Ultrafast Lasers: Reading Minds, Curing Disease?
Where Flexibility Equals Happiness
Trenton Library Goes with EBSCO
Corporate Angels: Food for Plainsboro
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Bart Jackson and others were prepared for the
December 13, 2000 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. A defunct number was
deleted on January 1, 2006. All rights reserved.
Refining Knowledge Management
The traditional technique for what is now known as
“knowledge
management” was to gather around the watercooler and chat, but
today’s busy schedules preclude that. Like almost every other business
practice, the sharing of information is now a digital operation.
Digitizing
the knowledge enables people to access snippets of official and
unofficial
information through the plumbing of a company’s business software
system or search engine.
What knowledge management is, and why knowledge management is
important
is the topic for Robert Terdeman, chief data architect of EMC
Corporation, keynote speaker of a half-day conference staged by the
Global Electronic Technology ContactX Association (GetContactX) on
Thursday, December 14, at noon at the Newark Airport Marriott. Cost:
$49 for non-members. Call 609-844-9880.
Based on Lenox Drive, GetContactX is a membership organization of
technology oriented companies and individuals (www.getcontactx.com).
Other speakers include Dan Paolini, data architect, State of
New Jersey Office of Information Technology; Jane Warsaw, vice
president, technology, Aptegrity Inc.; Peter Dorfman, founder,
KnowledgeFarm; John M. Quirk Jr., senior director, Xpedior;
Kevin Hamm, president & COO, NetIDEAS Inc.; and Susan Handman,
national practice director of CRM, RCG Information Technology.
Would-be urban developers can attend a training session
hosted by the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (HMFA)
on Thursday, December 14, from 9:30 a.m. to noon at the HMFA
headquarters,
637 South Clinton Avenue in Trenton. The workshop is for developers
and not-for-profit sponsors who want to apply for Phase VIII funds
under the Urban Home Ownership Recovery Program, a Whitman
administration
initiative that finances the construction of new for-sale homes in
mixed-income developments.
HMFA has $5 million in subsidy funds to offset the cost of homes for
low and moderate-income families in urban areas that meet these
criteria.
The deadline for applications is Thursday, February 15. To register
for the workshop call Joyce Kaminski at 609-278-7550 or Deborah
Dashefsky at 609-278-7566.
HMFA has financed more than 2,200 homes in 21 urban areas, says
Deborah
DeSantis, executive director. In the last round of the UHORP
funding,
it committed to help fund 190 new homes worth nearly $20 million.
HMFA is funded and financed through the sale of taxable and
non-taxable
bonds to private investors (www.nj-hmfa.com)
Another HMFA project is to offer mortgage monies to lower income
adoptive
parents. In 18 months this program has helped 18 families provide
permanent homes for more than 50 adopted children. The 30-year
mortgages
are offered at below market interest rates to prospective adoptive
parents who cannot afford sufficient housing. The federal department
of housing and urban development named this project as one of the
“Top 100 Best Practices” for this year. Because the current
funds have been used, an additional $4 million has just been
committed.
Call 609-278-7567 for information.
December 18
Top Of PageUltrafast Lasers: Reading Minds, Curing Disease?
By setting his laser on ultrafast, one Princeton
professor
is stunning our perceptions of psychology and setting cancer up for
the kill. knows. On Monday, December 18, at 8 p.m. in Princeton
University’s
Kresge Auditorium, Warren S. Warren will present a
lecture/demonstration
with the intriguing title “Breasts and Brains — Similarities
and Differences.” The American Chemical Society, sponsor of this
free lecture, also offers a 6 p.m. dinner at Prospect House. Cost:
$20. Call Denise D’Auria at 609-258-5202.
Warren directs the New Jersey Center for Ultrafast Laser Applications,
a group that has raised to a whole new level the precision with which
we can view our brains, breasts, and other body tissue. His background
stands as fairly routine for a world class scientist: the
undergraduate
majors of chemistry and physics at Harvard; the physical chemistry
Ph.D. at Berkeley; then off to California Technology for postdoctorate
work with Nobel prizewinning Ahmed Zewail. He came to Princeton 18
years ago.
The ultrafast laser technology, says Warren, “holds the promise
of revolutionizing psychology. We can trace the neural path and tell,
for instance, if an individual is just mentally picturing a photo
before him or actually remembering it.” Though the results are
boggling, you will not have to appear on the Nobel short list to
understand
his lecture. “Anyone with a good college or even a strong high
school science background will fully understand my talk,” he
assures.
