Rebecca Fannin, 06.07.10, 06:00 AM EDT

Now, everything is made in China–

but little is invented there.

When will the familiar label “Made in China” switch to something more challenging: “Invented in China”? Not for another decade at least, according to investors and technology entrepreneurs who gathered recently at an event in Beijing to discuss the topic. (For video of the event, click here.)

Sure, some things are already being invented in China. Internet whizzes have pushed advances in mobile gaming and instant messaging. But many obstacles prevent a full-scale leap into widespread inventing.

One hurdle is culture. Entrepreneurs in China are still afraid of failure, noted Feng Deng of Northern Light Venture Capital. A failed startup in Silicon Valley is practically a badge of honor. In addition, entrepreneurs in China may be good at coding software, but they make for lousy managers. That often keeps their businesses from scaling.

Innovation in China comes largely by accident, not by design, said DCM investor Hurst Lin, one of the first generation of China’s returnee entrepreneurs from the West and co-founder of Chinese Internet portal Sina. Facebook and Google ( GOOG – news – people ) were accidents of imagination that was allowed to roam and think differently. Such breakthrough ideas could not have been the result of an upbringing in China, said Lin, where education needs to move toward critical thinking and away from sheer memorization.

Even so, Lin and others (including myself) hold out hope–and the expectation–that China will climb the innovation ladder quickly. Why? Necessity is the mother of invention. Many of the country’s 1.3 billion people are yearning for middle-class living standards and the cars and consumer goods that go with it. The market for homegrown innovation is there.

Major and rapid developments are coming in clean tech–an area that Northern Light’s Deng is focusing on with bets in energy-efficient lights, wind power and energy storage. Let’s hope some of these ideas can clean up China’s polluted cities.
Before China’s tech hubs join the same league as Silicon Valley, however, the country needs more collaboration among university labs and venture capital firms to work on breakthrough ideas. This method has worked well in Silicon Valley and in Boston. In Shanghai and Beijing I’m told that professors and scientists prefer not to share their intellectual capital with financiers.

Still, corporations worldwide are pouring more investment into Chinese R&D operations every day, a point made by Egidio Zarrella of KPMG.

One example is corporate America’s interest in Chinese biomedical research and development–an area of investment that is rapidly becoming as hot as clean tech. Pfizer ( PFE – news – people ) recently established a joint venture with Crown Bioscience to work on finding a cure for cancers common in Asia–predominantly lung cancer. While in Beijing, I got a tour of Crown Bioscience, which is located in an immense life sciences park close to the Great Wall.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 7th June 2010

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More Information

Sourced and Published by Henry Sapiecha 5th June 2010

On Butterfly Wings

Inspire More Powerful Solar Cells

Plastic Makes Perfect?

Automotive Engineers

Bend New Materials

into Futuristic Shapes

Chemists Create Self-assembling

Although diamond is currently the undisputed champion of ultrahard materials, research teams around the world are engaged in a battle to find a new contender to topple it from its place; one which is cheaper, more durable, and more easily produced. Once such team, lead by Professor Richard Kaner of UCLA, have targeted transition metal borides as their diamond-killer of choice. Ultrahard materials are useful in many industrial applications, as, for example, abrasives, cutting tools, and coatings. But diamond isn’t always the best tool for the job; the chemical reaction between carbon and iron means that it isn’t suitable for use with ferrous materials, and the high temperature and pressure necessary to produce synthetic diamond can make the manufacturing process prohibitively expensive. In contrast, the materials considered by Prof. Kaner, such as rhenium diboride and tungsten tetraboride, have comparable or greater hardness and stress resistance, but can be potentially be produced at ambient pressure and can be used in a great variety of chemical environments.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 3rd Nov 2009

Foods usually have complex compositions and are subjected to many changes in temperature during production, transport, storage and processing. Pasteurization, sterilization, cooking and freezing are only some examples of such processes. Along with the factors of time and water content, temperature changes can have a decisive impact on the quality of foods.

Many substances are metastable and undergo phase changes during storage. Chemical reactions such as hydrolysis or oxidation can change color, appearance, or texture, or can even cause foods to become inedible. A good understanding of the effect of temperature changes on the physical and chemical properties of foods is therefore important for manufacturers in order to be able to optimize processing conditions and improve product quality.

Various Thermal Analysis methods, primarily Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Thermogravimetry (TG) but also Dynamic-Mechanical Analysis (DMA), yield meaningful results for the evaluation of foods and their raw ingredients. NETZSCH-Gerätebau GmbH, a renowned manufacturer of instruments for Thermal Analysis and for the determination of thermophysical properties, provides equipment for all of the techniques needed for a comprehensive characterization.

