Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 10.

07 - March 26, 2011 ISSN: 1712-9834

Selected news items from postings to Innovation Watch

in the last two weeks...

gut bacteria transplant triggers obesity in mice... stem cell injections

repair heart damage... a computer algorithm discovers the laws of
nature... researchers move closer to linking neurons and
semiconductors... rising salaries in India reduce its offshoring
David Forrest advantage... China creates 64 new billionaires last year... researchers
advises predict the extinction of religion in nine countries based on a
organizations mathematical model... most Americans have less than $25,000 saved
on emerging for retirement... Vietnam invests billions on ports to compete with
trends, and China... Germany argues against nationalizing the Arctic... NASA plans
helps to develop to use lasers to manage space junk... energy shocks create uncertainty
strategies and new dilemmas... an American researcher looks at the implications
for a radically of a cyberwar between the US and China... the challenge of feeding the
different future world by 2050...

More great resources ...

the book, Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting

Brains with Machines -- And How It Will Change Our Lives, by Miguel
Nicolelis... a link to the website of AutoNOMOS Labs, a research team
that is developing technology for driverless cars... a video of Festo's
SmartBird robot, that flies with the effortless grace of a seagull... a
post by Venessa Miemis on the Superfluid Economy, "the set of tools
and behaviors that are developing to make economic exchange,
transactions, payments, commerce, distributed collaboration, resource
allocation, and social enterprise formation as frictionless and fluid as
possible"...

David Forrest
Innovation Watch
SCIENCE
Top Stories: Forward

Overweight? Get Someone Else’s Gut Bacteria (PhysOrg) - Know someone who
Scientists have now found evidence that the bacterial might be interested
composition in the body can influence, among other things, in this newsletter?
diseases and weight. When researchers introduced gut Forward it
bacteria from an obese mouse and those from a normal
mouse in sterile mice, the mice with the gut bacteria from the Unsubscribe
obese mouse became obese, while the others did not.
Don't want to
Heart Damage Improves, Reverses After Stem Cell Injections
receive the
in a Preliminary Human Trial (PhysOrg) - Researchers have
newsletter?
shown for the first time that stem cells injected into enlarged
Unsubscribe
hearts reduced heart size, reduced scar tissue and improved
function to injured heart areas, according to a small trial
published in Circulation Research: Journal of the American
Heart Association. Researchers said that while this research is
in the early stages, the findings are promising for the more
than five million Americans who have enlarged hearts due to
damage sustained from heart attacks.

TECHNOLOGY
Top Stories:

Eureqa! Signs of the Singularity? (H+) - Schmidt and Lipson

worked on this problem for six months, developing an
algorithm that can extract laws of nature by analyzing
measurements from an experiment. Beginning with data
collected from a simple harmonic oscillator consisting of a
mass slung between two springs, Schmidt and Lipson refined
the algorithm until it could handle one of the most complex
systems of all: The chaotic double pendulum. Such a
pendulum swings its arms in a way that’s virtually impossible
to predict. Their evolutionary algorithm, though, was able to
breed an equation describing the kinetic and potential energy
of the system. Not only that, the equation 'discovered' by
Eureqa shows that energy is always conserved. It had
'rediscovered' the first law of thermodynamics, one of those
immutable laws of nature.

Nerve-Electronic Hybrid Could Meld Mind and Machine

(Wired) - Nerve-cell tendrils readily thread their way through
tiny semiconductor tubes, researchers find, forming a
crisscrossed network like vines twining toward the sun. The
discovery that offshoots from nascent mouse nerve cells
explore the specially designed tubes could lead to tricks for
studying nervous system diseases or testing the effects of
potential drugs. Such a system may even bring researchers
closer to brain-computer interfaces that seamlessly integrate
artificial limbs or other prosthetic devices.
BUSINESS
Top Stories:

Rising Salaries Dull the Allure of Offshoring (Market Watch) -

Annual salary gains for Indian software engineers, which hit a
bump in 2009, once again are rising much faster than they
are for their U.S. counterparts. They are rising so fast, in fact,
and have risen so much during the past 10 years, that some
who employ them can soon see a time when their costs will
outweigh their benefits for U.S. companies.

China’s Billionaire Boom: Will It Last? (Forbes) - China had a

record 115 billionaires on the 2011 Forbes Billionaires List, an
increase from 64 a year earlier and ranking second to the
United States. Will that success last? What needs to be done
to encourage new entrepreneurs in the country? How much
of a threat is government favoritism toward state-owned
companies?

SOCIETY
Top Stories:

Religion May Become Extinct in Nine Nations, Study Says

(BBC) - A study using census data from nine countries shows
that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers. The
study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious
affiliation. The team's mathematical model attempts to  
account for the interplay between the number of religious
respondents and the social motives behind being one.

