Brief

Japan is odd: A new ultrasound scanner to detect fresh tuna

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My four cats, including a new family member, Koko, really like tuna in cans. We spent a lot of money to buy a canned tuna brand that they like. It is no surprise that Japanese like fresh tuna to make sushi and other sashimi.  As a regular lover of sushi myself, a fresh tuna is a dish to be enjoyed with soya sauce and wasabi.

It was reported by the London Times on January 9th, 2023 that the Japanese had developed a method to determine the freshness of tuna meat. Researchers from Tokai University in  Tokyo, in partnership with the major technology company, Fujitsu, have found a way of using ultrasound scanners to check the freshness of frozen tuna., the most popular component of sushi and sashimi.

When commercialized, the new technology will allow a person with a hand-held scanner to grade tuna, a job which is presently done by a relatively small number of experts, using knife, eye and instincts acquired through experience.

Although the Japanese consume less fish than previous generations, they remain the world’s biggest consumer of tuna, eating a quarter of the global catch, mostly raw. Much of it is caught far from Japan and frozen on huge factory vessels, preserving it, but making it difficult to judge its quality before it is defrosted. The flesh of fish left for too long before being frozen loses tenderness.

Until now, the job of grading has been done by cutting of the tuna’s tail and securitizing the exposed flesh and its layers of fat. According to Fujitsu, “cutting the tail  of the tuna often damages and ultimately lowers the value of the fish, and the process relies heavily on a limited number of experts to accurately conduct quality inspection”.

A high quality tuna is expensive. At the recent 2023 auction at the Toyosu fish market in Tokyo, a 467-pound fish of the highest quality was sold for 36 million Yen (US$281,000), a valuable fish indeed.

The researchers experimented with scanning frozen tuna using ultrasound , analysing the results using artificial intelligence. Some ultrasound frequencies failed to achieve the desired results. They eventually found that low frequency waves wee reflected back very intensely by the spine of the fish that were past their best.

“By analysing the waveforms using machine learning, we developed the world’s first method to determine the freshness of frozen tuna without the need to cut the product,” the team reported.

“The new technology thus offers a new method to inspect the quality of frozen tuna without  lowering its value, and may one day contribute to greater trust and safety in the global distribution of frozen tuna and other food products.”

The scientists’ goal is eventually to develop hand-held tuna scanners that can be used to identify bad fish with more than 70 per cent accuracy. The device may also be able to spot other defects that reduce the value  of a  fish, such as blood clots and tumours.

The technology has the potential to be sold outside Japan, where demand for tuna is rising. The market research firm Global Information estimates that global tuna sales will grow from $40.7 billion in 2021 to $48.8 billion in 2027.

My Salina Boy likes canned tuna

“In Southeast Asia, it’s common for tuna to be shipped as cheap canned products,” Akira Sakai of Fujitsu Artificial Intelligence Laboratory told the Mainichi newspaper. “The fish is worth four times more when prepared for fresh eating.”

Brief

Japan  is odd: Researchers discover that rats nod to the rhythm of Lady Gaga

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At the Tokyo University in Japan, researchers had discovered that rats can pick out the tempo of a song and nod their heads in time to the beat. They bop to songs by Queen, Mozart and Lady Gaga.

Professor Hirokazu Takahashi and his team conducted a new study of “beat synchronization”. They found that rats can pick out the beat in a piece of music in the same way humans can and move in time to it, even if they have never heard before.

He fitted ten laboratory rats with wireless miniature accelerometers that could measure the slightest head movements , and recruited human participants who were a larger version of the same device.

The rats were monitored as the Takahashi’s’ researchers played Lady Gaga’ Both This Way, Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust, Michael Jackson’s Beat It, Maroon 5’s Sugar and Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K448 at four different tempos.

According to Professor Takahashi: ”To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on innate beat synchronization in animals that was not achieved through training or musical exposure.”

One-minute excerpts from five pieces were played at four different tempos—25 per cent slower, the original tempo, twice as fast and four times the original speed. The accelerometer measures whether the humans and rats moved in response to the music.

