Tag Archives: Neal Ungerleider

Kodjo Afate Gnikou and his team in Togo create the world’s first 3D printer for less than $US100

If you want to create a 3D printer for less $US100 scavenge your parts from electronic waste products as Kodjo Afate *Gnikou and his team did according to an Oct. 11, 2013 article by Neal Ungerleider for Fast Company (Note: Links have been removed),

The small West African nation of Togo is one of the last places you’d expect to find a maker space–a workshop where inventors and tinkerers can work on new projects to their hearts content. But inside the capital city of Lome, there’s a maker space. Woelab bills itself as “Africa’s first space for democratic technology” and it’s home to Kodjo Afate Gnikou. Gnikou’s latest invention was recently unveiled, and it’s amazing: A 3-D printer made from cheap discarded electronics of the kind found all over the world.

For anyone whose geography may need refreshing, there’s this from the Wikipedia Togo essay (Note: Links have been removed),

Togo Listeni/ˈtoʊɡoʊ/, officially the Togolese Republic (French: République Togolaise), is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately 57,000 square kilometres (22,000 sq mi) with a population of approximately 6.7 million.

Togo is a tropical, sub-Saharan nation, highly dependent on agriculture, with a climate that provides good growing seasons. Togo is one of the smallest countries in all of Africa. The official language is French, with many other languages spoken in Togo, particularly those of the Gbe family.

An Oct. 10, 2013 posting on 3ders.org offers this about the project,

Using rails and belts from old scanners, the case of a discarded desktop computer and even bits of a diskette drive, Gnikou has created what is believed to be the first 3D printer made from e-waste.

Afate has been working on this experimental device for several months. He calls it W.AFATE, a composition of “W” WoeLab, and “Afate”.

Afate launched his project on ulule, an European crowdfunding site earlier this year, and raised more than 4,000 euro from supporters. The fund helped Afate support the cost of the original investment in time and equipment. W.AFATE 3D printer is now a working prototype. Some elements had to be bought new but, in all, his printer cost him 100 US dollars to build.

Afate says his printer can be useful on a daily basis as it can print various utensils needed in any household, that are not always easy to get hold of in west Africa.

You can find out more about Afate Gnikou’s WoeLab here (Note: You will need your French language skills),

 “Petite république numérique” au quartier Djidjolé, [Lomé,, Togo] “définitivement fablab à niveau de rue”, WɔɛLab est un lieu d’innovation partagée où s’élabore au quotidien de nouvelles approches de la collaboration productive vertueuse en contexte africain, suivant le cahier des charges- concept : #LowHighTech. Ses prérogatives sont : -Centre de Ressources Numériques, Incubateur de Technologie. Le lieu héberge en latence du potentiel technologique qui ne demande qu’à être exploité sous la double condition du libre et de la transparence. -Pépinière de structures des domaines web, numérique et TIC.  -Espace d’expression privilégiée de la Démocratie Technologique. Diffusion d’une connaissance LowHighTech accessible à tous, assistance mutuelle bénévole, accompagnement technologique gratuit pour les artisans du quartier, reconquête du pouvoir de faire, recherche d’une Intelligence Globale. -Collaboration Universitaire et Volet Recherche. Partenariats avec les centres de recherche et les écoles de design. Appui aux institutions dans la démarche de constitution de leur propre pôle Lab.

I’ll do my best with this very rough translation but as I’ve noted in previous postings, my French is rusty. This is not word for word but is an attempt to get at the meaning with the terminology that is in use here in Canada and the US, e.g., collaboration productive vertueuse is sustainable and collaborative innovation

Our fabrication lab is part of a digital enterprise, which is located in Djidjolé, neighbourhood of Lomé, Togo,, WoeLab is committed to sustainable, collaborative innovation. within the African context and according to the principles of LowHighTech Innovation: use of free materials and transparent governance. Our goals are (1) to make knowledge and equipment that benefits our community and adds to global efforts in the democratic use and production of technology and (2) to contribute to our common global intellectual pursuits.

If someone can better represent what’s being said in French, please add it in the comments or contact me directly.

There was mention of a successful crowdfunding campaign, on the French language crowdfunding platform, Ulule, which has resulted in the W.Afate 3D printer Afterwards, the WoeLab community produced a thank you video,

In searching for more information about Afate Grnkou’s 3D printer, and other projects I found this June 5, 2013 posting by Daniel Hayduck on his blog/magazine, The Developing Tray,

Last week I met someone here in Lome with an idea I can safely say I’ve never heard before.

Kodjo Afate Gnikou wants to put e-waste often dumped in West Africa to good use on Mars, building a colony for the future.

Using rails and belts from old scanners, the case of a discarded desktop computer and even bits of a diskette drive, he’s created what’s believed to be the first 3D printer made from e-waste.


The 33-year-old, who makes a living repairing cellphones and computers in his neighbourhood, says he believes this model is only the prototype for something much larger.

“I imagine e-waste and other waste being transported to Mars and I imagine a 3D printer can be sent to Mars to make homes for mankind,” says Afate.

“They all say it is merely a dream, that will never happen.”

