Category: Economics of Technology

DARPA’s $66 Million Fails to Develop Tech to Match Dog Noses

(p. A2) “What’s cool about dogs is when they do come into contact with an odor, they can track it to its source,” said L. Paul Waggoner, co-director of the Canine Performance Sciences Program at Auburn University. “There is not an instrument out there that replicates a dog’s nose.”
That’s not for lack of effort.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense spent $66 million between 1997 and 2010 drawing on the expertise of at least 35 different research institutions to develop sensors that could detect explosives as ably as a dog and identify other chemicals.
They couldn’t do it.
. . .
Surprisingly, pigs and ferrets outperformed German shepherds and Labrador retrievers, breeds often chosen for odor detection.
But overall, dogs won out because of their combination of qualities: Not only do they have strong noses, they are compatible with people, they respond to training, and–for now–they beat technology paws down.

For the full commentary, see:
Jo Craven McGinty. “THE NUMBERS; Dogs Still Beat Technology in the Smell Test.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 25, 2017): A2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 24, 2017, and has the title”THE NUMBERS; Making Sense of a Dog’s Olfactory Powers.”)

Apple Funds Corning’s Glass Innovation

(p. B6) SAN FRANCISCO — Apple is seeding the next generation of American-made glass for its iPhones and iPads, and its investments may have the side benefit of helping the company win favor in Washington.
Apple announced Friday [May 12, 2017] that it was giving $200 million to Corning, which makes the tough, scratch-resistant face for every iPhone and iPad, to support the glass maker’s efforts to develop and build more sophisticated products at its factory in Harrodsburg, Ky.
Corning has made the glass for every iPhone since the original 10 years ago. Apple’s investment, the first from the technology giant’s $1 billion fund to promote advanced manufacturing in the United States, will help Corning develop thinner, more versatile glass for iPhones as well as other product lines that Apple is exploring, such as screens for self-driving cars and augmented reality glasses.
The move goes beyond Apple’s traditional practice of subsidizing suppliers, said Tim Bajarin, president of the technology consulting firm Creative Strategies.
“I would see this more as an Apple-Corning partnership to flesh out what other kinds of things you would use glass for,” he said. “They are literally thinking about stuff you and I aren’t thinking about yet.”

For the full story, see:
VINDU GOEL. “Apple Gives $200 Million to Advance Phone Glass.” The New York Times (Sat., MAY 13, 2017): B6.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 12, 2017, and has the title “Apple Gives Corning $200 Million to Invent Better Phone Glass.”)

Silicon Valley Funding Big Dings in the Universe

When Steve Jobs was trying to recruit Pepsi’s John Sculley to become Apple CEO, Jobs asked him something like: ‘do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water, or do you want a chance to make a ding in the universe.’

(p. B1) One persistent criticism of Silicon Valley is that it no longer works on big, world-changing ideas. Every few months, a dumb start-up will make the news — most recently the one selling a $700 juicer — and folks outside the tech industry will begin singing I-told-you-sos.

But don’t be fooled by expensive juice. The idea that Silicon Valley no longer funds big things isn’t just wrong, but also obtuse and fairly dangerous. Look at the cars, the rockets, the internet-beaming balloons and gliders, the voice assistants, drones, augmented and virtual reality devices, and every permutation of artificial intelligence you’ve ever encountered in sci-fi. Technology companies aren’t just funding big things — they are funding the biggest, most world-changing things. They are spending on ideas that, years from now, we may come to see as having altered life for much of the planet.

For the full commentary, see:
Manjoo, Farhad. “STATE OF THE ART; These Days, Moon Shots Are Domain of the Valley.” The New York Times (Thurs., MAY 17, 2017): B1 & B6.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date MAY 17, 2017, and has the title “STATE OF THE ART; Google, Not the Government, Is Building the Future.”)

“Mind-Bending” Automatic Braking Trickles Down to Cheaper Cars

(p. B4) I first experienced radar-assisted cruise control in a $70,000 Mercedes in 2001. Slowing automatically to keep from hitting the car ahead felt like a magic trick. In 2009, I was told to drive a new $50,000 Volvo into the back of a “parked car” (really, an inflatable mock-up). Every fiber of my body wanted to stomp on the brake pedal. Instead, the car did it for me. Automatic braking is mind-bending the first time.
Both of these technologies are standard equipment on 2017 Toyota Corollas, which start at $19,385. So is lane-keeping assist, which nudges the car back between the road stripes if you wander. Automatic high-beam headlamps, too.
Huzzah for technology trickle down!

