Even in the hands of the most skilled surgeon, removing kidney stones can leave small fragments behind. Until recently, this meant a second procedure, often more invasive than the first.

But researchers at the Kidney Stone Center at UW Medical Center – Northwest are conducting clinical trials where ultrasound waves dislodge and move the small fragments so they can be expelled naturally. The team hopes to finalize trial results and submit them to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval next year. 

The new procedure doesn’t require anesthesia. Just one or two visits of about 30 minutes should do the trick to get the fragments to clear on their own. 

“All the surgeries that we do to treat stones have the potential to leave fragments behind,” says Dr. Mathew Sorensen, a UW Medicine urologist. “Some of those fragments, especially if they’re small, usually clear pretty quickly. But the ones that stay and hang out, especially if they stay in the bottom of the kidney, they have the potential to grow and … lead to another event such as surgery or an unpleasant [emergency room] visit down the road.” 

The team is also exploring ultrasound to break larger stones into smaller pieces and then use a handheld device to expel the fragments. In the future, such a process will allow doctors to remove stones without using anesthesia, reducing the unpleasant side effects of a more invasive procedure.

This advance in treatment is of particular interest to NASA. In the weightlessness of space, kidney stones can become a significant problem because there’s no surgical option in flight. More than 30 astronauts have reported kidney stones within two years of space flight, so a longer mission to Mars could create a medical situation far away from Earth-based care.

Dr. Sorenson has had three stones himself, including one that required a procedure. As anyone whose had kidney stones knows, they can be extremely painful and debilitating, even when they eventually find their way out on their own. Anything that can speed their transition while reducing pain is a welcomed advance in treating kidney stones. Kidney stones become symptomatic if they become stuck in the urinary tract, causing debilitating pain. In addition, obstruction of urine flow causes a backup, which can result in kidney swelling and cramping, and set the stage for infection or lasting damage.

Read all about it…

Powerboating is a true joy unless you’re trying to talk to the person next to you. Boat engines are noisy, whether they are inboards or outboards. The constant roar of the engine has ruined more than one party, and perhaps even a relationship or two.

Enter Pure Watercraft. A Seattle company, Pure Watercraft has its designs on a new kind of boating experience, one that is whisper-quiet, thanks to its electric motors.

We can hear the old salts now, poo-pooing the very idea of an electric motor. They’ll claim they have no range, are poky slow and aren’t worth a hill of beans (or a bucket of salt water, in this case).

Pure Watercraft founder and CEO Andy Rebele will challenge that assumption any day. He recently took boating enthusiasts, investors and the media on a test ride of his newest creation, the Pure Pontoon. The fully electric boat is the result of a partnership with General Motors, which acquired a 25% stake in Pure Watercraft.

Ready to party? Pure Pontoon is up to the task. It builds on the company’s progress over the last 12 years as it continues its quest to disrupt the $44 billion global leisure boating industry. The company’s motors, battery packs, throttle and charger system have been tested on rigid inflatables and small launches. They have proven to not only be extremely reliable but extremely friendly to the environment, especially when compared to traditional boat motors that run on gas.

The idea of a social boat, as these boats are often referred to, began in 2017. The challenge was to make it efficient without sacrificing performance. The solution was a hydrofoil system that gently lifts much of the 25-foot, 9-inch boat out of the water. By cutting drag, the energy needed to push the boat through water was reduced by 21%.

The boat is powered by a single 25-kilowatt (50-horsepower equivalent) electric motor. You can also order it with two motors. With the twin option, you can reach a top speed of 26 mph. With the single, 14 mph. Range depends on how much you want to open the boat up. If you to go full throttle, you get about 30 miles; at a slow cruise of 5 mph, you can go about 120 miles before recharging. A handy charge status meter at the helm shows you how much charge you have left before you’re thumbing another boat for a tow. The actual range also depends upon how many revelers are aboard. The Pure Pontoon can carry up to 10 people.

The price for the single outboard model starts at $75,000; for the twin motor version, tack on an additional 20 grand.

Read all about it…

It’s not every day that a legendary airline and an industry disruptor join forces to change the way we think about the future of air travel.

