Award winners Will Crawford (left) and Peter Brewin of Concrete Canvas Credit: Chris Cassidy, Cassidy Photography
Conventional Seed wisdom tells us that "science is culture." Judging from Saatchi & Saatchi's Award for World Changing Ideas ceremony, science is very, very high culture. Located in the advertising agency's trendy, upscale building in Greenwich Village, the festivities looked more like an art opening than a science exhibition.
Attractive waiters carried wine and appetizers around a spacious room decorated in a combination of iMac white, Sony hi-tech and Gateway cow print. With red cuffs and collar peeking out of my black shirt, I ranked above the median in colorfulness of dress. But the cold exterior was warmed by a near giddiness in the air, as everyone in attendance ogled and marveled at each invention, thinking, "That is so rad!"
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The evening's top prize of $100,000 went to two fit British blokes who created Concrete Canvas, a nearly-instant, durable shelter for aid organization workers—as well as the over 35-million refugees worldwide who currently live in very temporary tents. Each 16 square-meter (172 square-foot) structure arrives via truck as a 225 kilogram (500 lb) bag of cement dust and fiber. The sack is filled with water and left to hydrate for 15 minutes. Then it is unfolded and inflated by activating a small chemical pack, which releases gas into the plastic lining. After 12 hours, the concrete cloth fully hardens into a sterile, usable structure with a minimum durability of 10 years. It looks like a cross between a zeppelin and an igloo, but when the Red Cross is needed, form takes a back seat to the impressive function of the Concrete Canvas structure.
My personal favorite was the Frozen Ark from the University of Nottingham. The project aims to preserve the DNA of every endangered species on Earth, and has already partnered with museums and research groups around the world to build its collection. They believe that within the next thirty years, the Ark will include all 16,000 known endangered animals. While the researchers are currently in the information-gathering phase, they do not rule out the possibility that we will eventually have the technology to resurrect extinct species from the frozen genetic material. Next up, Jurassic Park.
Second on my crazy-sexy-cool list was the work of the highest-profile research team nominated for the award: NASA. Chuck Jorgensen, a scientist at the agency's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told me about his computerization of silent, "subvocal speech." When electrodes are placed under the chin and on either side of the Adam's apple, scientists can measure the slight muscle twitches that occur during speech, and, with the help of some software, actually infer what a person is saying. This way, firemen caught in a smoke-filled, noisy building can call out to each other for help, astronauts in low pressure can communicate commands, and perhaps, someday, people with larynx problems will be able to speak without personally creating a sound.
A spittingly-excited German, University of Leipzig professor Josef Käs, was on-hand to explain his newfangled, biopsy-free method of diagnosing whether a tumor is cancerous. The Optical Stretcher capitalizes on a simple difference between normal cells and cancer cells: Cancer cells don't have a rigid cytoskeleton, and, therefore, stretch easily; normal cells don't. Käs' device sends an infrared laser beam through individual cells, to stretch and measure them. Käs said the Optical Stretcher can make a diagnosis after detecting 50 tumor cells, so samples can be much smaller than those needed for more traditional testing.