The panel discussion and talk involved several VCs in the Boston area and their take on how business best can get equity funding for commercialization. Some of the key take away points from the panel discussion include:

• From the point of view of the venture capitalist, they want to make money, you need to show progress and clear financials that are not fuzzy in nature. The key is to show how the next round will be more attractive.
• Understand who you are presenting to in the VC world. Is it a VC who likes only early stage or late stage, etc.?
• References do matter and make a difference in how fast your business plan can get reviewed
• In previous years, Boston VCs used to be interested mostly in Greater Boston based firms, but now that has changed, to whomever in the US has the experience, funding, management and product to succeed.
• There is an interest in potentially funding international companies as well, though the question is how to start and connecting with people on the ground where the company is, because the bottom line is if the venture can make money.

By Casey Ross

House lawmakers last night approved a $1 billion, 10-year plan to bolster life sciences firms in Massachusetts, handing Gov. Deval Patrick a victory on one of his top economic priorities.

The bill, which is expected to win approval from the Senate, provides $500 million to pay for construction of new labs and research facilities; $250 million for tax credits to life sciences firms and $250 million for research grants.

It also creates the largest stem cell bank in the world, to be housed at UMass Medical School in Worcester.

“This is an industry that is on the move in Massachusetts and it is an industry that can only grow,” state Rep. Daniel Bosley said. “These jobs pay higher than average wages and hold the promise of curing diseases that we previously thought were incurable.”

The approval of the bill comes after months of back-room negotiating between Patrick and top lawmakers. At times, Patrick voiced frustration about the pace of the process.

However, a deal to move forward was reached in late December, and lawmakers have been working to iron out final details since then.

In the version approved last night, the House expanded the scope of the bill to include a number of earmarks to benefit specific companies, communities and state facilities.

The University of Massachusetts, for example, will get $95 million for a life science center in Amherst and another $90 million for a genetic research center on the UMass Medical School campus in Worcester.

The bill also includes $12.6 million for a new interchange off Interstate 93 in Andover to spur development of bioscience and medical firms. It also provides $12.9 million for a new sewage facility in Framingham to support a planned expansion by Genzyme Corp.

The Senate is expected to take up the Legislation within days.
cross@bostonherald.com

Source: optics.org

Laser irradiation followed by selective etching can fabricate microchannels and self-assembled nanostructures in sapphire, and could lead to microreactive devices for chemical and biological measurements.

German researchers have used an ultrashort pulsed laser to create subsurface nanostructures in a sapphire crystal. The team believes that the techniques could be used to fabricate microfluidic devices as well as 3D photonic structures. (Optics Express 16 1517.)

Rather than using the laser for direct machining of the sapphire surface, the team exploited the fact that irradiation with ultrashort laser pulses generates highly nonlinear light-matter interaction beneath the surface of the material. Subsequent etching with hydrofluoric acid produces self-assembled nanoplanes within the material, perpendicular to the beam’s polarization.

“The irradiation induces some physical effects in the material which lead to the formation of these structures, but there is no beam-shaping or special processing technique involved,” Dirk Wortmann of RWTH Aachen University explained to optics.org. “Hence we describe the structures as being self-assembled.

To know more, click here.

US healthcare spending to nearly double by 2017
by Alison Fischer
A report by economists at the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services forecast that healthcare spending in the US will nearly double over the next decade to $4.3 trillion in 2017. The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Health Affairs.

According to the report, healthcare spending will grow by an annual rate of about 6.7 percent through 2017, outpacing annual economic growth of 4.9 percent. The increase in healthcare spending will be due in part to higher prices for drugs and an ageing population who will be seeking treatment for chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes, the report authors indicated. Furthermore, prescription drug spending over the next decade is expected to more than double to $515.7 billion from the projected $231.3 billion in 2007.

Commenting on the news, Miller Tabak’s Les Funtleyder noted that “the growth rates are staggering, when you compare it to inflation.” Study author Sean Keehan added that “healthcare is expected to consume an expanding share of the US economy over the next decade, meaning policy makers, insurers, and the public collectively face some difficult decisions about the way healthcare is delivered and paid for.”

Source: Military and Aerospace, feb.2008

Un dossier interessant en p.18 et suivantes sur les “smart Sensors”.

Technology solutions are needed that will reduce operator workload and enable one person to manage many surveillance systems efficiently and effectively. Enter smart sensors.

“Smart sensors are the goal for our future deployments of intelligence and surveillance systems,” acknowledges Partynski. “Automated systems that detect, track, and classify threats without radar experts or SIGINT (signals intelligence) experts, or even people continuously staring at camera video, will allow the U.S. to deploy a nationwide system that is secure, has low false alarms, and cues the operators only when a real threat is detected.”

Automated solutions, while bringing about a reduction in personnel costs, also contribute to time savings. A lot of technology out there is gathering tons of data, recognizes Smith. “The key issue,” he says, “is how to reduce the timeline between collection, processing, and assessment?”

“If you have to review the video from thousands of cameras manually, then it’s hopeless,” says Smith. “That is why we’re so keen on ‘smart’ applications in which the camera or collection system has the capability to perform preliminary analysis, and then report interesting stuff to humans who can further assess the data.”

“The camera itself processes the images,” says Smith of a smart camera project for Appian. “It can test them against a database and simply report the tag info, time, and location, or it can provide amplifying info, such as photos, if requested.” Taking humans out of the loop until they are needed saves a great deal of time, he continues.

To know more, click here.

Source: optics.org

Varioptic and seiko team up on liquid lenses. Cooperation on manufacturing and marketing aims to build market penetration in camera modules and other large volume products. An agreement between Seiko Instruments (SII) and Varioptic will see the companies cooperate on the development, manufacturing and marketing of Varioptic’s liquid lens products, and is intended to lead to significant market penetration. “Our objective is to become the leading supplier of high quality image solutions for mobile devices,” said Christian Dupont of Varioptic. “SII’s expertise in the production of low cost miniature mechanical assemblies makes it an ideal partner.”

The agreement significantly enhances the existing production capacity for Varioptic’s Arctic 314 and Arctic 416 liquid lenses, designed for 5-Megapixel, 1/3″- and 1/4″-format camera modules. SII intends to use its large manufacturing capacity to produce liquid lens units in very high volumes and apply aggressive cost reductions, building on its existing position as a major supplier of backup batteries and capacitors for mobile phones. The company’s production capacity is expected to reach 0.5 million units per month by Q3 2008, with further expansion according to market needs.

