Lifetime Medical Costs Of Obese People Actually Lower Than Costs For Healthy And Fit, Mathematical Model Shows

Daily Science Journal (Feb. 8, 2008) — A new research paper suggests that preventing obesity might result in increased public spending on medical care. Many countries are currently developing policies aimed at reducing obesity in the population. However, it is not currently clear whether successfully reducing obesity will also reduce national healthcare spending or not. Pieter van Baal and colleagues, from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, created a mathematical model to try to answer this question.

Researchers found that the group of healthy, never-smoking individuals had the highest lifetime healthcare costs, because they lived the longest and developed diseases associated with aging; healthcare costs were lowest for the smokers, and intermediate for the group of obese never-smokers. (Credit: iStockphoto/Eliza Snow)

In their study, van Baal and his co-workers created three hypothetical populations of 1000 men and women, all aged 20 years at the start: a group of obese, never-smoking individuals; a group of healthy-never smoking individuals of normal weight; and a group of smokers of normal weight. The model produced an estimate of the likely proportion of each group who would encounter certain long term (chronic) diseases, and then estimated what the approximate cost of medical care associated with each disease was likely to be. The researchers found that the group of healthy, never-smoking individuals had the highest lifetime healthcare costs, because they lived the longest and developed diseases associated with aging; healthcare costs were lowest for the smokers, and intermediate for the group of obese never-smokers.

However, the authors argue that although obesity prevention may not be a cure for increasing expenditures, it may well be a cost-effective cure for much morbidity and mortality and importantly contribute to the health of nations.

A Perspective by Klim McPherson, from Oxford University in the UK, who was not involved in the study, discusses the implications of these findings and comments that "it would be wrong to interpret the findings as meaning that public-health prevention (e.g., to prevent obesity) has no benefits"; the quality of life experienced by individuals, and other factors, must also be taken into account when planning interventions aimed at improving public health.

Citation: van Baal PHM, Polder JJ, de Wit GA, Hoogenveen RT, Feenstra TL, et al. (2008) Lifetime medical costs of obesity: Prevention no cure for increasing health expenditure. PLoS Med 5(2): e29. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050029 http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050029

Adapted from materials provided by Public Library of Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Why Serotonin Can Cause Depression And Anxiety

Daily Science Journal (Feb. 5, 2008) — Mood disorders could be caused by a loss of our inherent, reflexive avoidance of aversive events, according to a new study. Researchers from UCL in London and Columbia University in New York used computational modeling techniques to integrate what appeared to be blatant contradictions between serotonin's roles in different states of health.

Serotonin appears to be one of the major players in mood and a variety of other disorders. But exactly how remains an open question. Imagine walking past a dark alleyway in a dangerous part of some city; although it might be a shortcut, most people wouldn't consider taking it. In healthy subjects, serotonin appears important for this automatic avoidance.

It has long been suggested that over-activity of the serotonin system may relate to mood disorders such as depression and anxiety, as these seem characterized by too much withdrawal and avoidance. However, the new modeling study simply suggests that we think about what happens when these reflexes fail--suddenly you have to think hard to avoid things that used to be avoided reflexively You might for example consider walking down the dangerous alley, be robbed and thus be reminded and taught by additional experience that dark alleys are to be avoided.

In this study Prof. Peter Dayan and Dr. Quentin Huys built a reinforcement learning model of reflexive choices. Agents take actions and as a result of these move through a set of states, some of which are rewarded or punished. As agents progress through this space, they learn the value of each state--how much punishment or reward is to be expected from this state onwards.

It turns out that adding to the agent's behavioural repertoire a simple reflex, which guides the agent away from an action with potential for poor consequences, does two things: it increases the rewards reaped overall, but, because bad states are now not explored any more, it also prevents them from learning exactly how bad these bad states are. When serotonin drops, say in depression or anxiety, agents have no more recourse to the reflexive avoidance and have to rely on what they learned. Because they have not learned how bad the bad states are, they start exploring states that don't look too bad to them, but in reality are much worse. Serotonin enhancing drugs, such as Prozac, are then suggested to reinstate the reflexive avoidance, and thus to redress the balance.

This study gives insight into some puzzling findings--for example, it argues that the association of depression with aggression may have to do with a lack of reflexive avoidance of it. In addition, stress not only causes depression, but people with depression experience more stressors. Again, this may be related to a dysfunctional reflexive avoidance system. The study, however, vastly oversimplifies a number of issues, such as the flexibility of reflexive actions, and the effect of non-reflexive action choice. These provide interesting avenues for further research, and may in fact give some insight into the co-morbidity of different mood disorders.

Journal citation: Dayan P, Huys QJM (2008) Serotonin, inhibition, and negative mood. PLoS Comput Biol 4(1): e4. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0040004. http://compbiol.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pcbi.0040004

Adapted from materials provided by PLoS Computational Biology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Swarm Approach To Photography Improves Contrast And Detail In Digital Photos

Daily Science Journal (Feb. 3, 2008) — A new approach to cleaning up digital photos and other images has been developed by researchers in the UK and Jordan. The method uses a computer algorithm known as a PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) to intelligently boost contrast and detail in an image without distorting the underlying features.

Malik Braik and Alaa Sheta of the Department of Information Technology, at Al-Balqa Applied University, in Salt, Jordan, working with Aladdin Ayesh in the Division of Computer Engineering, at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, explain that the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm represents an entirely new approach to solving all kinds of optimization problems. PSO has recently been used in computer science and electrical engineering.

The roots of the PSO algorithms lie in Swarm Intelligence paradigm which is inspired by models of living systems, artificial life (A-life) in general, and by theories of how and why birds flock, why schools of fish behave the way they do and in particular what controls swarming insects. Despite its potential it relies on only simple mathematics and does not need powerful computers to run, which means software applications based on PSO would not be limited only to academic researchers and those with access to supercomputers.

There have been several approaches to image enhancement developed by image manipulation software companies and others. However, none comes up to the standards of the kind of image enhancement often seen in fiction, where a blurry distorted image on a screen is rendered pin-sharp at the click of a mouse. PSO, however, takes image enhancement a step closer to this ideal.

PSO is based on a mathematical model of the social interactions of swarms. The algorithm treats each version of an image as an individual member of the swarm and makes a single, small adjustment to contrast levels, edge sharpness, and other image parameters. The algorithm then determines whether the new members of the swarm are better or worse than the original according to an objective fitness criterion.

"The objective of the algorithm is to maximize the total number of pixels in the edges, thus being able to visualize more details in the images," explain the researchers. Such enhancement might be useful in improving snapshots of CCTV quality for identification of individuals or vehicle number plates, it might also have application in improving images produced with lower quality cameras, such as camera phones, that are required for use in publishing or TV where image quality standards are usually higher.

The process of enhancing step by step is repeated to create a swarm of images in computer memory which have been graded relative to each other, the fittest end up at the front of the swarm until a single individual that is the most effectively enhanced.

"The obtained results using grey scale images indicate that PSO is better than other approaches in terms of the computational time and both the objective evaluation and maximization of the number of pixels in the edges of the tested images," they add.

This research was published recently in Inderscience's International Journal of Innovative Computing and Applications.

