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Tech Scribes

This is a forum for posting articles discussing your Master's or PhD research. The aim of this website is to help you get intelligent feedback and help you view the problem from a different perspective. If you wish to post on the site, please e-mail caveman(at)gmail(dot)com or mailsunildsouza(at)yahoo(dot)com with the article which you want to post.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

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Thursday, February 07, 2008

Popups here caused by web stats program.

It appears that this site is getting popups caused by the web stats program being used.

Is there anyone still running this site? If not, can someone grant me admin access and I can remove the popup generating code?

It appears that no-one is watching. They started doing this quite a few years ago.


Thank you,

Bill Austin
Famous Quotes

Monday, November 06, 2006

Amgen Foundation Launches $25 Million Amgen Scolars Program

Amgen Foundation Launches $25 Million Amgen Scholars Program
Amgen, Inc. (Public, NASDAQ:AMGN)


Amgen, Inc. AMGN Amgen Foundation Launches $25 Million Amgen Scholars Program.
Amgen Foundation Launches $25 Million Undergraduate Research ProgramAmgen Scholars Will Provide Hands-on Science Research Experience at 10 of the Nation's Premier Universities
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. Oct. 19, 2006--As part of its mission to advance science education, the Amgen Foundation today announced its partnership with 10 of the nation's leading universities to provide hundreds of selected undergraduate students an opportunity to engage in a fully funded, hands-on research experience each summer.

More at Arizona Biotech and Biotech News

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Solar Fidelity

The internet revolution has galvanised the world and is being billed as the great leveler between the developed and the developing nations. However, its reach continues to be limited to the urban and semi-urban sections in India due to issues of cost and availability of connectivity and electricity.

An nonprofit organization is to start a pilot project for cheap, solar-powered Wi-Fi network in three schools in Uttar Pradesh, where one of the schools has a cable connection.

Each node in this Wi-Fi network consists of a battery-powered router and a solar panel to charge the battery. The nodes are mounted on rooftops, and the network's Wi-Fi signals are transferred over a grid using a wireless network standard known as 802.11b/g.

The solution also has an elegant degradation system that would function under variable weather conditions depending on the charge level of the battery and the amount of incoming sunlight. The users are split into categories, with everyone initially able to connect. If the power level drops a bit, certain groups are cut off, leaving access only to specific school grades or teachers. When even less power is available, the system limits their bandwidth--users can send e-mails, for example, but not watch videos online. Finally, the hours of operation can be restricted to the opening hours of the school. All this is managed through a simple Web-based interface.

If successful, this standardized, relatively inexpensive and simple to deploy networking solution can revolutionise education by bringing internet access to schools and remote villages.

Details here

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Are robotic cars around the corner?

Posted on Thu, Dec. 01, 2005
AUTOMOBILE TECHNOLOGY

A number of challenges remain, but a competition in October proved cars that drive themselves are not as far-fetched as once believed.


BY RALPH VARTABEDIAN
Los Angeles Times


The predictions of futurists have often fizzled on the subject of robots, which today can vacuum floors and play chess but not drive a car.
But an exciting demonstration in the Nevada desert suggests that technologists are getting closer than anybody realized to a robotic car.

Within about two years, the first car able to drive autonomously on freeways will be a reality, predicts Sebastian Thrun, Stanford University's guru of robotic cars and the winner of the Pentagon's Grand Challenge race in October.

The Grand Challenge, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, pitted teams that had built cars able to autonomously navigate and drive an off-road course in the Nevada desert.

The Stanford team won a $2 million prize for completing the course in the shortest time among a field of 23 finalists, five of which were able to cross the finish line. In a similar contest last year, not a single entry finished.

Thrun admits he is not much of an expert on cars, although he is director of one of a handful of artificial-intelligence labs nationwide that are directing serious attention to developing cars that can drive themselves.

''I am a big fan of putting the intelligence in the cars,'' Thrun says.
That statement marks a shift in thinking, coming after decades and billions of dollars in government spending on intelligent highways. The Bush administration has sharply increased such federal outlays, which have reached hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
The Grand Challenge results this year were a real breakthrough, demonstrating that individual cars could successfully use satellite guidance, artificial vision and complex software to navigate around obstacles, away from ruts and through tunnels.

Stanford spent about $500,000.

The car, named Stanley, was equipped with a global positioning system, a series of laser range finders and a video camera, all connected to a computer that made decisions about how to navigate the course.

No doubt a human driver could have beaten the car's time, because people can still handle a steering wheel more adeptly than a computer can. But perhaps not for much longer. For decades, the best chess players could beat computers, but no more.
Thrun is unrestrained in his enthusiasm for the technology, saying the challenge of navigating the off-road course -- with vegetation, ruts and rocks -- was greater than keeping a car on a paved highway.

