Designs for “sustainable development in a time of change”

The 7th International Salon of Inventions and New Technologies “New Time” took place recently in Sevastopol, the date having been chosen so as to coincide with the Inventors and Innovators’ Day celebrations in Ukraine. It was attended by leading inventors’ organizations, firms and enterprises from 35 countries, from China and Taiwan to the east, to the US to the west, from Iran and Turkey to the south, and to Russia and Poland to the north, and, of course, different regions of Ukraine were represented, too. The salon’s motto was “Sustainable development in a time of change.” Its participants came together to establish contacts and find someone interested in the implementation and popularization of their ideas.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov greeted the event’s participants, said that Ukrainian inventors made the nation’s innovative products renowned in the international market, ensuring with their efforts Ukraine’s well-deserved high position among developed countries, and promised that his cabinet would put every effort into improving the country’s intellectual property market. It is really a very important issue, as Ukraine has currently as much as 120 laws and regulations governing the registration of intellectual property which is obviously way too much. The salon’s visitors got to see more than 300 designs, innovative projects and organizations, including more than 100 designs by young inventors from eight countries. This long-standing event has obtained the first category status among members of the International Federation of Inventors’ Associations, and the federation’s president Dr. Andras Vedres of Hungary participated in this year’s salon. Speaking at the opening of the salon, Vedres informed the participants about US President Barack Obama’s proposal to establish uniform international regulations on classification and registration of inventions in order to facilitate protection of intellectual property rights of inventors from different countries.

The salon’s stalls had place for various designs, from simple components to complex structures built to improve different aspects of humanity’s life, such as sea wave power station, dental pins with high probability of successful embedding, corrugated cardboard from discarded plastic bottles, intensified sugar beet cultivation technology (the latter was developed at Poltava Agrotechnological Institute), multi-module implant-prosthesis which had already seen use by surgeons for the restoration of the human musculoskeletal system, and many other interesting designs.

Designs that aimed at increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy use were the salon’s special topic this year. A colloquium on energy efficiency and energy savings in utilities and industry, both issues being so pressing nowadays, was held as part of the event for the first time.

Over 200 works were evaluated by the international jury headed by professor Pierre Fumier from Belgium and the national jury headed by Anton Karlov from Sevastopol National Technological University, Ukraine’s representative in the European Theory of Inventive Problem Solving Association. Over 70 prizes, medals and diplomas were awarded in the festive atmosphere. We might only wish for this intellectually demanding event to find its investors and obtain real support from government officials and businessmen, so as to go beyond being just an amateur exhibition.