Students at Temasek Polytechnic are using Virtual Reality (VR) technology to have virtual field trips. Aspiring aerospace engineers can hone their practical skills by getting up close and personal with virtual plane engines. The pandemic has challenged polytechnics to find new ways of providing practical skills. They have responded by adopting new tech tools for immersive learning, like using VR to give aerospace engineering students a hands-on experience.
Students can use VR to take part in virtual field trips, enabling them to have up-close experiences with training equipment. For example, aerospace engineering students can use the technology to perform maintenance on the aircraft landing gear and fuel systems. They also learn how to start an engine from the rest using VR. The tool can be useful for students who need access to training equipment that is expensive or unavailable.
Singapore’s schools are similarly transporting students to inaccessible places with VR. Historic sites like the Amazon rainforest are among the locations available for virtual visits. VR tools provide the opportunity for students to learn in a new way. The immersive tech can take concepts like molecule structures and geometric shapes and represent them as virtual objects in the classroom.”
– Aaron Loh, Divisional Director, Educational Technology, MOE Singapore
Using Data for New Ways of Teaching
The polytechnic’s lecturers use data analytics to support students during remote learning. Data analytics can identify learning gaps that students are struggling with and enable lecturers to provide almost real-time follow-ups. AI algorithms also intervene to help student learning. It can look at students’ quiz results and direct them to learning resources in areas where they are not performing well. This creates a personalised learning path for students based on their progress.
The polytechnic created a 20-hour upskilling programme, where teachers learn how to design a follow up with students driven by analytics. Other areas of the programme include turning numerical data into visual images and understanding who owns different data.
“Looking ahead to a post-pandemic world, the polytechnic is reconsidering what the most effective form of learning will look like. It is already weighing up which activities are better done face-to-face, and which are better done online. The polytechnic is also exploring how students are going to be assessed in a post-pandemic future. Soft skills like problem solving, resourcefulness, self-direction and social skills are becoming more important in preparing students for life after graduation.”
The polytechnic will adopt a hybrid learning approach where students will have the flexibility to join lessons in person or virtually. Recordings of lessons will also be made available online. This is relevant in the current context where students may have to be isolated at home or recover from Covid”, Boey shares.
Educational institutions are not letting the pandemic get in the way of developing hands-on skills. VR technology is enabling students to get up close and personal with training equipment, while lecturers learn how to support students in real-time with data analytics.
Singapore has been using VR in various fields, including healthcare. As reported by OpenGov Asia, By leveraging novel smart technologies like virtual reality (VR) and gamification, physiotherapists at SingHealth institutions, such as Sengkang General Hospital (SKH), have found new and efficient ways to help patients meet their rehabilitation goals while allowing therapists to monitor their progress and recovery more efficiently.
There are also VR-enhanced treadmills. Using VR simulations and intelligent feedback, patients navigate obstacles and different terrains while improving their mobility, balance, and fitness levels. Technological equipment that incorporates VR and gaming make otherwise mundane rehabilitation activities like walking fun and interactive, thereby increasing patient interest and participation.
A data scientist said during an online demonstration of the solution that a toolkit that can reduce algorithmic bias in Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for the health industry would mean better care for everyone. The unique risks in algorithmic bias come from the way that it allows the systematic and repeatable automation of biases to impact people on a previously impossible scale. Designers may input the assumptions into the technology so they should be tested to ensure they are not automating harm.
Called Diagnosing Bias, the toolkit contains resources to help government health care procurement officers incorporate best practices for algorithmic accountability. The toolkit’s two main elements are a procurement template generator tool with AI contract riders and the AI Model Checklist.
– Matthew Zhou, Tech Policy Fellow, Aspen Institute
The template generator provides procurement officers with a readymade template for writing health care AI contracts that includes clauses addressing transparency, bias mitigation, security and privacy. This is not unlike a request for proposal templates common for many other purchases, such as property. The goal is to make these templates open-sourced and freely available to procurement officers.
The second tool is the checklist, which provides a set of guiding questions and transparency artefacts that procurement officers can solicit from health care AI companies at each stage of the AI design process. Health care AI has the potential to vastly improve medicine – once bias is minimised. A Science Academic Journal article stated that health care algorithms overlooked 28% of Black patients when compared to white patients with the same disease.
The National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation offers examples: The American Heart Association’s Heart Failure Risk Score assigns three additional points to patients identified as “nonblack,” which may raise the bar for hospital admission for Black patients. The STONE score, which predicts the likelihood of kidney stones in patients who arrive at the emergency room with flank pain adds three points for “nonblack” patients, leading clinicians away from diagnosing the condition.
