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ABB, GM to Research Spent Car Batteries for Grid Storage
ABB, a developer of power and automation technologies in Cary, North Carolina, and General Motors will collaborate in a research and development project focused on uses for electric vehicle batteries once their useful life in the vehicle is over. The project will examine the reuse of spent lithium-ion battery packs from GM’s Chevy Volt, as…
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Chinese Solar Company, NREL Sign R&D Agreement
LDK Solar Co. Ltd., a manufacturer of solar wafers and photovoltaic products in Xinyu City, China and Sunnyvale, California, says it signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for collaborative research and development activities on silicon materials and photovoltaic devices. Under the agreement, the LDK Solar…
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Intermittent Posting Through Thursday
Starting today through Thursday, I will be at the GridWise Global Forum in Washington, DC. As a result, we will have fewer items, posted less regularly than usual. We’ll be back to our regular output on Friday.
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Dow, Wageningen to Collaborate on Potato Genome
Dow AgroSciences, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company in Indianapolis, Indiana, and the Plant Sciences Group of Wageningen UR (University and Research Center) in Wageningen, the Netherlands agreed to study how a technology developed by Dow can improve the starch quality of potatoes, a food and industrial crop. Dow’s process, called EXZACT Precision Technology, provides…
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Coronary Stent Gets FDA Approval
Medical device developer Medtronic Inc. in Minneapolis, Minnesota, said today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved its Integrity coronary stent system for use in the United States. The stent system already received the CE (Conformité Européene) mark in February and is currently available in approximately 100 countries outside the United States. The company…
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Spanish-French Team Tops Wine Bottles with New Composite
The Spanish research institute Tecnalia, in Bizkaia (Vizcaya), has developed a new material to replace plastic and cork as stoppers for wine bottles. The project developing this new composite, called PLACOTOP, includes the companies Plásticos Urteta in Spain and Rescoll-Societé de Recherche in France, and is funded in part by the European Commission. Plastic stoppers…
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Clinical Study Data Published on Cortical Bone Substitute
Orthovita Inc., a developer of medical implants in Malvern, Pennsylvania, reports today that the journal Spine published data from studies of its product Cortoss, an injectable polymer composite that mimics cortical bone. The paper reports on two pilot studies of Cortoss to treat vertebral compression fractures or VCF (paid subscription required}. The paper says Cortoss…
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NIH Awards Two Small Business Grants for Skin Disorders
Signum Biosciences Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey received two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 grants by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, a division of the NIH, totaling over $684,000 for development of G-protein coupled receptor modulating therapeutics designed to treat common skin disorders. Phase 1 SBIR grants fund…
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Random Number Generation for Computer Security Advances
Computer researchers at Queen’s University Belfast in the U.K. developed a simpler and smaller way of generating random numbers, an essential property of cyber-security. Jiang Wu and Máire O’Neill of the university’s Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology have produced a series of circuits for generating random numbers that are up to 50 percent…
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Contract Awarded for Radiation Countermeasure Drug
Cleveland BioLabs Inc., a drug development company in Buffalo, New York, received a contract from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to develop and stockpile its drug CBLB502 as a medical radiation countermeasure. The initial contract provides $14.8 million for advanced development of the drug, with later options worth $30 million for purchase of doses.…