convenes experts to set a product standard before any version is launched, capitalism gives market access to all versions. [Edmund Phelps, Wall Street Jounral, Oct 10] America's twentieth-century credit history would confuse a bank loan officer. The world's largest debtor before 1914, the nation became its largest creditor almost overnight before returning to the status of greatest global borrower in the 1980s. The first two acts of that drama are told with extraordinary precision in Mira Wilkins's latest book. The History of Foreign Investment in the United States, 1914–1945. (Harvard Studies in Business History, number 43.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2005. Pp. xxvi, 980. $95.00. [Cyrus Vesser, American Historical Review, Jun 2006] Talent. talk to bosses and you discover a gnawing worry—about the supply of talent. ...the modern economy places an enormous premium on brainpower; and there is not enough to go round. The best evidence of a “talent shortage” can be seen in high-tech firms. The likes of Yahoo! and Microsoft are battling for the world's best computer scientists. Google, founded by two brainboxes, uses billboards bearing a mathematical problem: solve it for the telephone number to call. [The Economist, Oct 7] That issue has a a whole special section on talent. Is there enough talent in the government to read and pick the best SBIR projects? Maybe. The government would not put its best technical and enterprising talent on SBIR; it needs those people to handle the SciTech challenge of getting new things to work. Working for the government also requires a stomach for the political overrides of favoring projects for their political value. Mike Langberg wrote his final column for the San Jose Mercury News before going to a new job outside journalism. Yes, it's often impossible to lure mid-career professionals from out of state, when a comfortable four-bedroom home that costs perhaps $300,000 in Austin or Atlanta sells for $1 M [in Silicon Valley]. ... But quality counts for a lot, because Silicon Valley is such a lure for the best and brightest that employers still get highly qualified applicants and aren't enduring unusually high turnover. [San Jose Mercury News, Oct 6] Percussive maintenance: "Whacking the heck out of something to get it running again." [Andrew Cassell on euphemisms, Phila Inquirer] Or in Army lingo, Don't force it; get a bigger hammer. hpcanswers writes "Venture capitalist Ron Garret has posted a list of eleven (despite the title) common mistakes entrepreneurs with a technology background make. A common theme is that good ideas sell; in reality, what a customer wants sells. By extension, having a Ph.D. and holding a patent are not particularly helpful if the intended end-user does not have the same level of understanding of the widget as the creator does." [slashdot.org, Oct 3] Technostalgia... "iWoz" is a chatty memoir full of surprises, says George Anders reviewing Wozniak's autobiography. [Wall Street Journal, Sep 30] BLOGSPOTTING innovation.corante.com/network WHY READ IT. Head for this blog aggregator -- a blog of blogs -- to get top-quality entries on innovation and creativity all in one place. Corante, a blog media company, selects the best posts from member blogs (15 and counting) and features them alongside commentary from two knowledgeable editors. It adds up to a mix of new voices, helpful context, and ahead-of-the-curve musings on everything from design to the newest ways to measure innovation. This network is the fourth Corante blog hub, joining sites on marketing, media, and technology. [Elizabeth Woyke , Business Week, Oct 9] A New Look at R&D. In the current system of measuring gross domestic product, R&D is treated like a so-called intermediate expense. ..Under the new approach developed by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Science Foundation, R&D spending is treated like capital investment, ... By that measure, R&D would have accounted for nearly 7% of growth from 1995 to 2002, up from a little more than 4% from 1959 to 1994. (The rest comes from an expanding work force, increased capital and other, unexplained factors.) That exceeds by a wide margin the 2% contribution of investment in buildings and factories during the 1959-2002 period. [Greg Ip and Mark Whitehouse, Wall Street Journal, Sep 29] Note that shifting the accounting for R&D says nothing about whether SBIR is good or bad. SBIR merely shifts R&D money that would be spent anyway to a politically preferred group of performers with no economic justification for the preferment. MIT researchers are developing low-cost manufacturing methods based on the rapid reproduction of viruses, says MIT professor Angela Belcher who has engineered viruses to assemble battery components that can store three times as much energy as traditional materials by packing highly ordered materials into a very small space. [Kevin Bullis, MIT Tech Review, Sep 28] More than 8,600 press releases have been issued over the years with "breakthrough" in the headline, a majority of them by computer and electronics companies,' Lee Gomes writes in the Wall Street Journal. He examines whether hyperbole and hype has robbed the term of much of its meaning, focusing on a recently announced 'breakthrough' by Intel involving optical computing. From the article: 'Having been inside Intel's laser labs, I need no persuading that the company is doing important work here, and an Intel spokesman says the development is indeed a "breakthrough" because it shows how real-world optical products can be made with silicon. I wonder, though, how many more breakthroughs we will be reading about before optical computing becomes ubiquitous.'" [slashdot.org, Sep 27] For Her Business. SBA Office of Women's Business Ownership .... List of local centers .... National Association of Women Business Owners .... To find your local centers: .... Count Me In .... Make Mine a Million ..... Ladies Who Launch .... Find a local incubator: .... Angel Capital Education Foundation .... Golden Seeds ... Center for Women's Business Research .... Wells Fargo Women's Business Center [Joanna Ossinger, Wall Street Journal, Sep 25] Doerr says the overall green-energy market is "probably