NewsTrust - Innovation - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

Larry Page is fostering Google's start-up spirit

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Jessica Guynn - Apr. 02 (News Report) - Larry Page wants to run Google Inc. like it's 1999. The co-founder of the Internet search giant has begun an unusual afternoon ritual of sitting and working with his top executives on small couches in an open area of the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. Employees, who used to have to stalk Page around campus, can drop by and grab a few minutes of his time.

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New Meningitis Vaccine Could be Model for Future Drugs

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

NewsHour - Mar. 19 (News) - The rollout of a new meningitis vaccine developed specifically with poor countries in mind began Monday in western Africa. Health officials hope to vaccinate more than 12 million people in Burkina Faso by the end of the year and millions more in Mali and Niger over the next few months.The three countries are part of the meningitis belt, a strip of sub-Saharan Africa often hit with outbreaks of the disease, which infects the thin lining surrounding the brain and spinal cord.Meningitis can cause loss of hearing, severe brain damage, or death--more than 5,000 people died of meningococcal meningitis in 14 African countries in 2009. The new vaccine is the first designed specifically for Africa--it costs less than 50 cents for a dose, and provides a decade of prevention. There are currently other meningitis vaccines used in African countries during meningitis outbreaks, but they cost up to $80 a vaccine and only provide two or three years of protection, according to the World Health Organization."We needed a vaccine that is affordable within the context of meningitis belt countries, which are some of the poorest countries in Africa," said Christopher Elias, president of the international nonprofit PATH, which partnered with WHO in 2001 to develop the vaccine.The new vaccine is also the first that can be used on infants. With financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation*, the groups worked independently from the large pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Europe, and ultimately manufactured the vaccine through a company in India, keeping costs lower."[Meningitis A], that's the epidemic that strikes Africa and there was no market for the pharma industry to want to introduce a vaccine," said Jean-Marie Okwo-Bele, director of the Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals Department at the World Health Organization.This new development model has "tremendous potential," said Elias, and could applied to other diseases in the future that greatly affect the developing world, but may not be attractive from a business perspective. The World Health Organization is currently looking to apply it to a new generation of the polio vaccine, while PATH is working towards new rotavirus and pneumonia vaccines. The process highlighted that having the buy-in from African countries from the beginning was a major advantage."These people here know better than anybody how dreadful this disease is," said Okwo-Bele. "It's a vaccine specifically designed for Africans, requested by Africans."*For the record, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation underwrites the NewsHour's global health coverage.

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USA Inc.: Red, White, and Very Blue

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Business Week - By Mary Meeker - Feb. 26 (Special Report) - The bottom line on USA Inc.? Cash flow and net worth are negative, profits are rare, and off-balance-sheet liabilities are enormous. The "company" has underinvested in productive capital, education, and technology—the very tools needed to compete in the global marketplace. Lenders have been patient so far, but the sky-high rates on the sovereign debt of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal suggest what might lie ahead for USA Inc. shareholders and our children. By our rough estimate, USA Inc. has a net worth of negative $44 trillion. That comes to $143,000 per capita. Negative. To be fair, the net worth calculation leaves out some assets, including, most importantly, the power to tax. Which simply means that the government can improve its own finances by worsening those of its citizen-shareholders. Medicare and Medicaid are the crushers for USA Inc. Excluding them and one-time charges, the "core business" shows a median net profit margin of 4 percent over the past 15 years. USA Inc.'s core operations were in surplus nine of those years. In the early years of the Republic, the only entitlements were military pensions. The big change came with the 1930s and World War II, when the federal government substantially expanded its role in the economy (in effect, its "business lines"). Entitlements experienced a surge in the Great Society of the 1960s. Since 1965, the nation's gross domestic product has increased about 2.7 times over, but entitlement expenses have increased 11.1 times over. What do Americans have to show for it? Evidence suggests that when the government provides, families do less for themselves: There is an 82 percent correlation between rising entitlement spending and falling personal savings rates. With the aging of my baby boom generation, things will get even worse.

