Archive for category Inventing Stuff

AN ARTIFICIAL SPHINCTER

Posted by on Saturday, 27 August, 2011

INCONTINENCE

TALK about the things that people take for granted!

Your sphincter?

If something goes wrong with  your urinary sphincter or your anal sphincter you can become incontinent.

Seriously,

Most people with incontinence cope.

Not so easy though.

I’m not saying their lives are over. Not at all. There are treatments –  exercises, nerve stimulators, drugs,  surgery. Even diapers. But wouldn’t it be nice if  you could just call up and say “How about a new one?”

Dr. Kalil Bentar (Institute For Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center) is developing artificial sphincters – anal AND (you’ll be thrilled to know) urinary – that could replace the real thing. They’re grown in the lab with real muscle cells and real nerve cells. Drop in place replacements.

It’s no Heathkit. Surgeons are still needed for the “install”. Still. This is a big advance.

ScienceAintSoBadRating? In spite of the yuck factor, I would like to give this one a 10 because it’s SO cool and offers a great quality of life for millions of people.

But I can’t.

Not yet.

There‘s still a lot to be done before this is fully refined, tested, and available.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 6 for now.

More to come.

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Credit to Joriel “Joz” Jimenez for the above photo.
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Category: Inventing Stuff, Medicine   , , , ,
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CHINA TINKERING WITH THORIUM POWER PLANT

Posted by on Saturday, 20 August, 2011

STICK A PETUNIA IN IT

 

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST

 On August 13th, I talked about thorium reactors . I went on and on about the advantages of thorium over uranium.  Ending the article with my irresistible dry humor. I said:

The LAST thing MISTERScienceAintSoBad wants to do is make you feel all competitive. But DO you want India or (maybe) Iran to beat us to this very neat technology?

Do you?

Since my timely warning, the United States has done nothing. (Neither has Iran, apparently). China’s getting into this technology big time, though.  Andrew Orlowski (The Register) says that China is committed to a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor. And India’s going for six of these buggers.

Six!

MisterSASB doesn’t mind our  close friends in India scooping us on something.  They do it all the time. It’s a healthy competition between three hundred thousand people here and 14 trillion there. Same for China.

We got there first. We had a Thorium plant  at Oak Ridge in 1950. We know about this stuff.   C’mon, guys (that’s the generic “guys” that includes all known sexes, by the way). We don’t have to stand here with our thumbs in our whatevers.

Light up the skies, America!

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Category: Inventing Stuff, Technology & Industry   , , ,
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THE TIME I INVENTED NOISE CANCELING EARPHONES

Posted by on Sunday, 15 May, 2011

A GOOD IDEA

My acoustics teacher was kinda famous. I didn’t care as much about that as how hard a grader he was but, I gotta say, Amar Bose was good. Instructors at MIT aren’t necessarily heavy on personality. The selection criteria seemed to be based on how smart you are, not your “presence” which, in my opinion, was a big mistake. But Bose had lots of personality AND lots of brains.

Like me.

Except, maybe, the brains.

Back then, he was all pissed off about the way Consumer Reports had treated his baby.  Although he discussed transmission losses and reverberation and fourier transforms dispassionately, there was a homicidal glitter in his otherwise civilized eyes when he discussed Consumer Reports which, with misbegotten evil,  had failed to grasp the breakthrough principals of his, then new, Bose 901 system. The sound “tended to wander around the room.” He was trying to bust them with a libel lawsuit and I’m glad I wasn’t still in his classroom when, eventually, the Supreme Court decided that Consumers Reports could say what it liked as long as there was no actual malice involved. I bet THAT was a shitty day!

Since I was in a Phd program, a thesis topic was supposed to choose me and, so far, it hadn’t. One idea I had was  kinda crazy so I asked Bose about it.

I was thinking about noise cancelling earphones. Sound is complicated. Otherwise you wouldn’t have to pay people to learn about it. Waves and things. Some of those waves reinforce and some of them cancel. Would it be possible to jigger things to subtract annoying sounds and let you concentrate on the sounds you want to hear?

Just a question. Maybe a little naive, I said.

Dr. Bose was nice about it. I don’t remember his exact words. I do remember he brought up Green’s theorem just to help me understand what I would be getting into. Could it be done? Well, he couldn’t be too encouraging. It might be unrealistic.

I chose something else.

Bose went on to create sound canceling headphones, and I went on to create the LectricLifter (TM). You probably haven’t even heard of the LectricLifter (so far, at least) unless you read my blog constantly.

Which I hope you do.

The sound canceling earphones, you’ve seen at the mall or you’ve read about in SkyMall Airline Magazine. You may own a pair.

I love this story because it shows how smart I was. And how my idea got misappropriated by a guy who went on to make BILLIONS with it..

Except that’s BS.

