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Innovation in Orange County: Cutting Edge is Commonplace in This County

Posted on: Tuesday, 18 April 2006, 12:00 CDT

By Colin Stewart, The Orange County Register, Calif.

Apr. 18--The future is breaking out in Orange County.

So it seemed last week when cutting-edge scientists and inventors gathered to discuss American innovation in a conference at the University of Southern California.

Again and again, changes that they forecast for the future are already visible in Orange County, at least in their early stages.

A few examples:

"By the end of the decade, computers will disappear. Instead, they'll be wearable and in the environment," said author/entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil, the inventor of an early music synthesizer, a flat-bed scanner and the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind.

Kurzweil is also a futurist whose early books made several accurate forecasts -- for example, his 1990 predictions of pilotless military planes, a chess-playing computer that defeats the best human players, and students using computer networks to do their homework and send messages to each other.

As for the disappearance of computers, he anticipates that computers will become so powerful, prevalent and interconnected that we won't have to lug laptops because computing power will be available to us wherever we go.

Displays will appear in midair instead of on a screen.

Does that sound extreme? Consider the early signs of it in Orange County.

Of course, computers are already in many places that we don't think of as computers -- our cell phones, cash registers, cars, gas pumps and traffic lights.

Some computer processors are wearable -- such as the Thump sunglasses-plus-music-player from Foothill Ranch-based Oakley with 1 gigabyte of memory.

Computer displays in midair? That seems farther off, but Cypress-based projector company Christie Digital Systems Inc. is working on new types of digital 3D movie projectors and large wrap-around screens for high-definition flight simulators.

Computers that establish networks automatically? That's the direction Wi-Fi wireless networking is heading, and Orange County is a hotbed of Wi-Fi development, including major wireless-router makers Linksys and D-Link.

In addition, Broadcom makes the chips that run the first commercially available routers using the newest, fastest version of the Wi-Fi "n" standard, 802.11n, which started showing up in online stores last week.

The industry's standards committees are working on further specifications, "k" and "v," for managing communications among large numbers of wireless devices.

Similarly, large-scale networks of wirelessly linked computers are a key feature of the Future Combat Systems program, under development for the U.S. Army by Boeing engineers in Huntington Beach.

Television commentator Chris Matthews, who was moderator for one panel, introduced the topic of global warming by saying he's worried that it's already under way.

Several panelists expressed confidence that the problem, though serious, will be solved in the near future.

"I don't agree that we're ruining our world," said Nobel Prize-winning chemist George Olah of USC.

"I believe humankind will find a solution that allows future generations a better life and safeguards the planet." Inventor-author Kurzweil chipped in: "Climate change is a problem of old industrial technology. We will solve it." Within 10 or 20 years, he predicted, nanoengineered fuel cells and solar cells will be reliable sources of energy, without the drawbacks of burning fossil fuels.

Olah himself is already pursuing such solutions, including work in Orange County. He is researching methods to reduce levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane by converting them into fuels.

He has also developed a methanol-powered fuel cell that could reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

That fuel cell, under study by electronics makers as a substitute for standard batteries, could include a key component made in Orange County.

Olah is on the scientific advisory board of nano-metals company QuantumSphere of Santa Ana, which makes nano-cobalt for potential use in methanol fuel cells.

Similarly, Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies of Irvine is helping to develop a car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

"Stem cells have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of human biology and disease," said Martin Pera, director of the new Center for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at USC.

In theory, anyway, stem cells from embryos can develop into any type of adult cell and be grown in such vast quantities that they could replace diseased or damaged cells anywhere in the body.

Pera is one of several scientists who have been attracted to jobs in California in part because of the passage of Proposition 71, which authorized state bonds totaling $3 billion for stem-cell research.

Legal disputes have delayed that funding, but universities and philanthropists have pitched in, even while the federal government has restricted its support because of ethical concerns regarding cells that are taken from embryos.

Pera arrived just last week to start work at the USC program, which is supported by a $25 million gift from philanthropist Eli Broad.

In Orange County, biologist Peter Donovan arrived a few months ago from Johns Hopkins University to become co-director of UCI's new Stem Cell Research Center.

His specialty is research into how primitive stem cells develop into more specialized cells, which could be used to treat neurological ailments such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.

The UCI center's other co-director, Hans Keirstead, has already achieved dramatic results.

In his explorations of stem cells as a treatment for spinal cord injury, Keirstead has restored partial movement in paralyzed laboratory rats.

If he gets the nod from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he will extend those tests to human patients.

-----

To see more of The Orange County Register, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.ocregister.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Orange County Register, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Orange County Register

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