The results showed  that the rats’ beat synchronization was clearest in the range of 120-140 beats per minute. The team also found that both rats and humans jerked their heads to the beat in a similar rhythm. Professor Takahashi said: ”rats displayed innate—that is, without any training or prior exposure to music—beat synchronization ,most distinctly within 120-140 beats per minute, to which also humans exhibit the clearest beat dyssynchronization.

The optimal nodding tempo was found to depend on the time constant in the brain—the speed at which it can respond to something—which is similar across species. This means that auditory and motor systems’ ability to interact  and move to music maybe widespread in animal.

What next?

The researchers have stated that they want to reveal how other musical properties such as melody and harmony relate to the dynamics of the brain, as understanding how music stimulates the brain may help scientists uncover how it can be used to trigger an emotional response.

“I am also interested in how, why and what mechanisms of the brain create human cultural fields such as fine art, music, science, technology and religion,” Professor Takahashi said.

Professor Takahashi said he and his team also believe that their results could eventually lead to the creation of AI music that can sync more easily with the brain.

“I believe that this question is the key to understand how the brain works and develop the next-generation AI. Also, as an engineer, I am interested in the use of music for a happy life.”

About Professor Hirokazu Takahashi  

He is Associate Professor, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo

Professor Hirokazu Takahashi received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1998, 2000, and 2003, respectively. After working as a research associate at Department of Engineering Synthesis, the University of Tokyo, and as an assistant professor at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, he has been an associate professor at Department of Mechano-Informatics, the University of Tokyo, since 2019. His current research interests include areas of biomedical engineering ranging from rehabilitation engineering for restoring lost functions to experimental neurophysiology for understanding fundamental brain functions. 

Source:

The Times London, November 12th, 2022

Interlude

Japan is Odd: The Government is Encouraging Youth to Consume More Alcoholic Beverages

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Many brands of beer in Japan

The growing sobriety of Japan’s young people is hitting the amount of revenue flowing into state coffers and has inspired the national tax agency to run a competition for ideas to encourage more drinking.

Tax raised from alcohol sales accounted for 5 per cent of total government revenue in 1980, dropping to 3 per cent by 2011 and less than 2 per cent by 2020.

While alcohol taxes still raised US$80 billion in 2020, Japan’s national debt to GDP ratio, at about 240 per cent, is worse than any country in the world except Zimbabwe’s. The government can ill-afford to lose more tax revenue.

Average alcohol consumption fell from 100 litres per capita in 1995 to 75 litres in 2020, much of that drop caused by drinking falling out of favour with a younger generation. Whereas junior employees were once expected to routinely accompany their seniors and bosses on boozy nights out after work, these days many young salarymen and women refuse to participate in such revelry or are completely teetotal. The pandemic has exacerbated the situation, as many Japanese fell out of the habit of going for drinks with friends. The tax agency campaign is looking for ideas to revitalise drinking culture, including those who choose to consume at home.

With its first round running until September 9, the Sake Viva! campaign is looking for ideas, which could include the promotion of imbibing using artificial intelligence and the metaverse. According to the campaign website: “The aim of this project is to appeal to the younger generation regarding the development and promotion of Japanese alcoholic beverages by having young people themselves propose business ideas, and to revitalise the industry by promoting great plans.”

Selected entries will progress to a final stage and an award ceremony for winners will be held in Tokyo on November 10. The winning ideas will be used by the tax agency for commercial campaigns.

Reactions to the campaign from the public have been mixed, with many online comments questioning the wisdom of a government encouraging its citizens to drink more alcohol.

Japan’s health ministry issued a statement saying it hoped the campaign would recommend that people drink alcohol in moderation.

Overseas applicants can enter the contest, as long as they submit materials and make presentations in Japanese.

Alcoholic beverage market in Japan

The market size of alcoholic beverage in Japan is about US$35 billion, according to the report of Japan’s National Tax Administration Agency. However, the market is shrinking little by little every year. The consumption amount of alcoholic drink also fell to about half of that in its prime. The number of people who drink in a bar or restaurant was decreasing during the years. On the other hand, the number of people who drink in a house was increasing.

According to consumption amount of types of alcoholic beverages, a beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage in Japan. However, the ratio of beer is decreasing every year. The ratio of liqueur and wine are increasing instead of beer. It is said many young Japanese people don’t like the bitter taste of beer.

There are three types of beers, which consist of normal beer, low-malt beer and the third beer in Japan. The amount of liquor tax of Japan increases by the amount of malt, so beer companies make low-malt beer called Happoshu to keep down the tax and sell it cheaper than normal beer. As a result, Japanese government raised liquor tax for low-malt beer because of fearing decreasing amount of liquor tax.

Beer companies made the third beer in response to rising liquor tax. The third beer has a taste similar to beer without malt. It belongs to the category of a liqueur in Japanese tax law because if does not have a malt, so the third beer is sold at a lower price than low-malt beer. It contributes to increasing liqueur consumption. Thus, the third beer has become the cheapest beer.  

It seems beer companies in Japan can find ways around taxation to offer the cheapest alcoholic beverage to Japanese consumers.

We should note that tax on alcoholic drinks are steep in most countries as a way of raising tax receipts for governments.

Good luck to Japanese government in your increased beer consumption campaigns!

Must-Read Reports

How does soil become fertile?

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Soil is an astonishing ecosystem

Some parts of my small garden are fertile where papaya trees are growing nicely. Why are they fertile and support healthy papaya trees? An article by George Monbiot in the Guardian, May 7th,  2022, would help explain this phenomenon. 

He noted that beneath our feet is an ecosystem so astonishing that it tests the limits of our imagination. It’s as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food, yet we scarcely know it. Soil.

Under one square metre of undisturbed ground in the Earth’s mid-latitudes (which include the UK) there might live several hundred thousand small animals. Roughly 90% of the species to which they belong have yet to be named. One gram of this soil – less than a teaspoonful – contains around a kilometre of fungal filaments.

When I first examined a lump of soil with a powerful lens, I could scarcely believe what I was seeing. As soon as I found the focal length, it burst into life. I immediately saw springtails – tiny animals similar to insects – in dozens of shapes and sizes. Round, crabby mites were everywhere: in some soils there are half a million in every square metre.

Then I began to see creatures I had never encountered before. What I took to be a tiny white centipede turned out, when I looked it up, to be a different life form altogether, called a symphylid. I spotted something that might have stepped out of a Japanese anime: long and low, with two fine antennae at the front and two at the back, poised and sprung like a virile dragon or a flying horse. It was a bristletail, or dipluran.

As I worked my way through the lump, again and again I found animals whose existence, despite my degree in zoology and a lifetime immersed in natural history, had been unknown to me. After two hours examining a kilogram of soil, I realised I had seen more of the major branches of the animal kingdom than I would on a week’s safari in the Serengeti.

That this thin cushion between rock and air can withstand all we throw at it and still support us is a dangerous belief.

But even more arresting than soil’s diversity and abundance is the question of what it actually is. Most people see it as a dull mass of ground-up rock and dead plants. But it turns out to be a biological structure, built by living creatures to secure their survival, like a wasps’ nest or a beaver dam. Microbes make cements out of carbon, with which they stick mineral particles together, creating pores and passages through which water, oxygen and nutrients pass. The tiny clumps they build become the blocks the animals in the soil use to construct bigger labyrinths.

Soil is fractally scaled, which means its structure is consistent, regardless of magnification. Bacteria, fungi, plants and soil animals, working unconsciously together, build an immeasurably intricate, endlessly ramifying architecture that organises itself spontaneously into coherent worlds. This biological structure helps to explain soil’s resistance to droughts and floods: if it were just a heap of matter, it would be swept away.

It also reveals why soil can break down so quickly when it’s farmed. Under certain conditions, when farmers apply nitrogen fertiliser, the microbes respond by burning through the carbon: in other words, the cement that holds their catacombs together. The pores cave in. The passages collapse. The soil becomes sodden, airless and compacted.

But none of the above capture the true wonder of soil.

