The many uses of Making electronics Who’s jamming bioluminescence bend and stretch your satnav? TechnologyQuarterly March 12th 2011

The hole story The quest to sequence a human genome in 15 minutes

TQCOV-March12-2011.indd 1 01/03/2011 13:37 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 Monitor 1

C ontents

On the cover Feeding strands of DNA through tiny holes, called nanopores, and reading o the genetic letters one at a time could make the process of genomic sequencing much quicker and cheaper. This would have momentous implications for genetic Rkoc s on the menu analysis and medical treatment: page 9

Monitor 1 Rock•eating bugs, robots that rescue soldiers, anti•theft tags, beaming power by laser, more elegant pylons, the erosion of Biotechnology: High commodity prices have encouraged the use of online anonymity, a camera mineral•munching bugs to extract metals from waste or low•grade ore that sees round corners, an exoskeleton for paraplegics, VEN the sleekest gadget depends on the ores and mining wastes with low metal the internet•addiction debate, Emucky business of digging stu out of concentrations. It is also generally cleaner. and an invitation to nominate the ground. Mobile phones and comput• Material containing poisonous elements innovators for our awards ers use copper for their wiring and rely on such as arsenic is unsuitable for smelting cobalt, germanium, lithium, nickel, plati• because of the risk of pollution. num and tantalum for other components. For many years bioleaching has been Di erence engine Electric motors need magnets made of used to recover gold from ores that are 8 Renumbering the net Œrare earth elements such as neodymi• hard to break down using heat treatment We’ve run out of internet um. But rising metal prices and China’s (known as Œroasting). The bacteria are set addresses. What happens now? tightening grip on supplies of rare•earth to work in huge stirred tanks, called bio• elements (it accounts for 97% of produc• reactors, containing ground•up rocks and Nanopore sequencing tion), have heightened the appeal of †nd• dilute sulphuric acid. The bacteria change 9 The hole story ing other sources of supply. The result is one form of iron found within the ore Towards the 15•minute genome growing interest in the use of rock•eating (ferrous iron) to another (ferric iron) and bacteria to extract metals from low•grade tap the energy released. In acidic solutions Stretchable electronics ores, mining waste or industrial e‰uent. ferric iron is a powerful oxidising agent. It 11 Flexible strategies Rock•eating bacteria such as Acidithio• breaks down sulphide minerals and re• Making circuits stretch and bend bacillus and Leptospirillum are naturally leases any associated metals. occurring organisms that thrive in nasty, In the past it has been hard to recover Inside story acidic environments. They obtain energy metals other than gold pro†tably in this from chemical reactions with sulphides, way. But high commodity prices mean 13 Exploiting bioluminescence ŒLiving light has many uses in and can thus accelerate the breakdown of that bioleaching of a variety of metals has medicine, warfare and even food minerals. Base metals such as iron, copper, become an attractive prospect in recent zinc and cobalt occur widely as sulphides, years. In 2008, for example, a new venture and more valuable metals such as gold started operating in Talvivaara, Finland. It GPS jamming and uranium are also present in the same was set up as the result of a European 16 Don’t block my satnav bodies of ore. With a little help from the research project called BioShale, which How to keep jammers at bay mineral•munchers, these metals can be showed that bacteria could recover nickel, released in a process called bioleaching. copper, lead, silver, zinc, cobalt, rhenium, Brain scan This approach has its pros and cons. To selenium, tin, gold, platinum, palladium 18 Betting on green recover large quantities of metals quickly and uranium from Europe’s extensive but A pro†le of Vinod Khosla, who is from ores with a high metal content, underexploited Œblack shale deposits. taking a risky clean•tech gamble smelting remains the most pro†table Last year the Talvivaara Mining Company route. Bioleaching is slower, but it is also produced over 10,000 tonnes of nickel cheaper, making it well•suited for treating and 25,000 tonnes of zinc from local 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011

2 s hales, and it plans to deliver 90,000 tonnes of zinc, 1,800 tonnes of cobalt and 15,000 tonnes of copper a year by 2012. In 2010 the †rm started to extract uranium, Caught in a BEAR hug and expects to produce 350 tonnes a year. Other metals may follow. In Chile, which has 30% of the world’s copper deposits, BHP Billiton, a mining giant, has set up two bioleaching oper• R obotics: A newly designed robot can recover casualties from battle†elds, ations in the past three years, each aiming and might also be able to make itself useful to soldiers in other ways for around 200,000 tonnes of copper production a year. The Finnish and Chil• ILLING a soldier removes one enemy design a general•purpose robot. ean ventures both use bioheaps, which Kfrom the fray. Wounding him removes The BEAR’s operator can control the are vast, carefully engineered piles of three: the victim and the two who have to robot in two ways. One, a joystick, can be ground•up ore (in Chile, 2,000 metres carry him from the battle†eld. That cyni• embedded into the grip of a ri‡e and long, over 100 metres wide and nearly 20 cal calculation lies behind the design of manoeuvred by the soldier’s †ngertip metres high), irrigated from above with many weapons that are intended to inca• when he is holding his weapon to his dilute sulphuric acid laced with bacterial pacitate rather than annihilate. But robot• shoulder. The advantage of this is that he cultures, and aerated from below. Using ics may change the equation. does not need to put his gun down to many di erent organisms within the The Battle†eld Extraction•Assist Robot, rescue his comrades. The other means of heaps gives the best results, says Barrie or BEAR for short, is, in the words of Gary control, a special glove designed by An• Johnson, a researcher at the University of Gilbert of the United States Army’s Tele• throTronix, another Maryland †rm, can Bangor in North Wales, who has been medicine and Advanced Technology sense the wearer’s hand movements and working on bioleaching with Rio Tinto, Research Centre (TATRC), Œa highly agile direct the BEAR accordingly. If, for ex• another mining giant. ŒWe †nd one ore and powerful mobile robot capable of ample, the gloved hand moves to the left, type will suit one consortium of organ• lifting and carrying a combat casualty the robot will follow. If the hand moves isms, and another might be better with a from a hazardous area across uneven backwards, the robot will slow down or di erent mixture, he says. terrain. When it is not saving lives, it can stop. If the glove’s wearer closes his †st, Meanwhile a Canadian †rm, BacTech perform diˆcult and repetitive tasks, such the robot takes that as an instruction to Mining Corporation, which sells a bio• as loading and unloading ammunition. grip an object with its arms. leaching process for gold extraction, has The current prototype BEAR is a small, Over the past year BEAR has been set up a new division to apply the tech• tracked vehicle with two hydraulic arms tested at the army’s Infantry Centre nology to mining waste. At the town of and a set of video cameras that provide a Manoeuvre Battle Laboratory in Fort Cobalt in Canada it plans to remove toxic view of its surroundings to its operator via Benning, Georgia. It has shown that it can elements such as arsenic from old silver• a wireless link. It has been developed by travel at around 12mph (19kph) across a ‡at mine tailings and extract cobalt, nickel and TATRC in collaboration with Vecna Tech• surface. It can also move over soil, sand silver. ŒFirst and foremost, we are trying to nologies, a company based in Maryland and gravel, through trees and inside build• remediate the environment, explains that invented the robot. Daniel Theobald, ings, albeit at lower speeds. Several more Paul Miller, vice•president of engineering BEAR’s inventor and Vecna’s boss, says years of tests are planned (this is the army, at BacTech. ŒBut by doing that, we also versatility is at the heart of the robot’s after all), but Dr Gilbert is optimistic that hope to recover valuable metals. design. ŒIt would be completely impracti• BEAR will come through them. If it does, Metals can also be extracted from cal if you had robots with a sole duty to soldiers will be able to get on with their polluted water. Water sources near dis• rescue soldiers, because they would primary job of killing the enemy, without used mines are often contaminated, as spend most of their time unused, he says. having to worry so much about what the water drains through old waste dumps. In ŒThe whole idea from the start was to enemy has done to their friends. 7 Germany a †rm called GEOS has set up a pilot plant on a coal•mining site to clean the iron•laced groundwater using bacteria. Organisms with slightly di erent dietary preferences, known as sulphur• reducing bacteria, show promise for re• moving dissolved metals from liquid industrial waste. Paques, a †rm based in the Netherlands, has a commercial pro• cess for recovering zinc using such bacte• ria, and British researchers in Birmingham and Dundee have recently retrieved palla• dium and platinum in this way, too. Interest in bioleaching shows no sign of abating. As part of a European project called ProMine, geologists are mapping Europe’s mineral resources to a depth of 5km (3.1miles) in an e ort to stimulate the mining industry and reduce dependence on imports. Integral to the project is fur• ther development of biological metal• recovery methods. In Europe, at least, mineral•munching microbes can expect long•term employment‹and lunch. 7 Carrying out an important duty The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 Monitor 3

Do Not Attempt Beam it up to steal

S ecurity technology: Special E nergy: Laser beams can deliver transparent adhesives, dabbed on energy to machines through thin air. valuables or sprayed on thieves, are This might be a good way to power helping police solve crimes drone aircraft or a space elevator HE rising price of metals over recent HE Pelican, a small, remotely con• Tyears, fuelled by booming demand in Ttrolled helicopter drone weighing less China and other emerging economies, has than a kilogram, is powered by a battery caused thieves to turn their attention to that provides about 20 minutes’ ‡ying. things that would previously not have And yet, one evening last October, the merited a second glance: rubbish bins, Now anything can have a †ngerprint Pelican took o , rose ten metres and hov• manhole covers, traˆc lights, industrial ered throughout the night. It was brought piping and‹perhaps most worrying‹ like celluloid, survives †re. Besides the down in the morning only because the electrical cables, telephone lines and the microdots, each batch also contains a exhibition hall near Seattle, where it was wires that control railway signals. In one unique combination of up to 30 com• airborne, was about to open for business. English county alone, the West Midlands, pounds of rare•earth metals. Checking This remarkable feat was achieved 52 thefts of metal from railways over the these is a bit more complicated than look• with the ingenious use of a laser beam. course of 18 months have resulted in the ing down a microscope. But if a dealer or The laser, aimed from the ground at photo• delay or cancellation of 1,500 trains, ac• the police have reason to suspect a piece voltaic cells mounted on the Pelican’s cording to Tom Watson, a local member of of scrap might be stolen, then Smart• underside, charged the chopper’s battery, Parliament. Indeed, Paul Crowther, depu• Water’s laboratory can tell them who keeping her aloft for an unprecedented 12 ty chief constable of the British Transport bought the batch of adhesive in question. hours and 27 minutes. An optical•tracking Police, the force responsible for keeping an Selectamark’s technology also uses system kept the laser beam on target, eye on the railways, describes metal theft microdots, though instead of celluloid it creating a Œscienti†cally exciting, yet a as the second•greatest threat, after terro• employs polyester or a nickel•based alloy, little boring experience, according to rism, to Britain’s infrastructure. depending on the type of adhesive in• Michael Achtelik of the Pelican’s German It would be useful, then, for scrap volved. In place of mixtures of rare•earth manufacturer, Ascending Technologies, dealers who are o ered metal objects of compounds, its unique chemical markers after a long night monitoring ‡ight data. unknown provenance to be able to tell are short stretches of DNA, each with a Keeping drones aloft is not the only quickly whether they have been stolen di erent sequence of genetic code. putative application of power beaming, as and, if so, from whom, so that they can DNA, indeed, seems to have a talis• this technology is known. Five years ago inform the police. Two small British †rms, manic quality in the †ght against crime. NASA, America’s space agency, o ered SmartWater Technology, based in Telford, Even SmartWater, which does not actually prize money to any team that could build and Selectamark Security Systems of use DNA, refers to its unique chemical a remotely powered robot able to climb Locksbottom, think they have worked out identi†ers as Œsynthetic DNA. Both com• quickly up a cable. Only in 2009, however, ways of letting them do just that. panies say the mere act of alluding to their were the †rst of these prizes claimed, SmartWater’s invention is a special products as a type of DNA helps deter when three teams from America and adhesive that can be painted onto objects criminals‹rather as the original DNA• Canada demonstrated climbing robots that might be stolen. Though invisible in identi†cation technology was often re• powered by lasers on the ground. Laser• normal light once it has hardened, this ferred to as Œ†ngerprinting, even though Motive, the Seattle company that designed adhesive glows yellow when illuminated it has nothing to do with †ngerprints. the Pelican’s laser system, won $900,000 by a beam of ultraviolet light. That, by Films and television shows have drama• by powering a 5kg robot up almost a itself, acts as a warning that goods might tised the use of DNA from crime scenes to kilometre of cable dangling from a be stolen, but the real trick is what hap• convict miscreants, generating what Jason manned helicopter. LaserMotive’s beam 1 pens next. The adhesive also contains Brown, Selectamark’s head of sales, calls a celluloid microdots the size of sand grains ŒDNA fear factor. The police concur, that have been imprinted with Smart• saying that when DNA warning signs are Water’s phone number and a code identi• posted prominently, crime drops. fying the metal’s owner. These can be read For those not deterred by magic words, under a microscope and a quick phone though, both †rms have an extra surprise. call will reveal whether the goods are, They also sell spray•can kits, to be in• indeed, stolen‹or have been sold legiti• stalled above doors or near valuables. mately by an owner who has forgotten to These are triggered by motion detectors or clean them †rst. the press of a button by a shop assistant or Of course, a thief who believes his householder. Even if a thief notices the swag might have been so marked might mist, he is marked for days. The spray attempt such cleaning himself. Thieves lodges in pores and creases in the skin, sometimes burn o the insulation on available to the swab of a curious police electrical cabling anyway. So SmartWater oˆcer and branding the thief as e ective• has found a further way to encode infor• ly as his own DNA would, had he left any mation in its adhesives‹one which, un• at the scene of the crime. 7 This Pelican can hover 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011

