Effingham Talk

Archive for the ‘Technological Innovations’ Category

MORGAN HILL, CA, Apr 04, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) –
Alien Technology (
www.alientechnology.com ), an industry leader in
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Ultra High Frequency (UHF)
products and services, and Digital China, the largest integrated IT
service provider in China, today announced a strategic relationship
for RFID sales, product offerings and solution delivery to customers
in China.

Digital China provides customers with sophisticated application-based
IT solutions, driving technological innovations for work and personal
life while enhancing the digitalization process in China. Digital
China has a formidable local infrastructure with 50 offices, 16,000
staff and an organization that addresses 860 cities throughout China
with its 19,000 channel/value-added channels. Digital China focuses
on significant market players within their respective industries
including China Development Bank, China Mobile, Sinopec and others.

The partnership provides the right to resell Alien’s integrated
circuits (ICs), inlays, readers, services and training to Digital
China’s new and existing customers/resellers through its extensive
reach within the China market. Alien will become Digital China’s
preferred RFID partner and will be the first choice recommendation to
Digital China’s customers for all UHF RFID solutions.

“We believe Alien’s worldwide UHF RFID reader and IC, inlay and tag
leadership and Digital China’s broad customer base and experience in
China are strategically aligned to deliver industry leading RFID
solutions,” said by Xiang Li, General Manager of Digital China’s
Network Business Unit. “The combination of our respective strengths
will deliver a strong value proposition for our combined customer
base in a variety of markets, including anti-counterfeiting, supply
chain, animal tracking, power meters, food safety, apparel, tobacco,
alcohol, pharma and others.”

“Digital China’s extensive reach into the local market provides Alien
unprecedented access into one of the world’s most rapidly growing
regions for RFID,” said Mike Frieswyk, Alien Technology, Vice
President of Sales and Marketing. “This strategic relationship is
also expected to allow Digital China to deliver on their vision to
digitize China, including the realization of the ‘internet of
things.’”

About Alien Technology
Founded in 1994, Alien Technology is a
leading technology and product provider of UHF Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID) Integrated Circuits (IC), tags, readers and
professional services. Alien Gen 2 products, along with software
solutions from partners, help solve business problems for customers
to improve productivity, processes, security and asset tracking for
closed-loop and supply chain systems. These solutions are implemented
in industries such as consumer packaged goods, retail apparel,
manufacturing, transportation, airports and cargo logistics,
government and defense, and more. Alien’s facilities include
corporation headquarters in Morgan Hill, CA; the Alien RFID Solutions
Center in the Dayton, OH region; and a sales office in Shanghai,
China. Alien is a member of EPCglobal.

About Digital China
Digital China Holdings Limited is the largest
integrated IT services provider in the Greater China area, spun off
from the former Legend Group in 2000, and got listed on the Main
Board of Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2001 (stock coad:00861).

By integrating global resources in the IT industry, Digital China
combines the variety of technical solutions with a full range of IT
products to meet diverse needs for IT services arising from vertical
industries, corporate customers, and individual users. At present,
Digital China has built a complete value chain in IT services that
covers IT planning and consulting, design and implementation of
solutions, outsourcing of IT system operation and maintenance, system
integration, IT distribution and maintenance, providing integrated
end-to-end IT services to its customers.

With persist effort in carrying out “customer-focused and
service-oriented” transformation, Digital China advocates Sm@rt City
strategy and drives business development in five areas, including
city infrastructure, mobile internet access device and application,
industry and corporate market, operation of Sm@rt City operation
service and Sm@rt City collaborative industry. Leveraging
urbanization and city informatization in China, Digital China becomes
a Sm@rt City expert with a forward-looking theoretical structure and
most successful cases in Sm@rt City development.

Alien, Alien Technology, the Alien logo, Higgs, BlastWrite,
QuickWrite and Dynamic Authentication are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Alien Technology Corporation in the United States and
other countries.

Media Contacts
Daniel Francisco
Francisco Group for Alien Technology
916-293-9030
dan@franciscogrp.com

SOURCE: Alien Technology

mailto:dan@franciscogrp.com

Copyright 2012 Marketwire, Inc., All rights reserved.

