Priceless Information about Science And Mathematics, Social Science And More

The stress of providing care for a loved one with Alzheimer’s results in 25 percent of family caregivers having at least one emergency room or hospital visit every six months, says an Indiana University study.It’s long been recognized that family care of an Alzheimer’s patient is difficult, but the Indiana University researchers said their study is the first to actually measure the stress and examine how it affects the physical and mental health of caregivers.

The study included 153 Alzheimer’s patients and their family caregivers, for a total of 366 people. Forty-four percent of the caregivers were spouses, and 70 percent lived with their Alzheimer’s-afflicted loved one. The average age of the caregivers was 61 years.

Age, education and relationship to the patient didn’t affect caregivers’ use of emergency room/hospital services, the researchers found. The behavior and functioning of the patient, not their cognitive disability, were the major factors that determined whether a caregiver went to the emergency room/hospital.

The study was published in the November issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

“Our findings opened our minds to the fact that society needs to expand the definition of patient to include both the person with Alzheimer’s dementia and that individual’s family caregiver,” study corresponding author Dr. Malaz Boustani, an assistant professor of medicine, said in an Indiana University new release.

“For American society to respond to the growing epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease, the health care system needs to re-think the definition of patient. These findings alert health-care delivery planners that they need to restructure the health care system to accommodate our new inclusive definition of patient,” said Boustani, who directs the Healthy Aging Brain Center.

About four million older adults in the United States have Alzheimer’s disease, and three million of them live in the community, often under the care of family members. By 2050, it’s estimated there will be 18.5 million people with Alzheimer’s in the U.S.

“While we’ve long known that Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease to the patient, this study offers a look at how it also impacts the caregiver’s health. If we don’t offer help and support to the caregiver too, the stress of caring for someone with dementia can be overwhelming, both mentally and physically,” Dr. Cathy C. Schubert, an assistant professor of clinical medicine in the IU School of Medicine, said in the news release.

Information technology outsourcing (ITO) companies in the Asia Pacific region (APAC) are increasingly looking at mergers and acquisitions to sustain their growth momentum. The region contributes nearly 14% of the total ITO deals that took place between January 2004 and September 2008, said a latest study by Everest Research Institute. There were 114 major M&A deals closed by 34 leading ITO suppliers worldwide between January 2004 and September 2008, the study added.

While half of the M&A deals occurred in North America, Everest analysts observed a fast growth of acquisitions in EMEA region, demonstrating a renewed focus on Europe. In fact, the study has found that M&A activity has been steadily rising among ITO suppliers year-on-year ever since 2004. Among the ITO M&A deal target service lines, Application Development & Maintenance (ADM) and IT Consulting emerged as the hot favorites with 37% and 31% of deals respectively.

Another interesting perspective that emerged from the study is that the average deal size in Europe ($415million) and in APAC region ($325 million) is higher than that in North America ($221 million).

Gaurav Gupta, principal & country head, Everest Group, said: “ITO suppliers are purchasing larger firms in EMEA as compared to other geographies, which explains the highest average acquisition price there. However, it might come as a surprise to note that companies are putting the highest value per dollar invested in firms not in the US or Europe but in acquisitions in the APAC region. While the average multiple ratio for an acquisition in APAC is 2.90, it is 1.41 in EMEA and 1.77 in North America.”

The study also indicated that the spurt of inorganic growth among ITO suppliers is not due to the economic slowdown only. “We have observed six main themes that characterise M&A activities in ITO - enhancement of offshore presence; expansion into newer geographies; acquiring industry-specific skills, especially domain-specific consulting skills; buying into existing book of business (ie, existing client-base); plugging gaps in their service portfolio by acquiring specific IP or skill-set; or consolidating their offshore operations,” Shiraz Ritwik, research director, Everest Research Institute, said. Of these, the biggest levers for a majority of M&A deals have been filling gaps in service portfolio (36%) and acquiring industry-specific skills (35%), he added.

Elaborating on specific implications of the study findings on India, Gaurav said: “India has been strategic both from a standpoint of acquisitions as well as acquirers. While 8 of the total 114 M&A deals occurred in India, as many as 9 of the total 34 ITO suppliers acquiring were from India. As we move along, we hope to see more of big Indian suppliers looking at acquiring ADM capabilities to move up the value chain.”

