R & D articles from December 2006

R & D archives from December 2006

R&D roulette.(EDITORIAL)
December 1, 2006... Where and with whom do you want to invest your R&D bets? There are lots of places, but there are also lots of risks, because the rules keep changing. Technologies are changing faster than ever before and the overall number of new technologies...

Self-repairing robots.(ROBOTICS)
December 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It sounds like a page from Star Trek or even Stargate, but a new robot devised by engineers at Cornell Univ., Ithaca, N.Y., has showcased its ability to heal itself. Loosely resembling a starfish, the new Cornell bot...

3M offloads pharma division.(PHARMACEUTICAL)
December 1, 2006... 3M, St. Paul, Minn., has completed the sale of its pharmaceutical operations in the Asia Pacific to Australian equity firms Ironbridge and Archer Capital in a deal valued at $349 million. This is the first in a series of transactions scheduled...

5 steps to nanotech safety.(MICRO/NANOTECHNOLOGY)
December 1, 2006... A study led by a team of 14 nanotech and health experts has outlined five distinct challenges to ensuring the safety of nanotechnology, now and in the future. "The threat of possible harm--whether real or imagined--is threatening to slow the...

Earth-shattering ozone record.(BULLETIN)
December 1, 2006... A survey conducted by ozone monitoring instruments aboard NASA's AURA satellite has yielded dramatic information about the status of the Earth's ozone hole. "From Sept. 21-30, 2006, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever...

Done deal for Thermo Fisher Scientific.(ANALYTICAL INSTRUMENTS)
December 1, 2006... Six months after announcing its plans to acquire Fisher Scientific, Nashua, N.H., Thermo Electron, Waltham, Mass., has been given the green light to complete is acquisition of the lab equipment provider by regulators. As part of the deal,...

STED garners spotlight.(MICROSCOPY)
December 1, 2006... All eyes were on Prof. Stefan Hell, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen, Germany, as he received one of the nation's premier awards for innovation, the German Future Award. Now in its 10 year, this award...

Arizona celebrates twin research hubs.(LABORATORY DESIGN)
December 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It was a dual celebration at the Univ. of Arizona (UA), Tucson, in early Dec. as the university officially opened the doors to its new Thomas W. Keating Bioresearch Building and UA College of Medicine's Medical...

IBM & Cray snag contract.(COMPUTING)
December 1, 2006... Nearly half a billion dollars has been awarded to computing giants IBM, Armonk, N.Y., and Cray, Seattle, Wash., for the development of supercomputers for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA), High Productivity Computing...

R&D's hot tech for 2007: as 2007 is ushered in, the editors and readers of R&D weigh in on what technologies will indeed be "hot".(Cover story)
December 1, 2006... For the third consecutive year, the editors of R&D Magazine performed a survey of our readers in late-November 2006 inquiring what technologies they expect to see rapid growth and high investment in 2007. This year's survey was identical to the...

OCT: imaging of the future: OCT will continue to advance imaging, especially in the medical field, throughout 2007.(HOT TOPICS)
December 1, 2006... Advances in optical imaging are improving many facets of everyday life, the most important of which is healthcare. One optical technique that stands out above the rest is optical coherence tomography (OCT). Developed in 1991 by researchers at...

Thin is in--and it's a win-win: 2007 may prove to be the dawn of the new age of thin-film photovotaics.(HOT TOPICS)
December 1, 2006... In recent years, governments have been straddling a fine line trying to discover a way to supply the ever-increasing demand for energy, while protecting the fragile environment and the health of its citizens. To that end, many nations, and...

FPGA come to the forefront: the flexibility and power of programmable gate arrays are moving them into new applications.(HOT TOPICS)
December 1, 2006... Invented in 1984 by the founders Of Xilinx, Inc., San Jose, Calif., the field programmable gate array (FPGA) has been a saving grace for design engineers. The reasons lie in their flexibility and cost benefits. In contrast to ASICs...

