Science & Technology

In a bold move, the UK Government has announced the creation of a £1 million prize for a new “grand innovation challenge.”  According to Prime Minister David Cameron, the award would go to the next “penicillin” or a plane that could fly carbon-neutral across the Atlantic. This effort will complement the £1 million Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. The inaugural prize will be awarded to the inventors of the Internet and World Wide Web in London on June 25, 2013. The prize will not only recognize those who come up with outstanding ideas, but it will also serve as source of inspiration for young people.

The global community is increasingly facing critical challenges in healthcare, energy, sustainability, and agriculture.  These issues are technologically complex, requiring scientific literacy among politicians, policymakers, and populations in both developed and developing nations.  Moreover, these issues demand innovative discoveries, requiring well-trained engineers to both invent creative and cost-effective solutions as well as inform decisionmakers on relevant technical considerations.

I am on my way back from the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Cape Town, South Africa. This was a remarkable meeting with an overwhelming intellectual energy. The event was unique in many respects. But foremost, it was anchored by a preliminary meeting of the Grow Africa venture where private enterprises have pledged $3.5 billion in support to African agriculture. This was a serious event that involved heads of state and government from eight African countries. I had the unique opportunity to be part of a small group of people working to connect science and technology with the larger business agenda of WEF.

The rise of emerging markets is heralded as a force that will change the global balance of power. But behind the rise of the new economies lies a strong commitment to leveraging engineering as a foundation for economic transformation. Engineering provides the basic foundations for economic growth such as energy, transportation, irrigation, and telecommunications. Yet the men and women who build and maintain these systems are hardly recognized. The announcement of the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering will go a long way toward helping the international community appreciate the role that engineers have played in making modern civilization possible.

In recent years the major focus of China’s engagement in Africa has been on economic diplomacy. Much of this debate has been influenced by concerns over China’s rise as an economic superpower and the preoccupation with viewing Africa through the jaded natural resource lens. A closer look at Africa’s growing economic diplomacy reveals a more complex picture involving other important emerging market economies as illustrated by economic relations with Brazil. Africa’s relations with Brazil highlight the emergence of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) as a new economic alliance that is reshaping international trading relations.

From the MIT Technology Review: "This package is meant to capture the rich variety of ways that innovations get commercialized. Each company on this list has done something over the past year that will strengthen its hold on a market, challenge the leaders of a market, or create a new market....[S]ome of these companies, like the thermostat maker Nest, have burst forth with a breakthrough product, and the question now is what the next one will be. Others, like the battery startup Ambri, are still on the verge of their breakthrough.

  A few months ago, I discovered that my excessive fatigue and uneasy sleep were caused by an underlying condition of severe sleep apnea. This malady causes one to stop breathing while sleeping. Humans of course, need to breathe, so the end result is that sufferers keep waking up every 5 minutes or so to restart the breathing process, all the while remaining blissfully unaware of multiple interruptions to their sleep. That is, until the fatigue begins upon waking. In my case, the recommended treatment was a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airways Pressure) machine.

From the current Issues in Science and Technology: "U.S. science policy since World War II has in large measure been driven by Vannevar Bush’s famous paper Science—The Endless Frontier. Bush’s separation of research into 'basic' and 'applied' domains has been enshrined in much of U.S. science and technology policy over the past seven decades, and this false dichotomy has become a barrier to the development of a coherent national innovation policy. Much of the debate centers on the appropriate federal role in innovation.