Friday, November 28, 2003

Women Inventors? BBC Technology -- Women are behind a much larger number of inventions than they are generally given credit for, a researcher has found. Deborah Jaffe has recently finished work on a book, Ingenious Women, in which she has investigated the female inventors who have changed the world with their ideas. They include the windscreen wiper, the dishwasher, filter coffee, and the technology behind the bullet-proof vest. "When I was writing the book people said to me, 'but women have never invented anything'," Ms Jaffe told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme. "I found proof. Some of them are famous and some of them are not, but that doesn't matter." The first patent granted to a woman was in 1637. Ms Jaffe said that in the UK, there had been 500 women inventors between that time and 1914, the point her research has reached so far. Among these inventions were the dishwasher, dreamed up by Josephine Cochran in 1886, and the disposable nappy, the brainchild of Marion Donovan. A number of the inventions reflected the traditional role of women, and were devices designed to make domestic life easier. But Ms Jaffe said that this was far the whole story. "What surprised me was when you see that somebody's invented a type of signalling at sea, or a life jacket, or things for public health," she said. Ada Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron, was heavily involved in the conception and invention of the Analytical Engine, one of the earliest computers, in 1842, for example. Patents registered in the US at around this time included a chain-link fire escape, by Gusta Aarons Bohannan, and Jenetta Valentine's cigarette-rolling machine. It was also a woman who first allowed a glimpse of the bottom of the ocean, when Sarah Mather patented a submarine telescope and lamp. (11/28/03) Dangers of Indoor Smoke BBC Science -- Smoke from indoor cooking fires kills one person every 20 seconds in the developing world, UK campaigners say. The Intermediate Technology Development Group says smoke in the home kills more people than malaria does, and almost as many as unsafe water and sanitation. The problem affects more than two billion people who burn wood, charcoal, vegetation and dung for heating food. The United Nations says inefficient stoves can be as bad for health as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. ITDG says 2.4 bn people burn biomass (organic matter) for cooking and heating, and when coal is included 3 bn people - half the world's population - rely on solid fuel. ... They say, "Women who cook on biomass are up to four times more likely to suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, such as chronic bronchitis. Lung cancer in women in China has been directly linked to use of coal burning stoves. In addition there is evidence to link the pollution to asthma, tuberculosis, low birth weight and infant mortality and cataracts." More than half the people who cook on biomass live in India and China, but in many sub-Saharan African countries more than 90% of people do so. On current trends 200 million more people globally will rely on biomass by 2030, the International Energy Agency says. (11/28/03) Save on Plastic BBC Technology -- A common plastic used to keep monitor screens clear of fluff could soon be used as a high-density computer memory. In the journal Nature, the US researchers behind the discovery say it could let them pack a gigabyte of data into a sugar cube-sized device. The material is also very cheap to manufacture and data can be written down and read back from it quickly. The researchers predict that it could take only a few years to turn their discovery into working devices. The full name of the plastic is polyethylenedioxythiophene, usually abbreviated to Pedot, and it is a candidate for storage because it conducts electricity. At low voltages Pedot conducts electricity but with a strong enough jolt of power it becomes permanently non-conducting. ... The researchers used these polar properties to represent the 0s and 1s of digital memory in their Pedot/electrode sandwich. Any device resulting from their work would be a "write-once, read-many" format and could perhaps be used to store films or music. The researchers speculate that very dense memory blocks could be created by stacking the thin layers of the material on top of each other. They team estimates that working devices could be up to 10 times more dense than current hard disks. (11/28/03) 5:58:59 AM

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