We featured work before on the Naval Research Labs work with artificial jellyfish for aquatic sensor applications, but this is the first time I have seen the efficiency of jellyfish propulsion applied to flight. A poetic design, huh?

For more info, see this Talking Science post, and please, please check out all of design work of Festo including lots of stuff on YouTube.

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Credit: “Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham, www.phdcomics.com

Like most professional societies of our ilk, ACerS is in the publishing business. The Society is a necessary—and willing—partner in the academic drive to “publish or perish.”

As an editor, my green pen is always ready to clarify, improve, refine and otherwise mark-up anything anybody has written. So, this panel from Jorge Cham, the brains and talent behind the wildly popular PHD Comics, resonated with me, and perhaps it will with you, too.

“The PHD Movie” is making the rounds of college campuses this fall, by the way. If you’ve seen the movie, drop us a note and tell us what you thought about it.

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Credit: NSF

We first told you about the NSF Innovation Corps initiative when it was unveiled by NSF director, Subra Suresh, in late July. The NSF has delivered on its promise to make the first round of awards by the close of FY 2011.

The thrust of the initiative is to expedite the transition of research discoveries to economically viable products and processes by providing funding to help PIs assess the commercial readiness of their innovations and to provide support in the form of training and mentorships.

About the very short proposal/evaluation/award timeline, the NSF press release says the “award process was intense, yet swift,” with awards being made less than 30 days after proposals were submitted. The program will continue to make awards quarterly.

Here is a listing of the inaugural class of I-Corps awardees.

Photocatalysts for water remediation
Principal Investigator: Pelagia Gouma, SUNY at Stony Brook; Stony Brook, N.Y.

IDecideFast - A web-based application for effective decision making for the layperson
Principal Investigator: Ali Abbas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Champaign, Ill.

Silicon Terahertz Electronics
Principal Investigator: Michael Shur, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y.

Naked eyes-based standoff detection of explosives using novel signal-amplifying nanocomposite and hand-held UV light
Principal Investigator: Yu Lei, University of Connecticut; Storrs, Conn.

Establishing an innovation ecosystem for technology transition of MEMS-based drug infusion pumps
Principal Investigator: Ellis Meng, University of Southern California; Los Angeles, Calif.

Replication of Laser-Generated Surface Textures for Anti-Icing and Sun-Light-Trapping Applications
Principal Investigator: Mool Gupta, University of Virginia; Charlottesville, Va.

Concentric Technology
Principal Investigator: Walter Besio, University of Rhode Island; Kingston, R.I.

Hand-Held Tonometer for Transpalpebral Intraocular Pressure Measurement
Principal Investigator: Eniko Enikov, University of Arizona; Tucson, Ariz.

Flexible, Low Cost Cooling Technology for LED Lighting
Principal Investigator: Satish Kandlikar, Rochester Institute of Technology; Rochester, N.Y.

Radiotracer Synthesis Commercialization
Principal Investigator: Stephen DiMagno, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Lincoln, Neb.

Accelerated Innovation and Technology Transition in Semiconductor-Based Hydrogen and Hydrocarbon Sensors
Principal Investigator: Lisa Porter, Carnegie-Mellon University; Pittsburgh, Pa.

Mobile Life Guard
Principal Investigator: Ram Dantu, University of North Texas; Denton, Texas

Pilot Production Of Large Area Uniform Single-Crystal Graphene Films
Principal Investigator: Alan Johnson, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pa.

Technological Assessment of Artificial Membrane-based Ion Channel Screening
Principal Investigator: Jacob Schmidt, University of California, Los Angeles; Los Angeles, Calif.

Commercialization Feasibility Research and Demonstration Preparation for Privacy-Preserving Location Based Services
Principal Investigator: Nan Zhang, George Washington University; Washington, D.C.

MySkinTone: A breakthrough technology and product for skin melanin evaluation
Principal Investigator: Michael Silevitch, Northeastern University; Boston, Mass.

Mobidemics: Using Mobile Gaming for Healthcare
Principal Investigator: Nilanjan Banerjee, University of Arkansas; Fayetteville, Ark.

SmartMenu
Principal Investigator: Elizabeth Mynatt, Georgia Tech Research Corporation; Atlanta, Ga.

Portable sensors using the widely available personal glucose monitor
Principal Investigator: Yi Lu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Champaign, Ill.

SwiftVax — A Green Manufacturing Platform for Faster, Cheaper and Scalable Vaccine Manufacturing
Principal Investigator: Karen McDonald, University of California, Davis; Davis, Calif.

Commercialization of an Engineered Pyrolysis Blanket for the Economic Conversion of Forestry Residues to Soil Amendments and Energy Products
Principal Investigator: Daniel Schwartz, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash.

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Björk - you either lover her or hate her. But, she is on a science+Apple apps binge, so I think she is worth watching. The first single from her science-based and iPad-composed album Biophilia (to be released Monday) is “Crystalline,” and was actually released earlier this summer. Subjects of the rest of the album reportedly include (each partnered with a new app) dark matter, tectonic plates, lightning, gravity, DNA, viruses and lunar cycles. The second video is a demonstration of the Crystalline app.

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With the Nobel Prize announcements starting soon, it is all too easy to overlook the 2011 Ig Nobel laureates (awarded at Harvard U. last Thursday). The event honors (presumably) the International Year of Chemistry.

The 2011 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

Physiology: Anna Wilkinson (UK), Natalie Sebanz (Netherlands, Hungary, and Austria), Isabella Mandl (Austria) and Ludwig Huber (Austria) for their study, “No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise.”

Chemistry: Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami (Japan), for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency), and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.

Medicine: Mirjam Tuk (Netherlands and UK), Debra Trampe (Netherlands) and Luk Warlop (Belgium) and jointly to Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder and Robert Feldman (US), Robert Pietrzak, David Darby, and Paul Maruff (Australia) for demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things—but worse decisions about other kinds of things—when they have a strong urge to urinate.

Psychology: Karl Halvor Teigen (Norway), for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.

Literature: John Perry of Stanford University (US), for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.

Biology: Darryl Gwynne (Canada, Australia, UK and US) and David Rentz (Australia and US) for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle.

Physics: Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, Dominique Deviterne and Bruno Ragaru (France), and Herman Kingma (Netherlands), for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don’t.

Mathematics: Dorothy Martin (US) who predicted the world would end in 1954, Pat Robertson (US) who predicted the world would end in 1982, Elizabeth Clare Prophet (US) who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim (Korea) who predicted the world would end in 1992, Credonia Mwerinde (Uganda) who predicted the world would end in 1999, and Harold Camping (US) who predicted the world would end on Sept. 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on Oct. 21, 2011, for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.

Peace: Arturas Zuokas (mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania), for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.

Public Safety: John Senders (Canada), for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him.

If you have a half hour (or three), you can view the entire shebang below:

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