Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), an international conference that brings together designers, developers, manufacturers, and distributors of consumer electronics products. CES reaches across global markets, connects the industry, and enables consumer innovations to grow and thrive. It was quite an amazing experience, full of new e-readers, 3D TVs, holographic displays, multi-touch screens, and some of the hottest new tech gadgets around.

Still, I couldn’t help but be most proud of this glorious yellow Albert Einstein t-shirt that I nabbed at the Promise Technology booth.  It was well worth the 20 minutes of technical jargon I had to endure while listening to a pitch for the company’s new Smartstor Zero network storage device.

By Dr. John. Anyone can be a scientist, and not surprisingly, scientists are just like everyone else. That’s what NOVA ScienceNOW hopes to convey with their new show, The Secret Life of Scientists, a web video series that provides a personal and thought-provoking look at the lives of 16 scientists and engineers. Through a mixture of whimsical interview questions, each show will demonstrate how scientists and engineers can be athletes, musicians, artists, chefs, and, most importantly, incredibly human.

Although, SUPER-human might be more accurate for tonight’s episode featuring Nate Ball, a mechanical engineer, entrepreneur, pole-vaulting coach, jazz pianist, and TV star. In his day job, Nate is chief technical officer and co-founder of a technology and innovation company, Atlas Devices. His business develops a tool that he helped invent, the Powered Rope Ascender, which enables military personnel and rescue workers to reverse-rappel up buildings at high speeds. Check out these awesome videos of Nate’s invention in action.

And, Nate isn’t camera-shy. He is currently a cast member on PBS’ Design Squad, a show that features two teams of contestants charged with brainstorming, designing, building, and testing products before putting them to the test.

I had a chance to ask Nate a few questions about how he balances all of these endeavors, what inspires him to innovate, and his strategies for creating more interest in science and engineering. You’ll find, just as I did, that Nate has transformed a childhood passion into a career and drawn from a variety of perspectives to keep himself grounded. To learn more about Nate’s drive to succeed, check out tonight’s episode of The Secret Life of Scientsts.

Dr. John: How do we demistify science and bridge the gap between scientists and society?

Nate: Bridging the gap between scientists & engineers and society has always been an extremely important endeavor, and certainly is now more than ever. The way I like to make my career of mechanical engineering more accessible is to point out that I get to do now what I loved to do as a kid–build stuff and solve problems! Did you like to make forts out of couch cushions when you were 6? It’s a great lead-up to civil or mechanical engineering. Love to make your own recipes in the kitchen? Chemistry or biology may be for you. What usually gives people that “aha!” sort of understanding about engineering is when they realize that engineering is responsible for everything around them, and what engineers do is no different from any of the creative experimentation and problem solving everybody did as a kid. It’s just at a higher level with some extra training.

Dr. John: You clearly balance your interests in science and technology with other interests in your personal life — why is this balance important?

Nate: I pursue quite a few activities outside my office, which I find really important. For one, it gives my brain a chance to rest after exercising the analytical one for 14 hours a day at work (I love my job!). Play music and spending time doing really active things is my chance to change up what I’m working on and recharge the engineering part. I actually find that I’m never as focused as right after a hard workout. My brain just feels like it works differently–nothing seems distracting, I have much better clarity on whatever I was trying to solve before, and I’m even relieved to be sitting down again. But the whole “giving the analytical side a rest” isn’t the only part of it; I find that the things I balance my work with are really complementary to the engineering I do. Exercising the creative part of the brain with playing music or figuring out how to coach one of my pole vaulters keeps the colorful brain half flexible and ready to attack engineering challenges in a new way. So it’s a very important two-way street.

Dr. John: What is your most cherished accomplishment?

Nate: Having heard through a parent that their kid was inspired to pursue engineering after reading about some of my work. That was one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever heard!

Dr. John: Who inspired you to pursue career in mechanical engineering?

Nate: I credit my parents and grandparents with nurturing my interests in engineering-related activities that launched me toward where I am now. When I was about 3 years old around Christmas, my granddad gave me a block of wood, a hammer, and a bunch of roofing nails. After a lot of hammered fingers, I was off to the races and never stopped! My parents’ continued support of all the projects I made growing up, from kayaks to land sailers to potato guns and a Tesla coil, was really responsible for me getting hooked on technical problem solving. They supported my decision to go to MIT and are still cheering me on today.

Dr. John: How big of role can citizens play in the scientific process?

Nate: A huge one! You don’t have to have formal training in science or engineering to be perceptive about how the world works, and the observations of countless laymen have always made tremendous impacts in technical development. Take anything you’re familiar with and think about how it could be improved. How about that bad intersection you always avoid when driving to work because the lights aren’t timed well? Do you always slip on your front walk with the coated pavement? That old car you drove in high school that needed some special operator training (jiggle the key just like this to get it to start…). Every person on earth has some amount of intuition and more than enough capability to observe how things work. We execute careful problem solving processes many times each day whether we realize it or not. And sometimes, average Joe or Jane Citizen makes an observation that’s particularly insightful, and the scientific process helps make another leap forward for everyone’s benefit.

Dr. John: How do you encourage people to become more interested in science?

Nate: I engage many people in a lot of different venues to familiarize them with science and engineering. Some outreach I do directly, some through the engineering reality TV show I host (Design Squad on PBS), and some is done with the help of the very-real engineered products I have helped create, which closely resemble some of the equipment on Batman’s tool belt. Nothing captures the imagination like zipping up a rope at 10 feet per second, and when I’m able to close the loop between what people are seeing me demonstrate and the engineering that made it possible, you can practically see the light bulb go on in their head. And that’s a great feeling.

