Startup Biomason Makes Biocement Tiles, Retailer H&M Group Plans To Outfit Its Stores’ Floors With Them via @forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2021/06/14/startup-biomason-makes-bio-cement-tiles-retailer-hm-group-plans-to-outfit-its-stores-floors-with-them/
The University of Central Florida, NASA’sKennedy Space Center and HySense Technology, an early stage startup company, will be recognized by R&D Magazine later this year for developing and producing one of the top 100 innovations of the year.
A team of UCF researchers at the Florida Solar Energy Center developed breakthrough technology implemented by NASA engineers under a grant from NASA’s Glenn Research Center.
This award, known as the R&D 100, is widely regarded as the “Oscars of Invention,” whose past winners include the fax machine (1975) and HDTV (1998).
According to a release from the university, UCF researchers at the Florida Solar Energy Center began work on the breakthrough technology, a color-changing tape to visually detect hydrogen leaks, under a grant from NASA’s Glenn Research Center.
Use of hydrogen as fuel for space exploration carries the risk of an accident if a hydrogen leak isn’t pinpointed and fixed quickly.
Adding to the difficulties in dealing with hydrogen: Potentially dangerous leaks in environments like a shuttle launch pad are hard to detect because hydrogen is odorless and colorless. However, by wrapping leak-susceptible areas with the new tape, leaks can be “seen” with a color change in the presence of hydrogen.
The color-changing concept for a visual cue was conceived by UCF’s Ali Raissi, with a team of scientists including Nahid Mohajeri, who would later bring the invention to market as UCF searched for a partner to commercialize the technology.
Mohajeri, who founded HySense Technology, introduced the award-winning hydrogen detection tape to the market.
On Nov. 7, UCF, NASA Kennedy and HySense will be recognized internationally at the R&D 100 banquet and award presentation held at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Sometime in early 2013, one of the delivery operations engineers at Tesla leaned back in his chair and took a look around the Silicon Valley office. “It was a sunny day, and I looked up and I thought, ‘Why are these lights on with full power, when full sunlight is coming through the window?’” says Neil Joseph. An online search for a better, responsive bulb only yielded a few expensive commercial products. That October, Joseph (who says even as a kid, his two fascinations were lights and cars) left Tesla to start his own lighting company.
The company is Stack, and its first product is Alba (alba is Italian for ‘sunrise’). The Alba bulbs are designed to work autonomously, both by adjusting light output based on sunlight and by learning and adapting to its owners’ household habits. As Joseph sees it, it’s the first in a new wave of lighting products to follow the Philips Hue and the LIFX. Those bulbs are smarter than the usual drugstore variety—they can sync with a smartphone app, and even keep rhythm with a song—but they aren’t intelligent by the same standards as the Nest Thermostat or even a tool like Google Maps. In short: They’re connected, but not responsive.
Embedded in Alba’s light diodes are sensors for motion, occupancy, and ambient light. This meant cofounder Jovi Gacusan, who worked on sensors at NASA, had to create a new core technology, because in order to work efficiently Alba has to both read and react to available light. “If you think about noise-canceling headphones, we have to cancel out the light being emitted by the light itself to understand how much light is in the light source,” Joseph says. The result is a light bulb that can see-saw with natural light and in doing so uses 60 to 80 percent less energy than a regular LED bulb.
Alba’s other main function involves tailoring itself around its owners. Like the Nest, Alba runs algorithms and remembers user habits at home. “If we notice that people are in a certain part of the house, at certain times of day, and then they mosey on over to a bedroom, and then they spend more time awake in the bedroom before they go to bed we can start to light a pathway,” Joseph says. Alba emits light with blue tones in the morning, to help users become alert, and then glows warmer shades of white as the day wears on. Users can adjust all this in the Stack app, and create profiles (‘dinner party,’ ‘nap time,’ and so on), and Alba will fold that data into its learning curve too.
