Archive for February 22nd, 2012

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Justice Nicholas in the Federal Court in Sydney is currently hearing a patent case in which Cancer Voices Australia is challenging a patent owned by Myriad Genetics relating to gene mutations that cause women to be more susceptible to breast cancer.

The case is related to some similar litigation that has been going on in the US, and raises some fundamental questions about what kinds of things can be patented. In many ways, though, this is a very “classic” patent case.

Myriad uses its patent to assert exclusive rights to undertake activities covered in the patent: namely, testing for the gene mutations. The patent ensures that no-one else can perform such tests without Myriad’s permission.

This is how we think of patent working – whether or not we like the fact that genes and methods for identifying them in a patient can be “owned” by someone.

Classic patenting norms are increasingly being modified for strategic purposes. CoastConFan

But you might be surprised to know that many, perhaps even most, patents today are not used this way. In fact, patents are used in a whole range of different, strategic ways that raise interesting questions about the patent system and whether it is doing what we think it is doing – that is, providing incentives for inventors.

One way we see patents used these days is in the accumulation of large patent portfolios. Economists have tracked the rise of such portfolios, but in a way, all you have to do is look at the yearly patent league tables, which will tell you, for example, that IBM was granted more than 6,000 patents in the US in 2011, and Samsung more than 4,800.

In fact, most patent offices around the world have been experiencing sustained rises in the number of applications for patents, and in patents granted, including in Australia.

Alternatively, you could follow the tech news, which over the last year or so has been full of stories about large-scale patent acquisitions as companies try to build up their position. Google, for example, acquired Motorola Mobility, paying US$12.5 billion for its 17,000 patents and 7,500 patent applications – after failing to acquire Nortel’s 6,000 patents (which was acquired by an Apple-led consortium for US$4.5 billion).

Staking territory

Why would a company need masses and masses of patents? There are a few reasons. One is to stake out a technological “territory” and deter or block potential competitors. Evidence from research suggests that smaller firms do avoid working in areas of technology that are heavily patented already.

Another reason would be for offensive use: a company with a large number of patents can overwhelm a competitor they allege is infringing on their technology with a barrage of different patents. The more patents that are alleged to be infringed, the more costly the option of litigation becomes for the alleged infringer.

In theory the alleged infringer can challenge the validity of the patents, but patent litigation is expensive at the best of times, and challenging multiple patents is a very daunting prospect. In these situations, the company with multiple patents may be able to force a settlement – perhaps including the alleged infringer paying royalties or changing their product.

The best defence is …

The flipside of offensive use of a patent portfolio is defensive use: a company might try to build up a strong patent portfolio so that, if it’s threatened with litigation, it can bring its own countersuit, using its own patent battalion – perhaps forcing a cross-licensing deal on much better terms than it would get without its own patents.

We’ve recently seen inklings of all of this in Australia, in the Apple/Samsung patent battle. The lawsuit delayed the launch of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 for some four months – until a mere couple of weeks before Christmas.

In that case, Apple – which has spent the last five years or so building up quite the patent portfolio in Australia – has asserted a record number of 22 patents against Samsung devices including the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Each of Apple’s patents has multiple “claims” (statements of the scope of the monopoly), meaning that, in fact, Samsung is fighting 278 separate battles, relating to ten different devices.

Samsung, which is also a significant patent holder in its own right, has launched its own countersuit against Apple’s iPhone 4S, and other 3G devices.

Both cases look likely to be heard this year. The case is unprecedented in its size for Australia, and even that litigation is only part of the whole picture of the battle. There have been other cases in the US, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, France, Italy, and South Korea.

You’d expect, in the end, to see some kind of global deal being done here. In the meantime, the patent missiles fly and the lawyers get paid. And that’s without mentioning Apple is also fighting with HTC and with Nokia.

Bring on the trolls

Patent portfolios, Apple and Samsung style, are not an end to the patent strategies that have developed in recent times. We have also seen the rise of the non-practising entity (NPE) – sometimes perjoratively referred to as the patent troll.

