Inventions by Taipei City University of Science and Technology faculty won 13 medals at the Seoul International Invention Fair last week, with a smart water dispenser for the blind and a shower head with voice control functions grabbing two golds and two special prizes, the university said yesterday.
The fair, which opened in the South Korean capital on Thursday and ended yesterday, announced its awards for participants on Saturday night.
The school’s 11 submissions won five golds, five silvers, one bronze and two special prizes, beating other Taiwanese participants.
Photo courtesy of Taipei City University of Science and Technology
The smart water dispenser, which won a gold and a special prize, was designed by Department of Computer and Communication Engineering assistant professor Tsai Yao-pin (蔡耀斌) and his students Hsu Hao-wei (許浩偉) and Hung Kai-tse (洪愷澤).
The dispenser allows visually impaired users to choose hot or warm water using voice commands and tells users when their containers are filled up, Tsai said, adding that its water tank automatically refills when the water runs out.
Tsai also won two golds with designs for an automatic garbage bin and an electronic lock using quick response (QR) barcodes, while his life vest won a bronze prize, the school said.
A voice-controlled shower head designed by Department of Mechanical Engineering associate professor Huang Jiunn-shyan (黃俊賢) and his students won gold and a special prize, it added.
Users can change the shower head’s spouts with voice commands and it can spray water in three different patterns, helping parents bath their infants and the physically disabled to shower more easily, Huang said.
Another invention by Huang, an elastic jack for cars and scooters, won a silver prize, the school said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching