Technology Blog

UC computer scientists release video on how to hack a sequoia touch-screen voting machine.

The Computer Security Group at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) has released a short, chilling video demonstrating how a single person can hack an election on a touch-screen voting system — even one with a so-called “Voter Verifiable Paper Trail” (VVPAT) added to it

To read the entire article and watch the videos CLICK HERE

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Aug. 11 - UC Santa Barbara Chemistry Professor Galen Stucky has been honored for his role in the development of a blood-clotting gauze that is helping save soldiers who suffer severe, life-threatening injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Department of Defense’s Advanced Technology Applications for Combat Casualty Care Award was presented to Stucky Aug. 11 during the opening ceremonies of the group’s annual meeting in Florida. The ATACCC convention is the premier scientific meeting on the battlefield medical needs of the nation’s soldiers and on recent advances in trauma surgery and medicine.

“I am very honored,” said Stucky of the ATACCC award. “In retrospect, this project has meant more to me than any other that I’ve worked on for the past 40 years. The most important aspect of this work is the thought that it is providing life support that is needed on an immediate-response basis to both military and civilian personnel. For those who knowingly are in harm’s way, it is particularly important.”

Severe battlefield injuries present unique problems in stemming blood loss, which is the primary cause of combat deaths. Medics may have less than two minutes to stop blood loss before death is imminent. In 2004, Stucky and his colleagues were asked by the Office of Naval Research to work with Connecticut-based Z-Medica to improve its zeolite-based substance, QuikClot(r) brand hemostatic agent, which promotes instant clotting and sealing of the wound until the injured can be taken to medical facilities. Adding to the task, the Navy wanted a solution within six months.

QuikClot, though effective in stanching blood flow, had the potential to cause second-degree burns around the wound. Stucky and his UCSB research team developed a “cooler formulation” of the product, eliminating the possibility of heat generation that existed in the first-generation formula. A Z-Medica team then created another “cooler” version of QuikClot that also maintains the product’s clotting power. Stucky’s team also created a QuikClot formulation with silver ions that provides enhanced clotting as well as antimicrobial properties to fight infection.

Stucky also discovered that an alternative simple substance, kaolin clay, not only eliminated the heat but added to the blood-clotting action.

“Kaolin clay has been used since the 1950s as an activating agent for a clotting test that medical doctors routinely perform,” says graduate student April Sawvel, who worked on the project. “We tested it against the original zeolite-based granular QuikClot and discovered that it worked just as well, but without the large heat release associated with the original QuikClot formulation.”

The latest generation of the product, QuikClot Combat Gauze(TM) brand, is now a medical gauze infused with nanoparticles of kaolin clay. It has been found to be 100 percent effective in careful testing performed at the Naval Medical Research Center. Z-Medica also markets a civilian version, QuikClot 1st Response(TM), which is becoming standard equipment with emergency providers nationwide, and QuikClot Sport brand and QuikClot Sport Silver, which are available over the counter and becoming popular with outdoor adventurers.

“Combat Gauze has been selected by the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care as the first-line product for hemorrhage control,” Dr. Michael B. Given, program officer for Casualty Care and Management with the Office of Naval Research, said in a note commending Stucky on his work. “Navy and the Marine Corps are adopting Combat Gauze, as will the other Services since we all follow CoTCCC recommendations. So, well done.”

“Here’s a very, very simple, cost-effective solution that works. I feel strongly about the impact it will and can have for the military and for civilians of every age,” Stucky said. “It’s a wonderful example of how the university can effectively and directly contribute to solving real-life problems in meaningful ways.”

Stucky said the next step is developing ways to stop internal bleeding. Imagine a successful, blood-borne process that would stem bleeding, say, in the case of a concussion. He and his team are planning to put their efforts into a new research project to tackle the problem. Meanwhile, QuikClot Combat Gauze is saving military and civilian lives all over the world.