2 struck a photovoltaic panel on the robot, to the poles. The resulting arrangement, generating electricity that turned a set of though hardly invisible, is reasonably wheels gripping the cable. elegant. As much to the point, though, it Conventional photovoltaic cells, made has technological advantages. Although of silicon, are designed to collect energy they have not been found to cause any from sunlight. LaserMotive uses special harm, the cables on conventional pylons, cells made with arsenic and gallium, which transmit a three•phase alternating which are better able to capture the near• current, generate a strong electric †eld and infra•red wavelengths of its laser beam. a continuous buzz of low•frequency radio The panel on the climbing robot, about the waves. Some people who live near them size of a co ee tray, harvested enough fear this might be bad for their health. power to run a small lawnmower. One of TenneT’s pylons should help allay that LaserMotive’s founders, Jordin Kare, fear. Carrying all the cables in a Œstack reckons that a similar laser could deliver between the poles, rather than hanging about as much energy 20km up if the them separately on outward•facing arms, panel were only a few times larger. allows them to be arranged in a way that One reason NASA supports power causes the individual †elds generated by beaming is that it hopes the technology each cable to cancel each other out, weak• could be used to help run a space elevator. ening the overall †eld around the pylons. This is a machine, familiar from science The result is far less low•frequency radia• †ction, which some engineers think could tion. The combination of being less of an be made science fact. In essence, it would eyesore and producing less electrical smog be a giant cable reaching tens of thou• should, TenneT hopes, soften objections sands of kilometres into space to an orbit• to the construction of new overhead ing satellite. Cable•climbing robots, pow• power lines. ered by laser beams shot upward from the That is important for two reasons. First, ground, or downward from space, would the alternative‹burying high•tension take payloads to orbit. Rockets would thus lines‹is expensive and largely futile. The become redundant. Indeed, Andy Petro of cost of putting a cable underground is NASA’s technology oˆce in Washington, between four and ten times as much as DC, says power beaming might change the that of carrying it on a pylon. On top of economics of space exploration complete• that, the †eld generated by an alternating ly. Lasers beamed from landing craft could, current interacts with the ground more he says, power rovers in sunless areas of Towering strongly than it does with the air. This the moon or Mars, such as craters where creates losses 40 times higher in a buried water might be found. beauty? cable than in an aerial one. Unless the Power beaming is also becoming more long•distance•transmission system were eˆcient. A few years ago lasers typically converted to direct current (which reduces converted less than 40% of the electrical E nergy: A rather more elegant way to transmission losses, but brings problems energy used to run them into beam power. convey electrical cables across the of its own), burial of transmission lines is The †gure is now about 60%, and costs countryside may be coming soon not a serious option. have dropped‹the result of e orts to The second reason TenneT’s pylons develop better laser printers, CD burners to a †eld near you may be important is that despite these and even hair•removal devices. Moreover, PYLON is supposed to be a beautiful problems, a lot of new long•distance• engineers have worked out how to make Athing. In ancient Egypt, pairs of taper• transmission lines are going to have to be laser beams more intense by using short ing stone towers called pylons marked the constructed, and soon. Wind power from lengths of optical †bre to narrow the entrances of temples. Christian architects the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean will beam. Such intense lasers are better suited borrowed the idea for the twin towers require that. So, more speculatively, will to power•beaming because the cells that above the façades of many Gothic cathe• the idea of generating solar power in collect the laser light can be smaller. drals. Whoever thought of appropriating north Africa and transmitting it to Europe. The Pelican’s successful ‡ight probably the word for the ugly metal•lattice struc• In the Netherlands alone, TenneT says, means that the †rst big application for tures that carry high•tension power lines more than 400km (250 miles) of new lines power beaming will be supplying energy across the countryside was therefore are needed. In Germany the state•owned to drones. At the moment, most small guilty of both a public•relations triumph energy agency, DENA, reckons the †gure is drones rely on battery power, so their and an act of etymological vandalism. more than 3,500km. At a recent meeting of ‡ights are short. LaserMotive reports that The latter, however, may soon be re• the European Council, on February 4th, American army oˆcials, including some deemed. The latest generation of electric• the leaders of the European Union’s mem• responsible for special•forces kit, have ity pylons are, in the eyes of some, at least, ber states acknowledged that Europe expressed an interest in power•beaming things of beauty in their own right. needs a completely new power grid, a systems for drones. DARPA, the American The pylons in question have been project they reckon will cost about ¤200 Defence Department’s technology agency, designed by engineers at TenneT, the †rm billion ($270 billion). The overhead power is also sponsoring research into power that runs the Netherlands’ national elec• problem is thus going to have to be solved beaming. British readers of a certain age tricity grid, in collaboration with KEMA, a one way or another. may remember that the spaceships ‡own Dutch research company. Instead of a In truth, of course, no pylon is ever by Dan Dare, Britain’s answer to Buck single lattice tower, the cables are sup• going to be a more attractive feature of the Rogers, were powered by Œimpulse ported by two elegant steel poles up to 65 countryside than no pylon at all. But if waves, beamed from Earth. That piece of metres high. There are no arms. The six pylons have to be built‹which they do‹ science †ction, too, may prove not to have cables that pass from one pylon to another then something elegant and eˆcient is the been quite so wide of the mark. 7 are each borne by two insulators attached least bad way of doing it. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 Monitor 5

groups, containing a total of more than 1.8m users, suggested that his rogue site would be able to determine the identity of Anonymous no more around four in ten visitors. A trial run, in which Mr Wondracek invited colleagues who use Xing to visit his history•stealing site, showed this estimate to be about right. The vulnerability he exploited has T he internet: It is becoming ever more diˆcult to browse the internet since been addressed by the engineers without leaving behind digital footprints that reveal your identity behind several browsers, including Firefox and Safari, but has so far not been †xed in AY back in the early days of the In 2010, however, privacy experts twice Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Wweb, in 1993, the New Yorker ran a pointed out that Facebook was sending Meanwhile, Facebook has quietly cartoon featuring two dogs sitting in front information about its users to the same gained the ability to monitor its users’ of a computer. The internet•savvy canine advertisers that track browsing using wanderings elsewhere on the web. Many is saying to its friend: ŒOn the internet, cookies. It is not known what, if anything, sites now include Facebook ŒLike but• nobody knows you’re a dog. This joke the advertisers did with this information. tons. Click one, and your Facebook pro†le captured the freewheeling anonymity of The potential, however, is clear: the Face• will be updated with a message linking to the early stages of internet adoption, but it book data could have been used to de• the page in question. This feature helps doesn’t work now. Today websites often anonymise the browsing histories associ• people share content with friends, but it know a great deal about their visitors, ated with the cookies. Facebook plugged also allows Facebook to track its users’ including their names and interests. this leak of personal information, but only browsing. In fact, merely going to a page The ability to use the internet anony• after the problem was given prominent containing a ŒLike button while logged mously is being eroded on several fronts. coverage in the Wall Street Journal. When into Facebook is enough to notify the Some popular websites, including Face• the leak was highlighted by computer social network of your visit, whether or book, the leading social network, and scientists in August 2009, nine months not you click the button. Quora, a popular question•and•answer earlier, Facebook took no action. Where is all this heading? It is clear that site, require users to give their real names, Another anonymity•eroding tech• many †rms can now track people as they and block people who are suspected of nique was recently ‡agged by computer move around the web, and can some• using pseudonyms. Other sites ask that scientists. It relies on Œhistory stealing, in times link these browsing histories to users provide their real names in order to which a security ‡aw in a user’s web speci†c individuals and their personal be able to leave comments, in the hope browser allows rogue websites to retrieve information. If the days of anonymous that discussions will be more civil if peo• fragments of his browsing history. This browsing are not over yet, some observers ple have to reveal their identities. may not directly reveal his identity, but think they soon will be. As Julie Cohen, a In recent months security researchers can be very revealing. For example, if a legal scholar at Georgetown University, have shown that if you use your real user has joined three groups on a social put it in a prescient paper published 15 identity on some sites, you can be identi• network, there is a limited overlap be• years ago, the internet era is Œas much an †ed when you visit others. One way this tween the groups’ membership lists, and age of information about readers as it is an can happen involves Œcookies, the snip• those lists are public, it may simply be a age of information for readers. Speaking pets of data that websites deposit on matter of working out who belongs to all at the Techonomy conference last year, visitors’ computers, so that returning three groups. Eric Schmidt of Google distinguished visitors can be recognised. It sounds This sounds rather contrived, but it between privacy, which he said should be creepy, but cookies are generally ano• works in practice. Gilbert Wondracek at respected, and anonymity. ŒAbsolute nymised. Cookies can reveal things about the Vienna University of Technology in anonymity could lead to some very diˆ• your browsing habits‹they are used to Austria and his colleagues built a history• cult decisions for our governments and target advertising, for example, based on stealing website aimed at groups on Xing, our society as a whole, he said. other sites you have visited‹but they do a business•orientated social network. Mr But anonymity is freeing. It lets people not usually know who you are. Wondracek’s analysis of over 6,500 Xing go online and read about fringe political viewpoints, look up words they are embarrassed not to know the meaning of, or search for a new job without being thought extrem• ist, stupid or disloyal. In America some judges have recognised that browsing habits will change if people feel that they are being watched. In rejecting a govern• ment demand for book•purchase data from Amazon, an online retailer, a judge wrote that the release of the information would create a chilling e ect that would Œfrost keyboards across America. Librarians have long understood this, which is why they keep read• ers’ †les con†dential. But many of the new custodians of people’s reading records do not seem in• clined to do the same. 7 6 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011