Adapted from materials provided by Inderscience Publishers, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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New Polymer Could Improve Semiconductor Manufacturing, Packaging

Daily Science Journal (Feb. 2, 2008) — Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Polyset Company have developed a new inexpensive, quick-drying polymer that could lead to dramatic cost savings and efficiency gains in semiconductor manufacturing and computer chip packaging.

Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Department of Physics and Center for Integrated Electronics have developed a new inexpensive, quick-drying polymer that could lead to dramatic cost savings and efficiency gains in semiconductor manufacturing and computer chip packaging. In this series of scanning electron microscope images of the new PES polymer in a UV-imprint lithography application, the well-defined pattern indicates the material’s potential for use in next-generation chip making techniques. (Credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Along with allowing enhanced performance and cost savings for conventional photolithography processes, the new material, called polyset epoxy siloxane (PES), should also enable a new generation of lower-cost, on-chip nanoimprinting lithography technology, according to the researchers.

"With this new material, chip manufacturers will be able to trim several steps from their production and packaging processes, and in turn realize a cost savings," said Toh-Ming Lu, the R.P. Baker Distinguished Professor of Physics at Rensselaer, who oversaw the study. "PES is cheaper and more reliable."

The widely adopted technique of photolithography involves using a mix of light and chemicals to generate intricate micro- and nano-scale patterns on tiny areas of silicon. As part of the process, a thin polymer film -- called a redistribution layer, and crucial to the effectiveness of device -- is deposited onto the silicon wafer, in order to ease the signal propagation delay and to protect the chip from different environmental and mechanical factors.

The new PES material developed by Lu's group and Polyset Company is one such thin polymer film, and it offers several advantages over the incumbent materials typically used in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. In addition, their new PES material can also be used as a thin polymer film for ultraviolet (UV) on-chip nanoimprinting lithography technology, which is still in the early phases of development. The consistency of using PES in conventional technology, and then continuing to use PES while academia and industry test and gradually migrate to the next generation of devices, should help ease the transition, Lu said.

"Having the ability to use one material -- our new PES -- for both photolithography and imprint will be very attractive to manufacturers," Lu said. "At its core, our project is basic research, but it also has important industry implications. It's very exciting."

Manufacturers today typically use benzocyclobutene and polyimide as polymers for redistribution layers, because of their low water absorption, thermal stability, low curing temperature, low thermal expansion, low dielectric constant, and low leakage current. Lu said PES offers significant advantages to these materials, particularly in the areas of cure temperature and water uptake.

PES cures, or dries and hardens, at 165 degrees Celsius, about 35 percent cooler than the other two materials. The need for less heat should translate directly into lower overhead costs for manufacturers, Lu said. Another advantage of PES is its low water uptake rate of less than 0.2 percent, less than the other materials. Additionally, PES adheres well to copper and can easily be made less brittle if needed. All of these attributes make PES a promising candidate for redistribution layer application and UV imprint lithography.

"The results demonstrate that PES is feasible to be used as UV-curable resist for both the redistribution application for electronic packaging and micro/nano imprint lithography," said Rensselaer Research Associate Pei-I Wang, co-author of the new paper, published recently in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B.

Along with photolithography and on-chip nanoimprinting lithography, PES holds the potential for applications in other optical devices, flat-panel display, biotechnology devices, and microelectromechanical systems, Wang said.

In addition to Lu and Wang, co-authors on the paper include Rensselaer materials science and engineering professor Omkaram Nalamasu, who is also chief technical officer of Applied Materials Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif.; Rajat Ghoshal and Ram Ghoshal of Polyset Co. Inc. in Mechanicville, N.Y.; Charles Schaper of Transfer Devices Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif.; and Andrew Li of Applied Materials.

The project was funded through the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation.

Adapted from materials provided by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

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Virtual Human In HIV Drug Simulation

Daily Science Journal (Feb. 2, 2008) — The combined supercomputing power of the UK and US ‘national grids’ has enabled UCL (University College London) scientists to simulate the efficacy of an HIV drug in blocking a key protein used by the lethal virus. The method – an early example of the Virtual Physiological Human in action – could one day be used to tailor personal drug treatments, for example for HIV patients developing resistance to their drugs.

The study ran a large number of simulations to predict how strongly the drug saquinavir would bind to three resistant mutants of HIV-1 protease, a protein produced by the virus to propagate itself. These protease mutations are associated with the disease’s resistance to saquinavir, an HIV-inhibitor drug.

The study, by Professor Peter Coveney and colleagues at the UCL Department of Chemistry, involved a sequence of simulation steps, performed across several supercomputers on the UK’s National Grid Service and the US TeraGrid, which took two weeks and used computational power roughly equivalent to that needed to perform a long-range weather forecast.

The idea behind the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) is to link networks of computers across the world to simulate the internal workings of the human body. The VPH – mainly a research initiative at present – allows scientists to simulate the effects of a drug and see what is happening at the organ, tissue, cell and molecular level.

Although nine drugs are currently available to inhibit HIV-1 protease, doctors have no way of matching a drug to the unique profile of the virus as it mutates in each patient. Instead, they prescribe a course of drugs and then test whether these are working by analysing the patient’s immune response. One of the goals of VPH is for such ‘trial and error’ methods to eventually be replaced by patient-specific treatments tailored to a person’s unique genotype.

Professor Peter Coveney says: “This study represents a first step towards the ultimate goal of ‘on-demand’ medical computing, where doctors could one day ‘borrow’ supercomputing time from the national grid to make critical decisions on life-saving treatments.

“For example, for an HIV patient, a doctor could perform an assay to establish the patient’s genotype and then rank the available drugs’ efficacy against that patient’s profile based on a rapid set of large-scale simulations, enabling the doctor to tailor the treatment accordingly.

“We have some difficult questions ahead of us, such as how much of our computing resources could be devoted to helping patients and at what price. At present, such simulations – requiring a substantial amount of computing power – might prove costly for the National Health Service, but technological advances and those in the economics of computing would bring costs down.”

For the moment, Professor Coveney’s group is continuing to look at all the protease inhibitors in a similar way. The VPH initiative, now underway with 72 million euros of initial funding from the EU, will boost collaboration between clinicians and scientists to explore the scope for patient-specific medical treatments based on modern modelling and simulation methods.

Journal reference: ‘Rapid and Accurate Prediction of Binding Free Energies for Saquinavir-Bound HIV-1 Proteases’, by Ileana Stoica, S. Kashif Sadiq, and Peter V. Coveney, is published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on Tuesday 29 January 2008.

The study was partially funded by the EPSRC, the EU-supported ViroLab project and the National Science Foundation. The UK National Grid Service also provided access to their resources and support for this project.

Adapted from materials provided by University College London.

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Building Safety Into Robots, Cars, Planes And Medical Equipment

Daily Science Journal (Feb. 2, 2008) — A revolutionary new technology developed by engineers at the University of Leicester after over 12 years research promises to make safety a sure thing in equipment as diverse as cars, aircraft and medical equipment.

TE Systems: Left to right: Devaraj Ayavoo, John Gordon, Anjali Das at the driving simulator and Michael Pont. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Leicester)

The new patented technology invented by the researchers has led to the development of a new product family called "RapidiTTy". A company -- TTE Systems Ltd - has been spun out from the University of Leicester to develop and market this product.

