BZ notes!

Moving to WordPress!

2006-06-22T11:19:00.000-04:00

My blog is making a move to a new location. It promises to be more user-friendly and easy to navigate. Please follow me:

http://bznotes.wordpress.com/

Amtrak

2006-06-22T01:35:00.000-04:00

Took my first trip to NY on a train. The Acela Express was just great. Left Boston at 5:15 and was on time to arrive in NYC City at 8:45. I made it in time for my interview at the Swiss Consulate and was back in Boston before dinner. This post highly recommends the service to anyone who is not trying to compare its fare of $106 to a $30 ticket on the GreyHound.

In general, the ease with which I felt I coul dmove between NYC and Boston has me thinking again about mobility in the US an dhow it has positively impacted the growth of economies (especially in the coastal corridors). When would governments in developing countries start to realize the importance of laying down infrastructure that can ease th emovement of goods and people? It was only 2 weeks ago that a senior officer at Dell India advised me to stay away from manufacturing in India - why? Because the logistics there simply suck! That is bad news for people like myself who hope to one day start a company with part of their operations in the Middle East or Pakistan.

Dress code at work or not?

2006-06-22T01:46:00.000-04:00

A friend just posted a note on his blog about a scandal brewing at a large bank in pakistan. Supposedly the bank managers posted a notice for all employees to comply with the "Western dress code" which meant not being able to wear the traditional Pakistani dress of Shalwar Kameez and/or trimming their beards. It was done to put up a 'professional image' for the Bank so its business would grow. In a divided society such as Pakistan, such an issue was sure to stir controversy and brew up a storm. It is important to state my personal opinion here that yes, it has often been quite a nuisance to show up to retain banking outlets and find grossness galore in how people dress and present themselves to customers.

However, the larger question still remains. Should the banks (and other service providing institutions in Pakistan such as hospitals, banks, even universities and schools) be able to enforce a dress code in order to infuse professionalism and discipline? And if yes, can they enforce it even if some parts of the society may consider such a dress code to be a slap in the face of local customs and traditions? Is there much that is said abut an organization and it sprofessionalism by what an employee wears? In the case of Pakistan, these discussions take on a different meaning all otgether. In a society where religion is so intimately tied up with society and even professional life, this may be an important discussion - one that has to be equally respectul towards the individual choices of the people involved (religious, cultural etc) as well as the professionalism and business savvy of their employers. Our greatest hero, Dr. AbdusSalam, wore a shalwar and a beard when he received his Nobel Prize in Physics (see picture), while our current head of state, General Musharraf, is equally comfortable and presentable in a modern wstern dress (see picture). Where should this society go next? And is this a totally pointless and useless discussion?

Which green sectors should entrepreneurs be watching -- and what determines VCs and angel investors' interest in a green startup?

2006-06-22T01:41:00.000-04:00

JUNE 20, 2006

Small Biz

By Jeffrey Gangemi

Green Growth Areas for Entrepreneurs

Which green sectors should entrepreneurs be watching -- and what determines VCs and angel investors' interest in a green startup?

When technology entrepreneur Martin Roscheisen was looking for the next big thing in 2001, the Internet wasn't part of his plans. Instead, he looked to the field of solar photovoltaics (PV), specifically at work being done by a small, government-funded research company named Unisun Corp. Roscheisen recruited one of Unisun's main researchers, and in 2002, he and his newly incorporated five-person company, Nanosolar, sought funding in California's Silicon Valley. The pitch: thin-film solar cells that could be produced for less, more efficiently, and on a significantly larger scale than standard solar paneling.

After receiving seed funding from Google (GOOG ) founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Roscheisen shopped the idea around to the venture-capital community, but was met with skepticism. "They told us that no venture capitalists had ever invested in this—that this is something GE (GE ) should be doing and that we should speak with them," says Roscheisen.

Four years later, with more than $50 million in funding from a variety of VCs, and a fast-growing staff of 50, Roscheisen believes Nanosolar is onto the next big thing. His company, whose ambitious slogan is "A Solar Panel on Every Building," is currently building the largest thin-film solar-panel factory in the world in California's Bay Area.

MORE THAN SOLAR. Roscheisen is not alone in his belief in solar. Last year, three of the five biggest IPOs were in solar photovoltaics. The industry is projected to grow from an $11.2 billion business in 2005 to a $51.1 billion business by 2015, according to the 2006 Clean Energy Trends Report by Clean Edge, a clean tech-focused research and consulting group. VCs put more than $150 million into U.S.-based companies like Nanosolar in 2005—double the amount of investment from 2004, according to the report.

The mood among investors, particularly within the venture community, has undergone a sea change in the past couple of years. Constant media attention surrounding global warming and hybrid vehicles has brought clean and green front and center because of its prodigious growth potential (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/8/06, "Ethanol Cars You Can Buy Now").

Clean Edge co-founder and principal Ron Pernick says other green technologies aren't far behind solar. "We're going to see a lot more in biofuels—ethanol and biodiesel—and also advanced lithium-ion batteries, as well as systems integration and packaging of these types of technologies," he says.

MORE THAN ENERGY. Large-scale venture backing for clean tech is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 1999, clean energy technology made up less than 1% of the total venture capital. In 2005, it was at 4.2%, or $917 million out of $22 billion—a more than 25% increase from the previous year, according to the Clean Edge report. All of the largest venture capital firms have gotten into the act, joining a group of long-established specialist firms that had been around since the early 1990s.

But for apt entrepreneurs, green growth areas aren't limited to energy technology. Sales of organic foods are expected to grow 11% annually for the next four years, according to the Organic Trade Association's 2006 Manufacturer Survey. And the green building industry will grow to $38 billion, five times what it is today, by 2010, according to the National Association of Home Builders (see BusinessWeek.com, Summer 2006, "Do You Need To Be Green?").

So, how can entrepreneurs score the kind of financial backing that Roscheisen's Nanosolar received? BusinessWeek.com talked to fund managers at three major venture capital firms, and executives at two angel investor networks that fund small or early-stage companies to find out which green technologies they see as entrepreneurial hotspots now, as well as what are the green growth industries of the future.

Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV), which currently manages a $400 million fund with interests in everything from software and systems companies to clean tech and life sciences, is one of the large VC firms that funded Nanosolar. MDV has made six investments over the past several years, three of which they've announced publicly: Nanosolar, Jadoo Power Systems, and Energy Innovations. The other three remain under wraps.

"SOLAR FARMS." Erik Straser, a general partner at the firm, manages the clean tech area for the company. He says despite the flurry of solar-related activity, there's huge potential still left in it, since the problem of supply—which cannot keep pace with demand—hasn't yet been convincingly solved. More technology startups similar to Nanosolar's are in the works, but Straser says there's still a lot of money to be made in "solar integration," which includes the delivery, installation, and storage of energy produced by these systems.

Entrepreneurs can play a role in all types of solar development, says Straser. Besides improving the installation technology, "another business angle might be to buy lots of small installers and create a single large installer that could get better panel pricing and have other efficiencies of scale," he says, since solar-panel technology is supposed to become ubiquitous. "There's going to be solar farms at some point," he predicts. "Instead of growing wheat, the new farmers will grow energy."

Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), another large, mainstream venture capital firm, is dedicated to the clean technology industry. DFJ has been actively investing for about five years and has done approximately 12 deals. "We're probably the most active of the traditional venture funds," says Raj Atluru, DFJ's managing director.

BIOFUEL BONANZA. What kind of deals is DFJ looking to do in the future? "If I was an entrepreneur, I'd jump all over the advanced fuel industry," says Atluru. He says techniques of cellulosic ethanol production, which uses disposable materials rather than just corn, are being perfected in university labs. Adds Atluru, "Advanced fuels are where solar was three or four years ago." He sees huge growth potential and IPOs in the offing.

The research backs Atluru's claims. The market for biofuels hit $15.7 billion globally in 2005, up more than 15% from the previous year and is predicted to grow to $52.5 billion by 2015, according to the Clean Edge 2006 report. Ethanol is a fast-growing sector, with a number of pending IPOs (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/12/06, "Should You Bet on Ethanol?"). Alternatives to corn-based ethanol, still underdeveloped in the U.S., make up a huge potential market, says Atluru.

Aside from the large venture firms like DFJ and MDV, there is a group of smaller, more focused funds that are more likely to fund smaller or earlier-stage projects. The group includes Nth Power, Enertech Capital, and Chrysalix Energy Management, and has funded clean energy startups for more than a decade. Nth Power, founded in 1993, focuses on energy and advanced materials and manages more than $250 million and an active portfolio of more than a dozen companies.

ENERGY OPPORTUNITIES. Although Nth Power's main emphasis is energy production, its portfolio extends to other technologies and advanced materials. "We've funded companies in everything from sensor and sensor networks to batteries to advanced metering solutions," says Rodrigo Prudencio, one of the principals of the firm. Prudencio says it's critical for entrepreneurs interested in green energy technologies to ask: "Where are the pain points in the energy value chain as they affect oil, gas, and power companies, or how they affect consumers, and how can technology develop a business around that opportunity?" Prudencio says there is still great potential in developing smart metering systems that conserve energy in household and industrial environments.

But before pounding the pavement for funding, Prudencio also cautions today's entrepreneurs that not all opportunities are created equal, and thus, they don't all require large-scale venture funding. "If I'm in a business where accessing $5 [million] or $10 million will give me access to a $3 billion market, then pursuing venture capital makes sense. If I'm pursuing a $200 million market, it may make sense to bootstrap," says Prudencio.

[Copy, Please paginate, so that page 3 starts here] Indeed, venture capital is far from the only type of funding available to green startups. Angel investors who support small social ventures are a good source for early-stage green companies.

