These are the public summaries of the teams which entered the 50K
competition this year:
Member Names:
Marinos Kallikourisis
Marta Zlatil
Marc D'Abbadie
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The market for laboratory supplies is large and growing. It is also
increasingly
competitive. We plan to use proprietary technology to substantially increase the
productivity of laboratory based researchers. This technology platform will
provide unique products enabling significant cross-selling. This wil confer a
major
competitive advantage upon us in this high-volume added market.
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Team Name: Accellerector
Member Names:
Alan Watt
Thomas Carter
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Accellerector has developed a patentable solution to proide
self-erecting
scaffolding towers. This system removes the need for skilled construction
labour and is easily erectable and transportable between jobs by one person.
This sytem undercuts both traditional scaffolding and powered access devices
in
short and medium term installations.
The system is easily manufactured using current technology.
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Team Name: afterGrad
Member Names:
Peter Ward
Gareth Jenkins
Patrick O'Connor-Reed
Justin Barnese
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afterGRAD provides employers with access to prepared graduates, by
helping
students fulfill their career potential. We develop students during their time
at
University, and provide our members with the awareness, focus, training and
experience attractive to employers. We enhance the value of our members, and
link them with graduate recruitment oportunities.
afterGRAD provides our corporate clients with graduate recuirment and
communcation solutions. We prefilter candidates for our clients, and facilitate
cost-effecgtive access to candidates who have been assessed through a full
development program. Our MAPPS Candidate Reports? highlight the performance,
preparation and suitability of each candidate, helping eployers reduce their
search, selection, and development cost. In short, we can improve our client's
graduate retention rates, productivity, and return on investment
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Team Name: Against Cancer with Love
Member Names:
Dr. Vega Kotzeva
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"Against Cancer with Love" is a non-profit making service, which
provides
knowledge, training and treatment for cancer patients and their supporters
applying the holistic approach to fight cancer. Implementing the British
experience
in the holistic treatment we are aiming to build the First Cancer Help Centre
in Bulgaria and introduce the approach to Bulgarian cancer patients. At the
moment
on the Bulgarian market this service is not known. The demographic picture is
characterised with ageing population, economic immigration of the younger part
of
the nation to the West and increasing numbers of cancer cases. There is a very
clear definition of the need - cancer patients cannot wait for development of
new
drugs and treatments. They need support right now. Using the holistic
techniques,
healthy eating and relaxed style of life the aim of "ACwL" is boosting immune
system by encouraging the "fighting spirit". The result will be improved
quality of
life and extended life expectancy.
In addition to addressing the needs of Bulgarian patients "ACwL" will provide
the
opportunity of treating British cancer patients on short visit basis in the
"ACwL" Centre, where they can experience local specialist procedures like
original
yoghurt diet highly energising micro-climate and the therapeutic effect of folk
dancing. Bringing identically diagnosed people from different nationalities and
backgrounds will be unforgettable cultural experience.
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Team Name: Ampika
Member Names:
Dr. Francoise Barbira Freedman
Dr. Mark Treherne
Dr. Paul Rodgers
Dr. Margaret Adey
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Exploiting a unique database of Amazonian medicinal plants to
develop novel
medicines with an initial focus on women's health needs. Short-term revenues
will
come from nutraceuticals, with longer-term revenues from the licensing of
phytomedicines and new chemical entities to pharmaceutical companies.
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Team Name: An Intelligent Media
Member Names:
Stephen Brooks
Marc Cardle
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We will develop an intelligent media player that adds
consumer-level functionality
to existing digital media players.
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Team Name: Bill White's
Member Names:
Henry White
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A new approach to fast food on the high street offering the first
'British' fast food chain (since fish & chips).
Bill White's offers the finest flavoured sausages from Britain and around the
world, served with its secret recipe creamy mash potato, the one-choice
lunchbox is the finest fast-food lunchbox on the high street for £3!
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Team Name: Brass Monkey
Member Names:
Mirdula Pore
Adrian Smaus
Richard Ellis
Maurice Monjerezi
Steven Liput
Jeff Champkins
Raj Shah
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BrassMonkey has developed a solution to two different, but related,
age-old
problems:
- How to cool a beverage rapidly when you don't have the time or patience to
wait for the fridge / freezer to do the job
- How to enjoy a cold drink on the go when cooling facilities are not available
Our product, the CoolClip, provides the means to cool a beverage quickly and
easily whilst still in its container. The user just has to open the container,
clip on
the CoolClip, activiate it by using a button and within a couple of minutes, the
beverage is ready to drink. It provides sufficient cooling power to chill from
room temperature to 5°C.
The goal of BrassMonkey is to license our CoolClip technology to drinks
companies. The company will then continue to develop alternate versions of the
CoolClip for different drinks applications.
