seeds of wonder

UNEP names Janine Benyus as 2009 Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation

I'm just pulling together a presentation for a key EU meet in Brussels on Quest, an Arts Council project that aims to nurture the development of an innovation skills mindset in UK and Polish manufacturers - by pairing Designer-makers and manufacturers to work together on defined projects - Quests. 

A key feature of Quest is sustainability and we'll be running workshops on sustainable innovation as well as developing sustainable innovation tool-kits. As part of this we're aiming to introduce biomimicry into the workshops as a source of inspiration and ideas on solving challenges faced by the manufacturers and designer-makers

So I was delighted to see this email (below) from the Biomimicry Institute land in my inbox.UNEP names Janine Benyus as 2009 Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation Brilliant news and very deserved. Great for the Biomimicry Institute too and the growth of awareness of Biomimicry.

For those who've yet to see Janine's TED talk, '12 Sustainable Design Ideas from Nature' do have a watch. Robert Full's talks are also as fascinating.

The Ask Nature website, recently launched is a brilliant way to explore how nature's design's might contain answers to common design problems encountered by industry.

Janine Benyus is in Paris attending this year's B4E - Business for the Environment, the UN Global Summi - a potent mix of leading environmental thinkers, innovators, global business leaders and key public figures. It will be interesting to see what new thinking the current economic climate will stimulate in sustainable innovation. Aron Cramer from Business for Social Responsibility is attending and blogging some useful stuff. 

Dear Supporter,

Breaking news!         

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced the 2009 laureates of the UNEP Champions of the Earth Awards in a special ceremony in Paris today.  We are so proud that Janine Benyus, Chair of the Board of The Biomimicry Institute, was named the 2009 Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation.

Past Champions of the Earth winners include Al Gore, former vice president of the United States, H.E. Mikhail Gorbachev of the Russian Federation and H.E. President Thabo Mbeki and the people of South Africa.

Thank you for your support of The Biomimicry Institute.

Happy Earth Day! 

Bryony Schwan

Executive Director

The Biomimicry Institute

bryony@biomimicryinstitute.org

Disruptive Innovation & Disrupting Class

My postman delivered my latest Amazon fix with a knowing look yesterday. 

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation will change the Way the World Learns by Clayton Christensen.

It's received good reviews and by some interesting people - Howard Gardner, Vicki Phillips (Gates Foundation) and I actually came to it via The Big Picture schools brochure, who he seems to heartily endorse.

I'm always interested, if not a little wary, on what business thinkers have to say on education, sometimes finding that their recommendations come from what shape they feel (current & future) business requires children to be in for greater competitive commercial success, mini malleable adults. So I'm interested to see what the gravitational core of the book will be, flicking through I notice a chapter on  'Schools meet society's needs' and on the jacket it reads "We can compete in the global classroom - and get ahead in the global market" this may just be publishers huff though.

When I first started home-educating a few years ago, and started thinking about the purpose of education I decided that it's aims were simple; to nurture happy, balanced self-oriented children who were able to find their place in the world - not society, culture, prevailing politics or 'work' as we see them now. I would say that this is probably quite important in the context of today's times, to be careful that we're not inadvertently carving out a role for this generation of children to fix the problems of the generation before.

This crosses over with Rudolph Steiner's philosophies, described well in this exert from Mothering Magazine;

Steiner felt that children need a balanced development of their capacities in order to be prepared as adults to contribute to cultural renewal, instead of to the ongoing dehumanization of society. His aim was not to inculcate in children any particular viewpoint or ideology, but to make them so healthy, strong, and inwardly free that they would become a kind of tonic for society as a whole. The purpose of education, he thought, should not be merely to instill knowledge, which can be coldly abstract and destructive when separated from human values and a feeling for the humanity of other people. Rather, Steiner’s goal was to educate the whole human being so that thinking, feeling, and doing are integrated, and capable of functioning in a healthy way. Such people are more likely to discover and implement solutions that further human development, rather than fall prey to narrow and dogmatic doctrines such as National Socialism. In fact, when they came to power, the Nazis closed all Waldorf schools in Germany and, later, in the countries they occupied.

