VOL III No 52 June 6, 2004: CYBERZONE/BIOZONE CALENDAR

A SERVICE OF CREATIVE RESOURCES, INC. by MARTY PLOTNICK

HAWAI'I CALENDAR:

****NEW****Tuesday, June 8-- 5:45 p.m. ELECTRONICPIZZA -- U.H. MARINE SCIENCES AUDITORIUM.
http://www.cyberpizzahawaii.com/upcoming.html for details and parking information.

****Sunday thru Thursday, June 6-10. GLOBAL GRID FORUM & IEEE SYMPOSIUM.
Hilton Village. 

****NEW****Tuesday, June 15--Noon to 1 p., Univ of Phoenix Brown Bag Seminar. Speaker: Todd Ogasawara, editor of MobileViews.com.  Topic: THE IMPACT OF MOBILE SYSTEMS ON OUR WORK AND PERSONAL LIFE.
FREE Honolulu campus, in Rooms 101/102

****NEW*** Thursday, June 17, 5 p.m. Kipapa Lecture. Kakaako Gateway Park, followed by a tour of the new medical school building.  Speaker: Robert E. Olson, Denver regional director of the Economic Development Administration with the U.S. Department of Commerce.  Long trousers and closed-toe shoes are required during tour.  For information: (808) 956-5507.

General East-West Seminar information: Marilu Khudari, khudarim@eastwestcenter.org, or phone 944-7384.

UH CALENDAR http://dbserver.its.hawaii.edu/calendar/

HTDC CALENDAR

http://www.hitechhawaii.com/webevents.asp

IF YOU HAVE CALENDAR ITEMS, SEND THEM TO martycri@lava.net

NEW WORDS ZONE

BLAMESTORMING:

Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

[This will be a continuing Zone. Contributions welcome.]

THINK ZONE

DIGITAL DEMOCRACY
Political campaigns are tapping into digital technology and popular culture to create playful parodies. Their goal: engage the huge numbers of young people who feel disengaged from the old-fashioned style of political communications. TrueMajority.org, for instance, is circulating a video where Donald Trump appears to fire George W. Bush; its website includes a game where you can spank George W. Bush's bare bottom with a raw fish.

 

The right has been every bit as busy making fun of Democratic hopefuls. There are of course hundreds of spoofs of Howard Dean's self-destructive"I have a scream" speech, including images of him howling as he gropes Janet Jackson, shouting at a kitten, and simply exploding from too much pent-up passion. And playful conservatives have morphed John Kerry's picture so that he looks like Stan Laurel or Herman Munster. Maybe, writes columnist Henry Jenkins, passing along a parody can be the first step toward a deeper engagement with political life.
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CYBERZONE

VIETNAM-SINGAPORE, HONG KONG TO BE FIBER-LINKED Vietnam will spend close to US$150 million for constructing a fiber optic route to Hong Kong with a capacity of 10 Gbps. A second route will also be constructed linking to Singapore. However this will start after the first route has become operational. Also a contingency plan is to be prepared by the Vietnam Posts and Telecoms Corp to deal with sudden breakdowns. Presently, Vietnam has two international fiber optic routes, SMW3, with a 10 Gbps capacity and TVH, with 560 Mbps capacity which link the country with Hong Kong and Thailand.
NO CLICK THROUGH

SUN OFFERS TECHNOLOGY DEAL TO DEVELOPING NATIONS Sun Microsystems has a bold sales pitch for developing countries: For as little as a few dimes per citizen, the technology giant would provide software to help run government computer networks....
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/06/01/BUGO76TT221.DTL

INDIA's SOFTWARE EXPORTS REACH US$16 BILLION According to Nasscom, the Indian software and services industry, including domestic market, grew by 28.2 percent during this period registering revenues of $15.9 billion up from $12.4 billion in 2002-03. Of the total software and services exports last fiscal, IT services products and technical services grew by 25 percent to $8.9 billion while IT-enabled Services (ITeS) and BPO grew by 46 percent to $3.6 billion.
http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2004/104060310.asp?nl=18_20041_Jun3

McCAW CLAIMS FASTER, CHEAPER ACCESS
Craig O. McCaw Wednesday told an audience of wireless experts that he has come up with a new strategy for delivering high-speed wireless Internet access at a price lower than that charged by cellular companies.
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W5RT05BFC79F00E3B2B653FC824ED0

DirecTV TO END RURAL DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT DirecTV, the satellite TV broadcaster controlled by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, on Wednesday moved to take greater control of its rural subscriber base with a cash offer to its third-party distributor The company said it would end its deal with the National Rural Telecommunications Co-operative, an association of local utilities and telecoms groups, which holds the exclusive rights to distribute DirecTV's service in rural areas.

