A QUANTUM OF SCIENCE
Forty years ago today, the first message was sent on what would become "the internet."
The year was 1969. It was the years of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The average computer was the size of a Buick. The Department of Defense wanted a way to communicate in realtime across great distances with multiple sites simultaneously. And at the Advanced Research Projects Agency, someone decided they needed something called a "network."
Major communications companies were invited to bid on the project. IBM and Bell both declined. They could see no future in the technology. Finally a small company called BBN Technologies, originally started by two MIT professors as an acoustic consulting company, took the contract.
On October 29, 1969, BBN's creation - the IMP (Interface Message Processors) - used its ultrafast 24 kilobyte core memory and 50 kilobits per second speed as the world's first router. Researchers at UCLA sent the first message to the IMP that night. What was that message? Was it "One small step for man" or "What hath God wrought" like other significant advances in human technology?
No. The first real message sent over the nascent internet was:
LO
The IMP then crashed.
An hour later, the first FULL message sent over the nascent internet was:
LOGIN
It was a bold new world, and to this day the internet continues to crash in millions of places around the world, twenty-four hours a day.
Happy birthday, Internet!
For more information:
Internet Turns 40 Today: First Message Crashed System (National Geographic)
ARPANET (Wikipedia)
© AQOS / P. Smalley (2009)
Reproduction with attribution is appreciation
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Telemedicine: Cell Phone Microscopy
A QUANTUM OF SCIENCE
Can technical innovations bring medical diagnostics anywhere a cell phone can go?
It is increasingly common for medical professionals to use images generated by light microscopy in the rapid evaluation and dissemination of a diagnosis of disease. This practice is so widespread that a medical communication standard has been adopted for using transferring digital images between doctors and institutions. This has resulted in improvements in rapid diagnosis of disease, but rural areas and developing nations lag far behind this due to the prohibitive cost of equipment and training required. Light microscopes and their more exotic cousins (dark-field, fluorescence microscopy, etc) are far from universal medical devices. Worse still for underserved regions, microscopy is an essential tool for diagnosis of diseases endemic to such areas. Tuberculosis, malaria and sickle-cell anemia are just a handful of the afflictions most easily characterized by microscopy, and which are also extremely common in developing nations.
What is strange and in this case fortunate is that rural areas and developing nations are being more quickly served by mobile phone providers, and thanks to this fact researchers in Berkeley, California were able to engineer a device that could interface with a standard cell phone to capture, analyze and transmit high-resolution microscopic images such that positive diagnoses could be made.
Using a Nokia phone equipped with only a 3.2-megapixel CMOS camera, scientists and engineers were able to construct a device consisting of two filters and three lenses that was capable of capturing high-quality microscopic images of blood (allowing positive diagnosis of malaria and sickle-cell anemia) and sputum (allowing positive diagnosis of tuberculosis). The latter required the addition of an LED emitting in the ultraviolet spectrum, permitting fluorescence microscopic images to be captured by the cell phone’s camera. While minimal image modification was required for the light microscopy images, even the fluorescence microscopy images needed only minor processing before they could be analyzed successfully.
The power and utility of this innovation of science and engineering cannot be easily overstated. For a relative pittance, the power of expensive and complex instruments requiring trained technicians to operate is now available to anyone with a cell phone. Soon, underserved rural areas and developing nations will have the possibility of rapid and high-accuracy diagnoses. With this piece of technical know-how the scientists, engineers and medical professionals of Berkeley have pushed back the darkness a little farther and paved the way for a better quality of life for many who suffer only because of where they happen to have been born.
For more information:
Mobile Phone Based Clinical Microscopy for Global Health Applications (Breslauer et al)
© AQOS / P. Smalley
Reproduction with attribution is appreciation
Can technical innovations bring medical diagnostics anywhere a cell phone can go?
It is increasingly common for medical professionals to use images generated by light microscopy in the rapid evaluation and dissemination of a diagnosis of disease. This practice is so widespread that a medical communication standard has been adopted for using transferring digital images between doctors and institutions. This has resulted in improvements in rapid diagnosis of disease, but rural areas and developing nations lag far behind this due to the prohibitive cost of equipment and training required. Light microscopes and their more exotic cousins (dark-field, fluorescence microscopy, etc) are far from universal medical devices. Worse still for underserved regions, microscopy is an essential tool for diagnosis of diseases endemic to such areas. Tuberculosis, malaria and sickle-cell anemia are just a handful of the afflictions most easily characterized by microscopy, and which are also extremely common in developing nations.
