A round up of other Innovation stories in brief...
TOTAL CHINESE STOCK MARKET FUNDS DOWN 41%
BEIJING :FUNDS RAISED through initial public offerings (IPOs) in China may shrink by up to 50 per cent this year because of weak market conditions and global volatility, although small and medium enterprises' IPOs are not likely to be seriously affected, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
Total funds raised on China's key stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen have fallen by 41 per cent year-on-year to 89.8 billion yuan (€8.37 billion) for the first six months of the year.
Hong Kong will also be hit hard by the sluggish market, with the total number of IPOs in the first half of the year reaching 23, compared with 34 in the same period last year.
"Besides stock market volatility and China's austerity measures, the heavy snow last winter and the recent earthquake have had a certain impact on the economy.
"Many companies have chosen to postpone their flotation plans as they are not in immediate need of cash and want to wait until market conditions improve," said Charles Feng, office lead partner at Pricewaterhouse- Coopers in Beijing.
The Shanghai Stock Exchange had a total of just four IPOs in the first half of the year, compared with 12 during the same period last year, with total funds raised amounting to 66.8 billion yuan (€6.23 billion) compared to 141.1 billion yuan (€13 billion) in the same period of 2007.
On the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, where the new listings are dominated by small- and medium-sized enterprises, the number of IPOs, however, rose to 54 from 38 last year, with funds increasing by 87 per cent from the corresponding period of last year to 23 billion yuan (€2.1 billion).
PwC forecasts that the IPO funds raised on the mainland and in Hong Kong markets will reach 250 billion yuan (€23.3 billion) and HK$130 billion (€10 billion) in 2008.
"As a number of uncertainties will be clearer in the next six months, we believe that the market sentiment will be warmed up and IPO focus will be on the retail, consumer goods and services and mining and energy companies," Richard Sun, assurance partner of PwC, said in a statement. - CLIFFORD COONAN
GREAT MEDIA WALL OF CHINA SET TO LIGHT UP THE CITY
BEIJING:BEIJING IS getting used to monster-scale projects as the Olympics approach, but one of the more elegant large-scale projects to light up the city is the zero-carbon media wall GreenPix.
This spectacular example of "architainment" is effectively a 2,200sq m monitor which uses a photo-voltaic system and is self-sufficient in energy terms.
The GreenPix screen works by harvesting solar energy by day and using that energy to illuminate the screen after dark. It was designed by Simone Giostra and Partners, with solar technology by China's leading firm, Suntech.
International engineering consultants Arup provided lighting design and facade engineering for the project.
The wall is on the outside of the new Xicui entertainment complex in Beijing, near the main sites of the Olympics next month. Its large-scale display, comprised of 2,292 colour LED light points with a monitor of 24,000 sq ft. "The Media Wall will provide the city of Beijing with its first venue dedicated to digital media art, while offering the most radical example of photo-voltaic technology applied to an entire building's envelope to date," said the wall's Italian designer, Simone Giostra.
The designers opened the project in late June with a programme of art works by leading new media artists.
The focus is set to remain on art, rather than news programmes or cartoons, as many big screens around the city currently show. - CLIFFORD COONAN
BREAKING DOWN PLASTICS AT SPEED
MISSOURI:LANDFILLS AND plastics don't mix well. It takes several hundred years for an oil-based plastic bottle to breakdown and they can take up as much as 25 per cent of the landfill space.
Those two problems are helping drive innovation into new bioplastic packaging material at research institutions including Missouri University of science and technology.
There, researchers are cooking up recipes for super-biodegradable plastics that decompose in a few months. A team there is investigating super-biodegradable plastic recipes made up of fillers, such as starch and fibres. Those natural building blocks make it possible for living organisms to break down waste material. - LEE BRUNO
Chip to analyse tumour cells
MASSACHUSETTS :RESEARCHERS AT Massachusetts General Hospital have developed a chip that can analyse the genetic information of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in the bloodstream and provide information on how best to treat the tumour.
The "blood biopsy" device could also allow doctors to monitor genetic changes in tumours during treatment periods.
"The CTC-chip opens up a whole new field of studying tumours in real time," says Prof Daniel Haber, senior author of a pilot study of the device to be published in The New England Journal of Medicine later this month.
Haber and his colleagues used the antibody-coated silicon chips to capture circulating cancer cells from the blood samples of 27 patients with non-small cell lung cancer.
Genetic analysis of the cells could highlight whether the tumour would respond to particular drug treatment regimes.
The study also found that the genetic signature of a tumour can change over the course of a treatment, with mutations for drug resistance cropping up in some patients.
"If tumor genotypes don't remain static during therapy, it's essential to know exactly what you're treating at the time you are treating it," said Prof Haber.
"Biopsy samples taken at the time of diagnosis can never tell us about changes emerging during therapy or genotypic differences that may occur in different sites of the original tumour, but the CTC-chip offers the promise of non-invasive continuous monitoring."
It could give new options for measuring a patient's response to treatment and also shed light on how tumours spread to other sites in the body, he added. - CLAIRE O'CONNELL
NEW MSc IN BUSINESS ANALYTICS
DUBLIN:GOVERNMENT ministers and advisers wrestling with difficult decisions in these times of worsening public finances might well benefit from the new MSc programme in business analytics being offered from September at the UCD graduate business school.
Business analytics is the science which brings advanced mathematics to bear on problem solving and decision making, helping managers and organisations make the right decisions all the time.
Business analytics looks at all of the factors that have contributed to success and failure in the past, takes in all available data about current market conditions, and combines them to produce guidance on informed decisions for the future.
