Biophotonics:

Handheld microscope diagnoses skin cancer, p.15: Montana State university

Optical Tweezers: empowering Biology with the force of light, p.34, 35, 36, 37

OPN:

In Vivo Images of Retina's "dark" cells: David Williams at University of Rochester, p7

Riding out the recession, p.12-13

OPN talk with...Federico Capasso, Laser pioneer and CLEO/IQEC speaker, p14-15

Source: optics.org

Software vendor targets designers of fibre lasers and fibre amplifiers.

The new version of the RP Fiber Power simulation software can help optical designers to fast-track the development and optimization of fibre amplifiers and fibre lasers for a range of applications, claims RP Photonics Consulting, Switzerland.

"Industrial companies, research laboratories and educational institutions can all benefit from the software's ability to assess the impact of various detrimental effects on the performance of fibre lasers and amplifiers," commented Rüdiger Paschotta of RP Photonics. "Predicting the performance of active fibre devices - for example, by finding the optimum fibre length, doping concentration and refractive-index profiles - is a key benefit."

To know more, click here.

UK fibre-laser specialist to push materials processing agenda at next month's LASER trade show.

A new range of ultrafast fibre lasers, an applications laboratory and a hosted panel session will keep materials processing at the heart of Fianium's agenda for the LASER 2009 tradeshow in Munich, Germany, next month.

The UK-headquartered manufacturer will demonstrate its FP1060-HE range of high-energy ultrafast fibre lasers, which are designed for diverse materials processing applications, such as high-precision micromachining. The industrial-grade lasers are capable of pulse energies of up to 10 µJ with pulsewidths of less than 20 ps, "allowing the processing of challenging polymers, glasses, organic tissue and reflective metals".To read more, click here.

Source: WBUR

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - When it comes to high technology, Massachusetts boasts one of the deepest talent pools in the country - and some industry leaders say innovation could drive Massachusetts out of the economic doldrums.

Even though venture-capital investment fell nationwide in the first quarter of 2009, Massachusetts received more than 12 percent of all VC investment in the United States, according to the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. That's above the historical average.

"The basic notion is that, you know, a start-up company looks something like this," says Tim Rowe, walking down one of the many long, airy corridors of the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square. It's lined with office spaces - some just cubicles where a lone person taps away on a laptop. But through windows in others you can see four to five people focused on getting their business off the ground.

Rowe founded the center in 1999 as a space for growing firms to set up headquarters without the large costs of starting a company.

"They come in, they don't buy their furniture or set up phones or get Internet lines or buy a copier or any of those things that you typically do when you start a company. Instead, they can just get going like the day they move in."

Ten years later, the center is home to 200 start-up life-science and technology companies. To read more, click here.

Source: Life Sciences Leader

CROs Voice Industry Concerns At Annual Event
By Phil Huffman, Associate Publisher Of Contract Sourcing

The topic of globalization was on the minds and lips of everyone in attendance at the 18th annual Partnerships with CROs & Other Outsourcing Providers event (April 28-30, 2009), as executives from both sponsor organizations and service providers converged on the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort and Conference Center in Orlando, Florida. The industry has certainly faced tough times during the last year as new regulations, financial constraints, and a host of other issues have slimmed pipelines, slowed approvals, and ultimately left everyone saying "where's the next blockbuster?" After more than 40 face-to-face meetings with key executives and several information-packed sessions featuring the brightest minds in the business, I came away with a newfound understanding of some of the biggest challenges the industry is facing as well as some of the proposed solutions.

The economy, globalization, and ethical conduct in clinical trials were three topics that surfaced in almost every conversation I participated in at the event. Whether discussing outsourcing as a way to increase efficiencies and reduce costs, the decision to use sites in Eastern Europe or South Africa, or the concern that language barriers and illiteracy don't cloud the decisions of potential patients, one thing was made very clear - CROs and other FSPs (functional service providers) are more important to the market than ever before. Further, sponsors are, and will continue, spending millions for the aid CROs and FSPs provide toward bringing new drugs to market.

In a session titled "Driving Global Growth: Strategic Considerations for Conducting Global Trials in Nontraditional Markets," insightful commentary was given by all of the panelists involved, including Mitchell Katz, VP, global clinical development at EISAI and Simon Britton, VP, clinical development, Asia Pacific for PPD. During the portion of the discussion regarding what conditions to monitor during clinical trials, conversation swirled around the topics of regional and medical considerations. For instance, in Asian markets, it was discussed how diets rich in certain herbs and vitamins need to be monitored in order to see whether drug efficacy may be altered.

