Developing robots for the hospital emergency room

When a patient arrives in the ER, the first thing he or she must do is register. Today, this is handled by a registration clerk. In the proposed system, the clerk would direct the patient (or attending family members) to a robot assistant in the form of a kiosk. The robot assistant would guide them through the registration process using a touch-screen and possibly voice prompts. When proper security measures are in place, the robot will be able to fill in much of the information for existing patients by accessing their electronic records. When the patients provide critical information, such as reporting chest pain, the robot can immediately alert the staff so they can provide immediate attention. Lacking such an alert, the robot would inform the patient of the current wait time and direct him or her to the waiting room.

The emergency room application is a perfect way to test a special cognitive architecture that the Vanderbilt engineers have developed for robots that is based on the working memory in the brain. "Our architecture is designed to allow robots to integrate quick decision-making with the more common deliberate decision-making process in flexible ways," Kawamura said.

The paper proposes a system of cognitive robots that gather medical information and take basic diagnostic measurements and ultimately provide tentative diagnoses to the human staff in order to address the critical concerns facing emergency departments in major hospitals: shortening the time that patients must wait, relieving the strain on overburdened emergency room staff and reducing the number of mistakes that are made.

Source : (VU) Vanderbilt News

Gene Enables Fish to 'Disappear'!!!...

Researchers led by Vanderbilt's Roger Cone, Ph.D., have discovered a new member of a gene family that has powerful influences on pigmentation and the regulation of body weight.

        

The gene is the third member of the agouti family. Two agouti genes have been identified previously in humans. One helps determine skin and hair color, and the other may play an important role in obesity and diabetes.

The new gene, called agrp2, has been found exclusively in bony fish, including zebrafish, trout and salmon. The protein it encodes enables fish to change color dramatically to match their surroundings, the researchers report this week in the early edition of theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The first agouti gene, which produces the striped "agouti" pattern in many mammals, was discovered in 1993. The same year, Cone and his colleagues at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland reported the discovery of the gene that encoded the melanocortin-1 receptor, a key player in the pigmentation story.

They demonstrated that the agouti protein prevented the melanocortin-1 receptor in melanocytes (pigment cells) in the skin from switching on production of black-brown pigment, and instead shifted the pigment to yellow-red hues.

The second agouti gene encodes agouti-related protein (AgRP), which blocks a melanocortin receptor in the brain. It prevents the melanocortin-4 receptor from inhibiting food intake, and thus stimulates eating.

Source : PNAS

Early lung cancer detection: Optical Technology

"By examining the lining of the cheek with this optical technology, we have the potential to prescreen patients at high risk for lung cancer, such as those who smoke, and identify the individuals who would likely benefit from more invasive and expensive tests versus those who don't need additional tests," said Hemant K. Roy, M.D., director of gastroenterology research at NorthShore.

The optical technique is called partial wave spectroscopic (PWS) microscopy and was developed by Vadim Backman, professor of biomedical engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Backman and Roy earlier used PWS to assess the risk of colon and pancreatic cancers, also with promising results.

The lung cancer findings are published online Oct. 5 by the journal Cancer Research. The paper will appear in print in the Oct. 15 issue.

Indian students open 'DOORS' to the web for differently-abled

Bangalore: A group of students from Bangalore's Government Sri Krishnarajendra Silver Jubilee Technological Institute have developed an operating system (OS) that will help the differently-abled people to use their PCs and laptops. Called the DOORS which expands to Disk Operated Office Recovery System, the OS makes use of gesture controlling system for physically challenged users, including visually impaired. 

The students, Neelakantan S, Vivekananda M, Veda Prakash and Mohammad Irshaad, have worked on the development of the OS for three years now. The OS is able to detect the slightest movements of the hands or limbs of a person with the help of an intensity sensor.

The OS includes a speech recognition tool specially meant for the visually impaired users. The OS also comes with an in-built anti-virus program called Cool Cops that automatically quarantine infected files.

The live OS does not require installing and takes about a minute to load. This makes the OS more user -friendly. The OS also supports Windows and Linux files.

SUN-like star "HD 10180" Richest planetary system discovered

Astronomers using ESO’s world-leading HARPS instrument have discovered a planetary system containing at least five planets, orbiting the Sun-like star HD 10180. The researchers also have tantalising evidence that two other planets may be present, one of which would have the lowest mass ever found. This would make the system similar to our Solar System in terms of the number of planets (seven as compared to the Solar System’s eight planets). Furthermore, the team also found evidence that the distances of the planets from their star follow a regular pattern, as also seen in our Solar System.
The team of astronomers used the HARPS spectrograph, attached to ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile, for a six-year-long study of the Sun-like star HD 10180, located 127 light-years away in the southern constellation of Hydrus (the Male Water Snake). HARPS is an instrument with unrivalled measurement stability and great precision and is the world’s most successful exoplanet hunter.

The astronomers detected the tiny back and forth motions of the star caused by the complex gravitational attractions from five or more planets. The five strongest signals correspond to planets with Neptune-like masses — between 13 and 25 Earth masses — which orbit the star with periods ranging from about 6 to 600 days. These planets are located between 0.06 and 1.4 times the Earth–Sun distance from their central star.

The newly discovered system of planets around HD 10180 is unique in several respects.

• First of all, with at least five Neptune-like planets lying within a distance equivalent to the orbit of Mars,
• this system is more populated than our Solar System in its inner region, and
• has many more and massive planets there
• Furthermore, the system probably has no Jupiter-like gas giant.
• In addition, all the planets seem to have almost circular orbits.

Totally Amazing Technology In This House

Proposed Future Technology!!...

In Pomegranate Phone | NS08 one  will find lots of gadgets, try to explore it. 2day U get everything....                         at one place!!!....     1day U ll get everything...                         in one phone!!..