SIBA centre stage at Licensed Business Show

May 21, 2007: The Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) will, for the first time, be a major exhibitor at the National Licensed Business Show (NLBS), at the NEC from September 25 to 27.

SIBA expects the show to be a promotional platform for participating SIBA members, its Direct Delivery Scheme and real ale in general. The centerpiece of SIBA’s presence at NLBS will be a branded theatre for ale tasting and education.

The provision of this SIBA supported and sponsored feature will provide visitors from the licensed trade with a hands-on insight into the benefits of introducing real ale or developing their current real ale offering.

Directly investing in trade education represents a major development for the brewer’s society which has significantly increased its presence this year in trade shows and media.

Explaining SIBA’s aims in supporting the NLBS, chairman Peter Amor said: "Craft beer is a major attraction for visitors to this show with over 40% of last year’s attendees stating they had a specific interest in real ale.

"Our members are making the most of strong consumer interest in local food and drink and grew volume sales by an average of 7.5% last year. Stocking a local ale from one of our members is a great way to grow not only long drinks sales but total pub business

" Our Direct Delivery Scheme is fast gaining popularity with multiple retailers and we are keen to increase awareness of commercial opportunities from trading with local brewers beyond our strong pub and off-trade base to customers in other sectors of the licensed trade."

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Auto-snug clothing

Philips hopes that fitting-room fiascos will become a thing of the past if it ever forays into the world of fashion. The consumer electronics giant has come up with a way to change the size, shape and style of clothes by weaving "muscle wires" into the fabric. The wires are made of shape-memory alloys that change length according to the small current passed through them.

Here's the idea: you try on a special pair of Philips' trousers, and connect up to a power source that changes the length of the wires in the fabric until the trousers have the correct waist size, inside leg and width.

Then simply disconnect to try the trousers in exactly your size. Philips says the technique could also be used to correctly fit shirts, socks and bras, or indeed any other article of clothing.

Read the full auto-snug patent application.

Cheaper medical imaging

X-rays are cheap compared to medical imaging techniques such as MRI, which requires expensive superconducting magnets. But X-rays give little information about soft tissues like cartilage, tendons and ligaments. Now, researchers at Cardiff University in the UK say they have a way of teasing this information from X-ray images.

A computer first analyses an X-ray picture by dividing it into regions according to naturally occurring boundaries in the image. The computer then compares the shape of these regions against a database of body parts. If a region of subtle shades matches the shape of a particular knee ligament, for example, the system assumes a match and identifies it as such.

This provides a much clearer picture allowing an expert to identify damage to soft tissue as well as bones. So a relatively low cost X-ray image can help diagnose problems that would otherwise require more expensive imaging equipment.

Read the full cheaper medical-imaging patent application.

Quieter landings

Aircraft noise is a big problem, particularly on approach to runways when planes are closest to the ground. In this phase of flight, as the engines idle, some of the worst noise-makers are the flaps, which generate a racket when the air flow over them becomes unstable.

Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton Virginia, US, say that vortices are the culprit. These form near the front of a flap and remain quiet while in contact with the surface but break away towards the rear of the flap causing the air flow to become unstable and noisy.

NASA says it can cut the noise by injecting gas through a slot into the air flow towards the rear of flap. This weakens the unstable airflow where the noise is created, reducing the noise and making a quieter aircraft.

Read the full quieter landings patent application.

For more than 30 years, New Scientist has trawled through the world's weird and wonderful patent applications, uncovering the most exciting, bizarre or even terrifying new ideas. Read previous Invention columns, including:

The 'suits you' cellphone, YouTube watermarks, hot lap prevention, edible RFID, covert iris scanner, personal TV censor, diamond-coated gadgets, computo-cooked perfection, Cellphone sunscreen, skateboard meets Segway, Taser gets tougher, razor light, wing-mirror cameras, body-wired headphones, rocket-repelling parachutes, tooth decay probe, laser healing, throwable game controllers, Microwave oven gun, Smart-card DVDs, Smart night scope, laser microphone, triple-standard DVD, ultimate body armour, Long-range stunner, tongue-o-vision, jellyfish injections, Flesh-burn sensor, fire-escape tubes, VoIP mangling, in-flight rearming, sense that fat, Designer speakers, throw-away parachutes, password-protected bullets, spinning touchdown, palmtop Feng Shui, Origami gadgets, mile-high showers, Hydrogen fuel balls, human cannonballs, the riot slimer, the bomb jammer, Apple's all-seeing screen, the TV-advert enforcer, the wing-sprouting drone, the drink-driver arm scanner, laser spark plugs, remote-controlled implants,the "I've been shot" gun, the snore zapper, the guitar phone, explosive-eating fungus, viper vision, exploding ink, the moody media player, the spy-diver killer, preventing in-flight interference, the inkjet-printer pen, sonic watermarks, the McDownload, hot-air plane, landmine arrows, soldiers obeying odours, coffee beer, wall-beating bugging, eyeball electronics, phone jolts, personal crash alarm, talking tooth, shark shocker, midnight call-foiler, burning bullets, a music lover's dream, magic wand for gamers, the phantom car, phone-bomb hijacking, shocking airport scans, old tyres to printer ink and eye-tracking displays.