Time to close up. The patient will have the battery placed in two weeks. The implanted system will be… instagram.com/p/Zqmn0_RI_p/

— UCLA Health(@UCLAHealth) May 23, 2013

And that’s it. Thank you for joining us today! #UCLAORLive vine.co/v/bVzh1JBpwUE

— UCLA Health(@UCLAHealth) May 23, 2013

It’s almost impossible for the average computer to mine Bitcoins in any efficient way, hence the rise of Bitcoin mining machines so tuned to their specific purpose that they barely resemble PCs. To wit: the Cryonic Bitcoin FrostBit machine is a PC in name only and contains a liquid nitrogen generator, special ASIC chips, and a price tag that would make the Winklevii twins think twice.

“It’s the first time a ‘PC’ has been built for consumers with built-in liquid nitrogen generators. We use helium compression technology to super-cool condensers that in turn condense nitrogen air into its liquid form. There’s nothing even remotely similar available to the consumers,” said CEO of Cryoniks, Inc. Fahad Koumaiha. “By sustaining cryonic temperatures we were able to achieve superconductivity with our custom designed ASIC processors. Not only do we get a huge boost in speed, but we cut down power consumption to around 2800W per unit; significantly less than anything on the market today.”

The PC hits a peak of 2800W – the average PC hits 200W on a bad day – but the device can perform 1000 Gigahashes a second. To put that in perspective a strong PC with good graphics card can hit about 100 MH/S and in my experience I haven’t been able to get any my machines to hit higher than 50 MH/S. It’s a powerful claim.

What are you going to pay for this ridiculous machine? Try a cool $15,000, which, sadly, you can’t pay for in BTC.

Can this thing really pay for itself? Probably, but not immediately. There are some BTC fans who believe a $10,000 BTC isn’t too far off and if that happens the potential benefits of this machine far outweighs the cost. They are planning on shipping this monster in July so if you’re seriously into mining, it may be worth a look. Everyone else? Be satisfied with your low GH/S. It’s a cryonic, nitrogen-cooled world out there and we’re just visiting.

UPDATE – Further discussions with both the company and BTC fans have led me to believe this is more or less an impossible device however the company has offered to allow me to try one of their machines when they begin shipping and, at that point, I will post a follow-up. At this time I would not recommend leaving money in their hands until such a time as an independent reviewer has seen the device.

Smartphones never cease to amaze me. I’m still impressed by how productive I’m able to be on my Android device no matter where I am (often to the chagrin of my wife), and I’m still surprised every time I see someone pull out a Square when it comes time to pay (like happened last night at Fat Choy in Las Vegas, a way-off-strip place you should totally check out if you’re in town). But neither of those situations really compare with busting out a phone in order to detect the levels of toxins in the air.

Yet that’s exactly what a group of researchers at the University of Illinois have created — a cradle that wraps around an iPhone and turns it into a biosensor that can detect, according to a university press release, “toxins, proteins, bacteria, viruses and other molecules.” Inside that cradle are about $200 worth of mirrors, lenses and a photonic crystal that the researchers claim can identify these substances as accurately as a $50,000 spectrophotometer in the lab.

The cradle is essentially there for support, though, while the phone’s camera and processor do the real work. With everything firmly aligned in front of the camera, a scientist would simply snaps a photo and the CPU processes the result. What it’s processing is the difference in wavelength that the photonic crystal, primed to react to a specific molecule, reflects. The team demonstrates the device and app in the video embedded below.

And if you’re into this type of mobile data collection, another group of University of Illinois researchers actually created a smartphone-powered water-pollution device called MoboSens

Like all things mobile or sensor, though — from SkinScan (now SkinVision) to health care apps like Ginger.io — the biggest value might come from data that has nothing to do with what the app is primarily measuring. Rather, when data about a certain condition, air quality or what have you is tagged with time and geodata, for example, it becomes the basis for mapping how situations are spreading or where there might be safe haven.

Imagine a team of scientists with iPhones dispersed throughout a city after a disaster, painting a real-time picture of what areas are most affected by a particular toxin (or maybe radiation). Taking a longer term approach, researchers could track how situations are evolving over time. Throw in even more data that smartphones are capable of detecting — temperature, ambient noise, vibration, etc. — and we might unlock entirely new ways to think about how diseases spread through the air or what conditions tend to favor the spread of foodborne bacteria.

