Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 10.

18 - August 27, 2011

ISSN: 1712-9834

Selected news items from postings to Innovation Watch in the last two weeks... researchers reverse evolution by changing chicken DNA... scientist says an engineered organism could help humans colonize Mars... light bulbs could transmit data... a new computer chip mimics the human brain... technology companies fight a global patent war... China's expatriates fuel its economic rise... one in four young people are bored with social networking... only 63.5 percent of American men have a job... China looks to Africa to increase its access to iron ore... Russia moves to annex 380,000 miles of the thawing Arctic... insects, plants and animals are moving north as the climate warms... Arctic summer ice melt opens two major shipping routes... DARPA begins to plan for colonies on other planets... hiring the young to create the future... More great resources ... a new book by Peter Navarro and Greg Autry, Death by China: Confronting the Dragon -- A Global Call to Action... the website of the Swarmanoid Project, on collaborating autonomous robots... a video of Swarmanoid robots in action... an interview with Nathan Myhrvold on the patent arms race... David Forrest Innovation Watch

David Forrest advises organizations on emerging trends, and helps to develop strategies for a radically different future

SCIENCE
Top Stories: Rewinding Evolution: Scientists Alter Chicken DNA to Create Forward Know someone who

Embryo with 'Alligator-Like' Snout (Daily Mail) - Scientists have undone the progress made by evolution by altering chicken DNA to create embryos with alligator-like snouts instead of beaks. Experts changed the DNA of chicken embryos in the early stage of their development, enabling them to undo evolutionary progress and give the creatures snouts which are thought to have been lost in the cretaceous period millions of years ago. The scientific revelation of 'rewinding' evolution could pave the way for scientists altering DNA in the other direction and use the same process to create species better able to adapt to Earth's climate. Life on Mars Closer Than Ever for Man Claims Scientist Creating Artificial Life that Feeds Off Carbon Dioxide (Daily Mail) - A mission to Mars may seem like a distant dream to cash-strapped NASA, but a controversial scientist says we are on the verge of a breakthrough that would enable humans to settle there. U.S. scientist Craig Venter stunned the scientific community last year when he revealed that he had created the world's first synthetic organism. Now his team are working on engineering the cells to grow by consuming carbon dioxide -- and he thinks we can harness this to set up camp on the Red Planet.

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TECHNOLOGY
Top Stories: The Light Fantastic: Bulbs Could Soon Be Used to Broadcast Household Broadband (Daily Mail) - Light bulbs could be soon used to broadcast wireless Internet, a leading physicist has claimed. Harald Hass said he has developed a technology which can broadcast data through the same connection as a normal lamp. By simply turning on the light in the room you could also switch on your Internet connection, he said in a speech. Other possibilities of the device -- which he has dubbed 'Li-fi', or Light Fidelity -- include sending wireless data from the 'white space' in your television spectrum or unused satellite signals. Chips That Think Like Brain Announced by IBM (CBC) - The challenge in training a computer to behave like a human brain is technological and physiological, testing the limits of computer and brain science. But researchers from IBM Corp. say they've made a key step toward combining the two worlds. The company announced that it has built two prototype chips that it says process data more like how humans digest information than the chips that now power PCs and supercomputers.

BUSINESS
Top Stories:

Tech Companies Place Big Bets on Patents (Boston Globe) The massive Google-Motorola deal illustrates the scale of global patent wars. Giant companies are paying billions of dollars to control key technical innovations, while rivals file high-profile lawsuits to cash in on their patent holdings and snuff out competitors. In late June, a consortium that included Apple, Microsoft, and EMC Corp. of Hopkinton spent $4.5 billion for 6,000 patents belonging to the bankrupt Canadian telecom company Nortel Networks, covering everything from microchips to wireless networking technology. Last November, the same companies joined forces to buy nearly 900 patents from Waltham software maker Novell Corp. for $450 million. Inside The Sinosphere: China's New "Diaspora" Economy (Forbes) - Chinese capitalism has relied on diaspora entrepreneurs. In this sense, the rise of China represents the triumph of a race and a culture. Indeed for most of its history China's most important export was not silk or porcelain but people. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, Rangoon, Bangkok and Jakarta can be seen as the original testing grounds for Chinese capitalism. In the past few decades North American regions such as Silicon Valley, Southern California, Toronto, Vancouver and New York-New Jersey have been added to the mix. Overall the entire overseas Chinese population has risen to nearly 40 million. Taiwan, which is de facto independent, is home to an additional 23 million, and Hong Kong and Macau, officially part of China but governed under different laws, boasts some 7.5 million.

