• Non-engineers can now design a widget and have it manufactured in a machine
  shop via the Internet. The 3-D printers (a.k.a. fabricators, replicators) we
  wrote about in November
  2003 will probably soon find their way into Internet-connected machine shops,
  followed by copy shops, and finally by the home. 

   

• Video imaging at the cellular level dramatically (literally) improves
  scientists ability to understand viruses. With
  that understanding comes an improvement in learning to harness viruses for
  therapy. 

   

• The Japanese are testing the science fiction idea of solar-sail-powered spaceships for
  intergalactic travel, in space. 

US pharmacy chain CVS Corporation is offering customers a disposable digital
color camera for US$19.99. A similar model will be offered by Ritz Camera and
Walt Disney Co. resorts. Consumers return the camera for processing and receive
film-quality prints and a compact disc that allows pictures to be stored or
e-mailed. It holds 25 pictures and can be recycled.

Reference: Unknown (2004). �Drugstore
Offers New Wave of Disposable Cameras.� Reuters, August 19.

Hydrogen Cars Have Truly Arrived

Honda Motor Co.�s 2005 FCX fuel cell vehicle has been certified by the US
Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board for
on-road use. The vehicle is the first to be powered by a Honda-designed and
built fuel cell stack.

The new model boasts a 33 percent gain in peak power (107 hp vs. 80 hp), an
EPA rating of 57 miles per kilogram�62 city, 51 highway�nearly 20 percent more,
and it has 50 percent fewer components and is easier to produce than earlier
prototypes. It is also cheaper, simpler, and works at startup temperatures as
low as -20�C.

Honda has delivered nine of its current fuel cell vehicles to government
fleets in California for testing. In addition to other California applications,
the company will place the 2005 four-seater with a customer in the northeastern
United States later this year.

Reference: Unknown (2004). �Honda FCV gets
certified.� Item in the Great Lakes IT Report, July 30, citing AutoTech Daily.

Perfect Storm

A recent conference brochure stated that �an unusual confluence of factors
[is] creating an extraordinarily turbulent and dangerous period in [the
automobile manufacturing] industry.� The factors include:

• Hyper-competition;
• Rapid global integration, from global sourcing to global operations;
• The accelerating velocity of change;
• New and �very competent� (read: intelligent?) tools;
• Exploding peripheral costs, such as healthcare and litigation, that divert
  company resources;
• Accelerating global regulation;
• Growing threats and opportunities from China, India, and other aggressively
  developing nations; and
• �Inappropriate profitability of the industry as a whole.��The only hope for survival,� says the brochure, �is a new and improved
  [cooperative] business model for this great and important industry.� It seems to
  us that these same factors, and the same conclusion, can be applied to the
  healthcare industry.

  Reference: Unknown (2004). �Automotive: The Perfect
  Storm.� Brochure description of a Management Briefing Seminars conference
  session, August 2-6.

  Superhumans

  What the Christian Science Monitor�s Gregory Lamb calls the �emerging
  science [of] gene modification or gene enhancement� is �going to turn sports
  into a . . . freak show,� said a sports doping researcher. DNA injections would
  replace training, producing the muscle without the sweat. �Somebody who�s not
  athletic at all could be transformed into something superhuman,� said a trainer.
  The same technology could also, of course, transform someone with muscular
  dystrophy into someone without muscular dystrophy, or a frail elder into a
  frisky kid.

  How far has the science emerged? More than enough to make the leap from
  animal lab to human bodies, it seems. H. Lee Sweeney, a University of
  Pennsylvania researcher, reported in March this year that mice injected with a
  gene gained up to 50 percent muscle growth. More recently, writes Kristen
  Philipkoski in Wired, �marathon mice� genetically modified by Howard
  Hughes Medical Institute researchers were able to run twice the distance of an
  unmodified control group.

  While these respectable scientists would not dream of moving from mice to men
  without following scientific process�not to mention the law�others probably not
  only will make the move, but may already be doing so. �The technology is
  available now for athletes to use,� according to a bioethicist who has written a
  book on the topic, and in light of its illegal, underground, and dangerous but
  inevitable application in sports, on the one hand, and its promise for helping
  humanity, on the other, he proposes that its use in sports be legalized and
  regulated, rather than banned.

  The problem, as one of Lamb�s other expert sources put it, is that �All bets
  are off when you start playing with genetic engineering … in terms of system
  function, organ function, and long-term effects. If you put in superfast muscle,
  are you going to alter function in a way that the tendons and the bones might
  not be able to support the loads?… You might start to snap tendons and bones.
  There might be deleterious health effects. We really don�t know.�

  We do know, however, that the genetic modifications are transgenic�they
  become part of the organism�s genome and are passed on to future generations,
  says Philipkoski. We also know, in the case of the marathon mice, that they
  became more resistant to weight gain, �even when fed a high-fat diet that caused
  obesity in other mice.�

