MIT finds new role for well-known protein

Research could lead to treatments for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,

Fluorescent micrograph (scale bar: 10 micrometers) shows yeast cells (red) with septin (green), which enables the budding of daughter cells. MIT researchers have found septin also helps neurons sprout the branch-like protrusions used to communicate with other neurons. Image / Philippsen Lab, Biozentrum B

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In a finding that may lead to potential new treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, researchers at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT report an unexpected role in the brain for a well-known protein.

A study by Morgan H. Sheng, Menicon Professor of Neuroscience and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and colleagues appearing in the Oct. 23 issue of Current Biology shows that the same protein that enables a yeast cell to bud into two daughter cells also helps neurons sprout the branch-like protrusions used to communicate with other neurons.

The work revolves around septins--proteins known since the 1970s to play an essential function in the process through which the cytoplasm of a single yeast cell divides. "In yeast, septin is localized exactly at the neck between the yeast mother cell and the bud or emerging daughter cell," Sheng said. "Amazingly, we found septin protein localized at the base of the neck of neuronal dendritic spines and at the branchpoint of dendritic branches."

Nine of the 14 septins found in mammals are found in the brain. One of them, Sept7, appears the most, but its role was unclear. Septins form long filaments and act as scaffolds, recruiting other proteins into their assigned roles of builders of the cell infrastructure.

While neurons don't divide, they do form protrusions that eventually elongate into dendritic branches. Dendrites, from the Greek word for "tree," conduct electrical stimulation from other neurons to the cell body of the neuron from which the dendrites project.

Electrical stimulation is transmitted via synapses, which are located at various points along the dendritic branches. Dendrites play a critical role in receiving these synaptic inputs. "Because dendritic spines are important for synaptic function and memory formation, understanding of septins may help to prevent the loss of spines and synapses that accompanies many neurodegenerative diseases," said co-author Tomoko Tada, a postdoctoral associate in the Picower Institute. "Septin could be a potential target protein to treat these diseases."

Moreover, in the cultured hippocampal neurons the researchers used in the study, septin was essential for normal branching and spine formation. An abundance of septin made dendrites grow and proliferate while a dearth of septin made them small and malformed.

"Boosting septin expression and function would enhance the stability of spines and synapses, and therefore be good for cognitive functions such as learning and memory," Sheng said. His laboratory is now exploring ways to prevent septin degradation and loss.

In addition to Sheng and Tada, authors are MIT affiliates Alyson Simonetta and Matthew Batterton; Makoto Kinoshita of Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine; and Picower postdoctoral associate Dieter Edbauer.

This work is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the RIKEN-MIT Neuroscience Research Center

Technorati : new role for well-known protein

Toxic Releases Down From North American Industry Leaders

Source :

Pollution , and purification is always a burning question , awaring the CEC's goal ,The latest Taking Stock report from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) reveals that a continued decline in releases of toxic chemicals to the environment--15 percent for the United States and Canada from 1998 to 2004--is being driven by a group of industrial facilities that are the largest generators of emissions
The CEC report, however, also reveals that the leading role of the largest waste-producing facilities stands in stark contrast to a substantial increase in chemical releases and transfers by a much larger group of industrial facilities that report lower volumes of emissions.

Released October 18, the annual report compares industrial pollution from a matched set of facilities in Canada and the United States--three million tonnes of chemicals released or transferred in the two countries in 2004. Over one-third of that amount was released at the location of reporting facilities, including over 700,000 tonnes released to the air, with another third transferred to recycling. For the first time, the CEC report also provides data from Mexico. Across the three countries, metals and their compounds--lead, chromium, nickel and mercury--were reported by the highest proportion of facilities.

"The evidence is clear that industry and government action to limit chemical releases is showing steady progress," said Adrián Vázquez-Gálvez, CEC's executive director. "It is equally clear that a large number of small and medium-size industrial facilities need to do a better job in reducing their waste and emissions if we are going to see even greater progress in North America. We trust the progress shown by industry leaders and the fact that pollution prevention is a proven strategy will encourage everyone to tackle pollution issues at the source."

The CEC's analysis demonstrates that facilities from Canada and the United States that reported pollution prevention activities--product and process redesign, spill and leak detection, and substituting raw materials--showed reductions from 2002--2004. Facilities not engaged in these activities did not show similar progress.

A new chapter provides a detailed look at industrial recycling, finding that over one-third of US and Canadian releases and transfers reported in 2004--more than 1 million tonnes--were recycled. Recycling has increased in recent years due to increases in production and in scrap metal prices. Most of the materials were metals, including copper, zinc, lead and their compounds.

The trilateral analysis is based on matched data from some 9 industrial sectors, 56 chemicals, and 10,000 facilities, comparing releases and transfers for similar facilities in Canada, Mexico and the United States. The report identifies a different pattern of releases and transfers in each of the three countries.

Comparisons of the three countries' industrial emissions will continue to improve as the CEC works with governments, industry and NGOs to expand the number of chemicals and facilities that are comparable.

Taking Stock compiles data from Canada's National Pollutant Release Inventory, the United States' Toxics Release Inventory, and, starting with its first year of mandatory reporting in 2004, Mexico's pollutant release and transfer register, the Registro de Emisiones y Transferencia de Contaminantes

Technorati : CEC’s goal .toxic

Nobel Awarded in economics for "mechanism design theory,"

"WHAT on earth is mechanism design?" was the typical reaction to this year's Nobel prize in economics, announced on October 15th. In this era of "Freakonomics", in which everyone is discovering their inner economist, economics has become unexpectedly sexy. So what possessed the Nobel committee to honour a subject that sounds so thoroughly dismal? Why didn't they follow the lead of the peace-prize judges, who know not to let technicalities about being true to the meaning of the award get in the way of good headlines?

In fact, despite its dreary name, mechanism design is a hugely important area of economics, and underpins much of what dismal scientists do today. It goes to the heart of one of the biggest challenges in economics: how to arrange our economic interactions so that, when everyone behaves in a self-interested manner, the result is something we all like. The word "mechanism" refers to the institutions and the rules of the game that govern our economic activities, which can range from a Ministry of Planning in a command economy to the internal organisation of a company to trading in a market.

The real world rarely behaves like economics models do, so mechanism design is used to design markets and auctions that will better reflect the actions of the participants. Mechanism design is also used to look at how companies behave and to consider how governments can best provision public goods like defense or infrastructure. In general, mechanism design is applied to interactions where people or companies participating in the mechanism may have reasons to behave in a non-truthful or less than optimal way, and attempts to create rules and incentives to discourage this unwanted behavior.

The winners of the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, announced yesterday, are Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson. The three men received the prize for their work on "mechanism design theory," a field of economics that focuses on creating incentives and rules for an economics interaction such that the desired outcome or some desirable properties are achieved.

Hurwicz began working on mechanism design over 50 years ago by applying mathematical analysis to companies and economics systems like capitalism and socialism. His major theoretical contribution is "incentive compatibility," where participants in a mechanism will want to vote or play honestly. It's an important result, since we tend to want mechanisms like voting systems to encourage truthful voting, rather than encouraging people to disguise their true opinions.

Although "mechanism design theory" may not sound like something you or I would need to interact with very much, it pops up in quite a few places. Take the upcoming 700MHz spectrum auctions, for example. For this auction, the government has some set of goals, including perhaps getting some payment and fairly allocating the spectrum. The companies also have goals, which may be to gobble up as much of the spectrum as possible. By applying some mechanism design theory to the situation, economists can then design an auction mechanism that best meets the goals of all the parties. This type of game theoretical analysis of auctions has been done by Roger Myerson, whose work has influenced these types of spectrum auctions.