In some ways, though, this is more than another cool thing you can do with a smartphone. It’s the furtherance of something we’ll discussing in depth at our Structure conference next month, which is how we rethink IT when computation and data are no longer bound within a single server or even the corporate network somewhere. The biological data this app will collect isn’t much use locked inside the phone; it needs a way to reliably and securely connect with other datasets and other services, likely distributed across the country or even the world. That’s where the real opportunity lies.

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Features:

• Ships with Windows 8 64-bit
• 13.3-inch display running at 2560 x 1440 (221ppi)
• 256GB SSD
• 2GHz Intel Core i7-3537U Processor
• 8GB of RAM
• MSRP: Starts at $1,599, model reviewed costs $1,999

Pros:

• An incredibly high-res display for a Windows laptop
• 2 years of free premium support
• Respectable battery life

Cons:

• No discrete graphics card
• Man, this thing is expensive

Eye Candy Meets Horsepower

Toshiba isn’t exactly known for churning out attractive, high-end notebooks, which is why the company’s new Kirabook is such an oddity. It’s a handsome little thing if you’re into very (and I mean very) understated designs, though I imagine at least a few people will think the Kirabook looks downright dull.

The Kirabook is wedge-shaped like many of its other ultrabook brethren but it’s thankfully very light on branding (save for a small, chrome-esque Toshiba logo slapped on a corner of the Kirabook’s lid), and a finish that comes as a result of the magnesium alloy chassis is nice enough. Sadly, that magnesium frame doesn’t mean the Kirabook is immune to scratches, something I quickly learned after stowing the thing in a checked bag while flying to Austin.

It’s got a respectable spate of ports for an ultraportable too: AC power aside, there are a total of three USB 3.0 ports plus an HDMI out, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card reader.

If anything, the real eye-catcher here is that sumptuous screen. The Kirabook plays home to a 13.3-inch display running at 2,560 x 1,440 (that makes for a pixel density of 221ppi), and Toshiba likes to crow about it being the highest resolution display available on a Windows notebook. Credit where credit is due, that display is one of the Kirabook’s most notable high points: colors are generally vivid and bright, and the panel seems hardy enough to handle even the most frenzied touch inputs. That’s not to say it’s without its shortcomings though. There’s a bit of light leakage around the edge of the display panel and viewing angles aren’t the greatest — looking at the thing dead-on is pleasant enough, but there’s a bit of color distortion to be seen once you start moving around.

But there’s one big problem when it comes to the display, and it has nothing to do with the panel itself. I won’t belabor the point too much — by now you’ve probably already made up your mind about Microsoft’s divisive OS — but the biggest disappointment is that Windows 8 and the apps that run on it just aren’t completely tuned for these HiDPI screens yet. Cruising through the touch-friendly start screen is a visual pleasure, as is firing up apps like Internet Explorer, Maps, Vimeo, and Netflix since they all thrive on these sorts of displays. Jumping into the desktop is another world entirely, and it’s full of applications and menus that appear blurry and ill-suited for such a neat display. What a bummer.

When it comes to performance, the Kirabook manages to hold its own very nicely. We like running Geekbench around these parts, and on average the Kirabook scored between 7500 and 8000 when it came to running 64-bit benchmarks: very solid numbers, and there wasn’t anything that came up during my day-to-day use that managed to flummox the little guy. That is, except for gaming — the lack of a discrete GPU in a $2000 machine is concerning, and the integrated Intel HD 4000 plus the need to push a crazy number of pixels means that there will be very little Bioshock Infinite running on the Kirabook unless you dramatically crank down the quality.

Speaking of day-to-day use, the Kirabook has more than enough juice to get you through the day. I’ve been toting the 2.9 pound notebook around for the better part of a week, and I’ve consistently been able to camp out in coffee shops and keep the Kirabook going for just over six hours.

There’s little question that the Kirabook is actually a pretty speedy little bugger, but there is a caveat. The downside to all that power is that the tiny fan nestled on the Kirabook’s bum will fire up after even slight provocation, and it’s just loud enough to be grating if you decide to do anything processor-intensive for a while. If you work in environments with plenty of ambient noise it may not be much of a problem, but be warned — those of you who like to work in quiet, zen-like tranquility will probably get pretty miffed.

I haven’t fiddled with many of Toshiba’s older laptop keyboards, but the consensus seems to be that they were largely rubbish. Keyboard snobs may just turn up their noses after a few moments with the Kirabook’s 6 row affair, but despite the fact that the keys feel a bit small I found that using it to peck out posts and emails wasn’t too bad at all after a break-in period. Sad to say, the trackpad was a completely different story.

