Innovation Watch Newsletter 1.06
April 6, 2002

SCIENCE

Cloning Pregnancy Claim Prompts Outrage - A woman taking part in a controversial human cloning programme is eight weeks pregnant, claims Severino Antinori, one of the two controversial fertility specialists leading the effort. "One woman among thousands of infertile couples in the programme is eight weeks pregnant," Antinori is reported as saying at a meeting in the United Arab Emirates. If true, this would represent the first human cloning pregnancy.

From Chimp to Chatterbox - Talking is a uniquely human trait. But scientists have long debated how sophisticated human language grew out of the primitive vocalizations of our ape-like ancestors. The most common theory has been that a dramatic evolutionary leap in brain design bestowed linguistic savvy. Now recent studies of our primate cousins suggest that the evolution of language may have been more of a tiny hop than a leap. Surprising similarities in the brains of great apes and humans suggest that our capacity for language may derive from subtle tweaks in structures that arose in the ancestor of humans, chimpanzees and other great apes at least five million years ago.

The Black Hole Next Door - Think of a black hole. No one has ever observed one directly, but chances are that you envision some gargantuan jet-black entity that's far, far away and insatiably consuming any matter or light that comes near it. Some physicists whose job description includes thinking about black holes have conjured up another possibility. They're suggesting that extremely tiny, lightweight versions of these exotic objects could be forming right over our heads when ultra-high-energy particles, called cosmic rays, from space strike atoms or molecules in the atmosphere. Those newly created black holes would then quickly decay, harmlessly raining subatomic particles down onto our planet and ourselves.

Scientists Unleash a New Form of Matter - Scientists have created a new kind of matter: It comes in waves and bridges the gap between the everyday world of humans and the micro-domain of quantum physics. Bose-Einstein condensates ("BECs" for short) aren't like solids, liquids and gases. They are not vaporous, hard nor fluid. There are no ordinary words to describe them. Bose-Einstein condensates are curious objects that obey the laws of the small even as they intrude on the big. BECs come from another world, the world of quantum mechanics.

Photons Get the Quantum Cloning Treatment - Near-perfect copies of single photons have been made in the lab for the first time. Quantum systems cannot be cloned - or duplicated - perfectly, but the development of quantum cryptography and computing relies on a knowledge of exactly how well they can be copied. Antia Lamas-Linares and co-workers at the University of Oxford sent a photon into a crystal where it stimulated the emission of another photon with almost the same properties, confirming theoretical predictions.

Taming High-Tech Particles - There are countless ways in which particles having microscopic dimensions could transform medicine and science. From the tiniest of circuits to the finest of filters, technologies made with such nanomaterials just might be the solution for shrinking the computer chip or removing microscopic contaminants from water. These particles, which have dimensions of billionths of a meter, might deliver drugs to targets inside individual cells or perhaps serve as components in sensors that detect chemical and biological agents.

Osteoarthritis Gene Breakthrough - Scientists have identified genetic factors which may increase the risk of developing osteoarthritis. The breakthrough brings closer the prospect of effective treatments for the crippling disease. The US study, which looked at osteoarthritis in the hand, found eight areas of the human genome indicated an inherited risk for the disease.

Google Uses Toolbar to Unlock Genes - Google has begun an experiment that could turn its modest toolbar software into a supercomputer to tackle scientific problems such as untangling genetic codes. The Internet search company invited 500 people to try out a new version of its toolbar that lets Windows users donate their computers' otherwise unused processing power to the Folding@home project at Stanford University. The project seeks to figure out how genetic information is converted into proteins, complex molecules whose three-dimensional structure is key to everything from fighting off a cold to transporting oxygen around the body.

Future Tech: Through the Looking Glass - "Every day you play with the light of the universe," wrote Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Physicist David R. Smith of the University of California at San Diego takes those words to heart. He spends his days contemplating how to bend light in ways that reverse the normal patterns of refraction. And his are more than theoretical musings. Smith and a handful of like-minded researchers are now building mirror-image materials that could ultimately result in practical applications ranging from better cell-phone antennas to DVDs that could cram 100 movies onto a single disc.

Augmented Reality: A New Way of Seeing - What will computer user interfaces look like 10 years from now? If we extrapolate from current systems, it's easy to imagine a proliferation of high-resolution displays, ranging from tiny handheld or wrist-worn devices to large screens built into desks, walls and floors. Such displays will doubtless become commonplace. Many computer scientists believe that a fundamentally different kind of user interface known as augmented reality will have a more profound effect on the way in which we develop and interact with future computers.

