National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) has emerged as the top winner in this year’s iF Concept Design Awards, with five of its entries listed among the “Best 100,” the university said yesterday.
NTUST ranked first in the prestigious German design competition for the fourth consecutive year.
Among the five winning designs was “ColorMe,” a piece of mobile device software created by Liya Lee (李亞芝) to help people who have color blindness.
Lee, a graduate student in industrial and commercial design, said people who have color blindness can encounter many problems in their daily lives, such as misunderstanding colored maps and being unable to distinguish the color of their clothes.
“The software processes images captured with smartphones and translates them into words to help people distinguish colors independently,” she said.
Other winners included “Light of Happiness,” a desk lamp that can function as a speaker, clock and smartphone charger; and “Slip Panel Switch,” a switch on a joystick.
The other two were “Holed Beach Slippers” that keep sand from being trapped under people’s feet and improve the comfort of walking on a beach; and “Shadow Stage,” a toy that allows children to project images onto walls.
Also participating, National Taipei University of Technology (NTUT) won an award this year for “Sun Stamp,” a photochromic stamp enabling people to know when to reapply sunscreen.
Two other projects by NTUT students won the Haier Special Prize, which is open to entries related to the theme of “Wonderful Home Life.”
They were “Thawer,” a defrosting and cutting board combined with a thermoelectric heating module; and “Golden Proportion Health,” a food dish designed with precise volumes and proportions for different kinds of food for children.
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