Smart Economy

Smart 18 hour dynamic erasable paper photocopies

Xerox Corporation scientists reported on Nov 27 that they have invented a way to make photocopy prints whose images last less then a day, so that the paper can be used again and again. The technology, which is still in a preliminary state, blurs the line between paper documents and digital displays and could ultimately lead to a significant reduction in paper use.

The project is a collaborative development between the Xerox Research Centre of Canada and PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Inc.).

Paul Smith, manager of XRCC’s new materials design and synthesis lab, shows the 16-hour disappearing capabilities of the temporary documents. (Photo credit: Greig Reekie)

Full Story see here >> [...]

ETA: 2009-2011?

Social Impacts of Technology> Violent video game effects linger in brain

Study: Violent video game effects linger in brain


CNN reports that teens who play violent video games show increased activity in areas of the brain linked to emotional arousal and decreased responses in regions that govern self-control, a study released on Tuesday found.

The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to record tiny metabolic changes in
brain activity in 44 adolescents who were asked to perform a series of tasks after playing either a violent or nonviolent video game for 30 minutes, according to Dr. Vincent Mathews, a professor of radiology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis and the study's author.

The children, with no history of behavior problems, ranged in age from 13 to 17. Half
played a T-rated first-person shooter game called "Medal of Honor: Frontline," involving
military combat, while the other group played a nonviolent game called "Need for Speed:
Underground."

Full Story >>[...]

U of T home to first molecular printer in Canada

Think of it as a miniscule dot-matrix printer that uses biological ink. Students and faculty at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Optical Sciences (IOS) will have access to the Nano eNabler, the first benchtop molecular printer in Canada, which will allow them to place microscopic dots of biological material onto surfaces with nanometer spatial precision.

In a six-month pilot project, Bioforce Nanoscience of Ames, Iowa has loaned the printer to the IOS, so that faculty and students can apply the technology in new research scenarios and experiments.

“This is a great example of how researchers and industry partners are working together,” says Karen Grant, managing director of the IOS. “The company benefits because we are writing application notes on how it’s used. We benefit because we can offer state-of-the-art equipment to our faculty, who can bring their students to come and work with it and experience it.”

The printer places dots on a variety of substrates by channeling a solution of biomolecules such as proteins, DNA, or antibodies from a reservoir onto a tape tip. The tape tip is then lowered with meticulous accuracy onto a surface to drop the dot.

Cynthia Goh, associate director of the institute, is a physical chemist who saw the potential the device could have for her research. Part of her work is in tissue engineering, where she requires the ability to immoblize biomolecules so she can study their material properties. Goh is also working on building micron-sized channels to control fluids at the microscale. The printer will allow her to innovate new designs quickly.

“Before, if I wanted to try out an arrangement of molecules, I’d have to build a whole mask, trace a design onto silicon, expose the silicon to light and then etch the channels. This takes time. It’s costly,” Goh explains. “But with this printer you don’t have to do complex microfabrication. You almost just type in the pattern you want.”

Venkat Venkataramanan, head of IOS scientific operations, says that though the Nano eNabler is designed to place biological dots, there could be many other applications in phototonics, semiconductors, or in microstructures used in optics. The company behind the printer hopes the institute, which brings together diverse faculty and students from chemistry, physics, materials science and electrical and computer engineering, will help find those new uses.

Given that the printer is just on loan, it is possible that demand for time with the equipment may exceed its availability.

“We’re expecting to also have people from medical sciences, hospitals and other universities wanting to use it, because this is a one-of-a-kind instrument in Canada right now,” explains Venkataramanan. “But that’s OK. We’re here to make the device available. And we’ll see how it goes. If we’re making progress, they’ll let us keep it longer.”

Contact:

Karen Grant, Institute for Optical Sciences, 416-978-1542; e-mail:
[email protected]

Cynthia Goh, Institute for Optical Sciences, 416-978-6254; e-mail: [email protected]

Satellite Observations Used To Track Avian Flu> Real time maps of "hot spots" and "hot times" for viral transmission

An international, interdisciplinary team of researchers led by professor Xiangming Xiao of the

University

of

New Hampshire

is taking a novel scientific approach in an attempt to understand the ecology of the avian influenza, develop better methods of predicting its spread, and provide an accurate early warning system.

Xiao and colleagues were recently awarded $1.55 million for a four-year project funded by the U.S. National Institutes for Health (NIH) as part of the Ecology of Infectious Diseases (EID) Program jointly sponsored with the U.S. National Science Foundation. The EID program supports research projects that develop quantitative analysis and modeling capacity for better understanding the relationship between man-made environmental change and transmission of infectious agents.

The UNH project will use environmental remote sensing data from Earth observing satellites in combination with research in epidemiology, ornithology, and agriculture to provide a better picture of how the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza survives and gets transmitted among poultry and wild birds. The work focuses on

China

, where outbreaks of the virus have been prominent.

