Technology Trends

This is the time of the year when pollens give you hay fever and your nose is running like crazy. But now, a new photon-based anti-hay-fever technology is available to help, at least if you live in Central Europe. A small Hungarian company, Rhinolight, has developed a new technology using light cannons to help you. Its special lamps, which illuminate your nose with high energy light, have been installed in about 20 medical centers. After two weeks or about six sessions, the company says that you have a 80% chance to be cured — at least for the current year. But as I haven’t read any reports about the efficiency of this method, don’t book a flight to Budapest before talking to your physician and read more… Update (September 8, 2005): László PÁPAI, the Area Manager from Rhinolight Ltd. sent me new information, and allowed me to publish it. You’ll find it at the bottom of this post.

Let’s start with a warning. All the quotes below come from the Rhinolight website, and I really don’t know if some of their claims are true, even if they’re backed with several scientific publications.

Here is a scary description of hay fever impact today.

Hay fever (allergic fever, allergic rhinitis) is a kind of inflammation of nasal mucosa and nasal sinuses mucosa induced by an allergic reaction.

Allergic rhinitis is the most frequent disease, affecting 10-20% of the population. The frequency of this disease was increasing during last years especially in developed countries. Therefore this century is used to call as the century of allergy.

Hay fever is not a serious disease but troublesome symptoms lower the overall quality of patient’s life. Besides nasal symptoms asthmatic symptoms also develop in 20% of all cases.

Of course, antiallergic drugs exist, but aren’t always efficient or can’t even be used. So (drumroll please!), Rhinolight has developed a new treatment to fight hay fever.

The research group of the Department of Dermatology and Allergology, University of Szeged has evolved the Rhinolight phototherapeutical apparatus, which is suitable for the treatment of the nasal mucosa of patients suffering from allergic rhinitis. The research group has proved that Rhinolight treatment significantly reduces the severity of the clinical symptoms of allergic rhinitis.

What kind of light is used by this device? The company doesn’t give too many details in the page mentioned above.

Rhinolight phototherapy significantly suppresses the symptoms of allergic rhinitis in patients who don’t respond to conventional treatments. The spectrum range of the emitted light is mainly visible light, so it doesn’t have any harmful effects on the nasal mucosa. The ultraviolet range of the emitted light mainly contains ultraviolet A light, which is applicable safely. The UVB spectrum is only 2% of the emitted light, so it has less harmful effects than sunlight. So high energy light source — which contains visible light in 84% — has not been used so far in the treatment of allergic rhinitis.

I’m not sure to understand the above paragraph.

Anyway, be careful before using this device. The idea of having a light cannon pointed to my running nose leaves me somewhat skeptical.

    I am writing as area manager of Rhinolight Ltd., Hungary. I have read Your article on our company and product, and would have a few comments to add.

 

    Firstly, please be advised that the source You have used for preparing your article is out of date, and has not been updated for 2 years. We will soon eliminate this site. By the way, had You clicked on any other links within the site or tried www.rhinolight.hu, You would have seen that there is a web page totally different from that of the one cited in Your article. I am of the opinion that such inaccuracy questions the seriousness of the content any contribution relating to Rhinolight.
    Therefore, contrary to what You have stated, let me set out in particular the issues You have, for yome reason, been mistaken:
1. We have over 60 centers in Hungary, almost 100 including the ones internationally.
2. You claim You have not read anything about efficacy - please do have a look at the list of publications, moreover, read them one by one. Also, You can find the results of a double-bind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical study on the web page (and in the articles, too). Likewise, we have ongoing studies in Hungary and Switzerland. I assume You have no reason to doubt the trustworthiness of JACI and other prestigious journals, in which we have published these studies.
3. You argue there are not much details specified about the device, then You enlist details. This can also be found on the web-site. However, beyond a certain extent, clearly enough, I suppose, we can not disclose information about the device, it being protected by a patent.
4. You warn your readers to be careful with the “light cannon”. I definitely object to this kind of labelling the Rhinolight III phototherapeutical device - it is engined by a high-discharge tube. Using the word “cannon” suggests something of harmful nature, and anyways, this is not mentioned on the web page. If You have concerns about efficacy and safety, feel free to ask us. We would be happy to provide You with information on the long-term effects - there aren’t any. This is proven by the studies and a comet assay.

 

    I do hope You will consider the abovementioned.

According to BusinessWeek in “Meet Your Organ Match Online,” about 88,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for living organs and expecting a transplant. But more than 60,000 patients will die before a liver or a kidney becomes available. Enter MatchingDonors.com, a non-profit corporation run by volunteers who take no salaries. If you’re a potential donor, you tell them that you’re ready to give an organ (not sell, it’s illegal!). If you’re a patient, you register for $295 per month — 100% of the money paid for patient memberships is applied to running the site. Then you have access to the full list of potential donors — 1,943 today — and you look for what you need. Read more…

Let’s first look at the current situation as summarized by BusinessWeek.

The vast majority of organ transplants, from donors both living and dead, are managed by the federally sponsored United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). UNOS allocates organs according to medical urgency, time spent on the waiting list, and the proximity of the patient to the available organ.

But there aren’t nearly enough available organs. There are currently some 88,000 people in need of an organ listed with UNOS, and the network says that only 4,373 transplants were performed in the U.S. between January and May 6 of this year. It’s estimated that 17 people die every day while waiting for transplants.

MatchingDonors.com wants to improve this situation by matching patients and potential donors. How does this process work?

Once a patient and potential donor find each other, the patient’s transplant coordinator schedules both a medical and psychiatric evaluation of the person seeking to give up a piece of his or her body. “We met with some resistance from some hospitals at the beginning but not so much any more,” says MatchingDonors founder and medical director Dr. Jeremiah Lowney. “After all, we’re doing a good thing here.”

BusinessWeek adds that only seven patients received transplants since last October. But this matching service is still very young.