But that’s just what happened this week as Alaska Airlines handed the keys of a de Havilland Dash-8 Q400 over to ZeroAvia in Everett. The 76-seat aircraft will serve as a demonstrator and test platform for the largest zero-emissions aircraft ever to take flight—the power source: a hydrogen-electric hybrid built around four 900-kilowatt electric engines.

While the aircraft isn’t ready to take flight just yet, ground testing of the engines and propellers is already underway at ZeroAvia’s research and development center in Everett. At the handover ceremony, the company showed off the testbed, a large truck with two engines connected to a Dash-8 prop. Dignitaries and company officials were impressed by how quiet the engine run-up was, even at full power.

“What you are witnessing here today is something that years from now, you will look back and say this is the time when the transformation of real large aircraft, real commercial aircraft started,” said Val Miftakhov, ZeroAvia CEO.

Governor Jay Inslee, who was at the ceremony, added, “The largest hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft is being developed right here in the greatest, most innovative state, the state of Washington.”

While the company’s operations extend to California and the United Kingdom, its Washington roots run deep. Alaska Airlines is an investor and partner and shares a hangar with the company at Everett’s Paine Field. Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures is ZeroAvia’s largest shareholder, and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund has also made numerous investments in the company.

The Dash 8 is a quantum leap in scale and complexity for ZeroAvia. The company began testing its technologies on a six-seat hydrogen-powered electric plane in 2020 and began testing using a 19-seat Dornier this year.

The Dash 8 will hydrogen fuel cells to generate the electricity to power the motors hung beneath each wing. The company is also developing the technologies required to store liquid hydrogen on the ground and in flight. The fuel cells use proton-exchange membrane for the onboard fuel cells onboard that power the four 900-kilowatt motors.

While the public may still think about the spectacular demise of the airship Hindenburg when they think of hydrogen, advances have caught up with its initial promise. Already, hydrogen-powered cars are plying the nation’s highways. The advances needed to ply the skyways aren’t a huge leap.

The company hopes to begin flight tests next year and enter commercial production by 2028.

Washington State is becoming a key player in developing and using sustainable and alternative fuels to reduce carbon emissions. Universal Hydrogen in Moses Lake is also prepping a Dash 8 turboprop to start flight tests later this year. It has partnered with Everett-based MagniX, which will provide the electric engines for the aircraft. The nine-passenger, all-electric Alice developed by Eviation uses MagniX’s 640-kilowatt power source. The Arlington-made plane began test flights in 2022 in Moses Lake.

To spur additional innovation, the state’s legislature included $6.5 million in the state budget to create a low-carbon fuel R&D center in Everett to support the state’s growing Sustainable Aviation Fuels industry. Washington is also pursuing funding to be one of the nation’s Hydrogen Hubs. The U.S. government plans to designate 10 such hubs in the next year.

Read all about it…

Once a brilliant idea takes off, most small businesses need extra space – fast! Warehouse space is tough to come by in many markets, especially when a leasing agent is offering you 10,000 square feet and you only need a hundred or two in your early stages.

Now there’s a solution. Co-warehousing is not only a great idea for small businesses that need warehouse space but entrepreneurs looking for the next big business opportunity.  

Saltbox is the first to market with the idea of co-warehousing, or flex warehousing. It’s a new take on co-working spaces, those shared office spaces where several businesses can share resources, costs and ideas.

Recognizing that there are nearly 750,000 direct-to-consumer e-commerce merchants in the U.S. with less than $5 million in revenue, Saltbox perfected the co-warehousing model, expanding into 11 new markets and attracting more than $30 million from investors.

In addition to a flexible office/warehouse space, the co-warehousing includes everything a business could want on the fulfillment side, from daily package pickups to large warehouse doors, loading docks and all the equipment you could ever need to move inventory in and out with minimal effort.

Saltbox offers other amenities for the monthly lease too, which starts at a little over $600 at their Seattle facility located in SODO. They have a photo lab businesses can use to shoot products professionally, a stocked kitchen, meeting rooms, communal spaces and, if you need it, extra hands to get you over the hump when orders take off.

Need more space? Put in an order for a larger space when one becomes available. Need more racks? They can be added to your lease as a monthly rental so your cash flow doesn’t take a big hit. Everything can be managed from a handy app, from reserving meeting space to asking for extra help to do inventory.

