| Fuel Cells
Despite a recent US government report warning that current industry fuel cell
plans are unrealistically aggressive, General Motors maintains that its 2010
introduction timetable for hydrogen-powered vehicles is on track. GM reportedly
says it intends to be in a position to sell fuel cell vehicles by that time but
can’t guarantee it because a hydrogen refueling infrastructure has to be
developed first.
That infrastructure will be built, if University of Minnesota researchers
have anything to do with it. They have made a small and consumer-affordable
reactor to extract hydrogen from ethanol. Current methods of producing hydrogen
from ethanol require large refineries and copious amounts of fossil fuels.
Hydrogen from the 2-foot-high prototype reactor is enough to feed a 1 Kw fuel
cell — almost enough to power a home or a car.
Reference: Associated Press (2004). “Scientists
Advance Hydrogen Tech.” Wired News, February 13.
Reference: Roush, Matt (2004). “GM says 2010
timeline still doable for fuel cells.” Paragraph in the Great Lakes IT Report
(an email free subscription newsletter) for February 18, 2004.
RFID: Hot and Cold
A US hospital supply company has sewn RFID tags into its million or so
reusable surgical gowns and drapes and installed RFID readers at its laundries.
The anticipated result is not just better inventory control but also a five
percent reduction in the firm’s laundry workers. Previously, workers would
inspect and fold clean gowns and drapes, then scan the bar code on each item
before it was shipped to a hospital. The new system combines the two steps, with
an RFID reader mounted on the garment folding table recording data from each tag
as the item is being inspected and folded. The RFID system also keeps track of
the number of times each gown has been used. The company says it will avoid
privacy issues by using readers that can only communicate with the tags over a
few feet and tags that do not have GPS tracking ability.
Meanwhile, the RFID
trial at a German supermarket owned by Metro, one of the largest retailers
in Europe, has been halted. RFID chips were embedded in the store’s customer
loyalty cards as well as in products from IBM, Gillette, Procter & Gamble,
and others. A kiosk that was supposed to deactivate the chips reportedly did not
so “completely.” Under pressure from privacy activists, Metro has said it will
cease embedding RFID chips in its loyalty cards and revert to using printed
bar-codes instead.
The Benetton company (which planned to install RFID tags into apparel) and
the European Central Bank (which planned to embed RFID chips into the fibers of
bank notes by 2005 as an anti-counterfeit measure) have also backed off in
recent months. Business and other organizations clearly must take much closer
notice of public privacy concerns; nevertheless, we maintain that the benefits
of RFID will keep the technology moving forward, by hook or by crook.
Reference: Zetter, Kim (2004). “Germans Protest
Radio-ID Plans.” Wired News, February 28.
Reference: Hundley, Kris (2004). “Tiny
discs help SRI/Surgical Express keep track of its gowns.” St. Petersburg
Times, February 2.
Flexible Displays
Rick Weiss of the Washington Post provides an in-depth look at the flexible
display we mentioned last month. “The device is a rectangular screen just
three times the thickness of a sheet of paper and measuring five inches
diagonally. It curls into a tube less than two inches in diameter and may soon
coil to the diameter of a fountain pen. With the exception of some invisibly
fine gold wires, the circuitry that’s inlaid into this flexible page is
completely plastic. An internal layer of ‘electronic ink drops’ creates black
text on a white background, giving the plastic sheet the look of a paperback
page. The whole thing weighs just 3.5 grams, or about the weight of 11/2
pennies,” he writes.
The advanced, flexible plastics-based, e-paper and organic electronics used
in the device make it as easy to read as a newspaper in bright sunlight, and it
uses far less power than the often hard-to-read LCD screens of today’s laptops
and palm PDAs. Several big corporations, says Weiss, “are now racing to
integrate flexible circuits into a variety of products,” including e-maps,
e-newspapers, chameleon fabrics for military uniforms to change shades to match
surroundings, billboards, and store shelf tags. Sony is said to be about to
launch an e-book — perhaps with a dictionary built-in.
An e-book with a high-speed wireless Internet connection could serve as an
individual’s newspaper, favorite magazines, professional desk references,
patient chart, atlas, phone book . . . all rolled into a pen-sized tube that
clips into a shirt pocket. This development could finally fulfill the promise of
an end to printed mass media.
Reference: Weiss, Rick (2004). “Flexible
Display Screens Readied for Production.” Washington Post, February 2.
China Awakes; Market Heats Up
Philips, the world’s third-biggest maker of medical equipment after GE and
Siemens, is investing heavily in a joint venture in China to develop and
manufacture medical devices. The Chinese market for CT, ultrasound, x-ray, and
other devices is already the world’s third-largest and growing at about ten
percent annually.
The evidence is abundant that China is on exponential track to dominate the
global economy in the R&D and manufacturing of everything from CT scanners
to cars. We’re not sure what this portends, except that it will surely have
major impacts on our daily lives.
Reference: Bilefsky, Dan (2004). “Philips,
Neusoft Will Join To Make Medical Gear.” Wall Street Journal, February 9.
Virus Nano Factories
A benign virus has been induced to produce so far some 30 inorganic materials
with semiconducting or magnetic properties, including uniform nanowires that
could be used in nanoelectronic circuits. The virus, re-engineered with
additional peptides that attract specific chemicals that form crystals, serves
as a temporary scaffolding on which the crystals grow. The virus is then “baked
away,” writes Anne Eisenberg in the New York Times.
The extreme miniaturization of complex electronic structures which this
breakthrough enables will have a revolutionary impact on electronic devices of
all sorts.
Reference: Eisenberg, Anne (2004). “Benign
Viruses Shine on the Silicon Assembly Line.” New York Times, February 12.
Dangers of Nanotechnology
Two recent studies of the health effects of engineered nanoparticles have
documented lung damage more severe than, and “strangely different” from, damage
caused by conventional toxic dusts. It may be possible to mitigate the risks,
but activists are not waiting to see. Some in California are trying to block
construction of a nanotech factory, others are demanding a global moratorium on
nanoparticles development. Heeding the lessons from asbestos, DDT, and
especially the “Frankenfoods” controversy that has done so much damage to the
genetically modified foods industry, the nanotech industry and government in the
US are mounting a PR campaign to assuage public concerns. “We can’t risk making
the same mistakes that were made with the introduction of biotechnology,” said a
director of the US National Science Foundation, according to Rick Weiss in the
Washington Post.
“Last year alone,” he says, “hundreds of tons of nanomaterials were made in
U.S. labs and factories.” And they are now out there, in air-tight tennis balls,
super-strong tennis rackets and airplane bodies, stain-resistant fabrics,
invisible sunscreens. His article details the specific findings of the two
studies and other findings. Suffice it to say here that either nanotechnology
development will be forced to slow down, to the potential detriment of
nanotech-based cures for existing diseases, or doctors may confront a whole new
class of ailments in their patients.
Reference: Weiss, Rick (2004). “For
Science, Nanotech Poses Big Unknowns.” Washington Post, February
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