Graduate Advice - Tech-ing Over The World
Graduates with knowledge of the latest technologies are invaluable to all sorts of companies, helping them stay at the cutting edge. But as well as keeping employers up to date, graduates are also redrawing the map of the technological landscape. Here are some of the latest technologies to make their mark.
Touchscreen TV
Some of the fun of being a technology graduate has to be making real what previously only existed in science fiction. That's definitely what BSc Software Engineering student Adil Zaheer must feel he's done. The University of Salford student, along with lecturer Lee Griffiths, has created a new touchscreen technology that allows the user to pick up, drag around and generally play havoc with social media of any kind.
"Interactive touchscreens and surfaces are becoming commonplace since being popularised with products like the iPhone. Our touch surface application allows TV presenters to display and manipulate pictures and comments sent in by viewers," Griffiths explained.
Nicknamed MediaSurface, the technology is proving so popular that the BBC have been trialling it for use in future broadcasts. Having used the technology to incorporate viewer's posts on twitter and Facebook into a broadcast, BBC presenter Gordon Burns tried the technology and had nothing but good things to say about it, commenting on how it was exactly the sort of technology TV presenters would welcome.
Talking technology
While a lot of new technologies are fun or frivolous, some can change lives. An electromagnetic voice synthesiser, developed by a group of British universities, promises to do just that for throat cancer patients.
The technology, designed and created by experts at the universities of Hull and Sheffield together with the NHS, could replace existing options for patients that have undergone throat surgery. Currently the only options for anyone that has had their larynx removed are electrolarynxes and silicone valves. Both have faults; requiring awkward equipment and sounding unnatural or filling with fluid after a few months.
James Gilbert of the University of Hull comments, "It's clear that current techniques and methods available to patients are limited, with systems failing too soon or sounding too artificial. With further work our research could allow patients to lead normal lives without drawing attention to their condition."
The new technology works by using a series of magnets to create a moveable three dimensional electromagnetic field inside a patient's mouth. With analysis of which movements will link to which sounds this can be used to generate specific words and phrases. Trials have so far created databases of up to 57 words. The hope is, in future, to record a patient's voice before surgery to allow it to be synthesised afterwards. Combining these two technologies could give a patient their own voice back after surgery...only with a robot voicebox, which is much cooler than an ordinary one.
Tackling technology at the source
With e-books, iPhones and just about everything else getting smaller and smaller, it's got to reach a point when gadgets just can't get any smaller. So what happens next? Postgraduates and researchers at the University of Surrey have sidestepped the size issue by designing components that fold.
The break-through technology is called the Source Gate Transistor (SGT), used to amplify and switch electronic signals without needing to be integrated into an electronic process. The SGT is a physical barrier, which means it can be easily modified to serve different purposes, from power-saving to analogue precision. Basically, it's so simple it can be used for pretty much anything.
"With the SGT, the beauty is that you can tune it to your application and it's still very robust so it doesn't require perfect alignment during fabrication," says Radu Sporea, a third-year Electronic Engineering PhD student at the University. The fact that it doesn't need to be precision-built to work means the SGT can be produced cheaply and still be usable.
Sporea is part of the team making the SGT usable in everyday technology. He believes that in a few years it could be printed onto sheets, making it a cheap and flexible component for use in everything from screens to keypads. He adds, "A very good application of all this would be very thin plastic display screens that are flexible enough to bend or roll up into a cylinder, with all the electronics built in and sort-of transparent."
The real problem now is convincing industry that the technology is worthwhile. But Sporea is confident that once they're on board, anything's possible.
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