And not everyone in the medical world likes this idea of searching for an organ on the Web and some hospitals and medical schools have ethical concerns.

To explore the issue, Harvard Medical School is set to hold a public forum on May 12 titled “Soliciting organs over the Internet,” bringing together Lowney with several medical ethicists and transplant surgeons. But given the very poor odds of finding an organ donor the traditional way, ethical concerns may hold little sway with desperate patients.

I don’t know about you, but I think that MatchingDonors.com has an excellent idea. Please tell me if you agree or not.

Sources: Catherine Arnst, BusinessWeek Online, May 12, 2005; and various websites

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In this article, The Scientist reveals a curious and probably unique story. Two years ago, a researcher at Brown University submitted a paper to a scientific medicine journal. Then he received a note from the editor saying that his paper would not interest the journal readers. Thinking that his article was unfairly rejected before peer review, he decided to publish a two-page ad with the contents of his paper in the same journal. He even asked readers if they thought the contents interesting and received 33 positive replies. Read more before telling me what you think and if you’ve heard about a similar story…

First, here are the facts, as described by The Scientist.

Two years ago, David Egilman submitted an editorial to the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) that critiqued a 2003 Dow-funded paper in Texas Medicine that said 11 cases of mesothelioma among Dow workers exposed to asbestos did not “suggest an occupational etiology” — even though mesothelioma typically strikes only 1 to 2 people per million, Egilman said.

He received an E-mail with comments from editor Paul Brandt-Rauf, who said the material was “not likely to be a high priority for the majority of JOEM readers.”

Egilman told The Scientist he believed the article was rejected unfairly, and he wanted to “see what would happen” if he submitted the rejected paper as an advertisement. When he did, it was published in its entirety as a two-page ad in JOEM, along with his survey asking if readers believed this material was a “priority” to them. Egilman said he chose to publish the paper as an advertisement in JOEM, rather than get it peer reviewed at another journal, because he became more interested in finding out if the paper was interesting to JOEM readers.

Of course, publishing a scientific article as an ad raises some issues. If it’s an ad, what is it trying to sell? The author or his ideas?

Then, there is the question of the respective roles of editing and advertising. The JOEM’s editor, Brandt-Rauf, said he would have cancel the ad if he had seen it. But on what grounds? Should he be involved in this kind of decision?

Lee Friedman, director of the Social Policy Research Institute in Illinois, cited a 2002 study in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics showing that 42% of the editors of 33 medical journals owned by professional associations said they had recently received pressure from the association’s leadership over content.

Furthermore, editors are not supposed to be able to veto ads, Friedman added. At many major biomedical journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, editors are “blinded” to which ads are going into which issue, to separate editorial from advertising.

I’m often amazed by the creativity of scientists, but do you think this one went too far? Imagine what would happen if anyone could post his “research” in an ad published by New Scientist or Nature… Tell me what you think.

Sources: Alison McCook, The Scientist, April 29, 2005; and various websites

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Today, anticancer drugs are delivered to patients in such a way that they can destroy both infected and healthy cells. But now, researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), in Singapore, have designed ’smart’ nanocarriers which deliver the drugs exactly where they are needed, reducing side effects and suppressing cancer growth. Their core-shell nanoparticles are both sensitive to temperature — which has been done before — and to acidic levels. When these nanocarriers encounter acidic environments such as tumor tissues, they break apart and release the molecules they contain. So far, this technology has only been tested on mice, but the researchers have filed an application patent in the U.S., so expect to see practical applications in a few years. Read more…

Before going further, please note that this IBN news release, published by PhysOrg.com on April 26, 2005, was originally issued by IBN on March 21, 2005. You can find the original version here (PDF format, 2 pages, 49 KB).

So what’s the situation of anticancer drugs delivery today?

Anticancer drugs are now being administered to patients using methods that cause the indiscriminate killing of both diseased and healthy cells. [...] Hence, there is a crucial need for the development of more effective cancer therapy, which not only minimizes side-effects but also directly targets diseased cells.

Scientists at IBN have found a way to tackle this problem through the use of anticancer drug delivery vehicles that transport drugs only to where they are needed in the body. This method significantly reduces or even eliminates the severe side-effects typically induced by conventional chemotherapeutics.

So what exactly is this new method?

The team led by IBN Group Leader Dr Yi-Yan Yang has created ’smart’ nanocarriers that can house anticancer drugs in their inner cores. Such polymeric core-shell nanoparticles are small in size (generally less than 200 nm), with shells that protect enclosed bioactive compounds against degradation and digestive fluids.

These nanocarriers, which are both pH-sensitive and temperature-sensitive, are structurally stable in the normal physiological environment. However, in slightly acidic environments that are characteristic of tumor tissues and endosomes (a cell component), they deform and precipitate, thus releasing the enclosed drug molecules.

The key idea behind this new technology is obviously that these nanocarriers are pH-sensitive.

“Previous attempts by other scientists involved the use of core-shell nanoparticles that were only sensitive to temperature. Drug delivery may be controlled by superficially heating and cooling the environment of the nanoparticles,” said lead scientist Dr Yang.

“The novelty of our invention compared to carriers that are only temperature-sensitive is the ability of IBN’s core-shell nanoparticles to target drugs to deep tissues or cell compartments without changes in temperature.”

Now, two questions need to be answered: is this technology efficient? and does it suppress side effects?

So far, the IBN team has proven that their core-shell nanoparticles can deliver anticancer drugs much more efficiently into cancer cells, compared to current techniques. Their in vivo studies using a mouse breast tumor model has also shown that doxorubicin (an anti-cancer drug) loaded in these smart nanoparticles can suppress tumor growth more efficiently than free doxorubicin.

“IBN’s ’smart’ nanocarriers do not show significant cytotoxicity, and offer great potential in targeting drugs to tumor tissues with high efficacy,” added Dr Yang. “This invention may also be used in in vitro and animal studies for drug discovery.”

