btw2.net

Key to funding for eldercare technologies? Pilots
By Dawn Kawamoto , Staff Writer, CNET News.com, July 17, 2007

The article goes on to cite other pilots that proved out other technologies - many using 35 or fewer participants. But if you save $50,000 to $100,000 per month per patient, you get some serious interest quickly from the party paying for it.

Harvard licenses more than 50 patents to nanotech start-up
By Barnaby J. Feder, The New York Times, June 4, 2007

George M. Whitesides, a Harvard University chemist, is a renowned specialist in nanotechnology, a field built on the behavior of materials as small as one molecule thick.

But there is nothing tiny about the patent portfolio that Harvard has amassed over the last 25 years based on work in his lab.

On Monday, Harvard and Nano-Terra, a company co-founded by Whitesides, plan to announce the exclusive licensing for more than 50 current and pending Harvard patents to Nano-Terra. The deal could transform the little-known Nano-Terra into one of nanotechnology’s most closely watched start-ups….

The patents cover virtually all nonbiological applications of work performed by professor Whitesides and dozens of doctoral students over the last decade. The biology related research–mostly in health care–had previously been licensed to other companies involving Professor Whitesides, including Genzyme, GelTex (sold to Genzyme for $1.2 billion in 1993), Theravance and two privately held start-ups, Surface Logix and WMR Biomedical.

Nano-Terra, though, is selling no products. It is just offering manufacturing and design skills in realms where flexibility and low costs are crucial.

The best-known patents cover soft lithography, Whitesides’ method of depositing extremely thin layers of material onto a surface in carefully controlled patterns. It can work over larger surfaces than photolithography, which is widely used to make microchips. Perhaps even more intriguing, soft lithography can work on highly irregular or rounded surfaces where photolithography is all but impossible….

Nano-Terra was founded in 2005 with the goal of creating a home for the Whitesides patents. Its management team includes the vice chairman, Carmichael Rogers, a former student of Whitesides and a partner with him in two other companies; the chief executive, Myer Berlow, a former Time Warner marketing executive; and the president, Ueli Morant, a former market executive at IBM and Royal Philips Electronics….

TEDTalks : 12 sustainable design ideas from nature- Janine Benyus  (2005)(video)

“In the world envisioned by science author Janine Benyus, a locust’s ability to avoid collision within a roiling cloud of its brethren informs the design of a crash-resistant car; a self-cleaning leaf inspires a new kind of paint, one that dries in a pattern that enables simple rainwater to wash away dirt; and organisms capable of living without water open the way for vaccines that maintain potency even without refrigeration — a hurdle that can prevent life-saving drugs from reaching disease-torn communities.”

THE ENERGY CHALLENGE

Recruiting Plankton to Fight Global Warming

By MATT RICHTEL, New York Times, May 1, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO, April 30 — Can plankton help save the planet?

Some Silicon Valley technocrats are betting that it just might. In an effort to ameliorate the effects of global warming, several groups are working on ventures to grow vast floating fields of plankton intended to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and carry it to the depths of the ocean. It is an idea, debated by experts for years, that still sounds like science fiction — and some scholars think that is where it belongs….