10 Universities Paving The Way For Cellulosic Ethanol

from Earth2Tech by Adena DeMonte

The key to cracking the code for cellulosic ethanol — biofuel made from non-food crops and plant byproducts — could be under development in a university lab near you. While researchers have spent years trying to figure out how to effectively produce the alt-fuel, universities across the country have recently been working on moving the ball forward.

Here's our picks for 10 schools making significant strides in cellulosic ethanol research and production:

University of Tennessee (Knoxville, Tenn.): Last week, the executive committee of the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees approved a business partnership with Mascoma Corp. to jointly build and operate a five-million-gallon-per-year cellulosic ethanol biorefinery. The partnership is a result of the UT Biofuels Initiative, an effort to grow the biofuel industry in Tennessee.

University of Florida (Gainesville, Fla.): The University of Florida recently said it will build a cellulosic ethanol plant at a Florida Crystals Corp facility. The plant will be a research and development lab as well as a commercial facility and will produce between one and two million gallons of fuel each year. The plant is financed by a $20 million state grant. The school's Bioprocess Engineering Research Laboratory also has a sustained research program on biogasification of biomass; additional work in cellulosic ethanol is being done through the Florida Center for Renewable Chemicals and Fuels.

Iowa State University (Des Moines, Iowa): DuPont (DD) pledged $1 million to Iowa State University's New Century Farm. For info on other cellulosic ethanol initiatives at the school, check out their Office of Biorenewables Programs.

Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.): Chemical engineers from the school are working on a eco-friendly cellulosic ethanol production process that they say is more efficient than traditional methods and also suppresses the formation of carbon dioxide. Separately researchers from the University say they have an insight into the structural changes cornstalks go through in the ethanol-production process, which could "establish a viable method for large-scale production of ethanol from plant matter."

University of California, Davis (Davis, Calif.): Last year, Chevron Corp (CVX) announced that it would fund up to $25 million in research at UC Davis over five years to develop affordable, renewable transportation fuels from farm and forest residues, urban wastes and crops grown specifically for energy. UC Davis is also home to a lot of cleantech activity, including The California Biomass Collaborative, a statewide collaboration of government, industry, environmental groups, and educational institutions.

Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Ga.): Chevron has also teamed up with the Georgia Institute of Technology with up to $12 million in funding for research to make cellulosic biofuels and "hydrogen viable" transportation fuels. The school has also partnered with Atlanta-based startup C2 Biofuels.

University of Massachusetts Amherst (Amherst, Mass.): Microbiology professor Susan Leschine, a leading authority on cellulose digesting microbes, founded SunEthanol. The company licenses microbe technology Leschine developed at UMass that converts biomass into ethanol using an efficient carbon-neutral process. In August, we chatted with SunEthanol's CEO Jef Sharp about the company's Series A funding.

University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, Calif.) & the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Urbana, Ill.): Let's not forget Berkeley and Illinois, which in February jointly received a whopping $500 million from British Petroleum (BP) for biofuels research. The funding is being used for the creation of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), which will initially focus its research on biotechnology to produce biofuels, including ways to turn field waste, switchgrass, and algae into transportation fuels.

University of Minnesota (Minneapolis): Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a way to convert sawdust and waste biomass directly into a mixture of gases, called syngas, that either be burned to generate electricity or made into liquid fuels.

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Why knockoffs are good for fashion

from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

James Surowiecki (author of the great book The Wisdom of Crowds) has a fantastic, tight little article about copyright and fashion in this week's New Yorker. Fashion designs aren't covered by copyright, and this means that couture designs are knocked off and sold at huge discounts in department stores and shops like H&M within seconds of appearing on the runway. This upsets many designers, but there's plenty of evidence that it's good for the industry as a whole -- the knockoffs sell to people who'd never buy the couture originals, so they don't really cannibalize sales; what's more, by making a hot new look ubiquitous, the knockoffs contribute to making it look tired and boring, which creates the market for next season's clothes.

This reminds me of the story of database copyrights, which exist in Europe and not the in the USA. Advocates for these monopolies argue that a copyright spurs investment and makes the industry bigger. But the fact is that the European database industry has stagnated over the past 25 years, while the US industry has grown 25-fold, and the biggest difference between the two is that European firms can prevent competition by using the database right.