The universality and forward-looking thrust of Waldorf education was summarized by Steiner: “We shouldn’t ask: what does a person need to know or be able to do in order to fit into the existing social order? Instead we should ask: what lives in each human being and what can be developed in him or her? Only then will it be possible to direct the new qualities of each emerging generation into society. The society will become what young people, as whole human beings, make out of the existing social conditions. The new generation should not just be made to be what the present society wants it to become.”

More flicking shows though that there is though lots of good stuff in Disrupting Class on 'personalization' (that term doesn't sit so well with me) and the importance child-centric education, as these ideas are not especially new it will be interesting to see how applying the theory of disruptive innovation will help to fully integrate learner-centric thinking into education. Looking forward to a good read.

Biomimicry & Ayurvedic Surgical Tools

First day of Easter holidays today and number one son very relaxed and just slipped into being curious again, relieved of any compulsion to be taught (v learn). He came back from the shop armed with that magic balloon gue, a brilliant little device for creating your own vortex/tornado in between water bottles, and an elastic-band gun. Been intrigued about static on balloon bubbles and looked up static electricity - learning about electrons, protons, attraction etc. considered role in pressures and bursting stuff - judged by exit wounds of elastic bands.

All makes home-education very tempting again.

We also re-looked at something we'd been interested in a while back - surgical tools used in Ayurvedic medicine from around 800 -1100 BC -much more advanced than surgery in the West even in 1700s. These tools are great examples of biomimicry in form and function - based on birds and mammals beaks, mouths and skulls with even placement of eyes and nose and other features mimiced - possibly as part of the function too. Different tools are modeled on different creatures according to the job they need to perform and based on what creatures perform those same jobs well in nature - cutting, gripping, suturing etc. All made out of steel to avoid rust.

Giant biting ants were used to suture wounds - creating biodegradeable sutures - well before the first biodegradeable sutures appeared in the West

I've been trying to find some more info on these ayurvedic tools - any more that is known of them, are there any collections anywhere to see. I found some drawings in a children's encyclopedia which I've copied out (below). There's reference by a vet. surgeon interested in ayurvedic medicine as a basis of creating sustainable medicine - another growing and interesting field. There are also plenty of references to Shushruta - considered father of surgery, but haven't found much on the mimicry aspect.

Would love some info if anyone's got any?

Cloud Computing & Creative Exploration

These posters by Emily Gobeille and Theodore Watson caught my eye.

Designed for children using data from a variety of sources from; elevation data from Hawaiian volcanos, craters of the moon, and voice wave forms, these quirky images combine science, nature, algorithm and design neatly integrating analytical and creative ways of thinking.

What I particularly like is that it's a neat and not overly intellectual way to join the dots in children's minds between (subject) areas that we currently separate out in education and culturally within business. And without explicitly saying so it sets a good foundation for introducing systems thinking further upstream.

It's the sort of software that lends itself to cloud computing at school - globally across all schools, as part of the creation of a central on-line playground where pupils can come online, tap into data from geography - data from a school in Hawaii on weather patterns, biology - Cambridge university's research on why locusts swarm (serotonin apparently, very interesting, best keep the SSRIs out the way), business studies, use waveforms from music, the skate park, the woods, creative tools from the art department to collaborate, create, play, integrate and post up. A more dynamic school exchange programme, that's on-going and driven by pupils in explorative mode from home rather than in ICT once a week. Bottom up rather than top-down.

Mangoes, The Delhi Metro, Japanese Ropework ~ thoughts for new homework

The Little Big Stuff on Juhu Beach - Early Evening - Homework or this? - Pic Sarah Lancaster

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately around the purpose of homework, with lots of associated reading from The Element, The Difference, The Homework Myth - and have just ordered Clayton's book on Disruptive Innovation and Education, partly for my own interests in creativity and education, but also personally too. As I'll shortly being going in to talk with my son's school and proposing a new homework approach (for him, since I'm not sure they'll swing on the whole school!). One that is much more centred around his interests with a focus on quality rather than quantity and some real-world thinking inspired by Big Picture Schools. I'm working on some blog thoughts for this.