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Team Name: Bubbles
Member Names:
Charlie Anson
Tim Nixon
Iain Hollingshead
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An innovative afternoon / late café bar whose focal point is the
smoking of fruit
flavoured tobacco in shishas (water-pipes)
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Team Name: Coventry BioPhotonics
Member Names:
Jayson Beatty
Dr. Terry Yeo |
The application of photons to biohealth and
bioscience applications has produced the convergent biophotonics sector. Photons
are the particles that comprise light, much as electrons are the particles the
comprise
electricity, with two significant differences. Firstly, photons have no charge,
and can tehrefore provide more information density than electrons. Secondly, the
interactions between photons and tissue are also unique and starkly different
from electron-tissue interactions.
Biophotonics involves the analysis and treatment of biological
tissues or biomolecules during and/or after photon activation. Biophotonics can
be used to probe for molecular mechanisms, function and structure. Applications
of biophotonics range from using light to selectively treat tumors, to sequence
DNA and to identify single biomolecules within cells. Biophotonics is also used
in medicine to study tissue and blood at the macro and micro organsim level to
detect, diagnose and treat diseases in a way that are non-invasive to the body.
And excellent example of applied biophotonics technology comes from U.S.-base
company SpectRx Inc. The company has developed a non-invasive photonics-based
device that can determine chemical and structural changes in cancerous or
pre-cancerous cervical tissue. Further advances in biophotonics will require
the multidisciplinary integration of optical technologies with molecular biology
in novel engineered systems.
Coventry BioPhotonics will position itself at the forefront of
this rapidly evolving and emerging field. The company intends to develop new
technologies and products in a number of areas related to diagnostics, therapy
and biotechnology.
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Team Name: Coventry InnoVision
Member Names:
Dr. Ambili Nair
Nittai Madrid
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Coventry InnoVision (CIV) will be set up to exploit cutting-edge
Computer Vision
technology that will make the acquisition of 3D models significantly quicker,
cheaper and more realistic than currently possible. At present, recording of 3D
objects is ery restrictive or based on expensive computer equipment. Then unique
advantage of the numerical method being developed by the Principal Team
Member as a result of his PhD Project is that it will considerably reduce the
costs
and time involved as well as allow re-lighting of 3D models of real objes. This
has
numerous applications in Museums / Exhibitions with www. Presence,
Advertisements, Game Industry, Film and Broadcasting, Architecture and also
future applications in Robotics, Space Exploration, Medical Imaging and in
Teaching.
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Team Name: Coventry Open Source Consultants
Member Names: Russell Middleton
Amir Shamsuddin
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Coventry Open Source Consultants will provide the highest quality
service to
small and medium-sized enterprises, and aim to become a market leader in the
installation and servicing of open source systems.
Open source adoption rates indicate that the demand for this service has been
growing steadily, and is set to grow at an exponential rate in coming years; we
will be at the forefront of this exciting new marketplace.
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Team Name: Coventry Refolding Technology
Member Names:
Dr. Daniel Jones
Jason Ho
Heikki Lanckriet
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Coventry Refolding Technology (CRT) provides generic and efficient
protein
refolding technology to facilitate the production of recombinant proteins using
bacterial hosts. This allows low cost production using high yielding insoluble
expression systems followed by refolding to create soluble and biologically
active
protein.
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Team Name: Coventry Solar Electronics
Member Names:
Gehan Amaratunga
Asim Mumtaz
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Coventry Solar Electronics are appying the latest power electronic
technologies
to solar energy applications to produce cost effective solar products for
developed and developing countries.
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Team Name: CMRC
Member Names:
Oscar Brihuega-Moreno
Frank Heese
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Coventry Magnetic Resonance Consultants (CMRC) are proposing to
set up a
company that offers a novel commercial application of Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (MRI) to the pharmaceutical, process and biotechnology industries
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Team Name: COCO
Member Names:
Jennifer Lam
Bernard Ho
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COCO is an educational software development company. Its mission is
to develop
children's (6 to 16 years old) problem solving skills by providng them with a
computer programming platform and a set of children-friendly tools that gear to
their individual interests. In addition to improving their problem solving and
cognitive
levels, children also acquire the skills of computer programming. These skill
sets
give them a competitive edge in today's global market. Parents, educators and
government knowthe importance of computer skills.
Today's technology in software and hardware makes it possible for children
to learn programming at a young age. COCO uses an object-oriented programming
approach and a set of tools that gear to their individual interests. Research
studies have shown that children understand the concepts of objects at a very
young age. Working in an environment that tailors to their interests, children
will be
more involved, engaged and learn effectively.
