Author: admin

• ARPA-E Head Sharpens Focus on Life After Grants

  The ARPA-E agency has increased its focus on commercializing energy research but it’s a concern the DOE has yet to fully address.

  The ARPA-E agency is known for its high-risk energy research projects. But this year’s annual conference had elements of a business bootcamp, offering would-be energy entrepreneurs tips on how to raise money and build a commercially viable product.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• New Method Could Cheaply Convert Natural Gas to Chemicals

  A ceramic membrane could unlock the potential of methane-conversion catalysts and help make use of natural gas that currently goes to waste.

  High-performance ceramic membranes from the R&D company Ceramatec could lead to a cheaper way to convert natural gas into benzene, a liquid that can be used to make a wide variety of chemicals and serve as a component of gasoline.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Mobile Computing Is Just Getting Started

  Smartphones, tablets, and wireless data plans are already a trillion-dollar business. It’s just the beginning.

  Mobile computers are spreading faster than any other consumer technology in history. In the United States, smartphones have even begun reaching the group of relative technophobes that consumer researchers call the “late majority.” About half of mobile-phone users now have one.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Research Hints at Graphene’s Photovoltaic Potential

  Newly observed properties mean graphene could be a highly efficient converter of light to electric power.

  Researchers have demonstrated that graphene is highly efficient at generating electrons upon absorbing light, which suggests that the material could be used to make light sensors and perhaps even more efficient solar cells.

  Conventional materials that turn light into electricity, like silicon and gallium arsenide, generate a single electron for each photon absorbed. Since a photon contains more energy than one electron can carry, much of the energy contained in the incoming light is lost as heat. Now, new research reveals that when graphene absorbs a photon it generates multiple electrons capable of driving a current. This means that if graphene devices for converting light to electricity come to fruition, they could be more efficient than the devices commonly used today.

  Previous theoretical work had inspired hope that graphene had this property, says Frank Koppens, a group leader at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Spain, who led the research. He says the new result, described this week in Nature Physics, represents the first experimental proof.

  To perform the experiment, the researchers used two ultrafast light pulses. The first sent a prescribed amount of energy into a single layer of graphene. The second served as a probe that counted the electrons the first one generated.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Let the People Live-Stream?

  Startup Koozoo wants us to join its streaming video network. I’m not convinced of its widespread utility, though.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• R&D Faces Its Own Fiscal Cliff

  The sequester means across-the-board cuts to federal R&D and, barring a grand budget bargain, anemic research budgets in the years ahead.

  U.S. politicians of all stripes are often quick to sing the praises of innovation and the economic benefits of federally funded research. But unless there’s a dramatic turn of events, U.S. government-funded R&D is poised for years of stagnation.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Sergey's Android-gynous Moment

  Google cofounder calls smartphones “emasculating” while wearing goofy Google Glass.

  We’ve heard plenty of speculation about Google’s “Glass” computer headset. But at the TED conference today, Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, finally revealed its true purpose: restoring strength and perhaps even manhood.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Mozilla’s Mobile Firefox OS Raises Security Questions

  Firefox’s new Web-centric OS will let users run apps from the Web, raising concerns over how to stop malicious software.

  Mozilla’s new Firefox OS for low-end smartphones—aimed initially at Eastern European and South American markets—will face challenges protecting users from the malicious mobile apps that are a growing problem around the world.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Why Sequestration Could Really Hurt Long-Term Research

  The U.S. budget cuts that take effect tomorrow will demoralize future inventors, researchers, and disease curers.

  The across-the-board U.S. budget cuts scheduled to take effect on March 1, known as sequestration, will have ripple effects that hurt scientific and health research for years to come, the heads of two federal research agencies said this week.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Toothbrushes, BristleBots And the Nature of Intelligence

  Fix a vibrating motor to the head of a toothbrush and you have an automaton that can demonstrate surprisingly complex behaviour, say Harvard physicists

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Rats Communicate Through Brain Chips

  Researchers show that animals can collaborate via a brain-to-brain interface.

  Pairs of rats can communicate through brain chips and collaborate to perform a task, report researchers in today’s Scientific Reports. Brain activity recorded in one rat was translated into a pattern of electrical pulses that were then transmitted to another rat that had been trained to push a particular lever in response to one of two patterns of electrical stimulation in its brain. The rats also worked together, say the researchers. If the second rat chose the wrong lever, then the first rat would change its brain function and behavior in the next trial so that the receiving rodent was more likely to get it right, claim the scientists.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Smartphone Makers: Don’t Leave the Elderly Behind

  They may not make up the sexiest market segment. But don’t forget Grandma and Grandpa!

