popular science june 2009
TRANSCRIPT
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JUNE 09 POPULAR SCIENCE 03
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contentsthis month’s guide to innovation and discovery
june ’09 VOLUME 274 #6
THE 2009 PopSci
INVENTION AWARDS37 This year’s ultimate garage creations and the big thinkers behind them.
38 THE FASTEST TANKAn unmanned machine tops 60 mph.
42 A BETTER CATHETERA guided needle prevents vein punctures.
43 TOUGH ON FISH, EASY ON LAKESThis lure biodegrades for clean waters.
44 HEIGHTENED REALITYThe next generation of Minority Report–style interfaces.
46 ROBO-LEGSAn exoskeleton that lets paraplegics walk and even climb stairs.
48 POWER MADE FROM SHOCKSTurns bumpy roads into a car’s electricity.
50 GREAT ESCAPESAn emergency harness lowers evacuees from the tallest skyscrapers.
51 ELECTRONIC VOICE BOXA stick-on gadget restores speech by translating neural signals.
52 GREEN STYROFOAMMushrooms produce an ecofriendly alternative to traditional insulation.
53 GREASE LIGHTINGUsed frying oil in one end, electricity out of the other.
PopSci innovator
54 AN ARMY OF ONE MINDThe Segway failed to transform society, but Dean Kamen isn’t done trying. Now he’s taking on clean water, robotic arms and gas-free driving. And his greatest feat might be making a lot more people into inventors like him. By Rena Marie Pacella
INSTANT EXPERT—special edition
60 THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO STEM CELLSEverything you need to know about the hottest topic in medicine: stem cells’ cures and controversies. By Elizabeth Svoboda
38
POPSCI.COM
54
60
FEATURES
51
53
5043 44
WHERE
ARE
THEY
NOW?
PLUS
“We recently received the contract to begin manufacturing the Paragon Dive System for final Navy certification.” —Taber MacCallum, 2008 winning invention: sewage-proof suit
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04 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
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Hands-on ScienceBrowse decades of DIY stories from the POPULAR
SCIENCE online archives, updated with how-to instructions for new projects. Get ready to make something crazy at popsci.com/archiveupdate.
Show Us Your Labs Do you tinker in your garage or experiment in your basement? Tell PopSci.com about your home workshop or laboratory at popsci.com/yourlabs.
Ice That Burns Oil is in short supply, but there’s a massive store of natural gas frozen at the poles. Scientists are devising ways to turn this icy gas into useful energy. Get the inside scoop at popsci.com/ice.
Hubble Retrospective PopSci.com takes a look back at the Hubble Space Telescope, from the wrong-mirror debacle to the images of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet crashing into Jupiter. See it all at popsci.com/hubble.
CONTENTS
REGULARS$�MEGAPIXELS
10 A virus up close and personal; a disaster-rescue robot.
$�WHAT’S NEW
15 GADGETSA laptop’s screen pops off to be an independent tablet.
16 THE GOODSAn ergonomic camcorder; a fingerprint-reading suitcase.
18 AUTO TECH Road-testing the gadget-heavy BMW 7-series.
24 RECREATIONA lightweight, carbon-fiber kayak for extreme maneuvers.
$�HEADLINES
27 EXPLORATIONSearching for life in pristine lakes beneath Antarctic ice.
28 AVIATIONA plane attempts to circle the globe on solar power alone.
30 30-SECOND SCIENCEAnimals attack: mutant rats, Ebola pigs and filthy flies.
33 UPDATE THE TEXTBOOKSDoes the Internet actually make you smarter?
$�HOW 2.0
71 YOU BUILT ?!An 18-foot-tall robotic exoskeleton.
74 GRAY MATTERThink mercury’s a liquid? Not if you freeze it.
77 USE IT BETTERThe best hacks for your Google cellphone. 78 ASK A GEEKAre high-end HDTVs worth the cash?
$�FYI
80 Can birds fart? Will crocodiles move to the poles?
$�OTHER STUFF
06 FROM THE EDITOR
08 THE INBOX
100 THE FUTURE THEN
WHAT
NEW SLIDESHOWS AND FEATURES
30
THEFUTURE
NOW
QUESTION 1
How many planets are in the solar system?
QUESTION 2
What’s the common name for dihydrogen
monoxide?
QUESTION 3
Do jellyfish have brains?
WHAT’S YOUR SCI-Q? You’re smart, but how much do you really know about science? We’ve written a pop quiz, so don your thinking caps. Put your knowledge to the test at popsci.com/quizme, and find out if you’re a whiz or a dunce.
Answer key: 1) 8, now that Pluto’s been demoted; 2) Water; 3) Nope, they have
a network of nerves but no central location to it.
POPSCI QUIZ
16
71
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Children of Invention
POPSCI.COM06 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
MAYBE I’VE SUCCUMBED to sampling error here, but it seems to me that inventors are getting younger. Unlike our Brilliant 10 honorees, chosen each fall from a roster of scientists under 40, the annual POPSCI Invention Award recipients [page 37] get no favoritism for being fledgling. Even so, the roll is
packed with young’uns this year. Geoff and Mike Howe started working on their light, speedy Ripsaw tank nine years ago, when the identical twins were 25. Michael Callahan came up with his Audeo voice box at age 22, inspired by a skateboard-ing accident he had at 17. And
the five guys who came up with the GenShock power-generating suspension system were all MIT undergrads at the time. If the company they’ve created to manufacture and market the technology takes off, they might never work for anyone other than themselves.
At the risk of sounding ageist, I’m thrilled to see signs that the whippersnap-pers are taking over the workshop. This spring, we launched our first POPULAR SCIENCE National School Inventors Challenge, inviting kids to submit their ideas for world-changing inventions. (Hurry! The deadline for submissions is June 30; go to popsci.com/sciencecontest for more info.) When we debuted the program at a science-teachers conference in New Orleans in March, nearly 700 educators made the commitment to get their students involved.
I suspect Dean Kamen would be gratified to learn of that out-of-the-blocks momentum, although it wouldn’t satisfy him. Kamen may always be best known as the inventor of the Segway, but as Rena Pacella’s profile on page 54 makes clear, he’d far prefer to be recognized as the founder of FIRST, an orga-nization that stages robotics competitions as a way to bring about its (and his) central vision: “to transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes.”
Rock-star engineers? It’s a notion that’s all too easy to dismiss as a pipe dream. But take a stroll through our Invention Awards, and I think you’ll agree that these guys can comfortably wear the mantle of “hero.”
MARK JANNOT
THE WHIPPER-
SNAPPERS ARE
TAKING OVER
THE WORKSHOP.
FROM THE EDITOR
JOH
N B
. C
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ETT
Editor-in-Chief Mark JannotDeputy Editor Jacob WardCreative Director Sam Syed
EDITORIALExecutive Editor Mike HaneyFeatures Editor Nicole DyerEditorial Production Manager Felicia PardoCopy and Research Director Rina BanderSenior Technology Editor Seán CaptainSenior Associate Editors Doug Cantor, Bjorn Carey, Seth Fletcher, Martha HarbisonAssociate Editor Lauren AaronsonAssistant Editor Susannah F. LockeEditorial Assistant Amy GeppertEditor at Large Dawn StoverContributing Technology Editor Steve MorgensternContributing Editors Eric Adams, Theodore Gray, Eric Hagerman, Joseph Hooper, Suzanne Kantra Kirschner, Preston Lerner, Gregory Mone, Rena Marie Pacella, Dave Prochnow, Jessica Snyder Sachs, Rebecca Skloot, Mike Spinelli, Elizabeth Svoboda, Kalee Thompson, Phillip Torrone, James Vlahos, Speed WeedContributing Troubadour Jonathan CoultonContributing Futurist Andrew ZolliEditorial Intern Catherine Schwanke
ART AND PHOTOGRAPHYArt Director Matthew CokeleyPhoto Editor Kristine LaMannaStaff Photographer John B. CarnettSenior Designer Stephanie O’Hara Contributing Artists Kevin Hand, Nick Kaloterakis, Graham Murdoch, Bob Sauls, Paul Wootton Photo Intern Jack Forbes
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THEFUTURE
NOW
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08 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009 POPSCI.COM
THE INBOX [email protected]
Our second-annual How It Works special issue, published
in April, parsed everything from Army helicopters to the
Internet. Some readers would have liked more detail on
that Black Hawk; others called it our best issue ever.
HOW IT WORKEDI’ve been a dedicated POPULAR SCIENCE reader since 1971, and the April issue is the best I’ve seen. It was so crammed with technically interesting and intellectually stimulating stories, it’s hard to believe you fit it all into just 100 pages. I congratulate you for producing a truly excellent magazine and applaud you for keeping up the spirit that has made it great for 137 years.Peter KarpVia e-mail
Editors’ note: Forgive us a moment while we toot our own horn,
but Mr. Karp isn’t the only one abuzz about POPULAR SCIENCE these
days. We’re proud to share some exciting news: The American
Society of Magazine Editors has named POPSCI a finalist for
a 2009 National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the
industry’s highest honor. Big thanks to all of our loyal readers,
who keep us inspired.
ALL MIXED UP“The Most Advanced Mixing Board” [How It Works] is an example of technology enabling people to create things more for their own satisfaction than for customers’. My wife and I are both 69, and because of all the sounds competing with actors’ lines, neither of us can understand much of what movie characters say. We comprehend the spoken words in older movies—made before advanced mixing boards came into vogue—just fine, and we enjoy watching them more because of it.Larry StrawhornOlney, Md.
CorrectionsWe neglected to credit the inventor of the Sun-brella in “Power from the People” [March]. He is Arian Reyes, CEO of Solar Solace.
In “Easy Rider” [What’s New, April], a picture of the single-speed Trek bicycle the District was mistakenly identified as the eight-speed Soho. The District is $930.
In “The Thinnest, Most Colorful TV Yet” [How It Works], the labels for the anode layer of the OLED TV screen and the thin-film transistors were switched.
FROM OUR CONTRIBUTORS
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Send letters to the editor to letters @popsci.com. Send science questions to [email protected]. Comments may be edited for length and clarity. We regret that we cannot answer unpublished letters.
The paper used for this magazine comes from certified forests that are managed in a sustainable way to meet the social, economic and environmental needs of present and future generations.
Contributing writer Arianne
Cohen is tall—really tall. At
6'3", she’s statistically likelier
to be influential and earn
more money (an additional
$789 per inch) than someone
of average height. In The Tall Book, she investigates these
and other surprising ways
the world treats people of
extreme height. The book
will arrive in stores this
month. You can head over
to popsci.com/thetallbook
to preorder your copy.
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Email elegance.
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10 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
megapixelsthe must-see photos of the month
HANDLE WITH CARE To pro-
tect itself, a virus like the one
shown here uses a protein shell
to seal off its genetic payload.
A MILLION LITTLE PIECESSCIENTISTS CREATE
AN IMAGE OF A VIRUS’S
PROTECTIVE CASING
After three years of piecing together hundreds
of individual x-ray images, researchers were
able to produce the first high-resolution
picture of the five million atoms that make
up a virus’s protective shell. The yellow- and
red-colored ribbons were highlighted to illus-
trate how four identical proteins join to form
the building block of the blue-hued shell, or
capsid, of the Ps V-F penicillin fungus-attacking
virus. The virus does not infect humans, but its
shape is similar to those that do, making it a
valuable model for developing future medi-
cal treatments. “If we know how to package
a virus, we could apply that information to
gene-therapy delivery mechanisms and dis-
ease control,” says Yizhi Jane Tao, an assistant
professor of biochemistry and cell biology at
Rice University. BY CATHERINE SCHWANKE
PHOTOGRAPH BY J. TAO AND J. PAN
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 11
See more amazing photos at popsci.com/gallery.
RIC
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12 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
MEGAPIXELS
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 13
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JUST PRESS “SAVE”DISASTER SEARCH-
AND-RESCUE IN
ROBOT-CRAZY JAPAN
No, it’s not a robot uprising. This is the Tokyo
Fire Department’s Rescue Robot, also known
as RoboCue, taking a mock patient to safety
as part of a training exercise for dirty-bomb
containment and casualty rescue, held late
last year in Tokyo. Designed by the fire depart-
ment itself, the search-and-recover ’bot is
tethered by a 328-foot cable and equipped
with infrared cameras, a megaphone, and
ultrasonic sensors that find victims in places
where human rescuers cannot go, such as
burning houses. It also has an onboard
oxygen canister for those who might need it.
Two feeler appendages gently load the victim,
whether injured by the blast or trampled in
the ensuing chaos, onto a sleigh bed before
wheeling him safely out. The only drawback:
Hauling multiple victims is not possible with
this particular model. BY BRIAN ASHCRAFT
PHOTOGRAPH BY KIYOSHI OTA
See more amazing photos at popsci.com/gallery.
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Host Nar WIlliams gives you a nerd’s-eye view of the biggest special effects.
PREMIERES TUES MAY 26TH • 9PMSCIENCE OF THE MOVIES
FROM CGI TO OMG
EP
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POPSCI.COM JUNE 2009 POPULAR SCIENCE 15
Soon you’ll be able to hang a photo on the fridge without even
printing it out. Always Innovating’s Touch Book will be the first
budget laptop whose display detaches to become a standalone
touchscreen tablet. Removable magnets on the back cover let
you stick the one-pound, half-inch-thick sliver on any metal
surface for use as a digital frame, calendar or notepad.
what’s neWtech that puts the future in the palm of your hand
24Gear for kayaking
trips and tricks
SPLIT PERSONALITYThe electronics and a three-to-five-hour battery hide
behind the display, instead of under the keyboard, so the
screen has a life of its own. Add the keyboard, and its battery
provides extra juice—up to 15 hours total, the company says,
or three times as long as most laptops. This longevity comes
from a simple Linux operating system and a fast but low-power
processor that’s also found in advanced cellphones. Future
models might link the screen with Bluetooth, so you could even
type fridge memos from the table.—Amanda schupak
20Cameras that see
in the dark
ALWAYS INNOVATING TOUCH BOOK
SCREEN: 9-in. resistive touchscreen
PROCESSOR: Texas Instruments
600-MHz OMAP3
PRICE: $400 ($300 for tablet only)
SIZE: 9.4 x 7 x 1.4 in. WEIGHT: 2 lbs.
AVAILABILITY: summer (est.)
GET IT: alwaysinnovating.com
18We drive BMW’s
ultra-techie 750i
POP OFF THIS COMPUTER’S
SCREEN FOR A TABLET TO GO
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16 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
WHAT’S NEW
THE
By Amanda Schupak
GOODSTotal Recall
Back up your entire PC, including documents, programs and the operating system, without complicated software. The 250-gigabyte Replica hard drive begins copying data as soon as you plug it in and updates continuously as long as you leave it connected. Seagate Replica
From $130; seagate.com
12 MUST-HAVE PRODUCTS
Personal
Baggage
Keep out snoops with the first fingerprint-reading suitcase. Press your thumb to its sensor, and an electronic lock opens only if your print matches one of several you can store in its memory. Heys USA BioCase
From $1,100; heysusa.com
Silent
Movie
Get crisp shots whether taking 12.1-megapixel stills or 1080p high-def movies. The GH1’s autofocus motor works in both modes and is even insulated to keep its whirring sound out of your movies. Panasonic
GH1 Price not set; panasonic.com
Sound Advice
This scanner listens for doubled-up pages to avoid misfeeds. It sends ultrasonic waves through incoming paper, and a sensor recognizes the change in sound caused by air trapped
between two sheets. Fujitsu ScanScap S1500
$500; fujitsu.com
Crime-Scene
Analysis
Archerfish is the first home security system that analyzes the video it records. It can recognize key events, such as a person entering a room, and send an alert by e-mail or text message. Archerfish
by Cernium $2,500 plus $25/
month; myarcherfish.com
Coloring Book
The first color e-reader can display thousands of hues. One charge powers it for 40 hours, thanks to a new kind of LCD that consumes electricity only when you turn pages (although page flips take longer than with grayscale e-paper). Fujitsu FLEPia $1,000 (est.); www.frontech.fujitsu.com/en
JAPAN ONLY
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 17
Camera Angle
Aim your camcorder with less effort. The HMX-R10 puts its lens and sensor at a 25-degree angle, so they point straight ahead when you hold your hand up naturally— no need to tilt your wrist or elbow backward. Samsung
HMX-R10 $550; samsung.com
Carry a Tune
Roland updates the 1980s-style keytar by building in a sound generator, so the AX-Synth doesn’t require an extra synthesizer or other equipment to turn its digital notes into sound. Just plug it into an amp, and rock out. Roland
AX-Synth
$1,250;
rolandus .com
go your own way
This GPS unit tailors route recommendations to its owner's driving habits. It records your average speeds on different types of roads, like highways and local streets, and uses that info to estimate drive times. Navigon
4300T Max $280; navigon.com
Better Boater This boat shoe saves knees from the vibration of a humming motor. Hard plastic inserts keep your foot steady, and a small air pocket in the midsole redirects force out to the sides. Sperry Top-
Sider ASV Solution $140; sperrytopsider .com
Shooting the
Breeze
This Bluetooth headset lets pals hear you on windy days. When gusts prevent its microphones from picking up low tones, it adds sound gathered by a vibra- tion sensor against your skin. If winds really howl, it warns you to move. Aliph JawBone Prime
Earcandy $130; jawbone.com
Far Sighted
Binoculars with built-in cameras use separate lenses for the cam and the specs. These are the first that let you focus both sets by turning a single knob, ensuring that your five-megapixel picture is as sharp as the view you see through the binoculars. Bushnell Sync Focus
ImageView $280; bushnell.com
POPS
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WHAT’S NEW
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SMART CARTHE NEW BMW 7-SERIES IS A FUNHOUSE OF AUTOMOTIVE
TECHNOLOGY. BUT DOES ANY OF IT MAKE DRIVING EASIER?