In the mean time I recently came across a couple of lists that pressed a thought out around the appreciation of the small stuff in life. That kind of deep satisfying appreciation that shouldn't be ignored. It made me think that in amongst schools needing to be much more child-centred - rather than system-centred, that one of the ways in which they can achieve this is to understand and encourage the small stuff.

The first list discovered via twitter - School of Everything  was A List of 100 Things I want to Learn linked to Pippa's thoughts on a DIY Masters, featuring things such as; Learn a musical instrument, How to make Bagels, Bookbinding, Japanese Ropework, Maintain my bicycle and so on. 

Different in content but probably similar in make-up to many of our lists if we sat down and thought about it. A balance between bigger stuff, little curious things, stuff you'd feel quite chuffed if you could do. Some will be more ephemeral, some will lead on to other things, some will be experience, some will be life-long passions. To make a list you just need to take note of those passing thoughts - 'I wonder how' and 'it'd be great to try' kind of thoughts.

The other list is from Andrew Buncombe on the Indy Blog - 10 of the Best Things About India 

He introduces the list by saying that it is an entirely personal list rather than a list of India's achievements, instead it's made up of the little gems that enrich his life in India:

1. Chana masala and tandoori roti at a scruffy dhaba - chickpea curry is the perfect cafe food when combined with amazing hot bread pulled straight out of the clay tandoor oven.

2. A winter's afternoon in Old Delhi, wandering without plan through the alleyways and eating the street food.

3. The concept of satyagraha or non-violent resistance, as developed by Gandhi. I love that everywhere in India, people feel the right to protest. The police often behave appallingly to protesters, but the right to hold sit-ins and demonstrations is ingrained in the culture.

4. The appropriately-named Sublime restaurant in the Goan coastal town of Anjuna Beach.

5. Tehelka magazine - a remarkable, investigative magazine that takes on the big guns of the Indian establishment and is the best subscription you can sign up for.

6. The Delhi Metro - clean, efficient, built on schedule and affordable for everybody. A genuine triumph.

7. The early evening in an Indian town or village, referred to as "Cow Dust Time" by the journalist James Cameron, because of the cows making their journey back from pasture. To me it also means the surge of people heading for home. I love the sense of calm before the frenzy of activity.

8. The smell of incense in old Hindu temples.

9. Bindeshwar Pathak and his NGO Sulabh International which has pioneered affordable public toilets in a country desperately in need of such facilities and has campaigned against the appalling caste-based practice of "manual scavenging" in which the poor are born into lives as toilet cleaners.

10. The amazing mangoes, papaya and guava at the local fruit stand.

And it clearly strikes a chord with readers who appreciate the personal and non-guide book view.

There's a parallel with schools here - subjects and lessons are often about lists of achievements in one form or another, and the big stuff- geography, french etc. and much less about the stuff that personally enriches each child's life, mangoes at the fruit stand, looking after your bike, learning how to make bagels. One of the noteable features about the list is the sense of balance they cover off bigger subjects - politics, bigger challenges - learn an instrument, but they are also just as much about enjoying food, dusty sunsets and craft. The pressure of homework not only supports an increasingly narrow subject driven approach, but also helps to contribute to our culture of overwork and lack of balance too. 

One of the justifications often given for supporting the case for homework (and yet not supported  by research) is that it helps to develop self-discipline. Self-discipline has seem to come to mean getting the mundane out the way, so you can move on to something more interesting. This is fine for housework, tidying etc. but not for life motivation. Children don't need discipline to help them choose a path in life, they need inspiration. You need discipline to stick at your passion when it goes through an inevitable dip in the road.