"The ecology of the avian influenza involves a complex web of factors, including environmental settings, agricultural practices of rice production and harvesting, poultry production involving huge populations of free-grazing ducks, and the migratory behavior of wild bird populations. Depending on how all of these risk factors intermingle over time, the virus can be spread through the environment by infected wild birds or domestic poultry.

For example, using imagery of varying resolution from different types of satellites, the team can map and track the spatial-temporal dynamics of crop cultivations (when planted, harvested, etc.) and wetlands. Used in conjunction with other geospatial data of environment, bird migration, and poultry production, dynamic maps of "hot spots" and "hot times" for viral transmission can be developed in near-real-time mode and will aid the public, researchers, business, and decision-makers in preparing for a potential pandemic crisis."

Full Story >> [...]

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"- old Japanese proverb

".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." - H. Mumford Jones

"Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  A. Einstein

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  - Margaret Mead

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

crowd-sourced manufacturing business> New Business Model ? Buy-what-you-design?

Blogger and tech columnist Tim O'Reilly recently posted a story about the significance of threadless.com, which he calls a “crowd-sourced” manufacturing business. Users submit designs for t-shirts; users vote designs up or down; the most popular ones get manufactured. Tim writes:

“… custom fabrication devices like laser-cutters, water-jets, and 3D printers are currently at about the price points of typesetting machines back when desktop publishing took off in the early 80's. Even traditional manufacturing techniques can now be harnessed by small companies and individuals, who can hire overseas factories to make short runs of custom designs. How far off is a future in which the creative economy overflows the thin boundary that separates ‘information’ from ‘stuff’?”

Just wait till they start integrating even smarter technologies into the manufacturing mix.

Traditional manufacturing business model-"design decoupled from buyers" you buy what someone else designs and manufactures. "Wear Their Brand"

Smart Business Model-"buy-what-you design"; "white label manufacturing" & "Wear MyBrand"

An update on Smart Disruptive Technologies Part 3 of 5

Yesterday we looked at various types of "traditional" disruptive innovations and at their 'smart cousins".

Today I promised to show some examples. Frankly I'm having a hard time trying to find a product catagory that's gone through the whole range of disruptive innovations other then cell phones. But one that does come to mind...are nails (what ? nails??? ...now you must be thinking that this Derzko characture has flipped) Bear with me.

Traditional nail have been around since the iron age, and have changed little over the ages. (if you were to go back in time and show a Roman Legion warrior a nail from today, he would likely still recognize it as a nail)

Here's a Viking blacksmith forgeing nails by hand....over time we switched to machine cut nails (disruptive platform innovation)

The iron nail components likely became more robust over time (disruptive component innovation), but not much has changed in the basic design until now.

Ed "Dr Nail" Sutt has taken 6 years to redesign the venerable nail as a better connector in hurricane force winds. (disruptive design innovation)

Sutt explains:

"when nails fail, 1 of 3 things usually happens..either the nail rips its head through the sheathing, its shank pulls out of the frame, or its midesction snaps under the lateral loads that rock a house or other structure during high winds and earthquakes. The HurriQuake nail's head is 25 per cent bigger, there's a spiral shank below that and the bottom half of the nail is encircled with angled barbs that keep the screw in place even in 170 mph winds."

How much extra does this cost over the cost of traditional nails to build a house? Just $15.

Smart Nails (still hypothetical) might incorporate future "smart dust"- like sensors to warn occupants when the roof is about to be blown off and when to evacuate.

An update on Smart Disruptive Technologies Part 2 of 5

Clayton M. Christensen has been critisized by academics and practitioners alike for lumping all innovations together....in his original theory everything falls under the term disruptive innovations. I disagree. His definition of disruptive technology (as we saw in Part 1 yesterday) is too ambiguous for many people including myself.

Disruptive innovations can be further broken down as follows:

• disruptive technology innovations, (which we will explore today) ,
• disruptive business model innovations (how we add/create and maximine value in our offerings),
• disruptive business process innovations (how we structure our activities to create our offerings)

First, we can further redefine disruptive technology innovations as platform, design, and component innovations.

Disrutive Platform Innovation is the emergence of an entirely new scientific principle to solve a problem, which is distinctly different from the current scientific principle used to solve the same problem.  For example, the CD used a new scientific principle, laser optics to write and read data where the prior products (VHS) used magnetism. N.B.People often use the term technology synonymously with technological platform or platform.

Disruptive Component Innovation  is the use of new parts or materials within the same technological platform.  For example, magnetic tape, floppy disk, and zip disk differ by use of components or materials, although all are based on the platform or technology of magnetic recording.

Disruptive Design Innovation is a reconfiguration of the linkages and layout of components within the same technology.  For example, floppy disks decreased from 14 to 8 inches in 1978, to 5.25 inches in 1980, to 3.5 inches in 1985, and to 2.5 inches in 1989, although each was based on the technology of magnetic recording.

So, by definition, performance improvements within a technology come from design or component innovations.

Extending that thinking, we can incorporate smart or intelligent capabilities into all of the 3 above areas, platforms, design or material/component structures that produce "smart cousins" of the above

• Smart disruptive platform innovations incorporate a brand new-to-the-world intelligent capability not available in a previous generation of platform technologies.
• Smart disruptive design innovations incorporate a smart capability in the design /layout of a technology platform.
• Smart disruptive component innovations incorporate intelligence into the material or component elements of a platform techonology or the creation of novel smart metamaterials.

(source: G.J Tellis 2006 and W. Derzko 2006)

I'll provide some examples of these smart enhancements tomorrow.

An update on Smart Disruptive Technologies Part 1 of 5

The idea of disruptive innovations namely disruptive technologies was first popularized by Clayton  M. Christensen from MIT in his 1997 book, the Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Harvard Business School Press.

Background

For anyone who isn't familiar with this notion of disruptive innovation, this blog post summarize Christensen’s (1997) thesis in five important premises, some of which can be further divided into sub premises, shown as letters in the following points:

(1) A new disruptive technology initially under performs the dominant one along the dimensions mainstream customers in major markets have historically valued.

(2) But the disruptive technology (a) has other features a few fringe (and generally new) customers value. Products based on disruptive technologies are typically (b) cheaper, (c) simpler, (d) smaller, or (e) more convenient than those established on the dominant technology.

(3) (a) The leading firms’ most profitable customers generally do not want and indeed initially cannot use products based on disruptive technologies. So (b) disruptive technologies are first commercialized in emerging or insignificant markets. (c) Incumbents conclude that investing in disruptive  technologies is not a rational financial decision for them.

(4) The new disruptive technology (a) steadily improves in performance until (b) it meets the standards of performance demanded by the mainstream market.

(5) At that point, (a) the new (disruptive) technology displaces the dominant one and (b) the new entrant displaces the dominant incumbent(s) in the mainstream market.

(Source Gerrard J.Tellis, 2006)

Tomorrow, I'll discuss gaps in the theory and how we can apply it to smart technologies in a predictive and normative observational  manner

Self-aware Robot

Last week, scientists announced that they created a brainy, four-legged robot resembling a starfish that can sense damage to its body and, on its own, think up a way to recover.

Researchers Hod Lipson and Victor Zykov of Cornell Universityand Josh Bongard of the University of Vermontmade a robot that observed its own motion using built-in sensors in its joints and then generated its own concept of itself, or at least its physical structure, in its internal computer.

It used this internal model of itself to figure out how to walk on its four legs and eight motorized joints.

"In the beginning, the robot starts off and does not know what it looks like. You look at it, and you see that it's a four-legged machine. But the robot itself doesn't know that. All it knows is that it could be a snake, it could be a tree, it could have six legs," Lipson said in an interview.

Lipson said the robot used various movements of its joints, first to generate hypotheses and then to formulate an accurate conception of itself.

Full Story>>[...]

New Motorola Handsets Feature Antimicrobial Coating

Motorola Inc. says that the AgION antimicrobial has now been incorporated into additional iDEN phones. The recently launched i835 and i880 handsets join the i870, introduced last year, to Motorola's growing portfolio of phones that feature AgION's antimicrobial. The antimicrobial, developed by AgION Technologies, Inc., is incorporated into the coating and protects the phones by inhibiting the growth of microorganisms such as mold and mildew to help resist odor. Motorola is the first and only manufacturer to offer mobile devices that feature AgION's antimicrobial technology for product protection.

"Motorola is committed to seeking the latest technology and useful features for our mobile phones," said Peter Aloumanis, vice president and general manager, U.S. Markets, Motorola's iDEN(R) Mobile Devices. "AgION was so well received last year on the i870 that we decided to make it available on a broader range of iDEN devices in more markets worldwide."

The AgION antimicrobial is incorporated into the plastic of the painted surfaces and the keypads of the phones. It has been proven effective against a range of mold, algae and other microorganisms. The antimicrobial is comprised of naturally occurring silver ions. Silver has long been recognized for its antimicrobial properties and has been used to fight microbes for many years.

The AgION compound provides protection from microorganisms by releasing silver ions to the surface at a slow and steady rate. This creates a self- cleaning surface that provides safe, continuous, long-term protection from microbes. Studies have shown that surfaces treated with AgION's antimicrobial result in a 99.99 percent reduction in the number of microbes within a one- hour period than what is normally found on untreated surfaces.

N.B.

While the AgION antimicrobial helps protect the phone's treated surfaces against bacteria, it does not protect users against viruses or other germs.

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"- old Japanese proverb

".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." - H. Mumford Jones

"Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  A. Einstein

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  - Margaret Mead

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page