Paul Heney

Brix refractometers are a common instrument used to measure the sugar content of a solution. Increasing sugar content leads to an increase in the refractive index. By passing light through a sample and measuring the refraction, the amount that the light bends, the sugar content can be measured. Brix refractometers are calibrated using the brix…

A refractometer measures the index of refraction for a material, which could be a gas, a liquid or a transparent solid such as glass. They achieve this by passing light through the sample and measuring the refraction — the amount that the light bends. Most commonly, aqueous solutions are measured, providing an indication concentration. Examples…

R&D World has won multiple awards in the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) annual publication awards competition, the Azbees. The publication won regional awards in a diverse group of categories in the 2021 iteration of the awards, including a Gold Award in Opening Page or Spread, a design category; a Bronze Award in…

We’re back! Join co-hosts Paul Heney and Aimee Kalnoskas, who return with another exciting episode of R&D 100 – The Podcast. Episode 5 is now live! With this episode, Paul and Aimee delve into the incredible technology behind Abbott’s Amplatzer Piccolo Occluder, a 2020 R&D 100 Award winner. This is a self-expanding, wire mesh device that is…

Computers have got faster over time, much faster, and it’s not just about the speed that an individual processor can perform calculations, they also have many more processors, all performing different calculations at the same time. Quantum computing is something different entirely, its not about performing arithmetic faster, its an entirely new way of computing…

Recently, I interviewed master inventor Dean Kamen, well known as the inventor of the stair climbing wheelchair and the Segway, as well as the creator of the FIRST Robotics competitions for school children. I explained to Dean how R&D World’s Global Funding Forecast was reporting that China will outspend the U.S. for the very first…

The COVID-19 pandemic created numerous issues in early 2020 relating to academic R&D. When the pandemic first spread throughout the U.S. in March, schools were among the first establishments to close their facilities to prevent the spread of the virus. This remained the standard operating mode through the end of the year.  With no students,…

Protein titer monitoring is a common test used to determine the concentration of a specific protein in a sample. For example, it can be used to detect antibodies, or to control the manufacturing process for a protein-based biopharmaceutical. Protein titer monitoring can be performed as a manual test or may be automated. A titer is…

On December 27, 2020, President Trump signed the U.S. Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2021. This $2.3 trillion spending bill combines $900 billion in stimulus relief for the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. with a $1.4-trillion omnibus spending bill for the FY2021 budget. The omnibus bill also prevents a government shutdown. An omnibus spending bill again…

When computers display the type of intelligence that humans and animals possess, this is known as artificial intelligence (AI). Intelligence involves perceiving the environment and using this information to take actions that maximize the likelihood of achieving objectives. Specific AI capabilities include learning, perception, reasoning, planning, knowledge representation and natural language processing. Ultimately, it is…

A form of machine learning that excels at pattern recognition Deep learning is a form of artificial neural network used for machine learning. This is a way of storing and processing information that is very different to conventional computers. Deep learning allows a computer to learn a task without a human first defining the algorithm,…

As we end an economically disastrous 2020, the outlook for 2021 appears to be that of a “rousing recovery,” according to U.S. investment strategists. Economists anticipate that continued accommodative monetary and fiscal policies will support markets and that market-destabilizing political developments will not come to pass. A small economic recovery began in the summer of…

After a short break, co-hosts Paul Heney and Aimee Kalnoskas are back with another exciting episode of R&D 100 – The Podcast, we are happy to report that Episode 4 is now live! Join our co-hosts, Paul J. Heney and Aimee Kalnoskas, editors with R&D World magazine, as they talk about foiling cyber sleuths via some…

By Tim Studt, Contributing Editor For 62 years, R&D World and its predecessors have published an annual R&D funding forecast. These reports predict the combined dollar amount of R&D investments expected by industry, government and academia for the upcoming calendar year. Over those years, the publications these reports have appeared in have changed their ownership…

The 2021 R&D 100, the 59th iteration of the esteemed awards program, will open for submissions on February 1st, 2021. Download a PDF of the Call for Nominations form here: 2021 R&D 100 Awards. Established in 1963, the R&D 100 Awards is the only S&T (science and technology) awards competition that recognizes new commercial products,…

Supercapacitors, also known as ultracapacitors, have performance characteristics somewhere between a battery and a conventional capacitor. A battery has a high energy density, meaning it can store a significant amount of energy with a relatively small volume or mass. Batteries are, however, limited in terms of the speed at which they can charge or discharge,…

Ordinary metallic conductors have electrical resistance, which dissipates electrical power as heat when a current flows through them. Although resistance reduces slightly as the temperature is lowered, even at close to absolute zero there is significant resistance. When a superconductor is cooled, an abrupt change occurs at its critical temperature whereby all resistance suddenly disappears.…

Following up on the enormous success of the first two episodes of R&D 100 – The Podcast, we are happy to report that Episode 3 is now live! Today, co-hosts Paul J. Heney and Aimee Kalnoskas, editors with R&D World magazine, are day drinking — but it’s all in the name of science! We swear! In…

Graphene is a flat hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms, just one atom thick. It is a form of carbon related to carbon nanotubes and buckyballs (C60). Although it has always occurred naturally, it is only recently that it has been isolated and it’s individual properties examined. It is now known that graphene has exceptional electrical,…

Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a general term for any method that determines material properties without damaging the object being tested. Most commonly it is used to measure cracks and pores in materials that may be subject to a brittle failure. Because these defects could act as crack initiation sites, the size and frequency of the…

By Mark Butler, IPS The race for a COVID-19 vaccine has highlighted the importance of accelerating the design and construction process, in order to bring manufacturing facilities online to produce the vaccine as quickly as possible. The silver lining of the COVID pandemic is that it has fostered innovation and collaboration. While companies are racing…

Late last year, I attended an excellent CDX conference at Georgia Tech that was focused on digital transformation. There were speakers from all sorts of well-known organizations, from Accenture to Verizon. But all of these months later, I’m still struck by the intriguing talk from Rajesh Anandan of Ultranauts, an organization I’d never heard of.…

About half of the respondents to the 2020 Global R&D Funding Forecast survey expect their 2020 R&D budgets to rise. More than a third also expect to see their capital budgets increase and their organization’s participation in alliances grow as well. Only 16% of the respondents expect to see their acquisition of outside intellectual property…

An imaging technique that shows the underlying spectrum for each pixel Hyperspectral imaging combines digital imaging with spectroscopy, so that the underlying frequencies in the spectrum for each pixel can be identified. Because only a single wavelength can be represented as a colour for a pixel, a two-dimensional hyperspectral image effectively represents three-dimensional information, in…

One can almost see the future of R&D in current biopharmaceutical research labs: There are often no researchers in attendance. Yet the instrumentation is humming away, and automated loading and unloading systems are quietly and smoothly shuffling sample trays. Data is detected, collected and automatically loaded into digital files which are available immediately in real-time…