innovationguy.com

Originally this was posted over at Roland Piquequaille’s Emerging Trends Blog. (Link) 

U.S. researchers have used a new technique named cryo-EM (short for ‘Electron cryomicroscopy) to capture images of a virus at a resolution of 4.5 angstroms — less than half of a nanometer. As said the lead researcher, ‘This is the highest resolution ever achieved for a living organism of this size.’ The team thinks this should help to develop new disease treatments. Of course, this kind of research has a cost. It requires high-end electron microscopes and powerful computing resources. The next microscope used for this project will be installed in 2009 for a cool $2 million. And in order to generate the 3-D images at this very high resolution with their current microscope, the research team used the power of 7,000 computers at Purdue University. But read more…

You can see above an image of the bacteriophage Epsilon15 studied by Wen Jiang. On the left, the bacteriophage which has approximative diameter of 700 angstroms is shown at a resolution of 4.5 angstroms — the highest resolution achieved for a living organism of this size. On the right are shown “seven subunits in an asymmetric unit, annotated in different colours. Each subunit contains one copy of [baseplate proteins gp7 and gp10? (Credit: Wen Jiang lab, via Nature). Here is a link to a larger and better version of the image on the top left.

This research project has been led by Wen Jiang, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Purdue University, and members of
his research group. “In addition to Jiang, Matthew L. Baker, Joanita Jakana and Wah Chiu from Baylor College of Medicine, and Peter R. Weigele and Jonathan King from Massachusetts Institute of Technology worked on the project.”

Now, let’s look at the advantages brought by the cryo-EM imaging technique. “The imaging technique, called cryo-EM, has the added benefit of maintaining the sample being studied in a state very similar to its natural environment. Other imaging techniques used regularly, such as X-ray crystallography, require the sample be manipulated. ‘This method offers a new approach for modeling the structure of proteins in other macromolecular assemblies, such as DNA, at near-native states,’ Jiang said. ‘The sample is purified in a solution that is very similar to the environment that would be found in a host cell. It is as if the virus is frozen in glass and it is alive and infectious while we examine it.’”

And why is this imaging technique different from other ones currently used? “In electron microscopy, a beam of electrons takes the place of the light beam used in a conventional microscope. The use of electrons instead of light allows the microscope to “see” in much greater detail. Cryo-EM cools specimens to temperatures well below the freezing point of water. This decreases damage from the electron beam and allows the specimens to be examined for a longer period of time. Longer exposure time allows for sharper, more detailed images.”

For more information, this research work has been published in a recent issue of Nature under the title “Backbone structure of the infectious 15 virus capsid revealed by electron cryomicroscopy” (Volume 451, Number 7182, Pages 1130-1134, February 28, 2008). Here is a link to
the abstract. The images above have been extracted from this page.

Sources: Purdue University News, March 5, 2008; and various websites

I was browsing around google images today. I always enjoy seeing what comes up visually with certain search terms. I was looking at “innovation” this time. Actually a word a do a lot of searching about and thinking about. I ran across this image below at loosetech.com .

This image caught my eye as I have always been a fan of mind-mapping type concepts. This particular image is by Brandy Agerbeck, a Chicago artist and graphic facilitator. Here is the specific link to her gallery of graphic facilitation. The except describing this work is:

This is a drawing summarizing 3 speakers talking about Innovation: Craig Sampson of IDEO, David Ormesher of Closerlook and Robin Cook, participant in the Innovation University. I drew this in real time during the talk using black pens in a variety of line widths, a silver pen and two oranges.

One thing I really like about this type of work is how it captures the essence of a subject talks. You can really see the relatedness of the conversation that went on that day. Compared to what I usually use for capturing the contents of a talk/presentation/meeting, this type of real-time graphic captures ten times the data and meaning. Below two other examples of graphic facilitation by the same artist: a talk by Tom Friedman of “The world is Flat“, and a talk by Tim Hurson about “Think Better”

If you are interested in mind-mapping or topic-mapping or more information on this, I ran across this link that give some great examples.

I was looking through some older emails today and I came to the conclusion that I have a bad habit of emailing myself links to interesting articles or newsitems I find, but not getting them out on here. So here’s and effor to catch up.