TTE Systems Ltd aims to transform the way engineers develop systems which contain "embedded processors". Aircraft, cars, medical equipment and industrial robots are all examples of modern systems which contain such processors. Many of these embedded systems are safety related.

The company believes its new technology can make all the difference between life and death in some scenarios.

Dr. Devaraj Ayavoo, Technical Manager, TTE Systems Ltd, said: "If you are surfing the Web and it takes a few seconds longer than normal to access a particular page, this won't usually matter at all. However, if you put your foot on the brakes in your car, you can't afford to wait -- you need to be sure that the brakes will work immediately. At TTE Systems, our job is to ensure that complex embedded systems always work correctly."

Dr. Michael Pont, CEO of TTE Systems Ltd and Head of the Embedded Systems Laboratory at the University of Leicester, added: "Clearly there are many systems currently in use that are perfectly safe.

"However what is not easy at present is making systems safe and proving that they are safe. Our technology makes it easier to develop systems with predictable behaviour - a key requirement for safe systems.

"In an industry that is geared at developing new systems very quickly, the development of predicable systems has often been ignored and it is in this area that we have specialised.

"Our work involves what are known as "time triggered" -- or TT - designs. The goal with this technology can be stated very simply: In a TT design, we know in advance exactly what the embedded system will be doing at every moment of time during its execution.

"This is a highly innovative approach to system development.

"Our techniques can be applied in a very wide range of systems - even where safety is not a key requirement. For example, in many consumer appliances -- like washing machines, dishwashers, even DVD players -- customers would welcome improved reliability."

TTE Systems Ltd, created with support from the Lachesis Fund (the University Challenge Fund for the East Midlands), has launched the first products in the RapidiTTy family. The RapidiTTy family provides a complete, cost-effective, suite of software tools which support the rapid development and testing of a wide range of reliable embedded systems. The RapidiTTy tools build on a solid technical foundation ("time-triggered architectures"). These were developed in the Embedded Systems Laboratory at the University of Leicester over a period of more than 12 years. Staff in the Laboratory have an international reputation for their work in this area. To date, seven patent applications have been filed in connection with this new technology.

Dr Pont said there was real potential for the systems developed at Leicester to make an international impact: "Our tools make it very easy to incorporate our technology in "standard" development processes.

"Using time-triggered technology allows us to create low-cost tools which facilitate the rapid development of reliable embedded systems. Our goal is to make reliability a cornerstone of mainstream development tools."

Dr. Ayavoo added: "The design of embedded systems is often an extremely complicated process. Our users have been amazed how easy RapidiTTy is to use."

The ESDL is a newly-created lab which is funded by EMDA and hosted by the University of Leicester in New Walk, Leicester.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Leicester.

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Computer Scientist Makes Splash With Academy Award For Fluid Simulation

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 31, 2008) — The rushing floodwaters in Evan Almighty, the heaving seas of the latter two Pirates of the Caribbean movies and the dragon's flaming breath in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire all featured computer-generated fluids in spectacular action. The science behind those splashy thrills will be recognized Feb. 9 with an Academy Award for Ron Fedkiw, associate professor of computer science at Stanford, and two collaborators at the special effects firm Industrial Light and Magic (ILM).

A computer-generated scene shows off the fluid simulation technology developed by computer science Associate Professor Ron Fedkiw, former students, and collaborators at Industrial Light and Magic. (Credit: Frank Losasso, Jerry Talton, Nipun Kwatra, Ron Fedkiw / courtesy of Stanford University)

"The primary work started a few years ago when we developed a system designed for the female liquid terminator in Terminator 3," Fedkiw said. "Almost immediately after that it was used in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie to simulate the wine that the pirate skeleton was drinking out of the bottle in the moonlight. Things like the sinking ship in Poseidon and the large water whirlpool in Pirates of the Caribbean 3 are good examples of the system in action."

The system, co-developed with ILM scientists Nick Rasmussen and Frank Losasso Petterson (a former doctoral student of Fedkiw's), uses a method of simulating low-viscosity fluids such as water and fire, as in the explosions in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

Contributing to a Star Wars movie was a particular honor for Fedkiw.

"George Lucas made Star Wars and, well, that changed the world for a lot of us," he said. "It's amazing what a movie can do to a civilization. I can only be grateful that he made three more of them and that I started working with ILM just in time to get a screen credit on the last one."

Lifelike liquids

Computer graphics experts typically have used particles and complex blobs to represent water, but these can give rise to unrealistically lumpy or grainy surfaces. Alternatively, they have used a technique called "the level set method" that gives a smooth surface representation, but some water is "under-resolved" and simply disappears when it breaks down into small volumes, as in a crashing wave.

The key innovation behind Fedkiw and former doctoral student Douglas Enright's novel "particle level set method" was to mix the use of particles and level sets so that studios could maintain smooth surfaces wherever possible and still keep all the fluid via the particle representation.

"As an added bonus, the method automatically generates spray particles and bubbles in under-resolved regions where the level set [method] loses mass and volume," Fedkiw said.

Fedkiw gives a lot of the credit to his colleagues for the system used to make the movies: "Nick made the system and Frank made it rock."

The effect's power is clearly evident in a movie on Fedkiw's website. There, gigantic waves crash against a lighthouse and produce huge sprays. In addition to incorporating the particle level set method, the rendering also uses an additional method to simulate how the spray interacts with itself and the surrounding water.

Such integrations are indicative of a future direction of Fedkiw's computer graphics research.

"This year we built a system that allows two-way coupling between rigid and deformable bodies, so we can fully physically simulate bones moving around under flesh—interacting with the environment," he said. "Another main result is a two-way, solid-fluid coupling method that can be used with it, so the environment can be water; that is, we're going to be simulating people swimming."

Of course the more immediate future calls for a trip to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills for the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards presentation Feb. 9. Fedkiw says he'll probably go to pick up his plaque.

"After wearing sandals for the last two years—even in the Lake Tahoe snow— it's going to be tough to go black tie," he said.

Adapted from materials provided by Stanford University.

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Cell Phone Sensors Detect Radiation To Thwart Nuclear Terrorism

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 29, 2008) — Researchers at Purdue University are working with the state of Indiana to develop a system that would use a network of cell phones to detect and track radiation to help prevent terrorist attacks with radiological "dirty bombs" and nuclear weapons.

Purdue physics professor Ephraim Fischbach, at right, and nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins review radiation-tracking data as part of research to develop a system that would use a network of cell phones to detect and track radiation. Such a system could help prevent terrorist attacks with radiological "dirty bombs" and nuclear weapons by blanketing the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system. (Credit: Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)

Such a system could blanket the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system, said physics professor Ephraim Fischbach. Fischbach is working with Jere Jenkins, director of Purdue's radiation laboratories within the School of Nuclear Engineering.

"It's the ubiquitous nature of cell phones and other portable electronic devices that give this system its power," Fischbach said. "It's meant to be small, cheap and eventually built into laptops, personal digital assistants and cell phones."

The system was developed by Andrew Longman, a consulting instrumentation scientist. Longman developed the software for the system and then worked with Purdue researchers to integrate the software with radiation detectors and cell phones. Cellular data air time was provided by AT&T.

The research has been funded by the Indiana Department of Transportation through the Joint Transportation Research Program and School of Civil Engineering at Purdue.