Software patents are another area where mechanism design comes into play. One of the Nobel laureates, Eric Maskin, has done some work on patent valuation. In particular, Maskin is critical of the software patent system, which he believes is harmful to innovation when new inventions are closely related to old ones. His (very) basic argument is that in many technology fields, competition is actually better for firms in the long run. Patents generally lead to less innovation in a particular field, and also lead to less competition since companies can't work on the same types of products. Thus, in the end, patents are bad for software and technology companies, because of how they limit competition.

If you're at all interested in mechanism design theory, I would highly recommend checking out the scientific background for the prize, since it provides a nice overview of the key results from the work of Hurwicz, Maskin, and Myerson. It can be a bit daunting to delve into, particularly since it's not a field of economics that gets talked about at your average cocktail party, but it's worth a look due to the sheer number of social and governmental situations that rely on mechanism design to operate more efficiently

Technorati : mechanism design theory

Sony Forks Over Chip Production To Toshiba :can do a better job of supplying the brains for the PlayStation 3.

Sony and Toshiba are collabrating for chip development :

Sony announced on Thursday a plan to sell its loss-making multimedia microprocessor operations to Toshiba for an undisclosed amount, hoping that its trusted joint venture partner can do a better job of supplying the brains for the PlayStation 3.

Following a month of leaks to various media outlets by unnamed sources, the world's second-largest consumer electronics company made an announcement late on Thursday that it will unload production lines for its Cell processor in a joint venture arrangement for a reported amount of about 100 billion yen ($856.38 million) to Toshiba.

The sale, drawn up in preliminary form as a nonbinding memorandum of understanding, is the latest swing of the ax by Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer, who has cut the workforce and closed factories to boost profitability. In February he promised to cut back on development costs for the expensive, loss-making chips and to consider outsourcing production to outside partners.

Toshiba appears to be the best available buyer: Along with IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ), Toshiba helped Sony develop the Cell, which bundles multimedia game features onto a single chip using 65-nanometer technology. Cell is produced in a plant in Nagasaki, in southwestern Japan; costly investment would be needed to prepare it to produce chips using next-generation 45-nanometer technology.

In addition to the sale of the Cell line, Toshiba is also taking over the manufacturing equipment for a line of image-processing chips also used in the PlayStation 3. Both sides were mum on how much the sale was worth but Nikkei Business Daily reported before the announcement that the sale price was about 30 billion yen ($256.92 million).

In a joint announcement, the two companies said Sony would transfer to Toshiba its advanced 300-millimeter wafer line fabrication facilities installed in a plant operated by its subsidiary, Sony Semiconductor Kyushu Corp., by the end of March 2008. The facilities house the Nagasaki Technology Center, responsible for developing the Cell line.

While the ownership of the asset would go to Toshiba, Sony and its gaming unit, Sony Computer Entertainment, would jointly participate in the production process as a minority shareholder of 40% in a new joint venture to be set up in April with Toshiba, which would take the remaining 60%.

Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) shares swooned after initial press rumors of the sale a month ago, but on Thursday afternoon, they were up 30 yen, or 0.55%, at 5,430 yen ($46.57).

The sale allows Sony to pass on the heavy cost of microprocessor development to Toshiba, Japan's largest microchip maker. It could possibly lower Sony's procurement costs for Cell chips if Toshiba can reap production efficiencies from commercializing the chips in a broader range of applications. Sony will also be able to invest the proceeds of the sale to bolster its world-leading position in image-processing chips for its digital cameras and cell phones.

For Toshiba (other-otc: TOSBF - news - people ), buying the Cell line would give it a huge upgrade in the system chip business, where it is lagging far behind Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) and Samsung (other-otc: SSNLF - news - people ), with the anchor of having Sony as a reliable buyer.

Both companies said they would jointly advance the Cell chips to the next stage of technology: Toshiba was reported by Nikkei Business Daily as intending to roll out a 45-nanometer version of the Cell in two years and employinh the cutting-edge chips in personal computers and flat-panel televisions.

The market has been concerned about Sony's growth prospects over the longer term beyond its recent obsession with asset sales and cost cutting. The sale of Cell follows after it sold part of Sony Financial last week, bringing the unit public in a 320 billion yen ($2.74 billion) share sale. (See: " Sony Cashes In On Financial Unit")

While it is planning to sink more money into research and development to reclaim technical leadership, exciting new growth areas seem far off, and it will now have to rely on Toshiba, a competitor on the consumer electronics front, for future generations of microprocessors for its games consoles.

Technorati : chip ps3 +

Aerotropolis: A city by itself

The first phase of the modernisation of Delhi International Airport by the GMR-led consortium, which will be completed by 2010 will see an investment of US$ 1.5 billion in commercial real estate development transforming Delhi airport into an airport city - an aerotropolis

According to the land concession agreement for the Delhi airport, of the 5,000-acres of land belonging to the airport only five per cent, or 250 acres can be used for commercial purposes. This will see high-density development of hotels, business centres, retail spaces, convention and exhibition centres, golf courses and entertainment centres. Says Mridul Upreti, head, Capital Markets, Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj, "An aerotropolis, because of its high density and high quality development, strategic location and good connectivity would soon outdo even Connaught Place in economic activity and commercial rentals."

Ever since Dr John D Kasarda, director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, USA, first introduced the concept of an aerotropolis, the span of an airport has gone up exponentially. In the new model, airports, besides their core infrastructure and services, have created significant non-aeronautical commercial facilities, services and revenue streams. Consequently, they are extending their formal reach and impact with development along airport arteries up to 20 kms outwards.

In fact, Hong Kong International Airport already has a mini-city on a nearby island for its 45,000 workers, and soon the SkyCity, a complex of office towers, convention centres, and hotels is also being developed. China is spending US$ 12 billion for the Beijing Capital Airport City that will accommodate four lakh people. Dubai is also looking at developing the largest aerotropolis, Dubai World Central, a US$ 33 billion airport city capable of supporting a permanent population of 7.5 lakh.

But can such a development take place in India? According to Sanjay Dutt, deputy MD, Cushman and Wakefield, whenever there is large scale economic activity, the area around it becomes vibrant. Airports are the hub of very enormous economic activity including cargo, car rentals, hotels, retail, etc. Says Dutt, "Prices shoot up because people start calculating returns on property near the airport. In a developing economy like India, the value is expected to go up significantly. It can even go up by 100 per cent".

However, DTZ director Vivek Dahiya feels that as the cantonment area on three sides and Palam Village on the fourth surround Delhi airport, no major development can take place outside the airport area. "Moreover, the DDA master plan does not allow for commercial centres like hotels to come up near the airport. Only if DDA revisits the policy and allows commercial development can the real estate prices around the airport also go up."

Interestingly, many airports are now getting a bigger of their revenues from non-aeronautical sources than from aeronautical sources (landing fees, gate leases, passenger service charges). Globally, 70 per cent of an airport revenue is generated through non-aeronautical sources, while in India it is still a lowly 30 per cent.

Due to the significantly higher incomes of airline passengers (typically three to five times higher than national averages) and the huge volumes of passengers flowing through the terminals , it should not be surprising that terminal retail sales per square metre average three to four times greater than shopping malls and downtown shops. As a result, terminal commercial lease rates tend to be the highest in the metropolitan area.

Commenting on the high commercial rentals of airports in India, Dutt says, "The passenger is bound to shop, eat, etc, and has certain needs. Therefore, outlets at the airports design and put retail items accordingly. Moreover, the quality of experience is assured. Secondly, in India, the quality of retail space is very limited and so is organised retail. With lots of airports getting privatised and developed, we will witness a rush to occupy retail space."

