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Meet the Domino, a little chip that can diagnose your health. Photo courtesy of University of Alberta

Let’s start by agreeing that nanotechnology is magical science. Most of us know that it’s about scientists operating at a molecular level. Many of us understand that it usually involves the tiniest of “machines” assembling themselves through chemical interactions. But when researchers start talking about creating molecule-sized robots that can repair cells inside our bodies, they’ve moved so far beyond my comprehension that I’m reduced to blubbering, “Sounds good…keep ‘em coming.”

One thing even I can understand, though, is how profoundly nanotech can transform medicine and health care–whether it’s cell-sniffing nanobots that can seek and destroy cancer cells with no collateral damage or replace abnormal genes with normal ones or help broken bones heal faster.

Other nano-driven medical advances, while not as dramatic as detonating chemo bombs inside tumors may actually be more far-reaching in that they transform something as basic as how disease is diagnosed. Take two inventions announced last week.

The first, called Domino, is a small plastic chip that can perform 20 different genetic tests from a single drop of blood. It was created by a team at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and it works like this:

The blood flows into 20 separate tiny compartments, each filled with a gel. Then the chip gets put into a small portable lab about the size of a toaster where a molecular test is run on each compartment. From that one drop of blood, the doctor can determine if the patient has breast cancer and if so, whether she is resistant to cancer drugs. Or it can determine if she has malaria, even what type of malaria.

The second innovation, developed at UCLA, combines nanotechnology, a cell phone and Google Maps to create a device that reads Rapid Diagnostic Tests–strips that change color if there’s infection–with much more precision than a human can out in the field. The strips are inserted into the device, a reader that clips on to a smart phone. Then the phone’s camera, working with a mobile app, converts the strip into a digital image.

From that, the app determines if the results of the test–for HIV or malaria or TB, for example–are positive or negative. And here’s where Google Maps comes in. If positive, the device wirelessly transmits the results to a map that tracks the spread of diseases around the world.

What these nanotests mean for most of us, ultimately, is an end to those long, and often stressful waits for results to come back from the lab. Increasingly, doctors will be able to do DNA and other diagnostic testing right in their offices, with results available within the hour. Plus, $100 lab tests could end up costing only a dollar or two.

Not that these mini-labs are brand new. Harvard professor George Whitesides, for one, has been working on “diagnostic stamps” for several years now. But these “labs on a chip” have become such a popular field of research that there’s now a website called simply “Lab-on-a-Chip”, which reports on the latest developments. Most, however, are still in the trial stage.

“Lab tests are fine,” says David Alton, one of Domino’s creators. “But we need to show that it works. We need to show the results from a thousand tests. Then people start saying `OK, this is real.”

Then there’s the dark side

Of course, as with any cutting edge science, questions arise about how the wizardry of nanotechnology could go wicked. As useful as they can be, nanoscale forms of materials like silver, carbon, zinc and aluminum can be ingested, inhaled and perhaps, absorbed through the skin. No one’s sure how harmful that may be. About two weeks ago, the FDA issued a draft of guidelines suggesting that companies using nanoparticles in food or cosmetics may have to do extra tests to show the products are safe.

And just last week a paper by Kathleen Eggleson, a scientist at Notre Dame, raised the novel kind of ethical dilemma nanotechnology can stir up. She notes that in an effort to fight infections in hospitals, medical supply companies have taken to coating nearly everything–door knobs, bed rails, sheets, curtains–with nano-sized particles of silver, a material known for blocking the spread of microbes.

But, as Eggleson points out, the vast majority of bacteria and other microorganisms are actually neutral, or even beneficial. Some bacteria, for instance, are needed to maintain necessary levels of nitrogen in the air; others help us digest food.

So covering every surface with tiny flecks of silver, she argues, could end up doing more harm than good.

Yes, even in a world we can’t see, life is complicated.

Where the small things are

Here are other recent nanotech developments. These are outside the world of medicine.

• Stop squeezing the fruit!:An MIT chemistry professor has developed a way to attach tiny sensors to boxes that, when scanned, will reveal how ripe the food is inside.
• And it beats rock and scissors: A scientist in Genoa, Italy has found a process for making paper waterproof, magnetic and antibacterial.
• When a nanotree falls, does it make a sound?: Engineers at the University of California at San Diego are building a forest of tiny nanowire trees with the goal of capturing solar energy and converting it to hydrogen fuel.
• But they only pick up nature shows: A Utah company has devised a way to spray nanoparticles on trees and turn them into high-powered antenna.