Investor's Circle, a 160-member group made up of socially minded investors, is one such example. Since 1992, Circle members have invested more than $107 million in 171 deals, ranging from renewable energy and organic food to health care, education, and media, says Woody Tasch, the CEO and chairman of the organization. Members team up to gather injections that range from $250,000 to $500,000 for projects that might be considered too early-stage or too small for traditional VC backing.

WHAT'S RIPEST FOR INVESTORS. While many see trouble for smaller entrepreneurs in the organic food space with Wal-Mart's (WMT ) entrance (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/29/06, "Wal-Mart's Organic Offensive"), Tasch says he sees growth and opportunity. "I wouldn't say renewable energy or organics are the easiest way to make money—the big home runs are still in finding the next Google. But you've got huge, relatively predictable movements in these sectors, so if you're trying to create long-term shareholder value and do some real interesting work, this is the place to be," says Tasch. He points to organic beef production as one example of a great green growth business possibility.

Carol Sands, founder and one of the managing directors of Angels' Forum, a private group of 25 investors who invest in small corporate and family venture funds that in turn invest in green technologies, couldn't agree more. Sands points to four common segments that make up the bulk of green investing possibilities—energy, transportation, water, and other green sectors. Of the four, Sands says the other sectors, which include energy management, new sensor technology, agriculture, and chemicals, may be the most ignored and thus ripest for entrepreneurial innovation. "It's going to be relatively easy to develop these technologies and isn't going to take a long time to adapt them—it offers a reasonable time frame with a reasonable rate of return," says Sands.

Sands says there needs to be more communication between the entrepreneurial types and lab rats, since there's a glut of great ideas just waiting to be discovered. "There are a large number of entrepreneurs who are searching for the next business…to get involved in. My answer to them is look to clean tech," says Sands.

FERTILE FIELD. The funding history of Light Engineering, a company supported by Angels' Forum, illustrates the boom in the industry. In 1998, when Matt Johnston, Light Engineering's CEO, was looking to fund his fledgling company, which could challenge traditional industrial manufacturing by producing cleaner, smaller motors and generators, both VCs and angels expressed little interest. Seven years later, Johnston says the industry is buzzing. "I gave a 15-minute presentation [on clean energy] just to help out a friend, and I was approached by about 30 people. It was pretty overwhelming. This is becoming a big topic again," says Johnston.

That level of interest signals to Johnston that it's almost time to sell Light Engineering, which he says he plans to do within two years. But just because some entrepreneurs are beginning to cash out, that doesn't mean green is anywhere near mature. With more and more funding possibilities, whether through venture capital, angel investing, or bootstrapping, opportunities for green entrepreneurs are rich.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gangemi is a reporter for BusinessWeek Online in New York

Disel Audi R10 TDI wins Le Mans 24 hour race

2006-06-18T21:29:00.000-04:00

Excellent news for diesel – a demonstration of better performance and fuel economy of diesel, and a kick-ass victory for a friend I made while working in the Diesel Particulate Filter area! As somebody noted: “A diesel engine's greater fuel efficiency makes for fewer pit stops. The winning Audi made 27, while the Pescarolo in second made 32”.

Audi R10 TDI Diesel Wins Le Mans

18 June 2006

An Audi R10 diesel (No. 8) won the Le Mans 24 Hours race this weekend—the first diesel-powered car ever to do so—with a four-lap lead over the second-place car. A second Audi R10 (No. 7) took third after having to replace a turbocharger earlier in the race, a delay that cost it 10 laps.

The Le Mans 24 is an endurance race—the winner is the car that covers the most distance in 24 hours; cars are driven by teams. The No. 8 covered 380 laps on a 13.65-km (8.48-mi) circuit in this year’s race.

The Audi R10 TDI is powered by a completely new all-aluminum, 5.5-liter, twelve-cylinder bi-turbo TDI engine that delivers more than 485 kW (650 hp) and more than 1,100 Nm of torque. (Earlier post.)

The V12 TDI used in the R10 is the first Audi diesel engine with an aluminium crankcase. The cylinder-bank angle is 90 degrees. The V12 TDI has, like Audi production car engines, four valves per cylinder and twin overhead camshafts. The common rail fuel injection system exceeds 1,600 bar. The V12 TDI is equipped with a pair of diesel particle filters.

Peugeot has announced that it will enter the 2007 Le Mans 24 Hours race with a new diesel car—the Peugeot 908—powered by a 5.5-liter V-12 HDi diesel engine equipped with a diesel particulate filter system. (Earlier post.)

The Le Mans 24 Hour race set an attendance record this year, with a total of 235,000 spectators.

Ups and downs of a venture.

2006-06-16T00:50:00.000-04:00

Jeff Bussgang is well known to people in Boston, and certainly to the group that has association in the Boston VC community or with The Boston Consulting Group. I don’t know him personally but certainly have found people talking about him in my network. He recently wrote the following about the evolution of a company he helped found, UPromise. He is now a VC, but his thoughts about his experiences with UPromise are worth sharing. I just started my 3rd year into the startup world (with GEO2), and his lessons ring quite true. Every entrepreneur can show you his/her battle scars…

“I would be remiss if I didn't make note of last week's announcement that Sallie Mae is acquiring Upromise, a great outcome for the company I was privileged to co-found alongside Michael Bronner 6.5 years ago and serve as president and COO. One of my early investors called me and pointed out that for a height-of-the-bubble-era investment (we closed a $34 million series A in March 2000 with a very lofty pre-money valuation, despite being a handful of folks and some fancy Power Point slides), it is miraculous that he was able to make some money on the transaction.

I learned many lessons during my three years there and even beyond as I stayed close to the company's evolution after I left to join IDG Ventures. One important lesson is that no one person "makes" a company - it takes a village. My high school football coach had a favorite line: "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan". Similarly in any successful entrepreneurial venture, there are a thousand people that "make" the company, and I got to see this in spades at Upromise.

Another important lesson is that every entrepreneurial venture is a winding journey with many ups and downs and many phases of life. There were times when we thought Upromise was going to be a world-changing company and there were times when we thought we would need to shut out the lights after burning through a hundred million dollars. In the end, the passion of the employees, partners and customers and the perserverance of the investors saw it through to a happy outcome for all. Congratulations to everyone involved.”

Jeff Bussgang (http://bostonvcblog.typepad.com/vc/2006/06/upromise_sale_t.html)

GM vs Thomas Friedman.

2006-06-14T13:06:00.000-04:00

It is not always easy for me to agree with Thomas Friedman (yes, of the NYTimes fame), but this time I agree with him wholeheartedly. His take on GM’s $1.99 Gasoline rebate is absolutely on the spot. GM wants to sell its largest SUV’s and trucks – mostly because those are the vehicles it actually makes money on. And to incite customers to buy those gas-guzzling monsters, they are offering a gas rebate. In some ways re gas rebate, as Shakespeare may have said it, is a rebate by any other name. But in this modern world where fuel prices are sky-rocketing to $3.25 and beyond, and where wars are being fought and crazy invasion schemes are being concocted to secure oil reserves,, GM’s strategy is a dangerous play on American consumers’ minds. As a function of such a gas rebate, consumers will be misled into believing that fuel is not as expensive as it ‘really’ is, and once more young Americans are emotionally an culturally attached to the largest, most fuel-inefficient vehicles it will be hard to get them off the addiction.

GM has at least tried to portray a clean and green (aka ‘yellow’) image, but this time it once again fell on the wrong side of the argument. No matter how many blogs they publish to discredit Friedman, he is right and GM will eventually finds its face muddied once again. If it’s just a bad PR job (which may be the case in a company desperate to gain sales and revenue numbers), I hope it is corrected soon. I cannot imagine a company like GM instituting such ridiculous rebate programs as a part of a long-term strategy.

From his article (14 June 2006):

“I'm not a car expert, so let me leave the last word to Automotive News, the industry's top trade magazine. Its June 5 editorial said: ''General Motors' promotion that reimburses some buyers for gasoline purchases is ill-advised for an automaker that is trying to burnish its green image. The program should be dropped, not expanded. It's simply a subsidy for vehicles that burn a lot of gasoline. And it's one more example of G.M.'s tone deafness on environmental issues. Yes, G.M. can make vehicles that are as fuel efficient as anybody else's. But it acts as though its future depends on gas guzzlers.''

And on Flex-fuel vehicles:

“Ah, says Mr. Harris, but we offer nine vehicles that can run on E85 ethanol-gas blends, and have made 1.9 million such cars and trucks. Toyota makes none. The truth: The Big Three U.S. automakers started making flex-fuel cars in the mid-1990's after they were given a shameful federal loophole.

As the Des Moines Register explained in an article on May 26: ''The loophole works this way: A dual-fuel vehicle that can run on either gasoline or 85 percent ethanol, or E85, is credited with a much higher mileage rating than it really gets. That keeps the overall mileage of the cars and trucks that a company like Ford or General Motors makes in any given year within the government's mileage limits.''

By agreeing to build flex-fuel vehicles credited with phony mileage, Detroit gets to make many more bigger, heavier gas guzzlers, the paper explained, ''without having to pay fines for exceeding the federal mileage standards.'' For instance, the 2006 G.M.C. two-wheel-drive Yukon 1500 actually gets 15 m.p.g. city and 20 m.p.g. highway. But under this loophole it is rated as getting 33 miles per gallon for purposes of meeting the government's fleet fuel economy standards. ''The Union of Concerned Scientists calculates that the loophole increased U.S. oil consumption by 80,000 barrels per day in 2005 alone,'' the paper said.

If G.M., Ford and Chrysler really care about saving oil and the environment, why exploit this loophole? And by the way, even though G.M. has made 1.9 million flex-fuel vehicles, it and the other automakers for a long time did little to inform customers that their cars could run on ethanol -- because their real interest was the mileage loophole to make more big cars. Most people didn't know they were driving a flex-fuel car. ''Until recently, the only way to tell was by checking the vehicle identification number,'' the paper noted. Recently, General Motors has put yellow gas caps on its dual-fuel vehicles to alert customers.”