Saltbox seems to have hit on a sweet idea. If you’re saying, “why didn’t I think of that?” don’t despair. Tyler Scriven, founder of Saltbox, says flex warehousing has a massive market opportunity.

“E-commerce is the predominant driver of this demand,” he says in a recent CNBC interview. More than 70% of his 700+ customers nationwide are selling products direct to consumers, a rapidly growing market. About 75% of these customers are women or minority-owned small businesses. “Our economy is increasingly driven by logistics,” says Scriven. “And right now, that works in the favor of large companies.”

Want to know more about flex warehousing as a business model or need space for your own growing business? It’s a pretty smart idea, even if someone else thought it up first.

Check out Saltbox’s video for the Seattle office.

Learn more at Saltbox.com

It’s easy to brag about Washington’s amazing history of innovation and invention. After all, we’ve created some amazing stuff, from the first successful commercial jet airplanes and life-saving procedures to the more whimsical side of life – the slinky dog and Pictionary come to mind.

In fact, we have an entire timeline filled with just a  few of the next big things Washington residents have created over the last 150 years. Play Pickleball? You’re welcome! Can’t pass a Cinnabon stand without stopping to buy some? Blame it on us. Kept your bread fresh with a small plastic clip? You can thank us.

But we don’t need to keep singing our laurels. KOMO News has joined the chorus. They’ve created a wonderful one-hour documentary on why Washington is the place to be when it comes to making lives better, more fun or more productive. It is both entertaining and informative. Even we learned a few things along the way, and we thought we were pretty good at marketing the state.

So pop up some corn, grab your favorite Washington microbrew or glass of wine, sit back and enjoy a great show about why we’re all so creative and better yet, how we continue to change the world with our ideas.

We talk a lot about innovation here in Washington State. But you can’t beat it when someone else sings your praises, especially since it was supposed to be a travel piece.

Innovation is our secret sauce. For more than a century, it has set us apart from the rest of the nation. Our unique history has created a perfect storm for coming up with ideas that shake up markets and, sometimes, the world.

From the historic Pike Place Market, where Starbucks started, to the Museum of History and Industry, which has an astounding collection of artifacts – including the first wireless phone introduced by a Seattle inventor in 1909 – innovation is in our blood.

But we need not say more. CNN did all the writing for us using – wait for it – a real-life reporter. No ChatGPT here, though our techno-centric economy would have thought that was pretty cool if it were.

“Seattle’s a boom and bust town – it’s been gold boom and bust, tech boom and bust,” says Ryan Reese, co-owner of Pike Place Fish Market, known for its “fish throwers.”

While the story is mainly about Seattle, people who live here will tell you the story is virtually the same across the state.

Residents seem to have a Midas touch. While not everything turns to gold, when one does, it tends to take the world by storm. Remember when ordering coffee was as simple as saying, “I’d like it black?” Thank us for the 25-words you need to string together to place your order today. Dig the sounds of Indie artist Brandi Carlisle? She’s from here, as are other groundbreaking acts, from Hendrix and Heart to Macklemore.

Perhaps it’s fitting that The Space Needle continues to be the shining symbol of our continual look to the future. A last-minute addition to the Century 21 Exhibition in 1962, the 50-year-old landmark still looks like it’s straight out of a sci-fi movie.

“We don’t necessarily invent things – we make things better,” says Leonard Garfield, executive director of Seattle’s MOHAI (Museum of History and Industry).

“I think this area is a fertile ground for ideas, for innovation, and for considering what’s possible,” adds Dani Cone, owner of Cone & Steiner. “There’s just something in the DNA of this place.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Read all about it…

Universal Hydrogen’s Dash 8 aircraft spins up its hydrogen powered electric motor for the first time. (Universal Hydrogen via Twitter)

Universal Hydrogen is taking advantage of the 13,500-foot runway in Moses Lake to prove that hydrogen could be the fuel of the future for commercial aircraft. The company’s converted De Havilland Dash 8 spun up its propellers for the first time this month.

The plane, known as “Lightning McClean,” uses MagniX’s electric motor Magni650, which is manufactured in Everett. Each motor is rated at 850 shaft horsepower. McClean is only using one of the engines during initial tests to provide a margin of safety. With successful start-up tests completed, the plane will start taxi and flight tests in the coming months.

