Newsgroup sci.techniques.spectroscopy 2924

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Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> 
>     Recently a patent issued that was bad enough to be easy enough to bust
> that I wouldn't mind doing so over the news service. 
Once again, Greg has targeted one of my clients, so I cannot comment on his 
allegations in particular.
However, I will again note that in order to determine the breadth of a claim, the file 
wrapper history _MUST_ be read and evaluated before the scope of a claim can be 
determined.  This is true for any patent issued in the U.S.
Otherwise, such "analysis" is mere armchair lawyering and should be taken as such.
Regards,
--Bob.

>Greg,
>Oh yee of such boundless technical knowledge.  Have you ever run an
>infrared spectrum or used one in research?
>The non-patent prior art as you present it does nothing to 'bust' this
>claim.  In my mind, it actually appears to do the opposite.
>To establish a reference date, when I was actively using infrared for
>chemical research in 1986, using IR for identifying tissues
>was embryonic.  An invention for 1) using infrared spectroscopy to 2)
>identify tissues by 3) using pattern recognition techniques was probably
>not possible at that time.
>.............-----------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not Greg, but I can give you another, and somewhat different 
reference point.  In 1986 I was in Boston as part of a startup company.  
In my spare time, I worked with some researchers at Harvard, helping them 
with the instrumental and spectral aspects of a project looking at mouse 
tumors by mid-IR ATR.  The spectral differences between tumor and normal 
tissue were obvious. Either the contemporaneous Merck work on heuristic 
recognition, the Gram-Schmidt factor approach, or for that matter any of 
the existing automated spectral library search techniques in use at the 
time, would have been adequate to classify those tissues.
The major question at the time was not pattern recognition, spectroscopy, 
or tissue classification, but the clinical and instrumental problems of 
building and using an acceptably small hypodermic ATR probe combined with 
a biopsy punch, in order to obtain the necessary human in-situ tumor 
library.
And I seem to remember this project being discussed with colleagues in 
Ohio AND the NRCC during 1986.
-- 
Warren Vidrine, Vidrine Consulting
tel 1-714-489-8372, FAX 1-714-489-8379
e-mail: wv@vidrine.com
http://www.vidrine.com/vidrine/

> In article <32AD7BF3.E04@aecl.ca>, "Paul A. Rochefort"
>  wrote:
> 
> > We have a HP UV-Vis. spectrometer, Model 8450A.  I would like to convert
> > spectra saved in the HP formatted files to DOS (or Mac) format.
> > Galactic Industries manual list several programs that read HP files.
> > The two programs I am considering are :
> >
> > 1)  File/Swap-PC,  by A Gentle Wind Inc.
> >
> > 2)  HP to IBM PC File Copy,  by Oswego Software
> >
> > Has anyone has had experience using either these conversion programs or
> > any other similar programs?  Can the converted files  be read by they be
> > read by GRAMS or do you have to do futher file format massaging?
> >
> > Thank you for your help in advance.
> >
> > Paul A. Rochefort
> > AECL
There is no way that I know of to directly read the HP disks.  What we
do is dump the data out the serial port in the back of the 8450A with
the command "tapefile xx to device 31".  The data stream is then
collected by any simple communications package running on a PC.  We use
Cross-Talk.  Check out the ports settings in the HP manual - they are a
little different from the usual.  The file now sitting on the PC is in a
simple ASCII format.  You can write a little something to clear out the
extraneous characters or use the HP8450.AB array basic program in Grams
to do the same thing.  Indeed, Galactic wrote that little program at our
request many years ago when all they had was Spectra Calc.  The array
basic program also has the ability to carry out the data transfer step
to, though I haven't used that option in a long time so I'm not sure
that it works in Grams/386 let alon Grams/32.
-- 
     Roy Haskell               | roy.haskell@am.pnu.com 
     Pharmacia & Upjohn, Inc.  | f94lh01@kzoo.edu
     7000 Portage Road         | Phone: 616-833-4748 
     Kalamazoo, MI  USA  49001 | Fax: 616-833-2030