An NPE amasses a patent portfolio, not to defend its own product territory or to attack competitors, but solely for the purpose of licensing. In other words, a non-practising entity is just that: it doesn’t itself make or sell products.
Some argue NPEs are a great way for small inventors, for whom litigation is not an option, to get paid. Others argue that NPEs are “trolls” exacting tolls on invention.

Very recent research suggests these companies are more often involved as repeat patent litigators than other kinds of patent holders, although they often lose.

They too are contributing to the increase in patent litigation. They may, according to some research, also be deterring some innovation. What is more, there are plenty of patents for NPEs to acquire.

Some come onto the market when companies with large offensive/defensive portfolios fold; others when a company decides to offload some assets.

In other words, all these new patent strategies are related. The build up of patent portfolios by some companies has made it imperative for others to join in, meaning an overall rise in the numbers of patents being granted, and an increase in costs for firms, especially in some of these high-tech fields.

Some of these patents are making their way into the portfolios of non-practising entities. In this world, it seems that many companies are locked into playing the patent game, even if it is increasingly expensive and, in at least some cases, a distraction from the work of innovating and selling new products.

All these strategies are a long way from classical thinking about the way patents work. Where patents are acquired defensively, end up being sold to an NPE, and are asserted against an inventive firm, you have to wonder where along that line those patents provided any incentive for investment in research and development – and whether that incentive outweighs the cost to innovation when the final inventive firm targeted by the NPE is forced to license or fold.

You have to wonder, in the great patent wars between Apple and Samsung and others, whether we have lost sight of the patent system’s goals.

And you have to wonder whether patents have become so abstracted from the realities of research and invention that they have started to bear some resemblance to the complex financial products that now seem to plague our financial system: complex, impossible for the ordinary person to understand, and no longer doing their job.

With firms locked into the cycle of patent or perish, it is evident, to me at least, that we need more serious thinking about just what these government monopolies are about, and whether the complexity and abstraction of the system can be tamed.
I don’t have the answers, but I do have a lot of questions.

This is the third part of Ideas and Ownership. To read the other instalments, click on the links below:

Part One: IP, patents, copyright, you

Part Two: Do patents promote innovation?

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

The art of war: know your enemy’s patents, and your own

TAG:patents intellectual property Apple Google

SAN FRANCISCO—Shipments of graphics chips declined 10 percent sequentially in the fourth quarter of 2011, continuing a new seasonal trend hat has taken shape since the financial crisis of 2008, according to analysts at Jon Peddie Research (JPR).

Prior to 2008, the fourth quarter was typically a time of sequential growth for graphics chip shipments, JPR said. Since 2008, the fourth quarter has been a seasonally down quarter, with last year’s 10 percent decline the biggest drop since 2008, JPR said.

JPR said a lot of the sequential unit decline was blamed on the PC supply chain bottleneck caused by flooding in Thailand last year. But the firm noted that general economic malaise still permeates the industry.

Slightly more than 124 million graphics chips shipped in the fourth quarter, down 10 percent from the third quarter, but up 9 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2010, according to JPR.

JPR said it revised downward its forecasts for desktop and PC shipments in coming years, saying that media tablets have changed the nature of the PC markets.

GPU shipments had another down Q4

TAG:Jon Peddie Research Graphics Intel

In the context of a fear of spiders, this warped perception doesn’t necessarily interfere with daily living. But for individuals who are afraid of needles, for example, the conviction that needles are larger than they really are could lead people who fear injections to avoid getting the health care they need.

A better understanding of how a phobia affects the perception of feared objects can help clinicians design more effective treatments for people who seek to overcome their fears, according to the researchers.

In this study, participants who feared spiders were asked to undergo five encounters with live spiders — tarantulas, in fact — and then provide size estimates of the spiders after those encounters ended. The more afraid the participants said they were of the spiders, the larger they estimated the spiders had been.

"If one is afraid of spiders, and by virtue of being afraid of spiders one tends to perceive spiders as bigger than they really are, that may feed the fear, foster that fear, and make it difficult to overcome," said Michael Vasey, professor of psychology at Ohio State University and lead author of the study.

"When it comes to phobias, it’s all about avoidance as a primary means of keeping oneself safe. As long as you avoid, you can’t discover that you’re wrong. And you’re stuck. So to the extent that perceiving spiders as bigger than they really are fosters fear and avoidance, it then potentially is part of this cycle that feeds the phobia that leads to its persistence.