There’s more about the W.Afate to Mars project on the 2013 spaceappschallenge.org website (from the website home page for the Paris edition (April 20 – 21, 2013) in which Afate Gnikou was participating),

The Paris edition of the Nasa Space Apps Challenge ! We are gathering experts from the aerospace field, and the developer and startup community in France, to tackle the challenges laid out during this event.

Le “International Space Apps Challenge” est une collaboration internationale sans précédent entre des agences gouvernementales, des institutions académiques et des associations et entreprises innovantes tout autour du monde.

Le Space Apps Challenge est un hackathon* international ayant lieu pendant 48 heures en même temps dans plusieurs villes autour du monde.

Congratulations to Kodjo Afate Gnikou and his team on creating a more affordable 3D printer by reusing e-waste.

* I misspelled Kodjo Afate Gnikou’s name as Grikou in my posting and have corrected this (I hope I found every instance) as of Oct. 14, 2013.

A tooth and art installation in Vancouver (Canada) and bodyhacking and DIY (do-it-yourself) culture in the US

After a chat with artist David Khang, about various mergings of flesh and nonliving entities, I saw his installation, Amelogenesis Imperfecta (How Deep is the Skin of Teeth)  at Vancouver’s grunt gallery with  an enhanced appreciation for the shadowy demarcation between living entities (human and nonhuman) and between living and nonliving entities (this was à propos the work being done at the SymbioticA Centre in Australia, which is mentioned in the following excerpt) and some of the social and ethical questions that arise. Robin Laurence in her Sept. 13, 2012 article for the Georgia Straight newspaper/website describes both the installation and its influences,

With Khang’s newly launched works, Amelogenesis Imperfecta (How Deep Is the Skin of Teeth), on view at the grunt gallery until September 22, and Beautox Me, at CSA Space [#5–2414 Main Street] through October 7, he has again found formally and intellectually complex ways to meld his seemingly disparate professions. The grunt gallery installation includes microscopic laser drawings on epithelial cells and an animated short of a human tooth evolving into a fearsome, all-devouring shark. This work developed out of experiments Khang conducted during his 2010 residency at SymbioticA Centre for Biological Arts in Perth, Australia. “It began as a goal-oriented project to manufacture enamel,” he says, “but ended up being a meditation on ethical interspecies relations.” Fetal calf serum, he explains, is used “to fuel” all stem-cell research.

In our far ranging discussion, Khang (whose show at the Grunt [350 E. 2nd Avenue, Vancouver, ends on Saturday, Sept. 22, 2012) and I discussed not only interspecies relations but also the integration of flesh with machine/technology,which is being explored and discussed at SymbioticA and elsewhere.

Coincidentally, one day after my chat with Khang I found this Sept. 19, 2012 article (Biohackers And DIY Cyborgs Clone Silicon Valley Innovation) by Neal Ungerleider for Fast Company (Note: I have removed links),

The grinders (DIY cybernetics enthusiasts) and their comrades in arms–biohackers working on improving human source code, quantified self enthusiasts who arm themselves with constant bodily data feeds, and independent DIY biotechnology enthusiasts–are moonlighting for now in basements, shared spaces, and makeshift labs. But they’re ultimately aiming to change the world. Think of how bionic [sic] legs like those belonging to Oscar Pistorius and cochlear implants that let the deaf hear have changed everyday life for so many people. Then multiply that by a million. A million people. And millions of dollars.

Not only has the new wave of do-it-yourself (DIY) cybernetics moved well beyond science fiction, it’s going to cause a business boom in the not-too-distant future.

I have two comments. (1) Pistorius does not have bionic legs but he does use some very high tech racing prosthetics, which I describe briefly in my July 27, 2009 posting in part 4 of a series on human enhancement. On the basis of this error, you may want to apply a little caution when reading the rest of Ungerleider’s  article. (2) Prior to this article, I hadn’t considered machine/flesh integration as a business opportunity but clearly I’ve been shortsighted.

I was particularly interested in this following passage where Ungerleider mentions the fusion of the living and of the electronic.

In Brooklyn, a small “community biolab” called Genspace is home to approximately a dozen DIY biology experimenters whose work often involves the fusion of the living and the electronic. Classes are offered to the public in synthetic biology, which engineers living organisms as if they were biological machines.

A workshop recently held at Genspace, Crude Control, showed how in-vitro meat and leather could be created via tissue engineering, and it explored the possibility of creating semi-living “products” from them. Although the Genspace workshop was for educational purposes, similar technologies are already being monetized elsewhere–Peter Thiel recently sank six figures into a startup that will make 3-D printed in vitro meat commercially available.

The teacher at the Crude Control workshop, Oron Catts, [emphasis mine] walked participants through “basic tissue culture and tissue engineering protocols, including developing some DIY tools and isolating cells from a bone we got from a local butcher.” Some of Catts’ previous projects include bioengineering a steak from pre-natal sheep cells (in his words, “steak grown from an animal that was not yet born“) and victimless leather grown from cell lines. [emphases mine]
 

I emphasized Oron Catts because he is SymbioticA Centre’s director.From his biographical page on the SynbioticA Centre website,

Oron Catts is an artist, researcher and curator whose work with the Tissue Culture and Art Project (which he founded in 1996 with Ionat Zurr) is part of the NY MoMA design collection and has been exhibited and presented internationally. In 2000 he co-founded SymbioticA, an artistic research laboratory housed within the School of Anatomy and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia. Under Oron’s leadership, SymbioticA has gone on to win the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Hybrid Art (2007) and became a Centre for Excellence in 2008.