It’s fairly easy to see how Stack, by riding the light bulb’s coattails, could quickly become the spine of the connected home. Everyone has to buy light bulbs, and many of them. And because each Alba bulb contains a Bluetooth module that acts like iBeacon technology, the hardware is already poised to start talking to other smart gadgets.
For now, it’s being used to track users and their movement patterns around the house. (This feature has a dystopian ring to it. Joseph says, “We don’t track any personal data, or anything that’s on an individual user. It’s environmental and used for learning and product performance.”) Down the line, though, Joseph has ambitions of partnering with other companies, from “thermostats to smart beds that track how people sleep,” to eventually build a home that goes beyond convenience, and is actually healthier. “The more data we have, we can see if you’re in a REM cycle, and then know not to wake you.”
Alba is sold as a starter kit with two bulbs, for $150.
Inventors, get your minds in gear to apply NASA’s Mindshift technology to your next invention. NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has partnered with Edison Nation to identify the best consumer inventions or product adaptations to use with its powerful mind control tool, Mindshift.
For those of you who are not familiar with the technology, Mindshift is a physiological feedback system, developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center, that monitors and provides feedback about a person’s heart rate, muscle tension, and brainwave activity – all stress indicators. The feedback system allows you to control these stress indicators so that you can perform optimally.
Today, NASA’s Mindshift technology is being used alongside motion-sensing gaming technology like the Wii and Xbox. As the Mindshift controls are independent of the gaming program and control, Mindshift provides biofeedback to the user without interfering with the game, thus allowing the gamer to modify his stress levels so he or she can play better. Mindshift is also being explored for use in educational, psychological, and medial situations.
Now, NASA is looking for new and adapted consumer products to use with Mindshift. What activities of home or work life would benefit from the ‘mind control’ that the Mindshift technology offers? What application can you create or modify to enhance this activity?
NASA Technology
In November 2006, after attempting to make a routine maneuver, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) reported unexpected errors. The onboard software switched to backup resources, and a 2-day lapse in communication took place between the spacecraft and Earth. When a signal was finally received, it indicated that MGS had entered safe mode, a state of restricted activity in which the computer awaits instructions from Earth. After more than 9 years of successful operation—gathering data and snapping pictures of Mars to characterize the planet’s land and weather—communication between MGS and Earth suddenly stopped.
Months later, a report from NASA’s internal review board found the spacecraft’s battery failed due to an unfortunate sequence of events. Updates to the spacecraft’s software, which had taken place months earlier, were written to the wrong memory address in the spacecraft’s computer. In short, the mission ended because of a software defect.
Over the last decade, spacecraft have become increasingly reliant on software to carry out mission operations. In fact, the next mission to Mars, the Mars Science Laboratory, will rely on more software than all earlier missions to Mars combined. According to Gerard Holzmann, manager at the Laboratory for Reliable Software (LaRS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), even the fault protection systems on a spacecraft are mostly softwarebased. For reasons like these, well-functioning software is critical for NASA.
In the same year as the failure of MGS, Holzmann presented a new approach to critical software development to help reduce risk and provide consistency. He proposed “The Power of 10: Rules for Developing Safety-Critical Code,” which is a small set of rules that can easily be remembered, clearly relate to risk, and allow compliance to be verified. The reaction at JPL was positive, and developers in the private sector embraced Holzmann’s ideas.
Partnership
To demonstrate the feasibility of using a tool to automatically check software for compliance with Holzmann’s rules, JPL awarded Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding to GrammaTech Inc. of Ithaca, New York. The software development company adapted its existing software code analysis product, CodeSonar, to include verification of The Power of 10. Michael McDougall, a senior scientist at GrammaTech, says, “JPL was already using CodeSonar to check its software; however, there are things that might be acceptable in a desktop application that are unacceptable in an environment like on Mars or the Moon. CodeSonar didn’t have rules specifically crafted for this type of critical software.” After successfully adapting CodeSonar to check for the NASAderived rules, GrammaTech transitioned the changes into its commercial version of the product in 2008.
