San Clemente, CA. June 16, 2009….Micro Imaging Technology, Inc. (OTC:BB “MMTC”) announced that it has launched a campaign to obtain strategic partners for both distribution and manufacturing of its MIT 1000 Rapid Microbial Identification (ID) System.

By recently obtaining Performance Test Method (PTM) Certification for the ID of Listeria from the AOAC Research Institute (RI), the first step in MIT’s commercialization strategy has been accomplished, allowing the Company to initiate sales into the targeted food safety market. MIT next plans to improve its market position with additional Certifications and product improvements. In parallel, the Company plans to create a worldwide distribution network and establish a high quality (e.g. ISO 9000) manufacturing process.
MIT will use its expertise to enhance the System and improve its market position by securing additional AOAC RI PTM Certifications for the ID of E.coli and Salmonella this year. The MIT 1000 will then be certified for the identification of the three bacteria that are responsible for most of the food bacterial contamination events worldwide. To accelerate profitable growth, MIT plans to complement its internal efforts with strategic partners rather than organically grow the Company. Discussions have been initiated with several worldwide distribution leaders in the food industry and a local, well known, global ISO 9000 manufacturer that could also assist in reducing the System’s material cost.

“Our goal is to have our strategic partners in place later this year enabling us to obtain several million dollars of profitable revenue in the food safety market next year. In addition, we plan to have strategic partners assist us in entering the pharmaceutical and clinical diagnostic markets in 2011,” stated Michael Brennan, MIT’s Chairman and CEO.

Over $3 billion is spent for rapid microbial identification in the food safety market annually and is rising at nearly 10 percent per year. Expansion to the pharmaceutical and clinical diagnostic markets is estimated to add over $2 billion to MIT’s addressable market.

ABOUT MICRO IMAGING TECHNOLOGY:
MIT is a California-based public company that has developed and patented a rapid microbial ID System that can revolutionize the pathogenic ID process and annually save thousands of lives and tens of millions of dollars. The System IDs bacteria in minutes, not days, and at a significant per test cost savings when compared to any conventional method. It does not rely on chemical or biological agents, conventional processing, fluorescent tags, gas chromatography or DNA analysis. The process is totally GREEN requiring only clean water and a sample of the unknown bacteria. Revenues for all rapid testing methods exceed $5 billion annually – with food safety accounting for over $3 billion - having expanded at a rate of 9.2 percent annually since 1998. Current growth projections are at 30 percent annually with test demands driven by major health, safety and homeland security issues.

The System is laser based and uses the proven principles of light scattering in conjunction with proprietary PC-based software algorithms to ID microbes and create a proprietary database. MIT, through independent testing, has proven the ability with high accuracy to ID the most dangerous and pervasive pathogens; E. coli, Listeria, Salmonella, and Staphylococcus aureus (a.k.a. Staph) and twenty (20) other species of bacterium.

The MIT 1000 System has numerous ID applications including food quality control, clinical diagnostics, pharmaceutical quality assurance, semiconductor processing control and water quality monitoring. MIT has chosen to focus initial efforts on food quality control as recent events have created an urgent demand for quicker and cheaper testing – demands that will promote a high-value return on any investment in MIT’s technology.

Please visit our web site: www.micro-imaging.com

For financial data and information, visit:
http://globalfinancialwire.com/2009/06/micro-imaging-technology/

# # # # #
This release contains statements that are forward-looking in nature. Statements that are predictive in nature, that depend upon or refer to future events or conditions or that include words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “estimates,” and similar expressions are forward-looking statements. These statements are made based upon information available to the Company as of the date of this release, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could differ materially from our current expectations. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to dependence on suppliers; short product life cycles and reductions in unit selling prices; delays in development or shipment of new products; lack of market acceptance of our new products or services; inability to continue to develop competitive new products and services on a timely basis; introduction of new products or services by major competitors; our ability to attract and retain qualified employees; inability to expand our operations to support increased growth; and declining economic conditions, including a recession. These and other factors and risks associated with our business are discussed from time to time within our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Artist Brian Dettmer dissects books to expose the beauty of their anatomy.

Using an X-acto knife and tweezers, Dettmer pulls away carefully selected layers of books, revealing a complex view of their internal organization.

In this time when the book is no longer the most efficient way to store and transmit data, Dettmer’s transformations are at once nostalgic and forward-thinking. His process is a wonderful example of how a destructive act can create something beautiful and new.