Stucky is the E. Khashoggi Industries, LLC, Professor in Letters and Science at UCSB. He received his Ph.D. in 1962 from Iowa State University. After postdoctoral study at MIT, he held positions at the University of Illinois, Sandia National Laboratory and DuPont Central Research and Development Department before joining the UCSB faculty in 1985. His recent honors include the ACS Award in Chemistry of Materials (2002), the International Mesostructured Materials Association Award (2004), and election to fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005).

(Source: AScribe Newswire, August 11th 2008)

Scientists at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and MIT have developed nanometer-sized “nanoworms” that can cruise through the bloodstream without significant interference from the body’s immune defense system and—like tiny anti-cancer missiles—home in on tumors.

Their discovery, detailed in this week’s issue of the journal Advanced Materials, is reminiscent of the 1966 science fiction movie, the Fantastic Voyage, in which a submarine is shrunken to microscopic dimensions, then injected into the bloodstream to remove a blood clot from a diplomat’s brain.

Using nanoworms, doctors should eventually be able to target and reveal the location of developing tumors that are too small to detect by conventional methods. Carrying payloads targeted to specific features on tumors, these microscopic vehicles could also one day provide the means to more effectively deliver toxic anti-cancer drugs to these tumors in high concentrations without negatively impacting other parts of the body.

“Most nanoparticles are recognized by the body’s protective mechanisms, which capture and remove them from the bloodstream within a few minutes,” said Michael Sailor, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego who headed the research team. “The reason these worms work so well is due to a combination of their shape and to a polymer coating on their surfaces that allows the nanoworms to evade these natural elimination processes. As a result, our nanoworms can circulate in the body of a mouse for many hours.”

“When attached to drugs, these nanoworms could offer physicians the ability to increase the efficacy of drugs by allowing them to deliver them directly to the tumors,” said Sangeeta Bhatia, a physician, bioengineer and a professor of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT who was part of the team. “They could decrease the side effects of toxic anti-cancer drugs by limiting their exposure of normal tissues and provide a better diagnosis of tumors and abnormal lymph nodes.”

The scientists constructed their nanoworms from spherical iron oxide nanoparticles that join together, like segments of an earthworm, to produce tiny gummy worm-like structures about 30 nanometers long—or about 3 million times smaller than an earthworm. Their iron-oxide composition allows the nanoworms to show up brightly in diagnostic devices, specifically the MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, machines that are used to find tumors.

“The iron oxide used in the nanoworms has a property of superparamagnetism, which makes them show up very brightly in MRI,” said Sailor. “The magnetism of the individual iron oxide segments, typically eight per nanoworm, combine to provide a much larger signal than can be observed if the segments are separated. This translates to a better ability to see smaller tumors, hopefully enabling physicians to make their diagnosis of cancer at earlier stages of development.”

In addition to the polymer coating, which is derived from the biopolymer dextran, the scientists coated their nanoworms with a tumor-specific targeting molecule, a peptide called F3, developed in the laboratory of Erkki Ruoslahti, a cell biologist and professor at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research at UC Santa Barbara. This peptide allows the nanoworms to target and home in on tumors.

“Because of its elongated shape, the nanoworm can carry many F3 molecules that can simultaneously bind to the tumor surface,” said Sailor. “And this cooperative effect significantly improves the ability of the nanoworm to attach to a tumor.”

The scientists were able to verify in their experiments that their nanoworms homed in on tumor sites by injecting them into the bloodstream of mice with tumors and following the aggregation of the nanoworms on the tumors. They found that the nanoworms, unlike the spherical nanoparticles of similar size that were shuttled out of the blood by the immune system, remained in the bloodstream for hours.

“This is an important property because the longer these nanoworms can stay in the bloodstream, the more chances they have to hit their targets, the tumors,” said Ji-Ho Park, a UC San Diego graduate student in materials science and engineering working in Sailor’s laboratory.

Park was the motivating force behind the discovery when he found by accident that the gummy worm aggregates of nanoparticles stayed for hours in the bloodstream despite their relatively large size.

While it’s not clear yet to the researchers why, Park notes that “the nanoworm’s flexibly moving, one dimensional structure may be one the reasons for its long life in the bloodstream.”