Basically, Warren peers into mind and body using two methods of
clinical
imaging that he himself has recently enhanced. The first is Nuclear
Magnetic Resonance Imaging — referring to that popular medical
test that lab technicians refer to as “an MRI.” The
technological
recipe for this begins with summoning a batch of stable atomic
particles
(those with an equal number of neutrons and protons.) These particles
have the fortunate habit of bouncing away at an angle and, for a brief
instant, leaving a non-vanishing trace along their path.
The process entails placing the patient in a magnetic chamber and
directing these stable (and totally safe) particles into her body.
The real trick is to adjust the resonance so that the radio frequency
of the body tissues and the frequency of those entering particles
are exactly the same — so they resonate on the same wave length.
If you line it up exactly, and then snap off the machine, the
patient’s
body will give back a weak signal that can be interpreted on a screen
as breast or brain image.
On December 18 Warren will not only show the process and explain its
underlying physics, but he will demonstrate his most recent MRI
refinements.
“At this point,” he notes, “we can image the brain so
precisely that I can see a difference between you sitting still and
sitting while just tapping your finger. I can actually watch the
neural
cortex kick in with that kind of basic motor activity.”
But beyond the brain, applying an ultrafast, continuous laser to the
MRI process allows doctors to discern infinitely smaller groups of
cancerous cells. Early detection takes another stride forward.
The second method of Warren’s brain and tissue scanning holds the
somewhat daunting title of Femtosecond Laser Spectroscopy. And while
it does involve shooting lasers through bodies, Warren has come a
long way since Goldfinger and James Bond. A very proper, safe, and
swift laser — with all its protons lined up between two mirrors
— is sent through the tissue in question. At what speed? A
femtosecond
is a thousandth of a millionth of a millionth of a second. It passes
faster than a Congressional pay raise bill.
By sending short pulses of this ultrafast laser beam through a cell,
Warren is able to suppress the scattered light that normally appears
on spectroscopy images. “The short pulses,” he explains
“send
the quickest first light on the most direct path” with less visual
static.
Again, such refined clinical images allow doctors to judge a single
cell cancerous or benign. One can also actually trace the neural paths
through the brain and even the molecular rearrangement with different
brain activities. Warren modestly admits that he is just one of a
hundred groups studying this “extraordinary level of
scanning.”
Last year, his mentor, Ahmed Zewail, received his Nobel prize in
chemistry
for just such laser spectroscopy advances. Yet there can be no doubt
that Warren and his New Jersey Center for Ultrafast Laser Applications
are breaking some of the newest ground.
Nor does this groundbreaking go unnoticed. The U.S. Army has partially
funded Warren’s center. Responding to a Congressional mandate to
encourage
research program for earlier cancer detection, the New Jersey
Commission
for Science and Technology Research and Development has also funneled
funds into the center.
The funds have purchased, among other things, a small MRI chamber
that one can don for brain scans. “We are verging on totally new
insights of knowledge,” says Warren, “even with the technology
we have. Who knows how far and into what fields this process can take
us?”
— Bart Jackson
Send nominations for the Greater Mercer County Chamber
of Commerce’s 2000 Business Awards by Friday, December 15. Each
nomination
must be accompanied by a justification. Awards will be presented at
an annual dinner in March. Categories include citizen of the year
(for lifelong contributions to the area), corporation of the year,
and small business of the year (fewer than 100 employees).
Last year the winners in each of these categories were Carol Beske
(of ACT Engineers), Trap Rock Industries (the quarry in Kingston),
and Waters & Bugbe, a Trenton-based contractor. Paperwork may be faxed
to 609-393-1032.
The chamber is selling series subscriptions to nine monthly luncheons
(excluding March, July, and August. Individuals may reserve seats
for $195 (and save $30). An annual table reservation costs $1,950,
$300 less than the table for a single luncheon. Many of the luncheons
are held at the Hyatt, but the dates for the luncheons vary. Call
609-393-4143.
Top Of PageWhere Flexibility Equals Happiness
When managed effectively, greater workplace flexibility
is a win-win situation for both companies and the individuals they
employ. This was the conclusion drawn by the Boston College Center
for Work & Family, which published the results of a two-year research
project, “Measuring the Impact of Workplace Flexibility.”
