From newsmaster from bellsouth.net Wed Jun 17 09:30:00 2009 From: newsmaster from bellsouth.net (newsmaster@bellsouth.net) Date: Wed Jun 17 11:57:51 2009 Subject: [Bioforum] AT&T Usenet Netnews Service Shutting Down Message-ID: <1245249220_18963@newsgroups.bellsouth.net> Please note that on or around July 15, 2009, AT&T will no longer be offering access to the Usenet Netnews service. If you wish to continue reading Usenet newsgroups, access is available through third-party vendors. http://support.att.net/usenet Distribution: AT&T SouthEast Newsgroups Servers From bitterpearl from sbcglobal.net Thu Jun 25 23:27:51 2009 From: bitterpearl from sbcglobal.net (Margaret Glaser) Date: Fri Jun 26 12:07:24 2009 Subject: [Bioforum] Magnetic Effects of MRI Message-ID: I was just reading the post on MRI effects in the long-term. It is interesting that there do not seem to be any long-term studies. It would be difficult to say that there is no effect, when there is no mechanism (?) for recording any effects and processing the information. Considering how often they are used---not just for specific medical purposes, but in studies on basically well people in order to learn more about some aspect of human functioning---it would seem ethically wrong to continue with no long view. I don't know how many years they have been used, but I believe the intensity and frequencies, and perhaps the characteristics of the wave forms have changed over the years, so that one might not be sure that what used to seem safe, still is. MRI evolved in an environment in which there was the belief that non- ionizing radiation would not hurt you, as long as it was not intense enough to burn or cook you. That view is being seriously challenged in a lot of peer-reviewed studies around the world now---especially studies done without RF industry money. A good review of the science---several hundred pages worth, but in sections---can be found at www.bioinitiative.org. This was completed in summer of 2007 by an international working group of independent researchers and public health experts. Called "The BioInitiative Report," it has been having a big impact in Europe and some other parts of the world. It led the European Union this year to issue a resolution concerning the need for precaution re RF (radiofrequency radiation), and several other countries have weighed in on this, as well. I'm not sure whether MRI is mentioned in the report. I think it is an area that will be one of the last to be addressed, because of the medical benefit that is gained in most cases. But if you read the review of the studies, you will see that all different frequencies and intensities of RF are "whispering" (so to speak) to the body and these signals are evoking reactions from the body's cells, affecting different processes. It appears that about 2-3% of the population may be more sensitive to RF and EMFs in general, than others. One of the effects that has been seen in several studies to occur at an exceedingly low intensity level is the opening of the blood-brain barrier. This should make us pause, at least, and start looking at potential long-term effects from multiple MRI's. One "established" effect, which I heard about from the RF industry people themselves, is that some people experience "seasickness" while having an MRI (presumably, contrast medium effects were accounted for). "Don't ask, don't tell" is not a good policy when it comes to determining whether medical procedures are truly safe in the long-run. From engelbert_buxbaum from hotmail.com Fri Jun 26 15:09:12 2009 From: engelbert_buxbaum from hotmail.com (Dr Engelbert Buxbaum) Date: Fri Jun 26 15:22:42 2009 Subject: [Bioforum] Re: Magnetic Effects of MRI References: Message-ID: Am 26.06.2009, 00:27 Uhr, schrieb Margaret Glaser : > MRI evolved in an environment in which there was the belief that non- > ionizing radiation would not hurt you, as long as it was not intense > enough to burn or cook you. That view is being seriously challenged in > a lot of peer-reviewed studies around the world now---especially studies > done without RF industry money. A good review of the science---several > hundred pages worth, but in sections---can be found at > www.bioinitiative.org. Those interested in the so called "electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome" can find a report on a conference by WHO under http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241594128_eng.pdf For those short of time my summary of this report: - there are some sick people out there who claim their condition is caused by electromagnetic fields. - these people can not detect the presence of EMF and their condition is independent of the presence or absence of such fields in double-blind studies. - there is no physical or epidemiological evidence suggesting a connection between EMF and disease (if dose is within internationally accepted limits). - there is often a pre-existing psychiatric condition