"We’re trying to understand why phobias persist so we can better target treatments to change those reasons they persist."

The study is published in a recent issue of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders.

The researchers recruited 57 people who self-identified as having a spider phobia. Each participant then interacted at specific time points over a period of eight weeks with five different varieties of tarantulas varying in size from about 1 to 6 inches long.

The spiders were contained in an uncovered glass tank. Participants began their encounters 12 feet from the tank and were asked to approach the spider. Once they were standing next to the tank, they were asked to guide the spider around the tank by touching it with an 8-inch probe, and later with a shorter probe.

Throughout these encounters, researchers asked participants to report how afraid they were feeling on a scale of 0-100 according to an index of subjective units of distress. After the encounters, participants completed additional self-report measures of their specific fear of spiders, any panic symptoms they experienced during the encounters with the spiders, and thoughts about fear reduction and future spider encounters.

Finally, the research participants estimated the size of the spiders — while no longer being able to see them — by drawing a single line on an index card indicating the length of the spider from the tips of its front legs to the tips of its back legs.

An analysis of the results showed that higher average peak ratings of distress during the spider encounters were associated with estimates that the spiders were larger than they really were. Similar positive associations were seen between over-estimates of spider size and participants’ higher average peak levels of anxiety, higher average numbers of panic symptoms and overall spider fear. These findings have been supported in later studies with broader samples of people with varying levels of fear of spiders.

"It would appear from that result that fear is driving or altering the perception of the feared object, in this case a spider," said Vasey, also the director of research for the psychology department’s Anxiety and Stress Disorders Clinic. "We already knew fear and anxiety alter thoughts about the feared thing. For example, the feared outcome is interpreted as being more likely than it really is. But this study shows that even perception is altered by fear. In this case, the feared spider is seen as being bigger. And that may serve as a maintaining factor for the fear."

The approach tasks with the spiders are a classic example of exposure therapy, a common treatment for people with phobias. Though this therapy is known to be effective, scientists still do not fully understand why it works. And for some, the effects don’t last — but it is difficult to predict who will have a relapse of fear, Vasey said.

He and colleagues are studying these biased perceptions as well as attitudes with hopes that the new knowledge will enhance treatment for people with various phobias. The work suggests that fear not only alters one’s perception of the feared thing, but also can influence a person’s automatic attitude toward an object. Those who have developed an automatic negative attitude toward a feared object might have a harder time overcoming their fear.

Though individuals with arachnophobia are unlikely to seek treatment, the use of spiders in this research was a convenient way to study the complex effects of fear on visual perception and how those effects might cause fear to persist, Vasey noted.

"Ultimately, we are interested in identifying predictors of relapse so we can better measure when a person is done with treatment," he said.

This work is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Co-authors include Michael Vilensky, Jacqueline Heath, Casaundra Harbaugh, Adam Buffington and Vasey’s principal collaborator, Russell Fazio, all of Ohio State’s Department of Psychology.

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Phobia’s effect on perception of feared object allows fear to persist

TAG:Anxiety Racial Issues Behavior Spiders and Ticks Animals Endangered Animals

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For the first time, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientists has identified how different neural regions communicate to determine what to visually pay attention to and what to ignore. This finding is a major discovery for visual cognition and will guide future research into visual and attention deficit disorders.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used various brain imaging techniques to show exactly how the visual cortex and parietal cortex send direct information to each other through white matter connections in order to specifically pick out the information that you want to see.

"We have demonstrated that attention is a process in which there is one-to-one mapping between the first place visual information comes from the eyes into the brain and beyond to other parts of the brain," said Adam S. Greenberg, postdoctoral fellow in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.

"With so much information in the visual world, it’s dramatic to think that you have an entire system behind knowing what to pay attention to," said Marlene Behrmann, professor of psychology at CMU and an expert in using brain imaging to study the visual perception system. "The mechanisms show that you can actually drive the visual system — you are guiding your own sensory system in an intelligent and smart fashion that helps facilitate your actions in the world."

