re
:
think
Spring 2014
8
extended periods of time as cells in scar
tissue and the body’s immune reactions act
on the pores in the metal surface.” The team
has developed an objective method of
characterising electrode impedance through
the use of a newly-developed, fractional-
capacitor
model
of the electrode-
electrolyte interface.
They are applying
this model in order
to understand exactly
how the electrode
impedance is affected
by various biological
events. “Since surface
roughening treatments
have been used as anti-
fouling
protection,
it is clear that not all
surface
roughness
approaches invite the
same outcome,” says Professor Scott.
With continued research this Waikato
University team hopes to be able to explain
what happens when electrodes degrade in
the body, and develop a way to improve the
electrode surface area without becoming
susceptible to the body’s natural defences.
HEART, cochlear, spinal-cord and deep-
brain stimulators all deliver therapeutic
stimuli through electrodes implanted in the
human body, but implants would have longer
battery life, smaller electrodes, and could
offer greater therapeutic impact if the
effective
surface
area of electrodes
was increased.
This is a grand
challenge,
says
electronic engineer
Professor Jonathan
Scott who’s taken
up the challenge
with colleagues from
the University of
Waikato’s
Faculty
of Science and
Engineering,
Drs
Ray Cursons and
Gregory Jacobsen
and PhD student Mark Jones.
“Effective surface area is everything for
implantable electrodes,” says Professor Scott.
He says surface roughening technology exists to
increase the effective surface area of electrodes
but is not used in implants.
“This is because it’s thought the advantage
of the increased surface area is lost over
Longer life electrodes
ENGINEERS INVESTIGATING: (L-R) Dr Gregory
Jacobsen, Mark Jones, Professor Jonathan Scott
and Dr Ray Cursons.
In the interest of SMEs
ALTHOUGH almost all New Zealand’s
businesses are small or medium sized
enterprises (SMEs), specific policies for this
sector are scarce. The issue was enough for
SME specialist Professor Delwyn Clark at
Waikato University’s Management School to
take action.
“Time and time again we hear it said that
small businesses are vital to the New Zealand
economy, but nobody seems to be addressing
their specific needs,” Professor Clark says.
“What’s good for big businesses may not always
be good for small.”
As an academic, Professor Clark decided to
findoutjustwhatresearchwasbeingdoneonsmall
and medium businesses, and with a colleague
from Victoria University, secured a summer
research scholarship for a student to dig deep
and find all the people who are doing research in
the sector.
“We found that while there was a lot going
on, everybody was working in silos. There was
no central place that people could go to find
out the latest research, no matter the specific
management discipline.”
So, with the backing of the Small Enterprise
Association of Australia and New Zealand
(SEAANZ), Professor Clark started working
on a collaborative project with the Ministry of
Business, Innovation and Employment.
In June this year, the Minister for Small
Business, Steven Joyce, launched the SME
Research Hub that pulls together important
information in one place for small business
advisors, researchers, and government officials
and policy makers. At the same launch Mr
Joyce also released the first Small Business Sector
Report that provides detailed information
on the nearly 500,000 small businesses in
New Zealand.
“Our work will connect with the Business
Growth Agenda and the Productivity Hub’s
programmes,” says Professor Clark.
“As we refine our website we can identify
gaps and priority areas for research. One of the
most pressing areas is the impact of ICT on
small firms and how they can work smarter with
new technologies.”
She hopes the new hub will connect people
working in similar areas and create opportunities
for collaboration, and that people who provide
advice to small businesses will also make use of
the web-based resource.
“Our aim is to initiate discussion and
debate about the priorities for SME research in
New Zealand, and the more information we get,
the better we’ll be able to influence evidence-
based policy making for this important sector.”
Web in the pocket
AN international project to create a data-
gathering, curating, crowd-sourced and
automatically updating digital tool is a step
closer to reality. And that could be good
news for tourists, adventure seekers,
trampers, hunters, people lost in the bush
and, more importantly, those out looking
for them.
The tool has been dubbedWiPo, or Web in
thePocket,andistheresultofworkbyUniversity
of Waikato researchers Drs Stuart Dillon and
Karyn Rastrick alongside Munster University’s
Professor Gottfried Vossen (also an Honorary
Professor at Waikato) and research assistant
Florian Stahl.
Professor Vossen spends two months each
year in New Zealand working on the project
and, with Florian, supervises students in
Germany working on a prototype.
WiPo works by allowing selected data
to be ‘pushed’ to a digital device and remain
available to the user even in areas where there
is no access to the internet. Data can include
text, audio or video content.
While internet access is available in an
ever-increasing range of places, there are still
times and places when a user is unable to
access the web.
And that internet expansion is being
overshadowed by the massive amounts of
data being created on a daily basis. That
flood of data means it’s increasingly difficult
to filter the good from the bad.
WiPo provides one solution. Dr Dillon
says expert-curated data, with criteria
determined and entered by the user, can
supply more worthwhile, detailed and
specialised information to the user. It
would be able to take advantage of the
most recent information by automatically
updating from sources identified by the
user, with that data then ‘pushed’ to
the device.
Dr Dillon says e-tourism and Search
and Rescue are two areas where WiPo could
provide real benefits. Prototypes being
developed have used New Zealand’s
Hobbit
movies as an example, with information about
all aspects of the movies, from site tours to
maps and reviews, able to be loaded into a
device, providing accurate and up to date
information to the user, no matter where
they are.
Search and Rescue could also benefit, with
searchers able to be provided with the latest
information, including things such as the likely
behaviour of missing people, weather, terrain
and search updates.
“They could also be provided relevant
information depending on who they are
looking for. Lost trampers, hunters, dementia
patients or people who don’t want to be found
all behave differently,” Dr Dillon says.
The next steps of the project, he says,
will be to move towards the use of more
crowd-sourced data curation, similar to
how Wikipedia works, but using more
refined information.
BUSHTELEGRAPH: Drs Karyn Rastrick and
Stuart Dillon creating theWiPo.
PROFESSOR DELWYN CLARK
