R & D articles from November 2006

R & D archives from November 2006

A timely action plan.(EDITORIAL)
November 1, 2006... A four-year-long study by an international team of researchers led by Boris Worm at Dalhousie Univ. in Halifax, Nova Scotia, hit the media headlines recently with their announcement of potential seafood collapses by the middle of this century...

X PRIZE in Genomics launched.(LIFE SCIENCE)
November 1, 2006... The non-profit X PRIZE Foundation, Santa Monica, Calif., is turning the wheels of innovation again with the recent announcement of the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics. The competition calls on private companies to create a technology...

X-ray crystallography work garners Nobel.(ANALYTICAL INSTRUMENTS)
November 1, 2006... The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, bestowers of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has awarded Stanford Univ:, Calif., Prof. Roger Kornberg with this year's prize. The award recognizes Kornberg's work on understanding how DNA is...

Time to add 118 to the Periodic Table?(CHEMISTRY)
November 1, 2006... Physicists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Calif., and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Dubna, Russia, have purported the existence of the newest superheavy element, element 118. 'In experiments conducted...

Micro/nanotailored CVD.(MICRO/NANO)
November 1, 2006... A new variation on chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has shown promise for its possible use in micro/nano device manufacture. Devised by engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Stanford Univ., and NYU, plasmon-assisted CVD...

U.S. troops MASTOR Arabic.(BULLETIN)
November 1, 2006... IBM, Yorktown Heights, N.Y., has recently announced the successful delivery of an advanced speech-to-speech translation system to U.S. military forces in Iraq. The bidirectional English to Arabic translation software, dubbed MASTOR or...

Lilly surges forward in expansion.(PHARMACEUTICAL)
November 1, 2006... Pharma giant Eli Lilly, Indianapolis, Ind., has completed the first phase of its $560 million biotech plant expansion with the dedication of a new 20,903[m.sup.2] bioproducts plant manufacturing plant. The new manufacturing facility (known as...

Millipore expands with new R&D center.(LABORATORY DESIGN)
November 1, 2006... Pharmaceutical and life science lab equipment provider, Millipore Corp., Billerica, Mass., has expanded its reach into the drug discovery and development arena with the opening of its new $50 million R&D bioprocess center in Bedford, Mass. The...

Flying the silent skies.(AVIATION)
November 1, 2006... Team members from the 'Silent' Aircraft Initiative celebrated a recent milestone with the unveiling of the project's final design concept. Launched in 2003 by Cambridge Univ., U.K., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),...

Greener plastics.(MATERIALS)
November 1, 2006... Research being conducted at Carnegie Mellon Univ. (CMU), Pittsburgh, Pa., has demonstrated the benefits of using vitamin C and pure water in plastics manufacturing. The approach, according to the NSF, Arlington, Va., which funded the research,...

Unlocking mysteries of the brain.(R&D INFORMATICS)
November 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Wash., has completed its inaugural project, the Allen Brain Atlas. Arthur Toga, a member of the Institute's scientific advisory board, says the Atlas is a critical tool...

ThermoML improves data.(R&D INFORMATICS)
November 1, 2006... A new Web-based system that speeds researcher access to a large body of new scientific data has improved access to data as well as the quality of the data itself. ThermoML, a Web-enabled thermodynamics global data exchange, catches and...

China train tech on a roll.(R&D ASIA)
November 1, 2006... China's Shanghai Railway Administration put the new Shanghai-Tibet railway service into operation on Oct. 1, China's National Day. The 4,373-km journey takes 53.25 hrs and serves as the world's highest elevation commercial railway. Development...

India hot to become steel leader.(R&D ASIA)
November 1, 2006... Tata Steel, Jamshedpur, India, will become India's largest steel producer with its approved acquisition of the Anglo-Dutch Corus Group, Europe's second largest steel producer. Tata Steel, part of the $22 billion Tata Group conglomerate, will...

Toyota-Isuzu joint R&D.(R&D ASIA)
November 1, 2006... Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. and Isuzu Motors Ltd. have announced that they will form a capital alliance and diesel engine development program. They will jointly develop and produce small diesel engines and gas emission control systems. among...

Google in Korea.(R&D ASIA)
November 1, 2006... Mountain View, Calif,-based Google has announced that it will set up an R&D center in Korea to hire local employees and develop online services and technology for global markets. Korea joins other Google R&D offices in the UK. Israel, Norway,...

Australian R&D sets records.(R&D ASIA)
November 1, 2006... The Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS) has announced that Australia's national investment in R&D reached a record $15.7 billion in 2004/5. "Expressed as a share of GDP, our national investment in R&D...

Architect of the future: refocusing on basic research: R&D Magazine's 41st Scientist of the Year balances genomic research while spearheading one of the newest centers of basic research in the life sciences.(Cover story)
November 1, 2006... Dr. Gerald Rubin is a researcher who works to understand the genomic structure of the Drosophila melanogaster, or common fruit fly. Rubin is also Vice President and Director of the Janelia Farm Research Campus (JFRC), the recently opened...

Roundtable probes government lab performance: executives from U.S. labs speak out on the economic, technological, and administrative issues affecting government labs.(Government CEO Roundtable)(Interview)(Discussion)
November 1, 2006... The 8th annual R&D Magazine Government CEO Roundtable took place on Oct. 19 at Chicago's Navy Pier. As in years past, this event provided a unique forum for government lab executives to 'talk shop' regarding the challenges they face in...

Los Alamos National Laboratory: defining the future of National laboratories in a global technology economy.
November 1, 2006... The U.S. leadership position at the frontier of innovation has been the vital engine driving the U.S. economy for more than a century. The fuel for the growth of U.S. technology dominance has been the federal investment in science. However, the...

