The University of Florida’s Digital Worlds Institute in cooperation with King’s alma mater Morehouse College in Atlanta kicked off the first of the webcasts at 10 a.m. EDT on April 4, when experts from UF and Morehouse, along with institutions in China, India, Kenya and South Africa, discussed in real-time King’s meaning for the 21st century, said James Oliverio, director of UF’s Digital Worlds Institute. The other three programs are also scheduled at 10 a.m. on successive Fridays in April, and all can be viewed on the Internet at www.worldhouse.morehouse.edu.

In his “World House” speech upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, King said “modern man has brought this whole world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future. He has reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success. He has produced machines that think. Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance.”

The outreach developed from a collaboration between UF and Morehouse College, the recipient of about 10,000 pieces of Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal writings in 2006. Terry Mills, a former UF dean who moved to Morehouse last year to become the Margaret Mitchell Marsh Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, said the idea came in discussions he had with Oliverio about how the two institutions might use the acquisition in educational programming.

The innovativeness of the technology at Digital Worlds Institute, which Mills called the “Imac Theater of Videoconferencing” for its ability to allow multiple partners around the globe to engage in an interactive, unified virtual space, made UF the natural choice to help produce the program, he said. “There are also geographic and historical reasons for the connection, notably Gainesville’s close proximity to St. Augustine where Dr. King had led freedom marches as well as its location near the site of the Rosewood massacre,” Mills said.

The purpose of the global discussions is not only to remind the world of King’s legacy but to keep his vision alive, as his message continues to have relevance today, Oliverio said.

“This is a memorial to Dr. King, not just in the sense of looking backward to some academic papers in a museum, but honoring his life’s work in the hopes that students of today at Morehouse, UF and the other participating institutions will reassess their involvement with their own societies in the same way that Dr. King took a stand against oppression of African Americans in the United States,” he said. “Even at the beginning of the 21st century human kind is still butchering each other in tribal conflicts over economic materialism and resources.”

Although King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is well-known among college students, many are not familiar with the “World House” concept mentioned in his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech and his writings where he discusses the need to fight racism, war and poverty, he said.

A group of engineering students at the University of Florida has come up with a method for using an airbrush to make microelectrodes — tiny conductors used in an increasing range of consumer, research and medical products. The technique is simpler than the standard one, at least for small projects that require production of only a few electrodes.

“The idea was to try to find something cheap and quick, that we could do in our own lab without much expense,” said student Corey Walker.

Walker was one of four UF engineering students who worked on the project. Now a doctoral student in biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine, he is the lead author of a paper appearing this month in the online edition of the journal Electroanalysis.

Microelectrodes are highly sensitive, fingernail-sized devices used, for example, in off-the-shelf glucose monitors for diabetics. They are also vital to “lab on a chip” devices under development to identify substances in air, blood or other samples.

The industry standard for manufacturing microelectrodes is screen printing, a technique that, oddly, is also borrowed from the visual arts. But it requires a screen printer, and the students, who were trying to craft a hydrogen sensor, didn’t have one.

So a student who used airbrushes to build model airplanes suggested they try that tool. Trials and tests perfected the approach, with the students eventually using fully airbrushed electrodes to craft a working sensor. The technique works best for small projects because it requires each electrode to be made individually or in small batches.

“A screen-printing machine useful for fabricating microelectrodes might cost $10,000, whereas you can buy an airbrush for less than $200,” said Hugh Fan, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who oversaw the project. “So this is a useful technique for small, custom projects.”

The breakthrough was presented by University of Florida and Texas Instruments engineers today at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.

Ken O, a UF professor of electrical and computer engineering and the lead researcher on the project, said his team had demonstrated a 410-gigahertz circuit using complementary metal oxide silicon, or CMOS, technology — the technology used to make many of the components in personal computers, cell phones and handheld electronic devices.

Measured in a UF laboratory using a circuit equipped with an on-circuit antenna the size of a pen tip, 410 gigahertz eclipses the previous record for CMOS circuits set in February 2006 by 200 gigahertz. More important, it is about 60 gigahertz higher than the previous record set using alternative but more expensive indium phosphide technology. Texas Instruments’ advanced manufacturing technology, known as the 45-nanometer CMOS process, serves as the foundation for the new circuit.

“This is probably the first time in 30 years that a silicon-based circuit has been shown to have a higher operating frequency than one based on indium phosphide and similar compounds,” O said. “This is exciting because if you can build these circuits, then you can build inexpensive detection and imaging systems for a range of applications. The result could reduce the cost for these systems by a factor of 100 or more.”

Ultra-high-frequency circuits have been created in the past, but only with exotic materials that are costly to manufacture. CMOS, by contrast, is the standard process used to make the majority of the circuits in the integrated circuit industry. That opens the door to widespread manufacture and distribution of the high-frequency circuits.

“There is a very rich applications space that is available, but nobody has been able to get there in the high-volume sense,” O said. “By leveraging Texas Instruments’ advanced process technology for manufacturing this circuit, the University of Florida and Texas Instruments demonstrate that through CMOS there is real possibility we will be able to do it in the next five years.”

These applications include, for example, always-on environmental monitoring equipment acutely sensitive to pollution, noxious gases or bioterrorism agents. In imaging, high-frequency circuits make possible techniques that can penetrate clothing to ”see” hidden weapons or plastic explosives. The circuit also can be used in medical equipment designed to facilitate early detection of skin and other cancers, and in industrial systems that monitor the coatings on pills to ensure they have the proper thickness and uniformity.

The other authors of the paper that is the source of Wednesday’s announcement are Eun-Young Seok, Changhua Cao, Dongha Shim, Daniel Arenas, and David Tanner, all of the University of Florida, and Chih-Ming Hung of Texas Instruments.