The researchers are now working on developing ways to attach drugs to the nanoworms and chemically treating their exteriors with specific chemical “zip codes,” that will allow them to be delivered to specific tumors, organs and other sites in the body.

“We are now using nanoworms to construct the next generation of smart tumor-targeting nanodevices,” said Ruoslahti. We hope that these devices will improve the diagnostic imaging of cancer and allow pinpoint targeting of treatments into cancerous tumors.”

(Source: www.azonano.com - May 9th 2008)

Tom Abate - May 5th 2008

The same innovation that makes laptop screens thinner turns out to be one of the best energy-saving technologies on Earth - and it’s all thanks to new tricks that make it possible to create more illumination using the most humble member of the semiconductor family, the light-emitting diode, or LED.

Semiconductors, you will recall, are materials that can be coaxed into either conducting or not conducting electricity. Computer chips, which turn on and off, or count to zero and one, are the most common type of semiconductor. Solar cells, which emit electrons when struck by the photons in light beams, are another well-known semiconductor.

The LED is a solar cell in reverse, said Steven DenBaars, a professor of materials science at UC Santa Barbara. “When we put in electricity, it comes out as light,” he said.

Although the LED has been in commercial use since the late ’60s, it has ever been the blinking idiot of the semiconductor world. Costly to make and emitting only tiny amounts of light, the LED was at first useful only in expensive instruments such as calculators, watches and eventually those old VCRs that used to flash 12:00.

But in a world that is warming globally, this all-but-forgotten semiconductor may finally get its day in the sun, according to technology analyst Sweta Dash, who noted the growing importance of LEDs in a recent report for market research firm iSuppli Corp.

Writing about the display screens on electronic devices from wall-size to wrist-size televisions, Dash noted that one of the most important trends is a switch in the type of backlight that helps brighten the screens and increase the color range. Increasingly, Dash wrote, laptop and PDA makers are opting to use LEDs as backlights. Why? LEDs are thinner and use less energy than the fluorescent tubes inside today’s flat-panel screens, she said.

As Dash explained, behind the flat-panel display in a typical laptop there sits a thin fluorescent lightbulb that illuminates the back of the screen. Dash’s report noted how designers increasingly are using LEDs in this backlight function.

“In notebooks, everyone is trying to get more battery life,” said Dash, adding that the solid state LED also takes up less space than today’s fluorescent backlight. And that allows for sleeker products like Apple’s MacBook Air, which is about three-quarters of an inch thick at the hinge.

Thanks to this happy confluence of low-power consumption and thinness, Dash predicted that “in the next few years we will see this major change where these LED backlights are going to be everywhere.”

John Peddie, whose Tiburon consulting firm has tracked graphics and multimedia for three decades, said LED backlighting will not only yield thinner electronic devices but a more vibrant palette of colors on display screens. Current display technology can represent a palette of about 24 million colors. “We need close to a billion colors, our eyes are that sensitive,” said Peddie, adding that LED backlighting will enrich visual display.

But snazzier graphics and thinner gizmos are just the beginning of the LED revolution. The same power-saving characteristic that drives computer design is already making LEDs economical as a source of illumination in real world applications like traffic lights, according to DenBaars, the UCSB professor who works at that school’s Solid State Lighting and Energy Center.

“Cities are saving hundreds of dollars per intersection per year with LED traffic lights,” said DenBaars, who broke down the savings as follows.

The 100-watt incandescent bulb in a streetlight might cost $2 to buy, $40 to install and $73 a year to run, plus the cost of electricity. The bulb will likely last just six months, he said, pushing the cost to about $160 per year - two bulbs, two installations and the electric bill.

A 15-watt LED stoplight could throw off the same illumination at an annual electricity cost of about $11 - more than enough to offset the $50 cost of the solid state lamp, which should last five years, he said.

Because of the favorable economics, cities have led the charge on using LEDs in traffic lights and other round-the-clock situations in which the initial cost of the solid state device is still quite high relative to other light sources such as compact fluorescent bulbs. But it will be a while before consumers can justify the higher costs of LEDs as energy-saving replacements for older household fixtures.