Video games are everywhere these days!  And so, the next time you go to pick up your Wii controllers or log on to your favorite World of Warcraft server, take an hour or so to put your gaming skills to a more scientific use.  Scientists at the University of Washington are exploiting our societal love of video games to advance their research on protein folding by creating the game Foldit.

Though this program appears to be just a game based on logic, each “move” in the game is actually determining protein structure, one fold at a time. So why should you dedicate your hour of free time folding proteins instead of getting a new high score on Mario Kart?  Proteins are biology’s workforce: they drive all of the reactions that make biology work, and comprise all of the structural elements that hold biology together.  Proteins self-assemble into specific shapes, or folds, in order to carry out their designated function.  When proteins fold incorrectly, they can clump together into aggregates that promote diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, cystic fibrosis, and Mad Cow.  And so, by understanding the folding process for particular proteins linked to these diseases, scientists can also begin to predict where folding mistakes may occur and how to avoid them. To get started, download the free Foldit program and take the 20 minute tutorial on the rules of the game.  There are also beginner puzzles you can try to familiarize yourself with how the program works.  From there, it’s happy folding! A special thank you to JT Lewis, for bringing the Foldit project to my attention. (Reporting on citizen science projects is much easier to do with the help of our readers — this means YOU!  Please report any projects you hear about using our form on the main webpage!)

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

• Topics: Computers and technology
• Location: at home or close to home
• Duration: a few hours, or less
• Cost: free or low cost
• Gear: A computer with an internet connection (to download software)
• Level of Difficulty: Easy

I just watched the movie Iron Man, for the second time. Entertaining, albeit sobering, reminder that our own nation’s superior advances in technology–in this case, weapons technology–can be hijacked by friends or foes and, eventually, used against us. Keeping our weapons out of enemy hands is a problem for the Department of Defense to worry about. I’ve got my own “technology trust issues” I’d like to vent about.

Let me start with my  touch screen cell phone. Formerly known as my trusted companion. Keeper of my diary, confider of private discussions. My personal assistant for goodness sake. For no good reason, “it” has turned against me. Randomly dialing people, exposing my conversations for all the world to listen in on. Sneaky thing does this when I least expect it. Like when I’m damning to hell the speeding cab driver, talking to myself, or whispering my sins to Father Mark in the confessional box. 

My phone has more commands and function buttons than my ridiculously over-engineered cable TV remote control. Still I have yet to locate what must be a simple “lock” or “please do not call anyone without my permission” request. Working on it.

Technological applications have the ability to betray insects, too, as it turns out.  Even the smartest of bugs: cockroaches. This New ScientistTech article explains how a matchbox-sized robot can “infiltrate a pack of cockroaches and influence their collective behavior.” The robot can “persuade a group of cockroaches to venture out into the light despite their normal preference for the dark, for example.” 

(Note to self: borrow that little robot to march the menacing mice out of my house and into an open flame.)

I’ve resorted to using this computer as my personal assistant, you see. I’m all synced up with my online contacts and online calendar (functions I used to depend on my cell phone to handle until it turned on me). However, I’m currently investigating options other than the computer and Internet largely because of stats like these, authored by Bill Gates of Microsoft, in this 2007 essay:

Today, connectivity – the basic foundation for anywhere access – can be a double-edged sword. Connectivity that streamlines the flow of information and communications can also open the door to malicious users. How widespread is the problem? In the United States last year, security breaches – some inadvertent, some purposeful and criminal – exposed the personal information of more than 100 million people. In 2005, 46 percent of fraud complaints filed with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission were Internet related. A 2006 report from the Cyber Security Industry alliance noted that 50 percent of Internet users are afraid their credit card information will be stolen.

Maybe my dearly departed Uncle Johnny was right when he gave me this counsel on one of my childhood birthdays: “Computers are stupid and evil. Waste of time. Just like that ballet nonsense. You should have learned something useful, like the foxtrot, Dummy.”
 
Fortunately for us, lots of smart people are working hard to find a solution to Bill’s concerns and instill trust in technology users (us). I had a feeling the defunct Office of Technology Assessment had a hand in investigating the matter back in the early 1990s, before their doors were closed. The OTA used to help Congress understand how technology and technology policy would most likely impact society. I dug around a bit and found this OTA report on Information Security and Privacy in Network Environments (1995).

In this report, the OTA studied “legal issues and information security, including electronic commerce, privacy, and intellectual property.” And the office identified “about two dozen possible options” in which “the need for openness, oversight, and public accountability–given the broad public and business impacts of these policies–runs throughout the discussion of possible congressional actions.”

Unfortunately, the OTA was caught in a bipartisan slapdown resulting in its closure right about the time this issue update was completed. Would people trust technology more today if the OTA’s recommendations had been implemented? I say, “yes.” It’s one of the reasons I am pushing for better, stronger OTA to be reopened. Better and stronger because, unlike the OTA of the past, the new OTA  will include public participation in important discussions of science and technology policies. Other countries do this. In fact, the E.U. and Denmark modeled our OTA to create their own OTAs but they one-upped us by including public participation.

Ah, once again, a great idea, hijacked.  Let’s get our OTA back.