The creation of miniature biochemical analysis systems using microfavrication technology is a recent significant development in the field of micofluidics. These systems offer advantages such as size reduction, power reduction, and increased reliability. However, current systems are tailored to a specific task, and thus are unable to be reconfigured and reprogramed to handly a variety of tasks.

Displacement chromatography has attracted signifcant attention as a powerful technique for the purification of bioherapeutic proteins and oligunucleotides. Displacement chromatography enables simultaneous concentration and purification in a single step, which is significant in the purifcation of biopharmaceuticals. However, the major obstacle in implementing this technique is the lack of a sufficient diversity of appropriate displace candidates that are applicable across a wide spectrum of bioseparation demands.

This invention is directed to a high-throughput process for screening proteins for kinetic stability.Kinetically stable proteins are trapped in one conformation and have a high barrier to unfolding, so they are resistant to aggregation and degradation and have a longer half-life.The ability to quickly and easily identify kinetically stable proteins would have a myriad of applications in the biotechnology industry, pharmaceutical industry, and in basic life science research.

The crystalline lenses of the eyes undergo mechanical, physiological, morphological and refractive changes to adjust the total refractive power of the eyes to maintain sharp visual acuity whenever an object of regard is moved toward and away from the distance at which humans typically view reading material. The aggregate changes experienced by the crystalline lenses of the eyes to maintain sharp visual acuity is referred to as accommodation. At any given time the crystalline lenses and the eyes may be regarded as being in a state of accommodation.

Most lighting level measurements are characterized in terms of illuminance.While this is useful for indoor applications, illuminance levels are not always as useful for outdoor lighting efficiency characterization.Lighting designers and researchers need a method to accurately characterize their outdoor or low level lighting applications. This invention is directed to a system for approximating the flux density of light on a human retina.Different tasks require different structures of the eye.

While there have been rapid advances in microscale device fabrication, microfluidics, and lab-on-a-chip technology, there is still a need to immobilize biomolecules (especially proteins) on a microfluidics apparatus, while maintaining high biological activity and electroosmotic flow (EOF) capability. This invention relates to the discovery that certain polymers containing both ionic and hydrophobic groups can be reproducibly adhered to microfluidic channels and can be used to simulataneously immobilize biocatalysts with good catalytic activity while supporting EOF.

Gaze determines a subjects current line of sight or fixation point. The direction of the eye gaze can express the interests of the subject and is a potential porthole into the current cognitive processes. Existing techniques for eye gaze tracking can be divided into video-based techniques and non-video-based techniques. However, non-video-based techniques are intrusive and interfere with the subject, while video-based techniques have significant shortcomings such as lacking sufficient accuracy and imposing physical constraints on the subject.

Recently, Terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) has emerged as a successful method to measure the refractive index of thin solid films without sample perturbation. However, a need remains for a new non-invasive biosensor technology having application, for example, in healthcare, food monitoring, and weapon detection. This invention is directed to a method for detecting specific associations between a tethered molecule and an untethered target molecule, thus providing a method of probing bimolecular interactions using THz radiation.

This invention is directed to a highly accurate and efficient method and algorithm, namely the Dual-Bootstrap Iterative Closest Point algorithm, for performing image registration generally and retinal image registration in particular. Retinal image registration is challenging. The images are projections of a curved surface taken from a wide range of viewpoints using an un-calibrated camera. The non-vascular surface of the retina is homogeneous in healthy retinas, and exhibits a variety of pathologies in unhealthy retinas.

Chemicals affect living organisms in both positive and negative ways, depending on the chemical. Chemicals can have different effects on different organisms, for example, potential drugs that work in animals studies but fail in human trials. A major reason to these differences is that species, individuals, and organs all have different kinds and amounts of enzymes. There is a need for a technology to rapidly, effectively, and economically test the heatlh effects of chemicals.