Oron has been a researcher at The University of Western Australia since 1996 and was a Research Fellow at the Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston from 2000-2001. He worked with numerous other bio-medical laboratories around the world. In 2007 he was a visiting Scholar at the Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University. He is currently undertaking a “Synthetic Atheistic” residency which is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation (USA) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK) to exploring the impactions of synthetic Biology; and is a Visiting Professor of Design Interaction, Royal College of Arts, London.

You can find out more about the SymbioticA Centre here.

As for the “steak grown from an animal that was not yet born” and “victimless leather,” the terminology hints   while the description of the work demonstrates how close we are to a new reality in our relationships with nonhumans. Some readers may find the rest of Ungerleider’s article even more eyebrow-raising/disturbing/exciting.

Everything becomes part machine

Machine/flesh. That’s what I’ve taken to calling this process of integrating machinery into our and, as I newly realized, other animals’ flesh. My new realization was courtesy of a television ad for Absolut Greyhound Vodka. First, here’s the very, very long (3 mins. 39 secs.) ad/music video version,

I gather the dogs are mostly or, possibly, all animation. Still, the robotic dogs are very thought-provoking.  It’s kind of fascinating to me that I found a very unusual, futuristic, and thought-provoking idea embedded in advertising so I dug around online to find a March 2012 article by Rae Ann Fera, about the ad campaign, written for the Fast (Company} Co-Create website,

In the real world, music and cocktails go hand in hand. In an Absolut world, music and cocktails come with racing robotic greyhounds remotely controlled by a trio of DJs, spurred on by a cast of characters that make Lady Gaga look casual.

“Greyhound”–which is the title of the drink, the video, and the actual music track–is a three-minute visual feast created by TBWA\Chiat\Day that sees three groups of couture-sporting racing enthusiasts converge on the Bonneville Salt Flats to watch some robotic greyhounds speed across the parched plains, all while sipping light pink Absolut Greyhounds. While the fabulous people in the desert give each other the “my team’s going to win” stink-eye, the three members of Swedish House Mafia are off in a desolate bunker remotely controlling the robodogs to a photo-finish while ensconced in holographic orbs. …

Given that “Greyhound” is part music video, part ad, it will be distributed across a number of channels. “When it come to our target, music is their number one passion point and they live in the digital space so the campaign is really going to primarily TV and digital,” says Absolut’s Kouchnir [Maxime Kouchnir, Vice President, Vodkas, Pernod Ricard USA].

The advertisers, of course, are trying to sell vodka by digitally creating a greyhound that’s part robot/part flesh and then setting the stage for this race with music, fashion, cocktails, and an open-ended result. But, if one thinks of advertising as a reflection of culture, then these animated robot/flesh greyhounds suggest that something is percolating in the zeitgeist.

I have other examples on this blog  but here are a few recent  nonadvertising items I’ve come across that support my thesis. First, I found an April 27, 2012 article (MIT Media Lab Hosts The Future) by Neal Ungerleider for Fast Company, from the article,

This week, MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Media Lab researchers and minds from around the world got together to discuss artificial implantable memories, computers that understand emotion… and Microsoft-funded robotic teddy bears. Will the next Guitar Hero soon be discovered?

….

Then there are the scientists who will be able to plant artificial memories in your head. Ted Berger of the University of Southern California is developing prosthetic brain implants that mimic the mind. Apart from turning recipients into cyborgs, the brain prostheses actually create fake memories, science fiction movie style: In experiments, researchers successfully turned long-term memories on and off in lab rats. Berger hopes in the future, once primate testing is complete, to create brain implants for Alzheimer’s and stroke patients to help restore function.

While erasing and/or creating memories may seem a bit distant from our current experience, the BBC May 3, 2012 news article by Fergus Walsh, describes another machine/flesh project at the human clinical trials stage. Retinal implants have placed in two British men,

The two patients, Chris James and Robin Millar, lost their vision due to a condition known as retinitis pigmentosa, where the photoreceptor cells at the back of the eye gradually cease to function.

The wafer-thin, 3mm square microelectronic chip has 1,500 light-sensitive pixels which take over the function of the photoreceptor rods and cones.

The surgery involves placing it behind the retina from where a fine cable runs to a control unit under the skin behind the ear.

I believe this is the project I described in Aug. 18, 2011 posting (scroll down 2/3 of the way), which has 30 participants in the clinical trials, worldwide.

It sometimes seems that we’re not creating new life through biological means, synthetic or otherwise, but, rather, with our machines, which we are integrating into our own and other animal’s flesh.

