PARC Innovations Update (2008 #3)

This is the archive entry for our e-mail newsletter, PARC Innovations Update. [subscribe]

• Spotlight: Water treatment through PARC’s novel filtration approach
• In the Marketplace: Powerset Reinvents the Search and Discovery Experience for Wikipedia Articles
• Case Study: Accelerating time to market and increasing cost-efficiency
• On the Road: Clean Technology 2008 – Membrane-less filtration; an “atmospherically healthy” recipe for carbon-neutral transportation fuels
• PARC In the News: low-energy water filtration; FAST track to better health; more

Links are not provided for older items in the archive.

Spotlight: Water treatment through PARC’s novel filtration approach

By applying expertise in particle manipulation, microfluidics, and MEMS — honed through years of manipulating toner particles for Xerox printers — PARC has developed a scalable, membrane-free, spiral fluidic approach to water filtration. The novel approach reduces requirements for physical space, chemicals, and energy in conventional water treatment. For a typical 20 MGD installation, PARC technology could cut land use in half, and reduce capital, operations, and maintenance costs by more than a third.

In the Marketplace: Powerset Reinvents the Search and Discovery Experience for Wikipedia Articles

Powerset recently launched a public beta release of its consumer search engine, taking the first step in reinventing how people seek and discover information. Applicable to all topics and domains, the beta technology reads and extracts meaning from every sentence in Wikipedia. Unlike traditional search engines, Powerset matches the meaning of user queries to the meaning of sentences. Powerset signed a licensing and collaboration agreement with PARC in 2007 to develop and commercialize natural language technology for consumer search, leveraging three decades of PARC’s scientific research and technology refinement in natural language understanding.

Case Study: Accelerating time to market and increasing cost-efficiency

Realizing that solar electricity would be widely adopted if it were cost-competitive with fossil fuel-derived electricity, the entrepreneurs behind SolFocus, Inc. had developed a promising concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) approach. PARC proposed an improved, smaller CPV design that would be simpler to manufacture and able to convert significantly more sunlight into electricity – essential features for lowering system cost and enhancing appeal. SolFocus decided to rely upon this innovative concentrator design as the basis for its 2nd generation products, and “set up shop” in PARC’s facility. Among other achievements, SolFocus has received $95M financing to date, expanded its international operations, secured supply, moved into new headquarters, and began its first commercial deployment.

On the Road: Clean Technology 2008 – Membrane-less filtration; an “atmospherically healthy” recipe for carbon-neutral transportation fuels

Meet PARC scientists at the CTSI Clean Technology and Sustainable Industries Conference and Trade Show (June 1-5, Boston). PARC will present “Membrane-less Filtration for Conventional Potable Utility Applications”; “An ‘Atmospherically Healthy’ Recipe for Carbon-Neutral Fuels: A synthetic fuel made from sunlight, CO2, and water”; and more. If you are attending the conference and would like to meet with Cleantech Innovation Program director Scott Elrod, please e-mail pr@parc.com.

PARC In the News

Low-Energy Water Filtration — Technology Review
The FAST track to better health — The Economist
PARC to Spin Out Solar Startup — Greentech Media
How to Determine Your Organization’s Vulnerability to Crimeware — eWeek.com
May 22, 1973: Enter Ethernet — Wired
Seeing the first Ethernet cable… — Scobleizer.com [videos]
PARC: As Silicon Valley as it Gets — Yahoo! Finance Tech Ticker/ Sarah Lacy
PARC Moves Beyond Just Document Research — Internetnews.com
PARC shows off research projects beyond its Xerox Work — VentureBeat
Inside Innovation — O’Reilly Radar
Getting innovation out of the lab — FORTUNE
Computers for the People — CNET News
Searching for education application in the virtual world — techLearning.com
Luminaries look to the future web — BBC News