Nonetheless, Thrun hopes that within two years his team will be able to build a car capable of autonomously navigating a moderately crowded freeway.
Stability control systems and adaptive cruise control systems already show that car computers can make critical decisions. But complex tasks such as merging onto a freeway or making left turns in traffic are significant challenges, Thrun admits.

If they ever do get on the road, such cars could transform society. Imagine a commute where you were free to work, read or perform other useful activities as your car drove you to work.
No longer would parking lots have to be next to offices or schools, because cars could be programmed to park themselves elsewhere after dropping off their occupants.
Such effects could transform urban real estate, insurance and the auto industry.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Disruptive Technologies - An evolution

A year back a blog on Disruptive Technologies was published on this site.

Over the past year, the concept of Disruptive Technologies has hardened a lot. A very good sign of the concept gaining momentum and feasibility is that analysts have tracking this as a separate technology market segment. Even the finance sector came with up funds that primarily invest in companies that develop disruptive technologies.

In September this year, InformationWeek and Credit Suisse First Boston launched the Disruptive Technology Portfolio to track the emergence of companies that are driven by innovative and radical ideas. A look at the performance of this portfolio ever since shows that it has outperformed the broader indices consistently and outrightly. This is surprising since the value of such companies is difficult to estimate. A great 'concept' might never materialize into a marketable product, and even the leading edge product might not translate into shareholder value.

What is also surprising is the list of Disruptive Technologies companies in the Disruptive Technology Portfolio. Apart from the expected biggies like Novell, Red Hat, Google, Texas Instruments and Apple who are known to drive innovation in the market, the list also includes Indian offshore outsourcing firms like Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant.

Quite an achievement!

Saturday, October 08, 2005

VeriSign Purchases Assets of Weblogs.com - Weblogs.con from VeriSign, Inc.

Perhaps the most important piece of real estate in the blogsphere.

Bill Austin
Arizona High Tech Talent Partnership


VeriSign Purchases Assets of Weblogs.com

Increases Reliability and Infrastructure of Ping Server Architecture for Blogosphere

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, October 7, 2005 - VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), the leading provider of intelligent infrastructure services for the Internet and telecommunications networks, today announced that it has purchased Weblogs.com and its ping service from Scripting News, Inc., to provide more stable and reliable communications for the Internet’s blogosphere.

A ping server automatically notifies subscribers when new content is posted to a Web site or blog. Weblogs.com is the original ping server created and developed by pioneering blogger Dave Winer, also one of the pioneers of Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Weblogs.com currently handles nearly two million pings each day and supports thousands of daily RSS feeds from bloggers as well as professional publishers. By migrating Weblogs.com’s ping service to VeriSign’s reliable and scalable ping infrastructure, VeriSign will be able to offer the users of RSS and real-time content a robust, intelligent platform as the use of RSS and real-time content continues its rapid growth. VeriSign will continue to operate Weblogs.com as an openly available service, greatly benefiting the entire blogosphere, from individual bloggers to value-added feed applications such as blog search services.

“The Internet has experienced an explosion in both the number of bloggers and the number of daily RSS feeds from bloggers over the past 12 to 24 months, but the infrastructure to support that level of Internet communications has not kept pace,” said Mark McLaughlin, senior vice president of VeriSign’s Naming and Directory Services. “VeriSign is uniquely positioned to provide the scalable, secure infrastructure that the blogosphere needs. Purchasing the ping server architecture of Weblogs.com enables VeriSign to continue supporting the vast numbers of Internet communications and improve the experience of millions of Internet users.”

Currently, VeriSign enables over 14.5 billion Internet interactions each day in operating the Internet’s .com and .net infrastructure.

VeriSign purchased Weblogs.com from Scripting News, Inc. for $2.3 million in cash. To read more about VeriSign’s work in supporting the blogosphere, visit http://www.verisign.com/infrablog.

About VeriSign

VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), operates intelligent infrastructure services that enable and protect interactions across voice and data networks-anytime, from anywhere on multiple devices. Additional news and information about the company is available at www.verisign.com

Statements in this announcement other than historical data and information constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause VeriSign's actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by such forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the uncertainty of future revenue and profitability and potential fluctuations in quarterly operating results due to such factors as the inability of VeriSign to successfully market its services, including the weblogs.com services; customer acceptance of the services as provided by VeriSign; the risk that expected economies in servicing customers will not materialize; the incurrence of unexpected costs integrating the assets; increased competition and pricing pressures; and the inability of VeriSign to successfully develop and market new products and services and customer acceptance of any new products or services. More information about potential factors that could affect the company's business and financial results is included in VeriSign's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2004 and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. VeriSign undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statement after the date of this press release.

Monday, October 03, 2005

The Next Generation of Hispanic Space Explorers - La Familia Technology Week

The Next Generation of Hispanic Space Explorers

The growing Hispanic community is changing the face of the employment pool. Hispanics are now more than 11 percent of the total work force, but make up only 3 percent of the science and engineering work force, according to the Urban Policy Institute. NASA astronauts and scientists and IBM engineers are trying to change that by sharing their personal experiences of space travel and the impact of technology on space exploration to Hispanic students during La Familia Technology Week.


