A new chemical trick for making nanostructured materials could help increase the range and reliability of electric cars and lead to better batteries that could help stabilize the power grid.

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, WA, have developed the technique, which can turn a potential electrode material that cannot normally store electricity into one that stores more energy than similar battery materials already on the market.

In work published in the journal Nano Letters, the PNNL researchers show that paraffin wax and oleic acid encourages the growth of platelike nanostructures of lithium-manganese phosphate. These "nanoplates" are small and thin, allowing electrons and ions (atoms or molecules with a positive or negative charge) to move in and out of them easily. This turns the material--which ordinarily doesn't work as a battery material because of its very poor conductivity--into one that stores large amounts of electricity.

The National Business Travel Association (NBTA) and The Wall Street Journal have announced winners of the first-ever Business Traveler Innovation Awards. Corporate travelers nominated services, products and ideas that help to make business trips easier and more productive. Submissions were categorized, and the public voted for their favorites. The winner of the Travelers’ Choice Award, presented to the innovation that received the highest number of votes, and winners in each of the eight categories, will be honored at the 2010 NBTA International Convention & Exposition on August 9 in Houston.

Travelers’ Choice Award
The 2010 NBTA Business Traveler Innovation Traveler’s Choice Award will be presented to Continental Airlines for the Mobile Boarding Pass. Continental Airlines introduced paperless boarding passes in December 2007, becoming the first carrier in the United States to offer this innovative product. Paperless boarding passes enable customers to display a 2D bar code along with passenger and flight information on their mobile phone, eliminating the need for a paper boarding pass.

Category 1: Sustainable Practice
Criteria: Outstanding and original environmental efforts in the travel industry.
Winner: Enterprise Rent-A-Car
Innovation: Energy Efficient Thin Client Terminals
Enterprise’ new rental transaction system streamlines the company’s rental processes and offers significant environmental benefits in the process. The new system – ECARSTM 2.0 – connects the reservations, billing and reporting operations of more than 7,000 Enterprise rental offices around the world. Use of the technology will enable Enterprise to cut its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 6.5 million pounds – a reduction of nearly 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per branch office per year.

The rapid growth of wind farms, whose output is hard to schedule reliably or even predict, has the nation’s electricity providers scrambling to develop energy storage to ensure stability and improve profits.

As the wind installations multiply, companies have found themselves dumping energy late at night, adjusting the blades so they do not catch the wind, because there is no demand for the power. And grid operators, accustomed to meeting demand by adjusting supplies, are now struggling to maintain stability as supplies fluctuate.

On the cutting edge of a potential solution is Hawaii, where state officials want 70 percent of energy needs to be met by renewable sources like the wind, sun or biomass by 2030. A major problem is that it is impossible for generators on the islands to export surpluses to neighboring companies or to import power when the wind towers are becalmed.

Every semester a lot of professors' lectures are essentially reruns because many instructors are too busy to upgrade their classroom methods.

That frustrates Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard University, who argues that clinging to outdated teaching practices amounts to educational malpractice.

"If you were going to see a doctor and the doctor said, 'I've been really busy since I got out of medical school, and so I'm going to treat you with the techniques I learned back then,' you'd be rightly incensed," he told me recently. "Yet there are a lot of faculty who say with a straight face, 'I don't need to change my teaching,' as if nothing has been learned about teaching since they had been prepared to do it—if they've ever been prepared to."

And poor teaching can have serious consequences, he says, when students fall behind or drop out because of sleep-inducing lectures. Colleges have tried several approaches over the years to spur teaching innovation. But among instructors across the nation, holdouts clearly remain.

The initial public offering of India’s largest microlender SKS Microfinance Ltd. starts today and will make some innovators in the sector very rich.

The high-growth, profit-powered model of lending to micro entrepreneurs has already made the company’s founder, Vikram Akula, a multi-millionaire. Earlier this year, he sold part of his stake in the company he launched 12 years ago for more than $10 million.

If the company’s shares sell at the top end of the 850 rupee to 985 rupee price range at which they are being offered, Mr. Akula’s remaining 2.68 million shares will be worth another $50 million. The open offer is scheduled to close on Aug. 2.

To prove they have no plans to take the money and run, Mr. Akula and other SKS executives that hold company shares have pledged not to sell their holdings for the next three years in the 352-page IPO prospectus.

The population of the European Union surpassed the 500 million mark at the beginning of this year, with migration accounting for the majority of growth in 2009, according to estimates released yesterday (27 July).

European statistics agency Eurostat said the EU gained 1.4 million residents in 2009, increasing the population of the 27-country bloc from 499.7 million to 501.1 million.

63% of the increase - representing nearly 900,000 people - was due to net migration, which accounts for arrivals and departures, while the rest was from births.

