A blog to gather opinions and questions regarding the center's work and develop a technology roadmap for future research direction and industry applications.
Well, there’s good news and bad news.The bad news is the video editing/capture/uploading takes a really long time, and I am still working on this.The good news is all one-hundred and thirty-two videos from the 2008 summer conference are up on youtube, and can be found on this site:
While the videos were converting, I read “Poisoned Profits” by Philip Shabecoff.The book discusses the darker side of mankind’s use of manufactured chemicals and materials by detailing the damage these chemicals cause to our bodies, especially to children.While not the best written book, it does have a lot of good information, and it did lead me to the following website, www.healthandenvironment.org, where you can go under the CHE Toxicant and Disease Database, and see what exposure to trace chemicals and pollutants have on our health.Going through this database is pretty eye opening, and I think is a good resource to consider.
For those of you who are reading this, sorry these posts are pretty boring at this point- the videos are taking a lot of time, but I will say they turned out great, and will be an important resource to have.
This week continues where we are working to get the information presented at the 2009 Conference out to you all.I just finished filling in the MIRTHE Roadmap Powerpoint and it should be available in the near future (be sure to check out the “notes” sections where we include everything we said in the presentation and more!), and I am working on capturing, converting and editing the videos from this conference.Also, I am working on creating a youtube channel for MIRTHE, for the purpose of posting the 2008 videos.
There is still much to do for the roadmap.First, I want to start working on better defining the “first generation” sensors for applications in environmental monitoring, industrial process sensing, and uranium hexafluoride analysis.One of the areas where Kelsey and I struggled was in determining the gases needing to be detected in industrial processing, and other than natural gases or petroleum refining, determining which processes demand the ppm/ppb/ppt sensitivity which the QCLs can provide.I’d like to pose this question to anyone reading the blog, and please feel free to email me what you know or think (petervschram@gmail.com).
In other news, I have recently been in contact with an anesthesiologist who has been discussing the need for real-time detection of infections in the intensive care unit.He said how ventilator acquired pneumonia and sepsis are a significant dangers for those in the intensive care, and how early detection could prevent infection and death.The bacteria responsible for the infection produce nitric oxide, meaning a sensor which could detect NOx would be significant in these situations, especially if the detector is non-invasive.While there is no commonly accepted practice for monitoring the NOx in the blood, research physicians have been using intraperitoneal catheters to detect NOx, but these are very invasive and have their own shortcomings.This is just one other possibility for QCL based sensors for breath analysis.In the next step in the roadmap, I will be looking into applications within breath analysis like this: NOx as a gas is already being detected with our QCL sensors in environmental monitoring, so the next questions are a). could one laser occupy both types of sensors and b). if NOx is even the right gas to look for.
I have now returned to the Princeton Engineering Quad to continue the task of Mid-IR Industry-Roadmapping, and Kelsey is off in New York taking part in the Take Dance Intensive then back to Princeton for her senior year. Needless to say, it was a pleasure working with her, and I know we accomplished much this summer due to her inquisitive nature and her hard work and dedication.
The MIRTHE conference in NYC was awesome- while I was certainly in over my head for a number of science talks, what was more important was the excitement of the students and industry members for this technology.Also, while Kelsey and I both understood there is still much work to be done, we were pleased with how responsive and enthusiastic the industry members and students were about our talk, and how open they were to helping us further the roadmap.Overall, it was a great experience.
In other news, today in Princeton there are both excessive heat warnings, and air quality alerts.After a summer of researching requirements for environmental sensing, and then last week in the high emphasis placed on environmental monitoring, I remembered one of the first things Claire said to me about MIRTHE.She told me how we take for granted the air we breathe is safe, and the environments we inhabit are not detrimental to our health.But, as we see today, this is not always the case.And, if we continue on in a “business as usual” model, or if we had in the past before the Clean Air Act, our atmosphere would not be safe and our society would be suffering a range of problems associated with high pollution levels.However, numerous regulations have been put in place, and today, America is a safer place because of this.
But there is still work to be done.If today in New Jersey is any indication, we still need help.Globally, America is far ahead of developing countries like China and India, where air quality and water quality are major problems. Furthermore, global warming is changing our climate in unpredictable and dangerous ways, and yet we are still pumping GHGs and toxins into our atmosphere at an unsustainable rate.
As James Butler said in his talk on supporting Greenhouse Gas Management Strategies, there is no real way to create effective regulation legislation without means to measure pollutant levels.One of the best parts of MIRTHE is in addition to forging the way in the fields of breath analysis, explosives detection and industrial process detection, MIRTHE does so while working to better understand climate and atmospheric changes which are so closely tied to the lives of human beings all over the planet.Because of the interconnectivity of the challenges QCL sensors, MIRTHE is able to work to monitor the environment AND contribute to many viable and lucrative fields.