Even though the evidence is that a database right has retarded the industry and limited growth, European database firms still profess a great love for their regulatory monopoly, and American firms still bemoan its absence.

The recipients of regulatory monopolies are like kids getting candy: they all believe that they need more, and nothing will convince them otherwise. But monopolies end up costing the public and the next generation of creators: by limiting competition in databases, Europe has created a smaller and less useful database industry. By encouraging competition in fashion, the world has created an easy means for all of us to get cheap clothes, while creating a huge amount of investment in the "next thing," making it easier for new designers to break into the field.

Designers' frustration at seeing their ideas mimicked is understandable. But this is a classic case where the cure may be worse than the disease. There's little evidence that knockoffs are damaging the business. Fashion sales have remained more than healthy--estimates value the global luxury-fashion sector at a hundred and thirty billion dollars-- and the high-end firms that so often see their designs copied have become stronger. More striking, a recent paper by the law professors Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman suggests that weak intellectual-property rules, far from hurting the fashion industry, have instead been integral to its success. The professors call this effect "the piracy paradox."

The paradox stems from the basic dilemma that underpins the economics of fashion: for the industry to keep growing, customers must like this year's designs, but they must also become dissatisfied with them, so that they'll buy next year's. Many other consumer businesses face a similar problem, but fashion--unlike, say, the technology industry--can't rely on improvements in power and performance to make old products obsolete. Raustiala and Sprigman argue persuasively that, in fashion, it's copying that serves this function, bringing about what they call "induced obsolescence." Copying enables designs and styles to move quickly from early adopters to the masses. And since no one cool wants to keep wearing something after everybody else is wearing it, the copying of designs helps fuel the incessant demand for something new.

Link (Thanks, Scott!)

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Citigroup Data Leaked on Limewire; Will There Be Jail Time?

from CenterNetworks - by Allen Stern

eWeek is reporting that a Citigroup employee running p2p software Limewire has potentially been used to find over 5,000 customer records including Social Security Numbers, names, credit information and mortgage types. eWeek notes:

Tiversa found over 10,000 files, deduplication revealed only 5,208 unique Social Security numbers, along with names and what type of mortgage each customer had: conventional, 30-year or conforming, for example.

The information is likely to have been exposed to millions of LimeWire users, given that there are at least 10 million nodes online in a P2P file-sharing network at any point in time, said Chris Gormley, Tiversa's chief operating officer.

If this information is proven to be accurate, should the employee or the Citigroup execs face jail time? The monetary fines are obviously not working, would a stint in jail start to wake up companies that our data is the most important piece to their ability to generate revenue.

I raised my concerns earlier this week with Mint and their "bank-level" security. What I would like to see from them (and the other apps in this sector) is their plan for when data is breached. How will they handle the breach in both communications to customers and in monetization to those who were affected.

And while many wrote about Facebook blocking in corporations, one of the issues no one (including me) seemed to touch on is security. How far are we from a malicious Facebook app?

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MySpace News Is Stealing Your Search Results

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

We’ve wondered previously who was going to use MySpace News (if ever), and now we’ve found the traffic source: Google.

Framed pages of blogs and news sites, complete with MySpace News branding and MySpace URL, are being indexed by Google as original content, stealing search engine placement and direct links from content creators.

A search of Google found thousands of MySpace News pages presenting story headlines with a MySpace url that led directly to a framed page that uses content from other sites.

The legality of passing off content as your own is questionable. The case most frequently cited in content framing cases is Washington Post vs Total News where the Washington Post argued that this was unfair and harmful use of their trademark and there was a danger that the user would be confused concerning whose content was being displayed. Unfortunately that case was settled out of court; notably MySpace today is framing content from the Washington Post as well (example here). Some refer to the practice as stealing, and even Chilling Effects notes that the legality of serving framed content is questionable.

The practice may also be in breach of Google’s TOS; MySpace is leveraging its position of strength to promote your content branded as their content in the Google search results, a practice that looks like search engine manipulation from a distance.