  AllThingsD reports that Fujitsu is pitching an Android phone it’s calling the Stylistic, aimed at the “mature consumer” (read: old folks). Technology for the elderly may not be the sexiest topic, and seniors in general may not be the coolest demographic, but technology companies should be doing more of this. There may or may not be a business case for laving R&D on seniors, but if nothing else, it’s the right thing to do, and could inspire a kind of generational trickle-down brand loyalty to the sons, daughters, and grandkids who would buy these products.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Password You Wear on Your Wrist

  Mobile security startup PassBan offers smartphone owners a slew of authentication options—including one you can wear.

  A mobile security startup called PassBan thinks the best way to keep mobile devices secure is to allow people to choose from a bevy of different authentication options—including one that you wear on your wrist.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Mobile Traffic, Connections, and Network Speeds—Oh My!

  The latest Mobile Operator Industry report contains some interesting stats highlighting the explosive growth of the mobile Web.

  The GSMA, which is a mobile operator industry group, released a beefy report this week on the state of the mobile economy that is nicely designed and, more importantly, chock-full of interesting tidbits.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Protecting Power Grids from Hackers Is a Huge Challenge

  Securing critical infrastructure needs to go far beyond the measures in President Obama’s recent executive order.

  Yesterday, the president’s cybersecurity coördinator, Michael Daniel, appeared in San Francisco at the world’s largest security conference, RSA, to explain how the president’s cybersecurity executive order—intended to help U.S. critical infrastructure to withstand computer attacks—will operate. The order, announced by President Obama earlier this month, will create voluntary security standards for power utilities and other infrastructure companies and allow them to receive classified government information about security threats.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Musk Says Tesla Will Pay Off Its Loans in Half the Time

  Tesla’s CEO claims the company is a success, and partially credits the DOE loan program.

  Speaking alongside Steven Chu at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy’s annual summit outside of Washington, D.C., Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, confidently declared that his company, which received a $465 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, is a success story, and said the company would repay the loan in half the time it is required to. The loan is due by the end of the decade.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• An Autopsy of a Dead Social Network

  Following the collapse of the social network Friendster, computer scientists have carried out a digital autopsy to find out what went wrong

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Stanford Researchers Build Complex Circuits Made of Carbon Nanotubes

  A simple sensor circuit made of hard-to-handle but promising carbon nanotubes is a first step in making the materials practical for computing.

  Researchers at Stanford University have built one of the most complex circuits from carbon nanotubes yet. They showed off a simple hand-shaking robot with a sensor-interface circuit last week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Facebook Nudges Users to Catalog the Real World

  Taking aim at Google, the largest social network wants a database describing as many things as possible.

  More than one billion people visit Facebook each month, mostly to see photos and messages posted by friends. Facebook hopes to encourage some of them to do a little work for it while they’re there. By asking people to contribute data—from business locations to book titles—and to check one another’s work, Facebook is building a rich stock of knowledge that could make its software smarter and boost the usefulness of its search engine.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The “Six Strikes” Copyright Alert System Is Toothless

  What will stem piracy?

  When I was a wee college sophomore, about a decade ago, my Intro to Photography professor was made an example of. The Recording Industry Association of America filed a federal lawsuit against him and 260 others who it claimed were “major offenders” and had illegally downloaded 1,000 copyrighted music files or more. I wasn’t very Napster or Torrent inclined already (and am generally a fairly risk-averse person), but the move scared me off piracy for good. More to the point, as a working writer, I’m come to feel strongly about the need to be paid for what one creates.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• House of Cards and Our Future of Algorithmic Programming

  Netflix knew why its original TV series would be a hit—based on data about the viewing habits of its 33 million users.

  Plenty is being made about how Netflix made its first original TV series, House of Cards, available all at once online, and what that portends for the future of television consumption. But this is nothing new. People now expect to fit entertainment into their own schedules. It seems inevitable that on-demand entertainment will eventually eclipse weekly scheduled broadcasts.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• The "World's Young and Hungry": Where Real Mobile Innovation Will Come From

  Companies are scrambling to develop products and operating systems for the developing world, but any old phone will do.

