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Ultrasound imaging that fits in the palm of a hand

Computer engineers at Washington University in St. Louis are bringing the minimalist approach to medical care and computing by coupling USB-based ultrasound probe technology with a smartphone, enabling a compact, mobile computational platform and a medical imaging device that fits in the palm of a hand.

William D. Richard, Ph.D., Washington University Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and David Zar, Washington University Research Associate in Computer Science and Engineering, have made commercial USB ultrasound probes compatible with Microsoft Windows Mobile-based smartphones, thanks to a $100,000 grant Microsoft awarded the two in 2008. In order to make commercial USB ultrasound probes work with smartphones, the researchers had to optimize every aspect of probe design and operation, from power consumption and data transfer rate to image formation algorithms. As a result, it is now possible to build smartphone-compatible USB ultrasound probes for imaging the kidney, liver, bladder, and eyes, endocavity probes for prostate and uterine screenings and biopsies, and vascular probes for imaging veins and arteries for starting IVs and central lines.

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Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Cloud computing has been made possible by Operating system-level virtualization. Operating system-level virtualization is a server virtualization method where the kernel of an operating system allows for multiple isolated user-space instances, instead of just one. Such instances (often called containers, VEs, VPSs or jails) may look and feel like a real server, from the point of view of its owner. On Unix systems, this technology can be thought of as an advanced implementation of the standard chroot mechanism. In addition to isolation mechanisms, the kernel often provides resource management features to limit the impact of one container’s activities on the other containers.

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Implications for biotech applications; possible targets for infection-fighting drugs
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Binshan Lin and John Vassar at the College of Business Administration, Louisiana State University in Shreveport, suggest that online learning communities have many benefits because they offer learners social networks to effectively and easily acquire and share knowledge among themselves. However, key to success, they have found is individual self-governance.

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Telecommuting has freed many to work far from the confines of the office via laptop, but the price of working while sipping a latte at that sunny café is the danger that a public network will not keep the data that passes through it safe. Now, to combat the risk inherent in remote access, the [...]

To cut the cost of bringing high-speed Internet to rural areas, Dr. Ka Lun Lee and colleagues at the University of Melbourne and NEC Australia in the state of Victoria are experimenting with a way to boost the reach of existing technology.
The 21st century has seen a big push to close the digital divide that [...]

The device looks deceptively simple – a porous clay pot placed in a five-gallon plastic bucket with a spigot – but Vinka Craver believes it can save millions of lives each year.
The assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Rhode Island says that when water is poured into the ceramic pot [...]

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Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a prototype malaria test printed on a disposable Mylar card that could easily slip into your wallet and still work when you took it out, even months later.
Paul Yager, UW bioengineering professor, and colleagues described the prototype cards in the December issue of the journal Lab on [...]

Jan Hein Hoitsma: ‘The Sustainer is a containerised installation which can be used in rural areas to convert oil-bearing crops and seeds into edible oil and biodiesel. The seeds are stored in an integrated bunker which feeds the oil press. After the oil has been extracted, it is then refined into edible oil or it [...]

Android is a software platform for mobile devices, powered by the Linux kernel, initially developed by Google and later the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries. Applications written in C and other languages can be compiled to ARM native code and run, but this development path is not officially [...]

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