Attracting creatives and economic opportunities

The Canadian 2012 federal budget was presented today (Mar.29.12) and so a discussion about creativity and economic opportunities seems à propos. I’ll start with Amsterdam (Holland/The Netherlands) and THNK. Neal Ungerleider, in his March 27, 2012 article titled, The THNK Tank: Why Amsterdam Wants Your (Creative) Brains, for Fast Company notes,

Amsterdam is embarking on an ambitious experiment to attract foreign creatives: An invite-only, public/private-funded school and accelerator for international creative minds, leaders, and entrepreneurs. THNK: The Amsterdam School of Creative Leadership opened several weeks ago with an initial class of 30 drawn from across Europe, the United States, China, India, Israel, Mauritius, and South Africa. Classes and mentoring at THNK are held both in Amsterdam–in a home base inside a converted gasworks–and via telecommuting once participants return to their home countries.

For Amsterdam, THNK is a slick business development project that simultaneously doubles as soft diplomacy. The thinkers and doers who will be joining in THNK’s activities will be connected with local entrepreneurs, artists, and firms–whom the city is doubtlessly hoping will be back in the future.

The partnership behind this initiative includes the Dutch federal government, the province of Noord-Holland, Stadsregio Amsterdam (a regional conglomeration of 16 municipalities in what is dubbed as the ‘Amsterdam region’, The Netherlands Chamber of Commerce, and I amsterdam.

These organizations certainly seem to be modeling leadership. Here’s more about their initiative, from the About THNK page,

Of course the world is changing. That’s what it’s done since time began. Evolution is natural. Sometimes it happens slowly. And sometimes it rocks the world like a fiery volcano, suddenly transforming entire landscapes.

Our world has reached that point now. Social inequality, our love/hate relationship with technology, dwindling resources, climate change, the collapse of financial institutions…

Organizations of all types, shapes and sizes are struggling with this new reality. Some are so involved in daily operations – and keeping their heads above water – they are blind to the future. Others recognize the challenges around them, but lack vision.

THNK believes the answer is passionate, visionary and creative leadership.

Creative leadership according to THNK means: public, social and business worlds coming together to create and realize new and innovative solutions to major issues of societal relevance that will have great meaning and impact – either nationally or internationally.

This isn’t just about generating ideas. It’s also about making it happen.

About Amsterdam

Although our focus is international, THNK is firmly rooted in Amsterdam. We’ve made the Westergasfabriek our home. This 19th-century former gas factory has been transformed into one of the city’s most exciting cultural centers, with old industrial buildings now housing trendsetting cafes, cinema, festivals and other events. Not to mention the surrounding city parks – with everything from hidden waterways to bike paths reaching from the countryside to the heart of Amsterdam.

Thanks to its highly diverse culture – with more than 175 nationalities – and an inventive and tolerant mentality, Amsterdam has grown into an important international hub for creative thought and industry. The city’s unique DNA of creativity, tolerance, diversity, collaboration and trade is reflected in THNK’s highly pragmatic and open culture.

It’s not surprising that such diverse influences have brought forth such creativity. Three of our local scientists have been awarded Nobel prizes. Fashion designers Viktor & Rolf have wowed the world. Droog designer Marcel Wanders has changed the way we look at interior design. Architects such as Ben van Berkel are reshaping our skylines.

Amsterdam’s unique DNA of creativity, tolerance, diversity, collaboration and trade will be reflected in THNK’s highly pragmatic and open culture. Reaching beyond its borders, Amsterdam serves as a major gateway into continental Europe. With two major seaports within a 50-kilometer radius, strong international railroad connections and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol close by, you’re always close to anywhere in Europe and the world.

They do invite applications (perhaps the invite-only applications were a feature for the first cohort). You can get more information here or go here to apply immediately. The 18-month program costs  € 39,500 (approx. $52, 520 CAD) and there are periods when you are required to be in Amsterdam, so you may want to include some housing and travel costs as well.

Meanwhile in Vancouver (Canada), Simon Fraser University (SFU) is about to host BCreative 2012 from May 10 – 12, 2012. From the BCreactive 2012 conference/showcase About page,

… designed to bring together government, business, the creative sector, and researchers to stimulate thinking, policy, and action directed at developing a strategy and levering resources to further build the creative economy and to help British Columbia BC become a leader in the creative sector in the twenty-first century.

BCreative 2012 conference/showcase has four specific objectives:

  1. To make the case for the creative economy to have a commanding presence in government economic and cultural policy;
  2. To build bridges between the general business community and this new and dynamic business sector with distinctive infrastructure needs from which all British Columbians can benefit both socially and economically;
  3. To encourage information sharing among the creative sub-sectors and to sensitize the creative sector to the contribution of the creative economy to job creation and overall economic growth;
  4. To bring forward useful information, analysis, training, and research resources that can assist in building BC’s creative economy.

Speakers include the co-author of the two UN Creative Economy reports, Edna dos Santos-Duisenberg, creative cities theorist Charles Landry, Canada Council CEO Robert Sirman, representatives from creative cities: Berlin and Paris. Partners with Simon Fraser University in this enterprise include the BC Business Council and the Vancouver Board of Trade, with Tourism Vancouver helping behind the scenes.

There’s an early bird registration fee until March 31, 2012. You can find a copy of the schedule (presumably a draft) here.  I hope the participants will develop ideas as fresh and innovative as THNK.

BTW, I notice that Amsterdam’s THNK mentions scientists while the BCreative conference does not whether that omission reflects organizational difficulties or a blindspot is a mystery.

Interpol and innovation? Let’s not underestimate the criminals

My hat’s off to Neal Ungerleider at the Fast Company website. His Feb. 9, 2012 article (Inside INTERPOL’s New Cybercrime Innovation Center) has proven to be incredibly successful. It seems to be everywhere which makes tracking down additional information about INTERPOL’s new complex a bit of a challenge. Here’s what Ungerleider wrote about the centre,

INTERPOL, the international policing agency, is opening a massive innovation center in Singapore in 2014. At the center, law enforcement will learn all about the latest cybercrimes… and have access to cutting-edge forensics laboratories and research stations.

I particularly enjoyed this line from Ungerleider’s article,

INTERPOL, the international policing organization, is building a law enforcement tech geek heaven in Singapore.

Here’s a video of what this new complex may look like,

Ungerleider goes on to note this about the activities and the bureaucracy supporting the complex,

Beyond cybercrime, police officers and researchers at IGCI will also be developing experimental strategies to combat environmental crime, counterfeiting, corruption in football/soccer, and Asian criminal syndicates. The complex will include laboratories, conference space, and a museum-like space for tours geared toward the public. INTERPOL being INTERPOL, the whole organizational process behind the center is highly bureaucratic and intricate [PDF].

The Jan. 16, 2012 media release from INTERPOL announces the director for this new complex,

INTERPOL has announced that Noboru Nakatani of Japan, currently the Special Advisor to the Commissioner General of Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA), and Director of the NPA’s Transnational Organized Crime Office, has been appointed as the Executive Director of the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) in Singapore.

The state-of-the-art facility, due to become operational in early 2014, will equip the world’s police with the tools and knowledge to better tackle the crime threats of the 21st century. As a research and development facility for the identification of crimes and criminals, it will provide innovative training and operational support for law enforcement across the globe.

During the building’s ongoing construction, Mr Nakatani will oversee and coordinate the creation and development of the programmes and services that will be delivered from the IGCI by INTERPOL to its 190 member countries.

At Japan’s National Police Agency, Mr Nakatani held the post of Senior Assistant Director for cybercrime, as well as Executive Officer to the Minister of State, the Chairperson of the National Public Safety Commission.

“I am very pleased that the Government of Japan has allowed Mr Nakatani to return to INTERPOL in order to take up this challenging and historic post; it reaffirms Japan’s strong commitment to INTERPOL and to international police cooperation,” said INTERPOL President Khoo Boon Hui.

INTERPOL notes this about the need for this complex, from the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation page,

Crime threats are changing

Police worldwide are facing an increasing challenging operational landscape, as criminals take advantage of new technology, the ease of international travel and the anonymous world of virtual business.

Criminal phenomena are becoming more aggressive and elusive, notably in the areas of cybercrime and child sexual exploitation.

The future of policing

It is crucial for police to stay one step ahead of criminals. In today’s world this can only be achieved if law enforcement officials have real-time access to information beyond their own borders.

The digital age has opened up immense new opportunities to police forces, providing secure communications channels and instant access to criminal data. Innovation must become our best ally.

Championing innovation

The Global Complex will go beyond the traditional reactive law enforcement model. This new centre will provide proactive research into new areas and latest training techniques. [emphasis mine] The aim is to give police around the world both the tools and capabilities to confront the increasingly ingenious and sophisticated challenges posed by criminals.

The four main components of the Global Complex are as follows:

Innovation, research and digital security

  • Boosting cybersecurity and countering cybercrime;
  • A forensic laboratory to support digital crime investigations;
  • Research to test protocols, tools and services and to analyse trends of cyber-attacks;
  • Development of practical solutions in collaboration with police, research laboratories, academia and the public and private sectors;
  • Addressing issues such as Internet security governance.

For some reason that business about extending past the traditional reactive approach  to become proactive reminded me of the movie, Minority Report (internet movie database),

In the future, criminals are caught before the crimes they commit, … [sic]

I can’t imagine getting more proactive than that.

Portable x-ray machine

It’s all about the adhesive tape according to the researchers at Tribogenics. Yes, they can create x-rays by unrolling scotch tape in a vacuum. Neal Ungerleider’s Dec. 8, 2011 article for Fast Company,

Tribogenics’ products rely on a counterintuitive discovery: X-rays are generated when unrolling Scotch tape in a vacuum. In a Nature article, UCLA researchers Carlos Camara, Juan Escobar, Jonathan Hird, and Seth Putterman detailed how Scotch tape can generate surprisingly large amounts of X-rays thanks to visible radiation generated by static electricity between two contacting surfaces. The research encountered challenges thanks to the fact that Scotch tape and generic brand adhesive tapes generated slightly different energy signatures; the composition of Scotch tape adhesive is a closely guarded 3M trade secret. …

Fox [Dale Fox, Tribogenics’ Chief Scientist] told Fast Company that “every other X-ray source in the world uses a high-voltage transformer connected to a vacuum tube. In contrast, we’ve harnessed the power of the immense voltages in static electricity to create tiny, low-cost, battery-operated X-ray sources for the first time in history. It’s like the jump the electronics industry took when it moved from vacuum tubes to transistors.” According to Fox, Tribogenics has already developed X-ray energy sources the size of a USB memory stick. While Tribogenics representatives declined to discuss pricing for upcoming products, the firm “very comfortably” promised that the cost would be less than 10% than that of any existing X-ray technology.

