Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 11.

11 - June 2, 2012

ISSN: 1712-9834

Highlights from the last two weeks...

a Stanford researcher has created a microscopic storage device from DNA that can store data inside a living cell... a new microscope 4.5 metres tall magnifies 20 million times... a new NHK super hi-vision camera captures four billion pixels per second... in-car Internet provides access to Twitter and Facebook in new automobiles... there is a global shortage of skilled workers... New York aims to become an international high-tech hub... a privacy group lobbies to keep Google's driverless cars off the road... scientists show that information spreads faster in social networks... researchers find a backdoor in the Chinese computer chips used in US military systems... China plans commercial deep-sea mining for metal resources by 2030... greenhouse gas concentrations rise above safe levels in the Arctic... ships in the desert left behind by the shrinking Aral Sea... the number of Facebook users in India will overtake the number of US users in 2014... the "New Economy Movement" is gathering force with thousands of grassroots projects...

David Forrest helps multistakeholder communities come together to take on shared challenges. The Integral Strategy process he developed has been widely used to catalyze collaboration, build social capital, deepen stakeholder commitment to action, and develop creative, purposedriven strategies for complex challenges in energy, environment, healthcare, research, education, innovation, transportation, economic development, community development, and community service.

More resources ...

a new book by Josh Linkner -- Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity... a link to ResilientCity.org, a not-for-profit network of planners, urban designers, architects, designers, engineers, and landscape architects helping to increase the capacity for resilience in communities and cities... the video clip of a presentation by Peter Diamandis, co-founder of Singularity University, on taking action to create the future... a blog post by Douglas Crets on the Institute of Design at Stanford University, a school that is building micro-design and innovation centers all over the world... David Forrest Innovation Watch

SCIENCE
Top Stories: Turning DNA into a Hard Drive (PhysOrg) - Silicon-based computers are fine for typing term papers and surfing the Web, but scientists want to make devices that can work on a far smaller scale, recording data within individual cells. One way to do that is to create a microscopic hard drive out of DNA, the molecule that already stores the genetic blueprints of all living things. Stanford University bioengineer Drew Endy is a pioneer in the field of synthetic biology, which aims to turn the basic building blocks of nature into tools for designing living machines. Last week, members of his lab reported in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences that they had figured out a way to turn DNA into a rewriteable data storage device that can operate within a cell. Supermicroscope Installed at University of Victoria (CBC) A University of Victoria scientist's 10-year dream to get the world's most powerful microscope built has come true. The 4.5metre tall microscope is being installed at the university, and already, researchers around the world are vying to use, said Rodney Herring, the mechanical engineer who created the device. The Japanese-made instrument will allow researchers to see things at a magnification up to 20 million times greater than that of the human eye. That will mean scientists can see how cells move and function, allowing them to better understand diseases and ultimately lead to treatment.
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TECHNOLOGY
Top Stories: The Camera That Captures Four Billion Pixels a Second and Could Be the Future of Films (Daily Mail) - Japanese television company NHK has unveiled a camera that captures and 'digests' four billion pixels per second -- capturing 33-megapixel footage at 120 frames per second. To put that in context, the camera in iPhone 4S is eight megapixels, and cinema reels run at 24 frames per second. Companies such as Toshiba are already unveiling televisions and projectors with resolutions above 1080p HD -- the highest currently possible -- and Peter Jackson's new film The Hobbit will be shot in 48 frames per second and 4K

resolution, about four times sharper than HD. NHK's camera is a demonstration model for its Ultra-HD standard 'Super Hi-Vision' -one of several competing resolutions designed to take televisions beyond hi-def. Twitter, Facebook Join the List of In-Car Distractions (Businessweek) - Drivers, start your engines -- and log in to your Wi-Fi. Just be sure to put the car in park if you're going to tweet or update your Facebook status. That's essentially the auto industry's response to government warnings that a proliferation of models equipped with Web access and other distractions will cause a spike in accidents. As Audi, Nissan, General Motors, and Ford make a selling point of in-car Internet and social networks, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is pushing new federal guidelines to discourage their use.

BUSINESS
Top Stories: The Surprising Global Shortage of Skilled Workers (Businessweek) - Want to find a job? That's not a problem if you are trained as a technician and looking for work in China or Brazil. Ditto for sales representatives, who are in hot demand in Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Japan, engineers won't sit idle. Meanwhile, in Ireland, IT workers are needed. In the Netherlands, it's laborers. Even with unemployment running at an historic high of 8.1 percent in the U.S., dont worry if you are a plumber, welder, or electrician. There's plenty of demand for your skills. Even as economists and politicians fret about the problem of global unemployment, those with the right resumes are in hot demand. That's leading to talent shortages around the world, according to a survey released on May 29 by Milwaukee-based ManpowerGroup, one of the world's largest temporary workers agencies. New York is Vying to Become Global High-Tech Hub (PhysOrg) - Just as a trench dug in the 1800s created a shortcut to the nation's interior and helped make New York a global trading hub, the city is now hoping for another "Erie Canal moment" with a high-tech research complex to be built on an island in the East River. The idea is to create an applied-sciences university where engineers are also trained as entrepreneurs from day one. Proponents say New York, home to powerful global companies and now exploding with technological startups, could shift this sector into top gear if the latest findings went straight into new businesses. "Today we're second only to Silicon Valley as a tech center, and we don't like to be second to anybody," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