Businesses can use it to assess the chances of success for the introduction of a new product or the impact of moving production from one global location to another.
The science is already in use in professional sport around the world.
For example, much of the recent success of English Premier League football teams such as Bolton Wanderers, has been attributed to the judicious use of powerful decision support software packages like Prozone.
This analyses the performance of both the team and individual team members after each match and helps identify the underlying reasons for defeat and victory, assisting in the elimination of the former and the consistent repetition of the latter.
Both the one-year full-time and two-year part-time programmes are open to graduates from a wide variety of disciplines who would like to use their aptitude for mathematics or computerised problem solving to address business problems.
For further details, log on to www.smurfitschool.ie- BARRY McCALL
Building firms looking east
DUBLIN:AS CONSTRUCTION activity slows in Ireland and the UK, building firms are increasingly looking to diversify into central and eastern Europe, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The report says a significant infrastructure deficit exists in central and eastern European (CEE) countries such as Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Estonia, with a particular impetus for Poland and Ukraine, which are hosting the 2012 European football Championships.
Almost half the large property developers surveyed by PwC said they were looking abroad, with Poland the favoured destination.
According to PwC, funding for much of the infrastructure development will come from public sources backed by EU funding. However, as this source of funding is finite, Public Private Partnerships are becoming increasingly popular.
Joe Tynan, tax partner with PwC, said for companies looking to expand into new, lower cost markets, CEE was an attractive option, as it was much closer to Ireland than traditional low-cost locations such as China and India.
Governments in the region are also taking steps to make investments in infrastructure projects more attractive, Tynan said, adding that a minimum €500 million was needed to modernise transport links and water supplies.
Tynan also says that "we are seeing Irish businesses getting more comfortable with eastern European countries such as Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and Russia."
"The further east you go, the more difficult it can be, but it can also have greater benefits. We see Irish companies using eastern Europe not only to lower their cost base but also to access the local markets." - DAVID LABANYI
Innovation in a changing climate
DUBLIN:ROBERT SHELTON, author of Making Innovation Work will be a lead speaker at the National Innovation Forum at Croke Park on September 11th.
Organised by Enterprise Ireland, this year's event is entitled "Making Innovation Deliver Results" and will address how innovation can deliver tangible results for organisations in today's changing economic climate.
Other speakers include Dr Elena Lurie-Luke, head of Bioscience Business Development and member of Proctor and Gamble's Connect and Develop team.
The Forum is particularly aimed at SMEs interested in creating effective innovation partnerships with multinationals.
Other speakers include: Prof David Gann, head of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Imperial College London; and Prof Cornelius Herstatt, Institute of Technology and Innovation Management at the Hamburg University of Technology. - MICHAEL McALEER
Art assists business
SPAIN:DISONANCIAS, THE initiative to place artists on long-term residencies inside firms to assist with innovation, has been busy opening a new call for artists (see disonancias.com) and presenting the results of its 2008 intake.
In 2008/9, 10 artists will get a chance to be a part of an innovation team in a Basque company in Spain, or perhaps that should be put the opposite way around; in 2008/9, 10 Basque companies will have the opportunity to work alongside innovative artists.
The presentation of the scheme's results focused heavily on the dissonances, divergences and agreements that took place between artist and business. The deliberate construction of tension and disagreement, as well as co-operation, is a hallmark of Disonancias projects.
Daniela Bershan, a German artist, who worked with leading Basque building materials company Sarkis-Lagunketa, describes feeling like an intruder as she took up her placement. "But that is the point," says Bershan, who worked with the company's chief engineer.
Her project involved creating a new facia building block, Molekulo, an acrylic, clickable block that can be used to simplify facia construction. A real novelty is that it is a living, breathing space.
The interior can be filled with soil in order to grow plants, creating building facias that are constantly changing. They also have an environmental role, equipping buildings with C02 and capturing vegetation. The prototypes are now being made and tested in China.
So what was it like for an artist, accustomed to innovation, working on an industrial project?
"I usually work with processes that grow," says Bershan, referring to her normal practice of beginning a small project, which she develops in different directions. "Here it felt like the opposite way. It was a limited proposal that was cut down. And cut down again."
If that sounds negative, Bershan is quick to point out that Disonancias positively aims for these moments when the two worlds collide.
"It is difficult to compromise, but it is a different way of working." And the relationship is long-lasting, even though she has now left Sarkis-Lagunketa. "It is a possibility space that you can use, long term," she says. "The hybrid [art and industry] is not created in six months." - HAYDN SHAUGHNESSY
GLOBAL ICONS - COMMODITIES
In the eyes of some, why are commodity prices so high?
Commodity markets can be slow in their supply response, which means that when demand takes off, there is a period of adjustment when the commodity is relatively scarce and prices rise. No bubbles, just fundamentals.
So what do the investor demand and supply explanations portend for the economy?
If the investor demand explanation is right, then commodities are a bubble. You should get out now. If the supply explanation is right, then the economy is in trouble.
What commodity is the most important of all?
Oil.
How has the high oil price changed the market?
Sugar is switching from being a food commodity to one strongly influenced by ethanol production.
What will be one of the most important commodities in the future?
Water.
Are there other candidates?
Carbon will be the world's biggest commodity market.
Is there a long history of commodity bubbles?
One of the earliest known financial bubbles was the tulip mania that hit the Netherlands in the 17th century.
- theglobalist.com
Commodity prices - especially those of wheat, rice, oil, natural gas and gold - are rising. Over the past year, the price of rice increased by 122 per cent, wheat by 95 per cent, oil by 82 per cent and gold by 66 per cent. Why are they increasing and what does it mean for the global economy?
