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Curious Cat Science and Egineering blog full tag cloud
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| Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams is a national grants initiative of the Lemelson-MIT Program to foster inventiveness among high school students. The webcast above shows a high school team presenting a project they completed to create a solution to provide clean water. This stuff is great. I love appropriate technology. I love seeing kids think and create effective solutions to real problems. This is how you get kids to learn - not boring classes (at least kids like me).
The students are passing on the project to students at their school to continue to work on. MIT TechTV has many more presentation by other InvenTeams. InvenTeams and MIT deserve a great deal of credit for creating such great learning opportunities and great solutions for the world. |
InvenTeams composed of high school students, teachers and mentors are asked to collaboratively identify a problem that they want to solve, research the problem, and then develop a prototype invention as an in-class or extracurricular project. Grants of up to $10,000 support each team’s efforts. InvenTeams are encouraged to work with community partners, specifically the potential beneficiaries of their invention.
Related: Water and Electricity for All - Water Pump Merry-go-Round - Engineering a Better World: Bike Corn-Sheller - Inspiring a New Generation of Inventors - Kids in the Lab: Getting High-Schoolers Hooked on Science
Dean Kamen: part man, part machine
Now he and his engineers have built and tested a range of Stirling engines suitable for mass production that can be run on anything from jet fuel to cow dung. The one in the boot of the small blue car is designed to extend its range and constantly recharge its batteries to make a new kind of hybrid vehicle: one fit for the roads of the 21st century. A Stirling-electric hybrid, Kamen tells me, can travel farther and more efficiently than conventional electric cars; it generates enough power to run energy-hungry devices such as heaters and defrosters that are essential for drivers who, unlike those he calls the ‘tofu heads’ of California, must cope with a cold climate; and even using petrol, the engine runs far cleaner than petrol-electric hybrids such as Toyota’s Prius.
However, Kamen confesses, his new creation isn’t quite finished yet: ‘The Stirling engine’s not hooked up. Which really pisses me off.’
But it could work?
‘It will work,’ he says. ‘Trust me.’
Related: R&D Magazine’s 2006 Innovator of the Year - Robotic Prosthetic Arms for People
MIT’s Guru of Low-Tech Engineering Fixes the World on $2 a Day
Related: Smokeless Stove Uses 80% Less Fuel - appropriate technology posts - Engineering a Better World - Bill Hunter
The Lemelson-MIT Prize awards $500,000 to mid-career inventors dedicated to improving our world through technological invention and innovation. Joseph M. DeSimone received the 2008 award.
Among DeSimone’s notable inventions is an environmentally friendly manufacturing process that relies on supercritical carbon dioxide instead of water and bio-persistent surfactants (detergents) for the creation of fluoropolymers or high-performance plastics, such as Teflon®. More recently, he worked on a team to design a polymer-based, fully bioabsorbable, drug-eluting stent, which helps keep a blocked blood vessel open after a balloon-angioplasty and is absorbed by the body within 18 months.
DeSimone’s newest invention is PRINT® (Particle Replication in Non-wetting Templates) technology, used to manufacture nanocarriers in medicine. At present, DeSimone’s Lab is vested in a variety of projects that also extend beyond medicine, including potential applications for more efficient solar cells and morphable robots. In 2004, DeSimone co-founded Liquidia Technologies with a team of researchers from UNC to make the technology available in the market. Liquidia is using the PRINT technology to develop precisely engineered nanocarriers for highly targeted delivery of biological and small molecule therapeutics to treat cancer and other diseases. DeSimone’s proposed applications for cancer treatment with the PRINT platform was instrumental in UNC landing a grant of $24 million from the National Cancer Institute to establish the Carolina Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence.
“You can do all the innovating you want in the laboratory, but if you can’t get it out of the university walls you do no one any good,” said DeSimone. He instills an entrepreneurial spirit in his students that focuses on the importance of commercializing technology and scientific inventions. One of DeSimone’s greatest accomplishments is his mentorship of more than 45 postdoctoral research associates, 52 Ph.D. candidates, six M.S. theses and 21 undergraduate researchers. Furthermore, he speaks to groups of high school students about the inventive process and encourages them to learn and explore areas that are less familiar to them to broaden their exposure to other disciplines.
A prolific inventor, DeSimone holds more than 115 issued patents with more than 70 new patent applications pending, and he has published more than 240 peer-reviewed scientific articles.
Related: Inspiring a New Generation of Inventors - $500,000 for Innovation in Engineering Education - Collegiate Inventors Competition - posts on inventors
False Teeth For Cats! What Next?
False teeth for cats may sound ridiculous, but they could be a solution to a serious problem for cats. Cats have notoriously bad dental problems. Cat owners seldom brush their cats’ teeth or scrape the surfaces of the teeth to remove plaque. By the time a cat is 3 or 4 years old, she may already have periodontal disease that can lead to tooth loss. Tooth loss may also come about as a result of tooth breakage, particularly in the canine teeth.
Link provided via our post suggestion page.
Related: Engineering Students Design Innovative Hand Dryer - UK Young Engineers Competitions - La Vida Robot - Eco-Vehicle Student Competition - Genetically Engineered Machines Competition
Innovation propels students’ careers
Most propellers have a body encasing the motor. There’s air inside, which can cause the body to collapse when submerged in oceanic depths. The casing also creates drag, slowing the machine down and making it difficult to move backward.