Source: optics.org

The Quantel Group, a provider of laser solutions to the industrial, scientific and medical communities, has created a new division to consolidate its business operations in the non-medical arena. The Industrial and Scientific Laser Division includes Quantel USA, Quantel Laser Diodes and Quantel Fiber Laser R&D in France, and the contracts, R&D and manufacturing activities of Quantel in Les Ulis, France. Patrick Maine, the current CEO of Quantel USA, has been appointed executive vice president of the newly created division. Philippe Aubourg has been named vice president for sales, Alain Diard is now vice president for strategic business development, and Kamran Mobarhan has been appointed vice president, marketing and product management.

Source: optics.org

An imaging system that uses terahertz pulses is giving scientists their first glimpse of lost paintings.
Researchers in the US are using terahertz radiation to evaluate underdrawings that have been covered and hidden over time by plaster or additional art work. The process uses a pulsed terahertz reflectometer and imaging system to detect metallic and dielectric paint patterns through additional layers of paint and plaster. (Optics Communications 281 527).

“We can clearly resolve images that are buried beneath layers of plaster or paint,” John Whitaker, a researcher from the University of Michigan, told optics.org. “We can determine the size and shape of drawings made with a variety of different materials and we hope to extend this to eventually distinguish different colours.”

Whitaker and his colleagues are collaborating with researchers from the world-famous Louvre Museum in Paris and US firm Picometrix. The group is using the T-Ray system developed by Picometrix, which can penetrate up to 1 cm of plaster. Whitaker’s team has already used the system to detect coloured paints and a graphite drawing of a butterfly through 4 mm of plaster.

Imaging historical artefacts requires a non-destructive, non-invasive and precise method that can be applied on-site. Unlike X-rays and other highly energetic beams, terahertz is non-ionizing making it safe to humans and appropriate for use in open environments. It can also reveal depth and detail that other techniques cannot.

“X-rays do not provide good depth resolution and microwave techniques may give some depth resolution, but their spatial resolution is severely limited,” explained Whitaker. “Pulsed terahertz beams, however, provide spatial and lateral resolution down to less than a millimeter, the ability to see through most non-metallic materials and provide information on the composition of an object.”

The team’s set-up uses a Ti: sapphire laser emitting at 810 nm and a repetition rate of 80 MHz. Pulses with a duration of 100 fs are fired onto a photoconductive switch, which converts them into terahertz pulses with a duration of around 1 ps.

“A simple antenna structure helps to radiate the terahertz pulse into free-space, and we use optical elements to focus the pulse onto our object,” explained Whitaker. “Because the terahertz pulse is so short, we can separate out each of the reflections from the object.”

To know more, click here.

Source: R&D Magazine

The International Confocal Microscopy Working Group, an independent group of medical professionals and students, has been formed as a means to promote the betterment and increased use of reflective confocal microscopy (RCM) in patient care.

The Working Group is open and welcoming new members worldwide. Dermatologists, dermascopists, dermatopathologists, medical students and other professionals interested in learning more about RCM should consider joining the working group. RCM is a new medical imaging technology that noninvasively provides cellular resolution images of the skin. These images can assist physicians in identification of skin disease and monitoring treatment.

At the first meeting, which was held at the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) 66th Annual Meeting in San Antonio earlier this month, the Working Group established organization and membership guidelines, opportunities for collaborative research, and opportunities for training and recent scientific research in RCM.

For more information about the Working Group, including membership information, contact Maggie Oliverio by email at Maggie@ADMCORP.com and reference in the subject line “International Confocal Microscopy Working Group.”

By Deborah Borfitz

Outsourcing of biopharmaceutical clinical trials to China and India is growing at a substantial rate, but in real terms the much-ballyhooed nations are still “very minor players,” says Ernst Berndt, PhD, professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. So is every other country except the U.S., which commands a 48.7 percent share of total trial activity and has eight times the number of trial sites of second-place Germany.

These were among the findings of a study by Berndt and his colleagues, based on an analysis of data on ClinicalTrials.gov and published in the January 2008 issue of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. Eastern Europe, Latin America, and even Peru posted healthy growth, “not just Asia,” notes Berndt. “I think a lot of people lump the outsourcing of technology with the outsourcing of trials.” Read more.

By Kevin Davies

In late 2005, Mercury Computer Systems conducted a successful partnership with the lab of Boston University biomedical engineering professor Sandor Vajda. It liked the results so much it decided to invest in to Vajda’s company, SolMap Pharmaceuticals.

“Mercury is in the business of solving very, very computationally intense - and intensive - problems,” says Mirza Cifric, general manager of SolMap. For two decades, Mercury was best known for providing 3D reconstruction engines for computed tomography applications in medical imaging, CT and MRI to companies such as Philips, GE, and Siemens. Read more.

Courtesy Bio-IT World

Source: Biophotonics newsletter

A new type of optical tweezer consisting of a Fresnel zone plate microfabricated on a glass slide can trap particles without using high-performance objective lenses. It has the potential to make biological and microfluidic force measurements inside microfluidic chips and other integrated systems.

The microfabricated nature of the new optical tweezer offers an important advantage over conventional optical tweezers based on microscope objective lenses,” said Crozier. “High-performance objective lenses usually have very short working distances — the trap is often about 200 mm or less from the front surface of the lens. This prevents their use in many microfluidic chips since these frequently have glass walls that are thicker than this.”

The researchers said that the Fresnel zone plate optical tweezers could be fabricated on the inner walls of microfluidic channels or even inside cylindrical or spherical chambers and could perform calibrated force measurements in a footprint of only 100 x 100 µm.

Traditional tweezers, by contrast, would suffer from crippling aberrations in such locations. Also, in experimental trials, the optical tweezers exhibited trapping performance comparable to conventional optical tweezers when the diffraction efficiency was taken into account, the researchers said.

The device was created by researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS): postdoctoral fellow Ethan Schonbrun and undergraduate researcher Charles Rinzler under the direction of electrical engineering assistant professor Ken Crozier.

Optical tweezers, which trap and move objects through the forces supplied by tightly focused laser beams, have become important tools for biological research over the last 20 years, such as in cell sorting. Most of the time, optical tweezers are built by making extensive modifications to a standard optical microscope.

To know more, click here.