Last week, The Economist released its Big Mac Index (via Catherine Rampell of The New York Times Economix) which basically compares how much it costs to buy – you guessed it – a Big Mac in countries across the world. The magazine explains the index as a:

…lighthearted attempt to gauge how far currencies are from their fair value. It is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), which argues that in the long run exchange rates should move to equalise the price of an identical basket of goods between two countries. Our basket consists of a single item, a Big Mac hamburger, produced in nearly 120 countries. The fair-value benchmark is the exchange rate that leaves burgers costing the same in America as elsewhere.

And it goes on to note a number of caveats about it:

The Big Mac numbers should be taken with a generous pinch of salt. They are not a precise predictor of currency movements. The bulk of a burger’s cost depends on local inputs such as rent and wages, which tend to be lower in poor countries. Consequently PPP comparisons are more reliable between countries with similar levels of income.

This morning when I wrote a post about Apple’s new Magic Trackpad, I knew it would be a little controversial. After all, I basically said that it was the beginning of the end of the mouse — a device that everyone reading the post probably still uses for a good chunk of their computing on a daily basis. But I didn’t expect what I said to be that controversial. To the point where we have to declare the comment section to be a war zone.

I mean come on, it’s a mouse. Does anyone really think it’s going to be the main way we interact with computers in the future? It’s a 50-year old technology for Chrissakes.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying trackpads and other multi-touch surfaces are going to replace the mouse overnight. Of course they’re not. I’m also not saying that the Magic Trackpad specifically is going to kill the mouse. Of course it’s not — it’s Mac-only, that’s still a small percentage of overall computer users. What I am saying is that the Magic Trackpad is the device that is signaling the end of the mouse era.

Changing Demographics In Entrepreneurship

Over the last 10 years, entrepreneurship has become a growing trend with growing importance within the global marketplace. In fact, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), about 330 million people, or 14% of the adults in the 35 countries surveyed, are involved in forming new businesses.

Whether it is the desire to be your own boss, pursue your own ideas, or the hope of financial rewards, people are changing their outlook on how to do business. Within the scope of entrepreneurship there are four demographics that are increasing faster than ever.

Women Entrepreneurs

In 2002, the most recent year the U.S. Census Bureau collected business ownership data, there were 6.5 million women-owned businesses. That number is up 20% from 1997. Traditionally, women-owned businesses were most prevalent in the health care and professional services industries. But surprisingly, the fastest growing areas of women-owned businesses are construction (up 30%), agricultural services (up 24%) and transportation (up 20%).

What is the ultimate goal of process-driven innovation? Open a bottle of Coca-Cola – and read its performance reports – to get a true taste of the answer.

In 1980, the Coca-Cola Company was struggling, and its market share was underperforming compared to its competitors. So at a worldwide management conference in 1981, CEO Roberto Críspulo Goizueta decided to refocus the entire organization on putting value creation first.

The company refined its marketing investment, expanded into new markets, and acquired new bottling companies and the intellectual property and patents they held. The company created new products, including Diet Coke. It embraced a global vision; to wit, some market researchers say the company became the world’s best-known brand.

When Yahoo bought Jordan-based Maktoob.com in August 2009 for a reported $85 million, it barely made a ripple in U.S. technology circles. But the deal for the leading Arabic online community had a seismic effect on the fledgling startup economy in the Middle East.

And it's just one of several examples of how Silicon Valley has helped jump-start the region's innovation economy.

There's a lot at stake. Silicon Valley is on the hunt for new markets and new sources of ideas. The Middle East needs to generate jobs at a far greater pace for its unusually young population. And the U.S. government has launched efforts to help Middle Eastern entrepreneurs in hopes of rebooting the difficult relationship between the two regions.

There is a huge opportunity here for everybody — but also some huge hurdles. There's so little startup activity in the Middle East, for instance, that most firms that track venture capital spending don't even monitor the region.

The one source I could find, the Zawya Private Equity Monitor, reported that Arab private equity funds allocated only $72 million to venture capital funds. And according to Renaissance Capital, the Middle East — excluding Israel — has accounted for only 3 percent of the world's 197 initial public offerings so far in 2010.

Here's a fun thought experiment. Let's say all the major tech companies decide to reward their employees by divvying up cash on hand and giving it to the staff.

Which employees would get the biggest payday? Some 21,805 Googlers would be the winners with each employee walking out with $1.4 million. Obviously, it's not going to happen, but Googlers can dream.

Yesterday, we took a look at parts of the U.S. where broadband still isn't available.

That's depressing stuff, but we're not all doom and gloom around here, and some areas in the country have terrific Internet.

Akamai just released its quarterly State of the Internet report, which includes a look at broadband speeds across the country and the world.

Via Streaming Media, here is the good news for America.