The new US$ 4 billion Suvarnabhumi airport in Thailand, will see more than 100 million passengers a year passing through the airport, about as many as JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports combined. Within 30 years, a city of 3.3 million citizens - larger than Chicago now - will have emerged around Suvarnabhumi.

Delhi International Airport, has already invited expression of interest from Indian and international real estate investors to develop a complete range of hospitality services to build various categories of hotels and related facilities at the Delhi airport. But no other airport in India is looking at developing similar facilities. According to analysts, commercial development near the Mumbai airport would affect real estate prices. "Mumbai airport is in the heart of the city, unlike Delhi. If the slums get cleared, the real estate value of the area surrounding the airport will substantially increase," Dahiya said.

Amsterdam Schiphol, through its Schiphol Real Estate Group, has been working for over a decade on the cityside commercial development. Nearly 58,000 people are employed at Schiphol, which integrates multi-modal transportation, regional corporate headquarters, retail shopping, logistics and exhibition space to form a major economic growth pole for the Dutch economy. Others, though not quite on the scale of Amsterdam Schiphol or Seoul's Incheon, have given commercial development a high priority in their master planning (Brisbane, Vienna, Calgary, Zurich and Stockholm-Arlanda). Many of these have implemented the airport city concept in their strategic development.

There are different requirements that can stipulate the developing of an aerotropolis. For companies engaged in IT services it is very important to have good air connectivity. According to a report, high-tech professionals travel by air at least 60 per cent more frequently than others. Such firms are increasingly looking at setting up their offices near airports. The Washington-Dulles Airport access corridor in Northern Virginia and the expressways leading to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport are good examples.

When commercial centres start coming up around an airport, it also leads to a high rate of employment generation faster than other suburbs situated at similar distances from other city centres, which further leads to development of an aerotropolis.

Technorati : Aerotropolis:

VIVACE R&T project delivers major improvements for future Aeronautical

A Virtual Aeronautical Collaborative Enterprise" (VIVACE) Research and Technology project focuses on simulation and modelling techniques for aeronautical products during their design and development phases with the objective of reducing development time and costs .

The final results of VIVACE are presented at a public Forum held in Toulouse from 17th to 19th October.

VIVACE is a very large European Commission co-funded R&T project, grouping 63 companies and research institutions from the aeronautic sector such as Airbus, Rolls Royce, Snecma, Thales… It was launched in January 2004 and will be fully completed at the end of 2007.

Major innovation and progress has been developed within the scope of the project in seven key areas of the product development process, providing solutions in "Design Simulation", "Virtual Testing", "Design Optimisation", "Business and Supply Chain Modelling", "Knowledge Management", "Decision Support" and "Collaboration in the Extended and Virtual Enterprise".

Through industrial simulations of a part of the aircraft, of the engine or of a development process, reflecting both the Virtual Product and the Virtual Extended Enterprise, major improvements have been obtained in terms of processes, methods and tools.

VIVACE contributes to answering the Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE) Vision of halving the time to market for new products, increasing the integration of the supply chain and maintaining a steady and continuous fall in travel costs. By using the latest innovations in advanced simulation and modelling techniques, it will provide the means to get the best possible knowledge about the product prior to its physical development, thus reducing the development cost, shortening time to market and further improving product quality.

More information on the VIVACE project can be found at: www.vivaceproject.com

Technorati : Airbus, R&T-project

FalconStor Unveils A Virtual, Virtual Tape Appliance

FalconStor Software is adding to the slowly-growing number of virtual storage appliances with the introduction this week of its new virtual virtual tape library.
It is one of two new virtual tape libraries the company is introducing this week aimed at bringing down the cost of the technology.

Virtual tape libraries, or VTLs, are disk arrays configured to look to the host server and the backup software as if they are physical tape libraries. Data is streamed to and recovered from the VTL as if it were tape, so no changes are needed to the backup process. However, because they use hard drives, the backup and recover speed is much higher than when using tape drives. Data backed up to a VTL can also be backed up to a physical tape for archiving or off-site storage.

The FalconStor VTL Virtual Appliance is a pre-configured, ready-to-run software application with an operating system that can be downloaded into a virtual machine using VMware, said John Lallier, vice president of product management for the vendor.

FalconStor this week also introduced a new family of low-cost physical VTLs. The primary differences between the virtual and the physical appliances is its price and the fact that the virtual VTL performance is limited compared to the hardware versions.

Both the virtual and the physical VTL appliances include FalconStor's Single Instance Repository de-duplication technology.

De-duplication, also called "de-dupe," removes duplicate information as data is backed up or archived. It can be done on the file level, where duplicate files are replaced with a marker pointing to one copy of the file, and/or at the sub-file or byte level, where duplicate bytes of data are removed, resulting in a significant decrease in storage capacity requirements.

It is only the latest in a handful of virtual storage appliances which do the same function as hardware-based appliances but which run on a virtual machine built using VMware.

FalconStor last month unveiled its first virtual storage appliance, one which does continuous data protection between physical and/or virtual servers. It is aimed at helping customers do LAN-less data backups and archiving as well as build disaster recovery architectures which rely on virtual servers at the remote site.

Last month also saw EMC introduce a virtual data de-duplication appliance using technology it received from its Avamar acquisition.

Steve Bishop, CTO of VeriStor Systems, an Atlanta-based storage solution provider, said he is seeing a number of vendors starting to move to offer virtual storage appliances.

"Customers are asking, can their storage applications be virtualized?" Bishop said. "We're seeing a lot of interest."

Greg Knieriemen, vice president of marketing at Chi, a Cleveland, Ohio-based FalconStor partner which has already had good success with the vendor's virtual CDP appliance, said a virtual VTL could help open the market for replacing tape with disk-based storage.

"We're selling VTLs to SMBs and enterprises, across the board," Knieriemen said. "It's a 50-50 split. But there's a much larger base of SMB customers. The SMB adoption of VTLs is still marginalized. This could really open the door for VTLs in the SMB market."

Both Bishop and Knieriemen said the $8,000 list price for the FalconStor virtual VTL is a good price, when compared to physical VTLs.

However, because of the slower performance of the virtual VTL appliance compared to hardware appliances, the right choice for customers depends on a number of factors, including backup performance requirements, customer size, what virtualization environment is available, how many virtual machines are in use, and what the customer's backup window looks like, Knieriemen said.

"You have to really develop a complete profile of the customer," he said.

Wendy Petty, vice president of sales at FalconStor, said the virtual VTL appliance makes it easy for customers or solution providers to test the vendor's VTL software.

"Just download the VTL appliance, and you can test the software as a proof-of-concept," Petty said. "It's very, very simple. You don't need to send a hardware out to test it."

With their de-dupe capability, the virtual VTL appliances are also good for small remote offices, Petty said. "Partners can offer a solution that saves customers money," she said. "They can take the management from the remote offices, where backups are not normally done anyway. And they can do global de-dupe with our patented replication."

For customers looking for higher performance, FalconStor also unveiled three new VTL hardware appliances.

The VTL-S6 can be configured for up to four different tape libraries with a total of 16 virtual tape drives and 1,024 tapes, for a maximum pre-de-dupe capacity of up to 50 Tbytes. It has a backup speed of 200 Mbytes per second.

The VTL-S12 can be configured for up to eight different tape libraries with a total of 32 virtual tape drives and 2,048 tapes, for a maximum pre-de-dupe capacity of up to 100 Tbytes. It has a backup speed of 250 Mbytes per second.

