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The White House, after reaching out to scientists for their views on what big ideas the government should tackle, is now asking average citizens to speak up about federal priorities, and one of the ways they can provide their ideas is through Twitter. In a post on the official White House blog, Thomas Kalil — the deputy director for policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy — described what the government is calling the “Grand Challenges of the 21st Century” project. In addition to emailing ideas to the White House, citizens can post their ideas as a response to the White House Twitter account @whitehouse with the #whgc hashtag.

The Grand Challenges project started with a call to scientists in February, which wrapped up submissions earlier this month. Then the administration turned to Expert Labs to help it reach out to everyday U.S. residents for ideas. Expert Labs is a non-profit public policy venture run by Anil Dash, formerly with the blog software maker Six Apart, that’s associated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is being funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Dash (who is speaking at Twitter’s Chirp conference today in San Francisco) described the effort in a recent interview with TechPresident. Among other things, he said that the goal of Expert Labs was to “improve the decisions policy makers make, by giving them the tools to tap into crowdsourcing in the same way that private companies do every day.” As he explained:

So instead of trying to fly 20 PhDs into a room in DC, we think a perfect situation would be for the White House to ask on Twitter and Facebook, “Hey, what are some of the important scientific breakthroughs we should be focused on?” What’s the next moon landing or human genome sequence? And instead of working from a set of a few hundred ideas, maybe 100,000 people will have a response to that, an answer. And Expert Labs can provide the technology to collect those answers, give policy makers tools to filter them out, and we can publish the responses for anyone in the public to analyze.

In order to collect and sift through the messages from those with big ideas, Expert Labs is using software called ThinkTank, a kind of Twitter-aggregation and filtering tool built by former Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani. So far, many of the suggestions are fairly obvious: cure cancer, develop hyrdrogen fuel, create a manned colony on Mars, build a space elevator, construct a high-speed rail network across the U.S., repair or reconstruct the ozone layer, etc. It’s not clear how Expert Labs will find the jewels amongst all the dross coming from Twitter — a problem the Obama government has had with other crowdsourcing experiments in the past — or how much influence they will actually have on what projects the government decides to take on.

As bizarre or outlandish as some of the ideas might be, however, it’s still fascinating to see a government using these tools to engage directly with its citizenry. The prospect of a White House having an official blog or Twitter feed — or even knowing what a hashtag is, let alone how to use one — would have seemed equally bizarre and outlandish not that long ago. The Obama government has used crowdsourcing tools of various kinds for a number of projects, including the OpenGov initiative, which was powered by Ideascale, and allowed citizens to post ideas and upload videos arguing for the ideas they thought the administration should tackle (as it turned out, legalizing marijuana was the No. 1 most-voted for initiative). The Grand Challenges project seems like yet another tangible example of how Barack Obama is the “Internet president.”

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Forget Twitter, the Real Fire Hose Is Government

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Crystaljingsr

By Gary Howard

According to Rasmussen:

Election 2012: Barack Obama 42%, Ron Paul 41%

Pit maverick Republican Congressman Ron Paul against President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 election match-up, and the race is – virtually dead even.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of likely voters finds Obama with 42% support and Paul with 41% of the vote. Eleven percent (11%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided. Read more…

It may be suprising to some in the establishment, but for some of us it’s not a surprise.

By the way, CNN polls show that Obama beats just about every other GOP prospective contender by good margins.

What about the hypothetical general election matchup in 2012 against President Obama?

The poll shows Obama topping Romney 53 percent to 45 percent, beating Huckabee 54 percent to 45 percent, defeating Gingrich 55 percent to 43 percent and topping Palin 55 percent to 42.

Interesting enough, in that same poll, Republicans have Congressman Paul coming in fifth against those same contenders who lose to Obama in the presidential poll.

According to the poll, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, another 2008 Republican presidential hopeful, would be in fifth place, with eight percent.

Well, it seems that if it were up to GOP elites, they would continue to nominate only those with no chance of winning.

Should be interesting to see how THIS poll is discredited by the establishment.