SOCIETY
Top Stories: Privacy Group Wants Google's Driverless Cars Kept off the Road (PC World) - A privacy group is calling on the California Assembly to keep Google's self-driving cars off the road. Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit privacy group, sent an open letter to the Assembly today urging members to defeat a bill, SB 1289, that would allow Google's self-driving cars on California's roads unless the bill is amended to provide "adequate" privacy protection for the cars' users. The letter asks legislators to ban all data collection from Google's autonomous cars. Google has been pushing ahead with its research into developing autonomous automobiles that can be sold commercially. Why Rumors Spread Fast in Social Networks (PhysOrg) Information spreads fast in social networks. This could be observed during recent events. Now computer scientists from the German Saarland University provide the mathematical proof for this and come up with a surprising explanation. Together with his research colleagues Benjamin Doerr, adjunct professor for algorithms and complexity at Saarland University, and the PhD student Mahmoud Fouz he proved that information spreads in social networks much faster than in networks where everyone communicates with everyone else, or in networks whose structure is totally random.

GLOBAL POLITICS
Top Stories: Cambridge Researchers Uncover Backdoor in Military Chip (Tech World) - Researchers at the University of Cambridge have found evidence that Chinese manufacturers are putting backdoors in FPGA (field-programmable gate array) chips used by the US military. The research was conducted in response to claims by intelligence agencies around the world that the silicon chips that run their defence systems are vulnerable to Trojans. "This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key," said security researcher Sergei Skorobogatov in a blog post. "This particular chip is prevalent in many systems from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for national security and public infrastructure."

China Eyes on Deep-Sea Mining Technology (China Economic Net) - Commercial deep-sea mining by China of polymetallic nodules that contain copper, nickel and cobalt among other key minerals, can begin as early as 2030, according to the former head of the State Oceanic Administration. "With the improvement in deep-sea technology, metal resources under the ocean can be explored and mined within 20 years," said Sun Zhihui. Last year, China was among the first group of countries approved by the International Seabed Authority to look for polymetallic sulphide deposits, a recently discovered mineral source, in the Southwest Indian Ridge, a tectonic plate boundary on the bed of the Indian Ocean, he said, adding the country is applying to explore for cobalt in a new area in the Pacific Ocean.

ENVIRONMENT
Top Stories: Greenhouse Gas Levels Hit 'Troubling Milestone' (PhysOrg) - The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant. Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395. So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon. The Eerie, Rusting 50-Year-Old Ghost Ships Which are the Only Reminder That This Desert Used to Be a Sea (Daily Mail) - In the middle of the desert, you may stumble across a strange sight - a panorama of ghostly ships basking in the sun. The ships are a relic from a bygone age, when the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was a rich area teeming with fish and providing a bustling trade for the surrounding communities. Then, in the space of a few years, much of the sea dried up, the fish died, and nothing was left but the rusting hulls. The Aral Sea used to one of the largest lakes in the world, covering 26,300 square miles. Now, it exists only as about 2,000 square miles of water, split into four smaller lakes.

THE FUTURE
Top Stories: The Future of Facebook Is in India (Businessweek) - By

2015, India will have more Facebook (FB) users than any other country on Earth -- tilting the social networking action away from the West and toward one of the fastest-growing emerging markets on the planet. According to Eleanor Armitage, a Socialbakers spokeswoman, the number of Indian Facebook users is growing 22 percent every six months, meaning that India will edge out the U.S. toward the end of 2014, when both countries are expected to have 170 million to 175 million members. The Rise of the New Economy Movement (Huffington Post) - Just beneath the surface of traditional media attention, something vital has been gathering force and is about to explode into public consciousness. The "New Economy Movement" is a farranging coming together of organizations, projects, activists, theorists and ordinary citizens committed to rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up. Thousands of real world projects -- from solar-powered businesses to worker-owned cooperatives and state-owned banks -- are underway across the country. Many are self-consciously understood as attempts to develop working prototypes in state and local "laboratories of democracy;" that may be applied at regional and national scale when the right political moment occurs.

Just in from the publisher...

Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity

By Josh Linkner Read more...

A Web Resource... Resilient City - ResilientCity.org is an open, not-for-profit network of planners, urban designers, architects, designers, engineers, and landscape architects whose mission is to develop creative, practical, and implementable planning and design strategies that help increase the capacity for resilience of our communities and cities to the future shocks and stresses associated with climate change, environmental degradation, resource shortages, in the context of global population growth and migration. Multimedia... Peter Diamandis The Best Way to Predict the Future (Singularity University) - Peter Diamandis, Chairman and Co-Founder of Singularity University, discusses the best way to predict the future, and shares his personal philosophies on innovation and the commercial space industry. Filmed at Singularity University's Executive Program, March 2010. (1h 46m 10s) The Blogosphere... Designing a Life, Making Meaning: Simple Design Choices (Huffington Post) Douglas Crets "Last week, I visited the Institute of Design (also known as the d.school) at Stanford University. Stuart Coulson, an adjunct professor at the school took me and my colleague Claire Lee around and gave us a little information about

the school, its origins and what it was doing. I learned a few things I didn't know. The d.school isn't really a part of the University itself. It's an independent organization in the school that students can take part in and get add-ons to their degree. The school is also using a $100 million grant to build micro-design and innovation centers all over the world."

Email: future@innovationwatch.com