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Notiziario Marketpress di
Marted́ 09 Marzo 2004
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MILANOTECH2004 MILANO, - MAY 19-20, 2004 : UNIVERSAL TRANSLATION - MICROFLUIDIC OPTICAL FIBERS - RNAI THERAPY - NANOWIRES - PERSONAL GENOMICS |
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Milano, 9 marzo 2004 - Following our successful Biomilano 2003 conference, the Milano Group is organizing for May of 2004 a technology partnering conference. Our conferences are a unique approach to presenting that will give participating companies access to the Italian financial and industry sectors. This select group will have the opportunity to develop new contacts and to interact with representatives focusing on emerging and established technologies. Milanotech 2004 will be held in Milano, Italy on May 19 and 20, 2004. Day one of the conference will include general presentations to the financial community followed up on day two with one-on-one meetings with industry sector representatives and financial institutions who have expressed an interest in your company. Universal Translation - Distinct from speech recognition and synthesis, the technology behind universal translation has matured in recent years, driven in part by global business and security needs. In 10 years, everyone may have universal-translation software on their handheld or cell phone. A universal translator would benefit not only the military, but would also be valuable to tourists, airport personnel, phone operators, and border patrol and customs agents. In the future, we may all wear a tiny wearable translator in order to remove one of the biggest barriers to communication across cultures. Microfluidic Optical Fibers - The blazing-fast Internet access of the future--imagine downloading movies in seconds--might just depend on a little plumbing in the network. Tiny droplets of fluid inside fiber-optic channels could improve the flow of data-carrying photons, speeding transmission and improving reliability. Prototype devices, called microfluidic optical fibers, may be the key to superfast delivery of everything from email to Web-based computer programs, once "bandwidth" again becomes the mantra. While the optical fibers that carry today's phone and data transmissions consist of glass tubing that is flexible but solid, microfluidic fibers are bored through with microscopic channels, ranging from one to 300 micrometers in diameter, depending on their use. Rnai Therapy - From heart disease to hepatitis, cancer to Aids, a host of modern ailments are triggered by our own errant genes--or by those of invading organisms. So if a simple technique could be found for turning off specific genes at will, these diseases could--in theory--be arrested or cured. Once such solution is Rna inferference. It was discovered that tiny double-stranded molecules of Rna designed to target a certain gene can, when introduced into human cells, specifically block that gene's effects. The implications of Rnai are breathtaking, because living organisms are largely defined by the exquisitely orchestrated turning on and off of genes. For example, a cut on a finger activates blood-clotting genes, and clot formation in turn shuts them down. Pharmaceutical companies are already using Rnai to discover drug targets, by simply blocking the activity of human genes, one by one, to see what happens. Nanowires - Few emerging technologies have offered as much promise as nanotechnology, touted as the means of keeping the decades-long electronics shrinkfest in full sprint and transfiguring disciplines from power production to medical diagnostics. Companies from Samsung Electronics to Wilson Sporting Goods have invested in nanotech, and nearly every major university boasts a nanotechnology initiative. Red hot, even within this R&d frenzy, are researchers learning to make the nanoscale wires that could be key elements in many working nanodevices. As their name implies, nanowires are long, thin, and tiny--perhaps one-ten-thousandth the width of a human hair. Researchers can now manipulate the wires' diameters (from five to several hundred nanometers) and lengths (up to hundreds of micrometers). Wires have been made out of such materials as the ubiquitous semiconductor silicon, chemically sensitive tin oxide, and light-emitting semiconductors like gallium nitride. Personal Genomics - Three Billion. That's the approximate number of Dna "letters" in each person's genome. The Human Genome Project managed a complete, letter-by-letter sequence of a model human--a boon for research. But examining the specific genetic material of each patient in a doctor's office by wading through those three billion letters just isn't pratical. So to achieve the dream of personalized medicine--a future in which a simple blood test will determine the best course of treatment based on a patient's genes--many scientists are taking a shortcut: focusing on only the differences between people's genomes. Genetic tests can already tell who carries genes for certain rare diseases like Huntington's, and who will experience the toxic side effects of a few particular drugs, but each of these tests examines only one or two genes. Most common diseases and drug reactions, however, involve several widely scattered genes, so researchers want to find ways to analyze an individual's whole genome. Since most genetic differences between individuals are attributable to single-letter variations called single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or Snps, scientists believe that identifying genomewide patterns of these variants that correspond to particular diagnoses or drug reponses is the quickest, most cost-effective way to make patients' genetic information useful. Infolink: http://www.Milanogroup.com/modules.php?name=milanotech2004
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