Science and Enterprise

Month: September 2011

  • Cardiac Device Infections Linked to Higher Costs, Mortality

    A team of academic and industry researchers have found an association between infections from cardiovascular implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) and increases in mortality and hospital care costs. The findings from this study appear online in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine (paid subscription required). The researchers, led by Muhammad Sohail, from the Mayo Clinic College…

  • Consortium Funds Semiconductor Research in Emirates

    Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), a university-research consortium in Durham, North Carolina, announced seven research contracts will be awarded to four universities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The new contracts continue the joint effort between SRC and the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) in the UAE begun last year on semiconductor sciences and technologies. The…

  • Measure Devised of Disruption From Attacks on Wi-Fi Networks

    Engineers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh have developed a way of measuring the potential disruption from various types of attacks on Wi-Fi networks. The tools proposed by professor of electrical and computer engineering professor Wenye Wang and her colleagues will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.…

  • Biotech Developing Anti-Cancer Drugs Gets $15M Investment

    Tensha Therapeutics in Cambridge, Massachusetts says it has received $15 million in early stage financing to advance treatments for cancer by regulating the transcription of disease-associated genes. The series A investment — the first round of funding after a company’s initial seed capital — is provided by HealthCare Ventures, life science venture capital firm, also…

  • Non-Native Insects Costing Local Governments, Homeowners

    Scientists from U.S. and Canadian universities and the U.S. Forest Service built a statistical model to compute the cost of damage caused by invasive tree-feeding insects that are inadvertently imported to the U.S. The team from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at University of California in Santa Barbara published their findings…

  • Student Engineers/Entrepreneurs Develop Child Safety Device

    Two engineering students at Michigan Technological University in Houghton are taking to market a device they built to keep children from unbuckling their seat belts. Collin Veele and Alex Cotton say they have secured a provisional patent and trademark, and now their Buckle Blocker is ready for the marketplace. The Buckle Blocker, which would typically…

  • Superbug Screening Methods Under Development

    Researchers at University of Houston and St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, also in Houston, are developing better screening methods to detect a potentially lethal, drug-resistant superbug found in that region. The team’s findings on the discovery of the multi-drug resistant bacterium appeared earlier this year in the journal Diagnostic Microbiology & Infectious Disease (paid subscription required).…

  • Companies Need Better Mix of Business, Patent Strategies

    Science and engineering companies often develop innovations based on multiple discoveries, which calls for better integration of their patent and business strategies, according to study by three intellectual property analysts. The paper by Deepak Somaya at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana college of business (pictured left), with David Teece of University of California at…

  • Study: Inexpensive Controls Cut Hospital Infections

    Researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill find that an inexpensive set of infection control measures could save patient lives and cut health care costs by preventing hospital infections. The findings appear in the September 2011 issue of the journal Health Affairs (paid subscription required). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate…

  • University, Company Partner on Contraband Nuclear Detector

    Researchers at University of New Hampshire in Durham and Michigan Aerospace Corporation in Ann Arbor have received a contract from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency to build an instrument to accurately detect illicit radioactive materials from a safe distance. The one-year contract of $303,000 calls for a realistic field test of the device in…