It presents a detailed look at the impact of workplace flexibility
on managers, co-workers, and overall work group productivity. Cost:
$149. Call Kathy Lynch at 617-552-2865 (or E-mail: lynchks@bc.edu).
The study showed that 87 percent of employees and 70 percent of
managers
report that flexible work schedules have positive effects on
productivity,
87 percent of employees and 65 percent of managers agree that it has
a positive effects on the quality of work, and 80 percent of employees
and 76 percent of managers say that it has positive effects on
retention.
This data reveals that the most effective form of flexibility is daily
flextime, which is the ability to vary work hours on a daily basis.
Adjustable schedules report higher levels of job satisfaction and
better work/family balance among employees.
PharmaPros Corporation has begun a new program, led
by Laura Bersen, to train professionals involved in clinical
data management and regulatory technology.
Peg Regan, president of the firm on Main Street in Lawrenceville,
says that some of the available courses are Introduction to Clinical
Data Management, Case Report Form Design and Annotation, Database
Standards Design, and Database Design (www.PharmaPros.com). Call
609-912-1100.
Commerce, Fleet, and First Union Bank are
among the banks that are participating in a new state program to make
funds available for entrepreneurs. Also participating are First
Washington State Bank and Yardville National Bank. These
banks have transformed an informal lending program from the New Jersey
Development Authority into a formal one. Now aspiring business owners
who attend the eight-week Entrepreneurial Training Institute can apply
for funding from a special revolving loan fund set up just for
graduates
of this program.
The fund is called “SEED: Strengthening the Economy with
Entrepreneurial
Development,” not to be confused with “seed capital”
dispensed
to technology companies. Call ETI at the number for the New Jersey
Economic Development Authority 609-292-9279 (www.njeda.com).
Instead of committing personnel to the tiresome job
of manning tables at a job fair, sign yourself up for the New Jersey
Technology Council’s Virtual Tech E-Fair, which will run for 30 days
starting Monday, January 15.
Member companies pay $250 to register and non-members pay double that.
To get a banner ad as well, member companies pay $500 and non-members
pay $750. Registration is taking place now (www.njtechefair.org).
Jobs posted range from internships to those for technologists with
experience. The E-fair will be marketed to New Jersey’s colleges and
universities, and one-third of the proceeds will go to the NJTC
Education
Foundation. For details call 856-787-9700.
Top Of PageGovernment Documents
Several new publications relate to small business,
finance,
trade, the Internet, and economics. For purchase, call the
Superintendent
of Documents at 202-512-1800 or go to bookstore.gpo.gov.
“Building the Foundation for a New Century: Final Report on
Implementation
of the Recommendations of the 1995 White House Conference on Small
Business” highlights the success of legislative and administrative
actions taken to meet policy priorities set during the conference.
“Economic Issues: Economic Perspectives on the Internet”
covers
economic aspects of the Internet and electronic commerce, including
different methods used for pricing user access to the Internet and
issues surrounding pricing of goods and services on the Internet.
The annual “Securities and Exchange Commission Annual Report”
focuses on effective enforcement in and regulation of our nation’s
capital markets. The last release, “The Third Millennium: Small
Business and Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century,” presents a
picture of where small business stands and looks at trends and issues
expected to affect small business over the next several years.
Top Of PageTrenton Library Goes with EBSCO
The library at 120 Academy Street has joined virtually
all the other libraries in New Jersey to offer the EBSCO Online system
to any cardholder at (www.trenton.lib.nj.us). EBSCO Online has full
text articles from more than 1,800 magazines and is searchable by
subject or keyword. Library cards are free to anyone who lives, works,
or goes to school in Trenton. Call Joyce Willis at 609-392-7188.
Top Of PageCorporate Angels: Food for Plainsboro
National Business Parks is sponsoring the 10th
annual College Park Holiday Food Drive through Wednesday, December
20. Non-perishable food collected in the cafeterias at 4 Research
Way Food at 107 College Road East will be distributed to Plainsboro
residents identified by the township’s department of social services.
They include the elderly, families on social assistance, the disabled,
those chronically ill, and those who are victims of domestic violence.
