Innovation Watch Newsletter 1.09
May 18, 2002

SCIENCE

Scientists Wire Up Rats for Remote Control - [MSNBC] By implanting electrodes in rats' brains, scientists have created remote-controlled rodents they can command to turn left or right, climb trees and navigate piles of rubble - and maybe someday, with the rats outfitted with tiny video cameras, use to search for disaster survivors.

Smoking Gun Found for Alzheimer's - [Nature] Alzheimer's disease may be caused by small clumps of wrongly folded proteins, two new studies suggest. Stopping rogue proteins ganging up might prevent or reverse this and other diseases, including diabetes and CJD.

Hydrogen-Fed Bacteria May Populate the Universe - [Cosmiverse] Primitive bacteria exist in huge numbers deep in the Earth, living on hydrogen gas produced in rocks, a NASA scientist reports in the spring issue of the journal Astrobiology. Recent studies suggest that the mass of bacteria existing below ground may be larger than the mass of all living things at the Earth's surface, according to recent studies cited by the paper's lead author, Friedemann Freund, who works at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. Similar hydrogen-consuming microbes may some day be discovered on Mars, raising new prospects for the possible existence of life beyond Earth, Freund added.

Rain is "Earthquake in the Sky" - [New Scientist] A rain shower in London may have more in common with an earthquake in California than you would think - both processes obey similar statistical rules. The scientists who discovered the link say thinking about rain as a kind of "earthquake in the sky" may help improve models of the weather.

USCF Finding Offers Provocative Insight Into What Drives Cancer - [Science Daily] In a finding that calls into question a prevailing belief about the way in which cancers develop and progress, researchers led by a UCSF scientist report that it may take only two interlocking genetic steps to cause tumors to develop.

Scientists Compile Map of Mouse's Genome - [Washington Post] Passing yet another milestone in the rapidly advancing science of genetics, biologists said yesterday that they had compiled a map of the hereditary instructions of the laboratory mouse, the single most important test organism in medical research.

Tiny Triumph for Science - Scientists have for the first time used the power of light to create mechanical energy for a microdevice, making a single molecule of plastic drive a tiny machine.

E-Tongue Tastes Success - [Physics Web] A new hand-held electronic device that can detect traces of fermented milk promises to speed up production in Swedish dairies.

Autonomic Computing - [Scientific American] Programs crash, people make mistakes, networks grow and change. That's life, and computer scientists are finally building systems that can deal with it.

Aluminum with Bubbles for Cars that Go Boom - [Popular Science] It looks like a silver Rice Krispies treat, but biting into it is not advised. It's actually a superstrong lightweight material called stabilized aluminum foam, and one day it might save your life.

Reconfigurable Robots - [Technology Review] If you think the liquid android in Terminator 2-the one that reassembled itself after being smashed into tiny droplets-is centuries off, think again. Robots built from small, intelligent, interchangeable modules are already squirming their way off the drawing boards in labs around the world, including Mark Yim's Modular Robotics Laboratory at the Palo Alto Research Center.

Family First to Get Computer Chips Implanted - [CNN] With a painless syringe-prick in their upper arms, a Florida family on Friday became the first recipients of tiny, computer chip implants that store medical information.

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BUSINESS

Enron Papers Show Manipulation of California Crisis - [Washington Post] Enron Corp. manipulated the California electricity market with such maneuvers as transferring energy outside the state to evade price caps and creating phony "congestion" on power lines, according to internal Enron documents released yesterday.

Licensing Life - [OECD Observer] No, life cannot be patented. But an invention which includes genetic material as an isolated, purified molecule outside the human body can. That means genes. More than 3,000 patents on genetic inventions have been granted since 1980 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, with the European and Japanese patent offices not far behind. In the US, according to one study, close to 5,000 DNA-based patents have been issued each year since 1995.

McDonald's to Offer Web Access - [BBC] McDonald's fast-food burger restaurants in Japan are reportedly about to offer equally speedy access to the web.

Giving Back - [Inc. Magazine] For years, philanthropy was the preserve of the super-rich. Today, entrepreneurs like Sanjay Chopra are part of a shift in philanthropy. From setting up charitable foundations and grant-making networks to showing businesspeople how to maximize their contributions through personal involvement, entrepreneurs are ushering in a new age of giving.

Radicals for Responsibility - [Fast Company] Social responsibility has captured the attention of a new generation of MBA students. At a time when trust and benevolence are scarce, these students aim higher.

Copyright or Copywrong - [Context Magazine] The Internet, which has given birth to so much innovation in recent years, is on its way to being neutered, Lawrence Lessig warns in The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Lessig says that legal protection is becoming much too broad, especially for intellectual property, because existing companies are interested in stifling any innovation that might threaten them.

The Web Evolves - And Why You Should Care - [Corporate Board Member] The next generation of Internet technology promises all kinds of new, expensive ways to do business. Sound familiar? Here's how to get it right this time.