"The likely targets of a potential terrorist attack would be big cities with concentrated populations, and a system like this would make it very difficult for someone to go undetected with a radiological dirty bomb in such an area," said Longman, who also is Purdue alumnus. "The more people are walking around with cell phones and PDAs, the easier it would be to detect and catch the perpetrator. We are asking the public to push for this."

Tiny solid-state radiation sensors are commercially available. The detection system would require additional circuitry and would not add significant bulk to portable electronic products, Fischbach said.

The technology is unlike any other system, particularly because the software can work with a variety of sensor types, he said.

"Cell phones today also function as Internet computers that can report their locations and data to their towers in real time," Fischbach said. "So this system would use the same process to send an extra signal to a home station. The software can uncover information from this data and evaluate the levels of radiation."

The researchers tested the system in November, demonstrating that it is capable of detecting a weak radiation source 15 feet from the sensors.

"We set up a test source on campus, and people randomly walked around carrying these detectors," Jenkins said. "The test was extremely safe because we used a very weak, sealed radiation source, and we went through all of the necessary approval processes required for radiological safety. This was a source much weaker than you would see with a radiological dirty bomb."

Officials from the Indiana Department of Transportation participated in the test.

"The threat from a radiological dirty bomb is significant, especially in metropolitan areas that have dense populations," said Barry Partridge, director of INDOT's Division of Research and Development.

Long before the sensors would detect significant radiation, the system would send data to a receiving center.

"The sensors don't really perform the detection task individually," Fischbach said. "The collective action of the sensors, combined with the software analysis, detects the source. The system would transmit signals to a data center, and the data center would transmit information to authorities without alerting the person carrying the phone. Say a car is transporting radioactive material for a bomb, and that car is driving down Meridian Street in Indianapolis or Fifth Avenue in New York. As the car passes people, their cell phones individually would send signals to a command center, allowing authorities to track the source."

The signal grows weaker with increasing distance from the source, and the software is able to use the data from many cell phones to pinpoint the location of the radiation source.

"So the system would know that you were getting closer or farther from something hot," Jenkins said. "If I had handled radioactive material and you were sitting near me at a restaurant, this system would be sensitive enough to detect the residue. "

The Purdue Research Foundation owns patents associated with the technology licensed through the Office of Technology Commercialization.

In addition to detecting radiological dirty bombs designed to scatter hazardous radioactive materials over an area, the system also could be used to detect nuclear weapons, which create a nuclear chain reaction that causes a powerful explosion. The system also could be used to detect spills of radioactive materials.

"It's impossible to completely shield a weapon's radioactive material without making the device too heavy to transport," Jenkins said.

The system could be trained to ignore known radiation sources, such as hospitals, and radiation from certain common items, such as bananas, which contain a radioactive isotope of potassium.

"The radiological dirty bomb or a suitcase nuclear weapon is going to give off higher levels of radiation than those background sources," Fischbach said. "The system would be sensitive enough to detect these tiny levels of radiation, but it would be smart enough to discern which sources posed potential threats and which are harmless."

The team is working with Karen White, senior technology manager at the Purdue Research Foundation, to commercialize the system. For more information on licensing the cell phone sensor technology, contact White at (765) 494-2609

Adapted from materials provided by Purdue University.

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Computer-based Tool Aids Research, Helps Thwart Questionable Publication Practices

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 29, 2008) — A new computer-based text-searching tool developed by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers automatically -- and quickly -- compares multiple documents in a database for similarities, providing a more efficient method to carry out literature searches, as well as offering scientific journal editors a new tool to thwart questionable publication practices.

Dr. Harold "Skip" Garner. (Credit: UT Southwestern Medical Center)

The eTBLAST computer program is efficient at flagging publications that are highly similar, said Dr. Harold "Skip" Garner, a professor of biochemistry and internal medicine at UT Southwestern who developed the computer code along with his colleagues. Not only does the code identify duplication of key words, but it also compares word proximity and order, among other variables.

The tool is especially useful for investigators who wish to analyze an unpublished abstract or project idea in order to find previous publications on the topic or identify possible collaborators working in the same field.

Another application of eTBLAST is to aid journal editors in detecting potentially plagiarized or duplicate articles submitted for publication. Dr. Garner and his colleagues explored that application in two recent articles: in a scientific paper in the Jan. 15 issue of Bioinformatics and in a commentary in the Jan. 24 issue of Nature.

In the first phase of the study, published in Bioinformatics, researchers used eTBLAST to analyze more than 62,000 abstracts from the past 12 years, randomly selected from Medline, one of the largest databases of biomedical research articles. They found that 0.04 percent of papers with no shared authors were highly similar and cases representing potential plagiarism. The small percentage found in the sample may appear insignificant, but when extrapolated to the 17 million scientific papers currently cited in the database, the number of potential plagiarism cases grows to nearly 7,000.

The researchers also found that 1.35 percent of papers with shared authors were sufficiently similar to be considered duplicate publications of the same data, another questionable practice.

In the second phase of the study, outlined in the Nature commentary, Dr. Garner and Dr. Mounir Errami, an instructor in internal medicine, refined their electronic search process so that is was thousands of times faster. An analysis of more than seven million Medline abstracts turned up nearly 70,000 highly similar papers.

Plagiarism may be the most extreme and nefarious form of unethical publication, Dr. Garner said, but simultaneously submitting the same research results to multiple journals or repeated publication of the same data may also be considered unacceptable in many circumstances.

When it comes to duplicate or repeated publications, however, there are some forms that are not only completely ethical, but also valuable to the scientific community. For example, long-term studies such as clinical trial updates and longitudinal surveys require annual or bi-annual publication of progress, and these updates often contain verbatim reproductions of much of the original text.

"We can identify near-duplicate publications using our search engine," said Dr. Garner, who is a faculty member in the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development at UT Southwestern. "But neither the computer nor we can make judgment calls as to whether an article is plagiarized or otherwise unethical. That task must be left to human reviewers, such as university ethics committees and journal editors, the groups ultimately responsible for determining legitimacy."

Dr. Garner said eTBLAST not only detects the prevalence of duplicate publications, but also offers a possible solution to help prevent future unethical behavior.

"Our objective in this research is to make a significant impact on how scientific publications may be handled in the future," Dr. Garner said. "As it becomes more widely known that there are tools such as eTBLAST available, and that journal editors and others can use it to look at papers during the submission process, we hope to see the numbers of potentially unethical duplications diminish considerably."

Other UT Southwestern researchers in the McDermott Center who were involved in the research are computer programmer Justin Hicks, postdoctoral researcher Dr. Wayne Fisher, network analyst David Trusty and staff member Tara Long. Dr. Jonathan Wren at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation also participated.

The research was funded by the Hudson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Adapted from materials provided by UT Southwestern Medical Center.

