Young Minds – Inventive Solutions

innovation and creativityThis series of articles is devoted to the thriving innovative minds that bring solutions to what may seem like insurmountable issues. With every generation young inventors are bringing fresh perspectives to solving old problems.

After learning about the 11 year old, Nikita Rafikov of Evans, Georgia, who developed a way to light homes without using electricity I knew the world was in good hands. This young man will be riding in limousines to college while the rest of the world is benefiting from his application of bioluminescence in window panes.

Using the same green florescent protein, GFP like that found in jelly fish, Rafikov discovered a way to embed this into window panes. He has created an eco-friendly bio-polymer that brings light into a space without the use of electricity.

Another area that has perplexed the forward progress of eco-friendly development has been in batteries. Batteries are short lived, hard to dispose of and the chemicals they contain are corrosive. They must be disposed of consciously and not just dropped off at the local landfill.

They harbor elements that poison and don’t break down easily and irreversibly harm the soil. Sahil Doshi, a 14 year old from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has developed a battery that uses carbon dioxide and other common waste materials that are found all over the world. This eliminates the harsh chemicals and the greenhouse gases. Using Doshi’s idea brings electricity to developing countries that otherwise would have limited access.

When faced with life threatening circumstances such as earthquakes, floods and structural collapses trapped victims have no access to food, water, light or other life sustaining necessities.

Twelve year old David Cohen of Dallas, Texas came up with an idea to reach the helpless safely and without putting others in harm’s way. After a science class discussion on earthworms, and also knowing of recent accounts of helpless victims trapped in inaccessible debris, he came up with the ingenious idea of a robotic earthworm.

The “worm” is equipped with instruments that locate through heat sensors, GPS and other lifesaving programs. The robot can worm itself through small openings where dogs or humans cannot reach. Instead of jeopardizing more lives the wormy robot takes all the risks.While accidents will continue to happen the survival rate has been clearly improved by the genius mind of this young thinker.

The C word is heard more and more these days and with early detection cancer stands a better chance of being treated and the survival rate goes up. One of the hardest cancers to detect is pancreatic cancer and often discovered too late, the patient stands only a 2% chance of recovery.

Jack Andraka, a high school student was driven by the pancreatic cancer death of a close family friend to learn more about how to prevent this from happening to others. He developed a procedure for early cancer detection and then sent his work to over 200 cancer researchers.

In return he got back 199 rejections. A single professor – and that’s all it took, gave him supervised entry into his laboratory. Once able to put his hypothesis into real time practice, Andraka and the local medical community found the results groundbreaking.

His method detects an unusually high level of a protein that is a marker in early stage pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancer. While his series has to go through years of testing before being approved, it is the most audacious breakthrough in this field to date.

Our world is a constantly evolving place. We live in some of the most challenging times and luckily we have people with brilliant minds capable of solving big problems with the environment, medicine, population growth etc…that we will all be forced to deal with in the future.