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Computer Game Being Designed to Combat Domestic Violence
15 January 2016. Social scientists and designers in the U.K. are developing a computer game to teach empathy and non-violence in family relationships. The game, for use in the Caribbean and the U.K., is funded by a €400,000 ($US 434,000) grant from the European Commission. The funding, from the EU’s delegation to the Eastern Caribbean…
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Organovo, UC-San Diego Partner on 3-D Liver Tissue
15 January 2016. Organovo Holdings and University of California in San Diego are collaborating on isolating and better understanding human liver cells for the production of 3-D printed liver tissue. Financial and intellectual property aspects of the agreement were not disclosed. Organovo designs and produces human tissue for research and transplant, using its own bio-printing…
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Students Design Pad to Collect Urinary Infection Samples
14 January 2016. A team at Hebrew University in Jerusalem designed a microfiber pad to improve collection of urine samples from people with urinary tract infections. Graduate students from a number of disciplines developed the pad under in the Israeli university’s Biodesign medical innovation program. Infections can occur anywhere in the urinary tract, but happen…
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Yahoo Releases User Interaction Data for Machine Learning
14 January 2016. The online company Yahoo is releasing an extensive data set of individual user interactions with some of its popular services to the academic community as raw material for studies of machine learning. The de-identified data sets will be part of Yahoo’s Webscope reference library offered to academic researchers. The data sets cover…
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Boehringer, Arena to Discover Neurological Drugs
13 January 2016. Pharmaceutical companies Boehringer Ingelheim and Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. are collaborating on discovery of new therapies for schizophrenia and other neurological disorders. The partnership could bring Arena, in San Diego, as much as $262 million. Arena Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company developing therapies for disorders related to G protein-coupled receptors, or GPCRs, proteins…
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Smart Pills Detect, Measure Gases in Gut
13 January 2016. A team at RMIT University in Australia developed a device, swallowed like a pill, that measures gas concentrations in the intestine and sends its data to an outside receiver. Proof-of-concept results from tests with pigs appear in the January 2016 issue of the journal Gastroenterology. Researchers led by RMIT engineering professor Kourosh…
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Gates Funding RNA Treatment for HIV Infection
12 January 2016. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is backing a biotechnology company’s early development of antibodies to treat human immunodeficiency virus or HIV based on RNA, nucleic acids expressed by a person’s genetic code. The foundation is supporting the work of Moderna Therapeutics, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with an initial $20 million grant, and…
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Zika Virus Genome Sequenced
12 January 2016. A team from Institut Pasteur in French Guiana sequenced the complete genome of the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne pathogen causing disease outbreaks in tropical regions, including the Americas. Findings from the analysis appeared last week in the journal The Lancet. The Zika virus causes fever, with rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis, also…
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Trials Show Safety, Benefit of Stem Cells to Treat ALS
11 January 2016. Two clinical trials testing stem cells to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, found the treatments are safe for patients, and can slow progression of the disease. Results of the trials testing the stem cell product known as NurOwn made by BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics in Petach Tikvah, Israel are reported today in…
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Juno Acquires Biotech, Licenses Cell Sequencing Tech
11 January 2016. Juno Therapeutics is gaining single-cell sequencing technology for cancer immunotherapies through the buy-out of biotechnology company AbVitro Inc., and licensing part of that technology to pharmaceutical company Celgene Corp. The AbVitro acquisition is valued at about $125 million, while financial details of the licensing deal with Celgene are not disclosed. Juno Therapeutics,…