Copenhagen—The employee of the decade in green tech is scum. University College Dublin (UCD) has come up with a way to recycle old plastic bottles and containers with microorganisms. The end result—the thing that comes out of the bacteria’s digestive system--is a new piece of plastic. The difference, however, is that the plastic that comes out of the process is biodegradable. It can go safely into a landfill and will disappear over time, said Kevin O’Connor, the lead researcher on the project during a presentation at Copenmind, a university tech transfer conference taking place this week. If the process can be brought up to an industrial level, it could help the world...

Copenhagen—Toyota and lithium just don’t mix. Masatami Takimoto, executive vice president for the technology department at Toyota, acknowleged during a presentation at Copenmind, a technology conference taking place here this week, that the Japanese auto giant will inevitably put lithium ion batteries in some types of cars. Toyota, for instance, will probably put lithium ions into commuter cars and will also likely use a lithium ion battery in its plug-in hybrids. In fact, the company will in the near future send out lithium ion batteries to those testing the plug-in Prius. Right now, those plug-in Priuses contain two regular Prius batteries, which cuts the...

Copenhagen—If you really want to be comprehensive when it comes to searching for a college, you’d better get cracking. There are approximately 7,500 universities in the world, said the organizers of Copenmind, a conference here that is trying to link up universities with corporate labs. (Yet, somehow, there are probably only 372 different animal mascots.) There are also 10,000 research institutes, such as Germany’s Max Planck Institute, which has more branches than Quiznos. That large number in part was the inspiration for the conference. Universities employ large numbers of researchers. Yet, most of the time, the results of this research become landlocked. A person...

It’s Labor Day week, so I’m going to quote Eugene V. Debs. Debs doesn’t get quoted much or even remembered much so I’d like to do it.

In this country – the most favored beneath the bending skies – we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child – and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their...