Ultra-strong diamond silicon carbide.(CASE STUDY)
November 1, 2006... Diamond is the hardest naturally occurring substance. Not surprisingly therefore, diamond Composites are used in many high-performance cutting tools and drill bits. However, in certain high-impact or high-stress environments, conventional...

Multifunctional element detector for immediate response.(CASE STUDY)
November 1, 2006... Hundreds of thousands of occupational illness cases are reported each year. These occupational illnesses create needless human suffering and billions of lost dollars in wages, administrative expenses and health care. Additionally, air and...

DOD needs better tech transfer processes: a recent GAO report recommends that the U.S. Dept. of Defense should use gated processes to strengthen its technology transition procedures.(Government CEO Roundtable)(Company overview)
November 1, 2006... The U.S. Dept. of Defense (DOD) is tasked with the development of technologies that will keep its current and future war fighters ahead of its adversaries, But, while we develop the best weapons in the world from a technology standpoint, the...

The dream of Composites: the use of composite material in Boeing's 787 Dreamliner is benefiting manufacturing, the environment, and, ultimately, the entire air travel industry.(MATERIALS)
November 1, 2006... The 787 Dreamliner, being built by Boeing, Everett, Wash., is changing the face of air travel in more ways than one Besides the new passenger-pleasing features like an unproved interior environment wider seats and aisles, and larger window, the...

Innovative solar cell mimics photosynthesis: a 'leaf-inspired' PV cell design offers the possibility of inexpensively converting solar to chemical and electrical energy.(PHOTONICS)
November 1, 2006... The U.S. alone uses about 30 trillion kilowatt-hours of energy each year, and with energy usage in other regions of the world rapidly growing, it is clear that developing alternative sources is imperative. Each square meter at mid-latitude...

Net neutrality issue draws ire.(REGULATORY UPDATE)
November 1, 2006... Net neutrality--the concept referring to networks that don't favor destinations/ applications over others, has network and hardware providers lobbying for legislative change. At the crux of this issue is the concern over the amount of...

Microsoft Vista ready to roll.(REGULATORY UPDATE)
November 1, 2006... In August, R&D Magazine reported that Microsoft, Redmond Wash., had been fined $356 million by the European Commission (EC) for not complying with its antitrust order. Arduous negotiations between Microsoft and the EC had threatened to delay...

Law helps terminate pollution.(REGULATORY UPDATE)
November 1, 2006... Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a new initiative into taw that imposes the nation's first mandatory statewide cap on greenhouse gas emissions. "Using market-based incentives, we win reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year...

Asbestos trade OK ... for now.(REGULATORY UPDATE)
November 1, 2006... In Oct., parties to the Rotterdam Convention an international treaty governing trade in toxic substances, decided against adding chrysotile asbestos to its global list of toxic substances. Representatives, led by Canada--a major asbestos...

New AI method grows output.(REGULATORY UPDATE)
November 1, 2006... A strong demand made it difficult to supply heat-treated plates for aerospace and other applications. To increase capacity, ASTM International, West Conshohocken, Pa., Committee on Light Metals and Alloys has developed a new standard. The...

Enhancing THz detectors.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: academic)
November 1, 2006... The potential of sensors and detectors operating in the terahertz (THz) range has not yet been realized because signals in that range have traditionally been incompatible with conventional microelectronics. This may soon change with the recent...

Solving Schrodinger simply.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: academic)
November 1, 2006... David Mazzioti, a chemist at the Univ. of Chicago, Ill., has developed a new method for determining the behavior of electrons in atoms and molecules. His method is based on the Schrodinger equation, which determines the behavior of all of the...

Lighting up photons.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: academic)
November 1, 2006... Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, have developed a new silicon and polymer waveguide that can manipulate light signals using light, at speeds almost 100 times as fast as conventional electron-based...

Increasing EUV power.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: academic)
November 1, 2006... Researchers at the Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando, have successfully demonstrated an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source with enough power to run the stepper machines used to reproduce detailed circuitry images onto computer chips. The...

Cooling neutrons for research.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: eureka)
November 1, 2006... The High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at the Dept. of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Tenn., has successfully tested its cooling system. During tests, the powerful refrigeration systems designed to cool the reactor's neutron...

Stopping bleeding quickly.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: eureka)
November 1, 2006... Simple biodegradable liquids, developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, can stop bleeding in wounded rodents within seconds. When the liquid, composed of protein fragments called peptides, is...

Controlling quantum processes.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: eureka)
November 1, 2006... A research team at the National Research Council (N RC) Canada, Ottawa, has developed a new technique which uses ultrafast laser pulses to control quantum processes. The method was illustrated by changing the outcome of a chemical reaction...

Changing light's wavelength.(EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: eureka)
November 1, 2006... An innovative process that converts low-energy longwave photons into higher-energy shortwave photons has been developed by a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany, and the Sony Materials Science...

Focus on lab automation.(Calendar)
November 1, 2006... The Association for Laboratory Automation (ALA) will hold its 10th annual Laboratory Automation Conference on Jan. 27-31, 2007, at the Palm Springs Convention Center, Calif. This event continues a tradition of knowledge sharing and information...

Biocompatible material demand.
November 1, 2006... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Demand for biocompatible materials in the U.S. is forecast to increase 6.6% annually to $3.7 billion in 2010, up from $2,7 billion in 2005. Based on quality, performance, and cost advantages in the broadest range of...

Global nanotechnology market.
November 1, 2006... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Worldwide, more than $9.5 billion was spent On nanotechnology R&D n 2005 Out of the total R&D expenditure, major contributions were from various governments and corporations which together contributed nearly $9 billion,...