Category Archives: Economics

Posts exploring the economic impacts of science and engineering. The value of strong science and engineering practice has many benefits to the economy – directly and indirectly. Many countries are focusing their future economic plans on advancing their scientific, engineering and technology communities and creating environments that support scientists and engineers.

Â£25 Gadget Saves Energy

Â£25 fridge gadget that could slash greenhouse emissions by David Adam:

Invented by British engineers, the Â£25 gadget significantly reduces the amount of energy used by fridges and freezers, which are estimated to consume about a fifth of all domestic electricity in the UK. If one was fitted to each of the 87 million refrigeration units in Britain, carbon dioxide emissions would fall by more than 2 million tonnes a year.
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Because air heats up much more quickly than yoghurt, milk or whatever else is stored inside, this makes the fridge work harder than necessary. With the cube fitted, the fridge responds only to the temperature of the food, which means it clicks on and off less often as the door is open and closed. Trials are under way with supermarkets, breweries and hotels. One of the largest, the Riverbank Park Plaza hotel in London, fitted the device to each of the hotel’s 140 major fridges and freezers. David Bell, chief engineer, says energy use decreased by about 30% on average – enough to slash the hotel’s annual electricity bill by Â£17,000. The Park Plaza group plans to fit them throughout its UK hotels, and to recommend them overseas.
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Mr Freedman said the devices would have the biggest impact in the large freezers and open chill cabinets used in the catering and supermarket industries. They do reduce the energy consumption of domestic fridges, but the saving is not so great because the door is not opened very often.

Electric Cars

The March NSF Cafe Scientifique meeting was about Electric Cars. The presenters were from the Electric Vehicle Association of DC (that site has quite a few links on this topic). In the talk the presenters mentioned Ford had produced electric cars in the 1920’s. PBS on Timeline on Electric Car History:

1893 – A handful of different makes and models of electric cars are exhibited in Chicago.
1897 – The first electric taxis hit the streets of New York City early in the year. The Pope Manufacturing Company of Connecticut becomes the first large-scale American electric automobile manufacturer.
1899 – Believing that electricity will run autos in the future, Thomas Alva Edison begins his mission to create a long-lasting, powerful battery for commercial automobiles. Though his research yields some improvements to the alkaline battery, he ultimately abandons his quest a decade later.
1900 – The electric automobile is in its heyday. Of the 4,192 cars produced in the United States 28 percent are powered by electricity, and electric autos represent about one-third of all cars found on the roads of New York City, Boston, and Chicago.

1893 was the famous Chicago World’s fair where the first Ferris Wheel was constructed and the American Society for Engineering Education was formed (I work for ASEE now). Photo by John Hunter shows a partial view of the meeting space, which is held inside the NSF headquarters.

European Innovation Scoreboard

European Innovation Scoreboard (pdf)

The US and Japan are still ahead of the EU25 in terms of innovation performance, but the innovation gap between the EU25 and Japan, and in particular with the US is decreasing (see Figure II). The EU25 has improved its relative performance compared to the US in S&E graduates, tertiary education, business R&D, early-stage venture capital, medium-high and high-tech manufacturing employment, EPO patents, USPTO patents and community trademarks. The EU has improved its relative performance compared to Japan mostly in S&E graduates and broadband penetration rate.
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Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Japan and Germany are the innovation leaders, with SII scores well above that of the EU25 and the other countries…
The US, UK, Iceland, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Ireland are the innovation followers, with SII scores below those of the innovation leaders but above that of the EU25 and the other countries.

Economic Gains from Science

Gaze into future for state’s economy:

For policymakers, that means: Invest in the state’s educational system, especially the University of Wisconsin System, and use tax policy to encourage investors to supply the money to make business ideas grow.
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TomoTherapy, 10 years old, already employs 500 people. Co-founded by two UW-Madison professors, it was financially backed by investment groups in Madison, Milwaukee and California. The next step may be to follow Madison-area high-tech businesses Third Wave and Sonic Foundry into the public stock market.

GenTel, employing 17, started at University Research Park, has moved to Fitchburg and plans to open an office in North Carolina. The company has found additional financing from investors, including groups in Madison and Appleton. Aruna sprouted from brainpower and research at the University of Georgia, but it licenses human em bryonic stem cell technology from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Because UW-Madison is a hotbed of stem cell research, moving its jobs and income to Wisconsin would make sense.

Wave Energy

Orkney to get ‘biggest’ wave farm:

Of the Pelamis scheme, he said: “This will be the world’s biggest commercial wave project – significantly bigger than the major Portuguese scheme. “Scotland has the potential to generate a quarter of Europe’s marine energy and kick-starting the sector is vital if we are to create a significant industry based in Scotland and meet our long-term renewables targets.”

