Today's Achievements Research Articles

Microbial biosensors for diagnostics, surveillance and epidemiology: Today's achievements and tomorrow's prospects.

Microbial biosensors hold great promise for engineering high-performance, field-deployable and affordable detection devices for medical and environmental applications. This review explores recent advances in the field, highlighting new sensing strategies and modalities for whole-cell biosensors as well as the remarkable expansion of microbial cell-free systems. We also discuss improvements in robustness that have enhanced the ability of biosensors to withstand the challenging conditions found in biological samples. However, limitations remain in expanding the detection repertoire, particularly for proteins. We anticipate that the AI-powered revolution in protein design will streamline the engineering of custom-made sensing modules and unlock the full potential of microbial biosensors.

Norms in action? On the channels through which Poland's historical partitions may still contribute to divergent educational achievements in the country's regions.

The goal of this paper is to better understand the importance of a long-erased border between two empires that once partitioned Poland and its ongoing effect on regional educational achievement. Previous research has indicated that inherited norms towards education may explain the observed gap in the achievement of students in the former Austrian and Russian partitions of Poland. Findings suggest that although a gap in favour of the former Austrian partition does indeed exist in four school subjects, there is no convincing evidence of the causal effect of historically rooted norms on the achievements of today's students. If such an effect exists, it is probably indirect and works through the accumulated educational attainments of adult generations and quality of instruction rather than by directly influencing the attitudes of today's students.

Artificial Intelligence and Brain Science: the Present and the Future

Artificial intelligence and brain science have kept a swinging relationship with opposing views: "Artificial realization of intelligence should be free from biological constraints" and "We should reverse-engineer the best existing implementation of intelligence." In this article, we first review today's achievements of artificial intelligence and its impacts on brain and life sciences. We then discuss how progresses in brain science can contribute to future developments in artificial intelligence.

Smart materials on the way to theranostic nanorobots: Molecular machines and nanomotors, advanced biosensors, and intelligent vehicles for drug delivery.

Theranostics, a fusion of two key parts of modern medicine - diagnostics and therapy of the organism's disorders, promises to bring the efficacy of medical treatment to a fundamentally new level and to become the basis of personalized medicine. Extrapolating today's progress in the field of smart materials to the long-run prospect, we can imagine future intelligent agents capable of performing complex analysis of different physiological factors inside the living organism and implementing a built-in program thereby triggering a series of therapeutic actions. These agents, by analogy with their macroscopic counterparts, can be called nanorobots. It is quite obscure what these devices are going to look like but they will be more or less based on today's achievements in nanobiotechnology. The present Review is an attempt to systematize highly diverse nanomaterials, which may potentially serve as modules for theranostic nanorobotics, e.g., nanomotors, sensing units, and payload carriers. Biocomputing-based sensing, externally actuated or chemically "fueled" autonomous movement, swarm inter-agent communication behavior are just a few inspiring examples that nanobiotechnology can offer today for construction of truly intelligent drug delivery systems. The progress of smart nanomaterials toward fully autonomous drug delivery nanorobots is an exciting prospect for disease treatment. Synergistic combination of the available approaches and their further development may produce intelligent drugs of unmatched functionality.

History and today's achievements of the Department of Pathological Physiology

History and today's achievements of the Department of Pathological Physiology

Inclusion and the standards agenda: a reflective commentary

Successive governments in the UK have measured the quality of schools through a simplistic method based upon the academic attainment of pupils. Whilst this measure is important it fails to take into account those other qualities that education should develop in children. In this paper the author reviews two papers by Glazzard (2014) that suggest an incompatibility between the standards agenda and policies advocating greater inclusion for students with special educational needs. The author argues that these two are not wholly incompatible but that the interpretation of the language used, coupled with a political agenda aimed at the marketisation of education, are providing a false impression of the achievements of today's teachers.

Al-Akhawayni's description of pulmonary circulation

Since antiquity, heart function and the mechanism of blood circulation within the human body have been the focus of attention of scientists from different parts of the world. Over the passage of time, the theories and works of these scientists have resulted in the achievement of today's knowledge of circulation. The medieval Persian scholar, Al-Akhawayni Bukhari (?-983AD), is among the physicians who investigated both the anatomy and the physiology of the human body. Al-Akhawayni describes the mechanism of pulmonary circulation in his only extant book, "Hidayat al-Muta`llemin fi al-Tibb" (A Scholar's Guide to Medicine) with which he made a contribution to the development of knowledge regarding this mechanism in the medicine of the Islamic world. In this paper, Al-Akhawayni's viewpoints on anatomy and the function of the heart, its related vessels, and also pulmonary circulation will be briefly discussed.