Report: Massachusetts biotech sector faces challenges
The life sciences industry in Massachusetts faces several challenges, such as rising competition, a lack of trained employees, and inadequate coordination between state agencies and the life sciences cluster, according to a report by Mass Insight Corp. and consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The report also offered some suggestions for addressing the issue, including an increased focus on training for life sciences jobs and improved oversight to facilitate the launch of clinical trials in the state. The Boston Globe (2/25)

An analysis was conducted by Batelle, where there seems to be continuous improvement in industrial funding. Some of the major points include:

• 2008 industrial R&D expected to increase 3.4%
• Government defense spending sees strong 4.8% growth
• Non-profit growth strong at 3.6%; Academic spending flat
• Offshore outsourcing continues to affect future R&D performance

Complete pie of R&D funding and the industrial challenges, and reasons for funding increases in certain areas are included in more detail in the attached article: rrd080202.pdf

Courtesty R&D Magazine February Issue

Clarus Ventures has raised $660 million for its second life sciences fund. Principals with the fund say they’ve invested 90 percent of the first biotech fund of $500 million, which was raised in 2005. And the life sciences field has remained hot for investors. The National Venture Capital Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Thomson Financial concluded that a third of all venture money went to biotech and medical device makers in the last quarter of 2007.

“We have effectively completed the deployment of our first fund and built a diversified portfolio of exciting companies,” said Robert Liptak, a Clarus Ventures Managing Director. “These include companies with…breakthrough products and technologies such as Aerovance, Centaurus, CoMentis, ESBATech, Pearl, ProActa, SarCode, Taligen, and Variation.”

- read the release for more
- check out the report from The Boston Globe

Related Articles:
Clarus closes $500M fund. Report
Billion-dollar baby: Biotech still on a roll with VC funds. Report
The top 20 VC deals of 2007. Report
Biotech, emerging markets are big VC targets. Report

Source: Photonics.com

Rudolph Technologies Inc. of Flanders, N.J., announced that it is the first semiconductor equipment supplier to join Sematech’s metrology program at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), located at the University at Albany. Under the membership agreement, Rudolph, a provider of process-characterization equipment and software for thin-film measurement and macro-defect inspection, and Sematech, a consortium of chipmakers, will jointly establish an International Process Characterization (IPC) program to focus on integrated metrology, inspection and yield-enhancement software solutions to address critical process characterization challenges for semiconductor manufacturing at the 32-nm technology generation and beyond. The IPC program, which brings together expert researchers and technologists and critical tools and software, will serve as a foundation to Sematech’s expanding metrology programs at the CNSE’s Albany NanoTech Complex. Rudolph will team with Sematech’s members and the members of ISMI (International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative) to accelerate the development and application of measurement methods for advanced semiconductor technologies. The initial IPC program addresses the metrology of thin films and metal gate stacks; wafer front, back, and edge macro-defect inspection; inspection and metrology for through silicon vias (TSV) and 3-D integrated circuits (3DIC); immersion lithography process characterization; process modeling and optimization for yield enhancement; and automatic defect classification (ADC). The program also aims to establish benchmarks for cost-effective solutions by including cost-of-ownership criteria in all projects.

Source: photonics.com

Un prodil de Raydiance

f Barry Schuler has his way, we’re on the cusp of a photon revolution.

No stranger to skepticism or speculation, the former AOL executive once described his proudest accomplishment as “confounding the technology elite of Silicon Valley, who thought AOL was doomed because it dumbed down the Internet.” (Business Week, July 2001)

“It’s not the technology itself,” he was quoted as saying. “It’s the application of technology that’s important.”

That year, he had just become chairman and CEO of AOL’s interactive services unit after the company merged with Time Warner. He stands by that philosophy as the chairman of Raydiance Inc., a California-based ultrashort -pulse (USP) laser startup he has established using technology originally developed by company founder Jeff Bullington (currently on a leave of absence) and Peter Delfyett, PhD, a professor of optics, electronic engineering and physics at University of Central Florida (UCF) Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers, or CREOL, where he now leads an ultrafast-photonics research group.

“When you look at the high-tech explosion of the last 30 years and the hundreds of billions of dollars of value generated, it was all created by harnessing electrons to make microprocessors — then those ‘computers on a chip’ became powerful, cheap and ubiquitous,” Schuler said. “Today they run our lives; they are in our laptops, cell phones, cars, microwave ovens, TVs — even sneakers. Raydiance believes we are at the beginning of a similar revolution based on photons.”

The Raydiance USP technology platform features integrated software control. All key laser parameters are user-controlled via a laptop computer.

He bills Raydiance, which also has offices adjacent to the UCF campus, as the developer of the “world’s first compact, cost-effective and fully software-controlled USP laser system” that is “accessible for the development of revolutionary new applications across a wide range of industries.”

The company, started in 2004, raised more than $25 million of venture capital from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which has also backed Hotmail, which was acquired by Microsoft; Overture, acquired by Yahoo; and Skype, which was bought by eBay.Its executive team includes Scott Davison, Raydiance’s president and a board member, formerly senior vice president of AOL, and Michael Cumbo, PhD, chief operating officer, an expert in precision optical fabrication and thin-film coating technology. Before joining Raydiance, Cumbo was CEO of BinOptics Corp., a compound semiconductor laser startup that was originally funded by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Before that, he was executive vice president and general manager of the optical components group of Coherent, which included that company’s passive and nonlinear optics, laser measurement and semiconductor diode laser business units. He has also held positions at JDS Uniphase (now JDSU) and Optical Coating Lab. Bruce Garreau, chief financial officer, joined Raydiance from Infinite Photonics, where he was CFO of both the subsidiary and its parent company Infinite Group Inc.

Raydiance board members are, in addition to Schuler and Davison, John H. N. Fisher, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson; New Jersey Sen. William “Bill” Bradley; Michael Goldblatt, PhD, CEO of Functional Genetics and former director of Defense Sciences at DARPA; and Joel McCleary — a former White House aide and treasurer of the Democratic Party who is currently the founder and chairman of Pharmathene Inc. and managing partner of Four Seasons Ventures, where he is focusing on national defense production issues in bio-defense for the Department of Defense.

Davison said during a presentation at SPIE Photonics West 2008, held in January in San Jose, that USPs will become an industry worth $100 billion by 2015.

“Ultrafast lasers have reached their silicon moment: the point at which ease of use, small form factor and affordability combine to enable large-scale commercial applications,” he said.