"Creating an artificial divide between rural America and the rest of the country is not in the best interests of DirecTV or its subscribers," Mr Murdoch told shareholders at the company's annual meeting in New York.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1085944468833&p=1012571727304

A VACCINE FOR YOUR PHONE
Your home and office computers are probably protected by antivirus programs and firewalls. But what about your new cell phone?
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/innovation30604.asp?trk=nl

BIO/NANO/MEMS ZONE

OREGON HOPES IF THEY BUILD NANO, FEDERAL FUNDS WILL COME Luminaries from business, academe and government got together for a supernetworking event at the recent formal opening of the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute. Not only are nanotech supporters convinced money for nano research and education will spur the state's economic recovery to continue, they believe that attracting top scientists will keep that recovery going for years to come.
http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=7983

AMATEUR SCIENTISTS STUDY MICROSCOPY IN BASEMENT NANOLABS Amateur scientists today and throughout history satisfy their insatiable curiosities through kitchen chemistry, backyard stargazing and garage physics. And science is better because of it. The barriers to entry for amateur molecular biologists or materials scientists are not trivial. But theyíre not insurmountable either.
http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=8014

SELF-HEALING BANDAGE
A self-healing bandage that uses a patient's own cells is being developed.
The technique has already been tried successfully on patients with diabetic ulcers and in the long-term could offer a more effective, quicker, and cost efficient way of treating many types of slow-healing wounds such as pressure ulcers. The bandages are already available for patients with severe burns.

A small tissue sample is taken from a patient and used to grow a culture.
The cells are then placed on a membrane made from a medical-grade polymer, which has been treated with a special coating that enables skin cells to attach and grow. When the cells are ready, the cell-membrane bandage can then be used to dress the wound instead of a standard bandage. Because the cells belong to the patient, they are not rejected by the body.
http://link.abpi.net/l.php?20040601A5

HARNESS & VEST SYSTEM TO DECREASE CRASH INJURIES A team of Johns Hopkins engineering students has devised a harness and vest system to reduce impact forces on "fragile" motorists. In people with weakened bones, compression can lead to broken ribs and other serious internal injuries.

Tests were conducted on a dummy that simulated a 108-pound woman. The dummy was equipped with sensors to gauge the effect on various parts of the body during the equivalent of a 20-mph head-on crash or a 35- to 40-mph crash involving a moving car striking a parked vehicle.

When the dummy was outfitted with the vest under a conventional seatbelt, chest compression was reduced by approximately 8 percent. Testing with the harness provided a different loading mechanism to the dummy torso and created much less sternum deflection. The students also compared crash impact forces, measured from the seatbelt. This dropped from 644 pounds of force with the standard shoulder belt alone to about 436 pounds with the harness. http://link.abpi.net/l.php?20040603A7

KIRIN BREWERY & U.S. FIRM DEVELOP WORLD's FIRST BSE RISK-FREE COW Kirin Brewery Co said Monday it has succeeded with U.S. biotech firm Hematech LLC in developing a genetically engineered cow that will not be infected with mad cow disease due to the lack of prion genes. The cow, which is expected to be born in nine months, has been created as part of the two companies' research project to produce cows having human antibody genes for use in developing medicines for treating human infectious diseases, Kirin said.
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=4&id=300508

BIO BRIEFS ZONE

Baltimore--Aberdeen deal a boost to Md.'s homeland security hopes
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874935

Charlotte--N.C. may pay $35 million to build UNCC tech program
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874936

Honolulu--Hawaii will showcase its biotech industry at BIO 2004
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874937

Kansas City--Senator stems Bartle's life sciences bill, splits with party, church
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874938

Milwaukee--UW, Japanese researchers close to launching biotechnology business
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874939