As AI is among the most important technological developments in the healthcare sector, numerous startups are developing AI-driven imaging and diagnostic solutions that are accountable for the growth of the market. The US is evolving as a popular hub for healthcare innovations. Several start-ups have appeared in the last few years to automate the analysis of medical images. The COVID-19 outbreak has significantly promoted the implementation of remote health check-ups using digital tools, delivering clinical services to patients over distance rather than in-person.
A significant increase in the number of artificial intelligence startups in the healthcare sector is anticipated to positively influence the North American market growth during the forecast period. Additionally, the growing usage of artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry is among the other factors expected to fuel the demand for artificial intelligence in healthcare in North America.
As reported by OpenGov Asia, to help clinicians avoid remedies that may potentially contribute to a patient’s death, researchers at MIT have developed a machine learning model that could be used to identify treatments that pose a higher risk than other options. Their model can also warn doctors when a septic patient is approaching a medical dead end — the point when the patient will most likely die no matter what treatment is used — so that they can intervene before it is too late.
When utilised to a dataset of sepsis sufferers in a hospital intensive care unit, the investigator mannequin confirmed that about 12% of the therapies for deceased sufferers have been dangerous. The research additionally exhibits that about 3% of sufferers who didn’t survive have been caught in a medical stalemate 48 hours earlier than demise.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur (IIT- Kharagpur) have developed a new highly accurate, affordable, and non-invasive device that detects oral cancer in resource-constrained clinical settings. The technology includes a portable handheld unit that combines various sensors and controllers that feed the measured data to a computer simulation engine to classify normal, pre-cancer, and cancer cases in the oral cavity. It does not need referrals to specialised medical centres for resource-intensive diagnostic procedures.
The device is a portable and user-friendly blood perfusion imager (BPI) that combines a miniature far-infrared (FIR) camera and a humidity sensor, which are electronically controlled and interfaced with a combined physics-based and data-driven software engine. The process has proven to be technologically superior to thermal imaging-based screening technologies currently in use. This is because the temperature in the tissue itself varies with the surrounding conditions. With combined variabilities in the local blood flow and metabolism, there is not always a specific indicator of the diseased state under investigation. The new device offers an automated, touch-free approach to estimating blood flow variations in different regions of the potentially diseased tissue, specifically relating to the diseased condition.
Experts from the Guru Nanak Institute of Dental Sciences and Research supervised the clinical trials and have established the efficacy of the method in differentiating cancerous and precancerous stages of suspected oral abnormalities, as verified by high-standard biopsy reports. The research was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.
According to a report, decisive exclusivities of the technology have also been achieved by infusing a machine learning (ML)-based classification approach with physics-based analytics, based on thermal images obtained from the portable device. Since oral cancer, at its early stage, is known to manifest an increase in blood flow whereas full-grown cancer reveals a decrease in blood flow similar to pre-cancer or normal cases; such data-science augmented interpretation algorithm has minimised inevitable instances of misclassification due to similar common deceptive features among different medical conditions. This may be compounded by obvious inter-patient variability that, in borderline cases, may lead to wrong clinical decisions.
The device consists of a probing unit for screening, and a processing unit for obtaining blood perfusion data and disease recognition. The probing unit is composed of a holder and sensor housing. The holder is used for guiding the sensor housing to the measurement site and the sensor housing maintains a stable environment, minimising the effect of breathing. The sensor housing consists of an on-chip long-wave infrared camera to measure tissue temperature and a fully-calibrated digital humidity sensor to measure ambient temperature and relative humidity inside the mouth. The camera sensor array captures the spectral radiance and uses additional signal-processing electronics to convert the radiometric values into temperature values.
The patent for this new technology has already been filed. Cancer of the oral cavity remains one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in socially challenged communities, which reveals an on-an-average 80% chance of five-year survival rate if diagnosed early. The survival rate drops to 65% or less in more advanced stages. Most oral cancers remain undetected until reaching an advanced stage. In resource-constrained settings, there is a serious dearth of accurate yet affordable diagnostic tools to arrive at a decisive recommendation during the first possible clinical examination of the patient.
A new invention by a Brisbane energy company could help to increase the penetration of home solar and batteries in low voltage areas, reducing the need to build costly distribution grid infrastructure. On behalf of the Australian Government, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced $451,167 in funding to the energy firm to demonstrate the potential of their new technology, eleXsys, to increase distributed energy resources (DER) hosting capacity on low voltage power lines.