Benefits
Items as varied as infusion pumps, cell phones, and aircraft components are made using CodeSonar, a product from GrammaTech Inc. that incorporates rules developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to quickly find problems in the products’ software.
As a static analysis tool, CodeSonar finds problems in software without executing any part of the program. The tool produces a list of potential violations, including complex programming bugs that can result in system crashes and memory corruption. Compared to traditional software testing methods, CodeSonar checks more code in less time and saves time and expense by finding problems before the software is completed and distributed to users.
The design of CodeSonar allows users to configure how thoroughly it performs a check. The tool can warn about every potential issue, only critical violations, or a combination of both. McDougall explains, “Depending on the application, the software may not need to be as reliable as a Mars rover, but it can still be troublesome if it crashes at the wrong time. Users can choose the level of compliance that suits their context.”
Today, CodeSonar has hundreds of users worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, startup businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies working on satellites, avionics, industrial controls, medical devices, wireless devices, networking equipment, and consumer electronics.
In response to a widespread medical device recall, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started encouraging manufacturers of infusion pumps to utilize static code analysis tools like CodeSonar to check the pumps’ software. Commonly used to deliver fluids into a patient’s body, infusion pumps have been responsible for a number of deaths and injuries since 2005. In one instance, investigators at the FDA used CodeSonar to help determine the root cause of malfunction in a widelydeployed, commercial infusion pump.
Cell phone developers like LG Electronics Inc., Samsung, and Panasonic are also using CodeSonar. McDougall explains, “Cell phones are expected to function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The software that runs the internal cell phone, changes what is on the screen, and manages the address book, all has to be very reliable. Users do not want to have to reboot or install updates in the middle of a phone call.”
GE Aviation, a provider of jet engines and components, as well as avionics, electric power, and mechanical systems for aircraft, uses CodeSonar to ensure the software in aircraft functions properly. “Software is an important part of engine design, and a lot of how planes work is controlled by software. You want it to be perfect—or as close to perfect as possible,” says McDougall.
With public and private entities employing CodeSonar, Holzmann is hopeful that more organizations will be inspired to improve software development practice. “If the technology continues to be adopted, we will have made a contribution to making the computer systems we rely on safer and more reliable,” he says.
Since developing The Power of 10, Holzmann has devised a single coding standard called the JPL Institutional Coding Standard for the Development of Flight Software. McDougall expects the standard will be incorporated in the next commercial version of CodeSonar.
CodeSonar® is a registered trademark of GrammaTech Inc.
NASA Technology
Getting a multitude of people to work together to manage processes across many organizations —for example, flight projects, research, technologies, or data centers and others—is not an easy task. Just ask Dr. Barry E. Jacobs, a research computer scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center. He helped NASA develop a process management solution that provided documenting tools for process developers and participants to help them quickly learn, adapt, test, and teach their views. Some of these tools included editable files for subprocess descriptions, document descriptions, role guidelines, manager worksheets, and references.
NASA’s SBIR program provides opportunities for small businesses to participate in research and development projects. The STTR program awards contracts to small businesses for cooperative research and development with a non-profit research institution, such as a university.
First utilized for NASA’s Headquarters Directives Management process, the approach led to the invention of a concept called the Electronic Handbook (EHB). This EHB concept was successfully applied to NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, among other NASA programs. Several Federal agencies showed interest in the concept, so Jacobs and his team visited these agencies to show them how their specific processes could be managed by the methodology, as well as to create mockup versions of the EHBs.
Partnership
In partnership with NASA and under the guidance of Jacobs, REI Systems, a Herndon, Virginia-based small business, received a NASA SBIR award in 1989 to build an integrated, uniform, and extensible framework for storage, retrieval, and update of heterogeneous objects. REI’s solution employed the NASA-developed EHB paradigm.