“A room light is on about four to six hours a day,” DenBaars said, and that works out to a payback period on the order of three to six years.

So while LEDs may be ready to make computers smaller and sleeker, the technology will have to come down in price before it can find wider household application. But DenBaars said LEDs will eventually have a big role to play in reducing electricity consumption. And in the short term it may even find applications where its benefits outweigh its installation costs, such as in outdoor lighting for decks and patios.

“LED lights don’t attract bugs,” DenBaars said. “They don’t emit ultraviolet light like incandescent and fluorescent lights. And it’s the ultraviolet light that attracts the bugs.”

(Source: San Francisco Chronicle - May 5th 2008) 

Author: Ben Butkus

Pfizer said last week that it will provide $14 million over three years to the first phase of public-private research consortium project designed to investigate the regulatory mechanisms involved in human energy metabolism and potentially uncover ways to treat diabetes and obesity.

The Insulin Resistance Pathway project, which could eventually receive additional funding from the pharma giant,
comprises scientists from biotech firm Entelos, the University of California-Santa Barbara, the California Institute of
Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Massachusetts. It plans to take a
systems-biology approach to help it better characterize the basic biology of insulin signaling in adipose cells.

According to officials on both sides of the agreement, the consortium will seek to protect the interests of the academic
parties by allowing them to freely publish and patent any discoveries, although Pfizer will have first rights to review
these discoveries and an option to license them for further development.

“The idea generally is that in order to get the deal to go, we protect the academics and let them do what they have to do
to be successful, which is to publish and patent,” Preston Hensley, senior director of worldwide exploratory science and
technology at Pfizer, and head of the IRP project, told BTW this week.

“We encourage them to do that, and the only thing we want is to see manuscripts 30 days before they go out just to
make sure that there is nothing we need to worry about in there,” Hensley added. “And then if there are any patents, we have the right to license them either exclusively or non-exclusively, depending on the patent.”

Frank Doyle, a professor of chemical engineering at UCSB and associate director of the ICB, said that the 5-year-old institute receives about $10 million in annual funding from the Army, and has traditionally focused on biosensors,
medical systems, and biological materials, although more recently it has developed a systems biology core in its
network sciences division.

“The team really grew from a dialogue between the core academics and researchers at Pfizer,” Doyle said. “Pretty soon we had shaped the proverbial ‘A team’ to attack the problem [using] a balance of computational biology,
high-throughput biological assays, and clever experimental protocols.”

More specifically, Doyle said that the team will be taking a systems-biology approach to investigate the linkage between insulin binding to the outside of an adipocyte, and the end process of that cascade, which is the mobilization of GLUT4 transporters to the cell wall so glucose can enter the cell.

“One of the key paradigms that people use to describe systems biology is this iterative process of going from data to models to new experiments to better models, and so on,” Doyle said. “The model is not the end goal; it is a tool that sheds light on the system, much like proteomics and genomics shed light on the system. So this is one more tool in the tool kit to shed light and understanding on the network.”

Pfizer will fund the consortium for three years and $14 million initially. If the first phase of the project proves successful, Pfizer said, it will fund a second, two-year phase that will extend the studies to other insulin-sensitive tissues such as liver, muscle, and possibly hypothalamic or beta cells.

Hensley said that Pfizer, Entelos, and the academic collaborators jointly developed a basic research strategy and list of milestones at the onset. The completion of those milestones will help determine whether Pfizer will fund the second leg of the project.

Navigating the potential intellectual property roadblocks that could arise from a public-private collaboration of this size will undoubtedly be challenging. However, according to UCSB’s Doyle, the basic nature of the research has lent an air of true cooperation to the consortium that is somewhat unusual in industry-sponsored research.

Doyle added that the early-stage nature of the research “allowed all of the sides here to recognize that we’re really going to be writing papers about the molecular biology of adipocytes, shedding light on fundamental biology, and that the translational piece of that is further down the road.”