See, the trackpad occasionally seems to forget what it’s capable of — I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to two-finger scroll in Chrome using the trackpad before the Kirabook suddenly stops accepting multi-finger inputs. This may not seem like a big deal to some of you (especially since the Kirabook sports a highly responsive, glass-covered touchscreen) but it’s tremendously frustrating to discover what worked 5 seconds ago doesn’t work any more for no apparent reason.

The elephant in the room here is the price tag that’s attached to this highly portable package — the configuration I’ve been spending time with will set you back a cool $1,999. Toshiba has tried to temper the sticker shock by loading the Kirabook up with full versions of Photoshop Elements and Norton Internet Security (ugh), not to mention two years worth of premium support from a dedicated team of Kirabook specialists all within the United States, but the price differential will probably be enough to make some would-be ultrabook purchasers balk.

Who is it for?

Designers

No. If you’re an artist looking to get some work done, I suspect the blurry, pixelated text and images that result from mixing a hi-res screen and applications that aren’t really ready for it may be enough to get you running for the hills.

On the plus side, Photoshop makes full use of what limited screen real estate the Kirabook affords you and it’s easy enough to get into the swing of things… if you’re willing to squint, that is. Hooking the Kirabook up to an external monitor helps quite a bit, but the sketchy trackpad means you’ll definitely need other peripherals to chip in too.

Founders

No. If you’re a founder looking for a smart way to spend your newly-raised seed funds, you’d probably do well to stay away from the Kirabook. That’s not to say it’s a bad computer, but the crucial bang-for-the-buck factor is notably absent here. The most basic touchscreen-laden Kirabook retails for $1,699, or $100 more than an a higher-end 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. That’s not an insignificant premium to pay when the Kirabook is marred by a few prominent issues. And sure, you can pick out a slightly less expensive version that eschews the touchscreen, but then there’s really no point in Kirabook in the first place.

Programmers

Maybe? 13.3 inches may seem a little cramped for coding, but that multitude of pixels means that you’ve got plenty of real estate for crafting apps and tapping into APIs. Arguably the price tag is still too steep if all you’re looking for is a machine to run Visual Studio, Android Studio, or good ol’ Notepad++, but there’s nothing here that would immediately disqualify the Kirabook from being a coder’s companion.

Bottom Line

You know, for all of the little things Toshiba either got wrong or didn’t execute that well, I still actually really like the Kirabook. The company took a shot on something different, and even though this first iteration isn’t exactly a home run, it has made me rethink the prospect of spending my own money on a Toshiba computer.

Once the Kirabook drops in price (which shouldn’t take long since Intel’s new Haswell chips are barreling down the pipeline), Toshiba’s nifty premium ultrabook may find the success it deserves. For now though, it’s just too pricey and too unpolished for anyone but the biggest Toshiba die-hards to splurge on — here’s hoping that Toshiba manages to firm up the formula when it comes time to whip up the Kirabook 2.

Google continues to expand Google Fiber, especially in the Kansas City area.

Google Fiber Community Manager Rachel Hack ways on the Google Fiber blog:

Last night, the City Alderman in Raytown, Missouri voted unanimously to bring Google Fiber to their city. Raytown is the tenth Kansas City-area expansion we’ve announced, and we hope to bring Fiber to more communities in the area, too.

It will be awhile before we can hook up Raytown residents—we need to plan and build our network there first. When we have more info, we’ll be sure to post it here.

Earlier this month, Google announced it would be adding Grandview, Missouri to the list. The city is just south of Kanas City.

The service will also be coming to Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah in the future as well.

You all know that we’re fans of what the folks at Warby Parker are doing. In particular, we’re quite intrigued by their effort to take their online brand offline. The New York-based company, which recently raised a ton of money, is now taking the next step in terms of branding and is going to be working with the makers of the movie, Man of Steel, on two special frames with a hint of Superman Blue or Red near the temples.

Clark Kent — you know, the nerd journalist who is also Superman — and Warby Parker, the brand that was made by nerds, is one movie merchandising deal that makes a lot of sense. Of course, we talked about Warby Parker’s future with its co-founder at our RoadMap 2012 conference. (You can find out more about our RoadMap 2013 conference later this year by clicking here.)

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney can now eat his campaign words — at least the part where he called Tesla a loser. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in an interview with Bloomberg TV Thursday that now that Tesla has repaid the entirety of its loan to the Department of Energy, plus interest, U.S. taxpayers have actually made a $20 million profit off of Tesla.

That’s a telling metric for all of Tesla’s former haters, as well as recently converted fan boys. Tesla still has hurdles ahead of it as an independent auto maker, but the company has made it through the Valley of Death and emerged with its first quarterly profit in a decade, and a hot electric car that’s sold out for months.

In contrast, electric car maker Fisker Automotive, which took a loan from the same government program that Tesla did, could reportedly be sold for $20 million, and still owes the government $171 million. Check out my comparison piece: Tesla, Fisker, and what could have been: A tale of two electric car startups.

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LinkedIn continues to redesign various functions of its site on both desktop and mobile devices. Today, the company introduced a new navigation bar, which a LinkedIn spokesperson tells WebProNews is “designed to make it quicker and easier for members to find what they are looking for.”

“Over the last year and half we’ve had the chance to learn quite a bit from you about the types of changes that add the most value to your daily professional life, and we’ve brought some of these learnings to the new navigation,” says LinkedIn’s Amy Parnell. ” When approaching this re-design, we analyzed years of navigation data to determine which links were adding the most value for you, and which could be removed to create a more focused and streamlined experience. We also observed how useful Search was as a productivity tool, and aligned the search box with the results page, for fine-tuned search efficiency.”

“As you explore the new navigation bar, you will notice a few visually striking differences, including a simplified menu of tabs to help you quickly and easily locate the features and content that are of most value to you,” she adds. “We have also moved the search bar front and center to make easier than ever to discover and find what you’re looking for on LinkedIn.”

Settings can be found when you hover over your profile picture in the upper right.

The new navigation will be rolling out to English language users over the next month.

Big data has become something of a buzzword. Everybody talks about it, but its impact can be elusive. How is big data really changing the way companies and other organizations function? These 12 stories highlight that transformation: from helping health insurers keep better tabs on patients, to changing how cars are made, to easing traffic congestion on busy freeways. These case studies show big data at work.

Healthcare

Getty Images

We’ve got the medicine to treat lots of ailments — the challenge is getting doctors and patients to focus on the the one or two intervention programs that would make a real difference to a person’s health. Aetna is using big data to try to achieve that.

–From How Aetna is using big data to improve patient health

Cars

Getty Images

When most people think about how cars are built, they think about assembly lines and manufacturing robots. But at Ford, big data is impacting the parts and features of those cars before they’re ever part of a design file.

–From How data is changing the car game at Ford

Presidential campaigns

Getty Images

Many people use Facebook to update their status, share photos, and “like” content. The Obama presidential campaign used all that data on the social network to not just find voters but to assemble an army of volunteers.

–From How Obama’s data scientists built a volunteer army on Facebook

Highway traffic

Shutterstock

Anyone who has driven in Los Angeles has experienced the traffic nightmare. The goverment is using big data to keep traffic moving on the I-10 and I-110 freeways for drivers who are willing to pay for less congestion.

–From Hey, Los Angeles, Xerox thinks it can clear traffic on I-10

Pro basketball

Pro sports teams collect vast amounts of data, yet they’re struggling to make sense of it. Are there two or three things that will guarantee teams a win or at least tip the scale in their favor? That’s Krossover’s premise.

–From How to make your mark in professional basketball at 5′ 9″

Music

 

More than a decade ago, the music metadata company Gracenote received some cryptic advice from Apple to buy more servers. It did, Apple launched iTunes and the iPod, and Gracenote became a metadata empire.

–From Gracenote co-founder on ‘iPod day’ and better music through data

Social networking

Ghosh’s diagram of LinkedIn’s data architecture, with Hadoop plans laid out

Five years ago, LinkedIn was a shell of the technology company. Today, it’s an engineering powerhouse. Here’s how it got there.

–From How and why LinkedIn is becoming an engineering powerhouse

Insurance

The insurance industry hasn’t exactly been a beacon of technological innovation. But MetLife has bet $300 million on a new system that for the first time puts everything it knows about its customers in one place.

–From The promise of better data has MetLife investing $300M in new tech

Television

How RUWT might work on the TV.

For sports fans, keeping up with what’s on TV is a near impossibility. On many nights there are hundreds of events spread across 8,000-plus channels. One app tracks all that sports and rates games based on how exciting the action is — so you know what to tune into.

–From How one sports geek wants to save cable TV with data

Social change

One of India’s highest-rated TV shows aggregates and analyzes the millions of messages it receives from viewers on controversial issues like female feticide, caste discrimination and child abuse — and uses that data to push for political change.

–From How India’s favorite TV show uses data to change the world

Prescription drugs

Shutterstock

While drug prices tend to dominate discussions about prescription drugs, we shouldn’t overlook the economic problems caused by abuse and misuse. One company is using sophisticated models to detect fraud and predict when people will stop taking medications on time.

–From Not taking your medication, or taking waaay too much? The data knows…

Email

MailChimp’s core business is email — it sends about 35 billion emails a year on behalf of roughly 3 million users. But it’s what the company is doing with the data from all those emails that may represent its future.

–From How MailChimp learned to treat data like orange juice and rethink email in the process

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Google has a crisis response map for those affected by the giant tornado that ripped through Moore, Oklahoma. Included in that is imagery of the area from Google Maps.

Google posted a before/after look at the area to its Google Maps Google+ account today:

Google Maps7 hours ago

We've published post-tornado imagery of Moore, OK on our Google Crisis Response Map ( http://google.org/crisismap/2013-oklahoma-tornado ). Here's a before (collected on 29th April by CNES 2013, Distribution Astrium Services/Spot Image) and after (collected on 22nd May by Digitalglobe) view showing Briarwood elementary school and the surrounding area – http://goo.gl/9pazZ. You can check/uncheck the boxes on the right of the map link to explore more information.

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In other Google Maps news, the company also revealed that it has been using its Trekker camera device to capture new imager from the Galapagos Islands. This imagery will be making its way to Google Maps later this year. You can see a preview here.

Twitter is letting loose a lot of new advertising and marketing offerings. Earlier this week, Twitter launched a new Lead Generation card for mareters.

Today, the company announced the availability of TV ad targeting, which has been developed through its acquisition of Bluefin Labs. Twitter says it’s designed to make it easier to extend and enhance TV ad campaigns. The offering is now available for Promoted Tweets in limited beta to select partners running national TV commercials in the U.S.

“TV ad targeting enables marketers to engage directly with people on Twitter who have been exposed to their ads on TV,” says Twitter Revenue Product Manager Michael Fleischman. “Synchronized Twitter and TV ad campaigns make brand messages more engaging, interactive and measurable, while making it easy for marketers to run always-on Twitter campaigns that complement and amplify their TV creative.”

Twitter is giving advertisers a new TV ads dashboard, which shows when a brand’s TV ads have aired.

“This will help digital teams align not only with what’s shown on TV and when, but give insight into how Promoted Tweets can be crafted in the most effective ways to build upon broader marketing themes,” says Fleischman. “TV ad targeting works by using video fingerprinting technology to automatically detect when and where a brand’s commercials are running on TV, without requiring that advertiser to do any manual tracking or upload media plan details. Whenever a commercial airs during a TV show, Twitter not only determines where and when it ran, but can identify users on Twitter who tweeted about the program where the ad aired during that program. We believe a user engaged enough with a TV show to tweet about it very likely saw the commercials as well.”

Twitter also announced a new wave of multi-screen partners today, and named the partnership program Twitter Amplify. New partners (which join BBC America, FOX, Fuse and The Weather Channel) include: A&E, theAudience, Bloomberg TV, Clear Channel, Conde Nast, Discovery, MLB.com, National Cinemedia, New York Magazine, PGA Tour, PMC, Time Inc., VEVO, Warner Music, WWE and VICE.

According to Bloomberg, Twitter plans to release a tool similar to Facebook’s custom-audience feature as well.

Google announced that you can now find photos, and connect with friends, places and events from your Google+ photos from Google Search. To do so, go to Google, sign in, and search for “my photos” or “my photos from new york last year,” or something to that effect.

“For example, now you can search for your friend’s wedding photos or pictures from a concert you attended recently,” says Google product manager Matthew Kulick. “To make computers do the hard work for you, we’ve also begun using computer vision and machine learning to help recognize more general concepts in your photos such as sunsets, food and flowers.”

“Your photos represent some of your most important memories and life events, yet they are increasingly difficult to manage as you build up your photo library, accumulate new devices and make new friends. In many cases, searching for your photos can be challenging because the information you’re looking for is visual,” says Kulick.

The feature works pretty well, even for something as general as “my photos of food”. I have to say, I’m impressed that it can recognize “food” when that can really be any number of things. It struggles with other things. While it will do well with “my photos of people,” it won’t do so well with “my photos of babies”.

The “my photos of food” query also didn’t work too well with Google’s new voice search feature, in my experience.