For the study, the research team conducted two sets of experiments with five adults. They first used several different functional brain scans to identify regions in the brain responsible for visual processing and attention. One task had the participants look at a dot in the center of the screen while six stimuli danced around the dot. The second task asked the participants to respond to the stimuli one at a time. These scans determined the regions in both the visual and parietal cortices. The researchers could then look for connectivity between these regions.

The second part of the experiment collected anatomical data of the brain’s white matter connectivity while the participants had their brains scanned without performing any tasks. Then, the researchers combined the results with those from the functional experiments to show how white matter fibers tracked from the regions determined previously, the visual cortex and the parietal cortex. The results demonstrated that the white matter connections are mapped systematically, meaning that direct connections exist between corresponding visual field locations in visual cortex and parietal cortex.

The researchers used a technique called "diffusion spectrum imaging," a new procedure pioneered at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh to generate the fiber tracts of the white matter connectivity. This method was combined with high-resolution tractography and provides scientists with better estimates of the hard-wired connections between brain regions and increased accuracy over conventional tractography methods, such as those typically used with diffusion tensor imaging.

"The work done in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh researchers exploits a very new, precise and cutting edge methodology," Behrmann said.

"Because we know that training can alter white matter, it might be possible, through training, that the ability to filter out irrelevant or unwanted information could be improved," Greenberg said.

Additional researchers on this study included Timothy Verstynen, a research associate in the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center, Yu-Chin Chiu, a post-doc in University of California, San Diego’s Department of Psychology, Steven Yantis, professor of psychological and brain sciences at the Johns Hopkins University and Walter Schneider, professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. Greenberg, Behrmann, Verstynen and Schneider are also members of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), a joint project between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh devoted to investigating neural mechanisms and their impact on human cognitive abilities.

The National Institutes of Health funded this research.

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Neuroscientists identify how the brain works to select what we (want to) see

TAG:Neuroscience Perception Psychology Intelligence Brain Injury Child Development

In a report in the journal Nature, an international consortium of researchers that includes Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland and Baylor College of Medicine explains the molecular linkage between the circadian clock and the deadly heart rhythms that lead to sudden death.

The answer begins with a controller of the circadian clock — krüppel-like factor 15 (Klf15), which has been a long-time target of the laboratory of Dr. Mukesh Jain of Case Western, said Dr. Xander Wehrens, professor of molecular physiology and biophysics and cardiology at BCM, also an author.

Klf15, in turn, controls the level of a potassium channel-interacting protein (KChIP2), which affects how potassium flows out of heart muscle cells called cardiac myocytes.

Changes affect potassium current

Because the level of this KChIP2 protein fluctuates during the circadian or daily cycle, it can change the size of the potassium current in cardiac myocytes. Changes in this subunit or Klf15 can affect the potassium current that governs repolarization of the cardiac myocyte. Overall, this can shorten or lengthen the time the heart muscle has to empty the heart’s pumping chamber (ventricle) of blood. This time interval for repolarization is critical. Too much or too little can result in abnormal heart rhythms called arrhythmias. As the heart loses the regularity of the beat, it cannot pump blood efficiently.

Studies of mice that lacked Klf15 and mice with a genetic change that caused them to make more Klf15 than normal increased the risk of deadly arrhythmias.

This was a proof of principle, said Wehrens.

"It is the first example of a molecular mechanism for the circadian change in susceptibility to cardiac arrhythmias," he said.

"If there was too much Klf15 or none, the mice were at risk for developing the arrhythmias," he said.

Long QT or Short QT

Because Klf15 is regulated by the circadian "clock," the rate of flow through the potassium channel goes up and down and if disrupted, can lead to a change that results in one of two known heart problems linked to sudden death — long QT or short QT syndrome. (QT refers to an interval measured from an electrocardiogram or ECG, which corresponds to the electrical recovery time of heart.)

Wehrens credits Jain’s laboratory with accomplishing much of the work. His laboratory performed the electrophysiology experiments with the mice that lacked Klf15 and those who produced too much, he said.

Much of the BCM work was done by Dr. Mark McCauley, a cardiology fellow who was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory at the time, said Wehrens.

