Archive for category: Technology

Information and stories about technology news.

Stem Cells 101 – Regenerative Medicine, to What Extent?

Stem Cells 101
This article is intended to give a basic understanding of what stem cells are, and their potential use for improving human health.

1. What are stem cells ?

Stem cells “have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body during early life and growth.” Accordingly, they have the potential to regenerate tissue, thereby serving as a sort of “internal repair system” to replenish a damaged, diseased or aging tissue throughout life. This remarkable potential stems from an asymmetrical division process: “When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential either to remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function, such as a muscle cell, a red blood cell, or a brain cell.”

2. What differentiates Stem Cells from other cells ?

Stem cells also have specific properties: they are not fully differentiated, and they can divide and renew themselves for long periods of time. Stem cells can be found in embryonic, fetal and adult tissues. Understanding the regulation mechanisms and processes underlying long-term self replication is critical to both basic and applied life sciences as it could lead to a true cure of degenerative diseases as opposed to merely managing their symptoms.

3. Different types of stem cells

Human embryonic stem cells are typically derived from unused 5-days-old embryos, given to science under informed consent after an in-vitro fertilization. By its very nature, this type of stem cell thus has the potential to differentiate into any of the cells of a human being. By contrast, fetal and adult stem cells have a limited spectrum of differentiation, for example, hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow typically differentiate into blood cell lineages only. Sometimes, the differentiation potential of stem cells is limited to very specific cellular lineages to ensure tissue renewal throughout life (e.g, skin progenitors).

4. Potential uses and obstacles

The therapeutic potential uses of stem cells -including progenitor cells- are tremendous, from curing genetic and/or degenerative diseases to curing cancer. For instance, fully controlling the processes of cellular differentiation might lead to replacement cells for regenerative medicine. Stem cells, and their progeny, could also be used to discover or test new drugs and therapies.

5. Still a long way to go…

Stem cell research is viewed as a pillar for medical innovation as it could provide realistic solutions to treat diseases and conditions for which there is no or very limited medical options today.

However many questions remain unsolved, from the potential rejection of embryonic stem cells if they are viewed as foreign cells by the patient’s immune system, to the potential damaged state of stem and progenitors cells extracted from a diseased or aging patient. Despite the fact that there is today no evidence that stem cells can actually be curative, the frenzy fueled by the myth of an “eternal life” has generated many parallel businesses, from the hundreds of companies throughout the world proposing to bank your own stem cells, to private clinics in countries with no or permissive legislation advertising treatments for desperate patients in need (stem cell tourism).

– Lauren Yeh

Sources: NIH
Photo: 

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PATH: Transforming Global Health

ricePATH, formerly known as the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, is an international nonprofit organization that focuses on developing innovative, high-impact and low-cost health solutions in more than 70 countries.

PATH attempts to address a wide breadth of health problems ranging from vaccines for bird flu, to cheap ways to heal broken bones, to developing practical ways to purify water. The organization focuses to a large extent on collaboration. They develop health solutions with the communities that will use them, keeping them in contact with the specific needs of the people they serve. According to their website, PATH “infuses innovation and collaboration into those solutions to ensure they work in poor as well as rich countries.”

PATH began in Seattle, Washington in 1977 with the goal of implementing new contraceptives into poor countries that needed them but could not afford them. Now PATH has expanded to include all health issues in developing countries.

Today, the innovators at PATH now spend their time trying to figure out how to meet basic health needs. In the face of this daunting task, the secret to operations at PATH is their specific and autonomous projects.

PATH is organized project by project with small teams gearing solutions towards very specific health issues in specific communities. A large portion of PATH staffers also come from the for-profit community, making it easier for PATH to forge partnerships and deals with commercial companies which, according to PATH’s website, “…are a critical and unique element of our approach.”

One significant health technology developed by PATH is their Ultra Rice. Ultra Rice is made from combining rice flour with essential micronutrients and then molding the product into a rice shape. These new fortified rice grains are typically blended with normal white rice to fight malnutrition in poor communities. By addressing things like iron deficiency, vitamin A deficiency, folic acid deficiency and zinc deficiency, Ultra Rice gives children in developing countries the opportunity to grow into health adults and become productive members of their communities.

