Do-or-die at Delphi

I profile Delphi Medical Systems in a Detroit-area tech magazine called X-Ology. The company is a subsidiary of the bankrupt auto supplier Delphi. Like most businesses ... and workers ... around my neck of the woods, it's change or die. This is how Delphi is attempting to survive. Nanotech watchers will recognize one of my sources, nano and MEMS guru Marlene Bourne.

Delphi Medical Systems: A New, Inspired Course

The ancient Greeks, it is written, would gather around the Oracle of Delphi not to see into the future but rather to soak in the intellectual atmosphere that pervaded the crowds. In the modern age, the name Delphi Corp., for some, conjures up images of a suffering automotive supplier, but take a closer look and you can see the innovators of the 21st century gathering around it, picking up the broken links and discovering new directions. More here (free registration required).

Update: Here's a PDF of the Delphi Medical article

Self-replicating nano-ethics

Think tank that studies the ethics of nanotechnology urges Congress to fund more studies on ethics of nanotechnology.

Backgrounder
False claims inform consumers as they 'talk nano'
Wilson Center's nano numbers racket
Indigestible nanotech claim

More assault on batteries at Michigan Messenger

The Michigan Messenger has the latest in my coverage of the Detroit Auto Show.

The Messenger is part of a growing family of news sites ready to take over where major metro dailies are sadly lacking these days. It was launched by the nonprofit Center for Independent Media.

If you're not in Michigan, no problem. You can check out the center's publications in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico and Washington.

In today's Messenger, I continue my obsession with battery technology, which -- as I have written before -- is directly related to nanotechnology.

Will batteries recharge Michigan’s economy?

They will if Congress -- and Detroit's critics -- come to understand that the auto industry is infrastructure.

DETROIT — A year ago, a confident Chrysler opened the North American International Auto Show with Dodge trucks herding cattle down Jefferson Avenue.

This year, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm came to Cobo on a mule.

A mule, of course, is Detroit-speak for a prototype automobile, and while Granholm’s ride boasted significantly less horsepower than last year’s methane-emitting stampede, the governor seemed at last on the right road after years of a visionless policy for Auto Industry 2.0. More here

Backgrounder
Blogging for Center for Independent Media
My 'respectable' blog launches at Small Times

Energetics: Nanotechnology Job of the Day

Freelancing is fine, but I am in perpetual search of a full-time job, with benefits. Yeah, I know. Me and a few million others.

But I come across nanotech-related work in my job search that I am quite underqualified for and that use pretty big scientific words in their descriptions, so I figured maybe NanoBot readers might get a few job leads.

I'll post these from time to time ... whenever I have the time.

The job below, in green energy, seems like a growing field -- although I hope the "energetics" in the company name does not refer to "nanoenergetics," which involves the nasty business of blowing up stuff ... and people.

Nanotechnology/Materials Scientist, Energetics Inc.

Energetics seeks a Nanotechnology/Materials Scientist to be located in our Washington, D.C. office.

The selected candidate will assist clients in DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program with a variety of activities required to run an effective technology research and development program. Specifically, the candidate will assist EERE’s Industrial Technologies Program with its R&D programs in nanomanufacturing, materials, and other areas. Responsibilities may include:

Evaluating energy, technology, and market trends.

Evaluating technical and economic feasibility, identifying and assessing applications and markets, and projecting future impacts of new technologies.

Characterizing technical and market barriers to commercialization and deployment, and evaluating strategies to overcome these barriers. More here

Al Franken and the 'Nano-Bees'

At last, Minnesota has gerrymandered a joke we can all take seriously. Al Franken will be declared the winner in the Senate race.

What does this have to do with nanotechnology, you may ask? Well, you might know that nanotech is playing an important role in helping some Minnesota communities recover from bad times. So, I searched and searched for anything Franken might have said about the subject. To my disappointment, the only item I could find came from an Air America bulletin board:

There was a segment where Al and Katherine talked to someone about nanotechnology and Al came out with this idea of having Nano-Robot Bees for military purposes. The discussion then devolves into about 3 or so minutes about the potential use of the Nano-Bees. It was the funniest thing ... More here

Oh, Al. I'll have to find you a Minnesotan or two who can educate you about all the nanotech economic development going on in your own frigid state.

Meanwhile, enjoy the picture above. The photo, and the baby being kissed, belongs to Robin Marty, a Minnesota journalist I met more than a year ago at a journalism conference in Lansing, Mich.

Backgrounder
The Great State Of Nanosota

Legal corruption will road-trip to Russia

Siemens AG is, no doubt, bringing its Davis Polk & Wardwell lawyers with them to Russia as it invests in nanotechnology.

In Russia, bribery is often simply a built-in cost of doing business, and Davis Polk, among others, appears to be quite proud of helping Siemens get off a little lighter after a decade of corrupt business practices.