the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century." Since 2001, KPCB has committed $200M to at least nine energy startups. ... To Doerr, alternative energy is an investment theme on the scale of the Internet. Of course, such markets are given to volatile cycles of hype, disillusionment, and rebound. [Business Week, Oct 2] Nanotechnology, the science of creating functional systems on the scale of molecules or smaller, could enable engineers to combine the functions of memory chips and disk drives on a device the size of a dime. Besides the instant boot up, systems that are in development today could enable desktop computers to hold 10 terabytes of data (10,000 gigabytes) or more, and future systems may be able to store data for as long as 100 years while eliminating the worry that the storage media will become obsolete, according to ComputerWorld. Some of these systems could be available today if the economics were right. Others will probably take another decade or so. [Dan Mitchell, New York Times, Sep 23] Copper Out, Glass In, Maybe. Kate Green [MIT Tech Review, Sep 25] reports the coming demise of copper in airplanes because its hundred miles of insulated copper wire is a big liability: it's heavy, it's susceptible to electromagnetic interference, and when not properly maintained, it can cause system failures and fires. Now researchers at Texas A&M developed a novel optical switch that enables much of that copper to be replaced by FO lines. But economics may be a big barrier to ever seeing it in Boeing planes since the 787 design is already cast with a more cost-effective optical communication network onboard. While it’s nothing like 2000, strong earnings have allowed companies to take bigger risks on unproven technologies. Corporate venture investing rose to $1.05 billion in the first half of this year, up from $680 million in the same period last year, according to the National Venture Capital Association. [Miguel Helft, New York Times, Sep 22] I need to focus on the short-term rather than on the future. Battening down the hatches to ride out the economic storm is so tempting in poor economic conditions. Yet it increases the odds for failure. When your business strategy shrinks to "how am I going to live day to day?" it might be time to consider closing up shop. If cash is a problem and you can no longer secure bank loans, consider bringing in another equity partner to strengthen your cash position. However, a far more viable strategy is to reduce your selling prices to ensure a steady flow of customers and a continuing turnover of your inventory. Although you will be making less profit on each sale, you will be protecting your market share. When bad economic times loom, don't give up the ship. Instead, craft a strategy to come sailing through the downturn as an even stronger company. [Arizona Business Gazette, Sep 21] The 2006 WSJ Silver Medal for Technology Innovation went to HelioVolt (Austin TX) for the fastest and most effective way to manufacture CIS (Copper Indium Selenide), the most reliable and best-performing thin film [photovoltaic] material. One SBIR (Phase I so far from MDA) perhaps created by Ron Gale. VP for Business Development and formerly Chief Technical Officer for Kopin.Other SBIR companies among the winners and runners-up: Xencor (Pasadena CA), Invitrogen San Doego CA), CardioMag Imaging (Schenectady NY), Sunpower (Athens OH), Fiberstars (Solon OH), A123 Systems (Boston MA), Eikos (Raynham MA), Advanced Diamond Tech (Champaign IL), Coverity (Menlo Park CA). About half the small company winners had a little SBIR help. Companies with a lot of SBIR may well not compete well because they have lost sight of innovation and fallen for the lure of government money. "US Patent and Trademark Office made a new record for the number of software patents awarded in a single year. The agency has issued 893 new patents yesterday. Pushing the total to 30,232 in this year [slashdot.org, Sep 20] InnoCentive® says it is an exciting web-based community matching top scientists to relevant R&D challenges facing leading companies from around the globe. We provide a powerful online forum enabling major companies to reward scientific innovation through financial incentives. Other Business Week highlighted sites for "crowdsourced crowds" : IBM's InnovationJam , Cambrian House. innovation isn't free, that innovation actually is quite expensive and quite risky. ... You have to connect your innovation initiatives and your innovation investments to your broader business strategy, and look at those areas where you are going to get, or think you can get, a competitive advantage [Nicholas Carr, Wall Street Journal interview, Sep 11] Innovation is only free when a lifestyle company does government R&D (especially with SBIR money) with no intention of investing anything itself. But then after the contract, there's no future. Getting Solar to Commerce. Prashant Kamat (University of Notre Dame) uses the carbon nanotube. ... so that the tubes stuck up from the surface like hairs. The tubes then eased the passage of the liberated electrons from the cell to the electrode that collected them. Using this technique doubled the efficiency of Dr Kamat's cell from 5% to 10% at ultraviolet wavelengths and he reckons it would create similar increases in efficiency in both plastic and dye-based cells. Such a boost would take novel solar cells closer to becoming a commercial reality. [The Economist, Sep 16] The article discusses two other new techniques as well. If Universal Display is right, lightbulbs in the future won't come in boxes. They will be incorporated into the wallpaper. .. The company so far has made transparent light sources and prototypes of transparent displays. .. 22% of the US electricity consumed goes toward lighting [CNET news.com, Sep 5] Drew a Blank? A handful of journals that publish only negative results are gaining traction, and new ones are on the drawing boards. ... Example: In the 1990s, publication bias gave the impression of a link between oral contraceptives and cervical cancer. In fact, a 2000 analysis concluded, studies finding no link were seldom published, with the result that a survey of the literature led to "a spurious |