PARIS: President-elect Barack Obama may reverse the Bush Administration’s restrictions on stem cell research, which has been contentious in some European countries, too.

According to an article in the British medical journal The Lancet, physicians at four European universities have completed what they say is the first successful transplant of a human windpipe using a patient’s own stem cells to fashion an organ.

At the same time prevent its rejection by her immune system, One of the physicians said the surgery could herald a “new age in surgical care.”

Ms. Castillo, 30, was hospitalized in March with her windpipe so badly damaged by tuberculosis that she was unable to walk more than a few steps at a time, according to a statement from Bristol University.

Anthony Hollander, a professor at Bristol University, said ethical concerns relating to embryonic stem cell research had not surfaced in the latest procedure because it had used only the patient’s own stem cells.

A Colombian woman has received the world’s first tailor-made trachea transplant, grown by seeding a donor organ with her own stem cells to prevent her body rejecting it, an international research team reported on Wednesday.The success of the operation, performed in June using tissue generated from the woman’s own bone marrow, raises the prospect that transplanting other organs may be possible without drugs to dampen the immune system, they said.

Doctors work hard to match tissue type when transplanting organs so that the body does not completely reject the new organ, but patients usually have to take immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives.

“The probability this lady will have a rejection is almost zero percent,” Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, head of thoracic surgery at the Hospital Clinic, Barcelona who performed the transplant, told a news conference.

“The patient is enjoying a normal life with no signs of rejection after four months.”

Claudia Castillo sought help after a case of tuberculosis destroyed part of her trachea — the windpipe connected to the lungs — and left her with breathing difficulties, prone to infections and unable to care for her two children.

The 30-year-old’s only option other than the experimental surgery was for doctors to remove part of her lung — a choice that would have seriously degraded her quality of life, the researchers said.

“It isn’t just an issue of life, it is an issue of quality of life,” said Martin Birchall, a surgeon at the University of Bristol, who helped treat Castillo.

‘HYBRID ORGAN’

After finding a donor, the researchers first depleted the transplanted trachea of the donor’s cells and then obtained bone marrow stem cells from Castillo they grew into cartilage cells.

Next, the team seeded these cells on the outside of the donor trachea using a device developed at Milan Polytechnic in Italy that incubated the cells. The researchers used the same device to make epithelial cells to construct the lining of the trachea.

This created a hybrid organ in a lab that Castillo’s body would identify as its own and make immunosupressant drugs unnecessary, the researchers said.

Finally, the team grafted a 5 cm (1.97 inch) piece of the trachea onto Castillo’s damaged left main bronchus, which connects the main windpipe to the left lung.

Castillo, who lives in Spain, had no complications from the surgery and left the hospital after 10 days. She is returning to normal activities and even called her doctors from a night club to say she had been out dancing all night, the researchers said.

“We believe this success has proved we are on the verge of a new age in surgical care,” said Birchall, who predicted the technique could be applied to other hollow organs similar in structure, such as the bowel, bladder and reproductive tract.

British iPhone users are facing a tough time using the new voice recognition software, because it does not understand British accents.The new Google iPhone gives its users an opportunity to search for information using voice-recognition.

The high-tech programme was launched this week and allows users to search Google for cinema times, bring up pictures and information and convert currency and measurements with one tap of the screen.

The owners can download it for free, and if popular, it could be extended to other mobile phones.

British iPhone users were left baffled after it responded to requests with bizarre titbits of unwanted information.

When asked to search for “iPhone” the results varied wildly. A user with a Scottish accent found his phone opted to search for the term “sex” instead, and suggested a link to an adult web site.

When asked in a Kentish accent to search for “iPhone”, it came up with “my sister” and “Einstein”, while a Surrey user was offered “myspace” as well as “Einstein”.

“I’ve got a traditional Kentish accent and the thing kept on spitting back ridiculous things,” the Telegraph quoted Roger Ellinson, 26, from Maidstone, as saying.

“I asked it to find my nearest pizza take away and it came back with something about volcanoes.

“Then I asked it to find my nearest pub and it gave me a link to some kind of weird dating website.

“I’ll have to try to put on my best American accent to get it to work,” he added.

However, Google points out on its website that the application is “currently available only in US English”.

