Future of Business: Improved Freight Transport Management Using Swarm Intelligence

Anirban and  Snigdhajyoti address the issues of freight management by proposing a swarm system model. This approach is advantageous as well as intuitive. A typical swarm system has individual units acting in a co-ordinated manner to give rise to an emergent intelligent system which then eventually achieves a global goal, for example ants searching for food. They argue that this is almost exactly similar to the freight transport system, except the individual units are replaced by truck and freight carrying ship instead of ant. The global goal in this case is to optimize freight transport. This method is advantageous because the use of swarm algorithms make the system robust and error tolerant with very little extra cost (since swarm units follow very simple set of rules). Also, the emergent intelligence of the system as a whole is an added advantage for unforeseen circumstances.

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Future of Community: Mobile-based employment system for under-privileged communities

The study is meant to foster the development of a technological solution for the problems faced in the employment seeking process in underprivileged communities. The benefits of having a mobile-based employment system in place would accrue to parties at both ends of the job-seeking process. Employees would have a larger more efficient pool of jobs to select from. The information that was previously isolated would now be available to a larger audience much more quickly. Consequently, employers would have a larger number of qualified candidates and the time taken to fill an open position would also be greatly reduced.

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Future of Design: Development of a Biosensor for a Biomaker in Breast Cancer

The development of a low cost sensor device for the diagnosis of breast cancer in point-of-care, made with new synthetic biomimetic materials for subsequent potentiometric detection. This concept was applied to target a conventional biomarker in breast cancer: Breast Cancer Antigen (CA15-3).

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Future of Health: Optimization for Breast Tomosynthesis Image Reconstruction using Parallel Computing

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, being a major public health problem. Worldwide, X-ray mammography is the current gold-standard for medical imaging of breast cancer. However, it has associated some well-known limitations: high false-negative and false-positive rates. These drawbacks prompt the development of other imaging techniques for breast cancer detection, in which Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) is included. DBT is a 3D radiographic technique that reduces the obscuring effect of tissue overlap and appears to address both issues of false-negative and false-positive rates. The 3D images in DBT are only achieved through image reconstruction methods. These methods play an important role in a clinical setting since there is a need to implement a reconstruction process that is both accurate and fast.

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Future of Sustainability: A Human-Centred Designed Biomass Gasifier for Vietnam – improving living conditions in rural areas while promoting sustainable development

Joan’s idea is to introduce biomass gasifiers in the rural areas in Vietnam. Gasifiers have the potential to be a real alternative to fossil fuel and LPG stoves in developing countries. The use of such gasifiers will decrease the levels of indoor air pollution and be a real alternative to safe but unaffordable cookstoves for the majority of the population in Vietnam.

In order to successfully introduce gasifiers in Vietnam, instead on strictly focusing on the working principle he has approached it from the user and context side while enhancing co-creation. In addition, he considers the production to be done in Vietnam to promote sustainable development, entrepreneurship and create job opportunities.

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Future of Technology: Development of paper-based color-strip test for drug detection in aquatic environment:Application to sulfadiazine

The increasing productivity in aquaculture systems results from the introduction of drugs in the aquatic system, a practice that leads to the dissemination of drugs in the aquatic environment. This practice questions biodiversity and food safety in general, especially when the drugs employed are antimicrobial agents of human use. This introduction of antibiotics in the aquatic environment can be reduced by regular or continuous monitoring of the levels of the drug in the water systems. New analytical methods allowing frequent/continuous analysis of waters are therefore required.

The present study describes a disposable test-strip for this purpose, consisting of regular paper that was chemically modified by monolayer reaction and produced a color change after contact with the antibiotic. In general, the sensor materials produced offered very advantageous characteristics for its local application of antibiotics in the monitoring water aquaculture.

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