Ultra Rice is just one example of how PATH is using innovative technologies to transform the developing world. The organization’s work is important given that, in many communities, solvable health issues like malnutrition are the biggest obstacles to development. Innovations like Ultra Rice give these communities the ability to overcome obstacles and rise out of poverty.

– Martin Drake

Source: PATH, XConomy

Toy Philanthropist Invents a Super Truck for Africa

truckPoor infrastructure is one of the chronic issues in African countries. Power grids, water supply, and gas lines are often unreliable or non-existent. Of all these, however, perhaps the most basic and necessary are roads—the foundation of trade and thus economic growth. Yet despite their great importance, roads in Africa are usually difficult to traverse, dangerous, or outright unusable.

To Sir Torquil Norman, an 80-year-old toy entrepreneur in the UK, this problem has an easy solution: when roads are bad, just get better vehicles. The long-time philanthropist, who is the creator behind toy sensations like Polly Pockets and Yellow Teapot Dollhouses, recently turned his attention to inventing a cheap vehicle that could provide reliable transportation in the world’s least developed areas, like Africa.

The OX, a 1.5-ton all-terrain truck, is his answer. Designed to withstand potholes and dirt roads, the oddly toy-like truck is an impressive feat of engineering. Six OX’s can pack into a standard vehicle shipment (which usually holds only two) and each one takes three men eleven hours to assemble. Norman has tailored every aspect of the truck for rough terrain, heavy loads, and cheap repair—like interchangeable doors, seats that become ramps, and an engine that doubles as a generator.

Norman’s claim is that the OX, unlike its flat-bed counterparts, uniquely fits a market niche undiscovered by major car manufacturers. While the wealthiest parts of the world demand increasingly heavier and more expensive trucks, he claims that the developing world craves a cheap, lightweight, and durable transport vehicle—an unmet demand that not only offers a lucrative opportunity, but also a philanthropic one.

“A village with an OX would suddenly be independent and could conceivably prevent its young people being forced to move to some terrible slum in a huge city,” Norman says. “I think we might just have the tiger by the tail. It seems to me we may be opening a door to making a lot of people’s lives better.”

– John Mahon 

Sources: The Independent, Devex, Global Vehicle Trust
Photo: Needpix

USAID Gives Contracts to Louis-Berger Group

USAID Gives Contracts to Louis-Berger Group
The United States Foreign Aid budget recently contracted several development projects to the Louis-Berger Group, Inc (LBG).  The contracts, which will continue for the next three to five years, will provide logistical support, aid in information technology and clean energy, and help with legal reforms in conflict-prone areas in the Philippines.

Providing logistical and especially legal support is important, especially for the autonomous region in the Muslim Mindanao. LBG previously did work in the area and saw growth in economic activity, business development, and better governance practices as a result.

The Louis-Berger group, founded in 1953, has worked in over 70 developing countries since its beginning in 1959. It is a privately-owned company that specializes in work in the following areas: buildings and facilities, development economics, energy, environment, public administration, reconstruction and recovery, transportation, and water.

Afghanistan is one of the areas in which this company is heavily involved. In the Helmand province, Louis-Berger helped rehabilitate two turbines and generators at the Kajakai power plant.  With LBG’s help, the all-Afghani run plant now supplies sufficient power for both Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

Louis-Berger has over 30 U.S. Federal agencies as clients, including the Departments of Defense, Transportation, and Energy. It not only works inside the U.S., but also has client relationships with other countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. It purports its goal is to ‘work its way out of a job’ by emphasizing local development and sustainability. This, hopefully, will be the case for the Philippines in these new contracts funded by USAID.

– Aysha Rasool
Feature Writer

Source: PR Web

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What is PEER?

What is PEER?
PEER or, Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research, is a collaboration between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). PEER is a competitive grant program that allocates money to scientists in developing countries, who are working on research that is of importance to the development of their respective regions. PEER focuses on granting money to scientists whose research involves food security, climate change, or other development tools such as biodiversity and renewable energy. PEER attempts to create connections between scientists of developed countries and scientists of developing countries. The grants allow these scientists to conduct research that they would not have been able to do without a grant. PEER is a relatively new program, being two years old.