  In fact, above-board science may not be all that far behind the underground.
  According to Philipkoski, GlaxoSmithKline is developing an oral drug that
  activates the same protein in humans (called PPAR-delta) that was stimulated in
  the marathon mice, and has already completed phase I clinical trials of the drug
  for use as a good cholesterol, or HDL, booster. The company was apparently
  surprised�but elated�to discover from the Hughes research that its drug might
  also combat obesity and work as an insulin sensitizer (by lowering levels of the
  intramuscular triglycerides associated with insulin resistance and diabetes in
  obese people), not to mention improve muscle performance. The fact that multiple
  outcomes were effected by altering just one gene was the biggest surprise of
  all. �The world,� said one of Philipkoski�s sources, �is about to change
  dramatically.�

  Reference: Lamb, Gregory M. (2004). �Will gene-altered
  athletes kill sport? Soon, animal DNA could make us faster and stronger – no
  training needed.� Christian Science Monitor, August 23.

  Reference: Philipkoski, Kristen (2004). �Scientists Breed a
  Tougher Mouse.� Wired News, August 23.

  Anti-angiogenic Hits a Speed Bump

  It has been discovered that Avastin, the first approved angiogenesis
  inhibitor used to treat colorectal cancer, increases the risk of stroke and
  heart attacks. A Genentech spokeswoman said some patients who took the drug had
  died from heart ailments, and that a single fatality during the drug�s clinical
  trials had not been enough to establish a clear relationship between the drug
  and the fatality. The company is informing health care providers by letter and
  is adding warning information to the drug�s label. The clinical trials showed
  that the sickest colon-cancer patients taking Avastin survived on average
  five months longer than those receiving standard care. The problem, said one
  expert, is that the targets of biologic drugs such as Avastin could be
  present in tissues or organs besides the one being treated.

  Reference: Henderson, Diedtra (2004). �FDA,
  Genentech Warn Doctors About Avastin.� Associated Press via Yahoo News,
  August 13.

  Joining Forces to Fight Cancer

  Four leading, and hitherto competitive, cancer centers are now coordinating
  clinical trials and sharing resources and findings on multiple myeloma.
  Participants in the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium are the Mayo Clinic,
  the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research
  Institute, and the Ontario Cancer Institute.

  �Progress against the disease has been slow because researchers studying the
  disease rarely communicated, often duplicating each other�s findings and hitting
  dead ends,� writes Anahad O�Connor in the New York Times.

  Reference: O�Connor, Anahad (2004). �Joining
  Forces to Combat Multiple Myeloma.� New York Times, August 17.

  Toward the Home Manufactory

  �The Internet Revolution meets the Industrial Revolution� is how the AP�s
  Peter Svensson concisely captures the significance of eMachineShop, a free
  program that lets even non-engineers design �car parts and door knobs . . . door
  signs, motorcycle seats, robot frames, car engine covers, guitar plates and
  camera parts��and other small objects�on the Web, to then be manufactured by a
  �real world� machine shop.

  Key to eMachineShop�s success is that it incorporates �the knowledge of a
  machinist,� which prevents the designer from designing things a machinist would
  know to be impossible or inadvisable.

  Ten sandblasted copper door knobs of your design will cost you US$143. The
  most expensive item made since beta testing began last year is a $4,011 aluminum
  part for a laboratory magnet. The customers range from large companies that make
  prototypes, to hobbyists; one of whom told Svensson: �Being able to sit at you
  home computer, draw up some parts, submit them and 30 days later they are on
  your doorstep, all without human contact, is mind-blowing.�

  Reference: Svensson, Peter (2004). �Program
  Lets People Design 3-D Objects.� AP via Yahoo News, August 18.

  Understanding Viral Processes

  Using crystallography, cryoelectron microscopy, and imaging software, Purdue
  University researchers have made detailed pictures of a common bacteriophage
  (bacteria-eating virus) called T4, and a video showing how it attaches to a cell
  surface, infects it, and replicates. The work, reports Kristen Philipkoski in
  Wired, could �elucidate the secrets of viral infection and possibly
  improve gene-therapy techniques.� For instance, said one of the researchers: �By
  changing the receptor molecule at the ends of the long tail fibers, you may be
  able to target specific cells or add to the genome of the virus to get it to
  insert additional genes into target cells.�

  Bacteriophages have long been used in Eastern Europe in place of antibiotics,
  and given the problem of growing antibiotic resistance, could have important
  significance in the West.

  Reference: Philipkoski, Kristen (2004). �When
  Viruses Attack.� Wired News, August 30.

  Solar Sails Into the Sunset of Science
  Fiction

  The Japanese Institute of Space Astronautical Science has tested two solar
  sails aboard a rocket in space. The idea (popular in science fiction) is that
  photons from the Sun impart a small force when they strike the sail, giving the
  spacecraft to which the sail is attached increasing momentum. Though it starts
  off slowly, the cumulative acceleration leads, in theory, to astronomical speed
  and enables travel to distant planets.

  Reference: Unknown (2004). �Japan
  unfurls solar sail in space.� BBC News, August 11.