The research work has been published online by Advanced Materials on February 4, 2005(Volume 17, Issue 3, Pages 318-323) under the title “pH-Triggered Thermally Responsive Polymer Core-Shell Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery.” Unfortunately, this link to the paper doesn’t provide an abstract.

But you’ll find few more details on this page at IBN about “Stimuli-Sensitive Core-Shell Nanoparticles for Cancer Therapy.” [Please note that the URL of this page has been built manually: it's not directly available from the IBN site.]

Conventional chemotherapies for cancer treatment have significant toxic side-effects due to the non-specific absorption of anticancer drugs by all cells. The aim of our project is to develop a smart and safe delivery system to target drugs specifically to tumor cells.

In this project, novel core-shell polymer nanoparticles are designed with their lower critical solution temperature (LCST) being dependent on the ambient pH. This value is above the nominal physiological temperature of 37°C at pH 7.4, but decreases to a temperature below the physiological temperature with a small decrease in pH. The resulting change in LCST causes the core-shell nanoparticles to deform and precipitate in an acidic environment, triggering the release the chemotherapeutics at low pH. In addition, a biological signal has been conjugated to the shell of the nanoparticles, which can recognize tumor cells. This system may be able to target drugs to tumor cells and release the drugs intracellularly.

Finally, the researchers filed a patent application in the U.S. under the name “Nanostructured thermosensitive membranes as wound dressing.”

I can’t give you more details today as the search engine of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) seems to be broken, returning internal errors. But try another day: with the name, it should be pretty easy to find it in the USPTO database.

Sources: Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, March 31, 2005; and various websites

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As it is often the case, a recent discovery just came out from a simple idea. By studying diseases in which the human body generates too much bone, UCLA researchers have discovered a natural molecule that can be used to generate new bone growth in patients who lack it. This new molecule has aptly been named UCB, or University of California Bone. This new protein for growing bones is more precise and has less side effects than the ones currently used by orthopedic surgeons to aid in bone repair. But if you suffer from a bone deficit today, you’ll have to wait almost ten years before an FDA approval and a commercial introduction of products based on this discovery. Read more…

Here is the beginning of this UCLA news release.

Bioengineering professor Ben Wu at UCLA’s Department of Bioengineering, and Kang Ting, Thomas R. Bales Professor at UCLA’s School of Dentistry, are developing a new molecule they’ve named UCB, or University of California Bone.

[Note: while I was doing my homework research for this entry, I discovered that Kang Ting was sometimes named Eric Ting. I wonder if he prefers to be called Kang or Eric.]

The core technology developed by Wu and Ting is potentially the most significant advancement in bone regeneration since the discovery of bone morphogenetic proteins by Dr. Marshall Urist at UCLA in the 1960s.

“For the average person, this new development potentially means faster, more reliable bone healing with fewer side effects at a lower cost,” Ting said. “In more severe cases, such as in children born with congenital anomalies, the new protein may offer an advanced solution to repair cleft palates, which involves bone deficiencies, and also aid in repairing other bone defects such as fractures, spinal fusion and implant integration.”

Before going further, here is an illustration showing the results of UCB.

On the right part of the image, you can see the bone defect, corrected by the UCB on the left side (Credit: UCLA School of Engineering).

Here is a link to a larger version (1,513 x 517 pixels, 123 KB).

As I mentioned above, UCB is more precise than the bone morphogenetic protein currently used.

With bone morphogenetic proteins, bone formation has been observed to occur at locations outside of the intended implant site, and tissue other than bone also has been reported. In contrast, UCB’s main effects appear to be more specific towards bone formation process, giving surgeons increased control over where bone forms. According to Wu, UCB is more specific because it works downstream from the body’s “master switch” for bone formation.

It’s nice to discover a useful new protein, but how do you move it near the bones when it has to do its work?

The team at UCLA is developing a carrier that is engineered for UCB activities in the biological environment. “It’s the right combination of carrier and protein that further increases the stability and activity of UCB,” Ting said. “For certain clinical applications, we will need to develop injectable options that are minimally invasive. For other clinical applications, we will need moldable carriers that can hold the UCB in place better.”

And when will this molecule be available to patients?

The team of UCLA researchers, under the business name Bone Biologics, already has begun forming partnerships that may assist in the development of appropriate carriers for UCB. Wu and Ting anticipate FDA approval and first sales of the product in the next seven to nine years.

For more information about Bone Biologics, you can read this article from the UCLA Daily Bruin.

Finally, Xinquan Jiang, a visiting scholar from Shanghai, China, and working in Ting’s Lab, won the prestigious 2005 Hatton Award given by the International Association of Dental Research (IADR) for this new technology.

Sources: University of California at Los Angeles news release, April 21, 2005; and various websites

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What a week in the robotic world! All the media wrote about the robots used as camel riders in Qatar, but other exotic machines were also announced, such as robo-matadors in Spain or the future Picasso, the ART Painter in Hartford, Connecticut. In the medical area, robo-masseurs are helping U.S. golfers, tiny needle-driving robots are developed in Israel while future mobile ‘trauma pods’ studied in California are still 10 years away. Elsewhere, a robot that could think for itself and solve real-world problems was unveiled in Wales. But my preferred robot this week is TerraMax, a self-navigating robotic truck built in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and which might participate in the second DARPA Grand Challenge in October 2005. Read more…

Below is a photograph of the TerraMax robotic truck in action (Credit: Oshkosh Truck Corporation). You’ll find other high-definition pictures of the TerraMax in this photo gallery.

Here are some facts taken from the press release mentioned above.

Oshkosh Truck Corporation announced [on April 12, 2005] that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has chosen the company’s TerraMaxTM robotic vehicle for evaluation for the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 — a 175-mile, off-road race in the Mojave Desert for completely autonomous vehicles. Of 195 teams originally submitting race entries, DARPA, a part of the Department of Defense, chose 118 for further review based on vehicle designs and capabilities.

DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 is a field test of autonomous (driverless) ground vehicles to promote the advance of autonomous vehicle technology. Teams vying to compete in the Grand Challenge develop their vehicles without government funding. By 2015, the Pentagon hopes that using autonomous military vehicles such as TerraMax will help save the lives of military personnel.

For more information about this robotic race, please visit the official DARPA Grand Challenge website. Below are quick facts about the race.

The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge will be held on October 8, 2005 in the desert Southwest. The team that develops an autonomous ground vehicle that finishes the designated route most quickly within 10 hours will receive $2 million. The route will be no more than 175 miles over desert terrain featuring natural and man-made obstacles. The exact route will not be revealed until two hours before the event begins.

And don’t forget to check the TerraMax home page, which gives some details about the origins of the truck.

The TerraMax vehicle is based on Oshkosh’s Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR) defense truck platform. The MTVR was designed for the US Marine Corps with a 70% off-road mission profile.

All-wheel drive, TAK-4™ independent suspension, and central tire inflation make rocks, dips, holes and crevasses easier to handle. And the truck can handle 60% grades and 30% side slopes. A 425-hp Cat C-12 engine powers the truck.

But the site doesn’t give any details about the computer systems which will control its path. I guess these details will be available after the race, around the end of the year. Anyway, good luck, TerraMax!

Sources: Various websites

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You certainly know that it’s possible to alter the shape of plastics and polymers by heating them. But now, a team of American and German researchers have found a way to change plastics shape with light, according to this MIT news release. These special polymers can move to new shapes by being exposed to light of specific wavelengths. And they’ll retain this stable new shape until they’re illuminated with another source of light of a different wavelength. This discovery has many potential applications, particularly for medical applications, such as expandable strings keeping blood vessels opened during surgery. Read more…

Here is the introduction of this news release.

Picture a flower that opens when facing the sunlight. In work that mimics that sensitivity to light, an MIT engineer and his German colleagues have created the first plastics that can be deformed and temporarily fixed into shape by light.

Here is how this works.

Key to the work: “molecular switches,” or photosensitive groups that are grafted onto a permanent polymer network. The resulting photosensitive polymer film is then stretched with an external stress and illuminated with ultraviolet light of a certain wavelength. This prompts the molecular switches to crosslink, or bind one to another.

The result? When the light is switched off and the external stress released, the crosslinks remain, maintaining an elongated structure. Exposure to light of another wavelength cleaves the new bonds, allowing the material to spring back to its original shape.

“This is really a new family of materials that can change from one shape to another by having light shined on them,” said Institute Professor Robert Langer of MIT.

And what are some possible applications of these new materials?

Imagine, for example, a “string” of plastic that a doctor could thread into the body through a tiny incision. When activated by light via a fiber-optic probe, that slender string might change into a corkscrew-shaped stent for keeping blood vessels open.

The team is also looking at other medical and industrial applications, such as “paper clips that relax when you don’t need them anymore.”

This research work has been published by Nature in its April 14, 2005 isuue under the title “Light-induced shape-memory polymers.” Here is a link to the abstract and below is the text of this abstract.

Materials are said to show a shape-memory effect if they can be deformed and fixed into a temporary shape, and recover their original, permanent shape only on exposure to an external stimulus. Shape-memory polymers have received increasing attention because of their scientific and technological significance.

In principle, a thermally induced shape-memory effect can be activated by an increase in temperature (also obtained by heating on exposure to an electrical current or light illumination). Several papers have described light-induced changes in the shape of polymers and gels, such as contraction, bending or volume changes. Here we report that polymers containing cinnamic groups can be deformed and fixed into pre-determined shapes — such as (but not exclusively) elongated films and tubes, arches or spirals — by ultraviolet light illumination.

These new shapes are stable for long time periods, even when heated to 50 °C, and they can recover their original shape at ambient temperatures when exposed to ultraviolet light of a different wavelength. The ability of polymers to form different pre-determined temporary shapes and subsequently recover their original shape at ambient temperatures by remote light activation could lead to a variety of potential medical and other applications.

Finally, if the subject interests you, here are two references to previous papers about shape-memory polymers, “Biodegradable, Elastic Shape-Memory Polymers for Potential Biomedical ApplicationsScience” published by Science in May 2002 (free registration for access to the full paper) and “Shape Memory Polymers: Biodegradable Sutures,” published by Materials World in July 2002.

Sources: Elizabeth Thomson, MIT News Office, April 14, 2005; and various websites

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Last year, the United States decided to send humans on Mars within thirty years. This sounds possible to me, but in this article, The Scientist warns that besides technical barriers, NASA will need to work to avoid biomedical risks to the human crews. First, crew members will have to live together for almost three years in a small spacecraft, and this promiscuity can lead to possible conflicts or depressions. Bone and muscle losses are another serious issue for such a long mission. Finally, the crew will be exposed to cosmic radiation and will need to be protected from such damages as the destruction of their brain cells. Fortunately, the author thinks that there are solutions to these three problems and offers us his vision. Read more…

Let’s briefly look at the psychological factors. Jay Buckey Jr., the author, who flew aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1998, thinks that conflicts between crew members can be avoided either by sending large crews or big spacecrafts. But he also notes that human are pretty adaptable, especially when faced with tough conditions. He gives a couple of examples.

Fridtjof Nansen spent nine months above the Arctic Circle in a two-person hut with colleague Hjalmar Johansen. Nansen returned and later received the Nobel Prize for other work. He not only survived, he flourished. The crew on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s unsuccessful trip across Antarctica survived two years lost in the Antarctic ice.

So even if a three-year mission could be difficult, it’s still possible to be a successful one with proper training and crew selection.

NASA will have to face the even more serious issue of bone loss.

Crew members in space can lose approximately 1.5% of bone mass per month in certain load-bearing areas such as the hip. This loss occurs despite an aggressive, exercise-based countermeasure program.

According to Buckey, this problem can be solved by using two approaches. The first one implies more effective exercise and use of drugs. The second one would be to build a spaceship with an artificial gravity. Of course, NASA would have to test a series of inhabited rotating spacecrafts before.

The biggest health problem for a human crew going to Mars is the exposure to cosmic radiation, and mainly because it’s invisible and almost impossible to quantify. Here is a description of the problem.

Galactic cosmic radiation consists of atomic nuclei traveling at high speed with high energy. Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere deflect or block most of it terrestrially, but a spacecraft in interplanetary space would not have this protection. Modeling studies have shown that with typical shielding, ions with an atomic number (z) ¡Ý 15 would hit approximately 6%-12% of the entire population of neuronal nuclei (depending on size and location) in the brain. Hits would occur outside of the nucleus as well. Many of these strikes are likely to be lethal to the cells.

So what’s the solution to this problem? The answer is to build a shield around the spaceship.

Again, there are two solutions. A passive shield, made of lead for instance, would have to be very thick to successfully protect the crew, and the weight of such a protected spacecraft would probably be too high to send it in space anyway.

But there is another solution: active shielding.

Just as a magnetic field protects Earth, it might be possible to put a magnetic field around a spacecraft. A coil of a superconducting material could produce a substantial magnetic field, which could, in turn, deflect the energetic galactic cosmic radiation. For a small-coil radius, the magnetic field would have to be quite strong (several Tesla) to be effective. A field of this size presents major structural and safety issues.

The larger the coil, however, the weaker the magnetic field needs to be. A wire wrapped on a spool could be unwound in space into a large coil. As the radius of the coil approaches a kilometer or so, the field strength and current that is needed will drop to reasonable levels. This approach to shielding, called active shielding, potentially could keep radiation levels within the spacecraft at any desired level.

In his conclusion, Buckey says that Mars is an achievable goal, and delivers his vision.

We solve most of the physiologic problems such as bone loss through biomedical research; address the psychological stresses with proper training and selection; and devote our engineering efforts to making an active radiation shield.

Even if technical or medical hurdles remain, wouldn’t you be happy to go to Mars?

Source: Jay C. Buckey, for The Scientist, Volume 19, Issue 6, 20, March 28, 2005

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We’re all getting older, and many of us will suffer from some alteration of our sense of vision. We might be one day affected by age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which causes blindness to 700,000 people in the Western world every year. But now, ophthalmologists and physicists at Stanford University have teamed up to design a ‘bionic eye’. This system works like some ‘virtual reality’ devices. A little video camera is mounted on transparent goggles allowing for simultaneous use of remaining natural vision. Images from the camera are processed by a microcomputer and projected on the retina. The ‘bionic eye’ which also includes a solar-powered battery implanted in the iris, is currently tested with rats, but human testing could start within three years. Read more…

Here is an excerpt from the introduction of this news release.

[These researchers have designed] an optoelectronic retinal prosthesis system that can stimulate the retina with resolution corresponding to a visual acuity of 20/80 — sharp enough to orient yourself toward objects, recognize faces, read large fonts, watch TV and, perhaps most important, lead an independent life. The researchers hope their device may someday bring artificial vision to those blind due to retinal degeneration.

And here is a description of the problem.

Worldwide, 1.5 million people suffer from retinitis pigmentosa (RP), the leading cause of inherited blindness. In the Western world, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the major cause of vision loss in people over age 65, and the issue is becoming more critical as the population ages. Each year, 700,000 people are diagnosed with AMD, with 10 percent becoming legally blind, defined by 20/400 vision. Many AMD patients retain some degree of peripheral vision.

As there is no effective treatment for most patients with AMD and RP, the researchers tried to directly stimulate the inner retina with visual signals.

To that end, the researchers plan to directly stimulate the layer underneath the dead photoreceptors using a system that looks like a cousin of the high-tech visor blind engineer Lt. Geordi La Forge wore in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It consists of a tiny video camera mounted on transparent “virtual reality” style goggles. There’s also a wallet-sized computer processor, a solar-powered battery implanted in the iris and a light-sensing chip implanted in the retina.

The system has been designed by Daniel Palanker and his colleagues of the Group of BioMedical Physics and Ophthalmic Technologies. Here is how it works.

The chip is the size of half a rice grain — 3 millimeters — and allows users to perceive 10 degrees of visual field at a time. It’s a flat rectangle of plastic (eventually a silicon version will be developed) with one corner snipped off to create asymmetry so surgeons can orient it properly during implantation.

The research work has been published by the Journal of Neural Engineering on February 22, 2005 (Volume 2, Number 1, March 2005) under the name “Design of a high-resolution optoelectronic retinal prosthesis.” Here is the end of the abstract, which summarizes how the system works.

To provide for natural eye scanning of the scene, rather than scanning with a head-mounted camera, the system operates similar to ‘virtual reality’ devices. An image from a video camera is projected by a goggle-mounted collimated infrared LED-LCD display onto the retina, activating an array of powered photodiodes in the retinal implant. The goggles are transparent to visible light, thus allowing for the simultaneous use of remaining natural vision along with prosthetic stimulation. Optical delivery of visual information to the implant allows for real-time image processing adjustable to retinal architecture, as well as flexible control of image processing algorithms and stimulation parameters.

And if you need more information, please read the whole well-written news release.

Sources: Dawn Levy, Stanford University News Service, March 30, 2005; and various websites

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Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) have developed fluorescent and stable nano-probes which can stay inside a cell’s nucleus for hours or even days. According to this LBL news release, this will help biologists to better understand nuclear processes that evolve slowly, such as DNA replication, genomic alterations, and cell cycle control. This research was partially based on previous investigations about quantum dots. Now, the researchers want to tailor their quantum dots, which emit different colors depending on their sizes, to check specific chemical reactions inside nuclei, such as how proteins help repair DNA after irradiation. Read more…

Here is a short description of what the researchers achieved.