Let’s start with something that flips our understanding of how we survive. Plants release into the soil between 11% and 40% of all the sugars they make through photosynthesis. They don’t leak them accidentally. They deliberately pump them into the ground. Stranger still, before releasing them, they turn some of these sugars into compounds of tremendous complexity.

Making such chemicals requires energy and resources, so this looks like pouring money down the drain. Why do they do it? The answer unlocks the gate to a secret garden.

These complex chemicals are pumped into the zone immediately surrounding the plant’s roots, which is called the rhizosphere. They are released to create and manage its relationships.

Soil is full of bacteria. Its earthy scent is the smell of the compounds they produce. In most corners, most of the time, they wait, in suspended animation, for the messages that will wake them. These messages are the chemicals the plant releases. They are so complex because the plant seeks not to alert bacteria in general, but the particular bacteria that promote its growth. Plants use a sophisticated chemical language that only the microbes to whom they wish to speak can understand.

When a plant root pushes into a lump of soil and starts releasing its messages, it triggers an explosion of activity. The bacteria responding to its call consume the sugars the plant feeds them and proliferate to form some of the densest microbial communities on Earth. There can be a billion bacteria in a single gram of the rhizosphere; they unlock the nutrients on which the plant depends and produce growth hormones and other chemicals that help it grow. The plant’s vocabulary changes from place to place and time to time, depending on what it needs. If it’s starved of certain nutrients, or the soil is too dry or salty, it calls out to the bacteria species that can help.

Take a step back and you will see something that transforms our understanding of life on Earth. The rhizosphere lies outside the plant, but it functions as if it were part of the whole. It could be seen as the plant’s external gut. The similarities between the rhizosphere and the human gut, where bacteria also live in astonishing numbers, are uncanny. In both systems, microbes break down organic material into the simpler compounds the plant or person can absorb. Though there are more than 1,000 phyla (major groups) of bacteria, the same four dominate both the rhizosphere and the guts of mammals.

Just as human breast milk contains sugars called oligosaccharides, whose purpose is to feed not the baby but the bacteria in the baby’s gut, young plants release large quantities of sucrose into the soil, to feed and develop their new microbiomes. Just as the bacteria that live in our guts outcompete and attack invading pathogens, the friendly microbes in the rhizosphere create a defensive ring around the root. Just as bacteria in the colon educate our immune cells and send chemical messages that trigger our body’s defensive systems, the plant’s immune system is trained and primed by bacteria in the rhizosphere.

Soil might not be as beautiful to the eye as a rainforest or a coral reef, but once you begin to understand it, it is as beautiful to the mind. Upon this understanding our survival might hang.

Malaysian Innovators

Basic: What is a NFT?

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An illustration of a NFT

Recently, the media has seemed to catch on the new invention—NFTs. NFT is a unique, non-interchangeable digital asset basked by blockchain ledger technology. Non fungible characteristic of these tokens or assets refers to the unique and non-replicable nature of this digital-crypto assets, compared to, for example a Bitcoin or a US$1 bill, where each unit of the asset is interchangeable and is the same.

Examples of NFTs range widely from digital art, domain names, games, and collectibles to are audio and video recordings. NFTs are created    (i.e., minted) on a blockchain, such as Ethereum, which authenticates the ownership and the NFT asset (i.e., where it comes from, where it originates, and who is the owner).

In the physical world, a tangible example would be Mona Lisa’s painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. Although there are many replicas, there is one original Mona Lisa in the world, and this piece of art is unique, creative and indivisible.

Similarly, NFTs are creative works of art that, for the most part, do not allow for fractional ownership. Some NFTs can be very expensive, with a price tag of millions of dollars.  

Some trace the origins of the NFTs back to 2012-2013 when colored, small denominations of bitcoins were created. These coins represent different assets with different uses, ranging from collectibles to access tokens. These colored coins were “unique and identifiable from regular bitcoin transactions. “

In 2014, Robert Dermody, Adam Krellenstein, and Evan Wagner founded a peer-to-peer financial platform, Counterparty, which was built on top of the bitcoin blockchain. In 2015 and onward, trading cards and memes became prevalent. Various video games popularized the creation of digital assets to be stored on blockchain technology; these included swords, shields, and even digital parcels of real estate.  Crypto kitties became famous in 2017, launched by the Vancouver-based company Axion Zen.