“University research is critical for moving the technology industry forward, and Texas Instruments is proud to be part of University of Florida’s ground-breaking work,” said Bill Krenik, chief technology officer of TI’s wireless terminals business unit. “By leveraging the high performance and low-power consumption that CMOS process technology delivers, the circuit demonstrates very compelling results that hold great potential for future safety, medical and environmental applications.”

The circuit was demonstrated on Texas Instruments’ low-power 45-nanometer process technology. The process includes a number of techniques to deliver cost-effective multimillion transistor, system-on-circuit processors with the performance and lower power consumption required for processing advanced applications. While designed to extend battery life in portable products, the technology also offers the performance to handle advanced multimedia functionality in a tightly integrated design.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Good news about that annoying jumble of electronic device charger power cords — it may soon be history.

University of Florida engineering researchers have built and successfully tested a pad that can charge cell phones, PDAs, laptops and other electronic devices via wireless technology. Rather than plug in the electronics to different cords and outlets, users simply place them anywhere atop the flat, thin pad, where they begin charging automatically.

The researchers are not the first to design a wireless charging device — in fact, at least four small companies, including one based around the UF research — are competing to bring a charger to market. Some products are expected to reach store shelves as soon as next year.

But the UF team says its device is unusually efficient, transmitting an average of about 70 percent of the power flowing from the outlet to the devices’ batteries. The team has filed paperwork for seven patents on the technology in the past three months.

“Our advantage is that thanks to a new transmitter design, we can achieve high power charging with high efficiency,” said Jenshan Lin, a UF professor of electrical engineering.

With today’s electronic devices requiring separate cords, consumers are all too familiar with confronting a tangled mess of wires, not to mention the inconvenience that comes with forgetting one cord or another while traveling. That’s why researchers and companies are working so hard to design and market a universal charging device that requires only one plug — for its own power. It’s anticipated that companies could sell as many as 1.9 billion chargers each year, according to one company official.

But the technical challenges are significant.

Electrical engineers have to figure out how to transmit power uniformly to a broad range of devices that operate at different power levels. They also have to design receivers that are cheap, small and uniform enough to be added on — and eventually fit into — everything from the tiniest cell phone to the most powerful laptop.

The UF researchers began working on the problem in 2006, when Ryan Tseng, a former electrical and computer engineering undergraduate, made it a senior design project and his honors thesis research. Lin was Tseng’s adviser on his research.

Tseng, now an MBA student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, later founded a company, Florida-based WiPower Inc., to sell a charge pad device. WiPower has provided funds to sponsor the continued UF research, with the Florida High Tech Corridor contributing matching funds.

Lin said his research team, led by UF doctoral student Zhen Ning Low, have made rapid progress on the charge pad, broadening its charging ability from cell phones to laptops while also making it considerably more efficient.

Key steps have included a redesign of the internal electronic architecture of the transmitter, as well as an adaptive power control mechanism that varies charging power based on the type of device and distance from the pad, Lin said.

The researchers demonstrated the device using a digital picture frame that displays photos stored in a memory stick. A video showed how the frame — which usually has to be plugged in to turn on — began displaying pictures and videos once it was moved to within an inch or so above the pad. The researchers also demonstrated the pad charging a standard cell phone and a receiver-equipped light bulb that turned on when placed near the pad

Lin said the UF charger differs from others because it transmits nearly as much power as its standard wired counterparts. The most efficient wired transmitter sends about 90 percent of the power tapped from the wall, while the UF wireless transmitter can average 70 percent. Lin said he thinks he will be able to boost that average, even eclipsing the wired level. The more efficient the devices, the less consumers will pay for electricity.

Hurdles include making the pads — and the needed receivers — hardier and useful in a bigger variety of devices. The chargers and receivers must be standardized, a difficult problem because it will require cooperation among scores of electronic-device manufacturers. To sell their chargers, companies will have to persuade manufacturers to include receivers.

“The biggest problem is standardization,” Tseng said. “If you can standardize, the chicken-and-egg issues should be minimized. Look at Bluetooth and WiFi.”

Those challenges aside, Lin said he envisions a day when charge pads could be included in, for example, desk furniture or seat back tray tables in airliners. “Hopefully in the future we can create something like WiFi,” he said, “except it becomes wireless power.”

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Always on, connected, cheap and on sale everywhere.

What people have come to expect in cell phones and personal communicators may soon become common in health-care devices and products at home and in medical offices, thanks to new technology announced today by the University of Florida and IBM.

The technology creates the first-ever roadmap for widespread commercial development of “smart” devices that, for example, take a person’s blood pressure, temperature or respiration rate the minute a person steps into his or her house – then transmit it immediately and automatically to doctors or family.

That could eliminate the need for many doctor’s visits, which are often difficult for the elderly or sick. By enabling regular updates via text message or e-mail, the technology also could pave the way for people to share real-time information on their health or well-being with absent loved ones. And it could prove useful for doctors who need to keep tabs on many patients at one time by helping the doctors to prioritize whom to treat first.

“We call it quality-of-life engineering,” said Sumi Helal, professor of computer engineering and the project’s lead UF researcher. “It’s really a change of mindset.”

The idea of using technology to provide medical care at a distance is nothing new. Doctors have relied on “telemedicine” to communicate with specialists for years. More recently, telemedicine has been expanded to include, for example, surgeons performing robotic procedures on distant patients.

But the UF-IBM advance goes a step further: It provides the technological
“stepstones” to make it easy for any company to manufacture and sell smart networked devices — while also making them more user-friendly for consumers.

“UF and IBM both see the need and the opportunity to integrate the physical world of sensors and other devices directly into enterprise systems,” said Richard Bakalar, Chief Medical Officer for IBM. “Doing so in an open environment will remove market inhibitors that impede innovation in critical industries like health care and open a broader device market that’s fueled by uninterrupted networking.”

Helal has devoted the past several years to developing smart devices for the elderly in a model home known as the “Gator Tech Smart Home” in Gainesville.

