Do-it-yourself DNA
The cost of reading DNA is expected to drop as dramatically in 2009 as the stock market did last year. Technology has made it so fast and cheap to unravel the six billion chemical units of the human genome that the amount of DNA you can read for a dollar has been doubling every 12 months.
DNA is the famed double helix coiled into each of our 10 trillion cells. It contains the operating instructions to build and operate a human being and a slew of secrets about our health. Being able to routinely read it – even if fully understanding DNA remains a long way off – is expected to launch the age of personalized medicine.
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In 2001, the first human genome map rang in at close to $1-billion (U.S.). By the end of 2007, a whole genome map cost about $100,000. Some predict the price of sequencing a full genome could plummet to as little as $10,000 within a few years.
In the meantime, that's likely to put all sorts of DNA scans within reach of middle-class pocket books. This past year, the prominent California company 23andMe, created in part by the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, dropped the price of its genome scan from $1,000 to $400. The scan includes a report that estimates a customer's risk of developing diabetes, Parkinson's disease and age-related macular degeneration, along with a wide range of other conditions. It also delves into the body's more whimsical traits from true eye and hair colour, to revealing your earwax type (wet or dry).
Still, direct-to-consumer genetic testing remains a hugely controversial field. Most experts agree that predicting health on broad sweep genetic tests is terribly premature. Some scientists say you will learn more from your horoscope. Alberta lawyer and ethicist Tim Caulfield has warned that these types of tests could also give rise to a generation of the “worried well” – people who learn about their genetic susceptibility to a disease they will never get, or a potential condition they can do nothing about.
But love it or loathe it, a number of companies have already sprung up to cash in on this form of crystal-ball medicine. Geneticist Steve Scherer, a senior scientist with Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, suspects the wide access is a sign of things to come: “Technology is poised for each of us to know our own genome sequence for little more than the cost of a pair of shoes.”
- Carolyn Abraham
The 3-D revolution
DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has declared 2009 the year of 3-D films. He announced recently that, starting this month, all movies produced in his studio will be made in 3-D. Not only that, he trumpeted the technology as the third cinematic revolution – behind sound and colour.
Despite the economic downturn putting a wrinkle in his hopes for 5,000 3-D screens worldwide by the time DreamWorks's Monsters vs. Aliens is released in the spring, Mr. Katzenberg said he still expected 40 per cent of the film's box office to come via 3-D. (And, by the 2010 release of the next Shrek instalment, that should rise to 70 per cent.) Around a dozen 3-D films are already set for release this year, including James Cameron's Avatar – reportedly the most expensive movie ever made, with a budget of $250-million to $300-million (U.S.) At the same time, 3-D TV technology is developing fast – the buzz at this month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is all around TVs capable of supporting 3-D programming. It will be some time before every home boasts a 3-D TV, but meanwhile the conversion of movie screens to digital 3-D projection continues. Cineplex owns 1,300 screens across Canada, about 60 of which are 3-D compatible. “Our goal is to increase that to around 20 per cent,” said Pat Marshall, vice-president of communications and investor relations at Cineplex.
November saw the first live-test broadcast of a football game broadcast to U.S. theatres using 3-D TV technology; in December, Montreal company SENSIO sold 50 systems that enable screening of 3-D live events to Cinedigm in the United States.
Several companies are developing eyewear – including reusable sunglasses – that are 3-D compatible. (Say goodbye to those cardboard specs with red and green lenses.) Dade Hayes, Variety's New York bureau chief, believes the push to roll out more 3-D screens will begin to pick up after the first quarter of this year. “The question remains,” he noted, “whether consumers will pay the $5 ticket premium that Katzenberg is proposing.” (In Canada, Cineplex already charges a $3 premium for 3-D.) Mr. Hayes attended a screening of clips of Monsters vs. Aliens in December. “I always rolled my eyes at 3-D,” he said. “But there were moments in that footage that were quite arresting. I think it's the real deal.”
- Fiona Morrow
The age of avatars
Who do you want to be, digitally speaking?
Over the past year, avatars – online characters or personas standing in for real people – entered the public consciousness and grabbed real-world headlines all around the globe.
Avatars will enjoy greater mainstream acceptance in 2009, and although convergence is not likely to happen overnight, expect certain sites to begin thinking about partnering up to allow character crossovers the way social networks are trying to make profiles more portable.
In Japan, a woman is facing charges related to “murdering” her husband's avatar in an online video game. A British couple is divorcing after a woman caught her partner “cheating” by using his Second Life character to knock boots with the avatar of another woman.