At the time we talked, Dr. Bose knew more about sound cancellation then I will ever know. I didn’t teach him a thing. If he remembered the discussion, a few weeks later, it shows he has an uncanny  ability to remember trivia.

IF anything I said, later, turned out to be useful, would he have credited me? Actually, I think he would have. He’s a good guy and very ethical. At the time we had our discussion, computers were big, expensive, and slow. Practical solutions for noise cancellation were iffy. Why would Amar Bose encourage a topic that’s an intellectual cul de sac? His advice was right. And Greene’s theorem (as I remember it now) didn’t mean it couldn’t be done, just that there are realistic constraints.

My point?

Look how smart I am.

But there’s another thing. Sometimes it’s hard not to make a personal history “all about me”.

Seriously.

There is a way to think about this exchange and convince yourself – myself, actually – how unfair life is. Nasty  Amar Bose, taking my idea and building a whole industry out of it. But – honestly? – it didn’t happen that way at all. And I know that. He left me with more than I left him with.

I learned something.

He had an extra student he didn’t much need.

And later, based ENTIRELY on his own work, he did go on to create an entirely new product category. A good one which adds to his legacy.

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad rates Amar Bose’s contributions to the science of acoustics very highly.

And Mister ScienceAintSoBad rates his own personal maturity right up there too though there is some room for improvement.
Category: Inventing Stuff   , ,
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Inventors Talk To An Old Guy

Posted by on Saturday, 7 May, 2011

BOX? WHAT BOX?

Inside Starbucks. But SO Outside-Of-The-Box

I was summoned to a meeting with a local inventor.

At Starbucks.

I forgot to ask. Eirik, the President of CustomBuds what he looks like. But Starbucks isn’t large. And my face is on LinkedIn. I figured we’d find each other easy enough.

When I arrived, I bought a cup of tea (who drinks coffee at night?) and looked around for a corporate leader. Nothing obvious. No one with a loosened tie or folded suit coat. Just teenagers and young women with kids. Too early? Wrong Starbucks?

One of the teenagers came over. Was I MISTER ScienceAintSoBad? He was Eirik Somerville. The guy with him was Sam, he said, his CFO.

Sam had that youth look down too.

Their Macbooks were open. And, on the table were containers of disassembled parts. Custom ear buds, it turns out.

I asked Eirik if he’s as young as he looks or if it’s a genetic curse that runs in his family.

“I’m seventeen,” he said.

EIRIK

“And you’re running a company?”

All business (and, apparently, having heard this crap often enough to ignore it), Eirik plunged in.

“So. Some time ago, I noticed how Steve Jobs, at Apple, leveraged the look of his products to improve sales. I love Steve, because he understands the power of aesthetics. And I wondered,” (said this child,) “if I couldn’t find a way to launch a company that does nothing but customize common products for other people.”

“The first thing that came to mind were the earphones that’re worn by kids with iPods. So I looked into offering custom colors for ear buds.”

“That’ll never work,” I said.

“We’re selling thousands,” he said. “With just word of mouth.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Here’s the thing,” Eirik said, “I know it may sound crazy, but people want things to reflect their own personality. With something as minimal as earbuds, the color’s the only thing you can really make your own. And we make a really quality product. Take a look.”

He pushed the box at me. Machined anodized aluminum ear pieces that made me want to take one home. Lots higher quality and more durable (it seemed) than the plastic version you usually see.

I let Sam and Eirik wind down. Then I got off some questions. How do you test? Who does the assembly? Marketing? (word-of-mouth will only stretch so far).  Financing?

Jeez! They had thought this thing through. Their answers were believable. They have a solid business plan and they know what they’re doing. Not perfect. But I’ve talked to plenty of entrepreneurs with less savvy. Older isn’t always better.

(Except in my case.)

CustomBud’s stock in trade is efficiency. Eirik says he’s developed a nifty way of spinning out high quality, solid metal ear buds on a per order basis at prices that compete with the mass produced stuff.

How does he do it?

I dunno, exactly. It can’t be slave labor since they employ US vets as workers. Probably, they don’t want to share the ingredients of the secret sauce. I can’t say I blame them.

CustomBud's very pro website in action

Quality control and testing? Very serious about it. Nevertheless, they were intent on learning how to improve. They asked good questions. I hope I gave good answers. New product lines? We booted that around too.

By 6:30, the lady behind the counter was giving us the you-gonna-order-more-or-give-up-the-table look. Since my lungs were already floating, I suggested we wrap it up.

Maybe I helped them. Maybe they were being polite. But, look at it this way, I got an article out of it. And tea.

CONCLUSION

Eirik Somerville. Remember that name. You may hear it again.

Category: Inventing Stuff, Technology & Industry   , , ,
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HOW TO SURVIVE AN EARTHQUAKE

Posted by on Monday, 14 March, 2011

WHAT THE HECK? IS THIS THING BROKEN?