The VTL-S24 can be configured for up to 16 different tape libraries with a total of 64 virtual tape drives and 4,096 tapes, for a maximum pre-de-dupe capacity of up to 200 Tbytes. It has a backup speed of 300 Mbytes per second.

The virtual VTL appliance, model VTL-V3, can be configured for up to 4 different tape libraries with a total of 16 virtual tape drives and 1,024 tapes, for a maximum pre-de-dupe capacity of up to 40 Tbytes. It has a backup speed of 60 Mbytes per second.

All four VTLs are available. The VTL-V3 is priced at $8,000, while the VTL-6 is priced at about $20,000. Replication software is available as an option for $3,000 to $8,000, depending on capacity. A Fibre Channel connectivity option is available for the three hardware appliances with a price of $3,000 to $8,000.

Technorati : Virtual Tape Appliance

Industrial Nanotech, Inc. Announces New International Supply Chain Expansion

Nanotech business is becoming the most precious business in the world following the upgrowing demand and service of the sector

Industrial Nanotech, Inc. (Pink Sheets:INTK), an emerging global leader in nanotechnology, announced today that the Company has severed its relationship with Mercatus & Partners Group, of Rome, Italy as joint venture partners for a manufacturing facility in Italy and is moving to expand the Company's supply chain for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia with manufacturing in Budapest, Hungary and a fulfillment center in Shanghai, China.

Stuart Burchill, CEO of Industrial Nanotech, Inc., states, "The relationship with Mercatus & Partners Group was not productive or suitable for Industrial Nanotech, Inc. and we have terminated the relationship. However, pending deals make it a priority that we ramp up our ability to provide large quantities of product on a regular basis to Europe, the Middle East, and China. We are currently in negotiations with a facility in Budapest, where one of our key coating scientists maintains professional relationships sufficient to provide day to day quality control monitoring, to provide our Company with manufacturing capabilities and we plan to utilize the services of a fulfillment center in Shanghai. This strategy represents the most cost effective way to implement an efficient supply chain to meet our needs in these regions and without a major capital expenditure and with consideration for the protection of our valuable intellectual property."

About Industrial Nanotech, Inc.

Industrial Nanotech Inc. is rapidly emerging as a global nanoscience solutions and research leader. The Company develops and commercializes new and innovative applications for nanotechnology. Additional information about the Company and its products can be found at their websites www.industrial-nanotech.com and www.nansulate.com.

About Nansulate(R)

Nansulate(R) is the Company's patented product line of specialty coatings containing a nanotechnology based material and which are well-documented to provide the combined performance qualities of thermal insulation, corrosion prevention, resistance to mold growth and lead encapsulation in an environmentally safe, water-based, coating formulation. The Nansulate(R) Product Line includes both industrial and residential coatings.

Safe Harbor Statement

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This release includes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the impact of competitive products, the ability to meet customer demand, the ability to manage growth, acquisitions of technology, equipment, or human resources, the effect of economic and business conditions, and the ability to attract and retain skilled personnel. The Company is not obligated to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.

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contacts:
bjedynak@janispr.com
lgrock@janispr.com

Technorati : Industrial Nanotech

Verizon Admits to Emergency Wiretapping

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In an Oct. 12 letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Verizon officials said they acted under the emergency provisions of FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). The committee is seeking information about the country's telecom carriers' cooperation, including possible violations of U.S. privacy laws, given the Bush administration's admitted domestic wiretapping program.

AT&T, of San Antonio, Texas, and Qwest Communications, of Denver, also responded to the committee's request for information, but provided no details, pointing out that they are under a federal order to not disclose any information about their activities.

"The United States, through a sworn declaration from the director of national intelligence, has formally invoked the states secrets privilege to prevent AT&T from confirming or denying certain facts about alleged intelligence operations and activities that are central to your investigation," Wayne Watts, AT&T's general counsel, wrote to the committee.

Qwest officials wrote a similar response.

However, New York-based Verizon provided details that show the Bush administration's interest in obtaining customers' electronic communications.

"Verizon would receive a classified written notice that the attorney general has authorized the emergency surveillance, stating the time of such authorization," wrote Randal S. Milch, senior vice president of legal and external affairs at Verizon. "We would provide the assistance requested as expeditiously as possible. If we do not receive a FISA order to continue the surveillance within 72 hours of the attorney general's authorization, the surveillance would be terminated."

Verizon also noted that in 2005, it cooperated with more than 90,000 legal requests backed by subpoenas or court orders issued by local, state and federal government officials. In 2006, Verizon responded to about 88,000 such requests, and through the first nine months of 2007, it had cooperated with 61,000 requests.

Verizon, AT&T and Qwest all contend they acted legally in reliance on existing federal, state and local laws.

"Current law … provides a complete defense to any provider who in good faith relies on a statutory authorization," Verizon wrote. "If the government advises a private company that a disclosure is authorized by statute, a presumption of regularity attaches."

All three carriers are involved in what AT&T characterized as a "maelstrom" of litigation over the domestic spying program. The New York Times first broke the story of the administration's warrantless wiretapping and USA Today later added that the National Security Agency is using information provided by telephone carriers to data mine tens of millions of calling records.

AT&T and others asked about government access to records. Click here to read more.

AT&T said the issue of disclosing its alleged participation in the domestic spying program rests with the White House, which is also seeking immunity for carriers in the legislation before Congress.

"Our company essentially finds itself caught in the middle of an oversight dispute between the Congress and the executive branch relating to government surveillance activities," AT&T wrote.

"Applicable legal rules make clear that much of the information you seek is under control of the executive and that disputes of this kind need to be resolved through accommodation between the two political branches of the government."

House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, said the carriers' response proved to him that the White House, "as the sponsor of this program and the party preventing the companies from defending themselves-is the entity best able to resolve the many outstanding issues. I look forward to meeting with representatives of the administration in short order, and I am hopeful that they will be forthcoming with the information Congress needs to properly evaluate this program."

Technorati : Verizon communication system

Broadcom unveils integrated 3G chip,

Broadcom Corp (BRCM.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it had developed an integrated third-generation (3G) high-speed wireless cell phone chip ahead of bigger rivals Texas Instruments Inc (TXN.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O: Quote, Profile, Research), sending Broadcom shares up as much as 3 percent.

Shares of Texas Instruments and Qualcomm both fell about 2 percent after Broadcom said it developed a single chip with a baseband -- the cell phone's main processor -- and a radio receiver as well as FM radio and Bluetooth, a short-range technology used for wirelessly linking handsets to headsets

Chipmaker Broadcom said Monday that it has developed a new processor that integrates all key 3G cellular and mobile technologies onto a single chip.

The processor that operates at extremely low powers will enable cell phone makers to build new 3G phones in more compact form factors with very long battery lives at a fraction of what it costs today, the company said.

The new 3G "Phone on a Chip" supports the four next-generation cellular technologies used throughout the world: HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access), HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), and EDGE (enhanced data for GSM evolution). It also can transmit and receive FM radio for playing music on a car stereo. And it supports Bluetooth technology and processing capability for a 5-megapixel camera.

Broadcom claims it is at least a year ahead of competitors, such as Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, in terms of integrating so much functionality into a single chip. The company also said the chip is already available to a select group of Broadcom customers.

In 2006, Broadcom had only about 1.4 percent of the cell phone chip market. By contrast, TI and Qualcomm each had about 20 percent of the 2006 mobile phone chip market, according to iSuppli.

