The Cutting Edge: Computing / Technology / Innovation : Solving the Human Jigsaw Puzzle
Anthropologists trying to trace the evolution of mankind are faced with two major problems: finding fossil fragments and reconstructing them into human form. Vertebrate fossils are rarely found complete and undamaged, and putting the pieces together is rather like trying to make a model airplane by using a few broken pieces from several different kits.
But with the help of a new visualization software package developed by IBM researchers, anthropologists can now use advanced computer graphics and visualization techniques to electronically rebuild human fossils. Starting with a number of 400,000-year-old fossilized skull fragments discovered in Morocco several years ago, researchers digitized, analyzed and assembled five fossils.
The discoverer of some of the fossil pieces provided a blueprint for the composite electronic reconstruction. Then Alan Kalvin, a member of the computer-assisted surgery group at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and David Dean of the New York University Medical Center Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery took over. First they shrunk two larger fragments to match the size of the other pieces. Then they used mirror-imaging to accurately create three additional pieces.
Finally, the pieces were assembled with sub-millimeter precision. Not only can these electronic jigsaw puzzle pieces be moved around more easily, but the reconstruction can be easily modified when further fossils are found or theories developed.
From the Battlefield to the Nursery: Neonatal intensive care at your local hospital might not be a place you would expect to find military technology, but as part of an initiative to transfer defense technology to commercial applications, a team of researchers at Hershey (Pa.) Medical Center and the Penn State Applied Research Laboratory are developing an automated system for the care of premature infants based on battlefield techniques for integrating information.
On the battlefield, real-time information from radar, optical sensors and soldiers is integrated via methods known as data fusion technologies. The same technologies can be used to monitor the oxygen levels of babies who have respiratory distress syndrome and automatically deliver the right amount of oxygen to each infant. Too little oxygen and a baby could suffocate; too much could cause blindness. The planned system would also recognize sensor failures and other dangerous situations and alert doctors or nurses.
While a number of companies already manufacture monitors of this type, the systems currently in use process information from a single sensor. It is up to the attending doctor or nurse to relate the information coming from individual sensors, often in a high-stress situation. A data fusion module to merge and interpret the information from a variety of sensors could greatly improve patient care. Researchers hope to develop and test a prototype in partnership with a medical equipment maker over the next year.
True Blue Solution: Nature seems to have no trouble providing us with brilliant blue skies, blue lakes and bluebirds. Scientists have a more difficult task when it comes to flat-panel displays. That’s because blue is at the high-energy end of the light spectrum. In current displays, that means getting true blues requires using much higher voltage than is needed for red or orange.
If flat panels are to be used for wristwatch computers, flat home television screens or stadium-size TV screens--as many computer soothsayers hope and expect--they must be able to show sharp pictures in full colors, including blue. Enter Los Alamos National Laboratory and Planar Systems of Beaverton, Ore., which are working on the blue problem with funds from the Energy Department’s Small Business Technology Transfer Program.
The researchers are concentrating on a kind of flat panel called the electroluminescent display, in which a light emitter, or phosphor, is sandwiched between two insulating layers. When electricity is applied and exceeds a specific threshold, the insulating layer breaks down and electrons pass from one side of the sandwich to the other. On the way, the electrons excite ions of the phosphor, which in turn give off light. The color is determined by the properties of the phosphor and how much voltage is applied.
The Los Alamos researchers found that cerium-doped phosphors composed of calcium gallium sulfide, when deposited onto a thin film by a special vapor deposition process, will yield a true blue light at low voltage. The group recently received a $30-million grant from the federal government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, which will be used to build a production line for the new displays.