Chips to Fight Kidnapping - An US company is considering producing electronic implants that could be used to keep tabs on kidnap victims via satellite. Originally Applied Digital Solutions had intended to market its VeriChip to patients who wanted to keep their medical records under their skin. But recently the firm has caved in to pressure to include tracking devices.

Japanese Electronics Maker Shows Test-Model Vacuum-Cleaning Robot - Japanese electronics maker Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s is testing a vacuum-cleaning robot that it hopes to put on the market in Japan in two or three years for nearly $4,000. But the unnamed test model shown to reporters Monday still crashes into chair legs and leaves lots of corners unswept.

Putting the Tech in Biotech - "We are going through a massive, massive process of amalgamation, moving from the individual discovery into the data management mode," explains Dr Bruce Cornell, Chief Scientist, at ASX listed biotech device manufacturer Ambri. "Scientists are using technology to trawl through very large databanks, referring to endless epidemiological studies, in their wake the pharmaceutical industry requires large population studies, looking for a few subtle correlations." With big names like Oracle, IBM and Compaq all jumping on the lifesciences bandwagon, the increasing convergence between the infotech and biotech sectors is reaching the point where there the rate of new breakthroughs in life sciences are almost entirely dependent on increases in computing power.

BUSINESS

FCC to Refund Spectrum Payments - The Federal Communications Commission agreed yesterday to return most of the $3.2 billion in down payments made by telecommunications companies that participated in an airwaves auction now mired in litigation. The FCC said it would give back $2.8 billion to 22 companies that bid in the 2001 auction. The companies bid almost $16 billion for the wireless licenses, but have been unable to use them because of a controversy over ownership of the airwaves.

Dutch Court Clears Web Music Swapping - Embattled Internet song- and movie-swappers were given new hope Thursday by a Dutch court ruling protecting the legality of popular file-trading software. In a surprise decision, an appeals court in the Netherlands overturned a lower court ruling that had held file-trading company Kazaa BV liable for copyright infringement, saying Kazaa is not responsible for the illegal actions of people using its software. That decision--which still can be appealed to a higher court--was the first anywhere to protect a file-swapping company against copyright liability. Lawyers and file-swapping aficionados in the United States are now scrutinizing the decision to see what effect it could have in U.S. courts, or in providing a safe overseas haven for the distribution of software that might ultimately be deemed illegal in the United States.

Biotech's Next Wave: Soon You'll Be Wearing It - It sounds quite literally like the stuff of science fiction. In mid-January, a Canadian startup called Nexia Biotechnologies announced that its researchers had genetically engineered "dragline" spider silk in the laboratory. An amazing material, dragline silk is used in nature in the radiating spokes of a spiderweb, and is stronger than steel, lighter than cotton, and harder to tear than Kevlar. For more than a century, synthesizing it has been "the Holy Grail of materials science," says Nexia CEO Jeffrey Turner. Working with military researchers -- the Pentagon wants to create spider-silk body armor -- Nexia spliced a spider's silk-producing genes into cells from the milk-producing glands of cows. The genetically altered cow cells secreted a soupy fluid, from which Nexia was able to extract spider silk that it later spun into fibers.

Public v Private - Herdly anyone in Britain now argues that railway privatisation was done well. Despite some successes-both passenger numbers and safety have increased-the relationship between Railtrack, which owns the network of tracks and stations, and the train operators, which run the trains, has not been a happy one. Moreover, Railtrack has not been well managed. Its expansion schemes have been late and over budget. Matters have not been helped by the state of near-war between two different rail regulators. When Stephen Byers, Britain's transport secretary, finally put Railtrack into administration (bankruptcy) last October, claiming that it was insolvent, many people viewed it as the inevitable end of a privatisation that was ill-conceived and far too complicated. And yet the way Mr Byers handled Railtrack has provoked a storm of protest and, inadvertently, raised a host of questions in Britain about whether privatisation has gone too far, and about the government's plans for involving private firms directly in the public sector through partnerships.

Mandelbrot: A Math Maverick Takes Stock - Benoit Mandelbrot, one of the world's most celebrated mathematicians, believes that our understanding of the stock market is as flawed as medieval astronomy. But the 77-year-old mathematician thinks that he now has the tools to fundamentally revise the way economists envision price variation. The change could be as radical as moving the Earth from the center of the solar system to an orbit round the sun.