No matter what the legalities and moral dimension, if you’re a publisher and MySpace is hijacking your search results and throwing up a frame with their branding around your content, it’s not a good thing. Given what little traffic MySpace News is doing on their main site, there is little new traffic benefits from the service, instead the traffic from the MySpace News pages on Google cannibalizes existing search traffic.

Here’s hoping the Washington Post and the other big media outlets who are having their content framed and presented as MySpace News content take the matter further.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Salmon Sperm makes LEDs Brighter

A University of Cincinnati (UC) researcher has an unusual approach to developing “green” electronics — salmon sperm. Date: 9/10/2007 By: Wendy Beckman Phone: (513) 556-1826

Professor Andrew Steckl, a leading expert in light-emitting diodes, is intensifying the properties of LEDs by introducing biological materials, specifically salmon DNA.

Electrons move constantly — think of tiny particles with a negative charge and attention deficit disorder. It is through the movement of these electrons that electric current flows and light is created.

Ohio Eminent Scholar Andrew Steckl is one of the world's leading experts in photonics. (Photo by Dottie Stover)

Steckl is an Ohio Eminent Scholar in UC’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He believed that if the electrons’ mobility could be manipulated, then new properties could be revealed.

In considering materials to introduce to affect the movement of the electrons, Steckl evaluated the source of materials with an eye to supply, especially materials that do not harm the environment.

“Biological materials have many technologically important qualities — electronic, optical, structural, magnetic,” says Steckl. “But certain materials are hard for to duplicate, such as DNA and proteins.” He also wanted a source that was widely available, would not have to be mined, and was not subject to any organization or country’s monopoly. His answer?

Salmon sperm.

“Salmon sperm is considered a waste product of the fishing industry. It’s thrown away by the ton,” says Steckl with a smile. “It’s natural, renewable and perfectly biodegradable.” While Steckl is currently using DNA from salmon, he thinks that other animal or plant sources might be equally useful. And he points out that for the United States, the green device approach takes advantage of something in which we continue to be a world leader — agriculture.

Steckl is pursuing this research in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory. The research was featured recently in such premier scientific publications as the inaugural issue of naturephotonics and on the cover of Applied Physics Letters.

“The Air Force had already been working with DNA for other applications when they came to us and said, ‘We know that you know how to make devices,’” quotes Steckl. “They also knew that they had a good source of salmon DNA.” It was a match made in heaven.

So began Steckl’s work with BioLEDs, devices that incorporate DNA thin films as electron blocking layers. Most of the devices existing today are based on inorganic materials, such as silicon. In the last decade, researchers have been exploring using naturally occurring materials in devices like diodes and transistors.

“The driving force, of course, is cost: cost to the producer, cost to the consumer and cost to the environment” Steckl points out, “but performance has to follow.”

And what a performance — lights, camera, action!

“DNA has certain optical properties that make it unique,” Steckl says. “It allows improvements in one to two orders of magnitude in terms of efficiency, light, brightness — because we can trap electrons longer.”

When electrons collide with oppositely charged particles, they produce very tiny packets of light called “photons.”

“Some of the electrons rushing by have a chance to say ‘hello,’ and get that photon out before they pass out,” Steckl explains. “The more electrons we can keep around, the more photons we can generate.” That’s where the DNA comes in, thanks to a bunch of salmon.

BioLEDs make colors brighter.

“DNA serves as a barrier that affects the motion of the electrons,” says Steckl. It allows Steckl and his fellow researcher, the Air Force’s Dr. James Grote, to control the brightness of the light that comes out.

“The story continues,” says Steckl, again smiling. “I’m receiving salmon sperm from researchers around the world wanting to see if their sperm is good enough.” The next step is to now replace some other materials that go into an LED with biomaterials. The long-term goal is be able to make “green” devices that use only natural, renewable and biodegradable materials.

This research was funded by the United States Air Force.

Here we have the “yin” of biological materials in photonic devices. See Steckl’s “yang” research placing electronics in biological materials: UC Engineering Research Widens Possibilities for Electronic Devices: NSF-funded engineering research on microfluidics at the University of Cincinnati widens the possibilities on the horizon for electronic devices.

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