A group of young scientists has won the Teen Tech Awards in the United Kingdom this week after reinventing the safest means of contraception: the condom. The chameleon condoms change color to alarm wearers of potential STD, so evaluators have all agreed that the invention is both unique and useful.
Muaz Nawaz (13), Chirag Shah (14) and from the Daanyaal Ali (14) from the Isaac Newton Academy of London were awarded $1,500 USD by the Teen Tech Awards this week due to the useful invention they have come up with.
The young students were supposed to create a project that can render humans’ life easier or better. The batch of chameleon condoms they presented was labeled by all competition supervisors as incredibly useful.
Thanks to this means of contraception, wearers can tell whether their partner is infected with a sexually transmitted disease or not. Currently there are three types of infections that these condoms can identify, namely, herpes, chlamydia and syphilis. The project might inspire scientists to create additional models in the future that can detect HIV, as well.
The three geniuses explained that they wanted to make an invention that can address one of the most troublesome problems of UK, STDs. They have, thus, provided the condoms with built-in layers of antibodies that change shade whenever in contact with STD antigens.
The different colors that the condoms take suggest the type of sexually transmitted infection that partners may be suffering from. Blue is the hue for syphilis, yellow for herpes, purple for human papillomavirus and green for chlamydia.
Inventors, however, did not mention whether chameleon condoms help identify STD molecules in both partners or only in just one of them. Even though the S.T.E.Y.E project is only in its conceptual stage, many condom producers have already evinced interest in the idea. Additional improvements will be enacted on the products before they get officially released on the market.
The Teen Tech Awards program is open to any scientific project or research developed by students aged 11 to 16. The only condition that participants have to observe is that the technological inventions are really useful to humans.
This year’s edition has seen the presentation of many color-changing concepts, but S.T.E.Y.E was the only one that truly captured evaluators’ attention. Among the projects they suggested were also a Wi-Fi hairclip that changes color to match the wearer’s clothes and a “panic bracelet” that constantly monitors the pulse.
In other news, IBM releases the first computer intelligent app, Chef Watson.
Image source: royaltimes.net
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