
Teen invents a system to keep germs from spreading on airplanes - beyti
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/05/15/meet-the-teen-who-just-won-75000-for-inventing-a-system-to-keep-germs-from-spreading-on-airplanes/
======
strommen
This invention is awesome.

I can't believe all the negativity in this thread for something created by a
17-year-old. So what if the technical complexity of this project isn't the
super high? It's a novel approach to a real problem, he did the research to
show that in theory it can be effective, and it seems reasonable practical.

Beyond serious diseases, it seems very common to get a cold/cough/flu after
flying. This is just anecdotal experience, but it sure seems like 100 people
sharing the same 5000 cubic feet of air for 4 hours is the perfect storm for
airborne contagions.

CDC, please build on Raymond's work and get it rolled into production.

~~~
sliverstorm
_So what if the technical complexity of this project isn 't the super high?_

I would even go the other way, the low complexity of the solution makes it all
that more amazing. The kid ran his own studies and created a very simple
solution that requires almost no effort to implement and yet should be hugely
effective. That's the hallmark of great engineering, and what I strive for
every day.

~~~
surge
Right, also less complex solutions are often the most reliable, less points of
failure or things that can go wrong.

------
giarc
The goal should be prevention instead of control. I work in infection
prevention and control so can shed some light on this.

The two major diseases people on planes should be worried about are measles
and chickenpox. Both of which have excellent vaccines to prevent illness.

TB is airborne but not highly transmissible, for example, the public health
department where I live will only conduct exposure follow up for TB patients
that were on a plane for longer than 7 hours, and only start with 2 rows in
front, and 2 rows behind. Only if those passengers seroconvert for TB will
they test the rest of the plane.

Things like SARS/MERS-CoV are also a concern, but the control should be to
prevent these people from getting on the plane in the first place (temperature
monitoring).

Influenza and other respiratory viruses are a concern, but these are spread
through larger droplets and therefore only really concern those directly next
to you (likely family members) and you are just as likely to pick it up in the
airport lounge than on the plane.

Cool invention, but just a minor cog in the chain of infection.

~~~
jedberg
> The two major diseases people on planes should be worried about are measles
> and chickenpox. Both of which have excellent vaccines to prevent illness.

Unless you're too young or sick to get the vaccine, or the vaccine is
ineffective.

I just flew on an 11 hour flight with my 4 month old, and my biggest concern
was measles since she can't be vaccinated yet.

~~~
giarc
Correct, but she would be protected if all the other adults were vaccinated.
We did a very good job over the past 60 years of almost eradicating measles
and it's only be recently that cases have appeared in groups of anti-vaxxers
and spreading to those too young to get the shot.

~~~
alextgordon
The situation with chickenpox is actually quite complicated. The vaccine is
not routinely offered in the UK.

They say something interesting, which is that adults get a boost to their
immunity whenever they are exposed to the virus (as most parents are).

If children were vaccinated, then adults who had had chickenpox would not
receive this boosting effect and it could cause a higher incidence of shingles
in the adult population.

Because chickenpox is mostly harmless in childhood, they reason that it's
better to just hope that as many children as possible catch it, and vaccinate
the adolescents that don't.

[http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/vaccinations/Pages/chickenpox-v...](http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/vaccinations/Pages/chickenpox-
vaccine-questions-answers.aspx#routineschedule)

~~~
giarc
There is a shingles vaccine now though. Basically a booster.

------
jawns
Quote by the teen who won the competition: "Basically a lot of this work is
master's or PhD-level research."

I believe it! Which makes me think ...

We spend a lot of time giving high-school students a general, liberal arts
education, but I think there's room in secondary education, at least for
highly motivated students, to drill deeply into one particular domain.

You've probably seen mattmight's famous "Illustrated guide to a Ph.D.":
[http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-
pictures/](http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/)

I wondering if we shouldn't do more to encourage self-driven learners to
extend that tentacle out earlier than we currently do.

~~~
carlob
> We spend a lot of time giving high-school students a general, liberal arts
> education, but I think there's room in secondary education, at least for
> highly motivated students, to drill deeply into one particular domain.

I don't know if I agree, I think it's very important to have a well rounded
education by the time you come out of high school. I, for one, am very
grateful to have been exposed to philosophy, literature (in more than one
language), art. All stuff that I probably would not have chosen for myself.
You have all of your life to specialize in a domain, what's the rush?

~~~
kiba
Why is it important to be well rounded?

~~~
derekp7
It isn't that there is intrinsic value in the various other subjects
themselves, the value comes from having a shared core of knowledge /
experience that can be used when interacting with others. Just two examples
from recent conversations -- once I used an example that had a comparison to a
canary in a coal mine. Several people in the group never heard of that phrase,
so I had to explain what it meant. Another time I used the expression "Tilting
at Windmills", and again that was lost on some people.

So yes, it is important to be well rounded, just to have common base for
general conversations.

~~~
minthd
But surely, if the only need is common core of shared knowledge - and since
most people forget most of what they learned in school - maybe just teaching a
highly condensed form of this knowledge, in a highly memorable fashion would
be better ?

------
CountHackulus
Using existing air systems for these seems like a nice hack. It's something
that's easily implemented, though I fail to see airlines implement it any time
soon. There's no financial benefit to them for this. Someone having a cold
will hardly stop them from buying a plane ticket.

~~~
rjsw
I avoid flying because I always end up ill afterwards. There is a cost to
airlines of doing nothing.