“First developed in the 1980s, USP lasers are extremely brief light pulses of unprecedented power that, unlike continuous-wave lasers, instantly vaporize any material without heat or residual damage to surrounding areas at very precise scales, down to the micron level.”

Until now, most USP systems have been extremely expensive, very large and usable only by trained photonics experts, according to a statement on Raydiance’s Web site: “This has limited experimentation to highly specialized university and government research labs and made commercialization of meaningful applications nearly impossible.”Raydiance said it has “liberated” the technology by combining advanced fiber and micro-optical components with software that is upgraded automatically over the Internet, with a business model “to be an enabling technology platform that allows developers and inventors to apply the transformational properties of USP technology to a range of groundbreaking applications quickly, easily and reliably.”

Schuler said the company will be successful “if we can take this very promising, yet complicated and expensive, technology and make it so that inventors and entrepreneurs can create the applications that make people’s lives better.”

Adam Tanous, director of applications marketing, said the Raydiance system is the marriage of two technologies: a high-power but compact ultrashort-pulse laser and embedded software control. “The vision Barry Schuler has for this company is informed by a pretty simple lesson from the tech revolution of the last 40 years: Until something is small and easy to use, it’s not going to change the world,” he said.

To know more, click here.

Source: biophotonics International

Une breve sur Rudolph

Applied Precision LLC of Issaquah, Wash., has announced the sale of its semiconductor division to Rudolph Technologies Inc. of Flanders, N.J., a designer and manufacturer of process characterization equipment and software for thin-film measurement and macro defect inspection and of process control metrology and data analysis systems for use by semiconductor device manufacturers. The former will continue to operate its life sciences unit, which produces the DeltaVision microscopy-based imaging systems product line.

21 February 2008 France created 34,517 jobs (for 624 projects) through FDI in 2007 - France’s third best performance since 1993 - according to the latest figures from the Invest in France Agency.

In presenting France’s Annual FDI Review, Philippe Favre, President of the Invest in France Agency, said that 2007 was “a year of transition for France”.

With political change and a range of reforms already implemented, Favre was optimistic for France’s FDI outlook in 2008, despite the global economic picture and a slowdown of US investments. He added that Prime Minister Fillon’s 2008 Spring reforms would include a host of measures specific to the ‘attractiveness’ of France.

Favre said that job creation and numbers of projects in 2007 were down on an exceptional 2006 (-13.7% and -6.2% respectively). The average size of projects declined to 55 jobs, reflecting the increase in service sector projects versus decline in large scale manufacturing projects. Favre also referred to a change in statistical parameters adopted last year, to include retail projects over 50 jobs.

French statistics confirm the increasing importance of the European economic area, with European investors accounting for 67.4% of total job creation. Whilst the US remained France’s single largest investor, North America continued its steady decline from 27.2% share in 2006 to 18.8% in 2007 (6,473 jobs), with the US accounting for 16.7%. By contrast Asia grew by 13.5% over 2006 to 4,654 jobs, however China declined slightly.

France’s top five investors in terms of numbers of jobs created in 2007 were the United States followed by Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. German investments in France (by job numbers) declined significantly by 5.3%, with the aerospace and business services hit hardest.

Foreign investors by far preferred the Paris (Ile-de-France) region with a 30.1% share of total jobs created. The capital region also bucked the national trend with a resilient 1400 job increase over 2006, totaling 10400 jobs created. Similarly number two regional destination for foreign investors, Rhone-Alpes, both increased its number of jobs on 2006 and its market share to 13.5%. Nord- Pas-de-Calais, Midi-Pyrenees and Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur complete the top five regional destinations.

Services sectors increased their share to 39.5% in 2007, due to the transport and other commercial and financial services sectors, whereas the business services and software sectors showed a downward trend. The manufacturing industry, which had shown a slightly more positive performance in 2005-2006, continued its previous downward trend accounting for 60.5% of total job creation compared with 63.5% in 2006. Sectors most affected by this decline included the aerospace equipment and the chemicals and plastics industries. New investments accounted for 35.3% of the total, whilst expansions accounted for 30.9%.

Courtesy IPAWorld Global trade and Investment News

By CHRISTOPHER LAWTON
February 21, 2008; Page D3, Wall Street Journal

Google Inc. and nonprofit academic medical center Cleveland Clinic formed a partnership and pilot program aimed at giving patients more control over their online medical records.

The venture marks the Mountain View, Calif., Internet search company’s first foray into the online health-care space. Since 2006, Google has discussed on its company blog and in executives’ speeches the issues around giving consumers more control over their medical data and more relevant health-related information.

While Google hasn’t disclosed plans, analysts and technology industry observers have speculated that the company has big ambitions in health care. They say Google could boost its already large user base and search-related advertising business by becoming a destination for health-related information and services.

The effort by Cleveland Clinic and Google is part of a larger push by technology companies, hospitals, insurers and the government to use technology to give patients more control and access to their medical information. That could help lower health-care costs if access to more data helps consumers make better choices. Similar efforts are under way at companies such as Revolution Health Group LLC and Microsoft Corp. Microsoft started its online health-care service, dubbed HealthVault, in October.

Health-care experts say companies such as Google and Microsoft face an uphill battle in trying to improve the nation’s health-care system. The industry is highly regulated. People have also been slow to embrace online personal health records amid privacy and security concerns.

Cleveland Clinic’s new program will be open to up to 10,000 of its patients by invitation only. Under the pilot, patients who already use Cleveland Clinic’s personal health record system can securely share medical information such as prescriptions, conditions and allergies between the Cleveland Clinic system and a Google health-profile online. Users can access their Google profile from any Internet-connected personal computer and would control what information goes into the profile.

Cleveland Clinic and Google officials say the pilot program is intended to free medical data from electronic-medical records so that patients can take their data wherever they go and share it with other doctors or pharmacies. Typically, control over medical data stored in electronic-medical records is in the hands of the health-care profession instead of the patient.

“From a patient perspective, they no longer have to remember all that information, write it down on a piece of paper and keep it with them,” says C. Martin Harris, chief information officer for Cleveland Clinic.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience for Google, declined to say how the Cleveland Clinic initiative fits into Google’s overall ambitions in the online health market.