This technology can be traced back to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in 2007 when the agency funded the company’s first research, according to the company website. There have been other military funds as well, the US Army Telemedicine and Advanced Research Center in 2010.

The company describes itself this way (from the home page),

Tribogenics patented technology enables portable, compact x-ray solutions for applications in precious metal, mining, military, medical imaging, security and other industries. By miniaturizing X-ray sources and eliminating the need for high voltage, we can create products and solutions unattainable using existing X-ray technology. Tribogenics revolutionary X-ray solution emerged from DARPA and TATRC-funded initiatives at UCLA and was developed by prominent scientists.

Ungerleider notes that the company has not launched any commercial products yet but this one sure looks interesting,

… ultra-portable X-ray machines show the greatest potential for becoming a disruptive medical technology. Tribogenics’ methods have revolutionary ramifications for catheterized radiation therapy, which currently poses significant radiation risks for patients, doctors, and nurses. According to Fox, the company’s products eliminate the need for radioactive isotopes.

If you are interested in this technology, I would suggest reading Ungerleider’s article for additional details.

DARPA, innovation, passwords, people, and nanotherapeutics

There have been a few articles recently about (US) DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) that have roused my interest in how they view innovation and business. The first piece I’m mentioning is a request for a proposal (RFP) on nanotherapeutics in a Nov. 22, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

Through the U.S. Department of Defense’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, DARPA is currently soliciting research proposals to develop a platform capable of rapidly synthesizing therapeutic nanoparticles targeted against evolving and engineered pathogens (SB121-003: Rapidly Adaptable Nanotherapeutics pdf).

Here’s part of the problem they’re trying to solve,

Acquired resistance compromises our ability to fight emergent bacterial threats in injured warfighters and our military treatment facilities. For burn patients in particular, multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter calcoaceticus-baumannii complex (ABC) is a common cause of nosocomial infection, causing severe morbidity as well as longer hospital stays. Typically, antimicrobial resistant infections require a hospital stay three times as long and are in excess of four times as expensive. Therefore, new and innovative methods to control bacterial infection in the military health system are of critical importance.

Here’s what they want,

Recent advances in nanomaterials, genome sequencing, nucleotide synthesis, and bioinformatics could converge in nanotherapeutics with tailored sequence, specificity, and function that can overcome earlier challenges. Collectively, these core technologies could permit the development of an innovative pharmaceutical platform composed of nanoparticles with tethered small interfering RNA (siRNA) oligonucelotides whose sequence and objective can be reprogrammed “on-the-fly” to inhibit multiple targets within multiple classes of pathogens.

This topic is focused on the development of a revolutionary rapidly adaptable nanotherapeutic platform effective against evolving and engineered pathogens. The biocompatible materials used to fabricate the nanoparticle should optimize cellular targeting, intracellular concentration, target sequence affinity, resistance to nuclease, and knockdown of target genes. The platform should leverage state-of-the-art genomic sequencing and oligonucleotide synthesis technologies to permit rapid programmability against evolving biologic threats.

I have taken a look at the RFP and, predictably, there’s a militaristic element to the introduction,

DARPA’s mission is to prevent technological surprise for the United States and to create technological surprise for its adversaries. The DARPA SBIR [Small Business Innovation Research] and STTR [Small Business Technology Transfer] Programs are designed to provide small, high-tech businesses and academic institutions the opportunity to propose radical, innovative, high-risk approaches to address existing and emerging national security threats; thereby supporting DARPA’s overall strategy to bridge the gap between fundamental discoveries and the provision of new military capabilities. (p. 1)

In short, we should never be caught with our pants down but we would like to catch our enemies in that position.

I was surprised to find that the responders are expected to create a business plan that includes information about markets, customers, and sales (from the RFP),

5. Market/Customer Sets/Value Proposition – Describe the market and customer sets you propose to target, their size, and their key reasons they would consider procuring the technology.

• What is the current size of the broad market you plan to enter and the “niche” market opportunity you are addressing?

• What are the growth trends for the market and the key trends in the industry that you are planning to target?

• What features of your technology will allow you to provide a compelling value proposition?

DARPA – 3

• Have you validated the significance of these features and if not, how do you plan to validate?

6. Competition Assessment – Describe the competition in these markets/customer sets and your anticipated advantage (e.g., function, performance, price, quality, etc.)

7. Funding Requirements – List your targeted funding sources (e.g., federal, state and local, private (internal, loan, angel, venture capital, etc.) and your proposed plan and schedule to secure this funding.

Provide anticipated funding requirements both during and after Phase II required to:

• mature the technology

• as required, mature the manufacturing processes

• test and evaluate the technology

• receive required certifications

• secure patents, or other protections of intellectual property

• manufacture the technology to bring the technology to market for use in operational environments

• market/sell technology to targeted customers

8. Sales Projections – Provide a schedule that outlines your anticipated sales projections and indicate when you anticipate breaking even. (pp. 2-3)

I do understand that the US has a military-industrial complex which fuels much of the country’s economic growth; I just hadn’t expected that the military would care as much as they do (as per this RFP) about  their suppliers’ business plans and financial health. It makes sense. After all, you want your suppliers to stay in business as it’s expensive and time-consuming to find new ones.

