Science and Enterprise

Month: December 2010

  • Weather Company, Brazil Institute to Test Lightning Sensors

    WeatherBug, a Germantown, Maryland provider of weather-related products and services and operator of a weather observation network, has agreed to form a research partnership with the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. WeatherBug and INPE will collaborate on research to test the performance of a network of 12 WeatherBug…

  • Product’s Carbon Footprint Found Tough to Compute

    Companies looking to calculate their products’ carbon footprints — the greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change — may find taking those measurements more difficult than they anticipated. A recent study by Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU’s) Christopher Weber found that the calculation of carbon footprints for products is fraught with large uncertainties, particularly related to the…

  • Journal Highlights African Health Innovations

    A supplement to the open-access journal BMC International Health and Human Rights devotes its entire issue to health innovations in sub-Saharan Africa, which offers case studies of local initiatives. The papers, relating the experiences of projects by institutes and companies in Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda provide lessons from successful…

  • U.S. Biotech, Japanese Pharma Partner on Protein Drugs

    Anaphore Inc. of La Jolla, California and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation in Osaka, Japan formed a partnership for research, development, and commercialization of protein therapies for autoimmune disease. The partnership will focus on disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and psoriasis. The companies will make use of Anaphore’s technology, which generates novel trivalent…

  • ‘Green’ Treatments Fail to Stop Bacteria in Commercial A/C

    A recent study by University of Pittsburgh researchers indicates that non-chemical water-treatment devices may not work as they claim and can allow dangerous bacteria to flourish in the cooling systems of hospitals and commercial offices, almost as much as they do in untreated water. The university says the study, conducted by its school of engineering,…

  • Univ. Researchers Develop New Blast-Resistant Glass

    A team of engineers from the University of Missouri in Columbia and the University of Sydney in Australia is developing a blast-resistant glass that is lighter, thinner, and colorless, yet tough enough to withstand the force of an explosion, earthquake, or hurricanes winds. Their research is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of…

  • Pfizer Stops Trials, Pulls Pulmonary Hypertension Drug

    Pfizer Inc. in New York, New York said today (10 December) that it is voluntarily withdrawing its drug Thelin (sitaxentan) for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in the European Union, Canada, and Australia, where the drug was approved.  In addition, Pfizer is discontinuing clinical studies of Thelin worldwide. PAH is abnormally high blood pressure…

  • Pharma Mergers Jump 20 Percent in 2010 [UPDATED]

    Update: 12 January 2011. Life Science Analytics, the source of the statistics quoted in this entry, notes that the data refer to partnership deals, NOT mergers as the entry implies. The company asked that we post the following statement … Please note the reference to top deal makers in this article reflects their participation in…

  • Company Leads Consortium to Crystallize Parkinson’s Enzyme

    Emerald BioStructures, a structural biology services company in Bainbridge Island, Washington, received a grant to lead a consortium to crystallize and solve the structure of the enzyme believed to be a key molecular mechanism behind Parkinson’s disease. The project, funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, includes researchers from the Helmholtz Association…

  • More International Collaboration Found in Nanotech Research

    Investigators at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and Florida International University (FIU) in Miami reveal how research in nanotechnology has increasingly become a multi-national enterprise, despite having some 60 countries now funding nanotech initiatives within their borders. Phillip Shapira of Georgia Tech and Jue Wang of FIU found nearly a quarter of all published…