TECH OFFERS

In dental treatment, clear aligners are successful alternatives to the conventional fixed appliances or braces in achieving physiological orthodontic tooth movement (OTM). However, its control of dental movement is not absolute and attachments, usually made of tooth-coloured dental composite resins, are inserted at precise locations to allow the aligners to grip the teeth and guide them into their new locations. This procedure takes up clinical time and increases the cost to the clinicians. Moreover, these attachments protrude off from the surface of the teeth making the appliance obviously visible and may also potentially increase patient’s discomfort as they scratch the insides of the patient’s mouth. Upon completion of treatment, these attachments need to be removed and the enamel surfaces of the teeth may potentially be scratched or damaged. This invention introduces a Biogel material that will be applied and act as an interface layer between the clear aligner and the clinical crowns of the teeth. As a base and catalyst, the Biogel, a 2-part mixture sets into a semi-solid form after the clear aligner is inserted onto the teeth. The Biogel is a thin interface that engages the undercuts of the teeth, grips the dentition to enhance the transfer of active orthodontic forces from the clear aligners onto the teeth without the need for placement of attachments. The Biogel does not adhere to the teeth but rather the internal surfaces of the clear aligners and can be easily peeled off clean and replaced as required.

To date, the current primary feedstock for plastic production is oil, which accounts for more than 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases emissions per year. Hence, there has been an increasing demand for green plastics, which are plastic materials produced from renewable sources. This technology offer is a synthesis method of green plastics from carbon dioxide (CO2) and renewable feedstock. The green plastics produced are non-isocyanate polyurethanes (NIPUs) and can be actively tuned to be anionic, cationic, oil-soluble and cross-linkable which enables a wide range of applications. These NIPUs are non-skin irritant, have high bio-content and can possibly be made to be bio-degradable. This technology owner is looking for partners in various industries such as personal and consumer care, coatings and lubricant additives (to name a few) for further co-development of the solution. The technology owner is keen to license this technology as well.

The technology offer presents a wireless data transmission via ultrasound system. The technology transforms any speaker or sound system into a tool for detection, geolocation, authentication and wireless communication. The system allows wireless data transmission in constrained environments where radio waves (e.g., Wi-Fi, cellular and Bluetooth) are not effective or not permitted, such as explosive, defense, electromagnetic-sensitive, metallic and high humidity environment.

This technology offer is a low cost, smart thermal sensor with proprietary thermal imaging technology. The thermal sensor has edge AI capabilities comprising on-board computer vision algorithms, enabling advanced applications such as human tracking, hotspot tracking and fall detection. The technology has native low resolution so it is privacy non-intrusive and works in all lighting conditions, making it the technology to go for when it comes to monitoring of people, animals, hazardous hotspots and assets in all those spaces where privacy and/or cost are a concern.

Most existing training applications offer good programmes for guiding users to achieve individual fitness goals, some even come with guided video workouts led by professional trainers. However, such applications lack or have limited capability to assess whether the correct posture is maintained during exercise - poor posture can reduce exercise effectiveness and may even cause injury, e.g. arched back during push-ups. This solution is a synergistic combination of video/image processing, human pose recognition, and machine learning technologies to deliver a solution that addresses the twin challenges of accurate count and correct execution of exercises in an automated manner, without having to wear any additional hardware/sensors. The software-only solution is able to advise users on the correct execution of repetitive movement sequences, e.g. sit-ups, and push-ups, and is deployable on a wide range of affordable camera-enabled hardware devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and laptops, and it can be easily integrated into existing applications to enhance functionality. It is applicable to the sports and healthcare industry to help users perform exercises correctly and effectively in an unencumbered manner.