Others who took part in this work include first author Darwin Jeyaraj, Saptarsi Haldar, Xiapoing Wan, Yuan Lu, Betty Eapen, Nikunj Sharma, Eckhard Ficker, Michael Cutler, and David Rosenbaum, all of Case Western; Jurgen A. Ripperger and Urs Albrecht of University of Fribourg in Switzerland; Kun Hu and Steven A. Shea of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston; James Gulick, Atusushi Sanbe, and Jeffrey Robbins of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; Sophie Demolombe of Universite de Nice Sophia Antipolis in Valbonne, France; and Roman Kondratov of Cleveland State University in Ohio.

Funding for this work came from the National Institutes of Health, the Heart Rhythm Society, the American Heart Association, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and the Leducq Foundation.

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Heart beats to the rhythm of a circadian clock

TAG:Heart Disease Vioxx Stroke Prevention Cholesterol Workplace Health Chronic Illness

MANHASSET, NY — ConEdison Solutions has launched, together with Viridity of Philadelphia, a demand response process for its customers to generate revenue during periods other than when utilities and independent system operators send out reduction appeals.

The new offering transforms energy users into virtual energy generators by triggering usage reductions when prices rise.  Participants sell pre-contracted commodity back into the marketplace when market prices significantly exceed the original price the user had paid.

Similar energy plans exist with other utilities and ISOs.

“For many years, we have worked with smart energy users to help them benefit from price shifts in commodity prices or savings from energy management programs,” said Jorge J. Lopez, President and CEO of ConEdison Solutions, in a statement. “This offering brings in dollars for customers by turning users into suppliers.”

ConEdison Solutions, a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc., develops strategies with individual energy users to maximize their value of energy and minimize their cost.

ConEdison Solutions and Viridity worked with the Drexel university campus with an annual electricity bill exceeding $4.2 million and a peak demand of 10.5 MW. The campus has over the years made significant energy investments including back-up generation and thermal storage systems (see pdf here).

Using Viridity’s VPower optimization software the university receives a day ahead forecast of wholesale electricity market opportunities. Should they elect to participate in a given day, they implement their automated load reduction solution during a specific window, which shifts variable energy usage outside of high-priced market hours.

VPower takes into consideration overall load forecast and generation forecasts, energy prices, and the attributes and  matches these operating features against market pricing forecasts for generating an optimal schedule to use the least amount of energy when prices are high, and shifting variable energy load to when prices are low.

The university relationship began as a demonstration and continues to grow in stages.

Initially with three buildings, it expanded to six buildings within the campus infrastructure. The revenue and savings at these buildings resulted in over ten percent of the annual electricity spend for those buildings—or about $53,000 from an approximately $435,000 annual bill. If implemented campus-wise the university is position itself for the smart-grid risk free with no upfront out of pocket cost, according to ConEdison Solutions.

A recent Viridity white paper on the implementation of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued Order 745, which provides the DR opportunity for consumers, can be read here.
ConEd Solutions partners with Viridity on road to ‘smart grid’

TAG:Smart grid

LONDON – YouTube has a video that shows the results of a number of “tug-of-war” matches between MEMS electrothermal actuators belonging to Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Kyoto University.An electrothermal actuator is also known as a heatuator.

The basic rules were that to win a MEMS heatuator should pull its rival by 8-microns and hold for at least one minute with a maximum powers supply voltage of 100-V.

As you can see the battle was from 2011 but I’d like to know who won, apart from G4, that is. HKUST or Kyoto?

For more MEMS matter go to EE Times’ MEMS Buzz.

EE Times is working on a MEMS Sector Profile and Database report. If you would be interested in being advised when copies are available, please send an email to peter.clarke@ubm.com


MEMS acutuators fight robot tug-of-war

TAG:HKUST Kyoto MEMS fight robot semiconductor

Bacillus stratosphericus — a microbe commonly found in high concentrations in the stratosphere — is a key component of a new ‘super’ biofilm that has been engineered by a team of scientists from Newcastle University.

Isolating 75 different species of bacteria from the Wear Estuary, Country Durham, UK, the team tested the power-generation of each one using a microbial fuel cell (MFC).

