Nontoxic Water Screening System Blasts Off

September 15, 2009

University of Utah chemists have developed a new nontoxic water testing system that they recently sent via the Discovery shuttle to be tested over six months in the International Space Station.

Astronauts there have two water purification systems--the Americans use iodine and the Russians use colloidal silver. Too little of either means microbe growth while too much iodine can cause thyroid problems and too much silver turns the skin grayish-blue, permanently. To test the water, the astronauts usually send samples back to Earth and wait for the results. Until now.

University of Utah chemistry professor Marc Porter led the creation of a two-part water testing system ten years in the making. A water sample is injected into a cartridge containing a membrane-covered disc of a nontoxic reactive chemical--5-(dimethylaminobenzylidene) rhodanine (DMABR) for silver and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) for iodine. The cartridge is then loaded into an industrial sensor usually used commercially to measure automotive paint color. The sensor can determine exactly how much iodine or silver is in the water sample. If all goes well, the astronauts will be able to correctly calibrate water disinfection in space.

The chemists are currently reworking their color-sensitive NASA system to detect levels of arsenic and heavy metals such as cadmium and lead in water on Earth. The inexpensive color-based detection systems out there now tend to be unreliable, says Lorraine Siperko, a senior research scientist on the University of Utah team. The chemists' goal is to create reliably reactive cartridges that cost less than a few dollars each.

"We want to make something that’s affordable and could be used in many parts of the world, especially where they have limited resources," Siperko says. "We want to make it easy, so you don’t have to be an astronaut."

Top: University of Utah chemist Lorraine Siperko has a zero gravity moment while testing a water monitoring system aboard a NASA aircraft. Bottom: Two of the color sensors. Credit: Courtesy of NASA.

Wide Angle: VillageReach Takes Medicine the Extra Mile

September 01, 2009

Among the 2009 Tech Award winners being announced today is an organization called VillageReach that goes the distance to deliver health care in developing areas.

VillageReach is one of the Nokia Health Award winners, a subcategory of the annual Tech Awards, which recognize 15 innovators using technology to address urgent humanitarian problems. The winners also receive nice fat checks.

Headquartered in Seattle, VillageReach is a nonprofit international organization that strengthens health care systems and health care delivery in developing areas. Looping rural health centers into computerized health management systems is a challenge. VillageReach fills the gap using both paper and mobile technology. Part of their approach in Mozambique involves using USB drives to share supply chain information in order to maintain health center drug supplies.

The organization also works with local entrepreneurs to launch businesses offering transportation, communication, and IT services that support the health system. The overall results are impressive. An independent study this year looked at VillageReach's work in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, and found that combination vaccine coverage among children had risen from 69 percent to 95 percent. Incidents where crucial medical supplies ran out dropped to less than 1% compared with 2004's frightening 80 percent. Plus, 90 percent of the families interviewed had gone to a health center in the past month, despite frequently living over two hours away. Maybe the organization should do a presentation in Congress.

Photo: A health center receives supplies in Mozambique. Credit: VillageReach.

Hydropower Without Destructive Dams

July 28, 2009

An entrepreneurial company based in Seattle has figured out how to generate electricity from small, unassuming waterways such as irrigation canals. No dams required.

CleanTechnica recently reported that Hydrovolts Inc., started by clean tech expert Burt Hamner in 2007, created what they call the FlipWing turbine to generate electricity. The turbine is kinetic--much like my favorite battery-free flashlight. It's essentially a paddle wheel system that is entirely underwater.

"After four thousand years we figured out how to make a paddle wheel practical," Hamner told me. The FlipWing turbine's blades have a hinged mechanism so that they fold backwards on the upstream stroke, eliminating drag. The turbines are perfect for aqueducts and irrigation canals, Hamner says. His plan is to build a good reputation for the turbines in America before looking to build partnerships overseas in developing regions.

The company is working on three different turbine sizes, the smallest roughly the size of a two-drawer filing cabinet. If all goes well, Hydrovolts will start selling the turbines in summer 2010 at an average price of $14,000. Hamner says the right sites will allow the turbine to generate 4 kilowatts of energy. The return on investment is between three to four years. Never underestimate a gentle current.

Here's a quick video showing the FlipWing in action:

Photo: The FlipWing goes through testing at the University of Washington. Credit: Hydrovolts.

Is It Toxic? Bio-Strips Could Tell Us Now

July 13, 2009

Most planet-minded folks are used to saving electronic versions instead of printing or, better yet, using an application that makes a chainsaw sound for every print job. But Canadian researchers just developed a potentially life-saving kind of printout.

Chemist John Brennan and his colleagues at McMaster University in Ontario came up with a way to print toxin-detecting biosensors on paper. Designed almost like a pregnancy test, a thin film of the enzyme--deep breath--acetylcholinesterase is deposited over a layer of ink made from silica nanoparticles. Put a drop of questionable toxins on the paper and, presto, the color changes depending on how toxic the sample is.

