Govind Rao, a professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering as well as the director for the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) was recently quoted in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

“Advances in DNA biology, particularly those of the past three decades, catalyzed the emergence and expansion of experimental approaches to manipulate gene expression. Subsequently, these advances impacted protein science, a field that found itself increasingly positioned at the juncture of technology, science, and art,” wrote Richard Stein, in the article.

“We are trying to make bioprocessing more intelligent and provide a greater degree of measurement at all stages,” said Govind Rao, Ph.D., professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering and director of the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). A major effort in Dr. Rao’s lab is focused on developing noninvasive, disposable sensors to actively monitor culture parameters during growth.

“Most biological processes are very complex, and many parameters change during the growth of a culture,” added Dr. Rao. Recently, Dr. Rao and colleagues described the use of triple disposable noninvasive optical sensors that can be positioned inside culture flasks, and revealed that pH, oxygen level, and carbon dioxide level can be dynamically monitored during E. coli fermentation to collect information that would not be routinely available from shake flasks.

According to a paper co-authored by Dr. Rao in Biotechnology Progress in 2012, the sensitive element of the disposable noninvasive optical sensors is a thin, luminescent patch affixed inside the flask. The paper also noted that small electronic devices for excitation and fluorescence detection are positioned outside the shake flask for noninvasive monitoring.”

“New sales figures show slow the decline of the personal computer is accelerating, with consumers abandoning the desktop units in droves in favor of more portable devices.

New figures from the International Data Corp. show 1 million fewer PC shipments than tablets in the third quarter of this year,” wrote Nathan Porter of the Washington Times.

The article, addresses the question, will PC’s soon be a thing of the past with the increasing popularity of tablets?

Not so, says Tim Finin a professor in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, ”

“While I think this trend will continue, there are still going to be many people who will need to use PCs,” said Tim Finin, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.”

A new company launched by Google will seek to extend human life spans.

Twitter seeks to do better at inferring its users’ consumer and political preferences, gender, age, and more.

Twitter began selling promoted tweets in 2010, but it has always faced challenges in knowing which of those ads should be delivered to which Twitter accounts. Most Twitter users don’t give up their locations, and many don’t reveal their identities in their profiles. And mining tweets themselves for insights is hard because the language is not only short but filled with slang and abbreviations.

Today W3C appointed two new Chairs to the Tracking Protection Working Group: Justin Brookman and Carl Cargill. They join continuing co-Chair Matthias Schunter. The Working Group updated two draft DNT specifications this week. Matthias Schunter announced this week a stable plan for reaching Last Call. Learn more about the Tracking Protection Working Group.