Adaptations
Through 9 May 2009
Packer Schopf Gallery
942 West Lake Street
Chicago, IL 60607 map
tel. +1 312 226 8984

Scientists at the university have announced an electronic microchip that can detect the type of malaria infecting a patient and find out whether the malaria is resistant to first line drugs. Blood samples are placed in the microchip, which is designed to detect the strain of disease. This means the best drug can be used to treat it.

The university claims that it is the only malaria study of its kind in the U.K. to use the technology. Those with malaria suffer from flu-like symptoms that can go unnoticed until they are critically ill.

Malaria Microchip Diagnosis

“Since 2000, an average of 1700 Britons have been diagnosed with the disease every year, although the number of actual cases is thought to be much higher through under reporting,” the statement from the university said.

Dr. Lisa Ranford-Cartwright is leading the team working on the project by using the new lab-on-a-chip technology that is expected to help doctors treat the disease more quickly as more number of incidences are being reported by the health professionals.

At present, the diagnostic test takes up to 48 hours to determine whether a patient has malaria and even then, doctors are unable to tell whether the parasite is drug resistant, according to her.

“In certain cases, a malaria diagnosis has to be confirmed by DNA amplification which can take another one to two days. The only current way to test for drug resistance is to give patients certain drugs and wait to see if they work,” Ranford-Cartwright said in a statement.

She added, “Our malaria chip should be able to do the whole process in less than 60 minutes, and we hope that by the end of our development project we will have reduced this time further.”

According to the World Health Organization, almost half of the world’s population is at risk of malaria, and an estimated 247 million cases led to nearly 881,000 deaths in 2006.

Malaria is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of south-east Asia and it claims the life of a child every 30 seconds. Its symptoms include a fever and chronic exhaustion, which can turn in to a severe form called cerebral malaria that is caused by Plasmodium falciparum and is considered to be fatal mainly due to late diagnosis.

Malaria transmission in the United States was successfully thwarted in the 1950s. There were 1,505 reported cases of malaria in 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last year a study revealed more cases of the most dangerous type of malaria than ever before are being brought back to the UK from trips abroad. The Health Protection Agency study identified 6,753 cases of falciparum malaria diagnosed between 2002 and 2006. Experts said many of the cases arose from visits to west Africa made by people visiting relatives and friends.

Project leader Dr Lisa Ranford-Cartwright said: “The current way of diagnosing is using a blood smear on a slide and examining it on a microscope. That will take a good microscopist a good hour to reach a diagnosis, it’s extremely difficult to make that diagnosis accurately. The chip can give us a result in as little as half an hour.”

Dr Heather Ferguson, a malaria researcher, picked up the disease in southern Kenya and it was only spotted by chance when she was giving a blood sample. She said: “Had I not been diagnosed at that moment and caught it within the next 24 hours all those millions of parasites would have replicated one more time, making eight times as many as there had been before, which could very easily have been lethal.”

via BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Glasgow, Lanarkshire and West | Doctors welcome malaria microchip and http://www.vitabeat.com/scientists-develop-microchip-to-detect-malaria-within-minutes/v/10017/

Analysts believe accurate voice search could boost Google’s business

The company’s VP Engineering made indicative comments at a discussion during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

“We believe voice search is a new form of search and that it is core to our business,” said Vic Gundotra.

While voice search as a concept is not exactly a new form of search (see my 3 year old Sony Ericsson mobile) the accuracy and effectiveness of processing voice inputs may be at last achieving relevance as a software application. SearchEngineLand editor Greg Sterling agreed: “If done right, it could be a valuable strategic feature for Google.”

Mr Gundotra acknowledged to the audience that “voice recognition in the early days was a nice trick but not very usable”.

There were early complaints that Google’s offering could not understand a broad range of accents (other than ‘Californian’) and that results were often garbled.

“Look how far we have come. I get the advantage of looking at daily voice queries coming in and it’s amazing. It’s working. It’s reached a tipping point. It’s growing and growing very, very fast and we are thrilled about it,” said Mr Gundotra.

He declined to share figures about just how many queries the company deals with via voice search.

However, Mr Gundotra did say: “It’s one of those technologies we think gets better with usage.

“We launched it on the iPhone and have seen a 15% jump in accuracy because, as more people use it, we collect more data and our accuracy gets better.”