Most Workers Have Saved Just $25,000 for Retirement (CNN)

- Most Americans have less than $25,000 saved up for
retirement. And surprise!: Retirement confidence is at record
lows. More than a quarter, or 27%, of workers say they are
"not at all confident" about retirement, according to an
annual survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute
and Mathew Greenwald & Associates Inc. That's up from 22%
last year, which was the lowest level recorded in the two
decades the survey has been conducted.

GLOBAL POLITICS
Top Stories:

Vietnam Bets $21 Billion on Ports to Beat China: Freight

Markets (Businessweek) - Vietnam is pouring billions of
dollars into building ports for the world's largest container
ships in a drive to draw export industries from China. The
investment may propel the port complex near Ho Chi Minh
City into the ranks of the world's top 15 ports within a
decade, said Malcolm Gregory, chief commercial officer at the
$270 million Cai Mep International Terminal Co.

Berlin Enters the Scramble for the Arctic (Spiegel) -

Unfettered access for scientists isn't the only interest
Germany is pursuing in the Arctic. From fish to natural
resources to shipping routes, the region is of great interest
for Germany, according to officials at the Foreign Ministry.
The diplomats are worried that the five countries bordering
the Arctic -- Russia, Canada, the United States, Norway and
Denmark -- plan to divide up the previously ice-covered
ocean among themselves. They argue that there is a risk that
the Arctic could be completely nationalized when the sea ice
melts, providing access to the sea floor.

ENVIRONMENT
Top Stories:

NASA to Shoot Lasers at Space Junk Around Earth to Prevent

Collisions With Satellites (Daily Mail) - NASA is considering
using lasers to deflect space junk around Earth and stop it
colliding with satellites. Lasers similar to those used for
welding in car factories would be fired through telescopes to
'nudge' piles of rubbish left in orbit. The gentle movement
would stop them from taking out communications satellites or
hitting the International Space Station.

Energy Shocks (IEEE Spectrum) - It must be a tough time to

be working at the OECD's International Energy Agency.
Ordinarily, what could be better, if you're a bright young
economist or computer modeler, than working in a plush
Paris suburb and dining at Michelin-starred restaurants? But
right now your job is to figure out how prices for all fuels will
be affected in the coming year by Mideast turmoil and the
Japanese nuclear crisis--and the obvious truth is, nobody has
the slightest idea how much costs of alternative energy
sources will rise, and what all the ramifications will be.

THE FUTURE
Top Stories:

'What If?' Scenario: Cyberwar Between US and China in 2020

(PhysOrg) - As Iran's nuclear plant attack and Chinese-based
hackers attacking Morgan Stanley demonstrate how the
Internet can wreak havoc on business and governments, a
new paper by a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for
Public Policy hypothesizes what an all-out cyberwar between
the U.S. and China might look like.
 How to Feed the World by 2050: Biotech Isn’t the Answer
(Atlantic) - With food prices hitting record highs, people are
rioting and political regimes are crumbling. We can only
imagine what it will be like when the global population rises
to 9 billion in 2050 from just under 7 billion now. More riots,
more deforestation, more hunger, more revolutions? How are
these people going to be fed? The unequivocal answer we so
often hear: biotechnology.

Just in from the publisher...

Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of

Connecting Brains with Machines — And How It
Will Change Our Lives
by Miguel Nicolelis

Read more...

A web resource... AutoNOMOS Labs - The AutoNOMOS team is part of the Artificial
Intelligence Group of the Freie Universität Berlin. Researchers and students have the vision
to develop the technology for driverless cars of the future.

Multimedia... SmartBird Flying Robot (Festo) - SmartBird is an ultralight but powerful

flight model with excellent aerodynamic qualities and extreme agility. With SmartBird, Festo
has succeeded in deciphering the flight of birds – one of the oldest dreams of humankind.
Inspired by the herring gull, the robot can start, fly and land autonomously – with no
additional drive mechanism. Its wings not only beat up and down, but also twist at specific
angles. (1m 48s)

Ideas and opinions... 10 Projects Moving Us Towards a Superfluid Economy

(Emergent by Design) - Venessa Miemis -- "What is the future of money? And not just
money, but currencies in general – from virtual currencies to timebanks to social currencies
based around trust, identity, reputation, expertise and relationships. And not just
currencies, a.k.a. tools that are supposed to represent a unit of measurement in order to
transact, but also value exchange in general and the social behaviors that precede them. So
we’re really talking about The Superfluid Economy, the set of tools and behaviors that are
developing to make economic exchange, transactions, payments, commerce, distributed
collaboration, resource allocation, and social enterprise formation as frictionless and fluid as
possible."

 
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