How to Be Silicon Valley?

2006-06-14T10:54:00.000-04:00

Many people (and places) around the world wonder how to create the dynamic technology and entrepreneurship centers in their midst in order to bring greater economic benefit to their regions. There are numerous books and articles written on it – ideas that range from government funding of universities to startups and from liberalizing education to infrastructure development have been presented – but I think in the following piece, Paul Graham says it simply and clearly. It takes nerds and money. Vibrant city cultures attract the rich & wealthy who can invest, and smart intellectual hubs attract the nerds who can ideate, invent and innovate. Having one but not the other is not good enough. Now there’s a lesson for cities in developing countries, such as Pakistan. –Bilal

-----

All credits to: http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html

(This essay is derived from a keynote at Xtech.) May 2006

Could you reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something unique about it?

It wouldn't be surprising if it were hard to reproduce in other countries, because you couldn't reproduce it in most of the US either. What does it take to make a silicon valley even here?

What it takes is the right people. If you could get the right ten thousand people to move from Silicon Valley to Buffalo, Buffalo would become Silicon Valley. [1]

That's a striking departure from the past. Up till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities. All great cities were located on waterways, because cities made money by trade, and water was the only economical way to ship.

Now you could make a great city anywhere, if you could get the right people to move there. So the question of how to make a silicon valley becomes: who are the right people, and how do you get them to move?

Two Types

I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds. They're the limiting reagents in the reaction that produces startups, because they're the only ones present when startups get started. Everyone else will move.

Observation bears this out: within the US, towns have become startup hubs if and only if they have both rich people and nerds. Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it's full of rich people, it has few nerds. It's not the kind of place nerds like.

Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people. The top US Computer Science departments are said to be MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. MIT yielded Route 128. Stanford and Berkeley yielded Silicon Valley. But Carnegie-Mellon? The record skips at that point. Lower down the list, the University of Washington yielded a high-tech community in Seattle, and the University of Texas at Austin yielded one in Austin. But what happened in Pittsburgh? And in Ithaca, home of Cornell, which is also high on the list?

I grew up in Pittsburgh and went to college at Cornell, so I can answer for both. The weather is terrible, particularly in winter, and there's no interesting old city to make up for it, as there is in Boston. Rich people don't want to live in Pittsburgh or Ithaca. So while there are plenty of hackers who could start startups, there's no one to invest in them.

Not Bureaucrats

Do you really need the rich people? Wouldn't it work to have the government invest in the nerds? No, it would not. Startup investors are a distinct type of rich people. They tend to have a lot of experience themselves in the technology business. This (a) helps them pick the right startups, and (b) means they can supply advice and connections as well as money. And the fact that they have a personal stake in the outcome makes them really pay attention.

Bureaucrats by their nature are the exact opposite sort of people from startup investors. The idea of them making startup investments is comic. It would be like mathematicians running Vogue-- or perhaps more accurately, Vogue editors running a math journal. [2]

Though indeed, most things bureaucrats do, they do badly. We just don't notice usually, because they only have to compete against other bureaucrats. But as startup investors they'd have to compete against pros with a great deal more experience and motivation.

Even corporations that have in-house VC groups generally forbid them to make their own investment decisions. Most are only allowed to invest in deals where some reputable private VC firm is willing to act as lead investor.

Not Buildings

If you go to see Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings. But it's the people that make it Silicon Valley, not the buildings. I read occasionally about attempts to set up "technology parks" in other places, as if the active ingredient of Silicon Valley were the office space. An article about Sophia Antipolis bragged that companies there included Cisco, Compaq, IBM, NCR, and Nortel. Don't the French realize these aren't startups?

Building office buildings for technology companies won't get you a silicon valley, because the key stage in the life of a startup happens before they want that kind of space. The key stage is when they're three guys operating out of an apartment. Wherever the startup is when it gets funded, it will stay. The defining quality of Silicon Valley is not that Intel or Apple or Google have offices there, but that they were started there.
So if you want to reproduce Silicon Valley, what you need to reproduce is those two or three founders sitting around a kitchen table deciding to start a company. And to reproduce that you need those people.

Universities

The exciting thing is, all you need are the people. If you could attract a critical mass of nerds and investors to live somewhere, you could reproduce Silicon Valley. And both groups are highly mobile. They'll go where life is good. So what makes a place good to them?

What nerds like is other nerds. Smart people will go wherever other smart people are. And in particular, to great universities. In theory there could be other ways to attract them, but so far universities seem to be indispensable. Within the US, there are no technology hubs without first-rate universities-- or at least, first-rate computer science departments.
So if you want to make a silicon valley, you not only need a university, but one of the top handful in the world. It has to be good enough to act as a magnet, drawing the best people from thousands of miles away. And that means it has to stand up to existing magnets like MIT and Stanford.

This sounds hard. Actually it might be easy. My professor friends, when they're deciding where they'd like to work, consider one thing above all: the quality of the other faculty. What attracts professors is good colleagues. So if you managed to recruit, en masse, a significant number of the best young researchers, you could create a first-rate university from nothing overnight. And you could do that for surprisingly little. If you paid 200 people hiring bonuses of $3 million apiece, you could put together a faculty that would bear comparison with any in the world. And from that point the chain reaction would be self-sustaining. So whatever it costs to establish a mediocre university, for an additional half billion or so you could have a great one. [3]

Personality

However, merely creating a new university would not be enough to start a silicon valley. The university is just the seed. It has to be planted in the right soil, or it won't germinate. Plant it in the wrong place, and you just create Carnegie-Mellon.

To spawn startups, your university has to be in a town that has attractions other than the university. It has to be a place where investors want to live, and students want to stay after they graduate.
The two like much the same things, because most startup investors are nerds themselves. So what do nerds look for in a town? Their tastes aren't completely different from other people's, because a lot of the towns they like most in the US are also big tourist destinations: San Francisco, Boston, Seattle. But their tastes can't be quite mainstream either, because they dislike other big tourist destinations, like New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas.

There has been a lot written lately about the "creative class." The thesis seems to be that as wealth derives increasingly from ideas, cities will prosper only if they attract those who have them. That is certainly true; in fact it was the basis of Amsterdam's prosperity 400 years ago.
A lot of nerd tastes they share with the creative class in general. For example, they like well-preserved old neighborhoods instead of cookie-cutter suburbs, and locally-owned shops and restaurants instead of national chains. Like the rest of the creative class, they want to live somewhere with personality.

What exactly is personality? I think it's the feeling that each building is the work of a distinct group of people. A town with personality is one that doesn't feel mass-produced. So if you want to make a startup hub-- or any town to attract the "creative class"-- you probably have to ban large development projects. When a large tract has been developed by a single organization, you can always tell. [4]

Most towns with personality are old, but they don't have to be. Old towns have two advantages: they're denser, because they were laid out before cars, and they're more varied, because they were built one building at a time. You could have both now. Just have building codes that ensure density, and ban large scale developments.

A corollary is that you have to keep out the biggest developer of all: the government. A government that asks "How can we build a silicon valley?" has probably ensured failure by the way they framed the question. You don't build a silicon valley; you let one grow.

Nerds

If you want to attract nerds, you need more than a town with personality. You need a town with the right personality. Nerds are a distinct subset of the creative class, with different tastes from the rest. You can see this most clearly in New York, which attracts a lot of creative people, but few nerds. [5]

What nerds like is the kind of town where people walk around smiling. This excludes LA, where no one walks at all, and also New York, where people walk, but not smiling. When I was in grad school in Boston, a friend came to visit from New York. On the subway back from the airport she asked "Why is everyone smiling?" I looked and they weren't smiling. They just looked like they were compared to the facial expressions she was used to.

If you've lived in New York, you know where these facial expressions come from. It's the kind of place where your mind may be excited, but your body knows it's having a bad time. People don't so much enjoy living there as endure it for the sake of the excitement. And if you like certain kinds of excitement, New York is incomparable. It's a hub of glamour, a magnet for all the shorter half-life isotopes of style and fame.

Nerds don't care about glamour, so to them the appeal of New York is a mystery. People who like New York will pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment in order to live in a town where the cool people are really cool. A nerd looks at that deal and sees only: pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment.

Nerds will pay a premium to live in a town where the smart people are really smart, but you don't have to pay as much for that. It's supply and demand: glamour is popular, so you have to pay a lot for it.
Most nerds like quieter pleasures. They like cafes instead of clubs; used bookshops instead of fashionable clothing shops; hiking instead of dancing; sunlight instead of tall buildings. A nerd's idea of paradise is Berkeley or Boulder.

Youth

It's the young nerds who start startups, so it's those specifically the city has to appeal to. The startup hubs in the US are all young-feeling towns. This doesn't mean they have to be new. Cambridge has the oldest town plan in America, but it feels young because it's full of students.

What you can't have, if you want to create a silicon valley, is a large, existing population of stodgy people. It would be a waste of time to try reverse the fortunes of a declining industrial town like Detroit or Philadelphia by trying to encourage startups. Those places have too much momentum in the wrong direction. You're better off starting with a blank slate in the form of a small town. Or better still, if there's a town young people already flock to, that one.

The Bay Area was a magnet for the young and optimistic for decades before it was associated with technology. It was a place people went in search of something new. And so it became synonymous with California nuttiness. There's still a lot of that there. If you wanted to start a new fad-- a new way to focus one's "energy," for example, or a new category of things not to eat-- the Bay Area would be the place to do it. But a place that tolerates oddness in the search for the new is exactly what you want in a startup hub, because economically that's what startups are. Most good startup ideas seem a little crazy; if they were obviously good ideas, someone would have done them already.

(How many people are going to want computers in their houses? What, another search engine?)

