Computing/Biology to Dwarf Internet Era; Fuel Cells

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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010128/tc/forum_future_dc.html

> Sunday January 28 7:56 AM ET
> Computing/Biology to Dwarf Internet Era
>
> By Lucas van Grinsven and Ben Hirschler
>
> DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The marriage of biology and
> microelectronics that may cure diseases and create designer
> babies will create trillions of dollars of new wealth.
>
> Scientists at the World Economic Forum (news - web sites) here
> have little doubt that nanotechnology, genomics and robotics are
> going to be the hot technology growth areas in the years to come,
> but many are also unnerved about its impact on society.
>
> The reason is last year's mapping of human genome, the genetic
> ``recipe book'' which scientists have now broken down into a
> digital code of 3.1 billion chemical bases.
>
> Code in a computer, rather than tissue under a microscope, had
> dramatically changed the way we should look at biology, said Bill
> Joy, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, one of the world's
> leading computer makers.
>
> ``It is symbolic that the code of the human genome has been
> broken in the year 2000. It has made biology an information
> science,'' he said.
>
> ``The 21st century is going to be the real information age, and I
> don't mean the Internet,'' Joy added.
>
> He predicted the value these new technologies will create is
> going to dwarf the Internet era, once dubbed by venture
> capitalist John Doerr as the greatest legal creation of wealth in
> the history of mankind.
>
> ``The upside is enormous,'' Joy said. ``Over the cause of the
> next century it can create $1,000 trillion of new wealth.''

So the obvious question is: where should I invest my money to
benefit from these developments in the mid- to long-term?
(say, 5-30 years.)

Years ago I decided that I should try to find and invest in about
10 (small?) companies that have chances of making it very big in
the future, for example by finding cures for major diseases or by
providing alternative energy sources (e.g., fuel cells.)

But I haven't really looked at many specific companies yet.

> Shopping For Babies
>
> The mapping of the genome has thrown up a myriad of new
> possibilities in tackling the root cause of diseases, notably
> cancer, and genetic scientists believe engineering the genes of
> individuals will soon be within reach.
>
> George Church, director of the Lipper Center for Computational
> Genetics at Harvard Medical School (news - web sites), said
> clinicians may soon be able to sequence the genomes of
> individuals, launching the age or truly personalized medicine.
>
> ``It's not out of the question that we could have a technology
> for sequencing our individual genomes in the not too distant
> future,'' he said.
>
> But there are ethical dilemmas too.
>
> Confronted with the question of whether they would want to map
> out the genome of their unborn and eliminate ``faulty'' genes, a
> group of politicians, scientists, computer engineers and
> entrepreneurs in the fringes of the meeting were split 50:50.
>
> But Jeremy Rifkin, president of the U.S.-based Foundation on
> Economic Trends, had no doubt all of them would jump on the
> opportunity when it presented itself.
>
> ``I guarantee you that everyone will want that map...A child will
> become the ultimate shopping experience in post modern life,'' he
> said.
>
> New Cancer Cures
>
> Richard Klausner, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute
> (news - web sites), said there was a huge potential for an
> improvement in treatment with the first fruits of genomic
> research coming in new ways to differentiate between dozens of
> different cancers.
>
> Biotechnology firms in 2001 will also focus increasingly on the
> body's capacity to cure itself, using stem cells and other
> techniques. Stem cells are immature ``master'' cells which can be
> coaxed into forming virtually any type of tissue in the body.
>
> ``The era of using cells in this way is just beginning,'' said
> Irving Weissman, professor of pathology at Stanford University
> School of Medicine and founder of StemCells Inc.
>
> His team have already successfully isolated blood-forming stem
> cells and reintroduced them into adult cancer patients to restore
> bone marrow destroyed by radiation therapy.
>
> Wet Molecules Vs Dry Molecules
>
> But breakthrough developments are not just coming from genetics,
> where people tinker with the so-called wet molecules, that are
> alive. Now scientists also work to create dry molecules.
>
> For scientists to create a dry molecule, they use nanotechnology
> to manipulate atoms and thus design circuitry to forge
> ``intelligent'' molecules.
>
> Xerox labs is developing something called digital clay, matter
> that shape and organize itself, said John Seely Brown, chief
> scientist at Xerox Corp.
>
> As he showed a small brown cube between his thumb and index
> finger he said: ``Our aim is to make these as small as a grain of
> sand. Eventually they could become dry molecules.''
>
> With computing power doubling every 18 months, semiconductors
> should become a million times more powerful in 30 years time.
> Tiny molecules can one day be smart enough to arrange themselves,
> and their surroundings.
>
> ``Ten years ago Nicholas Negroponte said we would move from a
> world of atoms to a world of bits, but now we're moving back to a
> marriage of atoms and bits,'' Seely Brown said.
>
> Nathan Lewis, professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at
> the California Institute of Technology said that the real impact
> of genomics is that it will tell you what body proteins are doing
> at present so that an individual does not have to wait for a
> fever to tell him he is sick.
>
> ``Another possibility is self-organizing materials. Implants that
> interact with their environment and which will adapt perfectly to
> the stress situations in a body and will fit perfectly,'' he
> said.
>
> Paul Saffo, director of the U.S. Institute for the Future, is
> amazed at the way biotechnology and microelectronics have found
> each other.
>
> ``The biggest surprise is perhaps that we are at the intersection
> of the two,'' he said.