Video bonus: The National Cancer Institute makes its case for how nanotechnology could be the cancer-fighting weapon we’ve been waiting for.

Look for more people riding on battery power. Photo courtesy of Busetti

The United States and China are different in so many ways. We borrow, they lend. We like to fly solo, they value their roles in larger groups. We follow the exploits of people named Snooki, they do not know the depths of Snookiness.

Then there are electric bikes. China loves them, America, not so much. Actually, hardly at all.

Let’s run the numbers: Last year, about 25 million e-bikes were sold in China; in the U.S. the number was under 100,000. According to Pike Research, U.S. sales might climb over 100,000 this year and could reach as high as 350,000 in 2018. But that would still be a sliver of projected global sales in 2018, just under 50 million. And it would not only be dwarfed by the market in China–which will still account for almost 90 percent of worldwide sales–but also will fall well below e-bike purchases in India, Europe and Japan.

So why have e-bikes been in such tepid demand here? After all, they run on a battery inside the frame, which has a range of roughly 30 miles on a full charge. They’re very clean–no gas combusted–amazingly efficient, and can go almost as fast as a moped, up to 20 miles per hour. And they can flatten hills that make grown men weep. Or as Steve Roseman, founder of the San Francisco—based Electric Bike Network, told Outside magazine, it’s like “a fairy godmother tapped you on the shoulder and made you twice as strong.”

Okay, there is the price. A good electric bike can start at $1,000, about three times the cost of a quality bicycle; some models, such as the ones now being used by the Los Angeles Police Department, can cost as much as $5,000.

But it’s more than that. A bigger problem is that the people most likely to use electric bikes in the U.S. don’t much like them. In fact, ask most cyclists what they think of e-bikes and they’ll tell you they consider them just one notch above Segways on the sloth meter. A bike with a battery? Isn’t that cheating? Isn’t the whole point to pedal?

Plug and play

Well, yes and no. In China, particularly, electric bikes are a cheap way to get to work. Fitness is not a big part of the equation. You can pedal, but most Chinese don’t. The sensation has been described as something like gliding on a moving walkway at the airport.

Even outside China, e-bikes are coasting closer to the mainstream. Last fall Hertz started renting e-bikes in London. Also in the U.K., the first Electric Bike World Championship–appropriately an uphill race–will be held in Bristol this June. In Amsterdam, where pedaling to work is as routine as morning coffee, almost one out of every five bikes sold last year were battery-powered.

There are trends that could turn things around in the U.S. The obvious one is rising gas prices. Every time they flirt with $4 a gallon, electric bike sales in the U.S. bump up. If they hit $5, the bump could become a boom. There’s also the matter of aging Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who like to ride bikes, but no longer yearn to feel the burn. For them, it’s glide time. In fact, that’s a big part of the e-bike business in Europe.

While fewer than 2 percent of Americans bicycle daily, there’s no question that the number of people biking to work in U.S. cities increases every year. And as the packs of bikers grow in places like San Francisco and Seattle, where the hills are beyond brutal, expect a lot more of them to avoid the heavy pedaling and go electric.

An update: Since posting this piece, among the responses I’ve received was an email from
Boris Mordkovich, a greentech entrepreneur from New York who’s in the middle of a cross-country odyssey to promote e-bikes in the U.S. He emailed from Milwaukee a note including the following comment:

“You’ve mentioned that a big problem in the U.S. is that most of the people who are likely to use them don’t like them. It’s actually not entirely the case. Most of the people in the U.S. either aren’t familiar with electric bikes or have misconceptions about them, confusing them with scooters, motorcycles and everything in between. As long as that’s the case, they fail to see the benefits in them. However, as soon as they are explained what an electric bike is and how it actually works, or better yet, take their first ride on it, the perception changes drastically.”

Batteries not included

Of course, a lot of cool things are still happening with non-electric bikes. Here are a few of the latest innovations:

• A light touch: There’s no shortage of ideas for making bikers visible at night, but one of the more ingenious ones is GLOBARS, in which plastic tubing containing LED lights is wrapped into the handlebars.
• Glow with the flow: A bike called The Pulse provides an even more stylish way to keep urban bikers safe. The middle of the frame is coated with photo-luminescent powder to make it glow in the dark.
• Can a bike ever be too thin?: The aptly named ThinBike is designed for the urban biker with zero storage space. It features collapsible pedals and handlebars that can be twisted without moving the front tire, allowing the bike to shrink from 21 inches to six inches wide.
• I’m pickin’ up wood vibrations: Okay, this isn’t for everyone, but it sure looks like one sweet ride. It’s a bike handcrafted from ash wood in Spain that demands that you don’t dare wear sweat pants when you climb aboard. Or if your taste in wood runs more tropical, check out the creation of designer Craig Calfee, who has built a bike of bamboo, right down to the spokes.

