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So can I get a show of hands
how many of you in this room

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have been on a plane
in this past year?

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That's pretty good.

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Well, it turns out that
you share that experience

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with more than 3 billion people
every year.

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And when we put so many
people in these metal tubes

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that fly all over the world,

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sometimes, things like this
can happen

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and you get a disease epidemic.

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I first actually got into this topic

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when I heard about 
the Ebola outbreak last year.

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And it turns out that although Ebola
spreads through

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these more range-limited,
more tropical routes,

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There's all these other sorts
of diseases

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that can be spread through
the airplane cabin.

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The worst part is

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when we take a look at some
of the numbers,

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it's pretty scary.

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So with H1N1,

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there was this guy who decided 
to go on the plane

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and in the matter of a single flight,

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actually spread the disease
to 17 other people.

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And then there was
this other guy with SARS

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who managed to go 
on a 3-hour flight

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and spread the disease
to 22 other people.

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That's not exactly my idea
of a great super power.

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When we take a look at this,
what we also find is that

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it's very difficult to 
pre-screen for these diseases.

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So, when someone actually
goes on a plane,

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they could be sick

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and they could be in this latency period

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in which they could actually
have the disease.

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And they could, in turn,
spread the disease

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to so many other people
in the cabin.

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And how that actually works is that
right now

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we have air coming in from
the top of the cabin

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and from the side of the cabin
as you can see in the blue.

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And then also, that air goes out
throught hese very efficient filters

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that eliminate 99.97 percent
of pathogens near the outlets.

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And what happens right now,
though,

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is that we have this 
mixing air-flow pattern.

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So if someone were to actually sneeze,

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that air would get swirled
around multiple times

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before it even has a chance
to go out through the filter.

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So I thought, clearly,
this is a pretty serious problem.

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I didn't have the money
to go out and buy a plane,

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so I decided to build
a computer instead.

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It actually turns out that with
Computational Fluid Dynamics,

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what we're able to do is create
these simulations

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that give us higher resulutions

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than actually physically going in
and taking readings in the plane.

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And how, essentially, this works 
is

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you would start out with
these 2D drawings --

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these are floating around
in technical papers around the Internet.

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I take that and I put it into 
these 3D-modeling software,

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really building that 3D model.

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And then I divide that model
that I just built into these tiny pieces.

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And then I tell the computer where
the air goes in and out of the cabin,

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throw in a bunch of physics,

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and basically sit there and wait until
the computer calculates the simulation.

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So what we get with the conventional cabin
is this:

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you'll notice the middle person sneezing,

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and we go "Splat!", 
right into people's faces.

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It's pretty disgusting.

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And from the front, you'll notice
those two passengers

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sitting next to the central passenger,

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not exactly having a great time.

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And when we take a look
at that from the side,

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you'll also notice those pathogens


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spreading across the lenth of the cabin.

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The first thing that I thought was,
"This is no good."

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So I actually conducted 
more than 32 different simulations

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and ultimately, I came up
with this solution right here.

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This is what I call a
patent-pending Global Inlet Director.

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With this, we're able to reduce
pathogen transmission

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by about 55 times

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and increase fresh air- inhalation 
by about 190 percent.

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So how this actually works is

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we would install this piece
of composite material

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into these existing spots
that are already in the plane.

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So it's very cost-effective
to install

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and we can do this directly overnight.

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All we have to do is put
a couple of screws in there

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and you're good to go.

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And the results that we get
are absolutely amazing.

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Instead of having those problematic
swirling air patterns,

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what we have is we can create
these walls of air

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that come down in between 
the passengers

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to create these 
personalized breathing zones.

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So you'll notice that if the
middle passenger here

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is sneezing again,

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but this time, we're able to
effectively push that down

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to the filters for elimination.

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And the same thing form the side,

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we're able to directly
push those pathogens down.

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So if you take a look again now
at the same scenario

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but with this innovation installed,

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you'll notice the middle passenger
sneezes,

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and this time, we're pushing 
that straight down into the outlet

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before it gets a chance
to infect any other people.

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So you notice the two passengers
sitting next to the middle guy

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are breathing virtually
no pathogens at all.

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Take a look at that 
from the side as well,

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it's a very efficient system.

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And in short, with this system,
we win.

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When we take a look
at what this means,

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what we also see is that
this not only works

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if the middle passenger sneezes,

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but also if the window seat 
passenger sneezes

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or if the aisle seat
passenger sneezes.

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And so with this solution, what does
this mean for the world?

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When we take a look
at this from the computer simulation

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into real life,

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we can see from with this
3D model that I built over here

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essentially using 3D printing,

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we can see those same air flow patterns
coming down right to the passengers.

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In the past, the SARS epidemic
actually cost the world

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about 40 billion dollars,

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and in the future, a big disease
outbreak could actually

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cost the world an excess
of 3 trillion dollars.

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So before, it used to be that
you had to take an airplane

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out of service for one-to-two months,

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spend tens fo thousands
of man hours,

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and several million dollars
to try to change something.