The new wave of Silicon Valley start-ups

Silicon Valley is the southern part of San Francisco's Bay Area, stretching from the city to San Jose. This is one of the top research and development centres in the world; wherever you look someone is having a good idea.According to the Wall Street Journal, half of the 20 most inventive towns in the US are in Silicon Valley.Nowadays the place is not just about silicon chip makers; all technology is here.It is a string of satellite towns full of clever people, incredibly successful tech companies, and hopefuls looking to make the big time.This place was the centre of the dotcom bubble of the mid 90s, when investors were pouring money into anything with a dot in the title. Of course it was also the hardest hit when the bubble burst. For every surviving big player, hundreds went under.Now the optimism is back, along with the money.
Cash call Each week there are meetings, networking events and presentations in which hopeful start-ups attempt to garner interest from investors. Vincent Lauria, Tech meetup organiser said: "Hi-tech meetups have actually grown phenomenally. We started out pretty small, six people first met up. We met every month and kept growing gradually, bigger and bigger until it hit critical mass and started growing on its own."We are now over 1,500 people," he said."I try to pick companies that either I feel are on a very good course to do well, or have a really unique idea that nobody else is really touching."It is often the simple things that take off. Take Data Robotics which makes high capacity home storage systems called Drobo.Geoff Barrall, Data Robotics boss, said: "Today's storage solutions are all very intensive; you have to move data around, you have to copy files, you have to worry about backing up data. "The Drobo does all of that for you. So once the data is on Drobo it's going to worry about keeping it safe, it's going to worry about letting you add more storage and grow into the future without you having to do anything at all."Simplifying storage and back-up has tapped into a big market. Data Robotics claims it is selling its $500 (£250) boxes faster than it can make them.
Green machines It is not just computer technology that folks in the valley are working on. Green technology is winning investors too, said Drew Clark from IBM Capital Ventures."I think [one of] the major drivers in today's buzz in Silicon valley is clean tech or energy tech or energy 2.0, whatever we are calling it these days," said Mr Clark."If you look at venture capital statistics it is now the third highest place that money is going into.One of the green innovations dreamed up is a highly efficient solar panel. The panels produced by SolFocus reflect sunlight to a central point to harness the energy.Unlike flat panels it means the expensive materials used to convert the energy to electricity are concentrated in one place. SolFocus claims to use 1/1000th of the area needed by flat panels, which keeps the manufacturing costs low.Gary Conley, SolFocus explained: "These cells have efficiency over double that of the best silicon today. We concentrate the sun 500 times on that small amount of cell, hence the 1000th of the amount of material used, or the expensive part."When there is no sun, or you can't see the solar disc, our panels produce zero power. They only produce power in bright sunny locations or when the sun is out."Contracts have already been signed with the Spanish government for a large scale solar farm in Southern Spain.

Nissan studies drink-proof cars

Japanese carmaker Nissan has unveiled new technology designed to detect whether a driver has been drinking.

It includes odour sensors that monitor breath, detectors which analyse perspiration of the palms, and a camera that checks alertness by eye scan.

If the system thinks a driver has drunk too much, the car will not start.

Nissan, Japan's third-largest carmaker, says the technology is still being developed, but it will eventually be introduced to reduce road deaths.

The firm says it has no specific timetable, but it aims to cut the number of fatalities involving its vehicles to half the 1995 levels by 2015.

Nissan general manager Kazuhiro Doi said the sensitivity of the technology still needed to be worked out.

"If you drink one beer, it's going to register, so we need to study what's the appropriate level for the system to activate," he told Reuters news agency.

Measuring sea level rise from space

Meteorologists and climate modellers are eagerly awaiting the launch of a satellite that will be able to measure sea level rise to an unprecedented degree of precision.
Jason-2, scientists hope, will help shed light on the oceans' dynamics by measuring the topography - the "hills" and "valleys" - of the world's seas every 10 days.
The satellite's radar altimeter, Poseidon-3, is designed to measure the sea level height to within a few centimetres. It will do this from its orbit more than 1,300km above the Earth.
Data collected by Jason-2's instruments will help researchers develop more precise forecasts, improve hurricane path projections and reveal how climate change is affecting ocean currents.
"There is more to the dynamics of sea level rise than just a single, global rise," explained Mikael Rattenborg, director of operations for the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat).
"Although we have seen, overall, global sea level rise, there are areas that have decreased for long periods, followed by an increase.
"We can only analyse the significance of regional variability of sea level rise if we have altimetry data available to us," he added. "Jason-2 will help us model and explain this evolution."
The satellite will be able to map 95% of the world's ice-free oceans every 10 days, something that would be impossible using survey vessels on the surface of the planet.
As well as observing variations in sea levels, Mr Rattenborg said the mission would also help researchers map seasonal and inter-annual ocean patterns, such as the Pacific's El Nino effect.
"This has a profound impact on the weather, not only in that region but globally. We can study this phenomenon in much greater detail with the altimetry data.
"All of these processes are coupled to climate analysis, which is the key reason why Eumetsat is interested in altimetry."
Storm tracking
Eumetsat operates and collects data from satellites on behalf of Europe's national meteorological agencies, such as the UK's Met Office, to compile forecasts and climate models.
Mr Rattenborg said the sea surface topography recorded by Poseidon-3 would also reveal tell-tale signs that would help predict the path and intensity of hurricanes.
He used Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the US Gulf coast in 2005, as an illustration.
"It passed over the Florida peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico as a strong hurricane (category three), but not an intense one.
"But suddenly, about 24 hours before it hit New Orleans, it developed into a category five hurricane.
"If you look at the sea surface temperature in the Gulf at the time Katrina passed over, it is fairly homogenous, so it does not explain why the system developed so rapidly."
Mr Rattenborg said the answer could be found in something called the Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential.
"It is a measurement of the heat energy available in the deep layer of the ocean," he explained.
"Altimetry provides us with a measurement of this potential, because the (sea) surface topography reacts to the changes to the heat content beneath the ocean.
"In the area of the Gulf, south of New Orleans where Katrina passed, there was a sea-surface height anomaly, which corresponds to a very deep layer of very warm water.
"This clearly shows that by looking into the ocean, we can monitor the availability of heat energy."
But it is not only the thermal energy stored deep within the oceans that causes the variation in sea level, gravity also has an influence.
The subterranean geology is not uniform, some regions are more dense than others. This causes a subtle but significant shift in the Earth's gravitational force.
To measure the influence of gravity and its impact on ocean topography and currents, the European Space Agency (Esa) plans to launch an arrow-like satellite called the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce). If we want to improve our climate models then we need to improve our knowledge of how the oceans move, and Goce will help us do that," mission scientist Dr Mark Drinkwater, from Esa, told BBC News, combining the data gathered by Goce and Jason-2, meteorologists and climate scientists will advance their understanding of the physical factors influencing the oceans and atmosphere.Jason-2 is the latest addition to a series of satellites fitted with altimeters to map the sea surface.The first, Topex/Poseidon, was launched in 1992 as an experiment to assess the effectiveness of high-accuracy altimeters to measure ocean dynamics from space.Its success paved the way for the Jason-1/Poseidon-2 mission, launched in 2001.Lessons learned from the previous missions have allowed the team building the Poseidon altimeter instrument for Jason-2 to improve its accuracy and reduce the margin of uncertainty to within 2.5cm.