That's the connection between technology and liberalism. Without exception the high-tech cities in the US are also the most liberal. But it's not because liberals are smarter that this is so. It's because liberal cities tolerate odd ideas, and smart people by definition have odd ideas.

Conversely, a town that gets praised for being "solid" or representing "traditional values" may be a fine place to live, but it's never going to succeed as a startup hub. The 2004 presidential election, though a disaster in other respects, conveniently supplied us with a county-by-county map of such places. [6]

To attract the young, a town must have an intact center. In most American cities the center has been abandoned, and the growth, if any, is in the suburbs. Most American cities have been turned inside out. But none of the startup hubs has: not San Francisco, or Boston, or Seattle. They all have intact centers. [7] My guess is that no city with a dead center could be turned into a startup hub. Young people don't want to live in the suburbs.

Within the US, the two cities I think could most easily be turned into new silicon valleys are Boulder and Portland. Both have the kind of effervescent feel that attracts the young. They're each only a great university short of becoming a silicon valley, if they wanted to.

Time

A great university near an attractive town. Is that all it takes? That was all it took to make the original Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley traces its origins to William Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor. He did the research that won him the Nobel Prize at Bell Labs, but when he started his own company in 1956 he moved to Palo Alto to do it. At the time that was an odd thing to do. Why did he? Because he had grown up there and remembered how nice it was. Now Palo Alto is suburbia, but then it was a charming college town-- a charming college town with perfect weather and San Francisco only an hour away.

The companies that rule Silicon Valley now are all descended in various ways from Shockley Semiconductor. Shockley was a difficult man, and in 1957 his top people-- "the traitorous eight"-- left to start a new company, Fairchild Semiconductor. Among them were Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, who went on to found Intel, and Eugene Kleiner, who founded the VC firm Kleiner Perkins. Forty-two years later, Kleiner Perkins funded Google, and the partner responsible for the deal was John Doerr, who came to Silicon Valley in 1974 to work for Intel.

So although a lot of the newest companies in Silicon Valley don't make anything out of silicon, there always seem to be multiple links back to Shockley. There's a lesson here: startups beget startups. People who work for startups start their own. People who get rich from startups fund new ones. I suspect this kind of organic growth is the only way to produce a startup hub, because it's the only way to grow the expertise you need.

That has two important implications. The first is that you need time to grow a silicon valley. The university you could create in a couple years, but the startup community around it has to grow organically. The cycle time is limited by the time it takes a company to succeed, which probably averages about five years.

The other implication of the organic growth hypothesis is that you can't be somewhat of a startup hub. You either have a self-sustaining chain reaction, or not. Observation confirms this too: cities either have a startup scene, or they don't. There is no middle ground. Chicago has the third largest metropolitan area in America. As source of startups it's negligible compared to Seattle, number 15.

The good news is that the initial seed can be quite small. Shockley Semiconductor, though itself not very successful, was big enough. It brought a critical mass of experts in an important new technology together in a place they liked enough to stay.

Competing

Of course, a would-be silicon valley faces an obstacle the original one didn't: it has to compete with Silicon Valley. Can that be done? Probably.

One of Silicon Valley's biggest advantages is its venture capital firms. This was not a factor in Shockley's day, because VC funds didn't exist. In fact, Shockley Semiconductor and Fairchild Semiconductor were not startups at all in our sense. They were subsidiaries-- of Beckman Instruments and Fairchild Camera and Instrument respectively. Those companies were apparently willing to establish subsidiaries wherever the experts wanted to live.

Venture investors, however, prefer to fund startups within an hour's drive. For one, they're more likely to notice startups nearby. But when they do notice startups in other towns they prefer them to move. They don't want to have to travel to attend board meetings, and in any case the odds of succeeding are higher in a startup hub.

The centralizing effect of venture firms is a double one: they cause startups to form around them, and those draw in more startups through acquisitions. And although the first may be weakening because it's now so cheap to start some startups, the second seems as strong as ever. Three of the most admired "Web 2.0" companies were started outside the usual startup hubs, but two of them have already been reeled in through acquisitions.

Such centralizing forces make it harder for new silicon valleys to get started. But by no means impossible. Ultimately power rests with the founders. A startup with the best people will beat one with funding from famous VCs, and a startup that was sufficiently successful would never have to move. So a town that could exert enough pull over the right people could resist and perhaps even surpass Silicon Valley.

For all its power, Silicon Valley has a great weakness: the paradise Shockley found in 1956 is now one giant parking lot. San Francisco and Berkeley are great, but they're forty miles away. Silicon Valley proper is soul-crushing suburban sprawl. It has fabulous weather, which makes it significantly better than the soul-crushing sprawl of most other American cities. But a competitor that managed to avoid sprawl would have real leverage. All a city needs is to be the kind of place the next traitorous eight look at and say "I want to stay here," and that would be enough to get the chain reaction started.

Notes

[1] It's interesting to consider how low this number could be made. I suspect five hundred would be enough, even if they could bring no assets with them. Probably just thirty, if I could pick them, would be enough to turn Buffalo into a significant startup hub.
[2] Bureaucrats manage to allocate research funding moderately well, but only because (like an in-house VC fund) they outsource most of the work of selection. A professor at a famous university who is highly regarded by his peers will get funding, pretty much regardless of the proposal. That wouldn't work for startups, whose founders aren't sponsored by organizations, and are often unknowns.
[3] You'd have to do it all at once, or at least a whole department at a time, because people would be more likely to come if they knew their friends were. And you should probably start from scratch, rather than trying to upgrade an existing university, or much energy would be lost in friction.
[4] Hypothesis: Any plan in which multiple independent buildings are gutted or demolished to be "redeveloped" as a single project is a net loss of personality for the city, with the exception of the conversion of buildings not previously public, like warehouses.
[5] A few startups get started in New York, but less than a tenth as many per capita as in Boston, and mostly in less nerdy fields like finance and media.
[6] Some blue counties are false positives (reflecting the remaining power of Democractic party machines), but there are no false negatives. You can safely write off all the red counties.
[7] Some "urban renewal" experts took a shot at destroying Boston's in the 1960s, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but most neighborhoods successfully resisted them.

Thanks to Chris Anderson, Trevor Blackwell, Marc Hedlund, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Greg Mcadoo, and Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this, and to Ed Dumbill for inviting me to speak.

Adil Najam's blog

2006-06-12T17:48:00.000-04:00

Finally, the time has arrived for me to seriously follow an online blog on Pakistan. Reason is mostly because Adil will be authoring it. I have now known Adil for many years and I could not recommend a better blog to follow if you really want to read quality material. Here it is in all its glory:

http://pakistaniat.wordpress.com/ [ALL THINGS PAKISTAN]

Schumpeterian entrepreneurship

2006-06-11T19:15:00.000-04:00

From “Civic Entrepreneurship, Global Synthesis, Vol I, 2002” (Eds: Tariq Banuri and Adil Najam). Thanks to SH for referring to this.

-Bilal

Second, and to put it as simplistically as possible, we have found that sustainable development is not a blueprint. It always involves newness, a new way of pulling things together, new ways of mobilizing resources, building legitimacy, engendering collective action, stimulating economic activity or adapting technology. In short, it involves entrepreneurship, in the manner that the great economist Joseph Schumpeter (1934) defined it. The Schumpeterian entrepreneur is not necessarily an inventor or manager or financier – he may just as easily be someone who adopts somebody else’s idea, borrows money from a bank and hires a manager to put the idea to practical use in a business or factory. Without entrepreneurship, ideas or inventions cannot impact development, sustainable or otherwise. The entrepreneur has the imagination to see the potential for profit from the innovation (i.e. the practical application of the technique), the initiative actually to carry out the task of introducing the innovation, and a willingness to take the calculated risk that the effort might fail and lead to a loss rather than a profit.

Schumpeter’s insight pertained mainly to entrepreneurship for business purposes. What we have found, however, is a form of entrepreneurship driven explicitly by the public interest, which seeks to create not necessarily a new way of making a profit but a new way of building social capital, a new way of showing how to harness existing ideas, methods, inventions, technologies, resources or management systems in the service of collective goals. It is, in short, civic entrepreneurship – hence the title of this series. As mentioned, civic entrepreneurship is not confined to the actions of civil society organizations; it includes the actions of visionary business leaders and government officials, whose work is driven by the civic motive.

This perspective on sustainable development can best be analogized to the growth process of a tree, starting from a single seed, rooted in the soil, dependent on its compatibility with the environment and, at least in its early years, requiring persistent attention and care. Every seed has the potential of becoming a tree, but not every seed will become a tree. Unlike the house or the river, its evolution is not predetermined by the dictates of the blueprint or the gradient.

More importantly, the tree grows not only in itself but also through others, not only upwards but also outwards, by germinating new seeds, new saplings, and through links, networks, reproduction and adaptation. Trees die, but many live on through others who took root because of them. In short, our reading of the experience of sustainable development is as an organic process, which, although driven by its own inner logic, requires the investment of human will and agency both by individuals and through the broader social environment.

okay so I am not that tall myself, but my sis.....

2006-06-09T12:15:00.000-04:00

Personalbee: Energy, Environment and Clean-Tech

2006-06-07T13:19:00.000-04:00

I recently got introduced to the Personalbee website. I started following the ‘VC and Startups’ Personalbee maintained by Pamela Mahoney, and realized that building one for my interests in energy, environment and cleantech would be useful (and fun). I have created such a bee to make it easy for myself to follow the newsrooms and blogs on these topics, but it is open for public viewing. Enjoy.

Personalbee

Energy, Environment & Clean-Tech: Renewable Energy, Clean Technologies, Venture Capital & Environment.

http://www.personalbee.com/bee_reader.php?grpno=1429

Fun facts about biodiesel fuel

2006-06-07T13:40:00.000-04:00

Fun facts about biodiesel fuel

Biodiesel

· Biodiesel can be used at 100 percent levels or mixed in any proportion with No. 2 diesel or No. 1 diesel.

