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The
Columbus Dispatch...
Editorial:
Buckeye bests
Ohio gets bragging rights as Honda and
Battelle lead pack in their fields
Friday, July 1, 2011
Gov.
John Kasich, as he courts
businesses to move to Ohio, can point to Honda and Battelle as examples
of the
Buckeye State’s innovative spirit and industrious work force.
Battelle
and the national laboratories
it oversees won 19 of the R&D 100 Awards handed out this year,
which are
called the “Oscars of Innovation” for a good reason. R&D
Magazine
recognizes technologies that have fundamentally reshaped everyday life.
Past
winners have included the technologies that led to the flashcube
(1965), the
automated teller machine (1973), the fax machine (1975), the
stop-smoking patch
(1992) and high-definition television (1998).
To
see how fast science has churned
out developments, go to www.rdmag.com/rd100awardsarchive.aspx and plug
in a
year.
Battelle’s
2011 award was for the
Resource Effective Biodentification System, which uses lasers to
monitor and
rapidly detect microbes at pharmaceutical factories, food processing
plants and
hospitals that might sicken workers and the public. The system has
important
implications for national security as it can be used to check for
dangerous
biological agents the air.
Oak
Ridge National Laboratory received
seven of the awards. Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory and a handful of others got two each.
Meanwhile,
Honda is also driving home
the point that “Made in Ohio” means quality.
The
car manufacturer’s East Liberty
and Marysville plants are among the best in North America, according to
new
J.D. Power and Associates report on initial quality. J.D. Power rated
vehicles
and the factories of origin on defects in the first 90 days of
ownership.
A
Honda plant in Indiana and a Toyota
plant in Canada tied for first place, but Ohio’s Honda workers captured
third,
fourth and fifth.
“Phenomenal,”
a Honda spokesman said.
Years
ago, as Gov. James A. Rhodes was
wooing Honda, he’d pointed out the hardworking people of Ohio as an
asset. He
was right then and still is. Ohio can have no better advertisement than
such
successes.
Read
it at the Columbus Dispatch
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