“I want to be clear that all sides were very open and negotiable here,” he said. “You have a lot of different stakes on IP in play here, yet everybody recognized that this was something big and exciting, and it was the beginning, and we should see where we run with this, and in subsequent phases we can worry about carving out those strategic IP
domains.”

Similarly, Sherylle Mills Englander, director of the Office of Technology & Industry Alliances at UCSB, which is handling the sponsored research contract negotiations on behalf of UCSB and the ICB, said that Pfizer has “set an example” for developing large-scale industry-academic collaborations.

Englander acknowledged that the pharmaceutical industry is often painted as being difficult to work with by academic tech-transfer offices, and vice-versa. However, Englander said that Pfizer was “absolutely exceptional” during the negotiations, and were not at all difficult to work with when they could have been.

“They really listened to the universities’ needs, and really came to the middle, rather than having a take-it-or-leave-it attitude,” Englander said. “For a collaboration of this scope, that’s really admirable. They did make sure that their critical needs were addressed, but made absolutely sure that the contract did not become an obstacle to the scientists working together.”

According to Pfizer’s Hensley, IP-development and licensing issues might not even come into play. “My secret feeling is that there will not be much need for that,” he said. “Usually Pfizer is not in the business of patenting targets, unless something extraordinary comes out of this.

“In a sense what we’re doing is playing the role of the National Institutes of Health,” he added. “We’re funding focused research to understand the pathobiology of, in this case, diabetes. If we know that there are five redundant pathways that link insulin binding to glucose transport in adipocytes, and we understand how one might modulate those pathways to restore insulin sensitivity, for example, that’s all we care about.”

(Source: BiotechTech Transfer Week - April 30, 2008)

Zymes’ Ubisol-Aqua(TM) technology enables key chemical reactions to take place under “green” conditions - safely, in water, at room temperature, without reliance on organic solvents.

HASBROUCK HEIGHTS, N.J., April 9 /PRNewswire/ — Zymes, LLC announced that PTS, the lead compound of their Ubisol-Aqua(TM) solubilization technology, allows reactions to be performed in water at room temperature with yields and selectivity comparable to, or better than, those previously obtained in organic solvents. These new environmentally responsible chemical processes utilizing Zymes’ patented Ubisol-Aqua(TM) technology were published online in the American Chemical Society journal Organic Letters on March 12, 2008. Dr. Bruce Lipshutz, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of California Santa Barbara, demonstrated that the use of Zymes’ PTS can be applied to three diverse types of widely used chemical reactions (Suzuki-Miyaura biaryl couplings, Heck reactions, and intermolecular olefin cross-metathesis) that now proceed with water-insoluble materials, with water as the only solvent.

Industrial reactions are usually run in organic solvents at elevated temperatures. Commonly used organic solvents such as toluene, methylene chloride (DCM), dimethylformamide (DMF) and tetrahydrofuran (THF) can be toxic, flammable, and expensive. During the reaction phase of a chemical manufacturing process, approximately 10 kilograms of organic solvents are required for every kilogram of product formed. Thus, in a single process scaled to 25 metric tons, the use of Zymes’ PTS could potentially replace 250 metric tons of organic solvents with pure water. Every year more than 3.2 billion kilograms of organic solvents are used in chemical manufacturing. The use of Zymes’ PTS, at a mere 1% penetration in the reaction phase of the chemical manufacturing process, could result in a reduction of more than 16 million kilograms of organic solvents.

Prof. Lipshutz stated “The significance of the PTS technology to green chemistry is that it not only opens doors to new reactions in water, but it decreases reliance on solvents, many of which are derived from the world’s oil supply. These processes also have the potential to reduce energy consumption and decrease solvent waste. To further enable such fundamental processes as Nobel Prize winning metathesis chemistry with “green” virtues is very gratifying.”

