Latest Technologies: Biocybernetics

India Latest Technology - NANO

The much awaited Tata small car, which is giving sleepless nights to its rivals, was finally unveiled at the Auto Expo 2008. The small car, which is priced at Rs100, 000 (2,500 dollars), has been named Nano. According to the Tata Motors, the Nano will hit the Indian roads later this year. Ever since the Tatas announced their intention of developing the 1 lakh car (touted as people’s car), the auto industry experts have been raising doubts over the price, features, safety and specifications of Tata Nano. Have a look at specifications and other aspects of the Tata Nano, the four door mini-hatchback.

Looks & Dimensions of Nano: Keeping in mind the young age group, the Tata Motors has strived well to give the Nano a contemporary and stylish look. The snub-nosed small car derives inspiration from Fiat 500 and Nissan Micra. As far as dimensions of the car are concerned, Nano is 3.1 metres (10.23 feet) long, 1.5 metres wide and 1.6 metres high and can accommodate four to five people.

Engine: The small car sports a two cylinder 623 cc, 33 horsepower rear mounted multi-point fuel injection (MPFi) petrol engine. Tata claims that the car can touch the top speed of 105 kms.

Fuel Efficiency: Engineers at Tata Motors have designed an efficient engine that can run 20 Kms on every litre of petrol.

Pollution: Against the criticism and concerns of the environmentalists, Nano surpasses Indian regulatory requirements and Euro IV emission norms. In fact, Tata claims that the small car is less polluting than most of the bikes on Indian roads.

Safety: Tata says that they have tested the small car extensively for front, rear and side collisions and come out with a product that exceeds current regulatory requirements. The safety features of the Nano include a strong passenger compartment, intrusion resistant doors, seat belts, sturdy seats and anchorage.
Price: The base model of the car will sport a price tag of Rs 100,000 (2,500 dollars) which excludes taxes and transport costs. The high end/deluxe models will include air-conditioning and other features to be incorporated based on suggestions of the common people

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Biocybernetics

Biocybernetics is the application of cybernetics to the biological science, comprised of biological disciplines that benefit from the application of cybernetics: neurology, multicellular systems and others. Biocybernetics plays a major role in systems biology, seeking to integrate different levels of information to understand how biological systems function.

RESEARCH IN THE BIOCYBERNETICS LABORATORY these days is somewhat eclectic, but - as alway interdisciplinary. Our work typically involves integration of theory with real laboratory data, using biomodeling, computational and biosystems approaches. Our current problem domains are physiological systems, disease processes, pharmacology, and some post-genomic bioinformatics. The pedagogy of the lab involves development and exploitation of the synergistic and methodologic interface between structural and computational biomodeling with laboratory data, or computational systems biology, with a focus on integrated approaches for solving complex biosystem problems from sparse biodata (e.g. in physiology, medicine and pharmacology), as well as voluminous biodata (e.g. from genomic libraries and DNA array data).

NEUROENDOCRINE PHYSIOLOGY RESEARCH
Our primary neuroendocrine research project involves experimental studies of thyroid hormone regulation and metabolism.Our overall long-term goal is enhancement of understanding of the hierarchical mechanisms of control of thyroid hormone (TH) production, organ distribution metabolism and excretion in mammals and fishes. Our approach is quantitative and integrative, with emphasis on both whole-organism and local organ TH regulation in health and disease states (integrated regulation of sources and sinks). Over the last 30 years, our contributions to the literature of TH metabolism and physiology have been realized using an integrated multidisciplinary investigative approach. Physiology and biochemistry laboratory methodologies have been supplemented with two distinct and highly sophisticated biomodeling and experiment design approaches pioneered in our laboratory. Both treat in vivo derived multiorgan-whole-body data, one collected from steady state tracer kinetic experiments using multisite hormone constant infusion inputs, the other from multisite hormone pulse-dose transient response kinetic experiments. We are also currently embarking on a new modality, using a new technology, MicroPET, for whole-body dynamic functional imaging, for enhancing our in vivo TH kinetic analysis approach.

We continue to emphasize three focus areas, in health versus disease states: (1) the arterio-enterohepatic system, particularly the role of intestinal components and processes in overall TH regulation (2) whole-body production of the hormone triiodothyronine (T3) from thyroxine (T4) in nonendocrine organs and from the thyroid; and (3) local organ T3 production rates, which have not been fully quantified in any organ, in any species, a problem we have nearly resolved in our most recent work.

We are also exploring alternative mechanisms including a possible "chaos" explanation for the well-established pulsatile nature of secretion of hormones from the pituitary gland. These studies utilize techniques of computational biology and nonlinear biomodeling, some developed by us, and others by collaborators at MIT, applied to human pituitary data supplied by collaborators at the University of Oregon.