CRM: Dream or Nightmare? - Peruse any recent survey of chief information officers and you could conclude that the letters "CRM" are the Holy Grail for corporations, promising to smooth customer relations and improve the bottom line. If only it were always true. Studies released in the last few weeks show that a large number of such projects fail to deliver on stated goals, and dissatisfaction with completed customer relationship management software projects runs high within executive ranks. Analysts said it would be easy to blame the software providers such as Siebel Systems, Oracle and PeopleSoft for the failure rates, but there's plenty of blame to go around. Companies are spending money on CRM software without thinking about their own business strategy or processes, analysts said. To have any chance of success, companies need to organize their internal data so it's easier to find, and to set measurable goals.

Robots: Working for Japan's Future - By the end of the decade, the people who disarm bombs and search for survivors after a disaster may no longer need to put their lives on the line. A machine, possibly made in Japan, may be able to handle the dangerous stuff. That is one goal of the Japanese government's $37.7 million Humanoid Robotics Project (HRP), which aims to market within a few years robots that can operate power shovels, assist construction workers and care for the elderly. In the process, a new multibillion-dollar Japanese industry could be born.

In Brief: Language Lessons - Did you know that there are approximately 6,000 living languages in the world today? And that they all sprang, in a process of "imperceptibly gradual transformations," from a single tongue spoken by early humans in East Africa nearly 150,000 years ago? Moreover, would you believe it if someone told you that most of these languages will be extinct by the next century?

China Hails Own Strategic Nuclear Missile Force - Chinese state media Wednesday hailed the country's nuclear force and second-strike capability, amid a row over US contingency plans listing China as a potential target for nuclear attack. The People's Liberation Army Daily, the People's Daily and other newspapers carried as their top story a eulogy of China's missile and nuclear forces, organized in the Second Artillery Corps.

Spanish Priest Jams Cell Phones During Mass - A priest fed up with mobile phones ringing during Mass has installed an electronic jammer to keep his flock more in tune with God. The Rev. Francisco Llopis, pastor of the Church of the Defenseless, said the beeps, tunes and other digital noise emitted by today's omnipresent cell phones are incompatible with quiet worship. Llopis' church in the southeast coastal town of Moraira is the first in Spain to install such a device, which transmits low-power radio signals that sever communications between cellular handsets and cellular base-stations.

Tonga Gets First Space Tourist - In yet another scheme to raise money, the South Pacific island nation of Tonga has started a space travel industry and signed it first tourist, an American woman, Wally Funk, who trained with the original Mercury astronauts but never made it into space. According to Tongan officials, Funk has agreed to pay $2 million for a seven-day stay in polar low-earth orbit. California-based space rocket developer InterOrbital Systems (IOS) founders Roderick and Randa Milliron said the orbital tourism flights, from a planned spaceport on one of Tonga's 170 islands, are scheduled to begin in 2005.

U.S. Government Trains Cyberdefenders - Long before September 11 and last year's virus-like attacks over the Internet, the United States government announced plans to train an elite corps of computer security experts to guard against cyberterrorism. Officials warned it would be only a matter of time before terrorists learned to exploit vulnerabilities in major systems, from air traffic and banking to spacecraft navigation and defense. Now, more than three years later, the first students have been awarded scholarships to study computer security in return for working at least two years at a federal agency after graduation.

Borg Journalism - As a journalist covering the weblog beat, I officially love weblogs. But sometimes that love can be sorely tested. Weblogs scoop you at every turn, breaking "your" stories before you have a chance to rush your article to press. And even if you do manage to break a story, weblogs take it over, dissecting every point you made and pushing your logic to every inevitable conclusion. Forget that follow-up you had planned - 'blogs have already anticipated and published every point you might have made. Welcome to the world of Borg Journalism. Resistance is futile: journalism is being assimilated.

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ENVIRONMENT

GM Crops Bound to 'Escape', Says EU - Genes will inevitably escape from genetically modified crops, contaminating organic farms, creating superweeds, and driving wild plants to extinction, an official EU study concludes. It adds that the three GM crops at present being trialled in Britain - maize, sugar beet and oilseed rape - pose the greatest risks of all the varieties it examined. The study, just published by the European Environment Agency, confirms environmentalists' worst fears and will make it very difficult for the Government to approve the commercial planting of GM crops in Britain.

World's Wildlife Shows Effect of Global Warming - Global warming is already directly affecting the lives of animals and plants living in a variety of habitats across the world, according to one of the most detailed ecological studies of climate change. An international team of scientists working across a range of disciplines has found that the relatively small increase of 0.6C in the global average temperature seen over the past 100 years has left a major imprint on wildlife.

Biotech Crop Plantings Rise Again in 2002 - American farmers will plant more biotech crops this year, with nearly three-fourths of all soybeans and one-third of corn grown from gene-spliced seeds, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Thursday. The new USDA estimates showed growers continuing to embrace the new bio-crops which are designed to trim chemical costs and boost yields.