NASA Astronauts and Scientists Encourage Student Interest In Math and Sciences During La Familia Technology Week

More here:
NASA Astronauts and Scientists Encourage Student Interest In Math and Sciences


Bill Austin
Arizona High Tech Talent Partnership

Friday, July 08, 2005

National Solar Car Race Begins Today

National Solar Car Race Begins Today

Rain or Shine, Dell's National Solar Car Race Begins Today;

More Than 180 Students to Travel 1,600 Miles from Texas to California in 10th Annual Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge

The 10th annual Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge, which begins at Dell's headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, will wind its way through Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, en route to the finish line at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Nine teams have been preparing for the competition for more than a year, applying the skills they've learned in the classroom and gaining new ones along the race course. Dell is the national sponsor of the educational program.

"This program promotes 21st Century skills such as science, math, technology and teamwork," said Scott Campbell, vice president of Dell's K-12 business. "It shows students the relevance of their classroom learning to real-world projects, and it gives them a huge sense of accomplishment."

Racers will gauge solar car battery usage, monitor weather patterns, track competitors via global positioning systems and upload daily statistics to www.winstonsolar.org/race/ In addition, the race judges will use the notebooks to track the teams as they travel the course.

"Virtually every area of life today involves some sort of technology," said Dr. Lehman Marks, founder and director of the event and program director of the Winston Science Academy. "In addition to harnessing technology to complete a challenging project, participants in this solar car challenge will develop confidence and communication skills."

The student participants are from New York, Minnesota, Mississippi, Texas, Colorado, California, Indiana and Mexico.

Each year, the Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge alternates between the Texas Motor Speedway and a cross-country route. The Winston School uses a combination of distance learning and a multi-city tour to educate teachers and students about the race, including how to plan, design and build their own solar cars.

About The Winston School

Based in Dallas, The Winston School is focused on realizing the potential of bright children who learn differently through individualized learning. In 1993, The Winston School launched an education program to provide curriculum, materials, on-site visits and workshop opportunities for high schools across the country. The program has taught more than 8,500 students in 22 countries about the wonders of science and demonstrated that high school students can build and race solar cars.

Bill Austin
Arizona High Tech Talent Partnership

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

iCar

I am thinking of a nice gadget that can be the next big thing - an iCar. Think of the amount of time you spend reaching your office/school in your car. Say, from atleast 10 minutes to maybe, 45 minutes. Why not have a system that shows you traffic conditions with alternative, faster routes to reach your office sooner? A GPS navigator that also stores tons of music! A gadget like this is definitely possible to make! Storing music would be as simple as removing its panel, attaching its usb port to your PC, downloading music and fixing it back to the navigator. You would get your music with your navigation system in the iCar. I know a few out in the market but not of the best standards that would appeal me. GPS navigators need space to save frequently used maps. So, why not combine its space with the music storage space? Here's how I think its possible.

Almost all cars have a speaker system. Let's assume that we can attach an iPod to that stereo system. Now, let's say we have an addon with GUI for GPS on the iPod. This addon would send an output voice signal to the iPod. The voice signal would contain the direction information for navigation purpose. The iPod would then simply send that voice signal to the speaker system. Now, the catch is, you can't listen to music and the voice commands at the same time. So, a solution to that is to have this iPod + GPS addon integrated in the car stereo system. Then, we could channel the voice signal to the front speakers and music to the back. You may also have option to use those features individually too. No need for any CD players in the car and no more fancy navigation systems to be installed. Apple??!!! Are you reading? ;)

Monday, January 31, 2005

Biotech Bodies

Recently came across this article on Tissue Engineering, and its future. Its kinda old but is really well written. It's like a story, or a fairy-tale. Even if you are not from medical/ biomedical background, it should make a very interesting and enterprising article for you. I am copy-pasting it word by word from: http://www.businessweek.com/1998/30/b3588001.htm .

This is something I am planning to work on as a career, for my PhD and lateron as well. I find it a very realistic dream, because its very well supported by a strong scientific base. Read on as you get time:

"Sean G. McCormack of Norwood, Mass., seems like your average 16-year-old boy, if a little more reckless, given his passion for mountain biking. In fact, though, he is an advance scout for a brave new world: He has the first chest grown in a lab rather than in the womb.

Sean was born without cartilage or bone under the skin on his left side, a rare congenital condition known as Poland's Syndrome. The cartilage down the center of his sternum pointed out, and his heart was virtually unprotected--you could see it beating under the skin. Doctors talked of implanting an artificial plate once he reached 21 and stopped growing. But by the time he was 12, Sean was a star pitcher for his Little League team and no longer wanted to put up with a condition that put him at risk every time he played ball. His doctor referred the family to a team of scientists and surgeons at Children's Hospital in Boston who are leading the way in growing human body parts in the lab.

