[scientizscht (OP)]

Hello!

Can you list please current technological or social challenges that need addressing?

I want to submit to an innovation competition, but I cannot pinpoint a problem to focus on.

Thanks!

[Ophiolite]

The largest challenge facing us currently is climate change. Numerous possibilities emerge from this:

• Carbon sequestration technology
• Novel renewable energy systems
• Improvements to existing renewable energy systems

[scientizscht (OP)]

Anything more precise?

[alancalverd]

The only variable over which we have complete control, and which will devastate everyone's life if not controlled, is human population.

The solution is simple, does not require anyone to actually do or make anything,  and in the long run saves money. However there is no possibility of any individual or corporation profiting from it in the short term, so it won't happen and we are doomed.

[scientizscht (OP)]

The only variable over which we have complete control, and which will devastate everyone's life if not controlled, is human population.

The solution is simple, does not require anyone to actually do or make anything,  and in the long run saves money. However there is no possibility of any individual or corporation profiting from it in the short term, so it won't happen and we are doomed.

Thanks but I want to participate in an innovation competition, I cannot propose a Final Solution for the overpopulation issue!

[chris]

Maybe your innovation could be a system to help people to remember to follow the forum rules and please phrase post titles as questions...?

[Ophiolite]

Anything more precise?

Recently, my son reflecting on the once widespread use of waterwheels to power mills and facory equipment, noted that this renewable resource, on a small scale, was now neglected. Would that be present a fruitful area to investigate?

Part of the AGW problem might be laid at the door of the oil and gas drilling industry (an industry dependent on, but distinct from, oil and gas companies.) Most reports on carbon sequestration in underground reservoirs I have read focus on the geology and reservoir engineering aspects. It might be interesting to examine how drilling technology could be best adapted for this new role.

In regard to detail, it would be helpful to know from your side what kind of innovation competition this is. Are you part of a small consultancy team vying for a $100,000 prize and with a $5,000 budget to create your plan? Or are you a high school student required to produce a four page essay on the topic? This would help identify the sort of projects members might suggest.

[scientizscht (OP)]

Anything more precise?

Recently, my son reflecting on the once widespread use of waterwheels to power mills and facory equipment, noted that this renewable resource, on a small scale, was now neglected. Would that be present a fruitful area to investigate?

Part of the AGW problem might be laid at the door of the oil and gas drilling industry (an industry dependent on, but distinct from, oil and gas companies.) Most reports on carbon sequestration in underground reservoirs I have read focus on the geology and reservoir engineering aspects. It might be interesting to examine how drilling technology could be best adapted for this new role.

In regard to detail, it would be helpful to know from your side what kind of innovation competition this is. Are you part of a small consultancy team vying for a $100,000 prize and with a $5,000 budget to create your plan? Or are you a high school student required to produce a four page essay on the topic? This would help identify the sort of projects members might suggest.

The former.

I need to know more about current challenges. The more I know, the more probable it is for me to think of something.

[alancalverd]

Thanks but I want to participate in an innovation competition, I cannot propose a Final Solution for the overpopulation issue!

As I recall, the inventors of contraceptive devices and pharmaceuticals have generally been  praised and rewarded for their innovations. The simple sociological solution is to pay women to use these products, and limit any child-related benefits to the first child. The appropriate rate of pay in the UK would be £500 every 6 months if she is not pregnant,  The saving in health, education, welfare and other benefit costs would outweigh the expenditure within 2- 5 years and the longterm environmental impact would be wholly beneficial, uncontroversial, sustainable, and cost-free.

[RjMaan]

In social challenges, peoples are divided into different categories with respect to their earning or status. The gap between rich and poor is increasing day by day.

[scientizscht (OP)]

In social challenges, peoples are divided into different categories with respect to their earning or status. The gap between rich and poor is increasing day by day.

Guys, I am talking about technical and social challenges that can be dealt with technology, engineering, science etc.

I am not talking about ideas in the sphere of politics, philosophy, religion, sociology.

[Zer0]

" Water covers 70% of our planet, and it is easy to think that it will always be plentiful. However, freshwater—the stuff we drink, bathe in, irrigate our farm fields with—is incredibly rare. Only 3% of the world’s water is fresh water, and two-thirds of that is tucked away in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use.

As a result, some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water, and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. Inadequate sanitation is also a problem for 2.4 billion people—they are exposed to diseases, such as cholera and typhoid fever, and other water-borne illnesses. Two million people, mostly children, die each year from diarrheal diseases alone.

Many of the water systems that keep ecosystems thriving and feed a growing human population have become stressed. Rivers, lakes and aquifers are drying up or becoming too polluted to use. More than half the world’s wetlands have disappeared. Agriculture consumes more water than any other source and wastes much of that through inefficiencies. Climate change is altering patterns of weather and water around the world, causing shortages and droughts in some areas and floods in others.