“Up in the Air” director Jason Reitman is talking about directing in this clip from KPCS, but a lot of his advice (put actors in the room and see what happens, plans can be a waste of time because you don’t know what you need until you edit, the “perfect science” approach taught in grad school ignores the chaos of reality, etc.) applies to creating a product or business too. Also, interesting to hear how he filmed/edited the entire airport security scene from “Up in the Air” on a camcorder first and then brought in the real crew to recreate it.

Related: Stanley Kubrick quotes [SvN]

You guys know those CelleBrite units that don’t actually point to if or when a phone’s coming to a particular carrier? (A fact that we’re sure you’ll want to remind us of yet again in the comments.) Well, the Google Nexus One just showed up in Sprint’s. So neener neener. (As to when the Sprint version of the Nexus One will be available? Eh, good guess.) Thanks, Red White and Jew.

Many cat owners worry/wonder about what their buddies are up to while the humans are away at work. Are they eating the houseplants? Sleeping on the kitchen counter? Prowling next door to bother the neighbors’ pet bird?

Now, researchers in Japan hope to bridge the gap between humans and their pets by rigging cats with sensing devices that help owners track their felines’ activities.

Cat@Log, one such sensing device, allows you to snoop on your cat as he goes about his daily schedule.

You can track his movements, map his territory, and even see what he sees thanks to a bulky device that can be strapped on your kitty’s collar. The tech site Recombu says that Cat@Log comes loaded with a camera, microphone, microSD card, an accelerometer, Bluetooth, and GPS.

Recombu writes:

The GPS hooks up to Google Maps to create a territory map, showing you where your cat goes when he’s out and about, while the camera gives you a ride-along view. The accelerometer can also interpret certain actions like scratching, going up and down stairs, eating, and jumping, all of which can be used to update a Twitter-feed – or even a full-on blog – of what your cat is up to all day long.

The Cat@Log is great, especially for anxious owners who are away on holiday and wondering if the cat-sitter is doing a good job, writes Recombu. You can also be assured your cat won’t be lonely on Twitter as he’d have Sockamillion (Sockington), the famous tweeting cat, for company.

Here’s a video of Cat@Log in action:

Related Content:
Discoblog: New Device Aims to Read Your Dog’s Mind—and Broadcast It on Twitter
Discoblog: Introducing the Twettle: The Tea Kettle That Tweets
Discoblog: The Best Way to Predict Box Office Hits: Twitter Chatter
Discoblog: Your Plants Have More Twitter Followers Than You—Literally

Image: Cat@Log

Filed under: Etc., Marketing/Advertising, Celebrities

Just when you thought the world was safe from Robert Van Winkle, the O.G. Vanilla Ice rears his frosted tips once again. Don’t run for the hills just yet – the guy isn’t bent on releasing a new attack on hip-hop this time. Instead, he’s jumping feet first into hawking garage/loft condos for The Car Loft. Haven’t heard of the project? There’s probably a good reason for that.

According to the company’s website, The Car Loft is what would have happened if someone had decided to fund and build the awesome garage/house we all drafted in first grade. The roughly 25×30 structures feature parking for up to four cars and a loft space up above for entertaining, sleeping or work. So far, so good, but we started getting skeptical when we heard each unit came pre-furnished with flat-screens, high-end tools, towels and plates monogrammed with the Car Loft logo. Oh yeah, each unit is completely hurricane-proof and features 24-hour surveillance you can monitor over the internet. No word on whether or not you have to pay extra for the robot that cleans up after you and dispense slushies at the same time.

Supposedly The Car Loft has already started its first compound in Delray Beach, and if it’s successful, you can expect similar condos to crop up everywhere from Las Vegas to Detroit. Okay, maybe not Detroit. No word on how much these things are going to cost, but based on how often the word “exclusivity” appears on the Car Loft site, we’re betting it’s more than we’ve got stuffed under the mattress. More importantly, we’ve got to wonder how many high-rollers are going to want to wake up every morning smelling like they’ve spent the night under a Jiffy Lube.

[Source: TheCarLoft via MotorAuthority]

Yo, VIP! Vanilla Ice resurfaces with The Car Loft originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BMW vuelve a estar de enhorabuena ya que acaba de ser fabricada la unidad un millón del aclamado Serie 1. Además, durante el pasado trimestre, la marca premium que más ventas obtuvo no fué otra que BMW.