H ow to see The right round corners trousers Digital imaging: An unusual new type of camera analyses the R obotics: An arti†cial exoskeleton, re‡ections of a laser pulse to do the akin to a pair of robotic trousers, seemingly impossible promises to bring hope and dignity HOTOGRAPHY can perform many to paraplegics by letting them walk Ptricks. Until now, though, looking ONFINEMENT to a wheelchair is not around corners has not been one of C merely frustrating and degrading. It is them. Ramesh Raskar of the Massachu• positively bad for the health. People con• setts Institute of Technology plans to †ned to wheelchairs often su er urinary, change that. He and two of his students, respiratory, cardiovascular and digestive• Ahmed Kirmani and Andreas Velten, system problems, as well as osteoporosis have developed a camera that can see and pressure sores. Amit Go er, an Israeli what other cameras cannot. engineer, knows this all too well. In 1997 In standard ‡ash photography a Dr Go er had an accident that left him burst of light strikes a subject, and some partially paralysed. Being an engineer, he of it bounces back to the camera to decided to do something about it. The Standing tall create an image. Dr Raskar’s device is result is a pair of Œrobotic trousers that he similar, but with one crucial di erence. calls ReWalk. be cleared for sale by the end of the year. Instead of recording light re‡ected di• The idea of a powered, arti†cial exo• Dr Go er says his aim is to enable rectly, it records light that has been re• skeleton will be familiar to cinema•goers paralysed people to lead normal lives. As ‡ected several times on the way back. from †lms such as ŒAliens and ŒAvatar. well as giving users the ability to walk, the For example, a photographer taking In both of those movies, however, the device also helps them regain their digni• a picture of someone standing out of device ampli†es the user’s power and ty. When someone is in a wheelchair his sight in a room with a half•open door strength. ReWalk, an exoskeletal version head is at the height of an average per• might aim the camera at the door. Light of the pelvic girdle and the legs’ bones and son’s waist. This literal diminution of his from the ‡ash would be re‡ected o the muscles, has a more modest aim: to re• stature can reduce his metaphorical stat• door and onto both the person and the store power and strength to the user’s legs. ure, too. Once able to stand up, his stature, walls behind that person. Some of this ReWalk consists of a set of plastic• in both senses of the word, is restored‹ light would then travel back to the door covered aluminium struts, linked by actu• and that can be just as valuable as the and be re‡ected into the camera. That ator motors, that are strapped to the legs health and mobility bene†ts. 7 much is basic optics. and waist, and a backpack. With these, The trick is what the camera does and a pair of crutches for backup, a user with the incoming light. A computer can walk around. An array of sensors identi†es which incoming rays came distributed along the struts and around back early because they bounced o the the wearer’s body feeds information to a Addicted? person, and which came back later computer in the backpack, which tells the because they bounced o the walls actuators what to do. Really? behind the person. A geometric recon• The wearer starts by telling the com• struction of where the various light rays puter what he is trying to achieve. A re• have been then creates an image of mote control strapped to one wrist o ers T he internet: Mental•health what could not ordinarily be seen. several modes of action: Œstand, Œsit, specialists disagree over whether to Because the ‡ash must survive mul• Œwalk, and Œascend and Œdescend for classify compulsive online behaviour tiple re‡ections without being absorbed staircases. Once strapped in, the user or becoming too weak, not just any light chooses Œwalk mode, pushes his crutches as addiction‹and how to treat it can be used. It must be a laser. Dr Raskar outward and is o . Algorithms devised by RAIG SMALLWOOD, a disabled and his students are working with one Dr Go er’s colleagues at Argo Medical C American war veteran, spent more that †res its pulse in a thousand bil• Technologies, the †rm he founded to than 20,000 hours over †ve years playing lionth of a second. This ensures that develop ReWalk, analyse the data from the an online role•playing game called ŒLi• re‡ections from di erent places are sensors and use the result to operate the neage II. When NCsoft, the South Korean easier to tell apart, because they do not actuators. Experience shows the device †rm behind the game, accused him of blur into one another. can be worn all day without discomfort. breaking the game’s rules and banned At the moment the camera can pro• ReWalk is now undergoing trials in him, he was plunged into depression, duce only low•quality images, and Israel, America and Europe. Two versions severe paranoia and hallucinations. He cannot cope with objects that have of the device are being developed. One, spent three weeks in hospital. He sued several sorts of surface material. But Dr for supervised use in hospitals and reha• NCsoft for fraud and negligence, demand• Raskar reckons that his technique will bilitation centres, is already available for ing over $9m in damages and claiming eventually open a range of applications, sale in Europe for ¤87,500 ($120,000) and that the company acted negligently by from studying inaccessible nooks and has just been approved in America. The failing to warn him of the danger that he crannies of the human body to looking other, for the unsupervised use of those would become Œaddicted to the game. into burning buildings. who have undergone such training, is still But does it make sense to talk of addic• under scrutiny, but Dr Go er hopes it will tion to online activity? Mental•health 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 Monitor 7

2 specialists say three online behaviours can become problematic for many people: video games, pornography and messaging via e•mail and social networks. But there B right sparks is far less agreement about whether any of this should be called Œinternet addic• tion‹or how to treat it. Some mental•health specialists want• Innovation Awards: We e invit ed Œinternet addiction to be included in nominations for our annual prizes the †fth version of psychiatry’s bible, the recognising successful innovators ŒDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of in seven categories Mental Disorders, known as DSM•V, which is currently being overhauled. The HE ECONOMIST’S tenth annual American Medical Association endorsed TInnovation Summit will take place in the idea in 2007, only to backtrack days London on October 21st. Expert speak• later. The American Journal of Psychiatry ers will examine the latest trends in called internet addiction a Œcommon innovation, from the laboratory to the disorder and supported its recognition. marketplace. For this year’s tenth anni• Last year the DSM•V drafting group made versary event we will be inviting all of its decision: internet addiction would not our previous winners to participate. be included as a Œbehavioural addiction‹ And at an awards ceremony on the only gambling made the cut‹but it said evening of October 20th we will present further study was warranted. this year’s awards to successful innova• Sceptics say there is nothing uniquely tors in a range of †elds. addictive about the internet. Back in 2000 Accordingly, readers are invited to Joseph Walther, a communications profes• nominate outstanding innovators in sor at Michigan State University, co•wrote seven categories: bioscience (which an article in which he suggested, tongue in includes medical devices, pharmaceu• cheek, that the criteria used to call some• ticals, biotechnology and agriculture); one an internet addict might also show energy and the environment; comput• that most professors were Œaddicted to ing and telecommunications; Œno academia. He argued that other factors, boundaries (including nanotech• such as depression, are the real problem. It has also opened more than 100 clinics nology and other emerging †elds); He stands by that view today. ŒNo scientif• for internet addiction and sponsored an consumer products and services; busi• ic evidence has emerged to suggest that Œinternet rescue camp for serious cases. ness processes; and social and eco• internet use is a cause rather than a conse• But compulsive behaviour is not limit• nomic innovation, a category that recog• quence of some other sort of issue, he ed to gamers. E•mail or web•use behav• nises individuals who have pioneered says. ŒFocusing on and treating people for iours can also show signs of addiction. technologies and business models that internet addiction, rather than looking for Getting through a business lunch in which improve everyday lives. Nominees underlying clinical issues, is unwise. no one pulls out a phone to check their should be people, not companies, be• Others disagree. ŒThat would be messages now counts as a minor miracle hind an innovation that has been a wrong, says Kimberly Young, a research• in many quarters. A deluge of self•help proven success in the past decade. er and therapist who has worked on in• books, most recently ŒAlone Together by Please submit your nominations by ternet addiction since 1994. She insists that Sherry Turkle, a social scientist at the visiting economistinnovation.com, the internet, with its powerfully immer• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where you will be asked to supply the sive environments, creates new problems o er advice on how to unplug. nominee’s name, aˆliation and contact that people must learn to navigate. Pornography is hardly new, either, but details, and a 200•word summary ex• No one disputes that online habits can the internet makes accessing it much plaining why the person in question turn toxic. Take South Korea, where ubiq• easier than ever before. When something deserves to win in a particular category. uitous broadband means that the average can be summoned in an instant via broad• The deadline is April 7th. high•school student plays video games for band, whether it is a game world, an 23 hours each week. In 2007 the govern• e•mail inbox or pornographic material, it ment estimated that around 210,000 is harder to resist. New services lead to are the preferred way to treat internet children needed treatment for internet new complaints. When online auction problems. After several deaths, however, addiction. Last year newspapers around sites †rst became popular, talk of ŒeBay scrutiny of the camps has intensi†ed. the globe carried the story of a South addiction soon followed. Dr Young says Yet many people like feeling perma• Korean couple who fed their infant daugh• women complain to her now about addic• nently connected. As Arikia Millikan, an ter so little that she starved to death. In• tion to Facebook‹or even to ŒFarmVille, a American blogger, once put it, ŒIf I could stead of caring for the child, the couple game playable only within Facebook. be jacked in at every waking hour of the spent most nights at an internet café, Treatment centres have popped up day, I would, and I think a lot of my peers sinking hours into a role•playing game in around the world. In 2006 Amsterdam’s would do the same. Bob LaRose, an which they raised, fed and cared for a Smith & Jones facility billed itself as Œthe internet specialist at Michigan State Uni• virtual daughter. And several South Kore• †rst and, currently, the only residential versity, doesn’t believe her. In his research an men have died from exhaustion after video•game treatment program in the on college students, he found that most marathon, multi•day gaming sessions. world. In America the reSTART Internet sense when they are Œgoing overboard The South Korean government has Addiction Recovery Program claims to and restore self•control. Less than 1% since asked game developers to adopt a treat internet addiction, gaming addiction, have a pathological problem, he adds. For gaming curfew for children, to prevent and even Œtexting addiction. In China, most people, internet use Œis just a habit‹ them playing between midnight and 8am. meanwhile, military•style Œboot camps and one that brings us pleasure. 7 8 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 D i erence engine Renumbering the net

