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simply because patients have had a side-effect to medications that a doctor has prescribed them,” says Brunham. This shows how considerable the problem is in terms of cost, morbidity and mortality. Brunham’s group and collaborators in the


Surveillance and Pharmacogenomics Initiative for Adverse Drug Reactions (SAPhIRE) program and the A*STAR Genomics Institute


of Singapore are doing a follow-up study on the cost benefits of implementing a national phar- macogenomics testing program. This program would allow doctors to analyze a patient’s genetic makeup to predict if he or she is likely to have an adverse reaction to particular medications. Alexandre Chan of the National


University of Singapore, and principal investigator for the study, says that a national


pharmacogenomics testing program would “reduce costs, prevent unnecessary admissions and reduce the morbidity associated with drug-induced adverse drug reactions.”


1. Chan, S. L., Ang, X., Sani, L. L., Ng H. Y., Winther M. D. et al. Prevalence and characteristics of adverse drug reactions at admission to hospital: a prospective observational study. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 82, 1636–1646 (2016).


Hard disks:


APPLYING HEAT TO STAY ON TRACK


As the density of data stored on a hard drive gets close to multiple terabytes per square centimeter, the precision of the internal components is becoming increasingly significant. A*STAR researchers have designed a system that achieves a new milestone in micro-positioning, and it could become the next industry standard1. Like a 21st century update of the gramo-


phone record, hard disk drives consist of thin magnetic platters with data bits arranged on concentric tracks. The data bits are read and written by a magnetic recording head that floats a few nanometers above the platter surface at the end of a ‘slider’ arm, while the platter spins at high speed beneath it. But unlike an old record, a modern disk


drive contains up to a million tracks per inch and track widths as narrow as 25 nanometers. And that density is increasing every year. This means future disk drives will require extraordi- narily precise head positioning and responsive- ness to meet performance expectations. “The actuator mechanism will need to


be able to position the recording head with a precision of just one or two nanometers,”


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explains Jiaping Yang from the A*STAR Data Storage Institute. “The actuator schemes commonly used today can offer a fast response, but will have difficulty achieving the positioning accuracy needed for future high-density drives.” Yang and his colleagues from A*STAR and Nanyang Technological University


A CLEVER ELECTRO-THERMAL ACTUATOR AND LEVER SYSTEM KEEPS HARD DRIVE RECORDING HEADS ON TRACK


in Singapore have been investigating the possibility of using an electrically activated thermal expansion element to control the position of the recording head at the end of the slider. The latter provides the larger-scale movement needed to navigate across multiple tracks.


The slider and recording head assembly that writes data to modern hard disk drives.


A*STAR RESEARCH 21


© IOP Publishing. Reproduced from Ref. 1 with permission. All rights reserved.


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