I don’t know if this is a new philosophy for the agency but it does seem to fit nicely with the current director’s Regina Dugan’s approach. From a Q & A between Dugan and Adam L. Penenberg for an Oct. 19, 2011 article in Fast Company,

That seems a key part of your mission since you got here–that it’s not enough to be doing cutting-edge research.
When deputy director Kaigham Gabriel and I got here, we understood that DARPA is one of the gems of the nation. We had been asked to take good care of her. For me, part of that meant really understanding why DARPA has this half-century of success in innovation. And the first element in DARPA’s success is the power that lies at the intersection of basic science and application, in the so-called Pasteur’s Quadrant. Do you know Stokes’s theory of innovation?

Absolutely not.
Donald E. Stokes wrote a theory of innovation in the late 1990s. Till then, most people thought of innovation as a linear process. You do basic science; then you do more advanced science; then you do the application work; then you commercialize it. What Stokes suggested is that it doesn’t happen that way at all. He preferred to think of it in a quadrant fashion, defining one row as very deep science and the other as light science; the two columns were a low-application drive and a high-application drive. Pasteur’s Quadrant happens at the deep-science-, high-application-drive quadrant. That’s DARPA’s absolute power lane. It’s called Pasteur’s Quadrant because serious concerns about food safety drove his research.

A very recent example of how it works for us is the blast-gauge work that we do. Here’s a big problem: TBI, traumatic brain injuries. So the way we approach it at DARPA is to say, “Okay, let’s understand the basic science, the phenomenology. How is it that an encounter with a blast injures the brain? What levels of blasts cause what levels of injury? Is it the overpressure? Is it the acceleration? What is it?” A medical person from DARPA researched this and discovered it was the overpressure. And the DARPA physicist says, “We know how to measure that.” Together, they devise this little blast gauge that’s the size of a couple stacks of quarters [the gauge helps doctors measure a soldier’s blast-exposure level, enabling better assessment of injuries]. They develop it in one year, going through four iterations of the electronics. That’s fast.

All of this leads back to the idea of shipping products. The defense world is like a mini-society. It has to deploy to anyplace in the world on a moment’s notice, and it has to work in a life-or-death situation. That kind of focus, that kind of drive to ship an application, really does inspire greater genius. And the constancy of funding that comes with that–in good times or bad, whether this party or that party is in power–also helps inspire innovation.

Dugan later goes on to describe her first weeks at DARPA (she was sworn in July 2009) where she and the deputy director made it their mission to meet every single person on staff, all 217 of them.

Still on the theme of innovation and DARPA, there’s a Nov. 16, 2011 article, DARPA Is After Your Password, by Neal Ungerleider in Fast Company which has to be of huge interest to anyone who has passwords,

According to DARPA press materials, the agency is focusing on creating cutting-edge biometric identification products that can identify an individual user through their individual typing style. In the future, DARPA hopes smart computers will be able to verify account-holders’ identities through their typing speed, finger motions and quirks of movement.

Materials published by DARPA seem to indicate that researchers at the agency believe most contemporary account passwords–at least those adhering to best practices–are clunky, hard to remember, and ultimately insecure. According to program manager Richard Guidorizzi, “My house key will get you into my house, but the dog in my living room knows you’re not me. No amount of holding up my key and saying you’re me is going to convince my dog you’re who you say you are. My dog knows you don’t look like me, smell like me or act like me. What we want out of this program is to find those things that are unique to you, and not some single aspect of computer security that an adversary can use to compromise your system.”

Nobody likes entering passwords. Nobody likes remembering passwords. Nobody likes forgetting passwords. Creating a painless, easy, and secure password-replacement system will be a major cash cow for any firm that can effectively bring it to market. [emphasis mine]

My enthusiasm for a world without passwords aside, I do note the interest in having the technology come to market. I wonder if DARPA will accrue some financial benefit, i.e. a licensing agreement. I did quickly skim the RFP but was unable to confirm or disprove this notion.

British Library’s new iPad app

How do I love thee, British Library? Let me count the ways. (I know it’s a cheap move paraphrasing these lines from Elizabeth Barrett Browning but it’s a compromise since it can take me years to come up with the perfect poetic line by which time this news will be ancient history.)

The British Library has announced an iPad application (app) which will make over 60,000 19th century titles from their collection available through Apple’s iTunes store later this summer. At this point, there are approximately 1000 titles available in the app they are calling the 19th Century Historical Collection. Neal Ungerleider on the Fast Company website writes in his June 15, 2011 article,

The British Library is launching a new library-in-an-iPad application that gives tablet users access to tens of thousands of 19th-century books in their original form. The app, called the 19th Century Historical Collection, is taking a notably different tack to putting classic literature online than rivals such as the Kindle platform: Antiquarian books viewed through the British Library application will come in their original form–complete with illustrations, typefaces, pull-out maps and even the occasional paper wear.