What is strange and in this case fortunate is that rural areas and developing nations are being more quickly served by mobile phone providers, and thanks to this fact researchers in Berkeley, California were able to engineer a device that could interface with a standard cell phone to capture, analyze and transmit high-resolution microscopic images such that positive diagnoses could be made.
Using a Nokia phone equipped with only a 3.2-megapixel CMOS camera, scientists and engineers were able to construct a device consisting of two filters and three lenses that was capable of capturing high-quality microscopic images of blood (allowing positive diagnosis of malaria and sickle-cell anemia) and sputum (allowing positive diagnosis of tuberculosis). The latter required the addition of an LED emitting in the ultraviolet spectrum, permitting fluorescence microscopic images to be captured by the cell phone’s camera. While minimal image modification was required for the light microscopy images, even the fluorescence microscopy images needed only minor processing before they could be analyzed successfully.
The power and utility of this innovation of science and engineering cannot be easily overstated. For a relative pittance, the power of expensive and complex instruments requiring trained technicians to operate is now available to anyone with a cell phone. Soon, underserved rural areas and developing nations will have the possibility of rapid and high-accuracy diagnoses. With this piece of technical know-how the scientists, engineers and medical professionals of Berkeley have pushed back the darkness a little farther and paved the way for a better quality of life for many who suffer only because of where they happen to have been born.
For more information:
Mobile Phone Based Clinical Microscopy for Global Health Applications (Breslauer et al)
© AQOS / P. Smalley
Reproduction with attribution is appreciation
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Quantum: Tracking H1N1 mutations in real time
A QUANTUM OF SCIENCE
How do scientists around the world collaborate rapidly in real time when a pandemic looms?
Today marks a departure from the established format of longer, more detailed essays with the first "quantum" post designed to provide a short, sweet snapshot of a small corner of Science. The intent of such quantum posts is to give readers tools to make use of on their own to extend their knowledge of the cutting edge of science and technology.
Today's quantum is the Human/Swine A/H1N1 Influenza Origins and Evolution project: a wiki site maintained by Oliver Pybus of Oxford University and Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh. The purpose of this wiki is to provide a place for scientists around the world to post and discuss the genetic sequences of H1N1 influenza strains they have isolated and characterized. Based on these sequences, scientists can build a more accurate picture of where the flu virus is spreading and - most importantly - how fast it is mutating... in real time. This is key because a mutation that increases virulence could make the difference between a regular annual flu season and a global pandemic.
Of particular note: the phylogeography link has a great discussion of how fast different strains of the virus are spreading, and where. This ties in nicely with the phylogenetic analysis of the virus, a look at the genetic history of H1N1 as it has spread over time.
© AQOS / Peter Smalley (2009)
Reproduction with attribution is appreciation
How do scientists around the world collaborate rapidly in real time when a pandemic looms?
Today marks a departure from the established format of longer, more detailed essays with the first "quantum" post designed to provide a short, sweet snapshot of a small corner of Science. The intent of such quantum posts is to give readers tools to make use of on their own to extend their knowledge of the cutting edge of science and technology.
Today's quantum is the Human/Swine A/H1N1 Influenza Origins and Evolution project: a wiki site maintained by Oliver Pybus of Oxford University and Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh. The purpose of this wiki is to provide a place for scientists around the world to post and discuss the genetic sequences of H1N1 influenza strains they have isolated and characterized. Based on these sequences, scientists can build a more accurate picture of where the flu virus is spreading and - most importantly - how fast it is mutating... in real time. This is key because a mutation that increases virulence could make the difference between a regular annual flu season and a global pandemic.
Of particular note: the phylogeography link has a great discussion of how fast different strains of the virus are spreading, and where. This ties in nicely with the phylogenetic analysis of the virus, a look at the genetic history of H1N1 as it has spread over time.
© AQOS / Peter Smalley (2009)
Reproduction with attribution is appreciation
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