But Shea, along with Brian Claus, Peter Crocker and Toren Gustafson, devised a way to build the motor in the casing that surrounds the propeller blades. The parts are assembled in a ring shape then encased in epoxy, making the motor waterproof. The propeller is fastened inside the ring, allowing it to easily move forward or backward.
Related: PhD Student Speeds up Broadband by 200 times - Singapore Students Engineer New Products - Concentrating Solar Collector wins UW-Madison Engineering Innovation Award
‘Vanishing’ colour gives schoolgirls chance to beat ban on nail varnish
The dramatic change is caused by a chemical reaction between the varnish and the ultraviolet light in natural sunlight. The polish was devised by pupils from Albion High School, Salford, who thought the “vanishing” colour may help them beat the school’s ban on nail polish.
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They came up with the idea while working on an enterprise project with Paul Haywood and Sam Ingleson from Salford University’s school of art and design.
Not exactly what I would create but it is great to see students using scientific thought to find solutions they desire.
Related: The Chemistry of Hair Coloring - Engineering Students Design Innovative Hand Dryer - Student designs a baby high chair - Engineering Student Contest Winners Design Artificial Limb
I caught some of Everyday Edisons the other day, which looked promising (though I would prefer less fluff and more focus on the process of designing and marketing the products. American Inventor season two premiers tonight on ABC. I saw some of American Inventor last year and it was interesting (though it didn’t grab me enough to get me to watch often). Still compared to the usual TV fair they look interesting and do actually provide some insight into turning ideas into products.
One minor point I find funny and a bit lame. On the Everyday Edisons web site they show a photo with 10 people and then have an image underneath it with text (yes image text like a myspace page - obviously whoever is responsible for this website doesn’t follow the advice of the web usability experts - this image text is just one example, another is that every time you go the home page it starts playing a video with audio - it is annoying to have web sites with so little idea of good web design practices) that states something like “I thought there were 14 inventors, I only see seven. What’s up?” The image actually shows 10 people - not 7, what is up with someone that only sees 7?
Related: Engineering Education Reality TV (which I also note web usability failings) - Help Choose the New PBS Science Program - Japan Project X: Innovators Documentaries
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An inexpensive, modular solar-energy technology that could be used to heat water and generate electricity (see photo) won $12,500 and took first place in both the Schoofs Prize for Creativity and Tong Prototype Prize competitions, held Feb. 9 and 10 during Innovation Days on the UW-Madison College of Engineering campus.
In a package about the size of a small computer desk, the winning system uses a flat Fresnel lens to collect the sun’s energy and focus it onto a copper block. Then a unique spray system removes the energy from the copper block and converts it into steam, says inventor Angie Franzke, an engineering mechanics and astronautics senior from Omro, Wisconsin. The steam either heats water for household use or powers a turbine to generate electricity.
Other 2006 Schoofs Prize for Creativity winners include:
* Second place and $7,000 — William Gregory Knowles, for the OmniPresent Community-Based Response Network, a personal, business or industrial security system that draws on networked users and devices to more efficiently verify burglar alarms, fire alarms or medical emergencies.
* Third place and $4,000 — Garret Fitzpatrick, Jon Oiler, Angie Franzke, Peter Kohlhepp and Greg Hoell for the Self-Leveling Wheelchair Tray, a stowable working surface for wheelchairs that self-levels, even when the wheelchair is tilted or reclined up to a 45-degree angle.
2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize Won by Inventors of Charge-coupled Devices
The 2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize will be presented by the National Academy of Engineering to the inventors of charge-coupled devices (CCDs), Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, on Feb. 21 in Washington , D.C. Boyle and Smith will share the $500,000 prize for inventing CCDs, which are imaging sensors or optical elements that convert light to digital data. CCDs are widely used in consumer products, such as camcorders and cell phone cameras, as well as in advanced electronic imaging tools, such as telescopes and imaging satellites.
CCDs are the first practical solid-state imaging devices. They were invented in 1969 by Boyle and Smith while working at Bell Laboratories. Because CCDs are silicon-based devices, they are fairly inexpensive to produce, compact, and fairly rugged, making them suitable for commercial product use. Their high sensitivity, excellent stability, and lack of distortion make CCDs attractive for use in scientific research imaging systems. CCDs are capable of imaging a variety of sources, including optical, x-ray, ultraviolet, and infrared emissions.
Administered by the National Academy of Engineering, the Draper Prize is endowed by The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., and was established in 1988. The Prize is awarded for outstanding achievement, particularly innovation and reduction to practice, in engineering and technology contributing to the advancement of the welfare and freedom of humanity. The Prize honors the memory of Draper Laboratory’s founder, Dr. Charles Stark Draper, who pioneered inertial navigation. It is intended to increase public understanding of the contributions of engineering and technology. Originally biennial, the Prize is now awarded annually.
Previous years awards include:
2002: Dr. Robert S. Langer for extraordinary contributions to the bioengineering of revolutionary medical drug delivery systems
2001: Drs. Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, and Lawrence Roberts for the invention of the Internet
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