For the full story, see:
TOM VOELK. “Tech Trickles Down into a Safer Corolla.” The New York Times (Fri., MARCH 17, 2017): B4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 16, 2017, and has the title “Video Review: Not-So-Standard Equipment on the Otherwise Standard Corolla.”)

Under Communism Inventiveness Did Not Yield Economic Benefits

(p. A17) The Soviet Union may have pioneered in space with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, but today Russia has less than 1% of the world commercial market in space telecommunications, the most successful commercial product so far stemming from space exploration. Russians may have won Nobel Prizes for developing the laser, but Russia today is insignificant in the production of lasers for the world market. Russians may have developed the first digital computer in continental Europe, but who today buys a Russian computer? By missing out on the multi-billion-dollar markets for lasers, computers and space-based telecommunications, Russia has suffered a grievous economic loss.
Accompanying this technical and economic failure was a human tragedy. Russian achievements in science and technology occurred in an environment of political terror. The father of the Russian hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov, wrote in his memoirs that the research facility in which he worked was built by political prisoners, and each morning he looked out the window of his office to see them marching under armed guard to their construction sites. The “chief designer” of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolev, was long a prisoner who worked in a special prison laboratory, or sharashka. The dean of Soviet airplane designers, A.N. Tupolev, also labored for years as a prisoner in a special laboratory. Three of the Soviet Union’s Nobel Prize-winning physicists were arrested for alleged political disloyalty. Probably half of the engineers in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s were eventually arrested. In 1928 alone 648 members of the staff of the Soviet Academy of Sciences were purged.
When one looks at these statistics and at the genuine achievements of Soviet science, one is forced to ask basic questions about the relation of freedom to scientific progress.
. . .
Mr. Ings admirable effort to reach nonspecialized readers sometimes leads him to make exaggerated statements. He claims that we have “good agricultural and climate data for Russia going back over a thousand years” when in fact the data is incomplete and unreliable.
. . .
The claim that the Soviet Union was a scientific state brings Mr. Ings close, in his conclusion, to condemning science itself. He sees science and technology as causing a coming global ecological collapse, and he thinks that in some ways the demise of the Soviet Union was a preview of what we will all soon face. In one of his final sentences he says: “We are all little Stalinists now, convinced of the efficacy of science to bail us out of any and every crisis.” “Stalin and the Scientists” deserves attention, but a very critical form of attention. It is based on an impressive amount of study, and most readers will learn a great deal. It is, however, incomplete and overdrawn.

For the full review, see:
LOREN GRAHAM. “BOOKSHELF; No Good Deed Went Unpunished.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Feb. 21, 2017): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Feb. 20, 2017, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Science Under Stalin.”)

The book under review, is:
Ings, Simon. Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017.

Amateur Tinkerers Keep Steam Power Alive

(p. D4) Most people, when they think of steam power, they think of rusty farm tractors from 150 years ago. But there’s such a thing as modern steam power. Steam is the most direct way to get power out of heat. You can’t build an internal combustion engine in your garage. But you can build a steam engine, and the interesting thing is, it can run on anything that will burn, even sawdust.
At my farm, I have about 100 steam engines, many of them homemade, plus a library of technical papers, patents, and books on steam technology. I have Volkswagen engines converted to steam, outboard boat engines, etc. I collect and preserve this stuff. I get a lot of it from old widows whose deceased husbands were tinkerers; these women are so happy to get rid of it. Some of the engines are well built, others not, but you can learn as much from a bad example as a good one.

For the full story, see:

Kimmel, Tom (as told to A.J. BAIME). “MY RIDE; Never Before Has Steam Been Quite This Cool.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Dec. 2, 2015): D4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 1, 2015, and has the title “MY RIDE; Never Has Steam Been So Cool.” )

More Than 100 Video Stores Still Open in U.S.

(p. A15) “Whoa, a video store!” said a man recently walking by Video Free Brooklyn, loud enough to be heard inside the shop.
It’s true: Video-store holdouts still exist. Their goal is to keep pushing DVDs, Blu-Rays and even VHS tapes in an age when streaming movies is second-nature.
Owners and customers of the more than 100 independent and nonprofit video stores still kicking throughout the U.S., often in places with strong locavore food scenes, say the stores offer variety film lovers can’t find elsewhere. It might be a deep roster of anime films by Hayao Miyazaki, or one of Dario Argento ‘s more obscure grindhouse efforts. They allow a browsing experience impossible online and serve as libraries for movies and TV shows that will likely never transfer to an online format.

For the full story, see:

ERIN GEIGER SMITH. “Revenge of the Video Store.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Nov. 28, 2016): A15.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 26, 2016.)

