Wisconsin Advanced Technology Advocates, Inc.

Tech trend brings growth for start-up

By Guy Boulton of the Journal Sentinel

When Jim Prekop joined TeraMedica Healthcare Technology as president and CEO in 2005, the Wauwatosa company's investors asked him first to determine whether closing the start-up would be the best course.

The company opted to push ahead, and its investors now may be rewarded for their patience as the market recognizes the need for TeraMedica's software.

TeraMedica sells software for managing the millions of diagnostic images stored throughout health care systems.

The size and number of those images - digital X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, mammograms, ultrasounds - have grown exponentially with advances in technology.

They typically are stored on different systems in various departments and locations throughout a health care system. Yet they need to be accessible through the electronic health records now taking hold throughout health care.

TeraMedica's software enables those images to be stored and managed - more efficiently and for less money - from one central repository. That repository, in turn, can be linked to an electronic health record.

The company, founded in 2001, knew that image storage would become a headache at some point for health systems. But it acknowledges that it was a bit ahead of the market.

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Scientists Untangle Tough Quantum Computing Knot

By Richard Adhikari

TechNewsWorld

New research may provide the answers to overcoming one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of the development of quantum computing: quantum decoherence. The experiment used molecular magnets, which suppress extrinsic decoherence. Extrinsic decoherence was reduced to the point where it was no longer observable, said USC's Susumu Takahashi.

A team of scientists has achieved what might prove to be a breakthrough in quantum computing.

The group has managed to partially suppress quantum decoherence, one of the major obstacles to quantum computing, by using crystalline molecular magnets.

Decoherence, which is a much-debated topic, is believed to be the loss of information from a system into the environment that fixes a system into one state.

By doing so, decoherence negates quantum states, which exist because of the entanglement of multiple electrons and molecules.

Think of it this way: A fishing net, where all the strands are linked to each other by knots, is like a quantum state. Separating out a strand by cutting the knots binding it to other strands is what happens when decoherence sets in.

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Big Blue: 100 years making things compute

By Michael Hill and Jordan Robertson, Associated Press

Endicott, N.Y. - Google, Apple and Facebook get all the attention. But the forgettable everyday tasks of technology - saving a file on your laptop, swiping your ATM card to get 40 bucks, scanning a gallon of milk at the checkout line - that's all IBM.

International Business Machines turns 100 on Thursday without much fanfare. But its much younger competitors owe a lot to Big Blue.

After all, where would Groupon be without the supermarket bar code? Or Google without the mainframe computer?

"They were kind of like a cornerstone of that whole enterprise that has become the heart of the computer industry in the U.S.," says Bob Djurdjevic, a former IBM employee and president of Annex Research.

IBM dates to June 16, 1911, when three companies that made scales, punch-clocks for work and other machines merged to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Co. The modern-day name followed in 1924.

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Civic group envisions 'design tech' cluster in Milwaukee

By Kathleen Gallagher of the Journal Sentinel

Throwing out references to "hack-a-thons" and software apps, the Greater Milwaukee Committee on Monday unveiled plans to put its weight behind creation of a second industry cluster in design technology.

The business and civic organization that counts many of the area's big-company executives among its members was a catalyst behind creation of the Milwaukee 7 Water Council.

Now it is starting to connect its corporate members to the region's geeks and entrepreneurs, and is working toward setting up a Design Tech Council, said GMC president Julia Taylor.

"We see ourselves shifting from the machine shop of the world to the design tech center of the world," Taylor said at a GMC lunch meeting.

Design technology can cover anything from software apps to engineering, but its heart is information technology, the programming and software development done by technicians who often refer to themselves as hackers. These are not nefarious types who circumvent security systems, but computer experts who have an anti-authoritarian approach to software development associated with the free software movement.

Many of the area's biggest companies were hatched in a patch of the city near First St. and Florida St., and a similar breeding ground is developing in the Grand Avenue Mall, Taylor said.

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Magical BEANs: New Nano-sized Particles Could Provide Mega-sized Data Storage

The ability of phase-change materials to readily and swiftly transition between different phases has made them valuable as a low-power source of non-volatile or “flash” memory and data storage. Now an entire new class of phase-change materials has been discovered by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley that could be applied to phase change random access memory (PCM) technologies and possibly optical data storage as well.  The new phase-change materials – nanocrystal alloys of a metal and semiconductor – are called “BEANs,” for binary eutectic-alloy nanostructures.