“The food drive is a real person-to-person way to give something
back to the community,” says Tom Stange of the real estate
management company. “If everyone working here along Princeton’s
corporate corridor put just one food item in the bin, we would have
enough to provide holiday meals for dozens of our neighbors who would
otherwise go without.”
Suggested items for this or any other food drive are canned goods,
peanut butter, powdered milk, cereal, coffee, soups, and cans of
tunafish.
Financial contributions will help purchase special discount coupons
at supermarkets.
Since 1990, more than 1,200 families or individuals have received
food. For information call 609-452-1300, extension 19.
Saturday, December 16, is the deadline to contribute
new, unwrapped toys for needy children ranging in age from infant
to teenagers. The toys will be distributed by HomeFront, which helps
Mercer County’s homeless families through a variety of programs.
Bring new, unwrapped toys to the Fleet Financial Solutions Center
at 16-18 Nassau Street during business hours or until noon on
Saturday.
Each donor will receive a poster of McCarter Theater’s all-new
production
of “A Christmas Carol,” which has been supported by the bank.
Donors are also eligible to win a $100 gift certificate for McCarter
tickets. For information call 609-688-0381.
Top Of Page$5 Million for Nassau
Harold W. McGraw of the McGraw Hill Companies
has endowed Princeton University with $5 million to create a campus
center for teaching and learning. The center’s key features include
an electronic classroom, a multimedia learning resource lab, a writing
center, a lecture/demonstration room, a video study facility, and
a study hall. It will become a place for sharing teaching and
curriculum
strategies, offering technological and professional support
inter-departmentally,
and incorporating high-tech tools into teaching and learning.
The McGraw Center will also incorporate the Princeton Writing Program
and the Language Laboratory and regularly host visitors for lectures
and workshops on new methods and new tools.
Comcast employees packed and delivered Thanksgiving mealsto less fortunate families on Thanksgiving morning with the help ofthe Americana Diner in East Windsor. Families who received the mealswere chosen by the Community Action Service Center of Hightstown,a not-for-profit organization that has aided the needs of communitymembers since 1967.Bloomberg Financial Markets of Skillman hosted 75 studentsand mentors from the Granville Academy in October as a part of theacademy’s annual convention that was held at the Four Points Sheratonin Cherry Hill. The students and mentors toured the Skillman offices,and its communications center, met with several managers, and oneof Bloomberg’s executive recruiters.William Granville, who founded the academy in 1983, hoped that thevisit would inspire the college-bound, inner-city students who couldpursue business, industry, and entrepreneurship as careers.The Independent Insurance Agents of New Jersey (IIANJ)donated $18,500 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of New Jersey, whichwill help sponsor an all-expense paid trip to Disney World for fourchildren with life-threatening illnesses and their families. Theirtickets include access to the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT Center, MGMStudios,Sea World, Universal Studios, Dinner Theater, as well as Bush Gardens,Cypress Gardens, Wet N’ Wild, Discovery Island, and Gatorland. IIANJraised the money through its Charity Golf Classic held in the springof 2000.The Professional Insurance Agents of New Jersey Inc. raisedover $34,000 for Special Olympics New Jersey at its 17th annualgolf classic. The money will go towards supporting year-round sportstraining and athletic competition for 12,000 children and adults inNew Jersey with mental retardation or other closely relateddisabilities.Next year’s Golf Classic will be held on September 10 at GreenacresCountry Club in Lawrenceville.The ERA Brokers of New Jersey raised $15,000 for the MuscularDystrophy Association (MDA) through its second annual ERA/MDA GreatWalk. Over 100 people of all ages and physical abilities took partin the ERA/MDA Great Walk, and funds exceeded last year’s by 50percent.Princeton University has donated $300,000 to the constructionof the new Princeton Public Library. The library’s cardholders include2,300 faculty, staff, and students, who borrowed more than 40,000items last year. The fund raising campaign has a goal of $11.5million.Fox Rothschild O’Brien & Frankel made holiday donationsto the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen and other food banks throughout thestate. By designing its own Thanksgiving card, the Lenox Drive officeof the law firm was able to decrease the cost of holiday cards andprovide additional financial support.Top Of PageCancer BookletCancer Care of New Jersey has published a resource guidecalled, “A Guide to Getting Help in Your Community,” forpeoplewith cancer, their families, health care professionals, and thepublic.It promotes early stage detection of cancer and helps people affectedby cancer better manage the cancer experience.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