Using a familiar, easy-to-learn “handbook” interface, the EHB guides each user through complicated procedures that formerly required using multiple paper documents or legacy systems. This web-based business process management system was used to automate, integrate, execute, and optimize the business processes for NASA’s SBIR and STTR programs, which receive approximately 2,500 Phase I and Phase II proposals annually.
The team worked closely with the stakeholders at every level in order to fully understand the roles and business processes involved, which helped ensure the successful functionality, efficiency, and usability of the system. The way Jacobs sees it, “To truly understand one’s universe, one must see it through multiple ‘eyes’ and also have tools to communicate these views.”
The first NASA SBIR/STTR EHB was deployed in 1996 for the Phase I Review and Selection process. Now, the NASA SBIR/STTR EHB is a complete end-to-end paperless system for management of the SBIR/STTR programs ranging from solicitation development to contract administration processes and commercialization. The EHB continues to be used by all program participants, with approximately 6,000 active users from NASA Centers and firms.
According to REI, each firm that uses the EHB system to apply to the NASA programs saves the costs associated with printing and mailing of eight paper copies. For NASA, there has been a more than 30-percent reduction in the time required for processing, with commensurate reductions in the effort to manage the paper submissions.
Benefits
Originally featured in Spinoff 2001, REI has grown from a startup to a large business that provides a variety of Web-enabled, database-driven knowledge management and performance support solutions for Federal agencies, State governments, and the commercial sector. REI Systems continues to innovate with the EHB concept nurtured by NASA 22 years ago.
The company has applied the approach to managing information in every one of their custom software applications that manage the grants-making processes for Federal agencies as diverse as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice, and the Department of Energy (DOE). Specifically, REI’s NASAderived EHB model has more than 60,000 users with over $6 billion in financial transactions per year.
REI has also taken its NASA SBIR domain knowledge to other agencies—DHS’s Science and Technology, the Small Business Administration, and DOE—where it is currently developing systems for their SBIR programs. In turn, REI has leveraged its open government and dashboarding solutions for the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration (Recovery.gov, ITDashboard.gov, and USASpending. gov are some eGov sites developed by REI) and brought those solutions back to NASA to provide data visualization capabilities. Innovation with the EHB has been a two-way street.
According to REI, EHBs create a system that has lower maintenance, support, and upgrade costs, as well as reduced publication, distribution, and storage costs. An organization using an EHB will benefit from increased productivity and efficiency, enhanced communication and collaboration, enterprise-wide knowledge management, and increased data quality and accuracy. Samidha Manu, senior program manager at REI, says, “We look at what our customers’ needs are, and then we provide what makes the most sense in an automated tool. The big push is to make the process efficient, to make it work more effectively.”
REI’s largest EHBbased system supports HRSA, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, to provide competitively awarded grant funding to states and localities in providing healthcare and affiliated services to underserved communities nationwide. The EHB supports more than 300 grant programs and cooperative agreements, more than 10,000 grantees, and 1,500 HRSA employees.
Manu expresses appreciation to NASA for helping REI get to where it is today. “The tools deployed for NASA Goddard, in one form or another, have been adapted to the technology or solutions that we are deploying for other Federal agencies and doing a variety of things we probably never anticipated,” she says. “In 1998, there were hardly any Federal Internet applications to speak of. Since then, all types of Web applications have exploded.”
NASA Technology
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Mizuna lettuce growing aboard the International Space Station before being harvested and frozen for return to Earth. NASA funded the development of Ethylene scrubbers to remove the plant-produced gas from the air, which help to keep vegetables fresh in space.
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In the 1990s, NASA scientists were thinking of what astronauts would need to survive long-term missions to the moon and even to other planets in the solar system. One important requirement was a dependable source of food, which could be accomplished by astronauts growing their own produce in space-age greenhouses. But cultivating crops in a sealed-off environment results in the buildup of an undesirable gas called ethylene. Plants release the odorless, colorless fume into the air, which has the unfortunate effect of accelerating decay, hastening the wilting of flowers and the ripening of fruits and vegetables.