By selecting the best species of bacteria, a kind of microbial "pick and mix," they were able to create an artificial biofilm, doubling the electrical output of the MFC from 105 Watts per cubic metre to 200 Watts per cubic metre.

While still relatively low, this would be enough power to run an electric light and could provide a much needed power source in parts of the world without electricity.

Among the ‘super’ bugs was B. stratosphericus, a microbe normally found in the atmosphere but brought down to Earth as a result of atmospheric cycling processes and isolated by the team from the bed of the River Wear.

Publishing their findings Feb. 21 in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Environmental Science and Technology,

Grant Burgess, Professor of Marine Biotechnology at Newcastle University, said the research demonstrated the "potential power of the technique."

"What we have done is deliberately manipulate the microbial mix to engineer a biofilm that is more efficient at generating electricity," he explains.

"This is the first time individual microbes have been studied and selected in this way. Finding B. stratosphericus was quite a surprise but what it demonstrates is the potential of this technique for the future — there are billions of microbes out there with the potential to generate power."

The use of microbes to generate electricity is not a new concept and has been used in the treatment of waste water and sewage plants.

Microbial fuel cells, which work in a similar way to a battery, use bacteria to convert organic compounds directly into electricity by a process known as bio-catalytic oxidation.

A biofilm — or ‘slime’ — coats the carbon electrodes of the MFC and as the bacteria feed, they produce electrons which pass into the electrodes and generate electricity.

Until now, the biofilm has been allowed to grow un-checked but this new study shows for the first time that by manipulating the biofilm you can significantly increase the electrical output of the fuel cell.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the study identified a number of electricity-generating bacteria.

As well as B. stratosphericus, other electricity-generating bugs in the mix were Bacillus altitudinis — another bug from the upper atmosphere — and a new member of the phylum Bacteroidetes.

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Stratospheric superbugs offer new source of power

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LONDON – Fabless chip company Dialog Semiconductor plc has reported strong financial results for fourth quarter, as expected, and has forecast a strong first quarter of 2012.

Dialog (Kirchheim-unter-Teck, Germany), which makes integrated power management, audio and short range wireless ICs reported a net profit of $19.1 million on sales of $172.1 million. The quarterly revenue represents a sequential increase of 22.4 percent on the $140.6 million of revenue delivered in 3Q11 and an increase of 96.5 percent over the $87.6 million delivered in the comparative period last year.

The revenue growth was driven primarily driven by the success of customers in the smartphone and tablet computer market, Dialog said.

For the financial year 2011 revenue was $527.3 million: an increase of 77.8 percent over FY 2010.

“2011 was a very successful year for Dialog, where we led the industry in terms of integrated power management market share for smartphones and tablet pcs, while achieving our management goal of breaking through $500 million in annual revenue. Through a very difficult supply chain period, I am particularly proud that we increased unit shipments by 61 percent across the company and offered our customers higher value solutions,” said Jalal Bagherli, CEO, in a statement.

“We executed on our first significant acquisition, adding short range wireless technology to our portfolio and achieved earnings accretion just one quarter after closing the acquisition. As a result, Dialog is well positioned with a much stronger portfolio to take further advantage of opportunities in the emerging high growth personal portable connected device market,” he added.

Looking forward Dialog said that 1Q11 revenue would be between $160 million and $166 million, representing a strong year-on-year growth and less of a sequential decline than normal. In addition the company expects gross margin to improve through 2012.

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SAN JOSE, Calif. – Smart Storage Systems officially debuted as a standalone company focused on solid-state drives for business systems, rolling out its latest product, the Optimus Ultra a high-end serial-attached SCSI drive.

Smart Storage claims the Optimus Ultra can deliver 25 full drives writes per day for five years using multi-level cell (MLC) flash, an endurance level typically limited to single-level cell flash. The drive, available in capacities ranging from 150 GBytes to 1.2 TBytes, can execute up to 100,000 read operations per second and up to 60,000 writes.

Separately, Avnet Memec and Avnet Embedded agreed to distribute Smart’s existing Xceed solid-state drives (SSDs).

Smart Storage is part of the former Smart Modular Technologies holding company, taken private by Silver Lake Partners and Silver Lake Sumeru in August 2011. The parent company began investing in solid-state drive technology in 2008 with its acquisition of Adtron.