TESTED
CO
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TESY
BM
W O
F N
OR
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ICA
When even an $18,000 Honda offers
a navigation system, an $81,000
luxury sedan has to work harder to
impress. For BMW’s 7-Series, the
techno lures include computer-
enhanced performance from the twin-
turbocharged V8 and enough gizmos
to equip the cockpit of the Starship
Enterprise. We spent more than 1,000
miles testing and grading the 750i. Our
conclusion: It, along with its sibling,
the long-wheelbase 750Li, ditches the
silly-gadget overload for technology
that actually makes driving safer and
more fun. Some fancy bits, such as the
Pedestrian Detection system, remain
undercooked or unsatisfying. Where it
counts, though—in power, handling, and
the navigation and multimedia systems—
the technology makes this a BMW worth
every penny.—Lawrence Ulrich
Engine
Grade: A
With direct fuel injection
and two turbochargers
nestled efficiently between
the “V” of the cylinder
banks, a new 4.4-liter V8
produces 400 horsepower.
It also generates a
prodigious 450 pound-
feet of torque, more than
BMW’s 6-liter V12. The
engine hurtles the 750i
from 0 to 60 mph in an
improbable 5.1 seconds,
yet it’s quiet and civilized
in everyday driving.
Four-wheel
Steering
Grade: B
When you make a turn at
low speeds, the BMW’s
rear wheels point in the
opposite direction of the
fronts, tightening the car’s
turning circle to 39.4 feet.
That’s better than any
comparably large sedan,
and it makes parking
surprisingly easy. Still, it’s
not a home run. The system
adds cost and complexity,
and at higher speeds the
benefits are subtle.
High-beam
Assist
Grade: A
A truly bright idea: The
car detects approaching
vehicles from more than
half a mile away, using a
camera mounted near the
rearview mirror. The system
automatically dims the high
beams until the oncoming
vehicle passes and then
switches them back on.
The result: no more on-
again, off-again with
the high-beam lever on
darkened roads.
controls
Grade: A
The rotary iDrive knob that
manages navigation and
other functions—and once
made even basic radio
tuning complicated—is
suddenly intuitive. The
fourth-generation iDrive
banishes buried submenus
and illogical functions. Old-
fashioned buttons for often-
used functions surround
a slimmed-down console
knob. A huge, 10.2-inch
high-res screen displays
easily readable graphics.
Night Vision
Grade: C–
BMW’s thermal-imaging
safety system adds
Pedestrian Detection, in
which the navigation screen
shows an animated outline
of people and animals
lurking at up to 1,000 feet in
front of the car. If it detects a
person 330 feet or less away,
it flashes a warning on a
head-up display. But the
novelty fades quickly—for
the system to be truly useful,
you’d have to stare at the
screen instead of the road.
AUTO TECH
GADGET MOBILE The thoroughly
tricked-out 2009 BMW 750i
POPSCI.COM18 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
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WHAT’S NEW PHOTOGRAPHY
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IN A NEW LIGHT
TWO CAMERAS AIM TO SHOOT
IN THE DARK—AND THE SUNDOES IT
WORK?
Dim moonbeams or glaring rays:
Either can ruin a photo. New cameras
from Fujifilm and Sony promise sharp
pictures in all kinds of tricky lighting.
Both try to conquer darkness
by erasing pixel noise—white or
colored flecks that appear in photos
when there isn’t enough light for the
camera’s image sensor to get a good
reading. Fujifilm’s model also takes
on high-contrast settings, in which the
range between bright and dark parts
of a scene exceeds what the sensor
can measure. For example, in photos
on a bright day, a blue sky often
comes out white.
We tested the cameras by photo-
graphing a bridge—both at night and
in strong sunlight—and a basketball
game with a bright court and a sha-
dowy huddle of players.—Dan Havlik
Fujifilm F200EXR
THE TECH In dim conditions, this
camera can double its light-gathering
power by combining data from every
two pixels on its 12-megapixel sensor,
producing a crisp 6-megapixel image. In
high-contrast scenes, you can program
half the pixels to a low sensitivity for
capturing bright features and half of
them to a high sensitivity for dark areas.
THE RESULTS Photos of the bridge at
night had only a few white speckles in
the dark sky—far less than images from
competing cameras, which were riddled
with colored spots. By day, it captured
slightly more detail in the shadows
under the bridge, while maintaining a
truer blue sky. $400; fujifilm.com
Sony DSC-HX1
THE TECH This 9.1-megapixel camera
takes six pictures and combines them
into one. Because pixel noise varies with
each shot, the processor cancels out
specks that appear on only one of the
photos to produce a single clean image.
THE RESULTS Low-light photos of still
objects had only mild pixel noise. But
in removing the fuzziness, the HX1 also
erased actual details from the photos.
Because the camera took about two
seconds to capture the six pictures, its
noise-reduction tech didn’t work with
action photos at the game, which came
out splotchy. And waiting that long for
each photo was frustrating.
$500; sonystyle.com
EXTREME VIEW
Sony and Fujifilm
introduce new tech-
nologies for taking
photos in very dim or
very bright scenes.
EDITORS’ RAting EDITORS’ RAting
POPSCI.COM20 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
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WHAT’S NEW HOME ENTERTAINMENT
SA
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From Second Life to The Sims to Spore,
games have long encouraged users
to develop content, such as fashions
or creatures, and share it online. But
Microsoft has taken creativity to the next
stage with Kodu, a program that allows
players on an Xbox 360 or a PC to craft
entire games using just the controller to
select icons.
You develop your creation by choosing
objects and characters and setting rules
for how they behave. For example,
select the game’s enemies —say,
spaceships—from among the 20
characters that come with Kodu,
and then choose the actions
they perform, such as shooting
at castles and moving away from
GET YOUR GAME ONCREATE VIDEOGAMES WITHOUT CRUNCHING CODE
IT’S ABOUT
TIME
obstacles such as mountains. Then
establish the number of points you win
if you shoot down a spaceship or you
lose if it destroys your castles, and add
a scoreboard to keep track. Kodu also
lets you customize your game world by
adding land, trees and bodies of water.
GET IT:
Microsoft
Kodu
$10 (est.);
xbox.com
IN RELATED NEWS: CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTUREMillions of people participate in online
role-playing games like .
But they are limited to a handful of
missions designed by the games’
developers. City of Heroes, a comic-
book-inspired adventure for Mac and
PC, is the first to let loose the creativity
of its players, allowing them to devise
storylines, modify characters, and write
scripts. Programming is a cinch: Would-be
authors select from drop-down menus to
specify, for example, the superpowers and
costumes of heroes and villains, and they
simply type dialogue in boxes.
� In Kodu, you select icons to
build rules that describe how
objects and characters behave.
If you don’t want to start from
scratch, select premade characters,
environments or entire games and
modify them as you wish. Once you’ve
finished your game, you can share
it with friends through the Xbox Live
online community.—Sean Portnoy
World of Warcraft
22 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
City of Heroes
$20, plus $15/month;
cityofheroes.com
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Bike is shown with optional accessories. *Only available at participating dealers. Offer ends May 31, 2009, or while supplies last. $12,999 applies to 2009 Vegas 8-Ball. California models are subject to additional $250 low-emissions fee. **The industry’s only full-line fi ve-year limited warranty is available on all new unused Victory bikes for a limited time. ***Offer is valid only in the U.S. and Canada and does not apply to prior purchases. The fi ve-year coverage consists of 48 months’ POLARISTAR ESC coverage in addition to the Victory 12-month factory warranty for a total of fi ve years. The ESC carries a standard $50 deductible and no mileage limitation. The ESC will be mailed six to eight weeks from receipt of purchase. Victory and Victory Motorcycles® are registered trademarks of Polaris Industries Inc. Always wear a helmet, eye protection, and protective clothing and obey the speed limit. Never ride under the infl uence of drugs or alcohol. ©2009 Polaris Industries Inc.
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WHAT’S NEW RECREATION
XX
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Whitewater kayaking is virtually an aerial sport, with paddlers
in freestyle competitions performing tricks like airscrews—
barrel rolls above a rapid. The lighter your kayak, the higher you
can go, so instead of conventional polyethylene plastic, Wave
Sport turned to composite materials for its 54 Cx kayak. The first
prototype, a pure carbon-fiber model, weighed just 19 pounds
(about 15 pounds less than a plastic kayak) and was easier to
maneuver, thanks to the rigid frame. But it proved no match
for river rocks, which cracked the hull. In three subsequent
prototypes, Wave Sport added Kevlar strips to reinforce the
parts of the kayak that take the most abuse. The resulting six-
foot-two-inch boat—the first carbon-fiber freestyle kayak made
in the U.S.—weighs a bantam 20 pounds but is sturdy enough to
survive a hotdog paddler’s acrobatics.—Mark Anders
WATER ROCKETBRAVE THE RAPIDS WITH THIS SUMMER’S LIGHTEST, TOUGHEST GEAR
FULLY
LOADED
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ESY
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GET IT: Wave Sport 54 Cx
$2,500 (limited run
of 50); wavesport.com
POPSCI.COM24 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
PERFECT PADDLE
Unlike most paddles, which have
separate blades attached to a
shaft, the 42-ounce Eddy is molded
as a single piece of braided carbon
fiber and Kevlar. The stiffer design
transfers more power to the water.
Adventure Technology Eddy
$329; atpaddle.com
tight fit
These slim boots squeeze inside
the smallest hulls. But their sturdy
wraparound soles, made from
rubber similar to that used on
climbing shoes, protect your feet
from rocks and provide a solid
grip on slippery riverbanks. TEVA
Cherry Bomb $65; teva.com
HEAD SHOTS
Capture the entire river with
this waterproof helmet cam’s
170-degree lens. Set it to record
up to 56 minutes of video or to
shoot five-megapixel stills every
two or five seconds. GoPro
Helmet HERO Wide $190;
goprocamera.com
WATER SAFETY
This sealed nylon canister keeps
gear like GPS units, cameras and
mobile phones dry under three
feet of water for up to 30 minutes.
And its padded interior protects
them from impacts. Outdoor
Research SeaVault Capsule
$55; outdoorresearch.com
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POPSCI.COM JUNE 2009 POPULAR SCIENCE 27
This winter, Russian scientists will resume
drilling into what may be the most pristine
environment in the world: Lake Vostok, an
unfrozen body of freshwater the size of Lake
Ontario cut off from the world for millennia
beneath two miles of Antarctic ice. The sedi-
ment on the lakebed could hold clues to past
climate changes, and the waters could be
teeming with new forms of life—but the slight-
est mistake could spoil the lake for good.
After more than a decade of technical
difficulties, and objections from the scientific
community that the project could contami-
nate the lake with outside bacteria or drilling I LLU
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headlinesdiscoveries, advances and debates in science
A football helmet that
keeps players cool
Ebola-infected
pigs run amok
Fly around the world
on solar power
30 3428
UNCHARTED WATERfluids, the Russians have cleaned up their
act just 500 feet from breaching the lake.
But they are no longer the only scien-
tific group with its sights set on tapping
Antarctica’s lakes. A team led by glaciolo-
gist Martin Siegert of the University of
Edinburgh in Scotland recently unveiled
an even more ambitious plan: Drill into
the six-mile-long Lake Ellsworth, two
miles below the ice in western Antarctica,
and search for life using remote-control
probes, in December 2012.
Scientists know that ice covered the
lakes, two of some 150 bodies of water
ICE CAPADES Scientists use explosives to
generate seismic maps of Lake Ellsworth
[left] and GPS to track water flow [above].
EXPLORATION
A NEW SCIENTIFIC PROJECT JOINS THE RACE TO EXPLORE LAKES UNDER ANTARCTIC ICE
below Antarctica’s icy surface, more than
400,000 years before humans existed. Any
microbes living there can survive total
darkness, high pressure, near-freezing
temperatures, high acidity and oxygen
debt—and, as such, possibly possess
never-before-seen biology. “It could be
like a super-Galápagos,” Siegert says.
“Given that we’ve found microbial life
in other environments thought too harsh
to support living things, such as seismic
vents in the ocean floor, it would be sur-
prising if we don’t find something living in
these lakes,” says
South Pole
Lake Vostok
McMurdo Station
Lake Ellsworth
Ross Ice Shelf
[continued ON page 29]
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28 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
This fall, Swiss adventurer Bertrand
Piccard and his team will begin test
flights of a prototype of Solar Impulse,
a sun-powered plane designed to
circumnavigate the globe without
burning a drop of oil. Piccard wants
the project to demonstrate the poten-
tial of green technology, and he’s
feeling the pressure. “We still have to
prove that this plane will fly,” he says.
Led by CEO André Borschberg, the
team has implemented major design
revisions since announcing the project
in 2003, such as bowing the wings to
improve handling and substituting light-
weight engines, but the basic idea is the
same. Photovoltaic cells on the wings
will gather solar energy, recharging the
AVIATION
RACING THE SUN A SOLAR-POWERED PLANE GEARS UP FOR A ROUND-THE-WORLD FLIGHT
batteries that power its propellers.
Traveling at a leisurely, energy-
efficient 45 mph, Solar Impulse will take
three weeks to loop the world, landing
every few days to change pilots and show
off the technology to the public. Piccard
hopes the sight of the plane in flight
will prove that renewable energy can
transform even the most energy-hungry
STURDIER TAILMoving down the horizontal stabilizing
wing streamlined the plane and reduced
stress on the body in turbulent winds.
This allowed the team to trim weight from
the already light carbon-fiber fuselage.
FRESH AIRPiccard’s grandfather, Auguste Pic-
card, invented the pressurized cabin,
but the prototype plane won’t have one,
so its top altitude will be 28,500 feet.
HEADLINES
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THE UPS AND DOWNS
OF SOLAR FLIGHT
Solar Impulse will fly eastward around the equator for
the most possible sun exposure. The plane will take off
from the ground before dawn with fully charged bat-
teries. It will reach 10,000 feet by that sunrise, and the
solar cells will begin restoring the power spent during
the initial ascent. The plane will peak at 39,000 feet so
it can gradually descend to 10,000 feet during the night
to conserve energy, ready to recharge and ascend
when day breaks again. If it drains its batteries before
sunrise, the pilot can land it like a glider.
human activities, sparking interest and
investment in green tech across the globe.
Takeoff of the full-size plane is slated for
2011, but Piccard and Borschberg are cur-
rently focused on getting the prototype off
the ground by September and working their
way up to 36-hour overnight flights. “We
have the plane,” Piccard says. “This is really
the moment of truth.”—GREGORY MONE
LIGHTWEIGHT ENGINESThe four lightweight, custom-
built engines that replaced the
original layout of two larger,
rear-mounted engines will put
less strain on the wings
and body.
EFFICIENT SOLAR CELLSThe photovoltaic cells are 25 percent more efficient than
those that were planned in 2003. The 12,000 cells will
crank out only six kilowatts on average—just enough to
run the four 10-horsepower motors.
POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 29
GR
AH
AM
MU
RD
OC
H; IN
SE
T: PA
UL W
OO
TT
ON
“IT WOULD BE
SURPRISING
IF WE DON’T
FIND LIFE IN
THE LAKES.”
Mahlon Kennicutt, president of the Scientific
Committee on Antarctic Research, a nongov-
ernmental advisory body. Past discoveries of
such microbes have led to the development of
better artificial sweeteners and key enzymes
used in DNA research, among other things.
Drilling into Vostok has been difficult.
The ice at the lake’s perimeter consists of
extremely hard crystals of up to five feet
long, and friction on the crystals from the
drill melts a layer of water that causes the bit
to slip, slowing progress. “No one had ever
encountered ice like this before,” explains
Valery Lukin, director of the Russian expedi-
tion. This December, Lukin’s
team will drill to the
cusp of the lake,
after which they
will replace the
kerosene anti-
freeze in the hole
with inert silicon
oil (concern that
the kerosene
could contaminate
the lake has stalled
the project in the past).
Next year, they will pierce
the lake so that water flows back into the
hole, which they will allow to freeze and then
remove for analysis a year later.
The U.K. team has refined its equipment
to better cut the ice and preserve the lake.
They plan to carve through the ice with a jet
of 200°F water melted from ice extracted
from the hole itself. The water, filtered twice
to remove any bacteria or viruses from the
outside, also sterilizes the equipment. But,
Siegert says, it’s impossible to do this type
of research without leaving some mark: “It’s
like leaving footprints on the moon.” Although
his crew won’t strike water until two years
after the Russians do, he believes that his
mission’s sample-collecting phase will ulti-
mately provide the more valuable data. The
team will lower a pair of probes into the lake
to capture video and retrieve water and sedi-
ment samples—and any microbes in them.
Of course, the groups might not find any-
thing, but that’s what makes drilling into this
vast, completely unexplored realm so excit-
ing. “We’ve never sampled this water, so we
have no idea what’s down there,” Kennicutt
says. “But it is becoming clear that Antarctica
is a very dynamic place.”—TOM CLYNES
[continued from page 27]
39,000 ft.
10,000 ft.
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30 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
UNSTOPPABLE MUTANT RATS
Sixty years of killing rats with poison
might be making them stronger,
according to new research. A series
of small mutations in some rats’
genetic code allows them to survive
high doses of warfarin, the most com-
monly used rodenticide. Warfarin
inhibits blood clotting, causing fatal
internal bleeding. Although “super-
warfarin” poisons are available, study
leader Simone Rost of the University
of Würzburg in Germany warns that
the rodents might develop immunity
to those chemicals as well.