Drug Discovery & Development - February 01, 2008

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. integrates Matrix Science’s Mascot search engine for protein identification with its BioWorks software. This integration is expected to enable users to consolidate identification results from the two search engines and cross-validate the results, taking advantage of the complementary information provided by each. Studies have shown that different search engines match different spectra, resulting in a large overlap and some unique protein identifications for each. Including both search engines in the same software platform provides a new level of confidence in protein identification.

www.matrixscience.com
www.thermo.com/bioworks

This article was published in Drug Discovery & Development magazine: Vol. 11, No. 2, February, 2008, pp. 9.

http://www.dddmag.com/Product-Thermo-and-Matrix-Integrate-Software-208.aspx

After nearly a decade of resisting, biotech companies want a law passed this year that lets generic drug companies sell cheaper copies of their medicines.

Story in The News & Observer/AP.

Source: optics.org

Femtosecond laser creates subsurface structures Laser irradiation followed by selective etching can fabricate microchannels and self-assembled nanostructures in sapphire, and could lead to microreactive devices for chemical and biological measurements.

Une application bizarre pour laser femtoseconde…

Source: optics.org

A femtosecond laser process can create a variety of colours on a metal surface, and could lead to control of material’s optical properties from UV to terahertz.

A team at the University of Rochester has discovered that irradiating aluminium with femtosecond pulses produces surface structuring at nano-, micro- and submillimeter scales that affect the reflectance properties of the metal, and so change the colour. “I had wanted to see what would happen to a metal under different radiation conditions from high-intensity ultrashort pulses,” Chunlei Guo told optics.org. “As the research progressed, I realized that we could actually enhance the absorbance properties permanently.” (Appl Phys Lett 92 041914.)

Guo’s team used a femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser that generated 65 fs pulses at 800 nm. Irradiating polished Al at an intensity of 0.16 J/cm2 and a repetition rate of 100 Hz resulted in the metal becoming golden in colour. “The reflectance of the Al after treatment drops over the entire measured wavelength range, but is more pronounced at shorter wavelengths,” explained Guo. “The greater absorption at blue and green wavelengths leads to a golden colour in the aluminium, which is visible at various viewing angles.” Since the process is a surface alteration and not a coating, the new colour should not fade or peel away.

Modifying the laser parameters produced other colourful results. “We produced black aluminium, where the reflectance approaches zero over the entire wavelength range, and an Al sample having two different shades of grey,” said Guo. Applying the same principles to other metals resulted in coloured gold, platinum and titanium as well.

”This technique should be quite general in terms of the types of metals we can colourize,” Guo commented. “The intrinsic electronic, optical and transport properties of metals can affect the process, but I believe we should be able to tailor our experimental parameters to compensate for these differences.”
(…)
Guo believes such altered metals could be used in a variety of applications. “Some examples include laser marking, military camouflage and stray light suppression in optical instruments.”

Source: optics.org

Ultrafast fibre lasers offer flexible solutions One of today’s most active research areas is exploiting ultrafast fibre lasers that produce picosecond or femtosecond pulses. Frank Lison and Thomas Renner of TOPTICA provide a back-to-basics look at the technology and review the emerging applications that could benefit.

To know more, click here.

The Massachusetts Biotechnology Council got a surprise when the state’s $1 billion biotech incentive bill was unveiled yesterday. As it turns out, only companies that have their U.S. headquarters based in Massachusetts are eligible for the funding, meaning that 40 members of the Mass BIO are out of luck if they don’t relocate operations. “If we’re going to spend a billion dollars, we would like to get as many corporate headquarters here as we can,” said Rep. Dan Bosley (D), who was involved in drafting the bill. Mike Webb, Mass BIO’s chairman, wasn’t expecting that requirement but said he doesn’t foresee it being a problem. Massachusetts lawmakers, including chief proponent Gov. Deval Patrick, say the massive funding bill is necessary to help Massachusetts keep its edge in the biotech economic development race.

- check out this report

February 1 2008

Un peu en avance sur la musique…mais toujours dans le feu de l’action!

IRcameras, Inc. has signed a strategic agreement with HGH Infrared Systems, a leading developer of high performance thermal imaging area and line scan cameras. IRcameras will market the IR360 Panoramic Infrared Thermal Imaging Linescan Camera in the United States. The IR360 is an innovative product intended for short & long range surveillance, perimeter protection, marine applications and intrusion detection. The IR360 features a panoramic view of a scene contiuously updated at the rate of 1Hz. Images are transfered to a host PC via an ethernet connection, allowing for long distance monitoring and control. The IR360 software provides the ability to autmatically detect and track multiple threats and generate alarms. For more about the IR360, visit http://www.ircameras.com/ir3601.html.

Source: Laser Focus World de fevrier

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is fast becoming the most successful optics technology to date in the field of disease diagnostics. Invented in the early 1990s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA) and first commercialized for medical applications by Carl Zeiss in 1996, OCT offers fast, high-resolution diagnostic images for a variety of clinical applications, plus the potential to supplant existing imaging modalities in some medical disciplines.

According to Optical Coherence Tomography-Technology, Markets, and Applications: 2008-2012, the first market research report to quantify this rapidly expanding field, the global market for OCT systems is currently around $200 million and growing at an annual rate of 34%. This trend is expected to continue for the next several years, with revenues topping $800 million by 2012.¹

There are several reasons for the increasing end-user interest in OCT. Unlike some imaging techniques, OCT is noninvasive, noncontact, and uses no harmful radiation, while still allowing micron-scale imaging of biological tissue or other samples of interest over short distances. It does this by measuring the time delay and magnitude of reflected light from the sample. OCT is often compared to ultrasound imaging, with the exception that it uses low-coherence light rather than sound waves. Very detailed cross-sectional or 3-D images are rendered through data compilation and visualization software.

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Mais a cote des pubs d’Amplitude…y aura pas photo!

Source: Laser Focus World de fevrier

In recent years the demand for meter-scale optical elements has increased significantly, driven by growth in terrestrial and satellite-based astronomy, and defense and security applications. Laser interferometry is used throughout the manufacturing of large optics to ensure conformance to demanding design specifications. More recently, “dynamic interferometry” has been implemented for vibration-insensitive measurement of large optics. The data is used to control polishing operations, verify dimensional stability of support structures, align mirror segments, and complete other critical metrology applications.

Meter-class metrology

The term “meter-class” describes a category of telescopes with optical elements that are larger than one meter in diameter, typically operating within the infrared through visible spectra. The primary and secondary optics can be monolithic glass structures or can consist of multiple segments that can be actively aligned. Mirror size is only bounded by current manufacturing methods. More than a dozen telescopes are currently in operation with primary mirrors larger than eight meters, and several more challenging projects are in development (see Fig. 1).

