Top Shelf: July's Literary Picks from Leading Minds

At the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report, we get access to some of the greatest minds in scientific and technological innovation to bring you their insights in print every month. No conversation of ours is complete, however, without talking about one critical subject: The entertainment that feeds those great minds outside of the lab, clinic, or boardroom.
While the answers might not always make it to print, check in here, where we’re pulling together the best books read by some of our best recent interviews.

In this month’s premium edition of the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report , we brought you our conversations with NIH Director Francis Collins, Intel CTO Justin Rattner, and ResMed founder and chairman Peter Farrell. While Collins gave us reading to do, Rattner and Farrell shared their tips and a peek at their bookshelves.

Here are their top shelf picks:

Justin Rattner: Googled, by Ken Auletta, was a worthwhile read. Before that I read The World Without Us which was great, but rather sobering.

Peter Farrell: The Climate Caper, as I’ve been reading a lot on “climatology” recently with the launch of Climate Debate, which I backed. I also like autobiographies and find the lives of the Founding Fathers really interesting—especially Benjamin Franklin, because he was a scientist.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter @ForbesWolfe for the latest on emerging technology and the amazing minds we interview each month.

WEB EXCLUSIVE: NIH Director Francis Collins’ 5 Critical Pathways for Science

In an exclusive interview for the July issue of the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report, NIH Director Francis Collins outlined what he considers the critical pathways for the future of health sciences. Below are his five areas of exceptional opportunity for the next decade.

1. The application of high-throughput technologies to large biology projects has the potential to comprehensively answer fundamental questions about how life works. That includes genomics, but it also includes nanotechnology, imaging approaches, proteomics, and computational strategies to allow us to be much more systematic in assessing mechanisms than before. In the past, we had to take a hunch, pick a candidate gene, and draw a cartoon. Those days are gone. Now we can be faster and more thorough, and we’re often surprised when the answers aren’t where we expected.

2. Rational drug design based on structural information is the next frontier. The academic investigator field is essential for the critical mission to translate the deluge of information we get from the academic world into real forms of treatment. We must push that therapeutic agenda on the academic field, which often stops at basic science discovery and does not move into translation. We need to provide the tools to make that move from science to treatment possible. This is where chemistry and translational research are crucial – areas that have been largely the province of the private sector in the past. Now, there’s both a diminution of research and development investments in the private sector and a profound surge of new targets emerging from the basic science. I think there is also an increasing interest from academia to play a more significant role in the therapeutic development pathway - we have the chance to make that happen.

3. The development of the science of healthcare reform will be critical to provide the evidence necessary for our healthcare system to focus more effectively on good outcomes and reduced costs. This can mean focusing on everything from comparative effectiveness to personalized medicine and pharmaco-genetics. We have tools that provide us with an increasing understanding of the individual. Now, we must shift our attention to how we can use that information for prevention and for choosing the best therapies for those who need treatment.

4. Global health is a priority that we can help to speed by de-risking projects to make them more attractive to the private sector. We understand the basic nature of certain pathogens that cause illness for hundreds of millions, yet a lack of economic incentives has resulted in few developed therapeutics for these conditions. By de-risking some of those projects and speeding up the process, the private sector can begin to fill this critical gap.

5. Our own biomedical research community must be empowered and invigorated so they can chase after innovative ideas and recruit the next generation of investigators. The USA Science and Engineering Festival also kicks in here. We’re hoping that it will be an opportunity for young people to find out why this is such an exciting time in science, so those with curiosity and some vision can pursue these myriad opportunities. We must foster innovation and interest in the sciences by sustaining funding, encouraging young scientists, and facilitating innovative research.

For further insights and exclusive content from Dr. Collins and other leading minds in science, business, and finance, subscribe to the premium edition of the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report.

Top Shelf: Literary Picks From Leading Scientific Minds

At the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report, we get access to some of the greatest minds in scientific and technological innovation to bring you their insights in print every month. No conversation of ours is complete, however, without talking about one critical subject: The entertainment that feeds those great minds outside of the lab, clinic, or boardroom.

While the answers might not always make it to print, check in here, where we’re pulling together the best books read by some of our best recent interviews.

This month’s premium edition of the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report featured “Mythbusters” Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. Rounding out the issue, we sat down with Genocea co-founder and Harvard Professor Darren Higgins as well as Princeton’s Bonnie Bassler.

Here are their top shelf picks:

Mythbuster Adam Savage: Any one of Raymond Chandler’s novels.

Mythbuster Jamie Hyneman: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Darren Higgins: Trouble the Water, a collection of African poems. I have two young daughters, and one of the things I’ve been trying to do is read them poems or sing them lullabies that teach them my pride in our heritage and our family’s journey.

Bonnie Bassler: A translated Italian novel, Ocean Sea. It’s a quirky magical story with a scientist as one of the main characters, and all those components make perfect brain food for me.

Bob Metcalfe: An Excerpt from Our Exclusive Interview

As the inventor of Ethernet and a pioneer of the Internet, you played a key role in a massive technological and societal change—what are some of the lessons you learned that you’d like to apply to the next big wave of change in energy?
This concept is applied history, and I believe that there are important lessons to learn from the Internet that we can use to solve energy. These lessons are many and they’re all over the map, but let me start with the fun one. I’ve decided that a good thing to do is to change the color (green) of the energy movement. Green is not a good color. We should use blue instead, because although green stands for environmentalism, it carries all sorts of baggage. To my ears, it sounds like anti-technology, anti-American, anti-capitalist and anti-nuke. I bring up this point because energy has become a movement much like the Internet was a movement. And with movements come true believers, dogmas, inquisitions, colors and slogans. So, if you’re going to have a movement, you have to take some care in your choices. Instead of going green, let’s go blue.

What other parallels do you draw between the development of the Internet and the emerging changes in energy?
Infrastructure. I really like this particular insight. In building the Internet, we used, grew and enhanced what I would call an innovation infrastructure: the notion of venture capital and all the infrastructure that goes with it. This is the model where you combine university professors and their graduating students with experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to create seriously competing companies that bring new technologies to market. Imagine if that same type of infrastructure that came together to solve all of the information problems facing the burgeoning Internet came together to do the same thing in energy. This infrastructure is what leads to massive change, and I think you’re seeing that infrastructure being put in place today.

Recently, there’s been a resurgence of in- terest in nuclear power. What are your thoughts around startups pursuing this space?
I’m interested in nuclear startups for a simple reason—energy density. The energy density of gasoline is about 1,000 times that of a lithium-ion battery, and nuclear bonds are another factor of a million better than gasoline. The state of the nuclear industry today...

To read the full interview, as well as insights and opinions from Nanosys CEO Jason Hartlove and the Kauffman Foundation's Paul Kedrosky, get the premium report

The Food vs Fuel Debate

One Lux Research analyst had this to say: “The Food versus Fuel” Argument Yields no Fruit”:

The “food versus fuel” meme that spread like wildfire in 2008 arose from fears that record oil prices would spark a scenario in which modern economies would be forced to choose between crops for food and crops for alternative fuels. It was a simplistic notion based more on hype than on science or economics. It also ignored the environmental shortcomings of petroleum-based fuels.

Most scientists agree that the rising price of food in 2008 wasn’t caused by actual shortages. Instead, it derived from speculation, hype, a relatively poor growing season, and ironically, the high cost of petroleum fuel, which made transporting crops to market more costly.

Contrary to the false dichotomy of “food versus fuel” there are many reasons for actively seeking out crops that can serve as both food and fuel.

1. Increasing crop yields from existing farmland is preferable to expanding agriculture. Expanding agricultural lands either requires repurposing arable lands and losing their environmental benefits, or increasing irrigation of dry land, which will exacerbate a mounting water crisis. Planting food crops and using them for energy allows us to exploit the plant as fuel when food is plentiful, or divert it from energy when food is scarce. If we only plant energy crops, or replace food crops currently being cultivated with energy crops, we lose that option and put our food supply at greater risk.



2. 
   Crops grown purposely for biofuel poses economic issues. Growing crops exclusively to provide biofuel feedstocks requires farmers to invest in new seeds, new implements, additional maintenance, fuel, and labor. This requires long-term contracts with farmers in order to ensure a steady biomass supply that justifies the establishment of biorefineries nearby. Dedicated crops require additional tilling, planting, fertilizing, irrigation, and harvesting. All of this increases the cost of the biomass, making it more difficult to produce economically.



3. 
   Growing fuel crops on non-arable land is costly too. Planting energy crops on non-arable land requires an even bigger investment in cultivation. There’s a reason why crops aren’t grown on non-arable land: The soil quality is too poor, there is too little rainfall, the area is inaccessible, etc. So in addition to the challenges named above, non-food crops on underused lands lack roads, rail, farmers, fueling stations, and other infrastructure needed to cost-effectively transport this biomass to market.