Smart Storage enters a hotly competitive SSD market with dozens of suppliers including industry giants such as Hitachi, Micron, Samsung and Toshiba. The company claims its Guardian software gives it an edge in creating MLC drives with long life times and says it has unique capabilities to help top tier OEMs qualify SSDs.

“You can’t underestimate the importance of test because OEM qualifications can take six to nine months and cost millions of dollars,” said John Scaramuzzo, president of Smart Storage.

The company expects in 2013 to expand its serial ATA and SAS offerings to include 12 Gbit/s and multi-link SAS drives as well as PCI Express drives.  Multi-link SAS “has all the capabilities of PCI Express in speed and high availability, but PCI Express is sort of the prettiest girl at the dance right now,” said Scaramuzzo.

The SSD company hopes to grow at rates as high as 150 percent over the next two years to hit revenues in the range of $100 to $200 million.
Smart roles high endurance MLC drive

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PARIS – The Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM SA) has launched a four-year, 14.2 million euro ($18.8 million) project that aims to develop highly efficient, long-lasting, cheap and environmentally friendly printed organic photovoltaics (OPV).

The project, dubbed SUstainable Novel FLexible Organic Watts Efficiently Reliable (Sunflower), gathers 17 partner institutions from science and industry, including Agfa, BASF, DuPont Teijin Films, Amcor Flexible Kreuzlingen, as well as the photovoltaic pioneer Konarka Technologies and European research institutes and universities.

The Sunflower consortium said it expects to produce printed organic PV panels with high efficiency architectures such as tandem cells and dedicated light management structures. The performance of the photo active and passive barrier materials is expected to be much higher including process controlled morphology, partners said.

Project partners said they intend to deliver solutions for cost effective flexible substrates, diffusion barriers and conductors. In the near future, they said they expect to have a deeper knowledge of the device physics, an elucidation of degradation mechanisms and an estimate of the environmental impact of the main materials and processes.

The consortium noted that the requirements for the project prototype include: High module efficiency to be competitive with other photovoltaic (PV) technologies; Multilayer structure (“tandem”) to achieve high efficiency; Cost effective barriers and getters to achieve long lifetime; as well as roll-to-roll atmospheric printing processes to lower costs [where costs include fabrication (Eur) and environmental impact (kgCO2)].

EU project boosts OPV for solar power generation

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Fashioniste, fashion blogger e amanti del lusso, segnatevi un appuntamento da non perdere: a Marzo ci sarà l’inaugurazione di Private Griffe, il primo esclusivo private marketplace online in Italia.

Ciò che contraddistingue Private Griffe dagli altri outlet online è il suo carattere “private”. PG infatti è un marketplace esclusivamente per privati.

Un altro punto d’innovazione di PG, raccontano Leonardo Cucchiarini e Maria Cecilia Andretta è il suo carattere “social”. Su Private Griffe, infatti, Seller ed acquirenti oltre a vendere ed acquistare i prodotti potranno interagire tra loro e scambiarsi consigli. Le Seller, inoltre, attraverso le loro boutique virtuali potranno esprimere il proprio look.

Chi vuole diventare una Seller, comunicano Leonardo Cucchiarini e Maria Cecilia Andrettta, può già da ora candidarsi tramite la Cooming Soon del sito.

Tutto ciò che dovranno fare le seller sarà proporre i propri capi fashion, che saranno selezionati dal Team di PG per verificare che si tratti di capi autentici, di alto livello e in buone condizioni. Il team di PG, penserà poi a tutto il servizio di intermediazione, dalla spedizione dei prodotti dalle seller alle acquirenti alla gestione dei pagamenti in maniera sicura.

Private Griffe, raccontano Leonardo Cucchiarini e Maria Cecilia Andretta non sarà solo “shopping online” ma si tratterà di una vera e propria “shopping experience” ad alto tasso fashion. Dove amanti della moda, amanti del lusso e fashion blogger, potranno proporre i propri look e lanciare nuove tendenze. Non solo un e-commerce quindi, ma una vera e propria community.

