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Here a a couple of interesting links.

1. Scientists at NIST show DNA wrapped SWCNT of 200nm or less enter ex-vitro lung cells where longer ones don’t.  Not sure if this is like saying 200nm DNA stands enter lung cells, while longer DNA stands don’t?  Another confusion in the the debate on the safety of “nanomaterials”.  How does your company deal with  EHS and nanotubes?
2. I had a long drive this past weekend and was listening up on Phil McKinney’s Killer Innovations Podcasts from 2006.  This one on “Listening Skills and Rules of Future Forecasting”  was one that I enjoyed.
3. Ditto on the Podcast  “Observation Skills and Contradictions”  deals with a quick exercise for improving observation and the most concise and true-ringing explanation of TRIZ I have seen anywhere.
4. So how do you really test how building behave in an earthquake?  You build one on top of a giant shaker table and deck it out with sensors.  Pretty Amazing.
5. Inkblot Earth has a post about The first person killed by a robot.   Not the science fiction of Asimov, but  interesting.
6. Endless Innovation has a post from Design Sojourn about 7 ways to unleash your creativity  originally from IDEO.   (three level link action).  Those IDEO guys are great,  I got to meet a few through work.
7. Again with IDEO,  The 10 Faces of Innovation changed my outlook on how people work and what drives them.

I was reading my copy of NASA Techbriefs this morning and came across this article describing some work by Harish Manohara and Michael Bronkowski of Caltech for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. What really caught my attention was the image below (click to enlarge).

The image shows as array of Bundles of Carbon Nanotubes grown by CVD onto a substrate. Each of the pillars is a mass of carbon nanotubes. The inset image shows a close-up of one of the tips of the pillars. The original Article is here. An excerpt from which describes how the pillars were manufactured.

In preparation for the experiments, planar arrays of bundles of carbon nanotubes having various bundle diameters, bundle heights, and bundle spacings were fabricated. The fabrication process can be summarized as follows: Electron-beam lithography was used to form planar arrays of iron dots having various thicknesses and having diameters and inter-dot spacings corresponding to the desired diameters and spacings of the carbon-nanotube bundles. The dots served as catalysts for the growth of carbon nanotubes: Bundles of multi-walled 20-nm-diameter carbon nanotubes were grown on the iron dots by chemical vapor deposition. The average height of the bundles was 70 ± 2?m. The heights of the bundles were found to depend on the thicknesses of the iron dots. The tallest bundles (112 ?m high) were found on iron dots 8 ?m thick.

This work is targeted at constructing better field emission sources. The reasearches were looking to (1) understand the relationship between nanotube bundle size and spacing while also probing (2) whether bundles of nanotubes are more rubost to operation than single nanotubes.

I saw this article in my mailbox this morning:

“The Japan Water Agency and the Monohakobi Technology Institute (MTI) are undertaking joint sea trials in which water transportation sacks filled with fresh water will be towed by a tugboat. The material used for the sacks is Kuraray’s VECTRAN polyarylate superfiber. “

MTI has built a giant ballon/sack that measures 44 meters long, 10 meters wide and 4 meters high, with a volume of approximately 1,000 cubic meters. The sacks are made from a compound material comprising VECTRAN and urethane resin. The concept is that in a disaster situation, you can unroll this sack, fill it full of water and quickly deploy it by towing it behind a boat to there it is needed.

I was reading this and could not get the image of a CamelBack for the sea. It seems to me that is it a pretty interesting concept and hopefully can be developed to eventually help in disaster situations. The bigger question is whether or not this means of transporting water is cost effective for water re-distribution from those areas that have it to more arid regions? Another interesting find when looking up the Kuraray website was some of the other uses of Vectran fiber: Fishing Line, Air Ship Bladders, protective nets, anti-cut gloves, lifting straps, and hose and belt reinforcement.

<image from Kuraray website http://www.kuraray.co.jp/en/release/2007/070226.html>