There is no Mother Teresa or Darth Vader in technology, which is another way of saying technological innovations are never completely benevolent or malevolent. Its always a combination of the two, and telemedicine is no exception.

According to BCC Research, the worldwide telemedicine market reached $9.8 billion in 2010 and will almost triple to $27.3 billion in 2016. Its clear from these stats that several nations are using the technology to close the gap in healthcare while lowering the cost of treating patients.

Hard gelatin capsules have served as an effective delivery form for dietary supplements for more than 100 years. Generally made of bovine, they have been the product of choice due to their versatile and reliable performance. But plant-based capsules have gradually been gaining share in the hard capsule market since the first non-animal hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) capsule was introduced more than a decade ago.

Vegetarian capsules were accepted because they satisfied a wide variety of health, dietary and cultural requirements of the booming lifestyle-driven market. In the United States, the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) reported 35 percent of supplement users say a vegetarian or non-animal source is important when choosing a supplement, up from 26 percent in 2006–and this group is among the most frequent users of supplements. In a recent study of supplement users in Europe, conducted by Capsugel, more than 45 percent of respondents said they would be more likely to purchase a supplement if they knew it was in a vegetarian, plant-based capsule.

Of the 70 million shoppers currently seeking vegetarian products–a market growing at a rate of 9 percent annually–69 percent agree regular supplement intake offers benefits, according to NMI data. They prefer supplements from non-animal sources, and delivering them in a vegetarian capsule boosts the intrinsic merit of the entire package, especially if the product can claim no additives, no preservatives, no allergens, non-GMO, starch free, gluten free, kosher and halal certified and/or approved by the Vegetarian Society.

Another reason for the growing market gains is recent technological innovations have allowed for customization. Companies can now satisfy the diverse needs of their businesses and branch out to more niches of the broader consumer market. The unique features of non-animal capsules offer distinct advantages in manufacturing ease, marketing, global certification, dissolution profiles, delivery of specific ingredients and more.

Food products

By Adebiyi Adedapo

The Federal Government has been advised to invest more on intervention strategy in the agricultural and industrial sectors.

The government was equally advised to reduce the tax burden on industrialists, so as to encourage technological innovations and improvement in quantity and quality of locally manufactured products.

Editor-in-chief, Industry and Technology Review magazine, Mr. Moses Owolabi, made the call at an Award ceremony recently in Abuja.

He said that leaving both sectors without serious intervention would slow down much needed economic development in the country. Leaving the two real sectors without intervention is tantamount to marooning the farmer or industrialists on the high seas, he said.

He suggested that the government should introduce a fuel voucher system that would ensure that petroleum products used in industrial are accessed by real industrialists at subsidised rate.

According to Owolabi, government should lower the burden of the industrialists while the authorities beam its searchlight on the rich and make them pay more taxes, this he said would generate more employment and more revenue for the government.

We will suggest the introduction of a fuel voucher system that would involve the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), and other industrial associations to ensure that diesel and HPFO (Black Oil) are accessed by real industrial users at subsidised rate.

The loan requirement for industrialists seeking loan at the Bank of Industry and other banks should be reduced to the minimum, while the loan is guaranteed to the tune of 70 per cent by the Central Bank as it has just been done for the agricultural sector, he said.

Director General of Raw Materials and Development Council (RMDC) Prof. Peter Onwualu, National Board for Technology Incubation, Nigerian Content Monitoring and Development Board, Yenagoa, Electronics Development Institute, Awka amongst others were recognised for their outstanding contributions to technological development of the country.

Owolabi noted that the awardees were nominated based on their clear-cut and verifiable achievement towards formation of a national system of innovation in Nigeria.

Allan Swann looks at the rise, and potential fall, of mobile payment platforms.

For what seems like an eternity, the mobile industry has waxed lyrical about the potential of mobile devices to change banking and payments, pulling each individuals financial world out of their wallets and integrating it seamlessly with their mobile devices. So why does everywhere else in the world appear to be ahead of the UK, a supposed world financial centre?