The eleXsys device works by regulating voltage on low voltage power lines by dynamically providing or absorbing reactive power, for the benefit of new and existing DER customers where the device is installed. By maintaining voltage within normal operating bands, eleXsys can better utilise DER, such as locally produced solar and battery storage, without expensive grid upgrades.
The $1.92 million trial will be undertaken in conjunction with local distribution network service provider (DNSP) Energy Queensland who will undertake testing of eleXsys at its Real Time Digital Simulator facility in Cairns to show how the device performs across a wider range of network types. The project will also benefit from the insights of several other DNSPs participating in a dedicated stakeholder reference group.
The energy firm will manufacture and install five eleXsys devices, with three being directly connected to Energy Queensland’s network, one being trialled behind the meter on a customer’s premises, and the other being used for testing at the Real Time Digital Simulator facility. The final findings of the project will be made public through a comprehensive knowledge sharing report.
The CEO of ARENA stated that technology will play an increasingly important role in adding more renewables to our energy makeup. To help increase the amount of distributed energy that is available on Australia’s energy network, it is vital that ARENA supports these new technologies such as the eleXsys which not only help to connect more home solar and batteries, but also helps to avoid expensive network augmentation works to support increased demand. He added that ARENA is excited to be supporting the trial of the eleXsys device. After a successful trial in south-east Queensland, the technology could be seen installed across the grid to save costs for users while also enabling more distributed renewals to be connected to the grid.
The CEO of the energy company stated that ARENA’s support and that of Energy Queensland are critical to demonstrating applications of eleXsys in the residential DER market and how existing distribution grids can be supported to host much more exported solar energy than is typically the case in Australia today.
ARENA has previously supported over $100 million of DER projects and established the Distributed Energy Integration Program (DEIP), a collaboration of government agencies, market authorities, industry and consumer associations aimed at maximising the value of customers’ DER for all energy users.
Global revenue for grid edge technologies for distributed energy resources integration is expected to total $120.3 billion from 2015 to 2024, according to a recent report. Utilities the world over are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities as distributed energy penetration increases along different points of the distribution grid, particularly at the edge. While utility efforts to date have largely been reactive, in the longer term, grid edge intelligence and automation for distributed energy is expected to spur the development of markets for clean energy resources and services.
The Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad (IIT-Hyderabad) has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-based job platform for people with disabilities (PwDs). The Institute claimed that the platform, Swarajability, is the first of its kind in India. It will offer technical training and job opportunities that are tailored to the user’s skills. The platform will analyse the available information and suggest the required training needed for the jobseeker. For maximum reach, the platform is accessible on both the web and mobile phones.
According to reports, the platform was developed in partnership with private players, and several organisations with different areas of expertise have come together on the project. There are 21 million persons with disabilities in India. Over 70% of them are unemployed/underemployed. The platform is a step towards remedying this. The importance of creating this platform is if the country is to meet its demographic dividend, the most vulnerable, like youth with disabilities, should be skilled and given sustainable opportunities, the platform developers said. Technology can facilitate this and ensure that no one is left behind. The platform supports NGOs, educational institutions, and governments in their efforts to promote diversity and inclusion.
An official highlighted the significance of rigorously testing technology in both the software and hardware sector among groups of people who need them before these innovations are scaled up by the industry. Furthermore, he added that it is important to remember the age-related subgroups of people with disabilities; children are a vulnerable group too and their disabilities should be considered.
Around the world, governments are pushing forward initiatives to aid persons with disabilities through technology. Technological innovations have also helped mitigate some of the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has brought. OpenGov Asia reported last year that New Zealand launched a device to assist people with disabilities to be vaccinated. The online tool, Manaakitanga Journey, summarises crucial information from the Unite Against COVID-19 website, such as how to schedule New Zealand Sign Language interpreters at clinics and how to get to and from a vaccine appointment. The government collaborated with the disability sector and community, as well as the Office for Disability Issues, the Ministry of Health, and the District Health Board (DHB), to establish services and information to ensure individuals are aware of their vaccine eligibility.
The vaccination initiative is aimed to be inclusive and accessible to all New Zealanders, ensuring that everyone can get vaccinated. DHBs and local providers are dedicated to ensuring that persons with disabilities get access to the vaccine in a way that fits their needs in their community. The New Zealand government also launched a disability-specific section of the Unite Against COVID-19 website, which is updated weekly with accessible locations and centres for individuals to get vaccinated across the nation. The Unite Against COVID-19 website will also include consolidated information for people with disabilities and those with underlying health issues, such as supported decision-making, a list of accessible vaccination centres near them, transportation arrangements, and information in alternative formats.
