Shifting Focus

Anyone with bad eyesight knows how miserable and unproductive it is when they lose or forget to pack their glasses or contact lenses. In developing countries, where more than one billion people do not have access to eyeglasses, that lack of productivity is multiplied across entire communities. Oxford, UK-based Adlens is tackling this problem by offering a low-tech, low-cost solution. Adjustable-focus glasses can be easily matched to thousands of different prescription combinations in a few minutes without the need for equipment or trained personnel. The secret to the Adlens technology is a fluid-filled lens that changes with the turn of a dial. The lens is a hollow chamber with a clear plastic sheet stretched across inside. The highly refractive fluid is pumped into or out of the chamber to change the curvature of the plastic sheet inside. Adlens currently has two products: Adlens Universals, which can be one-time adjusted and the Adlens Readers that remain adjustable throughout their lifecycle. In 2008, Adlens Beacon licensed the technology and has been testing the social marketing potential in Ghana. On the non-profit side, Adaptive Eyewear, is working with Adlens to deploy the technology to underserved populations in the developing world.

Power Plant

Withevidence mounting against the retrograde side effects of mainstream biofuels, canny investors are starting to wonder if algae is the Next Big Thing. Among the fastest growing plants in the world, the slimy stuff thrives in harsh conditions, feeds on C02 and sunlight and is packed with fatty acids ideally suited to petrochemical alchemy. This July, even hoary old ExxonMobil signalled that a green gold rush could be on by investing $600m (€410m) in Synthetic Genomics, a recent start-up by human genome guru Craig Venter. Other notable front-runners include Solazyme (currently working with the US Navy), the Dow Chemical Company-backed Algenol, and Seambiotic, which has teamed up with NASA. Perhaps most compelling of all is Sapphire Energy, which claims to own over 70% of the nascent industry’s patents and is touting an entirely new process: Green Crude Production. Last September, the San Diego start-up received a much-hyped $100m (€68m) vote of confidence from a ‘dream team’ syndicate of investors including Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment. The company’s trump card is a patented photosynthetic production platform that uses transgenicallyenhanced algae strains to produce an oil that is chemically identical to the petrochemical holy grail — light sweet crude. Remarkably, this oil not only has a C02 lifecycle significantly lower than conventional biofuels and two-thirds less than that of traditional petroleum products, but is also 100% compatible with all existing energy infrastructure. Although not in the refining business itself, Sapphire Energy has produced demonstration fuels such as 91-octane gasoline, 89-cetane diesel and jet fuel, all of which have achieved American Society for Testing and Materials certification. This is not ethanol, or biodiesel, it boasts, but ‘Renewable gasoline’. The company’s targets are eye-catching: one million gallons of fuel per year by 2011 — enough to constitute commercial production — 100 million gallons by 2018, and one billion gallons by 2025. During a recent senate hearing Sapphire Energy president Cynthia J Warner, a former BP executive, even testified that the company could replace more than 25% of conventional petroleum by 2050. “If you’re not thinking about it at world scale then you’re really not in the energy business,” argues vicepresident of corporate affairs Tim Zenk