“Decarbonization of aviation is really hard,” says Mark Cousin, Universal Hydrogen’s chief technology officer. “We don’t believe it’s going to be done with batteries. And the key market within the aviation business, which produces nearly 60% of aviation emissions, is the single-aisle family of aircraft.”

The industry needs to come up with a plan for a new generation of single-aisle planes by the 2030s, Cousins told Geekwire. “What we want to do is demonstrate to their customers, and ultimately to them, that hydrogen is the only really viable zero-emissions fuel for the next generation of short- and medium-range aircraft.”

Technology and materials have changed dramatically since the famous Hindenburg disaster in 1937. Researchers have come a long way in understanding the properties of nature’s lightest gas, which has been tainted by history until now.

Of course, liquid hydrogen has been used as a fuel source for the space program for decades. When chilled, the gas turns into a liquid that can be stored in tanks. When hydrogen is mixed with oxygen, electricity and water become the byproducts.

Toyota and Hyundai are already selling hydrogen-powered cars in California, and ZeroAvia recently conducted the first flight of a hydrogen-battery-powered airplane. The company has a research and development facility at Everett’s Paine Field and has some big investors behind it.

Universal is taking a different approach, focusing on hydrogen as a clean fuel source. It’s not interested in building planes. Instead, it plans to capture the conversion market for short- and medium-range passenger aircraft.

Moses Lake provides the ideal testing ground since Universal is using MagniX’s Magni650 on the De Havilland testbed. Seattle-based AeroTEC provides engineering for the conversion work, while Spokane’s PlugPower office provides the fuel cells.

The runway in Moses Lake was initially designed to handle long-range bombers and served as an alternate landing site during the Space Shuttle program. Eviation, which is building its new all-electric plane Alice in Arlington, Washington, shares hangar space with Lightning McClean.

Read all about it in Geekwire.

The potential of quantum computing is virtually unlimited, in part because it’s based on physics theories that were science fiction just a few years ago. Maryland-based IonQ plans to turn fiction into fact with a new 65,000-square-foot research and manufacturing facility in Bothell, Washington. The Bothell facility will be the first dedicated quantum computer manufacturing facility in the U.S.

Using subatomic particles instead of streams of binary ones and zeros used by computers today, quantum computers will be able to solve complex problems in moments rather than days, weeks or even years.

While quantum computing has near-term uses in medicine, research and analytics, it will also be able to help address seemingly unsolvable problems related to transportation, manufacturing, climate change and energy.

“The Seattle region has been a hub of tech innovation and manufacturing for decades and has the skilled workforce we need to design, build and manufacture our quantum computers,” noted Peter Chapman, IonQ’s CEO and president. “The Seattle region has been a hub of tech innovation and manufacturing for decades. We’re excited to be among the other innovative companies who call Seattle home.”

The new facility is part of the company’s long-term plan to invest $1 billion in the Pacific Northwest over the next decade. The Monte Villa Parkway facility will house the company’s second quantum data center and serve as North America’s primary production engineering location. If all goes according to plan, IonQ hopes to bring thousands of jobs to the Pacific Northwest region in the next 10 years.

This new facility comes at an ideal time since researchers are still deciding how to structure the building blocks needed to create a quantum computing framework. Some of these building blocks are based on, as of yet, unproven theories in physics.

IonQ was founded in 2015, spinning out of the University of Maryland. The 200-person company went public in October 2021. The new Bothell facility will open in the first half of 2024.

The company is partnering with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland and has development contracts with Airbus, GE, Hyundai and the U.S. Air Force.

Read all about it in Geekwire.

A flying boat skimming the lakes of Saturn’s Titan moon? Impossible, you say? Well, we’re sure that the lunar rover astronauts drove around the moon was pretty outlandish when Boeing proposed it to NASA in the 1960s.

The uncrewed TitanAir probe was one of three Washington State projects to net Phase 1 grants from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC, for all you acronym lovers out there.

The $175,000 grants provide seed funding for bold ideas that could eventually find their way into the space program, says Michael LaPointe, program executive for NIAC. “These initial Phase 1 NIAC studies help NASA determine whether these futuristic ideas could set the stage for future space exploration capabilities and enable amazing new missions.”