It handles some timeframes well. For example, queries for “my photos from last year,” “my photos from two years ago,” and so on work pretty well. “Photos from this week” works. “Photos from January,” or “Photos from February” queries don’t work. Something like “my photos from 2009″ does work.

The feature is also available on Google+ Photos.

As Android Police described in an article this week, one of the new, but “unadvertised” Google+ features Google rolled out from Google I/O is photo search with visual recognition.

Tor Norbye1 day ago

I'm blown away by the new photo search in Google+ where it's recognizing subjects in my own photos — here the various times I've run into snakes while hiking.

It's unbelievable how the state of the art in computer vision has progressed recently. And I can't imagine the amount of number crunching that must have gone into all this picture processing!

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This seems to be just one of the latest ways Google continues to tie its various services together into one larger Google experience.

Continue reading…

Last year, Google launched the ability to see results from your Gmail, Google Drive and Google Calendar accounts as you type in the search box from Gmail. This was only available as part of a field trial.

Soon, all users in the U.S. will be getting this functionality. Google software engineer Balazs Racz says in a brief blog post:

As part of field trial we opened in October, it became possible to instantly see your relevant emails, Google Drive files, Calendar events, and more when you search in Gmail. Those of you who participated in the field trial told us that you like the time-saving convenience of searching for all your stuff from one place, and over the coming week, we’ll be rolling out this feature in English to all U.S. users. Now you can find what you’re looking for faster right in Gmail.

The feature is nice, but the part of the field trial that lets users retrieve content from Gmail, Google Drive and Google Calendar when searching Google’s regular web search is even better. It remains to be seen when this functionality will become available to all.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory honored more than 165 staff for their creation, development and commercialization of intellectual property at PNNL’s annual Intellectual Property Commercialization Recognition & Rewards Program banquet. 

The Department of Energy national laboratory named materials scientist Jun Liu Inventor of the Year for his work developing battery materials that can store large amounts of energy, ease impacts to the electrical grid, and reduce the time it takes to charge cell phones, electric vehicles and other battery-powered devices.

Other staff were recognized for receiving patents, developing commercially valuable software products, making key contributions to technology commercialization efforts, and receiving R&D 100 and Federal Laboratory Consortium Awards over the past year. 

“As a national laboratory we continuously strive to move new technologies into the marketplace so others can benefit from federal investments in research,” said Technology Deployment and Outreach Director Cheryl Cejka. “In 2012, PNNL researchers responded by accelerating commercialization and innovation that protects the nation and the environment, and increases our energy capacity.” 

The Inventor of the Year honor is awarded annually to a staff member who — over the previous two years — has created intellectual property, or whose innovations have the potential to create intellectual property.

Liu received four U.S. patents in 2011 and 2012. During the same time, he contributed to 25 additional U.S. patent applications and filed 17 invention reports related to battery innovation. Since joining PNNL in 1993, Liu has received 43 patents and written or co-written more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles.

“By focusing on the fundamental science and obtaining insights for different energy storage systems, Jun and his colleagues have pushed the frontiers of batteries from conventional lithium-ion batteries to high-capacity redox-flow systems and cutting-edge lithium-air batteries,” noted Cejka.

Ninety-six PNNL staff were recognized for receiving 42 U.S. patents for advancements in analytical instrumentation, bio-based products, electricity infrastructure, energy storage, fuel cell and information system technology, materials processing, microtechnology and sensors. Since PNNL’s inception in 1965, staff have received more than 2,200 U.S. and foreign patents with more than 500 of those issued in the past five years.

PNNL honored 26 staff for developing and commercializing four software products in 2012, and another 38 staff for their contributions to the development of innovations that resulted in two R&D 100 Awards and two Federal Laboratory Consortium Awards.

In addition, PNNL acknowledged 62 staff members for making key contributions to the creation, development and commercialization of five technologies and one software suite of products that were licensed to private companies the previous year. The commercially available products enhance the ability to sort through vast amounts of information, the delivery of medical radiogels and isotopes, and the sensitivity of analytical instruments. They also have led to the creation of batteries that hold promise for storing large amounts of renewable energy and providing greater stability to the energy grid.

Last, but not least, PNNL recognized three staff with Distinguished Inventor of Battelle awards, which go to Battelle staff at PNNL and worldwide who have received 14 or more U.S. patents for their work. Staff members Michael Lilga, Kerry Meinhardt, and Keqi Tang joined 21 previous Distinguished Inventors from PNNL, including Liu, and 60 others worldwide.

Continue reading…