THIS LITTLE PIGGIE HAD EBOLA
In January, the Ebola virus leapt from pigs to farmers in the Philippines. But
don’t panic. Despite being a cousin of the deadly African strains, this one, Ebola-
Reston, merely causes flu-like symptoms in humans, says Pierre Rollin, a
biologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To be safe, the Philip-
pine government ordered farmers to euthanize 6,500 pigs from infected farms.
Ebola-Reston was first seen in Philippine monkeys in 1989 and has since passed
to other species. Scientists think contagious bats urinated in pigs’ water supply,
and the swine then coughed the virus onto humans.—KATharine GAMMON
CALL IN THE SWAT TEAM
Roughly 70 percent of all the antibiotics
used in the U.S. are for warding off bacte-
rial infection in farm animals so they can
grow big fast. The trouble is, these bacteria
eventually develop resistance to the drugs
and, researcher Jay Graham of Johns
Hopkins University has recently shown,
flies are spreading the resistant bacteria
around. The flies can pick up strains from
chicken droppings that cause human ill-
nesses such as meningitis and carry them
as far as 20 miles. Graham recommends
sterilizing animal waste with the same
techniques used for human sewage.
ANIMAL ATTACKVERMIN AND FARM CRITTERS STIR UP HEALTH SCARES
CLO
CK
WIS
E F
RO
M T
OP: G
ET
TY
IM
AG
ES; C
OU
RTESY
SD
ASSO
CIA
TIO
N; FR
AN
K G
REEN
AW
AY
/GET
TY
IM
AG
ES; D
AV
ID S
ILV
ER
MA
N/G
ET
TY
IM
AG
ES
ACHIN’ BACON An Ebola strain has jumped
from monkeys and bats to pigs and people.
30-SECOND SCIENCE
YIKES Rats’ genetic mutations let
them survive poison.
HEADLINES
SUPERBUG FARM Flies
feed on bacteria-ridden
chicken feces and spread
human diseases.
Cameras run out of memory at the
worst times—like when you faced down
Michael Jordan at the poker tables in
Vegas. But a new flash-memory sys-
tem could pack up to two terabytes of
storage, or 480 hours of high-definition
video, into the average memory card.
Current SD memory cards store
files using the 10-year-old FAT32 stan-
dard filing program. FAT32 often splits
photos or videos into small pieces,
which it saves in random locations on
the card. This slows down the flash
drive as it saves and retrieves files,
capping storage at 32 gigabytes—any
more would make the card impracti-
cally sluggish. So new SD eXtended
Capacity (SDXC) cards will feature
Microsoft’s exFAT system, which opens
the door to bigger storage by saving
files in one piece in an organized way
that makes them quicker to find.
The first SDXC cards, due out from
Panasonic this year, will offer 64 giga-
bytes—space for 3,500 12-megapixel
photos or a 50-gig Blu-ray movie—
and read/write speeds 10 times as fast
as current cards. As companies scale
down transistors (the circuits that
physically store data), standard cards
could theoretically store two terabytes.
Although the cards won’t work in
SD-card-reading devices, SDXC cam-
eras in the pipeline will prove your
wildest stories—as long as your battery
doesn’t die.—MARSHALL LOUIS REAVES
ENDLESS MEMORYCOMING SOON: THE TWO-
TERABYTE FLASH CARD
SHRINKAGE
TOTAL RECALL Revamped flash cards
could store 40
Blu-ray movies.
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32 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
HEADLINES
Dolphins are elegant swimmers, but waterlily leaf beetle
larvae take first place for the simplest stroke. The insect just
arches its back to manipulate a basic physics principle that
lets it glide across water. Now engineers have borrowed this
technique to make a tiny boat that could autonomously patrol
water reservoirs for months on just a watch battery.
The larva’s efficiency relies on surface tension, the force
that causes water molecules to stick together. By arching
its body, the larva disrupts the water’s tension in such a way
that the bug moves forward. Sung Kwon Cho, an engineer at
the University of Pittsburgh, decided to harness the tension,
like the beetle does, to move an inch-long boat. But instead
ELECTRIC GLIDEENGINEERS TAKE CUES FROM BEETLES
TO MAKE A SUPER-EFFICIENT ROBO-BOAT
INSPIRED BY NATURE
of making a bendable craft, Cho
attached a Teflon-coated elec-
trode to the plastic boat’s stern.
Teflon usually repels water, but when you charge it with elec-
tricity it breaks the surface tension, as the beetle does, to push
the boat along. A side-mounted electrode turns the boat. Cho
suggests that his device could be up to 100 times as efficient as
mechanically driven mini-boats and, in a few years, could scale
up to power a sensor-toting surveillance dinghy five times the
size of his prototype.—SUSANNAH F. LOCKE
WATER BUG Electrodes propel
this boat by breaking the sur-
face tension of water, as a leaf
beetle larva does.
Surgical solutions for restoring lush locks have always involved
a painful trade-off—transplanting hairs from the rear of your
head to the top could leave you thin in the back. But Bessam
Farjo, a hair-loss specialist at the British company Intercytex, has
devised a less barbaric fix: cloning patients’ hair cells. “The con-
cept is to create a limitless supply of donor hair,” Farjo says.
Male pattern baldness is caused when some hair-producing
dermal papilla cells begin growing thinner, less visible hairs.
Standard transplant procedures involve plucking roughly 6,000
healthy cells, but Farjo takes only 100. He clones these in the
lab until he has millions and then injects them into sparse scalp
regions, where each can sprout a fresh hair and even encourage
additional hair growth in neighboring scalp tissue. The procedure
isn’t just a matter of vanity; it could provide insight into how to
clone other tissues for therapeutic uses.
Farjo recently wrapped up a 13-man, 48-week clinical trial in
SEND IN THE CLONES COVERING BALDING HEADS WITH CLONED HAIR
MED TECH
which 40 percent of the implanted cells, paired with blood-
flow-stimulating scalp massage, produced new hair. His
next goal: growing complete hair follicles in the lab, which
could make the transformation from Mr. Clean to Donald
Trump even more certain.—ELIZABETH SVOBODA
CLO
CK
WIS
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OP: C
OU
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Intercytex’s technique
involves extracting
100 hair-making cells
from the back of the
head, reproducing
them in the lab until
there are millions, and
injecting them into
the scalp to stimulate
new hair growth.
1
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POPSCI.COM 34 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
Football championships, coaches say,
are won during preseason workouts. So
football players, from high-schoolers
up to the pros, report to mini-camps
every summer to run windsprints and
engage in full-contact drills. Broken
bones and blown-out knees are the
typical player’s biggest concern, but 39
football players, mostly high-schoolers,
have died from overheating since 1995.
Now Hothead Technologies in Atlanta
is introducing a helmet that monitors the
temperatures of an entire football team
in real time so coaches can pull players
off the field before it’s too late. The Heat
Observation Technology (HOT) system
uses an electric thermometer called a
thermistor, a spoon-size device made
of metals whose electrical resistance
vary with temperature. Inserted under
the padding of a standard helmet, the
thermistor measures the temperature in
the player’s temporal artery and uses a
built-in radio to transmit temperatures
between 99.9° and 110°F—heat illness
typically sets in around 104°—every 10
seconds to a PDA monitored by a coach
or trainer on the sidelines. Rain, sweat
and ambient temperature typically skew
the results from skin-contact thermom-
eters, but Hothead is nearly as accurate
as a rectal thermometer, which sets the
standard for the industry.
Simply resting and hydrating over-
heated athletes would go a long way
toward preventing deaths like Korey
Stringer’s. The 335-pound Minnesota
Vikings lineman collapsed after a swel-
HEADLINES
BURN NOTICEA FOOTBALL HELMET
TELLS THE SIDELINE
WHEN PLAYERS
ARE DANGEROUSLY
OVERHEATED
SPORT TECH
tering morning practice in July 2001. His
body temperature was 108.8°, and he
died of organ failure hours later. “It took
Stringer some time to get into the danger
zone,” says Jay Buckalew, Hothead’s
CEO and founder. “I have no doubt that
our device would have detected that.”
Hothead is currently wrapping up
deals with the major helmet companies,
including Riddell and Schutt, and is nego-
tiating with the NFL. Teams with HOT
helmets will pay a $50 activation charge
per player per year, plus an additional
$100 annual team fee for the PDA service.
The helmet companies have placed 10,000
orders for this year, and Hothead expects
to roll out 400,000, mostly to high schools
and colleges, by 2011.—BRETT ZARDA CLO
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PREVENTIVE
MEDICINE The
Hothead helmet
[shown without
padding] sends
body-temperature
data to a PDA [right]
to prevent deaths
like that of Korey
Stringer [below].
Thermistor
Antenna
Radio
transmitter
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JUNE 2009 POPULAR SCIENCE 37
THE 2009 POPSCI
INVENTIONAWARDS
A Decoder for Impaired Speech
Insulation Made from Mushrooms
An All-in-One Grease Refinery
Michael Callahan
Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre
James Peret
INVENTION
INVENTION
INVENTION
INVENTOR
INVENTORS
INVENTOR
right now, somewhere in America, there’s an inventor in a garage on the verge of something big. It might not be a cure for leukemia or a rocket to Mars, but some unexpected innovations can be almost as profound. Like the fisherman who made a lure that doesn’t damage the environment. Or the college kids who built a shock absorber that saves fuel by turning potholes into power. Here in our third-annual Invention Awards, we present these and eight other standout inventors whose creativity and hard work are making our lives better, as well as the secrets for getting your own great idea out of the garage and into the world.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN B. CARNETT ILLUSTRATIONS BY BLAND DESIGNS
A 60mph Tank
Geoff and Mike Howe
INVENTION INVENTORS
38
51
52
53
A Better IV Catheter
Amir BelsonINVENTION INVENTOR
42
The World As a Web Interface
Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry
INVENTION INVENTORS
44
A Stronger, Greener Fishing Lure
Ben HobbinsINVENTION INVENTOR
43
Robo-legs Amit GofferINVENTION INVENTOR
46
Shocks That Create Power
The MIT Team
INVENTION INVENTORS
48
An Escape Harness for Skyscrapers
Kevin StoneINVENTION INVENTOR
50
Check out video of the winning inventions at popsci.com/invention.
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38 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
2009INVENTIONAWARDS
THE FASTEST TANKAN UNMANNED BEAST THAT CRUISES OVER ANY TERRAIN AT MORE THAN 60 MPH
Ripsaw
Geoff and Mike Howe
$760,000 9 years
INVENTION
INVENTORS
TIMECOST
HORIZON
PROTOTYPE PRODUCT
Track Spring-loaded wheel
HOW IT WORKS To glide
over rough terrain at top
speed, the Ripsaw has shock
absorbers that provide 14
inches of travel. But when the
suspension compresses, it
creates slack that could cause
a track to come off, poten-
tially flipping the vehicle.
So the inventors devised a
spring-loaded wheel at the
front that extends to keep
the tracks taut. The Ripsaw
has never thrown a track.
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 39
cue up the Ripsaw’s greatest hits on YouTube, and you can watch the unmanned tank tear across muddy fields at 60 mph, jump 50 feet, and crush birch trees. But right now, as its remote driver inches it back and forth for a photo shoot, it’s like watching Babe Ruth forced to bunt with the bases loaded. The Ripsaw, lurching and belching black puffs of smoke, somehow seems restless.
Like their creation, identical twins Geoff and Mike Howe, 34, don’t like to sit still for long. At age seven, they built a log cabin. Ten years later, they converted a school bus into a drivable, transforming stage for their heavy-metal band, Two Much Trouble. In 2000 they
POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 39
“SHOULD I
PATENT MY
INVENTION?”
AMATEUR INVENTORS FAQ
GETTING A PATENT is expensive and time-consuming, so don’t just start filling out an application as soon as you come up with a bright idea. John Calvert, the administrator for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Inventor Assistance Pro-gram, offers advice on whether it’s truly worth it.—Sarah Z. Wexler
#�Short of a getting a patent, legally there’s not much you can do to protect an idea that could be easily replicated.
#�You can expect to pay about $5,000 to the patent office to secure and maintain the rights to a patent, and another $3,000 to $15,000 for attorney’s fees. But the more leg-work you can do—from researching similar inventions to making sketches—the less it will cost you. Patent attorneys in cities like D.C. or New York often charge more for the same services as those in places like Alabama or North Dakota. Many will work with you remotely, potentially saving you a few grand.
#�Once you’ve filed, you still won’t have any rights to stop some-one from making a product that infringes on your idea. At that point you can send the infringers a cease-and-desist letter, but you can’t sue them. Once you receive the patent, potentially years down the line, you can take legal action.
#�Mark your invention “pat-ent pending” after you’ve filed. That’s fair warning to potential infringers that you can send a cease-and-desist letter.
#�Remember that there’s no such thing as a worldwide patent. Some-one in China can (and probably will) see your idea, rip it off, and sell it there without consequence.
#�Still, an approved patent can be extremely valuable, giv-ing you a mini monopoly in the U.S. for 20 years. After that, it expires, and you can’t renew.
couldn’t agree on their next project: Geoff favored a jet-turbine-powered off-road truck; Mike, the world’s fastest tracked vehicle. “That weekend, Mike calls me down to his garage,” Geoff says. “He’s already got the suspension built for the Ripsaw. So we went with that.”
Every engineer they consulted said they couldn’t best the 42mph top speed of an M1A Abrams, the most powerful tank in the world. Other tanks are built to protect the people inside, with frames made of heavy armored-steel plates. Designed for rugged unmanned missions, the Ripsaw just needed to go fast, so the brothers started trimming weight. First they built a frame of welded steel tubes, like the ones used by Nascar,
MEAN MACHINE Troops could use
the Ripsaw as an advance scout,
sending it a mile or two ahead of
a convoy, and use its cameras and
new sensor technology to sniff out
roadside bombs or ambushes.
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00 POPULAR SCIENCE POPSCI.COM
BEHIND THE WHEEL The Ripsaw’s six
cameras send live, 360-degree video to
a control room, where program man-
ager Will McMaster steers the tank.
that provides 50 percent more strength at half the weight.
When you reinvent the tank, finding ready-made parts is no easy task, and a tread light enough to spin at 60 mph and strong enough to hold together at that speed didn’t exist. So the Howes hand-shaped steel cleats and redesigned the mechanism for connecting them in a track. (Because the patent for the mechanism, one of eight on Ripsaw components, is still pending, they will reveal only that they didn’t use the typical pin-and-bushing system of connecting treads.) The two-pound cleats weigh about 90 percent less than similarly scaled tank cleats. With the combined weight savings, the Ripsaw’s 650-horsepower V8 engine cranks out nine times as much horsepower per pound as an M1A Abrams.
While working their day jobs—Mike as a financial adviser, Geoff as a foreman at a utilities plant—the self-taught engineers hauled the Ripsaw prototype from their workshop in Maine to the 2005 Washington Auto Show, where they showed it to army officials interested in developing
weaponized unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). That led to a demonstration for Maine Senator Susan Collins, who helped the Howes secure $1.25 million from the Department of Defense.
The brothers founded Howe and Howe Technologies in 2006 and set to work upgrading various Ripsaw systems, including a differential drive train that automatically doles out the right amount of power to each track for turns. The following year they handed it over to the Army’s Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), which paired it with a remote-control M240 machine gun and put the entire system through months of strenuous tests. “What really set it apart from other UGVs was its speed,” says Bhavanjot Singh, the ARDEC project manager overseeing the Ripsaw’s development. Other UGVs top out at around 20 mph, but the Ripsaw can keep up with a pack of Humvees.
Back on the field, the tank has been readied for the photo. The program manager for Howe and Howe Technologies, Will McMaster, who is sitting at the Ripsaw’s controls around
the corner and roughly a football field away, drives it straight over a three-foot-tall concrete wall. The brothers think that when the $760,000 Ripsaw is ready for mass production this summer, feats like this will give them a lead over other companies vying for a military UGV contract. “Every other UGV is small and uses [artificial intelligence] to avoid obstacles,” Mike says. “The Ripsaw doesn’t have to avoid obstacles; it drives over them.”—Bjorn Carey
40 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
OVER THE HILL Despite the best efforts of
inventors Mike [left] and Geoff Howe, the
Ripsaw has proven unbreakable. It did once
break a suspension mount—and drove on
for hours without trouble.
2009INVENTIONAWARDS
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42 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
A BETTER CATHETERA NEW DESIGN THAT HELPS DOCTORS START AN IV SUCCESSFULLY, EVERY TIME
When Amir Belson flew from Israel for a pediatric fellowship at Stanford University in 1998, he carried a list of 64 ideas for medical inventions. Many of the concepts were influenced by the years he served as a flight surgeon in the Israeli air force, while others came from time spent in a neonatal intensive-care unit. One of them was an idea for a better intravenous catheter, one that wouldn’t damage veins or kink inside of them. By 2005, he had made his first prototype.
The design of the IV catheters that drip medications and fluid into patients’ bodies has changed little in 30 years. Belson found that as many as 40 percent of first attempts to start an IV fail. Advancing a needle blindly often leaves veins clogged and useless for weeks, bruises patients, exhausts clinicians, and costs hospitals thousands of dollars a week in extra needles and labor. Some research has been done to thread catheters using ultrasound technology or infrared light, but both techniques are expensive and require additional training.
Belson’s Vascular Pathways prototype, inspired when he spent an entire shift working to insert an IV into a newborn, is a more practical design based on standard catheters. As with any needle, a medical professional using Vascular Pathways knows the vein has been reached when blood flashes back through the needle. She then slides forward a lever, which advances a guide wire safely out from inside the needle. The guide wire rolls into a curlicue before the catheter slides over it, preventing the catheter tip from hitting the vein’s walls. Finally, the needle and guide wire are retracted, leaving the catheter in place. “It’s going to make a big difference in saving a lot of what are now unavoidable re-sticks,” says Jeff Stuart, medical director of the Washington Outpatient Surgery Center in Freemont, California.
