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The students at Rockport High School know the dangers that fishermen face because their fathers are lobstermen on the North Shore, or simply because they've grown up steeped in their hometown's rich, seafaring history.
So it makes sense that some of the Rockport students might want to create a life-saving invention for fishermen.
The Rockport students are using a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam grant to make a device that shoots an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon up to 60 feet away from a boat in trouble, before it capsizes and traps the beacon beneath the vessel, where it might fail to work.
The Rockport students recently received a $3,200 "continuation" of their initial 2008 grant for the beacon launcher. The initial grant was for $5,500.
The Rockport InvenTeam, with help from industry, has also been tweaking its original design, which called for a mechanical, auto-deployment system, made from off-the-shelf parts. Beverly-based Kaiser Systems Inc. is working with the Rockport InvenTeam on a low-voltage, long-lasting power source for the auto-deployment system.
And Stockholm-based Autoliv Inc., which makes automotive safety devices, will provide the Rockport InvenTeam with a customized electronic tilt sensor and an airbag deployment system.
The Rockport InvenTeam reports that it will remain true to one of its original goals for the auto-deployment system, which is to keep the cost of the system as low as possible for mariners.
Several Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams will be showcasing their prototypes at EurekaFest (web.mit.edu/invent/eurekafest.html) June 24-27, at MIT and the Museum of Science.
From netbook revolutionary, one screen that's easy on the eyes
Have you ever wondered why your laptop can't double as a proper e-book reader?The reason: Mary Lou Jepson has only just gotten around to inventing the right screen for the job.
Jepson, who invented the sunlight-readable screen for the One Laptop Per Child laptop, is preparing to roll out a 10-inch LCD for netbooks, which will spare you the additional expense of an e-book reader.
The screen, made by Jepson's company, Pixel Qi (www.pixelqi.com/), uses transflective technology - its pixels are partially covered, so they can transmit or reflect light.
You still get to check out your YouTube videos, Flickr photos, and Facebook pages, in full color, with the Pixel Qi screen. But unlike other LCDs, when you turn the Pixel Qi screen's brightness all the way down to zero, it becomes a fully reflective, hi-resolution, black-and-white e-paper surface.
Like so many of us, Jepson spends a good chunk of her time reading e-mail and articles on airplanes and in hotel rooms. She hopes to save our eyes from the light-emitting LCDs, which require us to crank-up their brightness to compete with ambient light. "It's like staring into a flashlight," Jepson said of reading on her laptop.
"No one wants to get in the way of gaming and movies," said Jepson. "But most people do a lot of reading on the screen, as well."
"Have you ever noticed, when you print something out to proofread it, how many mistakes you didn't catch?" Jepson asked. "That's because we don't read as closely on-screen."
The Pixel Qi screen provides readers with crisp text that you can read under most lighting conditions, similar to devices made with E-Ink technology. (The Pixel Qi screen is not an E-Ink device.)
Pixel Qi's manufacturing facility in Taipei will begin producing the screens this summer, Jepson said.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