Recollections of People and Ideas

This special issue marks the 25th anniversary of IEEE Intelligent Systems. In looking back over the magazine's history, it's obvious that today's achievements would not be possible without the guidance and visions of editors in chief past. As part of this message, past EICs speak on their experiences at the helm of this publication.

STRUCTURED INFLUENZA MODEL FOR META-POPULATION

We present a mathematical model parameterized to simulate the 1918 pandemic and modified to account for today's achievements in medical care and technology. Our goal is to use the model with carefully selected parameters to analyze and simulate different scenarios in a changing environment including behavior changes and reduction of mobility as the disease progresses. The model is structured by the disease age, representing the time elapsed since the exposure to influenza infection, and most of the parameters used in this study are thus disease-age dependent. We also consider the case where an influenza pandemic affects two distinct regions, connected only through controlled mobility. We evaluate the influence of different control measures on temporal patterns of disease dynamics and consider the impact of the movement of disease age structured population on spatial spread. A special example is examined that considers different scenarios of disease spread between Canada and USA when different border control strategies are implemented.

Towards the Future Internet: virtual networks for convergent services

In this paper we will investigate the deficiencies and the achievements of today's Internet. We outline how Network Virtualization (NV) can overcome the shortfalls of today's networks, how it paves the way for the Future Internet, and how it can facilitate the convergence of currently different networks. The major building blocks of NV are the a) use of application-specific routing overlays, b) the safe consolidation of resources by OS virtualization on a generic infrastructure, and c) the exploitation of the network diversity for performance enhancements and for new business models, such as the provisioning of intermediates nodes or path oracles. Furthermore, we detail a more elaborate concept for network virtualization, which is denoted as Transport Virtualization (TV). TV transfers the concept of location independence of resources to the area of data transport in communication networks.

The ASCO Cancer Foundation.

It is a privilege to be invited to contribute to the Partners in Cancer Care column in this issue of Journal of Oncology Practice. Participating in this edition of JOP gives us an opportunity to express our gratitude for the work the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) members do and for member support of the mission of the ASCO Cancer Foundation (TACF), to reflect on our partnership, and to share some of our accomplishments and plans to improve the lives of people with cancer. First, I would to acknowledge the leadership of the ASCO Clinical Practice Committee (CPC) in supporting the ASCO Cancer Foundation Grants Program by funding a Young Investigator Award (YIA). In 2007, the CPC made ASCO history by funding the first-ever committee-supported YIA. They repeated their generosity and funded another YIA awarded in June. Dr Richard T. Lee from the University of Chicago became the recipient of the 2008 CPC YIA for his abstract titled “Cancer Patients Use of and Communication Patterns about Complementary and Alternative Medicines During Clinical Trials.” The grants program celebrated its 25th anniversary at the 2008 ASCO Annual Meeting recognizing more than $48 million that has been awarded in grant funding since 1984. This year, more than $7.6 million was awarded to support clinical and translational research designed to improve cancer prevention, treatment, and care. Several new grants were awarded this year including three Clinical Oncology Research Awards (CORA), three Advanced Clinical Research Awards (ACRA), and two Translational Research Professorships. Dr Nancy Davidson, Immediate Past President of ASCO, announced TACF's establishment of a mission endowment at the 2008 Annual Meeting. This fund will enhance our ability to continue ASCO's important work. The endowment will ensure that the extraordinary promise of the ever-increasing lifesaving advances of new research be made available to oncologists, and ultimately to patients around the world. Our mission endowment was established to provide a long-term base of support in five key areas: research, patient education, physician education, international outreach, and access to care. The mission endowment's founding supporters are: Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline Oncology, Novartis Oncology, and sanofi-aventis US. There are several ways individuals, groups, corporations, and foundations can participate. One way is to establish a named endowed fund. Please contact the development office to talk about leaving a legacy through TACF. TACF has hosted several events to educate patients and the public about important developments and progress in cancer medicine. Inaugural Public Forums were held in conjunction with the 2007 Breast Cancer Symposium and the 2008 Genitourinary Cancer Symposiums. Other critical expanded patient education offerings are being supported through the foundation including Cancer.Net, print materials, and advocate scholarships. The new TACF brand and name were officially introduced April 1, 2008, as was the Foundation's new Web site: www.ascocancerfoundation.org. Our name has changed slightly, but our charitable mission continues to be founded on four core tenets: research is at the heart of progress against cancer; cutting-edge knowledge is essential when to comes to treating people with cancer; getting good cancer care starts with getting good cancer information; and all patients with cancer deserve access to the best possible care. Thank you ASCO members for your role in making ASCO the world's authoritative body on cancer. You provide the inspiration, knowledge, and hope for those who are teaching, researching, and providing patients with the highest stand of care worldwide. TACF raises funds that help make those achievements possible. Collaborating with TACF will ensure that today's achievements reach those who need them, as quickly as possible. Together we are making a world of difference in cancer care. Figure 1