In a landmark discovery, University of Wollongong (UOW) researchers have realised the non-contact manipulation of liquid metal. The metals can be controlled to move in any direction and manipulated into unique, levitated shapes such as loops and squares by using a small voltage and a magnet.
The liquid metal used is galinstan, an alloy of gallium indium and tin, which favours the formation of droplets due to its high surface tension. Under the application of a small triggering voltage, this liquid metal becomes a wire as the voltage causes electrochemical oxidation, which lowers the surface tension of the metal.
The research team was led by Distinguished Professor Xiaolin Wang, a node leader and theme leader at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET), and the Director of UOW’s Institute for Superconducting and Electronic Materials within the Australian Institute for Innovative Materials. He noted that by combining electromagnetic induction and fluid dynamics, the team was able to manipulate the liquid metal in a controllable way and move like soft robotics.
The research in liquid metals was inspired by biological systems as well as science fiction, including the shape-shifting, liquid metal “T-1000” robot in the James Cameron-directed film Terminator 2. “This research is more than science fiction, we have conceived and realised this non-contact method for liquids, offering a new way to manipulate and shape fluids,” Prof Wang said.
Because these reactions require an electrical current passing through the wire, it becomes possible to apply a force to the wire via the application of a magnetic field (ie, electromagnetic induction; the same mechanism as drives motion in an electric motor). Thus, the wires can be manipulated to move in a controllable path, and can even be suspended (against gravity) around the circumference of the applied magnetic field, assuming controlled designed shapes.
UOW PhD student Yahua He was the lead author of the study, published in the January issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), one of the world’s premier journals for multidisciplinary research. He noted that the non-contact manipulation of liquid metal allows researchers to exploit and visualise electromagnetism in new ways.
The ability to control streams of liquid metals in a non-contact manner also enables new strategies for shaping electronically conductive fluids for advanced manufacturing and dynamic electronic structures. Non-contact methods of manufacturing and manipulation can minimise unwanted disturbance of objects being studied or manipulated. Previously developed non-contact technologies include object manipulation by acoustic manipulation or optical tweezers.
However, to date, free-flowing liquid streams have been particularly difficult to manipulate in a non-contact manner. Realising highly controlled changes in directionality or complex shaping of liquids, especially without disrupting the cross-sectional shape of the stream, was the challenge for the team at UOW.
Once the team started working on this topic, they realised that there is much more behind it. The liquid metal wires form by applying a small voltage (approximately 1 volt). However, the team found that a considerable electrical current (up to 70 mA) could be measured in the resulting wires.
“There was a creative leap at this point, as the team realised that electromagnetic induction could be used to control the liquid metal wires in a non-contact manner. This was the key to finally successfully solving the challenge, thereby developing a new strategy for shaping fluids in a non-contact manner,” he added.
This non-contact manipulation is made possible by the material’s unique fluid dynamic and metallic properties. As soft, current-carrying conductors, the wires present minimal resistance to manipulation via Lorentz force under a controlling magnetic field. Thus, the researchers could manipulate the wires in designed ways.
Co-author Professor Michael Dickey from North Carolina State University said this very low resistance to movement allowed unusually fine control of resulting shapes. He said that usually, liquid streams break up into droplets. For example, streams of water coming from a faucet or hose start out as a cylinder, but quickly break up into droplets. However, the liquid metal wire has a string-like property, similar to waving ribbons in the air. That property allowed the researchers to manipulate the liquid metal stream into continuous loops and other shapes.
5G services are projected to contribute 7.34% to Vietnam’s GDP growth in 2025, according to research by the National Institute of Information and Communications Strategy. At a recent high-level forum on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh stated that the revolution and innovation form a new driving force for socio-economic development.
He said in order to recover and develop the economy post-pandemic, it is necessary to have an infrastructure development strategy, including digital transformation infrastructure, and telecommunications services that reach low-lying and border areas, and islands. Digital infrastructure is among the government’s top priorities. It has set a target to be among the top 30 nations with the most advanced and robust digital infrastructure by 2025. Vietnam’s next wave of socio-economic development will come from innovation, science, and technology, driven by the digital economy.