Dr. Joseph Upton and Dr. Dennis P. Lund, working with tissue-engineering pioneer Dr. Joseph P. Vacanti and his brother, Dr. Charles A. Vacanti, scraped away Sean's protruding cartilage and used the cells to seed a biodegradable scaffold made of artificial polymer, molded to the shape of his torso. Dr. Yilin Cao added growth factors to the cells and ''cooked'' the concoction in a bioreactor for several weeks until a chest grew. ''The procedure was so experimental that none of the polymer companies would give us [custom-designed] material for fear of a lawsuit,'' says Joseph Vacanti. The doctors had to adapt off-the-shelf polyglycolic acid, normally used to stitch up wounds, adding to the risk of the operation.


Sean admits that ''at first I was like, 'What if they mess up?' But after a while, I put it in my head that they've done this a million times.'' Of course, they had never even done it on an animal. Nevertheless, after receiving special dispensation from the Food & Drug Administration, doctors implanted the engineered cartilage in Sean. Within a year, the boy had a normal-looking chest that was able to grow along with him. Now, four years later, the six-foot-tall teenager says: ''It's pretty cool. It looks like something I was born with.''


This is more than a nice human-interest story. It is a glimpse into the future of medicine, one in which doctors will routinely order up newly grown, living body parts whenever existing ones fail. Or they will prod the body into regenerating itself. After some 20 years of painstaking investigation into the processes by which cells grow, the nascent field of tissue engineering is ready for prime time, and dozens of startup companies are preparing commercial products. Regenerated or lab-grown bone, cartilage, blood vessels, and skin--as well as embryonic fetal nerve tissue--are all being tested in humans. Livers, pancreases, breasts, hearts, ears, and fingers are taking shape in the lab.


Scientists are even trying to develop tissues that would act as drug-delivery vessels. Salivary glands could secrete antifungal proteins to fight infections in the throat, skin could release growth hormones, and organs could be genetically engineered to correct a patient's own genetic deficiencies. ''I think [tissue engineering] holds the possibility for revolutionizing clinical medicine,'' says Kiki B. Hellman, coordinator of the FDA's biotechnology center for devices and radiological health.


The age of the biotech body is dawning. Tissue engineering offers the promise that failing organs and aging cells need no longer be tolerated--they can be rejuvenated or replaced with healthy cells and tissues grown anew. The prospect signals ''a profound revolution in medicine,'' says William A. Haseltine, a leading genetic scientist and chief executive of Human Genome Sciences Inc. in Rockville, Md. ''The current chemical era of medicine may, in retrospect, appear to be a clumsy effort to patch rather than permanently repair our broken bodies,'' says Haseltine. ''Cellular replacement may keep us young and healthy forever.''


Haseltine's genetic fountain of youth is a long way off. After all, lab-grown organs, the first step towards his vision, are still subject to the ravages of age. But tissue engineering can certainly keep failing organs from shutting down life prematurely. The principle has already been proven with the first off-the-shelf tissue approved by the FDA in May: a living skin, Apligraf, for the treatment of leg ulcers, a common ailment in the elderly. Apligraf maker Organogenesis Inc. (ORG) of Canton, Mass., turns a few cells of infant foreskin into acres of living skin that can be handled, cut to fit, and grafted on to anyone without fear of rejection or scarring. Next up: cartilage to strengthen the urethra and repair the knee and a method for replacing shinbones. Both processes are in late-stage clinical trials and are likely to be considered for FDA approval in the next year or two.


THUMBS UP.

In the next 10 years, a veritable body shop of spare parts will wend its way from labs to patients. ''It's time for us to move into humans,'' says Charles Vacanti, and he's not wasting any time. At the University of Massachusetts at Worcester, his team is growing thumb bones right now in bioreactors for two machinists who cut off their own appendages. Vacanti says one or both of the thumbs should be grafted back on to the patients this summer, with growth factors added that will encourage regeneration of the nerves and tendon. He figures that the thumbs will be operational about 12 weeks after surgery.


In Boston, meanwhile, a team of doctors at Children's Hospital led by Dr. Anthony J. Atala plans to implant a bladder grown from fetal cells into a human in the next few months. Atala's lab caused a stir in the medical community last summer when doctors there successfully used the same procedure to implant new bladders into 10 baby lambs.


Creating even the most complex organs seems possible, though still 5 to 10 years out. Researchers from around the world met in Toronto in June to set up a 10-year initiative to grow a human heart. ''It's an ambitious project but not a farfetched one,'' says Michael V. Sefton, biomaterials professor at the University of Toronto and head of the heart effort. ''The likelihood of success is very feasible.''