“Our work represents the first time a biologist can image long-term phenomena within the nuclei of living cells,” says Fanqing Chen of Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division, who developed the technique with Daniele Gerion of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Their success lies in specially prepared crystalline semiconductors composed of a few hundred or thousand atoms that emit different colors of light when illuminated by a laser. Because these fluorescent probes are stable and nontoxic, they have the ability to remain in a cell’s nucleus — without harming the cell or fading out — much longer than conventional fluorescent labels.

This could give biologists a ringside seat to nuclear processes that span several hours or days, such as DNA replication, genomic alterations, and cell cycle control. The long-lived probes may also allow researchers to track the effectiveness of disease-fighting drugs that target these processes.

The two researchers closely collaborated with Paul Alivisatos, director of the Materials Sciences Division at LBNL, who’s working on quantum dots for several years now. Here are two links to previous entries about Alivisatos research, “Nano Tetrapods With Tunable ‘Legs’,” and “Nanotech solar cells: Portable Plastic Power.”

So, Chen and Gerion thought it was possible to introduce these quantum dots inside a cell’s nucleus. And they did it.

First, they had to breach the nuclear membrane, which has pores that are only about 20 nanometers wide. To fit through these tiny slits, Chen and Gerion used an especially compact cadmium selenide/zinc sulfide quantum dot coated with silica. Next, they stole a trick from a virus’s playbook to smuggle this nanocrystal past the highly selective membrane that guards the entrance into the nucleus.

Chen and Gerion obtained a portion of this protein and attached it to the quantum dot. The result is a hybrid quantum dot, part biological molecule and part nano-sized semiconductor, that is small enough to slide through the nuclear membrane’s pores and believable enough to slip past the membrane’s barriers.

And what are they working on now?

In the future, they hope to tailor quantum dots to track specific chemical reactions inside nuclei, such as how proteins help repair DNA after irradiation.

They also hope to target other cellular organelles besides the nucleus, such as mitochondria and Golgi bodies. And because quantum dots emit different colors of light based on their size, they can be used to observe the transfer of material between cells.

However, with their current nano-probes, they’re already able to know if “a drug has arrived where it is supposed to, and if it is having the desired impact.”

The research work has been published by Nano Letters on September 9, 2004 (Volume 4, Issue 10, Pages 1827 -1832). Here is a link to the abstract of this paper named “Fluorescent CdSe/ZnS Nanocrystal-Peptide Conjugates for Long-term, Nontoxic Imaging and Nuclear Targeting in Living Cells.”

Sources: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory news release, March 18, 2005; and various websites

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According to some studies, one of every six Army soldiers returning from the war zone in Iraq experiences major depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. Military scientists have launched several efforts to help them, including therapy based on a virtual reality program. The Washington Post, in “Recalling Iraq’s Terrors Through Virtual Reality” (free registration), and the San Diego Union-Tribune, in “Military to try virtual combat stress remedy,” are both reporting on the progress of this initiative. Read more…

Here are some selected excerpts from the Washington Post article.

As the fighting in Iraq enters its third year, the U.S. military is grappling with what threatens to become a mental-health crisis in the armed forces. A New England Journal of Medicine study published this year estimated that one of every six Army soldiers returning from the war zone experiences major depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.

The virtual-reality experiment is among the most innovative efforts the government is launching. Among others: military-sponsored support groups for returning fighters, a mock house at a rehabilitation center to teach wounded troops to care for themselves before going home, combat-stress units to counsel personnel on the ground, and psychological questionnaires to earlier identify problems among returning troops.

But let’s go back to the virtual reality program, which will cost about $4 million over three years.

“The events keep coming back. They have nightmares, flashbacks. They can’t get away, and they want to get away,” said James L. Spira, a staff psychologist at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego who is a lead investigator in the virtual-reality study. Some turn to alcohol or drugs to block out the experiences, he said.

Within a few months, the virtual-reality treatments will begin to be offered to troops at three locations: the Naval Medical Center and Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital in California — which together hope to enroll roughly 180 patients — and Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, which hopes to enroll about 75.

The system used in California, which is based on the video game Full Spectrum Warrior, puts the patient in the middle of a city. Therapists will gradually expose the patient to more radical scenarios. In the first session, the scene might be an empty street. In the second, other troops or civilians might be added. Near the end of the treatment — which could last weeks or months, depending on the person — the patient may be put through a full-scale attack. Researchers say they also plan to introduce smells and to superheat the treatment room to the 100-degree-plus temperatures the patients experienced in Iraq.

“A virtual reality program transported Navy Cmdr. Paul Hammer back to the streets of Iraq. A study will test the technology as a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder.” (Credits: Earnie Grafton for the picture, Rick Rogers for the legend, The San Diego Union-Tribune).

Of course, this program has its detractors.

The researchers worry that the technology may turn out to be just a distraction, a gimmicky, new-age twist on traditional therapies that may not work as well — or, worse, that it could end up aggravating some patients’ conditions by re-exposing them to their traumas too quickly if it is not used by a skilled therapist.

To avoid that, the therapists will make use of biofeedback sensors, measuring heartbeat, breathing, temperature and moisture on the skin. These statistics will help doctors determine the patients’ reaction to certain stimuli — such as the sounds of Arabic-accented voices yelling at them, helicopters landing and mortar shells striking — and whether they are nearing the edge of what they can tolerate.

“We are not developing a self-help tool. This is something that needs to be used hand in hand with the help of a good clinician,” said Albert Rizzo III, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California who is collaborating with Spira.

Anyway, it’s not the first time that virtual reality has been used for years to cure phobia. For example, read “Virtual Reality Therapy Cures Spider Phobia” or “A (Virtual) Therapist’s Dream.”

