Posts tagged future

A new drug to combat a certain type of lung cancer is being hailed today as an “amazing development” by medical experts.

The drug crizotinib (Xalkori), manufactured by Pfizer and approved last week by the Food and Drug Administration, is intended for a small number of patients.

The twice-daily capsules are meant for patients with non-small cell lung cancer who have a unique gene known as an abnormal anaplastic lymphoma kinase(ALK). An ALK gene causes cancer growth and development.

“Many of these patients had received three or more prior treatments, and we would expect only about 10% to respond,”Yung-Jue Bang, MD,PhD

Overall response rate was 57% and disease control rate was 87%. The most frequently reported toxicities were nausea (54%) and vomiting (44%).

Sources: http://www.healio.com/hematology-oncology/lung-cancer/news/online/%7B7F093ECD-D7CD-420A-86E2-F47AC2497224%7D/ALK-inhibitor-crizotinib-has-high-response-rate-in-patients-with-ALK-positive-NSCLC

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/lung-cancer-pill-crizotinib-highlights-improved-iding-treating/story?id=14414833#.UFfTQPmw6c4

(Source: futurenow321)

Algae based biofuel is a new energy source that has been getting a lot of attention lately. Certain types of algae contain natural oils that can be readily distilled into a vegetable oil or a number of petroleum like products that could serve as drop in replacements for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Dunaliella salinais a type of halophile green micro algae especially found in sea salt fields. Interestingly this algae grows bright pink and can produce up to 35% in lipids(oils) that could one day power your car. Luckly for us we have plent of salt water in the world.

(Source: futurenow321)

A San Francisco-based startup called Sidecar is looking to make your phone calls a little smarter.

The company on Tuesday launched the Sidecar app for iPhone and Android smartphones that lets users make free VoIP calls, as well as share live videos, photos, contact information, and location data. What makes Sidecar different from other apps is that it lets you share data while you talk on the phone. So, you don’t have to end your phone call, or fire up another app to share photos or location data.

(Source: futurenow321)

The ink’s been dry for 160 million years but scientists have for the first time confirmed pigment in two fossilized ink sacs from cuttlefish like animals, a new study says.

The ancient ink’s similarity to modern squid ink suggests this defensive weapon hasn’t evolved much since the Jurassic period.

Using several different techniques, though, the team was able to confirm that melanin had survived intact in the ink sacs. They then compared the chemical properties of the Jurassic pigment with those of ink from living common cuttlefish, which release clouds of ink to confuse predators.

“As far as we can tell by everything we’ve thrown at it, the [ancient] ink is indistinguishable from modern ink,” he said. That the ink hasn’t changed over the millennia may not be too surprising, since “it’s a pretty good defense mechanism,” he said. Overall, the study hints at soft tissue’s promise as a new resource for learning about the ancient world.

“As we look back and think about what we know about life before our time, it’s mostly through skeletal info,” Simon said. “What’s beginning to happen now is that people are realizing that, in addition, there is soft tissue that’s being preserved. Studying soft tissue, he added, “could give us a whole new window into species that are extinct and their relationships to modern-day” life-forms.

(Source: futurenow321)

It turns out that studying how to make robots grasp objects with their hands is helping researchers figure out how to make robots balance on their feet.

Christian Ott and his team at the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics have discovered a way to keep bipedal robots from falling over by using principles from robot grasping. As shown in this video released at the 2011 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots in Bled, Slovenia, the new approach allows the DLR Biped, a legged robot based on KUKA’s lightweight system, to keep its feet firmly planted on the floor, even when kicked by a mean researcher or slammed with a 5-kilogram medicine ball.

It may appear that the robot is not doing much. But in reality, upon getting hit or pushed, it is rapidly adjusting the torque of its joints to counteract the disturbance and avoid falling on its face (well, it has no face, but you get the idea). Imagine you are standing and someone starts pushing on your back. You react by putting more pressure on your forefeet. This nonrigid way of reacting to external forces and perturbations is called compliance, and is highly sought-after in cutting edge robotics it’s better to absorb an impact than break or fall over. That’s exactly what the DLR Biped is doing. It’s using a balancing controller to adjust its center of mass in a compliant way.

Today, most bipedal humanoid robots rely on a different balancing approach, known as Zero Moment Point (ZMP). It’s been around since the mid-1980s and is used by many famous robots, such as ASIMO and WABIAN-2. With ZMP, robots rely on force sensors on their feet and a feedback control loop that constantly adjusts their position relative to this stable point (the ZMP) to keep balanced.

Ott’s approach tackles the problem without needing the ZMP and foot sensors. Their technique “uses a formulation coming from the field of robot grasping, which considers at the same time a desired force and torque that allow the robot to recover the initial position and orientation [when disturbed],” the researchers write in “Posture and Balance Control for Biped Robots Based on Contact Force Optimization,” which won the Best Paper award at the conference.

Their grasping-inspired controller elegantly takes into account friction at the contact points with the ground. First, it uses an optimization algorithm that computes the forces needed at each point to neutralize the perturbation. Then it determines how to move the robot’s torque-controlled joints to produce the desired forces. The result: equilibrium.

The next obvious step would be to keep the stability while walking. The challenge is that the method currently uses a finite set of predetermined contact points, but the researchers are confident that they can extend it to a more general model. And they say it could be applied to one-legged and multi-legged robots as well.

Some researchers remain skeptical that bipedal robots will ever work (especially with the slew of face-planting robot videos), but advances like this will allow them to better integrate into our environment even if people try to push them over.

(Source: futurenow321)