and signs + symptoms may worsen by the fear of EMF. - patients should be carefully evaluated (both their medical condition and their environment), any cause for disease found should be eliminated. Otherwise the treatment is symptomatical. From codrina.lauth from iais.fraunhofer.de Sat Jun 27 04:51:57 2009 From: codrina.lauth from iais.fraunhofer.de (Ina Lauth) Date: Sat Jun 27 11:56:19 2009 Subject: [Bioforum] NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION NEXT GENERATION DATA MINING SUMMIT: ENERGY, EMISSIONS & TRANSPORTATION Message-ID: <4A45EBBD.7090301@iais.fraunhofer.de> ================== NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION NEXT GENERATION DATA MINING SUMMIT: DEALING WITH THE ENERGY CRISIS, GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS, AND TRANSPORTATION CHALLENGES Location: Baltimore Date: October 1--3, 2009 Workshop Web Site: http://www.kd2u.org/NGDM09/ Primary Sponsors: National Science Foundation and KD2U CALL FOR PAPERS The world is facing a number of critical challenges. Finding the next generation of solutions for energy supply, reducing greenhouse emission, and transportation problems is critical to sustain the world and our civilization. Energy crisis is a major challenge that needs to be addressed for sustaining and further developing the world. Greenhouse emissionsis widely believed to be connected with energy consumption. Transportation system has significant effect on the energy consumption and on greenhouse emission. Many problems related to greenhouse emissions and transportation industry are critically connected to the consumption and supply of energy. Information processing and advanced data analysis techniques are likely to play important roles in solving these problems for the next generation. Efficient production, distribution, and consumption of existing and alternate energy would require supporting information processing networks in order to adaptively control and protect the underlying physical systems. Understanding the effects of greenhouse emissions requires advanced data analysis techniques for understanding remotely sensed data. Reducing the carbon footprints of buildings, vehicles, and airplanes would require continuous monitoring of sensors and detecting deviation from desired behavior. Designing the next generation of transportation network becomes particularly challenging in the context of increasing demand for energy supplies and reducing greenhouse emission. Sensor networks for highways and vehicles equipped with diagnostic data bus along with the availability of machine-to-machine wireless communication networks are going to make the role of advanced data mining techniques very important in the transportation industry. Computing in itself is under scrutiny from the perspective of its effect on greenhouse emissions and pollution. We need to pay close attention to the environmental impacts of computing and the supporting infrastructure. Overall, we need to explore technology for sustainable computing and computing technology for a sustainable world. The Next Generation Data Mining (NGDM?09) Summit: Dealing with Energy Crisis, Greenhouse Emission, and Transportation Challenges? will bring together data mining researchers, scientists and engineers from a diverse background along with domain experts. NGDM'09 will focus on the following areas: 1) Energy crisis, information processing, and data mining 2) Greenhouse emissions, climate changes, and data mining 3) Transportation, emissions, and data mining The summit will generate a report based on the presentations and discussions of the participants. We would like to invite paper (extended abstract) submissions from data mining researchers and practitioners. The papers should be relevant to the focus areas of NGDM'09. The papers must present innovative research directions that may be suitable for the agenda of the summit. Submitted papers should not exceed 5 pages. The summit will accept only electronic submission of papers in PDF or Postscript format to "info at kd2u dot org" with "NGDM09 Submission" in the subject line. The papers will be included in the NGDM?09 proceedings. The summit will also produce an edited book. Extended versions of the selected papers will be included in the book. For more details please visit the workshop website. INVITED SPEAKERS NGDM'09 will have many invited speakers. The list includes: Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, Cisco (http://www.kd2u.org/NGDM09/Castilla-Rubio.pdf) Tom Dietterich, Professor, Oregon State University (http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~tgd/) Carla Gomes, Professor, Cornell University (http://www.cs.cornell.edu/gomes/) Vipin Kumar, Professor, University of Minnesota (http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kumar/) Rich Lechner, Vice President, IBM (http://www-05.ibm.com/hu/soasummit/cv_lechner.html) Mark McGranaghan, Director, Electric Power Research Inst. (http://my.epri.com) Shashi Shekhar, Professor, University of Minnesota (http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~shekhar/) Brian Worley, Director CSED, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/directory/brian-worley) Philip Yu, Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago (http://www.cs.uic.edu/~psyu/) **More to be announced soon......