The original field of 136 experimental vehicles vying for a $10 million prize in Progressive Insurance's Automotive X PRIZE competition has been whittled down to just nine finalists, competition organizers said Tuesday. Each of these finalists, having passed on-track testing at Michigan International Speedway, now move onto the validation phase, where the vehicles must prove they can exceed 100 MPGe, which stands for "miles per gallon energy equivalent."

The field of nine includes:
Mainstream Class (Two vehicles, one team)
•    Edison2, Very Light Car #97 (Charlottesville, VA), Internal Combustion Engine
•    Edison2, Very Light Car #98 (Charlottesville, VA), Internal Combustion Engine

Walk into a Barnes and Noble you can find dozens of books on innovation. There are books ranging from teaching the ‘how to” to teaching creative thinking. There are not many good ones simply because the subject is a moving target with rules being broken and created every day. Meanwhile existing tools are becoming obsolete, and best practices are often worst practices. Much that is held as common wisdom regarding how purposeful or successful innovation happened is wrong. This is not to say that all organizations are not innovative; but obviously many are not, thanks to our management systems and education.

Innovation does not require a revolution. What it does require is thoughtful construction of a good sense making process, a robust pipeline management approach and a strategic intent from top leadership. Innovation is not just about creativity and having creative punks doing money shows or a facilitator running some offsites. Coming up with good-to-great ideas is the easiest part (call me and I can give you half a dozen for free); the hard stuff is activation and mobilization.

The parties already exist for make-up, sex toys and Tupperware. But now, there is a buying party for men: Man Cave Worldwide “meatings.”

The parties already exist for make-up, sex toys and Tupperware. But now, there is a buying party for men: Man Cave Worldwide "meatings."

The company, started by a 2010 University of Minnesota graduate, offers men what women have had for years. With a Man Cave adviser, men can host their friends for a barbecue, drink free beer, learn how to grill and sell products.

"Guys have been needing this for a long time," said Mike Krueger, who hosted a "meating" Thursday at his home in Eden Prairie.

The market demand is evident in the figures. Man Cave founder and University entrepreneurship graduate Nick Beste expects the company to net $2 million in revenue this year.

A dispute among work team members can flash-over into a full conflagration in no time, scorching you and your colleagues in minutes. That’s why quick action on your part as team leader to douse the flaming is needed.

Problem is, you’ve got seconds, not minutes, to get on top of things. What’s your first action? Is it the trusted but usually ineffective, “Let’s everyone take a time out” gambit? Maybe you prefer the “Let’s settle down and talk this out” response, which works great if you have a therapist’s license.

The best answer is to have a conflict resolution mechanism set ahead of time — team norms.

Making fun of the Transition's looks seems like a low blow, but I'll tell you why it isn't: The vehicle is meant to herald an era when airplanes become mass-market consumer goods, just like sports cars or power boats. They have to meet a pretty high bar in their design, if they're to compete with each other. After all, for now it's almost a pure luxury good--and that means you better look damn good piloting it. Which is one reason why a competing aircraft, the Icon A5, looks stunning:

Eradicating any organism would have serious consequences for ecosystems — wouldn't it? Not when it comes to mosquitoes, finds Janet Fang.

Every day, Jittawadee Murphy unlocks a hot, padlocked room at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, to a swarm of malaria-carrying mosquitoes (Anopheles stephensi). She gives millions of larvae a diet of ground-up fish food, and offers the gravid females blood to suck from the bellies of unconscious mice — they drain 24 of the rodents a month. Murphy has been studying mosquitoes for 20 years, working on ways to limit the spread of the parasites they carry. Still, she says, she would rather they were wiped off the Earth.

That sentiment is widely shared. Malaria infects some 247 million people worldwide each year, and kills nearly one million. Mosquitoes cause a huge further medical and financial burden by spreading yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya virus and West Nile virus. Then there's the pest factor: they form swarms thick enough to asphyxiate caribou in Alaska and now, as their numbers reach a seasonal peak, their proboscises are plunged into human flesh across the Northern Hemisphere.

While many students turn to YouTube when looking for help with their homework, it can be hard to find good-quality educational clips there, according to two professors who did a preliminary analysis of several video search engines.

The two researchers, Jeffrey R. Bell, a professor of biological sciences at California State University at Chico, and Jim Bidlack, a biology professor at University of Central Oklahoma, entered scientific terms into several video search engines and analyzed the top 20 results from each one to compare their relevance and educational usefulness. Students were also shown some of the resulting videos and asked to rate their effectiveness at explaining the concept involved.

The professors found that YouTube favored videos made by students as class projects, perhaps because those videos attracted more comments than professionally made ones, said Mr. Bell in an interview. Google Video returned the most high-quality videos in the top 20 search results, the professors said. (Google owns YouTube but also operates Google Video, which includes videos across the Web rather than just those on YouTube, which hosts videos from users.)