Opportunities For United Kingdom’s Innovators To Partner, Rather Than Ride Piggyback

For United Kingdom’s organisations ready to bite the innovation bullet, the European Union’s Framework Programme is a rewarding introduction to collaborative R&D.

Noting the remarkable success of India’s generic drug makers, a leading news weekly observed, “They invest in just enough know-how to exploit the rest of the world’s discoveries.” The same could apply to India’s raging success in other areas of science and technology. But while the country is at a stage where it has more to gain from making the most of technology than from the trouble of innovation, it is unclear how long this will hold out. What is needed is a culture that encourages private funding of innovation, putting into motion cycles of innovation that create others.

In fact, the Department of Science and Technology offers a clutch of evolving funding mechanisms to stimulate original R&D work. In spite of that, the United Kingdom’s government’s spending on R&D is paltry. As a percentage of GDP, it is less than that of most developed countries. While India already hosts R&D centres for over 100 multinational firms, these do not have programmes that openly invite collaborative participation even if they do share subject focus MCTS Training.

An alternative would be to explore the public funding schemes of other countries or organisations that are open to participation from the international community. The European Union’s Framework Programme (EU FP) is such a plan for collaboration in science and technology with Europe. Since its launch in 1984, it has become the world’s single largest publicly funded research programme, offering a single window to collaborate with a continent that continues to be at the forefront of defining and influencing key developments in science and technology. Funding schemes within the Framework Programme (FP) combine private sector investment and national and European public funding, the bulk of which goes into collaborative research. This collaborative angle of the FP supports cooperation between universities, research centres, public bodies and industries across the EU and the world.

The EU and India get together in science and technology

The 2002 EU-India Science and Technology (S&T) Cooperation Agreement sealed a formal collaboration between the EU and India that gave India the tag of an International Cooperation Partner Country. In practical terms, this makes United Kingdom’s organisations participating in the FP eligible for funding alongside counterparts from EU Member States. United Kingdom’s FP participation took off with the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006) which saw close to 80 United Kingdom’s organisations in projects across ten thematic areas (see listing in next section) MCITP Certification.

For a programme that invites international collaboration, it has its support structure in place: a worldwide network of National Contact Points (NCPs) that provides assistance to prospective organisations on aspects of participation in the FP. In India, the role of the NCP has been assigned to the Ministry of Information Technology. The NCP and its network in India, as elsewhere, assists organisations in the process of going about submitting a proposal and forming a consortium, while at times even recommending organisations for inclusion in other project consortia in the process of being formed.

Computing At The Snap Of Your Fingers

Computing At The Snap Of Your Fingers
Gesture-based computing sounds like fun. But it can actually be the difference between life and death in certain situations.
User-friendly gesture-based interface devices are widely perceived to enhance a system’s usability, i.e., the ease, convenience and hence interest in using it. However, the real benefits of gesture-based computing become far more evident in situations where touch-free operations are critical for the success of a procedure.

If you want to use a PC, wave your hand

Here’s an example—imagine a neurosurgeon performing a complex operation on a patient. During the procedure, the surgeon requires to refer to the patient’s MRI images, which have been loaded onto a computer in the operation theatre. Let’s assume that a particular image is required to be zoomed into. If the surgeon uses the system by touching the screen, keyboard or mouse, it could very well compromise sterility, and by spreading infection, adversely affect the outcome of the operation. Instead, what if the surgeon could simply gesture to the computer to zoom into the image Microsoft MCTS Training?

A hand gesture recognition system is exactly what researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel and the Institute of Medical Informatics (IMI), USA, have developed. What’s more, their hand gesture recognition system, Gestix, was successfully implemented in an actual ‘in vivo’ neurosurgical brain biopsy conducted at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, earlier this year.

An outcome of two years of joint R&D, {quotes}Gestix enables surgeons to manipulate or browse digital images during a medical procedure by gesturing to the machine.{/quotes} Dr Juan Wachs spent a year at the International Management Institute (under Dr Michael Gillam who conceived the project) as a research intern during his PhD studies at BGU. He explains that the gestures for this sterile gesture interface are captured by a Canon VC-C4 camera positioned above a large flat screen monitor, which is connected to an Intel Pentium system with a Matrox Standard II video-capturing device.

The camera is a key component of the Gestix system. In fact, Helman Stern, principal investigator on the project, professor, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, BGU, says finding a cheap webcam that could operate under variable lighting conditions with their hand detection and segmentation algorithm, was the greatest difficulty the project team faced. Apparently, as most webcams have automatic adjustments for dim light conditions, the team decided to use a more professional camera.

Training a hand-gesture recognition system

Stern explains how Gestix functions: “In the first calibration stage, the machine recognises the surgeon’s hand gestures. Subsequently, surgeons must learn to implement eight navigation gestures, by rapidly moving the hand away from a ‘neutral area’ and back again. Gestix users even have the option of zooming in and out by moving the hand clockwise or counterclockwise. In order to avoid sending unintended signals, users may enter a ‘sleep’ mode by dropping the hand MCITP Certification.”