Month: September 2011
-
No posts today
Science Business will take a break today for the Labor Day holiday in the U.S. We’ll resume posting tomorrow. * * *
-
Pfizer to Build Research Labs in Cambridge, Mass.
Pfizer Inc., the global pharmaceutical company based in New York, says it will build a new research facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company expects the facility will employ a staff of 400, most in research or related positions. The new building will be located in Kendall Square, just north of the MIT campus. Pfizer says…
-
Fast, Inexpensive, Portable Blood Tests Developed
A team of engineers from University of Toledo in Ohio has developed a low-cost, portable technique that can quickly detect specific proteins in a sample of human blood. Their technique is described in the 1 September issue of the journal, Biomedical Optics Express. Human blood has thousands of different proteins essential to day-to-day life functions,…
-
Integrated Exploration Methods Urged for Oil and Gas
Researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel have combined several surveying methods to develop an integrated prospecting technology for oil and gas. The methods proposed by geophysicist Lev Eppelbaum and zoologist Youri Katz appeared earlier this year in the journal Positioning. Eppelbaum and Katz created detailed structural-tectonic maps of Israel and surrounding areas from an…
-
Insomnia Costs U.S. Employers Billions in Lost Productivity
Researchers from universities, hospitals, and companies in the U.S. and Europe calculated the lost productivity of Americans suffering from insomnia at an annual cost of $63.2 billion to employers. Their findings from the study, funded by the pharmaceutical company Merck, appear in the 1 September issue of the journal Sleep (paid subscription required). The team…
-
NSF, Industry Consortium Fund Advanced Chip Research
Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond has received two grants totaling $1.75 million from National Science Foundation and the Semiconductor Research Corporation to create more energy-efficient computing devices. Semiconductor Research Corporation is an international technology research consortium of member companies and university research programs. The grants fund research to translate theoretical work on replacing traditional transistor-based…
-
Improved Cellulose Processing Developed for Biofuels
A team of university and industry researchers in Europe and the U.S. have developed a process to hasten the breakdown of cellulose in waste plant matter for conversion to ethanol. Their findings appear online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists with the company Novozymes in Davis, California, and Bagsvaerd, Denmark,…
-
Manufacturing Process Devised for More Economical LEDs
Materials scientists at University of Florida in Gainesville have developed a new manufacturing process for light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, used in flat-panel displays and solid-state lighting. The process is described in an article now appearing in the journal Nature Photonics (paid subscription required), and has been licensed to a company for commercialization. Two research teams…