Perhaps one approach to homework is to do away with the traditional approach- 6 hours a day at school is enough, no need for double shifts here - and for children to spend say an hour a week- what ever feels right to them - on exploring their 100 Would like to's List, to eventually be able to make a 10 Things I Love list. 

Of course the elephant in the room here is that school, not just homework, should be about helping children realise, who they are, how they learn and relate to the world and what they love - the lifelong learning that is often on the lips of educators but somehow not woven into the fabric of education.

Homework would be a pragmatic place to start and perhaps the catalyst for change further down the chain. A change in homework policy would work wonders all round, not least for family relationships free of homework tension. After all, as Alfie Kohn says in the Homework Myth, who gets to choose how we use family time?

Little gems at Juhu Beach - Pic by Sarah Lancaster

Pretty Rubbish?

Playing at their favourite tree-swing, as a diversion, my son and his friend decided to do a bit of archeology on the launch slope. they were pretty chuffed to unearth a pair of 'old' (apologies archeologists at the random arm-waving on the age) bristle and bone toothbrushes, as well as a couple of other bits and bobs. Our suspicion was that the mound was the result of an old Victorian tip from the nearby woodman's cottages.

The toothbrushes were quite simply crafted, the bristles having since rotted away (how long would our so-called disposable toothbrushes take to break down now?), and gone to provide nutrients to the soil as would the bone when it followed later.

As I turned them over in my hands I couldn't help but wonder if our rubbish would be just as interesting to look at and just as nutritious to the ground - McDonalds super-size cartons, Pret Sandwich boxes, Walkers crisps, Coca-Cola cans, Greggs Bakers bags, KFC, Subway. I mention these as these are the brands that have the biggest share of voice on the streets - quite literally - with Mcdonalds packaging making up 29% of litter on the streets and in the countryside according to a survey with Keep Britain Tidy. Research released at the same time by Manchester business school suggests that litter leaves a damaging legacy on a brand's reputation. What do the organisations think - some such as McDonalds seem to make a certain degree of effort - though nothing especially ground-breaking, others such as Red Bull seem to be dissonant at best. When contacted by Tim Barnes from Litter Heroes, who identifies them as one of the worst offenders in his part of the country, RedBull released a statement effectively saying not our responsibility, it's up to the customers to get rid of it properly.

Disappointing, short-sighted and some-what behind the times with many organisations nowadays recognizing to some degree or other their role in ecosystems of community and environment. But beside the truculent nature of the response a few things strike me about the litter debate.

1) There's no doubt there's a huge littering problem. Debate is stuck between 2 absolutes, throwing away (good?) or littering and an argument over where responsibility lies. There's also no doubt that many of our measures are not working - law and logos alike as -Bill Bryson noted on the Litter Heroes website 

 "Now here is a fact to make you sit up. In the three years to last November, the city of Sheffield recorded a rather whopping (but by no means exceptional) 441,361 instances of fly-tipping. In the same period, it managed to catch and prosecute exactly one person" 

2) A less linear and more systems based approach could be taken. With the Keep Britain Tidy logo approaching mid-life perhaps some time for some fresh thinking.

3) Nature litters. All the time, especially in Autumn. Like the thinking in Cradle-to-Cradle and Gunter Pauli's Systems Thinking, could the very nature of litter be transformed. Like blossoms on a tree could it be pretty. Or perhaps biomimicry could be called upon, with inspiration from nature's habit of timed-degradation to ensure it breaks down within a pre-determined time - either as fleeting as butterfly wings for products with a short life span, or to work under tougher, more elemental conditions and last longer taking a note from creatures such as mussels and mussel glue, all then returning into the system as a nutrient. 

4) Perhaps litter could be edible and we could eat it, or feed it to the ducks. We could mimic the spiral structure of the womb to expand and collapse and make it easier to carry and perhaps encourage the right behaviours when out and about. 

