Japanese engineer Takeuchi Masaki has developed a wearable voice box called Syrinx, which can be strapped on like a neck brace so that people who have lost their larynx to cancer are able to produce speech. The device is intended to revolutionise the design of a traditional electrolarynx, which resembles a small flashlight that has to be held up to the throat. The project was named Japan's national winner of this year's James Dyson Award. Modelled on the way that vocal cords are vibrated through air from the lungs to generate sound, an electrolarynx manually vibrates the neck to create a noise that the user can then form into words using their mouth and tongue.