To support new manufacturing methods, advanced metrology systems have been developed that are capable of providing quality assurance throughout the process. Laser interferometry is the most widely used technique for verifying surface quality of large optics. A laser interferometer measures the phase difference between beams reflected from a high-quality reference optic and from a test optic. In a traditional, “temporal” laser interferometer the reference optic is translated relative to the test surface in known steps, typically quarter-wavelength shifts. The instrument acquires a frame of phase data following each shift. From this phase data the optical-path difference (OPD) can be determined, and the surface shape extracted. Measurement data is compared after each polishing iteration until the final optical shape is achieved.

As the diameter of optics has grown, several issues have complicated the use of laser interferometry. Measurement times are on the order of hundreds of milliseconds so vibration can greatly affect measurement quality. Furthermore, to measure the entire optical surface, the interferometer must be positioned a significant “stand-off” distance from the test piece-in some cases tens of meters away. And turbulence within such a large cavity can significantly distort the phase data. Vibration isolation and airflow control systems on this scale can prove prohibitively expensive or functionally impractical.

Another difficulty arises when measuring space-based hardware under actual-use conditions, at extremely low pressures or cryogenic temperatures. The demanding environment combined with the extreme vibration from support equipment make such real-world testing virtually impossible with traditional interferometers.

Finally, many modern telescope designs rely upon nontraditional elements, such as conformable mirrors or aspheric optics. Characterizing these new elements creates yet another challenge for metrology systems.

(…)

Adaptive optics. Many large telescopes now use adaptive optics on either their primary or secondary elements to counter the effects of constantly changing atmospheric conditions. The actuators for the adaptive system are typically piezo elements attached to the back of flexible elements. In the past, to understand the modal response of an optic to changes in the actuators, sensors have been used to measure movement at individual points on an optic-a slow, low-resolution solution. Dynamic interferometry, because of its short acquisition time, can image an optic as it is being actuated to verify and calibrate the response of the actuators. The dynamic system shows the 3-D response of the entire optic, providing a complete image of control system performance.

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Raydiance font encore parler d’eux. Au moins les types du marketing bossent.

Source: Laser Focus World de fevrier

Raydiance Inc., developer of a compact, cost-effective and fully software-controlled ultrashort pulse (USP) laser system, is working with a leading geologist at New Mexico State University (NMSU) who has received funding for laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) of rock and mineral compositions, a process by which researchers are able to analyze small parts of a mineral in a way that is essentially non-destructive.

As part of this initiative, the precision and power of the Raydiance USP platform will allow researchers to differentiate fake gemstones from real gemstones, as well as uniquely identify individual gemstones with certainty, without causing damage to the stones. Until now, other lasers that have been effective at this technique have not been small, portable, precise or inexpensive enough to be practical for commercial use. They have also typically caused collateral damage to the material being examined.

Nancy McMillan, PhD, professor and academic head of the Department of Geological Sciences at NMSU and principal investigator of the gemstone project, said, “Lasers have been used in the past to determine the type, origin and quality of gemstones. However, until we saw Raydiance’s technology in action, we had never seen a laser that does not cause damage to the stone, lowering its value. Looking ahead, we expect the Raydiance USP laser platform to be an invaluable tool for appraisers and insurers across the industry.”

McMillan’s project aims to illustrate how Raydiance lasers can detect gemstones that were treated to look like real stones, such as chemically-coated diamonds, rubies injected with leaded glass to superficially remove flaws, and sapphires that have been diffused with the element beryllium to produce a brilliant orange color. The research will also test the laser’s capability to identify minerals that are being illegally sold as more expensive ones, such as synthetic forsterite sold as tanzanite.

Today, gemstone evaluation most-commonly consists of either subjective visible inspection, examining a stone’s refractive index, or inspection with a microscope.

USP lasers are extremely brief light pulses of unprecedented power that, unlike continuous wave lasers, instantly vaporize any material without heat or residual damage at very precise scales, down to the micron level. Until now, most USP systems have been extremely expensive, very large and usable only by photonics experts.

To know more, click here.

13 February 2008

New York-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer has announced that it is investing 130 million euros to establish an industrial research centre in France to formulate and manufacture inhaled medicines. Investment at the centre, which will be located at an existing plant in Amboise, will start in the spring of 2008 and will continue over a five-year period. The new facility will employ up to 440 people once it is operational.

Courtesy: IPAWorld global trade and investment news.

Dyax Corp. has entered into a license agreement with Paris-based sanofi-aventis that gives an exclusive worldwide license to the French pharmaceutical company for the tumor-fighting monoclonal antibody DX-2240.
Read more of this article

Courtesy: Mass High Tech

Friday, February 8, 2008 Boston Business Journal - by Craig M. Douglas Journal staff
Boutiques: Smaller deals still abundant
Boston’s once-torrid merger-and-acquisition market has been doused with some cold water.

During the six months ending Jan. 31, local M&A activity — that is, deals involving either a Massachusetts buyer or seller — totaled $27.3 billion, a 34 percent slip from the $41.2 billion in transactions that closed during last year’s corresponding period, according to Thomson Financial. Industry insiders attributed much of the year-over-year drop to recent challenges in closing larger deals, as buyers and financiers have balked at the M&A prices and debt-to-equity ratios that were common just a year earlier.

But while those trends have dented the local buyout sector in dollar terms, it has alternately proven a boon to smaller M&A advisory firms that specialize in deals valued at less than $100 million. Principals in that end of the market say deal activity has never been better, as the economy’s broader downturn has added urgency to negotiations between small, privately held sellers and acquisitive corporations with loads of cash reserves.

“We’ve literally never been busier. But I think there’s a little bit of fear driving that,” said Peter Falvey, a managing director with Revolution Partners, a boutique investment bank in Cambridge.

Friday, February 8, 2008 Boston Business Journal - by Jackie Noblett Journal staff

Massachusetts’ information technology firms are defying expectations of a slowdown as companies bulk up on staff, a sign that the state’s technology sector may be more resistant to downturns in times past.

Despite fears of recession and the unexpected loss of 17,000 jobs nationally in December, state tech companies and IT departments continue to hire fervently.