Video bonus: How could electric bikes not be mainstream if Jay Leno has one? Watch him take it out for a spin.

Is mining asteroids the next space frontier? Photo courtesy of European Space Agency

A strange thing happened in Washington last week. This normally is a pretty jaded place, but when the space shuttle Discovery did its victory lap over the city atop a 747 Tuesday morning, people poured out of government buildings or raced to office windows to take one long, last look. Most fired away on their cell phone cameras, knowing that they weren’t likely to get a great shot, but equally sure they had to try.

It was a moment that revived awe, if only for fleeting minutes, one that screamed “Turning point!” in a way that history rarely does. Some, such as the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, saw it as a sad funeral procession, a “symbol of willed American decline.” Others, including America’s reigning celebrity scientist, astrophyicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, viewed it as motivation to double NASA’s budget.

Truth is, the next chapter in American space exploration may be more likely to unfold in Seattle tomorrow when a startup called Planetary Resources has its coming-out news conference. Last week it sent out a cryptic press release, announcing that the company “will overlay two critical sectors–space exploration and natural resources–to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP.” Analysts offered an instant translation: It plans to mine asteroids.

Not a big leap to draw that conclusion, especially since one of the principals of Planetary Resources is Peter Diamandis, the space entreperneur behind the X-Prize competition, and a man who recently told an interviewer, “Ever since childhood, I wanted to do one thing–be an asteroid miner.” (The rich apparently are different from you and me.)

What makes this undertaking much more than one man tilting at asteroids, however, is the band of billionaires behind it. Drum roll, please: Film director and ocean explorer James Cameron, Google co-founder Larry Page, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Google board member Ram Shriram, former Microsoft exec and two-time space tourist Charles Simonyi and Ross Perot, Jr., the suitably wealthy son of the former presidential candidate.

Obviously, it’s a group with loads of money to burn, but also one that knows something about smart investments. While mining asteroids is clearly a high-risk enterprise with enormous challenges, it has the potential to be hugely lucrative. Diamandis has estimated that the platinum alone in one relatively small asteroid could be valued as much as $20 trillion.

Still, Planetary Resources’ mission appears to be driven, at least in part, by the young-boy fantasies of very rich men. Diamandis talks of others like himself who grew up when NASA was golden and “Star Trek” aired weekly and now have the means to be space frontiersmen–people like Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, both of whom are investing heavily in developing vehicles that can launch satellites or carry people into space.

Says Diamandis: “They’re able now to take the money they’ve made and hopefully fulfill the vision they had as a child. In our heart of hearts, many of us have given up on NASA as the mechanism to get us there.”

A rocky road

How plausible is asteroid mining? It turns out that earlier this month NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, along with the Keck Institute for Space Studies and the California Institute of Technology, released a study concluding that asteroids could be retreived, then mined. The scientists agreed that by 2025, it will be possible to have a robot spacecraft capture a 500-ton asteroid and move it into a high lunar orbit. The cost? About $2.6 billion.

But that would be for an asteroid only 22 feet or so in diameter–a big expense for a not such a big rock. And it doesn’t include the cost of actually extracting minerals. The other option would be robotic missions to asteroids where mining operations would be set up. But humans have yet to land a spacecraft on a body as small as an asteroid and take off again with minerals from the surface. The closest attempt came in 2005 when the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency landed a probe on an asteroid. It returned to Earth five years later with about only 100 microscopic particles.

Can’t wait to see what Planetary Resources has in mind.

Meanwhile, back at NASA

No, they haven’t turned off the lights at NASA. Here’s some of its more recent news:

• Private business: The space agency has been working closely with Space Exploration Technologies, better known as Space X, in preparation for the first flight of a private spacecraft to the International Space Station at the end of April. The unmanned capsule, named Dragon, will deliver cargo after it’s grabbed with a robotic arm operated by astronauts in the space station.
• Moons over Saturn: Now 15 years into its mission, the Cassini spacecraft continues to send back images of Saturn and its moons. The most recent photos are of Enceladus and Tethys.
• Can’t get enough…of that Martian stuff: The latest rover headed to Mars, an SUV-sized vehicle named Curiosity, is now more than halfway to its destination. After it lands in early August, it will start exploring the large Gale Crater and a three-mile-high mountain inside it for signs of microbial life.
• The hunt goes on: Earlier this month NASA extended the mission of the planet-finding Kepler space telescope until 2016. It has discovered 2,300 potential alien planets since its launch three years ago.
• “Recalculating…”: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California is developing an atomic clock that will serve as a kind of GPS for spacecraft in deep space.
• Where stars are the stars: And we definitely can’t forget the Hubble Space Telescope, which turns 22 tomorrow. It just keeps delivering remarkable images from deep space, including this latest one of the Tarantula Nebula 170,000 light years away.

