Firing up the old web browser, I uncovered hundreds of applications. It could take weeks to investigate the numerous applications, I decided to choose one specific category - recent medical applications. As these applications affect people's lives and should they fail, they have potential legal ramifications, they represent a good measure of the technology's viability. I was very impressed with the applications I did find. Neural networks, for example, are being used to predict the outcome following Idiotypic Immunotherapy in Ovarian Cancer.
Neural networks assess the impact of a number of factors after a sequence of iv injections.
The system looked at relevant serum-based pharmacokinetic data, HAMA response, blood profiles, CA125 levels, tumor burden, patient response, and up to 15 additional factors. I even found a fuzzy logic based blood pressure monitor - the fuzzy logic technology determines if the cuff has been sufficiently inflated. In this issue we provide examples of our own. These sources can include anything from text documents, news articles to web pages. To round out this issue we have speech recognition, intelligent filtering, teaching on the web, representing knowledge in XML, and book reviews on artificial immune systems, robotics and telepresence.