As always, 1 Invention Central is committed to keeping you
up-to-date on the news and happenings affecting inventors everywhere. So whether it’s interviews with interesting inventors, the latest technological advances, patent law updates or stories of new product success, you’ll find it here.

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New Process Turns Corn into Plastic
Adapted from an article by Terry Perkins for Office.com

June 20, 2000 -U.S. farmers produced almost 10 billion bushels of corn in 1998 – more than 40 percent of the world’s total corn crop. That banner production has resulted in a large surplus, and researchers are now investigating a variety of alternative uses for it. One is a new manufacturing process called NatureWorks, developed by Cargill Dow Polymers, a joint venture of Cargill Inc. and Dow Chemical Co.

“This process isn’t something we just stumbled upon,” explains Michael O’Brien, of Cargill Dow. “Our objective starting 10 years ago was to find alternative uses for corn that would also fit the business parameters we knew we needed to be successful. Through our research into polylactide, or PLA, and with the considerable help of the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), the U.S. Grains Council (USGC), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Energy (DOE), we were able to reach that goal.”

PLA is a plastic polymer first produced in 1932. Over the years it has been used to make a variety of medical devices, including sutures and implants. But PLA is extremely expensive to manufacture, making its range of commercial applications very limited.

The NatureWorks process ‘harvests’ carbon that plants like corn remove from the air and store in starches, such as the plant sugar dextrose. The Dow Cargill research team found a way to reduce the manufacturing cost of PLA by using corn dextrose as a raw element, and employing a patented production process that fine-tuned the crystalline structure of PLA to expand its possible uses.

Those uses include packaging for everything from snack foods, coffee, milk, yogurt, cereal and candy to decorative wrapping that offers an alternative to cellophane. PLA can also be easily converted into a number of different fiber forms that offer excellent resiliency, feel and durability – making it ideal for use in active and sports wear as well as in blends with natural fibers such as cotton, wool and silk.

Says Lee Klein, president-elect of the National Corn Growers Association, “The development of a manufacturing plant that can make commercially available plastic and fibers out of an agricultural crop is a significant milestone for U.S. farmers.”

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Building Better Engines Through Natural Selection
Source: University Of Wisconsin-Madison (http://www.wisc.edu/)

MADISON, 6/21/2000 – Could Charles Darwin’s rules of evolution help engineers design high-performance engines of the future?

Computer models developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by Peter Senecal, a post-doctorate engineer, are doing just that by using genetic algorithms to simultaneously increase fuel efficiency and reduce pollution. The computer models help sort through literally billions of combinations of factors that determine engine performance – a task too enormous for conventional computer simulations.

The most important advance is in improving pollution emissions without sacrificing fuel efficiency, and vice versa. Normally, engine designers who concentrate on solving one problem end up with major tradeoffs in the other. However, Senecal’s results have been dramatic. Using a Silicon Graphics supercomputer, the engineer created a diesel engine design that reduces nitric oxide emissions by three-fold and soot emissions by 50 percent over the best available technology. At the same time, the model reduced fuel consumption by 15 percent.

His work is turning heads in the engine manufacturing industry, which faces major new federal pollution control mandates by the year 2002. Caterpillar Inc., a Peoria-based manufacturer of diesel engines for trucks and heavy equipment, is funding Senecal’s post-doctorate work that will focus on improving the geometry of engines.

Senecal says genetic algorithms have been developed in recent years for other engineering challenges, such as designing bridges and airplane wings. “I kind of stumbled onto this in the literature, and wasn’t sure if it would work for something as complex as engine design,” he says.

Here’s how it works: Senecal begins with five “individuals,” which are defined as one distinct set of six basic engine performance parameters. Four of the individuals are randomly selected and the fifth is the baseline, or best known set of parameters. Next, a computer model is used to weed out the best parameters of the first group. The two fittest “parents” are then allowed to “reproduce” and a new generation is formed, complete with “mutations” that represent marked improvements over the previous generation. The process is continued through successive generations until the computer identifies the most “fit” member of the group.

Mechanical engineering Professor Rolf Reitz, Senecal’s Ph.D. thesis advisor, says the computer model is extremely versatile and could be used for all types of engines. While current work focuses on questions like fuel injection and air intake, studies of engine hardware are just beginning. Reitz says the typical engine piston, for example, has not been fundamentally improved upon for decades. Yet engineers have no idea whether a different geometry could produce much better engines. If engine manufacturers want a more powerful engine, or a more durable engine, one can program the genetic model to find those traits, too.