Other complex tissues are already taking form. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chemical engineer Linda Griffith-Cima is using three-dimensional printers, first developed for computer-aided design, to build up structures that are turned into mouse-size livers. And at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, David J. Mooney, another chemical engineer, is heading an effort to grow cosmetic breasts for women who have had theirs removed. Researchers in Sweden and California have been able to regenerate nerves in rats with severed or damaged spinal cords to the point where they can walk again--albeit weakly.


With each success, more attention is paid. After years of barely acknowledging tissue-engineering research, the National Institutes of Health plans to award 30 grants in the field, some $6 million worth, this summer. But the lack of government interest heretofore may have been a blessing in disguise. Gail Naughton, president of Advanced Tissue Sciences Inc. (ATIS) of La Jolla, Calif., says that because so little federal money was available, tissue engineers had little choice in years past but to start a company and go public in order to raise funds. ''I think that this field has moved so quickly toward reality precisely because it spent very little time in academic labs,'' she says.


Even as it gains recognition, tissue engineering remains hard to categorize. The multidisciplinary field attracts surgeons, chemical engineers, materials scientists, and genetic researchers. Products straddle the boundaries between medical devices and gene therapy. The FDA even had to set up a special task force three years ago to figure out how to regulate the products.


The FDA is playing catch-up with a technology that has been 20 years in the making. As early as 1979, Eugene Bell, professor emeritus of biology at MIT and the founder of Organogenesis, figured out how to grow skin in his lab. Since then, much of the field's progress stems from a 20-year collaboration of two fast friends--Joseph Vacanti, a pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital, and Robert S. Langer, a chemical engineering professor at MIT. Their lab ''seeded the entire country with people doing this work,'' says Dr. Pamela Bassett, president of medical consultants BioTrend in New York.


LIFE MISSION.

The two, both 49, first met as researchers in the mid-1970s and started working on a way to grow tissue in the early 1980s. In 1986, they developed an elegantly simple concept that underlies most engineered tissue. Start with a scaffold, bent to any shape, made of an artificial, biodegradable polymer. Seed it with living cells, and bathe it in growth factors. The cells multiply, filling up the scaffold and growing into a three-dimensional tissue. Once implanted in the body, the cells are smart enough to recreate their proper tissue functions. Blood vessels attach themselves to the new tissue, the scaffold melts away, and the lab-grown tissue is eventually indistinguishable from its surroundings.


Vacanti, who is remarkably self-effacing despite his pioneering role in the field, says he is driven by his dedication to his patients. He regularly saves the lives of the smallest children by replacing their failing livers--and regularly sees others die for lack of donors. ''I recognized fairly early that the biggest problem facing me as a surgeon was the shortage of organs,'' he says. ''I've devoted my professional life to solving that problem. Wouldn't it be nice if [tissue engineering] could provide the solution?''


Nice is an understatement. A study done by Vacanti and Langer in 1993 found that more than $400 billion is spent each year in the U.S. on patients suffering from organ failure or tissue loss, accounting for almost half the national health-care bill. Some 8 million surgical procedures are performed annually to treat these disorders, yet every year 4,000 people die while waiting for an organ transplant. An additional 100,000 die without even qualifying for the waiting list.


''OVER THE BRINK.'' Those kinds of numbers represent a huge commercial opportunity as well as a humanitarian one. Dr. Peter C. Johnson, president of the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative research consortium, estimates that the overall market for engineered and regenerated tissues could reach $80 billion. As for individual products, Michael Ehrenreich, biotech analyst with investment adviser Techvest of New York, says that the most immediately promising are those that repair damaged knee cartilage, now replaced with artificial materials. ''There are a quarter of a million meniscus [knee-joint] operations performed every year, and no good options for repair,'' says Ehrenreich. ''That's the killer app.''


Tissue engineering is dominated now by tiny startups (table, page 64), but the big drug companies are beginning to take notice. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. has investments in four tissue-engineering companies, including Organogenesis. ''With the [FDA] approval of Apligraf, this whole area has really sparked the imagination of corporate executives,'' says David Epstein, vice-president of Novartis' specialty-business sector. ''We've stepped over the brink into the future of medicine.'' Novartis is not the only one with future vision. Britain's Smith & Nephew is investing some $70 million in Advanced Tissue Sciences; Amgen has a deal worth up to $465 million with Baltimore-based Guilford Pharmaceuticals to develop a compound for regenerating nerves; Stryker is funding research into bone regeneration at Creative BioMolecules of Hopkinton, Mass.; and Medtronic has agreed to invest up to $26 million in lab-grown heart valves from LifeCell in The Woodlands, Tex.


Although it may take a decade or more for some of these investments to see any returns, scientists in the field are heartened by the rapid progress of the past two to three years. ''The kinds of things that we are doing now are the kinds of things that we used to think about sitting around having beers 13 or 14 years ago,'' says Dr. Scott P. Bruder, director of bone and soft-tissue regeneration research at Baltimore-based Osiris Therapeutics Inc.