· Contains no nitrogen or aromatics

· Typically contains less than 15 ppm sulfur. Does not contribute to sulfur dioxide emissions

· Has characteristically low carbon monoxide, particulate, soot and hydrocarbon emissions

· Contains 11 percent oxygen by weight

· Biodiesel has the highest energy content (BTUs) of any alternative fuel and is comparable to No. 1 diesel.

· Fuel efficiency is the same as diesel fuel

· Fuel economy, power, and torque are similar to No. 2 diesel and vary linearly with the blend level

B2 biodiesel

B2, a blend of 2 percent biodiesel and 98 percent diesel fuel, is a fuel component to extend engine life through exceptional lubricity.

· B2 can add core lubricity to No. 2 diesel, or enhance lubricity of a premium diesel fuel.

· Can increase lubricity by up to 66 percent over No. 2 diesel fuel, which means:

· Protection against fuel injector and injection pump failure

· Longer equipment life

· Lower maintenance costs

· Less equipment downtime

· Reduces friction so engine doesn’t have to work as hard

· Virtually identical to No. 2 diesel in fuel consumption, power output and engine torque

· In winter, virtually no difference in cold flow properties between B2 and No. 2 diesel.

· Virtually no difference in cold flow properties between B2 and a 50/50 blend of No. 1 diesel and No. 2 diesel

B20 biodiesel facts

B20 is a blend of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent diesel fuel, which:

· Provides optimum emission benefits for the lowest cost.

· Keeps NOx increases small (1-4 percent) and within legal emission limits for engines. (NOx can be reduced further by changing engine timing.)

· Offers excellent emission benefits by reducing soot, particulates, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide by more than 10 percent each.

· Minimal increases in cloud and pour point levels can be easily managed by additives

· Does not contribute to sulfur dioxide emissions

Economy

· One bushel of soybeans can produce 1.4 gallons of biodiesel.

· Since June 1999, biodiesel sales have grown to an industry estimate of 15 million gallons, or the equivalent of 10 million bushels of US soybeans.

· A study completed in 2001 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Energy Policy and New Uses in conjunction with the Economic Research Services (ERS) found that an average annual increase of the equivalent of 200 million gallons of soy-based biodiesel demand would boost total crop cash receipts by $5.2 billion cumulatively by 2010, resulting in an average net farm income increase of $300 million per year.

· In the last year, the price of wholesale delivered biodiesel has decreased significantly. Generally, a 20 percent biodiesel blend (with 80 percent regular diesel, known as B20) costs about 15-30 cents more per gallon than straight petroleum fuel. B2 blends generally cost only a couple of cents more than No. 2 diesel fuel.

Environment

· Biodiesel is a renewable, biodegradable, cleaner-burning fuel. Unlike other fuel additives, biodiesel poses minimal risk to water quality.

· A 100 percent biodiesel blend lowers carbon monoxide (CO) emissions by 44 percent, particulate matter emissions by 40 percent and sulfate emissions by 100 percent.

· B20 lowers carbon monoxide (CO) emissions by 9 percent, particulate matter emissions by 8 percent and sulfate emissions by 20 percent. When B20 is used along with an oxidation catalyst, it reduces particulate matter by 45 percent, carbon monoxide by 41 percent and total hydrocarbons by 65 percent.

· The ozone forming potential of the speciated hydrocarbon emissions for biodiesel was nearly 50 percent less than that measured for diesel fuel.

· Biodiesel reduces air toxins by up to 90 percent.

· Biodiesel has the highest energy balance of any fuel. For every one unit of fossil energy needed to produce biodiesel, 3.2 units of energy are gained.

· Does not contribute to sulfur dioxide emissions

Performance

· Biodiesel has the highest energy content (120,000 BTUs per gallon) of any alternative fuel.

· Biodiesel has significantly improved lubricity, which can decrease maintenance costs and reduce engine wear.

· A flash point of over 300 F makes it much safer to use, store and handle than diesel, gasoline, or other gaseous fuels.

· More than 100 major fleets use biodiesel. Additionally, numerous biodiesel demonstrations, including three one-million-mile tests and more than 30 50,000-mile tests, have logged more than 10 million road miles with biodiesel blends. In these tests, performance, fuel mileage and drivability with biodiesel blends were similar to conventional diesel, but opacity levels were reduced and exhaust odor was less offensive. No adverse durability or engine wear problems were noted.

· Biodiesel can be operated in any diesel engine with little or no modification to the engine or the fuel system. In blends over 20 percent, biodiesel has a solvent effect, which may release deposits accumulated on tank walls and pipes from previous diesel fuel. The release of deposits may clog filters initially and precautions should be taken.

· Manufacturer warranties cover defects in material and workmanship, and those warranties extend to engines burning biodiesel. Using biodiesel will not void warranties.

Information courtesy of the Iowa State Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

Ethanol may not be answer to US oil dependence

2006-06-02T10:09:00.000-04:00

Ethanol may not be answer to US oil dependence: critics

AFP, 2 May 2006 - As concerns mount over soaring gasoline prices and the United States' dependence on foreign oil, ethanol is emerging as a controversial balm for the nation's growing energy problem.
Politicians and automakers say the corn-based biofuel can reduce demand for gasoline. By using more ethanol, advocates say, gasoline (petrol) prices would come down, air quality would improve, and American farmers would benefit.
But some critics say there are far more effective alternatives than a fuel which requires massive energy inputs to produce.
"I wish ethanol were everything that advocates say it is, but it is terrible that this has been latched on to and proposed to be a solution to our liquid fuels problem," said David Pimentel, a Cornell University ecology and agricultural sciences professor.
Not only does ethanol require 30 percent more energy input than what is produced, Pimentel said, but crop pesticides and fertilizers cause water pollution and other environmental problems.
At the same time, he said, farmers stand to receive billions in federal subsidies.
For its part, the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition said ethanol production has become less energy-intensive over the last 20 years, and will continue to improve.
There are two types of ethanol gasoline: E10, a blend which contains 10 percent ethanol, can be used in any vehicle and is already used in 40 percent of all gasoline sold in the United States; and E85, a blend which uses 85 percent ethanol and requires specially made vehicles.
Although automakers are on board, even touting their products, the question is whether consumers will warm to vehicles that require a different fuel and engine.
A J.D. Power and Associates' study reported that only 7.23 percent of all new car buyers last year said that "environmental impact" was a key factor in their buying decision.
Added Pimentel: "I think the public will buy into it, but only until the facts get out. They'll find out that this is not solving our energy problem."
There are other challenges. For one, ethanol achieves lower mileage than traditional gasoline, according to www.fueleconomy.gov.
The website shows, for example, that a 2006 Chevy Monte Carlo can travel a combined 25 miles (40 kilometers) per gallon on gasoline, but only 19 miles (31 kilometers) per gallon on E85. By comparison, a 2006 Toyota Prius hybrid gets 55 miles (88 kilometers) per gallon.
Another problem is the lack of infrastructure. There are about 180,000 gasoline stations in the United States, but only 600 or so ethanol stations, according to the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition.
Most of those are in the Midwest. The number of ethanol stations is expected to grow to 2,000 this year, thanks to a tax credit for station owners who install E85 pumps.
Some say it's worth it.
President George W. Bush said he wants to increase ethanol production to replace 30 percent of gasoline demand by 2030 in order to stanch the nation's growing reliance on foreign oil.
In January, two Midwestern senators sponsored a bill that would require automakers to annually increase the number of vehicles capable of burning E85 until nearly all vehicles are so equipped.
General Motors Corp., still smarting from being late to market on hybrid technology, has launched an ad campaign touting ethanol. Hybrid leader Toyota Motor recently said it would consider building ethanol-friendly vehicles.
Chrysler Corp. plans to add three new vehicles to its lineup of E85 flexible-fuel vehicles this fall: The Jeep Grand Cherokee and Commander SUVs, and the Dodge Dakota pickup.
The manufacturer expects to sell 250,000 E85-fueled vehicles in 2007 and 500,000 in 2008. Nearly all of the company's E85 vehicles have been sold to fleet customers -- at least half of those to government agencies -- but the new versions will be sold directly to consumers.
By the end of this year Ford Motor Co. will have sold two million E85 vehicles.
Earlier this year Ford introduced the Escape Hybrid E85, a research vehicle that marries hybrid electric power and flex-fuel capability, and is said to produce 25 percent less carbon dioxide than a gasoline-fueled Escape hybrid.
In all there are about six million E85-compatible vehicles on the road.

This article is reproduced with kind permission of Agence France-Presse (AFP)
For more news and articles visit the AFP website.

Chemistry kits - and preparing kids for a career in Chemistry

2006-05-30T15:29:00.000-04:00

This article made me think why was it that do-it-yourself chemistry kits were never a thing-to-give-your-kid in Pakistan (instead of cricket kits)?

I see my fellow chemistry researchers fondly remember their childhood chemistry kit experiences, and how they were inspired by their own creations. But at those moments I feel I have nothing to contribute, and no way of relating to their experiences. Come to think of it, maybe its one reason why I find myself doing chemistry and enjoying it, but not necessarily feeling wed to it like some of my colleagues. Could this be changed for the next generation of Pakistani school-goers? How would we even begin to do something about it? Perhaps LUMS chemistry students creating chemistry kits, venturing out to high schools, conducting chemistry-demos, and pushing more and more schools to make their science-fairs more competitive and engaging for future chemists?

-Bilal

http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry_pr.html

Don't Try This at Home

Garage chemistry used to be a rite of passage for geeky kids. But in their search for terrorist cells and meth labs, authorities are making a federal case out of DIY science.