Its enough to make you want to smash your iPhone 4S. Or not.

Alongside problems with security and standardisation, the initial dog eat dog mentality has given way to a more collaborative approach, driven as much by fear as innovation as the 21st centurys technological titans, Google, Amazon and Apple all bring their weight to bear on the incumbent financial services providers, banks and mobile network operators.

The debate is coming down to two main solutions: physical near-field communications (NFC) payments, such as tapping your phone against the till to pay from your digital wallet (such as Google Wallet), and cloud-based options, such as an iPhone or PayPal app that simply debits money from your account.

But is it all really necessary? Surely in a recession there are bigger problems to tackle than developing costly, untested new payment methods?

Well, half of UK phone owners own smartphones, and ComScore research shows that 4.8 million of them used their device to access their bank accounts in 2011. IMRG/CapGeminis data shows that £940m, or 4% of last Christmass sales, were via mobile, and Visa believes that mobile payments in Europe will reach £650bn by 2020 while the UK Centre for Retail Research has said that shopping via mobile phone is expected to grow by 584% in 2012 to £4.5bn. This is seriously big business.

James Richards, director of mobile at digital banking software company Intelligent Environments (IE), believes there is a huge pent-up demand from consumers that is not being matched by the service providers.

A lot of them see the incredible things an iPhone or Android device can do, and wonder why it cant do their banking too. And why cant it? The technology is here, he says.

Much like most emerging technical standards, a muddled mix of industry protectionism and a lack of clear standardisation has stifled many attempts thus far to provide a clear technological channel for money to flow through.

On the app side, early adopters in the UK, such as Barclays Pingit (which allows for financial transactions) and UBSs more in-depth mobile banking app are a rarity in this country, yet US and Australian counterparts have had these capabilities for years. Even the third world, such as Cambodias Acleda and Thailands Bangkok Bank, have superior app-based offerings.

Serge Van Dam from Fiserv says that the delay has been due to banks attempting to do the job in-house, a task not made easy by the continually evolving development cycle. While banks traditionally work to six-month software development cycles, Apple releases new iPhones nearly that regularly, and updates its OS every month or two. The banks need to work together, or approach third parties to develop their mobile banking options to match that kind of speed.

We do it cheaper, faster and provide a decent return on investment. We have 70 dedicated developers working on our product, says Van Dam.

Andrew Tobin, chief technology officer at O2 Money, believes that once the options become available, mobile banking and payment will be something customers will adapt to quickly. Android and Apple have shown how commerce can be performed on mobiles quite easily.

In the next one to three years the public will become familiar with using phones to transact as a matter of course, and further capabilities, such as money-saving coupons and vouchers, will become popular, as they will be automatically integrated with the purchase transaction, Tobin says.

Alongside its development of O2s virtual wallet app, IE recently released research suggesting that the investment going into the mobile banking and mobile payments infrastructure for the 2012 London Olympics will provide a pivotal moment for the adoption of mobile financial services in the UK.

IEs research found that a quarter of the respondents to its survey believe that mobile financial services will hit the mainstream in 2013, while a further third believe it will in 2015.

Richards believes one of the key problems with adoption has been the UKs hyper-conservative banking culture. Many banks have used security as an excuse to put off development, as they struggle to balance functionality against their security requirements.

Its not so different from ten years ago with internet banking – we had problems then, but for the most part it worked. Security became more of an educational exercise once the systems were in place, he says.

The problem with the mobile channel that wasnt there ten years ago for online banking is that there is now a huge user expectation for a seamless and hassle-free user interface. Users accustomed to clean Android and Apple interfaces wont put up with bulky, messy mobile apps. As Richards puts it, replicating the online banking experience is not good enough.

If users cant access their account details in less than ten seconds, they will look elsewhere for solutions, he says.

Indeed, the banks appear to be heading in the opposite direction. Their latest online banking initiatives have forced greater burdens on the user in the name of security. Just this year HSBC has introduced its laborious SecureKey PIN system, and Barclays has gone a step further with its Pinsentry Card Reader, to name a few examples.

