Seven Gadgets to Save the Planet -- And Lives

LifeBelt CPR (pictured above in an artist's concept), can help restart the heart. The device beat out a record 1,091 entries to win top honors in the annual Create the Future Design Contest, NASA Tech Briefs announced March 10, 2009. The magazine organizes the contest "to help stimulate and reward engineering innovation."

LifeBelt CPR, which amplifies the force applied by rescuers performing CPR, won its inventor, Thomas Lach of Columbus, Ohio, U.S. $20,000.

Most people can only do CPR effectively for about two minutes, and paramedics often take eight to ten minutes to arrive. The new tool makes it easier to do the compressions for longer periods and includes a readout to ensure that the motions are done properly.



Scooter With In-Wheel Engine

Featuring an in-wheel electric motor--which helps reduce emissions and frees up space, allowing for a lighter, more efficient frame--the design for an eco-friendly Movito scooter won Tai Chiem of Melbourne, Australia (like all first-place winners) a computer.

Designed for short trips, Movito uses an electric motor currently employed in solar-powered racing cars.

Announced March 10, 2009, the Create the Future contest winners were chosen by an independent panel of design



Tire Sensor

The sensor concept pictured above may change the world of tire design. Monitoring temperatures from inside a tire, it allows overheated areas to be detected before the tire bursts.

Though currently intended for prototype tires now being tested, the sensor, designed by Mahmoud Assaad of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Ohio, could someday be installed on standard cars, trucks, and aircraft.

Assaad's concept took a first-place prize in the Create the Future contest, whose winners were announced March 10, 2009.



Superstraw

Removing heavy metals such as lead and mercury as well as viruses, bacteria, and plain-old bad tastes, this inexpensive filter fits into a standard water bottle.

Designed with nanotech filtering material by Jim Jablonsky of Pennsylvania, the prototype bottle insert pictured above could make safe drinking water readily available to those with none.

"It can purify many different water streams from almost all Third World sources," said Jablonsky in his entry for the Create the Future contest, whose winners were announced March 10, 2009.


"Lazy Eye" Detector

Checking infants for "lazy eye," or amblyopia--the most common cause of vision loss in children--has long been a challenge for doctors. This pediatric vision screening device, designed by Kristina Irsch of Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, may help solve the problem by making it easier to check babies for proper eye alignment and focusing ability.

On March 10, 2009, NASA announced that the design for the device, shown above, was a top entry in the Create the Future contest.



Goggles Stop Fogging Before It Starts

Have you ever imagined a windshield that predicts and prevents the buildup of ice, fog, and frost? Thankfully, engineer Don Skomsky of Pennsylvania did--and successfully tested his brainchild in goggle form as part of an expedition to Mount Everest.

The battery-powered "Zoggles" pictured above use tiny external and internal sensors and a microprocessor to constantly forecast when the lens surface will drop below the dewpoint--the temperature at which condensation occurs. Then a heat source raises the lens surface by a fraction of a degree Fahrenheit.

Other antifog methods tackle condensation only after it's occurred, which requires a thousand times more energy, Skomsky said of his winning entry in the Create the Future design contest.



Air Conditioner Fights Global Warming

Though it may not seem like the most glamorously green invention, this redesign of the common air conditioner could save a quadrillion BTUs a year in the United States alone.

Replacing the conditioner's piston compressor and expansion valve with scroll compressors--more commonly used in automobile superchargers--and updating the power supply yielded power savings of 30 percent, wrote Create the Future contest winner Lindsay Meek of Australia.

The U.S. Department of Energy reports that two-thirds of U.S. homes have air conditioners, producing a hundred million tons of carbon dioxide annually and consuming 5 percent of the energy produced in the United States -- which costs consumers more than $11 billion.