He and his students pioneered the “Smart Wave” microwave oven that can automatically determine how much time to cook a frozen meal or keep track of how much salt it contains. Among other devices, they also created an instrument that records how many steps a person takes, information that can tell absent caregivers how active its occupants are.

But these and other devices currently have a major shortcoming: They require “a team of engineers” to install them, Helal said. In a world where consumers are accustomed to electronics that require no more than a power outlet, that dramatically limits their appeal. “We decided to create a technology that self integrates,” Helal said. “When you bring it in to the house and plug it in, it automatically provides its service and finds a path to the outside world.”

With $60,000 in research funding from IBM, Helal designed “middleware,” or software and hardware that glues together different systems, that can give his and any similar health-aid devices this independence and connectivity. Importantly, the software is based on open standards, or publicly available specifications useable by anyone, such as those now being made available by consortiums of technology companies including Eclipse, W3C and OSGi.

Open standards make it easy for product developers to tap the technology in any new smart assistive devices, Helal said. That, in turn, will make the devices more common.

The hardware component of the system is an inexpensive sensor platform about half the size of a business card. Developed at UF and licensed to Pervasa, a Gainesville-based UF spinoff company headed by Helal, the “Atlas” platform makes it easy to create a network of sensors and make their information available on a computer network.

The advance is crucial given the increasing number of elderly Americans. The number of people 85 and over is expected to rise from 4.2 million in 2000 to 6.1 million in 2010 and 9.6 million by 2030, according to federal government statistics. Meanwhile, the percentage of older Americans living alone will either remain high or continue to grow: About half of women and nearly a quarter of men aged 75 and older currently live alone.

But the UF-IBM technology may also prove useful in many other medical settings. For example, Helal said, it could help emergency rooms operate more safely. Rather than a standard waiting list, patients could be equipped with networked wireless monitors of their vital signs, allowing doctors to determine who in a waiting room needs the most immediate care.

“The conventional wisdom is that Internet service providers would have greater incentive to expand their service capabilities if they were allowed to charge,” said Kenneth Cheng, a professor in UF’s department of decision and information sciences. Cheng and his co-authors are scheduled to present the findings at the International Conference on Information, Technology and Management in New Delhi, India, next week. “That was completely the opposite of what we found.”

The research discovered that cable and telephone companies providing broadband to deliver the content of companies such as Google and Yahoo! are more likely to expand their infrastructure — resulting in quicker loading and response in a customer’s personal computer — if they don’t charge these companies for preferential treatment, Cheng said.

The findings are timely because of industry pressure on Congress to consider legislation that would allow broadband service providers to give preferential Internet service to online content providers willing to pay a fee. That would, in effect, end the current practice of “net neutrality,” he said.

“Abandoning net neutrality has far-reaching and rippling effects when you consider how the Internet has become part of our daily life experience,” said Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay, a professor in UF’s department of decision and information sciences, who did the study with Cheng. “If the broadband service providers are allowed to charge the content providers and my favorite content provider does not happen to pay my local broadband service provider, would I have to switch favorites in order to have a faster Internet experience?”

The UF researchers, who took no position on the issue, developed an analytical model based on game theory to determine the winners and losers if net neutrality were abandoned, as well as whether the practice’s demise would give broadband service providers greater incentive to expand capacity.

Not surprisingly, they found that broadband service providers were the ones to gain the most from ending net neutrality because they could collect fees from content providers. The content providers such as Yahoo! and Google, in turn, would be the biggest losers.

Consumers will “win” if their favorite online provider is the one paying a fee to the telephone or cable company because it comes with a guarantee that its site would have the opportunity to load faster than its competitors, Cheng said. But those consumers who prefer a content provider that paid no such fee will “lose” in having to endure slower service, he said.

More important, the researchers found that the incentive for broadband service providers to expand and upgrade their service actually declines if net neutrality ends. Improving the infrastructure reduces the need for online content providers to pay for preferential treatment, Bandyopadhyay said.

“The whole purpose of charging for preferential treatment to content providers is that one content provider gains some edge over the other,” he said. “But when the capacity is expanded, this advantage becomes negligible.”

He gave the analogy of the expansion of a two-lane highway where drivers willing to pay a toll to subsidize road improvements are rewarded with exclusive use of a faster lane.

“If the road is upgraded from two to four lanes, with one express lane, these drivers might say ‘Three lanes are good enough for me. I don’t want to have to pay a toll any longer,’” he said. “So the desire to pay a toll when the road is expanded gets lesser.”

The experience of other countries also suggests that better service – up to three times faster – results when there is greater competition, Cheng said.

“In Japan and Korea, where there is net neutrality and much greater competition among broadband providers than in the United States, there are also higher broadband speeds,” he said.”

Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor who is credited with popularizing the term ‘network neutrality,’ praised the study. “Kenneth Cheng is doing important research on a topic that is vital to the future of networking,” he said.

That’s because students can just teleport in.

Fishwick, a computer science and engineering professor, is teaching one of at least two classes offered at UF this semester largely in cyberspace — specifically, the trendy three-dimensional online world called Second Life. There, Fishwick’s “avatar,” the character that represents each player in Second Life, leads discussions among some 30 other avatars controlled by upper-level UF undergraduate and graduate students in CAP 4403/CAP 6402, Aesthetic Computing.

“I like the potential for collaboration, immersion, aesthetics, creativity, social interaction,” Fishwick said. “There are a lot of different dimensions I think are valuable to educators.”

With distance learning decades old, classes on computer are nothing new. But Second Life, which has more than 2 million users worldwide, opens a wealth of fresh possibilities, one educators nationwide are increasingly experimenting with.