Existing publicly available datasets, such as COCO, are built from the ground up to be general-purpose and therefore lack domain specificity. When such public datasets are used to train deep learning models for industrial use-cases and applications, e.g. detection of electronic components, they often result in sub-par performance caused by the disparity between objects typically found in industrial environments and data residing in public datasets. This disparity requires significant effort in pixel-level supervision (annotation), where each pixel, per frame, has to be annotated manually to make up for the difference in training data to improve model performance This solution is a deep-learning-based technique for instance segmentation in industrial environments intended to reduce the effort cost of annotation from pixel-level to video-level. With instance segmentation, the goal is not just to detect and localise objects within a scene, but also to determine the different classes and number of instances (or recognising more of the same type objects as different). This aids scene understanding and the resulting model can be deployed for productivity measurement or process improvement. Incremental learning is used to ensure that only the parts of the model that need to be updated with new data are changed, thus reducing the amount of time taken for re-training and model updates.

With the rapid pace of digitalisation, many existing systems and processes are becoming increasingly complex. Many users find themselves struggling to achieve their desired outcomes due to a wide variance in digital proficiencies; what is intuitive to one user may not be intuitive to another. Simply put, it is not possible to build a User Interface (UI) that is completely intuitive for every user profile i.e. no one-size-fits-all interface. Similarly, many Frequently-Asked-Questions (FAQs) and user guides are poorly maintained or are written in a manner that is too generic with little to no consideration of a user's role or level of proficiency. This technology offer is a no-code solution that can be deployed on websites to provide just-in-time (JIT) tutorial-style overlays which bridge the gap between digital workflows and human usage. These customisable overlays serve as guided walkthroughs to simplify employee onboarding and/or provide external users with a curated customer experience (CX). With this solution, highly re-useable, step-by-step Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), user manuals, and interactive guides can be easily created to provide clear, simple instructions for end-users to receive assistance when needed, this in turn, improves their understanding of proper software product usage and provide a painless user interface experience.

Early life complications and chronic health conditions among children continue to rise over the years. Accumulating evidence shows that microbes residing in the human body play important roles in infant development and  immunity system maturation, starting from the first 1000 days and transcendence in later life. The development of healthy gut microbiota during early life, with a predominance of Bifidobacterium spp., offers an extraordinary window of opportunity for neonatal health development and disease prevention. Aberrant bifidobacterial colonization affected by factors including gestational age, delivery modes, and feeding types may lead to gut disorders, allergies, and obesity later in life. Consumer recognition of the need to maintain healthy gut microbiota during early life for lifelong well-being is getting stronger and they are seeking probiotics to support infant health. Infant nutrition products are increasingly fortified with probiotics, including bifidobacteria, which are gaining traction worldwide. However, not all bifidobacteria are the same. A leading Japanese dairy company has developed a premium line of probiotic strains that are highly compatible with the human gut. These strains are natural inhabitants of the human intestines and more superior in physiological functions critical for infant health. Among them, the proprietary strain of Bifidobacterium longum is a well-documented probiotics with proven clinical benefits to infant's and children’s health. The company is seeking collaborations with infant nutrition, dietary supplement and functional food manufacturers that are interested in enhancing their product offerings in forms of R&D collaborations or cocreations to develop novel products incorporated with this proprietary B. logum strain.

Consumers today are much more proactive in preserving their health with natural approaches. They have turned their interests into functional food and beverage as they opt for prevention over treatment. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed consumer attitudes towards health and immunity, hence the impact on health consciousness is long-term. With growing awareness, consumers are connecting the dots between gut health and immune health. As such, appetite is growing for products such as functional food and beverage that contain probiotic ingredients to support the gut and immune system. However, not all probiotics are able to withstand the rigors of the manufacturing process for a wide range of functional food and beverage formats. A leading Japanese dairy company has developed a postbiotic ingredient that resolves formulation challenges. The proprietary postbiotic ingredient is a clinically proven heat-killed strain of Lactobacillus paracasei that possesses excellent immune-enhancing activity. It can be incorporated into a wide variety of products irrespective of their processing method or form. Since it is an inactivated strain, it is easy to use in accomplishing innovative formulations. The company is seeking collaborations with food and beverage product manufacturers that are interested in enhancing their product offerings with additional health benefits in forms of R&D collaborations or cocreations to develop novel functional food and supplement products incorporated with this proprietary L. paracasei strain.