The new chip could help boost Broadcom's market share against these competitors, especially in Asia where operators are rolling out faster networks much more quickly than they are here in the U.S. market. Broadcom has been aggressively trying to get a greater share of the cell phone market for the past few years. And as a result, the company has been embroiled in a series of legal fights with rival Qualcomm.

Broadcom won an important battle earlier this year, when the U.S. government banned Qualcomm and its partners from importing devices that use Qualcomm's 3G technology, because part of the technology has been found to infringe on patents held by Broadcom.

Technorati : Cellular chip

Microsoft developing (OCS)office communication server 2007

Sponsorder by : www.lustnews.blogspot.com

Microsoft Corp. is looking for develop their office communication server

While most enterprise IT shops today still don't know what Unified Communications really is, information systems leaders at Global Crossing in 2005 had a pretty good idea of what it was and how the company could benefit from it.

ADVERTISEMENT On Oct. 16, Global Crossing IS leaders will participate in the launch of Microsoft's UC platform and demonstrate how their UC implementation via Office Communications Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 helped improve worker productivity by streamlining exception handling.

Microsoft Corp. is expanding its work with enterprise telephony vendors to make its Office Communication Server (OCS) 2007 work more closely with office phone systems.

On Tuesday, at the launch of OCS, the company plans to unveil a formal program to certify interoperability between IP (Internet Protocol) phone systems and OCS. As part of that, Microsoft will discuss a specification to let enterprises migrate one building at a time to its software-based unified communications system and still have calls go across the organization as if on the same PBX (private branch exchange). Two models of Cisco Systems Inc.'s popular ISR (Integrated Services Router) branch-office platform will be among the products certified for this type of interoperability, according to Zig Serafin, general manager of Microsoft's Unified Communications group.

Microsoft's initiative, called the OCS 2007 Open Interoperability Program, will formalize work that has already been going on with some third parties. As that work has expanded, it's reached a point where it needs to be more organized, Serafin said. The idea is to let customers know what will work with OCS, and Microsoft will provide a table on its Web site where potential customers can check the certifications of third-party products.

Although promoted as an effort to coexist with the IP (Internet Protocol) phone systems now established or taking root in enterprises, the program also will make it easier for customers to migrate away from dedicated communications systems and phones themselves, the company acknowledges. Voice call control is new to Microsoft's unified communications system with OCS 2007, but the software giant envisions a day when separate platforms such as Cisco's CallManager won't be needed, industry analysts say.

Cisco, Avaya Inc. and other vendors have already moved the voice call-control functions of traditional circuit-switched PBXes (private branch exchanges) into server software, but they sell that software along with IP handsets and other gear. Microsoft intends OCS, together with Office Communicator 2007 client software or special OCS phones made by Polycom Inc. and LG Electronics Inc., to ultimately replace those dedicated systems.

There are three methods of interoperability that will be certified under the program.

- SIP CSTA (Computer Supported Telephony Applications) is based on a standard by the European Communications Management Association (ECMA). It lets users control calls through the Office Communicator client on the PC, though in most cases still using the handset and PBX.

- OCS Coexistence lets the user pick up a call on either the existing handset or a client that uses OCS, namely Office Communicator or a special OCS phone.

- Direct SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) interoperability allows for some parts of an enterprise to use traditional or IP PBXes and others to use OCS, with transparent connections between them using gateways, according to Microsoft. SIP is the emerging standard protocol for exchanging information on voice, videoconferencing and other communications sessions.

Microsoft has already certified gateway products from five vendors for Direct SIP interoperability, Serafin said. Among them are Cisco's Integrated Services Router 2851 and 3845. In fact, all ISRs with voice capability can interoperate with OCS, according to Mike Wood, [cq] director of product marketing in Cisco's access routing group. Gateways from Dialogic Inc. also have already been certified.

As a newcomer to telephony, Microsoft will take time to displace many standalone telephony systems, so interoperability will be critical, analysts said.

Most enterprises that adopt OCS still have phones connected to PBXes and will dial through the PBX, said Brent Kelly, [cq] a senior analyst at Wainhouse Research LLC. To start, most OCS users will keep their PBXes in place and take advantage of CSTA to gain the click-to-call benefits of OCS, he said.

"Right now, OCS doesn't have a voice model that's good enough for the enterprise," Kelly said.

However, there are a number of barriers to interoperability, too, said IDC analyst Nora Freedman. While Direct SIP interoperability is a good idea, it will take a long time to really work because SIP is so new, she believes.

"We're still battling proprietary SIP extensions from all the notable vendors," Freedman said.

Meanwhile, CSTA could be a distraction for enterprises trying to make the transition to unified communications because it brings yet another standard into the picture, she said. And for now, it's hard for early adopters to get theses kinds of systems put together, she added.

"Now we have a wealth of product but a drought of system-integrator experience in this," Freedman said. Resellers are working feverishly to build up their expertise, she said.

Microsoft's plan for telephony is bold, looking to eventually eliminate OCS as a separate product and make it, and telephony itself, just a set of features in applications, believes Zeus Kerravala [cq] of Yankee Group Inc. But for the time being, the job at hand is making OCS work with existing phones, he said.

"The first phase is just to get it out there,"

Technorati : communication server

Congratulation "Al Gore" Nobel for peace : Special work on Global Warming

24hoursnews( 24 hours news)We congratulate "Al Gore"

Gore's Nobel winnings go to Palo Alto global warming alliance.A year-old Palo Alto nonprofit will receive the $750,000 former Vice President Al Gore received along with his Nobel Prize.

The Alliance for Climate Protection, which was once lauded by Gore as the planet's "PR agent," is a think tank focused on letting people know about the effects of global warming and helping them become activists against it.

The alliance also works alongside other environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, for climate change education.

In concert with Gore's Current TV and actors that included George Clooney and Orlando Bloom, the alliance created a contest letting people submit videos on environmental action.

Gore also gave the alliance money from his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth

Last week the Nobel Foundation awarded Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the Nobel Peace Prize. Former U. S. Vice President Al Gore was honored for his work on climate change and his Oscar winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The IPCC, a joint project of the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization, was honored for its efforts over the past two decades to educate the world about climate change. Earlier this year, the IPCC issued its strongest statement to date, finding the evidence of climate change "unequivocal" and concluding with 90% certainty that humans are the cause.

In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to leaders in the battle against climate change, the Norwegian Nobel Committee emphasizes that the problem's effects go beyond climate, and extend to individual security and opportunity. In the award press release they state:

"Indications of changes in the earth's future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states...the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world's future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man's control."

Al Gore has argued for rising to meet the challenge of climate change from a moral perspective: "The climate crisis offers us the chance to experience what few generations in history have had the privilege of experiencing: a generational mission; a compelling moral purpose; a shared cause; and the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict of politics and to embrace a genuine moral and spiritual challenge."