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New Tool Gives Scientists Inside Look At Materials
Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (http://www.ornl.gov)

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Feb. 14, 2000 – When your computer crashes, it could be because of a failure in the tiny metal wires that connect parts of the integrated circuits inside, but until now, it’s been difficult to know for sure.

Thanks to researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), scientists have a powerful new tool to study materials made up of small disoriented crystal blocks called grains. "The new X-ray crystal microscope allows us to see the three-dimensional crystal structure of most materials for the first time," said Gene Ice of the Metals &Ceramics Division.

Existing methods such as electron microscopy provide high resolution for thin, two-dimensional samples, but simply cannot address the need for three-dimensional information on the scale of tens of microns. In the case of integrated circuits, researchers use the X-ray crystal microscope to make measurements of metal interconnects as the chip is processing signals. It can study how the shape, orientation and stresses in the individual interconnect grains influence the tendency to failure.

The approach relies on three innovations, the first using special thin-film mirrors for better focusing of X-rays, the second makes use of the Laue diffraction technique, a method for determining crystal orientation, and the third was the development of automatic indexing software that separates the overlapping Laue patterns from the simultaneously illuminated grains of the sample.

Ultimately, this work, which has been published in a number of technical journals, including the Journal of Applied Physics (November 1999), gives scientists a tool to help develop better materials to be used in computers, automobiles, medical equipment and the generation and transmission of electricity. ORNL is a DOE research facility managed by the Lockheed-Martin Energy Research Corporation.

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In 1803, when President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis into the wilderness of the newly purchased Louisiana Territory, he told the explorer to watch out for mammoths. Jefferson thought the great beasts might still be at large somewhere along the unexplored frontier.

An international team of scientists is working in Siberia to accomplish what Jefferson only imagined: the revival of the Siberian mammoth. The project, led by Bernard Buigues of France, has cut a well-preserved specimen of a Siberian mammoth from the permafrost on the Taimyr Peninsula and transported it to a controlled environment in the city of Khatanga about 200 miles away.

Larry Agenbroad, a paleontologist at Northern Arizona University and the only American member of the team, said experiments on the mammoth will begin in April. DNA extracted from the Jarkov mammoth will be inserted into the egg of an Asian elephant stripped of its elephant genes. If successful, the project will produce an animal that is 99.5 percent mammoth and 0.5 percent elephant.

Many scientists are skeptical about a successful cloning. Degradation of the mammoth’s DNA has probably occurred in the 23,000 years since the animal died, they speculate. Agenbroad says the DNA has not yet been sampled.

Russell Graham, curator and head of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the Denver Museum of Natural History, is one of the country’s leading experts on mammoths. While he doesn’t think a revival of mammoths is likely, he says that a living mammoth would answer some important scientific questions.

The reasons for the extinction of the mammoth are hotly debated in paleontology circles. One school of thought, led by Paul Martin of the University of Arizona, maintains that human overhunting wiped out the mammoths. Another theory blames disease for their demise. Graham is a proponent of a third hypothesis: that climate change 12,000 years ago resulted in a change in plant communities on which the mammoths relied.

Most scientific authorities believe successful cloning is unlikely. Agenbroad defends the effort. "I’ve had laboratories tell me that if they can get DNA there’s no problem," he said. "Some of the people who say it’s impossible would have said it was impossible to clone a sheep 10 years ago too."

"I don’t think it has any chance of working," said Alex Greenwood of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. "When they cloned Dolly the sheep, they took live cells that they cultured from the donor. And they took the nucleus from that donor and put it into an egg that had no nucleus. That new nucleus was able to guide genesis of a new individual sheep with identical genetics of the donor."

"In any ancient animals – even modern animals that have been freshly killed – the DNA starts to decay. It’s not structured anymore … It seems highly unlikely to me that you can take this fragment of DNA, which is also damaged and create a clone," said Greenwood.

The Discovery Channel will present a program about the Jarkov mammoth project at 8 p.m. ET March 12.

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Cambridge, MA., Jan. 21, 2000 – Ask Jeeves Inc., the internet search engine that permits users to ask questions in plain English, is being sued by two artificial intelligence experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

Patrick Winston and Boris Katz, claim the popular search engine is based on software that they patented in 1994 and 1995. Further, their suit claims, Ask Jeeves has been aware that it was violating those patents since February of 1999 but has continued to use the software anyway.

No ruling has yet been made in the case, but the suit alleges that California-based Ask Jeeves Inc. and its offshoot site for children, AJKids, wrongly appropriated technology that allows users to ask questions in sentence form, rather than typing in keywords.