Update: At Siemens, bribery was just a line item

Innovation in Detroit ... yes, Detroit

Lost in all the sickening political posturing in Washington over the lives and livelihoods of millions of human beings is the fact that innovation is indeed occurring in my hometown of Detroit.

It's just not happening at the Big Three.

But it is at companies like A123, which Seeking Alpha recently reported may not have lost out after all to rival battery-maker LG Chem for the coveted contract for GM's new electric hybrid Volt. (I covered the unveiling of the prototype Volt two years ago.)

As I have written before, both companies have ties to Michigan and both are using nanotech to develop safe, long-lasting lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.

Japanese companies like Toyota develop technologies like li-ion batteries largely in-house. While in the United States much of the real innovation occurs within smaller companies or groups until it's ready to be bought or gobbled by the big guys.

Motown's old automotive manufacturing and supplier jobs are gone. They won't come back. But automotive innovation, where nanotech plays a key role, is still happening in my poor, maligned, slandered and libeled, blighted, poverty-stricken, homeless, foreclosed and repo'd hometown of Detroit.

Backgrounder
Nano Powering The Auto Revolution
Big Three Are Dead; Long Live The Little

Big Three Are Dead; Long Live The Little

Commenting on my post, Nano Powering The Auto Revolution, Dexter Johnson at IEEE Spectrum writes:

The long-time nanotechnology blogger Howard Lovy at Nanobot presents some possibilities for how nanotechnology is fueling innovation in the auto industry. While it is good to have Mr. Lovy blogging again, and he is certainly someone who is uniquely qualified to write on both nanotechnology and the auto industry, I am hard pressed to extend his optimism for the automobile to the innovative sensibilities of Detroit automakers.

...

The problem is that the examples he cites in the article involve GE (while quite a large multi-national, it is not an automaker), A123Systems, and the all electric Tesla, the product of one man with a vision. All these companies are quite different than Detroit’s big three automakers. More here

First of all, thank you, Dexter. It's good to be back after taking five months off. You wouldn't believe the summer and autumn I've had.

I took time off for an experience that was eye-opening and life-changing. Even here in Michigan, in the heart of the Rust Belt, where we are being hit first and hit hardest by the worldwide economic slump, the poor just don't have a chance. They are cycled and recycled through a legal system where justice is for sale and only the rich, powerful and politically or legally connected come out unscathed. The problem is far worse, the system far more corrupt than I had ever previously imagined.

I will write much more about this in the future.

This is also related to the downfall of the auto industry that Dexter discusses. Here in Michigan, more and more of us are desperate ... and feel powerless and small. We see the captains of our formerly glorious automotive industry flying private jets to Washington so they can beg Congress for handouts.

The Big Three are dead, yet long live the auto industry. It's alive in the innovation coming not only from the small companies working on technologies like long-lasting, safe (and nanotech-based) lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles, but also divisions within the major auto companies and suppliers.

Toyota's doing it. Even General Motors is doing it.

But other companies, great and small, pick up where the major auto companies have failed miserably. I would argue, Dexter, that divisions within GE working on automotive technologies are, indeed, automakers. A123 Systems is an automaker. And that is true all the way down the supply chain to the companies and scientists supplying and developing the improved nanomaterials for catalysts and batteries.

If the auto industry were only the Big Three -- and not also the chain of innovation and manufacturing -- then my home state would not be in the horrible condition it is now (and even bottom-feeding writers like me would be able to find work).

Backgrounder
Nano powering the auto revolution
Who's driving the revolution?

Lorax Economics And Nano's New Name

Here's a piece of dialog that was in the TV version of "The Lorax," (click above, or here), but not in the book that I read to my kids.

The Once-ler: Well, what do you want? I should shut down my factory, fire a hundred-thousand workers? Is that good economics, is that sound for the country?

The Lorax: I see your point. But I wouldn't know the answer.

Excellent, cutting-edge stuff! Pure greed vs. pure innocence. And, as is usually the case, the villain is a great deal more interesting than the hero. That dirty ol' Onceler has thought about the issues, while the one-dimensional Lorax cannot see the forest for the trees.

Here's another excerpt:

The Lorax: I'm sorry to yell, but my dander is up! let me say a few words about gluppity-glupp. Your machinery chugs on, day and night without stop, making gluppity-glupp, and also schloppity-schlopp! And what do you do with this left-over goo? I'll show you, you dirty old Once-ler man, you!

Well, today, that very same dirty old Onceler man -- who, remember, is driven purely by the profit motive (forget about the end of the book, where the Onceler sees the error of his ways) -- could today become a "cleantech" entrepreneur. It's not that he feels bad about the gluppity-glupp and schloppity-schlopp, it's just that different times call for different methods of making profit.