To address the problem, the Marshall Space Flight Center’s Space Product Development Program funded the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, located at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, to develop plant growth chambers that included an ethylene reduction device. In this device, called a “scrubber,” air is drawn into tubes coated with thin layers of titanium dioxide (TiO2). When an ultraviolet (UV) light source located in the tubes strikes the TiO2, the ethylene gets converted to water and carbon dioxide, both of which are beneficial for plants.
Technology TransferThe ethylene scrubber was first used in 1995 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-73, where it successfully preserved a crop of potato seedlings. Updated versions of the device were subsequently flown on several missions to the International Space Station.
While NASA’s main objective in developing the technology was to get rid of ethylene, the scrubbers were capable of purging all kinds of unwanted organic particles from the air. Recognizing its powerful air purification abilities, KES Science & Technology, based out of Kennesaw, Georgia, licensed the technology from the University of Wisconsin (Spinoff 2001 and 2002). The company then partnered with Jacksonville, Florida-based Akida Holdings, which marketed the technology as Airocide (Spinoff 2009).
In 2013, Airocide finally found its way into people’s homes when Akida Holdings adapted the technology for home use by developing an eye-catching portable unit with enough power to purge an entire room of pathogens.
The home Airocide unit made its public debut with an appearance on the Ellen Degeneres Show, immediately generating a great deal of attention for it. “It was a lot of fun putting that together and it was also great publicity for our product,” said Barney Freedman, who is vice president at Akida Holdings.
Benefits
According to the company, Airocide is the only air purifier that completely destroys airborne bacteria, mold, fungi, mycotoxins, viruses, volatile organic compounds, and odors. And because of the technology’s versatility, the product is now used in a variety of settings. Grocery stores and produce distribution facilities now use it, in addition to a host of wineries, distilleries, and floral businesses. The device has also found its way into refrigerators that are used for both homes and for distributing food aid to remote towns. In hospitals and clinics, Airocide’s powerful germ-killing properties are on full display as it purges the air of harmful bacteria like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus.
—Barney Freedman, Akida Holdings
The home Airocide unit has a sleek, glossy, rectangular body accented with orange-peel-colored inside walls. The product, which can either be mounted on a floor stand or hung on a wall, could easily pass for a modern work of art. But, beyond its aesthetics, according to Freedman, the product will change consumers’ quality of life. “You’re going to sleep better, and you’re going to feel better,” he says.
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The Airocide unit can be laid on a flat surface, hung on a wall, or mounted to a floor stand.
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Freedman notes that Airocide works differently from High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, which are designed to capture particles that are 0.3 microns across and larger. If the strings on a tennis racquet represent the best of these filters, he says, and marbles represent dirt particles, the racquet’s ability to capture them is how the filter collects dust. But if your aim were to capture particles smaller than dust—like viruses, bacteria, and volatile organic compounds—they would just slip right through the filter, as BB gun pellets would drop through a racquet’s strings. Not so with Airocide. “We’re able to eliminate those particles on contact,” he says.
Airocide is simple to operate—just plug it into an outlet, turn it on, then forget about it. The only upkeep required is replacing the reaction chamber, which houses the UV light source, every 12-14 months. There’s a high and a low-intensity mode, as well as automatic, which alternates from high in the day to low at night.
While the unit functions in any room, Freedman suggests putting your first one in the bedroom. With all the hours spent sleeping, it’s the most important space to keep clear of contaminants. “In two days, you’ll notice how the bedroom just feels different,” he says. “And as you get the chance to breathe in the air, you’ll start feeling better physically. You’re going to wake up feeling refreshed. You’re not going to be stuffy in the morning nor will you have any of the issues associated with air quality that you had before.”
According to testimonials shared on the Airocide website, people credit the product with helping them and their loved ones attain relief from symptoms associated with asthma, allergies, and sinuses. Freedman isn’t the least bit surprised by their claims.