The internet: Just as car number plates and telephone dialling codes need to be updated every so often to allow for growth, so does the internet’s addressing system. But it should not need updating again any time soon EMEMBER the panic over the Œmillen• of unique identi†ers for decades, or even That speeds things up no end. But al• Rnium bug, when computers every• centuries, to come. though the two internet versions can coex• where were expected to go haywire on Jan• Two raised to the 128th power is an ist on a single device, they have to operate uary 1st 2000, thanks to the way a lot of old enormous number: roughly 340 billion bil• as two separate networks. When an IPv4 software used just two digits to represent lion billion billion‹or, as Martin Levy of device needs to communicate with an the year instead of four? Doomsters pre• Hurricane Electric likes to say, Œmore than IPv6 device, various relay services and dicted all sorts of errors in calculations in• four quadrillion addresses for every star in tunnelling tricks have to be employed, volving dates when the clocks rolled over the observable universe. That will come with IPv6 packets getting wrapped inside from 99 to 00. In the event, the millennium in handy when the Œinternet of things be• IPv4 packets and vice versa. dawned without incident. comes a reality. Already, some 2 billion It seems likely that the two separate in• Something similar is about to happen people have access to the internet, many of ternets will have to live side by side for the again, and this time it cannot be ignored. foreseeable future. That could mean put• The problem is the exhaustion of internet ting up with interoperability hassles for protocol (IP) addresses‹the four numbers decades‹in the United States, at least. Be• ranging from 0 to 255, separated by dots, ing the inventor and earliest user of the in• that uniquely identify every device at• ternet, America received the lion’s share of tached to the internet. According to Hurri• addresses before today’s rules were put in cane Electric, an internet backbone and place. As a result, many large companies, services provider based in Fremont, Cali• universities and government agencies still fornia, the internet ran out of bulk IP ad• have plenty of spare IPv4 addresses lying dresses on February 3rd. around unused. The pressure to upgrade The Internet Assigned Numbers Au• has therefore been minimal. thority, which oversees such things, had That is not the case elsewhere. The big• doled out all its so•called Œslash•eight gest single demonstration of IPv6 to date blocks of addresses to the †ve regional in• was during the 2008 Summer Olympics in ternet registries around the world. The reg• Beijing, when everything from live televi• istries are expected to allocate all their re• sion and data feeds to security and traˆc maining addresses to local network information was streamed over a vast IPv6 operators over the coming months. After network. Being a relatively latecomer to that, any organisation applying for new the internet, China has only one address addresses will be told: Sorry, none left. for every four people. Hence Beijing’s de• The issue is real and has been a long sire to adopt IPv6 as rapidly as possible. time in the making. The Economist †rst The same goes for Russia, South Korea and wrote about it ten years ago. The problem Japan. NTT, Japan’s largest telecoms †rm, is that the current version of the internet’s has been o ering IPv6 services to the pub• address system, called IP version 4 (IPv4), lic since 2000. uses 32•bit numbers, and the total number The next showcase for the new internet of addresses possible with such an ar• technology will be ŒWorld IPv6 Day on rangement is therefore two raised to the June 8th. While doing all he can to help, power of 32‹or roughly 4.3 billion in deci• Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet mal terms. Back in the 1980s, when the in• whom own multiple devices. The use of (who now works at Google), warns that ternet connected just a couple of dozen re• Wi•Fi base•stations and routers that allow the day could be marred by painful con†g• search institutes in America, that seemed sharing of a single IP address has put o uration problems. But the main purpose of like a huge number. the day of reckoning for a while. But add all the event is to air precisely such diˆculties But with the invention of the web in the televisions, phones, cars and house• and get their †xes circulated. Meanwhile 1990 came an explosion in demand. It was hold appliances that are currently being the American Registry for Internet Num• soon clear that it was only a matter of time given internet access‹plus, eventually, ev• bers, which allocates blocks of IP address• before the internet would exhaust its sup• ery book, pill case and item of inventory as es to internet service providers and other ply of addresses. Work on a replacement well‹and the need for IPv6 is clear. network operators throughout North for IPv4 began in the early 1990s, with IPv6 Though a vast improvement, IPv6 is not America, has suggested that all public•fac• †nally being made available in 1998 (IPv5 without its problems. The biggest is that it ing websites in its region be ready to sup• was an experimental protocol for stream• is not directly backward compatible with port IPv6 by January 1st 2012. Such initia• ing audio and video that was abandoned). IPv4. To reduce the amount of processing tives should gradually move the internet By giving the new internet version an ad• the routing computers have to do as they from today’s world, with islands of IPv6 dress space of 128 bits, the designers pretty direct packets of data over the internet, systems in a sea of IPv4, to a world with well guaranteed that it would not run out IPv6 was given a far simpler packet format. islands of IPv4 in a vast ocean of IPv6. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 Nanopore sequencing 9

ever, virtually no chemical pre•processing T owards the is required and no ampli†cation. Instead a single strand of DNA can be read, one base pair at a time, and without the need for la• 15•minute belling. Moreover, existing sequencing techniques involve breaking DNA into small chunks of less than 100 base pairs. genome These chunks have to be sequenced many times to †nd identi†able overlaps so that they can be pieced together, says Gustavo Stolovitzky, the head of the functional ge• nomics and systems biology group at IBM, a computer giant. Nanopore sequencing can cope with much longer strands, which should help speed things up.

The hole story Coaxing individual strands of DNA, some 50,000 times thinner than a human hair, through holes just a couple of nanometres wide (a nanometre is a thousand millionth of a metre) may sound impossible. But something similar happens in nature all the time, in the form of pore•forming pro• teins, called ion channels, that punch holes in the membranes of cells and selectively allow ions to pass through them. Many biological processes depend on the ability of ion channels to regulate the ‡ow of ions through cellular membranes. In the 1990s, inspired by the elegance of these proteins, Dr Bayley started looking at how ion channels could be used as biomo• lecular sensors. He started o with a lipid Genetics: Pulling strands of DNA through tiny holes, called nanopores, could bilayer‹a very thin biological membrane dramatically speed up the sequencing of human genomes with a high electrical resistance. An ion channel is used to create a tiny hole in this T WAS one of the largest international (the four chemical Œletters of the DNA al• layer, and a molecule with a slight negative Iscienti†c collaborations ever undertaken phabet) can then be read o one at a time charge is placed on one side of it. Applying and it led, eventually, to a landmark ac• as they pass through the nanopore. ŒMy a voltage across the bilayer causes the mol• complishment. Yet even with a budget of own vision is a 15•minute genome, says ecule to push its way through the pore to more than $3 billion and the participation Hagan Bayley, a chemist at the University the other side. Crucially, as it passes of thousands of scientists, the process of of Oxford who is a pioneer in the †eld of through the pore, the molecule produces mapping the human genome still took nanopores. ŒWhile you are being diag• characteristic disruptions to the ‡ow of more than a decade. The technology has nosed at the hospital your entire genome current which can be used to identify what improved enormously since then: it is now would be sequenced. sort of molecule it is. possible to sequence a human genome in Sequencing technology has come a By 1996 Dr Bayley had found that using about eight days, at a cost of around long way since the Human Genome Pro• one protein in particular, alpha hemolysin $10,000. But researchers dream of being ject, but it still requires DNA to be copied (AHL), it was possible to get single strands able to complete the process in a matter of millions of times, a step called am• of DNA, not just small molecules, to pass hours, or even minutes, for less than pli†cation, and labelled with ‡uorescent through a nanopore. This, he realised, $1,000. Genome sequencing could then tags. It is a time•consuming process and a might lead to a new way to sequence DNA. become routine, making it much easier to signi†cant bottleneck, says Gordon Sang• But threading a strand through an AHL identify the genetic basis of diseases or iso• hera, the chief executive of Oxford Nano• pore and detecting the individual bases at late the factors that cause a drug to work in pore, a †rm set up in 2005 to commercial• the same time is very diˆcult. So Oxford one patient but not another. ise Dr Bayley’s work on nanopores. Nanopore has also been looking at an al• The most promising way to make such ŒToday all the systems that are out there ternative approach, called exonuclease se• cheap, rapid sequencing a reality is an ap• have to chemically label the DNA and copy quencing, in conjunction with Illumina, proach called Œnanopore sequencing. it so they have enough to read it, says Dr an American †rm that is the market leader This involves drawing individual strands Sanghera. ŒSo the current state of the art in rapid sequencing. This also involves a of DNA through tiny nanoscopic holes, or spends between †ve and ten days just pre• nanopore in an AHL protein, but the DNA pores. The idea is that individual base pairs paring the DNA. With nanopores, how• strand does not pass through the nanopore 1 10 Nanopore sequencing The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 ŒNanopore sequencing is gaining momentum, with new developments occurring almost every month.

2 i ntact. Instead an enzyme, called an exonu• lots of nanopores to work in parallel, says IBM’s Stanislav Polonsky, co•inventor of clease, is attached to the top of the AHL. It Dr Bayley, with each sequencing di erent the technology. In order to get a strong cleaves individual base pairs from the sections of a genome simultaneously. enough signal to read the bases it is only DNA strand and feeds them through the An alternative approach, which has necessary to trap each one for around a pore to be detected one at a time. been gaining ground in the past couple of millisecond, he says. Most of this work has Dr Sanghera says Oxford Nanopore has years, is to dispense with proteins and been carried out in computer simulation, developed an electronic cartridge system create arti†cial nanopores in solid•state but the ratcheting mechanism has been called GridION, based on Œlab on a chip materials. IBM and 454 Life Sciences, a di• demonstrated in the laboratory. Moreover, technology, for exonuclease sequencing. vision of Roche, a drugs giant, have been it can move the DNA in both directions, Each cartridge contains multiple nano• working together to this end, using an elec• which would have the huge bene†t of al• pores (though the †rm will not say how tron microscope to punch three•nano• lowing error correction to be carried out, many) and all the micro‡uidics and elec• metre holes in membranes that are ten na• says Stephen Rossnagel of IBM. If solid• tronics to carry out the preparation, detec• nometres thick. These membranes are state nanopores can be made to work, ex• tion and analysis. These are plugged into a made of three layers of a conducting mate• isting chipmaking technology could then rack•like device that resembles a computer rial, titanium nitride, separated by insulat• be used to create massively parallel de• server. And, like servers, the racks can be ing layers of silica. When a voltage is ap• vices for well below $100 a chip, he says. combined in vast cabinets to carry out plied across the membrane, a strand of Others are also looking at solid•state large•scale analysis, sequencing DNA or DNA is drawn into the pore. As it enters, a nanopores, including Jene Golovchenko at simply detecting small molecules or pro• separate electric †eld is applied across the Harvard University, with whom Oxford teins. Dr Sanghera says this system is al• metal layers of the membrane, trapping Nanopore is also collaborating, and Nab• most ready for commercial launch. the †rst base pair. By ‡ipping this †eld’s po• Sys, a spin•out from Brown University in Even so, the ultimate goal is to perfect larity the DNA strand can be ratcheted Rhode Island. A variation of this approach single•strand DNA sequencing, threading along, one base pair at a time. uses nanopores in graphene, a sheet•like large sequences of DNA through nano• This can be done very quickly, says form of carbon that is one atom thick. Be• pores and reading them as they pass cause such membranes are so thin, only a through. This would be faster than exonu• single base will be present within the pore clease sequencing. It would also be more at any one time, making detection easier. accurate: because the bases are still at• According to preliminary experiments tached to one another, there is no chance by one group, headed by Joshua Edel at that they will pass through the nanopore Imperial College London, this approach in the wrong order. One of the reasons sin• should be able to sequence an entire ge• gle•strand sequencing is so diˆcult, how• nome in just a few minutes. Another ever, is that the combined thickness of the group, led by Marija Drndic at the Univer• protein and bilayer means that as many as sity of Pennsylvania, has found that add• 15 bases may be inside the nanopore at any ing a layer of titanium oxide a few mole• one time. In addition, the speed at which cules thick to the graphene membrane lets the strand passes through must be careful• the DNA pass through more easily and re• ly controlled to allow enough time to de• duces the noise level when measuring the tect each of the bases. current, which should improve accuracy. Dr Bayley is looking into solid•state pores The ratchet e ect too, and is also exploring a hybrid ap• In late 2010 Dr Bayley found a way to ad• proach that combines protein•channel na• dress the †rst of these problems, and Mark nopores with solid•state membranes. Akeson at the University of California, There is a clear sense that the †eld of na• Santa Cruz, found a way to tackle the sec• nopore sequencing is gaining momentum, ond. By modifying the AHL protein to with new developments occurring almost create a constriction within the nanopore, every month. Dr Sanghera believes that Dr Bayley showed that it is possible to en• the $1,000 genome will be possible Œwith• sure that the variation in current is deter• in three to †ve years. The bene†ts could mined by a single base, which can then be be vast, he says. Cheap and rapid whole• identi†ed. Dr Akeson, meanwhile, created genome sequencing will, for example, a clever ratchet arrangement by attaching a make it possible to sequence the entire ge• polymerase enzyme to the AHL protein. nomes of cancerous and healthy cells in in• This can ensure that the strand passes dividual patients to see what has changed. through the pore at a rate of one base every It should become easier to determine 20 milliseconds, which should be slow which drugs will work best in a particular enough to detect each one. patient, and why. It will also be possible to Yet even a nanopore reading 50 bases construct a †ne•grained picture of human per second would take about two years to evolution, and of how and when human• sequence a whole genome, which con• ity spread around the world. Nanopores tains around 3 billion genetic letters. So it are tiny, but if they can be harnessed, the will also be necessary to †nd ways to get consequences could be momentous. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 Stretchable electronics 11