To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

Start a company, sell it. Start up another, repeat. Not every entrepreneur can successfully follow these simple instructions. In fact, many of New England’s brightest entrepreneurs feel they must launch more than one company at a time. 

These parallel entrepreneurs don’t wait to sell one company before starting another one anew. When the next venture comes down the pike — whether from a glimmer of an idea or over dinner with a friend — they simply launch another enterprise. (more)

Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and their suburbs continue to be the most successful regions at sustaining value in the life sciences, according to a new report from the Milken Institute.

One report finding: The life sciences industry is prepared to weather the economic downturn and poised to benefit from federal policy and stimulus initiatives and future overall recovery.

The Milken Institute, which describes itself as a nonprofit economic think tank based in California, released its study at the BIO International Convention, now underway in Atlanta.

"Boston remains on top, Greater Philadelphia moves up to second from third, and San Francisco drops one spot to third," the institute said in a press release. To know more, click here.

Region's robotics roundup
The robotics ecosystem has been marked by launches as early as the '80s, and is still dominated by small shops

Top 10 ‘Robotics' employers in New England
1. Raytheon
2. MIT Lincoln Lab
3. Mitre Corp.
4. Teradyne Inc.
5. The Mathworks
6. PTC
7. Textron
8. Gerber
9. Microsoft Corp.
10. Timken Superprecision

To read more, click here.

Source: MHT

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center reports it is offering almost $1 million in work force development grants for the clean energy sector.

The MCEC plans to give the grants to state vocational-technical high schools, colleges and universities, and community-based nonprofit groups to train workers for the increasing number of local clean energy companies. For example, the number of solar power installation companies in the state tripled last year, according to the state Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

The grants are financed with funds appropriated by the state legislature last year for the Massachusetts Alternative and Clean Energy Investment Trust Fund.

Working with The Commonwealth Corp. - a quasi-public work force development agency affiliated with the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development - the MCEC said it plans to award grants of $75,000 to $200,000 for proposals to enhance, expand or create programs that build the clean energy work force development capacity of higher education institutions, vocational technical high schools and community-based organizations.

Projects eligible for funding include equipment purchased to support hands-on training, curriculum development to establish or enhance courses and programs, and professional development to improve the skills and knowledge of faculty and instructional staff. Grant applicants must partner with at least two Massachusetts clean energy businesses and are strongly encouraged to form partnerships with other entities experienced in workforce education and clean energy. Applications for the grants are due on July 2. To read more, click here.

Source: MHT

A fundamental shift is under way in how life sciences therapies are created and evaluated, and companies are altering how they do business to take advantage of it. Some of the winners may surprise you.

Legislators, practitioners and scientists are asking how to contain the soaring costs of health care while providing the best care. The $787 billion economic stimulus package provides for two prongs of inquiry - nearly $10 billion for academic research into new drugs, devices and surgeries for cancer and other illnesses and $1.1 billion to compare existing therapies to assess their effectiveness to treat specific conditions. These areas are subject to reporting and transparency standards as well as an increased focus on using funds efficiently.

Drugs, devices and therapies come to market by an intricate mechanism of discovery and development. A promising discovery is identified then refined and developed in a process that can include academic institutions, venture capital firms, small biotechs and big pharmaceutical or device firms. The current economic meltdown has forced the drug and device players to reevaluate how they function and refocus on an endpoint that achieves an effective and safe product in the most cost-efficient manner. Companies are closing and the survivors are tackling difficult restructuring and layoffs.

But the work still has to get done and outsourcing to third parties is increasingly important. Contract (or clinical) research organizations (CROs) have long been used for their expertise and cost efficiencies at the clinical stage of development but their preclinical use is increasing. Not direct beneficiaries of the stimulus package, CROs stand to gain because they offer comprehensive services at costs competitive with or under in-house work. Once thought of as secondary in importance, CROs are emerging as critical business partners and recognized experts in their fields. To read more, click here.

Source: Biophotonics

Hybrigenics, a bio-pharmaceutical company with a focus on research and development of new cancer treatments and specialized in protein interactions, announced today it has signed a substantial contract as part of a large-scale
European Union research project called MASTERSWITCH.