“We know technology-wise that this device works,” he says. “It was developed by NASA, it’s FDA-approved, and it’s been tested and vouched for by a host of universities. Not to mention the fact that we’ve been selling this for 10 years. We’re very confident in what it can do.”
AiroCide® is a registered trademark of KesAir Technologies LLC.
The video game’s description promised that two doctors were about to be swallowed by the jaws of fate.
Watching the action on the screen, Alan Pope said, somewhat unnecessarily, “You want to be careful with the scalpel when it’s jumping around.”
“This is really tricky,” replied Chad Stephens, studying the chest he was about to cut open.
The NASA research scientist wore a headset with sensors that monitored his brain waves. As he focused, his brain waves changed frequency, indicated by changing colors of LED lights below the screen. They flickered between red and yellow, then steadied on green. Stephens made a sudden movement with his hand.
“Oh, that’s good!” Pope exclaimed. A robotic voice from the game “Trauma Center: New Blood” intoned, “The incision has been made.”
Pope has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a doctorate in clinical psychology. Stephens is working on his psychology dissertation. Both work in aeronautics at NASA’s Langley Research Center, where their core research on cockpit design has led to an interesting spinoff: a biofeedback device that makes video games harder for tense or distracted players.
The application is the latest in Pope’s research on brain wave monitoring. His studies on cockpit automation in the 1990s led to the creation of attention-training games by a North
Carolina company.
It’s all part of NASA’s transfer of tax-funded research into the private sector for development of new products and uses that benefit the public as well as the space agency. Langley research has been used by Speedo to create faster racing swimsuits, by Medtronics Inc. to stabilize heart-failure patients, and by NASCAR to clean air inside race cars.
NASA research can be found in medical devices, industrial smokestack scrubbers, panoramic cameras, solar refrigerators, emergency air supplies for coal miners, parachutes for airplanes and more. The agency says its research has been used to save 444,000 lives since 2004, and has generated $5.1 billion for the economy.
The biofeedback technology is commercially available from NASA’s Technology Gateway. Its inventors say it could be used in anything from video games to training simulations for medical doctors to athletes – wherever improved concentration would also improve performance.
“We didn’t invent the Wii, and we didn’t create the game,” Stephens said, “but we figured out how we could modify the controls to serve as feedback to the user.”
In April, NASA obtained a patent for using the technology, called MindShift, on the Wii gaming system. An application has been submitted for Kinect.
“If a company was interested, it could involve this biofeedback mechanism into a game,” Stephens said. “For example, a wizard could use his mental powers to go through the game. Maybe use it in a challenge here and there to demonstrate his skill.
“We could measure fear and have that impact the game in some way. It has the potential to involve a player’s real emotion into the game.”
NASA uses the technology to assess new cockpit designs by monitoring brain waves, heart rate and eye movement of pilots in a simulator.
“We want to be able to sense what kind of state they’re in and provide feedback on a continuous basis so they can understand how their state affects their performance,” Pope said. “If we design something that takes up too much of their attention or doesn’t draw their attention, we probably have poor design.”
Pilots can be taught to focus through standard biofeedback training, where the subject tries to control his heart rate, for example, while moving a line or a bar on a monitor. That can be boring, Pope said. Many of the test pilots enjoyed golf, so the researchers incorporated the biofeedback training into a game where being “in the zone” – mind in perfect sync with body – is important.
They tested a putting green that reacted to a player’s brain waves. When stressed or unfocused, the biofeedback mechanism caused the indoor putting green to undulate, the hole to shrink and a targeting laser to swing back and forth. By relaxing and focusing on the task at hand, players could sink the putt more easily.
Then the researchers tried it with video games, which have real-world possibilities, too.
“Playing a surgery game with an unsteady hand is challenging,” Pope said. “You could imagine this as a surgeon in training learning how to focus, while it teaches the manual skill of surgery.”
