Sir Ray Avery hits Masterton

New Zealander of the Year and inventor Sir Ray Avery was in Masterton yesterday on his quest to expound the lifesaving potential of science.
Sir Ray's knighthood, conferred this year, came hot on the heels of his 2010 New Zealander of the Year award.
The philanthropist, inventor and businessman was due to speak at Copthorne Resort Solway Park last night.
His best-selling book Rebel with a Cause explains how an interest in science was sparked by books the teenage Ray read in the warmth of public libraries in years he lived rough in England.
In recent years Sir Ray has worked with the Fred Hollows Foundation in war-torn Eritrea, east Africa, and building a workshop and the technology to mass produce internal lenses for cataract blindness.
The workshop was such a success that it, and another in Nepal, now produce lenses for export, providing "multi-million-dollar revenue streams for those countries".
Now Sir Ray's organisation Medicines Mondiale, founded in 2003, is dedicated to similar "game-changing" inventions, and he says New Zealand is just the sort of place to develop them.
"It's such an open-source country," Sir Ray said.
"You can actually go and knock on Fonterra's door, and I have."
The dairy giant has expressed an interest in some of the work Sir Ray has been doing with pre-digested proteins.
The process brings together waste from the lamb and chicken industries, together with waste from the kiwifruit industry, to produce a protein powder capable of absorption by children dying of diarrhoea.
Apparently kiwifruit has an enzyme that breaks down proteins into their basic building blocks, amino acids.
"I noticed all these Maoris were squeezing kiwifruit on to their steaks to tenderise them," Sir Ray said.
The technology will also be usable in sports products.
One more basic invention, credited with potential to save millions of lives, is a simple "dial" plastic flow controller for intravenous drips, making safer and more accurate transfer of fluids.
Sir Ray said these technologies "have one footprint in the developing world and another footprint in the developed world".
With surgeries in the developing world unable to afford a flash screen to display readings from various monitors, Sir Ray's team developed an application that sends them to a mobile phone - a bonus for doctors the world over.
"There's always a way of making a thing commercial," Sir Ray said.
He believes his survival instincts, honed in the stressful and often brutal orphanages he was raised in, have helped develop his brain to the point where he sees connections others don't.
He says if New Zealanders, whom he describes as a nation of clever people, can learn to improve their observation, they can improve their innovation.
In overcoming his difficulties, Sir Ray hopes to inspire others that "one person can make a difference".
Ever the entrepreneur, he is also travelling the country drumming up support for a national on-line "knowledge bank" - where anyone can go online from overseas and be connected with what they want to know about New Zealand.