For example, the specific heat (cp) indicates the amount of heat energy which must be supplied to or removed from a unit quantity of substance in order to change its temperature by one degree centigrade. This makes the specific heat to an extremely important parameter in the drafting of cooling, freezing, or heating procedures.
Some biological materials, as well as some spray-dried, ground or frozen substances, are amorphous; in other words, thermodynamically they are in a state of non-equilibrium.

This is characterized by a so-called glass transition, the temperature position of which is a function of several factors including the water content. Associated temperature-dependent phase changes can thereby cause powders to become sticky, affect the crispness of breakfast cereals or cause gelled starches to crystallize.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 18th October 2009

More than 5,000 years ago, the Chinese discovered how
to make silk from silkworm cocoons. For about 3,000 years,
the Chinese kept this discoverya secret.
Because poor people could not afford real silk,
they tried to make other cloth look silky.
Women would beat on cotton with sticks to
soften the fibres.
Then they rubbed it against a big stone to make it shiny.
The shiny cotton was called "chintz."
Because chintz was a cheaper copy of silk, calling something
"chintzy" means it is cheap and not of good quality.

Silkworm Information

Phylum, Arthropoda; Class, Insecta; Order, Lepidoptera

Identifying Features Appearance (Morphology) Larvae are worm-like with a short anal horn. Three distinct body parts: head, thorax, abdomen Adult has four wings covered with scales Adult Males and Females Adult moths have creamy white wings with brownish patterns across the front wings. The body is very hairy and the wingspan is about 50 mm. Adult females are larger and less active than males. Male moths actively crawl around looking for females. They will copulate for several hours. Immatures (different stages) Lepidoptera are holometabolous, therefore they have three distinct morphological stages; larva, pupa and adult. After hatching from the egg, larvae go through four molts as they grow. During each molt, the old skin is cast off and a new, larger one is produced. The silk worm larval life is divided into five instars, separated by four molts. Three pair of short, jointed legs with a single claw at the tip are located on the three body segments immediately behind the head. Five pair of fleshy protuberances (prolegs) ending in a series of hooks called crockets are located posteriorly and ventrally on the abdomen and aid the larva’s clinging a climbing abilities on plants. Natural History Food Silkworms natural food plant is the mulberry tree (Morus sp.). An artificial diet has been developed to facilitate cultivation of silkworms. If you do not have a mulberry tree available, you must purchase the artificial diet. Habitat Today, the silkworm moth lives only in captivity. Silkworms have been domesticated so that they an no longer survive independently in nature, particularly since they have lost the ability to fly. All wild populations are extinct, although presumably old relatives exist in Asia. Interesting Behaviors Silkworms have been used by researchers to study pheromones or sexual attractant substances. The pheromones are released by female moths and the males detect the chemicals with olfactory hairs on their antennae. This allows the male to find the female for mating. The male antennae are made of many small hairs to increase the chances of picking up small amounts of the pheromones over long distances. Collecting Live Insects Where to find Silkworm eggs and artificial diet can be purchased from Carolina Biological Supply Company and Ward’s Biology. Check with other teachers and your district to see if there is a resource person in your community with eggs. Silk Industry History The coveted secret of silkworm cultivation began 5000 years ago in China. Sericulture (the production of raw silk by raising silkworms) spread to Korea and later to Japan and southern Asia. During the eleventh century European traders stole several eggs and seeds of the mulberry tree and began rearing silkworms in Europe. Sericulture was introduced into the Southern United States in colonial times, but the climate was not compatible with cultivation. Today Today, silk is cultivated in Japan, China, Spain, France, and Italy, although artificial fibers have replaced the use of silk in much of the textile industry. The silk industry has a commercial value of $200-$500 million annually. One cocoon is made of a single thread about 914 meters long. About 3000 cocoons are needed to make a pound of silk. To gather silk from cocoons, boil intact cocoons for five minutes in water turning them gently. Remove from the water and using a dissecting needle or similar tool, begin to pick up strands. When you find a single strand that comes off easily, wind the silk onto a pencil. Several of these strands are combined to make a thread.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 18th October 2009

PEOPLE MOVERS FOR THE MASSESS @ $2,000US

After getting official over a year ago, missing its original production plan and eventually hitting a wall with respect to production, Tata’s long-awaited Nano vehicle is all set to take to the streets this July. According to a fresh report over at Reuters, the world’s cheapest car (100,000 rupee, or $1,980) is expected to be the hottest thing around when it ships in India in a matter of months. In fact, there are so many orders waiting to be filled, initial owners will be “randomly selected from bookings made between April 9 and 25.” We’re also told that a European variant will be launched by 2011, and while a US model is still a possibility, no firm launch date has been given there. Good luck getting your rear into one, and be sure and shoot us a few hands-on shots if you do.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 29th Sept 2009