The Titan probe was proposed by Planet Enterprises in Gig Harbor. The idea calls for building a winged craft that can fly through the dense atmosphere of Titan, a largely aquatic moon of Saturn. While in the air, probes on the wings can simultaneously sample the air and water from the lakes, which are believed to consist of methane and ethane. Quinn Morley, Planet Enterprises founder, is working with engineers at Washington State University and Purdue to design the craft.

In addition to the TitanAir probe, Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies and Positron Dynamics also received nine-month Phase 1 study grants from NASA.

Ultra Safe proposes to modify the EmberCore radioscope battery to create a powerful beam of X-ray or gamma-ray light. The beam would be able to identify substances on other planetary surfaces from a great distance, such as frozen water deposits at promising lunar sites. The EmberCore Flashlight would be the most powerful light source used on space missions.

Last but not least is a proposal from Positron Dynamics. Started by former Blue Origin engineer Ryan Weed, the company will use the grant to study the feasibility of a radioisotope positron propulsion concept. This involves embedding fuel particles for a nuclear fission fragment rocket into an aerogel, one of the lightest substances on the earth that has a physical form. If it works, the propulsion system can send probes and telescopes on missions that are billions of miles from the earth.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the NIAC program helps give “forward-thinking scientists and engineers the tools and support they need to spur technology that will enable future NASA missions. NASA dares to make the impossible possible. That’s only achievable because of the innovators, thinkers and doers who are helping us imagine and prepare for the future of space exploration.”

Read all about it in Geekwire.

The concept of farm to table is well known across the land, but farm to oven?

That’s the mission of Cairnspring Mills, a small craft flour miller in Burlington, Washington. Opened in 2017, the stone milling company is a step back in time to a pre-industrial era when nutrient-dense grains were the choice of discerning bakers.

Before wheat was turned into a mass-produced commodity during the Industrial Revolution, more than 20,000 local grain mills operated across the United States. Local farmers sold their grain directly to the mill in the nearest town, so flour was naturally hyperlocal.

As demand outstripped supply, big corporations started scooping mills up and, along with them, a ready supply chain of thousands of farms needing to sell their grain to an increasingly lowest bidder, the conglomerates. This gave rise (this story kneaded a bread pun) to the all-purpose, bleached flour we know today.

For Kevin Morse, this looked like a market opportunity. As he drove through the Skagit Valley each day, Kevin couldn’t help but wonder if there was an untapped market for local flour, one that prized the flavor and nutrients found in the bran and germ that was stripped away in commercial mills.

Along with a growing number of boutique mills across the county, Cairnspring flipped the business model upside down. Instead of encouraging farmers to grow the cheapest wheat possible, Morse paid his growers an above commodity price for producing high-quality grain and committing to regenerative agricultural practices that create sustainable crops and rich soil.

All he needed now was farmers. The grains the mill purchases are transported less than 200 miles for processing. Most of the supply comes from three farmers in Eastern Washington and nearly a dozen in Skagit County. One of the Skagit farms is owned by a third-generation farmer, Dave Hedlin, in La Conner. He has 30 acres of rye that he sells to Cairnspring. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm for the flour we produce,” he says. “There are fewer things better than eating local.”

Local is the operative word when it comes to Morse’s mill. Local farmers engage in organic farming practices, and the resulting grains are rich in protein, other nutrients and the most crucial thing, flavor.

Unlike store-bought flour, Cairnspring’s product line has a shelf life of only 10 months because it’s fresh and not intended to sit in warehouses and store shelves for months on end. But if you’re not a big flour user, take heart. You can freeze it to increase its shelf life.

While you can purchase all-purpose flour from the mill, you may want to venture beyond the ordinary and try the extraordinary, such as Cairnspring’s aromatic Trainblazer Bread variety that uses Yecora Rojo or their Organic Expresso with its earthy flavor profile, perfect for rustic bread.

And if you want to enjoy a fresh loaf of bread using these flours, stop by Cottage Bakery in Edmonds. Every morning, they make a selection of rustic bread with Cairnspring’s flour. Just another step in the farm-to-table movement that makes a quick stop at a local mill.

You can learn more about Cairnspring Mills and order products online at cairnspring.com

You can also use their Store Locator to find a store near you.

Read all about Cairnspring and the Cottage Bakery in Edmonds, which uses the mill’s products to create their amazing bread.