Saginaw
snags 500-job solar plant
Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm Tuesday
announced a significant addition to Michigan’s burgeoning clean-energy
industrial base as Georgia-based Suniva Inc. will invest $250 million
in a new solar manufacturing facility in Saginaw County’s Thomas
Township. Suniva will create 500 new jobs over the next five years subject
to receiving a Department of Energy loan guarantee, which the company
recently applied for. The Michigan Economic Growth Authority Tuesday,
on Michigan Economic Development Corp. recommendation, approved a photovoltaic
Michigan Business Tax credit valued at $15 million over five years.
State officials also approved incentives to move forward the Wixom transformation
project announced last month. Clairvoyant Energy Solar Panel Manufacturing
Inc. was granted a photovoltaic MBT credit valued at $25 million, and
Xtreme Power Inc. received an advanced-battery credit valued at $100
million. More.
Niowave
wins two more DoE contracts, totaling $1.5M Lansing-based Niowave Inc.
said Tuesday that it has received two new contracts with the Department
of Energy for a combined total of $1.5 million. The two contracts are
part of the Department of Energy’s Small Business Innovation Research
program. Both were awarded for $750,000 in support of the second phase
of the projects, and each will be completed in July 2011. Niowave is
a high-tech research, development and manufacturing firm specializing
in hardware for superconducting particle accelerators. More.
Wayne
State prof to put cosmic images online A new telescope will provide
the widest, fastest and deepest images of space ever captured and provide
clues to the fate of the universe -- and thanks to a Wayne State researcher,
its images will be available to the public. David Cinabro, professor
of physics in WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, received
a $258,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop the
data processing portion of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST.
More.
Wayne State
to lead NIH research on neurological disorder The National Institutes
of Health this week announced a second phase of the Rare Diseases Clinical
Research Network totaling $117 million which includes funds for 19 research
consortia. Wayne State University received a five-year, $6.25 million
research consortium grant from the National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke under this program. The grant, "Inherited
Neuropathies Consortium," is an international project aimed at
developing a better understanding of and new treatments for the various
forms of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. More.
USDA
grant juices Michigan State fruit quality research
Hungry to make fruit better for longer, Michigan State University scientists
will lead a four-year, $14.4 million grant-funded research project.
The grant is the largest ever awarded
by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Specialty Crop
Research Initiative since its inception in 2007. The project aims to
improve the quality of apples, peaches, cherries and strawberries --
key species in the globally important botanical family Rosaceae. More.
In the Blue Box: Call it the Tech Tour Stop That Wasn't, Quite
Call
this the Tech Tour Stop That Wasn't.
Through a series of miscommunications, I never popped
in at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie as I had planned
on last week's Great Lakes IT Report 2009 Fall Tech Tour.
But I had a nice phone interview Tuesday with Morrie
Walworth, dean and director of intellectual property and economic development
in the College of Engineering and Technology at LSSU, and I can tell
you they're up to some interesting stuff that merits a future tour stop.
Walworth said robotics has been an LSSU specialty
for many years, "long before I was here. We used to offer robotics
degrees, but employers didn't understand what that meant. So we got
rid of the robotics degrees and embedded the content into the engineering
degrees. Employers understand what electrical engineering and mechanical
engineering with a robotics option means."
The college does little in the way of sponsored
research, but is nonetheless heavily involved in economic development
through its Prototype Development Center and its involvement with Sault
Ste. Marie's business incubator -- at 37 years of operation, since 1972,
the oldest in the state.
Walworth and Professor Jim Devaprasad wrote a proposal
for a state 21st Century Jobs Fund grant that wound up at $580,000 to
create the PDC. The center offers electronics and mechanical design
and prototyping for a wide variety of companies. Due to the confidential
nature of many projects most individuals and companies cannot be named
but others are names most will recognize -- Energizer, Delphi, Continental
Teves and more. One key element of the PDC is that many projects are
carried out by students, with involvement from faculty and staff. With
the difficult economy (lack of internships, etc.) the PDC is able to
offer real-world engineering development experience to the students
without the need for them to leave the campus.
The PDC's work is "all over the map from simple
prototypes to complicated objects." Their functions are similarly
diverse, from materials separation to wildlife sensing to fluid quality
monitoring to wireless data interfaces and more.
Note: For
information on how you can sponsor content in the Blue Box, contact
Jeff Lasser at (248) 455-7319 or
jeff.lasser@cbsradio.com.
Plex Systems
hails a year of 100 percent uptime
Auburn Hills-based Plex Systems Inc. Tuesday noted more than a year
of no unscheduled downtime for its user community using Plex Online,
its manufacturing management software delivered as a service online.
Plex Systems uses two geographically dispersed data centers with a redundant
infrastructure and replicated data to make Plex Online the first enterprise
software as a service to achieve a recovery point objective and recovery
time objective goals of two hours or less. More.
Economics
Dept.: Novi tech analysis firm warns housing bubble's back
Novi-based Ontonix this week
warned that the sub-prime related bubble in the housing sector, which
was the precursor of the recent global economic crisis, appears to have
re-emerged. The company says conditions that existed in 2006 -- which
it calls "market complexity" -- have come back in the housing
market. More.
Lawrence
Tech home in Troy part of Saturday's Solar Tour This weekend's National
Solar Tour will feature a famous home nobody's ever lived in. The solar
home built for the 2007 Solar Decathlon national competition by students
and volunteers at Lawrence Technological University will be part of
the tour. The home, now located at the Troy Community Center near Big
Beaver Road and I-75, will be open Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. More.