They booted up “Link’s Crossbow Training” on the Wii. Pope put on the headset, with a clip on his left earlobe to track his pulse. The cursor jumped around, and he couldn’t aim until his heart rate slowed.
He picked off a single target on the first screen and two targets on the next. Then five targets popped up at once, and the cursor jumped around so he couldn’t aim.
“Got a little excited there,” Pope said. As he calmed down and focused, the cursor steadied and he knocked down the targets one after the other.
“We think this is the next stage beyond motion sensing games,” he said. “That’s why we call it MindShift. We wanted developers to think about games in different ways. That would require a mind shift.”
In the 1980s, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists James Stephens and Charles Miller were studying the harmful properties of light in space, as well as that of artificial radiation produced during laser and welding work. The intense light emitted during welding can harm unprotected eyes, leading to a condition called arc eye, in which ultraviolet light causes inflammation of the cornea and long-term retinal damage.
Based on work done at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Eagle Eyes lenses filter out harmful radiation, reduce light scattering, and permit vision-enhancing wavelengths of light, protecting eyesight while also improving visibility.
To combat this danger, the JPL scientists developed a welding curtain capable of absorbing, filtering, and scattering the dangerous light. The curtain employed a light-filtering/vision-enhancing system based on dyes and tiny particles of zinc oxide—unique methods they discovered by studying birds of prey. The birds require near-perfect vision for hunting and survival, often needing to spot prey from great distances. The birds’ eyes produce tiny droplets of oil that filter out harmful radiation and permit only certain visible wavelengths of light through, protecting the eye while enhancing eyesight. The researchers replicated this oil droplet process in creating the protective welding curtain.
The welding curtain was commercialized, and then the scientists focused attention on another area where blocking ultraviolet light would be beneficial to the eyes: sunglasses. In 2010, the groundbreaking eyewear technology was inducted into the Space Foundation’s Space Technology Hall of Fame, which honors a select few products each year that have stemmed from space research and improved our lives here on Earth.
SunTiger Inc.—now Eagle Eyes Optics, of Calabasas, California—was formed to market a full line of sunglasses based on the licensed NASA technology that promises 100-percent elimination of harmful wavelengths and enhanced visual clarity. Today, Eagle Eyes sunglasses are worn by millions of people around the world who enjoy the protective and vision-enhancing benefits.
The Eagle Eyes lens (right) makes scenes more vivid because harmless wavelength colors such as red, orange, yellow, and green are enhanced, and damaging rays in the blue, violet, and ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths are blocked.
Maximum eye protection from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays is critical to our ability to see clearly. This is because when light enters the eye, a series of events happen which can help, hinder, or even destroy our eyesight. First, light passes through the cornea and ultimately reaches the retina which contains two types of cells—rods (which handle vision in low light) and cones (which handle color vision and detail). The retina contains 100 million rods and 7 million cones. The outer segment of a rod or a cone contains the photosensitive chemical, rhodopsin, also called “visual purple.” Rhodopsin is the chemical that allows night vision, and is extremely sensitive to light. When exposed to a full spectrum of light, rhodopsin immediately bleaches out, and takes about 30 minutes to fully regenerate, with most of the adaption occurring in the dark within 5 to 10 minutes. Rhodopsin is less sensitive to the longer red wavelengths of light and therefore depleted more slowly (which is why many people use red light to help preserve night vision). When our eyes are exposed to the harmful, ultraviolet light rays of the Sun (UVA, UVB, and blue-light rays), damage to our eyes and their complex vision-enhancing processes can occur and not even be noticed until years later, long after exposure.
The most common form of eye damage related to ultraviolet exposure, cataracts, causes the lens of the eye to cloud, losing transparency and leading to reduced vision and, if left untreated, blindness. In the United States alone, it is estimated that cataracts diminish the eyesight of millions of people at an expense of billions of dollars. Other forms of eye damage directly attributable to ultraviolet exposure include pterygium, an abnormal mass of tissue arising from the conjunctiva of the inner corner of the eye; skin cancer around the eyes; and macular degeneration, which damages the center of the eye and prevents people from seeing fine details.
