Government’s new modus operandi for innovation: The Prize

…The X Prize modeled itself on the Orteig Prize, announced in 1919 by hotelier Raymond Orteig as a spur for innovation in aviation. The $25,000 award would go to whoever could fly from New York to Paris, or vice versa, nonstop. Eight years later, Charles Lindbergh claimed the purse with his solo dash across the Atlantic. Diamandis said the key element of the story is not Lindbergh’s triumph, but what came afterward: “Within 18 months of Lindbergh’s flight, the number of passengers rose from 6,000 in 1927 to 180,000 in 1929.”

Last September, the Obama administration released the Strategy for American Innovation, which called on agencies to use prizes and challenges. The obvious advantage of the prize approach is that the government pays only for results. The competitors invest their own money in research and development.

Prizes also diversify the pool of problem-solvers. Solutions to technical problems, for example, are often found by people in seemingly unrelated fields. A prime example involves the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez in 1989, said Dwayne Spradlin, chief executive of InnoCentive, and another of the speakers at the Friday session. Spradlin said the Oil Spill Recovery Institute of Cordova, Alaska, had trouble cleaning up the oil at the bottom of Prince William Sound. When exposed to low temperatures, the oil would turn nearly solid. InnoCentive helped the institute put together a $20,000 contest for the best solution.

A construction engineer in the Midwest realized that the problem was analogous to the difficulty of keeping concrete from hardening prematurely when pouring a foundation. His winning solution used industrial vibrating equipment, placed on barges, which kept the oil in a liquid state.

“We don’t even call this outsourcing,” Spradlin said. “In this model it’s ‘diversity.’ You’re trying to get to as many potential solvers as possible.”

Contests and crowdsourcing aren’t foolproof, say the veterans of the game. If the rules aren’t carefully structured, someone can win a prize with an approach that has no practical value. The goal also has to be specific and realistic.

“You can’t just ask, ‘invent for me antigravity’ type of questions. Or cure cancer,” said Karim Lakhani, assistant professor of management at Harvard Business School, who has written extensively on open innovation. …

via Government’s new modus operandi for innovation: The Prize.

Teenager died after having his lip pierced

Daniel Hindle died from blood poisoning

A 17 year old British boy has died after having his lip pierced.

At an inquest into his death the dangers of body piercing were underlined by a coroner following the death of the student from blood poisoning two months after having a ring put through his lip.

The Sheffield inquest concluded that was the most likely cause of Daniel Hindley, 17, falling ill and dying from circulatory failure.

Apparently though Mr Hindley, of Richmond, Sheffield, had a heart defect he was leading a normal life.

Coroner Christopher Dorries, said that any wound carried a risk of infection, and those vulnerable to infection need to understand that it is not just adults trying to stop their fun, there can be very real risks to body piercing.

The jury returned a verdict of misadventure and concluded that Mr Hindley died from complications caused by severe septicaemia.

Mr Dorries is contacting the Health and Safety Executive and the Association of Environmental Health Officers to make them aware of the circumstances of the death in December 2002.

At the inquest Mr Hindley’s girlfriend, Naomi Storey, 21, said that she had had her eyebrow pierced at the same time and that the assistant had removed the cap of the needle with her teeth.

Following the hearing, Mr Hindley’s mother, Christina Anderson, 44, said she hoped her son’s death would make anyone considering body piercing stop and think twice about the risks.

via Teenager died after having his lip pierced.

Third of U.S. teens with phones text 100 times a day

A third of U.S. teenagers with cell phones send more than 100 texts a day as texting has exploded to become the most popular means of communication for young people, according to new research.

The study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which offers a glimpse into teen culture and communication, found that texting has risen dramatically even since 2008, eclipsing cell phone calls, instant messaging, social networks — and talking face-to-face.

The Pew Research Center said that three-fourths of young people between the ages of 12 and 17 now own cell phones and of those that do, girls typically send or receive 80 text messages per day and boys, 30 per day.

“Texting is now the central hub of communication in the lives of teens today, and it has really skyrocketed in the last 18 months,” Pew researcher Amanda Lenhart said, attributing the rise in part to payment plans that allow unlimited texting.

The study’s authors also say that, unlike phone calls, text messaging can be quietly carried out under the noses of parents, teachers or other authority figures and, unlike computers, it can be done almost anywhere.

“We’ve kind of hit a tipping point where now teens expect other teens to respond to text messaging and to be available,” Lenhart said. “There is definitely an element of text messaging that fits so seamlessly into their lives.”

Text messaging has become so much a part of teenagers’ lives that 87 percent of those who text said that they sleep with, or next to, their phone.

Study author Scott Campbell said focus groups conducted by Pew also offer insight into the subtleties of teen communication and culture, revealing for example that, while boys don’t typically use punctuation, for girls such nuances are critical.

“If a girl puts a period at the end of a text message (to another girl) then it comes across as she’s mad,” Campbell said, which explains the prevalence of smiley emoticons.

“They have these practices because they’ve learned that texts can lead to misunderstandings,” Lenhart said. “It’s a deliberate thing and it’s also part of a culture that’s interested in differentiating itself from adult culture.”

The percentage of teens with cell phones who sent at least one text message a day increased from 38 percent in 2008 to 54 percent in September 2009, according to the study.

Meanwhile 38 percent of teens said they daily make at least one cell phone call, 30 percent said they talk on a landline phone and 24 percent said they used instant messaging.

via Third of U.S. teens with phones text 100 times a day – Yahoo! News.

Largest atlas of nuclear galactic rings unveiled

An international team of astrophysicists has just unveiled the most complete atlas of nuclear rings, enormous star-forming ring-shaped regions that circle certain galactic nuclei. The catalogue, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, includes 113 such rings in 107 galaxies.

“AINUR (the Atlas of Images of Nuclear Rings) is the most complete atlas of nuclear rings created to date”, Sébastien Comerón, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), and co-author of the joint study with other scientists from the universities of La Laguna, Oulu (Finland) and Alabama (United States), tells SINC.

The atlas has just been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and covers 113 nuclear rings in 107 different galaxies. Six are dust rings in elliptical galaxies, while the rest (the majority) are star-forming rings in disc galaxies.

The nuclear rings are ring-shaped, star-forming configurations located around galactic nuclei. They range in size on average from between 500 to 3,000 light years, and they are very bright because they contain an abundance of young stars, including some extremely massive ones. This kind of star has a short lifetime but shines very brightly before exploding as a supernova.

To find the rings, the astrophysicists used images from around 500 galaxies observed by the Hubble space telescope, which belongs to NASA and the European Space Agency, as well as using other references. The images were processed using filters, generating various kinds of maps to help identify the rings more easily.

via Largest atlas of nuclear galactic rings unveiled.

Nude-Colored Hospital Gowns Could Help Doctors Better Detect Hard-To-See Symptoms

Human skin also changes color as a result of hundreds of different medical conditions.

Pale skin, yellow skin, and cyanosis – a potentially serious condition of bluish discoloration of the skin, lips, nails, and mucous membranes due to lack of oxygen in the blood – are common symptoms. These color changes often go unnoticed, however, because they often involve a fairly universal shift in skin color, Changizi said. The observer in most instances will just assume the patient’s current skin color is the baseline color. The challenge is that there is no color contrast against the baseline for the observer to pick up on, as the baseline skin color has changed altogether.

(To hear Changizi address the age-old question of why human veins look blue, see: http://blogger.rpi.edu/approach/2010/04/26/so-why-do-our-veins-look-blue/)

One potential solution, Changizi said, is for hospitals to outfit patients with gowns and sheets that are nude-colored and closely match their skin tone. Another solution is to develop adhesive tabs in a large palette of skin-toned colors. Physicians could then choose the tabs that most closely resemble the patient’s skin tone, and place the tabs at several places on the skin of the patient. Both techniques should afford doctors and clinicians an easy and effective tool to record the skin tone of a patient, and see if it deviates – even very slightly – from its “baseline” color over time.

“If a patient’s skin color shifts a small amount, the change will often be imperceptible to doctors and nurses,” Changizi said. “If that patient is wearing a skin-colored gown or adhesive tab, however, and their skin uniformly changes slightly more blue, the initially ‘invisible’ gown or tab will appear bright and yellow to the observer.” …

via RPI: News & Events – Bare Discrepancies: Nude-Colored Hospital Gowns Could Help Doctors Better Detect Hard-To-See Symptoms.

Less is more when restraining calories boosts immunity

Scientists funded by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) found that volunteers who followed a low-calorie diet or a very low-calorie diet not only lost weight, but also significantly enhanced their immune response. The study may be the first to demonstrate the interaction between calorie restriction and immune markers among humans.

The lead researcher, Simin Nikbin Meydani, is director of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University in Boston, Mass., and also of the HNRCA’s Nutritional Immunology Laboratory.

The study is part of the “Comprehensive Assessment of Long-Term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy” trial conducted at the HNRCA. As people age, their immune response generally declines. Calorie restriction has been shown to boost these immune responses in animal models.

In the study, 46 overweight (but not obese) men and women aged 20 to 40 years were required to consume either a 30-percent or 10-percent calorie-restricted diet for six months.

Prior to being randomly assigned to one of the two groups, each volunteer participated in an initial 6-week period during which measures of all baseline study outcomes were obtained. All food was provided to participants.

For the study, the researchers looked at specific biologic markers. A skin test used called DTH (delayed-type hypersensitivity) is a measure of immune response at the whole body level.

The researchers also examined effects of calorie restriction on function of T-cells–a major type of white blood cell–and other factors on the volunteer’s immune system.

DTH and T-cell response indicate the strength of cell-mediated immunity. One positive was that DTH and T-cell proliferative response were significantly increased in both calorie-restrained groups.

These results show for the first time that short-term calorie restriction for six months in humans improves the function of T-cells.

via Less is more when restraining calories boosts immunity.

Single monster tornado blamed for 10 Miss. deaths

The National Weather Service has confirmed that a single monster tornado is to blame for 10 deaths over the weekend in Mississippi.

It was initially unclear if a single massive twister, or multiple smaller ones, caused the deaths and damaged about 700 homes in the state.

The state’s chief Weather Service meteorologist, Alan Gerard, said Wednesday that the tornado followed a nearly 150-mile track from Tallulah, La., through Mississippi, before dissipating in Oktibbeha County in northeastern part of the state.

Gerard said the tornado was unusually large — measuring 1.75 miles wide. That’s a record for Mississippi.

The storm system went on to Alabama, where it spawned more tornados, and is blamed for two other deaths.

via Single huge tornado blamed for 10 Miss. deaths – Yahoo! News.

US Supreme Court rules against Monsanto GM alfalfa, Justice Scalia comments on it ending the world

Supreme Court justices sounded skeptical Tuesday of a federal court decision blocking US biotech giant Monsanto’s sale of genetically modified alfalfa because some farmers fear their crops will be contaminated.

A federal judge in California in May 2007 ruled in a finding upheld on appeal in 2009 to block the sale of Monsanto’s GM alfalfa seeds.

The ruling also asked the USDA to carry out an  environmental impact study which it had not done before giving a green light back in 2004 to the sale of these seeds.

Plaintiffs, who are organic farmers supported by organizations such as the Center for Biological Diversity, worry that genetically modified seeds will contaminate their crops.

Monsanto took the fight all the way to the highest court in the land, arguing that the federal court did not have authority to block the alfalfa seed sales.

In a hearing, justices had questions about whether the environmental impact could be addressed before the USDA had done an impact study.

Judge Antonin Scalia minimized potential risks saying, “This is not the contamination of the New York city water supply. This isn’t the end of the world. It really isn’t.”

via US Supreme Court eyes bar on Monsanto GM alfalfa – Yahoo! News.

Yeah, it’s not like some alfalfa is going to create a black hole that swallows the entire galaxy in one day and one night resulting in the complete extinction of all life everywhere in the entire Milky Way Galaxy. Geeze. Relax. Eat your franken-foods. Trust that if it turns out that GM foods are killing people slowly and/or causing diseases like cancer, there will, eventually, be lawsuits and it will be banned … after enough people have died. That’s the way  it worked with vioxx, asbestos, PCBs, certain pesticides, DDT and cigarettes.

Giant NASA balloon crashes in Australia

A giant NASA science balloon crashed during take-off in Australia Thursday, destroying its multi-million-dollar payload, toppling a large car and narrowly missing frightened observers.

Dramatic footage of the incident showed the balloon’s large undercarriage coming loose from its moorings, smashing through a fence and knocking a four-wheel-drive car on its side before coming to rest.

“We were sitting in our car and preparing to move it out of the way and we actually were within a foot (30 centimetres) of being wiped out,” a relieved bystander said, on footage relayed by public broadcaster ABC.

“If it hadn’t been for the other gentleman’s car being there, we’d be somewhere else by now, I think.”

The balloon, the size of a football field when inflated and designed to float up to 40 kilometres (25 miles) high, deep in the stratosphere, fluttered back down to the Alice Springs launch site after it came loose.

Witnesses said they were asked to move out of the way before the payload, containing expensive scientific instruments, was suddenly dragged across the launch site.

“We started moving the cars and just barely made it out without getting smashed,” one witness said.

“(There was) debris flying through the air everywhere,” said another. “That was it, just an instance of chaos outside.”

Scientists last week completed a similar balloon flight to measure X-rays and gamma rays sent out by various stars and galaxies from deep in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Ravi Sood, director of the Alice Springs Balloon Launching Centre, said scientists involved in the NASA-sponsored project were extremely disappointed.

“Ballooning, that’s the way it happens on occasions but it is very, very disappointing. Gut-wrenching actually,” he told ABC.

via Giant NASA balloon crashes in Australia – Yahoo! News.

Purple Pokeberries hold secret to affordable solar power worldwide

Pokeberries – the weeds that children smash to stain their cheeks purple-red and that Civil War soldiers used to write letters home – could be the key to spreading solar power across the globe, according to researchers at Wake Forest University’s Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials.

Nanotech Center scientists have used the red dye made from pokeberries to coat their efficient and inexpensive fiber-based solar cells. The dye acts as an absorber, helping the cell’s tiny fibers trap more sunlight to convert into power.

Pokeberries proliferate even during drought and in rocky, infertile soil. That means residents of rural Africa, for instance, could raise the plants for pennies. Then they could make the dye absorber for the extremely efficient fiber cells and provide energy where power lines don’t run, said David Carroll, Ph.D., the center’s director.

“They’re weeds,” Carroll said. “They grow on every continent but Antarctica.”

Wake Forest University holds the first patent for fiber-based photovoltaic, or solar, cells, granted by the European Patent Office in November. A spinoff company called FiberCell Inc. has received the license to develop manufacturing methods for the new solar cell.

The fiber cells can produce as much as twice the power that current flat-cell technology can produce. That’s because they are composed of millions of tiny, plastic “cans” that trap light until most of it is absorbed. Since the fibers create much more surface area, the fiber solar cells can collect light at any angle – from the time the sun rises until it sets.

To make the cells, the plastic fibers are stamped onto plastic sheets, with the same technology used to attach the tops of soft-drink cans. The absorber – either a polymer or a less-expensive dye – is sprayed on. The plastic makes the cells lightweight and flexible, so a manufacturer could roll them up and ship them cheaply to developing countries – to power a medical clinic, for instance.

Once the primary manufacturer ships the cells, workers at local plants would spray them with the dye and prepare them for installation. Carroll estimates it would cost about $5 million to set up a finishing plant – about $15 million less than it could cost to set up a similar plant for flat cells.

“We could provide the substrate,” he said. “If Africa grows the pokeberries, they could take it home.

“It’s a low-cost solar cell that can be made to work with local, low-cost agricultural crops like pokeberries and with a means of production that emerging economies can afford.”

via Purple Pokeberries hold secret to affordable solar power worldwide.