At the heart of the potential, these educators say, is the online world’s canny blend of real life, science fiction and fantasy, one that creates a place at once familiar and very strange. There are trees, rivers and buildings, and most avatars look like people — albeit tall, thin, attractive and highly stylized versions. (Fishwick’s is hardly professorial: He’s bushy-tailed and has a raccoon face.) But unlike their human counterparts, avatars can fly, teleport and change their appearance at will … or hop on a unicorn and gallop up to a pentagon-shaped building hovering over a glimmering city.

Two other UF professors began co-teaching a Second Life interdisciplinary research class this semester, and others are considering the possibility. UF has at least two islands in the Second Life “grid” as well as several buildings. The Biomedical Sciences Building, under construction in real life, is already in use on Second Life’s Gator Nation Island.

Attending class in Second Life is, well … otherworldly.

Students assembled for one of Fishwick’s classes recently by teleporting in to Aesthetica, a small island that Fishwick created. Although anyone can create an avatar and participate in Second Life for free, some activities cost money, and creating islands or buying land is one. UF paid Linden Labs, the company that created and supports Second Life, about $1,000 for Aesthetica and maintains the island with a $150 monthly fee.

Students in Fishwick’s class also meet in a real world classroom. But for this class, Fishwick’s avatar, Frederich Courier, assembled everyone at an airy platform levitating over an ocean marked with a sign, “University of Florida Simulation Gallery.”

There, Courier led a tour and discussion of digital objects students created for the class, which is devoted to the idea of making abstract ideas “real” through physical or graphically generated devices. Avatars examined a collection of cylinders, squares and cones built to represent a finite state machine, a set of commands used in computer programming. Some avatars occasionally zoomed skyward, evidently testing their flight abilities.

Fishwick said the possibility for collaboration is one of Second Life’s biggest attractions.
“The reason it’s different than what I did last year is that everyone can join in projects. We can all collaboratively build a computer program,” he said.

Also, he said, Second Life’s feature allowing users to create objects makes it uniquely suited for his class. In most computer games, the game world is established and the character deals with what he or she finds, he said. “It’s ‘I can create a dragon, I can create people, I can move around in space … I can do all these things I maybe couldn’t do before,’” he said.

The other UF class in Second Life — taught by James Oliverio, a professor and director of the UF Digital Worlds Institute, and Bill Ditto, a professor and chairman of the UF Biomedical Engineering Department — taps the program for entirely different purposes. The goal of BME 5937/DIG 5930, or Interdisciplinary Research Seminar, is to bring together upper-level students in biomedical engineering, business, film and the arts to work collaboratively on research, Oliverio said. In one recent real-life meeting, students divided into two groups discussed plans to open a bank in Second Life and start a club there.

“Second Life,” said Ditto, “will make you think about the real world rules and possibilities a little bit differently.”

Indiana was rated the best state in providing information about sex offenders on the Internet while Hawaii, Nebraska and South Dakota were rated the least forthcoming by the Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project in UF’s College of Journalism and Communications. Florida was rated 35th.

“Parents can look at the project’s Web site and say ‘this is a state that provides more information than anyone else’ or ‘these states don’t provide information,” said Bill Chamberlin, director of the Citizen Access Project and Joseph Brechner Eminent Scholar of Freedom of Information. “We tracked distribution of sex offender information because it was the subject of a recent Supreme Court opinion and we knew it was a topic a lot of citizens are interested in.”

The UF project is the first to systematically rate state laws on the accessibility to information about sex offenders, Chamberlin said.

States were ranked on a scale of one to seven, with one being “completely closed” and seven being “completely open.” Indiana rated a five, “somewhat open.” While no state received a rating of one, the three lowest – Hawaii, Nebraska and South Dakota — scored a two and were described as “mostly closed.” Florida, where there has been several highly publicized cases involving sex offenders in recent years, rated a “four,” which is “neither more open nor more closed.”

Indiana, the state rated most open, requires sex offender information to be posted on-line with stringent language, such as “must” or “shall” instead of “may,” said Courtney Barclay, a UF doctoral student in media law who helped prepare the Web site.

Whether the data about sex offenders “had to be posted,” or was simply allowed to be posted, was one of the four subcategories making up the overall rating. States also were rated on the kind of personal information available about an offender, such as a physical description, current address and occupation; administration and procedures, which among other things specifies which government agency is responsible for developing and maintaining the Web site; and sex offender classification, the types of offenders who have their information placed online.

North Carolina, Colorado and Arizona ranked most open for the mandate to distribute sex offender information. They received a five for “somewhat open.” Indiana, Wisconsin and New Jersey placed highest in maximizing the personal information available and received a six for “mostly open.” Indiana, Kansas and Kentucky had the best scores – six and “mostly open” – for providing information about sex offenders. In the administration and procedures category, all of the states received either a four for “neither more open nor more closed,” or three for “somewhat closed.”

“All our project does is rate laws according to whether they are more open or closed,” Chamberlin said. “We don’t pretend to make a value judgment on the best or worst laws because this is a very complicated subject.

“More information about sex offenders may not be necessarily better, depending on each individual’s values,” he said. “On the one hand it certainly is a compelling argument that parents need to know when repeat sex offenders are living nearby so they can take adequate precautions, but in some states a person can be classified as a sex offender for having had a consensual intimate relationship with someone under age 30 years ago.

“Society also has a real interest in rehabilitation of sex offenders and we don’t want to drive people who make one mistake many years ago into a position where they have no way to live a new life because they can’t get beyond their past,” he said.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that photos of convicted sex offenders could be posted online, refuting claims that such publicity was unconstitutional because it constituted a second punishment and was a form of double jeopardy.

A federal law passed in August goes beyond what many states have required to be posted on the Internet. States have three years to conform to the federal law. In the meantime, substantial differences exist in various state requirements, which are spelled out on the project’s Web site, Chamberlin said.

The Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project is funded by a grant from Marion Brechner, an Orlando broadcast executive and philanthropist. More information and individual state rankings can be found at www.citizenaccess.org.