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Elm Grove firm inks licensing agreement with university

By Kathleen Gallagher of the Journal Sentinel

Sept. 8, 2010

An Elm Grove medical imaging software firm said Wednesday morning it has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with the University of Pennsylvania.

The agreement gives Imaging Biometrics LLC the right to develop and commercialize technology that could provide a more automated way to accurately evaluate a tumor's response to different treatments, the company said.

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Ultra-powerful Laser Makes Silicon Pump Liquid Uphill with No Added Energy

Researchers at the University of Rochester's Institute of Optics have discovered a way to make liquid flow vertically upward along a silicon surface, overcoming the pull of gravity, without pumps or other mechanical devices.

In a paper in the journal Optics Express, professor Chunlei Guo and his assistant Anatoliy Vorobyev demonstrate that by carving intricate patterns in silicon with extremely short, high-powered laser bursts, they can get liquid to climb to the top of a silicon chip like it was being sucked through a straw.

Unlike a straw, though, there is no outside pressure pushing the liquid up; it rises on its own accord. By creating nanometer-scale structures in silicon, Guo greatly increases the attraction that water molecules feel toward it. The attraction, or hydrophile, of the silicon becomes so great, in fact, that it overcomes the strong bond that water molecules feel for other water molecules.

Thus, instead of sticking to each other, the water molecules climb over one another for a chance to be next to the silicon. (This might seem like getting energy for free, but even though the water rises, thus gaining potential energy, the chemical bonds holding the water to the silicon require a lower energy than the ones holding the water molecules to other water molecules.) The water rushes up the surface at speeds of 3.5 cm per second.

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UWM researcher's program helps predict stem cell fates

By Mark Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: Feb. 7, 2010

A software program developed by a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researcher successfully has predicted the fate of stem cells, a key step toward better understanding the developmental process and perhaps one day controlling it.

The program, developed by UWM's Andrew R. Cohen and described in a paper published Sunday in the journal Nature Methods, uses sophisticated mathematical techniques to study the movements of stem cells and translate those observations into reliable predictions about the kinds of cells they will eventually become.

Stem cells travel a path from less specific to more specific, from the limitless possibilities of an embryonic stem cell to the finished product - a piece of heart, brain, bone or skin. By studying the subtle behaviors that lead a cell to move toward one of these end points as opposed to the others, scientists hope they will discover ways to guide cells toward a particular path - perhaps skin to replace some that has been lost.

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QUANTUM COMPUTER CHIPS NOW ONE STEP CLOSER TO REALITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- In the quest for smaller, faster computer chips, researchers are increasingly turning to quantum mechanics -- the exotic physics of the small.

The problem: the manufacturing techniques required to make quantum devices have been equally exotic.

That is, until now.

Researchers at Ohio State University have discovered a way to make quantum devices using technology common to the chip-making industry today.

This work might one day enable faster, low-power computer chips. It could also lead to high-resolution cameras for security and public safety, and cameras that provide clear vision through bad weather.

Paul Berger, professor of electrical and computer engineering and professor of physics at Ohio State University, and his colleagues report their findings in an upcoming issue of IEEE Electron Device Letters.

The team fabricated a device called a tunneling diode using the most common chip-making technique, called chemical vapor deposition.

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Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation settles suit against Intel

Madison — The University of Wisconsin-Madison's patenting arm has settled its infringement lawsuit against computer chipmaker Intel Corp. involving technology used in a popular computer processor.

The case was expected to go to trial Monday in U.S. District Court in Madison, but both sides notified the court Friday they had reached a settlement. Details were not released, and Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said he could not comment because the terms were confidential.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation sued Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel in February 2008, alleging that technology used in Intel's Core 2 Duo Processor and others was created by university researchers but used by Intel without a licensing agreement.

The lawsuit claimed the micro-architecture of the Intel Core family of processors infringed on a 1998 patent based on work by four researchers, including Gurindar Sohi, a computer science professor. Intel had supported Sohi's research with about $90,000 in gifts in the 1990s and argued it was entitled to the intellectual property that resulted from the funding.

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