~~~
brandon272
I fly frequently and I always get sick, even though I'm fairly religious with
hand sanitizer and what not. I'm not sure what I do wrong.

~~~
tspiteri
Maybe it's not just because you are more exposed to germs on the plane. One
possibility is that air on planes is quite dry, and you are not drinking
enough, which would stress your system. Or there can be a combination of
conditions that get you sick.

~~~
brandon272
Or the airport bathrooms. Which are more often than not kind of filthy and do
not have a process for washing and drying your hands w/ paper towels that is
completely touch-free.

~~~
smeyer
>do not have a process for washing and drying your hands w/ paper towels that
is completely touch-free

This is different from my personal experiences. In the last few years, I've
dried my hands with a touch-free system in the vast majority of airport
bathrooms I've used. I've found airport bathrooms to be touch-free at a much
higher rate than public restrooms in general.

------
hvjackson
It's not clear to me whether this solution is stable. The air flow looks very
turbulent. Maybe if the air vents are blowing at a slightly different speed or
if you have a few empty seats, the dynamics change a lot and you go back to a
chaotic circulation pattern. Also, most airplanes have individual vents as
well that can be adjusted... how would those affect the flow?

------
gusmd
I'm have a Masters in Aeroacoustics (acoustics + fluid dynamics) and work
mostly on numerical simulations, so while I can see that for someone outside
the field this can look like black magic, I am certainly not impressed.

I mean, what he did is he used a commercial CFD (computational fluid dynamics)
software, created a model of the cabin and iterated through different air
outlet geometries until he found one that improved the situation. It's a
brute-force approach, which could be done even by someone without Masters/PhD
level CFD knowledge (we have 1st year undergrad students working on that kind
of thing in the university...).

It's cool that he used that for a problem that apparently is not getting the
deserved attention, and he is 17 (!) but, at least in my opinion, other
inventions competing for the price look much more impacting/life-changing. For
instance:

> Two runners-up each received $50,000. They included Wang’s fellow Canadian,
> Nicole Ticea, 16, who developed an inexpensive, disposable and electricity-
> free HIV-testing device for use in low-income communities.

~~~
cma
Did you look into the HIV device to the same extent the judges did? It was
"just" a modification of an existing one to create more turbulence and mix the
reagents better, a more optimal geometry being found through computational
fluid dynamics software...

(Just kidding, but seriously, it wasn't necessarily just that his problem was
under-researched, and it was a competition by Intel, maybe everything had a
computational modeling component as a requirement for entry. You're not
impressed because you know how to use the software to do what he did, but the
innovative step was thinking to use the software to do what he did. Certain
strains of flu can be a huge killer, HIV moreso, but neither person cured
either disease--you would need a lot more epidemiological details to know
which one deserved the prize by your utilitarian standard. This is one of the
most petty things I've ever read here.)

~~~
noamyoungerm
The competition is basically a huge science fair, and there are no direct
constrains on the projects you can submit, but there are several things to
take into account. First of all, research has to be conducted entirely in a
twelve month period, so already even the best participants can't do work
equivalent to a masters degree. During the judging process, the real world
impact is given much importance. This contrasts with an emphasis on basic
science and theoretocal research - both approaches are fine, but this is a
conscious choice. Finally, the judges generally don't actually read a long
manuscript but rather rely on a poster and a quick 15 minute interview/pitch
where you broadly overview your project - meaning that the competition wants
to emphasize scientific speaking (this also is a boon to international
participants who wrote their work in another language).

Because the scope of research one can complete in a year is so limited (and
has to be balanced with school), and the amount of experience everyone has is
small, the scope of the work can't really compete with academia.

Source: participated

~~~
minthd
I wonder: how much of the work done by those who reached the national level,
will be used in some way in real products ?

How does this compare to real scientists/engineers success rate ?

Just out of curiosity - and of course i know it's not the goal here - but
education/inspiration is .

------
WalterBright
It's a good idea, but hasn't been tested inside a real airplane cabin.

Back in the days of smoking on airliners, I'd often direct the nozzle to blow
in front of my nose. It wasn't very effective, as the nozzle was too far away.
It's hard to see how adding fins would improve it.

------
Terretta
This clean air wall or filter bubble effect is known to frequent fliers:

> _" Open your air vent, and aim it so it passes just in front of your face.
> Filtered airplane air can help direct airborne contagions away from you."_

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702040584045771084...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204058404577108420985863872)

------
allworknoplay
I don't understand -- there's a huge temperature and pressure differential
between recirculated air in planes and the air at 35k ft. I don't see any
reconditioning or pressurizing, which of course would be crazy to do anyway.

What am I missing?

~~~
jccooper
While it has nothing to do with the invention in the article (which is just
about restructuring cabin airflow): air in an airplane is constantly
introduced from outside, pressurized taps from the compressor inside the
engine(s). Pressure is maintained at a set level by a valve that controls how
much air escapes the plane. Most airliners will also have a
recirculation/filtering/conditioning system.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_control_system_%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_control_system_%28aircraft%29)

If that's what you're asking. Not entirely sure.

------
dothething
Anyone know what his parents do?

------
jedberg
So if he really wants a useful product, he should make a small insert you can
put into your air vent on the plane to at least create the "protective
airflow" for yourself.

------
akhilcacharya
I always wonder how these people get research mentors. I'd love to get one,
and I'm in university!

~~~
judk
Have rich parents

------
EGreg
I am very impressed both by this invention and the young invetor - seems this
is one of several by him!