Second Life – an online world where users create characters to interact with other avatars – is just the beginning. Dozens of sites also allow users to create virtual representations of themselves.
Whether it's Second Life, World of Warcraft or Sony's PlayStation Home video game console service, businesses are starting to realize the value of emerging digital worlds and are looking for ways to use them to make real-world cash.
Some organizations, such as Canada Post, have set up virtual outlets where users can move around inside a digital representation of a retail outlet. Others have set up shop inside existing online worlds.
Currently, it's not uncommon for a person to have several avatars for various sites, similar to how some people have profiles on more than one social network.
Until now, what happened in a virtual world stayed inside that virtual world, but recently a German company called Weblin created a system that allows Second Life users to transplant a copy of their character into other websites and transport it around the Web.
Already, Facebook and MySpace are working with partner sites to allow their members to use a single profile across a breadth of websites. It's only a matter of time before experts are talking about the next step and allowing users to use a single avatar across the Web to stroll through Second Life and then traipse through a virtual storefront on another site.
There will be software compatibility and copyright issues to work out, but it's a conversation that's bound to come up.
- Matt Hartley
Grow your own tissue
A salamander can regrow a lost arm, leg or tail. It's no longer science fiction to say that humans can perform similar feats. Researchers are working on different pieces of the puzzle in several labs around the world. In a huge step forward, scientists at the University of British Columbia are making progress on regenerating human tissue within the body using novel nanotechnology.
Frank Ko, a Canada Research Chair specializing in advanced fibrous materials, heads a team developing structures that mimic nature's architecture at the cellular level. Extremely fine fibres, each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, are spun in a high-voltage electrostatic field to form a web that is placed on damaged tissue. Referred to as nano-scaffolding, the web is seeded with cells that proliferate. The cells adhere to the scaffold, creating a three-dimensional structure. “The beauty of these is the shape of geometry of the structure,” Dr. Ko says. “You can form those cells and guide the cells to grow in different geometry.”
The researchers are trying to nudge the cells into growing into certain tissue and eventually into organs. The process would be an alternative to transplanting tissue from donors.
Dr. Ko is looking at using nano-scaffolding to help skin heal, especially for burn victims. He is also working with an orthopedic surgeon on tissue engineering for cartilage. He is investigating the feasibility of using scaffolding for drug delivery. As healing progresses, the scaffolding would be absorbed and metabolized by the body while slowly releasing drugs to aid in the healing process.
Dr. Ko, who came to Canada two years ago from Philadelphia's Drexel University, says the technology is there but it takes time to obtain official approvals, do clinical studies and demonstrate the feasibility of their work, he says. “We make incremental progress,” Dr. Ko says.
- Robert Matas
Reality check for social networks
Facebook has been riding a tidal wave of momentum behind an exploding user base and increasing mainstream acceptance for more than a year, but financial realities are threatening to bring the social network and its peers back to Earth in 2009.
In 2007, the ascension of Facebook, MySpace and other social networks from digital hangouts for the under-30 crowd into mainstream staples of online communication was the story of the year. Micro-blogging site Twitter enjoyed a similar coming-out party in 2008.
Marketers salivated over the technology these sites boasted that allowed them to tailor advertising to reach individual users and niche audiences. Investors, anxious to cash in on the Web 2.0 wave, began pouring in money as valuations skyrocketed past $10-billion.
That was all before the collapse of the global credit markets and before marketing experts began to fret that 2009 could be a rough one for industries that rely on advertising.
The problem is that Facebook and MySpace have yet to prove their worth with advertisers. Many are complaining that the click through rates for social networks – the standard by which Web marketing is often measured – fall short compared with other areas of online advertising, such as search engines.
In November, Ted McConnell, head of interactive marketing for Procter & Gamble Co. said he'd prefer to stop buying advertising on Facebook, and he's not alone.
Marketers are beginning to wonder if social network advertising is really worth the cost, according to Maggie Fox, chief executive officer of consulting firm Social Media Group.
“The reality is that when you look at that type of revenue model, all we're doing is slapping an old model on a new platform and it's clearly not really working,” Ms. Fox said.
“What we're finding is that ads are not really resonating the way that big brands need them to … that doesn't tell me that the networks are not useful, what it tells me is that the model is not where it should be or refined to the point where it makes sense.”
Unless Facebook and MySpace can continue to innovate new business models to help marketers to reach their target audiences beyond banner ads and fan pages, social networks will be forced to watch the value of their companies dive as new competitors enter the fray.
- Matt Hartley
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BY Carolyn Abraham, Fiona Morrow, Matt Hartley, Robert Matas and Matt Hartley
Source:Saturday's Globe and Mail
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