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Team Name: eight Ball
Member Names:
Pashalis Loucaides
Peter Brewin
Mahmut Tuncer
Iain Fong
Mike Coats
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The concept is an intelligent, modular, transportation and sorting
system. The
system is extremely flexible and robust and is capable of sorting a complex mix
of
products during transportation.
Passive radio frequency tags will soon be common on most parts, as factories
seek to increase traceability and tags become cheaper and more reliable.
Spherical rollers, aligned as a matrix on the upper surace of flat
modular
panels,
detect RF tagged products, identify their destination from the code on the tag,
and
then make a simple decision to send it forwards, backwards, left or right. For
energy conservation and maximal accuracy, the spherical balls are equipped with
pressure sensors to ensure that the balls are only activated when they are
depressed. The panels will be designed to clip together easily, sharing
electrical
power and information. In this way, like ants finding food, an array of panels
can
easily develop complex, dynamic and efficient routings for a massive variety of
products.
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Team Name: FaceFinder
Member Names:
Stephan Brooks
Mark Cardle
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An intelligent online model search agency and dating service.
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Team Name: GeneArt
Member Names:
Karl Bradshaw
Alex Binazik
Ryan Bethencant
Jackie Catchick
Sophie Costello
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GeneArt is a company led by five highly motivated, experienced, and
dynamic
individuals. Our aim is to commercialize DNA sequences of individuals as highly
personalized artwork on a large scale at accessible cost.
Enormous publicity has surrounded the sequencing of the human genome,
creating widespread interest in this epoch-making scientific accomplishment.
GeneArt will create the ultimate personalised gift: a poster enlarging a
500-base
pair stretch of an individual's DNA, as it appears on a fluorescent sequencing
gel.
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Team Name: Jonny Trapp
Member Names:
J. T. Steffenson
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The European Recorder Yearbook 2002
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Team Name: Kepler Simulation
Member Names:
Yelena Pavlova
Dr. Andrei Pavlov
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Development of scientific simulation programmes for astrophysics.
Simulation of
formation of gravitational systems such as stars, planets and galaxies.
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Team Name: Kerogam
Member Names:
Vijay Patel
Benedikt Reithofer
Dr. Mary New
Thorstein Bostad
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Kerogam seeks to develop a range of computer games for the
underserved female market. Currently, 43 percent of PC gamers are women and 35
percent of console gamers, yet there are vyer few games produced to specifically
appeal to this segment. SIM, one of a few companies unintentionally to target
this sector, currently has 5 out of the top 10 selling games.
Broadly, Kerogam aims to create games that are:
- based on strong female characters,
- more gender-neutral,
- designed to better meet the interests of women,
especially in terms of plots, characters and game logic,
- a reduction in sexist game content,
- marketing that acknowledges that women gamers exist,
- targeted to women who are older than the preadolescent
cohort that many "pink" games target,
- a reduction in the images of scantily-clad women used in
advertising and on gaming web sites,
- online gaming atmospheres that are free of gender
harassment,
The entertainment software industry is enormous and exhibits
double digit growth annually. The games market is $9 billion (larger than the
movie industry). It produces approximately 2000 new titles each year, and sells
200 million units. Furthermore, 97% of PC games are purchased by adults and 89%
of video games are purchased by adults. Kerogam's vision is by thorough
understanding of the female gaming and shopping behaviour (incluing, but not
limited to aspects like span of attention, attractiveness to diversion,
ambition to learn, likeliness to take a break, brand loyalty, physiological
price thresholds, inclination to treat themselves,...) and by paying attention
to segments of the female (current and future) markets makign Kerogam the
preferred choice for free time entertainment by this group. By effectively
targeting women with products that appeal to them, Kerogam will generate healthy
profits.
Kerogam business strategy is to begin in the PC games market
in the US because a large percentage of women have access to a PC
and ease to link games with online services. Next, Kerogam wants to move into
the consoles market. In this segment, Kerogam will target more hard core gamers
and a different demographic of the female market. Another market includes games
for mobile telephones. As mobile service providers seek new ways to attract
customers, games may feature prominently in targeting the women's segment.
Finally, Kerogam will reduce the costs of producing computer games by producing
the software in India, to take advantage of the lower cost base.
Kerogam forecasts revenue of $2.5 million per game, capturing
0.05% percent of the entertainment software market per game. Kerogam aims to
produce games at less than the industry standard cost by producing the software
in India, with marketing costs of an addional $0.5 million per game on average.
Kerogam expects startup costs to be $1 million. Thus, Kerogam seeks an initial
investment of $2.5 million to ensure healthy profits from each game.
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Team Name: Market Forecaster
Member Names:
Marc Cardle
Stephan Brooks
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We plan to develop a new stock market forecasting tehnique.