Recognizing the limits of traditional advertising, established technology companies are diving headlong into the sometimes chaotic landscape of social media to promote their products.Companies ranging from PC maker Dell Inc to storage equipment maker NetApp Inc are increasingly turning to outside blogs, viral videos and websites such as FaceBook, Twitter, FriendFeed and Digg — and their tens of millions of users — to reach consumers.

These social networking sites harness the age-old power of the word-of-mouth recommendation and can be potent marketing tools. If nothing else, they demand a higher level of consumer engagement than conventional ads.

“This is 180 degrees from that sort of advertising,” said Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer. “Having a conversation with them (consumers) is a very new skill.”

For tech companies with big marketing budgets, the shift to social media is an implicit acknowledgment that television and print are not necessarily the most effective ways to reach buyers, particularly younger ones.

In addition, with a recession looming, corporate budgets are being slashed. UBS has forecast global ad spending will fall 3.9 percent in 2009. In such an environment, social media could prove to be a cost-effective way to sell to consumers.

But the strategy is not without some risk. While every company wants to generate buzz, online backlash can be brutal.

Consumer healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson learned that the hard way with a recent Web video ad for its Motrin painkiller. While apparently trying to be irreverent about the pain of wearing a baby in a sling, the ad offended many mothers who savaged it on Twitter, the wildly popular “micro-blogging” site where users communicate with short “tweets” of 140 characters or less. J&J was forced to apologize on Monday.

Brian Keeler, a vice president at media consultancy VShift, said the key to social media is credibility and enlisting consumers in the act of marketing itself. But if you upset your audience, it can mean trouble.

“With the online media, things can go viral and spin out of control really fast,” he said.

ONLINE CREDIBILITY

Dell has a dedicated team of around 40 people that interacts with consumers through its blogs, community forums and third-party sites. The company began its social media push last year as it moved to repair its public image.

“There’s been a realization over the last several years that your customers are going to talk about you online and you have a choice to join that conversation,” spokeswoman Caroline Dietz said.

Dell said it has used Twitter to sell $500,000 worth of refurbished PCs. The company also took ideas solicited from its IdeaStorm site to make changes to its Latitude laptop.

NetApp sells data storage equipment only to enterprises, so its strategy is more limited. Its employees are encouraged to blog on third-party sites about its products and the company focuses on keeping a unified message.

Still, NetApp said that, for the first time, it is dedicating 20 percent of its PR budget to social media.

One of the most effective social media advertising strategies, said author and blogger Dave Taylor, is to simply hand a new product over to a blogger for a test-drive.

A bad review can hurt, but an endorsement from an established name “makes for some powerful marketing,” he said.

In a similar vein, hard-drive maker Seagate Technology sponsored prominent blogger Robert Scoble, who wrote about the company’s products and took part in promotions.

Seagate news now goes up on Facebook, pictures of products go on photo-sharing site Flickr, along with Twitter tweets. The company has even built a studio to film Web videos.

Although some companies may balk at the idea of relinquishing control of their message, they may have no choice.

“Historically, companies have been really focused on controlling the information they disseminate … and the fact is that’s dying, because accessibility and communication have so dramatically increased and improved,” Taylor added.

With Jerry Yang quitting as Yahoo Inc.’s chief executive, the Internet company’s board will confront pivotal questions as it looks for a new leader.Should Yahoo swallow its pride and try to strike a buyout deal with Microsoft Corp. at a price far below Microsoft’s $47.5 billion offer from 6 1/2 months ago? Or should Yahoo still pursue a long-awaited turnaround that’s becoming more difficult to achieve as the economy tanks?

If Yahoo plays it safe and hires someone from within or someone friendly with Microsoft, it could signal the board merely wants an interim captain who can steer the ship until Microsoft, or possibly another buyer, comes to the rescue.

But should Yahoo recruit a CEO with a prestigious resume or pluck an up-and-coming technology star, it will be seen as a sign that the company is digging in to remain independent for the long haul.

“It’s time for Yahoo to decide if they are going to keep entertaining offers or really start to focus on a business strategy,” said Mike Leo, a veteran online ad executive who now runs Operative Inc. “Yahoo still has some great assets. They have just been mismanaged.”