The US Environmental Protection Agency describes green chemistry as involving environmentally friendly chemicals and processes that result in: reduced waste; decreased costly clean-up treatments; safer processes based on water as solvent; and reduced demands on energy and resources. It is a preventive philosophy looking to put a stop to pollution at its source by encouraging the design of products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and/or generation of environmentally hazardous compounds, including organic solvents. Zymes PTS provides a means to reduce this waste and decrease cost by facilitating the reactions in water at room temperature.

Research quantities will be available through Zymes’ exclusive distributor, Sigma-Aldrich SIAL, in May 2008 under catalog number 698717. Larger quantities are available under license by Zymes LLC.

“We are pleased to offer PTS pre-dissolved in water to the scientific community,” commented Dr. Steve Branca, Vice President of Business Development for Sigma-Aldrich. “We see PTS as an enabling technology that provides a multitude of options for effecting both chemical and biochemical processes with lipophilic compounds in water without recourse to co-solvents or heating.”

About Sigma-Aldrich: Sigma-Aldrich is a leading Life Science and High Technology company. Its biochemical and organic chemical products and kits are used in scientific and genomic research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development, the diagnosis of disease and as key components in pharmaceutical and other high technology manufacturing. The Company has customers in life science companies, university and government institutions, hospitals, and in industry. Over one million scientists and technologists use its products. Sigma-Aldrich operates in 36 countries and has 7,900 employees providing excellent service worldwide. Sigma-Aldrich is committed to Accelerating Customer Success through Leadership in Life Science, High Technology and Service. For more information about Sigma-Aldrich, please visit its award-winning website at http://www.sigma-aldrich.com.

About Zymes: Zymes LLC is a bioscience company based in Hasbrouck Heights NJ that provides innovative solutions to its partners and consumers through proprietary science and technology, enabling new products to enhance the well-being of people and the environment. For more information visit its award-winning website at http://www.zymes.com or email info@zymesllc.com.

(Source: PR Newswire, April 9th, 2008)

The University of California, Santa Barbara is actively seeking a company interested in commercializing a new method of producing and recovering nanodiamonds that is 50% more cost-effective than current processes. This method produces smaller, rounder nanodiamonds that are superior for many applications, including grinding and polishing, drug delivery, oral dentistry, nanoglue and many others.

A Non-Confidential Description of the technology is available at this link: http://www.industry.ucsb.edu/technologies/details/2008-322

For more information about the above technology, please contact Franco Caporale at 805-893-2073 or caporale@research.ucsb.edu

The University of California, Santa Barbara is actively seeking a company interested in commercializing a new method of permanently removing dispersed nanoparticles from aqueous solution. This new technology is superior to existing ultra- or nano-membrane filtration since it avoids the potential for clogging (fouling) of the membrane typically seen in these systems. It is also superior to approaches which rely on changes in pH or ionic strength of the solution, which are generally impractical for large-scale water treatment, and which may only result in temporary removal.

A Non-Confidential Description of the technology is available at this link: http://www.industry.ucsb.edu/technologies/details/2008-318

For more information about the above technology, please contact Franco Caporale at 805-893-2073 or caporale@research.ucsb.edu

Author: Michael Kanellos

Blu-ray is finally getting some momentum in the market, and two secretive start-ups are already looking at ways to replace the standard, or at least retrofit it.

Kaai and Soraa are trying to develop lasers and LEDs that could, conceivably, replace conventional LEDs in the lighting market and serve as a standard for optical data storage, Ford Tamer, the newest partner at Khosla Ventures, said in an interview. The firm has invested in both companies.

Tamer didn’t provide many details on the companies, but that’s par for the Khosla Ventures course. The company is placing many investments in companies that are still in the exploratory and scientific discovery phase and thus wants to keep a lid on details. Tamer did, however, say that Kaai and Soraa are both interested in the lighting and data storage markets. (And if anyone can ferret clues out of the “aa” in both company names, send it along.)

Both companies will exploit gallium nitride, which is also the basis for existing blue LEDs and blue lasers, although the technologies at the two companies differ from each other. Blue lasers, used inside Blu-ray players, would be used in far more movie players and computers than they are seen in now, but they cost too much, said Tamer.