Massachusetts added 600 jobs in the computer systems design industry in December, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, capping off a year of strong growth. At about 50,000 jobs, the state has the most IT jobs since March of 2002 and about 7,900 more jobs than it did at the low point of the last recession in January 2004.

The IT industry added 2,100 jobs in 2007 — or about 4 percent — outpacing the professional, scientific and business services sectors, and grew far beyond a paltry 0.7 percent annual growth in all non-farm jobs.

Economists say it is unclear why IT hiring remains strong; either the beginnings of a recession has yet to filter to the job market or, just maybe, IT will ride through a slowdown relatively unscathed.

Benjamin Leader¹, Quentin J. Baca² & David E. Golan² About the authors

Article Link

Abstract

Once a rarely used subset of medical treatments, protein therapeutics have increased dramatically in number and frequency of use since the introduction of the first recombinant protein therapeutic — human insulin — 25 years ago. Protein therapeutics already have a significant role in almost every field of medicine, but this role is still only in its infancy. This article overviews some of the key characteristics of protein therapeutics, summarizes the more than 130 protein therapeutics used currently and suggests a new classification of these proteins according to their pharmacological action.

Author affiliations

1. Benjamin Leader is at the Department of Emergency Medicine, Brown Medical School, 593 Eddy Street, Providence, Rhode Island 02093, USA.
2. Quentin J. Baca and David E. Golan are at the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, 250 Longwood Avenue, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA, and Hematology Division, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 75 Francis Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02115.

Correspondence to: David E. Golan² Email: dgolan@hms.harvard.edu

Courtesy: Nature Reviews

IBM Launches Data Centre in Lyon
4 February 2008

New York-based IT company IBM has announced that it is opening a new high-security data centre in Lyon, for small and medium-sized enterprises. The new facility will facilitate the innovation efforts of local companies, by offering them a range of local services.

With the launch of this site, IBM is highlighting the economic vitality of the Lyon region and enacting its strategy of getting closer to its local clients.

Courtesy: IPA World, Global Trade and Investment News

Deformable mirror

mirao 52-d, manufactured by Imagine Eyes and distributed by Imagine Optic (Orsay, France), is the first wavefront correction device of its kind. Based on a new approach to deformable mirror technology that enables high actuator density and precise manipulation on a small pupil size (15mm), mirao 52-d allows users to generate high-quality results even when correcting highly aberrated wavefronts. It features 52 actuators in a 15mm useful pupil diameter, excellent optical quality in mirror shape at 5nm rms, 100micron wavefront correction, excellent linearity, and no hysterisis.

Source: bioptics world

Un article de Drexler!Noninvasive, simultaneous probing of 3-D cellular-resolution tissue morphology and depth-resolved function could significantly improve early medical diagnosis.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an emerging diagnostic-imaging modality that enables in vivo cross-sectional tomographic visualization of internal microstructures in biological systems (see “How it works,” p. 29). Since its invention in the early 1990s, the motivating factor behind the development of OCT tools and techniques has been to enable noninvasive optical biopsies—specifically, in situ imaging of tissue microstructures with a resolution approaching that of histology but without the need for tissue excision and post-processing.^1-7

To achieve this challenging goal, recent trends in OCT technology development have focused on improving image resolution, data-acquisition speed, tissue penetration, and contrast enhancement. New state-of-the-art delivery systems have facilitated the application of OCT in a variety of fields outside of ophthalmology (notably gastroenterology and cardiology), enhanced OCT tissue penetration, and provided access to internal organs for in vivo imaging. Additional extensions of OCT enable noninvasive depth-resolved functional imaging, providing polarization-sensitive spectroscopic blood-flow or physiologic tissue information. These advances should not only improve image contrast but enable the differentiation of pathologies via localized metabolic properties or functional (physiologic) state.

As a consequence, there has been a tremendous increase in publications (90 in 1998 vs. 900 in 2006), patents (9 granted patents in 1998 vs. more than 90 in 2006), and companies involved in the field of OCT (3 in 1998 vs. more than 20 in 2006). In 1998, OCT publications were cited approximately 700 times; in 2006, more than 10,000 citations referred to OCT research. In addition, sources have estimated that the market for OCT equipment will grow at a compound annual rate of more than 30% over the next four years, reaching €200 million (US$295 million) by 2011.⁸

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Source: optis.org (The researchers presented their work in Nanotechnology.)

Optical waveguides have the potential to trap, sense and then release particles within lab-on-a-chip devices, but how can you predict whether such a system will work in practice?

Simulation snapshot

To provide a starting point, researchers in the US have devised a “stability number” that describes the conditions under which it is possible to transport a particle optofluidically.

“If the stability number is greater than one then the particle will be confined to the waveguide and can therefore be transported along it using optical forces,” David Erickson of Cornell University told nanotechweb.org. “If the stability number is less than one then the particle will diffuse or be swept away.”

The idea of these “lab-on-a-chip” optofluidic sensors is that the particles of interest are mixed with a fluid that flows through tiny channels next to a solid optical waveguide. When light passes through the waveguide, it creates a short-range electric field in the channel that can be strong enough to trap the particles for subsequent analysis. However, it has proved very difficult to predict exactly how objects will behave in practical optofluidic systems. The simulations carried out by the Cornell team consider two classes of optical waveguide – a silicon waveguide operating at 1550 nm and a polymer waveguide operating at 1064 nm – located at the bottom of a simple microfluidic channel.

“We believe that the silicon-based system, with its high refractive index contrast, is more suited to trapping nanoscale objects, such as DNA or quantum dots,” said Erickson. “The polymer-based system, as we have already demonstrated experimentally in another paper, is very appealing as a cheap platform for guiding micron-sized objects, such as biological cells.”

For both systems, the group has generated “stability maps” that cover particles measuring from 600 to 300 nm in diameter. The charts provide a range of flow velocities where particle-waveguide trapping is likely to be successful based on three-dimensional finite element simulations. Additionally, the data highlights critically unstable regions where the drag force on the particle is stronger than the calculated trapping force.

So far so good, but what about moving to smaller particle diameters? “As the particle approaches tens of nanometers in diameter, its relative surface area to volume ratio increases and surface-particle interactions, such as adhesion, will become stronger,” explained Erickson. “For small molecules, the approximation of a spherical continuous particle will not be valid and it may become necessary to account for non-uniformity in the particle structure and makeup.”

..on aurait bien aime etre nommes dedans!