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Team Name: Mentacure
Member Names:
Zoltan Asztalos
Tope Omitola
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Mentacure aims to become a market leader in the discovery of novel
drugs for the
treatment of mental diseases, such as schizophrenia, using its unique high-
throughput in vivo screening technology in a fruit fly model system. A spin-out
company from the University of Coventry, Department of Genetics, being funded
by Dr. Zoltan Asztalos, tope Omitola and Prof. Michael Ashburner, seeks funding
to develop its Intellectual Property Rights.
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Team Name: Mini-Dictaphone
Member Names:
Marc Cardle
Stephan Brooks
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We plan to develop a portable voice recorder with consumer-level
features.
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Team Name: Music-driven
Member Names:
Marc Cardle
Stephan Brooks
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We plan to develop new products for interacting with music.
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Team Name: Novelty Vintages
Member Names:
Marc Cardle
Stephan Brooks
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Develop a new line of wine products based on novel marketing.
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Team Name: Palm Image
Member Names:
Annette Atkin
Martin Paton
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A digital photo album, allowing digital camera users to view photographs
in a
practical and familiar way.
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Team Name: PriceEye Group
Member Names:
Alan Tso
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Team Name: Ring-tone
Member Names:
Marc Cardle
Stephan Brooks
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We plan to develop a new device to help the mobile phone user.
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Team Name: Science in China
Member Names:
Emanouella Chatzidaki
Junyong Huang
Anonio Gimeno-Calvo
Anaclaudia Arias
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Science in China aims at becoming the life sciences meeting point on the
internet
for British companies investing in China. Science in China is a UK-based
consultancy that facilitates the introduction of antibody reagents and other
products for the Chinese healthcare market. Our aim is to provide an added-value
service to both UK companies and the emergent Chinese scientific commnity.
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Team Name: Siraya
Member Names:
Wei-Hsun Chen
Prof. Mike C. Payne
Chih-Hao Kao
Chien-Hung Yang
Roger K. Chen
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Siraya provides an integrated solution & platform system that will
solve the
complex information technology problems existing in pharmaceutical industry to
bring down their huge human resources cost, increasing R&D efficiency and
rapidly responds to processing issues.
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Team Name: Standard Materialia
Member Names:
Mario Cesar Cordero-Cabrera
R. Liliar Centeno-Sanchez
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Standard Materialia has been planned to be a business
dedicated to supply products and services to industry, academia dna research
centres throughout the world.
Within the range of products, Standard Materialia will
manufacture high-accuracy standards for the calibration and verification of
analytical instruments as well as for method validation. At this stage the
intended use of such standards is in areas where the control of particle size
distribution and pH are of paramount importance, such as pharmaceutical,
cements, food industry, etc.
Furthermore Standard Materialia will offer advisory on
technical issues and laboratory accreditation policies, the former related to
the correct use of standards for internal/external quality control, and the
latter about compliance with national and international guidelines such as
ISO/IEC/EN 17025 General Requirements for the Competence of Calibration and
Testing Laboratories.
Standard Materialia will fit within an international
measuerment traceability system fundamental in a world where worldwide trade is
demanding complicance with international standards and will promote
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Team Name: Televella
Member Names:
John Fremlin
Richard Smith
Davey Jose
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Televella brings the television concept online, profitably providing
high-quality
entertainment for free. It will give broadband internet users a better quality
and
legal alternative to Nepster-like filesharing systems, and by doing so will
provide a
better viewer experience than existing Internet based media supppliers (relying
on
Digital Rights Management technology) and traditional television stations.
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Team Name: Third Party Entertainment
Member Names:
Justin Barnes
Matthew Millikowsky
James Omartian
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Team Name: Toutes Directions
Member Names:
Christelle Crotaz
Gary Crotaz
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'Toutes Directions' is an online travel guide and portan for France.
The
team
behind the site has advanced skills in languages, database development, website
construction and search engine optimisation. We will generate revenue from
advertising, translation and online booking. With a proven track record in
previous
ventures, the chances of 'Toutes Directions' achieving success are very high.
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Team Name: Typing Assistant
Member Names:
Stephan Brooks
Marc Cardle
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An automated computer-based assistant that provides useful and timely
information. |
Team Name: TrakResQ
Member Names:
Luke Robinson
Michael Castle
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TrakResQ intends to be the leading provider of locating devices
for children and lone workers, and to enhance the safety of all individuals at
risk of attack.
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Team Name: VariOx
Member Names:
Julian Broevielle
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VariOx is an innovative and entrepreneurial concept started by a team
of MET1
students in 2001-2002. Forecast profits in the third year are £13.2 million.
There is a real need in the commercial and leisure diving markets for a
product
which can deliver a real-time flexible air mixture to divers. This will result
in
greater dive profile flexibility whilst reducing the risk of suffering from
common
and dangerous diving illnessess such as Decompression Sickness and Oxygen
Toxicity.
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