After testing the device on large veins in pigs, Belson started IVs in the tiny veins in rabbits’ ears, where muscles keep the ears bouncing around. Of 100 pricks made, only one failed. Having received FDA approval, in April Belson began a two-month trial with people. If successful, he plans to team up with Australian company Telesso Technologies and sell Vascular Pathways at a price comparable to current catheters, hoping, he says, “to make this catheter the gold standard worldwide.”—Corey Binns
Vascular Pathways Amir Belson
$600,000 6 years
INVENTION INVENTOR
TIMECOST HORIZON
PROTOTYPE PRODUCT
WHEREARETHEYNOW?
“My company was awarded a $750,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research.”—Jerome Rifkin
2008 INVENTION AWARDS
58 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2008
GORDON LINK, A DIABETIC and foot amputee,
is not looking to climb Mount Everest, run a
marathon, or snowboard off a cliff. “I just want to
walk without stumbling like I’m a drunk,” he says.
It may not sound like a tall order, but until he was fitted with
a prototype prosthetic foot that simulates the body’s natural
movements, walking on uneven ground was like navigating
an obstacle course. “Hitting a low spot of even one inch with
my old foot was like a non-amputee stepping into a four-
inch hole,” he adds. “Not good.”
Link has been testing the new foot for the past six
months, but 36-year-old inventor Jerome Rifkin has been
A MORE NATURAL ARTIFICIAL FOOTdescription
name
time
Mimics the jointed motion of a real foot for easier walking
K3 Promoter
8 yearshorizon
the idea
Prototype Product
cost to develop
$100,000
building and
rebuilding
the flexible
mechanical foot for more than eight years—ever since
he broke his hip in a bicycle accident and spent three
years learning to walk again. The mechanical engineer
had studied prosthetics as an undergrad, but his physical
therapy was a crash course in the biomechanics of walking.
“That’s when I realized that prosthetic feet were nothing
like natural feet,” he says.
With 26 bones, 35 joints, and the awesome responsibili-
ties of weight-bearing and propulsion, the foot is one of
HOW IT WORKS
NO FLAT FEET Jerome Rifkin
watches his prototype foot
flex in a testing rig he built.
A flexible midfoot joint makes the
prosthetic stable on uneven ground,
and a spring-loaded toe provides
push-off for each step.
INVENTOR
Jerome Rifkin
Midfoot joint
HOW IT WORKS The guide wire forms
a curlicue at its end for easy advancing.
The catheter is inserted over the guide
wire, which steers the catheter’s tip to
avoid kinking against the vein’s walls.
2009INVENTIONAWARDS
Guide wire
Needle
2008 INVENTION WINNER
PROSTHETIC FOOT
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 00
Ben Hobbins didn’t set out to clean up his local lakes, but his IronClads baits do exactly that. The Wisconsin inventor’s idea—fishing lures that are extra-strong, eco-friendly and nontoxic—solves a serious, if little-known environmental problem. Flexible and cheap soft plastics are the most popular type of lure among sport fishermen, but almost all of them eventually end up at the bottom of lakes and rivers because they easily detach from their hook when they’re cast or bitten. Once there, the baits disintegrate over time, releasing harmful phthalates and other petrochemicals. According to one study, 25 million pounds of the lures are left in U.S. waters every year.
In 2006, Hobbins, an avid fisherman, was really just trying to come up with a stronger version of the lures he was using for ice fishing, when the concept came to him. “I hate rebaiting hooks in zero-degree weather,” he says. A former biotech strategist, he speculated that methods used in the industry for skin grafting—using an expandable mesh to ensure that a graft stays intact and in place—could also work for reinforcing lures. The result was IronClads, which stay firmly on their hooks because of a microtube of polyester mesh that lends strength to the plastic, just as rebar gives tensile strength to concrete. The lures can sustain 93 pounds of tensile strain, so only fish with serrated teeth and considerable heft could possibly bite through them.
Hobbins sold his initial IronClads to local stores. Inspired by the praise he received for their environmental impact, he then set out to solve the remaining problem: the fact that the plastic was still toxic. Last summer he began work on an equally strong silicone-based version that, if it does tear off, biodegrades without the toxins released by soft baits made from plasticized polyvinyl chloride. (Neither version contains the usual flexibility-lending plasticizers made from phthalates, which Congress has banned from children’s toys.) Now testing the greener version, Hobbins has enlisted the help of the University of Wisconsin, which also worked with him to raise funding and create the initial prototypes of the lures. He expects the silicone IronClads to hit stores this year.—Christopher Steiner
TOUGH ON FISH, EASY ON LAKESA LURE THAT USES A SURGICAL TRICK TO PREVENT GETTING TORN FROM HOOKS, AND DOESN’T CONTAMINATE THE WATER
IronClads Ben Hobbins
$375,000 3 years
INVENTION INVENTOR
TIMECOST HORIZON
PROTOTYPE PRODUCT
Polyester-
mesh tubes
HOW IT WORKS
The IronClads’s
twin polyester-
tube skeleton
acts like rebar
in concrete,
giving the lure
the tensile
strength to
withstand
anything
but a direct
chomp from
the biggest,
toothiest fish.
POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 43
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44 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
HEIGHTENED REALITYA SYSTEM THAT TURNS YOUR SURROUNDINGS INTO A COMPUTER INTERFACE
SixthSense Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry
$350 8 months
INVENTION INVENTORS
TIMECOST HORIZON
PROTOTYPE PRODUCT
2009INVENTIONAWARDS
FINGERS ON THE
PULSE Using Sixth-
Sense, grad student
Pranav Mistry can
operate his laptop,
snap photos, and
more with hand
signals alone.
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 45
When he’s wearing the SixthSense, a combination miniature projector, webcam and notebook computer, Pranav Mistry can snap photos just by making the shape of a frame with his fingers. He can conjure a phone keypad in the palm of his hand and tap the virtual numbers to place a call. The system can even recognize a book in front of the camera, retrieve its Amazon listing from the Web, and project its rating on the cover. Watching Mistry, a graduate student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Arts and Sciences program, demonstrate the device is like witnessing a magic show. But he and his adviser, Pattie Maes, a digital-interface specialist at MIT’s Media Lab, expect the SixthSense to do a lot more than evoke wonder. Within a few years, they hope, it will let people operate smartphones without touching a button, do instant research on objects around them, and generally offer the kind of enhanced-reality experience that’s now confined to science fiction.
Maes hit on the idea last October while discussing g-speak, a real-world version of the gesture-controlled interface in the movie Minority Report. She liked the notion of using hand signals to manipulate digital content but wanted something cheaper that you could walk around with, projecting content and interacting with it anywhere you liked. Mistry, nicknamed “Zombie” because of his aversion to sleep, turned
out a prototype in just three weeks.Although the system has evolved
considerably since then, the basic concept has stuck. A pocket projector and a webcam hang on Mistry’s chest, both wired to a laptop in his backpack, and he wears four different-colored marker caps or pieces of tape on his thumbs and index fingers. When he switches on the system, the webcam starts capturing video and streaming it back to the computer. Then the computer’s vision algorithms take over. The real brains of this system, this software filters out background imagery, determines x and y coordinates for each cap or tape color in the video frame, and tracks them over time. The computer discerns which colors are moving which way, so it can follow freehand gestures. These, in turn, trigger various functions.
Say, for instance, Mistry wants to know the time. He traces a small circle on his wrist with his index finger, and the computer tracks the red marker
IN THE NEWS The SixthSense can scan newspaper stories and
retrieve related video from YouTube or other Web sites, which it
projects directly onto the surface of the paper.
“HOW SECRETIVE SHOULD I BE?”
LOOSE LIPS can sink potential inventions. So be very careful about sharing proprie-tary information. Anytime you write about your invention on the Web or in a published article, display it at a trade show, or make it public in certain other ways, that could qualify as a legal disclosure. From that moment on, you have only a one-year grace period to file for a patent; if you don’t, you lose the claim rights, and anyone else can try to patent it. Louis Foreman, author of the upcoming Independent Inventor’s
Handbook, suggests that you have anyone you discuss the invention with sign a non-disclosure agreement, a legally binding document in which the signer agrees to keep mum. You can download a sample NDA on our Web site at popsci.com/nda.—S.z.w.
cap or piece of tape, recognizes the gesture, and instructs the projector to flash the image of a watch onto his wrist. For book-recognition, Mistry activates the program with a gesture, and the system snaps a photo of the book, compares it with book-cover images it finds online, computes a match, and retrieves and projects the ratings. Future functions will similarly rely on computer vision algorithms. “It recognizes what’s in front of the user and augments those things with relevant information,” Maes explains.
This summer, Mistry will begin working with Samsung engineers to compress the entire system into one of the company’s new smartphones, which has a built-in projector. With further improvements to the algorithms, eventually even the markers and tape could go away and the device could track fingers alone, making it even easier to enhance your surroundings anywhere you go.—Gregory Mone
AMATEUR INVENTORS FAQ
Webcam
Projector
Laptop
HOW IT WORKS
A webcam captures
video, including spe-
cific hand signals that
the laptop reads as
commands. A mini-
projector then displays
the relevant content—
e-mail, stock charts,
photos—on the nearest
surface.
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46 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
FAC
ING
PA
GE: IL
AN
MIZ
RA
HI/
WPN
After breaking his neck in a 1997 fall, Israeli engineer Amit Goffer learned that he would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He soon concluded that this mode of transportation was outdated and began work on the ReWalk, the only wearable exoskeleton that allows paraplegics to stand, amble, and even climb stairs. Soon, more than a dozen patients in the U.S. will strap in and start strolling.
Goffer, now 56, needed a design that would be not only safe but also energy-efficient enough to last for an entire day. “I was worried you would need a truckload of batteries,” he recalls. To solve that problem, he made a design choice that meant he could never use it. Goffer is paralyzed from the chest down, but he realized that if wearers could use crutches, it would conserve energy and simplify balance, since the device wouldn’t have to keep the person upright all on its own.
The 44-pound prototype, which takes just a few minutes to get into, has several modes—among them, walking, sitting, and climbing/descending stairs—that the user selects on a wristband controller. Plant one of the crutches and lean forward in walk mode, for example, and a tilt sensor in the ReWalk’s shoulder harness registers the motion. A computer in a backpack interprets this data and instructs electric motors in the hip and knee of one leg to move it forward. (Other exoskeletons, like Honda’s walking-assist device, take cues from users’ actual leg motions or electrical signals in their muscles, which wouldn’t work with paraplegics.) Another plant of the crutches and another lean, and the motors on the other side swing the
ROBO-LEGSAN EXOSKELETON THAT ENABLES PARAPLEGICS TO WALK
“HOW DO I GET INVESTORS?”
FROM THE TIME you come up with an idea, expect to spend 50 to 70 percent of your time raising capital from angel investors, says Ellen Sandles, executive director of the Tri-State Private Investors Network. Here’s what you need to know to get the big check.—S.z.w.
second leg ahead. Stand up straight, and the device halts.Like the crutches, many of the components, including the
motors and battery pack, are off-the-shelf. Goffer says it’s the control algorithms that make the difference. For example, early in the ReWalk’s development, he and his team found that the tilt sensor could be thrown off by variations in the way users dressed (for example, its angle could be changed if a user wore a large belt buckle underneath the harness), so they wrote software that accounts for those differences and corrects them. The code also has to filter out vibrations from the ground, initiate the most energy-efficient steps so the batteries don’t drain prematurely, quickly recognize a stumble and recover in time to prevent a fall, and more.
Goffer says the next version will be down to about 30 pounds. Several patients have already tested the prototype successfully abroad, and U.S. clinical trials are set to start soon. One of ReWalk’s testers, 41-year-old paraplegic Radi Kaiof, thinks patients will be satisfied. When strapped in, he says, “I speak eye-to-eye with people, not from the bottom up. There is one life in a wheelchair, and this is a new life.”—GREGORY MONE
ReWalk Amit Goffer
$2 million+ 10 years
INVENTION INVENTOR
TIME HORIZONCOST
PROTOTYPE PRODUCT
#�Know your angel. Some invest only in start-up ventures, whereas others seek more mature companies.#�Most angels invest anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000. #�If you haven’t actually run a business, you should partner with somebody who has.
#�Plan on dipping into your own pocket. If you expect investors to risk their money on your venture, you should contribute 20 percent of your own net worth. #�Approach investors only after applying for patents, and come with a prototype and a solid business plan in hand.
# You don’t need to have any rev-enue yet. You do need to be working on a marketing plan to prove that you ultimately can generate revenue.#�You’ll get far more attention if you line up customers who are will-ing to test or sample your product.
AMATEUR INVENTORS FAQ
2009INVENTIONAWARDS
HOW IT WORKS
The user plants the
crutches out front
and leans forward.
A sensor registers
the motion, and the
computer instructs
motors in the hip
and knee of one leg
to swing it forward.
Tilt sensors
Computer
Motors
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 47
WALK ON Inventor Amit Goffer can’t use it himself,
but the ReWalk allowed Radi Kaiof [right], a para-
plegic, to walk for the first time in nearly 20 years.
“People didn’t believe me. They’ve been trying to develop these exoskeletons for the paralyzed for 50 years.” —ReWalk inventor Amit Goffer
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48 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
POWER PLAYERS Still in their early 20s,
Zack Anderson [left], Shakeel Avadhany
and the other team members handle
everything from the company’s busi-
ness plans to GenShock’s electronics.
POWER MADE FROM SHOCKSA SHOCK ABSORBER THAT GENERATES ENERGY AND INCREASES FUEL EFFICIENCY
GenShock Shakeel Avadhany, Zack Anderson, Zack Jackowski, Ryan Bavetta and Vladimir Tarasov $100,000 2 years
INVENTION INVENTORS
TIMECOST
HORIZON
PROTOTYPE PRODUCT
HOW IT WORKS
As the vehicle
moves, the shock
compresses and its
piston pumps fluid
to drive a hydrau-
lic motor and an
electric-motor gen-
erator. The power
that’s produced lets
the engine-driven
alternator do less
work, saving fuel.
2009INVENTIONAWARDS
Electric-motor generator
Hydraulic
fluid
Hydraulic
motor
Piston
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 49
The idea for an energy-producing shock absorber started humbly enough, just another wild invention tossed out during a late-night dorm-room bull session. Only, the students involved were among MIT’s best, and they actually went ahead and built it. Two years later, they’ve got a shiny Hummer H1, loaned by the manufacturer to use as a rolling testbed, and their GenShock may soon find its way into the military’s fleet of Humvees.
The team—Shakeel Avadhany, Zack Anderson, Zack Jackowski, Ryan Bavetta and Vladimir Tarasov—came up with a way to harness the energy generated by the up-down motion of a vehicle’s shocks as they compress over dips, bumps and potholes. The power that the GenShock system produces lets the alternator, which is driven by the engine and provides electricity to charge the battery, do less work. And that, ultimately, saves fuel.
They began by creating a simple hydraulic system, in which the shock absorber’s piston pumps fluid to drive a hydraulic motor and a miniature electric-motor generator. The team’s first prototype generated a total of 800 watts of continuous power with four shocks, and up to five kilowatts—about seven times as much as a typical car alternator produces—over nasty off-road terrain. They estimate that their next version could double the generating capacity, boosting fuel mileage on paved roads by 2 to 5 percent in commercial trucks and 6 percent in military vehicles, which when fully armored can slurp diesel at a dispiriting four to eight miles per gallon. Hybrids, which can store GenShock electricity in their batteries, would gain the most—up to 10 percent.
As a retrofit for large commercial trucks, “the system could pay for itself in fuel savings in a little over a year,” Avadhany says. Although paved roads generate less shock movement, the regular high-frequency oscillation can still produce useful power. And as a bonus, the invention could potentially provide better performance and handling when coupled with a computer sensor system that reads the road and
varies resistance over the shocks.MIT’s licensing department showed
interest in acquiring the technology, but in 2007 the group decided instead to incorporate as Levant Power. Later, one of their professors brought their work to the attention of Paul J. Kern, a retired four-star army general and the president of Humvee manufacturer AM General. He wanted further evidence of GenShock’s electricity-generating potential. “It started as, ‘Let’s see what you can do,’ ” Avadhany recalls. “We weren’t expecting them to ship us a Hummer in the mail.” When the device showed promise in tests, a lucrative development contract followed.
Working between classes from a rented warehouse and makeshift office in South Boston, the team outfitted the hulking SUV with the GenShock system and data-acquisition gear. During 500 miles
WHEREARETHEYNOW?
“CAN I GET RICH?”
BEFORE YOU START DREAMING of an early retirement in Tahiti, you need to face facts: Most inventors don’t get wealthy from their idea. Selling your inven-tion to a major company will usually get you 2 to 4 percent of the gross sales as a licensing fee. If licensing isn’t an option, you can try taking it to market yourself. That route is riskier and can be hugely expensive—anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000 for development, to thousands more for production—but you can make 40 to 50 percent margins.—S.z.w.
AMATEUR INVENTORS FAQ
of real-world testing, they began replacing existing components with custom miniaturized parts to scale down the shock’s size and weight and generate more power, while meeting the military’s sky-high standards for durability and performance. The system must last the lifetime of the vehicle, operate effectively when submerged in water, and limit electrical noise that could cause interference with other equipment.
The group is now speaking with the Office of Naval Research; the army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center; and truck builders such as Navistar and Mack Trucks. If any of those groups put in an order for the GenShock system, the inventors, now all graduated, won’t even have to send out their résumés. “This is it,” Anderson says. “This company is our job.”—Lawrence Ulrich
“This month, we expect to have a beta system installed in one of the largest underground coal mines in southeastern Ohio. We’ve received $400,000 in funding and a loan for $792,000.”