GM-Free Nations Fall to Monsanto - Genetically modified foods are poised to slip back into Britain after major advances by Monsanto in countries that have so far refused to grow them. Last week, India lifted a four-year ban on growing GM crops to allow production of three bio-engineered types of cotton and hinted that it will also give the go-ahead to GM foods such as soya and corn. And earlier this month, the Brazil's commission on GM foods recommended the immediate authorisation of GM crops and foods, despite a similar ban. The recommendation would particularly benefit Monsanto, which has been lobbying hard for approval to grow pesticide-resistant soya.

Alaskans Get Firsthand View of Global Warming - Here in suburban Juneau, Alaska, I have a glacier right outside my backdoor. Well, actually, it's about a mile and a half across the lake, but the way it fills up the view - an incandescent, craggy mass framed by dark rock and snow-draped spires - it might as well be just the other side of the flower boxes and bird feeder. Certainly it's close enough to claim as a lawn ornament in a metaphorical way, considering that just over a century ago, the same glacier, the Mendenhall, lay 1,000 feet thick over my house lot. There was no lake at all; that was formed by meltwater as the glacier retreated. There's a photo taken in 1940 from the stone picnic shelter a couple hundred yards from here. It shows the glacier leaning in, startlingly closer and higher. If you've lived in Alaska the past decade or so, you know how real global warming is. A recently publicized study confirms that several of the state's glaciers are melting and receding at a helter-skelter pace, even faster than originally suspected.

ADB Links Land Degradation to Rural Poverty - Land degradation, affecting most provinces in China's western region, has been cited as a significant factor in the deterioration of the environment and taken into mind in alleviating rural poverty. Annual soil loss is estimated at 5 billion tons, according to a recent report released by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Dust storms affect a wide area covering most provinces in North China, including the capital city Beijing and even other countries in East Asia.

Greenhouse Gas Trading Goes Live - The world's first greenhouse gas trading scheme open to all businesses nationwide has been launched in the UK. From 2 April, an initial group of 34 companies can start buying and selling allowances from the government for reducing emissions. Over the five years of the scheme, the 34 businesses have pledged to reduce their combined annual greenhouse gas emissions by more than four million tonnes of carbon dioxide - over five per cent of the planned reduction in the UK's annual emissions by 2010. In return, they will receive allowances of £53.37 per tonne.

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Looking Forward - Filmmakers, writers, futurists and even levelheaded academics regularly offer us thought-provoking glimpses of "the world that is to come," and their vision is often filled with remarkable technological promise and peril. Some of their prognostications are based upon a sound understanding of engineering and science, but some are also purely the result of creative genius and unrestrained imagination. Consequently, it is often very hard to separate the science fact from the science fiction in the speculative works and pronouncements of such erudite individuals. But what, really, can we look forward to in the coming years? What will the future of computing be like in the next 25 years? How will future technology impact our everyday life? What are the promises and potential shortcomings of the silicon-based technology that we have so enthusiastically embraced? And will computer technology keep advancing geometrically forever into the future? To get answers and gain greater insights about the plausible technological developments we can expect in the next 25 years, CCN posed these and other questions to Michio Kaku, Ph. D., professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, and author of the bestsellers Hyperspace and Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century.

Futurists Bet Cash On Their Crystal Ball - In 28 years, commercial airline passengers will routinely fly in pilotless airplanes. Sound ludicrous? Not to Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Craig Mundie, who recently bet Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt $2,000 that the prediction will come true. The wager will be made public Tuesday evening at PCForum, where a group of Silicon Valley futurists plan to take the wraps off of their latest quirky enterprise aimed at twisting mankind's gaze from the rearview mirror to the road ahead. Called The Long Bets Foundation, the non-profit plans to collect high-brow predictions about what the world will be like years, decades and even centuries hence. In the spirit of sportsmanship, prognosticators must put their money where their mouth is - all for the sake of charity, of course, in observance of U.S. anti-gambling laws.

The Web's Weaver Looks Forward - Tim Berners-Lee is lucky: He has been able to watch his creation transform society and business. However, although the World Wide Web will be only 12 years old this December -- six months after its chief architect turns 47 - Berners-Lee envisions a much richer Web. He calls it the Semantic Web. This next-generation Web will be imbued with language-like abilities that enable computers to understand meanings and relationships so digital systems can better serve businesses. Berners-Lee talked with BusinessWeek Senior Writer Otis Port in his digs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, home of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which he has headed since 1994.