Milwaukee--Puisis prepared to lead biotech firm in new direction http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874940

Philadelphia--Partnership draws road map to find executives
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874941

Philadelphia--Centocor, Egea shore up relationship
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874942

Phoenix--Salt River Pima Community aids biotech push with campus
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874943

San Francisco--City's biotech ambition hits resistance
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874944

San Francisco--Space-hungry Genentech strikes again: Biotech giant leases in South S.F.; still on the hunt for more
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874945

Seattle--Protecting patents' value can mean licensing them
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874946

Tampa Bay--USF sees decrease in NIH research funding in 2003, falls in ranking
http://www.bizjournals.com/ct/c/874947

CHINA ZONE

CHINA AND THE NEW RULES FOR GLOBAL BUSINESS China offers potentially huge benefits for multinational corporations. With a population exceeding 1 billion and an immense supply of low-wage workers, China is coveted both as a consumer market and as a superb location to source products. But is China really the place where major corporations need to be in the decades to come? In this first of four special reports on China, experts from Wharton and the Boston Consulting Group explore topics such as opportunities and threats that global companies face in China; an analysis of how China compares with the rest of the world as a sourcing location; and the emergence of Chinese firms that challenge global multinationals, among others.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/weblink/70.cfm

NOKIA TO HAVE POSTDOCTORAL R&D IN CHINA
Nokia (China) has been approved to set up postdoctoral research stations in China. As one of the very few postdoctoral research stations funded by foreign enterprises in China, it marks a significant move by Nokia to deepen its R&D cooperation with China.
Nokia has 5 R&D facilities with 600 employees in China. It has also built partnership with prestigious colleges, research institutes, operators and developers in China.
FULL STORY [People's Daily Online ]

WIRELESS & HOTSPOT HITS ZONE

HYATT JOINS RACE TO ADD Wi-Fi TO HOTEL ROOMS Hyatt Hotels & Resorts and T-Mobile USA are expected to announce a deal today that will bring high-speed wireless Internet access to nearly all of Hyatt Corp.'s more than 200 hotels by next year.
Hyatt;'s wireless access won't be free. Guests can expect to pay
$9.99 a day--unless they're already subscribers to T-Mobile's Wi-Fi service, in which case there will be no additional charge.
Ultimately, Hyatt expects to bundle the wireless service with other packages aimed at business travelers, offering deals that include some meals and other amenities.
http://email.wirelessweek.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/ehTo0C1swl0B4I0CZSa0Aq

FOOD LION CHECKING OUT WITH Wi-Fi
Grocery chain eyes new ways to enhance the shopping experience by helping customers check themselves out with the help of Wi-Fi.
http://nl.internet.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=1,xe0,1,20ni,kzu5,jcj3,9ffi

MOBILE PHONE OPERATORS IN JAPAN GET INNOVATIVE Mobile phone operators in Japan view a new bar code as a means to get users to dial up and stay on. With the convergence of phone, camera, e-mail and the Internet, mobile phone operators are getting creative to provide new services to the subscribers.
Japanese service providers such as NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Vodafone Holdings are providing facilities so as the camera phones can scan square bar codes packed with information. Moreover, users are able to make a phone call, send e-mail or surf the web easily with the push of a button without having to enter the information manually.
NO CLICK THROUGH

Hotspot Hits

More truckstops get unwired; California State University at Long Beach will put a cloud on campus; Finns get a big hotzone; and more.
http://nl.internet.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=1,xmr,1,l0p5,ecft,jcj3,9ffi

SITE CITES

A HOME TEST FOR PARALLEL UNIVERSES
When you think of a parallel universe, do you think of a universe, or a world, similar to ours but different in some fundamental quality.  Bill Clinton, for instance, is a happily celibate priest. Or George W. Bush delights his fellow Mensa members, at parties, with his verbal games. Or, perhaps, you only have a science-fiction quality vagueness to what you think of a parallel universe: pointed ears, warp-drive through worm holes, and form fitting Lycra body suits on a thin, well-groomed crew. A parallel universe, it may surprise you to learn, is actually detectable in your own home, office, or almost anywhere indoors. All that's required is a red laser pointer, a pin, and a piece of paper.
http://www.allsci.com/parallel.html

 

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