A bio-sensitive strip can be made for around 25 cents now, according to Brennan, although he hopes the price will go even lower. He also estimates that it could take between two to three years for the strips to be commercialized. The sensors could be a fast and inexpensive way to detect food-based toxins, poisons, and some insecticides, especially in areas of the world that don't have ready access to bio assays for involved testing. While the eco-freak in me ponders paper alternatives, this is clearly not something you'd want to recycle. However, Brennan does report that the strips can be incinerated.

Photo: Printing paper-based biosensors sound the alarm. Credit: McMaster University.

Wide Angle: Seeking Programmers for the People

June 30, 2009

You might remember Joel Selanikio as the guy behind EpiSurveyor, an efficient way for health care workers to take down survey data in developing areas. Recently I caught up with him in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was picking up a $100,000 check from the Lemelson MIT folks in recognition of his work.

During his visit, eager high school inventors at EurekaFest were busy corralling passersby. So I asked the pediatrician, programmer, and humanitarian about the tech these kids will need to develop in order to save the world later on. Here are excerpts:

Tell me about an ideal future, for you.

The best technology is the technology that can be repurposed by the end user. In 1995, if you wanted to put stuff on the World Wide Web you had to hire an HTML programmer. The solution wasn’t training everyone to become a programmer—the solution was programs like Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Blogger that lowered the bar to involvement.

I’ve seen enough programs where you pay a million dollars and you get programmers to make a system to distribute information about HIV/AIDS. We don’t need any more pilot programs to show that we can send text messages. The system may be useful, but it’s not scalable.

How come I can’t send a text message that says “create group” and my friends can join the group? Would that be useful? Yes. Would that be as good as Twitter or Google Groups or a Cray supercomputer in my basement? No. I think we fail to recognize that many people—the majority of the people in the world—don’t have access to the tools we have. We’re not saying this is the cure to cancer but it would be immensely useful and nobody is making it.

How do we get to the point where this exists?

We try at my organization, DataDyne, to do this in the context of health, but we’re an organization of 10 people. Let’s think of ways we can build tools that people in Botswana can actually use to build what they want.

If you had to write an ad to fill your job, what would it say?

What I actually do is deal with management, coordinate travel schedules, and a lot of mundane stuff. What I enjoy is trying to imagine what to do with this communications infrastructure we have. In most of the countries where I work, there’s nothing like an electronic medical records system. Now everyone has a cell phone in their pocket. Why are we giving them paper cards with vaccination records? Why aren’t we storing that information on a SIM card?

Why not me, too? Who knows where my records are.

It’s like aliens landed and gave us this technology. I think, What do I like to do on the World Wide Web and how do I get that to work on a cell phone? Could you get that functionality on any cell phone in the world? Ten percent is better than nothing when you’re talking about life-saving issues like the number and hours for an HIV clinic. The field is wide open. The difficult part is figuring out how to get money to do that on the phone and get money to continue.

You’re used to doing a lot with very little. Are you MacGyver?

[Laughs] No, no, no.

Are you sure?

Actually once, you know those cable locks that connect to your laptop? I was driving across rural Kenya and the muffler fell and was dragging below the vehicle. I had to crawl under the vehicle and use the cable lock with a knife to tie up the muffler. But most of what I do is not on the fly.

Photo: Selanikio takes the wheel during a DataDyne trip to Amboseli, Kenya. Credit: Joel Selanikio, used with permission.

Agribike Sends Seeds to Spinning Class

June 26, 2009

Just when I thought I'd seen one of the best bike inventions ever--the bicilavadora--another group of students has come up with one that turns agricultural labor into a fun ride.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, drought-resistant sorghum and millet are choice food staples. The problem: threshing the seeds from the stalk or "panicle" is a work-intensive process, requiring women and children to beat the grains with a giant mortar and pestle for hours every day in order to produce just enough to eat. A team of home-schooled high school students from Bridgewater, New Jersey, created a better way.

The Teen Technology Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam--a 501(c)(3)--worked with Jeff Dahlberg, a research director for the National Sorghum Producers to build a simple human-powered threshing machine that beats the stick hands down. The students were inspired by the rotating brushes inside a vacuum cleaner. A stationary bike component rotates a thresher drum, which is dotted with pegs that effectively shear the seeds from the panicle. Air blows through, sending the lighter material up and the heavier seeds down through a chute into a bucket.

Initial results were great: the bike produced 13 kilograms per hour compared to the traditional method's five. And it required far less energy to operate, too. Eleventh-grader David Schmidt told me at EurekaFest that the team is thinking about how the bike, which cost roughly $100 to build, could be made from indigenous materials. "You don't need [these] pedals," he says. "You could use wood."

Here's a short video I shot that shows it in action:

Photo: Pedals Pass the Pestle. Credit: Alyssa Danigelis.

Climate Modeling Goes Off The Charts

June 13, 2009

At the World Science Festival's carbon event this week, several prominent climate experts did a mock version of the Bonn carbon talks with a little help from an MIT-developed atmospheric simulator.  

Bill McKibben and James Hansen were among the panelists discussing how screwed we are, which was reinforced by satellite images showing accelerated Arctic sea ice melt during the summers. The warming climate threatens to release tons of methane from the tundra and ocean floor. Which would be beyond bad.

At one point the experts formed teams to represent developed countries, emerging economies, and developing countries to negotiate carbon emission reductions. Climate policy guy Robert Corell plugged their numbers into C-ROADS, a predictive climate simulator. We're past 380 parts per million of global carbon now and the ideal is 350. Even aggressive mock negotiating had us at 500 ppm several decades from now. At one point C-ROADS froze, showing nothing beyond 2040. "That's when it's over," I joked, maybe a little too loudly. Kyoto probably won't be enough, based on what C-ROADS showed.

All of the experts advocated large-scale action so I asked Hansen about popular geo-engineering plans. He pointed to promising "soft" geo-engineering approaches: reforestation, improved agricultural practices, biochar (although it has its cons, he says), white-rooftop initiatives in cities, and better ways to make concrete. "That kind of geo-engineering makes sense."

Photo: One of the 6-foot cubes representing the typical American carbon emissions for 4.3 hours on display at the World Science Festival. Credit: Alyssa Danigelis.

Wide Angle: Surgery Light, MacGyver-Style

May 04, 2009

Periodic power outages are more than just annoying. They're dangerous, especially if one happens in the middle of surgery. Enter the pie-plate-bike-part-LED-battery lamp, designed by a University of Michigan student group.

Michigan Health Engineered for ALL Lives, or M-HEAL, designs and repairs medical equipment in the developing world. A team led by engineering student Stephen DeWitt came up with a lamp prototype that can switch to battery power for short-term outages and could be hooked up to solar systems or hand cranks during longer ones. (Hat tip to GOOD magazine's blog.)

The students wanted to incorporate existing resources into their design and noticed that China was exporting a large number of LEDs to Sub-Saharan Africa. Their lamp connects eight LEDs to a pie pan for the light source. A automotive rear-view mirror serves as a joint connecting the pie pan to a bike break on the arm so the lamp head can be adjusted up and down. The whole thing costs about the same as a hand-held flashlight, which is what medical personnel have to resort to when the lights cut out mid-suture.

"Our end goal is to distribute plans to these lamps so anyone in developing countries can start building these lamps on their own," DeWitt says in a video about the project. Currently the lamp is being tested in Uganda. Using pie pans for the greater good is such a sweet idea.

Photo: Members of the M-HEAL lamp team with their prototype.

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Mobile Health Gets a Boost

April 28, 2009

The Lemelson-MIT program just gave entrepreneur Joel Selanikio this year's $100,000 Award for Sustainability. Here in swine-flu-shaken Queens, I'm psyched to hear about successful mobile health survey tech.

Selanikio is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Georgetown and cofounded the not-for-profit consultancy DataDyne, which created EpiSurveyor, open-source software that allows for the easy collection of key health data in developing areas. No paper needed.

This week DataDyne launched a new beta version of EpiSurveyor for mobile phones. Before, the software could only run on PDAs. Currently the technology is being used for projects in 20 African countries and plans are in the works to extend that reach. Health officials in Kenya have been using EpiSurveyor to track polio and immunization against it. While the software hasn't been called into service for the swine flu outbreak yet, it might not hurt to bookmark the beta test information. You know--just in case.

Photo: Interviewing a mother in Kenya using EpiSurveyor on a Nokia 6300. Credit: Joel Selanikio, used with permission.

Wide Angle: Inventors Wanted

April 20, 2009

This week your trusty tech team is taking on invention. From Leonardo da Vinci to modern-day master inventors, there's plenty of inspiration to go around...especially if you're thinking about the greater good.

While searching for invention engines that help turn smart ideas into reality, I came across several particularly cool catalysts:

Innocentive  Solar king Mark Bent first introduced me to this site, which takes an open-source approach to innovation. Pick a challenge, come up with a viable solution, and you could be eligible to receive financial awards up to a million dollars.

Ashoka's Changemakers  Full disclosure: I do some work for the nonprofit org Ashoka. A look at their online competitions and you'll see why. Take on some of the world's biggest problems through an open process that encourages constructive feedback from an entrepreneurial community. Even the entries that don't win can go on to succeed with outside grant money.

MIT Clean Energy Prize  It wouldn't be an invention-related list without at least one MIT entry. This annual contest is open to student teams from any university in the nation. The grand prize winner walks away with $200,000 in cash plus serious support to put the plan into practice. Speaking of MIT, a shout-out also goes to the Lemelson program for student inventors, which gets greener every year.

Intellectual Ventures  This company, founded by scientists, is based on the idea that capital + invention = awesome. Historically, inventors were off by themselves tinkering away and few made a business out of it. Intellectual Ventures sees beyond the standard product cycle. They organize sessions designed to cull the best that the brightest have to offer and then seed those ideas with investments.

What's your favorite invention engine?

Photo: Brendan Mauro.

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