Sources: Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, March 23, 2005; Rick Rogers, The San Diego Union-Tribune, March 17, 2005

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If the efforts currently underway at the Universities of Calgary and Alberta (U of A) are successful, you might soon be able to chat and have a real dinner with your spouse sitting in front of you even if you’re thousands of miles away from her. Pierre Boulanger, professor of computing science at U of A, has just received $1.7 million to develop new and inexpensive ‘telepresence’ tools to do just these kinds of tricks, and much more according to CBC News in Canada. “The technology could allow surgical instructors to transmit hand and scalpel movements thousands of kilometres across a computer network, where the movements would be recreated.” Or you’ll build a 3D model of the Earth core on your computer and a teammate will be able to reconstruct it and interact with it at the other end of the world. Read more…

Here are the opening paragraphs of the article.

New technologies could allow sweethearts separated by a long-distance relationship to talk over a meal, or medical students to learn surgical techniques in a virtual operating room, computer scientists say.

The University of Alberta’s new $2-million program will develop 3-D technology that allows people to interact with holographic images in virtual encounters, said Pierre Boulanger, a professor of computer science at U of A[, and director of the Advanced Man Machine Interface Laboratory].

In ‘telepresence,’ someone can speak to others in a virtual meeting, much like TV characters from Star Trek act out their fantasies on a holodeck that projects realistic, 3-D images of people and places.

Curiously, there are more details in this news release of U of A, “New virtual reality chair to explore frontier of ‘telepresence’.”

Imagine a world, for example, where professors of surgery transmit hand and scalpel movements, as well as what they see while operating, thousands of miles across a computer network, where it is recreated in an operating room.

“The student will actually look at that and actually feel what the doctor is doing,” said Boulanger. “On the other hand, the doctor can feel what the students are doing and give them a nudge in the right direction… It’s like being in virtual residence with doctors.”

You also can imagine what could happen with families when one member has to travel.

Families separated by travel will spend meals together through what is called ‘telepresence,’ said Boulanger. “You would wear special goggles — and we’re working on that – which would allow you to see your wife sitting in front of you, having a day-to-day conversation. In the future you will have virtual encounters like this, people you want to be part of a meeting sitting beside you virtually and having a conversation.”

Of course, this future low-cost technology would also be used for scientific usages.

At a press conference on campus Tuesday to celebrate his chair, and that of Dr. Christoph Sensen at the University of Calgary, Boulanger explained how scientists are now able to create and manipulate a model of the earth’s core by feeding computers highly sophisticated mathematical equations. Once recreated in 3D, the average person is fully capable of understanding such complex physical phenomena, he said. “People can actually interact with it, and say, “What happens if we have that instead of this?’”

For more information and links, please read this other news release from the University of Calgary, “Alberta building expertise in virtual reality computing.”

Sources: CBC News, March 16, 2005; and various websites

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BusinessWeek’s cover story looks at the future of health care from a business point of view. And the magazine tries to answer at how high-tech can save lives and money. For BusinessWeek, ‘productivity’ in health-care declined during the 1990s, but is starting to rebound, partially because of a massive investment of about $30 billion in information technology in 2005 alone by U.S. hospitals. Not only this is saving money by better managing patients and reducing the length of their stays in hospitals, this investment is also saving lives. Lots of them! It is estimated that “hospital errors result in up to 98,000 deaths annually,” including 7,000 just by missing drug-interaction problems. Amazing numbers, isn’t? Read more…

BusinessWeek has used the example of the Hackensack University Medical Center to check if it was defining the future of health care. Here is a short description of what’s going up there.

Hackensack is one of the nation’s most aggressive tech adopters. Millions of dollars in investments have paid for projects well beyond the online drug system that tipped off Gross. Doctors can tap an internal Web site to examine X-rays from a PC anywhere. Patients can use 37-inch plasma TVs in their rooms to surf the Net for information about their medical conditions. There’s even a life-size robot, Mr. Rounder, that doctors can control from their laptops at home. They direct the digital doc, complete with white lab coat and stethoscope, into hospital rooms and use two-way video to discuss patients’ conditions.

There are currently thirty-five Mr. Rounders in hospitals in the U.S. You can rent one for $4,000 a month, or buy them for $120,000 a piece. For more information about Mr. Rounder, you can check the following resources:

• “Mr. Rounder is On-Call at Hackensack University Medical Center” (press release)
  
  
• “Meet Mr. Rounder,” an online extra article from BusinessWeek
  
  
• “Mr. Rounder Makes the Rounds,” part on an online slide show from BusinessWeek
  
  
• InTouch Health, Inc., which builds Mr. Rounder
  

Now, let’s go back at the question of the health-care future.

Hospitals such as Hackensack, along with insurers and the government, are stepping up their investments in technology. For hospitals, there’s more motivation than ever: The government and private insurers are beginning to pay hospitals more for higher-quality care — and the only way to measure quality, and then improve it, is with more information technology. Hospital spending on such gear is expected to climb to $30.5 billion next year, from $25.8 billion in 2004, according to researcher Dorenfest Group.

Investing more dollars is one thing, but how do you measure ‘improved productivity’ in health-care? One thing is to look at financial results. And investments — and commitments by all nurses and doctors — have raised Hackensack’s operating margins, to 3.1% last year from 1.2% in 2000.

But besides the business case, hospitals are here to save lives. And BusinessWeek comes up with pretty staggering numbers.

Poor information kills some 7,000 Americans each year just by missing drug-interaction problems, according to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. All together, hospital errors result in up to 98,000 deaths annually. Early evidence indicates that proper technology can reduce the toll. Hospitals that have begun using electronic prescription systems have seen up to 80% fewer prescription errors. And at Hackensack, patient mortality has dropped by 16% over the past four years, in part because of its digital initiatives.

Pretty impressive, don’t you think?