A shapely future for circuits

‡exible circuitry is that single•crystal sili• Rogers and his colleagues recently demon• con‹the sort which is used to make high• strated an eyeball•shaped camera in which Electronics: Fle xible circuits that can performance components such as micro• the curve of the lens and an array of silicon bend and stretch with their processors and radio chips‹is rigid. But in sensors change shape to zoom in and out. surroundings could have a wide 2006 John Rogers, a materials scientist at Matching the curved lens with a curved range of uses the University of Illinois Urbana•Cham• sensor array reduces distortions that can paign, came up with a way to stretch sin• occur when using the ‡at sensor•arrays OR years engineers have dreamed of gle•crystal silicon without breaking it. Sili• found in most cameras, says Dr Rogers. Fbuilding electronic circuits that would con itself doesn’t naturally stretch, but the Another use for stretchable silicon is to bend and stretch, rather than being con• trick is in its preparation: it must be ultra• make new types of medical devices that †ned to rigid chips and boards. Flexible cir• thin, only about 100 nanometres thick. (A can reduce the invasiveness of certain pro• cuitry would be able to do many things nanometre is a thousand•millionth of a cedures. One of Dr Rogers’s projects, out• that rigid circuits cannot. Stretchable elec• metre.) Any material is ‡exible if it is thin lined in a recent paper in Nature Materials tronic skin could connect an arti†cial hand enough, says Dr Rogers. You can crumple a equips a standard balloon catheter, used in to the nervous system. Combat uniforms piece of paper, but not a plank of wood. angioplasty, with an array of sensors and and helmets containing ‡exible, light• radio circuitry. Instead of being an inert weight impact sensors could help medics Flexible strategies balloon that is used to break up a blockage, prescribe better treatment if a soldier is He and his colleagues have developed two the sensor•laden catheter can monitor wounded in an explosion. A neuroscien• basic approaches to stretching circuits built blood ‡ow, temperature, pressure and tist who wants to understand the electrical on ultra•thin, bendable silicon. The †rst in• electrical activity within the body. Wire• storm that occurs in the brain of an epilep• volves transferring ultra•thin sheets of sili• lessly powered electrodes can also burn tic patient could watch seizures unfold in con onto a sticky, rubber•like material that away tissue or cauterise as needed. real time with a circuit that conforms to the has already been stretched. When the rub• In December, MC10, a †rm founded by gyri of the brain. Flexible circuits would ber is released, the silicon buckles but does Dr Rogers and based in Cambridge, Massa• also make portable devices more resilient; not break, forming a sort of herringbone chusetts, announced a partnership with they could be worn like clothing or jewel• pattern. Dr Rogers has designed entire cir• Reebok, a sportswear•maker. The aim is to lery rather than carried. cuits based on this principle, with working develop clothes that can monitor impacts Researchers are pursuing a number of transistors, logic gates and oscillators. on the body, strain on joints and an ath• di erent approaches to making circuitry The second way to stretch a circuit is to lete’s gait as well as heart rate, blood pres• more pliable. Rigid chips and circuit make tiny islands of rigid silicon and con• sure and sweat pH. Although wearable de• boards will not be going away any time nect them with wires that provide the ‡ex• vices that can monitor an athlete’s heart soon, because they are so inexpensive to ibility. This approach works because the is• rate already exist, MC10 hopes to make the manufacture on a massive scale. The trick lands are small enough to withstand small sensors disappear into clothing. It is also is to †nd the appropriate ways to combine amounts of strain and the connectors are working on combat vests and helmets that rigid and ‡exible circuit elements‹and to designed in such a way to accommodate compute the intensity of nearby explo• identify the most promising applications any stretching. For instance, the wires can sions and ‡exible sheets of sensors that for the bendy sort. arc out of plane or spiral like springs. can be used to map cardiac health. The fundamental diˆculty in building Using the silicon•island approach, Dr Later this year Dr Rogers’s team expects 1 12 Stretchable electronics The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011

2 t o publish a paper on a thin arti†cial mem• moved, it forms a ripply surface, and the brane that could allow ‡exible sensor cir• spacing of the ripples a ects the colour of cuitry to be transferred onto a patient’s the laser light, which varies as the material skin, for example to produce an electrocar• is stretched. Analysing the change in col• diograph. He likens the membrane to a our could thus be used to measure strain in temporary tattoo. He is also working on a buildings and bridges, Dr Wagner suggests. thin, conformable sheet of electrodes to Whether they are based on tiny slivers monitor electrical activity in a patient’s of silicon, organic circuitry or a combina• brain during neurosurgery. This could be tion of the two, stretchable devices will re• used to track seizures or map motor and quire power to operate. Stretchable elec• speech centres. ŒWe can do lots of things, tronics will need stretchable batteries, says says Dr Rogers, Œand we’re pursuing as Siegfried Bauer, professor of soft•matter many opportunities as we can handle. physics at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. Last year his group an• Going organic nounced a new type of battery, based on Although high•quality single•crystal sili• standard zinc•carbon chemistry, that is ca• con may be the best•known material for pable of stretching. It pulls o this trick by making electronic components, it isn’t the using stretchy polymers, called elasto• only one‹and it’s not the only one being mers, in conjunction with conductive gels, teased into di erent shapes. Stéphanie to transport charged particles between the Lacour, a researcher at the École Polytech• battery’s terminals. nique Fédérale de Lausanne, is using or• Dr Bauer is also working on a stretch• ganic transistors as pressure sensors on able battery that is rechargeable. And his ‡exible materials, including silicone rub• team is looking for ways to exploit stretch• ber, that can function as stretchable elec• able materials so that energy used to de• tronic skin. Organic transistors, as their form the material can be captured and con• name suggests, are made of carefully lay• verted to electrical energy‹an idea known ered organic materials rather than being as Œenergy harvesting. This might allow etched into a rigid crystal of silicon. Al• devices to be powered by shoes or clothing though they are ‡exible, they are not as that harvest energy from the wearer’s small or fast as silicon transistors. But for movement, for example. sensing there is no need for extremely fast It may also be possible to make solar switching, says Dr Lacour. cells in a ‡exible, stretchable form. Dr Rog• The idea is that this ‡exible material ers and his colleagues are exploring a type could be wrapped around a prosthetic of semiconductor material called gallium limb, with electrical signals from the sen• arsenide, which is usually in‡exible, for sors connected to an amputee’s nerves to Ultra•thin circuits on pre•stretched rubber just this purpose. He proposes dividing a convey sensations. Dr Lacour has already (top and bottom); silicon Œislands with rubber substrate into squares separated by made a prototype sensor with Nokia, a ‡exible links (centre, and previous page) trenches, and transferring tiny islands of mobile•phone giant, consisting of a thin, rigid gallium arsenide onto those squares stretchable, touch•sensitive †lm. This when the rubber is stretched. These tiny could be applied to the outside of a curved deformed. The backing material must be solar collectors would be connected with phone in place of a keyboard, or used to as smooth as possible, and the circuitry wires that form bridges over the trenches control a device in the form of a ‡exible sealed beneath a layer composed of a po• between the squares, and which buckle wrist•band. Dr Lacour’s stretchable elec• lymer•metal•polymer sandwich. This acts when the rubber is relaxed. This protects tronic skin can be made using the same as a barrier to oxygen and moisture to keep the rigid gallium arsenide components processes used to produce organic light• the device working. These tricks, they re• from strain, but the system as a whole is emitting diode (OLED) displays, which are port, allow a ‡exible circuit to be bent with ‡exible and stretchable. found in many mobile phones. a radius of curvature of less than 0.1 milli• It is, in short, possible to see how logic Takao Someya of the University of To• metres‹in other words, folded like paper‹ circuits, input sensors, output displays and kyo, who is one of the pioneers of electron• without breaking. power supplies can all be made in ‡exible ic skin, has also built stretchable circuits us• At Princeton University, meanwhile, form. Traditional electronics are cheap and ing organic transistors on a rubber backing. Sigurd Wagner has also developed organic widespread today because they are made He hopes to equip robots with sensitive optical devices, including an organic laser in huge quantities in extremely eˆcient skin to make them more aware of their en• on a stretchable rubber surface. Organic la• factories. Stretchable electronics are not vironment. In addition, he has demon• sers are not as powerful as traditional la• there yet. It is likely to be some time before strated a working OLED display on a sers made with gallium or indium com• you are o ered a mobile phone in the form stretchable surface. In a paper recently pounds, but they can be easily printed or of a ‡exible rubber bracelet, a smart tattoo published in Nature Materials, he and his deposited directly on any type of surface. attached to your skin, or even an implant colleague Tsuyoshi Sekitani described In Dr Wagner’s laser, the organic layer that that ‡exes along with your body. But re• some tricks to ensure that organic circuits produces laser light is deposited onto pre• searchers have already taken the †rst steps continue to work even when drastically strained rubber. When the strain is re• towards such exotic devices. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 Inside story 13