Perhaps most intriguing about tissue engineering, though, is how much the scientists don't know. Much of the excitement in biotech these days centers on figuring out complex cellular interactions and then intervening. Tissue engineering, however, is driven by surgeons and engineers who are, by nature, most interested in a successful endpoint--and less so in how they got there. ''The great thing is, we don't need to know exactly why or how cells organize into tissues,'' says Joseph Vacanti. ''We just need to know that they do.''


This all sounds easier than it actually is. Scientists must still figure out the best materials for the scaffolds that shape the organs, determine exactly the right growth factors, and pick the right cells. For bone and cartilage replacement, one possibility under investigation is a kind of premature cell called a stem cell. First isolated from human bodies in 1992, this specialized cell can turn into everything from bone to tendon to cartilage. Implanting these cells in the appropriate location can generate the full range of cells normally found at that site. While only about one in 100,000 to one in several million bone-marrow cells are stem cells, Osiris Therapeutics, partly owned by Novartis, has been able to isolate enough of them to regenerate bone in both small and large animals.


UNWELCOME STRANGERS.

Scientists also must figure out ways around the immune system's rejection of human tissue. That's not a problem for skin--it presents relatively few resistance problems since the immune system will accept some foreign dermal cells. Nor is rejection a problem when the original cells are taken from the specific patient for which they are meant. However, if off-the-shelf organs are to be transplanted, patients must take the same immunosuppressant drugs now given to them when donor organs are used.


Ideally, tissue engineers want to develop universal donor cells that would not trigger an immune response, so that body parts can be manufactured in large numbers. To that end, cells must either be genetically stripped of their rejection-provoking proteins or encapsulated in a porous membrane that the body will accept. The latter approach is nearing clinical trials for the treatment of diabetics whose pancreases are failing. BioHybrid Technologies Inc. in Shrewsbury, Mass., and Neocrin Co. of Irvine, Calif., are harvesting insulin-producing cells, called islets, from the pancreases of pigs and encasing them in a membrane that blocks the immune response while allowing the cells to do their job. The capsules are injected into the abdomen, where they go to work producing insulin.


Some companies are trying to avoid the whole immunity problem by encouraging the patient's own tissue to regenerate. Genentech Inc. (GNE), for example, announced in March that 5 of 15 patients who were given a genetically engineered protein called VEGF regrew blood vessels around the heart. Integra LifeSciences Corp. (IART) of Plainsboro, N.J., believes that just about any tissue can be regenerated by implanting a collagen matrix coated with the appropriate growth factors at the site of the damage. It already has such a matrix on the market for growing back a burn victim's skin and is in clinical trials with a similar product for the nerve endings in arms and legs. ''The body is continuously regenerating tissue,'' says Integra Chief Operating Officer George W. McKinney III. ''We're just trying to harness that process.''


Most scientists agree that regeneration is the ideal but doubt that it is always possible, or practical. ''Sometimes you have complete organ failure and can't wait for tissue to grow back,'' says Antonios G. Mikos, a bioengineering professor at Rice University. ''In truth, I think we will have both approaches. There is no one right way.''


Indeed, there are dozens of right ways in the works. Reprogenesis Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., for example, is in late-stage clinical trials with its method for using lab-grown cartilage to reinforce the urethra, a tube leading to the bladder. Weakened urethras can lead to incontinence, which afflicts an estimated 10 million people in the U.S., and reflux, a potentially fatal condition affecting about 1% of all infants in which urine backs up into the bladder. Reprogenesis removes a few cartilage cells from behind a patient's ear, grows them in the lab, and then mixes them into a gel matrix. The cells are reinserted endoscopically where the urethra meets the bladder. There, they grow to bulk up the tubal walls.


A knee-repair product called Carticel, approved by the FDA last August, uses somewhat the same principle. Made by Genzyme Tissue Repair, Carticel grows cartilage cells removed from the patient in the lab and then surgically reimplants them in the knee. No matrix is provided, however, so the cells can only be used to repair small rents. To replace the entire meniscus--that's the C-shaped pad in the knee between the thigh bone and shin bone--ReGen Biologics Inc. of Redwood City, Calif., is in clinical trials with a collagen scaffold in the shape of the meniscus. The pad is implanted in the knee to encourage regeneration of the patient's cartilage. Going a step further, Advanced Tissue Sciences is in preclinical trials with a meniscus-shaped cartilage grown in the lab that's meant to work in anyone. It hopes to start human tests by yearend.


NO MORE FILLINGS? After cartilage, look for bone products. Creative BioMolecules Inc. in Hopkinton, Mass., bases its approach on a bone-regenerating protein called OP-1. The company molds a porous scaffold out of calcium, seeds it with OP-1 and a few of the patient's own bone cells, and then reinserts the newly grown structure. Doctors reported in March that in a clinical trial of 122 patients with tibia fractures, the OP-1 graft performed as well as grafts using the patient's own bone.


