Taking Great Ideas From the Lab To the Fab

aarondubrow (1866212) writes The "valley of death" is well-known to entrepreneurs — the lull between government funding for research and industry support for prototypes and products. To confront this problem, in 2013 the National Science Foundation created a new program called InTrans to extend the life of the most high-impact NSF-funded research and help great ideas transition from lab to practice. Today, in partnership with Intel, NSF announced the first InTrans award of $3 million to a team of researchers who are designing customizable, domain-specific computing technologies for use in healthcare. The work could lead to less exposure to dangerous radiation during x-rays by speeding up the computing side of medicine. It also could result in patient-specific cancer treatments.

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[interkin3tic]

But research funds are still low. [nature.com] There's been a big push to spend money on what the summary is talking about for about a decade. I'm wondering if the government spending money on moving stuff from the lab to the doctors office has simply convinced private industry they don't need to spend their own money to do that. I mean, people frustrated with "death valley" aside, I don't think we were previously ignoring valuable, profitable science go to waste anyway.

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[ShanghaiBill]

I'm wondering if the government spending money on moving stuff from the lab to the doctors office has simply convinced private industry they don't need to spend their own money to do that.

No. This is what VC money is for. The program described in TFA is just a way to funnel taxpayer dollars to the bad ideas that the VCs have rejected. Governments are horrible at picking winners, and tend to do so based on physical location (the right congressional district) and political connections, rather than merit. Government funding of basic research is sensible. Government welfare for corporations is not.

It needs to make its way into tablets....

[caywen]

Just so we can say we can take ideas from the Lab to the Fab to the Tab.

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[rmdingler]

I can't promise you anything,

but if you keep that up,

I feel strongly there's a tender offer for a Slashdot editorial position in your future.

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[caywen]

I'm all about the deep insight.

danger will robinson

[Mr D from 63]

less exposure to dangerous radiation during x-rays

If that were an actual problem, this would be worthy of stating. Even the lesser used high exposure CT scans have miniscule exposure, well below any amount that has ever been actually observed to cause physical harm in a human.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Still, needing less time could bring other benefits, perhaps you can up the dose in a shorter time to give the same radiation to the person but kill the cancer cells quicker. I don't know, but improvements are always nice. I am sure they checked if the study would have any benefit and realistic chance of success before awarding money.

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[Anonymous Coward]

What about the radiographer, huddled in their little lead-glass cube? Or, since the effects of exposure to ionising radiation is cumulative, anyone who needs a lot of imaging done over a period of time?

Something that improves resolution, accuracy and/or reduces exposure sounds like a good deal for everyone involved. A single dose has never been an issue or we wouldn't use X-rays at all.

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[Uecker]

Nonsense Radiation from CT is a serious concern. A single abdominal or chest CT corresponds to a dose of 5-10 mSv. The is especially a concern for children and in case of repeated scans. For example, see:

http://www.ajronline.org/doi/a... [ajronline.org]
"In the United States, of approximately 600,000 abdominal and head CT examinations annually performed in children under the age of 15 years, a rough estimate is that 500 of these individuals might ultimately die from cancer attributable to the CT radiation."

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[Mr D from 63]

But those numbers come from statistical models based on high - end ultra conservative extrapolations from much higher dose exposures, not on actual cases of cancer induced by radiation exposure at these relatively lower levels. In reality, there has been no physical evidence that these impacts occur at anything close to this rate, even for the exposures you mentioned. There is nothing wrong with this "play it safe regardless" mentality in the medical community as long as it doesn't force unneeded costs. I a

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[Uecker]

Comment is mine. Forgot to log in.

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[Mr D from 63]

RE: "No, the dose in CT is so high that it approaches the level we have direct statistical evidence from atomic bomb survivors." It is quotes like this that confuse the issue. There are a range of exposures among A-Bomb survivors, from much higher than you'll ever get in a CT scan down to zero. But you won't find statistical evidence in enough resolution to make the conclusions for the lower dose range, as withing the CT scan range, with any certainty, so they just simply got conservative and decided to as

Can we stop pandering to Ricki Lake fans?

[rebelwarlock]

Silly bullshit rhyming in the headline detracts from the actual story. Stop that.