These kinds of onerous and time-consuming procedures will not wash with mobile consumers. Indeed, technological innovations in the UK banking sector seem to be more focused on protecting the banks interests than providing any kind of decent customer service.

The banks blame complex regulation and the financial crisis for a lack of capex, which would allow them to approach the problem more aggressively.

Michael Nuciforo, mobile and digital banking consultant at Keatan Consulting, believes part of the failure by the banks in this area has been in their business models.

Banks have a phenomenal amount of data on their consumers available, and they never thought to use it until companies like Apple and Google showed just how effective targeted advertising and services could be, he says.

The mobile space provides huge opportunities specific to the medium, such as push messaging, location-based advertising and even augmented reality (AR) to provide real value-added services to customers, and boost the banks bottom lines.
One of the key changes has been banking frequency. One-hundred years ago people went to the bank once a week; internet banking may have reduced that to once every few weeks. Our research shows that mobile banking customers check their banking details 20 times a month – thats five times a week and a huge opportunity for banks to advertise and sell products to their customers, he says.
Painless as possible
Internet banking got users used to the idea of not visiting the branch; smartphone banking can go a step further and make those bank visits as painless as possible. Imagine opening your banking app, selecting a branch, and organising an appointment for later in the day, instead of having to call in or ring the branch to make an appointment.

Mobile banking also allows for potential tools such payment calculators. Users could look at their loan repayments for the new plasma TV, their home and car insurance or any of the current products banks offer.

Going a step further, Australias Commonwealth Bank has developed an augmented reality mortgage app. Firstly, it allows consumers to be notified when they are near a house for sale. They then hold up the device, which scans the house, provides all the relevant information, and calculates the users income and mortgage repayment rates. They can then book an appointment to inspect the house, or to see the mortgage advisor in branch to sign the paperwork.

Ed Adshead-Grant, head of Hewlett Packards enterprise services card and payments services for Europe Middle East and Africa, believes there is a very real risk the banks may find themselves cut out by market disruptors and new entrants.

That is a real fear that [the banks] have, but its also an opportunity for them to step up their innovations. The banks find it difficult to innovate; they can do it, but retailers and telcos have a different track record in innovation – they work to faster product cycles. They will come and eat the banks lunch, so to speak, if the banks dont get proactive immediately.

However, the telcos are also having their lunch eaten by over-the-top (OTT) service providers that coast on their infrastructure. Mobile operators no longer control phone content, which is now provided by these app stores, and, in Apples case, dont even get a decent cut of the handsets sale price. The telcos have been watching mobile banking with great interest to ensure they arent cut out of the loop. Google, Amazon and Apple, after all, are making the real money here from their networks.
Vertically integrated
The iPhone pushed the world into the internet smartphone era and opened up the potential for mobile payments almost singlehandedly with its vertically integrated iTunes store model, which allowed users to purchase and download apps on the go. The news that Apple finally decided to take this model a step further has kicked speculation into high gear – it recently applied for patents for an e-wallet type device, and NFC capability has long been rumoured to be included in its next generation iPhone.

Realising the importance of controlling the payment system end-to-end, Google has courted some controversy by pressuring its app developers in its Google Play store (formerly the Android App Store) to use Google Wallet rather than rival payment systems – a nod to Apples vertically integrated store.

While Android smartphones are already coming out with NFC chips built in, any move by Apple would almost certainly drive mass adoption of the standard.

Both the telcos and the banks want a piece of the pie, and the industry response appears to be collaboration, the likes of which has not been seen in the banking and tech sectors in the 21st century. And they may well have to.

Project Oscar, that is, Everything Everywhere (owners of T-Mobile and Orange), Vodafone and Telefonicas (O2) joint submission to the EC for its new payment mechanism, is one such move. The joint venture received shareholder approval, a president has been selected and its now going through an approvals process. Just three years ago, the idea of these three fierce mobile rivals working together in such a fashion would have been considered unthinkable.

Beyond Project Oscar, each of these companies has its own alliances with other companies – Vodafone, for example, has also announced a joint venture with Visa. Adshead-Grant believes MasterCard will be making a similar announcement shortly. The simple fact is that everyones hedging their bets.

That is not to say that NFC is a foregone conclusion. Unlike cloud-based payment systems, it requires a substantial hardware investment, such as installing the chips in devices and in point-of-sale terminals.

PayPal is one company that has backtracked on its support for NFC, dropping the development of its NFC mobile point-of-sale transaction plans, which looked set to move the company away from its predominantly online purchase-based roots into mainstream payment systems. Noises from its execs suggest that they now believe NFC to be dead-on-arrival – that is, by the time it has mainstream acceptance users will already have all their information in the cloud and find the idea of physical commerce silly.

Privacy advocates are concerned about both systems. Both cloud and NFC-based systems leave no room for anonymity in cash transactions. Every purchase is logged somewhere, with the banks, the telcos or the middle-men. This could lead to a rash of lawsuits similar to those that Facebook and Google have been facing over the past few years, as well as issues with law enforcement subpoenas and requests for information. Just how far will people trade their personal data for convenience?

Hopefully by year-end well have some idea.

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Ashtons Oscar-hopeful moment?

Ashton Kutcher will play Steve Jobs, the late, visionary founder of Apple, in Jobs, a new independent biopic to be directed by Joshua Michael Stern, Variety reported Sunday.

The film will follow Jobs unexpected rise to become perhaps the most iconic, beloved tech entrepreneur of the current era. The man who introduced the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTunes and a host of other life-changing technological innovations to the world died of pancreatic cancer last October at age 56 in Palo Alto, Calif.

PHOTOS: Ashton Kutchers love life

Although Two and a Half Men star Kutcher, 34, is mostly known for his goofy, comedic, hunky roles in TV and film, hes also one of the most tech-savvy celebrities in Hollywood — an early adopter of Twitter with over 10 million followers, Demi Moores ex-husband invests in and heads up several tech companies.

Sony Pictures is also developing a rival Steve Jobs project, based on writer Walter Isaacsons acclaimed, bestselling biography.

PHOTOS: Meet my big-screen twin!

Kutcher will shoot the film while on hiatus for Two and a Half Men.

Tell Us: Will Kutcher do a good job as Jobs?

RESEARCHERS and industry players from across the world today meet in Nairobi to assess the strides made in the mobile money business, following the run-away success of technological innovations in Kenya.

The two-day meeting will be seeking ways to build on the success of the mobile money applications by exploring the possibilities of rolling out more relevant applications that will boost financial transactions at lower income level groups, also known as base of the pyramid.

According to conference chairman, Professor Timothy Waema, despite Kenya enjoying much success in the mobile money applications, the uptake has been limited to money transfer only.

We would like to find out why we are not experiencing similar enthusiasm in embracing other mobile money applications from research. The conference will also allow researchers to establish the challenges and needs of industry practitioners in order to find ways of solving them, he said.

Waema, a scholar from the School of Computing and Informatics, University of Nairobi, warned that unless there is a joint collaboration between the academia and industry players, the benefits of mobile money technology will not be fully enjoyed at the lower levels of society.

He said the industry has challenges which could also be tackled through research in the universities.

Closer university-industry collaboration, with facilitating conditions created by the government and development partners, will help to conceptualise new models which will add value to users, Waema observed.

He said research institutions have gathered very insightful data on consumers which need to be shared with industry players for product development.

Academicians are blaming the slow uptake of mobile applications on a knowledge gap between the industry and consumers. Despite having more than 15 million customers in Kenya with access to mobile phone applications, 99 per cent use the service only to send money while only a paltry one percent carries out financial transactions through mobile money platforms.

There are many innovations out there but they are not being scaled down to the users appropriately. We need to bridge this gap by synchronising our expertise, Waema stated.

CONFERENCE NEWS

ACCA: Tech innovations key to value-based care
CHICAGO–On the road to value-based care, consumer electronics and technological innovations may be the key, Eric Louie, MD, chief medical officer at Sg2 in Skokie, Ill., said during a morning keynote March 23 at the American College of Cardiology Administrators (ACCA) meeting.