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West Palm Beach, FL , Jan. 10, 2000 – Applied Digital Solutions, Inc., a business-to-business e-commerce solution provider, announced that it is has acquired the rights to the world’s first digital device implantable in humans. Known as "digital angel", the GPS transceiver implant has applications ranging from business security to law enforcement to medicine.

The Digital Angel® transceiver can be implanted just under the skin or hidden inconspicuously on or within valuable personal belongings or works of art. When implanted in the human body, the transceiver is powered electro-mechanically through the movement of muscles. It can be activated either by the “wearer” or by a remote monitoring facility. The device can also monitor certain biological functions of the body – such as heart rate – and send a distress signal to the monitoring facility when it detects a medical emergency.

ADS acquired the right to develop the product or to sublicense development of specific applications to other entities. Chairman and CEO, Richard J. Sullivan, projected that the multi-purpose technology would enable ADS to tap into a huge global marketplace, through licensing and various other commercial arrangements, with an estimated value in excess of $100 billion.

United States Patent Number 5,629,678 was granted on May 13, 1997 for a "personal tracking and recovery system.” ADS is actively seeking joint venture partners to develop and market this technology. They expect to produce a prototype of the device by the end of 2000.

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12/99

FT. LAUDERDALE, FL – Certainly not complete (actually, not even close), the following list is, nonetheless, somewhat representative of the evolution of innovation throughout the 20th Century. Key social movements and historical developments often create, or are created by, significant inventions and discoveries. So just scroll and enjoy; and perhaps remember where you were when…

We have missed many, especially the profoundly life-changing inventions of the last decade. It is hard, at this point in time, to even project, let alone understand, the collective impact that faxes, voice mail, personal computers and the Internet will have on our civilization and our way of life over the next hundred years.

But not to worry. We’ll review the most important and lasting of those developments when we repeat this list in the year 2099.

9/99

TAMPA, Fl – Don’t think that confidential nondisclosure agreement is worth much? You’ll never convince one happy inventor of that. With a recent court award of $21.6 million for interest and punitive damages, on top of the $27 million award a jury granted him earlier this year, one Tampa, Florida resident has now tallied close to $50 million.

After signing a confidential nondisclosure agreement, officials at Perdue Farms told him they weren’t interested in his method to preserve roasted chicken, similar to the boil in-the-bag process used for certain pre-cooked vegetables. But when Perdue began marketing a product using the disputed process, it was obvious that they had no intention of honoring the agreement.

The inventor filed suit in 1997. His attorney argued that Perdue not only stole the process, but that they attempted to cover up their theft as well. A jury agreed, and in April of this year, after a three week trial, deliberated for just one hour before returning a verdict in favor of the inventor for $27 million. The additional $21.6 million awarded by the court was comprised of $6.75 million in punitive damages and $14.9 million in interest, calculated from 1993 when Perdue began to make money from the stolen process.

This should serve as a reminder that confidential nondisclosure agreements are, in fact, contracts. As such, they carry all the weight of any other legally enforceable contract, and should be used whenever possible. They are one of the best protection devices available to the individual inventor.

POSSIBLE FALLOUT FROM THIS DECISION It may be that some companies and manufacturers will now "think twice" before agreeing to sign confidential nondisclosure agreements. However, a properly worded form, excluding information already known to the company or already in the public domain, should go a long way toward eliminating any concerns.

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7/99

     This interview was conducted by phone by the staff of Invention Central on July 2, 1999. Mr. Bowden is the inventor of CAR STOP, a precision parking device for use in residential garages. CAR STOP mounts to the ceiling or an overhead garage door opener. It shoots a bright red laser dot onto the dash of your car to indicate that you’ve pulled in far enough for the garage door to close without hitting your car.

