Taiwan won three special awards on Friday at the 12th British Invention Show, the UK’s largest exhibition of invention, innovation and technology held at the Barbican Center from Oct. 24 to Oct. 27.
About 150 exhibits from 15 countries were judged by a panel of 25 experts on behalf of the British Inventor’s Society for the World Invention Award and British Invention of the Year Awards, which were presented in London on Friday.
Taiwan’s delegation to the show presented 23 creations, which were submitted by research teams from eight universities, two senior high schools and two companies.
One of the Taiwanese designs to win an award was an energy-controlled LED lighting device created by associate professor Tsai Yen-hsin (蔡彥欣) from Taipei Chengshih University of Science and Technology and his students.
The device was honored with a Diamond Award at the invention show, an annual event created to develop new business opportunities by bringing together innovation and enterprise, investors and inventors, designers and manufacturers.
The winning LED invention is equipped with infrared rays and can automatically adjust its brightness based on the movement of vehicles and people, Tsai said.
The patented light fitting, which is capable of using 90 percent less energy than traditional lamps and lighting tubes, can be used in indoor parking places thanks to microwave sensors, he added.
Tsai’s team also won a Double Gold Award for an automatic sterilization device designed for shoes.
The sterilization device “is convenient for people who wear shoes for long periods of time, for bowling alley operators and for people with athlete’s foot, for example,” Tsai said, explaining that the disinfection rate of the UV-LED sterilizer reached more than 99 percent after four hours of operation.
The device, which has a timer, allows the user to rapidly dry, disinfect, sterilize and deodorize shoes. It can be adapted to any kind of footwear regardless of its shape and size, the inventor said.
The device has been patented and is to be commercialized, he added.
The other Taiwanese design to win a special award was a wave power-generating system created by a team headed by professor Chou Chien-heng (周鑑恆) from Vanung University in Taoyuan County. The system received a Platinum Award.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods