Science and Enterprise

Month: July 2012

  • Grant to Fund New Drought-Resistant Biofuel Grasses

    The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis has received a $12.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a more drought-resistant type of grass that can be processed into biofuels. The five-year award will be shared by collaborators at Carnegie Institution for Science, University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, University of…

  • Israeli Consortium to Study Mediterranean Resources

    A consortium of universities and research institutes, headed by University of Haifa, will establish the Israel Center for Mediterranean Sea Research. A committee of Israel’s Council for Higher Education adopted the recommendation of Israel Academy of Sciences to establish the center, whose work will include research of Israel’s off-shore economic potential. In addition to University…

  • Nanoscale Drug Delivery Process Helps Cancer Treatment

    Researchers from Yale University’s medical and engineering faculties in New Haven have devised a new technique for delivering cancer treatments that also boosts a response by the immune system. The findings of the research, funded by a National Science Foundation grant, and led by Yale University biomedical engineering professor Tarek Fahmy (pictured right) are found…

  • Challenge Seeks Algorithm to Predict ALS Progression

    A new challenge competition seeks mathematical tools to predict the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease based on the patient’s current disease status. The competition, handled through the open innovation company InnoCentive, has a prize of $25,000 and a deadline of 15 October 2012. ALS, which affects 5 out of every…

  • Engineers Develop Robotic Driver-Assist Safety System

    Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised a semiautonomous safety system using robotics to help cars and drivers avoid accidents. Sterling Anderson, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering and Robotic Mobility Group researcher Karl Iagnemma presented their findings last month at the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium in Madrid, Spain (paid download required). The system…

  • National Lab Seeks Commercial Partner for Diagnostics Tool

    Sandia National Lab in Livermore, California is seeking a partner to commercialize its desktop medical diagnostics technology that the lab says is faster, less expensive, and more versatile than current diagnostics tools. The SpinDx, as it is known (pictured left), can tell in minutes a patient’s white blood cell count, analyze important protein markers, and…

  • Agilent, University, Agencies to Partner on Pathogen Genomes

    Agilent Technologies Inc. in Santa Clara, California is collaborating with University of California in Davis, Food and Drug Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on collecting a database of 100,000 foodborne pathogen genomes. The 100K Genome Project aims to sequence the genetic code of some 100,000 foodborne pathogens over five years, and make…

  • Special: U.S. Policies Connect Research to Manufacturing

    Editor’s note: Science Business today is devoted to a report of a conference in Washington, D.C., “U.S. Manufacturing: Policies for a New Economic Reality.” At a conference on U.S. manufacturing policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., panelists urged stronger policies to more explicitly link scientific research to the factory floor, in order for…

  • Strategy Proposed for Overcoming Resistance to Cancer Drug

    Researchers in the U.K., with colleagues from the U.S. and Sweden, have recommended a way to overcome the resistance of cancer cells to the drug crizotinib, which recently showed positive results in its first trial in children with cancer. The findings are published online this week in the journal Cancer Cell (paid subscription required). Louis…

  • Air Force Grant to Fund Research on Nanomaterials Shaping

    Funding from the U.S. Air Force is supporting multi-disciplinary research on the ability of nanomaterials to change their shape in response to external stimuli, such as heat and light. The $2.9 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research will support a project that touches on chemistry, biology, computer science, and engineering, led…