This project follows from the British Library’s previous mobile app project, Treasures. Here’s a video about that one,

Getting back to the most recent project the 19th Century Historical Collection (from the British Library June 7, 2011 news release),

The British Library 19th Century Historical Collection App forms a treasure trove of classics and lesser known titles in fields ranging from travel writing and natural history to fiction and philosophy. The app represents the latest landmark in the British Library’s progress towards its long-term vision of making more of its historic collections available to many more users through innovative technology. [emphasis mine]

I’m happy to see that the staff at the British Library remain open to ideas and experimentation. As I noted in my July 29, 2010 posting (Love letter to the British Library) about copyright, I’ve been having an affair with the British Library since 2000. Here’s an excerpt from that posting which relates directly to these latest initiatives,

Dame Lynne Brindley, the Chief Executive Officer for the British Library had this to say in her introduction to the [British Library’s] paper [Driving UK Research — Is copyright a help or a hindrance?],

There is a supreme irony that just as technology is allowing greater access to books and other creative works than ever before for education and research, new restrictions threaten to lock away digital content in a way we would never countenance for printed material.

Let’s not wake up in five years’ time and realise we have unwittingly lost a fundamental building block for innovation, education and research in the UK. Who is protecting the public interest in the digital world? We need to redefine copyright in the digital age and find a balance to benefit creators, educators, researchers, the creative industries – and the knowledge economy. (p. 3)

In this case, the action matches what’s been said. Bravo!

ETA June 21, 2011: The British Library has recently made a deal with Google to digitize 250,000 texts. All of the books are in the public domain. You can read more about the project/deal in Kit Eaton’s June 20, 2011 article for Fast Company, Pulp, Non-Fiction: On The British Library’s Book-Digitizing Deal With Google. From the article,

Google’s got several other high-profile deals with other libraries, but the British Library deal is significant because the BL is the second biggest library in the world, after the Library of Congress (if you’re counting books, rather than periodicals). There are 14 million books among 150 million texts in a variety of formats and three million are added every year–because the BL is a legal deposit library, so it gets a copy of all books produced in the U.K. and Ireland, including many books from overseas that are published in Britain.

The Library’s chief executive Dame Lynne Brindley has commented on the new deal, highlighting the original mission of the Library to make knowledge accessible to everyone–the Google deal is “building on this proud tradition.” Since anyone with a browser can now access the material for free from anywhere in the world, the deal sets an important precedent that may be expanded in the future.

Making 60,000 texts immediately readable on your iPad is one thing, and adding another 250,000 is another. The British Library is sending a big signal out about historic texts, and it could subtly change how you think about books. For one thing, student’s essays are going to be peppered with even more esoteric quotes from obscure publications as they ill-advisedly Google their way through writing term papers. It also boosts Google’s standing in the “free” books stakes compared to competitors like Amazon, and it does imply that in the future even more of the 150 million texts in the British Library may make it online.

Interesting development!

 

Phylo and crowdsourcing science by Canadian researchers

Alex Kawrykow and Gary Roumanis from McGill University (Montréal, Québec) have launched Phylo, a genetics game that anyone can play but is actually genetic research. From the article by Neal Ungerleider at the Fast Company website,

The new project, Phylo, was launched by a team at Montreal’s McGill University on November 29. Players are allowed to recognize and sort human genetic code that’s displayed in a Tetris-like format. Phylo, which runs in Flash, allows users to parse random genetic codes or to tackle DNA patterns related to real diseases. In a random game, a user found himself assigned to DNA portions linked to exudative vitreoretinopathy 4 and vesicoureteral reflux 2.

Players choose from a variety of categories such as digestive system diseases, heart diseases, brain diseases and cancer. All the DNA portions in the game are linked to different diseases. Once completed, they are analyzed and stored in a database; McGill intends to use players’ results in the game to optimize future genetic research.

This reminds me of Foldit (mentioned in my Aug. 6, 2010 posting) another multiplayer online biology-type game; that time the focus was protein folding. As Ungerleider notes in his article, gaming is being used in education, advertising, and media. I’ll add this,  it’s also being used for military training.

I was interested to note that the McGill game was made possible by these agencies,

* Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
* McGill School of Computer Science
* McGill Centre for Bioinformatics
* McGill Computational Structural Biology Group

On a side note, there’s another biology-type game called Phylo, it’s a trading card game designed by David Ng, a professor at the University of British Columbia. From the Phylo, trade card game About page,

What is this phylo thing? (Some interesting but relatively specific FAQs here)

Well, it’s an online initiative aimed at creating a Pokemon card type resource but with real creatures on display in full “artistic” wonder. Not only that – but we plan to have the scientific community weigh in to determine the content on such cards, as well as folks who love gaming to try and design interesting ways to use the cards. Then to top it all off, members of the teacher community will participate to see whether these cards have educational merit. Best of all, the hope is that this will all occur in a non-commercial-open-access-open-source-because-basically-this-is-good-for-you-your-children-and-your-planet sort of way.

The Phylo, trading card game is in Beta (for those not familiar with the term beta, it means the game is still being tested, so there may be ‘bugs’).

It’s nice to be able to report on some innovative Canadian crowdsourcing science.