The future is going to be tiny, according to participants in the International Contest of Applications in Nano-Micro Technology, or iCan for short. Teams of students from all over the world met in Beijing to show off the designs they created using tiny microchips and sensors.

"We aim to create new applications in nano-micro high technology," explained Zhang Haixia, a Peking University professor. Zhang helped launch the China national competition last year in Xiamen, and this year he helped host the international finals, iCan11, at the Chinese Museum of Science and Technology, where 30 teams from 15 countries competed to win the prize for most creative and innovative design. Students from countries like the US, UK, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and Germany participated. "Many technology companies cooperate with us by offering their invented sensors and other tech support for free to our participants," said Zhang, "but how to make good use of these little sensors by combining them together is up to the students with their creative ideas."

Designs were exhibited for four days at the museum, where the public got a chance to see them and vote for their favorites. The public vote counts for 30 percent of the total score; the other 70 percent depends on their presentation to the examiners.

Students from Zhengzhou University, Henan Province designed a Magic Flower. Its function is simple but practical. Using infrared sensors, these colorful flowers open and close their petals whenever people approach them. "These dynamic flowers can be widely used in places like wedding ceremony spots or hotels," explained team member Liu Yujie.

The TEMS (Talking Equipment from Manual Sign) invented by students of Kyoto University enables the hearing or speaking impaired to communicate using gestures to produce speech.

One of the team members, T. Akishiba, explained they put magnetic sensors on the four fingertips and a magnet on the palm. "The magnetic sensor is for detecting the flexing or stretching of the fingers by measuring the magnetic field strength," he said, "the tone generator hung on one's neck will produce the sound of the voice. "

"The Japanese finger alphabet this device relies on is a visual language representing phonetic syllables of the Japanese language," he said. One drawback is that so far, you must be a Japanese language speaker to use it. The Japanese team was the winner of iCan11, and their reward was $3000. But whether winner or losers, the teams who came to this inaugural China-hosted contest agreed that the most important thing was the process of inventing their gadgets and being able to introduce them to a wider audience.