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O'Malley seeks venture capital fund, wind farms in State of the State speech

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By John Wagner , Ann E. Marimow, Aaron C. Davis - Feb. 03 (News) - Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley asked lawmakers Thursday to create a $100 million venture capital fund, spur investment in offshore wind farms and ban the installation of septic systems in major new housing developments.

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Intel and Stanford University to jointly develop 3-D graphics projects

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

San Jose Mercury News - By Lisa Krieger - Jan. 26 (News) - In an unusual collaboration, Intel and Stanford University announced Wednesday that their scientists will work together, on campus, to design new visual computing projects. Intel is giving Stanford $2.5 million a year, for five years, to support a new "Intel Science & Technology Center" that is focused on 3-D graphics research, according to a joint announcement Wednesday morning by Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner and Stanford computer graphics professor Pat Hanrahan.

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Obama says he's trying to put the economy into 'overdrive' as poll shows plenty of work to do

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - Jan. 22 (News Report) - More than half the nation disapproves of President Barack Obama's policies to reduce stubbornly high unemployment, a new Associated Press-GfK poll said Friday as Obama refocused his job-creation efforts on a business-friendly vision

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Investors Bet on Strangers' Lives

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Mark Maremont, Leslie Scism - Dec. 21 (News Report) - Life Partners, a company that lets investors buy parts of strangers' life-insurance policies, has made large fees while often underestimating the life expectancies of people whose policies its customers invest in.

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The Year in Ideas

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Dec. 17 (Special Report) - Our digest of short entries refracts the light beam of human inspiration, breaking it up into its constituent colors — innovations and insights from a spectrum of fields, including economics, biology, engineering, medicine, literature, sports, music and, of course, raw-meat clothing. Happy thinking!

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Giant rats put noses to work on Africa's land mine epidemic

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Elliott C. McLaughlin - Sep. 08 (News Report) - Niko Mushi hated rats, as did most people in his village near Tanzania's Mt. Kilimanjaro -- until he learned the critters had a nose for land mines. Mushi, 32, has been working with giant African pouched rats for almost seven years. He now enjoys their company -- "They're just like my friend," he says -- but he concedes he was skeptical when the man who conceived the idea for HeroRats first told him they could sniff out live ordnance.

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Light bulb factory closes; End of era for U.S. means more jobs overseas

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Peter Whoriskey - Sep. 08 (Special Report) - The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.

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Laser-powered helicopter hovers for hours

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New Scientist - Sep. 02 (News) - Laser-powered helicopter hovers for hours

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NASA Puts the "Green" in Its Other Mission: Developing Revolutionary, Energy-Efficient Airplanes

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - By Adam Marcus - Jul. 30 (News Report) - The first "A" in NASA stands for aeronautics, and the agency is leading a host of federal programs and initiatives that aim to develop a fleet of environmentally friendly aircraft.

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NASA's Eco-Friendly Airplanes

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Katherine Butler - Jul. 30 (News Report) - The space agency pours cash and ideas into new innovations for cleaner aircrafts.

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The Electrifying Edison - The Making of America: Thomas Edison

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Bryan Walsh - Jul. 18 (Special Report) - Thomas Edison helped create the American way of innovation — but today the U.S. is in danger of losing its pre-eminence in science and technology.

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Panera to open more pay-what-you-wish restaurants

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Christopher Leonard - Jun. 30 (News Report) - The idea for Panera's first nonprofit restaurant was to open an eatery where people paid what they could. The richer could pay full price — or extra. The poorer could get a cheap or even free meal. A month later, the verdict is in: It turns out people are basically good.

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Silicon Valley's Prison Call Center

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Victoria Barret - Jun. 11 (Special Report) - Televerde is staffed by 250 "ladies," as they proudly prefer to be called, who show up for their shifts in bright orange jumpsuits. They submit to strip searches and are sometimes heckled by the guards, but once they've put on that headset, these women are in another world. "You get your dignity back," says Goodwin, who also had $8,000 in savings waiting for her on the other side.