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Videos Extract Mechanical Properties Of Liquid-gel Interfaces

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 29, 2008) — Blood coursing through vessels, lubricated cartilage sliding against joints, ink jets splashing on paper--living and nonliving things abound with fluids meeting solids. However important these liquid/solid boundaries may be, conventional methods cannot measure basic mechanical properties of these interfaces in their natural environments. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Minnesota have demonstrated a video method that eventually may be able to make measurements on these types of biological and industrial systems.*

Microscopic beads embedded in a gel surface were used to trace the motion of a gel forming an interface with a liquid. As the gel/liquid interface was stirred, the beads followed a complicated trajectory (patterns above photos), which the researchers broke down into a range of small, fast movements to large, slow movements in order to determine the gel's underlying mechanical properties. As the strength of the flow is increased (from left to right), the scale of the motion increases. (Credit: NIST)

Optical microrheology--an emerging tool for studying flow in small samples--usually relies on heat to stir up motion. Analyzing this heat-induced movement can provide the information needed to determine important mechanical properties of fluids and the interfaces that fluids form with other materials. However, when strong flows overwhelm heat-based motion, this method isn't applicable.

Motivated by this, researchers developed a video method that can extract optically basic properties of the liquid/solid interface in strong flows. The solid material they chose was a gel, a substance that has both solid-like properties such as elasticity and liquid-like properties such as viscosity (resistance to flow).

In between a pair of centimeter-scale circular plates, the researchers deposited a gel of polydimethylsiloxane (a common material used in contact lenses and microfluidics devices). Pouring a liquid solution of polypropylene glycol on the gel, they then rotated the top plate to create forces at the liquid/gel interface. The results could be observed by tracking the motion of styrene beads in the gel.

The researchers discovered that the boundary between the liquid and gel became unstable in response to "mechanical noise" (irregularities in the motion of the plates). Such "noise" occurs in real-world physical systems. Surprisingly, a small amount of this mechanical noise produced a lot of motion at the fluid/gel interface. This motion provided so much useful information that the researchers could determine the gel's mechanical properties--namely its "viscoelasticity"--at the liquid/gel interface.

The encouraging results from this model system show that this new approach could potentially be applied to determining properties of many useful and important liquid/solid interfaces. The NIST/Minnesota approach has possible applications in areas as diverse as speech therapy where observing the flow of air over vocal cords could enable noninvasive measures of vocal tissue elasticity and help clinicians detect problems at an early stage. Also, this research may help clarify specific plastics manufacturing problems, such as "shear banding," in which flow can separate a uniformly blended polymer undesirably into different components.

* E.K. Hobbie, S. Lin-Gibson, and S. Kumar Non-Brownian microrheology of a fluid-gel interface, To appear in Physical Review Letters.

Adapted from materials provided by National Institute of Standards and Technology.

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New Scoring System Protects Credit Card Transactions

Daily Science Journal (Nov. 11, 2007) — As this year's holiday season approaches, your credit card transactions may be a little more secure thanks to standards adopted by the payment card industry. The latest incarnation of these standards include the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Version 2 that was coauthored this year by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with 23 other organizations.

When you make an electronic transaction--either swiping a card at a checkout counter or through a commercial Web site--you enter personal payment information into a computer. That information is sent to a payment-card "server," a computer system often run by the bank or merchant that sponsors the particular card. The server processes the payment data, communicates the transaction to the vendor, and authorizes the purchase.

According to NIST's Peter Mell, lead author of CVSS Version 2, a payment-card server is like a house with many doors. Each door represents a potential vulnerability in the operating system or programs. Attackers check to see if any of the "doors" are open, and if they find one, they can often take control of all or part of the server and potentially steal financial information, such as credit card numbers.

For every potential vulnerability, CVSS Version 2 calculates its risks on a scale from zero to 10, assesses how the vulnerability could compromise confidentiality (exposing private information such as credit card numbers), availability (could it be used to shut down the credit card system") and integrity (can it change credit card data"). The CVSS scores used by the credit card industry are those for the 28,000 vulnerabilities provided by the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD), sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security.

To assess the security of their servers, payment card vendors use software that scans their systems for vulnerabilities. To promote uniform standards in this important software, the PCI (Payment Card Industry) Security Standards Council, an industry organization, maintains the Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV) compliance program, which currently covers 135 vendors, including assessors who do onsite audits of PCI information security. By June 2008, all ASV scanners must use the current version of CVSS in order to identify security vulnerabilities and score them.

Requiring ASV software to use CVSS, according to Bob Russo, General Manager of the PCI Security Standards Council, promotes consistency between vendors and ultimately provides good information for protecting electronic transactions. The council also plans to use NIST's upcoming enhancements to CVSS, which will go beyond scoring vulnerabilities to identify secure configurations on operation systems and applications.

Adapted from materials provided by National Institute of Standards and Technology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Computer Vision May Not Be As Good As Thought

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 27, 2008) — For years, scientists have been trying to teach computers how to see like humans, and recent research has seemed to show computers making progress in recognizing visual objects. A new MIT study, however, cautions that this apparent success may be misleading because the tests being used are inadvertently stacked in favor of computers.

The human brain easily recognizes that these cars are all the same object, but the variations in the car's size, orientation and position are a challenge for computer-vision algorithms. (Credit: Nicolas Pinto)

Computer vision is important for applications ranging from "intelligent" cars to visual prosthetics for the blind. Recent computational models show apparently impressive progress, boasting 60-percent success rates in classifying natural photographic image sets. These include the widely used Caltech101 database, intended to test computer vision algorithms against the variety of images seen in the real world.

However, James DiCarlo, a neuroscientist in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, graduate student Nicolas Pinto and David Cox of the Rowland Harvard Institute argue that these image sets have design flaws that enable computers to succeed where they would fail with more authentically varied images. For example, photographers tend to center objects in a frame and to prefer certain views and contexts. The visual system, by contrast, encounters objects in a much broader range of conditions.

"The ease with which we recognize visual objects belies the computational difficulty of this feat," explains DiCarlo, senior author of the study in the online Jan. 25 PLoS Computational Biology. "The core challenge is image variation. Any given object can cast innumerable images onto the retina depending on its position, distance, orientation, lighting and background."

The team exposed the flaws in current tests of computer object recognition by using a simple "toy" computer model inspired by the earliest steps in the brain's visual pathway. Artificial neurons with properties resembling those in the brain's primary visual cortex analyze each point in the image and capture low-level information about the position and orientation of line boundaries. The model lacks the more sophisticated analysis that happens in later stages of visual processing to extract information about higher-level features of the visual scene such as shapes, surfaces or spaces between objects.

The researchers intended this model as a straw man, expecting it to fail as a way to establish a baseline. When they tested it on the Caltech101 images, however, the model did surprisingly well, with performance similar or better than five state-of-the-art object-recognition systems.

How could that be" "We suspected that the supposedly natural images in current computer vision tests do not really engage the central problem of variability, and that our intuitions about what makes objects hard or easy to recognize are incorrect," Pinto explains.

To test this idea, the authors designed a more carefully controlled test. Using just two categories-planes and cars-they introduced variations in position, size and orientation that better reflect the range of variation in the real world.

"With only two types of objects to distinguish, this test should have been easier for the 'toy' computer model, but it proved harder," Cox says. The team's conclusion: "Our model did well on the Caltech101 image set not because it is a good model but because the 'natural' images fail to adequately capture real-world variability."

As a result, the researchers argue for revamping the current standards and images used by the computer-vision community to compare models and measure progress. Before computers can approach the performance of the human brain, they say, scientists must better understand why the task of object recognition is so difficult and the brain's abilities are so impressive.

This study was supported by the National Eye Institute, The Pew Charitable Trust and The McKnight Foundation.

