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Tesla’s announcement last week about creating a new line of batteries for use by businesses, consumers, and the electrical grid at large is a game-changer for the industry. Currently, when individuals or companies need back-up power, they usually rely on generators. Effective battery storage for large amounts of energy would be a game changer in that it would enable a separation of generation and use of energy produced through clean fuels like solar and wind power. The big problem with solar and wind right now is that the energy is only useful when it is actually produced and, because a...

The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, April 23, held a subcommittee hearing on the impact of the medical device tax on jobs, innovation and patients. Since January 2013, manufacturers and importers of medical devices have faced a 2.3 percent excise tax to offset costs of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). During the hearing, Health Care Subcommittee Chairman Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) shared an example from his state as to the effects of the tax: "I’ve had the opportunity to visit a lot of medical device companies, and I plead with them to show me their books. Sometimes they do, and...

May be a long post to explain circumstances, but I will try to be brief in my explanation that all professors are not slobbering at zer0's every word. I graduated over 25 years ago from a major university with a degree in electrical engineering. I have worked my way up in many areas including terrestrial communications and satellite communications. Last year I got handed (at the last minute) an obligation to support a university project funded by my company.

The hubs of advanced manufacturing will be the economic drivers of the future because innovation increasingly depends on production expertise. ... Second, the idea popularized in the 1990s and 2000s that innovation can happen in one place (say, Silicon Valley) while manufacturing happens in another (such as China) is not broadly sustainable. If all the manufacturing is happening in China, these networks are growing there, meaning eventually all the innovation—or at least a lot of it—will be happening there too. ... Without manufacturing, “we lose capabilities in the workforce,” says Harvard’s Shih. “It limits what you are able to do...

In fairness to the public sector column, government is always coming up with innovative ways to confiscate our money.

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We all can agree that overregulation of an industry tends to chill innovative business strategies and ultimately harm the consumers the regulations were intended to protect. However, in pursuit of free market solutions, policymakers must craft public policy approaches that not only allow free markets to flourish but also protect consumers. State and local governments across the country are trying to find that balance as they explore regulations involving commercial ridesharing and ride-on-demand services, offered by transportation network companies (TNC) such as UberX, Lyft, and Sidecar. As previously noted here, these new services have put a new “hi-tech spin” on...

THE FUTURE OF GLASS - "AMAZING"! If you wonder why HP, Dell and other leading computer manufacturers believe the end of the computer as we know it is near, here’s why. It's not the iPad that has them concerned about the future. It is developments like the ones Corning is working on that are game-changers:

US scientists deplore ‘innovation deficit’ By Nuala Moran Scientists in the US remain the best funded in the world, but they say falling federal investment and cuts due to sequestration, coupled with the enormous resources other countries are lavishing on research, are creating an “innovation deficit”.The consequence, say the presidents of more than 200 US universities, will be fewer US scientific and technological breakthroughs, fewer US patents and fewer US start-ups, products and jobs. Investment in research is not inconsistent with deficit reduction, indeed it is vital to it, they said in an open letter to President Barack Obama...

The United States is the global leader in medical innovation. You can measure that by Nobel Prizes or biotech R&D or where breakthrough treatments are developed or commercialized. And as University of Michigan economist Miles Kimball points out, one reason healthcare spending is lower in other advanced economies is their ability to “ cheaply copy drugs and medical techniques developed in the US at great expense.” But healthcare innovation isn’t just about miracle drugs and cutting-edge technology. Innovation can happen in how healthcare services are delivered and paid for. And it is in this area that the Affordable Care Act...

The Rijksmuseum in Holland had an idea: Let's bring the art to the people and then, hopefully, they will come to see more - at the museum.

Get ready to hear a lot more about technological unemployment. The theory holds that automation, especially of the digital variety, is happening more quickly than entrepreneurs and human capital can adjust. And it’s why, says Andrew McAfee, co-author of Race Against the Machines, a boom in US manufacturing wouldn’t bring a boom in job creation: – Manufacturing employment has been on a steady downward trend in the U.S. since 1980 (it increased some after the end of the Great Recession, but this boost appears to be leveling out).– Manufacturing jobs have also been trending downward in Japan and Germany since...