  For some time now, smartphones have become tediously similar (see “The New Smartphone Incrementalism”). We’ve been to the glitzy U.S. launches—the Motorola Droids, the Nokia Windows phones, the iPhone 5, the Blackberry 10, and so on. Let’s face it: they are much the same. Mobile World Congress this week in Barcelona was filled with the latest advances—but, again, these were at the margins. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Experiments on Cadavers Settle 100 Year-Old Puzzle Over Human Skin Strength

  Langer lines map out the pattern of forces within the skin but nobody knew what caused them. Until now.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Plan to Give Mobile Data Bills a Makeover

  What if mobile subscribers could click a button and top-off their data plan, or even buy mobile Internet access to a single app?

  Most people have enough to worry about without micromanaging their smartphone use, but that’s what it’s come to for many device owners. To avoid exceeding a data cap, and incurring a costly penalty, many people try to meter their phone activities or resist the temptation to click on that Pandora app or YouTube link near the end of a billing cycle.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Data Espionage Sleuths Aim to Put Chinese Corporations in Court

  CrowdStrike says it can help U.S. companies identify the companies that benefit from stolen data.

  In recent years, computer security companies and even U.S. government officials have alleged that attackers in China and elsewhere routinely steal company secrets from U.S. corporate computers. But tracing the perpetrators of such breaches and showing which companies may have received the data copied is extremely difficult. Now a startup company, CrowdStrike, has developed tools that it says can track attacks in enough detail for victims to publicly accuse those benefiting. The companies can then take legal action or lobby for international trade sanctions.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• LG Acquires WebOS for Smart TVs

  Ultimately, the operating system will live or die by its engineering talent.

  LG is acquiring WebOS from Hewlett-Packard, reports CNET’s Roger Cheng, for use in LG’s future smart TV’s.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Brain Implants Can Reset Misfiring Circuits

  Pacemaker-like treatment calms an overactive circuit in the brains of OCD patients.

  A study that combined electrical stimulation of the brain with advanced imaging has shown how correcting misfiring neural circuits can lessen the symptoms of a common psychiatric disorder.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• What ARPA-E Can’t Do

  The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy is highly popular, but its impact so far has been minuscule.

  At this week’s ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C., politicians from both sides of the aisle, together with environmentalists and business leaders, will do something unusual—they’ll agree on something. They’ll all sing the praises of ARPA-E, the agency created in 2009 to fund the development of early stage energy technologies. But what could get lost in all the laudatory remarks is the fact that ARPA-E won’t solve our major energy challenges and can’t fulfill its mission alone.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Astronomers Calculate Orbit of Chelyabinsk Meteorite

  The Chelyabinsk meteorite is from a family of Earth-crossing rocks called Apollo asteroids and there are 80 million others like it, say astronomers

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Coal Demand Falls in the U.S., Rises Everywhere Else

  Cheap natural gas means U.S. electricity producers are buying less coal. But the rest of the world is buying more.

  A glut of cheap natural gas in the United States has recently led utilities to replace some coal-fired electricity generation with that from cleaner-burning gas. But while the domestic coal industry is down, the international market for U.S. coal—especially in Europe and Asia—is booming.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Startup Engineers See-Through Solar Cells

  A spectrally selective approach could let tablets, e-readers, and windows turn light into power.

  Imagine a world where any surface could be coated with solar cells, converting sunlight and even the glow of light bulbs into small amounts of usable energy. This is the goal of a new startup called Ubiquitous Energy. The company hopes to develop affordable, transparent coatings and films that could harvest light energy when applied to windows or the screens of e-readers or tablet devices. One way to use the technology might be in electrochromic windows that turn from clear to dark when the sun is brightest.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  Recommending Given Names

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Solid-State Sequencer Debuts at Genome Conference

  Nabsys’s technology could provide the positional accuracy missing from current DNA sequencing methods.

  Nabsys, a DNA technology startup, showed off today its solid-state gene sequencing machine at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference in Marco Island, Florida. The company says that later this year it will begin selling its machine, which will allow researchers to determine the structural organization of long stretches of DNA. This differs from most existing sequencing methods, which read DNA in short snippets that are later stitched together by software. The new system will, at first, complement existing methods, but it could eventually offer cheaper and faster sequencing than other approaches.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• F-22's Human Interface Kills Humans, Then Lands Them Safely

  User experience design eats its own tail in a high-tech military boondoggle.