5) These supported by other measures such as well positioned bins in hot spot areas sponsored by the companies in question. Rural litter seems to be mostly linked to motorists, as we know by nose-picking, singing aloud and road rage, we all take on a different personality inside our cars. Understanding the nature of the problem, or jobs that motorists are trying to get done, would help drive more solutions for temporarily storing used packaging in cars.

The science is there, there's been much innovation on sustainable packaging and big consortium packaging organisations such as Faraday have been exploring biomimicry and packaging for some time.

It might seem an awful lot of trouble for a minority problem. But actually it's linked to the bigger picture. If this litter is the visible minority, lets say 3%, what about the invisible majority, the other 97%, that we've comfortably thrown away - landfill or recycled - pulped or burned.

If all those Mcd cups, Greggs bags and Pret boxes are recycled into other materials, paper etc. We may feel somewhat better about it? But much of the recycling system is a bolt-on trying to deal with an imperfect input. If it's incinerated for so-called recovered energy, 57 chemical by-products are released. If it's pulped for paper there's still stuff left over, a sludge, in fact according the the environment agency, in UK alone 300,000 tonnes of the stuff - and I guess that must be the dried weight as its converted into an ash - a mixture of bleaches, chemicals, inks and short paper fibres. This has to go somewhere and a lot of it goes back to landfill - I'm not sure the alternatives and plans to divert a third of this into other uses are anymore palatable. In true brush it under the carpet-style it's hidden in our homes and food - building industry - making bricks, cement and other building products - and farming - agricultural liming - a process which influences the pH of the soil - in other words spread on the fields by being legally sold as a soil conditioner! Carrots anyone? See Toxic Sludge is Good for You for further reading on the pr industry.

I guess you could say this re-packaging is systems thinking to a degree, but it only works when dealing with honest inputs and outputs and the resulting products - such as litter - can be both designed and treated as a valuable benefit to all, a truly closed loop network, not by appearances alone.

Organisations like McDonalds and RedBull need to recognise both their inputs and outputs in the bigger picture, the whole linked network with proper published auditing. Would they want to proudly proclaim that their bags of carrots are grown with the aid of chemical paper-mill sludge from their cups?

Not that I want to bash them over the heads with a green club, I'd like to see the whole thinking-turned on its head - as Gunter Pauli's Systems Thinking does, to view every output as a valuable commodity, doing away with the concept of waste, if designed with the right frameworks from the start.

Michigan State University School of Packaging has recently won $400,000 from Coca-Cola to create a packaging innovation sustainability centre - to measure the environmental impact of packaging. Let's hope some good stuff, rather than corporate wool, comes out of there.

A big part of the answer lies in school education - not education on the environmental issues - the symptoms - but on the causes, linear silo thinking. The thinking that separates, biology from home-economics, chemistry from philosophy, business from art and so on. To encourage systems thinking in the workplace we need to sow the right seeds at school. Perhaps then we will design litter as we'd like to see it outside our front-door and that might in turn ensure it's what we'd like to know of it when it's under the floor and on our food.

Going with the flow

Related to the shark blog and the question of flow ... Jay Harman re-designed the fan based on biomimicry - analysing flow forms in nature - to produce greater energy efficiencies. It's a huge market worth more than Hollywood, as exhaust fans are a feature in many bits of kit. 

His company PAX Scientific " is an engineering research and design firm that uses streamlining geometries to design energy, efficient, quiet, and ecologically friendly technology." Definitely an organisation to watch.  More on Jay in another blog and also related to that an exploration of the narrowness of our curriculum and increasingly our home lives too. A line in his bio says "Harman's love of nature began as a boy swimming in the ocean near his home". Experience and wonderment rooted in the natural world help us observe, learn and to ask the right questions, how do our home and school lives enable this experience?

Scott E.Page - The Difference

This book looks great, it's been added to my extensive Amazon Wishlist. 

From the reviews it sounds like it makes a good case for diversity in education and the workplace in order to reach better everythings; practices, solutions, innovations etc.