Source: Laser Focus World

Imagine Optic reports 150% U.S. market growth, files laser fuse patent

Imagine Optic, provider of wavefront analysis and adaptive optics technologies, reported that preliminary results for the fiscal year 2007 indicated approximately 150% growth in the U.S. market with steady growth in Europe and Asia. Worldwide, the company’s sales progressed over 10% during the year, attributed to increased demand for its adaptive optics product line, most notably the AOKit - bio.

In January 2007, Imagine Optic announced its intention to double growth in the U.S. through the reinforcement of its presence in that market. After having achieved this objective, Samuel Bucourt, the company’s CEO, said, “Over the course of 2007, we made significant investments into our sales and marketing program in order to meet the growing need for high-quality wavefront analysis and adaptive optics products around the world.” He continues, “While Europe and Asia remain equally important to us, the U.S. is a key actor in many of the industrial and scientific research and development programs that can benefit from our unique product offer.”

In the U.S., the company will use the French government’s VIE program, designed to bolster the international growth of small to midsized companies, to reinforce its presence by adding a full-time representative at its Venice, CA based distributor, Bosa Nova Technologies.

Imagine Optic will be exhibiting this week at stand 715 at Photonics West in San Jose, CA.

In related news, Imagine Optic and Amplitude Technologies (Evry, France), a manufacturer of advanced femtosecond laser technologies, have jointly filed a patent application for a totally new concept in optical fuse design and fabrication that will contribute to advancing the growing applications of high-power lasers. The optical fuse combines adaptive optics, dielectric technology, and a unique physical design that enables it to protect fragile and costly elements throughout the laser amplification chain. One of the key merits of this new technology is its use of inexpensive replacement parts as the disposable fuse element that enables users to benefit from a rapid return on investment.

High-power lasers rely on expensive rods, pumps, stretchers, and compressors to augment and focus the energy to levels that exceed the emissions of current state-of-the-art lasers by several orders of magnitude by firing extremely rapid and focused pulses. Gilles Riboulet, CEO of Amplitude Technologies, said “Every time a component is damaged to the unintentional misdirection or build-up of energy inside the amplification chain, facilities incur significant costs related to procuring replacement components. This new optical fuse provides a safeguard that will help prevent these costly accidents by inhibiting damaging energy from passing on to the next step in the beam amplification chain.”

For more information, visit www.imagine-optic.com.

… et on sait ce que ca veut dire. D’apres le principe de reciprocite, on devrait voir arriver des commandes en France.

Source: Space War Express. The government of France awarded Raytheon a direct commercial sales contract Jan. 18 worth $22 million for the combat-proven Enhanced Paveway II (EP2) dual- mode GPS/laser-guided precision munition and weapons integration for the French Air Force’s Mirage 2000D fighter aircraft.

Source: Space War Express. The governments of France and the United States have signed a Letter of Offer and Acceptance for the sale of Lockheed Martin’s precision-strike laser-guided Hellfire II missiles to France. The agreement authorizes the sale of multiple warhead variants of the modular Hellfire II, with options, for the French Army’s Helicoptere d’Appui Destruction (HAD) Tiger attack helicopter fleet.

Transparent zebrafish offers view of cancer development
Scientists have engineered a transparent zebrafish that gives a clear view of the progression of cancer cells, and observations have shown that the cells tend to home in on a particular area as they spread. The fish also could be used to study stem cell transplants, the study’s lead researcher said. The Times (London) (2/7) , The Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.) (2/6)

Source: Military and Aerospace electronics, Posted by John Keller

I think we’re seeing the future of network-centric surveillance in a U.S. Air Force project called Wide-Area Surveillance that seeks to blend information from many different imaging sensors into 3-D views of areas of interest.

This vision appears in a story in the Aviation Week and Space Technology blog entitled U.S. Air Force Eyes New Surveillance System that talks about Pentagon planning to develop an electro-optical intelligence system beginning sometime next year. Writes Av Week:

Dubbed “wide area surveillance,” the project stems from a prototype now operating in Iraq. The prototype system, built by the Air Force Research Laboratory and called Angel Fire, comprises multiple commercial cameras capable of collecting 1-2 frames per second. They are perched on a twin-engine, manned aircraft, which is being operated by contract personnel, the sources say. Images collected from the cameras can be “stitched” together using computers to present a near-360-degree vantage of a wide area. They may also be displayed in rapid succession to form a product similar to video.

It is this stitching together of images from different sensors that is so intriguing. They re talking about several sensors on one aircraft, but what is to prevent smart systems designers from blending images from many sensors on different platforms — manned and unmanned aircraft, orbiting satellites, surveillance balloons, combat vehicles, and even from gun sights on individual soldiers’ weapons.

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GlaxoSmithKline to Cut Jobs in France
5 February 2008 UK pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline is to cut up to 200 sales positions in France before the end of 2009, according to a spokesman.

This figure represents about four per cent of the total workforce in the country. The company said it is part of a process of reallocating resources according to needs.

courtesy IPAWorld

Source: Government Technology
Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy, the Municipal Council, and state and county officials presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the city’s new, state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center.

The high-tech facility, which was funded through the Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) grant program, is the first of its kind for any municipality in the state of New Jersey.

“Due to our location, the size of our City, and our critical infrastructure, having a state-of-the-art OEM facility is something we have been in great need of,” Mayor Healy said. “We now have the technology that will allow us to keep our citizens safe, which has always been my highest priority.”

The Emergency Operations Center will have a direct video link to the city’s Closed Circuit TV system (CCTV) and will support direct operational links with the mobile command and communication posts, such as the Fire Department water vessel.

In addition to Mayor Healy and members of the Municipal Council, representatives from the New Jersey State Police, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are scheduled to attend the launch of the city’s new EOC.

The new center will be the focal point for multi-agency coordination for incident management, as well as response or recovery operations. The EOC is equipped with ten audio-visual video cubes which provide the visualization of the crisis or incident at hand.

Source: Nature Photonics

Une nouvelle technique de microscopie permet de voir les proprietes mecaniques des tissus vivants.

L’article, p.13 a 14, explique la technique. Je peux vous le scanner si vous le souhaitez.
p.39 et suivantes, on notera un second article sur la question par Giuliano Scarcelli et Seok Hyun Yun intitule: Confocal Bbrillouin microscopy for 3 dimensional mechanical image. L’article est beaucoup plus detaille.

On remarque une pub d’une page entiere de OKO.