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International Technology Research Institute
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IN THIS ISSUE OF ITRInews

THE BOTTOM LINE OF INNOVATION IN THE INTERNATIONAL MARKETPLACE: US TRADE DEFICIT SKYROCKETS

FORGET TRANSISTORS; THINK LIGHTBULBS!
THE US/JAPAN CONFERENCE ON GaN and SiC ELECTRONICS
 
THE FRENCH REFEREE THE US VS JAPAN STORAGE FIGHT
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This is the fifth issue on studies of international S&T. It is from ITRI, which has done 50 such studies, but will cover other similar projects. (Please send email on workshops, reports, or projects that should be included.) Please forward.

Duane Shelton, rds@loyola.edu,

http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/

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THE BOTTOM LINE: WHICH COUNTRIES ARE MAKING MONEY FROM RESEARCH? Although there are many other factors involved, one global measure of success in commercializing science is the balance of trade in the international marketplace.  When the U.S. trade deficit in goods reached $160 billon in 1987 because of Japanese high-tech imports, the U.S. tried to make its industry more competitive and open foreign markets -- and managed to cut the deficit to $74 billion in 1991.  Well, it's back, much worse than ever, because other Asian nations have copied Japan's success in (over)building factories for export -- and are no longer able to import much.  An estimate of the U.S. 1998 trade deficit in ($billions) is shocking:

$64   Japan
$59   China (About $13 billion in 1991)
$42   Other Asian
$37   NAFTA (Canada and Mexico)
$27   European Union
$28   Rest of the World.
$257  Total US Trade Deficit in Goods (Estimate)

This estimate assumes that the latest figures (October) will also prevail in November and December.  The HTML version has a chart to illustrate. The Census Bureau has the definitive site on trade statistics; the November data will soon be available. (BOP means balance of payments basis.)
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/ 

FORGET TRANSISTORS! With sponsorship from NSF and ONR, ITRI organized a US/Japanese conference in Arlington, VA on December 7-8 on wide band gap electronics materials and devices. While the optical and electronics applications were illuminating, they paled in comparison to the replacement of ordinary light bulbs by GaN-based devices.  One panelist estimated that replacement of green light bulbs in traffic signals in the U.S.would save $250 million a year in energy; the Japanese are starting to make those changes.  A few copies of the viewgraphs from the conference are left for ITRInews readers from williams@loyola.edu.  They will soon be available at http://itri.loyola.edu/HTE/views/top.htm.
 

IEEE SPECTRUM TECHNOLOGY 1999 ISSUE Technology 1999: Analysis & Forecast provides a snapshot of a wide range of international technologies: communications, the Internet, consumer electronics, computers, solid state, electronic design automation, energy, industrial electronics, aerospace and military, medical electronics, software engineering, science software, test and measurement, transportation, and the environment.  The table of contents is at http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/contents/ with full text for IEEE members, or you could actually go to the library.
 
FRENCH REVIEW OF U.S. VS. JAPAN MEMORY TECHNOLOGIES. ADIT's December 1998 issue of Technologies Internationales has an article that assesses the U.S. as leading in magnetic storage technologies, but unable to compete with the Japanese in optical storage.  This confirms the view of the WTEC panel reported in ITRInews in September.  The article states that American optical research does offer the possibility of the U.S. regaining the lead.
http://www.adit.fr/Produits/TI/TIPDF.html
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FEATURED ORGANIZATIONS THIS MONTH

ADIT.  French government technology watching organizations include the Agence pour la Diffusion de l'Information Technologique.  It is sponsored by the ministries of research and foreign affairs to "gather, process, and circulate international S&T information to further research for civilian and business purposes and help development of French enterprises." It acquires information from 120 science specialists in French embassies and a network of local correspondents in the large industrialized nations. Most of its products are in French, but there is a monthly newsletter on French technologies, Technologies France, in English.  The ADIT homepage is available in English at:
http://adit.fr/PresentationA/AditAng.html

Actually, it is easy to translate any Web pages in HTML from Western European languages into English.  Go to:    http://www.babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate?
which uses the SYSTRAN translation engine.  Just enter the URL of the Web site that you need translated.  To give you an idea of the quality, here's a translated abstract from ADIT's Technologies Internationales, No. 50, December 98

 Storage of data.
American plays the seduction (142 KB)
On the sector of the storage of data, the Americans, leader of the hard disk and supports removable, do not seem in measurement, in the near future, to compete with their Asian adversaries in optical technologies. But, later on, several innovating American companies should supplant the domination nippone, by the development of new technologies, with the tempting characteristics.

While this is pretty racy stuff, the whole article is in Adobe .pdf format, which SYSTRAN can't handle.
 
BID.  ITRI operates a technology incubator program in Ukraine with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development.  This program is housed in ITRI's Business Development Division, headed by Dr. Robert Margenthaler.  It is one of ITRI's efforts to help scientists in the former Soviet Union survive in the free market.  This Business Incubator Development Program has created incubators in Kiev and Kharkiv, and hopes to expand to other cities and countries in the region.
http://itri.loyola.edu/BID
 
U.S. ARMY.  Like ONR and AFOSR the U.S. Army operates an international research monitoring effort from Edison House in London, the European Research Office of the U.S. Army.  Personnel are at http://www.ehis.navy.mil/armydir.htm , but their main Web page is down for maintenance.  Likewise Web information on their Asian office, co-located in Tokyo with ONR and AFOSR, is hard to find.  If anyone has a link, I would appreciate it.  The tri-service office in London has a nice clearinghouse, "Suggested US S&T Web Sites," at http://www.ehis.navy.mil/usstweb.htm ) mainly for U.S. Government sites.
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