By Steve Silberman

The first startling thing Joy White saw out of her bedroom window was a man running toward her door with an M16. White’s husband, a physicist named Bob Lazar, was already outside, awakened by their barking dogs. Suddenly police officers and men in camouflage swarmed up the path, hoisting a battering ram. “Come out with your hands up immediately, Miss White!” one of them yelled through a megaphone, while another handcuffed the physicist in his underwear. Recalling that June morning in 2003, Lazar says, “If they were expecting to find Osama bin Laden, they brought along enough guys.”

The target of this operation, which involved more than two dozen police officers and federal agents, was not an international terrorist ring but the couple’s home business, United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, a mail-order outfit that serves amateur scientists, students, teachers, and law enforcement professionals. From the outside, company headquarters – at the end of a dirt road high in the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque – looks like any other ranch house in New Mexico, with three dogs, a barbecue, and an SUV in the driveway. But not every suburban household boasts its own particle accelerator. A stroll through the backyard reveals what looks like a giant Van de Graaff generator with a pipe spiraling out of it, marked with CAUTION: RADIATION signs. A sticker on the SUV reads POWERED BY HYDROGEN, while another sign by the front gate warns, TRESPASSERS WILL BE USED FOR SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS.

Science experiments are United Nuclear’s business. The chemicals available on the company’s Web site range from ammonium dichromate (the main ingredient in the classic science-fair volcano) to zinc oxide powder (which absorbs UV light). Lazar and White also sell elements like sodium and mercury, radioactive minerals, and geeky curiosities like aerogel, an ultralightweight foam developed by NASA to capture comet dust. The Department of Homeland Security buys the company’s powerful infrared flashlights by the case; the Mythbusters guys on the Discovery Channel recently picked up 10 superstrong neodymium magnets. (These come with the sobering caveat: “Beware – you must think ahead when moving these magnets … Loose metallic objects and other magnets may become airborne and fly considerable distances.”) Fire departments in Nevada and California send for United Nuclear’s Geiger counters and uranium ore to train hazmat crews.

A former employee of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the 47-year-old Lazar radiates a boyish enthusiasm for science and gadgets. White, 50, is a trim licensed aesthetician who does herbal facials for local housewives while helping her husband run the company. When the officers determined that Lazar and White posed no physical threat, they freed the couple from their handcuffs and produced a search warrant. United Nuclear’s computers and business records were carted off in a van.

The search was initiated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal agency best known for instigating recalls of faulty cribs and fire-prone space heaters. The CPSC’s concern with United Nuclear was not the uranium, the magnets, or the backyard accelerator. It was the chemicals – specifically sulfur, potassium perchlorate, and powdered aluminum, all of which can be used to make illegal fireworks. The agency suspected that Lazar and White were selling what amounted to kits for making M-80s, cherry bombs, and other prohibited items; such kits are banned by the CPSC under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act.

“We are not just a recall agency,” explains CPSC spokesperson Scott Wolfson. “We have turned our attention to the chemical components used in the manu-facture of illegal fireworks, which can cause amputations and death.” A 2004 study by the agency found that 2 percent of fireworks-related injuries that year were caused by homemade or altered fireworks; the majority involved the mishandling of commercial firecrackers, bottle rockets, and sparklers. Nonetheless, Wolfson says, “we’ve fostered a very close relationship with the Justice Department and we’re out there on the Internet looking to see who is promoting these core chemicals. Fireworks is one area where we’re putting people in prison.”

In the past several years, the CPSC has gone after a variety of online vendors, demanding the companies require customers to prove they have a license to manufacture explosives before they can purchase any chemical associated with making them. Many of these compounds, however, are also highly useful for conducting science experiments. Sulfur, for example, is an ingredient in hydrogen sulfide, an important tool for chemical analysis. Potassium perchlorate and potassium nitrate are widely used in labs as oxidizers.

The CPSC’s war on illegal fireworks is one of several forces producing a chilling effect on amateur research in chemistry. National security issues and laws aimed at thwarting the production of crystal meth are threatening to put an end to home laboratories. In schools, rising liability concerns are making teachers wary of allowing students to perform their own experiments. Some educators even speculate that a lack of chem lab experience is contributing to the declining interest in science careers among young people.

United Nuclear got its computers back a few days after they were hauled away, and three years passed before Lazar and White heard from the authorities again. This spring, the couple was charged with violating the Federal Hazardous Substances Act and shipping restricted chemicals across state lines. If convicted, Lazar and White each face a maximum penalty of 270 days in prison and a $15,000 fine.

The lure of do-it-yourself chemistry has always been the most potent recruiting tool science has to offer. Many kids attracted by the promise of filling the garage with clouds of ammonium sulfide – the proverbial stink bomb – went on to brilliant careers in mathematics, biology, programming, and medicine.

Intel cofounder Gordon Moore set off his first boom in Silicon Valley two decades before pioneering the design of the integrated circuit. One afternoon in 1940, near the spot where Interstate 280 intersects Sand Hill Road today, the future father of the semiconductor industry knelt beside a cache of homemade dynamite and lit the fuse. He was 11 years old.

Moore’s pyrotechnic adventures grew out of his experiments with a neighbor’s chemistry set. He turned a shed beside the family house into a lab, stocking it with chemicals mail-ordered from San Francisco and filling an old dresser with beakers and funnels. Now retired, the 77-year-old Moore looks back on his days and nights in the shed as a time when he learned to think and work like a scientist. “The things I made, like nitroglycerin, took a fair amount of lab technique,” he recalls. “I specialized in explosives because they were fun, and I liked doing things that got results in a hurry.”

Many of Moore’s illustrious peers also first got interested in science by performing experiments at home. After reading a book called The Boy Scientist at age 10, Vint Cerf – who became one of the architects of the Internet – spent months blowing up thermite volcanoes and launching backyard rockets. Growing up in Colorado, David Packard – the late cofounder of Hewlett-Packard – concocted new recipes for gunpowder. The neurologist Oliver Sacks writes about his adolescent love affair with “stinks and bangs” in Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. “There’s no question that stinks and bangs and crystals and colors are what drew kids – particularly boys – to science,” says Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1981. “Now the potential for stinks and bangs has been legislated out.”

Popular Science columnist Theodore Gray, who is one of United Nuclear’s regular customers, uses potassium perchlorate to demonstrate the abundance of energy stored in sugar and fat. He chops up Snickers bars, sprinkles in the snowy crystals, and ignites the mixture, which bursts into a tower of flame – the same rapid exothermic reaction that propels model rockets skyward. “Why is it that I can walk into Wal-Mart and buy boxes of bullets and black powder, but I can’t buy potassium perchlorate to do science because it can also be used to make explosives?” he asks. “How many people are injured each year doing extreme sports or playing high school football? But mention mixing up chemicals in your home lab, and people have a much lower index of acceptable risk.”

The push to restrict access to chemicals by those who have no academic or scientific credentials gained momentum in the mid-’90s following the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. In the years since 9/11, the Defense Department, FBI, and other government agencies have strategized ways of tracking even small purchases of potentially dangerous chemicals. “The fact that there are amateurs and retired professors out there who need access to these chemicals is a valid problem,” acknowledges Rice University chemistry professor James Tour, who consulted with the Pentagon and the Justice Department, “but there aren’t many of those guys weighed against the possible dangers.”

A provision in the 2002 Homeland Security Act mandated background checks and licensing requirements for model-rocket enthusiasts on the grounds that ammonium perchlorate fuel is an explosive; the Justice Department argued that terrorists could deploy model rockets to shoot down commercial airliners. A bill pending in both houses of Congress would empower the Department of Homeland Security to regulate sales of ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer that Timothy McVeigh used to make the Oklahoma City bomb. “We finally have bipartisan support and encouragement from the chemical industry on this, which is important, because we’ve seen what can happen when these materials fall into the wrong hands,” says US representative Curt Weldon (R-Pennsylvania), who is sponsoring the House bill. “As we move forward, we’re going to be taking a very close look at other chemicals that should be regulated.”

In the meantime, more than 30 states have passed laws to restrict sales of chemicals and lab equipment associated with meth production, which has resulted in a decline in domestic meth labs, but makes things daunting for an amateur chemist shopping for supplies. It is illegal in Texas, for example, to buy such basic labware as Erlenmeyer flasks or three-necked beakers without first registering with the state’s Department of Public Safety to declare that they will not be used to make drugs. Among the chemicals the Portland, Oregon, police department lists online as “commonly associated with meth labs” are such scientifically useful compounds as liquid iodine, isopropyl alcohol, sulfuric acid, and hydrogen peroxide, along with chemistry glassware and pH strips. Similar lists appear on hundreds of Web sites.

“To criminalize the necessary materials of discovery is one of the worst things you can do in a free society,” says Shawn Carlson, a 1999 MacArthur fellow and founder of the Society for Amateur Scientists. “The Mr. Coffee machine that every Texas legislator has near his desk has three violations of the law built into it: a filter funnel, a Pyrex beaker, and a heating element. The laws against meth should be the deterrent to making it – not criminalizing activities that train young people to appreciate science.”

The increasingly strict regulatory climate has driven a wedge of paranoia between young chemists and their potential mentors. “I don’t tell anyone about what I do at home,” writes one anonymous high schooler on Sciencemadness.org, an online forum for amateur scientists. “A lot of ignorant people at my school will just spread rumors about me … The teacher will hear about them and I will get into legal trouble … I have so much glassware at my house, any excuse will not cut it. So I keep my mouth shut.”

Ironically, a shadow of suspicion is being cast over home chemistry at a time when the contributions of amateurs to the progress of science are highly regarded. In recent years, citizen scientists have discovered comets and supernovas and invented tools for gauging Earth’s magnetic field. Peer-reviewed journals like Nature now welcome papers coauthored by auto-didacts like Forrest Mims III, who studies solar storms and atmospheric conditions at his home observatory in Texas. Personal computers, digital cameras, and other consumer electronic devices are putting more accurate means of recording and measuring phenomena into the hands of home tinkerers than were available in high-end labs just a few years ago. The Internet is the ultimate enabling technology, allowing amateurs to collaborate with their counterparts at NASA and other organizations.