For most people, heeding these warnings in hospitals or at the movies is as simple as pressing a button. But for a growing number of people across the globe, the idea of being out of touch, even just for a 90-minute movie, is enough to induce anxiety, says a University of Florida psychologist who studies addictions to the Internet and other technologies.

Although cellular phones and personal digital assistants such as the BlackBerry were created to make modern life more convenient, they’re actually beginning to interfere in the lives of users who don’t know when to turn them off, says Lisa Merlo, an assistant professor of psychiatry in the UF College of Medicine.

“It’s not so much talking on the phone that’s typically the problem although that can have consequences too,” Merlo said. “(It’s) this need to be connected, to know what’s going on and be available to other people. That’s one of the hallmarks of cell phone addiction.”

Unlike addictions to alcohol, drugs or even gambling, it can be hard to pinpoint problematic cell phone use. Almost everyone has a cell phone and uses it regularly. But if someone can’t get through dinner without sending text messages or furiously typing on a personal digital assistant during a meeting, it may be time to take a step back, Merlo said.

How people respond to being separated from their cell phones or PDAs is another clue. Frequent users often become anxious when they are forced to turn off the phone or if they forget it at home, so much so that they can’t enjoy whatever they’re doing, Merlo added. Often, cell phone “addicts” compulsively check their phones for voicemails and text messages, she said.

“When (cell phone overuse) really becomes problematic for a lot of people is if they have underlying anxiety or depression,” she said. “This can really exacerbate it or (cause) their symptoms to manifest themselves.”

For example, someone who already worries about what others think of them could become easily agitated if their phone calls or messages aren’t returned right away.

“This is something that is going to affect them on a day-to-day basis,” Merlo said.

The problem seems to be growing. A Japanese study revealed that children with cell phones often don’t make friends with their less tech-savvy peers, a Hungarian study found that three-fourths of children had mobile phones and an Italian study showed that one quarter of adolescents owned multiple phones and many claimed to be somewhat addicted to them. A British study also recently found that 36 percent of college students surveyed said they could not get by without cell phones. But this may be more a sign that students view cell phones as a modern necessity like a car, said David Sheffield, a psychologist who conducted the study at Staffordshire University in England.

“The most shocking figure was that 7 percent said the use of mobile phones had caused them to lose a relationship or a job,” Sheffield said.

Although experts have pinpointed these problems in frequent cell phone users, studies have yet to show if a bad cell phone habit constitutes an actual addiction. Yet as with traditional addictions, excessive cell phone use is associated with certain hallmark patterns of behavior, including using something to feel good, building up a tolerance and needing more of it over time to get the same feeling, and going through withdrawal if deprived of it, Merlo said.

Cell phone users could start out with one phone and switch to newer models with more advanced features or PDAs that act like mini-computers over time to get the same feeling they had with their first phone, she said. Although withdrawal is typically considered a physical response that occurs when the body goes without a chemical, the anxiety cell phone users feel without their phone could simply be another form of withdrawal.

“Those things lend toward the idea that maybe this is an addiction, but maybe it’s manifesting in a little bit different way than you would think of a chemical substance,” Merlo said.

Addiction also causes changes in the brain, but scientists have yet to measure what happens in the brains of cell phone users, she said. Even eating and other behaviors have been shown to produce the same effects in the brain as drugs and alcohol in some people, UF studies have shown.

For frequent phoners who do think they have a problem or for parents of children obsessed with their cells, Merlo advises downgrading to a basic phone with fewer features and setting limits about where and when to use the phone.

“Cell phones are a great technology,” Merlo said. “They’re useful in a lot of situations. (But) one of the most important things is making sure you have some cell phone free time in your day. It’s OK to turn it off. Focus on family, homework, knowing that cell phone message will still be there.”

As coveted as these new video game systems and other models are, some parents may want to think twice before buying them for their children and teens, a University of Florida child psychologist says.

With more educational games hitting store shelves and one system, the Nintendo Wii, actually requiring players to peel themselves off the couch to use it, video game makers seem to be addressing concerns about how playing affects children. But too much gaming still puts children more at-risk for behavioral and health problems, which is why parents should consider how they will control children’s playing before they buy a system, said Eric Storch, a UF assistant professor of pediatrics and psychiatry.

“If you’re concerned it is going to be difficult to control how much your child is playing, then one recommendation would be not to tempt them,” Storch said. “Don’t purchase one of these systems.”

Video games can be a good outlet for children who like them, but they shouldn’t consume their lives, Storch added. Setting limits on playing time may help prevent casual gaming from spiraling into hours spent in front of a television screen with a controller.

Children and teens who play excessively often do so at the expense of homework, and playing solo can isolate children from their peers, potentially causing problems for them later in life, Storch said.

“Social interactions teach you how to deal with other people as well as what’s appropriate and what’s not,” he said. “You learn how to handle situations. Social interaction is also one way of coping with stress and receiving emotional support.”

Serious gamers who spend hours sitting in front of a TV also risk becoming obese and developing associated health problems, such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, Storch said. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises parents to limit children’s total TV, video game and computer time to two hours each day.

Unlike typical gaming systems, the new Nintendo Wii uses a wandlike controller that requires players to physically perform the action they want to see on-screen. The system gets users off the couch, but it’s still not like playing soccer or jogging, Storch said.

On the other hand, research has shown that Dance Dance Revolution, a game that requires players to dance on a mat to mimic moves they see on their TV, elicits the same level of motion in children as other forms of exercise. But the game is a solo activity, Storch said. Dancing with friends or playing sports would get kids moving and give them a chance to spend time with peers, he said.

Although gamers lose time to participate in sports and other physical activities, video games aren’t the sole reason many aren’t more active, said Elizabeth Vandewater, an assistant professor of human development and family sciences and director of the Center for Research on Interactive Technology, Television and Children at the University of Texas. If the video games weren’t there, many children would simply find something else to do inside, in part because crime and traffic increasingly hamper their ability to play outside, she said.

