5 Ways Google's New Search Tools Go Wide And Deep

Google is the barely challenged leader in search engine market share and, thanks to new tweaks like Real-Time Search and Google Goggles, it has no plans to slow down, either. This week, Google introduced a number of search capabilities that promise to broaden its search reach and continue to keep would-be competitors like Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo under Google's thumb. Here's how Google is doing it:


1. Google Real-Time Search
Google this week said that it would integrate realtime search results in search engine queries, meaning that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace that have content based on realtime status and other updates will be more easily found on Google. Microsoft's Bing also offers realtime searchability from social networking platforms, but the breadth and depth of Google's realtime search capability appear to be stronger.
Burning question: What does Google need to do to make that realtime capability even more comprehensive?


2. Google Goggles
The new Google Goggles allows users to take photos of something they're trying to identify using a mobile device (for now, an Android mobile device). Google's visual search will capture the image and return information, as if a user had typed in relevant search terms.
Burning question: When will Googles, available for Android phones, be made available for other platforms? And will it?


3. Google Favorite Places
Google is apparently providing more than 100,000 bar-code decals to various businesses around the country. Google is hoping that those businesses will post the bar codes so that mobile device users -- iPhone, Android and BlackBerry alike -- can scan those bar codes and instantly call up information such as reviews and promotions related to that business.
Burning question: Will businesses find Google Favorite Places as helpful a promotional tool as, say, offering coupons through Twitter or advertising promotions in Facebook communities?


4. What's Nearby for Google Maps
Google's What's Nearby for Google Maps is a mobile device feature through which users are supposed to be able to find landmarks, businesses and other local attractions based on where they are. Google also said it had updated Google Suggest to customize search results based on location. Typing in certain beginnings of words will yield different results depending on the city.


5. More languages in Google Voice Search
Google's voice search feature now supports Japanese in addition to English and Mandarin.

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India joins select club of 6, decodes human genome

Indian researchers have achieved a major feat: they have sequenced the entire genome of a human being, a 52-year-old Indian male.
Only five other countries - the United States, Britain, Canada, China and Korea - have so far done so.

It took scientists at the Delhi-based Institute for Genomics and Integrative Biology, affiliated to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, six weeks, several supercomputers and funds of around $ 30,000 (Rs 13.5 lakh) to achieve the breakthrough.

The decoding of the human genome is a giant step forward towards predictive treatment of diseases. The genome of the man chosen, for instance, shows him susceptible to cancer and heart disease —  which would not have been known otherwise. 

The achievement comes six years after a team of scientists drawn from several countries completed the first human genome sequencing in 2003.  That project took 13 years and over a billion dollars.

“We have bridged the gap between India and countries that have already decoded the genome,” said Prithviraj Chavan, minister of state for science and technology, making the announcement on Tuesday. Chavan compared genome sequencing to “man’s first landing on the moon”.
“It opens new possibilities for diagnostics and low cost treatment of Indian citizens,” said Samir Brahmachari, director general of CSIR.  
The human genome contains 3.1 billion base pairs, which describe every bodily function.

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Coming soon: An artificial skin!

Skin from a factory has long been the dream of dermatologists. Now, scientists are on track to develop what they claim is the artificial skin.

A team from four Fraunhofer institutes in Germany is developing the first fully automatic production system for two-layer skin models -- an almost perfect copy of human skin or artificial skin.
  
'Our engineers and biologists are the only ones who have succeeded in fully automating the entire process chain for manufacturing two-layer skin models,' said leader Jörg Saxler of Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT.
  
According to the scientists, in a multi-stage process, first small pieces of skin are sterilised. Then they are cut into small pieces, modified with specific enzymes, and isolated into two cell fractions, which are then propagated separately on cell culture surfaces.
  
The next step in the process combines the two cell types into a two-layer model, with collagen added to the cells that are to form the flexible lower layer, or dermis. This gives the tissue natural elasticity, they said.
  
In a humid incubator kept at body temperature, it takes the cell fractions less than three weeks to grow together and form a finished skin model with a diameter of roughly one centimetre.

The technique has already proven its use in practice, but until now it has been too expensive and complicated for mass production, according to the scientists.

'The production is associated with a great deal of manual work, and this reduces the method's efficiency,' Prof Heike Mertsching, a team member of Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB, said.

The team is now handling the development of the biological fundamentals and validation of the machine and its sub-modules, taking care of prototype development, automation and integration of the machine into a complete system.

'At the beginning, our greatest challenge was to overcome existing barriers, because each discipline had its own very different approach.
   
'Meanwhile, the four institutes are working together very smoothly. Everyone knows progress is impossible without input from others. Our goal is a monthly production of 5,000 skin models with perfect quality,' Saxler said.
 

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