Adapted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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New Experimental Website Converts Photos Into 3D Models

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 28, 2008) — An artist might spend weeks fretting over questions of depth, scale and perspective in a landscape painting, but once it is done, what's left is a two-dimensional image with a fixed point of view. But the Make3d algorithm, developed by Stanford computer scientists, can take any two-dimensional image and create a three-dimensional "fly around" model of its content, giving viewers access to the scene's depth and a range of points of view.

Maui coast, Hawaii. A new program created by Stanford computer scientists, can take any two-dimensional image and create a three-dimensional "fly around" model of its content, giving viewers access to the scene's depth and a range of points of view. (Credit: Michele Hogan)

"The algorithm uses a variety of visual cues that humans use for estimating the 3-D aspects of a scene," said Ashutosh Saxena, a doctoral student in computer science who developed the Make3d website with Andrew Ng, an assistant professor of computer science. "If we look at a grass field, we can see that the texture changes in a particular way as it becomes more distant."

The applications of extracting 3-D models from 2-D images, the researchers say, could range from enhanced pictures for online real estate sites to quickly creating environments for video games and improving the vision and dexterity of mobile robots as they navigate through the spatial world.

Extracting 3-D information from still images is an emerging class of technology. In the past, some researchers have synthesized 3-D models by analyzing multiple images of a scene. Others, including Ng and Saxena in 2005, have developed algorithms that infer depth from single images by combining assumptions about what must be ground or sky with simple cues such as vertical lines in the image that represent walls or trees. But Make3d creates accurate and smooth models about twice as often as competing approaches, Ng said, by abandoning limiting assumptions in favor of a new, deeper analysis of each image and the powerful artificial intelligence technique "machine learning."

Restoring the third dimension

To "teach" the algorithm about depth, orientation and position in 2-D images, the researchers fed it still images of campus scenes along with 3-D data of the same scenes gathered with laser scanners. The algorithm correlated the two sets together, eventually gaining a good idea of the trends and patterns associated with being near or far. For example, it learned that abrupt changes along edges correlate well with one object occluding another, and it saw that things that are far away can be just a little hazier and more bluish than things that are close.

To make these judgments, the algorithm breaks the image up into tiny planes called "superpixels," which are within the image and have very uniform color, brightness and other attributes. By looking at a superpixel in concert with its neighbors, analyzing changes such as gradations of texture, the algorithm makes a judgment about how far it is from the viewer and what its orientation in space is. Unlike some previous algorithms, the Stanford one can account for planes at any angle, not just horizontal or vertical. This allows it to create models for scenes that have planes at many orientations, such as the curved branches of trees or the slopes of mountains.

On the Make3d website, the algorithm puts images uploaded by users into a processing queue and will send an e-mail when the model has been rendered. Users can then vote on whether the model looks good, and can see an alternative rendering and even tinker with the model to fix what might not have been rendered right the first time.

Photos can be uploaded directly or pulled into the site from the popular photo-sharing site Flickr.

Although the technology works better than any other has so far, Ng said, it is not perfect. The software is at its best with landscapes and scenery rather than close-ups of individual objects. Also, he and Saxena hope to improve it by introducing object recognition. The idea is that if the software can recognize a human form in a photo it can make more accurate distance judgments based on the size of the person in the photo.

A paper on the algorithm by Ng, Saxena and a fellow student, Min Sun, won the best paper award at the 3-D recognition and reconstruction workshop at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Rio de Janeiro in October 2007.

For many panoramic scenes, there is still no substitute for being there. But when flat photos become 3-D, viewers can feel a little closer—or farther. The algorithm runs at http://make3d.stanford.edu.

Adapted from materials provided by Stanford University.

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Computer Learns Dogspeak: Programs Can Classify Dog Barks Better Than Humans, Study Shows

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 28, 2008) — Computer programs may be the most accurate tool for studying acoustic communications amongst animals, according to Csaba Molnár from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary and his research team. Their research shows that a new piece of software is able to classify dog barks according to different situations and even identify barks from individual dogs, a task humans find challenging.

A new piece of software is able to classify dog barks according to different situations and even identify barks from individual dogs, according to research by Csaba Molnár from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary and his team. (Credit: Image courtesy of Springer)

The aim of Molnár and colleagues’ experiments was to test a computer algorithm’s ability to identify and differentiate the acoustic features of dog barks, and classify them according to different contexts and individual dogs. The software analyzed more than 6000 barks from 14 Hungarian sheepdogs (Mudi breed) in six different situations: ‘stranger’, ‘fight’, ‘walk’, ‘alone’, ‘ball’ and ‘play’. The barks were recorded with a tape recorder before being transferred to the computer, where they were digitalized and individual bark sounds were coded, classified and evaluated.

In the first experiment looking at classification of barks into different situations, the software correctly classified the barks in 43 percent of cases. The best recognition rates were achieved for ‘fight’ and ‘stranger’ contexts, and the poorest rate was achieved when categorizing ‘play’ barks. These findings suggest that the different motivational states of dogs in aggressive, friendly or submissive contexts may result in acoustically different barks.

In the second experiment looking at the recognition of individual dogs, the algorithm correctly classified the barks in 52 percent of cases. The software could reliably discriminate among individual dogs while humans can not, which suggests that there are individual differences in barks of dogs even though humans are not able to recognise them.

The authors conclude by highlighting the value of their new methodology: “The use of advanced machine learning algorithms to classify and analyze animal sounds opens new perspectives for the understanding of animal communication… The promising results obtained strongly suggest that advanced machine learning approaches deserve to be considered as a new relevant tool for ethology*.”

* Ethology: the study of animal behavior, with a focus on behavioral patterns in natural environments.

Journal reference: Molnar C et al (2008). Classification of dog barks: a machine learning approach. Animal Cognition (DOI 10.1007/s10071-007-0129-9)

Adapted from materials provided by Springer.

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New Laboratory Robot Can Lift The Burden Of Boring Work

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 26, 2008) — Assistant robots really suited for everyday routines, which take over burdensome or monotonous work for humans, are still virtually unavailable commercially. Such systems are usually either not absolutely safe or not cost effective. The laboratory robot LISA could change that.

LISA laboratory robot. (Credit: Image courtesy of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft)

We have been hearing and reading for a long time about assistant robots that silently and carefully zip around humans to liberate them from burdensome work. Nevertheless, a truly convincing high-tech assistant with a gripper arm is not yet commercially available. LISA – short for life science assistant – is intended to change that. In roughly one year, a prototype of this robot will be rolling through biotechnology labs, loading incubators and measuring equipment with sample trays in concert with human colleagues and accurately navigating from one lab instrument to the next.

The developers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg have especially made sure that their silent assistant is safe and injures no one. Only then will the German institutions for statutory accident insurance and prevention and TÜV give it their blessing for everyday use.

LISA is equipped with a sensing gripper arm designed to hold plastic dishes but not injure human beings. Its “artificial skin” consists of conductive foam and textiles and intelligent signal processing electronics. This skin immediately senses and cushions inadvertent jostling. A thermographic camera additionally registers body heat and indicates for instance if a human colleague’s hand is in the way.

