Personalised corporate gift uk

Peter O'Neill reports from the 6th International Inventions Fair, held recently in London

Right: Dentistry student Gustavo Garcia, from Gran Canaria, has come up with a way of putting more bums on seats in cinemas. Now he needs a smart engineer to expand his invention.

Struggling between his Marbella English and our reporter's four words of Spanish, ET eventually discovered that his idea does not get digital information to `el box office'.

Garcia's invention helps cinema-goers with free seating tickets. It rests on a sensor which is triggered by mercury movement in each seat. When the seat is lowered, a bright digital readout at the end of the row on the aisle shows how many seats are left vacant.

Garcia has not yet achieved a networked digital readout for the whole of the cinema theatre. But this could prove even more useful at the box office. ortega@santandersupernet.com

Left: The potty lady was into bottom sensors too. Iris Whyte's plastic Potty that Praises the Botty has a chip, microphone and speaker in its base. She says some parents encourage their children to use the pot by first putting some water onto the sensors. This activates a message such as: "Will you be my friend? Will you come and do a wee wee?" Whyte used Wokingham-based `electronics people' Innervision to develop the technology.

Right: At the fair, there were inventors in strength from everywhere in eastern Europe and the Balkans - but no Russians. President of the Inventors' Association of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hussein Hujic said: "It is fantastic - just now we were at war, and here we are at this tremendous meeting of inventors. Malcolm [Cook, the show organiser] made it all possible [and cheaper] to help us get here".

Hujic's invention was the Annometer, or Year Meter, which is waiting to be turned into an application for a palm top computer and other mobile applications.

Inventors' 10 commandments

The UK's Institute of Patentees and Inventors, founded in 1919, says the process of getting inventions on to the market is still as tough as ever, and the threat of being ripped off remains.

If inventors are planning to storm the world with an innovation, they can find more information on www.invent.org.uk.

Howard Stableford, the Institute's president, offers 10 commandments for inventors:

{{ 1. Identify a need. 2. Check for originality. 3. Do not upset an established apple cart. 4. Build a working model. 5. Protect the invention. 6. Learn the patent system. 7. Be realistic about demand and costs. 8. Sell yourself with the invention. 9. Find a product champion. 10. Persevere. }}

Left: Inventor Li Tao Man grew up in Hong Kong, studied in Beijing and now lives in Wuppertal, Germany. His invention is a digital universal telecom terminal or DUTT, for which he already has a British patent. He is looking for a company to manufacture the chip, which he says is past the function design stage and has been checked out by some experienced engineers.

The two phone-linked terminals he demonstrated at the show do not need computers to run the exchange of data. A terminal can upload data from any source: a scanner, diskette, phone or CD. The terminal compresses this data using Man's proprietary software and sends it via ISDN or modem directly to the other terminal at speeds of up 155Kbits per second.

Man says the connection is faster since transmission and reception are direct; it is cheaper, as only one side has to pay to transmit; and more secure than the Internet. There is no need for the receiving person to log on and check a mailbox - the data alerts the recipient automatically. The corporate sector may be his biggest market as, with a scrambler, it offers security not available via the currently uncertain Internet routings.

Man would say no more than the technique lay in "simplified data flow", the control of which would be embedded in the chip. There is no technical restriction on how much data can be sent or stored. He gave an example of reducing a 75min video to around 14min transfer time. This was also cheaper than watching the video on-line. He has yet to explore transmission via satellite, which promises to give much higher speeds.

Man's solution is currently at the chip stage. He envisages the whole system fitting into one digital router box. LiAnja@aol.com

Left: Vladimir Spiranec, a Croatian mathematician, mechanical engineer and information technologist, is proposing a new concept in processor design and manufacture: a quantum holonic processor.

Spiranec says the algorithms currently used in computing do not produce 100% accurate results.

"Increased speed, power and capacity in computers do not enhance accuracy," he said. "Now it is possible to challenge the `butterfly effect' in the chaos theory which holds that differences in initial conditions give unexpected results, when making calculations continuously." In the chaos theory, the butterfly flaps its wings in Kew's Royal Botanic Gardens and it causes a tornado in Alice Springs.

Spiranec has a detailed hand-designed table, giving the basis for his new algorithm for his intended co-processor. This could be installed in existing computers without affecting current configurations or as a standalone processor in new computers.

"It is of particular relevance for computerised monitoring of automatic processes," he said.

Never mind the problems the Croatian scientists face because of the turmoil in the former Yugoslavia - Spiranec summed up the inventor's problem: "It is difficult to get into big companies and then find someone who can understand as well as be willing to take decisions." display@vz.tel.hr

Left: If you are bored and twiddling your thumbs and see no future with your employer or a dead-end project in your lab, the opportunity to use your equipment to come up with your own invention and make your fortune might prove too good to be ignored.

Superman's help was called upon by one exhibitor to show how a fair amount of money can be made on the side with a whole range of clever graphics products and imaginative designs - and all of it down to access to some state-of-the-art equipment.

One such example is a personalised book and gift company, which uses its own software to offer such services. This firm can be contacted at the Diss Business Centre in Norfolk on 01379 642122.

But beware of lifting other peoples' ideas, as in the famous can of beans ad from the Andy Warhol painting. The same advice might just apply to the use of cardboard cut-outs of Superman.

Right: Also from Croatia was Milica Pavic with her EEG headnet (fax/tel: +385 51 154 701). Pavic has used Holon mathematics to extend "numerical space by 100%". She has recalculated the periodic table with quantum mechanics so that it is twice its existing size. This return to natural structures, she says, means there are no errors when using this algorithm.

Could this be applied to the deep design of chip materials? She said it would help to moderate the structure of neutrons and electrons in the atomic structure.

Other relevant Croatian ideas included a remote electricity

consumption monitoring system using a chip in each main power socket and copper pairs and/or the Internet; an application for boats on marinas has already won a prize (process-electronics@ri.tel.hr); and a method of touch control on a screen with the ability to upgrade old touchscreen devices (Goran.Kladarin@zg.tel.hr).

Liquid crystal molecules

For Paul Nicholas (P.Nicholas@bham.ac.uk), leading a team based at the school of metallurgy and materials at Birmingham University and the department of chemistry at Hull, the GP breathalyser is just one aspect of research into liquid crystal molecular sensors (LCMS). The approach is suitable for uses in neural network control systems and the expanding field of quantum computing.

Nicholas says LCMSs can detect and distinguish between a variety of compounds, including biological molecules, in the gas or liquid phase. LCMS are specialised membranes in which liquid crystal molecules are oriented in one direction. Any deviation from this `rest' state can be detected by a change in light transmission. Devices of relatively simple construction will respond passively to a compound by exhibiting an increase in optical transmission proportional to concentration.

An electric field reorients the LCMS and an AC electrical field induces a corresponding optical waveform response. After exposure to a compound, the differences triggered are so big that they are visibly detected on a monitor.

Nicholas said: "In certain circumstances, you can control electrical conduction by manipulating liquid crystals. Discotic crystals tend to stack into columns, and by controlling that stacking and its orientation, you can control electrical conduction in certain directions. So conduction is directional.