Software Radio

Wireless devices, from cell phones to FM radios, are effective but dumb. Most handle only one wireless format, since the others would require different radio components, adding expense and bulk. Electrical engineer Vanu Bose is using software to make wireless devices smarter. In May, the company he founded and heads, Cambridge, MA-based Vanu, demonstrated a prototype handheld able to send and receive both walkie-talkie and digital police-band signals.

Vanu engineers started with a Hewlett-Packard iPaq running Linux and added a custom expansion pack. The pack contains basic radio hardware, plus electronics that convert signals into digital representations. Vanu's software then decodes the digital signals and sends sound output to the iPaq's built-in speaker. In reverse, transmissions are encoded into a digital waveform particular to the desired format and sent to the radio hardware for transmission. Adding a new format requires only a software upgrade. The company hopes to commercialize the software for use by police and fire departments within 18 months; consumer products that could incorporate cell-phone, pager, and wireless-data functions are "down the road," Bose says.

Cancer Cure Supplier

For tens of thousands of U.S. cancer patients each year, bone marrow transplants offer the best hope for a cure. But as many as 60 percent of patients cannot find donors who are genetically compatible. A new technology created by Gamida-Cell in Jerusalem, Israel, could improve those odds. The technology takes advantage of the fact that banked blood from newborns' umbilical cords, which contains blood-producing stem cells, can offer a better chance for a match than the adult bone marrow most patients receive. But umbilical-cord blood contains relatively few stem cells-only enough to aid recipients weighing less than 50 kilograms. Gamida-Cell has developed a chemical that significantly increases the number of stem cells in cultured cord blood. If all goes according to plan, the company will produce stem-cell-enriched blood itself and sell it as a transplant product, starting as early as 2006. Human trials of the approach have already begun at the University of Texas's M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Ride the Bus

Bus riders in Boulder, CO, who find it difficult to navigate the mass transit system may soon be able to tear up their maps and schedules and use handheld computers instead. Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder, working with Boulder-based software firm AgentSheets, are combining various technologies in a bid to restore independence to the cognitively disabled; eventually tourists might also use the system. Each traveler has a handheld computer and a cell phone. The handheld uses the phone to download Global Positioning System data transmitted by city buses, then determines the best route to the user's destination. Software analyzes bus speed and direction and steers the user to the right bus, using arrows, images, and voice prompts. Future versions may combine GPS, cellular, and processing capabilities, eliminating the need for two separate devices.