The developers at the IFF and their seven project partners from industry and research aim to construct a robot suited for everyday routines that can already be cost effectively deployed shortly after the pilot phase – and around the clock at that. Hence, LISA was not overloaded with functionalities. It has a laser-aided navigation system with which it orients itself in familiar spaces and goes through doorways on its own. It safely navigates around obstacles and people. That suffices for everyday laboratory work anytime.

LISA uses language to communicate and, thanks to its large vocabulary, understands entire sentences like “Get me dish A4 from incubator 8.” If something is unclear, it asks. Additionally, simple work commands can be entered through a touchscreen. LISA was conceived to be able to learn new actions easily. This is particularly important for life science laboratories in which new types of measuring stations are frequently installed or varied work steps are executed. “LISA was tailored precisely to its niche for use,” says project coordinator Dr. Norbert Elkmann from the IFF. “This is the only way its everyday use will soon be possible – we could be that far in about one to two years.”

Adapted from materials provided by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

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Face Recognition Made Possible With New Computer Program

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 25, 2008) — Hung-Son Le, Umeå University, Sweden, has developed in his PhD dissertation the algorithms that give a computer the possibility of recognising a face, even if only one picture is taken. The results can be used for safe and secure identity control or, on the light side, to find out to which famous persons you look alike.

If a non-authorised person gets access to your pin code and credit card, most likely your money will disappear from your account. Nevertheless, this would be impossible if the ATM could recognize your face as you look at a camera. Now, the algorithms to carry out this function, face recognition, exist. Face recognition can also be used in other functions, for instance in a dating service. Maybe the customer is interested in a man that looks like Brad Pitt or a woman that looks like Angelina Jolie.

Systems that can identify different faces are normally trained through a database with a large collection of face images in different illumination and pose. Nevertheless to collect such a large number of face images for each person is difficult and quite often expensive. Moreover these systems have problems due to the bad quality of the pictures, as well as facial expressions, the variety of angles and the different illuminations. These problems are now over.

The effective algorithms developed by Hung-Son Le make it possible to have a system that can identify a face even when there is only one picture in the database for each person. Moreover, the effectiveness of the system is a considerable improvement when taking into account light conditions, or facial expressions. His algorithms use a method than improves contrast in underexposed and overexposed pictures. Thus details can be made visible which otherwise would be difficult for a computer to identify. Given the method used (Hidden Markov Model, HMM), once the system is in place, it needs no time for retraining, when compared to existing HMM-based competitors, to “know” new pictures with different expressions taken under different illumination conditions.

The experiments carried out with the system and tested against international standards such as FERET and the Yale database, have demonstrated that it outperforms the leading competitors.

Commercial applications based on the PhD dissertation results are under development and will soon be presented. Among others, a face websearch engine is under final development phase.

Adapted from materials provided by Umeå University, via AlphaGalileo.

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New Robotics Challenge Aims To Develop Friendly Highly Autonomous Robots

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 25, 2008) — The “ROBAUCO: mobile, autonomous and collaborative robots” project was recently initiated.* The principal objective of the project is the generation of the technologies necessary for the development of mobile robots able to carry out complex tasks with a high degree of autonomy and capacity for collaboration. These robots, moreover, have to share tasks with people in the most friendly and natural way possible.

The technological areas in which solutions are to be developed are:

• The perception of the robots. Using sensors and sensorial systems which, with a holistic approach, are capable of recognising the complex environment (given that the idea is for exterior applications, over unknown terrain and changing situations).

• Communications. Between the robots themselves and with humans, in such a way that mutual collaboration leads to success in the targets set.

• Person-robot interaction Here the idea is that the robot is not limited to just obeying control orders that are formulated electronically, but they are also enabled to interact with their human collaborators and in the most natural manner, including with voice and, above all, with gestures which, for tasks in the exterior and in extreme conditions, may be the most reliable channel of communication.

• Autonomous behaviour. In this case the idea is to resolve complex problems of navigation on surfaces and in spaces that are difficult and equip the robots with self-perception in such a way that they are aware of their state, can undertake self-diagnosis and adopt measures in case of breakdown or limitations to their capacities.

• Mecatronic components. The problem to be tackled in principle is the movement through and overcoming of obstacles in all media, terrestrial, aquatic and aerial.

It is hoped to materialise all these developments in a terrestrial robot prototype which, in all probability, will be a test bank for solutions to emergency situations such as forest fires, rescues, etc. In order to know the peculiarities and skills these tasks require and thereby to orientate the prototype accordingly, contacts have been made with SOS Deia (the Basque Emergency Rescue Service) and it also expected to know other viewpoints from other autonomous emergency services.

The project is one of 6 which, at a Spanish State-wide level, is being financed by the State Office for Small and Medium Enterprises of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, through the programme of partnered projects designed to stimulate a synergic effect from the collaboration of various technological centres.

*The project, being led by Tekniker-IK4 and also involving the participation of another Basque technology centre, Fatronik, the Valencian Instituto Tecnológico de Informática (ITI) and CARTIF, the technology centre in Castilla-León. Moreover, university teams outstanding in robotics research have also collaborated - from the Carlos III University in Madrid, the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the University of Seville and the University of the Basque Country. The project is to last 30 months and has a budget of nearly 2 M€, of which somewhat more than 650,000 € has been allocated to Tekniker-IK4, coordinator and proponent of the idea.

Adapted from materials provided by Basque Research.

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Palpable Computing: A Taste Of Things To Come

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 23, 2008) — Virtually everyone stands to benefit from the more pervasive use of computer technology. But while adding microchips to more everyday objects can make lives easier – and even save them – the approach creates some unique problems of its own. “Palpable” rather than “ubiquitous” computing promises a solution.

“Palpable computing”, a term coined by Morten Kyng, a researcher at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, refers to pervasive computer technology that is also tangible and comprehensible to its users.

Ubiquitous computing, in the traditional sense, is based on the vision of making the computers invisible, Kyng suggests. “The problem is that when the technology is invisible you can’t see what it is doing, how it functions or comprehend it.”

Anyone who has tried to connect their mobile phone to their laptop can attest to that. But while the invisibility of ubiquitous computing technology may be a mere inconvenience for many, in some cases it can be a serious, even life-threatening problem. A breakdown in communications that cannot be quickly fixed during a natural disaster can cost lives, as too can interoperability failures in hospital equipment.

By making the technology visible when it needs to be and comprehensible all the time, palpable computing reduces the complications of using the technology, while opening the door to developers creating new applications more easily.

Putting the user in control

The vision of ubiquitous computing has focused on tools honed through use over time and well suited to what they are designed to do, comments Kyng. “The problems arise when you want or need to do something new or different from what the designers intended: the user is not really in control,” he adds.

Over the last four years, Kyng has led a team of more than a hundred researchers from across Europe working on making palpable computing a reality. They have developed software architecture for palpable computing systems as well as a toolbox for developers to create applications that has recently been made available under an open source licence. The researchers, who received EU funding in the PalCom project, also developed several test platforms that have served to highlight the benefits of their approach.

One of them was used when the Tall Ships’ Races – the world’s biggest competition for sailing ships – visited Aarhus in July 2007. The platform enabled police and fire fighters to interact with a three-dimensional (3D) workspace of the Aarhus harbour and its surroundings, displaying the location of key personnel, cars, ships and equipment to give a general overview of what was going on.