How illuminating

Biotechnology: Scientists have uncovered the biochemical mechanisms used generating cell in its body. When exposed by living organisms to produce light, known as bioluminescence‹and are to the blue light from the bioluminescent putting those tricks to a dazzling range of uses reaction, this protein, called green ‡uores• cent protein (GFP), glows bright green. Having worked out the basics of biolu• ROM fungi to †re‡ies, fascination with glowing trees and even glowing food. minescence, researchers started to tinker Flight•producing organisms dates back The simplest light•producing reactions with them. In 1967, keen to test the pos• to ancient times. Aristotle remarked on require an organic molecule, known as a sibilities presented by bioluminescence, the phenomenon, known as biolumi• luciferin, to be oxidised by oxygen, a Ellis Ridgway and Christopher Ashley, nescence, in the fourth century BC, ob• process that is helped along by an enzyme both then at the University of Oregon, serving that unlike the light from a candle, known as luciferase. (The need for oxygen collected photoproteins from 10,000 the light from †re‡ies and glow•worms explains why Boyle’s fungus stopped jelly†sh and injected them into the muscle was not accompanied by heat. In the †rst glowing when the air was removed.) The †bres of a barnacle. The researchers knew century AD Pliny the Elder, a Roman reaction generates light, carbon dioxide that as muscles contract they release calci• statesman, naturalist and writer, docu• and a compound called oxyluciferin. um ions, and they suspected this would mented the glowing creatures near his Some organisms produce light using just activate the injected photoproteins to home in the Bay of Naples, including this simple chemical reaction, but many generate blue light. They were right: they glowing jelly†sh and a species of glowing require additional helper molecules, had produced glowing barnacle muscles. clam that was considered a delicacy in his known as cofactors, to make it work. This work, and other studies that made day. ŒIt is the nature of these †sh to shine Fire‡ies, for example, which are some of use of proteins collected from †re‡ies, in darkness with a bright light when other the best•studied glowing organisms, rely showed that because bioluminescent light is removedðand to glitter both in the on two cofactors: magnesium ions and reactions require certain cofactors to be mouth of persons chewing them and in adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule present in order to function, they could be their hands, he wrote in his ŒNatural that provides energy storage inside cells. used to detect speci†c chemicals in an History. Pliny also described how he was environment. But the process of collecting able to make practical use of biolumi• Let there be light photoproteins from thousands of jelly†sh nescence: a walking stick dipped in the Many glowing jelly†sh exploit a some• was time•consuming, expensive, and not glowing slime of a jelly†sh, he observed, what di erent reaction. Instead of having particularly practical for larger•scale stud• Œwill light the way like a torch. freely available luciferin, they contain ies. As a result, exploiting bioluminescent Attempts to unravel the biochemical molecules called photoproteins which reactions was rather impractical. basis of this Œliving light began with the are, in e ect, luciferin proteins that already That changed with the invention of pioneering chemist Robert Boyle in the have oxygen bound to them. Like †re‡ies, cloning technology. In 1985 Douglas 17th century, who discovered that biolumi• they too rely on a cofactor, in this case Prasher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic nescent fungus stopped glowing when the calcium ions rather than magnesium. Institution in Massachusetts and his col• air was removed from a jar containing it. The light•generating reactions used by leagues used cloning to replicate the pho• But it is only in recent years that research• †re‡ies and jelly†sh occur in many other toprotein found inside Aequorea victoria. ers have determined the precise mecha• organisms. In addition, some organisms This bypassed the problems associated nism by which this biological light is are also capable of ‡uorescence. The with jelly†sh collection and made it much produced. This has allowed biolumi• bioluminescing photoprotein inside the easier to use bioluminescent reactions to nescence to be put to a dazzling array of jelly†sh species Aequorea victoria, for detect the presence of calcium ions. new uses, from illuminating other biologi• example, creates a blue light‹yet the The cloning of luciferase from †re‡ies, cal processes to monitoring the spread of jelly†sh itself emits a green light. This which also took place in 1985, proved just disease, detecting submarines and mon• ba‰ed researchers for years until it was as useful. Unlike jelly†sh photoproteins, itoring pollution. Glowing puppies have discovered, in 1955, that the jelly†sh has a which require calcium to light up, lucifer• already been created, and there is talk of special protein attached to every light• ase from †re‡ies needs a ready supply of 1 14 Inside story The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011

2 luciferin and ATP. In most environments ters further, not all lab animals respond to ATP is not freely available, but because it is infections in the same way. Even two the main mechanism by which cells tran• sibling mice may respond to a herpes sport energy, it is present in living organ• infection very di erently. isms. Researchers realised that adding So David Leib of Dartmouth Medical luciferase and luciferin to a sample of School decided to try a di erent approach. water or food could be used to detect ATP, He added the gene responsible for the and thus determine whether the sample formation of luciferase to the genome of contained bacteria or other pathogens. herpes simplex virus type 1and injected In 1992 Dr Prasher also cloned GFP, so the modi†ed virus into mice. The mice that it no longer had to be harvested from were also regularly injected with luciferin, living creatures. This expanded the pos• so that the luciferase would have the fuel sibilities for exploiting bioluminescence it needed to glow. dramatically, because it meant that GFP Because resulting light was so dim, Dr did not have to be injected into tissue. Leib worked with Gary Luker and David Instead, the gene sequence for GFP could Piwnica•Worms at Washington Universi• be added to the genome of a living organ• Aequorea victoria lit the way ty, St Louis, to place the animals in a dark ism, making possible new ways to track box and photograph them using a special the behaviour of its cells. tissues, and allowed the team to see how camera. The images collected by this Initially the technique was tested on the di erent types of cells behaved during camera showed the virus progressing bacteria such as E. coli to make them glow the regeneration process. through a single mouse at frequent in• green when illuminated by blue light. The researchers found that some tis• tervals. ŒSuddenly we had the opportuni• Similar tactics have since been used to sues, like the dermis, could become other ty to track interactions between the virus create much larger creatures that glow tissue types, like cartilage, but that others, and the immune system in real time and when exposed to deep blue light. One of such as muscle, were much less ‡exible use far fewer mice, says Dr Leib. the most intriguing is Ruppy, the ruby and remained muscle throughout the Part of the reason luciferase can be coloured puppy‹a dog that glows bright process. Although the †ndings do not seen by the camera, even through the red under ultraviolet light because it has reveal how to regenerate a severed human tissues of the bodies of the mice, is that genes in its body from a sea•anemone limb, they do provide valuable infor• luciferase generates some red light in protein that functions very much like GFP, mation about how cells can be expected to addition to the characteristic yellow•green but ‡uoresces bright red instead of green. behave as researchers move closer and light associated with †re‡ies. The yellows This might seem pointless, but it per• closer towards that ultimate goal. ŒWhat and greens cannot penetrate the mouse mits exploration of animal processes that ‡uorescent proteins are providing, in the tissue but red light, being of lower fre• have long been mysterious. ŒThe rainbow axolotl experiment and so many others, is quency, can. Norman Maitland of the of ‡uorescent proteins now available to a new way of seeing, says Dr Zimmer. Yorkshire Cancer Research Laboratory at modern researchers is allowing questions ŒLike the invention of the microscope, the University of York, together with a that have vexed us for years to be †nally they are allowing us to watch what could team of colleagues based at 14 labs within answered, says Marc Zimmer, a computa• never have been watched before. the European Union, used this idea to tional chemist at Connecticut College. develop a series of viruses that carry a One such question, that of how dam• Making disease glow away gene for GFP which has been modi†ed to aged tissues regenerate, is being studied in Bioluminescence can also be used to tag glow red, and are specially designed to salamanders by Elly Tanaka and a team of viruses‹a technique that is proving in• †nd and grow inside prostate•cancer cells. colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in valuable for studying diseases. To un• When these viruses are exposed in the Dresden. The salamander species that the derstand how infections progress, re• lab to tissue cultures which contain cancer scientists are working with, Ambystoma searchers have traditionally had to kill cells, they infect those cells and splice the mexicanum, is more commonly called the infected laboratory animals on a daily gene for the red glowing protein into the Mexican axolotl and is well known for basis. A lot can potentially be learned by gene sequences of the cancer cells, making being able to regrow severed parts of its comparing the tissues of an animal that them glow. In addition, the gene for the body, such as its limbs and jaws. has been infected with a herpes virus for glowing protein is passed on by the cancer To shed more light on the process, the only one day, say, with an animal that has cells as they replicate, so that their progeny research team used genetic engineering to been infected for several days. Through glow too. Dr Maitland has to use special• make axolotls that produce GFP through• such comparisons, researchers can work ised camera equipment to see the glowing out their bodies. The researchers took out where the virus is travelling and, if the red cancer cells inside the human body. pieces of limb tissue‹such as dermis, lab animal has been treated with a drug But he has already been able to demon• cartilage and muscle‹from these trans• intended to counter the disease, how it is strate that infecting cancer cells with a red genic animals and transplanted them into responding to the treatment. glow can help reveal prostate tumours. the limbs of ordinary axolotls. Once the The trouble with this technique is that And in future, tracking the glow may help tissues were safely in place, the recipients studying the tissues of animals killed on a reveal how cancer cells behave when a of the transplanted tissue had limbs am• daily schedule is like taking a still image tumour starts spreading cancer around the putated. The severing of the limb activat• from a †lm every ten minutes and trying body. Christopher Rose, chief technology ed the tissues at the point of amputation, to work out what is going on; it provides oˆcer at Vantage Oncology, a provider of including the transplanted ‡uorescing only part of the story. To complicate mat• cancer treatments in California, says the 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 Inside story 15

Œ Researchers have developed potatoes that glow when they need water, to minimise irrigation.