At the event, an industry expert explained that the manufacturing, energy/utilities, healthcare, and security sectors have the best opportunities for 5G-induced benefits in Vietnam. Businesses’ digitalisation capability through 5G networks will significantly improve labour productivity. It could potentially redefine the entire digital ecosystem. One of the country’s biggest network providers, the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), stated that 5G technology is helping it gradually develop more applications that are based on or incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of things (IoT), and robotics, among others, to build smart cities and for healthcare, education, and smart factories.
The Viettel Military Industry and Telecoms Group (Viettel) has identified the 5G network as the infrastructure foundation for digital transformation and the fourth industrial revolution. As such, the state-run company is promoting the research and creation of applications on the 5G spectrum. Viettel’s goal is to put Vietnam on par with the world in digital transformation and research and development for the high-tech industry.
Last September, Viettel successfully researched, tested, and established a 5G data transmission speed of more than 4.7Gb per second. This speed is 40 times higher than the 4G speed and more than two times the existing 5G speed, making Viettel one of the fastest 5G telecom networks in Asia. The result confirmed the outstanding capacity of the 5G ultra-short wave (mmWave) technology that Viettel plans to deploy.
In January, OpenGov Asia reported that the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) has made 5G services provisions through indigenously-developed devices a core government mission. Due to infrastructure limits, however, the target is to only offer these services to 25% of the national population in 2025. 4G networks cover 99.8% of the nation and 5G technology has been successfully piloted by three major carriers in 16 cities and provinces.
Domestic 5G equipment now ranges from the core, transmission, and access networks. Vietnam has finished installing 5G stations using open radio access network (ORAN) technology with download and upload speeds of 900Mbps and 60Mbps, respectively. This is a major boost for 5G device research and manufacturing in Vietnam, which will serve commercialisation tasks later this year.
Artificial snow is widely used at international skiing competitions, and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games has designed nine different types of snow to meet the needs of various events. Icy snow, a form of skiing snow, reduces friction on the track surface, and plays an important role in improving athletes’ performances, protecting their bodies and prolonging their sports careers. However, back in 2016, there was no qualified icy snow track in China and many domestic experts had not even heard of the concept.
China started its snow and ice research later than other countries and had little experience holding international snow and ice events, not to mention possessing related, high-end technologies. With international blockades on technologies, China could not even meet the standard parameters for snow tracks. In 2017, a technology research team focused on snow protection for the Beijing Winter Olympic Games was formally established.
From 2019 to 2021, the research team initiated studies on making icy snow, which sounds as simple as combining ice and snow. But with no specific parameters for how thick the snow should be or how often water should be added, the team struggled to find its way. The testing area was also very cold, with temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius. Occasionally, team members had to work in frigid conditions for more than 10 hours at a time.
Their persistence and hard work eventually paid off. The team independently built professional monitoring equipment for the icy snow track, including an icy snow hardness tester and an icy snow particle size tester. They also reduced costs by providing a green and efficient model for ski track construction. The snowmaking, snow preservation, snow storage and other snow services all meet the needs of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games now.
In addition to the icy snow manufacturing technology, China also achieved technological breakthroughs in other areas for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The bobsleigh competition is known as “F1 on ice” for its breathtaking speeds and excellent views, but equipment manufacturing has always been a foreign monopoly.
It was not until 2021 that Chinese researchers successfully developed a domestically-built bobsleigh, achieving a breakthrough by delivering two-man and four-man bobsleighs with aerospace technologies. The Water Cube, which used to be the main swimming pool for the 2008 Beijing Olympics has been transformed into the Ice Cube and will host curling events for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
As reported by OpenGov Asia, Chinese researchers have joined forces to prepare venues, gear and athletes’ training facilities for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. In 2018, researchers and students from the wind tunnel lab joined the construction efforts of the Winter Olympic venues. The National Alpine Ski Center, one of Beijing 2022’s most technically challenging venues, was built more than 1,200 meters above sea level on Xiaohaituo Mountain in the Yanqing competition zone.
Chinese researchers from the wind tunnel lab studied the wind field data in the Yanqing competition zone and used tunnel tests to assist in the design of the Olympic venues. The team developed a system combining the terrain, awning and sunshade to reduce the impact of solar radiation. They analysed the sun’s height in spring, autumn and winter, and used computer models to simulate and determine the awning and sunshade coverage on the track.
The first bobsleigh developed in China was exhibited in Shougang Park, the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games headquarters. The Chinese team has been relying on imported sleighs for training and competitions. A research and innovation consortium of 12 industry units was established to make the Chinese bobsleigh from scratch.