At the current consumption rate, this situation will only get worse. By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages. And ecosystems around the world will suffer even more. "

Thanks & Credits - https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/water-scarcity

It's a Huge Social Challenge with Technical difficulties in creating an Efficient system by which salt water could be converted into clean & clear sweet drinking water.
Hopefully Technology, Engineering, Science etc could n should be able to rescue us.

P.S. - Two thirds of our Planet is covered with Water, yet two thirds of our total population would suffer clean water shortages, that doesn't make sense, DOES IT???
Besides politicians, philosophers, saints & sinners alike, all feel thirsty once in a while.
✌

[scientizscht (OP)]

" Water covers 70% of our planet, and it is easy to think that it will always be plentiful. However, freshwater—the stuff we drink, bathe in, irrigate our farm fields with—is incredibly rare. Only 3% of the world’s water is fresh water, and two-thirds of that is tucked away in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use.

As a result, some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water, and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. Inadequate sanitation is also a problem for 2.4 billion people—they are exposed to diseases, such as cholera and typhoid fever, and other water-borne illnesses. Two million people, mostly children, die each year from diarrheal diseases alone.

Many of the water systems that keep ecosystems thriving and feed a growing human population have become stressed. Rivers, lakes and aquifers are drying up or becoming too polluted to use. More than half the world’s wetlands have disappeared. Agriculture consumes more water than any other source and wastes much of that through inefficiencies. Climate change is altering patterns of weather and water around the world, causing shortages and droughts in some areas and floods in others.

At the current consumption rate, this situation will only get worse. By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages. And ecosystems around the world will suffer even more. "

Thanks & Credits - https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/water-scarcity

P.S. - It's a Huge Social Challenge with Technical difficulties in creating an Efficient system by which salt water could be converted into clean & clear sweet drinking water.
Hopefully Technology, Engineering, Science etc could n should be able to rescue us.
Besides politicians, philosophers, saints & sinners alike, all feel thirsty once in a while.
✌

Bill Gates fund converted sewage water to drinkable water... and he drank it!

[Zer0]

" Bill Gates fund converted sewage water to drinkable water... and he drank it! "

scientizscht I'm a bit dumbstruck as to how Bill Gates posting a video on YouTube drinking a glass of distilled, multi-staged vapor phase filtered, condensed, re-filtered & liquid phased aerated sewage treated water saves the world from the impending water crisis.

Could you Please be kind enough to Elaborate?

P.S. - Awaiting response n Thanks in advance.
😁

[scientizscht (OP)]

" Bill Gates fund converted sewage water to drinkable water... and he drank it! "

scientizscht I'm a bit dumbstruck as to how Bill Gates posting a video on YouTube drinking a glass of distilled, multi-staged vapor phase filtered, condensed, re-filtered & liquid phased aerated sewage treated water saves the world from the impending water crisis.

Could you Please be kind enough to Elaborate?

P.S. - Awaiting response n Thanks in advance.
😁

Well it was the first step

[Supervolant]

Time. We don't have an infinite amount of it. Either we go immortal or we make things happen faster. I myself decided to make the things happen faster. I am working on a novel mobility solution. The average human just spends too much time traveling, most of it in a car and with that being said, the car is slow, suffers traffic and is using extremely inefficient routing. Aircraft are way better. They are fast, have all the freedom to move and use the most efficient rout, a straight line. I am in "competition" with around 70-80 other organizations following the dream of finally making these "flying cars" (some call it like that) a reality!

These craft will take-off and land vertically and some of it (like mine concept) have the ability to transition into an efficient fast forward flight.

This is an extremely big topic and there is much to talk about, I wanted to give you guys a short insight.

If you have any questions feel free to ask!

See all the more or less serious and published concept's on this site http://evtol.news/aircraft/

[chiralSPO]

scientizscht, the purpose of these innovation competitions is to provide a little bit of support for small teams of people who are already working on a proplem. The money can help, but (as I understand it) the primary purpose is to get publicity and generate interest for those with exciting new ideas that they can promote.

I think it would be extremely difficult for a team of people (no matter how smart) to win one of these (or even get an honorable mention) with the strategy of designing a plan de novo with the sole purpose of winning the competition. It sounds like you are just fishing for ideas that have little to do with your expertise--based on a survey of your posts here, it looks as though you are interested in burning corpses for energy, no wait, you want to get into solar energy, no wait you want to get waste energy from motions (perhaps this is also why you have asked the question about how much drag a car has? if so, please don't waste your time on trying to capture this drag energy and feed it back into the car--it's a non-starter!). So it seems like you are interested in energy and engineering, but... haven't got the maths to or googling skills to work out your car/drag problem?