oh... and speaking of fuel cells,

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010128/sc/exp_fuel_cells.html

| Sunday January 28 12:04 PM ET
| Fuel Cells May Redistribute Power
|
| By WILLIAM McCALL, Associated Press Writer
|
| PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - As the lights dim in parts of the nation
| because of an energy shortage, the model for supplying clean and
| abundant electricity in the 21st century can be found at a
| Portland sewage plant.
|
| Methane collected from decomposing waste provides hydrogen to
| power a commercial fuel cell that transforms the volatile gas
| into enough electricity to light more than 100 homes for a year.

(insert fart joke here)

| Fuel cells were invented in the 19th century. But most Americans
| had never heard of them until a faulty one blew a hole in Apollo
| 13 in 1970, scuttling what would have been the third moon landing
| and nearly costing three astronauts their lives.
|
| Fuel cells remain an essential part of the space program,
| reliably powering the space shuttle.
|
| Utilities, investors and government planners are now starting to
| pay close attention to some down-to-Earth uses for a technology
| that converts the most abundant element in the universe -
| hydrogen - into electricity and water.
|
| ``It's no longer science fiction,'' said Steve Millett, one of
| the leading researchers in the field. ``It's real.''
|
| Millett works at Battelle, the institute founded by a steel
| industry family in Columbus, Ohio, which now develops all kinds
| of technology for industry and the government, including NASA
| (news - web sites).
|
| Millett says fuel cell technology was transformed during the last
| decade from a cottage industry into one of the most rapidly
| expanding high-tech businesses in the world, partly due to the
| automotive industry's suddenly keen interest in hybrid electric
| motors.
|
| ``More and more auto companies have awakened to the fact that
| their sales are dependent on fuel prices,'' Millett said, ``so
| the auto companies are investing more in fuel cells and pushing
| harder than any other industry.''
|
| As 2001 began, it was reported that Exxon Mobil Corp. planned to
| join Toyota and General Motors in an alliance to develop
| environmentally friendly fuel cell vehicles. Ford and
| Daimler-Chrysler also have fuel cell projects in the works.
|
| Yet as recently as 1996, there was only one major manufacturer of
| commercial-size fuel cells in the country - ONSI Corp. in
| Windsor, Conn., a subsidiary of International Fuel Cells.
|
| ONSI built units the size of a minivan to provide electricity to
| facilities that were too remote from the main power grid or
| needed reliable backup power, such as hospitals and resorts.
|
| Now dozens of manufacturers and many large companies are
| considering fuel cell development in an industry that has one of
| the fastest-growing trade associations in the country - the U.S.
| Fuel Cell Council in Washington, D.C.
|
| ``There are a lot of big names in the business now,'' said Bob
| Rose, the council's executive director. ``General Electric is in,
| along with 3M, DuPont, United Technologies.''
|
| In the 1960s and 1970s, utilities were interested in building big
| fuel cell plants capable of producing one to three megawatts as
| part of a central power supply. But the long-range goals have
| shifted to a smaller scale: putting a washing machine-sized fuel
| cell in every home, or smaller units in every car and truck. And
| that's attracted a broader range of companies and investors, Rose
| said.