In 2021, NFTs have gained more momentum and have started to permeate the mainstream economy in some unexpected ways. The NFTs are poised to create a brand-new aspect of the  digital.        

In fact, we are launching our own NFTs based on a series of paintings by a famous Sabah artist, Dato’ Sri Wilson Yong, who called himself the Borneo Art Creator.    

Please note this article also appeared on my special blog, nft.datodranuar.com/wp

World Unique Innovation

Rubber: The first major industrial commodity

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Rubber tree: An important economic tree in British Malaya

British Malaya (then Malaysia) used to be the major producer of natural rubber, gutta percha and tin.  These three commodities made British Malaya an important British colony in the late 19th century and the early 20th century.

Natural rubber industry is no longer important in Malaysia, as rubber has been replaced by oil palm as the most important industrial crop in the country since the 1970s. However the economic and social impacts of the natural rubber industry have been very significant for Malaysians during the period from late 19th century to 1970s.

In the next few articles, we will be covering various aspects of the natural rubber industry, from its development in British Malaya, the innovators of the rubber products and the decline of the rubber industry. Every pupil in Malaysia knew that the seeds of rubber trees originally were smuggled out of Brazil. Later they came to British Malaya.

The first of the article is how I membered about rubber trees  and daily activities revolving around rubber.

Rubber trees and daily tapping of latex

An early clone of rubber tree used to be able to be productive after 5 to 7 years. The bark needs to be tapped to allow the bark to “bleed” a white latex. The white latex is collected in a cup made of porcelain. The work of a rubber tapper started early in the morning at about 6 am. My parents used to have a small holding of rubber trees about a few kilometres from our home in Beranang,  Selangor, Malaysia, in the 1960s. They cycled to the rubber small holding about 6.00 am, with a sharp rubber tapping knife. First, using a headlight light for illumination, they removed a thin slice of the rubber bark which was enough for the rubber latex to “bleed” and to be collected in the attached cup. They would take about an hour to complete the tapping of rubber trees in the small holding. By 8.00 am, the cups would be filled with white rubber latex. Then, they emptied the cups containing rubber latex to a big pail.

The pails would be placed onto the bicycle and transported to a communal rubber rolling centre. Every village would have a communal rolling centre to process the rubber latex into rubber sheets.

At the communal rolling centre, a measured amount of formic acid would be added to the rubber latex which had been poured into a special rectangular steel container. After a while, the rubber latex  would coagulate, separating water from rubber. The rubber was still soft and about 4 to 5 cm thick. The soft block of rubber would be passed through an iron roller to reduce the thickness of rubber block to about 1 cm. The remaining water in the rubber block would have been completely removed  after going through several times of rolling. Finally, the thin rubber sheet was dried in the sun to remove the remaining water. The dried drubber sheet would turn slightly brown after several days under the sun. The rubber was now ready to be sold for cash.

Rolling rubber sheet to remove water

The tapping of rubber trees and the conversion of rubber latex into rubber sheets would take from 6 am to about 12.00 noon, every day.

After resting for lunch, most villagers would go to the their small paddy field to prepare their rice fields or to harvest their paddy. The rice filed would become their supplementary income after rubber sheets. In every town in Malaysia, there would be rubber dealers who would buy the rubber sheets at “discounted prices” after quality checks.

As expected, rubber small holders and the villagers were poor, surviving from selling of rubber sheets. This was compounded by the fluctuations of prices of rubber sheets on the world market. At time of high rubber prices, they would purchase a new bicycle for the family or a having “a feast” with the first-harvest  of rice from the paddy field.

