Interview: Joichi Ito 
Frank Moss, a holder of PhD in aeronautics and astronautics, was succeeded last September at the position of the director of MIT Media Lab, operating under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by a renowned investor, consultant, former DJ and entrepreneur Joichi Ito. Dr. Nicholas Negroponte, the honourably retired president and co-founder of this prestigious institution, backed his decision by the fact that the quarter-of-century long digital revolution the institution helped to shape is irrevocably over. 

  According to the European commission data on road safety, 34 500 people lost life in 2009 in traffic accidents on the European roads. 20 percent of victims were pedestrians. The Commission's objective for the next decade is to cut the number of casualties in half by increasing the road traffic safety. To reach this goal, UN has adopted the GTR 9 Directive, shaping the foundations for a globally harmonised law on traffic safety. 

  There is something romantic in the Ajdovščina-based company Pipistrel. The team of 70 owns a wealth of first-class knowledge and technology to materialise the idea of simple, affordable and environmentally-friendly air travel for one to four persons. By fulfilling the dreams of others, Pipistrel are also fulfilling their own dreams and building the future of aeronautic industry. In order to get to know the company Pipistrel, one needs to travel back in time for at least two decades and a half, to the last years of Yugoslavia. The political playground was dominated by a totalitarian government, and the military was in full control of aviation.   

  If you stopped accepting new orders tomorrow and waited for all job orders to finish and for the backlog to clear, how much inventory would you be left with? The leanest answer is zero, but surely not the most common one. The introduction of lean manufacturing is an organisational change on all company levels. Its main task is to terminate losses regardless of their form. The most common examples are too big material inventories, unfinished products and finished products waiting for the customers, but also workers executing unnecessary motions, and other processes which do not bring value added to the final product, such as the set-up times. 

  A rugged, cutting-edge, automated pipeline welding system must be adaptable to address various customer requirements, provide maximum uptime, meet the highest reliability and quality standards, offer worldwide support, and have flexible hardware and software that can address control and monitoring needs throughout existing machine types in the future (such as Multinax, Externax, Saturnax 07). The solution to these challenges is NI Compact RIO hardware and NI LabVIEW software for motion control, condition monitoring and logic tasks, which were used in the new automated welding machine developed by Serimax.   

 Mould inserts with generatively created close-contour cooling channels and a hybrid build style provide an economical route to performance for moulders. Concept Laser GmbH offers its LaserCusing® generative (additive) laser-based metal-fusing technology to enterprises that make custom moulds for manufacturing companies. Such flexible and technically accomplished specialists as LPT GmbH in Paderborn, Germany, use the cutting-edge technology to make moulds that feature close-contour cooling channels for the highest degree of local temperature control during moulding. 

 In order to prove their dedication to the development of light materials for the automotive industry, BASF formed a special group to work on the development of materials and technologies for fibre-reinforced products for the automotive industry. Metal parts can be substituted with lighter, yet strong composite materials, which reduce the consumption of energy and carbon dioxide emissions. They intend to cooperate with their customers in the production of custom-made materials, based on their knowledge about resins, polyurethanes and polyamides. 

 ib-CADdy, d.o.o. celebrated the 20 years of operation at the end of last year. It was founded by Bojan Zupan, still its acting manager. From the very beginnings, ib-CADdy has been specialised in the field of engineering graphics, a field which took enormous steps forward during the last decades. In addition to running numerous representations of software and tools for technical, business and educational IT, ib-CADdy is also conducting own development of software solutions, tightly related with the buzzword 3D in the 21st century.   

 LOTRIČ, d.o.o. has built a new wind-tunnel at the company headquarters in Selce. The wind-tunnel is currently in the process of accreditation, and it will be ready for advanced measurements until spring. The calibration of anemometers (wind velocity meters) will be certified for the measuring range up to 40 m/s (air drag of products will be tested for velocities up to 150 km/h). The investment into the wind-tunnels is worth over 100.000 Euro, and Lotrič will be offering the air velocity and flow measurement services to many companies and organisations, which were until now shopping for these services abroad due to a lack of accredited domestic service in this field. 

 How are the information and communication technologies looked upon by the business analysts in 2012? The year will be difficult for most companies, but some of them will also discover new opportunities. Which technologies are crucial for the operations? Comprehensive international research conducted by business analysis companies predict weak budgets for the information and communication technologies, increasing only by 0.5 % on the global scale, and dropping by 0.7 % in Europe and by 0.6 % in the USA. 

  At HELLMERICH PRECISION COMPONENTS – HPC Produktions GmbH, the HERMLE C 60 puts all doubts at rest in terms of traverse paths, dynamics, efficiency and precision. Since June 2011, the company from Seeboden on the shores of Millstätt Lake in Kärnten has been producing multi-spindle heads and crown turrets on the gigantic 5-axis machining centre. The HELLMERICH company puts much store by efficiency in machining as well as being able to react flexibly to consumer requests. The precision machining units themselves stand for durability, reliability, easy maintenance and environmental compatibility. 

  There is no end without a beginning. And nothing in between. No evolution, passing, existence. Prof. dr. Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the general director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is convinced that stopping scientific research would mean giving up on the humankind. The human curiosity would run dry. The designers of this year's Ars Electronica, the festival of science, society and art, have selected the very origin for its central theme – the research of the big bang. The idea flashed into the minds of Cristina Schöpf and Gerfried Stocker, the artistic heads of the festival, upon the collective state of the society – the realisation of desire for knowledge, redefining the old news and uncovering new paths and solutions.