“Large-scale events, such as the Tall Ships’ Races, can be very hard to gain an overview of. With a million visitors and a huge area, it is challenging to monitor every critical spot. In my opinion, PalCom’s technology has enormous potential – not only for events [like this] but also for monitoring major accident scenes,” notes Aarhus fire chief Jakob Andersen.

A second test platform was created to enhance therapy for disabled children, while a third was designed to help landscape architects visualise the location and assess the visual impact of large development projects (wind farms, industrial buildings, etc.).

The system involves a camera, placed on the roof of a car, connected with a laptop running an advanced 3D-visualisation programme which provides landscape architects with a much more precise indication of where a new building will be located and its impact on the surrounding landscape as they drive around.

Key markets: emergency response and healthcare

“The potential uses for palpable computing are diverse, although initially I think the key markets will be in areas, such as emergency response and healthcare, where there is an urgent need for increasingly more efficient and effective technology,” Kyng says.

The University of Aarhus and several other project partners are concentrating on the development of applications using PalCom’s architecture in those fields. Kyng’s team, for example, is applying the technology to help women through pregnancies and to improve the treatment of hip-replacement patients. One palpable computing system being developed to enhance post-surgery monitoring will allow hip patients to leave the hospital 24 hours after surgery, he estimates, rather than the current three or four days.

The PalCom coordinator notes that the trial systems have elicited considerable interest and expects the open source release of the toolbox to lead to new applications.

“Ultimately, success in the marketplace will drive the technology forward,” he says.

Adapted from materials provided by ICT Results.

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Integrated Receiver For High Frequency Applications On A Tiny Chip

Daily Science Journal (Dec. 31, 2007) — Researchers at Chalmers University in Sweden have succeeded in combining a receiver for high frequencies with an antenna on a small chip.

The receiver is just a few square millimetre and is suitable for new safety systems, image sensors, and radio communication for high bitrates. The receiver is an electronic circuit including antenna, low noise amplifier, and frequency converter monolithically integrated on gallium arsenide.

"This is a breakthrough in our research. Our result opens the possibility to manufacture systems for very high frequencies within the so called 'THZ-electronics' area, to a relatively low cost. In the next phase of this project even more functions can be integrated on the same chip", according to Herbert Zirath, professor at the department of Microwave Electronics.

This circuit can be used, for instance, in radiometer systems in future safety systems looking for concealed weapons without personal intrusive search. Other applications for this circuit are imaging sensors that can look through darkness, smoke or fog. This is an important safety function for vehicles such as cars and aircrafts.

"Thanks to this technology, we now have the possibility of integrating imaging sensors by using circuits of a few square millimetre which is much smaller that the present technology at a lower cost. For automotive applications such as cars, aircrafts and satellites, the size and weight is of utmost importance. The present systems consist of many pieces and demands several cubic decimetres volume", says Herbert Zirath.

The new circuit is designed to work at the frequency of 220 gigahertz, but this is not an upper limit. According to professor Zirath, the technology can be used up to and above 300GHz in a near future.

The technology is also interesting for wireless data communication because, due to the very high bandwidth, data rate well above 10 Gbit/s is possible to realize in future radio links. Together with Omnisys Instruments in Gothenburg, we are also implementing receivers for future earth observation satellites for environmental studies and weather forecasts at frequencies 118 and 183 GHz, using the same technology.

This work is the results of a co-operation between Chalmers, Saab Microwave Systems, Omnisys Instruments AB, FOI, The Fraunhofer Institute IAF in Freiburg and FGAN, Germany, within the project "nanoComp".

Adapted from materials provided by Chalmers University.

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Software Wrapper For Smarter, Networked Homes

Daily Science Journal (Dec. 22, 2007) — Homes today are filled with increasing numbers of high-tech gadgets, from smart phones and PCs to state-of-the-art TV and audio systems, many of them with built-in networking capabilities. Combined, these devices could form the building blocks of the smart homes of the future, but only if they can be made to work together intelligently.

Although the idea of creating intelligent networked home environments as a way to make life easier, safer and more enjoyable has been around for some time, the technology has yet to catch up with the vision. Home automation systems have become more commonplace and consumer electronics have more networking capability, but no one has, so far, gotten all the high-tech and not so high-tech gadgetry cluttering modern homes to work together in an intelligent way. It is not yet common for fridges to talk to your TV to warn that the door has been left open or for heating systems to turn on when you return home, for example.

“People are finding themselves with all these networkable devices and are wondering where the applications are that can use these devices to make life easier and how they could be of more value together than individually,” says Maddy Janse, a researcher for Dutch consumer electronics group Philips.

There are two fundamental obstacles to realising the vision of the intelligent networked home: lack of interoperability between individual devices and the need for context-aware artificial intelligence to manage them. And, to make smart homes a reality, the two issues must be addressed together.

Software wrapper to get gadgets talking

The EU-funded Amigo project, coordinated by Janse, is doing just that, creating a middleware software platform that will get all networkable devices in the home talking to each other and providing an artificial intelligence layer to control them.

“With the Amigo system, you can take any networkable device, create a software wrapper for it and dynamically integrate it into the networked home environment,” Janse explains.

The project, which involves several big industrial and research partners, is unique in that it is addressing the issues of interoperability and intelligence together and, most significantly, its software is modular and open source.

By steering away from creating a monolithic system and making the software accessible to all, the partners believe they can overcome the complications that have held back other smart home projects. For consumer electronics companies and telecoms firms, the system has the additional benefit of providing a test bed for new products and services.

“What we are trying to do is so large and so complex that it has to be broken down into smaller parts. By making it open source and letting third-party developers create applications we can ensure the system addresses whatever challenges arise,” Janse says.

The Amigo architecture consists of a base middleware layer, an intelligent user services layer, and a programming and deployment framework that developers can use to create individual applications and services. These individual software modules form the building blocks of the networked home environment, which has the flexibility to grow as and when new devices and applications are added.

Interoperability is ensured through support for and abstraction of common interaction and home automation standards and protocols, such as UPnP and DNLA as well as web services, while the definition of appropriate ontologies enables common understanding at a semantic level.

“A lot of applications are already available today and more will be created as more developers start to use the software,” Janse says.

Vision of the future

A video created by the project partners underscores their vision for the future in which homes adapt to the behaviour of occupants, automatically setting ambient lighting for watching a movie, locking the doors when someone leaves or contacting relatives or emergency services if someone is ill or has an accident. In an extended home environment, the homes of friends and relatives are interconnected, allowing information and experiences to be shared more easily and setting the stage for the use of tele-presence applications to communicate and interact socially.

Initially, Janse sees such networked systems being employed in larger scale environments than an individual home or for specific purposes. Some subsets of applications could be rolled out in hotels or hospitals or used to monitor the wellbeing of the elderly or infirm, for example.

“With the exception of people with a lot of money building their homes from scratch, it will be a while before intelligent networked homes become commonplace,” the coordinator notes. “In addition, this isn’t something average consumers can easily set up themselves, currently some degree of programming knowledge is needed and installers need to become familiar with the concepts and their potential.”

Even so, the project is hoping to continue to stimulate the growth of the sector.

In October, it launched the Amigo Challenge, a competition in which third-party programmers have been invited to come up with new applications using the Amigo software. Janse expects the initiative will lead to the software being used in even more innovative and possibly unexpected ways.

Adapted from materials provided by ICT Results.

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