Rubber plantation companies were wealthy

The rubber small holding sector was a not a significant segment of the rubber industry. Rubber  estates or plantations were much bigger with substantial acreage. The rubber estates boomed in the early 1900s to 1930’s when the motor industry emerged in Europe, US and Japan, thanks to Mr Henry Ford. In the early 1900s investment syndicates based in London drew investors, both individuals and institutions, to invest in rubber estates in British Malaya. At the time, British administrators in British Malaya  opened up a vast area of forest to be cleared to plant rubber. Established British companies in British Malaya also attracted investors to buy smaller rubber estates to be consolidated into larger estates.

If we were to travel by car in British Malaya in the 1930s, rubber estates with British names would be scattered throughout British Malaya. These rubber estates would be managed by British planters, with the help of locals. They employ mostly Indian rubber tappers brought in from India, who were paid low salaries.

 The larger rubber estates would have their own golf courses and social clubs. My wife’s late mother described the lives of the British planters vividly. She was about ten and lived in  Rantau, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia, where her village was surrounded by one of largest rubber estates in British Malaya.  

“ Every evening, about 6 pm, I saw many cars, driven by Malay drivers, cruising to the Club in the centre of the town. The “missuses” of the British planters wore nice dresses, which were different from those worn by the local women.”

There was the days when rubber was the economic pillar of the economy of British Malaya.

Everyone knew that the rubber sheets sold to local rubber dealers would be destined to Europe. Very few would know that the innovations that led to the use of natural rubber into industrial products, notably tyres, were created much earlier in the mid of the 19th century. Many of these innovators went bankrupt many times during the innovative pursuits.

The next article would cover these innovators, which had transformed British Malaya from a nation of mainly forests to a modern economy driven by rubber trees. As Malaysians now, we should salute these innovators, such as the Hancocks of Marlborough and Charles Goodyear.

Interlude

Magawa, landmine-hunting hero rat dies in Cambodia

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Previously, we covered about Magawa, the landmine detector that was awarded a gold medal for heroism for clearing ordnance from the Cambodian countryside. Magawa has just died.

Magawa, a giant African pouched rat originally from Tanzania, helped clear mines from about 225,000 square metres of land – the equivalent of 42 football pitches – over the course of his career.

After detecting more than 100 landmines and other explosives, Magawa retired in June last year.

Magawa passed away “peacefully” this weekend at the age of eight, said the Belgian charity Apopo, which trained him.

“All of us at Apopo are feeling the loss of Magawa and we are grateful for the incredible work he’s done,” the group said.

Apopo said Magawa was in good health and spent most of last week playing with his usual enthusiasm.

But towards the weekend “he started to slow down, napping more and showing less interest in food in his last days”, the charity said.

Apopo trained Magawa to detect the chemical compounds in explosives by rewarding him with tasty treats – his favourites being bananas and peanuts.

He would alert deminers by scratching the earth after using “his amazing sense of smell”.

Magawa was able to cover an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes, something that would take four days using a conventional metal detector.

In September 2020, the rodent won the animal equivalent of Britain’s highest civilian honour for bravery because of his uncanny knack for uncovering landmines and unexploded ordnance.

Magawa was the first rat to receive a medal from British veterinary charity PDSA in the 77 years of the awards, joining an illustrious band of brave canines, felines – and even a pigeon.

Millions of landmines were laid in Cambodia during the country’s nearly three-decade civil war which ended in 1998, causing tens of thousands of casualties.

Three Cambodian deminers were killed on Monday by anti-tank landmines that exploded as they tried to remove them, just 20 minutes after a man burning vegetation on his farm was killed by war-era ordnance in the same village.

Source: The Guardian, January 12th, 2022

World Unique Innovation

LED pioneers awarded the 2021 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering

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Five LED pioneers, comprising Isamu Akasaki, Shuji Nakamura, Nick Holanyak Jr, M. George Craford and Russel Dupuis, were awarded the 2021 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.  They joined a list of distinguished individuals for their contribution to the engineering world and humanity. The five LED pioneers shared a prize of £1.0 million.

The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, also known as the QEPrize, is a global prize for engineering and innovation. The prize was launched in 2012. It is run by the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation, which is a charitable company. The QEPrize receives donations from, large International companies.