Alex Dehgan, science and technology advisor to USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah commented, “…PEER Science has provided over $12 million to 98 projects in 40 countries, and we are already seeing the tremendous benefits of bringing together developing and developed country researchers to solve some of our greatest global development challenges.”

Previous PEER success stories include reducing the risk of landslides and earthquakes in Lebanon and Bangladesh, decreasing air pollution in Mongolia, and improving the resilience of coral reefs and related habitats in Indonesia. PEER allows scientists in 87 countries to apply.

DeAndra Beck, program director for developing countries at NSF said, “With two or more parties contributing resources, a true intellectual partnership can be established, maximizing the potential to advance the pursuit of science and development in new and creative ways.”

PEER just announced its second cycle of awardees this June. PEER selected 54 new projects to receive a portion of the $7.5 million allocated to this cycle. Awardees were chosen out of 300 highly qualified applicants. These 54 projects reach across 32 countries and will focus on development issues. This has been an incredibly successful program in the short two years it has been running. Its innovative idea to connect scientists all over the developing world has been very effective in solving certain development issues.

– Catherine Ulrich

Sources: National Academies, All Africa
Photo: Minnesota Public Radio

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Google Blimps Bring Internet To Africa

Google Blimps
Some companies provide food to people in countries who need it, others may donate supplies to build homes or schools, and some may send doctors or medical supplies to help the sick. Google is taking a different approach, using their technology skills to bring the internet to Africa via blimps.

The company’s goal is to connect nearly 1 billion people across Africa and Asia to the internet with high-flying blimps and balloons. The Google blimps are beneficial because they can cover a wider area while remaining cost-efficient. Google has created an ecosystem of smartphones that are low-cost with low processing power, and the signals are carried by the balloons. Google also is asking the local government regulators for permission to use television airwaves for their project, because these waves are better at transferring signals through buildings and across large areas of land than traditional WiFi infrastructure.

Google isn’t the first to propose a plan that uses balloons and blimps. Afghanistan already uses blimp technology for surveillance purposes by scanning wide areas that wouldn’t be possible or as simple as other forms of ground technology. The U.S. military is also involved in cloud-type projects involving blimps, and the Army uses them for communication. Instead of using traditional satellites to communicate back and forth with troops on the ground, which is very expensive, they use Combat SkySat balloons.

Google has begun a trial launch of their blimps in South African schools to test how well the new technology performs.

– Katie Brockman

Source Forbes, Wired

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USAID and Qualcomm Expand Relationship

cell_phone
USAID and Qualcomm announced a formal agreement to work to expand global technology and increase collaborative efforts in development.  Qualcomm, a San-Diego based telecommunications company, has been working with USAID in recent years to improve access to technology in developing countries. The formal agreement will give Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach Division the ability to carry out projects.

Those that have already benefited from USAID and Qualcomm’s projects are fishermen in Brazil, police officers in El Salvador, and health workers in the Philippines.  In Brazil, the joint project provided small-scale fisherman with mobile devices and applications to connect with buyers, track sales, and get weather updates. Qualcomm was able to equip police in high-crime neighborhoods in El Salvador with smart phones that allowed them to connect to a database to work to reduce crime. Collaboration in the Philippines helped rural health clinics establish electronic records.

USAID commended Qualcomm for being an innovative, nimble, and strategic global technology leader.  USAID and Qualcomm share a vision of how to address the challenges in the developing world. Among the current goals of the formal agreement are to close the mobile phone gender gap, expand access to broadband, reduce the negative effects of climate change, and connect small farmers to market data.  Projects in Africa and Asia are the top priority and future consideration will be given to other areas including Latin America.

The future of technology in developing nations is changing quickly and this is just more step in the right direction.