Video bonus: Here’s one for old time’s sake, a flashback to one of NASA’s signature moments. Using data from its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA has recreated what three Apollo astronauts saw on Christmas Eve, 1968 as they watched a bright blue Earth rise over the moon’s horizon.

The Pebble smart watch is on a roll. Photo courtesy of Allerta

Remember how excited everyone got a few weeks ago when Google started sharing details about the augmented reality glasses it’s developing. Project Glass, as it’s called, seemed sure to be the next big thing in wearable tech–glasses that work like a smart phone, giving you directions, taking photos, connecting to the Web, pinging you with reminders, buying tickets, and generally acting like a concierge wrapped around your head.

Now that all seems soooo early April.

Because this week the new new thing is a smart watch called the Pebble. Not that smart watches are new–they’ve been around for a few years. But Pebble’s cutting a sharper edge. It’s the first smart watch to be able to communicate wirelessly with both iPhones and Android smartphones. Even more impressive, though, is how Allerta, the company behind it, has used “crowd-funding” to go viral and, in the process, raise way, way more cash than it thought it could.

Nine days ago, Pebble rolled out on Kickstarter, the website that’s usually associated with encouraging the public to invest in creative projects–indie films, music, video games, books. Allerta hoped people would kick in $100,000; as of this morning, it has raised almost $5.5 million. That’s serious money.

Usually a product like the Pebble would go the venture capitalist route. But founder Eric Migicovsky knew that investors can be skittish about throwing money into hardware, and would likely ask a lot of questions about models and market size. So he took his smart watch to the people. He simply made a video showing what the Pebble could do and invited visitors to the Kickstarter site to pre-order models at a discounted rate from the $150 it will cost in stores. More than 37,000 people have ponied up so far, and the offer still has almost a month to go. Which means the Pebble, which won’t come out until this fall, already has itself a community of believers.

That’s a sweet enticement to mobile apps developers, who are as critical to the success of a smart watch as they are to smartphones. If they can see that much demand for a product months before it’s available, they don’t need much incentive to jump on board. And that’s what will ensure that Allerta can deliver on its claim that the Pebble will be the first truly customizable smart watch.

How smart can a watch be?

So what is it about the Pebble that makes it so alluring? Start with the fact that it’s compatible with iPhones. That’s huge, since no other smart watch is. But here’s what else it will be able to do. It will allow you to read text messages on Android smartphones and flash caller ID on its screen when a call comes in. You can use it to control music on your phone and to track how far you’ve run or at what pace you’ve ridden your bike. On the golf course, it will be able to tell you how far it is to the hole. Plus, the Pebble is water-resistant, can hold a charge for a week and its e-paper screen is easy to read, even in direct sunlight.

Right, and it tells time. But not on some standard, dull digital display–unless that’s what you choose. Because you’ll be able to customize the watch face to your preference for how you want time to look as it passes.

Does this tech make me look fat?

More experts are saying wearable tech is about to go mainstream. Here are some of the latest developments:

• Turn the beat around: The Mayo Clinic is partnering with Preventice to develop a miniature wearable device that monitors heart and respiratory rates and, through a smartphone, wirelessly sends the data to a doctor’s office. The device, worn under your clothes, is now in clinical trials in the U.S. and Europe.
• Your baby called and he’s wet: For those who just can’t know enough about their baby, there’s now a very special onesie with sensors that track your kid’s vitals and send the data to your PC or phone. The cost of the outfit, software and service? A cool $1,000.
• Fashion statement: Oakley, known for is stylish sunglasses, is working on its own version of augmented reality glasses that could put it in direct competition with Google.
• The all-day workout: Nike is making its mark in the wearable tech biz with its Nike+ FuelBand, a rubber wristband that lets you set your exercise goals in the morning, then tracks steps taken, calories burned or other progress you’ve made. If you hit your goal, the color display turns green.
• May your soles rise up: And this summer, Nike plans to release the Nike+ Basketball and Nike+ Training shoes with pressure sensors in the soles. The sensors will collect information about your movement, like how high you jump, how fast you move, and how hard you play and transmit it to your phone.