“Children in America are definitely less active,” Vandewater said. “The question is whether (TV, computers and video games) are to blame.”

Most parents know to watch out for violent and graphic video games, but even educational games may not be as beneficial as they seem in commercials. Many games that claim to be educational aren’t evaluated to find out if children are actually learning from them, Vandewater said.

“Parents need to know they are being marketed to,” she said.

Each family is different, so deciding whether to game is best left up to parents, Storch said. The key: Parents who do allow video games should establish limits and rules and stick with them. Those concerned about their children abiding by the limits can remove controllers or install a new swipe-card system that only allows them to play for a programmed amount of time, automatically shutting off the system when it lapses. Another good strategy — have children do homework and play outside first, Storch said.

“There are certainly some positives to (video game playing),” Storch said. “For many kids it’s really enjoyable. But moderation is the key.”

But unlike the famous computer companion in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the first space-based supercomputer — so described because it will be by far the most powerful computer in space — is already nearing reality.

Engineering researchers at the University of Florida and Honeywell Aerospace are designing and building the computer projected to operate as much as 100 times faster than any computer in space today. Expected to be launched aboard a NASA rocket on a test mission in 2009, the computer is needed to process rapidly increasing amounts of data gathered by advanced scientific satellites. It is also needed to help space probes make more rapid decisions by themselves, independently of their Earth-bound minders.

“To explore space and to support Earth and space science, there is a great need for much more processing power in space,” said Alan George, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and UF’s principal investigator on the project.

Computers have become far more powerful and faster in recent decades, but these advances have been largely confined to Earth. That’s because all computers sent into space must be “hardened” or protected against cosmic radiation prevalent outside the Earth’s atmosphere, a process that slows their performance and increases their size and cost. The result is that even as satellites and space probes have become far better at gathering information, most of their data has to be sent to ground stations on Earth for processing.

“Usually the downlinks have very limited bandwidth. There are only so many bits per second you can send down from a satellite,” said John Samson, the principal investigator for the project at Honeywell’s Clearwater facility. “That means scientists are very limited in how much science they can do.”

Today’s unmanned space probes also have restricted abilities to act independently, relying instead on relaying much of their command information back and forth from Earth. Because of the huge distances in space, that makes it impossible for mission controllers on Earth to respond in real time to short-lived or unexpected events. If probes had more sophisticated computers on board, they could make more of their own decisions, such as quickly selecting the best sensor or camera to record a momentary event of interest.

“To be autonomous is to require a lot of computation, and until now, conventional space processing technologies have been incapable of high-performance computing,” George said.

The UF-Honeywell computer aims to upgrade both satellites and probes with a novel design called the Dependable Multiprocessor. Funded by NASA’s New Millennium Program and the Florida High Technology Corridor Council, the goal is to cope with radiation from solar flares or other space events not through the physical hardening of components – but rather through software that allows the computer to survive radiation-caused flaws or errors.

As George put it, “when you know components are going to fail, you can design the system to automatically adapt and thereby mitigate the effects of that failure.”

A microwave-sized box full of circuit boards in a UF electrical and computer engineering laboratory has been ground zero for the project. There, George and his team of graduate students develop and evaluate concepts and elements of the system. As per the project’s requirements, they feature off-the-shelf components with no deliberate radiation hardening. Their methods involve strategies such as making the computer fault-tolerant, or able to make an instant switch from a temporarily failing board to a functioning one. They also use algorithm-based techniques to detect and correct processing errors. “If one board is failing because of radiation, we can automatically go to another,” George said.

Samson said Honeywell is applying UF’s basic research to build a high-performance computer capable of actually flying in space. Even with the radiation problem solved, that’s a huge challenge because the system must be small, lightweight, capable of surviving the vibration of launch and the shock of the delivery vehicle separating from the booster rocket –and operate on relatively little precious electricity, among other challenges. “Space is a pretty tough operational environment,” Samson said.

If plans go as intended, the completed computer is expected to fly aboard the unmanned ST8 rocket mission on a test mission in February 2009.

In a report released today by the California-based economic think tank titled “Mind to Market: A Global Analysis of University Biotechnology Transfer and Commercialization,” UF ranked fifth on the institute’s University Technology Transfer and Commercialization Index. Only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the nine universities of the California system, the California Institute of Technology and Stanford scored higher than UF on the index, which measured four components of technology transfer: patents issued, licenses executed, licensing income and startups. MIT, Cal Tech and Stanford are private, and California does not report on individual institutions in its system.

Milken Institute researchers sought to discover which universities do the best job at technology transfer and commercialization. They compared university technology transfer processes around the world; studied the common characteristics to successful commercialization; and measured the role of the university offices of technology transfer, or OTT.

Among their key findings:

• Research activity (as measured by publications and citations) has a high rate of return. Each 10-point increase in the institute’s score for published research contributes an additional $1.7 million to a university’s annual licensing income.
• For every $1 invested in OTT staff, the university receives more than $6 in licensing income.
• For each additional year that an OTT is in operation, $228,000 of incremental licensing income is generated for the university.

“Without an OTT office, the average university would earn only 79 percent of its annual licensing income,” the report states.

David Day, director of UF’s Office of Technology Licensing, said the university made a commitment about six years ago to expand its commercialization efforts.

“Now we have the people and resources necessary to identify promising technologies, pursue patents and negotiate fair licenses,” Day said. “We’ve also worked hard to nurture our startups so they can develop their products and become financially successful.”

Lead author Ross DeVol of the Milken Institute said in the report’s executive summary that “it is perhaps surprising to many” that UF scored so high, but the university has had “remarkable success” with its Office of Technology Licensing.

