Getting a jump on the year end-lists for 2009, Time has declared its Best Inventions of the Year. Some are impressive, some are scary, and many are things whose inclusion requires an inventive stretch of the definition of the word “invention.”
Before we get to that, only two of the inventions listed have local connections — an electric eye developed at MIT, and an electric microbe developed at UMass Amherst. Does Time know how many things get invented around here? I don’t either, but it’s a lot. I’m not sure how many would make the top 50 for a given year, but I’d imagine more than two. Have these people not seen the Happiness Hat? I was at MIT earlier this year and a robot made me ice cream in 30 seconds. That doesn’t rate?
Meanwhile, among the winners were: a paper airplane, a high-school football offense, and a method to Tweet by thought. All impressive, and they round out a 50-click editorial feature nicely, but cooler than SixthSense? One is a decision not to do something, one is a paper airplane, and one is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.
On the downside, the gas mask bra that won at the Ig Nobel awards a few months back was chosen as one of the five worst inventions of the year.
Fu is a computer science professor doing research on preventing implanted medical devices from being hacked. At the 2008 Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas, Fu and his team of researchers showed it was possible to get information such as Social Security numbers and medical diagnoses from implanted devices. They also showed that by impersonating the computer a defibrillator communicates with and wirelessly changing the settings, a hacker could send a fatal shock to a patient’s heart.
At the time, MHT talked to Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center researcher William Maisel, a member of the research team, about the project. In the video above, Fu explains his research at another hacker conference, Black Hat 2008.
Other New Englanders selected:
José Gómez-Márquez, director of MIT’s Innovations in International Health
MIT, Stanford and the Technical University of Munich are working together to develop the Robot Operating System, an open-source OS that could help robots and roboticists collaborate, according to New Scientist:
This desire has its roots in frustration, says Brian Gerkey of the robotics research firm Willow Garage in Menlo Park, California. “People reinvent the wheel over and over and over, doing things that are not at all central to what they’re trying to do.”
For example, if someone is studying object recognition, they want to design better object-recognition algorithms, not write code to control the robot’s wheels. “You know that those things have been done before, probably better,” says Gerkey. But without a common OS, sharing code is nearly impossible.
And from the comments, a possible down side:
Lets hope its 100% virus proof.
Hacked robots could be a problem well before the self aware ones decide to “KILL ALL HUMANS!”
The article is populated by a cast of characters from the New England robotics scene — MIT, UMass Amherst and DigitRobotics’ UBot, Brown researcher Chad Jenkins, and Barrett Technology CEO William Townsend and the company’s WAM arm.
After the jump, watch video of the UBot at the UMass Amherst robotics lab last summer. (more…)
Staff writer Jackie Noblett dropped by New England Business Day to talk about using pavement as an energy source. Researchers at UMass Amherst and WPI, along with Acton-based materials company Novotech, are developing technology that could take heat captured by asphalt and use it to generate hot water or steam, which could in turn be used to generate power.
The technology could also help cool cities down, which would be nice to have later on this afternoon.
The Burlington-based maker of mobile field administration software for the architecture, engineering and construction agencies announced in 2007 that it had closed a $6 million Series A. The second close on that fund brings Vela Systems’ Series A to $10.5 million, and its total funding to at least $11.9 million – including a $1.4 million angel round closed in 2006.
The two-year old Chelmsford company is developing plastic polymers that are tough and have high melting points that can be used as flame retardant additives. FRX officials said these materials do not include halogens like traditional flame retardants, making them safer for the environment. The materials can also be used as stand-alone plastics.
Two new sites — Happn.in, and Venturefizz.com, — are offering themselves up as hubs of all things Boston. One is tracking Beantown’s Twitter memes; the other is mapping the Bay State’s high-tech economy by aggregating job postings, company profiles, news feeds and influential tech blogs in one place. (more…)
Accucom Corp. launched a new business model this week, hoping to provide e-commerce retailers with an easier way to figure out just who they are dealing with.
Until now, the Boston-based personal data clearinghouse has dealt mostly with private eyes, curious neighbors and protective fathers-in-law eager to pry into an individual’s background using its network of public and private sources.
MassTLC announced finalists in the categories of private sector company, public sector organization, CEO, innovator and CIO of the year. The next batch of finalists — for the categories of emerging innovative company, CTO, investor and emerging executive of the year — will be announced July 16. Winners will be announced November 5.
Federal regulators have taken Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. to task over an advertisement for the company’s multiple-myeloma drug Velcade, calling the promotion “false or misleading because it overstates” the product’s efficacy.
The promotional materials in question were mailed to doctors ahead of the 2008 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. Typically, such so-called “reminder labeling” is not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Spire Corp., the Bedford-based solar panel equipment maker, has expanded its existing line of credit to $8 million with Silicon Valley Bank. The revolving credit facility adds $5 million of export-import credit facility to the company’s existing $3 million credit.
Officials at the solar equipment manufacturer said the loan will be used to add liquidity and grow the company.
The 15 grants range in size from $15,000 to $170,000, and include projects in biofuels research, green computing, personalized cancer therapy, green jobs and entrepreneurship.
UMass Amherst chemical engineering professor George Huber will explain his “Grassoline” research — gasoline and diesel fuel made from plants — to congressional staffers at a National Science Foundation event in Washington tomorrow.
Last year, Huber won a UMass commercialization grant for development of a prototype reactor to demonstrate green gasoline production on a large scale. He has since spun a biofuel startup — Anellotech Inc. – out of the school’s Commercial Ventures & Intellectual Property Technology Development Fund. Anellotech is being incubated under the Mass Technology Transfer Center’s Virtual Incubator program.
Huber also articulates his Grassoline vision in the latest Scientific American.
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