  Think Windows 8 is a usability nightmare? Two pilots of the infamously expensive F-22 fighter jet recently went on 60 Minutes to describe how this “phenomenal, phenomenal machine” poisons its pilots’ air supply in the course of normal flight. But the plane is also smart enough to land itself with no help from its passed-out pilot. This is UX design by way of Brazil: the human interface is so bad that it actively tries to kill you the entire time you’re using it, and so good that it can deliver your comatose body back to safety with no help from you at all. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Cybersecurity Risk High in Industrial Control Systems

  Professionals in energy and other industries say design of control systems makes them vulnerable.

  If you thought that concerns over the security of the physical infrastructure of the U.S. are overblown, consider what people in industry say. It’s not particularly encouraging, although there are signs that awareness of the issue is rising.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Social Network That Really Matters to Startups

  Expanding beyond simply connecting investors and new companies, AngelList aims to create a more global startup community.

  AngelList started as a website for investors looking to connect with fledgling startups and vice versa. Now, three years later, it increasingly looks like an indispensable part of the startup scene—and in recent months it has introduced new features that could give it an even more central role.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• "Glassholes" Only, Please

  Why is Google restricting its Glass rollout to rich tech elites?

  Google has always had a big-tent, pseudo-public-service bent to its branding: “Don’t be evil”, “Organize the world’s information,” and the like. Google doesn’t position its products as Apple-like status symbols. Android is for anyone and everyone; even the ubiquitous slang “google it” couldn’t have caught on if the company’s search technology weren’t omnipresent and omni-accessible. Which makes the rollout of Google’s potentially world-changing Glass product seem strange. First, you have to audition on Twitter (or Google+) for access to the product: Google says it’s seeking “bold, creative individuals”. They could also add “rich” to that list: if Google selects your “application,” you still have to cough up $1500 for your pair of techno-specs. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Your Next Smartphone Could Respond to Your Voice, Even When It’s Asleep

  A new feature in Qualcomm’s chips will let you wake your phone with a voice command so it can do your bidding. Now it just needs to learn to cook.

  Imagine waking up in the morning, stretching, and asking your sleeping smartphone, “Ahoy, Google, what’s the weather like?” to get the local forecast.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Molecule Helps Nanoparticles Sneak Past the Immune System

  Researchers have given nanoparticles the ability to tell immune cells not to eat them, a development that could have broad implications for medicine.

  Taking a cue from nature, researchers have designed nanoparticles that can avoid being destroyed by the immune system by convincing immune cells that the particles are part of the body. The advance represents a fundamentally new way to address a major obstacle facing nanoparticle-based drug delivery.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Google Glass Needs Phatic Interaction, Stat

  When you’ve got a computer strapped to your face, do you really want to be talking to it all the time?

  Google Glass’s new demo video is impressive. The product is looking less like magic–the original teaser video made visual and experiential claims that just weren’t plausible–and more like reality. The most interesting thing about the video is how it finally confirms the most mundane, and important, aspect of Google Glass’s user experience: how do you control the damn thing? Google Glass, apparently, relies on a Siri-like interaction: you invoke it by saying “OK Glass” and then issue further instructions.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Chrome Pixel Has Highest-Resolution Screen on the Market

  Taking a page from Apple and Microsoft, Google debuts a new device.

  Google announces today something called the Chromebook Pixel, a laptop running Chrome OS that, as the company says, “brings together the best in hardware, software and design to inspire the next generation of Chromebooks.” That verb “inspire” should sound familiar. Just as Microsoft made the Surface to give a sort of Platonic ideal off of which its manufacturing partners could offer variations, so is Google hoping to achieve the same with the Pixel.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• An Augmented Reality Chip Might Speed Adoption

  If Metaio’s augmented reality chipset can save power in AR apps, smartphone owners could be more inclined to use them.

  Could your next smartphone come with an augmented reality chip? That’s the hope over at Metaio, a German company that announced its first augmented reality processing unit on Thursday. Metaio, which has previously just made software that developers can use to build AR apps, is working with mobile chip maker ST-Ericsson to include this “AREngine” in new mobile chips.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Quick Tour of Windows 8

  An overview of the user experience design of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Buyers Circle Around Ailing Fisker Automotive

  Electric vehicle company Fisker Automotive is in talks to be acquired by Chinese auto companies, a sharp contrast to competitor Tesla Motors.