2 use of bioluminescence is Œa terri†c way James Case at the University of California, cal spills or oil leaks are suspected. ŒA to better understand tumour behaviour. Santa Barbara, she devised a device that sample of water can be exposed to the It also has applications in surgery. A measures marine bioluminescence by bacteria, and the light generated allows a team led by Quyen Nguyen, a surgeon at pumping water through a grid that excites quick analysis to be made without the the University of California, San Diego, bioluminescent organisms and measures need for the usual high•end equipment, has devised a way to illuminate nerves so how brightly they glow. A network of he says. The bacteria could be housed in that they are less likely to be cut acciden• such devices could reveal where vessels sampling buoys in watery environments, tally, causing lasting damage. The re• can operate undetected, or where special with readings regularly reported to a searchers created a molecule that binds operations forces can come ashore with• central monitoring station. preferentially to nerve cells, and labelled it out being given away. ŒThe †rst system The potential ecological bene†ts of with a ‡uorescent tag. When it is injected cost $500,000 and was the size of a motor• bioluminescence do not end with detect• into a mouse, it spreads around the ani• cycle, says Dr Widder. Newer versions ing pollution. In November 2010 a team of mal’s body, so that all its nerves (though are the size of waste bins and cost $10,000. undergraduates at the University of Cam• not its brain or spinal cord) become ‡uo• Bioluminescence monitoring has other bridge took the †rst steps towards engi• rescent within two hours. The e ect wears uses too, such as detecting pollution. Dr neering bioluminescent trees that could o a few hours later. The technique has Widder is working with a bioluminescent replace streetlights, thus reducing electric• also been shown to work in human tissue, bacterium species called Vibrio †scheri ity consumption and related carbon• though it has yet to enter formal trials. that is sensitive to a wide variety of pollut• dioxide emissions. They took genes from ants. Its ability to bioluminesce is linked to †re‡ies and bioluminescent marine bacte• In a di erent light its respiration, and its respiration is almost ria and modi†ed them to produce a genet• Bioluminescence clearly has great poten• always depressed when it is struggling ic package that can be easily added to tial in medicine. But it also has a role in with pollution. Measuring the brightness other organisms to make them glow. The war. For reasons that are not entirely of the bacteria thus provides a simple way package includes genetic modi†cations to understood, many marine organisms to determine pollution levels. ŒWe know enable organisms to recycle oxyluciferin, bioluminesce only when disturbed. Scuba things are really bad when the light goes the by•product of the reaction that pro• divers swimming at night will often †nd out, says Dr Widder. duces light. To demonstrate their approach that just waving their arms around creates Jan van der Meer at the University of they added the genes to a bacterium, and a dazzling green glow. Large animals, like Lausanne in Switzerland is taking the idea found that a ‡ask of the bacterial culture passing whales and dolphins, can also of using bioluminescent bacteria as pollu• produced enough light to read a book by. create enough disruption to produce a tion monitors a step further, by tinkering Another potential use for glowing glow, as will passing boats. with their genetics. It is neater, he says, to plants is to indicate the health of crops. ŒThe US navy has long had an interest have organisms that glow brighter, rather ŒYou can put luciferase into plants and in bioluminescence‹it started during the than becoming fainter, as the environment tether it to plant stress genes to make sure cold war because of submarine detec• becomes more toxic. Unfortunately there crops are healthy, says Laurence Tisi, a tion, explains Edith Widder, a senior are no organisms that do this naturally. But bioluminescence researcher at Lumora, a molecular•diagnostics company based in Britain. A †eld would glow in areas where insects were attacking the crops, allowing insecticides to be deployed appropriately. Plants could also glow when they need water, to keep irrigation to a minimum. Researchers at the University of Edin• burgh, in Scotland, have already devel• oped potatoes that do just this. Even so, Dr Tisi is sceptical. ŒI am un• certain that any crops that glow in the dark Monitoring the regrowth of salamander limbs (above) and a glowing mouse (top) are going to be of much interest to con• sumers, he says. ŒGlowing things make scientist at Ocean Research & Conserva• using genetic engineering Dr van der Meer people wary. Yet BioLume, a privately tion Association, a conservation group. and his colleagues have coupled the light• held biotechnology company based in Indeed, one of the last German subma• generating reactions in bacteria to meta• North Carolina, believes such concerns rines to be sunk during the †rst world war bolic processes associated with handling can be overcome. It is developing biolumi• had disturbed enough bioluminescent pollution. Linking light•generating re• nescent proteins for use in the food in• organisms in the Mediterranean to pro• actions with these reactions, rather than dustry, and hopes to incorporate them duce a glow that could be seen from above respiration, makes the organisms glow into a range of products, from glowing the surface. This light was used to track the brighter as the pollution level increases. icing on cakes to glowing lollipops and submarine and destroy it. And because di erent bacterial species chewing gum. BioLume could be onto Speci†cally, America’s navy wants to are sensitive to di erent pollutants, di er• something. Glowing food was, after all, be able to forecast whether a vessel in a ent coloured glows can indicate the pres• highly fashionable in Roman times‹and particular location might cause a biolumi• ence of speci†c chemicals. Dr van der perhaps, given the dramatic progress that nescent glow that would give away its Meer imagines his genetically modi†ed is now being made in the exploitation of position, says Dr Widder. So, together with bacteria being used at sites where chemi• bioluminescence, it will be once again. 7 16 GPS jamming The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011

Germany, meanwhile, some lorry drivers have used jammers to evade the country’s No jam tomorrow GPS•based road•tolling system. ŒIf you do an internet search on GPS jammers, you get over 300,000 hits, with many of these linking to sites o ering them for sale, says Jim Hammond of the intelligent transport systems working Navigation: As the uses of satellite•positioning technology continue to grow, group at Britain’s Association of Chief Po• what can be done to stop deliberate and dangerous jamming of the signals? lice Oˆcers (ACPO). ŒI’d suggest you don’t get that level of hits for products that no• O AEROPLANES fell out of the sky Specialists have been warning for years body buys. ACPO and Britain’s communi• Nand no one died. But in late 2009 engi• that this growing dependency is a poten• cations regulator, Ofcom, are urging the neers noticed that satellite•positioning re• tial vulnerability. As long ago as 2001 a re• government to make it easier to prosecute ceivers for a new navigation aid at Newark port from the Volpe Centre, a transport•re• people who use and sell jammers, and to airport in New Jersey were su ering brief search body in Cambridge, Massachusetts, make their possession a criminal act. daily breaks in reception. Something was described GPS as a tempting target for ex• In November America’s National interfering with the signals from orbiting ploitation by Œmalicious persons. Ameri• Space•Based PNT Advisory Board said de• global positioning system (GPS) satellites. ca’s GPS and Russia’s GLONASS are cur• liberate disruption of GPS was becoming It took two months for investigators from rently the only functioning global more common, and that the systems in the Federal Aviation Authority to track navigation satellite systems (GNSS), but place to †nd and stop jammers were insuf• down the problem: a driver who passed by Europe’s Galileo and China’s COMPASS †cient. It called for the rapid development on the nearby New Jersey Turnpike each systems are under construction. of new ways to shut down sources of inter• day had a cheap GPS jammer in his truck. ference, new laws to punish o enders Such devices are illegal to sell or use, We’re jamming more harshly and for alternative, non•GPS• but they have become popular with com• All of them share a fundamental weak• based backup systems to be deployed. mercial drivers who object to their em• ness, however. Because they rely on sig• In Britain such e orts are already under ployers tracking their every move. A jam• nals from satellites transmitting from an al• way. ŒE orts to combat interference and mer prevents a tracking device in the titude of around 20,000 kilometres (12,400 jamming have accelerated in the last cou• vehicle from determining (and then re• miles), the signals are very weak, making ple of years in response to a rapid rise in porting) its location and speed‹but it also them vulnerable to accidental or deliber• the sale and use of jammers, says David disrupts GPS signals for others nearby. ate interference. This can take the form of Last, a former president of the Royal Insti• Although the incident did not have natural interference, as a result of solar ac• tute of Navigation and a GPS consultant to disastrous repercussions or make front• tivity, for example; accidental man•made the British government. The Technology page headlines, it did ring alarm bells with interference due to signal re‡ection or Strategy Board, a body set up to promote senior aviation and law•enforcement oˆ• faulty transmitter equipment; and deliber• innovation, has provided £3m ($4.8m) in cials. America’s military developed GPS ate jamming of the satellite signal by trans• funding for research projects in this †eld, from the 1970s, and satellite•based posi• mitters that drown it out by broadcasting called GAARDIAN and SENTINEL. tioning, navigation and timing (PNT) have their own signal on the same frequency. The GAARDIAN consortium, which since become crucial to all kinds of civilian British police began †nding jamming completes its work this month, has devel• infrastructure systems. Most people know equipment in the possession of criminals oped equipment to provide real•time in• that satellite signals are used by automo• about three years ago. This was not surpris• formation about the reliability of GPS at tive Œsatnav devices, but few realise how ing, because evidence from satnavs and airports or other sensitive locations using everything from aviation, †nancial•securi• vehicle•tracking devices had already been networks of probes. Each probe can pick ties clearing, mining and electricity distri• used in several successful prosecutions. In up GPS signals and signals from eLoran, an bution to mobile telecoms, road tolling July 2010 two men were jailed for a total of enhanced version of Loran, the ground• and weather forecasting also relies on GPS. 16 years after they admitted being mem• based terrestrial radio•navigation system Among other things, its signals are used to bers of a gang that stole 40 lorries and their †rst used by the American and British na• synchronise the clocks in mobile•phone loads with a total value of £6m ($9.6m). vies during the second world war. The base stations, steer combine harvesters They had used GPS jammers to prevent the probes also contain a small atomic clock. and keep oil platforms in position. vehicles being tracked after the thefts. In By comparing the GPS and eLoran time sig• 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 GPS jamming 17

2 nals with its internal clock, each probe can tively determine the jammer’s location lite•based alternative which has many detect interference and determine wheth• and report it. It is a clever idea, but it would cheerleaders. It is an enhanced version of er it is natural or man•made. take years to implement. Loran•C, which is itself an improved ver• The ability to detect man•made inter• Navsys may have found a way to speed sion of the original Loran (Œlong•range ference is not much use unless the source up the process, however. It says it has re• navigation) system developed in the can be located, however. That is where ceived encouraging feedback from Ameri• 1940s. Once widely used in America, Japan SENTINEL comes in. It is a new research ca’s Defence Advanced Research Projects and parts of Europe, Loran fell out of fa• project announced in December by Chro• Agency (DARPA) in response to a recent vour with the emergence of satellite•based nos Technology, the British †rm that leads proposal to develop an app that would systems. But its proponents have contin• the GAARDIAN consortium. The idea is to turn smartphones running Google’s An• ued to develop the technology, and eLoran use probes similar to those used in GAAR• droid software into JLOC sensors. Mem• is now accurate to within 10 metres or so, DIAN, but interconnected in such a way bers of the emergency services, or even which is comparable to GPS. ŒIt is terrestri• that the position of a jamming device can members of the public, would then be al as opposed to spaced•based, uses very be determined by triangulation. ŒIf there is asked to download the app and leave it high•powered signals rather than low• a power loss on one probe, and weaker running on their phones. This could pro• powered ones and it’s very low frequency power losses in other probes, that could vide the high•density detection network instead of high, says Sally Basker, presi• help us pinpoint the source of the pro• necessary to locate small jammers. dent of the International Loran Associa• blem, says Andy Proctor of Chronos. tion. ŒAll of which means its failure mech• In America there is already a military A down•to•earth alternative anisms are di erent to GPS and other system to spot GPS interference: the GPS Another way to cope with jammers is to satellite•navigation systems. Jammer Detection and Location (JLOC) deploy backup systems that do not de• Enthusiasm for eLoran is strongest in system run by the National Geospatial In• pend on satellite signals, but rely on terres• Britain, where the government awarded a telligence Agency. According to Navsys, the trial signals instead. In America radio•navi• 15•year contract in 2007 to develop eLoran company that developed JLOC, it involves gation and air•traˆc•control systems for use by shipping in western Europe. A a network of GPS receivers capable of de• based on terrestrial beacons, which pre• ministerial decision to move from the de• tecting regions of higher than normal sig• date GPS, were supposed to be phased out velopment to the operational phase is ex• nal levels and low signal•to•noise ratios, ei• by 2018 in favour of satellite•based alterna• pected shortly. In the United States and ther of which can indicate interference. tives, under a modernisation programme Canada, however, Loran•C transmitters But it is unknown how many sensors there called NextGen, overseen by the Federal were switched o last year. After a long de• are in the JLOC system, or how accurately Aviation Administration (FAA). Switching bate about the merits of keeping the sys• it can determine the location of a jammer. to satellite•based air•traˆc control would, tem going, Barack Obama declared it out• Some experts in the †eld are sceptical for example, allow more direct routes and dated. The House of Representatives has that it will be possible to develop cost•ef• save fuel, because aircraft would no longer given the Department of Homeland Secu• fective systems to locate low•power, short• have to follow a wiggly route from one rity until April to decide whether a single, range jammers around civilian infrastruc• ground•based beacon to another. national GPS backup system is required. ture. It would require a very dense net• In a paper presented at the NAV10 con• Which technology would be used to build work of sensors, says Dr Last. ŒI suspect we ference in London in December, Mitch such a system remains to be seen. have reached the stage where close to any Narins, chief systems engineer at the FAA, In a way, GPS has become a victim of its major highway you cannot expect to oper• and colleagues described the Newark jam• own success. Because it is used for such a ate a high•availability GPS system without ming incident as Œa valuable lesson be• wide range of civilian purposes, when it failing from time to time, he says. cause it highlighted the risks of becoming somebody wishes to disable one GPS• At a GNSS conference in Portland, Ore• too dependent on satellite•based systems based system, their actions can also dis• gon, last September, Phil Ward, president that were vulnerable to disruption. Mr Na• rupt other, unrelated systems. The bene†ts of Navward GPS Consulting in Dallas, Tex• rins and his team are now investigating of satellite positioning are undeniable, and as, proposed an elegant solution. Even whether the old•style terrestrial systems they are only likely to increase in future. low•power jammers could be detected, he can be modernised and extended to pro• But it is now clear that fully realising those suggested, if legislation was passed requir• vide a backup that could take over in the bene†ts depends on putting systems in ing smartphones, many of which now event of GPS failures. They expect to make place to mitigate against deliberate and ac• contain GPS receivers, to look out for jam• their recommendations in 2013 or 2014, in cidental interference, and to provide an in• mers and warn other phones nearby if one time for implementation to begin in 2016. dependent backup that does not rely on is detected. The phones would then collec• Elsewhere, eLoran is another non•satel• the delicate trilling of distant satellites. 7 18 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 Betting on green

