Science and Enterprise

Month: May 2011

  • So-Called Legal High Drugs on Internet Found Phony, Illegal

    A chemistry professor in the U.K. has found many drugs sold as “legal highs” on the Internet do not contain the ingredients they claim, and some contain controlled substances, for which Internet sales are illegal. Mark Baron, lecturer in chemistry at University of Lincoln published his findings online in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis…

  • Report: Concentrating Photovoltaic Solar More Competitive

    Traditional flat-plate photovoltaic (PV) solar technologies can expect to face increasing pressure in public utility markets from concentrating photovoltaic (CPV), according to a new study by GTM Research. The report — Concentrating Photovoltaics 2011: Technology, Costs and Markets — tracks 170 CPV projects underway by 70 companies, as well as cost and demand forecasts through…

  • Nanotech Patch Repairs Damaged Heart Tissue in Lab Tests

    Engineers at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and India Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kanpur created a patch made from carbon nanofibers and a polymer material that restores damaged cardiac tissue similar to the damage resulting from a heart attack.  The team reported their results online earlier this month in the journal Acta Biomaterialia…

  • Wireless Sensor Network Developed to Monitor Forests

    Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems (IMS) in Duisburg, Germany have installed a wireless sensor system for micro-climatic monitoring on the grounds of the Northwest German Forestry Testing Facility in Göttingen. The IMS team believes the network can provide a very detailed picture about the environmental conditions on the site, without…

  • Cancer Institute Invests in Three Spin-Off Companies

    The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) in Toronto says it invested in three new Ontario companies aimed at bringing anti-cancer technologies to market. OICR previously provided seed funding for the three companies. The three companies include: – TORCell Therapeutics Inc. is a spin-off of OICR and University Health Network in Toronto. The company is…

  • Venture Capital Investment Performance Improves Through 2010

    Returns on venture capital (VC) investments continued to improve for the fourth quarter and all of 2010, for most time horizons stretching back to 1981, and in some cases exceeding the benchmark stock indexes. These data are contained in the latest Cambridge Associates U.S. Venture Capital Index, prepared for the National Venture Capital Association. For…

  • Simple Fitness Tests Help Predict Heart Attack, Stroke

    Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have found in separate studies that the time it takes for a middle-age person run a mile can help predict the risk of dying of heart attack or stroke decades later for men, and could be an early indicator of cardiovascular disease for women. The…

  • Partnership to Discover Cancer Drugs from Natural Products

    University of Mississippi’s National Center for Natural Products Research (NCNPR) in Oxford has formed a partnership to search and test for cancer drugs with the university’s Medical Center Cancer Institute in Jackson. Under the agreement, NCNPR will develop anti-cancer compounds for further development and testing by the Cancer Institute. At the NCNPR, researchers collect plants…

  • Dissertation Grants Available for Entrepreneurship Studies

    The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri has opened applications for its 2011-2012 Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship Program. The online request for proposals runs through 14 September 2011. The Kauffman Foundation plans to award 15 fellowship grants of $20,000 each for Ph.D., D.B.A, and other doctoral students who include studies of entrepreneurship as part…

  • Encryption Hardware Designed for Non-Volatile Main Memory

    Computer scientists at North Carolina State University in Raleigh have developed a new technology for encrypting data in non-volatile main memory found increasingly in new computer systems and devices. The team will discuss their findings next month at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture in San Jose, California. Non-volatile main memory (NVMM) allows computers to…