Tomorrow's Tissue Engineering Triumphs Require Understanding of Today's Achievements

Tomorrow's Tissue Engineering Triumphs Require Understanding of Today's Achievements

Particle Colliders for High Energy Physics

The purpose of this article is to outline the development of particle colliders from their inception just over a half-century ago, expand on today's achievements, and remark on the potential of coming years. There are three main sections, entitled "Past," "Present," and "Future." "Past" starts with the electron and electron–positron colliders of the 1950s, continues through the proton rings at CERN, and concludes with LEP. Technology development enters the section Present, "which includes not only the major colliders in both the lepton and baryon worlds, but also recognition of the near-immediate entry of the Large Hadron Collider. "Future" looks at the next potential steps, the most prominent of which is an electron–positron partner to the LHC, but there are other very interesting propositions undergoing exploration that include muon storage and even conceivably departure from reliance on radio frequency acceleration.

The pulsed electro-acoustic technique in research on dielectrics for electrical engineering. Today's achievements and perspectives for the future

The pulsed electro-acoustic technique is presented to the Electrical Engineering community where it can find many applications, from the development of improved materials for electrical insulation to the control of electrostatic surface discharge (ESD) phenomena. After a short introduction of the space charge problem, we introduce the technique itself and we show how consistent quantitative information can be extracted from this simple method taking examples of dielectrics under field or charged by an electron beam. Non-polar and polar materials are considered and it is shown that space charge and polarization effects can be separated from the spectra analysis. In a last part, we review new perspectives open by this technique to understand and to model electrical transport in dielectrics

Reducing cardiovascular risk:Today's achievements ‐ Tomorrow's opportunities (October 5th and 6th 1999)

Reducing cardiovascular risk:Today's achievements ‐ Tomorrow's opportunities (October 5th and 6th 1999)

Green Plants For Industrial Oleochemicals The Management of a Possible Cancer Risk

Abstract Twenty-five years after discovery of the skin-irritant and tumour-promoting diterpene esters in Euphorbiaceae species at the Institut fur Biochemie of the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum basic knowledge has been developed enough to be used successfully in management of a putative risk of cancer associated with innovative explorations of Euphorbiaceae as renewable industrial resources. Therefore, the 25th anniversary of the Centre may be considered a landmark of scientific know-how in the control of a possible carcinogen as a new category of environmental risk factors of cancer. With the achievements of today a marked refinement has become feasible in assessing the risk of cancer associated with environmental factors.

PATENTING NEW LIFE FORMS: A DILEMMA IN BIOETHICS AND THE LAW

Two years ago Justice Michael Kirby wrote: The dynamic forces of science and technology affect the definition of human rights. It could scarcely be otherwise in the last years of the twentieth century. Our time has seen many remarkable scientific and technological developments. They profoundly affect the individual, the social environment, the relationships of nation states and the planet. They reach out into space. The dreams of scientists of yesterday become the fascinating achievements of today and the prospects of tomorrow. In this article the authors wish to consider an important and increasingly controversial legal aspect of one of the 'dynamic forces' of science and technology in the 1980's: genetic engineering. Two questions will be addressed in the ensuing pages: is it presently possible to patent the results of genetic engineering research on living organisms and is that position in law one which should be retained or altered in some way or other? It will be seen that the second question requires consideration not just of legal issues but of economic, moral and political issues as well.

Agricultural Research in Groundnut Cultivation

Modern agricultural science developed from the days of Liebig and Schubler in Germany, Boussingault in France and Lawes and Gilbert in England. Since then research in agriculture has made vast strides and other sciences like chemistry, biology, physics, etc., have also contributed to its development. Improvements by way of evolving new strains, new control methods against weeds, pests and diseases, etc., are also being effected year after year. The urge for bettering the achievements of to-day is growing and is bound to grow, as is reflected in the title for this year's symposium.