Dicha unidad fué entragada en el día de ayer a su nuevo dueño con motivo del Salón de Leipzig. Recordemos que este modelo cuenta con multiples carrocerías de 3 y 5 puertas además de diferentes versiones como Cabrio o Coupé. También dispone de una gama aplia de motores.

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In the short run, it now seems as if the euro has been saved.  Greece has received a massive infusion from the EU, its bonds are selling once again, the birds are singing and all is right with the world.

But Wolfgang Münchau makes a persuasive case that in the long run, a Greek default remains very likely.  The structural adjustments required to get its budgets back into reasonable balance are simply massive (hence the demonstrations that keep turning into near-riots).  That is going to require considerable austerity from the population, not to mention unemployment.

It has been done in the past, but with one key difference:  the countries involved were able to devalue their currencies.  This lowered the burden of paying debt denominated in the local currency, and it also made exports more competitive, giving a boost to employment.

Greece doesn’t have this option.  It’s going to be stuck with a monetary policy that will be way too tight for the economic pain it is experiencing, exacerbating the difficulty of paying the debt, and the broader suffering of the citizenry.  Not to mention the political pressure to exit the euro.

Though it’s weathered this episode, I continue to think that the euro remains extremely vulnerable.  The problems of running a monetary union between countries with vastly different business cycles, economic structures, and political resources, can apparently only be overcome with fairly massive transfers.  How many times will France and Germany be willing to open up their wallets?

Join the conversation about this story »

While there was a recent argument being made (weakly) that all property is intellectual property, reader Kerry Kaye recently pointed out a discussion of the opposite point of view, saying that intellectual property is actually a violation of the concept of real property. I have to admit that, while I had hoped to find the article compelling, I actually found it to be lacking in substance. At points it seems to go around in circles without clearly making a point. You could, potentially, make a case that intellectual property tries to limit what you can do directly with the output of your own mind, and that is antithetical to the concept that you have the right to make use of the output of your own brain — which could violated basic property rights, depending on your definition of property rights. In fact, this is the part that I find most troubling about intellectual property laws (especially patents): that it effectively tells you that even if you come up with something entirely on your own, others can stop you from making use of those ideas.

Perhaps a much more compelling (though, I’m sure not to strong believers in intellectual property) discussion on a similar topic is a recent piece by Vedad Krehic, (pointed out by Michael Scott) that discusses how intellectual property laws turn IP holders against their own customers. In it, he makes a similar, but much clearer argument like the one above:

If a friend, however, lends me a music CD and if I then make a copy, so that I can listen to the music without having to borrow the disc again in the future, nobody is harmed. It is possible that I could, for example, have made an agreement or contract with him when I borrowed the disc stating that I cannot copy it. If I were to do it anyway, I’d be in violation of a private agreement. If not, who is harmed by my act of duplication? I used my own tangible property (CD drive, computer, and hard drive or blank CD) to fashion a duplicate of the data on the CD. The original CD is still my friend’s property. I return it to him, and while he is no better or worse off than he was before, I am now better off. The imprint of the music on my tangible property makes that property marginally worth more to me, as I can enjoy its use to a greater extent than previously.

Was anyone harmed at any point here?

Yes — if you choose to believe the consumer entertainment industry. They claim there was a third party here that was being harmed. Can you see the third party? There was me, and there was my friend. There was my property and that of my friend. I don’t see the third party anywhere in that process. I suppose my friend could have been in a contract with the person or organization he purchased the CD from not to copy it, but I wouldn’t have been bound by that contract. Either way, I did nothing wrong.

And this is where the trouble comes in for intellectual property versus real property:

Can anyone please explain to me how someone can be a just owner of something, yet not be allowed to exercise his or her ownership rights over it? He can throw rancid tomatoes at the painting, but not duplicate the pattern that makes the painting a painting, rather than just canvas and paint? Or, to use a different type of copyrightable pattern, how can someone own their own brain yet not own the part of it containing a song they memorized?