Win Phillips, UF’s vice president for research, said the university’s sheer size and breadth allow it to simultaneously pursue basic and translational research. UF received nearly $519 million in research funding in 2006, more than half of it for biomedical research.

“UF’s strong and diverse research program, coupled with a commitment to growing our technology licensing operation, has led to this success in commercializing our discoveries,” Phillips said.

UF’s Sid Martin Biotechnology Development Incubator — one of the few university incubators devoted exclusively to biotech — has also enhanced the university’s commercialization efforts, Day said. The incubator provides space, equipment and support services to startups for development of promising biotechnologies. Technologies under development range from a method for producing ethanol from agricultural waste to an oral treatment for a form of age-related macular degeneration. The incubator is full and has a waiting list of companies seeking space. Last year, current and former incubator companies attracted more than $50 million in equity investment.

During the 2005-06 fiscal year, UF earned nearly $43 million in licensing income. Ten new companies were launched based on UF technologies, bringing the total over the last five years to 46.

“Universities around the world have expanded their mission beyond that of basic research and teaching to become places where knowledge fuels patent development, business collaborations and incubators for startups,” the report says.

Now, a team of more than a dozen University of Florida engineering faculty and graduate students has found a way to jump that hurdle: a tiny, inexpensive sensor device that can detect hydrogen leaks and sound the alarm by wireless communication.

The cool part? The device, called a sensor node because it is designed to work in tandem with dozens or hundreds more like it, has the ability to draw its power from a tiny internal power source that harvests energy from small vibrations. That means future versions could one day operate continuously without batteries or maintenance when affixed to cars, refrigerators, pumps, motors or any other machine that gives off a slight vibration.

“You need lots of hydrogen sensors to detect leaks, but you don’t want to have to maintain them or change the battery every couple of months,” said Jenshan Lin, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and the lead investigator on the NASA-funded sensor project. “Our sensor can operate completely independently.”

Lin and his colleagues developed the sensor node over the past two years as a part of the NASA Hydrogen Research Program at UF. The program spans several research projects. NASA uses liquid hydrogen to fuel the space shuttle, and the goal of the $1 million-plus sensor project is to help the space agency improve the safety and reliability of all its hydrogen systems.

The card deck-sized sensor node has been tested successfully in a UF laboratory, and researchers say the next step is to miniaturize it and test it at NASA labs and in field conditions. But its long-range applications potentially go far beyond NASA to the development of hydrogen as an increasingly important fuel source, perhaps even in the family car.

Hydrogen is the principal energy source in fuel cells, the futuristic, non-polluting power devices that President Bush has targeted as a leading alternative to fossil fuels. Bush in 2003 launched the $1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel Initiative aimed at making the technology commercially viable. That effort faces huge challenges, not the least of which is finding energy-efficient ways to extract hydrogen from water, where it is most abundant.

The handful of fuel cell-powered cars and buses on the road today could become far more common if those challenges are overcome. But for that to happen, the nation will need hydrogen filling stations, distribution pumps and pipes, and other engineering elements of a mammoth hydrogen infrastructure replacing today’s gasoline-based infrastructure.

That’s where the UF sensor node could play a role.

“You will need to have sensors all over the place – if there is a leak, you can see which ones light up, and where the leak is, and how quickly it is spreading. That way you can shut off valves and avoid a major problem,” said Steve Pearton, a professor of materials science and engineering and one of the faculty members on the project.

UF materials, electrical and chemical engineering researchers all had a hand in crafting the node. The materials and chemical researchers came up with the sensor, which is based on zinc oxide nanorods – what Pearton called “whiskers” of zinc oxide through which pass an extremely tiny electrical current. The more hydrogen surrounding these whiskers, the more conductive they become, providing a way to measure the ambient hydrogen in the air.

The electrical engineering researchers figured out how to amplify the signal enough to make it readable by a microcontroller. They also developed a tiny wireless transmitter to send the information to a central base station. The electrical engineers further found ways to power the device either through conventional solar cells or a “piezo-electric vibrational energy harvesting system” that draws on energy from vibrations produced by a variety of mechanical and electrical equipment.

Laboratory tests of the node, attached and energized by the vibrations of a mechanical shaker, showed that it could detect hydrogen concentrations of as little as 10 parts per million and successfully transmit the information as far as 20 meters, or about 65 feet. Ten parts per million is well below the level at which hydrogen becomes explosive.

Papers about the different technologies within the sensor node have appeared in academic journals in recent years, but the complete sensor was for the first time presented in its entirety at a conference late last month at a conference in Orlando.

The other UF faculty members on the project are Khai Ngo, Toshikazu Nishida and Jing Guo, professor, associate professor and assistant professor, respectively, of electrical engineering; Fan Ren, professor of chemical engineering; and Dave Norton, professor of materials science and engineering. Numerous graduate students also participated.

For those students, the days of quiet safety may be numbered.

A new University of Florida study suggests that when teachers use a hand-held computer that randomly chooses whom to call on, even the quiet student in the back won’t be missed.

And that may not be a bad thing. It turns out students actually do better in class when they know their number could come up at any time.

Paige Allison, who did the research for her dissertation in educational anthropology at UF, found that students at one North Central Florida high school where she conducted her research reported they were more engaged in the activities of school success when teachers used the name generator.

“The interview data from the teachers and students shows this technique helped students do those things that we know help them to be successful in school – paying attention, being prepared for class, staying focused and doing homework,” Allison said.
Allison, who teaches high school math, said she became interested in doing the study after listening to a radio report describing how math teachers call on boys more than girls.

“There is real, although subtle intimidation that takes place in the classroom reinforcing the idea that women and minority students cannot do math as well as white male students,” she said. “Research has shown that teachers not only tend to call on white male students more frequently than other students, but they respond to their questions and requests for help differently and provide them with entirely different experiences in the classroom.”

