During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Robert Paul Lanza studied embryonic stem cells [5], tissues, and endangered species as chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology, Incorporated in Worcester, Massachusetts. Lanza's team cloned the endangered species of gaur Bos gaurus [6]. Although the gaur did not survive long, Lanza successfully cloned another cow [7]-like creature, c...

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Robert Rosenthal died on February 27, 2002, of a sudden heart attack. He was just 57, in the prime of his professional life. He is missed and loved by the many friends, colleagues and students who knew him. His incisive, constructive views helped develop many new ideas, and even inspired directions of research that do not explicitly bear his name. The fact that he never took received wisdom for...

My research interests are in artificial intelligence. I focus primarily on automated reasoning in graphical models, such as Bayesian networks, constraint networks, Markov networks or influence diagrams, which have become a central paradigm for knowledge representation and reasoning. My goal is to develop efficient algorithms and data structures for such models, both on a theoretical and practic...

As a flexible needle with a bevel tip is pushed through soft tissue, the asymmetry of the tip causes the needle to bend. We propose that, by using nonholonomic kinematics, control, and path planning, an appropriately designed needle can be steered through tissue to reach a specified 3D target. Such steering capability could enhance targeting accuracy and may improve outcomes for percutaneous th...

Household businesses and small enterprises are a staple of villages in Thailand. In the late 1990s, Robert Townsend, an economic theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ventured into Thai villages to document household finances and sketch the ties linking family and village finances to regional and national economies. For the most part, economists had not delved into how these bu...