THE WORLD
IN TECH
AP might
charge some customers to get the news earlier The Associated Press is
considering whether to sell news stories to some online customers exclusively
for a certain period, perhaps half an hour, the head of the news organization
said Tuesday. The AP licenses its stories and photographs to many of
the Internet's main hubs, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN,
and its work also is used by hundreds of Web sites owned by newspapers
and broadcasters. Currently, they all get the material at the same time.
The AP's chief executive, Tom Curley, did not clarify how a product
that provided some news earlier would work or specify the target customers
for the potential new service. More.
AT&T
to expand Internet calling options on iPhone AT&T
Inc. said late Tuesday that it will begin allowing iPhone owners to
use Internet calling services on its wireless network. The phone giant,
the exclusive wireless provider for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, has until now
allowed Internet calling services to work on the popular device only
over Wi-Fi connections. Those connections generally have limited mobility
and therefore present less of a competitive threat to AT&T's core
wireless calling business. The move comes amid a Federal Communications
Commission inquiry into competition in the wireless industry. Among
other things, that inquiry will examine handset exclusivity deals, such
as AT&T's agreement with Apple giving AT&T exclusive access
to the iPhone. It also comes ahead of an FCC vote scheduled for later
this month on "network neutrality" rules, which would prohibit
broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain
types of Internet traffic flowing over their lines. More.
Where's
the next boom? Maybe in 'cleantech' Our
economy sure could use the Next Big Thing. Something on the scale of
railroads, automobiles or the Internet - the kind of breakthrough that
emerges every so often and builds industries, generates jobs and mints
fortunes. Silicon Valley investors are pointing to something called
cleantech -- alternative energy, more efficient power distribution and
new ways to store electricity, all with minimal impact to the environment
-- as a candidate for the next boom. And while no two booms are exactly
alike, some hallmarks are already showing up. Despite last fall's financial
meltdown, public and private investments are pouring in, fueling startups
and reinvigorating established companies. The political and social climates
are favorable. If it takes off, cleantech could seep into every part
of the economy and our lives. More.
3
Americans share Nobel physics prize The
next time you snap a digital photo and post it to Facebook, you can
probably thank the three men who won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday.
They helped develop fiber-optic cable and invented the "eye"
in digital cameras -- technology that has given rise to film-free photography
and high-speed Internet service, revolutionized communications and science,
and utterly transformed the way we live, work and amuse ourselves. Half
the $1.4 million prize will go to Charles K. Kao, 75, for discovering
how to transmit light signals long distance through hair-thin glass
fibers. That led to fiber-optic communication networks that zip voice,
video and high-speed Internet data worldwide in a split-second. The
other half will go to Willard S. Boyle, 85, and George E. Smith, 79,
for opening the door to digital cameras by inventing a sensor that turns
light into electrical signals. More.
Stocks:
Shares surge as investors bet on Australia, corporate profits The stock market got a big
lift from a faraway place: Australia. The Dow Jones industrial average
jumped 132 points Tuesday and all major indicators rose more than 1
percent as the Australian central bank's decision to raise interest
rates boosted investor optimism about the global economy. The Dow is
up 244 points in two days, its best back-to-back gain since mid-July.
Investors' show of confidence ahead of a flood of corporate earnings
reports came as Australia became the first major country to raise interest
rates since the onset of the financial crisis last year. The move signals
that policymakers see the country's economy as strong enough to withstand
higher borrowing costs. That touched off hopes that other economies
might also be growing. More.
The Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP)
jumped 35.42 points or 1.7 percent to 2,103.57. The Dow Jones Industrial
Average ($INDU)
rose 131.5 points or 1.4 percent to 9,731.25. The Philadelphia Semiconductor
Index ($SOX)
rose 6.49 points or 2.1 percent to 319.58. The Morgan Stanley High Tech
35 Index (MSH)
rose 9.85 points or 1.9 percent to 531.19. The NYSE Arca Pharmaceutical
Index (DRG)
rose 3.06 points or 1.1 percent to 282.73. The NYSE Arca Biotech Index
(BTK)
rose 13.54 points or 1.5 percent to 917.34. Finally, the Standard &
Poor's 500 (SPX)
rose 14.26 points or 1.4 percent to 1,054.72.
All contents copyright 2009 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS Radio & Eye logo trademarked and copyright 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. Written and edited
by Matt Roush, Technology Editor, WWJ Newsradio 950, Detroit. GLITR may contain material from the Associated Press, CNET, News.com, MarketWatch.com or Reuters, used by permission. For coverage comments or news tips, e-mail Matt Roush at
mnroush@cbs.com or call (248) 455-7380. For marketing and advertising queries, or with general questions or concerns, contact Pete Kowalski, WWJ's station manager, at
prkowalski@cbs.com. To subscribe, e-mail
Matt Roush or Georgeann Herbert at
gherbert@cbs.com.
LEGAL NOTICE: This email
may be considered an advertising or promotional message. If you no longer
wish to receive commercial email from this station, please reply to
this email by sending a reply email by clicking on the "reply"
button at the top of this page or by sending an e-mail to
Matt Roush or
Georgeann Herbert. Or you can change your subscriber profile: «Reserved.Unsubscribe»
You must use this method to notify GLITR and WWJ of your opt-out request, as we cannot guarantee that other methods of notification will be effective. Please be aware that we may continue to contact you
via email for administrative or informational purposes, including follow-up messages regarding contests you have entered or other transactions you have undertaken. By law, such messages are not considered to be commercial e-mail.
Note: The Great Lakes IT Report is sent in HTML format only. Please make sure you have given us permission to send you an HTML message. If you have any questions, drop an e-mail to
Georgeann Herbert or
Matt Roush.
E-Mail Story
Print Story
In the Blue Box: Call it the Tech Tour Stop That Wasn't, Quite