says Mr Khosla. Within just a few years, the internet boom had netted Kleiner Vinod Khosla thinks most venture Perkins a $7 billion return on its Juniper capitalists are being too cautious investment. Now Mr Khosla is gambling with their green investments. But is that venture capital can work similar his own approach too risky? magic in the †eld of clean technology. His approach is that of a pragmatic business• NVIRONMENTALISTS are †ddling man rather than an eco•warrior. ŒI don’t ŒEwhile Rome burns, says Vinod view climate change as a moral thing. I Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, a view it as a risk, no di erent from nuclear Silicon Valley venture•capital †rm. ŒThey proliferation, terrorism or national de• get in the way with silly stu like asking fence, he says. ŒBusiness is used to buy• people to walk more, drive less. That is an ing insurance, and this is insurance that it increment of 1•2% change. We need 1,000% is imperative we buy. change if billions of people in China and These high•tech insurance policies India are to enjoy a Western, energy•rich come in many ‡avours. Mr Khosla has lifestyle. Forget today’s green technol• invested in companies that promise ultra• ogies like electric cars, wind turbines, eˆcient air conditioning using hypersonic solar cells and smart grids, in other words. vortices or desiccant chemicals. He is None meets what Mr Khosla calls the funding the commercialisation of low• ŒChindia price‹the price at which people power lighting, next•generation solar cells in China and India will buy them without and super•strong building materials. But, a subsidy. ŒEverything’s a toy until it like the environmentalists he scorns, Mr reaches that point, he says. Khosla puts most of his energy into seek• Mr Khosla has a di erent plan to save ing alternatives to traditional fossil fuels. the planet. He is investing over $1billion ŒWe remain primarily a gasoline• of his clients’ money in Œblack swans‹ driven consumer economy, he says. ŒI’m ideas with the potential for sudden jumps happy to see the price of oil going up, as it in technology that promise huge environ• will incentivise us to replace fossil fuels. mental bene†ts, easy scalability and rapid Mr Khosla has invested in several biotech• payback. The catch? Mr Khosla expects nology companies that aim to condense nine out of ten of his investments to fail. the multi•million•year process of creating ŒI am only interested in technologies oil from plant life into a matter of hours. that have a 90% chance of failure but, if Amyris, which was ‡oated on the NAS• they do succeed, would change the infra• DAQ exchange last autumn, is using ge• structure of society in some radical way, netically engineered organisms to turn he says. Khosla Ventures’ portfolio reads plant sugars into a precursor of diesel. like an eco•utopian wish•list: non•pollut• ing nuclear reactors; diesel from microbes; Never tell me the odds carbon•negative cement; quantum batter• Another start•up, KiOR, is hoping to go ies; and a system for extracting methane one step further, converting cellulosic from coal while it is still underground. biomass (such as waste wood and leaves) ŒAny one of these things is improbable into a crude oil replacement called Re• but, if you have enough shots on goal, Crude. Fans of cellulosic biofuels hope then it’s very likely that something im• that they can produce ethanol without probable will win, he says. ŒTen years competing with food crops for agricultural ago, no analyst in the world would have land. According to Mr Khosla, KiOR can predicted 650m cellphone subscribers in produce Re•Crude in America today for India but only 300m people with access to less than $90 a barrel. ŒThree years ago, I latrines and toilets. Even †ve years ago, no would have said that there was a 90% one would have predicted the way that chance of KiOR failing. But these things Twitter took o . These are the black swan aren’t predictable. Forecasting is based on outliers. Mr Khosla is keen to point out assumptions, and technology changes that he has caught a black swan before. In those assumptions, says Mr Khosla. ŒI the mid•1990s, when working for Kleiner never compute returns. If you start fore• Perkins Cau†eld & Byers, a venture•capital casting cash ‡ows, you lose innovation, †rm, he invested $3m in Juniper Net• you lose instinct. You average yourself works, a company making telecoms gear down to mediocrity. based on internet standards. No one is likely to accuse Mr Khosla of ŒAt the time, every major telecom• that. At the age of 20 he launched a soya• munications company told us that they milk company in his home city of Delhi, would never switch to internet systems, targeting the multitudes in India who did 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly March 12th 2011 Brain scan 19

ŒI don’t view climate change as a moral thing. I view it as a risk, like nuclear proliferation or terrorism.

2 not own a refrigerator. When it failed he solution to our energy problems is almost of Netscape, whose IPO kicked o the moved to America to study biomedical the exact opposite of what Khosla says, internet boom, thinks Silicon Valley in• engineering and business. In 1982 he declares Joseph Romm, who is the editor vestors will prefer to stick to information co•founded Sun Microsystems, a maker of of Climate Progress, an in‡uential climate technology. He has even promised that his powerful workstation computers. After blog, and a senior fellow at the Centre for latest venture•capital fund will avoid the company’s initial public o ering (IPO) American Progress Action Fund, a think• Œclean, green, energy and electric cars. He in 1986, Mr Khosla left to become a venture tank. ŒTechnology breakthroughs are argues that clean•tech is a very di erent capitalist. At Kleiner Perkins, Mr Khosla unlikely to be the answer. Accelerated †eld. ŒMoving from IT ventures to green was involved in the early †nancing of deployment of existing technologies will technologies is nearly impossible, except Nexgen, an innovative chipmaker, and get you down the cost curve much more for rare and extraordinary individuals like Excite, a search engine. He also had some rapidly than a breakthrough. Vinod, he says. ŒHe has put years into high•pro†le ‡ops, including Dynabook, a But Mr Khosla is standing behind his becoming a master of the †eld, but it’s not company that designed a tablet computer black swans. ŒWe fool ourselves into the entire Valley deciding to move into 20 years before the Apple iPad but proved thinking that if 5% of San Franciscans or clean•tech. Mr Khosla’s mentor at Kleiner unable to bring it to market. rich Germans can a ord a technology, Perkins, John Doerr, has expressed con• ŒI’ve had many more failures than then it’s getting market traction. But only cern over his own company’s green in• successes in my life, admits Mr Khosla. when an electric car can compete with a vestments and Peter Thiel, co•founder of ŒMy willingness to fail gives me the ability Tata Nano will you achieve scale, and that PayPal and a partner at the Founders to succeed. His next move was character• requires radical innovations in battery Fund, has said that clean•tech companies istically unpredictable: he temporarily technology, he says, referring to the Œfor a variety of reasons don’t work. moved his family to India. ŒI wanted to see world’s cheapest production car. Accord• Facing both industry scepticism and if I could have a social impact, he says. ŒI ingly, Khosla Ventures is funding several the ire of environmentalists, Mr Khosla quickly realised that any non•pro†t activi• energy•storage systems, including high• decided to engage Tony Blair, a former ty I could do would be no more than a eˆciency solid•state batteries that side• British prime minister, who joined Khosla drop in the ocean. Most non•pro†t organi• step the safety problems with today’s Ventures last year as a senior adviser. The sations are completely ine ective. That’s lithium•ion cells. idea is that Mr Blair can provide a more when I decided that I needed to look for It’s all about diversi†cation, says Mr diplomatic public face for the company, scalable solutions, which meant self• Khosla: ŒWe’ll try half a dozen batteries. If and he also brings global clout. propagating solutions, which meant capi• other people try 30 more, only one has to Mr Khosla, who clearly likes to see talist solutions. Proving the capitalist tool work to completely change society. himself as a green iconoclast and †nancial as a solution for poverty is high on my Whether other investors will be prepared maverick, is either very foolish or very priority list. to take similar gambles on blue•sky tech• clever. But at this point it is diˆcult to say Mr Khosla put several million dollars nologies remains to be seen. which. ŒI try a lot of new things, he says. into SKS, a for•pro†t micro†nance com• ŒIt’s fun to play the game and fun to play pany. Although India’s booming micro†• Going it alone the odds‹and long odds win a lot of fun. nance industry has since attracted criti• Although Khosla Ventures’ two funds are Mr Khosla’s cold•blooded view of the cism (and even government action) for its fully subscribed, and have invested about economics of environmentalism has high interest rates and aggressive debt• $1.3 billion in over 40 companies, billions certainly ru‰ed some feathers. But if he collection practices, Mr Khosla is adamant more dollars and many more start•ups turns out to be right, his quest for clean• that its bene†ts outweigh any ills. ŒMil• will be needed to hatch a ‡ock of black tech black swans could be exactly what lions of people now have access to †• swans. Mr Khosla estimates that the the planet needs. 7 nancial services, he says. ŒThat’s more amount of investment required to replace social than any non•pro†t thing I could all the petrol consumed in America with O er to readers have done. And guess what? In the pro• renewable fuels will run into the hun• R eprints of Technology Quarterly are available cess, I made $100m. You never know dreds of billions of dollars. But other from the Rights and Syndication Department. when something you’re trying to be rad• high•tech venture capitalists seem to be A minimum order of †ve copies is required. ical on will make you money. steering clear of risky green investments. If Mr Khosla is unapologetic about ŒI would love to say that Vinod is start• C orporate o er making money while helping some of the ing a trend, says Steve Westly, another tCus omisation options on corporate orders of world’s poorest people, he is equally venture capitalist focusing on green tech• 100 or more are available. Please contact us to discuss your requirements. outspoken when it comes to the environ• nology. ŒBut no. Not everybody has the For more information on how to order special mental movement in the West. ŒWind courage to do that. Even here in Silicon reports, reprints or any queries you may have projects are a waste of time. And the reali• Valley, people †nd it hard to understand please contact: ty is that electric cars today are coal•pow• that if you think big, you’re going to have ered cars, because the USA and much of some failures. Mr Khosla thinks other The Rights and Syndication Department Europe have mostly coal•based electric• investors will come round to his way of The Economist ity, he says. ŒEnvironmentalists use arti†• thinking eventually. ŒThe climate will 26 Red Lion Square London WC1R 4HQ cial rates of return, buried assumptions change as soon as we have a Netscape Tel +44 (0)20 7576 8148 and ‘what if’ assumptions about behav• moment. When we have an IPO where Fax +44 (0)20 7576 8492 iour changes. It’s useless crap. people see they can make a billion dollars, e•mail: [email protected] This sort of talk does not exactly en• everyone will start to invest. www.economist.com.rights dear Mr Khosla to environmentalists. ŒThe But Marc Andreessen, the co•founder