It looks to me as though you are crowd-sourcing ideas for global problems, and crowd-sourcing possible competitions/funding sources, and unwilling to put in any of the leg work in doing preliminary research on any of these ideas. This entire approach is "bass ackwards", and doomed to failure.

Sorry to be harsh, but if you are truly interested in getting into the innovation/startup business, you will need to learn to deal with people who will look at 3 years of hard work for 2 minutes and tell you very directly, "It sucks, and you've wasted my time--don't contact me again!" You will also need to have a much better strategy. While it is true that there is little chance of success having a solution and looking for a problem that it solves, there is no chance of success if you don't even know what it is that you bring to the table.

[scientizscht (OP)]

Time. We don't have an infinite amount of it. Either we go immortal or we make things happen faster. I myself decided to make the things happen faster. I am working on a novel mobility solution. The average human just spends too much time traveling, most of it in a car and with that being said, the car is slow, suffers traffic and is using extremely inefficient routing. Aircraft are way better. They are fast, have all the freedom to move and use the most efficient rout, a straight line. I am in "competition" with around 70-80 other organizations following the dream of finally making these "flying cars" (some call it like that) a reality!

These craft will take-off and land vertically and some of it (like mine concept) have the ability to transition into an efficient fast forward flight.

This is an extremely big topic and there is much to talk about, I wanted to give you guys a short insight.

If you have any questions feel free to ask!

See all the more or less serious and published concept's on this site http://evtol.news/aircraft/

We don't have space in our cities for these monstrosities.

[scientizscht (OP)]

scientizscht, the purpose of these innovation competitions is to provide a little bit of support for small teams of people who are already working on a proplem. The money can help, but (as I understand it) the primary purpose is to get publicity and generate interest for those with exciting new ideas that they can promote.

I think it would be extremely difficult for a team of people (no matter how smart) to win one of these (or even get an honorable mention) with the strategy of designing a plan de novo with the sole purpose of winning the competition. It sounds like you are just fishing for ideas that have little to do with your expertise--based on a survey of your posts here, it looks as though you are interested in burning corpses for energy, no wait, you want to get into solar energy, no wait you want to get waste energy from motions (perhaps this is also why you have asked the question about how much drag a car has? if so, please don't waste your time on trying to capture this drag energy and feed it back into the car--it's a non-starter!). So it seems like you are interested in energy and engineering, but... haven't got the maths to or googling skills to work out your car/drag problem?

It looks to me as though you are crowd-sourcing ideas for global problems, and crowd-sourcing possible competitions/funding sources, and unwilling to put in any of the leg work in doing preliminary research on any of these ideas. This entire approach is "bass ackwards", and doomed to failure.

Sorry to be harsh, but if you are truly interested in getting into the innovation/startup business, you will need to learn to deal with people who will look at 3 years of hard work for 2 minutes and tell you very directly, "It sucks, and you've wasted my time--don't contact me again!" You will also need to have a much better strategy. While it is true that there is little chance of success having a solution and looking for a problem that it solves, there is no chance of success if you don't even know what it is that you bring to the table.

You are being quite harsh.

[chiralSPO]

scientizscht, the purpose of these innovation competitions is to provide a little bit of support for small teams of people who are already working on a proplem. The money can help, but (as I understand it) the primary purpose is to get publicity and generate interest for those with exciting new ideas that they can promote.

I think it would be extremely difficult for a team of people (no matter how smart) to win one of these (or even get an honorable mention) with the strategy of designing a plan de novo with the sole purpose of winning the competition. It sounds like you are just fishing for ideas that have little to do with your expertise--based on a survey of your posts here, it looks as though you are interested in burning corpses for energy, no wait, you want to get into solar energy, no wait you want to get waste energy from motions (perhaps this is also why you have asked the question about how much drag a car has? if so, please don't waste your time on trying to capture this drag energy and feed it back into the car--it's a non-starter!). So it seems like you are interested in energy and engineering, but... haven't got the maths to or googling skills to work out your car/drag problem?

It looks to me as though you are crowd-sourcing ideas for global problems, and crowd-sourcing possible competitions/funding sources, and unwilling to put in any of the leg work in doing preliminary research on any of these ideas. This entire approach is "bass ackwards", and doomed to failure.

Sorry to be harsh, but if you are truly interested in getting into the innovation/startup business, you will need to learn to deal with people who will look at 3 years of hard work for 2 minutes and tell you very directly, "It sucks, and you've wasted my time--don't contact me again!" You will also need to have a much better strategy. While it is true that there is little chance of success having a solution and looking for a problem that it solves, there is no chance of success if you don't even know what it is that you bring to the table.

You are being quite harsh.

You're welcome!