Alan Mittleman, president and CEO of Eagle Eyes explains, “When we’re born, our eyes are clear like drops of water. Throughout life, we start to destroy those sensitive tissues, causing the yellowing of the eyes and the gradual worsening of eyesight. When the eye becomes more and more murky, cataracts form. Simple protection of the human eye, from childhood and throughout adulthood could protect the clarity of the eye and extend good vision for many years—even our entire lifetime.
“It has only been recently,” he adds, “that people started to realize the importance of this.” Sunglass manufacturers are recognizing the importance of eye care, and consumers are becoming more aware of eye health. One issue still plaguing the sunglass market, though, is that consumers assume that darker lenses are more protective, which is not always the case.
It may feel more comfortable to wear the dark lenses, but in addition to reducing the field of vision, it relaxes the eye, which allows more blue light to get directly to the retina. Blue light, in particular, has long-term implications, because it passes through the cornea and damages the inner retinal area.
The Eagle Eyes lens allows wearers to see more clearly because it protects from ultraviolet light, but more importantly, blocks this blue light, allowing the good visible light while blocking the harmful wavelengths.
Among their many donations throughout the years and goal of spreading good vision and eye protection to remote areas of the world, Eagle Eyes Optics had the opportunity recently to provide assistance to a group in sore need of eye protection: children in Galena, Alaska. The incidence of cataracts is 300 times greater in Alaska because of the Sun’s reflection off of the snow. Eagle Eyes donated 150 pairs of its sunglasses to a high school in Galena, and they were delivered by members of the Space Foundation and presented by former NASA astronaut Livingston Holder.
Green energy has been on everyone’s minds lately. With climate shift occurring at an alarming rate, America will begin shifting it’s investments towards cleaner, more renewable energy. Over the years, NASA has paved the way for alternative energy, creating tens-of-thousands of high-paying jobs along the way.
From being able to predict pot holes to designing a chip that will allow plants never to go without water, NASA has helped a great portion of this country achieve an easier life. Even outside the country, NASA has outfitted our military with stronger body armor, and have even created water-purifying bottles for those without a clean water supply.
Due to NASA’s need for renewable energy on space missions, they’ve been a pioneer in green energy creations. Some of their most important contributions to the world are:
Solar Energy – NASA has pioneered photovoltaic power systems for spacecraft applications. Solar energy technology has been developed for space programs to expand terrestrial applications where no other long term energy sources exist.
Forest Management – A satellite scanning system has been developed that monitors and maps forestation. It detects radiation reflected and emitted from trees.
Oil Spill Control – The concept was invented by Petrol Rem, Inc. of 
Pittsburgh, Penn. Also, Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory helped to design the tiny beeswax balls (microcapsules). These microcapsules made of beeswax are designed so that water can’t get in, but oil can. The microorganisms inside release enzymes that digest the oil when the oil seeps through the shell. Once the balls are full of digested oil, they explode. The microcapsules release enzymes, carbon dioxide and water, all environmentally safe. The residue is even eatable fish food!
Fishing from Orbit – A series of satellites were launched in 1972 by NASA to observe the changing conditions of the earth’s surface. The ability to monitor changes to the earth for a long period of time provides invaluable information such as: preserving wildlife, monitoring air and water pollution, mapping the growth of cities, flood control and more.
Feeding Our World-And Prepping to Feed Other Worlds – Disney and NASA are working together in a unique partnership. They are striving to find ways to use human and industrial waste to provide the ingredients needed for growing edible plants. This technology will be needed for establishing human colonies on other worlds.
Other spin-offs include: Environmental Control Sensors, energy saving air conditioning, air purification, sewage treatment, pollution control and measuring devices, a whale identification method, and a earthquake prediction system. You can find more information about NASA Spinoffs at http://spinoff.nasa.gov
Science Grows Jobs! 