To grow you have to understand your market and its technologies: Applied Materials growth into new nanotechnology markets, including products like flat-panel displays, solar cells, and flexible electronics are all based on a complete understanding of their core technologies.(CEO SPOTLIGHT)
December 1, 2006... The National Science Foundation (NSF) has predicted that the market for non-IC (integrated circuit) nanotechnologies will exceed $1 trillion by 2015. Applied Materials, Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., aims to get its fair share of that pie by...

CEOs speak out on the State of Independent R&D: large contract research organizations see opportunities ahead for their style and operation of R&D.(INDEPENDENT R&D ORGANIZATIONS)(Company overview)
December 1, 2006... Independent research and development organizations (IRDOs) provide an essential capability to industry and government organizations. Their technological capabilities, expertise, and capital infrastructure provide quick R&D capabilities in peak...

MRI research puts heart rates to work.(CASE STUDY)
December 1, 2006... The variability of a person's heart rate helps gauge how well the autonomic nervous system is controlling the body. Sudden changes in heart rate variability may indicate the need for life-saving intervention in times of injury. ...

Getting online help in microscopy: a review of the best Web-based resources for microscopy researchers and enthusiasts.(MICROSCOPY)
December 1, 2006... In-depth knowledge of light and electron microscopy is limited in today's laboratories. Luckily, there are a number of online microscopy resources that can help make the difference--not only for incoming grad students and post-docs, but also...

Hot renewable energy.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: academic)
December 1, 2006... A new process to extract hydrogen from vegetable oil and sugar is helping to create usable fuels from plant wastes like sawdust or cornstalks. Led by Lanny Schmidt, professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the Univ. of...

Micropumping fluids.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: academic)
December 1, 2006... Engineers at the Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, have invented a tiny, inexpensive "micropump" that could be used to move liquid samples through a lab-on-a-chip. Using a silicone polymer material called polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS, the...

Desalinating [H.sub.2]0 with nanotech.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: academic)
December 1, 2006... Researchers at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles, UCLA, have developed a reverse osmosis membrane that promises to reduce the cost of seawater desalination and wastewater reclamation. The membrane uses a uniquely cross-linked matrix of...

Pulsating gels.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: academic)
December 1, 2006... Researchers at the Univ. of Pittsburgh, Pa., have studied a unique class of polymer gels, called Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) gels, that will pulsate when put in a bath of solutions with some reagents. The oscillation occurs because the gels...

Chilling hot chips.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: industrial)
December 1, 2006... The large amount of heat released by today's powerful computer processors and the additional energy required for removing that heat has led to the need for improvements in computer chip cooling. To that end, researchers at IBM's Zurich Research...

Solar power from an engine.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: industrial)
December 1, 2006... Infinia Corp., Kennewick, Wash., is developing a solar Stifling engine which concentrates light from a parabolic dish to generate electricity. The dish will be roughly 4.57 m high and will move to maximize light input during the day. The...

Shrinking memory devices.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: industrial)
December 1, 2006... Samsung Electronics, Seoul, Korea, has developed the industry's first 40-nm memory device. The new 32 Gb NAND flash device incorporates a Charge Trap Flash (CTF) architecture, which will increase manufacturing efficiency while greatly improving...

Using light to transfer electrons.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: industrial)
December 1, 2006... Scientists at Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, have built a light-emitting transistor (LET) that transfers, detects, and controls an electrical signal all on a single chip. The Hitachi LET is built using a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate, and...

Micro/Nano systems focus of conference.(Calendar)
December 1, 2006... The International Conference on Integration and Commercialization of Micro and Nano-systems, to be held in Sayna, Hainan, China, Jan. 10 -13, 2007, will focus on the state-of-the-art R&D, manufacturing, and commercialization of micro- and...

Spectroscopy forecast.
December 1, 2006... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] The total U.S. market for spectroscopic instruments was more than $3.6 billion in 2005, At an average annual growth rate (AAGR) of 7.7%, this market will cross $5.2 billion by 2010. Molecular spectroscopy is a large...

WLAN market soars.
December 1, 2006... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] The worldwide wireless large area network (WLAN) semiconductor market is forecast to reach $3.2 billion by 2010, up from $1.46 billion in 2005, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17%. While industry-wide competition...