Technorati : Global warming, nobel

Bussines @c stocks today

		ICICI Bank cuts interest rate on its special deposit schemes
		U.S. Company to Invest USD 50mln in Coffee Farm, Roasting Facility
		IT Dept may acquire space at WTC to open LTU
		VASCO Officially Introduces UK Banking Market Card Readers During London Banking Summit
		Deccan Chronicle allots 8.32 lakh equities on FCCBs conversion
		Enterprise Applications Databook is Designed to Help You Gain Insight into Key Technology Investment Patterns and Trends in Target Markets
		RIL Jamnagar plant shut for maintenance, supplies unaffected
		Wacker to invest up to 400 mln eur in Chinese siloxane plant - CEO
		Hero Honda rolls out 20 millionth bike; aims better sales
		Cookson makes open offer for 20 pc in Foseco India
		Punj bags Rs 389 cr pipeline order from Qatar Petroleum
		SC stays criminal proceedings against JJ Irani
		Covidien, BioSynthema In Exclusive Deals For Neuroendocrine Cancer Therapy Technology- Update
		NSEFULLLIST
		Hero Honda flags off bike-a-thon in Mangalore
		London shares open mixed, near seven-year high, Northern Rock slides
		RIL to spend USD 9bn in Jamnagar, adopt aggr. Growth strategy
		CRR hike would effect margins: HDFC
		Australia's AGL Energy ratings not immediately hit by cut in FY guidance - S&P

Technorati : Bussines @c stocks t

The DVR effect

In so many ways this television season is shaping up as those of the past have, a flock of new shows, some surprises, more disappointments and the suspenseful wait for the axe to land on those that sink.

But this year is quite different in an important way, as the first season in which digital video recorders have really become mainstream and the ratings that really count will include not just live viewing, when the show actually airs, but delayed viewing on DVR devices like TiVo up to seven days after that original airing.

That's hugely important for media people, as Media Life learned in a recent poll of readers about the new season.

The question posed to readers: What's the biggest storyline early in the season?

By far the largest share, nearly half, 44 percent, named DVRs, agreeing with this statement: "The impact of digital video recorders on broadcast ratings, with Nielsen's DVR sample more than doubling since last year. It will be weeks until we see the full picture for this season because it will depend on live-plus-seven-day-playback ratings."

Media Life then asked readers how the DVR ratings would affect their work as media planners and buyers. There were a slew of responses.

The overall sense was that DVR ratings would forever change broadcast television and how shows, networks and TV seasons are evaluated. But beyond that there was not a lot of agreement.

What follows are some of those comments, edited for conciseness:

"I think I will be buying a lot more sports! Planners are going to have to adjust CPPs and TRP levels to account for the dramatic drop in live ratings (I think the plus three part is crap, once it's on DVR very few people are going to watch the commercials, and the stations haven't really convinced me otherwise.) And agencies are going to have figure out and then re-educate clients on what to expect and what constitutes an effective buy. I believe the DVR to be the greatest invention since the VCR for watching TV and the worst, perhaps industry-killing innovation for the advertising industry. The DVR, even more than the internet, is going to be what forces advertising to change, evolve and adapt to a completely new landscape. We completely underestimated TiVo."

"DVRs will bring the ratings down. Once a show is recorded, the viewer isn't in any hurry to watch it. Between LPMs, DVRs, the increase in cable ratings, the political season, and the Olympics, 2008 is going to be a tough year for spot buying."

"It will certainly extend the period after a show airs before ratings actually matter."

"DVRs have become the means of watching TV. Why spend an hour watching it live when you can spend 45 minutes watching it an hour later. It's the only way I watch shows anymore."

"The new motto is, 'Get used to it,' this is the way people watch television and how it will impact ratings and viewership still remains to be seen. More work will need to be done to stay ahead of the curve on this one."

"I'll continue to buy good shows that reach the demos I need for individual clients--my ads stand out so they'll continue to be watched by MOST viewers of any specific program."

"Early in the season, I tape every new show, mainly due to my job as a planner, but even as a typical viewer, I will find the shows I like and I will tape them to watch at my convenience. As we all know, DVR taping impacts the real-time ratings we use to evaluate and project program delivery. I believe that the actuals delivered are mirrored as a percentage of the programs being watched in real time. As my personal example above, I tape shows, but when I decide I do not like something, I no longer tape it and only choose to tape the best ones in my view. The industry clearly needs to develop a method to rate DVR programming, but as a planner, I believe that the real-time ratings act as a percentage of total viewers and I continue to project based on the reporting available, as I believe those ratings are equal to the total viewers."

"DVRs' penetration is still not large enough to truly make a difference. The DVR demographic, although desirable, is still only a small audience to account for in planning and buying. So much hype for DVRs and energy put into them-yet so little true buying impact on my firm"

"As ratings go down, CPPs go up. Agencies/clients are holding on to outdated cost info. There are terrific integrated options on most stations but most buyers haven't been trained how to evaluate and recommend something that isn't 'sticking to the plan.' Stations/networks can't pay any less for programming so we all have to be more creative."

"I believe it will benefit most of the more unique shows, including 'Cane' and 'Journeyman.'

"Perhaps DVRs will make networks a bit more patient, willing to stick with shows longer, hoping to build viewership as the season progresses."

"It will impact it by lowering ratings, and it'll make it a little harder to figure out what people like to watch."

"There will be a lot of uncertainty and questioning the system--internally and client-side."

""DVRs will finally help give a more accurate picture of what people watch. Let's face it, rating systems are really totally imperfect, so anything that can give a more accurate picture is progress long overdue."

"I think that Nielsen's DVR impact will be a huge bomb."

"DVRs will have only a small impact on ratings. Overall, when viewers love a show, they still want to see it in first air so they can talk about it the next day. Even when shows are recorded, it is primarily because viewers are not home or can't watch, not because they want to skip the commercials."

"DVRs will delay getting full details as to how a show is truly doing. Networks are going to have to quickly figure out how they are going to determine what makes a show popular or not and look to other avenues of getting the show watched."

"The impact will only be slight. Nielsen ratings figures have always been suspect to fraud, in my opinion. I prefer to go by first-hand viewer feedback, as well as my own opinion of the current programming offerings. If anything, DVRs will add more viewers, who can now have access to programming materials at their convenience in a manner that works better with their schedule."

"I think if people DVR a show to watch it later they obviously chose something other than that show to watch, and it shouldn't affect the ratings for that particular day one way or the other. Time-shifted ratings are a 'myth' that shouldn't be tallied or counted as viewed for that day. It's like reruns, they don't rate like a first-run show, so DVR'd shows are just taped because they came in second for the night and they shouldn't count in the overall ratings."

"This is just a continuation of decreasing ratings for traditional media as more and more mediums become available and technology allows consumers to do what they want when they want. Network TV is still the biggest reach medium there is, and local TV and radio are still strong and the best way to go for many clients. But the ways they should be planned and bought are changing."

"DVRs will continue to affect viewership numbers. Viewers will continue to do what they have to avoid watching commercials. This why I approve of widespread use of product placements, as they make the shows more realistic when the characters can bee seen using REAL products, not fake studio knockoffs. The message gets through."

"A show being DVR'd is not something that can be counted on. Plus, just because it's been DVR'd doesn't mean that it will be watched. Plus, the fast forward button is still readily available on the remote. Basically, I think it's nice for the stations to get added exposure of their shows, but the Nielson ratings are all that we can count on for this diary market."

"In evaluating shows, you now have to look at not only Nielsen's ratings but the live+7 as well to really see how effective a program is. This year is going to be based more on qualitative information than real ratings data."

"I think it will make producers a little less trigger-happy when it comes to deciding which new shows will get the ax. With live-plus-seven, they cannot determine based on overnights which show will live, unless overnights are incredibly low in the main demographics."

"Confusing in the short-run, promising in the long-run."

"It will deliver preliminary numbers for most of the hottest hits that incorrectly indicate serious erosion. Confusion will reign. But subsequent measures, such as live plus seven, may reveal little overall loss for these hits."

"It's a 'watch when you want to world,' and that will only increase as the years go by. One good thing about this is that there have always been shows that get this treatment. Finally, they will get their due."

"On ratings, it's too soon to know for sure, but I suspect it will have a major impact. On program evaluation, it will depend on the degree of ad avoidance. On my job, it will depend on how the first two points play out, but I don't see it making it easier."