Looking at the Dartmouth Atlas Study, Louie said that it’s hard to believe that the disparities within the healthcare system are due to geography. He said that value must be demonstrated in the expenditures exhausted by the US healthcare system.

Therefore, the question becomes: “How do you more efficiently deliver care?” Louie said that two major strategies will be by linking outpatient care to inpatient care and delivering value over the entire continuum of care.

Louie said that there needs to be balance between volume and value. In the future, incentives and the right tools to make the transition to value-based care will be imperative.

Consumer electronics will be a large piece of the puzzle that will help to drive care. The introduction of the 3D HDTV, tablet computers and the cross-breeding of Skype to review images will be major players in the move toward impacting and improving quality-based care.

“Cardiology is a great example of how consumer products, especially for imaging, have driven our ability to extend beyond the stethoscope for the physical examine and really understand what is happening to the patient,” Louie offered. “Imaging is believing and it will have a big impact on patient care.”

He added that consumer electronics can help spread contextually relevant information and therefore ultimately increase access to care.

He added that Siri on Apple’s iPhone can “read your mind,” and help provide relevant resources and information to help answer clinical question. In addition, GE Healthcare’s Vscan echo allows an echo interpretation to be performed through the iPhone with the same quality as doing that by the bedside. And while he noted that the iPhone may be too small for this interpretation, he added that it’s “amazing we can even consider this.”

While not approved yet by the FDA, he outlined another technological advance using the iPad and iPhone that can help cardiologists remotely read ECGs. The real-time monitor (Alive ECG) is an iPad app that allows the device with a single lead ECG on the patient’s chest to have the ECG information transmitted for remote interpretation to the physician’s iPhone for instantaneous decision making.

He also mentioned a pill-sized leadless pacemaker with sensing and pacing capability that is in the works; it is implanted in the patient’s myocardium and synced up to a physician’s iPhone for monitoring.

On the other hand, Louie said that making improvements to clinical care, like using the radial PCI approach, can help save money and improve patient satisfaction by decreasing length of stay, discharging the patient on the same day.

Louie offered that cardiovascular imaging should focus on finding which patient to send for a procedure, and he questioned whether these types of new technologies will be cost-effective.

For instance, a University of Texas, Southwestern study found that using a combination of hybrid OR for aortic debranching and elephant trunk with endoscopic aneurysm exclusion was not cost-effective. In fact, the reimbursement was $61,194 for the procedure compared with $82,000 for the cost of the system.

“We are on the road to value-based care and there are many ways we can work better together, harder together with better tools to provide value to our patients,” Louie summed.

Who runs the world?

In terms of technology, definitely, it is the youth.

After American webtrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg created the social networking site Facebook, many more have started to surface with their own technological innovations that not only aim to change the way people interact with one another, but also the way we live and manage our businesses and communities.

At the recent Smart Wireless Engineering Education (SWEEP) Innovation and Excellence Awards organized by Smart Communications, brilliant young minds from Smart’s partner colleges and universities across the country unveiled their inventions of end-to-end mobile broadband applications and solutions, aiming to address certain problems and needs of communities and industries.

What stood out among these innovations are the simple, but timely and extremely useful applications made by students from the Notre Dame of Marbel University in Koronadal city and Bataan Peninsula State University (BPSU). These two teams copped the second and third places respectively. Mapua Institute of Technology received the top award for its unique Braille cell phone and wearable obstacle detection system for the blind.

NO MORE QUEUES

If the applications made by the Notre Dame team gets adopted and implemented, people will no longer have to fall in line and wait endlessly for their turn to buy tickets for the Light Rail Transit and Metro Rail Transit systems. They won’t even need to buy a Stored Value Card anymore because they can simply use their phone.

&"Using an android phone and Smart’s wireless broadband technology, subscribers will only have to swipe their electronic mobile card (from an application in the phone) at barcode readers at train stations and the payment will be deducted from their Smart Money account. Then they can board the train at once,&" explains Louie Jhayson Flores, team leader and fifth year BS Electronics and Communications Engineering (ECE)student at the Notre Dame of Marbel University.