The logical conclusion is that the natural right of property and the idea of copyright, and of intellectual property in general, are fundamentally incompatible and conflict sharply. You cannot own something and have someone else dictate to you what you can and cannot do with it, without that being an element voluntarily arrived at through contract. In absence of a contract, the dictating party is initiating aggression against the just owner of an item. Intellectual property is an assault on tangible property.

And that’s the problem that we keep pointing out around here that troubles us so much. There are many — especially in copyright debates — who insist that those who don’t agree with copyright law should just avoid supporting those who do. But they ignore how copyright law is used, regularly, to limit what should be fundamental property rights of individuals to do as they please to products they legally purchased.

In fact, Krehic then takes this further, and notes that much of the entertainment industry’s troubles today may be traced back to the fact that it has aggressively tried to use copyright law to stop people from doing what they want with their own property, and it’s that mistake (which they keep compounding) that has resulted in customers defecting, rather than any issue of “piracy.” Again, it’s easy to predict that intellectual property supporters will scoff at this and dismiss it as ridiculous, but there is growing evidence to support this position. As we’ve seen over and over again, content creators who learn to embrace file sharing and the power of new technologies, while connecting with fans, and providing a smarter business model, have been thriving. It’s not piracy that’s causing harm, it’s bad business model choices, and many of those bad business model choices are driven by an over-reliance on the “crutch” that intellectual property provides, which gives firms the ability to take away property rights from individuals.

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Turning oceans of health data into usable information that can actually impact people’s lives can be a daunting task. It’s why GE’s healthymagination team is exploring new ways to make better sense of it via several data visualization projects — with the latest being our new interactive tool, “Fit to Perform,” which examines how health affects work performance and vice-versa. To create it, GE teamed with The Economist Intelligence Unit – which is the business-to-business arm of The Economist Group, publisher of The Economist magazine — and London-based designer, writer and author David McCandless. Over 500 global corporate executives were asked their opinions for the project — and today’s results are the first part of a wide-ranging investigation into critical healthcare issues around the world. The broader findings in the “Health of Nations” program of research and analysis, created for GE by The Economist Intelligence Unit, will be unveiled in May.

How do you stack up?: Click the image to launch the data visualization.

The “Fit to Perform” survey polled 554 executives in December 2009 and January 2010 on their companies’ practices to support the health and well-being of the workforce. Respondents represented a wide range of organizations in terms of size, geography and industry. More than 95 percent of those who took part were aged between 25 and 65.

Taking care of business: At the WHCC, Mike Barber participated on the “Health Engagement: Global Business Imperative & Opportunity” panel. In addition to addressing GE’s strength in the healthcare space, Mike stressed the important role that GE’s Water business can play around the world given the critical link between clean water and health.

This data visualization comes just as the 7th Annual World Health Care Congress is wrapping up in Washington, D.C. today. GE VP of healthymagination Mike Barber was at the Congress, and while there shared new consumer survey data that was compiled by global PR firm Edelman. It shows that the public wants businesses to be engaged with health issues in the same way that they have become heavily involved with environmental issues.

Edelman’s Health Engagement Barometer — an 11-country, 15,000-person study — found that 73 percent of respondents believe it as important to protect the public’s health as it is to protect the environment. Together with GE’s recent Better Health Study, the two surveys showcase the importance of health — and the work that still must be done by business and clinicians to better connect with consumer interest in health.

Forbes magazine takes an extended look at the Edelman survey results in the essay “Health Is The Next Green For Business,” by Nancy Turett, Edelman’s global president for health. A video interview with Mike Barber, shot at the World Health Care Congress, will be available on Forbes.com later today.

* Learn more about David McCandless
* Visit David’s blog
* Read “Data visualization: A GOOD look at affording care” on GE Reports
* Read “Ben Fry at SXSW 2010: Visualizing data challenges” on GE Reports
* Read “A GOOD look at the ‘Cost of Chronic Diseases’” on GE Reports
* See all of our recent data visualizations in one place

Do you enjoy playing classic games with an emulator on your Motorola Droid? Hyrum Fairbanks has “invented” the Game Gripper to bring classic controls to the Motorola Droid. The plastic accessory snaps onto a Droid and transfers the button presses to the keyboard below.