One reason girls can get less attention in math class is that teachers may find themselves calling on boys, who tend to be more assertive in class, Allison said.

“People aren’t aware of how hard a teacher physically has to work, not only to manage but to actually teach 150 children a day,” she said. “As in any activity, the natural tendency is to want to conserve energy. It’s easier and faster to let the student who knows the answer respond for you. So the quiet person in the corner who doesn’t raise a hand doesn’t get called on as much.”

Often, teachers may call on students as a way to keep them on task or stop misbehavior, Allison said. “In an effort to maintain order in the classroom, teachers respond to this kind of pressure,” she said. “When I became aware of the research on this subject, I noticed that I called on boys more than girls as kind of a behavior control management device.”

Mathematics is important because it is a gate-keeping course for many college preparatory courses that lead to high-paying scientific and technical fields, yet math-related careers are not sought by females and minorities to the same extent as white males, she said.

To test the effectiveness of a random naming system, Allison compared participation rates of students in 15 math classes where the device was used with students in 11 math classes where it was not used.

Contrary to expectations, the study found no significant difference between classes that used the new experimental technique and those where teachers called on students according to their own methods, Allison said. This showed that teachers at this particular school did not show bias in calling on one gender or ethnic group more than another, she said.

The random questioning device was effective, she said, because students who participated in a series of focus groups afterward said they were more likely to show up for class prepared and to concentrate on what was being said when they knew the computer could spell out their name at any time.

“Both students and teachers reported that students paid more attention in class,” she said. “They felt they had to tune in more because they knew they had a chance of being called on for every question.”

To make the computerized name-generating system non-threatening, Allison allowed students who were called on to take a free “pass” without penalty if they did not know the answer or did not wish to respond for some reason.

Jerome Dancis, a University of Maryland math professor emeritus, said Allison’s research is important because only a small number of students are willing to raise their hands in class, usually the best students. “It’s important for teachers to realize that students need to be encouraged to speak in class, especially high school students because this is a shy age,” he said.

That lack of communication is especially alarming, the researchers write in the current issue of Geriatric Nursing.

“Many of these older women do not consider over-the-counter and herbal medications ‘real drugs’ and therefore don’t report them,” said Saunjoo Yoon, an assistant professor at UF’s College of Nursing and the study’s principal investigator. “However, it is clear that many health-care providers are not following through to learn their patients’ complete medication history.”

Recent research has shown that nearly half of people aged 65 years or older take five or more prescribed, over-the-counter and herbal medications, and 12 percent take at least 10 medications. Yet little research has focused on drug-drug interactions among these three types of medications in elderly people, who are more susceptible to their harmful effects.

Using a Web-based pharmaceutical program, Yoon and co-investigator Susan Schaffer, a clinical assistant professor, studied 58 older women who had reported taking at least one herbal product while using at least one over-the-counter or prescribed drug. The study’s participants were a subsample of 143 women from previous published studies. Seventy-four percent of the study’s participants were in danger of experiencing adverse effects from a moderate- or high-risk drug interaction. Common over-the-counter pain relievers like ibuprofen or calcium supplements, when taken in combination with certain prescription medications, were among the most common culprits.

The women were recruited by verbal announcements at meetings, personal contacts and posters displayed at meal sites, housing developments, community senior organizations, health fairs and churches in North Central Florida. The researchers used Gold Standard Multimedia’s Clinical Pharmacology Drug Interactions program, which defines a drug interaction as an altered drug effect occurring when one drug is taken with another drug or herb. An interaction is considered high risk if it has the potential for harm in most cases. A moderate risk requires careful monitoring and possible dose adjustment.

Of the 136 drug interactions detected, 41 percent were deemed high risk and 58 percent were moderate risk.

The greatest number of high-risk interactions occurred among participants who took two or more nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory, drugs to treat muscle pain and arthritis, or who combined the NSAIDS with the herbal drug ginkgo. NSAIDS are offered by prescription or in over-the-counter formulations, such as ibuprofen.

“It is commonly known that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs can cause gastrointestinal bleeding, and many women are combining these drugs, which increases that risk significantly,” said Schaffer. “Even just combining an herbal like ginkgo with ibuprofen also increases the risk of GI bleeding. Older adults are at a higher risk for GI bleeding even when the drugs are taken appropriately. There is a lack of understanding about these drugs and their effects when mixed together, especially when so many of them are offered over the counter.”

Mixing standard doses of acetaminophen with a narcotic pain medication that also contains acetaminophen in combination with propoxyphene can damage the liver. Some drug combinations, meanwhile, dilute the effects of prescription medications. UF researchers found that calcium supplements, routinely recommended to older women for prevention and treatment of osteoporosis, interacted with many drugs, causing them to lose their effectiveness. That proved true for study participants taking calcium in conjunction with high blood pressure or thyroid medications, or antacids.

The herbal medication St. John’s wort reduces the effectiveness of hormone replacement therapy and contraceptive medication as well as albuterol, an asthma medication, and fentanyl, a narcotic pain medication.

Carefully timing when these drugs are taken can prevent these effects. For instance, patients should take calcium at least one to two hours before taking high blood pressure medication, Schaffer said.

“It’s so important for health-care providers to take a careful medication history to evaluate all prescribed, over-the-counter and herbal drugs to monitor interactions in older women, particularly because these women have been shown to take a number of different types of medications,” Yoon said. “Although it is difficult to determine the impact of the drug interactions for any given individual, prevention of possible interaction is the safest practice.”

Health-care providers and their patients should making a point of discussing this issue, said David Kaufman, a professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health and associate director of the Slone Epidemiology Center at BU.

“This issue is clearly a concern as the overlap of herbal, over-the-counter and prescription drug use continues to grow among our senior citizens,” Kaufman said. “The results of this research study help to send a valuable message to health-care providers on taking time to ask the right questions about their patients’ medication use.”