Nanotechnology and government strategies worldwide
Dublin, Ireland: According to Research and Markets, a leading source for market research and market data, the worldwide nanotechnology research and development (R&D) investment reported by government organizations has increased approximately five times in the last five years between 1997 and 2002.

At least 30 countries have initiated national activities in this field. Scientists have opened a broad net of discoveries that does not leave any major research area untouched in physical, biological, and engineering sciences. Industry has gained confidence that nanotechnology will bring competitive advantages. The worldwide annual industrial production in the nanotech sectors is estimated to exceed $1 trillion in 10 - 15 years from now, which would require about 2 million nanotechnology workers.

The United States leads the way and will be allocating $800million in funding to the 2004 National Nanotechnolgy Initiative (NNI). The House of Representatives has also approved a bill that plans to allocate $2.36 billion to nanotechnology programmes over the next three years, not to mention the substantial state funding programmes.

Japan is next up, with almost $750millon in funding in 2002 and the European Union is assigning nanotechnology special status in the new Sixth Framework Programme. Germany and Switzerland are leading the way in Europe, closely followed by the UK. The NNI stimulated worldwide interest and most developed countries now have fully-fledged nanotechnology initiatives.

Germany is the third largest country, worldwide, in both scientific publications and patenting in the area of nanotechnology. There has been an impressive and detailed approach to creating an infrastructure across the spectrum of pure research, applications-oriented research and research within universities, all of which produce good students for research and industry. This has been backed by strong government funding, over 115 million euros in 2003.

The Irish government has substantially increased its nanotechnology funding in the past two years, building on an infrastructure based mainly in the National Microelectronics Research Centre in Cork. This funding seeks to enhance existing nanoscale electronics activities while broadening them to include other emergent areas such as the interface between nanotechnology and photonics.

Universities and the government fund most of China's nanotechnology research -both in Hong Kong and on the Mainland. In 2001, Chinese universities granted 465,000 science and engineering degrees, approaching the total for the US. China is also making significant strides in semiconductor production. Areas of strength are in development of nanoprobes and manufacturing processes using nanotubes.

China plans to spend USD250-300 million within the current five-year plan (2001-2005). The short -term strategy of China is to integrate nanotechnology with the traditional industries and develop products with competitive quality and performance.
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Cardio-vascular diseases to cost US $352bn
Dublin, Ireland: According to Research and Markets, a leading source for market research and market data, the direct and indirect costs of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke in the US alone, in 2003, are estimated at almost $352bn. Reducing these costs by appropriately treating cardiovascular risk factors has become a major focus of the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare payors.
Some of the key findings in this report:

- The global anti-hypertensive market was worth approximately $36.8bn in 2002. As the only class to remain entirely patent protected, the angiotensin receptor blockers will drive future growth within the global anti-hypertensive market.

- Pfizer is developing a single pill combination of Lipitor and its antihypertensive Norvasc. Currently in registration in the US, the product, branded Caduet, could generate sales of $1bn in 2008, although it is likely that other combinations of statins and anti-hypertensives will eventually prove more effective.

The prevalance of diabetes is rising rapidly, up from 30 million globally in 1985 to a forecast 300 million in 2005. This reflects growth of the aging population, adoption of unhealthy diets, obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

- The current obesity market is worth just less than $800m and has the potential to expand to around $1.6bn by 2010. Expansion will primarily be driven by the reimbursement and wider availability of anti-obesity therapies, based on the growing realization that treatment leads to a reduction in expensive co-morbidities and mortality.
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PinPoint: Powerful tool for baggage and cargo security
Dulles, USA: Guardian Technologies International, Inc., a leading provider of intelligent imaging solutions, has announced its new threat identification and detection alert solution, PinPoint, which combines software with artificial intelligence to augment traditional baggage scanning equipment to identify threat items, such as heavy metal objects and bombs/C4 explosives, with an accuracy rate of up to 90 per cent, which is more than twice the rate of existing scanning systems. PinPoint also offers a minimal "false positive" rate of less than 10 per cent, compared to 30-60 per cent for traditional scanning as reported in a 2003 GAO study.

According to the company airports are severely restricted in their ability to detect threat items when relying on traditional baggage scanning equipment and the human eye. Additionally baggage screeners have to maintain acceptable passenger throughput and hence must assess potential threat items in just seconds by viewing an X-ray image produced by non-intelligent scanning equipment. The company says that plastic explosives, and other threat items, have specific densities and characteristics, which are similar to those of non-threat items contained in baggage. The X-ray images produced by current baggage scanning technology often do not differentiate between threat and non-threat items enough to capture a human operator's attention.

PinPoint analyzes the X-ray image for threat item characteristics via a volume of parallel analytics in less than one second. When a threat is detected, Pinpoint immediately places a red box around the image of the suspected threat item, and sends a warning message to the operator stating the type of threat item found. Because mathematical analysis can distinguish minute variations in an image far more reliably than the human eye, PinPoint consistently detects even the most cleverly hidden or disguised threat items.
The safety and economic benefits of PinPoint are immediate for the transportation industry, which seeks to maximize screening accuracy and efficiency for carry-on bags, checked baggage, and airline and sea cargo containers. General availability of PinPoint is scheduled for the third quarter of 2004.
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DAX-2408: Universal data acquisition system with automatic sensor recognition
Detroit,USA: imcDataWorks, LLC, a world leader in measurement engineering, has introduced the DAX-2408, an ultra-compact universal data acquisition system, tailored for applications in transportation engineering and testing, featuring a revolutionary new "Plug & Measure" system that renders complex measurement devices obsolete.

DAX-2408 is a robust data acquisition device for tough, mobile testing, while still delivering laboratory quality measurements, testing control and flexibility. Applications can be mobile or stationary, in lab settings, on test benches, in vehicles, plants or industrial installations, wherever flexible, multi-channel measurements are required, regardless of mechanical or temperature stress.

Live operation and configuration of the DAX-2408 is easily achieved with any standard PC via TCP/IP - ethernet wired or wireless. Measurements can be continuously transferred at rates up to the aggregate sampling rate of 400 kHz, displayed, and saved on the PC's hard drive.

The DAX-2408 is able to read sensor data returned by a smart sensor together with the TEDS information, and configure itself automatically. It is no longer necessary to sort out channel numbers and signal conditioners. TEDS contains sensor data and configuration requirements, such as calibration data, input type, sampling rate, trigger configuration, etc. all based on a channel name. Combined with the TEDS memory clip from imc DataWorks, any sensor can now be TEDS enabled.

In PC-less, stand-alone operations, the DAX-2408 becomes an intelligent data logger, saving data internally on a standard PCMCIA flash card.
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