SOCIETY
Top Stories: Is the Tide Turning for Twitter and Facebook? One in Four Young People is 'Bored' With Social Media (Daily Mail) One in four young people is 'bored' with social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter, according to researchers. Some 24 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds admit to using social media increasingly less than when they first signed up, while 31 per cent said the fun of social media is wearing off. But a survey by technology research firm Gartner also found that 37 per cent of respondents claim to be using social networks more. The Slow Disappearance of the American Working Man (Businessweek) - The portion of men holding a job -- any job, full- or part-time -- fell to 63.5 percent in July -hovering stubbornly near the low point of 63.3 percent it reached in December 2009. These are the lowest numbers in statistics going back to 1948. Among the critical category of prime working-age men between 25 and 54, only 81.2 percent held jobs, a barely noticeable improvement from its low point last year -- and still well below the depths of the 1982-83 recession, when employment among prime-age men never dropped below 85 percent. To put those numbers in

perspective, consider that in 1969, 95 percent of men in their prime working years had a job.

GLOBAL POLITICS
Top Stories: Analysis: China Steps Up Iron Ore Drive in Africa (Reuters) A bold push by China into iron ore projects in Africa and elsewhere will increase its access to supply and may help moderate prices but will only slowly reduce its dependence on the three companies that dominate the market. China, the world's largest iron ore consumer, imported 618 million tons of iron ore last year, and most of that was supplied by global miners BHP Billiton , Rio Tinto and Vale. Russia's Arctic 'Sea Grab' (Christian Science Monitor) - In a multinational race to seize the potential riches of the formerly icebound Arctic, being laid bare by global warming, Russia is the early favorite. Within the next year, the Kremlin is expected to make its claim to the United Nations in a bold move to annex about 380,000 square miles of the internationally owned Arctic to Russian control. At stake is an estimated one-quarter of all the world's untapped hydrocarbon reserves, abundant fisheries, and a freshly opened route that will cut nearly a third off the shipping time from Asia to Europe.

ENVIRONMENT
Top Stories: Global Warming Pushes Species North (CBC) - New research shows insects, animals and plants are on the move north toward cooler climates as they try to escape the effects of global warming. About 2,000 species examined are moving away from the equator at an average rate of more than five metres per day, about 1 kilometres a year, according to new research published in the journal Science, which analyzed previous studies. Species are also moving up mountains to escape the heat, but more slowly, averaging 1.2 metres a year. Arctic Sea Routes Open as Ice Melts (BBC) - Two major Arctic shipping routes have opened as summer sea ice melts, European satellites have found. Data recorded by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Envisat shows both Canada's Northwest Passage and Russia's Northern Sea Route open simultaneously. This summer's melt could break the 2007 record for the smallest area of sea ice since the satellite era began in 1979.

THE FUTURE
Top Stories: U.S. Experts Start Work on Mission to Send People to Live on Other Planets (Daily Mail) - It may seem like a narrative right out of Star Trek, but one U.S. government agency is working to make it a reality. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking for a few good men - and women -- aiming to eventually colonise nearby planets. DARPA is the same agency that brought the world the internet and is hoping to introduce planes that will make the 747 look like a Cessna. DARPA will hold a three-day meeting in Orlando, Florida, to assess what such a mission to jet earthlings to space would entail. Why Not Hire the Young to Build Their Own Future? (Huffington Post) - Young Americans are a generation betrayed. Official unemployment is more than 25 percent for those aged 16-19. That means the real figure is much worse, especially in minority communities and depressed parts of the country. But jobs are scarce for everyone. College students are graduating with record levels of student debt before entering the worst job market for graduates in recent memory. We're handing them a nation of crumbling infrastructure, lost ambitions, diminished prospects -- and a seemingly endless parade of baby-boomer pop culture references, too. Since we've made such a mess of things, why not hire them to build the nation -- and the future -that they deserve?

Just in from the publisher...

Death by China: Confronting the Dragon A Global Call to Action

by Peter Navarro and Greg Autry
Read more...

A Web Resource... Swarmanoid Project - The main scientific objective of this research project is the design, implementation and control of a novel distributed robotic system. The system is made up of heterogeneous, dynamically connected, small autonomous robots. Collectively, these robots form a swarmanoid.

Multimedia... Swarmanoid Robot Swarm -- Swarmanoid is a heterogeneous robot swarm in which different groups of robots have different capabilities: some robots are specialized in manipulating objects and climbing, some in moving on the ground and transporting objects, and some in flying and observing the environment from above. This video presents the Swarmanoid project, a 4 year research project coordinated by Marco

Dorigo and funded by the Commission of the European Union. (5m 25s)

The Blogosphere... What Happens in a Patent Arms Race? An Interview With Nathan Myhrvold (IEEE Spectrum) - Nathan Myhrvold "Most technology markets are what I call a 'winner take most market,' and at various points Microsoft, or Apple, or Cisco, or Intel, or Google have all been the winners who took most. If you named 10 other household-name technology companies, they, too, would be winners who took most, and they could take most without patents; patents weren't a critical part of that -- it was about taking them to market. But as part of that process they also generated some patent liabilities; they tend to copy each other, and there were a variety of lawsuits that have occurred over the years, either for copying on a copyright basis -- you copied my code, you copied my look and feel -- or on a patent basis."

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