The Smart E-mobilized application aims to help minimize the time and effort people spend on buying tickets at the train stations.

&"I believe this application is really in line with the theme of SWEEP this year which is ‘Innovation in the palm of your hand.’ It will not only be convenient for the commuters but the train operations will also be faster and more efficient. At the same time, tataas pa ang revenue kasi mas maraming maeenganyong sumakay ng train,&" notes Flores.

ADDRESSING FISH MORTALITY

Daisyrie Sangalang, a fifth year ECE student at BPSU, says the growing incidents of fish kill in Laguna, Pangasinan, Batangas and even in their province in Bataan have moved them to create an aquamarine solution to salinity and oxygen using SMS technology.

The aquamarine solution, she explains, can remotely monitor, control and operate the system using SMS technology. A sensor made to measure the salinity and dissolved oxygen level will be installed in the body of water or fish pen. The gathered data will be available for propagation to the nearest cell sites for monitoring and manipulation of the fish pen owners and operators.

Sangalang says a report by the Bureau of Fishery and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) showed that there are already some 750 metric tons of milkfish that were affected by fish kills in Batangas and Pangasinan last year. In Bataan alone, the estimate value of fish loss is worth seven million pesos and 10 million pesos in total damages to industries. The BFAR Fish Health Section cites oxygen deprivation due to overstocked fish pens, floods, sudden high and drop in water temperature as among the causes of fish kill in these areas.

According to Sangalang, this is the first time that such a high-tech system was created. Fish pen operators and owners used to follow the traditional way of manual monitoring where they get a sample of water from the fish pen and check the salinity using a gadget. If dissolved oxygen and salinity is low, they will manually release water and put freshwater into the fish pen.

But with the system, she adds, it can automatically control the water to ideal levels in real time.

&"Matagal na itong problema since 1998 pa. As engineers, our College of Engineering and Architecture dean Rodrigo Muñoz has always wanted us to use our talents to create innovations that will give back to the community and help address the pressing problems of our country. Through this system, we hope to prevent more incidents of fish mortality and pave the way for sustainable food production,&" notes Sangalang.

The Central Luzon Association for Small Scale Fisherfolks, an organization of fish pond owners from Central Luzon, is interested in partnering with the BPSU team for their innovation.

Another team from the university also made it to the finals with their invention of a &"Palay Quality Checker through Leaf Coloration by Image Analysis.&"

NOBLE INTENTIONS

Two more finalists at the SWEEP Awards have also attracted interest for their simple innovations with noble intentions.

The low-cost alcohol breath analyzer with GSM Module interface by the students of the University of San Carlos (USC) in Cebu aims to decrease vehicular accidents by keeping drunk drivers off the streets, and promote road safety.

Theodore James Romo, a fifth year ECE student of USC, says the handheld breath analyzer can accurately determine Blood Alcohol Content using a standard formula, read information from a driver’s license for identification and an interface with a central database for automated record keeping. The team made use of the Smart network for wireless transmission of data from the device to a central database via GSM/GPRS module. The central database server connected to the Smart network will receive and handle data sent by the device.

The automatic barangay complaint filing system created by ECE students of Ateneo de Zamboanga, on the other hand, may have only made it to the finals of the SWEEP competition but three barangays in their province are already using it.

In fact, 12 more barangays also entered into an agreement with them for the implementation of the program in their respective areas.

According to team leader Hazel Ann Etiong, the database system can be used for storing barangay complaints and other necessary information. A central server contains all the databases of each barangay in the city so the exchange of information between barangays is possible through SMS or the internet.

&"Barangays usually do manual filing and retrieval of complaints and information. But our system can automate the recording of information to have a better and more organized filing system. This can lead to effective information keeping, better information security, faster transactions, and availability of accurate data in researches and projects that are undertaken by government agencies. It can even be used for gathering of statistics by fire stations and for planning and development of medical centers and hospitals,&" ends Etiong.

JURIST Guest Columnist Derek Bambauer of Brooklyn Law School says that the increased censorship of journalists worldwide is a result of technological innovations, which facilitate dissemination of information, but heighten the perceived threat to governments fighting to maintain control…