Invention Central: Wes, how did you first come up with the idea for CAR STOP ?
Wes Bowden: To be honest, I got tired of my wife driving into my workbench. We have a pretty big car and she was never sure if she had pulled in far enough for the garage door to close without hitting the car. So just to be safe, she’d pull in a little more. And that’s when she’d hit my workbench.
IC: I can see how that would become a problem.
WB: Well, it sure did. Whatever I was working on would be knocked over or scattered across the top of the workbench. And if anything was left in front of the bench, it stood a good chance of being crushed.
IC: At the same time, it’s understandable that she didn’t want the rear of the car damaged by a closing door.
WB: Exactly. I don’t blame her for pulling in. A lot of people have the same problem – not much excess clearance in their garage, so they’re never sure when they’ve pulled in far enough. Our problem made me think that perhaps lots of other people had the same problem.
IC: Did you try anything else, before the concept of the CAR STOP came to you ?
WB: I did. At first, I stacked a couple of empty cardboard boxes in front of the workbench. They were high enough so she could see them from the driver’s seat and tell when she hit them while she was pulling in. This was her indicator that the car was far enough into the garage.
IC: Where did you go from there ?
WB: The cardboard boxes were obviously a temporary solution. I always had the idea of using some kind of light beam – maybe mounted on the wall and shooting across the garage. Then when you pulled far enough into the garage, the beam would be broken and a buzzer or alarm would sound.
      But since cars come in so many different lengths, that idea didn’t really offer a universal solution. So I kept trying to think of other ways that I could use a light beam.
IC: Plus, using a buzzer or alarm adds another entire subassembly. It’s an additional element that could fail or break down.
WB: You’re right. Not to mention the fact that it adds cost. Actually, I’ve found that one of the most difficult parts of the invention process is to simplify as much as possible. As you know, my partner and I set up a company to build and market new products that we had thought of. One of my biggest mistakes with CAR STOP was to order parts before we had completely finalized the design. We did one last review of the components and came up with a simpler way of building CAR STOP that completely eliminated the part that I had already purchased. So now I have a load of brand new, unused parts sitting around to remind me to simplify, simplify, simplify.
IC: You brought up the fact that you had a partner. How much did that help you when developing your invention ?
WB: It was a great help. Of course, he had valuable engineering experience, so he was the right partner. On top of that, he was retired and had the time to spend working on the idea when I didn’t. Without his help, I doubt that we would have been able to develop CAR STOP as quickly as we did.
IC: How quickly did you develop the product? What was your timeline ?
WB: Well, I had been working on the idea…
IC: The idea or the product ?
WB: No, the idea. I was past the cardboard box stage but I was still thinking about it, about how I could use a light beam to turn the idea into something that would work.
IC: Go on.
WB: And then it all came to me on Labor Day weekend – of last year, 1998 – the overhead laser beam shining down – the red dot on your dashboard letting you know the car was positioned properly – the whole thing. From there we moved pretty quickly. We had prototypes together in a couple of months. It took a few tries to get everything right.
IC: Did you and your partner do it all in-house or did you farm any of the development work out ?
WB: One thing we did farm out was the packaging. We hired an industrial designer to do that.
IC: You mean "packaging" as in the look of the product itself, not the box or package that sits on a store shelf.
WB: Yes, that’s right. The "package" as in the plastic housing that mounts to the ceiling and contains the components. There’s a style to these things: do you want a black, plastic housing with rounded edges or a brushed aluminum housing with flat planes and sharp angles ?
IC: Was that a good decision on your part ?
WB: Oh, yes. He really gave it an appealing look. We applied for a patent in the fall and then we brought the product out early this year.
IC: Wow. That was fast. Less than a year from a workable idea to a product launch ?
WB: Yep. We didn’t waste any time. We began with a few TV spots in our own area, more of a test than anything else really. And that helped us.
IC: How so ?
WB: Well, we thought this would be an automotive product. We already had a good distribution network in the auto field, but it turned out to be much more of a home-improvement-type product. That’s another thing I learned: you can’t anticipate the market. What we found out was that lots of older people, people from their 50’s all the way into their 80’s, were our biggest market. I guess they have the most trouble judging how far into a garage they should pull, so they were very responsive to the product.
IC: And how are sales going now ?
WB: Well, our initial projections were a bit optimistic. But things are starting to move now. I think at last count we had ten distributors carrying CAR STOP, and this fall we’ll be in at least six catalogs.
IC: That’s tremendous! Congratulations. You’ve done a great job, Wes. Let me ask you one last question: what’s the one piece of advice you would offer to all those other inventors out there trying to get their own inventions developed and into the marketplace ?
WB: As far as I’m concerned, the key is to just stick with it. At first, I was pretty sure that I had a good, solid idea. But then I’d run into people who told me I was crazy to think anyone would ever pay good money for what I was working on. You’ve got to ignore these people. Just stick with it. Be persistent. You’ll end up second-guessing yourself a lot, but if you honestly believe you’ve got a good product, keep on working. I think that’s the most important thing for anyone who wants to be a successful inventor.
IC: Wes, I want to thank you very much for your time and your graciousness. All of us at 1 Invention Central wish you the very best with CAR STOP.

CAR STOP retails for $29.95 and is available from Pedestal Corp., 1114 E. 6th Av., Emporia, KS 66801. You can call them at 800-550-8425 or visit their web site at www.pedestalcorp.com.

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