The Game Gripper has been tested with GameBoid, Nesoid, and SNesoid but it should work with any emulator that allows you to map out the controls on your keyboard. Customers can purchase the Game Gripper for $14.99 ($5 shipping) from the official Game Gripper site.

[Thank you Hyrum for the tip]

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A new airship from E-Green Technologies/21st Century Airships sports the crackerjack name Bullet 580 along with a “radically different” design according to E-Green Chairman and CEO Michael Lawson. The innovations allow for more efficient performance and a larger cargo capacity, all with more energy efficiency relative to conventional aircraft. The Bullet 580 is 235 feet long and can carry a payload of up to 1,000 pounds.

Designed to carry communications, surveying, monitoring and and navigation equipment for civilian and military uses (including weapons platforms), the Bullet cruises at up to 35 knots and can reach a top speed of 70 knots. More than a dozen prototypes have been tested and the first full scale Bullet is due to be inflated next month, with test flights slated to begin in the summer.

(more…)

The rumors of the HTC Incredible coming to Verizon are rumors no more, as the carrier has a preview page up that confirms it is coming on April 29. It will be the Droid Incredible on Verizon, keeping the Droid product line active for another handset. The Incredible has largely the same specs as the Google Nexus One, that has been expected to appear on Verizon’s shelves for a while. Given the similar nature of the Incredible and the Nexus One, why would Verizon want both?

Google’s Nexus One web page still claims the handset will be heading to Verizon in the spring of 2010. It’s been that way for months so Google must still plan to sell the Nexus One for the Verizon network. The Incredible is a tweaked version of the Nexus One, and will definitely be sold by Verizon so it begs the question — why would Verizon want both phones?

I suspect it is Google that wants to get the Nexus One on Big Red, it is Google’s own phone after all. Google has made no bones about wanting to get the Nexus One on all of the major U.S. carriers, so this is no surprise. I’m not sure why Verizon would want to support the Nexus One and the Droid Incredible both, however, and I can’t see Big Red offering good subsidies on both handsets. The Droid Incredible, as a network phone, yes, but the Nexus One, no. The Nexus One will be competing with Verizon’s own handset now, and that just doesn’t make sense.

Related research from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Marketing Handsets in the Superphone Era

This recipe makes far more than enough for one meal, and the leftovers are great warmed or straight from the fridge. Hence, a dinner-to-lunch recipe! The fresh-cracked black pepper really makes the dish, so don’t be shy about laying it on.

Read Full Post

Early this year, the fertilizer sector underwent a dramatic recovery as farmers finally brought their applications back to normal levels. But now that pricing momentum has stalled, according to Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Koort.

"Despite expectations for robust spring demand, our channel checks suggest the planned domestic potash price hike is not going through and recent nitrogen and phosphate prices have weakened," he wrote in a note to clients.

"We also see increased risk from poor weather delaying field work and moderating [agriculture] commodity prices."

Mr. Koort downgraded both Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. and Mosaic Co. to "neutral" from "buy", noting that he sees "limited near-term momentum" for the fertilizer sector. He said that the next opportunity to re-establish higher pricing may come this summer, when new export orders are expected from South America. "Until then, we believe the stocks will be range bound as investors await confirmation that positive trends will return," he wrote.

Mr. Koort's price target on Potash Corp. is US$123.69 a share, and his target on Mosaic is US$64.00 a share. He cut each of them 6% from their prior levels.

Peter Koven

One of the major contributors to poor gas mileage is the heavy weight of many conventional cars. Even the lightest cars, such as the Mazda Miata, weigh over a ton. This makes converting a conventional car to electric power especially daunting, as many available electric motors simply don’t make as much power as petrol engines. While you can slap a supercharger on a low-displacement petrol engine, there is no such easy fix for electric cars.

Tokyo-based Teijin has unveiled a lightweight electric city vehicle made from composite materials. So is this just a pipe dream project, or something that might one day see production?

(more…)

This TMI Moment is brought to you by Lost’s Matthew Fox: “I was 12. She was about two years older than me. It wasn’t her first time. I can actually see the event in my mind’s eye, like photographs. It was in Dubois, Wyoming, where the population sign probably says, to this day, about 1,000. It happened literally on the ground by a river while a rodeo was going on in town…it was absolutely terrible and awkward—just two (crazy) kids lying down and pulling our pants down,” Matthew Fox, Playboy Magazine May 2010

Denver – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) along with Google and numerous other public interest organizations and Internet industry associations joined with Yahoo! in asking a federal court Tuesday to block a government attempt to access the contents of a Yahoo! email account without a search warrant based on probable cause.