The biggest market for tissue, though perhaps not the most dramatic, is the mouth. Some 10 million dental surgeries are performed each year in the U.S., on everything from teeth to periodontal ligaments, and most use artificial replacements. One of the first tissue-engineered alternatives is Atrisorb, made by Atrix Laboratories Inc. of Fort Collins, Colo. On the market since 1996, it is a bioabsorbable material loaded with growth factors and healing drugs that guides the regeneration of gum tissue.


But think of the implications if cavities could be filled with engineered tissue. Harold C. Slavkin, director of the National Institute of Dental Research at the NIH, says all the genes for making enamel have been cloned and sequenced, and lab-grown human enamel could be a reality in 5 to 10 years. Some 90 million new fillings are placed each year, and some 200 million are replaced. If those could be filled with original tissue, says Slavkin, ''we'd never have to do traditional fillings again.''


IN A HURRY.

Of course, many of these lab-produced body parts may never make it out of clinical trials. And doctors admit that they are entering uncharted waters: Who knows what might happen to an engineered organ decades after it has been implanted? Lab-grown tissues are put through far more rigorous purification processes than donor organs to make sure that they don't carry diseases, but it still is impossible to be completely sure that a replacement organ won't cause as many problems as the original a few years, or decades, down the line.
Still, there has been no evidence that these engineered tissues could turn malignant, says Joseph Vacanti. Therefore, he asks, ''can we really afford to wait for a complete understanding of how the process works?'' To him, the answer must be no. Millions of lives are hanging in the balance."


I remember a quote from Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam: "Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended. Dream, dream and dream. Dreams convert into thoughts and thoughts convert into actions. Dreams float on an impatient wind, A wind that wants to create a new order. An order of strength and thundering of fire".

....A beautiful mind and a beautiful life!!

Friday, October 22, 2004

State Switching Kalman Filter (SSKF)

Visual tracking has always been an interesting field. There are many filtering algorithms depending on the the process model and the measurement model of the object being tracked. Kalman filter is the most popular filter used to track objects which have a linear motion. Extended Kalman filter(EKF) and Particle filter are used to track objects that have a non-linear trajectory. Two years back at the Mechatronics lab in Clemson University we faced a unique problem. Dr Hoover had designed a workcell with a puma robot and visual sensing for the robot was provided using a 6 camera network. The idea behind the workcell was to develop a robotic arm which would adapt to changes in its environment.

Industrial manipulator nowadays are very efficient and precise but they are blind. When a robotic arm inserts a chip into a board, it assumes that the board would be at the specified position at the specified time. Any change in the environment would be disastrous. The workcell was designed so as to come up with a system that would react to changes like humans do. The first task was to track and grasp a foam ball moving in a random manner over an air conveyor. The air conveyor surrounded the staubli robot and 4 fans at its corners caused the random motion. The average speed of the ball was close to 100cm/sec. An occupancy map of the worspace was developed by fusing the 6 images from the cameras and by background subtraction raw measurements of the ball's position were fed to the kalman filter which filtered the noisy measurements and gave an estimate to the robot which extrapolated and picked up the ball. Everything worked well except the Kalman filter being a linear filter would take a long time to latch back on after the ball has bounced off a wall. Here a bounce event is a temporary non linear event and using an EKF dosent help matters much. Particle filters are computationally expensive so we decided to design a filter that would be robust and would be based on the kalman filter.

We decided to use the correlation coefficient of the measurements to detect a bounce event and used least squares approach using the most recent measurements to latch the filter back to the true state a lot faster than a normal kalman filter(KF). We experimented on this filter using different bounce models, measurement noise and different values of forgetting factor (forgetting factor in the kalman filter is the amount of belief in the measurements - more noisy measurement means KF will have lesser belief and vice versa). We found out that the SSKF performs better when the measurements are noisy and forgetting factor tuning is not necessary unlike the KF.

This algorithm is simple and at the same time very effective. Hawkeye Technologies which tracks the cricket ball to give the television viewers the projected trajectory of the ball for analyzing LBW decisions would find this useful.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Disruptive technologies

"Disruptive technologies" has become one of the buzz-words of late. Its a technology thats disruptive in nature i.e. causes a tubulence in the market for the existing technology. At times this can drive up the market to a new high of expectation resulting in a raised standards. But at its worse it can spell doom for the existing market players.

I recently read an interesting article about Disruptive technologies/ innovations (http://www4.gartner.com/research/fellows/asset_93329_1176.jsp). Its a discussion between Howard Dresner, an eminent technology writer, and Dr. Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and the preeminent expert in the area of disruptive innovation and business strategy.

Clayton has a different take on what qualifies to be called disruptive. As per him, "a disruptive innovation brings to market a product not as good as the products in the current market, and so it cannot be sold to the mainstream customers. But it is simple and it is more affordable. It takes root in an undemanding portion of the market, then improves from that simple beginning to intercept with the needs of customers in the mainstream later."

