Category: innovation

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A Teenage Girl Invented a Simple and Innovative Way to Get Rid of Your Car’s Blind Spots

The creative spirit and innovation of young people is so refreshing! Sometimes, they have the best ideas because they’re thinking forward while a lot of us older folks are set in our ways. In other words, when a young person has an idea about something, listen up, because it might turn out to be a game-changer.

That’s what happened with a 14-year-old named Alaina Gassler, who came up with a project called “Improving Automobile Safety by Removing Blind Spots” for the Broadcom MASTERS competition, which features science and engineering projects from middle schoolers.

Gassler built the system with a webcam, a projector, and other 3D-printed materials, and together it all works to fill in the space that a car’s frame blocks from drivers’ view.

Gassler hails from West Grove, Pennsylvania, and she took first place in the competition and won the $25,000 Samueli Foundation Prize. Her invention works like this: she mounted a webcam outside the passenger side of the car, which steams a live video onto the inside pillar of the passenger side from a projector attached to the sunroof above the driver’s seat.

Gassler also resurfaced the interior frame with a retro reflective fabric to make the projection clear. She said the material “only reflects light back to the light source, which is the projector in this case. Since the driver’s eyes are next to the projector, the driver can see a crisp, clear image, and the passengers only see a black piece of fabric.”

Take a look at the video below to see it in action.

This is quite impressive, I must say. Great work, Ms. Gassler, and we’ll be looking for more work from you in the future.

These kids today, I’ll tell ya…

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After Almost Losing His Mother, This Teen Invented a Bra That Can Detect Breast Cancer Early

I bet we’ll be hearing from this young man for many years.

After Julián Ríos Cantú watched his mother endure two bouts with breast cancer, the 18-year-old from Mexico decided he wanted to help out other women who might not have access to affordable healthcare.

Posted by Julián Ríos Cantú on Monday, November 20, 2017

Cantú’s mother ended up having a mastectomy. Standard screenings missed the lumps in his mother’s breasts because her high breast density obscured the growths. Cantú said, “At that moment, I realized that if that was the case for a woman with private insurance and a prevention mindset, then for most women in developing countries, like Mexico where we’re from, the outcome could’ve not been a mastectomy but death.”

Cantú took matters into his own hands, inventing Eva, a “bio-sensing bra insert” that uses thermal sensing and artificial intelligence to create a thermal map of women’s breasts. Abnormal temperatures and tumor growth are related, and an Eva insert can help women detect cancerous growths. It also helps with the self-examination process.

As things stand today, patients don’t have a lot of options for early detection of breast cancer. If you’re under 45, you can’t receive mammograms due to concerns about exposure to radiation. Even if you’re over that age, mammograms can be very expensive.

The Eva technology does not emit any radiation, and women of all ages can wear the insert.

The company has performed clinical trials on more than 2,000 women in Mexico. Eva’s website says,

“Eva’s technology is approved by the FDA as an adjunct method for breast cancer detection in section 884.2980 Teletermographic Systems. Similarly, Eva Clinic operates under the highest ethical standards, strictly following the Official Mexican Standard NOM-041-SSA2-2011, for the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, control, and surveillance of breast cancer.”

The product is now available for use at certified Eva clinics, but who knows? Maybe someday it’ll be in our houses, helping women detect breast cancer even earlier.

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