As this post starts to be a little bit longer, let’s jump to a couple of conclusions.

Hackensack offers clear lessons for other hospitals. Making technology pay takes time. It can be several years before the results of initiatives begin to surface. Just as important, making the technology work well takes a huge amount of effort. Hackensack’s central software system is constantly being tweaked to ensure that it’s woven into the routine of the medical staff.

Most important, doctors remain the key to hospitals’ success. Wooing them is an extremely delicate task. Only 7% of doctors actually work for hospitals. The others are essentially independent operators who are not required to do what hospital administrators want. Many are wary of gadgets that take extra time or interfere with their work. But they aren’t Luddites. Most are willing to experiment with new technology.

Please read this whole report, preferably the print edition because it will bring some money to BusinessWeek, which will be able to do more of these reports in the future. On the other hand, the online version has some extra articles. So read both.

[Final note: I'm not affiliated in any way with BusinessWeek or with any of the companies of the McGraw-Hill group, owner of BusinessWeek.]

Sources: Timothy J. Mullaney and Arlene Weintraub, BusinessWeek Magazine, Cover Story, March 28, 2005 Issue; and various websites

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Medical students often learn to ask questions such as “Tell me where it hurts” with live actors who are following prepared scripts. But this is expensive and the University of Florida (UF) has developed a new way to teach the subtle art of the patient-doctor interview. This news release, “UF’s Virtual Reality ‘Patient’ Teaches Bedside Manners to Medical Students,” tells us more about DIANA, which stands for “DIgital ANimated Avatar” and is a life-sized image of a young woman. Her image, completed by a simulation of a doctor’s office, is projected in front of a student who can interview her. So far, the method has only been used by two dozens students, but results are promising. Read more…

Let’s start with the introduction of DIANA.

“DIANA,” which stands for DIgital ANimated Avatar, is a life-sized image of a 19-year-old Caucasian female with a passing resemblance to video game hero Lara Croft. Her image, complete with simulated doctor’s office in the background, is projected onto a wall. Through their interviews with her, medical students can practice not only the right questions to ask to come to an accurate diagnosis but also the less straightforward aspects of human interaction such as gestures and eye contact.

“We want to focus on communication,” said Benjamin Lok, an assistant professor in UF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) department and the lead researcher on the project. “Part of (the interview training) is to get the right answer, but part of it is to learn communication skills.”

The images below show how the whole system works.

Now, here is the current status of this project — and its promising results.

Currently, medical students can practice interviewing skills with “standardized patients,” live actors who are given a script to follow for the interview. However, training the actors can be expensive, and it can be difficult to find sufficiently diverse populations of actors, a factor that can make a subtle difference in the interview process, Lok said. The system, which costs less than $10,000, would help students train for the standardized patient interviews, making those sessions more effective, Lok said.

Seven medical students tested DIANA in August, and another 20 interviewed her in December. After each test, the students rated the realism and usefulness of the interviews on a one-to-10 scale. By December, DIANA’s average rating of 7.2 was nearly identical to the 7.4 average for the live actors.

Of course, this system is not perfect and researchers are working on some of its limitations.

Though those results are promising, DIANA isn’t ready to replace live actors yet, Lok said. She can look up when she is spoken to, look down during pauses, reach out to receive a handshake. But there are many other physical cues in human conversations that can provide information to a doctor and also reassure a patient that the doctor is paying attention, he added.

“There are so many things that you and I do when we talk — I can tell whether your eyes are focusing on me, whether you’re listening, hand gestures, facial gestures, body posture. These are things that the computer can’t do — but we’re working on that,” he said.

For more information about this new computer interface for medical students, you can read this document, “Experiences in Using Immersive Virtual Characters to Educate Medical Communication Skills” (PDF format, 8 pages, 959 KB). The top illustration above comes from this document.

Sources: University of Florida news release, March 12, 2005; and various websites

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A European Union project named Synface has permitted to develop prototype phones for moderately hearing impaired people. In this article, CNN says that you need a laptop with a special speech recognition software. When a user receives a call on his phone, he can see an animated head “speaking” the words being said over the telephone, which helps him to better understand the conversation. The project took more than three years for a total cost of about 1.4 million euros. And with about 80 million people in the EU alone suffering from some kind of hearing impairment, this could be potentially a huge market, even if the technology is not currently commercially available. Read more…

Let’s start with a couple of pictures to illustrate the concept behind Synface.

And now, here are some details about the current status of the project.

Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) head of product development Neil Thomas told CNN the software enabled the listener to lip-read what was being said, just as they would in face-to-face conversation.

“Most people, particularly those who are hard of hearing, lip-read to communicate. When you’re on the telephone this becomes difficult because you can’t see the person who is speaking to you.”

Prototypes of the software are currently in field trials in the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands. RNID is overseeing trials in the UK, and Thomas said results showed 100 percent support for the concept.

And here are some quick details about the technology works.

There is a delay of 200 milliseconds between the person on the other end of the phone speaking and the receiver hearing the words.

This gives the software time to “listen” and display the face on the screen, though the delay is not noticeable and does not interfere with the flow of conversation, Thomas said.

Similar technology already on the market includes video telephony, which required both telephone users to have the technology, whereas Synface required only the receiver to have the software, Thomas said.

For more information, please check the following resources:

• “Lipreadable telephones” at RNID
  


• The Synface project homepage at KTH, a Swedish university which was involved because of its speech recognition expertise
  


• A movie showing how the technology works, also at KTH (Windows Media Player format, 2 minutes and 8 seconds, 14.8 MB) and from where the two images above were extracted
  


• “Bringing down communication barriers for the hard of hearing” from IST Results, a service from the European Commission
  


• The Synface project fact sheet also from IST
  


• “Animated face helps deaf with phone chat,” published by New Scientist on August 2, 2004
  

Sources: Julie Clothier for CNN, March 17, 2005; and various websites

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