A recent Queen's University graduate has created an actuator for robotic eye surgery and will continue working on the robot as part of a PhD at the university, starting in October. "During my final year I developed a low-cost actuator design which allows for a surgical tool to be translated and rotated during eye surgery with increased accuracy," said Aislinn McAleenan, who last week received her first-class honours Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Facebook has warned that it expects revenue growth to slow down "significantly" in the second half of 2021. The tech giant saw revenue rise to $29bn (£21bn) in the three months to 30 June, up from $18.69bn last year. But it said that sales would slow "as we lap periods of increasingly strong growth". It had benefitted from firms targeting consumers with online ads during lockdown. Its shares fell as much as 5% in after-hours trading.
Belfast-based IT recycling company Vyta announced that its customers received £6.3m from the resale of its old IT equipment in 2019 and 2020 - 51% higher than the previous two-year period. In the last five years, Vyta also said it has returned £14m overall to its customers by generating funds through sustainable and certified methods of IT disposal and recycling...
Microsoft has moved to boost its procurement offerings with the acquisition of Seattle-based start-up Suplari. The company currently uses a variety of AI tools and analytics to help businesses track and manage their software costs and cash flow, as well as providing future predictions and trend tracking...
Last week, 19-year-old Madina Sharifova from Azerbaijan graduated from Queen's University Belfast with a First Class Honours in Biomedical Sciences. The award-winning graduate came to Northern Ireland aged 16 and also received several accolades for both her academic and extracurricular endeavours...