** GENERAL CHAIR Hillol Kargupta Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland Baltimore County & Agnik Web: www.cs.umbc.edu/~hillol E-mail: info@kd2u.org STEERING COMMITTEE Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University Carla Gomes, Cornell University Hillol Kargupta, Univ. of Maryland, Balt. County Vipin Kumar, University of Minnesota Philip Yu, University of Illinois at Chicago Ashok Srivastava, NASA Ames Research Lab. REPORTS CHAIR Chris Giannella, New Mexico State University PUBLICITY CHAIR Codrina Lauth, Fraunhofer IAIS, Germany NGDM'09 ADVISORY COMMITTEE Budhedra Bhaduri, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Alok Chowdhary, Northwestern University Wei Fan, IBM T. J. Watson Research Laboratory Auroop Ganguly, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Jiawei Han, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Katharina Morik, University of Dortmund Srinivasan Parthasarathy, Ohio State University Dino Pedreschi, Universit? di Pisa, Italy IMPORTANT DATES Paper/Poster/Demo-proposal Submission deadline: August 15, 2009 Notification: August 31, 2009 Camera-ready due: September 15, 2009 Pre-Registration Deadline: September 8, 2009 Summit: October 1-October 3, 2009 From Issam.Mabrouki from sophia.inria.fr Tue Jun 30 09:27:25 2009 From: Issam.Mabrouki from sophia.inria.fr (Issam.Mabrouki@sophia.inria.fr) Date: Tue Jun 30 11:37:58 2009 Subject: [Bioforum] BIONETICS: submission deadline extension- 05 July. Message-ID: <39114.194.57.216.84.1246372045.squirrel@imap-sop.inria.fr> Extended Deadline : 05/07/2009. *** Our apologies if you receive multiple copies *** BIONETICS 2009 http://www.bionetics.org 4th International Conference on Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systrems December 9-11, 2009 - Avignon, France Technology is taking us to a world where myriads of heavily networked devices interact with the physical world in multiple ways, and at multiple scales, from the global Internet scale down to micro and nano-devices. Many of these devices are highly mobile and autonomous, and must adapt to the surrounding environment in a totally unsupervised way. The fundamental research challenge is the design of robust decentralized computing systems, capable of operating under changing environments and noisy input, and yet exhibit the desired behavior and response time, under constraints such as energy consumption, size, and processing power. These systems should be able to adapt and learn how to react to unforeseen scenarios as well as to display properties comparable to social entities. Biological systems are able to handle many of these challenges with an elegance and efficiency still far beyond current human artifacts. Based on this observation, bio-inspired approaches have been proposed in the past years as a strategy to handle the complexity of such systems. The goal is to obtain methods on how to engineer technical solutions which have similar high stability and efficiency as biological entities often have. The BIONETICS conference aims at bringing together researchers and scientists from several disciplines in computer science and engineering where bio-inspired methods are investigated. We are soliciting high-quality original papers in the following areas including but not limited to these topics: - * Bio-Inspired mathematical models, methods and tools * - * Bio-inspired algorithms and mechanism * - * Bio-inspired technical systems * - * Bio-inspired information and communication systems (ICT) * *PAPERS*: The conference invites original technical papers that have not been previously published and are not currently under review for publication elsewhere. Contributions addressing all areas related to bio-inspired technologies are solicited. * SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: * All paper, poster, panel, and workshop submissions will be handled electronically. Please visit the conference website http://www.bionetics.orgfor detailed submission requirements and procedures. * PUBLICATION:* All submitted papers and posters will be rigorously reviewed by technical program committee members and the reviewers they invite. A selected number of best papers will be considered for publication in a *leading journal*. *IMPORTANT DATES* - *Paper Submission Due Date: *July 5th, 2009 - *Notification of Acceptance:* August 21th,, 2009 - *Camera Ready Version Due:* September 20th, 2009 -- Best Regards, Issam MABROUKI INRIA - Project Maestro 2004 route des Lucioles - BP 93 06902 Sophia-Antipolis Cedex FRANCE Tel : +33 4-92-38-7573