cf. http://www.gepower.com/microgen/homegen_prod_desc.html :

] GE MicroGen
]
] Imagine your own guaranteed supply of electricity in a compact,
] quiet, self-contained package - it's called the HomeGen 7000.
] This new energy system produces more power, and is more
] environmentally friendly, more efficient and more reliable than
] ever. About the size of a refrigerator, the HomeGen 7000 provides
] 100% of a home's energy needs, plus runs on fuels (natural gas or
] propane) already delivered to your home.

back to the article:

| Motorola, for example, is working with the Los Alamos National
| Laboratory in New Mexico to miniaturize fuel cells for handheld
| electronic devices like cell phones.
|
| Mark Williams, fuel cell product manager at the National Energy
| Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, W.Va., said the U.S.
| Department of Energy (news - web sites) - the lab's parent agency
| - has been funding fuel cell research across the country for
|   years. But now initial public offerings of stock in various
|   technology development companies are spurring investment
|   interest, along with research funding by established companies.
|
| ``The alliance of auto manufacturers, fuel cell developers,
| utilities, universities - there's a whole new initiative that's
| bringing it together,'' Williams said.
|
| At the Portland sewage treatment plant on the peninsula formed by
| the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, the city is
| generating electricity from only the third commercial fuel cell
| of its kind in the nation to use waste ``biogas.''
|
| The fuel cell began operating in July 1999. It's such a success
| that the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) gave
| the city a ``clean air excellence'' award for converting waste
| gas from sewage into 200 kilowatts of electricity.
|
| David Tooze, energy program manager for Portland, said the city
| needed to pull together several grants to cover the $1.3 million
| cost of the fuel cell. But it has proved to be more than worth
| the investment by producing electricity at 8 cents per kilowatt
| hour, at a time when the deregulated spot market easily pushes
| the price to 20 cents per kilowatt hour.
|
| Fuel cells are an extremely clean source of power because they
| combine hydrogen and oxygen - the two elements that make up
| water, the main byproduct.
|
| ``A lot of long-term energy planners recognize fuel cells could
| be one of the major links that bridge us from a society that
| operates on fossil fuels and their pollution liability, to an
| energy economy that operates on hydrogen, which is essentially
| clean burning,'' Tooze said.
|
| Much of the fuel cell pioneering work is taking place in the
| Pacific Northwest. A public power consortium of 13 utilities
| called Energy Northwest is taking part in a Bonneville Power
| Administration test of fuel cells made by a company founded in
| the central Oregon town of Bend.
|
| Bonneville officials see fuel cell technology as a way to
| redistribute the power grid on a more local level. The
| Portland-based federal power marketing agency already oversees
| one of the cleanest energy sources in the nation, the string of
| 29 hydroelectric dams along the Columbia and Snake rivers.
|
| But salmon conservation and increasing power demand have forced
| the BPA to search for alternate sources of electricity. Fuel
| cells could be a way to take the load off the central power grid
| and create a system of residential generators that could power
| homes and even provide a surplus to the grid.
|
| But fuel cells are still too expensive.
|
| For example, a Boise-based company called Idacorp has joined the
| BPA to test for home use fuel cells that are in the $25,000
| range. The company hopes the cost per unit eventually will drop
| to the $5,000 to $7,000 range.
|
| Still, fuel cell development is becoming part of a nationwide
| shift away from reliance on any single power source.
|
| ``It's going to take time, and it's not effortless, but the move
| toward the so-called hydrogen economy has started,'' said
| Millett, the Battelle researcher. ``We've taken the baby steps.''

--
Gerald Oskoboiny <[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/

HURL: fogo mailing list archives, maintained by Gerald Oskoboiny