—Russell Breeding
2008 INVENTION WINNER
MINE TRACKER
riner knew what
it felt like to be
trapped in tight
and dangerous
spaces. And he
realized that the technology used to plot the position of a
submarine could do the same for a miner.
So Breeding designed a system, called InSeT, that
employs a wireless radio network to provide real-time loca-
tions. Miners wear walkie-talkie-size transmitters that hold
a battery and an inertial-motion sensor, a device similar to
those used in guided warheads and Nintendo Wii controllers
to track motion on three axes. “It’s basically taking a missile-
guidance system and strapping it to a guy’s hip,” he says.
Radio transceivers bolted into the mine’s roof pick up
the transmitter’s signal and relay the positions of miners to
an aboveground computer, which places them on a map of
the mine. The tricky part is compensating for “drift,” small
inaccuracies in the motion sensors that build up over time.
Breeding, who works with similar technology in his day job
as a navigational consultant for government contractors,
spent two years creating algorithms that account for this
drift. His current system can locate a
miner to within 10 feet, even at the end
of an eight-hour shift. Dave Chirdon,
who is responsible for approving elec-
trical equipment for the federal Mine
Safety and Health Administration, says
the technology has the potential to be
the most accurate available.
The transceivers are covered in bul-
letproof plastic, but even so, Breeding’s
plan calls for a highly redundant radio
grid with 30 hours of battery power so
that signals will get through even if sev-
eral transceivers go down.
Breeding has successfully tested his
system in three mines and hopes to start
licensing the technology by year’s end.
Ponceroff can’t wait. “This is going to
be the best thing we’ve had ever, as far
as I’m concerned,” he says. “I hope he
makes a billion dollars.”—Kyle Stock
MINE MAN In Virginia’s
Pocahontas Mine,
Russell Breeding
wears a transmitter
that tracks miners
deep underground.
2008 INVENTION AWARDS
60 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2008
IN JANUARY 2006, an explosion rocked West Virginia’s
Sago coal mine, trapping 13 miners. Rescuers searched an
area 500 feet wide by two miles long and didn’t reach the
miners until 41 hours after the blast, eventually pulling out
12 bodies and one survivor. Jim Ponceroff, who led a rescue
team, says that the biggest challenge in recovering miners is
locating them quickly so that engineers can drill a borehole for
fresh air and, ultimately, rescue. Sago, like most of the coun-
try’s nearly 900 active mines, relied on radios that transmit
signals over a thin wire that’s easily damaged in a cave-in.
Russell Breeding watched the Sago disaster unfold on TV.
Although he had never set foot in a mine, the former subma-
name
InSeT SystemHOW IT WORKS
A sensor tracks a
miner’s location and
relays it to the surface over
a network of transceivers.
TUNNEL VISIONdescription
Finds lost miners with the same tech found in guided missiles and the Nintendo Wii
INVENTOR
Russell Breeding
the idea
time
2 yearshorizon
Prototype Product
cost to develop
$475,000
VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM
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50 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
As the 9/11 inferno unfolded on television, one question kept dogging Kevin Stone: Why weren’t the people trapped in the World Trade Center able to make their way to safety? “I said to myself, This is crazy,” recalls Stone, an orthopedic surgeon and seasoned inventor in San Francisco. “There should be a better way to exit a skyscraper when something like this happens.”
Stone found all the existing systems for rescuing people from high places to
Rescue Reel Kevin Stone
$335,000 6 years
INVENTION INVENTOR
TIMECOST
HORIZON
PROTOTYPE PRODUCT
GREAT ESCAPESA HARNESS FOR EVACUATION FROM SKYSCRAPERS
be flawed or impractical, so he designed a device based on a fishing reel, a simple harness that would lower people steadily from skyscraper heights on a secure length of cord. The Rescue Reel affords people an easy way to engineer their own escape: All users have to do is open a file-drawer-size container and hook a Kevlar cord to a secure object or connection point (such as between a door and its frame). Then they step directly into the one-size-fits-all harness and rappel through an open window up to 100 stories from the ground. No special training is needed, and the entire sequence could take less than a minute.
Stone’s major innovation is a centrifugal braking system that automatically controls the rate of descent. The Rescue Reel’s cord unwinds from a spool and wraps around a shaft connected to a brake. As the shaft spins, a set of brake pads exerts force on the inner edge of the brake housing, smoothly slowing the user down. Should the automatic brake fail, the device is also equipped with a manual backup brake lever. Descending from 100 stories up takes less than four minutes—about two seconds per story.
Stone tested a prototype in 2007, and Skala, a company specializing in rope-access systems, has since conducted extensive tests of the device at California’s Vallejo Fire Department. It’s a significant upgrade from the slow, cumbersome rope systems firefighters usually use for high-floor rescues, says fire-safety consultant Scott Douglass. “It’s a lot more automated, and it’s easier and more intuitive for the trapped person to use.” He thinks it could be used for cliff rescues as well.
Now that testing is complete, Stone is preparing to market the Rescue Reel. A commercial-ready version should be available next year for about $1,500. He foresees lowering the price considerably once he starts mass production, making it practical for building owners who want to give their tenants an escape clause.
—Elizabeth Svoboda
2009INVENTIONAWARDS
Cord
Cord spool
Brake
HOW IT WORKS
As the cord unwinds, a
self-adjusting braking
system ensures that
the wearer descends
at a constant rate.
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 51
BE CAREFUL OF invention-marketing Web sites; the U.S. Patent Office lists complaints about 60 such sites that make money by exploiting inventors. That said, some of the best help you can get is at your computer. Here are four of the most useful sites.—S.z.w.
“ARE THOSE INVENTION-HELPER ORGANIZATIONS WORTH IT?”
When Michael Callahan was 17, he lost his short-term memory when he hit his head in a skateboarding accident. “The neural pathways were all wrong,” he recalls. Within weeks, he was back to normal, but the incident left him thinking, how could he help people who had permanently lost abilities that most of us take for granted? Five years later, he came up with the Audeo, a tiny device that detects electrical activity between the brain and vocal cords and turns it into audible speech.
When we speak, three basic things happen: the lungs deliver air, the vocal cords vibrate to create sound, and the mouth moves. The Audeo helps people for whom at least one of the three processes malfunctions due to ALS, traumatic brain injury or other problems—those whose brains and vocal cords are intact but whose impaired motor skills prevent them from moving their lungs and mouth.
Here’s how it works: Three pill-size electrodes on the throat pick up electrical signals generated between the brain and the vocal cords. A processor in the device then filters and amplifies the signals and sends them to an adjacent PC, where software decodes them and turns them into words spoken through the PC’s speakers. By placing the electrodes on the neck and “speaking” silently through vocal-cord movements (but without moving the mouth), the wearer generates enough neural activity to trigger this chain of events.
Callahan started working on the Audeo at the University of
ELECTRONIC VOICE BOXA DEVICE THAT ALLOWS PEOPLE WITH IMPAIRED SPEECH TO COMMUNICATE CLEARLY
Illinois, studying everything he could about signal processing and neuroscience. It took him four years to determine how to filter out unwanted electrical noise from the environment and the body (like the heartbeat) and detect only the signals needed for speech synthesis. He met his business partner, fellow engineering student Tom Coleman, in 2005, and the two formed Ambient Corporation later that year.
Callahan isn’t the only one trying to perfect silent speech. NASA’s Ames Research Center is working on a similar device to control rovers and help astronauts communicate even when there’s significant distance or noise. That version, however, uses pattern recognition and can distinguish just preprogrammed words. The Audeo allows people to use all English-language phonemes (the roughly 40 sounds that make up words, like “aw” and “ch”), so there’s no limit on what a user can say.
The technology does have room to improve. Right now, the Audeo can pick up a maximum of 30 words per minute, about one fifth the rate of normal speech. And learning the “language” of speaking in phonemes takes days of practice. Once mastered, though, the Audeo can do neat things like enable people to carry on phone conversations without making a sound. Ambient is also working on a cellphone interface, with the goal of scrapping the computer completely and reducing the price. “Eventually,” Callahan says, “we want it to cost as little as a Bluetooth headset.”—Lisa Katayama
The Audeo Michael Callahan
$330,000 5 years
INVENTION INVENTOR
TIMECOST HORIZON
PROTOTYPE PRODUCT
AMATEUR INVENTORS FAQ
USPTO.GOV andGOOGLE.COM/PATENTSTo avoid overlapping with an invention that has already been patented, search the official government site and the more beginner-friendly Google Patent Search.
EDISONNATION.COMA social network where you can find other groups of inventors by field or region and take advantage of the wide membership. Survey people by posting a question, or start your own group.
UIAUSA.ORGThe nonprofit United Inventors Association offers a 10-part educational series on top-ics such as licensing deals, financing, market research, avoiding scams, and other need-to-know basics.
WEB.MIT.EDU/INVENTThe Lemelson-MIT Pro-gram’s handbook provides help with issues like how to prove an idea is yours, devel-oping a solid business plan, and deciding whether yourinvention is worth patenting.
HOW IT WORKS Three electrode sensors on the user’s neck
capture electrical signals between the brain and the vocal
cords. The device’s processor sends the amplified signals to
computer software, which decodes them and turns them into
spoken words that can be heard through the speakers.
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52 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre want to line the walls of your home with mushrooms. The young entrepreneurs have created a strong, low-cost biomaterial that could replace the expensive, environmentally harmful Styrofoam and plastics used in wall insulation, as well as in packaging and a host of other products. Wind-turbine blades and auto-body panels aren’t out of the realm of possibility, either.
“We like to call it low-tech biotech,” Bayer says. In the lab, the inventors grow mycelia, the vegetative roots of mushrooms that resemble bundles of white fiber. But instead of soil, the roots grow in a bed of agricultural by-products like buckwheat husks, and those intertwining fibers give the material structural support. The mixture is placed inside a panel (or whatever shape is required) and, after 10 to 14 days, the mycelia develop a dense network—just one cubic inch of the white-and-brown-specked “Greensulate” insulation contains eight miles of interconnected mycelia strands. The panels are dried in an oven at between 100° and 150°F to stop mycelia growth, and at the end of two weeks, they’re ready for your walls.
Bayer and McIntyre’s work with mushrooms has come a long way since
they first met as mechanical-engineering students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. When the two set out to make biodegradable and renewable insulation, they started testing different varieties of mushrooms grown in Tupperware. Many prototypes later, lab tests confirmed their early hunch about the unusual properties of the mushroom-derived insulation. Mixed-in seed husks, for example, helped the mycelia withstand a blowtorch. And besides being cheaper and eco-friendlier than petroleum-derived products, Greensulate can grow at room temperature and in the dark, doesn’t require expensive manufacturing equipment built to withstand industrial conditions, and can easily be tailored to different levels of strength and flexibility.
In 2007, the inventors incorporated under the name Ecovative Design
GREEN STYRO-FOAMAN ECO-FRIENDLY INSULATION MADE FROM MUSHROOMS
Greensulate Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre$1,500 2 years
INVENTION INVENTORS
TIMECOST
HORIZON
PROTOTYPE PRODUCT
and won $16,000 in funding through the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. A year later, joined by now-COO Ed Browka and other team members, they took the $700,000 prize at the PICNIC Green Challenge in Amsterdam.
Ecovative has begun a trial run of Greensulate panels as replacements for insulation in a Vermont school gym. The partners expect to complete all industrial certification and testing by the end of the year and have enlisted Jeff Brooks of the Timberline Panel Company to advise them on meeting American Society for Testing and Materials standards for building insulation. “If they get to the point where I think they’ll get,” he says, “there’s a chance there would be no reason to use conventional foam products.”—Jeremy Hsu
2009INVENTIONAWARDS
HOW IT WORKS Greensu-
late’s strength derives from
billions of mycelia, or tube-
like mushroom roots that
intertwine with agricultural
castoffs like seed husks.
One cubic inch of the mate-
rial contains eight miles of
mycelium fibers.
OUT OF THE WOODS Eben
Bayer [left] and Gavin McIn-
tyre want mushroom-based
Greensulate to replace plas-
tics and other materials.
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 53
OIL MAN James Peret wondered why restaurant owners gave
away their excess grease instead of using it to power their busi-
ness. Then he discovered that no one had given them the option.
The nondescript six-foot-tall box behind Finz restaurant in Dedham, Massachusetts, looks like a tool shed, but actually it’s a self-contained grease refinery and five-kilowatt generator. Engineer James Peret’s Vegawatt is the first all-in-one device that processes grease to continuously provide a building with electricity and hot water, heralding a significant change in alternative-fuel applications. “It’s a brilliant idea,” says Josh Tickell, author of Biodiesel America. “A waste stream to an energy source, with no intermediary.”
Last December, after a year of 80-hour weeks on the development, Peret, 33, installed the first Vegawatt at Finz, a joint that offers loads of fried seafood. With patents still pending, he’s reluctant to give specifics on its inner workings, but it begins with staff members pouring in 10 to 12 gallons of used deep-fryer oil each day. Before going into the Vegawatt’s
GREASE LIGHTINGA GENERATOR THAT PROVIDES RESTAURANTS’ POWER USING THEIR LEFTOVER COOKING OIL
WHEREARETHEYNOW?
“I hope to have StunStick in full production shortly. I’m also in discussions with Neiman Marcus about debuting the civilian model in its catalog.”—Fred Pearson
FUTURE TECH: MILITARYinventor: fred pearson
A SHOCKING NEW WEAPON
I’m in a dark garage in the desolate woods of a small mountain
town, and Fred Pearson is about to send 50,000 volts of elec-
tricity through me. To stop him, I dodge the sparking claw of
electrodes at the tip of his yard-long rod and grab hold of the
device, hoping to take it away from him. A shock surges through
my hand, leaving me weak and trembling from fingertips to elbow.
“You asked for it,” Pearson says. He’s right. I’m playing guinea
pig for a prototype of the Tennessee inventor’s Stunstick Neuro-
scrambler, a new nonlethal weapon that causes enough pain to
make any mugger reconsider his career choice.
Pearson dreamed up the weapon six years ago while watching
his 10-year-old son slash the air with a toy light saber. He noticed
the ease and speed with which the boy’s sword could telescope
to three times its length. If electrified for real, it would enable the
person wielding it to remain beyond arm’s reach of an attacker
—something no handheld stun weapon can do. “That could be
a game-changing advantage in a real-life scenario,” says New
York–based martial artist Allain Atienza, who trains civilians, FBI
agents and Army Special Forces in close-combat fighting. The
problem with most such devices is that you have to be in contact
with your attacker to use them, notes Sid Heal, the commander
and technology-procurement specialist at the Los Angeles County
Sheriff’s Department. “I don’t know a single police officer who
has purchased [a stun gun] for his wife or daughters.”
Despite the fact that Pearson, a 51-year-old drywall contractor,
had never invented anything, he knew he could solve this prob-
lem. He took apart his son’s toy, wound fiberglass tape around
the shaft, lined it with wire, and augmented the electronics. Two
weeks later, the three-milliamp, 50,000-volt Neuroscrambler was
done. Press a button, and the entire shaft becomes electrically
charged, making it virtually impossible to disarm the operator.
“You can’t take what you can’t touch,” Pearson says.
Like other stun devices, the stick works by delivering a high-volt-
age, low-amperage electrical charge that overrides messages from
the brain to the muscles, leaving the victim unable to control that
part of his body. But, unlike any other weapon, it can also act like a
Taser, the weapon most often used by police. A Taser delivers higher
voltages and, by making contact in two points, contracts muscles
throughout the body, causing the subject to collapse.
That versatility is a boon for cops, who don’t always want to
Taser an attacker into submission, Heal says. “Sometimes we just
want to get a person to stop doing whatever it is he’s doing.” Heal
is eager for Pearson to begin human-effects testing—a first step to
LASD adoption—which should happen later this year at the Army’s
Target Behavioral Response Laboratory in New Jersey.
As I shake my dead arm, trying to restore sensation, I don’t envy
the test subjects. “That wasn’t so bad,” I lie. “Next time,” Pearson
tells me, “I’ll put in fresh batteries.”
A muscle-numbing magic wand that protects cops and citizens, Jedi-style
Stunstick Neuroscrambler
6 years
$50,000
Vegawatt James Peret
$300,000 4 years
INVENTION INVENTOR
TIMECOST HORIZON
PROTOTYPE PRODUCT
generator, the bread-crumb-filled muck is deposited into a reservoir and undergoes a multi-stage cleaning, treatment and filtration process. At this stage, the oil is prepared for combustion with a method Peret devised that draws heat from the exhaust system. After that, the processed grease moves into a tank that feeds the modified15-horsepower diesel generator. Heat from the Vegawatt’s engine coolant is used to warm the water in the building’s pipes, further reducing the restaurant’s energy needs.
The Vegawatt can process about 80 gallons of grease a week (standard for large restaurants) and produces five kilowatts of energy an hour, which could translate to monthly savings of $1,000, a 10 percent reduction in power costs. Peret is now selling the machine through his start-up, Owl Power Company, pitching it as the perfect way to go green, save money, and serve delicious fish and chips at the same time.—GREGORY MONE
HOW IT WORKS Dirty grease passes through a series
of tanks and filters that scrub, heat, and refine it
into fuel that burns clean in a diesel generator.