Most analysts and investors have interpreted Yang’s departure as precursor to Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo in its entirety or at least its search engine, which ranks a distant second in usage behind Google Inc.’s.

Yahoo shares gained 92 cents, or more than 8 percent, to close Tuesday at $11.55. That’s a fraction of the $33 per share that Microsoft offered in early May before Yang’s request for more money prompted the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker to withdraw its bid.

The negotiating breakdown infuriated shareholders and their fury intensified as Yahoo’s stock plunged to its lowest levels since early 2003.

Yang, Yahoo’s co-founder, clung to the hope that he could still engineer a comeback, but his plans went awry yet again this month when Google backed out of a proposed ad partnership to avoid an antitrust battle with the federal government.

The loss of Google’s help, which was supposed to boost Yahoo’s sagging profits, evidently prompted Yang and Yahoo’s board to conclude they needed to announce a change in command even before a successor had been found. Yang, 40, will remain CEO until his replacement is hired and then revert to his former advisory role of “Chief Yahoo.”

Yahoo so far has given few clues on the leadership skills it’s seeking, saying only that it wants a CEO “who can take the company to the next level.” The company has hired Heidrick & Struggles, an headhunting firm, to recruit its next CEO.

Although Yahoo’s profits and stock price have been crumbling for nearly three years, analysts say the company’s huge audience of about 500 million Internet users and leadership positions in e-mail and news could still attract a big-name executive. “Yahoo can still be salvaged,” said Forrester Research analyst David Card.

The names of possible successors include obvious ones like Yahoo’s current president and Yang confidant, Susan Decker, as well as its former chief operating officer, Dan Rosensweig, who left last year after a management shake-up diminished his authority.

Other candidates offer more intrigue, like former eBay Inc. CEO Meg Whitman or media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s top lieutenant at News Corp., Peter Chernin, who just so happens to be getting ready to negotiate another contract.

Whitman appears to be a long shot because she has indicated she’s more interested in pursuing a political career than returning to the executive suite.

Jonathan Miller, the former CEO of AOL, has been mentioned as another possibility. But when he left AOL in 2006, his severance agreement included a noncompete clause that prevents him from working from rivals like Yahoo until March 2009. Time Warner Inc., AOL’s corporate parent, enforced the provision to block Miller from joining Yahoo’s board last summer.

Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner believes Yahoo should recruit a turnaround specialist or a “young Turk” in the mold of Jason Kilar, who was lured from Amazon.com Inc. last year to run the online video site Hulu.com. If Yahoo takes that kind of a step, Weiner said the deep pools of talent at Silicon Valley neighbors Google and Apple Inc. might yield a savvy new leader.

Other names being bandied about include the former head of Microsoft’s online operation, Kevin Johnson, who helped persuade the software maker to bid for Yahoo. Johnson left Microsoft during the summer to become CEO of computer gear maker Juniper Networks Inc., which is located a half-mile from Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Whoever Yahoo selects needs to have charisma and vision if the company is to have any hope of bouncing back, said Todd Dagres, founder of the venture capital firm Spark Capital. “Yahoo is like a wounded animal right now. They need an Obama-like leader,” he said.

Microsoft might make a move on Yahoo before the board even has a chance to hire a new CEO, Jefferies & Co. analyst Youssef Squali suggests. He estimates Microsoft could buy Yahoo in its entirety for $20.50 to $22 per share or perhaps just snap up Yahoo’s search operations for $8 per share.

Microsoft declined to comment Tuesday on its interest in Yahoo.

Yahoo’s most outspoken director, Carl Icahn, has been lobbying for a search deal with Microsoft since he became one of the company’s largest shareholders in May.

Icahn waged a campaign to fire Yang during the summer before reaching a truce that gave him and two allies seats on Yahoo’s board. Those allies, former Viacom Inc. CEO Frank Biondi and former Nextel CEO John Chapple, also could vie for Yang’s job.

Even if Icahn finally gets his wish, a Microsoft deal might not be enough to make him whole. He acquired his 5 percent stake in Yahoo for around $25 a share.

Sanford Bernstein & Co. analyst Jeffrey Lindsay doubts Microsoft will renew its pursuit of Yahoo until early next year. He reasons Microsoft has little to lose by waiting, since Yahoo’s stock is unlikely to rise much higher, and the extra time will give the software maker more time to assess how its own efforts to improve its Internet operations are panning out.