Mr Stephen said the industry had the potential to create thousands of jobs and attract millions of pounds of investment. Scottish Power’s director of renewables, Keith Anderson, said: “This is a massive step forward. “It will be a test of the actual devices that will be used commercially and, if successful, should help propel Scotland into the forefront of marine energy throughout the world.”

Stimulate Innovation

What if America Had an Innovation Czar?, good ideas from Keven Kelly:

1. More large prizes, like the Grand Challenger, for specific results. Cheap, effective, popular. The best Mars rover gets sent to Mars, etc.
2. Reform patent law, to reflect reality of current conditions (no submarine patents, etc.).
3. Mandate science fairs in high schools, the secret sauces for American innovation.
4. Open-source scientific literature.

Scientifically Illiterate

216 Million Americans Are Scientifically Illiterate:

Let’s start by focusing on the positive. In just 17 years, over 50 million people have been added to the rolls of Americans who can understand a newspaper story about science or technology, according to findings presented last weekend at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Michigan State University political scientist Jon D. Miller, who conducted the study, attributed some of the increase in science literacy to colleges, many of which in recent years have required that students take at least one science course. Miller says people have also added to their understanding through informal learning: reading articles and watching science reports on television.

Okay, now let’s talk (dare I say rant?) about the 200 million Americans out there who cannot read a simple story in, say, Technology Review or the New York Times science section and understand even the basics of DNA or microchips or global warming.

This level of science illiteracy may explain why over 40 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution and about 20 percent, when asked if the earth orbits the sun or vice versa, say it’s the sun that does the orbiting–placing these people in the same camp as the Inquisition that punished Galileo almost 400 years ago.

Page: Marketing Science

Google’s Page urges scientists to market themselves:

And that was his main advice to the scientists in the room: take their scientific studies, market them better and make them readily accessible to the world. That way, the world might have a better chance at solving problems like energy consumption, poverty and global climate change.

“Virtually all economic growth (in the world) was due to technological progress. I think as a society we’re not really paying attention to that,” Page said. “Science has a real marketing problem. If all the growth in world is due to science and technology and no one pays attention to you, then you have a serious marketing problem.”

To that end, Page urged the group to take on more leadership roles in society, i.e., politics, so that they could control more funding for research and development. He also said that scientists should get in the habit of investing part of their scientific grant money to marketing budgets, in order to get the word out to the media about their research.

Entrepreneurialism should also be more ingrained in university culture, Page said, much like it is at his alma mater Stanford University and Google’s home-base, Silicon Valley. Finally, he called on the scientists to make more of their research available digitally. Even though Google Scholar tries to open access to scientific work, it still falls short.

Iowa Grapples with Engineer Shortage

State grapples with engineer shortage:

“In the past four years or so, it’s become increasingly difficult to fill positions, especially for people who have experience and can come in with a good skill set,” Dougherty said. “In some instances, you simply go without filling those jobs for a long time.”

Loren Zachary, an assistant dean at the ISU College of Engineering, said enrollment has been mostly in a downward trend over the past six years. In 2001, the college had 1,556 new freshmen; in the fall of 2006, freshman enrollment was 1,213, which was up slightly from 2005’s enrollment of 1,155. Of the 800 or so students who graduate with a bachelor’s degree in engineering from ISU each year, more than 60 percent leave the state for employment, according to Hanneman’s figures.

“Certainly you have a lot of engineering students who are leaving the state,” said the IES’s Scott. “You’ll always have that because the universities attract many out-of-state students.” Zachary said ISU has only a small number of engineering students who are women or minorities. For the current academic year, 14.5 percent of undergraduate engineering students are female. These are two demographics the university is targeting to boost enrollment. “We need more females in engineering,” Zachary said. “It’s an untapped market for us.”

The article mentions several programs for primary and secondary school students we have mentioned previously: Project Lead the Way, Math Counts and FIRST LEGO League

Aussies Look to Finnish Innovation Model

Aussies look to Finnish Innovation Model:

Australian policy makers are looking to Finland for inspiration in their drive to bring the nation closer to the dream of thriving technological innovation. The country’s president and other Finnish representatives are in Sydney to share with Australian researchers the strides the nation has made in the past three decades. Home of companies such as Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, Finland has captured the attention of governments looking to shift their economic base away from traditional industries towards a more innovative focus.

Finland’s research and development spend accounts for 3.5 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP), a higher percentage than that of most European Union nations. It intends to lift this percentage to four per cent by 2010. Australia’s spending on research in comparison was 1.8 per cent of GDP in 2004/05, below the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 2.3 per cent.