However, just because the Lorax has the megaphone right now does not make him any less naive and unaware than when he could not answer a simple question regarding economics and labor back in the 1960s. The herd stampedes toward cleantech from nanotech and every other tech, yet the profits will come to only a few -- and even then, most likely to the biggest Oncelers on the block and not the small entrepreneurs.

After that, some elements of nanotech will be ready for prime time -- such as the new materials and technologies that will power our cars more cleanly and will clean up the leftover schloppity-schlopp. It will be confusing, since the Loraxes and other self-appointed watchdogs of the environment have already convinced many that nanotech is actually dangerous and polluting. So, nanotech might be sold by any other name, since the ol' nano prefix has run its course in this cycle.

How about this for a new "nano" name? "Thneed!"

After all, everybody needs a Thneed.

Backgrounder
Son of McMonkey McBean
Cleantech's the new nano; nano's the new dot-bomb

Dear Boston Globe: A 'mashup' is not a survey

I'm surprised that the Boston Globe would be so technologically uninformed that it would mistake a Google Maps search that anybody can do for a full-fledged survey on nanotech hotbeds.

Even if you believe the exaggeration that this is any kind of real survey, it is far from the first. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to be the news editor for Small Times Magazine, where we actually did the first-ever rankings of nanotechnology hotbeds.

One other mistake in the Globe article: The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies does not "promote the benefits of nanotechnologies." It was formed as a kind of watchdog think-tank to make sure environmental and health risks are taken into account -- and proper regulations formed -- along the way to our inevitable nanotech future.

Backgrounder
State rankings and quantum reality
Indigestible nanotech claim
Son of Massachusetts Miracle

Why nanobusiness as usual with China?

Take a look at the story below and tell me whether you're uncomfortable with nanotech companies worldwide doing business in China. A lot of business. In fact, China is truly the land of opportunity for nanotech companies, where their products are likely to reach consumers sooner -- from nanocatalysts for fuel to drug delivery devices.

This is not a rhetorical question. I've had very mixed feelings on this issue since 1989, when I found myself yelling at the TV in outrage as I watched Brent Scowcroft toasting the Chinese leadership so soon after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

And the arguments over which dictatorial regimes to punish with economic sanctions are too wrapped up in U.S. politics to make any kind of sense. Liberals credit sanctions for toppling apartheid in South Africa, yet blame sanctions for impoverishing Cuba. Business-friendly conservatives argue in almost all cases that economic engagement with the people living under dictatorships is the surest way to change a society from within -- that is, unless we're talking about Cuba.

Even though it's a question that's broader than our own nano world, I still think this issue should be discussed among nanotechnology's other "societal and ethical implications."

China defector can stay - Australia minister (Reuters)

"A senior Australian minister said on Thursday that a Chinese diplomatic defector pleading for political asylum in Australia is in no danger of being sent home.

Chen Yonglin, a 37-year-old political affairs consul at China's Sydney consulate, has told Australian authorities he fears for his family's safety and would rather die than return to China.

'Mr Chen is in Australia, he is being dealt with in accordance with the ordinary process of Australian immigration law and he is at no risk of being sent back to China,' Health Minister Tony Abbott, a close ally of Prime Minister John Howard, told reporters.

Howard himself tried to calm concerns that Chen's fate might be influenced by Canberra's booming trade and economic ties with Beijing.

'Let me simply say that, just as in relation to the U.S., we have steadfastly refused to mix trade with politics and strategy and national security -- so it is in relation to China, and I'm sure that our Chinese friends will know that,' Howard told a business lunch in Sydney.

China, which is Australia's third-largest trading partner with annual trade worth almost A$29 billion (more than $22 billion), is in talks with Canberra on a free trade deal and a separate pact to import Australian uranium." More here

Backgrounder
People-to-People's State Partnership
'Dual-use' nano vs. export controls
China's Great NanoLeap Forward
Sleeping nanogiant stirs
U.S. to China: Let's share power
NanoSinoPhobia
China, garment workers and nanotechnology

State rankings and quantum reality

State rankings in nanotech. I just don't know. Yeah, I know, that's how you build buzz and sell paper and all that -- by getting regions and states to brag about their rankings and buy the reports and mags that rank them. But what do they really mean?

At the very least, maybe they're wonderful real-world illustrations of the "potential realities" concept that quantum mechanics teaches us.

How can you possibly quantify the economic impact of as-yet-non-existing businesses and economic clusters on state economies? I think you can judge, at best, the amount of coordination and money spent on building what these states and communities hope someday will reap economic rewards, along with existing "facts on the ground," like Michigan = auto and Army vehicles, Massachusetts = top universities and life science companies, Colorado = feds, etc.