Waiting also would help Microsoft get a better understanding of the antitrust hurdles a Yahoo bid might face under a new presidential administration.

In the not-so-distant future, American seniors may turn to helpful, uncomplaining robots to fill the worrisome “care gap” that many face today.One of these autonomous devices, called the uBOT-5, is already capable of carrying out simple tasks while it monitors the home environment. The robot can even spot trouble — such as a person falling down — and call 911 if necessary.

The freestanding device can also bring a faraway loved one into an aging person’s home via video Internet hook-up.

“So, if I’m at work, and it’s lunch hour and I want to poke in on Dad, I can get on the Internet and basically ’step inside’ the robot,” said uBOT-5 co-inventor Rod Grupen, who directs the Laboratory for Perpetual Robotics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. With their face appearing via video on the front of the robot’s head, the virtual visitor can converse with their loved one while moving the robot around, doing some cleaning, for example, or retrieving a dropped TV remote.

Any “authorized user” can jump into and guide the robot, Grupen said. “So, if you can’t get to your doctor, your doctor can now come to you,” he said. In fact, the UMass team hopes that the uBOT-5 will someday be capable of running simple medical tests, such as measuring blood pressure or blood sugar.

And because it’s fully mobile, with Segway-like wheels, virtual visits from others should include much of the house, and beyond. “Your granddaughter on the West Coast can get into the robot and visit with you outside in the garden, you can have a two-way conversation with audio/video, hold hands and go show them the flowers you just planted,” Grupen said.

There’s a huge and growing need for robotic home assistants that might help care for the elderly or disabled and allow them to stay in their homes, Grupen believes. According to U.S. Census figures, the number of Americans age 65 or over will double by 2030, and two-thirds will need some form of long-term care. At the same time, there’s a dearth of nurses and home health-care aides to care for them; experts predict a shortage of 800,000 nurses by 2020.

The uBOT-5’s design was inspired by the human body. Its myriad sensors mimic human eyes and ears, constantly scanning its environment. It is even programmed to detect and respond to worrisome aberrations, including a fallen, unresponsive human. The robot’s arms are each capable of handling 2.2-pound loads, and they can extend to reach high or pick things up off the floor (a dropped pill bottle, a package in a foyer, for example). The robot can lie prone to scoot itself under a bed (and then right itself), and it may even someday help with household cleaning and grocery shopping, Grupen said.

And the cost? Right now, the prototypes at UMass cost $65,000 apiece, but Grupen envisions a day when commercial versions would be sold for $5,000 plus a monthly Internet hook-up fee, much like today’s computers.

And the uBOT-5 isn’t the only such device in the pipeline. Over at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researcher Nicolas Roy, at the institute’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, has developed an “autonomous wheelchair” that only requires a command to whiz users from one spot to another in a hospital or nursing home.

When first delivered to a facility, the wheelchair — rigged out with high-tech scanning software — has no knowledge of the particular layout. But staff will uncrate it, turn it on, and give it a verbal guided tour, walking it past different rooms and nursing stations.

“You talk to it like you’d talk to a new person, a new nurse. And as a side effect of the thing being walked through the facility once or twice, the wheelchair has now been demonstrated a route between all the points,” explained co-developer Seth Teller, who helps lead the lab’s Robotics, Vision and Sensor Networks Group.

After that, a wheelchair-bound stroke patient or quadriplegic need only say, “Take me to Room 451″ for the chair to understand and then do just that. The device will be launched as a prototype ready for testing in a Boston-area nursing home within two years, Teller said.

Finally, at Georgia Tech, researchers led by assistant professor Charlie Kemp are making their own home-care robots, inspired by the agile intelligence of service dogs.

“We’re using service dogs to answer three important questions: What tasks would be good for a [home] robot to perform? How should people interact with the robot, to tell it to do these tasks? And how can the robot actually perform these tasks, given the complexities of the home?” Kemp said.

Service dogs and the disabled people they help are providing the answers. The new robot is being designed to move about and perform tasks such as opening drawers, turning doorknobs and working light switches, Kemp said. Users indicate what they’d like done by using a laser pointer, and homes are modified slightly to help the robot, just as homes are subtly tweaked to aid service dogs. “Things like tying a small towel to a doorknob” to facilitate grasping, Kemp explained.

