'INSIDE' LOOK AT ALZHEIMER'S

NEUROSCIENTISTS at University of California (Los Angeles) and University of Queensland in Australia have used imaging technology to create the first three-dimensional video maps showing how Alzheimer's disease systematically engulfs the brain of a living patient.

Dramatic time-lapse videos were built on an SGI Onyx family visualisation system, starting with enormous data sets.

The work was part of an ongoing University of Queensland project investigating early Alzheimer's disease.

These moving images, available online at www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/AD_4D/dynamic.html, show how brain areas that control memory function, before emotion and inhibition, and finally sensation are destroyed. They also illustrate how the disease spares small brain regions which control vision and other basic functions that typically remain intact in Alzheimer's patients.

The latest findings appeared in the February edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Neuroscience.

LCD TAG TO DISPLAY YOUR TEMPERATURE

THE Sars outbreak got one Nanyang Technology University professor wondering how best to use technology.

Professor Lun Kwok Chan, who is a vice-dean at the Division of Structural and Computational Biology, was reading stories about how people were using stickers to indicate that they were fever-free, when the idea hit him - to use a simple LCD screen, like those in digital clocks, to display to the world your temperature.

That way, he says, at one glance, people will know your temperature that day, and you don't have to keep pasting stickers on your shirt.

Although he and his colleagues have yet to develop a prototype, he reckons it will be easy enough to 'set' your temperature each day, much like how you would set a clock.

It would also be thin enough to be unobtrusive when hung on your blouse or shirt.

The display will also register the date and time when reading was taken and also have a 24-hour 'forced reset' so that an outdated reading is not displayed.

He is also working on a model that will take the temperature of a person automatically.

WEARABLE COMPUTERS HERE NEXT WEEK

STATE-OF-THE-ART wearable computers will come to town next week, thanks to an agreement signed between United States-based Xybernaut Corporation and homegrown Applesgate-Plus.

While they are not quite integrated with your clothes yet, the Xybernaut computers feature a wearable processor - less than 2 kg - that is clipped onto a harness that you can wear.

You enter data through a small keyboard worn on your wrist or you can opt for a touch-pad screen, or even a speech-recognition module. You can even opt for a 'heads-up display', which means that information is piped to a small screen right in front of your eye. Communication with the server is through wireless technology.

The technology is meant more for heavy-duty work though, like construction workers who have to look at floor plans before they erect structures, or aircraft maintenance engineers who can instantly access maintenance schedules without leaving the plane, or get authorisation for new parts on the go, said Mr Eddy Tan, managing director of Applesgate-Plus, which is planning to get 10 sets in next week.

Prices start at US$3,000 for a basic model.