Filtration reservoir Diesel generator
Filtered oil Power
2007 INVENTION WINNER STUNSTICK
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The creator of the Segway is one of the most successful and admired inventors in the world. He leads a team of 300 scientists and engineers devoted to making things that better mankind. But Dean Kamen won’t feel satisfied until he achieves his greatest goal: reinventing us
BY RENA MARIE PACELLA
“Let’s run it through from the top. This is going downhill.”Dean Kamen is standing on a six-inch riser in an almost empty room in the basement
of Westwind, his 32,000-square-foot house in Bedford, New Hampshire, trying to get this thing right. It’s crunch time for FIRST, the high-school robotics competition Kamen founded two decades ago in an effort to get kids jazzed about engineering, to make science as sexy as sports. (FIRST = For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Tech-nology.) In less than a month, 42,000 students on 1,700 teams will gather at 43 regional championships to showcase the ball-throwing ’bots that each team has spent six weeks assembling in novel ways from nearly identical boxes of parts. At stake besides glory is $9 million in scholarships. Kamen would dearly love to speak at every one of those 43 regional games, because he can’t afford to squander any opportunity to reach any one of those 42,000 fertile minds. But even Dean Kamen can’t be multiple places at once, so he’s decided to clone himself through the magic of video. And that’s why Kamen and his FIRST Robotics Competition co-founder, Woodie Flowers, are standing here peering into a teleprompter, trying, take after painful take, to perfect their message.
“You can bail out a bank, but you can’t bail out a generation,” Kamen recites for the tenth time in the past hour, and then his reedy voice trails off. “You can’t bail out a gen-eration . . . you can’t bail out a generation,” he mutters to himself, the wheels turning. This is supposed to be a pep talk—the barn burner the coach delivers to hype up the players before they storm the field, Kamen and Flowers taking turns exhorting these junior roboticists to new heights. But somehow the message keeps twisting away from simple inspiration toward something a bit more complicated.
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ILLUSTRATION BY CRAIG PHILLIPS
POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 55
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56 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
“You can bail out the banks by printing money, but you can’t bail out a generation of dumb people by printing diplomas. . . . Although I personally think printing more money is about as dumb as printing diplo-mas.” As Kamen (who, for what it’s worth, never earned a college diploma) wanders fur-ther and further off-script, Flowers tries to reel him back: “After I say, ‘The world needs more and more people like you, dedicated to solving problems, problems that really matter,’ then, Dean, you need to go right into ‘But we have to get started,’ ” says Flowers, fully aware that trying to direct Kamen is futile. “We’ve been at it for 18 years,” corrects Kamen. “We can’t say ‘get started.’ ”
Finally, hundreds of edits later, Kamen seems to feel that he’s gotten it right. “There is a lot at stake in the world today,” he intones. “We need you to be able to tackle energy challenges, advance our abilities in medicine, and develop entire new industries. Innovation is absolutely an essential part of the solution. Even before the current finan-cial crisis, we were in a deep competitive hole. Too many people were making money from money, or money from flipping houses and hamburgers. Too few were using hard-earned science and engineering skills to devise real solutions. We need more of you to make your investment in learning and thinking—to be innovators. But we have to hurry. World leaders may be able to bail out the banks by printing money, but you can’t bail out a generation by printing diplomas. It takes hard work, but it’s worth it.”
No one ever said inventing was easy. And make no mistake, that’s what the man who created the Segway is doing here. He’s work-ing on refining the invention that will trump all others, that will establish his legacy long after he’s gone. Except this invention isn’t made of gears and gyroscopes. What Kamen is doing is trying to reinvent our entire cul-ture. And the brains of these high-school students is where he’s going to start.
Six weeks to game day: It’s day
one of build season, and the Morris High
School FIRST robotics team from the
Bronx—dubbed 2Train, for the subway
line that takes them to team meetings—is
still wrapping their minds around the chal-
lenge that has just been unveiled. Teams
must design and build robots that gather
balls off a court, shoot them into goal
baskets attached to opposing robots, and
like to know that while he barely eked out his high-school diploma, as a teenager he had already turned his parents’ basement into a machine shop and was making 60 grand a year rigging sound and light shows at museums and hotels around New York City. (He’s an ADHD dyslexic, that classic driven-innovator double threat.) You might like to know that he’s a creature of habit, offloading pesky daily decision-making by wearing the same uniform of Levi’s jeans, denim button-down shirt and work boots every day for nearly 30 years and eating at the same mid-dling Italian chain restaurant almost every night. It might intrigue you to learn that he is a pop-culture conscientious objector, a man who has watched Star Wars dozens of times and every other movie exactly never. And that in his garage resides the 14th Tesla electric Roadster to roll off the factory floor,
with a license plate that says “FIRST,” plus a Porsche coupe and a military-grade Hum-mer. In another garage are his two Enstrom helicopters, a three-seat piston-engine model he’ll sometimes take for a three-minute commute to his office and a turbo-powered 480 for longer jaunts, like when he decides to head over to North Dumpling, his private three-acre island in Long Island Sound that in 1987 he declared (only half-jokingly) an independent and sovereign nation.
You might be interested to know all that, but, according to Kamen, you shouldn’t be.
“Have you looked out the window lately? Read the news? The world is a mess!” he says. “We’re obsessing over distractions and pastimes while the world unwinds itself!”
do it while sliding over a tennis-court-
size field as slick as an ice rink. The
low-friction polymer surface is meant
to simulate the crippling effect of the
moon’s one-sixth gravity, which helps
explain the name Kamen and crew
have given this year’s game: Lunacy.
By day three, team captain Adam
Cohen, drill in hand, is ready to start
building. A couple dozen students
gather in the machine shop of Colum-
bia University’s engineering school.
The gymnasium-size shop, packed
with lathes, mills, grinders and CNC
machines, will be their second home for
the next six weeks. Wearing a “Robots
have feelings” T-shirt and a heavy tool
belt, Cohen is already taking apart the
bearings on four plastic wheels. Most of
the other kids are still in brainstorming
mode, and lead mentor and engineer
Bob Stark, who runs the shop, encour-
ages any and all ideas. “How about we
use a turret to shoot the balls?” says one
student. Suggests another, “We could
use a laser, like the laser in your com-
puter mouse, to track the acceleration.”
Today is laid-back and low-key.
Soon, though, they’ll be napping on
cold cement floors and eating leftover
pizza off workbenches in the little
snatches of downtime they can grab
between fabricating parts, writing
code, and wiring electronics.
YOU MIGHT BE interested to know a few things about Dean Kamen. You might C
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 57
Kamen is sitting in his office, across from a chair that’s painted to look as if Einstein were seated on it. Above him hangs an aerial photo of his lighthouse home on North Dumpling, the image emblazoned with a characteristically provocative boast: “The only 100% Science Literate Society. America could learn a lot from its neighbor.”
Kamen is not entirely averse to the propagation of the Dean Kamen mythology. Indeed, if he’s going to rally the troops neces-sary to rescue this country from its descent into moral complacency and moronic dol-drums, attaining rock-star status would be a wise tactical move. He’d just like to control the message. So here is what he would like you to know about him, something he deems a worthy investment of your mental energy: that every one of his inventions—the wearable drug-infusion pump he devised
in 1973 at age 22, the Segway scooter, his water purifier for impoverished communi-ties—has been designed for the betterment of mankind. And that in 1982 he built from nothing a company of inventors-for-hire called Deka Research, with the express mandate that they only invent products that make the world better. It’s also worth knowing that Kamen’s definition of better is not flexible: Better means giving humanity what it needs, not what it wants. Once we’ve provided the basic necessities (water, power, health care) for the nearly seven billion peo-ple on the planet, Kamen explains, then we can go back to chasing a quick buck.
“I don’t think Wilbur and Orville and Thomas Edison set out as their primary
Three weeks to game day: Team
2Train is revving up to test-drive Tan Tan,
the five-foot-tall boxy robot that the stu-
dents have packed with $7,000 worth of
controllers, gears, motors and conveyor
belts. At the moment, they’ve got Tan
Tan sprawled on its back in a corner of
the machine shop, its innards exposed for
inspection and adjustment. A handful of
the students crowding around Tan Tan
begin to speculate about who will drive
the robot at the upcoming competitions.
Tryouts are in a week. “I don’t want to be
a driver,” says sophomore Steve Thoma-
son, in baggy jeans and a black hoodie.
“It’s too much pressure. Maybe a shooter.”
From the sidelines, two students will
drive the robot with joysticks, while three
more will shoot “moon-
rocks” into the opponent’s
baskets. “The guys shoot a lot of b-ball,”
says mentor and Columbia engineering
student Hans Hyttinen, a former FIRST kid
himself, “so we’ll score big there.”
Thomason also has his sights set on
another position: scout. Several students
will be assigned to identify teams at the
competition that would make good allies.
Alliances are a huge part of the game. Each
two-minute match pits one three-team
alliance against another, and the alliances
change with every round. So the players
have to work well not just with their own
teammates but with their competitors too.
IN 1987, A DOCTOR named William Murphy died and left his most prized possessions to
goal to figure out how, in the shortest period of time possible, to make the most money,” says Kamen as he wanders through the cavernous top floor of a newly acquired, gutted industrial space a quarter-mile upstream from Deka, num-ber nine in his collection of abandoned textile-mill buildings. “They set out to make a machine that could fly, or make night safe by making light.”
Of course, Kamen makes money—a great deal of it, actually. But, he asserts, “making money is a consequence of good invention, not a motivation for invention.” And that’s how he runs his Manchester research outpost. Beholden to no stock-holders and no bottom line, he has fashioned an inventor’s paradise, where the laws of physics and thermodynam-
ics are the only ones that
matter, the laws of economics banished to some less evolved place and time. Deka is a strange, cultish world of really, really smart do-gooders who have the will and the capacity to build life-altering machines, and they couldn’t care less if the rest of the country thinks they’re crazy. It’s an extension of Kamen himself.
“Deka is a masterpiece,” says bioen-gineer Jason Demers, who has worked with Kamen for 15 years. “One person can do only so much. But when you get 300 people to think like you—and with your strengths—well, that’s when you can get a whole lot done.”
Now if Kamen could only get the rest of the world to run like Deka.
NEW YORK’S FINEST Noah
Kleinberg and Gabriel Ruiz [first
and second from right] pilot
2Train’s creation at the FIRST
regional semifinals in New York.
LETDOWN The Segway has
yet to transform personal
mobility, and production of
the iBot wheelchair [left] was
discontinued in January.
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58 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
his son, a doctor named William Murphy Jr. Not long after that, Murphy Jr. invited Kamen, who was already a successful inventor of medical devices, to his home. When, through casual conversation, Kamen learned that neglected somewhere in his friend’s house, jammed into a cluttered closet or packed in a box, there was a Nobel Prize—the actual Nobel Prize diploma that his friend’s father had received in 1934 for his treatment of anemia—something fired in Kamen’s brain. Suddenly he could see it clearly: We’re celebrating the wrong stuff. We should celebrate the heroes in sci-ence and technology the way we celebrate sports figures and entertainers. We need an organization directed at kids that exists solely for inspiration and recognition of science and technology. We need FIRST.
That was in 1989. Now Kamen had a vision, and soon he had a nonprofit and a snazzy red, white and blue logo designed by his father, the acclaimed pulp comic-book artist Jack Kamen. Not long after, Kamen and Flowers met for the first time, and, as Flowers recounts it, “had a philo-sophical love-in.” Flowers, a mechanical engineering professor, had founded an engineering contest at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that attracted more fans than the school’s football games. The contest, the two came to agree, should be blown out into a homecoming-game-style sporting event for high-schoolers: the NCAA of smarts. By the inaugural FIRST competition in 1992, Kamen had
was to a mystified Diane Sawyer’s “That’s it?” Instead of transforming the way we get around cities, the way we design cit-ies, the Segway has hit roadblock after regulatory roadblock, suffers weak sales, and appears destined to remain a novelty.
Kamen hoped his iBot wheelchair, which climbs stairs and raises a user to eye level, would transform the way disabled people interact with their environment. The iBot is one of the key innovations behind his selection for some of the nation’s most prestigious honors, includ-ing the National Medal of Technology, the Lemelson-MIT Prize and the Heinz Award. But in January, with insurance companies and Medicare refusing to foot the device’s steep $26,000 price tag, the Johnson & Johnson division that manufactured it had no choice but to discontinue its production.
“I am the most frustrated man on the planet,” Kamen pronounces. “But after someone kicks sand in your face, you’ve got to keep on going.” For all his setbacks, he is still a true believer. It’s not his solu-tions that fail; it’s the rest of the world that fails—fails to see the value in his solutions.
One week to game day, 10 hours
to robot shipping: “OK, turn it on,”
says Hyttinen. “It is,” replies Noah Klein-
berg, a senior in charge of programming.
Nothing. No electricity runs through
Tan Tan’s wires. It’s past 2 a.m., and the
robot must be crated up and ready for
transport to the New York Regionals by
noon tomorrow. The tick of the clock is
arm-twisted companies like Xerox and Baxter to foot the bill for the games and to sponsor 28 student teams, all mentored by professional engineers. It sounds small by today’s standards, but it was four times the size of any of the MIT contests, and it was an instant hit with the kids. By 1995, the contest had more than doubled in size, and it’s been growing rapidly ever since.
“If you give a clever kid just one wish, he’ll wish for 10 more wishes,” says Kamen. “I’m that clever kid. If you ask me what my greatest invention is, I’d say it’s more inven-tors, thousands of them, tens of thousands of them. It’s FIRST.”
Forgive him his urgency, his evan-gelism, his hard-earned sense that not enough people out there get it. Over
nearly four decades, Kamen has built an unparalleled portfolio of trans-formative medical devices: portable insulin pumps, stents, mobile dialysis machines, a breakthrough prosthetic arm. But when it comes to his more ambitious “fixes,” the ones with the potential to affect tens or hundreds of millions of lives, the world tends to give him a much cooler reception. Before the Segway debuted in 2001, the media was falling over itself to get a glimpse of the new machine, which was $100 million and 10 years in the making behind the closed doors of Deka’s skunkworks lab. When Kamen finally lifted the shroud of secrecy, it
WHAT’S NEXT Deka’s Luke arm [left]
is the most advanced prosthetic in the
world. Kamen’s personal Think car [right]
is powered in part by a Deka-designed
Stirling engine [below], as is the water
purifier that he hopes to deploy in impov-
erished communities worldwide.
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 59
nearly deafening. The robot has logged
many hours on the sample sheets of
slippery polymer the team laid out to
make a test field in an empty parking
lot. Tan Tan wasn’t exactly graceful, but
it moved when and where it was sup-
posed to, mostly. Now it won’t respond
to even the most basic of commands: on.
They systematically disconnect
and reconnect everything, part by
part. Tick, tock, tick, tock. After an
hour, Hyttinen steps back and real-
izes that the sleep-deprived students,
when swapping in some new motors,
wired them backward. An easy fix.
By 3:30 a.m., all systems are go.
Ball-shooting time. The students start
feeding Tan Tan moonrocks, rolling them
toward it. The robot’s lower belts spin
so fast they suck in one ball, two balls,
three. But nothing comes out of the top.
Adam Cohen sums up the prevailing
verdict: “Now we’re sort of screwed.”
ONE DECEMBER EVENING at UnWine’d, a Kamen haunt in Manchester with live jazz and a wine selection that rivals the one in his own home’s basement, something bad happens: The silent flat-screen TV in the corner of the bar catches Kamen’s eye. “Look at these guys running around in tights and padding and throwing a ball around a field for millions of dollars.” He’s been snared by highlights from Monday night’s snooze of a matchup between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Houston Texans. “It’s ridiculousness! We get what we celebrate in this country, and if we cel-ebrate bounce-bounce-throw . . . ”
He’s interrupted by a call from Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle. After sacrificing approximately half a second for pleasantries, he jumps right back onto the pulpit, this time preaching to Lingle. She’s already a big FIRST supporter, but Kamen wants more. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, he tells her, has pledged to make Kamen’s state the first in the union to have a FIRST team at every high school. Kamen is trying to spur a race between the two states.
“You rarely see him eat, because when other people are eating, when their mouths are full, he’s got a captive audience,” says Vince Wilczynski, a FIRST game designer and dean of engineering at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. Kamen admits that he’s shameless about pushing FIRST on anyone within earshot, barter-
Kamen’s Stirling engine–run Slingshot burns grass or cow dung or whatever is
handy to power the world’s poorest, grid-less villages and convert their brackish
water into clean drinking water. For the power, the Stirling alternately heats and
cools (and in turn expands and compresses) helium sealed inside a cylinder, push-
ing pistons to create work. Channeled into the Slingshot, that energy boils water
in a chamber. The steam is superheated by a compressor and, as it condenses into
clean water, releases heat that can be recaptured to keep incoming water boiling.
Clean Water for everyone
Source water
Evaporator unit
Purified
water
Cooling panel
Recycled heat
Steam
Electronics panel
Heat source
Stirling engine core
Superheated steam
[continued ON page 85]
POWER SOURCE
DISTILLER
Recycled heat
Compressor
Condensing
freshwater
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INSTANT EXPERTspecial edition
By Elizabeth Svoboda
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MEDI-MATION
Master the Lingo
Embryonic stem
cells: The Swiss Army knife
of regenerative science, these
cells are harvested in the early
fetal stage and have the unique
characteristic of pluripotency,
meaning that they can turn into
any one of more than 200 tissue
types. This makes them ideal
for regenerating diseased heart
tissue, repairing spinal cords,
and replenishing brain cells.
But to critics who believe that
human life begins at conception,
harvesting these cells is akin to
killing a baby.
Induced pluripotent
stem (iPS) cells: These
cells are as close as you’ll get
to a fountain of youth. Inserting
genes responsible for embryonic
pluripotency into adult skin
cells effectively rewinds their
developmental clock and gives
them embryonic-like powers to
morph into heart, cardiac and
other tissue types. An added
bonus: No embryos necessary.
Stem Cells 101
scientists talk up all types of stem cells and techniques
to create them. But don’t feel overwhelmed—much of the jargon can
be boiled down to these fundamental terms.
60 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 61
Everything you need to know
about the hottest topic in
medicine, from big-league
breakthroughs and new therapies
to emerging health risks and the
patients willing to take them
For more than a decade, researchers have touted stem cells as the most promising advance in medicine since antibiotics. And this winter, when President Obama lifted the Bush administration’s ban on federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, talking heads buzzed that his decision could bring scientists that much closer to cures—not just treatments—for conditions like heart failure, spinal-cord injuries and Alzheimer’s disease. Biologists around the world toasted their new prospects with champagne. “Lifting the ban will free us up to use additional cell lines,” says Jack Kessler, director of the Feinberg Neuroscience Institute at Northwestern University. “It’s very important for science.”
The hype surrounding stem cells runs high these days. But getting the straight story—where the cells come from, what they do, and why they warrant executive orders and billions in research dollars—is surprisingly difficult. Making sense of the torrent of stem-cell research findings, separating the false claims from the scientists and studies that matter, requires an unusually well-honed baloney detector. In this comprehensive survey of the stem-cell landscape, we’ve done the vetting for you: hashing out the core science, analyzing the challenges, and getting firsthand insight from the patients themselves.
Big Money,
Big PictureThis year delivers a major spike
in federal funding for all types of
stem cells, and new legislation puts
fewer restrictions on how to spend
it. With just one U.S. clinical trial of
embryonic-stem-cell therapy under
way, the hope is that this double shot
of adrenaline will help American
researchers pick up the pace.
Amount of money the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) spent on
stem-cell research in 2008:
$938 million
Approximate amount of money the
state-funded California Institute for
Regenerative Medicine has approved
in research grants since its inception
in 2005: $693 million
Number of clinical trials on
embryonic stem cells sanctioned by
the Food and Drug Administration: 1
Estimated number of sanctioned
clinical trials involving non-
embryonic stem cells: 2,450
Estimated number of companies
developing stem-cell products
worldwide: 300
Approximate number of patients in
the U.S. who have received stem-
cell-based therapy within the past
three years: 30,000
Estimated amount of annual revenue
stem-cell therapies are expected to
generate in the U.S. by 2018:
$8 billion
Percentage of Americans in favor of
embryonic-stem-cell research: 73
Somatic-cell nuclear
transfer: This process
birthed the famous cloned sheep
Dolly. The basics: Take an egg
cell and replace its nucleus with
the genetic material of an adult
cell from the organism to be
cloned. Shocking the cell yields
an embryo with the same DNA as
the donor, which eliminates the
risk of an immune reaction. But
cloning humans may carry too
much ethical baggage to be truly
worthwhile, especially given the
viability of iPS cells, which also
contain a patient’s own DNA.
cord-blood stem
cells: These multipotent
stem cells are derived from
babies’ umbilical cords. Most
of them are precursors for
blood and immune cells, so they
aren’t as versatile as embryonic
or induced pluripotent adult
cells. Recently, however, cord-
blood stem-cell transplants
have become a viable
alternative to bone-marrow
transplants in treating blood
disorders like leukemia,
especially when a bone-marrow
match can’t be found.
GROUND ZERO A micro-
scopic view of a human
embryonic stem cell
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62 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
Hans Keirstead will always remember the day he set down a once-paralyzed rat and watched it walk away. Keirstead, a biologist at the University of California at Irvine, along with his team at Geron Corporation in Menlo Park, California, were investigating a possible way to treat spinal-cord injuries with embryonic stem cells and, before that moment, not a single person in the lab knew which crippled rats had received the stem cells and which had not. “I’ll never forget holding the animals and knowing, without anyone telling me, which ones had been treated,” he says. “One of my grad students yelled, ‘We broke the code!’ It was so obvious. Some of the animals were walking, and some were not.”
But Keirstead hopes he’ll someday look back on this, the most transformative experience of his life so far, as a prelude to something much greater. In January the Food and Drug Administration gave Keirstead and Geron the green light to perform the same treatment again—only in paralyzed human patients. As the first U.S. clinical trial of embryonic-stem-cell therapy, Geron’s experiment represents what stem-cell biologists have so long been seeking: a chance to back up breezy hopes with concrete, dramatic results.
Like the rats in Keirstead’s earlier study, Geron’s human participants will receive injections of GRNOPC1, the company’s proprietary mixture of cells derived from embryonic stem cells. The
compound is designed to work on spinal-cord patients with acute injuries. That means all the participants in the initial safety trial, slated to begin next month, will have been hurt within two weeks of treatment. In addition to improved walking abilities, rats that received the treatment within days of being injured showed significant healing of the spinal cord’s protective covering, myelin. Since Geron has submitted to FDA scrutiny for years, some scientists say the time is right to see if human patients can make the same strides as their animal counterparts. “This field needs a big success,” says Robert Lanza, the chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology in Santa Monica, California. “The FDA is very careful. They would never allow clinical trials of a therapy like this unless there was proof it was safe.”
But critics worry that it could put patients’ health in danger, and that a botched trial could sour the public on future stem-cell treatments. “I have significant concerns that the spinal cord is not the best place to use stem cells for the first time. It’s a very complex environment,” says stem-cell expert Jack Kessler. “Everyone will be watching. If the trial doesn’t work, people will lose faith.” Keirstead acknowledges the risks, such as uncontrolled tumor growth [see “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” page 65], but feels compelled to press forward. “We’ve done everything we possibly can to ensure safety. Every scientist has to strike a delicate balance between scientific diligence and sympathy for patients’ desperate needs, and I feel we’ve struck that balance very well.” He’s looking forward to greeting treated patients in the clinic for the first time—and maybe, in his wildest dreams, watching them walk away.
all eyes are on the world’s first human
clinical trial of embryonic stem cells
The Study to Watch
INSTANT EXPERT SPECIAL EDITION
In 2008, Claudia Castillo, age 30, underwent an
operation to repair her windpipe. To eliminate the risk of
rejection, surgeon Paolo Macchiarini of the Hospital Clinic
of Barcelona in Spain implanted a section of trachea seeded
with stem cells taken from Castillo’s bone marrow. It was
the world’s first transplant surgery involving stem cells.
I was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2004, and it
gave me a lot of problems, especially at night. I
kept coughing and coughing and getting worse. I
spent a lot of time incapacitated, because I had to be
quarantined. I also had bronchial stenosis, a condition
in which the bronchial tubes narrow and make it hard
to breathe. It’s hard to fix because you can’t just take
out one section of the bronchus and leave the other.
But my doctor said he had this new technique to
Patient Diary Claudia Castillo transplant a section of trachea into the bronchus.
I was scared going into the operation. When you’re
the first person in the entire world to have a procedure,
even the doctors don’t know exactly what will happen.
I walked into the operating room thinking, “Will I wake
up? Will I not wake up?” They took a section of trachea
out of the donor, cleaned it, and put my stem cells on it
so they could implant it into me.
So far, my body hasn’t rejected the organ, and I’m
feeling good. Now I can walk up stairs without having to
stop after every two steps. There
is still a lot of recovery time
ahead of me, and I’m not like
I was before the illness, but if
other people are considering this
surgery, I would say “Go for it!”
—As told to Tetsuhiko endo
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 63
How It WorksInside the first government-sanctioned clinical trial to heal injured spinal cords with stem cells
A blunt blow or disease can cause paralysis by destroying nerve fibers, or axons, in the spinal cord that carry signals to and from the brain. When these signals are disrupted, the protective insulation surrounding the axons, known as myelin, erodes, leaving permanent damage. Starting
next month, scientists at Geron Corporation will begin injecting myelin-precursor cells derived from embryonic stem cells into patients with newly injured spines. The hope is that the new cells will create myelin and restore the flow of nerve impulses traveling along the axons.
Axon
Nerve
impulse
Glial
cell
Myelin
Myelin
Injured
area
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64 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
INSTANT EXPERT SPECIAL EDITION
These landmark studies deliver on the promise of
stem cells and bring real therapies within reach
Brilliant Breakthroughs
reversed stroke
damage in rats
Milestone: This 2008 study conducted by
Gary Steinberg and his colleagues at Stanford
University marks the first time researchers
used embryonic stem cells to create mature
brain cells that significantly improved an
injured rat’s coordination, without causing
tumors. When the researchers transplanted
freshly grown neurons into rats that had
suffered strokes and lost the use of one front
paw, the rats regained control over the limb
within two months.
Why It Matters: In the next few years, Steinberg
hopes to adapt the technique to restore brain
function in people who have suffered strokes and
other neurological ailments.
Cloned human embryos
Milestone: Robert Lanza and his team
at Advanced Cell Technology have made
significant progress toward therapeutic cloning.
By removing the nuclei from human egg cells
and replacing them with genetic material from
adult cells, the researchers proved for the first
time that the resulting cloned embryos were as
healthy as normal embryos, adding weight to
the argument that such clones could be viable
sources of embryonic stem cells.
Why It Matters: Deriving embryonic stem cells
from a patient’s own genes provides scientists
with a plentiful source of patient-tailored cells
and gets us one step closer to a new era of
personalized medicine.
endowed adult stem cells
with embryonic-like powers
Milestone: In 2007, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto
University in Japan and James Thomson of
the University of Wisconsin announced almost
simultaneously that they had successfully
transformed mature skin cells into multipotent
powerhouses that could morph into dozens of
tissue types—a first in the field.
Why It Matters: Creating stem cells from a
patient’s own tissue eliminates problems with
immune rejection and sidesteps the controversial
use of embryos, making them virtually ideal to
treat disorders from diabetes to Alzheimer’s. But
their inability to morph into as many tissue types
as real embryonic cells remains a limitation.
Created adult-stem-
cell lines for 10 human
diseases
Milestone: Frustrated by the shortage of
embryonic-stem-cell lines (limited to 22 under
the Bush administration), last year George
Daley and other scientists at the Harvard Stem
Cell Institute took adult skin cells from patients
suffering from a variety of conditions, including
Parkinson’s disease and diabetes, and turned
them into undifferentiated cells that behave like
embryonic stem cells.
Why It Matters: These new stem cells could give
rise to a limitless supply of tissues that could
be used to study diseases and test medications
before experimenting on animals and humans.
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POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 65
Quack-Science Checklist Stem cells give new hope to thousands of
people with chronic medical conditions,
but shady researchers and clinics prey
on that hope by fabricating results and
offering untested treatments. Here are
some hallmarks of sham science.
Sweeping promises Chinese
surgeon Hongyun Huang lured hundreds
of desperate paralyzed patients to
his Beijing clinic with claims that his
treatments would provide “neuro-
regeneration, repair and functional
recovery.” But when a team of doctors
investigated Huang’s work in 2006, they
discovered that none of the spinal-cord-
injury patients they followed showed
any benefits from his therapy, and five
suffered dangerous side effects. One
man returned home with holes through
his skull—Huang had placed cells in the
man’s brain instead of his spine.
Blame-shifting After an
independent investigation in 2005 found
that Korean researcher Hwang Woo-
Suk had fabricated 11 of his stem-cell
lines, Hwang held a press conference to
apologize but still refused to admit that
he had cheated. Rather, he blamed his
collaborators for cooking up fake data
and charged that they were involved in a
conspiracy to sabotage his projects.
Highfalutin jargon At the
Cancun Stem Cell Clinic in Mexico,
patients receive treatments from
a “Hypoxicator” and a “Turbosonic
Machine.” Without offering any
evidence, the clinic’s Web site claims
that these devices “stimulate your body
to produce stem cells.”
Police tape In 2006, the Dutch
government shut down the PMC stem-
cell clinic in Rotterdam after one patient
was hospitalized for a serious allergic
reaction to an unproven treatment.
It started with a worst-case scenario. An Israeli boy was born with a rare disease called ataxia telangiectasia, which consumes parts of the brain and can cause paralysis. Anxious to halt the disease before the damage potentially turned lethal, the boy’s family sent him to a clinic in Moscow that gave him injections of neural stem cells from fetuses—once when he was 9 and then again when he was 10 and 12.
A year after the boy’s final treatment, disaster struck. He began complaining of headaches, and scans revealed that he had developed two nonmalignant tumors, one on his brain stem and the other on his spinal cord. Although he eventually underwent successful surgery to have the spinal-cord tumor removed, the case forced experts to reexamine the inherent risks of stem-cell treatment, particularly the tendency of transplanted stem cells to divide out of control. In a report on the Moscow debacle, Ninette Amariglio of the Sheba Medical Center in Israel wrote that mixing stem cells from multiple fetuses with growth-promoting compounds “may have created a high-risk situation where abnormal growth of more than one cell occurred.”
Other kinds of stem cells could have similar effects in humans if
they are not properly directed to evolve into distinct tissue types, warns Jack Kessler of the Feinberg Neuroscience Institute. “If you take a human embryonic stem cell and transplant it into a person without the cell being differentiated, it will cause a tumor, period. We have to remove all possibility of that happening.”
Making sure tumors don’t develop in stem-cell recipients is a tall order, requiring researchers to finely control the growth of the transplanted stem cells. Too little control, and the cells divide willy-nilly; too much, and they lose their regenerative capacity. Researchers have recently learned more about the biological factors that control stem-cell proliferation—last year, Jurgen Knoblich of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology isolated several cell proteins that can regulate or halt cell division. Still, the difficulty of striking the elusive cellular balance between stability and clinical effectiveness helps explain why we haven’t seen more stem-cell therapies in human trials yet. “I know there’s a lot of public pressure to demonstrate that stem-cell science is producing something,” says Marius Wernig, who directs a laboratory at the Stanford University School of Medicine, “but things can really backfire if we proceed too quickly.”
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
For all their promise, stem cells
harbor a dark side: tumors
SEALED FATE These
stem cells will eventually
morph into blood cells.
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INSTANT EXPERT SPECIAL EDITION
Landmark legislation to lift the ban on federal funds for embryonic stem cells, $10 billion in stimulus money, the first embryonic-stem-cell trial under way in the U.S.—it all adds up to a banner year for stem-cell science. But in a larger sense, things are just getting started. The next decade will see human trials of stem cells designed to treat all manner of illnesses and injuries, from blindness to diabetes, heart failure to paralysis.
More immediately, Advanced Cell Technology is slated to begin a human trial later this year that involves implanting embryonic stem cells into retinas to halt macular degeneration. Neuralstem in Rockville, Maryland, is lobbying the FDA for permission to start a trial using neural stem cells to treat ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease). And San Diego–based Novocell is developing insulin-producing cells from embryonic stem cells and hopes to receive permission to implant the cells in diabetic patients in the next few years.
As the number of embryonic-stem-cell trials increases, the number of paperwork headaches that go along with them will decrease, since reversing the ban effectively eliminates the artificial division between resources used for federally funded stem-cell research and embryonic-stem-cell research. Before, “having to exclude public funds from certain projects was a nightmare,” says Stanford University stem-cell expert Marius Wernig. As a result, we can expect
stem cells: future
cures and controversies
What’s Next?
to see the creation of new research-ready embryonic-stem-cell lines that carry disease-causing genes. These will help scientists study the origins of disease on a cellular level and test new medicines before experimenting on humans.
But as research on embryonic stem cells intensifies, so too will the ethical objections. “A lot of social conservatives say that destroying any embryo is wrong, and they will continue to be a very solid minority,” says David Masci of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Those objections could quiet down if researchers learn to work with adult stem cells, which don’t involve embryos at all. Cardiologist Eduardo Marban of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles began a clinical trial this year that uses adult stem cells to repair cardiac tissue after a heart attack, and Joanne Hertzberg of Duke University plans to expand the cerebral-palsy trial in which Dallas Hextell [see Patient Diary below] participated, eventually offering the cord-blood stem-cell treatment to 100 children.
Although adult stem cells are promising, the need to avoid controversy can’t drive things—the field needs all the research options it can get. “There’s still so much we don’t understand, so we have no idea what type of stem cell is going to be best for which particular disease,” says Advanced Cell Technology’s Robert Lanza. “I think there’s a consensus in the scientific community that we need to pursue all of the avenues available.”
In July 2007, Cynthia and Derak Hextell of
Sacramento, California, enrolled their one-year-old son,
Dallas, in a Duke University clinical trial to receive cord-
blood stem-cell therapy for cerebral palsy, an incurable
neurological disorder that affects muscle coordination.
The hope is that the stem cells will repair the damaged
tissues in Dallas’s brain. The first-of-its-kind trial, which
will eventually enroll 100 children, is still in progress.
Kurtzberg aims to publish her results next year.
Cynthia: Dallas was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when
he was around eight months old. He was missing some
milestones, like rolling over, and he cried constantly.
After the shock of the diagnosis faded, I remembered
that we had banked his cord blood after he was born, as
a form of insurance, and I started doing some research.
Patient Diary Dallas Hextell
Derak: The Duke treatment was
simple. They just put the IV into his
arm. It took 15 or 20 minutes for all
the stem cells to get into his body.
Cynthia: Dallas started improving
within weeks. It had always
seemed like there was a fog over him, and he
just started focusing better. It was like his brain was
becoming more of a sponge.
Derak: He couldn’t crawl before we went to Duke, but
now he’s walking and running.
Cynthia: Everything points to the fact that the stem cells
worked, but it would be irresponsible to say either way
until there is hard proof. We don’t think Dallas would have
made the progress he made as quickly as he did without
the stem cells. Now we have to wait for the trial results.
66 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
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MORE TO SEE Fewer
funding restrictions
should spur research
on human embry-
onic stem cells.
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1. Two Ideas, Vast Implications
2. Stop Sign Crime—The First Idea of
Calculus—The Derivative
3. Another Car, Another Crime—
The Second Idea of Calculus—
The Integral
4. The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus
5. Visualizing the Derivative—Slopes
6. Derivatives the Easy Way—
Symbol Pushing
7. Abstracting the Derivative—
Circles and Belts
8. Circles, Pyramids, Cones, and Spheres
9. Archimedes and the Tractrix
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12. Buffon’s Needle or ʌ from Breadsticks
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16. Economics and Architecture
17. Galileo, Newton, and Baseball
18. Getting off the Line—Motion in Space
19. Mountain Slopes and Tangent Planes
20. Several Variables—Volumes Galore
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24. Calculus Everywhere
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Carlos Owens had handled all kinds of machines as an
army mechanic, but he always dreamed of using those
skills for one project: his own “mecha,” a giant metal robot
that could mirror the movements of its human pilot.
Owens, 31, began building an 18-foot-tall, one-ton
prototype at his home in Wasilla, Alaska, in 2004. Working
without blueprints, he first built a full-scale model out of
wood. Moving on to steel, he had to devise a hydraulics
system that would provide precisely the right leverage and
range of movement. He settled on a complex network of
cables and hydraulic cylinders that can make the mecha
raise its arms, bend its knees, and even do a sit-up.
Owens is working on two more prototypes, modifying
the design to make it lighter and more maneuverable.
He foresees mechas having uses in the military and
the construction industry but acknowledges that
right now they’re best suited to entertainment. The
first application he has in mind: mecha-vs.-mecha
battles, demolition-derby style.—Charles Crain
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We review all our projects before publishing them, but ultimately your safety is your responsibility. Always wear protective gear, take proper safety precautions, and follow all laws and regulations.
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INSIDE JOB For the new prototype of his
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#�FRAME This mecha is
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used 27 hydraulic cylinders
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#�CONTROL As the driver
moves his arms and legs, steel
cables transmit those move-
ments to the hydraulics to
make the mecha walk, bend
down, or open its hands.
THE H2WHOA CREDO: DIY CAN BE DANGEROUS.
74Solid figures from
frozen mercury
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ILLU
STR
ATIO
NS: PETER P
AC
HO
UM
IS; PH
OTO
GR
APH
: LU
IS B
RU
NO
BUILD A DEVICE THAT LETS YOU CHARGE BATTERIES FOR YOUR
CELLPHONE OR MUSIC PLAYER JUST BY TAKING A STROLL
POWER WALKING
HOW 2.0
GREENTECH
YOU·RE HALFWAY THROUGH OLVWHQLQJ�WR���/D\OD··�ZKHQ�LW�KDSSHQV��<RXU�03��SOD\HU·V�EDWWHU\�GLHV��1RUPDOO\�\RX·G�KDYH�WR�ZDLW�XQWLO�\RX�ZHUH�DW�\RXU�FRPSXWHU�WR�ÀQLVK�URFNLQJ�RXW��EXW�WKHUH�LV�DQ�HDV\�DQG�HFR�IULHQGO\�ZD\�WR�GR�LW�RQ�WKH�JR��)LUVW��VOLS�D�SLH]RHOHFWULF�WUDQVGXFHU³ D�GHYLFH�WKDW�JHQHUDWHV�D�WLQ\�FKDUJH�ZKHQ�WRXFKHG³LQWR�\RXU�VKRH��$�FRQQHFWHG�PRGXOH�FROOHFWV�WKH�YROWDJH�
FUHDWHG�HYHU\�WLPH�\RX�WDNH�D�VWHS�DQG�FRQWLQXRXVO\�SRZHUV�XS�D�UHFKDUJHDEOH�$$�EDWWHU\���,W�WDNHV�D�ORW�RI�ZDONLQJ�WR�JHW�D�IXOO�FKDUJH��EXW�LW·V�SHUIHFW�IRU�UHYLYLQJ�RU�WRSSLQJ�RII�D�JDGJHW���2QFH�WKH�EDWWHU\�LV�FKDUJHG��SXW�LW�LQWR�D�',<�ÀYH�YROW�FRQYHUWHU��DQG�SOXJ�LQ�\RXU�GHDG�03��SOD\HU��1RZ�\RX�FDQ�OLVWHQ�WR�WKH�JXLWDU�VROR�ZKLOH�\RX�ZDON�VRPH�PRUH�MXLFH�LQWR�DQRWKHU�EDWWHU\�—Dave Prochnow
323�,7�,172�7+(�&219(57(5�%2;��3/8*�,172�7+(�03��3/$<(5������
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See popsci.com/diy for more projects from our super-builder, Dave Prochnow.72 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
/8&.,/<��<28�+$9(�$�)5(6+�$$�%$77(5<�,1�<285�6+2(�&+$5*(5��
122222�����<28·5(�287�:$/.,1*��$1'�<285�03��3/$<(5�',(6�
WALK YOUR WAY TO A CHARGED-UP GADGET
#�time: 6 HOURS #�cost: $73.12
#�easy hard
1Download the wiring diagrams
at popsci.com/powerwalker. Build
the AA battery charger [A]. Connect
the piezoelectric device [B] to the
energy-harvesting-module input.
2 Mount the battery holder on
the project box. Connect the
battery holder’s terminals to the
energy-harvesting-module output,
and install the module in the box.
3 Test the battery charger by
tapping on the piezoelectric
device and measuring the voltage
output. Then measure the energy-
harvesting module’s voltage output.
4Adapt the converter [C] for
USB output. Snip off its plastic
connector. Solder the wires from the
circuit board to the USB receptacle’s
pins. Install the converter inside the
USB enclosure. Test the converter
with a fully charged AA battery.
5 Put a rechargeable nickel-
cadmium battery [D] into the
charger, and get a move on.
STEPS TO CHARGING
For more details and a list of parts,
go to popsci.com/powerwalker.
··
A
B
C
D
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PLEASE PRINT PLAINLY
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POPSCI.COM
HOW 2.0
74 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
What you consider solid, liquid or gas
depends entirely on where you live. For
example, men from cold, cold Mars might
build their houses out of ice. Women from
Venus, where the average temperature is
about 870°F, could bathe in liquid zinc.
We think mercury is a liquid metal, but
it’s all relative. At one temperature, the mer-
cury atoms arrange themselves into a solid
crystal; at another, they flow freely around
each other as a liquid. Children from Pluto
(like mine, for example) could happily cast
their toy soldiers out of mercury, because
on that frigid planet it is a solid, malleable
metal a lot like tin. Here on temperate Earth,
you need a stove to cast tin but a tank of liq-
uid nitrogen to make mercury figurines.
At liquid-nitrogen temperature, about
–320°F, mercury acts like any other metal:
You can hammer it, file it, saw it. (It won't
shatter like other liquid-nitrogen-frozen
items because there's not enough moisture
inside.) Watching it solidify is exactly like
watching tin harden from a molten state.
As the atoms go from liquid to solid crys-
tal form, you see the surface pucker. And
because mercury, like most metals, shrinks
when it solidifies, you see the surface sink
in areas, forming a patchwork charac-
teristic of cast metal.
The fun of making frozen mercury
trinkets is another reason to lament the
fact that this marvelous metal is also an
insidious poison that must be handled
carefully and never spilled. Schools have
been evacuated because of one broken
mercury thermometer, and mercury in
the environment, particularly in fish, is a
major public-health concern. Which is, of
course, why I made this cute little mer-
cury fish.—Theodore Gray
HOW TO CAST SOLID, IF FLEETING, SHAPES IN MERCURY:
JUST ADD A LOT OF LIQUID NITROGEN
NICE CASTING 1. Room-temperature mer-
cury poured into a cold cornbread mold.
2. Adding liquid nitrogen freezes the metal.
FROZEN FISH 3. The frost crust forms
when water condenses from the air.
4. Above –38°F, the fish turns to liquid.
MIK
E W
ALK
ER
HOW 2.0
COLD, HARD FACTSGRAYMATTER
3
4
See a video of this demonstration at . popsci.com/mercuryfish
1
ACHTUNG! Don’t handle mercury. It is toxic, and even minor spills can be dangerous and very expensive to clean up.
2
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PSWEB CONNECTIONPSWEB CONNECTION To advertise contact Alycia Isabelle at MI Media Services, LLC 800-280-2069 www.popsci.com/psshowcase
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It happened on our last trip to South
America. After visiting the “Lost City” of
Machu Picchu in Peru, we ventured
through the mountains and down the
Amazon into Brazil. In an old village we
met a merchant with an impressive collec-
tion of spectacular, iridescent emeralds.
Each gem was tumbled smooth and
glistened like a perfect rain forest dew drop.
But the price was so unbelievable, I was sure
our interpreter had made a mistake.
But there was no mistake. And after return-
ing home, I had 20 carats of these exquisite
emeralds strung up in 14k gold and
wrapped as a gift for my wife’s birthday.
That’s when my trouble began. She loved
it. Absolutely adored it. In fact, she rarely
goes anywhere without the necklace and
has basked in compliments from total
strangers for months now.
So what’s the problem? I’m never
going to find an emerald deal this good
again. In giving her such a perfect gift, I’ve
made it impossible to top myself.
To make matters worse, my wife’s become
obsessed with emeralds. She can’t stop
sharing stories about how Cleopatra
cherished the
green gem above
all others and how
emeralds were
worshiped by the
Incas and Mayans
and prized by
Spanish conquis-
tadors and Indian
maharajahs. She’s
even buying into
ancient beliefs
that emeralds
bring intelligence,
well-being and
good luck to anyone who wears them.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that I’m
never going to find another deal this lucky.
Our elegant Emeralds in 14K Gold
Necklace features 20 carats of smooth,
round emerald beads, hand-wired
together with delicate 14K gold links.
Each bead is unique in both size and color,
ranging from transparent to translucent.
The 18" necklace fastens with a spring ring
clasp. If you are not thrilled at this rare
find, send it back within 30 days for a full
refund of the purchase price. But remember,
we have only found enough emeralds to
make a small limited number of necklaces
and earrings at this low price.
JEWELRY SPECS:
- 20 ctw of polished natural emeralds
- Linked with 14K gold
- Necklace is 18" in length
- Earrings are 5 ½" in length
- Individual color may vary.
The Curse of the Perfect Gift
14101 Southcross Drive W.,Dept. EGN162-01Burnsville, Minnesota 55337
Emeralds in 14K Gold Necklace
(20 ctw) MSRP $1,110
Your price $199 +s&h
Emeralds in 14K Gold Earrings
(5 ctw) MSRP $820
Your price $175 +s&h
Call now to take advantage of this limited offer.
1-800-333-2045Promotional Code EGN162-01Please mention this code when you call.
www.stauer.com
Smar t Luxur ies—Surpr i s ing Pr ices
20 carats of polished natural emeralds linked with 14K gold for under $200!
Complete your collection
with the 5 ctw Emerald
in 14K Gold Earrings.
“During my many years as a jeweler,
examining an astonishing 20 ctw
emerald necklace certainly is a rare
treat. The Stauer Emerald in Gold
Necklace is as good as it gets.”
— JAMES T. FENT, Stauer
GIA Graduate Gemologist
20 carats of genuinemined emeralds.
Enlarged to show details
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NORTHBOUND Crocodile-like reptiles
lived in the Arctic 55 million years ago.
FYI
ISTO
CK
.
power, he notes that “ ‘off’ is a very 20th-century idea.
—cornelius howland
Crocodile-like reptiles lived
in the Arctic 55 million years
ago. Could it happen again?
Yes, but probably not anytime soon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the planet’s average air temperature could warm by as much as 11.5°F by the end of the century. As a result, the world could be warmer than it was 55 million years ago, says Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees, an anal-ysis of hundreds of climate studies that reads like a nonfiction version of The Day after Tomorrow. Back then, the Canadian Arctic was as balmy as Florida and lousy with crocodile-like animals called champsosaurs.
Determining how individual species, much less entire ecosystems, will respond to rapid climate change is difficult at best, however. In the same regions where scientists found remains of champsosaurs, they also found fossils of their favorite food: turtles. Modern-day crocodiles could certainly be comfortable in a warmer north, but only if the prey and eco-systems required to support them proliferate there too.
The Arctic air may warm up, but there will most likely still be plenty of ice in the winters. Even aggressive climate models estimate that it will probably take thousands of years for the ice sheets to disappear year-round, so cold-blooded crocs will have to wait at least that long to head to the poles.—CHRISTOPHER MIMS
[continued From page 81]
POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 83
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Give AChild WithACleft A Second Chance At Life.
Donate online: www.smiletrain.org or call: 1-800-932-9541
The Smile Train is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit recognized by the IRS, and all donations to The Smile Train are tax-deductible in accordance with IRS regulations. ©2009 The Smile Train.
The Smile Train provides lifechanging free cleft surgery whichtakes as little as 45 minutes andcosts as little as $250.
It gives desperate children notjust a new smile—but a new life.
Your support can provide free treatment for poor children with clefts and other problems.
Mr./Mrs./Ms.
Address
City State Zip
Telephone eMail
Charge my gift to my credit card: � Visa � MasterCard � AMEX � Discover
Account No. Exp. Date
Signature
� My check is enclosed. The SmileTrain-Dept. Mag.P.O. Box 96231
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� $250 Surgery for one child. � $125 Half the cost of one surgery.
� $50 Medications for one surgery.� $ We’ll gratefully accept any amount.
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other people, bad luck, and later on, life styles, faulty
diets and inherited genes—almost never on self.
It is widely known that laws of physics make man-
datory people’s physical activities. Thus they learn not
to touch live wires, not to speed across an oil slick, and
that gravity keeps pedestrians tethered to the earth.
But, lacking the knowledge of nature’s law of right
behavior, society still believes that suffering and even
death are the inevitable plight of mankind.
There are well-meaning efforts being made to
cope with those typical wrong results: charitable giv-
ing to help the needy, finding cures for diseases, and
addressing famine and genocide overseas.
Our books and public-service advertising tell peo-
ple how those problems could be eliminated. In the
meantime, disinterest delays the breakthrough that
theoretically will come when enough people learn to
conform to creation’s law of absolute right.
As far back as the 1960s, behavioral experts de-
clared this information too simplistic and unworkable
while, at the same time, surreptitiously inserting parts
of it into their own programs.
Do not be deterred by differing expert opinions.
Learn about the behavioral law. Conform to it, not to
benefit you (although it will) but to do what is right
because that is what nature’s behavioral law calls
for. If that is your approach, you will be astonished
by the results. If you are not astonished, be sure you
are conforming to creation’s law of absolute right
with the same eagerness as you conform to cre-
ation’s law of gravity.
Visit our Website www.alphapub.com. To speak with
someone about books or to request a free mailing call
1.800.992.9124. If you reach voice mail, slowly spell
your name and address and name the magazine you
learned about The Alpha Publishing House. Write to
us at 411 Eagleview Blvd, Ste 100, Exton, PA 19341.
Our mailing list is never distributed.
Text by E. Marie Bothe, President of The Alpha Publishing House.
Richard W. Wetherill
1906-1989
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IDENTITY THEFT REPORT:
IDENTITY THEFT UP 22%, HITS 5-YEAR HIGHLeader in I.D. Theft Protection Strikes Back with Free Protection Offer for All
TEMPE, ARIZONA – Identity theft has topped the Federal Trade Commission’s list of consumer complaints for the past eight years.
Now, a stunning new survey shows a record 9.9 million Americans were victims of identity theft last year – a shocking 22% increase over the prior year – according to Javelin Strategy & Research.
This study sends a clear message: in the wake of the global economic crisis, identity theft is a big business. It’s up to consumers to take proactive steps to protect themselves.
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real Social Security number in advertising to show his confidence in the service. “It’s that simple.”
Immediately upon enrollment, all LifeLock members are protected by LifeLock’s $1 Million Total Service Guarantee.
Why should you protect your identity? Consider some of the Javelin survey’s specific findings:
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incomes of $75,000 or more) to be at higher risk. Latinos are 47% more likely to become victims of new account theft, versus 32% of all victims.
It’s important to point out that no one can stop all identity theft, but what LifeLock doesn’t stop, they fix at their expense, up to $1 million.
To get LifeLock free for 30 days during this special offer, call 1-877-222-1589 for individual memberships, 1-866-643-9002 for multiple enrollments, and use promo code FREEMONTH.
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POPSCI.COM100 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2009
TANK TOURISMSEPTEMBER 1920
After World War I, one battle-weary tank was
repurposed as a tourist attraction. Fitted with
an upper-deck platform to accommodate extra
passengers, it took customers for joyrides.
SMOKE BOMBSOCTOBER 1934
The U.S. Army’s newest tank [above] featured
a “smoke-generating apparatus” that created
a protective cloud around advancing soldiers.
Under the white haze, attacking infantry were
hidden from view while the defenders’ chances
of victory went, well, up in smoke.
ROLLING THROUGH
April 1951
The T-41, nicknamed the “Walker Bulldog”
after Lt. Walton Walker, was the army’s
first postwar tank. Equipped with a power-
ful 76-millimeter gun, the “light” 25-ton tank
could reach speeds of 35 mph, run by a new
air-cooled, opposed-cylinder engine.
POPULAR SCIENCE magazine, Vol. 274, No. 6 (ISSN 0161-7370, USPS 577-250), is published monthly by
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Treading WaterThen-cutting-edge amphibious vehicles helped the invading American
force transport cargo and troops to the beaches of Okinawa, Japan,
in 1945. Boasting continuous tracks, the LVT (for Landing Vehicles,
Tracked) series of oceangoing tanks could crawl over reefs that
would stall normal landing craft. Once ashore, the beach-busters
easily maneuvered over rough, sandy terrain to carry supplies to the
front line and bring back wounded troops, but they could reach top
speeds of only around 20 mph. See “The Fastest Tank” [page 38] to
read about a modern homemade tank that goes three times as fast,
speedier than any other tracked vehicle today.—Amber Sasse
SEPTEMBER 1945
FUTURE THENfrom the popular science archivesTHE
TANKS A LOT: MORE TANK STORIES
THROUGH THE YEARS
See allof POPSCI’s
137 years
at popsci.com/archives
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N 42.08 W –113.70
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