– Amanda Kloeppel

Source: UT San Diego
Photo: CIAT News

Iqbal Quadir’s TED Talk: Mobiles Fight Poverty

Iqbal Quadir is an advocate of business as a humanitarian tool. With GrameenPhone, he brought the first commercial telecom services to poor areas of Bangladesh. Partnering with microcredit pioneer GrameenBank in 1997, Quadir established GrameenPhone, a wireless operator that provides phone services to 80 million rural Bangladeshi. The company has become the standard for a bottom-up, tech-empowered approach to development.

In his TED Talk, he first questioned the way that rich counties sent aid to poor countries to fight poverty. And also, even though he did not find much evidence to support the idea that connectivity can really increase productivity, he presented research done by the International Telecommunication Union showing the positive effects it has. The impact of one new telephone to richer countries’ GDP is very little, however, one new telephone has a huge impact on the GDP of poorer countries.

“Mobiles have a triple impact,” Quadir says. “They provide business opportunities; connect the village to the world; and generate over time a culture of entrepreneurship, which is crucial for any economic development.”

– Caiqing Jin(Kelly)

Source: TED Talk

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The Future of Toilets in Poor Countries

The future of toilets in poor countries
What does the future of toilets in poor countries look like? The Gates Foundation hosted a competition to reinvent the toilet to process human waste without utilizing piped water, sewer or electrical connections and to transform waste into useful resources like water and energy.

The grand prize design was a solar-powered toilet that creates hydrogen and electricity. The second place prize was taken by a toilet that creates biological charcoal, minerals and clean water. A toilet that sanitizes feces and urine and recovers resources and creates clean water won third place.

Why all the excitement about toilets? In a nutshell, return on investments in sanitation is huge. For every dollar spent on sanitation, 5.5 dollars are returned. At a national level, lack of access to proper sanitation costs countries up to 7 percent of their GDP. In addition to being a smart investment, investing in sanitation is also a moral imperative. Diarrhea is the cause of an estimated 5000 child deaths every day. In areas where people defecate in the open or share large community bathrooms, women and girls are more frequently victimized.

Despite these striking numbers, improved sanitation is neglected at every political level. Without a drastic shift in strategies and the courage to undertake this stigmatized issue, the Millennium Development target of cutting the proportion of the population without access to clean water and basic sanitation by a half will be missed by a long shot.

In addition to the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, the government of India is running multiple campaigns to improve sanitation such as the “No toilet, no bride” campaign and an information and shaming campaign aimed at changing the culture of open-space defecation.

The World Bank also recently wrapped up a sanitation hackathon where mobile phone application developers were challenged to create apps to improve sanitation. Many involved mapping public toilets and reporting malfunctioning toilets. Several were designed as games to teach children good sanitation.

– Katherine Zobre


Sources: Gates Foundation , Global Poverty Project
Photo: The Guardian

How the 2022 World Cup Could Help Alleviate Poverty

How the 2022 World Cup Could Help Alleviate Poverty
Qatar will be hosting the World Cup in 2022 which creates the problem of dealing with the high climate experienced by the region. Temperatures in Qatar reach roughly 104 Fahrenheit and while the World Cup has relatively little effect of many impoverished nations the developments made to assist in cooling the stadium could be implemented throughout the Middle East.

Nasser Al-Khelaifi, a former professional tennis player and current sports businessman, is acting as the organizing committee’s director of communications and marketing. The stadium has already had a cooling system installed which has earned it the title of being the first and only cooled stadium in the world. However, the main element of the 2022 World Cup that could help alleviate poverty is the method in which they power the cooling system.

Al-Khelaifi is working with companies in Germany to develop a more resilient solar power grid to help power the stadium. Germany has thus far been leading the way in solar power technology and should prove useful in developing a new technology to deal with the conditions of harvesting power in the desert. The main problems in harvesting solar energy in the desert are keeping the grids clean enough to run efficiently.

By working to develop grids more resistant to the harsh environment of the desert, Al-Khelaifi could be producing a useful technology to assist in powering the impoverished communities which lie in some of the world’s harshest environment.

When the new solar power grids are not using the energy gathered by the grids for the World Cup in 2022, it will be put toward powering the neighboring communities.

– Pete Grapentien

Source: Arab Times
Photo: Ahram Online