News for Inventors

West Point Home the manufacturer of branded home products from Martex to Ralph Lauren to Harley Davidson. (Yes, there are HD sheets and boy are they wild!) West Point Home now wants your innovation for organization and storage products for any room in the house, including the attic.  The company has teamed up with Edison Nation to assist in collecting information and video about your ideas.  There is a catch though...

Some people literally see beyond the limitations of others to invent and develop assistive innovations that open doors to disabled persons.  In this case, Dr. Dennis Hong,  from Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), made some in'roads' for blind persons with his invention of the world's first blind driver vehicle.

Nick Lewis says that his new Adjustable Eco Hanger will save 6.5 million tons of carbon each year, the equivalent of removing 1.5 million cars from the road.  He figures this based on the 40 billion hangers a year that are used globally, many of which are discarded, especially by retailers.

An internationally known chemical biologist, Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi, researcher, entrepreneur, teacher, and mentor, from the University of California at Berkeley, has won the most prestigious Lemelson-MIT Prize for $500,000, dubbed the 'Oscar for Inventors.'  This award recognizes individuals who translate their inventions and innovations into technologies that improve our world.

They are not on a salary or salary/incentive basis, paid by their companies to invent; they work alone, on their own or in small groups, generally in someone's garage or other part of the home. Popular Science recognizes the accomplishments of these independent inventors yearly in the June issue of its magazine.  Here are the 10 winning inventions...

Three PhD students from Stanford University's chemical engineering program took $200,000 back to their new California business yesterday, after winning  MIT's Clean Energy Prize.  C3Nano, a spin-off of Stanford's chemical engineering department, was started to commercialize their invention, and it could use the prize money to get things going!

Switzerland slid past the U.S. to first place in the 2009 - 2010 Global Competitiveness Report, a biannual report published by the World Economic Forum.  There are many elements that contribute to a country's competitiveness, but the Forum puts a lot of emphasis, as it should, on innovation capacity.  If innovation capacity were the only factor, the U.S. probably would not make it to the top 20.

Before I knew that you weren't supposed to sleep in your contact lenses, I did.  And boy, did it feel fantastic to open my moist eyes in the morning and see clearly without having to search for my specs. Now, a Spanish optometrist has patented a contact lense that can correct your vision problems. And he wants you to wear his lenses overnight!