David C. Chavern: Ideas May Strike Like Lightning, but Innovation Must Be Cultivated
At the national level, we can and must do more to foster innovation. It will keep our economy humming, our businesses competitive and hiring, our manufacturers producing, our standard of living rising and our wages high.
There are five essential ingredients for innovation:
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Perspectives
How Big Data Can Help Contain Ebola — Q&A with Joy Alamgir
Microscopic 'Walkers' Find Their Way Across Cell Surfaces
Technology could provide a way to deliver probes or drugs to cell structures without outside guidance.
Nature has developed a wide variety of methods for guiding particular cells, enzymes, and molecules to specific structures inside the body: White blood cells can find their way to the site of an infection, while scar-forming cells migrate to the site of a wound. But finding ways of guiding artificial materials within the body has proven more difficult.
Perspectives
Tackling Brain Injuries — Q&A with the NFL’s Jeff Miller
Perspectives
Why Advanced Materials are Drivers for the Future Economy — Q&A with Angela Belcher
Quieting the Crickets: Field Tests Teach Scientists New Debugging Tricks
“Crickets”, says Dominic von Terzi, “You can’t imagine the noise they make.” He’s talking about an unexpected hurdle his team from GE’s European Research Center in Munich ran into while looking for ways to make wind farms work better and quieter.
Von Terzi leads a team of researchers from the center’s Aerodynamics & Acoustics Laboratory. They recently spent two weeks using sophisticated algorithms and software to precisely measure the noise produced by a Kansas wind farm. “Actually the loudest noise measured from this farm came from the crickets,” von Terzi says.
Sun-Powered Desalination for Villages in India
Off-grid Indian communities with salty groundwater could get potable water through a proposed solar technique.
Around the world, there is more salty groundwater than fresh, drinkable groundwater. For example, 60 percent of India is underlain by salty water — and much of that area is not served by an electric grid that could run conventional reverse-osmosis desalination plants.
Nadeem Ishaque: Imaging the Brain in Real-Time
Janet Crawford: Innovation’s Neural Paradox