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Munching machines

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jun. 10 (News Report) - A robot with dietary requirements might sound a bit far fetched, but a team of American researchers is developing a machine that will fend for itself by gathering biomass (wood, leaves and grass) to be used as a biofuel to run its steam-driven engine. Who might want such a device? The American army.

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Commercial Falcon 9 rocket launch could blaze trail for private spaceflight

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Marc Kaufman - Jun. 03 (News Report) - If all goes well, a rocket built by an Internet entrepreneur in a former Boeing 747 fuselage factory will launch into space Friday -- from one of the storied pads in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

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Facebook is just the first step, say Russians

Sun, 23 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - By Rupert Neate - May. 23 (News Report) - The Russian investment vehicle that bought a $200m stake in Facebook last year is preparing to buy stakes in dozens of well-known internet companies as Russia turns to the internet to lead its future prosperity.

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Craig Venter's synthetic life breakthrough raises scientific hopes

Fri, 21 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ian Sample - May. 21 (News) - It was a dream that began nearly 15 years ago, when Craig Venter, a Vietnam veteran turned geneticist, resolved one day to create a genome from scratch – and with it, make the first ever synthetic life form. Last night, in a dramatic announcement that led some to accuse him of playing God, Venter said the dream had come true, saying he had created an organism with manmade DNA. The feat, hailed as an epochal scientific breakthrough by some but an alarming development by others, was achieved by scientists at the J Craig Venter Insititute in Rockville, Maryland using little more than a computer, some common microbes, a DNA synthesizer and ...

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A Battery That Stores Wind Juice

Thu, 20 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Matthew L. Wald - May. 20 (News Report) - Mountaintop wind turbines produce most of their energy at night, when electricity demand and prices are low. That limits revenue and makes it hard for utility companies to meet state goals for high percentages of renewable energy.

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A Fuel-Saving Car Engine in the Blink of an IRIS

Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Henry J. Reske - May. 12 (News Report) - Amid an auto industry upheaval, two Colorado brothers promote a radical new design to replace the notoriously inefficient internal combustion engine.

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The Best Translation Program Yet: Google Delivers Foreign Tongues at the Press of a Button

Sun, 02 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Der Spiegel - By Philip Bethge - May. 02 (Special Report) - A German scientist has developed one of the first translation programs suitable for everyday use. Sheer computing power gives the Google software surprisingly good results -- perhaps the best yet seen created by a machine.

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The Rise of the Fleet-Footed Start-Up

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Steve Lohr - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - A fresh approach to creating companies has attracted much attention in the last year or so among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, technologists and investors.

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Geek Power

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Steven Levy - Apr. 20 (Special Report) - When I embarked on my project, I thought of hackers as little more than an interesting subculture. But as I researched them, I found that their playfulness, as well as their blithe disregard for what others said was impossible, led to the breakthroughs that would define the computing experience for millions of people. Early MIT hackers realized it was possible to use computers for what we now call word processing. (Their initial program was called Expensive Typewriter, appropriate since the one machine it ran on cost $120,000.) They also invented the digital videogame. The rebel engineers of the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley were the first to take advantage of new low-cost chips to build personal computers. They may have begun as a fringe cohort, but hackers alchemized the hard math of Moore’s law into a relentless series of technological advances that changed the world and touched all of our lives. And most of them did it simply for the joy of pulling off an awesome trick. But behind the inventiveness was something even more marvelous — all real hackers shared a set of values that has turned out to be a credo for the information age. I attempted to codify this unspoken ethos into a series of principles called the hacker ethic. Some of the notions now seem forehead-smackingly obvious but at the time were far from accepted (”You can create art and beauty on a computer”). Others spoke to the meritocratic possibilities of a digital age (”Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position”). Another axiom identified computers as instruments of insurrection, granting power to any individual with a keyboard and sufficient brainpower (”Mistrust authority — promote decentralization”). But the precept I perceived as most central to hacker culture turned out to be the most controversial: “All information should be free.”

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