"It will cause total time spent with television to increase. It will cause a nice lift for some 'appointment' programs. The new appointment shows are the ones that are recorded so you can watch them over and over again. It won't impact my job at all because after years of working in the TV biz, I'm working in internet media now."

"DVRs are going to help the ratings of many programs. The biggest impact will be on scripted dramas. The question we have to ask is, are commercials being watched during the playbacks or fast forwarded through? Right now it is a wait and see situation."

"Some shows will benefit from DVR's in my opinion, especially the serialized dramas and the most popular series ('CSI;' 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'House,' for instance). I'm betting the networks will look at the DVR ratings and give some promising new shows a chance. (After all, back in 1981, NBC renewed 'Hill Street Blues' in part because it was doing well with those who subscribed to cable TV--a relatively small number at the time.) DVR households could also become the make-or-break factor."

"The penetration of DVRs is getting high enough that their impact on ratings needs to be taken into account. What will be critical is the number of people that watch commercials on their recorded shows. If a significant number don't fast forward through the commercials then the overall impact will be small. However, it the opposite is true, then this will really have a major impact on what I buy and how I negotiate. It might actually be good for advertisers in the long run because the networks and their affiliates won't be able to justify price increases when their audiences can be shown to be not only decreasing (they already are but this hasn't impacted pricing yet for some reason) but that fewer people are actually watching commercials. It also should have an impact on how they schedule commercial blocks in order to minimize impact on commercial ratings."

"DVRs will obviously affect national TV negotiations from now on. I'm not so much concerned with the program ratings as I am with the commercial ratings. The industry needs to go to second by second data with some type of +3 or +5 data stream to accurately gauge engagement."

"As it will take longer to evaluate the ratings data, I suspect we'll see more grassroots protests to bring back canceled shows as people are actually watching them (even though the quick numbers may not indicate as such)."

"DVR makes our jobs more difficult. Who really wants to watch commercials if you don't have to anyway? I can't believe I just said that."

Technorati : The DVR effect

Something new under the sun

Innovation, long the preserve of technocratic elites, is becoming more open. This will be good for the world, argues Vijay Vaitheeswaran (interviewed here)

A CRISIS is a terrible thing to waste," Vinod Khosla laments to Larry Page. The two Silicon Valley luminaries are chatting one evening at the Googleplex, the quirky Californian headquarters of Google. The crisis which Mr Khosla is concerned about is caused by carmakers' addiction to oil and the consequent warming of the planet. "The energy and car industries have not been innovative in many years because they have faced no real crisis, no impetus for change," he insists.

The two are plotting what they hope will be the next great industrial revolution: the convergence of software and smart electronics with the grease and grime of the oil and car industries. Mr Khosla is kicking around his plans for getting "chip guys" together with "engine guys" to develop the clean, software-rich car of the future. Such breakthroughs happen only when conventional wisdom is ignored and cross-fertilisation encouraged; "managed conflict", in his words.

Mr Page, co-founder of Google, had earlier hosted a gathering of leading environmentalists, political thinkers and energy experts to help shape an inducement to get things moving: the Automotive X Prize, to be unveiled in early 2008. The organisers will offer at least $10m to whoever comes up with the best "efficient, clean, affordable and sexy" car able to obtain the equivalent of 100 miles-per-gallon using alternative energy. The charitable arm of Mr Page's firm has already taken hybrid petrol-electric vehicles, like the Toyota Prius, and turned them into even cleaner "plug in" versions which can be topped up from an electric socket.

Mr Khosla believes clean cars, using advanced biofuels or other alternatives, will come about only through radical innovation of the sort that Big Oil and Big Autos avoid. Risk and acceptance of failure are central to innovation, he argues, but the dinosaurs typically avoid both. "Big companies didn't invent the internet or Google, and much of the big change in telecoms also came from outsiders," he adds.

Coming from almost anyone else such talk would sound preposterous. But Mr Khosla and Mr Page are not ordinary businessmen or armchair revolutionaries. Mr Khosla helped to found Sun Microsystems, a path-breaking information-technology firm, and he went on to become a partner at Kleiner Perkins, a venture-capital company that was an early backer of Amazon.com, America Online and many other pillars of the internet economy. Mr Page's Google is one of the internet's biggest success stories. At 34 he is a multi-billionaire.

But these men are from Silicon Valley; and Silicon Valley is not America. It is tempting to dismiss such breathless talk of revolution as just more hype from people who are seeing the world through Google goggles. After all, go beyond the rarefied air of northern California and the rules of gravity are no longer suspended. The well-established industries which they mock still move at their usual but reliably glacial pace, right?

Well no, actually. Rapid and disruptive change is now happening across new and old businesses. Innovation, as this report will show, is becoming both more accessible and more global. This is good news because its democratisation releases the untapped ingenuity of people everywhere and that could help solve some of the world's weightiest problems.

The seditious scene from the Googleplex also captures the challenge this presents to established firms and developed economies. For ages innovation has been a technology-led affair, with most big breakthroughs coming out of giant and secretive research labs, like Xerox PARC and AT&T's Bell Laboratorie.

It was an era when big corporations in developed countries accounted for most R&D spending. .

North America still leads the world in research spending (see chart 1), but the big labs' advantage over their smaller rivals and the developing world is being eroded by two powerful forces. The first is globalisation, especially the rise of China and India as both consumers and, increasingly, suppliers of innovative products and services. The second is the rapid advance of information technologies, which are spreading far beyond the internet and into older industries such as steel, aerospace and carmaking.

What is innovation? Although the term is often used to refer to new technology, many innovations are neither new nor involve new technology. The self-service concept of fast-food popularised by McDonald's, for instance, involved running a restaurant in a different way rather than making a technological breakthrough. However, innovation can involve plenty of clever gadgets and gizmos.

One way to arrive at a useful definition is to rule out what innovation is not. It is not invention. New products might be an important part of the process, but they are not the essence of it. These days much innovation happens in processes and services. Novelty of some sort does matter, although it might involve an existing idea from another industry or country. For example, Edwin Drake was not the first man to drill for a natural resource; the Chinese used that technique for centuries to mine salt. But one inspired morning in 1859, Colonel Drake decided to try drilling for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. He struck black gold and from his innovation the modern oil industry was born.

The men in white coats

The OECD, a think-tank for rich countries, says innovation can be defined as "new products, business processes and organic changes that create wealth or social welfare." Richard Lyons, the chief "learning officer" at Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, offers a more condensed version: "fresh thinking that creates value". Both hit the nail on the head, and will serve as the definition in this report.

According to popular notion, innovation is something that men wearing white coats in laboratories do. And that's the way it used to be. Companies set up vertically integrated R&D organisations and governments fussed over innovation policies to help them succeed. This approach had successes and many companies still spend pots of money on corporate research. But firms are growing increasingly disenchanted because the process is slow and insular. A global study across industries by Booz Allen Hamilton, a consultancy, even concluded that "higher R&D spending doesn't ensure better performance in terms of growth, profitability or shareholder returns."

Now the centrally planned approach is giving way to the more democratic, even joyously anarchic, new model of innovation. Clever ideas have always been everywhere, of course, but companies were often too closed to pick them up. The move to an open approach to innovation is far more promising. An insight from a bright spark in a research lab in Bangalore or an avid mountain biker in Colorado now has a decent chance of being turned into a product and brought to market

So why does the generation and handling of ideas matter so much? "We firmly believe that innovation, not love, makes the world go round," insists John Dryden of the OECD. Corny perhaps, but studies do show that a large and rising share of growth-and with it living standards-over recent decades is the result of innovation (see chart 2). Innovative firms also tend to outperform their peers. "We're not discovering new continents or encountering vast deposits of new minerals," Mr Dryden adds. Indeed, the OECD's experts believe that most innovation has been caused by globalisation and new technologies.

