Tag Archive: Innovation of the Year

Aircarbon by Newlight Technologies

According to Popular Science Magazine, “Newlight’s first commercial plant, in California, captures methane generated by a dairy farm’s waste lagoon and transports it to a bioreactor. There, enzymes combine the gas with air to form a polymer. The resulting plastic, called AirCarbon, performs identically to most oil-based plastics but costs less—creating a market-­driven solution to global warming.”

Related Statistic:  “Humans produce 660 billion pounds of plastic a year, and the manufacturing process creates three times as much carbon dioxide by weight as actual plastic.”  — Popular Science Magazine

Honourable mention:  

Motiv Electric Powertrain Control System: This modular plug-and-play technology power­train can be built into vehicles from existing diesel-truck manu­facturers.

Related Statistic:  “…an electric garbage truck has been running a 60-mile route through Chicago, offsetting 2,688 gallons of diesel and 23 tons of carbon dioxide a year.” — Popular Science Magazine

 Aqueous Hybrid Ion (AHI) battery:   According to Popular Science Magazine this battery “…relies on a salt water–based electrolyte to carry the charge. It’s nontoxic, low-cost, and modular, and it can’t overheat. It has a long life cycle and a high capacity. And it can be scaled for home use or the grid. In other words, it’s basically everything today’s batteries are not.”

Solar Roadways:  There is still a long road ahead before we see where this one will take us, but provided it also proves to be a rainy day friend this one could have immeasurable value.

See more info on these and other innovations that will shape the future at BestofWhat’sNew@Popsci.

The GenShock Shock Absorber

Some other promising new inventions were unveiled but this is perhaps the one that will impact most ordinary people.  This shock absorber will convert your bumpy ride into electricity.  If your roads are anything like mine, this just might be the precursor to perpetual motion or, at the very least, the free ride we have all been waiting for.

I found nothing, but given as it [nothing] cannot be manufactured in China, I guess that’s something of an improvement.

Taxes in Greece 

Although your average Greek has yet to embrace this innovation like they might an Apple iPhone for every pocket or a Lamborghini in every garage, this remains the single most innovative concept of the year 2011 and just might be crucial in the world’s ability to finally shed its yoke of slavery to the (not as ancient as we thought) Greek empire.

The AquaPro Holland Groasis Waterboxx

The Groasis Waterboxx is an irrigation-free plant incubator that is designed to make the world’s arid and semi-arid lands fertile again. It’s nothing more than an exceptionally well-designed bucket. Place the tub around a freshly planted seedling, and fill the evaporation-proof basin—just once—with four gallons of water. The Waterboxx does the rest. At night, its top cools faster than the air, collecting condensation to supplement those initial gallons. The tub drips about three tablespoons of water a day into the soil, sustaining the plant while encouraging its roots to grow deeper in search of more water. Once the plant reaches the moist soil layer, usually after a year, the farmer lifts the box off the plant and reuses it on the next sapling. Each Waterboxx is expected to last 10 years, and, for about a buck or two per tree grown, is cheap enough to use in poor nations.  In tests in the Sahara, 88 percent of Waterboxx-sheltered trees survived, versus 10 percent of trees with traditional cultivation.

 The Lung Flute

There was lots of ink in the area of breakthroughs (with potential) of the green kind that I can only pretend to understand (when I am pickled), but I have to give the nod this year to a quasi-medicinal invention that has an immediate and affordable household application.  A couple of puffs on the Lung Flute promise to clear the lungs of all of that pesky mucus that is quite often the most annoying part of your common cold and countless other more chronic and debilitating conditions.

Honourable mention: X-Flex a new, blast proof wallpaper that is possibly stronger than the wall it is designed to protect.  Unfortunately, given the nature of things today, I suspect this might be the most game-ready and immediate of all of the potential life saving innovations that were introduced in 2009.

Canadian Runner Up: The Province of Ontario announces that it will begin teaching students in Grades 4 through 12 the basics of managing their money.

A hospital gown designed to actually cover your ass.

Bill Kirkland of Vernon B.C. has designed a new-wrap around hospital gown that actually covers your butt.  I am guessing the moon is the limit for what this will mean to the dignity of man.

Runner Up:   A “Pay as you go” hospital funding model piloted in four British Columbia Hospitals improves their levels of service and reduces wait times by 25%.

The current nationwide model where hospitals are given their funding up front introduces the mindset, real or implied that each new patient that comes along is just using up their funding.  Under the new model Hospitals are paid per procedure performed with bonuses for speedy care – e.g. if a broken bone is set in less than four hours, the hospital will receive an extra $100.

Neurofeedback helmets for use with the various mainstream game consoles. 

Smartbrain Technologies, Emotiv Systems and NeuroSky are three young companies in a vanguard that is adapting a relatively old concept to transport the measurement of brain waves (neurofeedback) from the medical sphere into the realm of computer games.  The technology is already getting a lot of attention from the Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) community (and that wholly accidental pun/oxymoron speaks volumes) as well as memory clinics for executives and seniors. Lynda Thompson, director of the ADD Centre and Biofeedback Institute in Mississauga, Ont. explains that children have been told to “pay attention” their entire lives without actually knowing what that means.  In one study she conducted using neurofeedback on 111 ADD subjects, their IQ’s climbed an average of 12 points, poor readers advanced four grade levels and, most importantly, 79% of the Ritalin users stopped medication completely. Bottom line: Anything that educates the kids and lets them have fun in the process while, at the same time, reducing dependency on drugs can’t be bad and deserves my vote for innovation of the year.

British Columbia and Alberta sign an agreement to eliminate inter-provincial barriers to trade at a time when Canada’s productivity in relation to the rest of the world continues to fall.  Perhaps if more provinces follow their lead, productivity within Canada will actually achieve the unprecedented levels that are required to recapture ground lost on the world stage (without selling out our country to the world at large).