4. 
   Agricultural and forest waste are the most economical and environmentally friendly sources of biomass. As we point out in our report, (Biofuels’ and Biomaterials’ Path to Petroleum Parity), the vast majority (70% to 90%) of the mass comprising food crops comes from non-food sections of the plant. It’s the stalks, leaves, and other parts that we do not eat. Taking advantage of this biomass requires no additional water, fertilizer, or labor. Plus, it can be transported, processed, and distributed alongside food, which makes more sense environmentally and economically than developing new crop species and fields.

There are certainly exceptions to the points above. There is some risk that biofuel crops could increase food costs, for instance, and specific sites exist where energy crops will work. In the vast majority of cases, however, improving utilization of crops we already cultivate for food (in particular, by recovering the non-food portion of the plant) is more viable from the perspective of the environment, food security, and biofuel economics.

Solar's Dimming IPOs and Brightening M&A

This week: a quick investable insight from the all-stars at Lux Research. This time on Solar’s dimming IPO and brightening M&A prospects.

M&A activity brightens among solar thermal developers, as photovoltaic IPOs dim

Early February saw 2010’s first concentration of M&A activity in the solar market. First, French nuclear power giant Areva acquired Ausra, a linear Fresnel lens solar thermal plant equipment supplier. Ausra struggled in early 2009 as investment in solar thermal installations all but halted (see the February 5, 2009 LRSJ – client registration required), and changed focus from a power plant developer to an equipment provider. The company was rumored to be up for sale since mid-2009. The Areva-Ausra match-up could breathe life into Ausra’s low-cost solar plant technology, and use the experience and reach of Areva’s power plant equipment business to push forward solar thermal installations.

Meanwhile, dish Stirling solar thermal technology developer Infinia raised $11.5 million in an equity financing round. This follows a $50 million capital raise mid-2009, and a $58 million raise in April 2008. Infinia competes directly with Stirling Energy Systems, which received $100 million in financing from NTR in May 2008.

The hoard of cash flowing into solar thermal component developers follows theacquisition of leading parabolic trough technology provider Solel by Siemens for $418 million in October 2009. But two questions remain.
First, who’s next to buy? Large component firms, including energy and defense firms, may see a strong fit between their competencies and the large-scale, highly regulated processes required for solar thermal plant execution. As for targets, we’ll keep our eyes on three firms:

Heliostat and power tower developer BrightSource Energy, which continues to execute in plant development
Linear Fresnel lens and parabolic trough developer SkyFuel, which offers a lower-cost technology option and potentially lower price tag, and
Power tower technology developer eSolar, which recently signed a licensing agreement for a 2 GW facility in China
The second question is tougher to answer. Where is all that solar thermal set to go? While 50 MW plant installations continue in Spain, regulatory issues continue to dog the U.S. market (see also the January 7, 2010 LRSJ – client registration required). Clients should expect large-scale wrangling among new solar thermal owners as they push through complex solar thermal projects and offer the reliability, and balance sheet, needed to get the huge projects off the ground.

All of this stands in sharp contrast to IPO activity among photovoltaic technology firms. In Q4 2009, Trony Solar indefinitely postponed its IPO followed by Daqo, a Chinese polysilicon producer, which filed (see the January 21, 2010 LRSJ – client registration required), then lowered, and then in January postponed its IPO. Then, earlier this month, Jinko Solar – a vertically integrated ingot, wafer, and cell producer, joined the list and withdrew its IPO due to “poor market conditions.”

Even the completed IPO of U.S.-based STR Holdings in Q4 2009 yielded lackluster results after repricing twice in the days ahead (see the November 5, 2009 LRSJ – client registration required).

While the general market slump since the first of the year will put investors off, their greater concern likely lies in the volatility of the subsidy-driven solar market – and with good reason. A fresh storm of price cuts and continued margin pressure is brewing for late 2010.

Bloom or Gloom & BYD vs. Toyota

Here are some great insights straight from the analyst team at Lux Research on Toyota’s race to secure lithium supply and how it affects Warren Buffett’s BYD stake; the bloom or gloom around the PR extravaganza and the real numbers behind this past week’s launch of Bloom Energy…

Toyota Joins the Race to Secure Lithium Supply

Is Bloom Energy a Better Place redux?