But, still, I think any state would be hard-pressed to point to any economic benefit yet. The labs will be built, the clusters will cluster and the companies will be launched, products will be released and then let the games begin. But I just don't think they've really crossed the starting line yet.

Related News
Nanotechnology offers promise on a smaller scale (Centre Daily Times)

NanoBot Backgrounder
The Nano-Rank Rag
Son of Massachusetts Miracle

The Nano-Rank Rag

If Hawaii has no nano, how do you explain the gecko?
But better a nano-lizard in the Kona than a nano-laggard in Arizona.

Way down in twenty-nine falls the apple of our buckeye;
But don't mess with this state and Smalley's loaded bucky

And the Colorado Rocky Nano High has seen it rainin' subsidy in the sky

California picks at sloppy seconds -- the gold is gone, that's what that means;
While Boston's not sure first is worth its weight in beans

Son of Massachusetts Miracle

I'm in the Boston area today, taking care of some family business. I took a ride on the old Route 128 on the way out of the airport, and thought of how well the region is doing in remaking itself one more time. I left the state after the first Massachusetts Miracle was already history (I'm talking tech, not Red Sox and Patriots). This story in today's Boston Herald says the state is doing well in the new small world, but is worried about competition.

The story also mentions "clusters," which reminded me that while communities across the country are looking to attract nanotech research parks and other similar clusters of business, venture capital and academic labs, not everybody agrees that technology clusters really produce economic miracles, as this working paper from the AEI-Brookings Joint Center indicates.

Here are excerpts from today's Herald story:

Mass. tops in nano, but execs worry (Boston Herald)

Massachusetts ranks as the biggest state in the nation for nanotechnology activity, according to a survey that looks at the cutting-edge sector some say is the next frontier for scientific breakthroughs.

A group of local industry experts are pushing to build a multimillion-dollar fabrication center they argue is critical if Massachusetts is to keep its lead in the emerging field.

Lux Research Inc. rates the Bay State as No. 1 in terms of the per capita number of nanotech companies, patents, research activity, commercial applications and other factors.

The survey, previewed last week at a Massachusetts Software Council conference, puts California at No. 2 and Colorado at No. 3.

Even if per capita calculations are excluded, Massachusetts still leads the nanotech race in the United States, said Matthew Nordan, a Lux researcher who presented the preliminary findings.

... But the local industry officials, nervous about Massachusetts losing its lead, are in the early stages of pushing the fabrication center, where prototype nanotech products can be built and tested before commercial manufacturing. More here

NanoBot Backgrounder
UMass to build nanotech training ground
Mass. nano marriage
Nanolian Cluster Bucks
Central Michigan is dendrimers' delight

Texas ropes young nano herd

TSTC Waco gets nano-grant (AP, via The Miami Herald)

Texas State Technical College in Waco is getting a 500,000 dollar grant to encourage students to pursue careers in nanotechnology.

Gov. Rick Perry today announced the federal funds will be used to launch the Nanotechnology Workforce Development Initiative.

T-S-T-C will partner with Baylor University, Del Mar College of Corpus Christi and Zyvex Corporation of Richardson.

The grant will provide internships and apprenticeships for engineering students at T-S-T-C and Del Mar College to work in advanced nanoscale manufacturing environments at Zyvex. More here

NanoBot Backgrounder
Zyvex's Von Ehr on pixels, bits and stitches
Nanotube Business 101
Nano and nan at NNI
Nano is Sizzlin' in Tennessee
Not your father's 'shop' class

Nanolian Cluster Bucks

All references to "nanotechnology" in the 2005 U.S. budget can be found here, nicely clustered for your convenience thanks to the Vivísimo "clustering engine."

Swords into nanoshares

It's rare that my current focus on nanotech actually melds with my previous incarnation as the managing editor of a wire service that covers issues relating to Judaism and Israel, but today, through some kind of kabbalistic convergence of the molecular and the mystic, we have this announcement that former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres will give the keynote address at the World Nano-Economic Conference Sept. 8-10.

I think this announcement illustrates, among other things, how amazingly fast the world can change in one person's lifetime. Peres was born in Poland during the 1920s, an era that scarcely could have imagined a world where nanotech was possible. It was a time when innovative new technologies were being developed that could save lives … or snuff them out, efficiently, by the millions.

Maybe the world hasn't changed so much since then.

Peres, a Nobel laureate, as long been an advocate of the peace process with the Palestinians in part because when it comes to world opinion, the conflict overshadows all of Israel's scientific achievements. Also, quite simply, Israel is using much of its financial and human resources to maintain a security state, rather than developing the science and technology needed to compete in the global marketplace.

For the other reasons why he's a big nanotech advocate, I'll leave it to Peres himself to explain: "Shimon Peres: Nanotechnology holds a key to Israel's future."

Discuss