  Electric car company Fisker Automotive appears to have found the deep pockets it needs.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Carbon Nanotube Transistors Orders of Magnitude Better At Spotting Cancer, Say Bioengineers

  Arrays of carbon-nanotube transistors can detect prostate cancer with a much higher sensitivity than conventional techniques

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Exposé of Chinese Data Thieves Reveals Sloppy Tactics

  A report on the Chinese group that breached the computers of U.S. companies reveals that they took few precautions against detection.

  A beige office block in Shanghai’s suburbs belonging to the Chinese army became world famous on Tuesday after Mandiant, a Washington-based computer security company, released a 60-page report alleging that it houses a group routinely stealing information from U.S. companies. While there’s no direct proof that the Chinese army sponsors the campaign, one thing the report makes clear is that the people carrying it out weren’t the slickest of operators.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Software with an Eye for Starbucks (and Nike and Coke …)

  Startup gazeMetrix uses computer vision to glean information from Instagram photos. It may be the future of marketing.

  Among the 40 million images that people post to Instagram each day are a slew of sunsets, puppies, and—according to Deobrat Singh—Starbucks coffee cups. He would know: he counts them.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Tesla's Explosive Revenue Suggests a Bright Future

  The maker of the Model S is cranking out cars and may be on track to turn a profit.

  Last year Tesla Motors struggled to meet manufacturing targets for its only production car, the Model S, and it recently got hit with a negative review in the New York Times after a journalist ran out of power during a test drive (see “Tesla Blames New Delays on Production Difficulties” and “Musk-New York Times Debate Highlights Electric Cars’ Shortcomings”).

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Tracking Brain Connections in Utero

  Researchers use fMRI to detect strengthening brain circuits.

  Researchers have mapped how neuronal connections develop in the healthy human fetus. Their results were published online on Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• We Still Don’t Know What Google Glass Will Be Like to Use

  New video and images from Google still don’t reveal what its wearable display will show the user.

  Google’s new website showing off Glass—eyeglass frames that insert a display into your peripheral vision—goes some way to explain what the company is planning for the gadget, such as directions and voice control. But the company still hasn’t given us a good sense of what the device will really be like to wear, and is even slightly misleading about it.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Future Shopping Mall of Tech Companies

  Google is likely joining Apple and Microsoft in opening its own retail stores—a trend that points toward a more fragmented user experience.

  Google storefronts could be coming to a mall near you, if recent reports from the Wall Street Journal and the blog 9to5 Google are true. Microsoft, too, has set up several dozen outlets in the last year. Apple, which pioneered the strategy of making it hip to hawk ones own wares, now has some 400 locations. It wouldn’t be surprising if we Amazon open real brick-and-mortar hardware stores, too. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Automakers Shed the Pounds to Meet Fuel Efficiency Standards

  Decades of increasing vehicle weight may be coming to an end as cars get more lightweight materials.

  Automakers are putting some of their best-selling vehicles on a diet in a race to meet strict new fuel-efficiency regulations that will kick in by the middle of the next decade.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Decisions and the Influence of Others

  Researchers work out a way to measure how much a decision is influenced by the opinions of others.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Story of a Study of the Mind

  As a grad student, Rebecca Saxe, PhD ’03, identified the parts of the brain that help us recognize others’ feelings. As a new professor, she took that research a step further in a groundbreaking follow-up study.

  Rebecca Saxe wants to know how our brains learn to be social.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The 50 Disruptive Companies of 2013

  Our fourth annual list of companies around the world whose innovations will reshape markets.

   

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Innovation Efficiency Index

  For the past five years, the Global Innovation Index has ranked countries’ ability to stimulate invention. Published by the French business school INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization, it compares 141 nations on more than 80 metrics, which are adjusted for population or GDP. Unsurprisingly, the top-performing countries are wealthy. But the report also analyzes which countries are best at making scientific advances or creating intellectual property despite disadvantages like unsophisticated markets and infrastructure. This “innovation efficiency” index makes a different group of countries stand out, as shown in the maps below and to the right.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Power It Yourself

  A natural battery in the inner ear could drive implantable electronic devices

  Deep in the inner ear of mammals is a natural battery—a chamber filled with ions that produces an electrical potential to drive neural signals. MIT researchers, together with colleagues at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), have demonstrated that this battery could power implantable electronic devices without impairing hearing.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Automation Sets Us Free

  A 1929 essay by Arthur D. Little argued that workers and consumers would benefit from more mass production, not less.