‘Queen’s English’

In 2002, Google Labs introduced a service that allowed users to search with a simple phone call. The company admitted it “wasn’t very useful because the results were displayed on your computer and Google discontinued it”.

Six years later, the search giant introduced an improved feature under the Google Mobile App for the iPhone.

Vic Gundotra says “voice search is core” to Google’s future mobile plans

It is also available on the Android based T-Mobile G1 and last month was introduced on the BlackBerry as a free download. The New York Times’s Gadgetwise blog rated the BlackBerry version the “App of the Week” earlier this week.

Early iterations that worked best with North American accents had problems understanding other accents, including British. BBC technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones reported in November last year that his attempts to use it were “pure gibberish”.

For example, his query about the next train, West Ealing to Paddington “delivered some useful information about ‘neck strain’ - but no train times”.

Those problems have since been largely ironed out and Google said it was continuing to work on improving the accuracy of the service. This, Mr Sterling said, is crucial if the company wants it to give them the edge in the marketplace.

“My view is voice search could be a strategic differentiator if it works well. It depends on how much better Google’s system is compared to, say, Yahoo’s or Microsoft’s.

“If they come up with a really great version that is really accurate, it could retain users and likely increase search usage for Google,” said Mr Sterling.

“Stay tuned”

At Web 2.0, Mr Gundotra also talked about a web-based version of Google’s e-mail service, Gmail.

Google’s “technical prototype”, coming soon to the public

He demonstrated a “technical prototype” on the iPhone and the G1 and said “Stay tuned” for a release date.

Mr Gundotra said the prototype used HTML 5, an as-yet incomplete version of mark up language of the world wide web.

He revealed that Google would create a whole suite of offline apps using HTML 5 and that “we are going to be leaders in taking advantage of HTML 5″.

Mr Gundotra also said that engineers were working hard to bring the Chrome browser to the Mac and that while there was no date for delivery, “we are making progress to get it out as fast as we can”.

Thanks to Maggie Shiels - Technology reporter, BBC News, San Francisco- who, really, wrote about 90% of this article

Flying helicopter hotel

This Soviet-made Mil V-12 has been extended and redesigned into a flying 5-star hotel. This summer the ‘Hotelicopter’ will host 18 guests on a 14 day roundtrip tour that includes New York, Charleston, Freeport, Montego Bay, Santo Domingo, Nassau, Miami and Charlotte. There are California and European tours planned for July, and this whopper of a chopper is available to be rented out for parties (celebrity weddings, perhaps?).

Unrolling of Space Station solar wings.

Friday, March 20th  saw the commissioning of the International Space Station’s fourth pair of solar arrays. This completes the the solar power array installation.

The solar wings were delivered to the ISS by the Discovery shuttle and installed by its astronauts with the help of the Canadian designed Canadarm2 robotic arm.

The station’s arrays can now produce up to 120 kilowatts of electricity, nearly doubling the power available for scientific experiments - from 15kW to 30kW.

“It’s just really amazing,” commented Mike Fincke, the space station’s commander. He said there was “a shout of triumph” from astronauts aboard the linked station-shuttle complex once the two wings were fully extended.

The installation work took spacewalking astronautsRichard Arnold and Steve Swanson just over six hours to complete.

The entire ISS backbone is now 102 meters long, and the space station is nearly 80% complete.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7956332.stm

Spacewalking astronaut Richard Arnold helps connect the new solar arrays

A novel matrix of neural stem cells and biodegradable polymer PLGA developed at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London can quickly repair brain damage from stroke in rats, growing new nerve tissue to fill stroke-induced cavities in just seven days.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22263/?a=f

Posted by - at 12.3.09

Thanks to Bill Barry at ubervidabasecamp

The education and training they need to deliver world-class, competitively priced IT services to global clients and acquire the essential business skills that help them break the cycle of poverty.

DDD is an innovative, internationally acclaimed non-profit organization that operates with a strong business model and has already generated more than $2.5million in revenues.

Their focus on economic sustainability allows us to reinvest our profits in social and economic programs that deliver lasting change for our employees and their communities. Over the past six years, DDD have trained more than 1000 people with marketable skills, and more than 200 of their staff have graduated from entry-level jobs to employment opportunities that earn them six times the average income in Cambodia.

UltraFuture is seeking partners to develop similar programs in developing economies and regions such as northeastern and southwestern China. To learn more, please contact info@ultrafutureworld.com

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