Innovation is Alive and Well in
Ukraine
By
Walter Derzko
Political bickering, the economic crisis,
and corruption tend to make international headlines, but after my most recent
trip to
I presented a paper on
business opportunities at the nexus of aerospace and aviation at the Canada
Ukraine Aerospace and Aviation Business Summit in Kyiv in September, 2009. It
was sponsored by the Canadian Space Agency, the National Research Council of
Canada, the Ukrainian Space Agency and the Science and Technology Center of
Ukraine.
Participants included
noteworthy Canadian companies and institutions such as Bombardier, MacDonald
Dettwiller and Associates (MDA), L-3 WESCAM; MDS, Aerospace
Industries Association of Canada, the Canadian Space Agency and the National
Research Council of Canada.
Sun Spring
While a number of potential collaborations
were discussed, one project from the Ukrainian Space Agency caught my eye. Code
named Sun Spring, it extends the observation that every child knows who
is playing with a magnifying glass - children quickly learn to focus sunlight
to burn or heat up a point source on the ground. This same macro effect occurs
in Space but at orders of greater magnitude. As the Sun shines on the Earth,
the Earth’s atmosphere which extends about 100 miles above the Earth’s surface,
concentrates sunlight just like a magnifying glass does toward a theoretical
point source at a distance from 0.6 to 1.2 million km from the Earth and always
opposite from the Sun. This theoretic power point rotates along with the Earth
and creates an estimated power source of 5 gigawatts or the equivalent energy
savings of 144,000 tons of coal per day. The Ukrainian Space Agency plans
to tap this “solar spring” by sending up satellites to measuring these power
levels and locations. Then they would launch an array of satellites with solar
mirrors in synchronous Earth orbit that would reflect this concentrated
sunlight back to the earth to solar farms and heat steam turbines to produce
electricity. This 30 year project, which appears to be feasible with existing
technology, is now looking for other international collaborators.
As I toured through
numerous research institutes in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Lviv, I was
excited by two medical breakthroughs and commercial products.
Western researchers are
only recently realizing that a change in our diets over the past 100 years has
shifted our intake of omega 3 fatty acids (found in flax and fish oil) versus omega
6 fatty acids (found in meat and vegetable oils) from a healthy ratio to
an unhealthy ratio. Anthropological evidence suggests that our human ancestors
maintained a healthier 2:1 omega 6/omega 3 ratio for much of history (100,000
generations). But in Western countries today, the ratio has spiked to as high
as 10:1. Since these omega fatty acids can be converted into inflammatory
molecules, this dietary change is also believed to disrupt the proper balance
of pro- and anti- inflammatory agents, resulting in increased systemic
inflammation and a higher incidence of problems including: asthma, allergies;
diabetes; Alzheimer’s; arthritis; cancer and others. (See “Effect of
dietary fatty acids on inflammatory gene expression in healthy humans”, by Kelly
L. Weaver, Priscilla Ivester, MIchael C. Seeds, L. Douglas Case, Jonathan Arm
and Floyd H. Chilton. http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/abstract/M109.004861)
Ukrainian researchers have
been researching these effects for over a decade and are just launching two new
natural food supplements to address autoimmune and anti-inflammatory diseases
that plague both developed and developing nations.
BioSESS
BioSESS (www.biosess.at.ua) is a
concentration of healthy omega fatty acids from oysters that was developed to
cure such autoimmune and anti-inflammatory diseases as Type 1 and Type 2
Diabetes, diseases of the gastrointestinal tract: stomach ulcers; duodenum;
gastroduodenitis; pancreatitis, hepatitis; and colitis as well as two
gynecological diseases: ovarium polycystosis and uterus fibromyoma .
The success rate in clinical studies averaged over 70%. It’s just been released
on the Ukrainian market as a natural food supplement.
Ukrainian researchers in Kharkiv were the
first in the world to develop a method to create water-soluble or
hydrated fullerenes (Carbon 60) or Buckminsterfullerenes, named after
Buckminster Fuller, who designed to football-shaped geodesic dome, which these
molecules resemble. These natural fullerenes structure or cluster water around
it, which produces a range of biological and medical effects – fullerenes
are anti-viral, anti-microbial, high anti-oxidants that inhibit cancer
metastasis (see http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2009/10/hydrated-fullerenes-coming-to-market.html
)
Since both of the above
products are released as natural food supplements in
Walter (Wolodymyr) Derzko is the
author of the soon-to-be released book: “