As any new business will attest, trials and tribulations will occur as you get going. Likewise, BeHeron will performing some much needed upgrades to our background code and server over the next few weeks. Please be patient while we bring you new and improved features.

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You all know that we at BeHeron love new products and new technology, but do you know that we also love “pond scum” ? Oh yes we do! Algae is now being utilized to produce gasoline and is getting very little love; and we believe that should change.

Algae is very different than other types of bio-fuels that you may be familiar with. R&D Magazine, in a story about Sapphire Energy, described the algae fuel this way:

“..."Green crude"—a liquid fuel chemically identical to gasoline but not dependent on either a food source or agricultural land. Even better, it promises to be "carbon neutral"; even though vehicles that burn the fuel will emit carbon, creating green crude involves pulling just as much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as it will put back in. Sapphire, based in San Diego, plans to make its fuel from algae microorganisms, salt water, carbon dioxide and the power of the sun. Chief Executive Jason Pyle was deliberately vague concerning how the technology works, but he says the company, which was formed in May 2007, has been able to produce 91-octane gasoline and has had it analyzed at a refinery.”

Sapphire Energy also lists these advantages over traditional bio-fuels:

*The process is not dependent on crops or valuable farmland

*It is highly water efficient, delivering 10 to 100 times more energy per acre than cropland biofuels.

*Sapphire’s fuel products are chemically identical to molecules in crude oil, making company products entirely compatible with the current energy infrastructure — cars, refineries, and pipelines.

Will this be the alternative fuel that finally frees us from foreign oil? Who knows? But what we do know is that there will be many opportunities for new businesses that take advantage of this new fuel. So let's all start rooting for the little "pond scum", shall we?

Keeping with our high-tech/bio-tech theme, BeHeron would like to introduce you to another new product that interfaces directly with the human body. Nanotech-now.com gave us a heads up on an article published by UC Davis in California about smart contact lenses. Tingrui Pan, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and postdoctoral researcher Hailin Cong started with a material called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The researchers were able shape the conductive silver into a circuit on the contact lens and use that to report eye data to a remote computer. This could be a breakthrough for those who must closely monitor their eyes for signs or progression of glaucoma.

The researchers are now making plans to apply for approval to test this technology in humans. BeHeron can't wait to see what the next development will be and what people out there will take advantage of this technology. We can only imagine how these nano-scaled devices will be incorporated into other technologies such as RFID. Can you imaging waking up in the morning and your refrigerator telling you that you should add carrots to your diet today!

To see the UC Davis article click here and click this to see the Pan Group website.

We at BeHeron love new products and we love new products when they incorporate new technology. But most of all, we love to discuss inventions that make us feel like we have transported ourselves into a Star Trek episode. Today's topic is about a company called Sweet Power. They are the makers of blood glucose powered fuel cells. A few months back, we heard a report about a fuel cell system that utilized human blood to power things like PDA's and watches. When we first saw this, our reaction was a mix of freaked-out and grossed-out due to the use of hypodermic needles and capillary tubes to transport blood to the instruments and back to the body. However, this company has found a much more marketable use for this technology.

Their goal is to, “Enable the delivery of advanced healthcare solutions by providing an implantable, self-sustaining energy source using blood glucose as the fuel." They are proposing to use this technology to power implanted devices such as pacemakers, blood monitoring tools, and drug delivery devices. They list several advantages.

* Continuous, long-term power supply with no need to replace or recharge

* No toxic materials – uses naturally present glucose in blood stream

* No toxic byproducts – the byproducts are water and carbon dioxide

* Silicon based architecture enables easy integration with MEMS devices

Just the thought of not having to surgically remove a pacemaker to replace a battery is advantage enough for us.

It’s time for us at BeHeron to talk about one of our least favorite topics, patents. While intellectual property protection, and patents in particular, are key to any business; we dread the paperwork, cost, and even the lawyers involved with this aspect of business. Patents can not only protect you; but also, tell your competition what you are planning to produce, or give away the direction your company is taking. And to top it all off, patents do expire. It is no wonder companies like Gore-Tex would rather hold process information close-to-the-vest via trade-secrets rather than via patents.

However, there are also obvious benefits to patents that are impossible to ignore. Some products are easy to copy or reverse engineer; thus, keeping these as “trade-secret” would be impossible. It is sometimes impossible to file a suit against a foreign manufacturer who copies your product. The good news is that patents, and the legal enforcement that follows, are starting to spread across the globe. They are especially spreading to those countries (many in Asia and we’ll leave it at that) that were notorious for copying (ok we’ll say it) stealing technology.

The United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) recently released 2008 Word Patent Report showed that patent filings in North East Asia (mainly China and the Republic of Korea) and the U.S. drove much of the patent growth from 2005 to 2006.

"“A major increase in innovative activity in China, the Republic of Korea and the United States has driven the overall growth of patent filings in 2006. This reflects a consolidation of earlier trends which demonstrate a marked shift in innovation hubs around the world,” the Director General of WIPO, Kamil Idris, said.

“While use of the patent system remains highly concentrated among a group of countries, statistics show an increasing level of patent activity in emerging countries. This is an encouraging trend,” Dr. Idris added..."

See the UN Press release here and the full report here (1 Mb File).

BeHeron believes that the key point that all of our readers should take away from this article is that foreign nations (especially those in the WTO) have to enforce patent laws to keep their economies growing. You should take advantage of this by filing in multiple countries through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), an agreement administered by WIPO which provides a simplified method for international patent filing.