“We will go after lasers first,” he said.

What makes the companies intriguing are the founders Shuji Nakamura and Stephen DenBaars. Most Americans, even those in the tech industry, probably don’t know Nakamura, but in Japan and some electrical engineering circles, he’s a major celebrity.

Nakamura invented the blue LED in the early ’90s while working for Nichia. When combined with a particular phosphor, blue LEDs produce white light. Energy-efficiency white light LEDs will likely begin to replace incandescent bulbs in the future. (Blue lasers, of course, are also used to store data on Blu-ray discs.)

Nakamura also made history by suing his employer, which gave him a bonus of around $200 for his invention, and winning in court. The somewhat un-Japanese action on Nakamura’s part resulted in a settlement in the millions. He later became a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He also won the Millennium Technology Prize. (You can read more in a biography of Nakamura by Bob Johnstone called Brilliant!)

“I was in Japan with him and people come up to him in the street for autographs,” Tamer said.

DenBaars, a professor of material science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is one of the leading researchers on LEDs. DenBaars has said that if 25 percent of the lightbulbs in the U.S. were converted to LEDs putting out 150 lumens per watt (higher than the commercial standard now), the U.S. as a whole could save $115 billion in utility costs, cumulatively, by 2025.

“They (Nakamura and DenBaars) found the next breakthrough in LEDs in 2000 and they have been working on it for seven years,” said Tamer.

Tamer, who formerly worked at Broadcom, will primarily focus on energy-efficiency investments. Earlier this month, for instance, the firm announced it has an investment in EcoMotors, which is developing diesel engines that could get 100 miles per gallon.

What else is Khosla Ventures cooking up? It has investments in G IV (semiconductor lighting), Seeo (a new type of polymer battery), Topanga (a plasma light similar to one produced by Luxim), and Lumenz (a zinc-oxide LED company).

(Source: “Green Tech Blog”, February 12th 2008 - Author: Michael Kanellos)

Imagine a projection-style TV that fits in your hand, but which can fill a whole wall with a full-color, high-resolution picture that’s as bright as any you’ve seen. Or a light bulb an inch or two high that fills a room with pleasing white light, but without the heat and wasted energy of an incandescent bulb.

In terms of technology, two of the three things needed to make those happen are already available. Efficient and inexpensive red lasers have been around as long as CDs, and blue lasers are now entering the home en masse inside high-resolution Blu-ray video players. What’s missing is a low-cost green laser to complete the red-blue-green trifecta that is the basis for most video displays and cool, “natural” room light.

In November Darpa, the famed Pentagon technology-funding agency, unveiled a green-laser initiative that included grants for nine universities and research centers, mostly in the U.S. but also in Poland. Darpa’s usual pattern is to fund technologies that, while having potential long-term civilian applications, have a more immediate military
use. The military applications for green lasers, besides projection displays in aircraft and military vehicles, are believed to include submarine-to-ship communications, because green light travels easily underwater.The main research effort involves finding a way to use super-low-cost, computer-style semiconductors to create green lasers, the same
way red and blue lasers in consumer products are made. The semiconductors used in green lasers aren’t made from familiar silicon but from other metals, notably gallium nitride and indium nitride. Unfortunately, producing a green-laser semiconductor involves mixing more of the two metals in a single compound than the metals themselves care to have happen. “The indium just doesn’t want to stay there,” says Christian Wetzel, a physicist at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Having a green laser costing a few dollars, and later a few pennies, would also help with the transition away from incandescent bulbs toward white-light-emitting diodes, which are increasingly being used to replace traditional bulbs. The cost of LEDs is falling, but green-laser technology could make their price plummet, said UC Santa Barbara physicist Steven DenBaars. One product green lasers won’t make possible are the higher-capacity storage products that followed blue lasers. The reason is basic optics. Compared with green ones, blue lasers have a shorter wavelength, meaning their light can be focused on a smaller area. As a result, more “blue-laser bits” can be fit onto a disk than would be possible with a green laser.

(Source: Wall Street Journal - February 2008)