Much of the breakthroughs for medicine, the environment, business practice and education simply won't happen without a diverse collaborative approach. Education is still largely stuck on educating from the neck up and even then just using selected parts of the brain. Looks like another good case for nurturing creativity in schools. Perhaps a complement to Howard Gardner's Five Minds work too?? I'm also reading Ken Robinson's latest book - The Element - which looks at how to create an environment in schools and the workplace around how we nurture all the diverse talents we have rather than a select few.

"Review
Rather than ponder moral questions like, 'Why can't we all get along?' Dr. Page asks practical ones like, 'How can we all be more productive together?' The answer, he suggests, is in messy, creative organizations and environments with individuals from vastly different backgrounds and life experiences. -- Claudia Dreifus New York Times The Difference is brimming with so many intriguing insights and findings that I cannot do justice to them all. -- Philip E. Tetlock Science A fascinating and important book... The Difference is a thought-provoking and stimulating read. -- Diane Coyle Business Economist [Page] redefines the way we understand ourselves in relation to one another. The Difference is about how we think in groups...and how our collective wisdom exceeds the sum of its parts. Why can teams of people find better solutions than brilliant individuals working alone? And why are the best group decisions and predictions those that draw upon the very qualities that make each of us unique? The answers lie in diversity...not what we look like outside, but what we look like within, our distinct tools and abilities. Education Digest In The Difference, Page reveals how groups that display a range of perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts. Diversity yields superior outcomes, and he proves it using his own cutting-edge research. Moving beyond the politics that often clouds standard debates about diversity, Page explains why difference beats out homogeneity. And he examines practical ways to apply diversity's logic to a host of problems. Here is the City Page has written a book that offers a pragmatic defense of diversity practices, where having a diverse set of points of view in a group equates to better decision making. The book ...illustrates the benefits of a different way of thinking about problem solving, providing people with conceptual tools to understand what lies behind some of the more popular treatments of topics and to reshape the public debate about the benefits and disadvantages of diversity. -- Henry Farrell Quality World "

Biomimicry, quiet wounds and the singing detective

Luca Turin's company,  Flexitral, is working with MIT in response to DARPA's (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) RealNose project. The RealNose project aims to mimic dogs ability to detect and interpret scent. There have been several more viable e-nose innovations and chemo sensors over the last 5 years or so, but still all with limitations on the number and specificity of the substances they can identify and so there is still a critical military need for innovation here. Now however MIT researchers have had a breakthrough that allows them to produce the receptors humans use to smell, a critical step in advancing scent detection technology. The project challenge laid down is to, build a nose using the canine nose as inspiration to simulate the mammalian olfactory system - from air intake to pattern recognition.

The mammalian olfactory system is pretty sophisticated, us humans have 5-6 million olfactory receptors and are capable of detecting substances in dilutions of less than one part in a billion parts of air. Dogs win on the scent top trumps though with 220 million olfactory receptors, while our olfactory cones are about the size of a corn kernal, dogs have a veritable cob wedged in their brains. The downside for dogs is that their ability to detect butyric acid is 100,000,000 x better than humans - this is the chemical responsible for smelly feet. 

As with many military projects this could have huge benefits for medicine. Dogs can sense when we're ill, infections and various cancers release chemicals into the bloodstream and breath, creating distinctive odour patterns which dogs are able to detect. 

Professor Julian Gardner who heads up the Sensors Research Lab at Warwick University, has been trialling an electronic sniffer to help detect the MRSA virus. In testing hospital patients or workers for MRSA, samples are sent off to be cultured which then take two or three days to complete. Time that patients with serious infections or hospitals needing to identify and control outbreaks just don't have. (Interesting article here on various methods being worked on to either identify or combat superbugs in hospital setting).