Porting the hacker ethic to the nonvirtual world, magazines like Make and blogs like Boing Boing are making it cool for geeks to get their hands dirty again, offering how-tos on everything from building your own telescope to assembling an electronic insect army. DIY robotics-fests like Dorkbot (“people doing strange things with electricity,” according to the Web site) are taking off from Boston to Bangalore.

But the hands-on revival is leaving home chemists behind. While surplus lab equipment is available on eBay, chemicals are subject to the site’s filtering software, which tracks or blocks the sale of items tagged as hazardous by the US Postal Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency. “There are very few commercial supply houses willing to sell chemicals to amateurs anymore because of this fear that we’re all criminals and terrorists,” Carlson says. “Ordinary folks no longer have access to the things they need to make real discoveries in chemistry.”

The heyday of home experimentation in the US coincided with the rise of the Porter Chemical Company, makers of the legendary Chemcraft labs-in-a-box, which contained enough bottles and beakers to perform more than 800 experiments. At the height of its popularity in the 1950s, Porter awarded college scholarships, mined its own chemicals, and was the biggest user of test tubes in the US. The company produced more than a million chemistry sets before going out of business in the 1980s amid increasing liability concerns.

One kid whose interest in science was sparked by the gift of a chemistry set was Don Herbert, who grew up to host a popular TV show in the 1950s called Watch Mr. Wizard. With his eye-popping demonstrations and low-key midwestern manner, Mr. Wizard gave generations of future scientists and teachers the confidence to perform experiments at home. In 1999, Restoration Hardware founder Stephen Gordon teamed up with Renee Whitney, general manager of a toy company called Wild Goose, to try to re-create the chemistry set Herbert marketed almost 50 years ago. “Don was so sweet,” Whitney recalls. “He invited us to his home to have dinner with him and his wife. Then he pulled his old chemistry set out of the garage. It was amazing – a real metal cabinet, like a little closet, filled with dozens of light-resistant bottles.”

Gordon and Whitney soon learned that few of the items in Mr. Wizard’s cabinet could be included in the product. “Unfortunately, we found that more than half the chemicals were illegal to sell to children because they’re considered dangerous,” Whitney explains. By the time the Mr. Wizard Science Set appeared in stores, it came with balloons, clay, Super Balls, and just five chemicals, including laundry starch, which was tagged with an ominous warning: HANDLE CAREFULLY. NOT EXPECTED TO BE A HEALTH HAZARD.

“It wasn’t really something you could use to teach kids about chemistry,” acknowledges Thomas Nikosey, head of Mr. Wizard Studios, which handles licensing for the 88-year-old Herbert.

Kits that train kids how to do real chemistry have yielded to innocuous science-flavored toys. At the Web site Discover This, one typical product promises lessons in making “rock candy, superbubbles, and molding clay … without blowing up the house.”

One of the few companies still selling chemistry sets worthy of the name is a German-American venture called Thames & Kosmos, run by former Adobe software engineer Ted McGuire. The company’s top-of-the-line kit, the C3000, is equipped with a full complement of test tubes, beakers, pipettes, litmus paper, and more than two dozen useful compounds. But even the C3000, which retails for $200, comes with a shopping list of chemicals that must be purchased elsewhere to perform certain experiments. “A lot of retailers are scared to carry a real chemistry set now because of liability concerns,” McGuire explains. “The stuff under your kitchen sink is far more dangerous than the things in our kits, but put the word chemistry on something and people become terrified.”

The chemophobia that’s put a damper on home science has also invaded America’s classrooms, where hands-on labs are being replaced by liability-proof teacher demonstrations with the explicit message Don’t try this at home. A guide for teachers of grades 7 through 12 issued by the American Chemical Society in 2001 makes the prospect of an hour in the lab seem fraught with peril: “Every chemical, without exception, is hazardous. Did you know that oxygen is poisonous if inhaled at a concentration a bit greater than its natural concentration in the air?” More than half of the suggested experiments in a multimedia package for schools called “You Be the Chemist,” created in 2004 by the Chemical Educational Foundation, are to be performed by the teacher alone, leaving students to blow up balloons (with safety goggles in place) or answer questions like “How many pretzels can you eat in a minute?”

“A lot of schools don’t have chemistry labs anymore,” explains CEF educational coordinator Laurel Brent. “We want to give kids lessons that tie in to their real-world experiences without having them deal with a lot of strange chemicals in bottles that have big long names.”

Many students are ill at ease when faced with actual compounds and lab equipment for the first time at school. A study of “chemistry anxiety” in the Journal of Chemical Education concluded in 2000 that “the presence of this anxiety in our students could be a contributing factor in the overall poor performance of high school students in science.” (Commonly reported fears included “lighting the Bunsen burner,” “fire,” and “getting chemicals on skin.”) Restrictions on hands-on chemical experience is “a problem that has been building for 10 or 15 years, driven by liability and safety concerns,” says John Moore, editor in chief of the JCE.

“The liability issues are a cop-out,” says Bassam Shakhashiri, the author of a four-volume guide to classroom chemistry who has taught for 36 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Kids are being robbed of the joy of discovering things for themselves.” Compared with students in previous generations, he says, undergraduates raised on hands-off science seem passive: “They want someone to do things for them. Even those who become chem majors and grad students are not as versatile in the lab, because their experiences in middle school and high school were so limited. This is a terrible shame. By working with real substances, you learn how to ask the right questions about the physical world, which is half the battle in science.”

Paradoxically, at a time when young people are particularly excited about technology, their enthusiasm for learning about the science behind it is waning. Thirty years ago, the US ranked third in the world in the number of science and engineering degrees awarded in the 18-to-24 age group. Now the country ranks 17th, according to the National Science Board. A 2004 report called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Education Study found that while fourth graders in the US rank sixth in basic science scores when measured against their peers worldwide, by the time they’re in eighth grade, they’ve slipped to ninth place. Prompted by concern that America is falling behind, President Bush proposed a $380 million “competitiveness initiative” this year that promises to train 70,000 new teachers of Advanced Placement science and math. By the time students have the opportunity to enroll in an AP course, however, many have already absorbed the message that science is best left to trained professionals.

“You have to capture kids’ imaginations very young or you lose them forever,” says Steve Spangler, a former protégé of Mr. Wizard who is now a science correspondent for the NBC affiliate in Denver. “But that’s hard when you have teachers required to check out vinegar and baking soda from the front office because something bad might happen in class. Slowly but surely the teaching tools are being taken away, so schools end up saying, ‘Let’s get a college professor to do this demonstration, and kids can watch the streaming video.’”

To Bill Nye, the “Science Guy” who hosted an Emmy award-winning series on PBS in the 1990s, unreasonable fears about chemicals and home experimentation reflect a distrust of scientific expertise taking hold in society at large. “People who want to make meth will find ways to do it that don’t require an Erlenmeyer flask. But raising a generation of people who are technically incompetent is a recipe for disaster.”

To ensure that the tradition of home chemistry survives, self-proclaimed “mad scientists” are creating a research underground on Web sites like Sciencemadness, Readily Available Chemicals, and the International Order of Nitrogen. There, in comfortable anonymity, seasoned experimenters, novices, and connoisseurs of banned molecules share tips on finding alternative sources for chemicals and labware.

One key to working as a DIY chemist, says Matthew Ernst, the 25-year-old host of Sciencemadness, is realizing how many useful chemicals are still available as household products or items designed for specialized niches. Silver nitrate, for example, can be found at potters’ supply stores, where it lends raku glazes an uncanny luster. “Amateur chemists become compulsive label readers,” Ernst says. “Many compounds are available if the chemist is willing to split his shopping between the paint store, hardware store, ceramics supplier, gardening center, welding supplier, feed store, and metal recycler.”

Out-of-print texts like Julius B. Cohen’s 1910 Practical Organic Chemistry are being made available again in PDF form on file-sharing networks and the Internet Archive. To route around stigmatized chemical pathways, home experimenters are reviving 19th-century methods of synthesizing reagents from scratch. Shawn Carlson of the Society for Amateur Scientists calls this “embracing Grandpa’s chemistry.”

Carlson’s group acts as a virtual co-op for its nearly 2,000 members by facilitating small purchases of legal chemicals and equipment. The group is also launching an ambitious national program called Labrats to provide mentoring to the next generation of researchers by teaming students with working scientists.

The father of three young children, Carlson understands parental concerns about safety. But he believes that the exhilaration of risk has always been a powerful factor in engaging kids’ interest in science, and should be actively encouraged – while minimizing the physical hazards. “We can get rid of most of the actual dangers, but it’s important that we preserve the perception of danger in science,” he says. “When I do experiments with my own kids, I’m more than happy to let them believe that if they’re not careful, something could happen to them. It adds that extra element of ‘my fate is in my hands – but if I do this right, everything will be fine.’”

In March, Bob Lazar and Joy White were building a new two-story home for United Nuclear in a clearing behind their house, hiring three assistants, and weathering a nerve-wracking shortage of aerogel after Boing Boing posted a link. Then news of the Justice Department’s charges against them arrived, and they called their lawyer to begin planning their defense.

“Kids read about the great scientists and their discoveries throughout history, and marvel that people once did these things,” Lazar says. “But they marvel a little too much. Taking chemicals and lab equipment away from kids who love science is like taking crayons and paints away from a kid who may grow up to be an artist.”

Contributing editor Steve Silberman (digaman@wiredmag.com) wrote about fMRI lie detection in issue 14.01.