Video bonus: See the video on Kickstarter that convinced thousands of people to invest in a Pebble smart watch.

Reverse innovation in action: An ultrasound scanner shrinks to smartphone size. Photo courtesy of GE

Here’s the story we’ve been hearing for years: Back in 1965 the coach of the University of Florida football team was befuddled that no matter how much water his players drank, they still became badly dehydrated in the brutal Florida heat and humidity. He asked doctors at the college for advice and one of them, James Robert Cade, devised a concoction of sucrose, glucose, sodium and potassium. Unfortunately, it tasted worse than a bucket of sweat. Cade’s wife suggested adding lemon juice and soon the world would be gulping Gatorade.

The part of the tale we never hear is that Cade got the idea from reading about doctors who went to Bangladesh during a cholera outbreak. They discovered that the locals were using a drink made of carrot juice, rice water, bananas, and carob flour–a combo of carbs and sugar–to rehydrate those suffering severe diarrhea.

This is what’s become known as “reverse innovation”–ideas that move from poor to rich nations. It’s just one of several examples that Dartmouth professors Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble roll out in their new book, Reverse Innovation: Create Far From Home, Win Everywhere. As Govindarajan learned while working as an “innovation consultant” for General Electric (GE), the notion that all the good ideas come from developed countries and simply are tweaked to work in more primitive places is an increasingly flawed concept.

It’s a small world after all

Instead, more and more products, even business strategies, are bubbling up first in “emerging” countries, then flowing uphill into mature markets. Take the case of the GE’s Vscan. It’s an ultrasound scanner not much bigger than a smart phone. But it didn’t start out that way. Not even close. No, GE’s original plan when it moved into the Chinese market was to sell the big, expensive–starting at $100,000–ultrasound machines that you see in so many American hospitals.

Chinese hospitals didn’t have that kind of money. And besides, what was really needed was a portable scanner that a doctor could use on patients in rural areas. So GE started thinking small. And it shifted its focus from high-priced hardware to relatively inexpensive software. This was shrewd. The Vscan has grown from a $4 million to a $278 million business and now American and European hospitals and doctors want them. GE CEO Jeff Immelt has gone so far as to predict that the Vscan could become “the stethoscope of the 21st century.”

Another example: After Wal-Mart discovered that its massive stores didn’t work very well in countries like China, Argentina and Mexico because a lot of shoppers had neither the money nor the storage space to buy in bulk, it scaled way back to models known as “small marts.” It then realized that this approach might work in the U.S., too, in places where buildings the size of airplane hangars didn’t make a lot of sense. So, last year the first of these shrunken stores, called Wal-Mart Express, opened in rural Arkansas. The second and third followed in urban Chicago.

“What works in the rich world won’t automatically achieve wide acceptance in emerging markets, where customer needs are starkly different,” writes Govindarajan. “As a result, reverse innovation is rapidly gathering steam–and will only continue to do so.”

Bright lights, big cities

More evidence of the global shifts of innovation comes from a database released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. By tracking international patents and patent applications, it found, not surprisingly, that inventions tends to flow out of the world’s cities–93 percent of patent applications are generated by inventors in metro areas accounting for only 23 percent of the planet’s population.

But the stats also show the U.S. losing ground on the innovation front. Its share of global patents fell from 40 percent at the turn of the century to 28 percent by 2010. Meanwhile, China saw its share rise by 6 percent over the same period.

And if all the social interactions and economic diversity that come with city living do help drive innovative thinking, as a lot of research suggests, developing countries would seem to be primed for a century of invention. Of the 25 fastest growing major cities in the world, seven are in China, six are in India. By 2025, only two of the 15 largest mega-cities–New York and Tokyo–will be in what are now developed countries.

Did you feel the Earth tilt?

Meanwhile, On the other side of the planet

Here are examples of innovative projects underway in developing countries:

• Going down:Construction began last month on Shanghai’s first “groundscraper,” a 380-room luxury hotel built 19 stories down into an abandoned quarry.
• Don’t look down. No, really: Now this is not for the faint of heart. After five years of construction, a suspension bridge more than 1,100 feet high and more than 3,800 feet long opened recently in China’s Hunan Province. If, God forbid, your car went over the side, it would take eight seconds to hit bottom.
• Start me up: India has launched its first telecom “incubator,” a private-public partnership called Startup Village, which hopes to boost 1,000 startups over the next decade. It’s modeled after a Silicon Valley program that helps finance student innovations.

Video bonus: Vijay Govindarajan explains how reverse innovation can make a rich country want a poor country’s products.