The Department of Justice is seeking the emails as part of a case that is under seal, and the account holder has apparently not been notified of the request. Government investigators maintain that because the Yahoo! email has been accessed by the user, it is no longer in “electronic storage” under the Stored Communications Act (SCA) and therefore does not require a warrant, even though that same legal theory has been flatly rejected by the one Circuit Court to address it.

Yahoo! is challenging the government request before a federal magistrate judge in Denver, arguing that the SCA and Fourth Amendment require the government to get a search warrant before compelling Yahoo! to disclose the email. In an amicus brief filed in support of Yahoo! Tuesday, EFF says that the company is simply following the law and protecting the constitutional privacy rights of its customers.

“The government is trying to evade federal privacy law and the Constitution,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “The Fourth Amendment protects these stored emails, just like it does our private papers. We all have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of our email accounts, and the government should have to make a showing of probable cause to a judge before it rifles through our private communications.”

This email privacy case comes on the heels of the announcement of a broad coalition of technology companies, think tanks, academics, and privacy groups — including EFF — that is calling for amendments to clarify and strengthen federal privacy law to preserve traditional privacy rights in the face of rapidly changing technology. The Digital Due Process coalition’s recommendations would, among other things, clarify that the government must get a warrant before obtaining stored email messages, regardless of whether they are opened or unopened and regardless of their age.

“Americans trust Internet service providers and other technology companies to collect and store large amounts of personal information — more and more every day — and it’s time that Congress clarified and strengthened the law to better protect that data,” said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. “Just as your postal letters and packages are private even though the carrier could open them, so your email and other information is protected even if it is stored on a third party’s server.”

Along with Google, other signers to the EFF brief are the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights (CFPHR), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), NetCoalition, the Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) and TRUSTe. Signers were represented by EFF, Professor Paul Ohm of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic, and attorney Matthew M. Linton of the firm Kennedy Childs & Fogg, P.C., in Denver.

For the full amicus brief:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/inreusaorder18/AmiciBriefYahooEmails.p…

For more on this case:
http://www.eff.org/cases/re-application-united-states-america-order

For more on Digital Due Process:
http://www.digitaldueprocess.org

Contacts:

Kevin Bankston
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
[email protected]

Jennifer Stisa Granick
Civil Liberties Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
[email protected]

Hospitals throughout the country have been largely unable to prevent the spread of potentially life-threatening hospital-acquired infections, according to a new government report on the nation’s health care system. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) released its 2009 national healthcare quality report this week, warning that postoperative sepsis, catheter-associated urinary tract infections and other preventable infections from hospitals are on the rise. The increases mean that more patients are at risk of prolonged hospital stays due to illness from infections, and more are likely to die from such infections.

According to federal reviewers, patient safety is one aspect of health care that is “performing particularly poorly.” Reviewers found that hospitals and the nation’s health care system overall are not devoting enough attention to patient safety, often because hospitals fail to share information due to fears that their professional reputations might be damaged or to avoid medical malpractice lawsuits.

The most alarming increase occurred in the rate of sepsis infections, which are a form of body-wide inflammation that results from the reaction to an infection. Symptoms can include high heart rate, a high respiratory rate, a high or low body temperature and elevated white blood cell count. Sepsis can cause organ damage and organ failure, and severe cases result in death about 20 to 35% of the time.

Specifically, government researchers determined that there was an 8% increase in the rate of sepsis infections acquired after surgery, a 3.6% increase in the rate of urinary tract infections from catheters and a 1.6% increase in overall hospital acquired infections over the last year. There was no change in the rate of infections acquired from central venous catheters. However, hospitals made huge inroads in the fight against postoperative pneumonia, with an 11.6% decrease in cases.

“It is evident that more attention devoted to patient safety is needed to ensure that health care does not result in avoidable patient harm,” researchers state in the report. “Systems for identifying and learning from patient safety events need to be improved.”