Analysis done by the McKinsey Global Institute shows that competition and innovation (not information technology alone) led to the extraordinary productivity gains seen in the 1990s. "Those innovations-in technology as well as products and business processes-boosted productivity. As productivity rose, competition intensified, bringing fresh waves of innovation," the institute explains.

That is why innovation matters. With manufacturing now barely a fifth of economic activity in rich countries, the "knowledge economy" is becoming more important. Indeed, rich countries may not be able to compete with rivals offering low-cost products and services if they do not learn to innovate better and faster.

But even if innovation is the key to global competitiveness, it is not necessarily a zero sum game. On the contrary, because the well of human ingenuity is bottomless, innovation strategies that tap into hitherto neglected intellectual capital and connect it better with financial capital can help both rich and poor countries prosper. That is starting to happen in the developing world.

Technorati : Something, new, sun, under

2007 MIT Innovations in Management Conference :Creating and Maintaining a Sustainable Business Strategy

Aletter for you :

The 2007 MIT Innovations in Management Conference is scheduled for December 5-6, 2007. The annual conference is offered by MIT's Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) and co-sponsored by MIT Sloan. This year's theme is "Creating and Maintaining a
Introducing MIT's new Sustainable Business Lab (S-Lab), the conference will feature research outcomes, application concepts, emerging trends, best practices, and enabling technologies that address issues related toencouraging, planning, and measuring sustainability.

For more information on the conference, you can download the brochure or visit the ILP website.

We worked with the ILP to schedule the conference around the dates of some of our executive programs, allowing participants to attend both the conference and a program in one trip. The programs offered near the conference dates are:

• Developing a Leading Edge Operations Strategy, December 3-4, 2007


• IT for the Non-IT Executive, December 3-4, 2007


• Understanding and Solving Complex Business Problems, December 10-11, 2007

We hope to see you in December.

Best regards,

Diana V. García-Martínez

Director, Open Enrollment Programs

Wong Auditorium, Tang Center

From climate change and deforestation to accelerating rates of social inequality and environmental degradation, our current business models are consuming natural and social capital at unsustainable rates. How can business respond? Can sustainability and profit by aligned? How can investments in sustainable products and practices create new markets and build profitable, healthy enterprises?

Developed in conjunction with senior faculty of the MIT Sloan School of Management, this program will seek to answer the following questions:

• What kinds of businesses can be built around making products and services that address the problems of sustainability?
• How can existing profit-driven companies place sustainability at the heart of what they do? What evidence do we have that such practices work?
• How does one value the long-term and intangible costs and benefits?
• What organizational and industry structures can be created to help support and diffuse more sustainable business practices (e.g., industry consortia, public-private partnerships, etc.)?
• How can business take advantage of new scientific and engineering developments to achieve sustainability targets and create new business opportunities in sustainability-related markets?
• How can you successfully manage the change process required to implement best practices around sustainability?

Registration Fees:

Full Registration Fee: $1,750
ILP Members*: complimentary


*A $50 processing fee will apply to each complimentary registrant who fails to attend without canceling in advance. Cancellations must be received in writing via email: register@ilp.mit.edu no later than November 28, 2007.


Registration Payment Methods:

Please make checks payable to MIT.
VISA, MasterCard, American Express and Discover accepted. (Payable in US dollars only.)

Cancellation Policy:

Cancellations received in writing via email register@ilp.mit.edu on or before November 28, 2007 are entitled to a full refund less a $50 processing fee. No refunds will be made after November 28, 2007. Substitutions, may also be made in writing by by November 28, 2007, however, any substitutions after that date will be made at the Conference On-Site Registration Desk.

Accommodations:

A block of rooms has been reserved at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge hotel near the MIT campus. Please call for reservations directly at 1-800-223-1234 or 617-492-1234. Rooms are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, and reservations must be made no later than November 4, 2007. Please refer to the MIT ILP Innovations in Management Conference to receive the $169 room rate, plus local tax, single or double occupancy.

Technorati : Sustainable Business Strategy

Research :Functional divergence of former alleles may explain an asexual organism's evolutionary success

Asexual organisms typically have gone extinct within one million years because a lack of genetic exchange doesn't allow for the removal of deleterious mutations or the sharing of advantageous ones. But a class of aquatic invertebrates called bdelloid rotifers have persisted for 35 to 40 million years, earning the term "ancient asexuals."

The divergence of alleles into separate genes with different but advantageous functions could explain the puzzling evolutionary success of certain asexual organisms, researchers report today in Science.

"This could point the way, in part, as to why bdelloids are so successful," David Mark Welch of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., told The Scientist.

Alan Tunnacliffe at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues examined genes associated with surviving dry spells, or desiccation tolerance, and found two copies for lea genes, which are known to preserve enzymes during desiccation in multiple organisms. Their sequences differed by about 13 percent, which is greater than allele differences in sexual animals. The researchers also localized the genes to different chromosomes, which would be expected of alleles from the same gene, and therefore also expected in former alleles.

Tunnacliffe and his colleagues found that the two genes provide different protective benefits to the animal during desiccation. One gene protects proteins from aggregating, while the other appears to associate with the cell membrane, perhaps preventing it from leaking. "Sequence divergence and subsequent functional divergence helped these organisms survive desiccation," Tunnacliffe told The Scientist.

The evidence supports the idea that these were former alleles that accumulated enough mutations to become separate genes, a process termed the "Meselson effect." Matthew Meselson at Harvard University and Mark Welch first described the process in bdelloids in 2000 in a paper that has been cited more than 140 times. The difference in Tunnacliffe's findings, said Mark Welch, is "he was able to come up with some functional assays," rather than just divergent sequences.

Such divergence gives asexual organisms an advantage, the authors argue -- the effect could not occur in sexually reproducing animals, because alleles become homogenized during recombination. The findings suggest asexual reproduction could actually be an "evolutionary mechanism for the generation of diversity," they write.

So far the Meselson effect has not been observed in other organisms, perhaps because the phenomenon is unique and linked to bdelloid's desiccation tolerance, said Mark Welch, who wrote an accompanying commentary in Science. Another reason is that very few asexual organisms do not undergo meiosis, which is part of the definition of the effect.

However, Roger Butlin at the University of Sheffield told The Scientist that additional genes are not necessarily a straightforward solution to asexuality. "Having more copies of genes doesn't get you out of the problem of [disadvantageous] mutation accumulation," he said. "I think we have to look elsewhere for how they've managed to remain asexual for so long." Butlin said bdelloids' large population size and ability to distribute widely might have contributed to their success.

Butlin said the next step will be to look at the evolutionary fates of other gene copies in bdelloids and Tunnacliffe said he will start to look for other functionally divergent genes. "I think this must be going on throughout the genome," Tunnacliffe said.

The authors assume these genes were former alleles, rather than gene duplication, but their assumption makes sense, Mark Welch noted. "If it was a gene duplication, and if we are right about the structure of the bdelloid genome, then there should be four copies," he said. But because Tunnacliffe found only two divergent genes, it appears they were former alleles. "I personally think they've got it right."

Tunnacliffe's functional assays were done in vitro. He said he would like to do more studies on the activities of the two genes' proteins. "What we'd really like to know is, do these proteins do the same job in a living animal?"

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