Biotic Man to Aid Drug Research

GE's technology development arm General Electric Global Research has announced its plans to develop a virtual human by signing an agreement with TMTI, Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative. Also supported by DTRA, Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the Department of Defense, the project includes a computer aided model to accelerate the development of new drugs against biological attacks.

The virtual human project dubbed as Biotic Man, is a Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) software tool, which will be used to better understand the effects of a new drug much earlier than clinical experiments. PBPK will digitally model bacteria, viruses and other infection agents.

John Graf, Principal Investigator on the project for GE Global Research has said,
GE's Biotic Man project is all about speed. The goal is to enable faster development of drugs to respond to new biological threats. This new software tool also could have broad impact across the pharmaceutical industry, helping to accelerate efforts to develop new drug remedies at substantially reduced costs. This new, enhanced software tool will enable researchers to test and develop new drug therapies in a virtual, safer environment with better quantitative information.
Does it not disturb you all progress and research is geared to war industry? Of course, you can replace war with defense if you feel it is more convenient but at the end of the day, they are one and the same.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 18, 2009 at 9:21 AM

    Biotic man?Like a bioroid?Thats news for me...and yea,unfortunately,the advancements in technology is mainly used in so called defense fields.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ArchiverJanuary 18, 2009 at 1:19 PM

    Biotic Man is a well thought name. Not only it has an appeal to the public, it also accurately describes what the software does: imitate the human body or its reaction to infectious and other biological agents.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pros of Short Domain Names

Life is a good teacher. Up to now, it has never occurred to me a short domain name could be an advantage. I have always assumed, because I do it that way, people could bookmark a site when they like it regardless of the length of its name. Though I do not use it, social networking sites like Twitter changed my mind. I suddenly realized how difficult it must be to write a tweet about an article on this site without the aid of URL shortener services. Just writing the part "experimentsincyberspace/2009/04/" with the protocol prefix consumes 52 characters. I am not saying you will not be found. I am talking about the extra step, often tedious, of the necessity of shortening the URL. A very good idea could be having a short URL handy beneath or above your articles so that people can easily use it. Rather than having your visitors do it, you can take the extra step and place a short link yourself. In addition, keeping your URL intact can be a marketing and branding advantage.
Read more

A Thought Experiment on Do Follow Comments

Image
Einstein was a great scientist and without exception all physics students new to his work are introduced to his use of Gedanken Experiment or thought experiments. Gren Ireson, a lecturer at Loughborough University, UK, where his research interests include quantum philosophy, physics of sport and learning and teaching physical sciences, contests that a thought experiment has three requirements [PDF]: It is carried out in the mind (however one cares to define 'mind'). It draws on experience. It allows the experimenter to see what is happening (perhaps a better term to use than 'see' is 'imagine' or 'form a mental image').  I see a lot of blogs announcing they do follow comments lately, so I will humbly use Einstein's technique to shed some light on do follow commenting today. Let us start with a definition first. Google's Matt Cutts speaks: The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives web masters the ability to modify PageRank flow
Read more

New Rush for Top Level Domains Begins

It will shortly, if ICANN's new proposal holds up, that is. According to Paul Levins, VP corporate affairs, any domain name will be possible, subject to your imagination, The familiar .com, .net, .org and 18 other suffixes — officially "generic top-level domains" — could be joined by a seemingly endless stream of new ones next year under a landmark change approved last summer by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the entity that oversees the Web's address system. Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a web address ending in .hiphop. [...] To beat a competitor to the punch, a company might decide it needs to control a new generic domain, such as .cereal or .detergent, but it would be costly. The currently proposed application fee is $185,000, plus an annual "continuance" fee of $25,000. If more than one company wants a suffix, there could be a bidding w
Read more