Assessment tool for emerging tech

Emerging technologies offer breakthrough investment and business opportunities. Unfortunately, identifying winners is challenging because these nascent fields are populated by an abundance of unproven start-ups, established companies, and international players - all fielding diverse business plans and unfamiliar technologies, writes Nanowerk.

A new tool from Lux Research, the Lux Innovation Grid, provides a standard reference for evaluating companies active in emerging technologies, based on the proprietary insights of Lux Research's analyst team.

“This framework gives our clients a more incisive tool to cut through the fog and quickly arrive at better decisions - whether they're corporations looking for partners or M&A targets, financiers identifying early market leaders, or start-ups seeking insight into the competition they face,” said Michael Holman, research director at Lux Research.

Xhead = UK invests £750m in innovation

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has committed to one of the biggest and most ambitious investment programmes in science and technology ever seen, reports GovNet.

Darling has committed to a new £750 million (R9.57 billion) Strategic Investment Fund designed to improve the creation of emerging technologies, boost the UK's innovation capacity and prepare for a 21st century economy.

The chancellor said: “This new fund will provide financial support, focusing on emerging technologies and regionally important sectors in, for example, advanced manufacturing, digital and biotechnology. It will encourage exports, support inward investment, promote research and development and harness commercially our world-class science base.”

Understanding how brain and heart cells process and generate electrical signals could lead to a new understanding of neurological and heart disease, according to Technology Review.

Until a few years ago, however, it simply wasn't possible to make electrical recordings at the level of single cells. In 2006, Harvard researchers used nanowire transistors to measure electrical signals at 50 points along a single neuron. Now the same research group has developed a new nanowire recording system and have used it to capture some of the most precise, high-quality electrical recordings ever made from heart cells.

The Harvard work, led by chemistry and chemical-biology professor Charles Lieber, is "at the forefront of research in integrating nanowire nanotechnology and bioscience," says Zhong Lin Wang, Regents Professor at the Centre for Nanostructure Characterisation, at Georgia Tech.