• This was one of the earlier links I sent to myself pertaining to enzyme based fuel cells.
• An article on Superpaper made from clay platelets. The article claims that is it will revolutionize the composites industry as it can replace high strength carbon fiber or even sheets of nanotubes. Here is the original press release for you to decide what you make of it. Considering the final material is succeptible to water it will take this plus another advancement to make it revolutionary. Here is another link from NetComposites.
• Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Akron have developed a process for making polymer surfaces covered with carbon nanotube hairs, imitating the thousands of microscopic hairs on a gecko’s footpad.
• Other researchershave new data from studying the compressive fatigue properties of carbon nanotubes and report that they are surprisingly resiliant.

I have a couple of interesting links that people may be interested in.

• My friend forwarded this transcript of a pre-commencement lecture given by Narayana Murthy (chief mentor and chairman of the board, Infosys Technologies) at the New York University (Stern School of Business) on May 9. The theme of the lecture was the great impact that chance events played in shaping his life. Quite a good lecture. It really got me thinking as to the random events that lead to long friendships, family, professional success, and perception altering moments.

• I got a note in my email today with links to 3 new TED Talks.
  • John Doerr: Seeking salvation and profit in greentech
  • Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Photosynth demo on SeaDragon and PhotoSynth (AMAZING)
  • Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: How to help Africa? Do business there

• Also some interesting articles in SmallTimes this month. NanoDynamics is planning an IPO.

• The rankings for the top Schools with Nano programs according to SmallTimes is out. ( or the quick view for the impatient).
• The SmallTimes mergers and acquisitions summary this month seem to have quite a few interesting tid-bits.

  • Xradia with it’s minaturized microscope offerings with some new funding.
    
  • NaturalNano Funding deal is in there (Notice the much improved website with their new money).
  • SolarDiesel with a huge buyout deal on the plans to builds the worlds largest biodiesel plant.
  • Arrowhead Research Corporation continues its end-run to gobble up all the SWNT patents it can find with the purchase of C Sixty Inc. and CNI

• This story from Seth Godin about alignment is concise and to the point.

“When there’s a gap between someone doing her job and doing the right thing, then management has failed.”

Guy Kawasaki has an interesting post on an experiment by the Washington Post. (original article) It seems that they took a world class violin prodigy playing a $3.5 million dollar violin and plunked him down in a subway station acting like a street musician. Dressed in regular clothes and a baseball cap with the open violin case at his feet he played some of the worlds most challenging violin pieces. So what was the result? So how much did he earn? Keep in mind that he usually sells out concert halls for $100 bucks a seat for the good ones? He made a staggering $32… (chech out the video on the Washington Post site)

Besides being a pretty good experiment on how context affects people’s perception, it is a good learning experience for marketers. You can have a world class service of product, but if you are selling it in the wrong place to the wrong crowd, you will be sorely dissapointed. How many times have we heard “Why isn’t this selling, it is the best performance product on the market?” Maybe you are trying to sell it to the wrong crowd or in the wrong context. Maybe your prospective customers are like the subway patrons that have no use for entertainment as their sole objective when they encounter the service  is getting to work.

A second take on this is to consider the fact that there was probably a subway musician in the same subway system that morning that cleared more than $32. Why was he more sucessfully financially while our virtuoso would be hard pressed to pay for a day of parking  in the downtown area?  Was it the tailoring of his music and “act” to the audience at hand? Did he play music that was recognizable to his audience? Did he “ham it up” for the audience to provide a laugh on the usually stressful trip to work?

• Where in your business or industry does context and experience affect the profitability or sucess of your product or service?
• Are you unsuccessfully trying to sell a product or service designed for one geography or context into one that isn’t as receptive?
• How do you use context or experience to increase your profit on a product or service?

I ran across this somewhere in my daily web visits. It is a story of how a small group of UCSC students (10) designed , planned and build a 4 story art pieces honoring the classic computer games Donkey Kong using nothing but some perspiration and a whole slew of post-it notes(~6,400). If you are not familiar with Donkey Kong, here is the Wikipedia link and here is the quick description form the UCSC page to put it’s place in gaming history in perspective.