Nano-Enhanced Fabrics Can Clean Themselves

(p. D3) Scientists in Australia, one of the sunniest places on the planet, have discovered a way to rid clothes of stubborn stains by exposing them to sunlight, potentially replacing doing the laundry.
Working in a laboratory, the researchers embedded minute flecks of silver and copper–invisible to the naked eye–within cotton fabric. When exposed to light, the tiny metal particles, or nanostructures, released bursts of energy that degraded any organic matter on the fabric in as little as six minutes, said Rajesh Ramanathan, a postdoctoral fellow at RMIT University, in Melbourne.
The development, reported recently in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces, represents an early stage of research into nano-enhanced fabrics that have the ability to clean themselves, Dr. Ramanathan said. The tiny metal particles don’t change the look or feel of the fabric. They also stay on the surface of the garment even when it is rinsed in water, meaning they can be used over and over on new grime, he said.

For the full story, see:
RACHEL PANNETT. “An End to Laundry? The Promise of Self-Cleaning Fabric.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., April 26, 2016): D3.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 25, 2016.)

The academic article describing the self-cleaning fabric, is:
Anderson, Samuel R., Mahsa Mohammadtaheri, Dipesh Kumar, Anthony P. O’Mullane, Matthew R. Field, Rajesh Ramanathan, and Vipul Bansal. “Robust Nanostructured Silver and Copper Fabrics with Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance Property for Effective Visible Light Induced Reductive Catalysis.” Advanced Materials Interfaces 3, no. 6 (2016): 1-8.

“Slow Is Smooth and Smooth Is Fast”

(p. B2) WASHINGTON — Jeff Bezos, the billionaire chief executive of Amazon, founded a rocket company as a hobby 16 years ago. Now that company, Blue Origin, finally has its first paying customer as it ramps up to become a full-fledged business.
Mr. Bezos announced that customer, the satellite television provider Eutelsat, on Tuesday. In about five years, Eutelsat, which is based in Paris, will strap one of its satellites to a new Blue Origin rocket to be delivered to space, a process it has done dozens of times with other space partners.
. . .
Blue Origin’s deal with Eutelsat is a “definite statement to the industry that Blue Origin will be a viable commercial launch vehicle,” said Carissa Bryce Christensen, the chief executive of Bryce Space and Technology, a consulting firm.
. . .
Mr. Bezos “is investing because he wants to transform people’s lives with space capabilities, but the expectation has always been that this will be a successful business,” Ms. Christensen said.
. . .
Mr. Bezos said he was approaching his space project with an abundance of patience.
“I like to do things incrementally,” he said, noting that Blue Origin’s mascot is a tortoise. With such high costs and risks with each rocket launch, it is important not to skip steps, he said.
“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” said Mr. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post and a clock that will keep time for 10,000 years. “I’ve seen this in every endeavor I’ve been in.”

For the full story, see:
CECILIA KANG. “Blue Origin, Bezos’s Moon Shot, Gets First Paying Customer.” The New York Times (Weds., March 8, 2017): B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 7, 2017, and has the title “Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s Moon Shot, Gets First Paying Customer.”)

For $9,000, No Chicken Need Die, When You Eat a Pound of Chicken

(p. B3) A Bay Area food-technology startup says it has created the world’s first chicken strips grown from self-reproducing cells without so much as ruffling a feather.
And the product pretty much tastes like chicken, according to people who were offered samples Tuesday [March 14, 2017] in San Francisco, before Memphis Meats Inc.’s formal unveiling on Wednesday.
Scientists, startups and animal-welfare activists believe the new product could help to revolutionize the roughly $200 billion U.S. meat industry. Their goal: Replace billions of cattle, hogs and chickens with animal meat they say can be grown more efficiently and humanely in stainless-steel bioreactor tanks.
. . .
On Tuesday [March 14, 2017], Memphis Meats invited a handful of taste-testers to a San Francisco kitchen and cooked and served their chicken strip, along with a piece of duck prepared à l’orange style.
Some who sampled the strip–breaded, deep-fried and spongier than a whole chicken breast–said it nearly nailed the flavor of the traditional variety. Their verdict: They would eat it again.
. . .
The cell-cultured meat startups are a long way from replacing the meat industry’s global network of hatcheries, chicken barns, feed mills and processing plants. But they say they’re making progress. Memphis Meats estimates its current technology can yield one pound of chicken meat for less than $9,000. That is half of what it cost the company to produce its beef meatball about a year ago. The startups, however, aspire to produce meat that can be cost-competitive with the conventionally raised kind.

For the full story, see:
JACOB BUNGE. “Startup Serves Chicken From the Lab.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., March 16, 2017): B3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 15, 2017, and has the title “Startup Serves Up Chicken Produced From Cells in Lab.”)