I beg to disagree.

I dont quite think that the new technology has to be more affordable to be disruptive. It can charge a premium for the value it adds and still cause turbulence in the market.

Lets take the example of the Audio CD. When introduced it was quite expensive than the prevalent audio cassette. (And still continues to be, even though the advancements and experience have resulted in considerable price reduction) It charged a premium for the increased customer experience. But it was disruptive enough even though less affordable and eventually dislodged the audio cassette from its prime position of being the preferred audio playback format.

Another such disruptive innovation is Open Source Technologies...and the topic of my next blog on technology. Watch this space! :)

The Promise of Swarms

Have you ever observed ants? They are so simple creatures but show a very complex collective social behavior. They are able to find food hundreds of meters away, build mounds thousands of times their own height, form complex hunting strategies etc. Each ant follows just a few simple rules that are based on their ability to track scent but the resultant task of these simple ants is mind boggling.
This collective behavior, often known as Swarm Intelligence, is found among different species in nature and has led researchers to study the scope, limitations and potential applications in fields like robotics, search, navigation and collaborative task handling.
Out of the many applications of collaborative swarm algorithms, Swarm Robotics seems to be an interesting one. Similar to ant behavior, imagine a number of very simple machines following simple rules but are able to do a very complicated robust search operation in hostile conditions. DARPA has been actively investing in Swarm Robotics for a similar reason. People in universities like MIT and CMU are studying the theoretical and practical capabilities and limitations of existing swarm-based approaches for robotics research applications.
Annual robotics competitions like Robosoccer are a few small pointers to the growing interest in this field.
These swarm based approaches have significant advantages over centralized approaches. They are evolutionary, they degrade gracefully and most importantly they are robust! No doubt swarm-based approaches are going to be building blocks of next generation technology.

This reminds me of a saying by a famous economist Kevin Kelly
"The surest way to smartness is through massive dumbness!".

...And inspired by this I write a poem
"Look at the ants
and look at the bees.
Each one is dumb
but everyone has the keys.
The keys to behave
however simple it might be.
But together they are
invincible as you can see."

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Tissue Engineering- A technology of tomorrow

Is there a limit to our dreams?... NO!!!.. We are human beings and we strive on inventions. 20 years back, noone had thought that mobile phones would become a day-to-day accesory. Today, almost everyone has it.

Can you imagine building an artificial heart from the cells of a living human?... Would you prefer to have a brand new bone instead of a metal rod, in case you meet with an accident?... Can you think of getting organ replacements that would help you live longer and healthier?...

Yes guys yes!! Here comes Tissue Engineering. And here come Bio-Engineers. We are here to change the world, we are here to let people live longer and happier. We are going to give you something, which, 10 years back, would have been considered as a miracle. Its a reality today... This miracle is called Tissue Engineering.

Sounds interesting?!?.. Read on.

What is Tissue Engineering?... Its a science ( or an art) of generating natural tissues and creating new tissues using biological cells, biomaterials, and some novel methods. Let me explain this to you in simple terms:

Tissue engineering is an innovative approach for repairing and replacing of damaged or diseased body parts. Cells, derived from same human source, or from other animal, which are often seeded into or shaped around a biomaterial matrix (called as a scaffold), are used to replace the tissue. As our understanding grows of the characteristics of various types of cells, and their interactions with materials, and how culture conditions can influence their development, we can see the potential for regeneration of damaged or diseased body parts with more authority.

Tissue engineering will have a significant impact in several areas of science and medicine in the future. Tissue engineering products (e.g., skin, cartilage) based on cell transplantation approaches are already available for clinical use. It is based upon a relatively simple concept: Start with some building material (e.g., extracellular matrix or biodegradable polymer... also known as a scaffold), shape it as needed, seed it with living cells and bathe it with growth factors (which helps the body to recognize the implant). When the cells multiply, they fill up the scaffold and grow into three-dimensional tissue, and once implanted in the body, the cells recreate their intended tissue functions. Blood vessels attach themselves to the new tissue, the scaffold dissolves, and the newly grown tissue eventually blends in with its surroundings. Regeneration of skin, bone, and blood vessels will likely be routine in the near (5-10 years) future.

The ultimate goal of we Tissue Engineers is to develop complete internal organs (e.g., heart, liver, brain). Researchers have taken the first steps towards that goal and have successfully created bio-artificial systems to treat patients with diabetic ulcers and soon will have the ability to repair and replace damaged cartilage.

However, we are still at the very beginning of what seems to be a field with potentially limitless growth. Success will largely depend on the ability of scientists to figure out complex cellular interactions, then intervening with the right scaffold material and exact growth factors and cells. But Tissue Engineering promises to be one of the most exciting and promising fields to look for.

http://wtec.org/loyola/te/final/te_final.pdf