“Donkey Kong (Miyamoto, et. al.,1981) was the first appearance of the Itallian plumber we now know as Mario. While this game’s early ’80s arcade popularity predates most of today’s engineering students, it represents the amazing results that a small development team can produce. Today Donkey Kong is ranked as the 3rd most popular arcade game of all time, selling over 65,000 units. Currently this work is visible at the E2 building at UCSC, it is scheduled to be removed on or before May 1.”

Check out the above website as it has a nice time-lapsed video and pictures.

So why is this important to innovation, creativity, or new ideas?

There are a couple of things hidden in here:

(1) It is pretty amazing what you can do with something so common as the post-it note, some planning, and an idea.  So they took a piece of colored paper with a self-stick adhesive along one edge designed for leaving reminders for one’s self, and turned into a piece of art.  Did you get the same amount of use of impact out of the last 6,400 post it notes that your organization used?

(2) Most of the students of this age group (I am making some assumptions here) probably didn’t grow up with Donkey Kong, but they still recognize it as a pivotal piece of computer game architecture design.

(3) It is also amazing what you can do with a small team that is dedicated. Let’s do a thought experiment. If you had asked a large corporation to do something like this, what would it have cost and how long would it have taken to implement? How does a small resource-limited groups get something done faster than a resource-rich one?

Some questions to ponder:

• So what operational differences that allow a small resource-limited group to out-perform what a larger resource-rich group?
• What tasks or programs in your organization would be more propertly suited by a small, nimble, and resource limited team?
• How do you approach a problem differently when you have few resources, or an extremely aggressive timeline?

I saw this video the other day on YouTube and some links from other places. It is pretty profound if you have not seen it.

It really brings into question what kind of expectations we are setting in the media. Check out one of the Dove sites if want to learn more. If you take a different slant on this, what business expectations do some companies strive for and are held to that are unrealistic for a given market segment? Is there a similar complex in business to assume that every industry is capable of supporting X return on investment or Y profit margin?

Do you ever have a day where you feel like this ?

This is pretty simple but at the same time quite stimulating.   I ran across this app that looks to be a front-end for images.google.com.   It is called the “Google Image Ripper“.

I am not sure of the original motivation for building it but I find it fabulous for random association generation.  For example search for a word that you think you have an idea of what a search would return.  Here are some simple exaples.

•  Paint
•  Flower
•  Water
•  General Electric

I don’t know about you, but you see some of what you expect,  but ever 4-5 images you get something that doesn’t make sense at first glance.  Why is that here?  Where is article for the image?   What story can I tell about the image?  What does the image tell me?

Next time you need a new direction or perspective, give it a try.   This also works with Flickr or some of the other photo sites,  but I really like this clean interface.

I was reading my copy of NASA Techbriefs this morning and came across this article describing some work by Harish Manohara and Michael Bronkowski of Caltech for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. What really caught my attention was the image below (click to enlarge).

The image shows as array of Bundles of Carbon Nanotubes grown by CVD onto a substrate. Each of the pillars is a mass of carbon nanotubes. The inset image shows a close-up of one of the tips of the pillars. The original Article is here. An excerpt from which describes how the pillars were manufactured.

In preparation for the experiments, planar arrays of bundles of carbon nanotubes having various bundle diameters, bundle heights, and bundle spacings were fabricated. The fabrication process can be summarized as follows: Electron-beam lithography was used to form planar arrays of iron dots having various thicknesses and having diameters and inter-dot spacings corresponding to the desired diameters and spacings of the carbon-nanotube bundles. The dots served as catalysts for the growth of carbon nanotubes: Bundles of multi-walled 20-nm-diameter carbon nanotubes were grown on the iron dots by chemical vapor deposition. The average height of the bundles was 70 ± 2?m. The heights of the bundles were found to depend on the thicknesses of the iron dots. The tallest bundles (112 ?m high) were found on iron dots 8 ?m thick.

This work is targeted at constructing better field emission sources. The reasearches were looking to (1) understand the relationship between nanotube bundle size and spacing while also probing (2) whether bundles of nanotubes are more rubost to operation than single nanotubes.