The report indicates that the sharing of information needs to be improved in order for hospitals to get control of the infection problem. Researchers also said that there also needs to be more work in understanding the processes and conditions that lead to the spread of hospital infections, and there needs to be more done to identify the practices that are the most effective in preventing the spread of those infections.

The CDC reports that there are more than 2 million hospital infections acquired each year, resulting in about 90,000 deaths annually. Another 1.5 million long term care and nursing home infections occur every year.

In recent years, there has been an increasing number of hospital infection lawsuits filed throughout the United States, as experts widely believe that most of these potentially life-threatening infections can be prevented if steps are taken by the hospital and staff. These steps could include improved methods of handling catheter during insertion, leaving them in for shorter periods and improved hygiene. Many hospitals have instituted new rules to ensure that hands are washed and increased efforts are being taken to keep areas lie the ICU more sterile and catheters clean.

About a year and a half ago I posted the question as to whether or not the large industrial gas companies could replace Big Oil at some point in the future. My thinking was that if we transition from a petroleum based transportation system to one based upon hydrogen, what companies would be most likely to build the infrastructure?

Some of the big oil companies, to their credit, such as Shell and Chevron have put up a few hydrogen fueling stations even though it’s not in their best financial interests to do so (and have been scaling back recently). Oil is cheap and there is already a system in place for pumping oil, producing gasoline or diesel fuels and delivering it to stations for a low price.

Hydrogen, on the other hand, as an emerging technology is not yet cheap to produce, or distribute and there are few fueling stations in which to deliver it. These are just the facts as they stand now. So, Big Oil has no financial incentives to build a hydrogen fueling infrastructure. But how about Big Gas?

Some of the major industrial gas companies such as Air Products, Praxair, Linde and Air Liquide sell most of the hydrogen they currently produce to Big Oil’s refineries to desulfur petroleum.

There is already a vast network of hydrogen pipelines along the Gulf Coast region of the U. S. supplying hydrogen to refineries. And, according to Linde, “Hydrogen demand will increase in the upcoming years as a result of stricter environmental legislation, more extensive processing of residues and higher diesel demand compared with gasoline.”

This makes me wonder about the inherent conflict of interest that Big Gas may have with Big Oil. If Big Oil is one of the biggest customers of Big Gas and Big Oil is a major competitor in regard to the fueling stations as well, how will this scenario play out in the months and years to come?

Right now, all of the big gas companies I’ve mentioned have hydrogen fueling stations and pumps in some regions of the world, supplying H2 to vehicles. But, this isn’t real competition yet for Big Oil.

Building thousand of hydrogen fueling stations or even just hydrogen fueling pumps for current stations will be seen as a threat to Big Oil profits. And the Big Oil companies are not going to let this happen without a fight, perhaps changing vendors to the Big Gas companies that competes less with them.

This means that some Big Gas company will have to take a huge risk and have the financial backing to start putting up hydrogen fueling infrastructure knowing that their contracts may be dumped by Big Oil.

Which Big Gas company will be willing to take this risk? Of course no one knows for sure, but what if none of the big gas companies decide to take this risk – where does that leave us?

The upside to this scenario is that the market will be wide open for smaller players to build infrastructure and reap big profits especially if aided by government incentives. This also leaves the market open for hydrogen coops to form and buy their own hydrogen stations.

The manufacturers of hydrogen on demand pumps like ITM Power or Hydrogenics or the makers of hydrogen slurries may step in to fill the void. On another positive note, Big Gas may not build hydrogen stations, but may build hydrogen pumps and sell them to other parties. Air Products has developed a modular series production system for their hydrogen pumps that will bring the cost of these pumps down considerably.

But, when Air Products starts selling too many of these H2 pumps and they start cutting into the profits of Big Oil, then at that point, Big Oil is sure to notice and take action. This, however, will leave the market open for another smaller company with no ties to Big Oil and step in to take over the market.

Like FedEx did for the shipping industry, some smaller hydrogen fueling company may do for the hydrogen transportation system. Starting small with some Big Idea we may see an unknown company come out of nowhere to become a transformational company for the building of the upcoming nationwide hydrogen highway network.