If there's been one topic that has entirely dominated the post-election landscape, it's the fiscal cliff. Will taxes be raised? Which programs will be cut? Who will blink first in negotiations? For all the talk of the fiscal cliff, however, I believe the US is facing a much more serious problem, one that has simply not been talked about at all: corruption. But this isn't the overt, "bartering of government favors in return for private kickbacks" corruption. Instead, this type of corruption has actually been legalized. And it is strangling both US competitiveness, and the ability for US firms to...

What makes cities grow? This question is the subject of countless magazine articles peddling lists of “best cities” and is fodder for consulting firms looking to sell advice. But in reality, the most reliable measure of a city’s future health is whether employment is expanding or contracting. Declining cities are not home to growing businesses that need people. Only true believers in the come-back story would move to Detroit, Cleveland, or Buffalo right now — the three big cities with the highest unemployment rates in the nation. So what features of a city correlate with expanding employment? The index-making experts...

The old man turned back at his coffee, took a sip, and then looked back at me.... “In fact, I’ve done lots of things ....Oh really? Like what types of things?, ...All the while, half-thinking he was going to make up something fairly non-impressive....I invented the first computer.....Um, Excuse me? ..... I created the world’s first internally programmable computer.... It used to take up a space about as big as this whole room and my wife and I used to walk into it to program it.... What’s your name?”. I asked, thinking that this guy is either another crazy homeless...

To encourage innovation in Europe, policymakers should just keep out of the way, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said. "I agree with the idea of streamlining and simplification. The only thing is that I would be much more extreme," he told EUobserver on Tuesday (8 May) on the sidelines of a conference in Brussels on EU innovation policy organized by global accounting firm Ernst & Young. "The most important thing that Europe needs to do to spur innovation is to eliminate barriers," he added. "To make it easier for investors and entrepreneurs to start businesses and to make it easier...

A start-up called Chamtech Enteprises has an answer to the problems of poor cellphone reception and other shortcomings of traditional antennas. The company has developed a spray-on antenna that it says is more lightweight, energy-efficient and effective than the old-school version. (Where was this stuff when the iPhone 4 came out?) The Sandy, Utah-based start-up’s nanotechnology, unveiled last week at Google’s inaugural Solve For X gathering, can be painted onto a tree, a wall, the ground or even the back of a soldier, enabling a more portable, lightweight way to get reception for a variety of uses. The company has...

Daydreaming during class paid off for UW-Madison student Eric Ronning. He won $11,250 on Friday at UW-Madison's annual Innovation Days for an invention he came up with during an engineering lecture. "I space out a lot," Ronning admitted, a sophomore from Lincolnwood, Ill., who is majoring in mechanical engineering. His invention, called the Manu Print, is an inexpensive prosthetic hand for amputees in developing countries. He said the prototype he created used only $20 of material. Other prosthetic hands on the market cost more than $1,000. More than $27,000 in prizes are awarded at Innovation Days, which is in its...

The class war is on. It's the 99% of "us" versus the 1% of "them." In the rhetoric of this war, we are fighting the 1% because they possess most of the nation's wealth, bankroll their handpicked political candidates, control the banks and get million-dollar paychecks and billion-dollar bailouts; yet they don't pay enough taxes or invest their wealth in creating American jobs. They're the "millionaires and billionaires" President Obama has called out as needing to pony up more for progressive reforms of our healthcare, banking, tax and political systems. They are the enemy of "us" — the 99% who...

It might look like as space hopper surrounded by model helicopters, but the 16-rotor E-Volo is an entirely new kind of helicopter - which can hover motionless in the air without input from the pilot... Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2057423/Multicopter-1-man-flying-space-hopper-air-car-future.html#ixzz1cvmNCoK4