Madison Section NewsletterNewsletters are archived online at http://ieee-msn.truenym.net/news.html. |
Vol. 17, No. 9 | Serving IEEE Members of South Central Wisconsin | October 2014 |
It is time for the Annual IEEE-Madison Section Elections. This November, you will be receiving an e-mail ballot request. PLEASE do vote. To vote, you will have to login with your IEEE Member account. If you have not done so in a while, or have forgotten you password, you can get login information at this link. At this time, we have no candidates for Secretary -- if you are interested in running for the Secretary position, please contact Steve Schultheis via email at ss-at-ieee.org.
Hidden Markov Chain Analysis:
Dr. James Tripp presented a fascinating summary of modern
Markov chain analyses to decode the chemical pathways for
the SAR11 bacteria. Though not discovered until 1990,
the SAR11 bacteria exceeds 30% of the
bacterial count in the ocean and represents a mass equivalent to
all species of fish in the ocean. His analysis
helped to decode the function of this previously unknown
organism. Dr. Tripp also spoke of his transformation from
a database programmer to scientist at 50 years old, turning a
lifelong interest into an exciting career.
Magnetic Materials in Medicine:
Dr. St. Pierre gave an excellent, well organized talk on new
developments in magnetic materials used in medicine. He
talked of both naturally occurring magnetic materials, such a
iron in red blood cells, and of man-made additives, such as
finely ground magnetic materials with drugs bonded to
them. One interesting use of the materials is to identify
sentinal lymph nodes to biopsy for breast cancer
detection. Nano particles of iron are injected into the
breast and flow though the lymph ducts to collect in the
sentinel cells, allowing a simple magnetic field probe to locate
the sentinel nodes for removal. It is safer and more
accurate than using x-ray techniques. On a personal note,
Tim had been traveling for three months as a Distinguished
Lecturer when he arrived in Madison so when I proposed kayaking
on Lake Wingra, he jumped at the chance. It was an
enjoyable afternoon and Dr. St. Pierre was left with a good
feeling about Madison.
Blue Tooth Product Development:
Bob Baddely gave a detailed talk on the steps he went
through when developing the DigiTally product. It was
quite informative and included an in depth discussion of eight
or more types of technology that he explored on the way to the
final solution. Bob's knowledge of problems in designing,
fabricating, and certifying products with RF connections was
useful to a number of the attendees.