Gardner's e-nose recognises a unique cocktail of volatile compounds that s.aureus excretes, within 15 minutes. The gas is identified through pattern recognition as it's passed over reactive electrodes.  In dogs a wet nose is a good sign of health and also it turns out important for detection of chemicals, as they dissolve in the mucus and separate into different odour molecules, in an orderly fashion, so that they can be interpreted individually. Gardner set about developing artificial snot - a project sure to re-engage any teenager with science - consisting of a 10 micron polymer sliver, increasing the performance of the e-nose and its ability to differentiate between different smells. Warwick University and many others have been working on e-noses for some 20 years now, improvements in technology and the cost of the technology are starting to make it more viable. Gardner thinks that an e-nose to detect s.aureus could cost as little as £5.00 each. 

Perhaps the DARPA project will produce a gadget that is capable of identifying a wider range of pathogenic bacteria that could have applications in wound care and post operative monitoring both in a home and hospital setting, a kind of singing detective that translates the bacterial by products into a signature tune based on their vibrational frequency picture.

These innovations would be well combined with some other exciting developments in biomimicry. A UK firm, First Water Gel Technology, has developed a range of wound care applications based on the way our own cells initiate and manage wound healing. 

Highly Sulphated Glycosaminoglycans (HSGs or GAGs) are long polysaccaride chains found in both the extra cellular matrix and on the outer surface of cell membranes. The HSGs act as binding sites involved in the normal wound healing process. In chronic wounds however the HSGs are dysfunctional. First Water has developed polymers that mimic HSGs and integrated them into a number of dressings for both the clinical and home market. The polymers are pro-ionic and have, weight for weight, the same absorbancy as aliginate - key for highly exuding wounds esp. those in the yellow and black phases. The polymers make the dressings somewhat adaptogenic as they are able to cope with high and low levels of exudate, absorbing and locking away moisture and allowing wound to breathe, but as the polymer gel is also 30% water, it is able to moisturize wounds such as burns giving a specific high heat capacity, controlling scarring, pain and epidermal breakdown, the moist environment allows cell movement, division and growth. Rather neatly they've seen a (much needed) role here in helping nursing mothers with breastfeeding - in helping to heal cracked nipples and absorb moisture both from exudate and leaked milk, current breastpads have been ripe for innovation for some time.

Usefully the gel is also naturally antibacterial against; c.albicans, p.aeruginosa, s.aureus and e.coli. The dressings are transparent (unlike traditional hydrocolloids) for better monitoring and reduce both cost and wound disturbance with unnecessary dressing changes. The polymer technology has also been integrated into their contact dressings. The exudate passes through pores of a primary layer  (not unlike the pores which pass fluid through to the pedicels in the kidney's filtration membrane)  into a secondary application that can be changed frequently as it doesn't disturb the wound - particular as the adhering gel only sticks to the surrounding skin and not the wound.

Things get really exciting when we can start to integrate complimentary innovations. These contact dressings are interesting and I wonder if some R&D could integrate them with the diagnostic technology in the e-noses where the removed secondary polymer layer is used as a form of mucus with an e-nose to analyse and monitor the presence of key bacteria within the wound. The polymer is also interesting in that another biomimicry innovation is based around using polymers - seaweed mimicing antibacterial compounds. Australian firm BioSignal have researched and developed a compound based on the seaweed Delisea Pulchra.

This seaweed produces compounds - fumerones - that inhibit bacteria's ability to colonise and form virulent biofilms. Over 80% of bacterial infections in people are estimated to involve biofilms. If you want to see a biofilm in action don't clean your teeth for a day, that gunky plaque is a biofilm - an appetising blend of bacteria, sugars, proteins and bacterial DNA. A wound is perfect for them as the fluid in the wound acts a medium to deliver nutrients and get rid of wastes. A vital aspect of colony formation is communication the bacteria signal to one another and that controls the virulence of the colony. Biofilms can't form on the Delisea Pulchra as the fumerones interfere with bacterial signalling and communication, crucially as they don't actually kill the bacteria the bacteria don't then develop resistance. Antibiotic resistant bacteria are a huge and dangerous challenge for the healthcare system and so other methods of effective bacterial control are vital. BioSignal's mission is to 'Provide effective defense against bacteria without generating bacterial resistance.' The industries that they're looking at are water and air conditioning systems, pipes and corrosion, industrial surfaces, foods, management of chronic lung infections, catheters and contact lenses - where they can be bound to polymers. Clearly it also has potential applications in healthcare, and in particular wound care, preventing and controlling infections in wounds and post-operative healing. Hushing the bacterial chatter- the quiet wound.