Un’iniziativa che ha alle spalle 3 professionisti esperti dell’ambito web e dei settori del lusso: Leonardo Cucchiarini, Maria Cecilia Andretta e Francesca Bongiovanni, e che ha già riscontrato il parere favorevole di numerosi fan e seller pronte a vendere i propri capi, rigorosamente fashion.

Leonardo Cucchiarini e Maria Cecilia Andretta presentano Private Griffe

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        Celebrities, Designer Dresses and Most recent On Style Look

                    Oscar, Golden Globes and It’s Influence on Our Style Look.

  With the 2009 award shows such as the Oscars approaching and the Golden Globes just passing by, we wonder how the likes of Angelina Jolie,  Cate Blanchett and several others stars who we like, manage to look stunning every time.  
    The 66th annual Golden Globes this year was totally Glam, Chic, and definitely The most Classy 1.  Females of any age had been after simplicity, elegance and class.  Take a look at very best supporting actress winner for “The Reader” Kate Winslet, in Yves Saint Laurent and Chopard, Penelope Cruz in Giorgio Armani Prive and Chopard, Anne Hathaway in Giorgio Armani Prive and Van Cleef &amp Arpels.  The list would never end…
  Each show commands a different style look, and each look is on full display for the critics to dissect.  It’s sufficient to make the average person crawl in a hole if put in the same position, whilst the star wants superhero powers to make it through – or at least a team of the finest in the enterprise.
  You may possibly think that if you had a crew to look following yourself, you’d look like a million dollar as well.  Envision if you needed to present an award at the Oscars, how would you want to look?  Understanding that your stylist would have your finest interest at hand, she would need to head to your favorite designer’s studio to pick the most dazzling looks.   While the jobs of Rachel Zoe and other stylists to the stars are surely stressful this time of year, it should be a dream come accurate to be the first to view some of these collections.  Becoming a fashion insider like Zoe would be as inspiring as it is wonderful.
 It would be difficult to decide on the 1 outfit, but I know that sometimes 3 or much more are set aside for the star to choose on, occasionally waiting up to the day of the event.  Of course, fit is taken into consideration, and every piece will be ready, regardless if it is worn.  There is sanctity in understanding that no 1 else will show up with the same dress.  The jewels, the shoes, the handbag are all precisely chosen, ready to go.  

  On the day of the event, the assembled team will be ready to powder the star into precise form.  She has most likely been buffed, waxed, and shined to perfection her limbs bronzed the proper shade to show off the lines of her sculpted body.  All of this would be absolutely nothing without the perfect  designer gown.   The hair and makeup are faultless, and an individual from the team will keep watch as she makes her way down the red carpet.   
Who can forget the extraordinary vintage Valentino that Julia Roberts wore in 2001 to accept her Oscar?  It was Valentino again on Cate Blanchett in pale yellow and burgundy when she accepted her Oscar in 2005.   Or anytime Renee Zelleweger showed up in Carolina Herrera – it was perfection each time.  These ladies know the power they hold over fashion during the awards season, and the designers cater to them, know that millions of women turn out to be spellbound.  It does not matter if the piece comes from the most recent collection or is vintage, the fashion has the authority to influence and create sales for designers everywhere.  Each award show televised creates a fashion buzz for women everywhere.

  This year, some of the style predictions are for lots of color in the dresses.  The styles themselves will be straightforward, but played up by dazzling diamonds and statement jewels.   The jewelry will not be of the costume selection, but of fine, unusual stones and special mountings.  The shoes will be the showstoppers, combining elite materials with towering heels – we will see feathers, ruffles, fringes, and sparkling embellishments.

  Fashion designers everywhere use the influence of celebrities and their style to develop occasionally one-of-a kind pieces.  A Miami based designer label Natasha Leratti, is identified for their special and elegant sense for evening wear.  Regardless if you are a movie star or a females who wants to be In Style and luxe, your very best option –  is to pay a visit to Leratti’s Style Studio.  Anything from a cocktail dress to an evening gown can be accomplished exclusively for your and reflect your personality.  With our professional encounter and fashion know-how, we will take you from the basic to the extraordinary to make sure that your night is as ideal as one of the movie stars.

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