  Excerpted from “Research and Labor: A Chemist Looks at Modern Life,” in the December 1929 issue of The Technology Review, by Arthur D. Little, founder of the management consulting firm that bears his name.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Steve Ballmer On the Strategy Behind His Strangest Product

  Microsoft’s CEO explains what Windows 8 means to his company.

  Windows 8 is radically different from any previous version of the Windows operating system. Designed to run on smartphones, tablet computers, laptops, servers, and even supercomputers, Windows 8 presents its users with virtually the same interface on any device. The response to this approach has been mixed: some critics have praised the operating system’s gorgeous graphic design and daring indifference to Microsoft’s past; others are baffled (see our own review on page 76). Jason Pontin, MIT Technology Review’s editor in chief, spoke to Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, about what Windows 8 means for his company.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• On Innovation and Disruption

  When did disruption become the overwhelming fact of business? It wasn’t always so. But the most admired businesses of the last 30 years have been technology companies or industrial companies that invested heavily in research and development, whose competitive advantage was their capacity to commercialize disruptive innovations or resist the innovations of other entities.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Mapping the Storms of the Sea

  How an MIT professor’s bold experiment gave rise to modern oceanography

  On October 16, 1969, MIT professor Henry Melson ­Stommel wrote to a worldwide group of his peers, the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research, to propose an experiment of unprecedented scope: an international initiative to measure the general circulation of the Atlantic Ocean. The plan involved a 100,000-square-mile patch of rough water, six research vessels, and on-call air support. The Mid-Ocean Dynamics Experiment (MODE) was hatched.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Braess' Paradox Infects Social Networks Too, Say Computer Scientists

  Traffic planners have long known that closing roads can improve traffic flow. Now network theorists say that removing products from social networks can improve the choice for everyone.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Pinterest’s Founder: Algorithms Don’t Know What You Want

  CEO Ben Silbermann says Pinterest is built on the idea that crowds of people are best at finding content that consumers care about.

  In 2012 the startup Pinterest became a peer of more established social sites by offering things that they didn’t—an attractive design, a focus on images rather than text, and a mostly female population of users. On Pinterest, people use virtual “pinboards” to curate collections of images related to their hobbies and interests, discovering new items for their virtual hoards on the boards of friends and in the site’s personalized recommendations. Tom Simonite, MIT Technology Review’s senior IT editor, recently spoke with Ben Silbermann, Pinterest’s cofounder and CEO, about the company’s popularity.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Bank Where Doctors Can Stash Your Genome

  A new company offers a “gene vault” for doctors who want to add genomics to patient care.

  Genomic sequencing might be more common in medicine if doctors had a simple way to send for the test and keep track of the data.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How A Tablet App Could Help Diagnose Concussions

  Fighting concussions. There’s an app for that.

  The Wyss Institute, at Harvard, has developed a tablet application that, among other things, could help diagnose concussions on the sidelines of a football match. Wyss reports on the findings on its site (and in the Journal of Gerontology); CNET and others have taken also taken note.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Brain is Not Computable

  A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen. Instead, humans will assimilate machines.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Graphene And The EmergingTechnology of Neural Prostheses

  Neural implants are set to be revolutionised by a new type of graphene transistor with a liquid gate, say bio-engineers

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Ambri’s Better Grid Battery

  A tiny startup called Ambri wants to transform our energy system with massive liquid-metal batteries.

  Standing next to the Ping-Pong table in the offices of the battery startup Ambri, chief technology officer David Bradwell needs both hands to pick up what he hopes will be a building block for a new type of electricity grid. Made of thick steel, it’s a container shaped like a large round cake pan, 16 inches in diameter. Inside it are two metal pucks and some salt powder; a round plate has been welded to the top to make a 100-pound battery cell.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Adventures in Infinite File Storage

  Bitcasa’s limitless storage service is a cool idea, but it needs work.

  Imagine never having to worry about running out of space on your laptop, tablet, or smartphone for pictures, videos, or documents; or even having to remember where you saved a file. It’s a wonderful idea and we’re getting closer, but we aren’t there just yet.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Nanocapsules Sober Up Drunken Mice

  Wrapping alcohol-digesting enzymes in a nanoscale polymer allows them to quickly reduce blood alcohol content.

  Researchers have reduced blood alcohol levels in intoxicated mice by injecting them with nanocapsules containing enzymes that are instrumental in alcohol metabolism. The treatment demonstrates a novel drug delivery technology that could have broad medical applications.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest