Gizmodo: Invention

The New Yorker on Simultaneous Invention and the Intellectual Ventures Laboratories

Brian Lam — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:15:54 EDT

Malcolm Gladwell (smart guy, puffy hair) has a feature in this week's
The New Yorker about the history of simultaneous invention, the best example being Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray both patenting the telephone on the same day. There are many other examples, leading to the conclusion that "scientific discoveries must, in some sense, be inevitable. They must be in the air, products of the intellectual climate of a specific time and place." The story is put into modern perspective by including scenes drawn from meetings of members of the company called Intellectual Ventures. The founding member, Nathan Myhrvold, also founded Microsoft's R&D labs. His idea for IV was to see if "the kind of insight that leads to invention could be engineered." The whole point being the creation of powerful ideas. Bill Gates, who works with them on H.I.V prevention, is quoted:

Bill Gates, whose company, Microsoft, is one of the major investors in Intellectual Ventures, says, "I can give you fifty examples of ideas they've had where, if you take just one of them, you'd have a startup company right there." Gates has participated in a number of invention sessions, and, with other members of the Gates Foundation, meets every few months with Myhrvold to brainstorm about things like malaria or H.I.V. "Nathan sent over a hundred scientific papers beforehand," Gates said of the last such meeting. "The amount of reading was huge. But it was fantastic. There's this idea they have where you can track moving things by counting wing beats. So you could build a mosquito fence and clear an entire area. They had some ideas about super-thermoses, so you wouldn't need refrigerators for certain things. They also came up with this idea to stop hurricanes. Basically, the waves in the ocean have energy, and you use that to lower the temperature differential. I'm not saying it necessarily is going to work. But it's just an example of something where you go, Wow."

Worth reading, if you've got a bus ride in your near future. [The New Yorker]

Guy Invents Potential Cancer Cure With Radio Machine Built Out of Pie Pans... and Hot Dogs

matt buchanan — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:30:00 EDT

You know, I really love it when (sorta) average guys out-innovate mega-corporate profit machines, like that homemade MRI machine. But this is more amazing: John Kanzius has no background in cancer research but might have invented a real cure. He was diagnosed with leukemia, and struck by the idea that radio waves could kill cancer cells. So he built a prototype machine using pie pans and conducted tests on hot dogs injected with copper sulfate—the radio waves only heat up metal spots, for tactical nuking without nasty side effects. It's now being tested at the University of Pittsburgh and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, where the lead doc says that it "may allow us to treat just about any kind of cancer you can imagine."

So how to get metal bits to cancer cells? This is where the big corporate research comes in: nanotechnology. Thousands of nano-particles composed of metal bits can fit in a cancer cell. So far, they've conducted successful cancer extermination trials using the Kanzius machine and metal nano-particles at both M.D. Anderson and Pittsburgh. The catch is that it's only been tested on solid tumors—hitting cancer that's spread around the body is what they're working toward, and if they can't hunt down the individual cancer cells with the nano-particles, this will only have limited applications.

Human trials are also still four years away, which unfortunately might not be in time for the machine's inventor to cure himself. [CBS via Medgadget]

P.S. On a lighter note, if you really liked the CGI in the video, the guys at Hybrid Medical Animation emailed us to let you know it was all them, baby.

Sour Milk Detector Saves Your Olfactory Receptors

Haroon Malik — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:45:00 EDT

Boffins have developed a smart chip that indicates whether milk has turned sour at the checkout, saving you the potentially unpleasant task of deciphering the health of the white stuff when you get home. The device will be sensitive to the thickness of the container's contents, and when it passes by the cashier's scanner it will begin to vibrate. If the contents is too thick, the vibration will be slower than expected and visa versa. Any detection of irregular speed vibrations will lead to an alarm being set off at the checkout, saving you cash and hassle.

The detectors are to cost about a penny a carton, and they will have a wider implementation than just milk should initial tests work out well. Kelis was ever so confident her milkshake would bring all the boys to the yard and now we know why—she obviously had a beta sour milk detector device. Kudos, Kelis. [Daily Mail]