Science and Enterprise

Month: February 2013

  • Wireless Brain Sensor Designed, Tested in Animals

    Neuroscientists and engineers at Brown University in Providence developed a wireless broadband implanted brain sensor that the researchers are testing in lab animals. The team led by Brown engineering professor Arto Nurmikko described their findings at this week’s 2013 International Workshop on Clinical Brain-Neural Machine Interface Systems in Houston, and in the April 2013 issue…

  • Faster, Lower Temperature Ceramics Method Developed

    A materials scientist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh discovered a new technique for making high-density ceramics needing lower temperatures and that takes only a second. Jay Narayan describes his process in two recent papers appearing online in the journal Scripta Materialia, a viewpoint essay posted last week, and a technical paper published last…

  • Mylan Acquires Generic Injectables Manufacturer for $1.6B

    Mylan Inc., a producer of generic and specialty branded drugs in Pittsburgh, will acquire Agila Specialties in Bangalore, India, a developer of generic inectable drugs and division of Strides Arcolab Ltd. Mylan will pay $1.6 billion cash for Agila Specialties, with up to $250 million in contingent payments possible later on. Mylan offers some 1,100…

  • Ball-Mounted Cam Provides Unique View of Football Field

    Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and University of Electro-Communications (UEC) in Tokyo designed a miniature video camera mounted inside a football, with an algorithm to process the images, to provide a view of the game rarely, if ever, seen. Carnegie Mellon’s Kris Katani and UEC’s Kodai Horita will describe their system in a…

  • Gastric Model Lands Funding for Expanded Applications

    An artificial digestive system developed at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich, U.K. for lab tests of physical and biochemical processes in the human stomach and intestines, secured more than £900,000 ($US 1.4 million) for research on new models of nutritional quality and health benefits. The two-year grant is provided to the Institute of…

  • Roche Increasing Access to Clinical Trial Results

    The pharmaceutical company Roche, based in Switzerland, will increase access to its clinical trial data for third-party researchers. The company also promises access to clinical data for its flu medication Tamiflu, after review by independent scientists, for which the British medical journal BMJ and evidence-based medicine organization Cochrane Collaboration have long-standing requests for access. In…

  • Research on Insects Leads to Forestry Biochemical Start-Up

    Biochemical researchers at University of Nevada in Reno started a company making compounds to control forest pests, based on their research in insect enzymes. Rubi Figueroa-Teran and Claus Tittiger, in Reno’s College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, started the company EscaZyme Biochemicals and were invited to join National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) to get the…

  • Grant to Fund Patient-Sourced Health Outcome Measures

    PatientsLikeMe, a health data-sharing network and platform in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received a $1.9 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to establish a system for involving patients in the development of health outcome measures. Paul Wicks, PatientsLikeMe’s research director (pictured right), is scheduled to describe the project today at the TED2013 conference in Long…

  • Patent Issued for Drug Technology with Prostate Treatment

    Medifocus Inc. in Columbia, Maryland received a patent for a technique of delivering heat-sensitive drugs with its treatment for enlarged prostate. U.S. patent 8,374,702 was awarded to Medifocus chief operating officer John Mon and MIT engineer Alan Fenn on 12 February and assigned to Medifocus. The patent covers a technology for delivering drugs targeted to…

  • Pharmas Recall Anemia Drug for Dialysis Patients

    Affymax Inc. in Palo Alto, California and Takeda Pharmaceuticals Company in Osaka, Japan are recalling its drug Omontys in the U.S. after reported cases of anaphylaxis, a serious and life-threatening allergic reaction. The recall is being coordinated with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Omontys, the branded form of the drug peginesatide, is a synthetic…