Pakistan's renewable energy investments

2006-05-30T13:36:00.000-04:00

Why is Pakistan not investing more in bio-fuels/cellulosic ethanol? We seem to have a good agricultural base to support it (just like India) and we can utilize both the corn and sugarcane feedstocks. This can also provide a nice impetus to our dormant agricultural biotechnology research institutions.
-Bilal

Pakistan Makes Goal of 650 MW Wind Energy by 2007
May 24, 2006

Karachi, Pakistan [Daily Times] Air Marshal Shahid Hamid (retd), Chairman of the Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB), said here on Saturday 13 leading investors had been given letters of commitment to install wind power turbines and as a result 650 megawatts of wind power would be injected into the national grid by the end of 2007. At a meeting with Acting President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI) Sheikh Muhammad Aslam and members of the FPCCI here in the Federation House, he said that the mid-term development plan of the AEDB included development of wind and solar energy to meet at least 5% of the total installed capacity, that is, 9,700 MW by 2030.

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=44993

Clean-tech investments up his quarter - again

2006-05-25T09:35:00.000-04:00

Green technology energy investments hit record
This is one of the best stories of 2006. It is good news for everyone, except for the oil companies -- a welcome change.
During the first quarter, venture capitalists invested $513 million into companies that have a clean-technology aspect to them, a six-year high, according to the Cleantech Venture Network quarterly report, to be released tomorrow.
That's a 2.3% increase over the previous quarter, and a significant 52.9 percent jump over the same quarter a year ago. Moreover, a record $357 million was invested into clean-tech energy companies.
The average deal size rose to $8.28 million, up twenty percent from the fourth quarter average of $6.88 million and 16.7 percent from first quarter of 2005.
The record quarter for clean-tech investments was $797 million, made during the bubbly first quarter of 2000.
Source: SiliconBeat

I am not happy.

2006-05-24T09:19:00.000-04:00

Another beautiful post from Paulo Coelho (www.warriorofthelight.com)

I am not happy - Paulo Coelho

A comment that is very often heard in interviews is: “ ... and now that you are a happy person ...”, which provokes the immediate reaction: “Did I say I was happy?”

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing. That is why I was admitted three times to a psychiatric clinic, spent a few terrifying days in the dungeons of Brazil’s military dictatorship, and just as quickly lost and won friends and girlfriends. I walked down paths that, if I could turn back, I might avoid today, yet something always pushed me forward, and it certainly was not the quest for happiness. What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats. I bear many a scar, but I also carry with me moments that never would have happened if I had not dared beyond my limits. I confront my fears and moments of loneliness, and I think that a happy person never goes through this.

But that is of the least importance: I am content. And contentedness is not exactly a synonym of happiness, which to me seems like a dull Sunday afternoon without any challenges, just rest that in a couple of hours grows into tedium, the same evening television programs, the prospect of Monday waiting with its routine.

I mention all this because I was surprised by the long leading article in one of the most prestigious magazines in the United States that is normally dedicated to political matters. The theme was: “The science of happiness: is it in our genetic system?” Aside from the usual things (tables of happier or less happy countries, sociological studies on man’s search for a meaning to life, eight steps to finding harmony), the article includes some interesting observations that for the very first time made me see that I am not alone in my ideas:

A] - countries where income is under US$ 10,000 a year are countries where the majority of the population is unhappy. However, it was discovered that from that figure upwards, monetary difference is not all that important. A scientific study conducted on the 400 richest persons in the United States shows that they are only slightly happier than those who earn US$ 20,000. The logical consequence: of course, poverty is something unacceptable, but the old saying that “money does not bring happiness” is being proved in laboratories.

B] – happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species. So, to force us to eat or make love, it is necessary to add an element called “pleasure”.

C] - however happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have. This is also a subtle manifestation of the instinct of survival: at the moment when everyone feels completely happy, no-one will dare to do anything different and the world will stop evolving.

D] therefore, both on the physical plane (eating, making love) and on the emotional plane (always wanting something we do not have), the evolution of humanity has dictated one important and fundamental rule: happiness cannot last. It will always be made of moments, so we can never get comfortable in an armchair and just contemplate the world.

Conclusion: better forget this idea of seeking happiness at any cost and look for more interesting things like unknown seas, strangers, provocative thoughts, risky experiences. Only in this way will we live our human condition to the full and contribute to a more harmonious civilization at peace with other cultures. Of course, everything has a price, but it is worth paying.

Pakistan phases out diesel in favor of CNG by 2007

2006-05-18T17:23:00.000-04:00

Pakistan

phases out diesel from major cities

3 January 2006

Business Recorder. The federal government of Pakistan has directed provincial governments to phase out diesel-engine buses, mini-buses, wagons and two-stroke rickshaws from major cities by the end of 2007.

The first meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Replacement of Diesel by CNG on Tuesday suggested that no permit be issued to diesel vehicles in the major cities of Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Quetta, and Islamabad/Rawalpindi from 2007.

Pakistan is mandating a major shift to CNG to reduce pollution. According to the director general of the Hydrocarbon Development Institute of Pakistan (HDIP), Pakistan has become the leading CNG user in Asia and 3rd in the world.

To ease the financial burden, the government may pick up interest on loans to prospective buyers of CNG buses on a public-private partnership basis and the State Bank of Pakistan may advise commercial banks to establish credit line for CNG sired goal by involving all the stakeholders.

Pakistan expects that about 100,000 vehicles per year will be converted to CNG.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/01/pakistan_orders.html

Climbing Mt. Everest - and lessons for an entrepreneur

2006-05-04T02:56:00.000-04:00

I attended the General Catalyst Partners annual gala last night. It was fun – and nice to meet a whole new set of people – all struggling to make it to the other side of their entrepreneurial ventures. There were about 500 guests – It was a refreshing re-introduction to the VC community – and I walked away with a different perspective than I have had in the past from other VC events. Speaking with a few other attendees, I realized we all agreed that the GC’s interest in utilizing its resources to cultivate a Boston-based community of smart people with a passion for entrepreneurship and ‘doing the impossible’ truly sets GC apart from its competitors. I met some wonderful folks last night including some who are currently affiliated with GC in some form and others who may perhaps be in the future. GC deserves a pat on the back for a organizing a wonderful event! Thanks to Hemant and Larry for the invite.

One of the speakers at the event was was David Bearshears of the Mt Everest IMAX movie fame. His talk was absolutely thrilling – not just about his wonderful journey to make the movie and the tragedies he encountered along the way – but the parallels one could draw with struggles in entrepreneurship. Two things struck a cord in me:

a) a picture of him stepping onto a very narrow crossing, hesitatingly looking down a deep gorge with a heavy IMAX camera in his hand, but continuing to move forward one step at a time - only because he did not want to give up

b) his remembering the group prayers in a Buddhist temple before going up: ‘the mountain is big, we are small – so I hope we can take care of each other’

I highly recommend entrepreneurs reach out to any opportunity to hear him talk. He really gets the meaning of ‘passion’ and ‘determination’. He so outshined the President and COO of The Limited Brands (despite him giving kudos to BCG several times for laying bare the Trading Up phenomenon J, and several videos of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Breashears

Cloud Simulator in Leipzig, Germany

2006-05-02T09:39:00.000-04:00

NATURE (News, April 26 2006) just reported that the Leipzig Aerosol Cloud Interaction Simulator is now in operation. The facility took 7 years and more than 3 million Euros to come together and is an excellent experimental facility to simulate many facets of aerosol-particle interactions that lead to changes in the cloud formation processes and cloud cover. While there are many experimental setups around the world to simulate the reactions and phase transitions that aerosols undergo at atmospheric temperatures and pressures, this is the most comprehensive chamber as yet. I am looking forward to data from this site, especially on the role of heterogeneous nuclei in ice formation. Can it go down to such low temperatures? Next big ‘bangs’ in this field may include such experimental work coupled to cloud modeling. I also hear the satellites CloudSat and CALIPSO are also due for launch soon! I am keeping my fingers crossed!

a pic that resurfaced.

2006-04-28T13:33:00.000-04:00

NYC - wet and wild.

2006-04-25T00:43:00.000-04:00

NYC is quite a place to be. I spent this past weekend there and for the first time felt at home. Was it because I took my car along and drove around NYC the way I drive around in Boston? I was mobile – did not have to climb down smelly stairways into the subway stations, and did not have to spend time on the street if I did not want to. I partied till late and did not have to worry about public transportation.

Well, it could be that – or perhaps that I had great company. Several friends joined me in this wet-weekend trip and we did essentially what most people dream of in a vacation. We ate, drank, partied and slept in beds with people we had not slept with before. Of course, I got to sleep on the floor J. Here’s a plug in for Babel Café, a small lounge on 131 Avenue C, NY (http://www.babellounge.com/). The DJs were neither hip, nor suave – but they sure knew how to blend Arabic, Desi and Reggaeton music!

I saw a new trend in NYC: specialty eateries such as Cupcake bakeries, Hummus cafes….next up – pakora store?

Here something as a reminder:

My sis in Boston!

2006-04-20T16:34:00.000-04:00

My sister (M) is in Boston these days – and here’s a pic of us together right in front of the MIT campus.

Dancing

2006-04-17T02:01:00.000-04:00

After a pretty long dry spell, we finally ended up back in Caprice – the place had been disappointing the past few times I tried to go there, but this Saturday, it lived up to my memories. Music kicked ass and the company was absolutely wonderful. We danced and enjoyed the company of good friends. How people bond during dancing is still a bit of mystery, but I know they do. I felt a little out of my skin, but closer to those around me. I hope we can still enjoy these occasional boogying nights even when we are too old to stay up past 4 am (like we did this time around). I know D thinks I stay up every Saturday partying, but that is not true. Most Saturdays I am pretty OK watching Modern Marvels on the History Channel.

Here’s N doing his butt-shake.