All of these are linked not only by potential applications but also by advances in polymer technology. Could they all work together to form an integrated solution?

How do we leave the door open for what we don't yet know

I love watching TED, it's interesting how often you come across something that links with an idea that was forming in your mind, or with other things you happen to be reading. Speaking of which it's TED 2009 this week. I'd love to be there.

Picking up the trail on other people's work on vibration, fascinates me. Luca Turin's talk on 'the science of scent' sparks a number of thoughts. Luca explored how we actually register smell? 

This is still a controversial area with a handful of competing theories. The shape model has it that it is to do with molecular shape - the lock and key mechanism. Luca's work, inspired work of Wright and Dyson, however set out to demonstrate that smell worked by vibration and not shape. That each molecule, and the bonds connecting them, responsible for a smell - such as cut grass - vibrated at it's own unique frequency. (And that frequency can be translated into audible range as a note). This was interesting enough in itself as I've always thought that colours sing - that would be one of my ways of describing them, each with a different tune. Smells are often described as having a note. This is not to say that shape isn't important in smell but Luca's theory is that smell is not a consequence of shape alone or even primarily.

Luca was able to demonstrate his theory when he left academia and set up a company "putting someone else's money where my mouth was" to work for industry developing fragrance and flavours. A French perfumer set him the challenge of finding a compound that smelt like coumarin. Coumarin is a sweet hay-like, tobacco smell, very important and popular in perfume (and so financially valuable) but actual coumarin is toxic and can't be used as I guess eroding your customer-base over time is not much good for business. Undaunted, they profiled coumarin -that is analysed its vibrational spectrum- and set about finding a match. They found one after just three weeks - virtually unknown. Quite a different shape, but an almost perfect match on vibrational frequency and the same sweet tobacco scent.

" When you're a scientist you're always selling ideas, people are very resistant to ideas .. when you put a 10 gm vial on the table and it smells like coumarin and it isn't coumarin, and you found it in three weeks, this focuses everybody's minds wonderfully."

A great story and well worth a watch.

Watching it leaves me with several thoughts;

1) Connected to the vibrational theory - how does this connect to or intersect the work of other researchers or traditions, on vibrational theory such as Candace Pert, Helen Langevin,Traditional Chinese Medicine, which in turn has interesting connections with the Patricia Kane's biomedical work, this touches on our understanding of our communication systems - what are the opportunities for medicine, industry and biomimicry.

2) This is more about mindset and the process of creativity and innovation itself. When I studied science the shape theory was presented as an accepted and complete'ish picture. In both education and innovation how do we leave the door open for what we don't yet know in order for us to think more creatively about solutions and the way stuff works. Generally we like black and white pictures rather than probables, but the trouble is this does tend to fix our way of seeing, to keep on thinking the world is flat. Prescription education based on standardised testing can only reinforce prescriptive standard thinking and carry the culture over to the workplace.

3) Linked to this is the importance of language and metaphor in building pictures in keeping the door open. When we use metaphors - and still pictures of lock and key it starts to fix in our minds how we think stuff is working. When we describe the immune system as defence, we start to interpret its behaviour within that context, as well as then compartmentalise function. Much of our language in medicine and business is often war-like and compartmentalised, rather than collaborative and networked - though much of this is changing now with our digital landscape as we recognise the power of networks and collaboration in both science and business.

These are huge subjects in themselves, but I'd quite like to think aloud on them some other posts. Luca Turin is also involved in an interesting DARPA research project on scent detection, more on that later too.