The robot may not ever replace a great service dog, but Kemp noted that the average disabled American now pays $16,000 for a properly trained canine, and waiting lists now stretch for years.

“I think there’s a real need,” he said. “So, the hope is that people will support this sort of work. Then, we’ll be able to deliver these things when people need them.”

Yahoo Inc said Jerry Yang will step down as chief executive as soon as the board finds a replacement, sending shares up 4 percent on hopes the departure would clear the way for a deal with Microsoft.Yang — who will return to his former role as Chief Yahoo, focusing on strategy and technology — tried to carve an independent strategy for Yahoo and was blamed when Microsoft Corp walked away from an offer to buy Yahoo earlier this year.

Rival Google Inc abandoned a search advertising partnership amid regulatory concerns, and Yang faced a growing chorus of criticism from investors and analysts as Yahoo’s shares nosedived.

Yahoo’s months-long discussions with Time Warner Inc about combining with its AOL unit — as yet another way to boost Yahoo’s earnings — have also failed to produce a deal.

“The company is in desperate need of change and this is clearly one way to do it,” said Ross Sandler, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, adding that Microsoft could enter the picture again. “Jerry was the roadblock for the last deal getting done,” he said.

Yang has consistently said that he would sell the company for the right price.

Microsoft declined to comment.

Yahoo shares rose to $11.10 in after-hours trading from their Nasdaq close of $10.63.

The shares are down nearly 65 percent from their 52-week high of $30.25, reached in February, two weeks after Microsoft made its $31-a-share offer public.

Microsoft withdrew its $47.5 billion buyout offer in May after Yahoo rejected the sweetened bid.

Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo, took on the CEO role in June 2007, hoping to strengthen its position as an online consumer brand.

“From founding this company to guiding its growth into a trusted global brand that is indispensable to millions of people, I have always sought to do what is best for our franchise,” Yang said in a statement.

In an e-mail sent to employees, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, Yang said his decision to step down was taken jointly with Yahoo’s board.

Yang has been talking with the board, which includes activist investor Carl Icahn, about stepping down since before Google pulled out of the search deal in early November, said a person familiar with the talks.

CHIEF YAHOO AGAIN

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock is leading the effort to find a replacement, said Yang, who will continue to serve as a director.

“Jerry was miscast in this CEO role as far as running Yahoo at this point,” said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities. “He’s much better off running strategy or technology behind the scenes.”

Pyykkonen said it was a step in the right direction for Yahoo, but warned that a lot depends on the board’s choice to replace Yang.

“Because he’s stepping down doesn’t mean the company is going to magically be wonderful again,” he said.

Yahoo has hired the executive search firm of Heidrick & Struggles to look for both internal and external candidates.

The process could take anywhere between four weeks and 12 weeks, the source said.

Analysts listed several executives as potential candidates for the job, including former AOL chief Jon Miller, News Corp President and Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin, former eBay Inc Chief Executive Meg Whitman, former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig and Yahoo President Sue Decker.

The source familiar with Yang’s talks with the board said Decker, No. 2 at Yahoo, was among the candidates being considered.

India’s space scientists have developed hydrogen fuel cells to power an automobile bus by leveraging their know-how of the homegrown cryogenic technology for rockets.

The two-year effort has yielded positive results and the scientists are now readying for the fuel cells to be fitted into a bus.

“That’s not exactly the cryogenic technology… (It’s) liquid hydrogen handling and that’s where we have some expertise. So, we have finalised the design”, Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation, G Madhavan Nair said.

According to Honorary Adviser of ISRO V Gnana Gandhi leading the technical team in this project, ISRO and Tata Motors entered into an MoU in 2006 to design and develop an automobile bus using hydrogen as a fuel through fuel cell route.

Nair said: “Tatas are taking the responsibility for the locomotive part of it, and hydrogen handling system also.

First protomodel has been assembled. Results are good. May be next year, it should be on the road”.

Gandhi said: “We are planning to integrate the system in the first quarter of next year (January-March 2009), and vehicle integration in the second quarter”.

He said the hydrogen cells are a spin-off of the cryogenic technology that ISRO has been developing for the last few years.