BBC News - Genetic testing to improve cancer drugs

BBC News - Genetic testing: NHS 'must back revolution'

One of the problems with modern medicine is that some of the definitions of disease are too broad.

Prof Bell told the BBC: "Breast cancer has always been defined because it is a tumour in the breast.

"But if you look at the molecular detail of those cancers, some are much more similar to ovarian cancers than they are to other breast cancers, in molecular terms and in terms of their response to therapy."

Cancer drugs are generally effective in fewer than one in three patients who take them, the report says.

The theory is that by looking at which genes are active inside a tumour, it will be possible to pick the correct treatment.

This is already happening in some cases. Bowel cancer patients with the defective gene K-RAS do not respond to some drugs, while the breast cancer drug herceptin works only if patients have a specific mutation, HER2.

“Innovation in any setting has to deliver a much better product or lower cost, or both, and I think genetics may be one of the things that does both”

Prof Sir John Bell

Chair of Human Genomics Strategy Group

Quantum computer

How much longer before the first Quantum computer will appear. This has the potential to revolutionize the computer world.

Boffin melds quantum processor with quantum RAM • The Register

In his quantum computer, he says, computational steps take a few billionths of a second, which is about the same as you get with a classical computer. But unlike a classical computer, a quantum computer can handle a large number of these calculations simultaneously.

Matteo Mariantoni and his quantum computer

As Mariantoni explains in a video provided by the University of California at Santa Barabara, where he is a postdoctoral fellow, the two central quantum phenomena upon which quantum computing are based are superposition and entanglement.
Quantum computing may still be far from being a viable commercial process, but Mariantoni argues that it's time to get going. "We can ... create something that is very close to a classical processor, and we can use it for implementing pretty complicated quantum softwares," he argues. "My feeling is that, at this stage – and it's really true – industries will be interested in investing money and effort in developing a large-scale quantum computer."
He may be right. With the increasing complexity and cost of shrinking silicon-transistor features in classical computing manufacturing, the possibility of commercial quantum computing is compelling – even if there remains a tremendous amount of work to be done by both researchers and engineers.
Just like there was in the years between Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain's first demonstration of a transfer resistor in late 1947, and Texas Instrument's marketing of the first commercial silicon transistor in 1954.

Update 20-Jan-2011

Quantum computing could head to 'the cloud', study says.

Quantum computing will use the inherent uncertainties in quantum physics to carry out fast, complex computations. A report in Science shows the trick can extend to "cloud" services such as Google Docs without loss of security. This "blind quantum computing" can be carried out without a cloud computer ever knowing what the data is.

Source BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16636580

U.N. Backs $100 Laptop For World's Kids - OLPC

Update 18 Jan 2012

OLPC announced the XO 3.0 tablet yesterday, and today we had a chance to sit down with the company's CTO, Ed McNierney and Marvell's Chief Marketing Officer Tom Hayes, who gave us a tour of the new tablet. The XO 3.0 is powered by Marvell Armada PXA618 silicon, which lowers the power requirements of the tablet to a scant 2 watts. That chip, along with the custom charging circuitry developed by OLPC and Marvell means that the tablet can be charged by a hand crank at a 10:1 ratio (10 minutes of usage time for every minute spent cranking), or by the optional four watt solar panel cover at a 2:1 ratio on sunny days. Like other OLPC devices, the XO 3.0 is customizable to customer needs -- so you can get the CPU clocked at 800Mhz or 1GHz, a 1500 - 1800 mAh battery, and your choice of a Pixel Qi or standard LCD display. The slate comes with 512MB of RAM, 4GB of NAND storage, USB and USB On-The-Go ports, plus the standard OLPC power and sensor input ports as well.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/08/olpcs-xo-3-0-tablet-hands-on/


Update 21 May 2008

Second generation OLPC

Smaller with a touch screen and a price of 75 dollars.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organization focused on providing educational tools to help children in developing countries "learn learning," announced today that work is already underway on a second- generation version of its revolutionary XO laptop computer. Leveraging new advances in technology, the primary goal of the "XO-2" will be to advance new concepts of learning as well as to further drive down the cost of the laptop so that it is affordable for volume purchase by developing nations.

One Laptop Per Child Frames Next Generation of Revolutionary XO Laptop

Update 10 January 2008According to Negroponte OLPC and Microsoft are working on a dualboot facility this will enable the OLPC to run a slimmed down version of XP or Fedora Linux.
Negroponte also mention the possibility of a cooperation between Olpc and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Source: Tweakers.net

Updated 27 November 2007
Politics stifling $100 laptop
A lack of "big thinking" by politicians has stifled a scheme to distribute laptops to children in the developing world, a spokesman has said.

Updated 24 September 2007
Give 1 Get 1 scheme will start 12 November for just 2 week. Is finally happing? So far the $100 mark has not been met.



Updated 23 July 2007
'$100 laptop' production beginsFive years after the concept was first proposed, the so-called $100 laptop is poised to go into mass production. The XO will be produced in Taiwan by Quanta, the world's largest laptop manufacturer.



Updated 10-Jan-2007
Public can purchase 100$ laptop
But customers will have to buy two laptops at once - with the second going to the developing world.
Updated 02-Jan-2007
The 100$ laptop program launches in 2007 read more at BBC
More info:
MIT
100$ laptop homepage (laptop.org/)

Why not sell these Laptops (developed by MIT) in the West for double the price so for each laptop sold in the "developed world" a free laptop can be given to the "World's Kids".
U.N. Backs $100 Laptop For World's Kids

Updated 08 June 2007
ASUS has announced a $199,- laptop at Computex 2007
Asus' Eee PC 701. The $199 price tag seemed to be for real, but that's probably just the starting point. A version for "English speaking countries" could hit the streets "as early as August this year".

See: engadget

Will this mean competition for the $100,- laptop program?

BBC News - Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control

BBC News - Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control

The headset, which was developed by Australian company Emotiv for the games industry, has been around for some time. But it is only now that companies such as IBM are beginning to harness the wealth of data that it can provide.

Using software developed in-house, researchers have linked the Emotiv to devices such as a model car, a light switch and a television.

"We linked the headset to the IBM middleware, and when he pushed the cube on the screen, that behaved like a click of the mouse - so he was able to use the computer," explained IBM's Kevin Brown.

Many commercial mind control technologies are designed to restore physical ability to those who have lost it.

At Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), researchers have applied brain-computer interface technology to create thought-controlled wheelchairs and telepresence robots.

For those who prefer pedal power, Toyota is working with Saatchi & Saatchi, Parlee Cycles and DeepLocal to develop a bicycle which can shift gear based on its rider's thoughts.