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IBM has scooped an eminent UK engineering award for its “middleware” breed of software called Websphere MQ.

Used by top global banks, it has transformed e-commerce, allowing data transfers across computer systems without the need for custom coding.

The Royal Academy of Engineering’s MacRobert prize rewards technological and engineering innovation.

IBM, one of four finalists, was awarded the £50,000 prize money by HRH the Duke of Edinburgh at a London ceremony.

The software, developed by IBM’s Hursley Laboratory in the UK, is crucial for the computing infrastructure of many top companies.

“This award recognises the importance of software as an engineering discipline in its own right, as much as it recognises the success of IBM WebSphere MQ,” said Graham Spittle, director of the Hursley lab Director.

“The MacRobert Award is an indication of the maturity of the industry and recognition of the significance of the role IT plays in the modern world.”

‘Pioneering’ ware

Banks that provide internet services make use of the software’s adaptability so that transactions take place without mistakes, even when computers go offline.

The software means vital information can be swapped between computer systems, wherever they are and whatever hardware, programming language or operating system they use.
IBM describes the software, which was developed in 1994, as “pioneering” because it lets applications on any of over 40 separate computer platforms to communicate and handle data transfer easily.

Previously, the only way to connect such systems was through custom coding.
“Without Websphere MQ we might never have enjoyed the full benefits of the e-commerce revolution,” said Dr Robin Paul, Chairman of the MacRobert judging panel.
“When you realise how many IT systems have to talk to each other when, for example, you check your balance and transfer funds online you really start to appreciate the value of this innovation.

“By enabling seamless communications between computers, the engineers at Hursley have effectively created the oil that now keeps the world’s e-commerce machine running.”
The other finalists for the MacRobert award included self-cleaning glass, an eco-friendly fuel-injection system, and displays that can switch from 2D to 3D.

Scientists are on their way to developing an effective antidote for botulinum toxin - one of the world’s most feared biological weapons.

Defence experts say that just one gram of the poison can kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Several people each year fall victim to “botulism” from food poisoning, but the toxin is also used as Botox - injected into brows to relax wrinkles.

The US team’s findings appear in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

With funding from the US government, researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Maryland, have broken through a barrier towards developing an effective antidote against the most potent form of the toxin.

The researchers have developed a protein that blocks the effects of the toxin by tricking it into not attacking cells in the body.

Biologist Subramanyam Swaminathan, who led the research, told BBC News: “We anticipate at least four to five years before this can be turned into an approved drug.”

The Clostridium botulinum bacterium produces seven different neurotoxins, which attach to proteins inside human nerve cells and blocks the chemicals they use to communicate with each another and with muscles. This can paralyse breathing muscles, which eventually suffocates the victim.

The new protein developed at the Brookhaven National Laboratory acts on the most powerful of these seven toxins, for which there is no medical treatment.

It behaves as a decoy to proteins in the nerve cells, which means that the toxin chooses not to attach itself to the nerve cells when it enters the body. This prevents paralysis.

“It is about 10 to 15 times better than the best one available so far,” said Subramanyam Swaminathan.

Vaccines for botulinum toxin already exist, designed to be administered before an attack, but this research could produce a drug that would work afterwards.

The US government has proposed increasing funding for research into defence against bioweapons such as botulinum to $9bn (£4.5bn; 5.8bn euros) in 2009. This is a rise of more than 5% on the previous year.

Although botulinum toxin has never been successfully used as a bioweapon, the Japanese terrorist cult, Aum Shinrikyo, tried three times between 1990 and 1995.

Also, in the run-up to the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq reportedly produced thousands of litres of the toxin.

A robotic system designed to care for millions of biological samples in sub-zero temperatures has been chosen as a finalist for a top engineering award.

The Polar system is already used at the UK Biobank, a facility that aims to shed light on debilitating diseases.

The robot system will guard 10 million human blood and fluid samples at -80C for 25 years, whilst also allowing scientists to access them at any time.

It is one of four finalists which will compete for the annual MacRobert award.

The prize is given out by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering for technological and engineering innovation.

The other finalists are the first commercially available bionic hand, an advanced filter to remove soot from diesel engines and a tiny silicon sensor which can detect explosives or toxic chemicals.

Deep Breath

The Polar system, designed by the Automation Partnership, consists of a series of ultra-low temperature compartments designed to hold blood and urine samples, which can be accessed automatically by robotic arms.

The liquid-nitrogen cooled store has been designed so that researchers do not have to enter a refrigerated area to retrieve or load samples.

It has been used by pharmaceutical companies as well as the UK Biobank, a medical research facility which intends to collect samples and data from more than 500,000 volunteers.

This will be used as tool by researchers investigating a range of life-threatening illnesses including cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

It already contains data from more than 100,000 volunteers.

It is one of three technologies with potential medical benefits that have been picked as finalists for this year’s awards.

A novel kind of chemical sensor, designed by Owlstone, a spin-out of Cambridge University, also has therapeutic uses.

The chemical chips are able to detect trace amounts of a wide variety of chemicals using a patented technique called Field Asymmetric Ion Mass Spectroscopy (FAIMS).

It fingerprints compounds by analysing how their charged forms move through a gas when subjected to electric fields. Each substance has its own characteristic signature.

The sensor can be reprogrammed to look for different chemical fingerprints, such as those found in pre combustion fumes during the initial stages of a fire.

However, one potential use is as a “breathalyser” to detect and diagnose illness by analysing chemicals on a patient’s breath.

It is known that asthma sufferers, those with cystic fibrosis and some forms of cancer breathe out chemical markers of their condition.