QUAKES, TSUNAMIS, POWER PLANTS

Yesterday an earthquake and a tsunami hit Japan.  The earthquake (magnitude 9.0) was a THOUSAND times more powerful than the one that killed 2 percent of the population of Haiti.

And  Haiti didn’t have tsunamis. Or exploding  nuclear power stations which are thought to be melting down.

As I’m writing , they’re still searching for victims so the number of injuries and deaths is still growing. The excellent planning that the Japanese do for such disasters should help. If the sympathetic hearts of others makes any difference, that’ll help too.

SCIENCE ISN’T AN EXACT SCIENCE

Probably yer thinking “What’s WRONG with those guys? If they can make something as good as a Toyota, why can’t their power plants stand being bounced around ?”

Not fair.

I especially didn’t like that little Toyota dig, but I’ll let it pass.

Here’s the thing. Engineers  don’t know fer sure the worst disaster that’ll hit their projects, do they?  So how does an engineer know how strong to make a bridge. Or a house? Or a nuclear power plant? How does he.she know what size earthquakes, winds,  waves, and so on, a power plant will have to deal with in its lifetime? This, after all, is the “loading” to which it must be designed.

You’re not gonna like this, but it’s  a game of chance.

A building, a bridge, an airplane, is designed to handle everything that gets thrown at it.

Almost.

Course, no matter how tough you make the design, there’s always something worse. A 10 ton meteor will NOT bounce off of yer roof and leave it undented. Sorry to say. Honestly? Your roof wasn’t even designed for 14 feet of snow. If you and your house live long enough, you will GET 14 feet of snow. It seemed like we got that much in Boston this winter. Or, if you don’t live where it snows, your house, for sure,  isn’t designed for a category 7 hurricane.

Always something!

Engineers try to anticipate everything that’s likely to happen. Then they throw in a little extra. But what about spectacularly awful things that only happen every 100 years? Or every 1000 years? How unlikely and how huge an event should you build for?

Magnitude 9.0 earthquake don’t occur in/near Japan very often – certainly not accompanied by a massive tsunami.   Very rare. So if you DO beef up your power plant design  for these conditions which include a 30 foot tsunami, what about the possibility of a 35 footer?

See what I mean? You gotta stop SOMEWHERE or you’ll NEVER get a mortgage on that overbuilt monstrosity.

It’s called engineering. Balancing practicality against perfection.

WAS IT A SCREW UP?

I’ll get back to you on that. If the designers simply failed to take tsunamis into account, you bet it was. If they designed for big, bigger, and biggerer but this was biggereryet, it’s just one of those things.

WHY USE URANIUM BASED NUCLEAR POWER?

Is there a way to make nuclear power plants that can’t melt down? Of course.

BACK TO EARTHQUAKES

Now it so happens that I have a lot to say about earthquakes. Because I definitely have an app for THAT. Our product, resQvox ( US Patent 7,839,290) will save your butt next time YOU’RE in one. We’re just in the beginning stages of looking for a licensee (interested?).

Here’s how it works.

You find yourself trapped in the rubble of a collapsed structure, right?

Talk about sucky! The first 24 hours you’re down there are the critical “Golden Hours”. After that first day, your chances of getting out alive get so poor that if they DO happen to drag you out of there with a heartbeat they will describe it as a “miracle”.

Maybe it is.

Anyway, here’s the catch. In most places where there’s an earthquake, it takes LONGER than 24 hours for  the pros to show up. They have to get notified, grab their equipment, search dogs, supplies, and whatnot, and get transport to the disaster site. While this happens, you’re down there under a filing cabinet getting weaker and weaker and weaker.

What to do?

That’s where resQvox comes in. It’s aimed at attracting the attention of the “locals” – the “guys in the neighborhood” – who’re running around trying to dig people out with anything at hand – garden spades, rakes, even bare hands. They don’t have infrared detectors or search dogs. Just their eyes and ears.

Like smoke detectors, resQvox locators are small and inexpensive and are positioned in key spots around a building. Its  sensors tell it if a building collapses (so do yours, but that’s another story) and it uses its speech capabilities to chat up survivors, reassuring, describing survival techniques, and collecting info on their condition. Then, no matter what shape they’re in (maybe drifting  in and out of consciousness or sleep), resQvox uses its “sonic beacon” to draw rescuers to the location  and to help  ”triage” based on the condition of the survivors and the number in each location.

Here’s how it works . (You can contact us at scienceaintsobad@gmail.com).

SceinceAintSoBadRating = 10 (I’m a little prejudiced).

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Credits: Top photo of the earth (modified by MISTER ScienceAintSoBad) is from NASA. Cartoons’n such are my own handiwork.

Category: Inventing Stuff, Nature, Public Policy, Technology & Industry   , ,
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