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Invention

Invention May 31, 2018

With ‘smart safe,’ IPS locks up another prestigious win

By GREGORY ZELLER // One of Long Island’s leading product-design firms has added another prestigious award to its bulging trophy case. Hauppauge-based Intelligent Product Solutions has earned another International A’ Design Award, granted by the A’ Design Award & Competition organization to promote professional designers and other global innovators. IPS and Solo Technology Holdings – an Internet of Things specialist based in Westchester County – announced Thursday that they’ve earned an International A’ Design Award…

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Invention October 2, 2016

Brew ha-ha: Seriously silly inventor strikes again

By GREGORY ZELLER // There’s always something brewing at Mary Putre’s house, sometimes literally. The relentless inventor – creative force behind Eyecatcher Gifts and much of its whacky inventory – believes she’s struck gold, again, with her latest doodad: the My Brew-Tini Kup, a portable, hand-held device that turns out steaming cups of joe, sans electricity. Putre, a regular at meetings of the Nassau County Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club, showed off her latest invention at…

Invention September 18, 2016

Hofstra mechatronics lift SBU startup

By GREGORY ZELLER // Well, that worked just like they drew it up. Inside three short months, ThermoLift’s strategic research partnership with Hofstra University’s Center for Innovation has engineered advanced mechatronic controls for the Stony Brook-based startup’s cutting-edge heat pump technology. Attacking a design problem with a mechatronics solution – combining mechanical, electronic, computerized and control systems – helps his company take a big step toward a critical testing phase, according to ThermoLift CEO Paul…

Invention September 9, 2016

When Elon Musk came to Shoreham

By GREGORY ZELLER // Spoiler alert: He hasn’t, yet. But with the South African-born Canadian-American magnate, engineer and inventor already investing $1 million in the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe – and the Musk Foundation promising more support – there’s a chance the man himself might grace the grounds of his most famous company’s namesake. “It’s possible,” according to Marc Alessi, executive director of the coming-soon center, who traces the Musk Foundation’s first $1 million…

Invention September 6, 2016

BNL shines in annual ‘Oscars of Invention’

By GREGORY ZELLER // Brookhaven National Laboratory has once again flexed its technological muscle, scoring five finalists in the 2016 R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine’s annual championing of the year’s top tech. An independent panel of more than 50 judges selected a bevy of BNL projects for the penultimate cut, including a novel electrocatalyst, a nanostructured water-repellent surface, an X-ray microscope, a “flex plate” ideal for protein crystallization and X-ray detectors fashioned from synthetic diamonds….

Education, Invention June 24, 2016

Giving high school inventors the business

By GREGORY ZELLER // A sensor-filled table to assist the autistic, an innovative method to save subway stations from storm-surge flooding … no doubt about it, these students were thinking big. Creative teams from Commack High School’s groundbreaking Science Research Program brought their brains, and their hearts, to this week’s meeting of the Suffolk County Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club. The annual visit gave the young thinkers a chance to showcase their next-level ideas and inventions,…

Invention May 2, 2016

With Crime Stopper, a safe place to drop a dime

By GREGORY ZELLER // They don’t shoot webs from their wrists and if they’re running around in tights and capes, well, let’s just say that’s another story. But with advanced technology facilitating instant communication, today’s average citizens are often on crime-fighting’s front lines. Andy Braverman wants to take that technology, and those anti-crime capabilities, one step further. His Port Jefferson Station-based Apptec Corp. has already introduced the DigiTel Police Reporting System, a “digital dictation system”…