The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering is awarded for engineering-led advances that are judged to be of tangible and widespread benefit to the public. The foundation invites nominations from the public, engineering and science academies, universities, research organizations, and commercial organizations from anywhere in the world.

The judging panel works from the information provided in the nomination, comments from referees and any other information required in order to establish which nomination most fully meets the following prize criteria.

  1. What s it that his person has done ( or up to five people have done) that is ground-breaking innovation in engineering?
  2. In what way has this innovation been of global benefit to humanity?
  3. Is there anyone else who might claim to have had a pivotal role in this development?

The winner (winners) of the QEPrize are announced every two years by the chairman of the QEPrize Foundation. To-date, nineteen individuals have been awarded the QEPrize, namely from US, Japan, France  and UK.

They are:

YearInventionRecipients
2013The internet and the world-wide web-Robert Kahn (1) (US)
-Vinton Cerf (2) (US)
-Louis Pouzin (3) (France)
-Tim Berners-Lee (4) (UK)
-Marc Andreessen (5) (US)
2015Controlled release large molecule drug delivery  -Robert Langer (6) (US)
2017Digital imaging sensors-George E. Smith (7) (US)
-Michael Tompsett (8) (UK)
-Nobukazu Teranishi (9) (Japan)
-Eric Fossum (10) – (US)
2019Global Positioning System (GPS)-Bradford Parkinson (11) (US)
-James Spilker Jr. (12) (US)
-Hugo FrueHauf (13) (US)
-Richard Schwatz (14)  (US)
2021LED lighting-Nick Holonyak (15) (US)
-Isamu Akasaki (16) (Japan)
-M. George Craford (17) (US)
-Shuji Nakamura (18) (Japan)
-Russel Dupuis (19) (US)

 Notes:

  • (1), (2), and (3): Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf and Louis Puzin for their contribution to the protocols that make up the fundamental architecture of the internet.
  • (4): Tim Berners-Lee for his contribution as the creator of the World Wide Web.
  • (5): Marc Andreessen for his contrition as the creator of the Mosaic web browser.
  • (6): Robert Langer for work in controlled-release large molecule drug delivery.
  • (7): George E. Smith for the invention of the charge-coupled device (CCD) principle.
  • (8): Michael Tompsett for the development of the CCD image sensor, including the invention of the imaging semiconductor circuit and the analogue-digital converter.
  • (9): Nobukazu Teranishi for the creation of the pinned photodiode (PPD).
  • (10): Eric Fossum for developing the CMOS image sensor.
  • (11): Bradford Parkinson for leading the development, design, and testing of key GPS components.
  • (12): James Spilker, Jr for developing the L-band GPS civil signal structure using CDMA.
  • (13): Hugo FrueHauf for his role in creating a highly accurate miniaturized atomic clock using a rubidium oscillator.
  • (14): Ricard Schwartz for leading the design and development of the highly robust, long-lasting Block I satellites.
  • (15): Nick Holonyak for developing the first (red) visible-light light emitting diode.
  • (16): Isamu Akasaki for the development of blue and white LED.
  • (17): M. George Crayford for developing the yellow LED and pioneering the development of AllnGaP LEDS using metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD).
  • (18): Shuji Nakamura for the development of blue and white LEDs
  • (19): Russel Dupuis for demonstrating that MOCVD could be applied to high-quality semiconductor thin films and devices to produce high performance LEDs.

We hope the QEPrize and Nobel prize would spur young scientists and engineers to develop innovations for humanity. We also hope that Malaysian scientists and engineers would be among the recipients of these QEPrize and Nobel prizes.

Reference:

  1. Wikipedia
  2. https://qeprize.org    
Must-Read Reports

Future businesses from emerging trends

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Future trends will influence the types of businesses that would emerge in the future. A report, NatWest Future Businesses report caught my attention this week. NatWest is a leading bank in the UK. I was one of its customers in the 1970s.

The NatWest Future Businesses  report highlights and explores the business trends most likely to emerge in the UK in the next 10-15 years, included within it, are predictions from a panel of four leading futurists and consumer business experts.