Powell: U.S. to Abandon Court Treaty - [Washington Post] The United States will tell the United Nations this week it is renouncing formal involvement in a treaty creating the first permanent war crimes tribunal, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. Powell said the Bush administration will notify U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the United States has no intention of ratifying the treaty and now considers itself "no longer bound in any way to its purpose and objective," Powell said on ABC's "This Week."

The Social Net - [Science News] Scientists hope to download some insight into online interactions.

Worry About the Children - [The Economist] Compared with a decade ago, many of the world's children are better off. And yet millions are still mired in poverty, and too many still die from preventable diseases. As diplomats gather in New York to discuss new policies, they should remember that investing in child health, schooling and general welfare is one of the most cost-efficient ways of reducing poverty overall.

History in a Cell - [Atlantic Monthly] The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," W.E.B. DuBois wrote in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly a hundred years ago. He turned out to be right. But will his prophecy hold true for the twenty-first century as well? Steve Olson, the author of the new book Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes, thinks not.

The Brown Revolution - [The Economist] The world is in the middle of a surge of urbanisation, with more than a dozen new "megacities" having arrived in the past two decades.

More Young Japanese Changing Their Language Landscape - [Japan Today] Currently, there is a growing number of Japanese who cannot speak and write proper Japanese. Many adult Japanese complain that they can't understand written and spoken lingo of many young Japanese. Many coined phrases of young Japanese make no sense to older people.

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ENVIRONMENT

Plant-Based Materials Replace Oil-Based Plastics, Polyesters - [Washington Post] When Patrick Gruber, chief technology officer at Cargill Dow LLC, peers into the future, he sees a world made of corn. Not gaudy structures like South Dakota's Corn Palace, whose exterior is decorated with thousands of painted corn cobs, but the stuff of everyday life: T-shirts, socks, milk bottles and auto parts.

Cellphone Radiation "Trapped" in Train Carriages - [New Scientist] Passengers on packed trains could unwittingly be exposed to electromagnetic fields far higher than those recommended under international guidelines. The problem? Hordes of commuters all using their mobile phones at the same time.

Wake-Up Call - [UNEP Our Planet] In the late 1980s preliminary research in northern Quebec and southern Baffin Island suggested that many Inuit in northern Canada had very high levels of PCBs and DDT in their blood and lipid tissues. Canada's Northern Contaminants Programme - in which Inuit, Dene and Yukon First Nations actively participated - generated considerable data throughout the 1990s and showed that the problem was the result of the long-range transport of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) originally released into the environment in tropical and temperate lands. Once they get to the Arctic, POPs degrade very slowly and bioaccumulate, particularly in the marine food web.

Models Put Spin On Future Climate - [Environment Canada] Over the past four decades, results from increasingly complex models of our global climate system have raised awareness of one of the most serious environmental issues facing the world today: the dramatic warming effects of increases in carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping "greenhouse gases" on the earth's atmosphere. Using various scenarios for future emissions of air pollutants, climate modellers have looked ahead 100 years and glimpsed a world in which global temperatures may be nearly 4.5°C higher on average than they were in 1985. Warming is expected to be even greater in Canada, and some parts of the Arctic could see average increases three times that magnitude.

Air Pollution Killed 4,000 in Hong Kong in 2000 - [Times of India] Air pollution was responsible for more than 4,000 deaths in Hong Kong in 2000 and there were no signs the air quality will improve, a study showed Monday. The study conducted by Hong Kong University found that there were 4,262 deaths in 2000 due to cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses such as heart attacks and lung cancer arising mainly from persistent air pollution in Hong Kong.

Ozone Hole Causes Mixed Antarctic Message - [New Scientist] Recent conflicting reports about whether Antarctica is warming or cooling can now at least be explained - it is all the fault of the ozone hole. Changing wind patterns triggered by the ozone hole are causing some areas to warm while others cool, says a new study by David Thompson of Colorado State University in Fort Collins.The temperature changes are so great that they are swamping the gradual warming trend caused by the greenhouse effect. Thompson says that the ozone hole has become "the largest and most significant" cause of climate change on the ice continent.

Navy Shows Polar Cap is Shrinking Fast - [Anchorage Daily News] The polar ice cap has been shrinking so fast that regular ships may be steaming through the Northwest Passage each summer by 2015, and along northern Russia even sooner, according to a new U.S. Navy report. Global warming will open the Arctic Ocean to unprecedented commercial activity. The seasonal expansion of open water may draw commercial fishing fleets into the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska within a few decades. The summer ice cover could even disappear entirely by 2050 -- or be concentrated around northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island.

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THE FUTURE

Wider Economic Gaps Ahead - [Japan Times] The first decade of the 21st century is likely to be no less turbulent than the last decade of the 20th century. It is next to impossible to predict how the world will change in this coming decade, but one thing is certain: The world in 2010 will defy predictions based on today's knowledge.