From virtual reality travel agents to the evolution of the e-scooter-these expert forecasts provide a fascinating insight into the future businesses we could see, and the industries where new job opportunities may emerge. Environment and sustainability, healthcare and education are among the many categories that are set to benefit from new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. 

General trends Identified

There are several trends identified in the NatWest Future Businesses report.

One, we are operating in an age of high-frequency change where technology has taken the friction out of business. It is easier than ever to get started with all the digital tools at our fingertips giving us significant power and reach. That doesn’t mean that success is easy though: with great technological progress comes even greater market opportunity.

Over the next 15 years, we will likely see continued growth in the number of self-employed people, particularly freelancers. Their numbers have doubled since the turn of century and though the trend was disrupted by the pandemic, it will return to growth as the economy recovers.

Freelancers allow organizations to scale up and down much more rapidly. Businesses built as networks will be able to take advantage of this flexibility, and thus be able to plug in new technologies quickly-as and when they add value.

But alongside a highly adaptable model, companies that adhere to a set of core values and proven social conscience will most likely thrive.

Government’s green policies mean the energy and transport sectors are being encouraged to evolve; something set to continue as newer and renewably powered technologies emerge. This is already evident in the electric vehicle market where firms race against each other to provide future-proofed solutions, from fuel cells to lithium batteries.

And all this is against a backdrop of the AI and robotic revolution. Mundane tasks from turning on the lights to food shopping will be carried out by automations, in a trend that is increasingly evident. Drone could keep us safe, driverless vehicles could take us to works, virtual shop assistants could help us select the perfect outfits for us to wear, and farmers could use algorithms to decide which crops to feed.

However, there will still many roles that require human skills such as caring for patients, dealing with customers and crucially in education. In essence, the more advanced technology becomes, the more people will be forced to concentrate on being people. With this in mind, the economy is gradually  shifting towards a care-focused model, dominated by emotion-led skills such as leadership, motivation and nurture.

Looking ahead, society will become more connected than ever. The digital world will blend with the real world, and the ability to communicate will no longer be restricted by poor WIFI or distance.

Overall, the future looks bright for small and middle-sized enterprises, especially those built as networks, which, whilst having relatively few full-time employees, will be able to compete with global giants. Increasingly consumers are seeking out companies that give back to society, offer a bespoke service and meet their individual needs.

The future businesses

Among the future businesses highlighted by the NatWest Future Businesses report include the  following:

  1. Agriculture: Precision farming, urban food farms, and livestock wearables.
  2. Health and medicine: Smart skin clinics, AI doctors, 3D printed organ production, intelligent ambulances, mind-controlled exoskeletons and biosimulator businesses.
  3. Energy: Microgrid managers
  4. Media and entertainment: Haptic body suits, AI digital entertainment critics, and interactive  TV.
  5. Education: Immersive teaching, holographic teachers, haptic gloves and adaptive learning platforms.
  6. Fashion and retail: AI tailoring, super-fast fashion, VR shop assistants, and augmented reality shopping experiences.
  7. Homes: Robot hire, servicing and repairs, and robo-gardener/robo-housekeeper
  8. Leisure: Analogue activity centers and wearable experience technologies.
  9. Food and drinks: Insect and bug foods, algae snack foods and supplements, lab-experience restaurants and fungus food-packaging.
  10. Transport: Driverless pods, air taxis and self-driving car rental services
  11. Travel and tourism: VR travel agents, VR mind refresher holidays and VR holidays.
  12. Construction and engineering: Robot pilots and high-speed 3D construction.
  13. IT and security: Drone security specialists and post-quantum security., and 
  14. Space industries: Space tourism, and orbital bin lorries.

The NatWest Future Businesses report is an interesting report. The authors are well known futurist and consumer services specialist. The NatWest Future Businesses can be downloaded as shown below.

natwest-future-business-report-design-finalDownload

The future businesses are interesting to explore. Algae farming and rental of robots and exoskeletons (light and compact) are my interests. An area of application is wearing exoskeletons to lift patients in hospitals and at home.