Hybrigenics will deploy its protein interaction expertise in the field of chronic inflammatory diseases. The company will develop a high throughput assay and screen its diverse 100,000 compound library and its collection of about 2,000 natural substances. The aim is to identify small-molecule inhibitors of a therapeutically relevant protein interaction. A hit-to-lead optimization program will then be conducted in close collaboration with Dr. Frédérique
Ponchel (Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, UK) and Prof. Richard Aspinall (Translational Medicine, Cranfield University, UK).

Hybrigenics will receive more than EUR 400,000 over the first two years of the five year long consortium agreement. "This EU contract is the recognition at international level of the excellence of Hybrigenics' expertise in this area of protein interaction assay development and screening," said Rémi Delansorne, CEO at Hybrigenics.

Source: Laser focus World

The Photonic Applications, Systems and Technologies (PhAST) Conference and Laser Focus World magazine are pleased to announce that BioPhotonic Solutions (East Lansing, MI) was selected as the recipient of this year's PhAST/Laser Focus World Innovation Award for the development of femtoFit, a low-cost, compact, commercial pulse shaper that unlocks the power of ultrafast lasers for industrial, scientific, medical, and defense applications (see "Better results from ultrafast nonlinear microscopy"). You can view a report on last year's Innovation Awards at www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/328855.

BioPhotonic Solutions will be accepting this award at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) Plenary Session on Monday, June 1 at 6 p.m. at the Baltimore Convention Center.

"FemtoFit is an impressive product that is 10 times smaller, three times cheaper, twice as fast, and even more accurate than previous industry offerings," said Gail Overton, PhAST co-chair. "Ultrafast lasers are becoming extremely important in multiple scientific and industrial disciplines. FemtoFit is an innovative tool that eliminates manual laser adjustments, bringing ultrafast technology out of the laboratory and into everyday, practical application."

FemtoFit will make its debut at PhotonXpo, the exhibit at CLEO, June 2-4 at the Baltimore Convention Center at booth 1232.

To read more, click here.

Source: Nasa Tech Briefs

Tunable fluidic micro lenses can focus and direct light at will to count cells, evaluate molecules, or create on-chip optical tweezers, according to a team of Penn State University engineers. They may also provide imaging in medical devices, eliminating the need to move a probe tip.

Unlike fixed focal length lenses that can focus light at only one distance, fluidic lenses can change their focal length or direction in less than a second while remaining in the same place, and can be fabricated on the chip during manufacture. To create their lens, the researchers have constant, tiny streams of calcium chloride surrounded by two adjustable streams of water. By increasing or decreasing the flow rate of the water, they can shorten or lengthen the focusing distance of the lens.

Tony Jun Huang, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State, said, "There are lots of possibilities about what fluids we can use. Most solutions change their refractive indices if the concentration changes." One application for the lens, Huang said, would be optical tweezers positioned directly on a chip the size of a quarter. This would eliminate the complex systems now necessary for optical tweezers.

Visit http://link.abpi.net/l.php?20090519A2 to learn more.

Source: Mass High Tech

The deadline for stimulus challenge grant proposals to reach the National Institutes of Health passed last month, and New England state schools submitted hundreds of requests for millions in funding. Rolling submissions and slowly congealing guidelines for stimulus funds from other agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, promise to keep researchers and administrators busy through the summer.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst submitted 64 proposals to the NIH, totaling $21 million, according to UMass Amherst vice provost for research Paul Kostecki.

The proposals draw on the school's strengths, including protein folding and stem cell technology, as well as interdisciplinary efforts. "We had the largest number of proposals for any one deadline this campus has ever seen," Kostecki said. To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

About a third of the federal government's $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be given out in the form of tax relief, and that's not necessarily good news for the venture economy.

At startups, spending decisions rarely hang on tax liability. In New England's startup-heavy economy, tax credits for buying equipment and building renewable manufacturing facilities are likely to have a muted impact.

However, one segment of New England's high-tech economy is seeing a ray of sunshine in the $288 billion of planned tax-relief stimulus. Companies that install solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal heating and other green energy equipment are seeing a dramatic increase in orders, as businesses and homeowners take advantage of improved federal tax credits.

The stimulus bill is making tax credits for renewable energy installations available as a check in hand, in the form of a grant for 30 percent of each project's cost. To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

According to the documents, the shares will be used to buy a minority interest in a Japanese subsidiary.

IPG Photonics went public in 2006 and employs more than 1,400 people worldwide. In 2008, the firm reported $229 million in revenue, an increase of $41 million over 2007, with a net income of $36.6 million.

Founded in 1990, IPG Photonics specializes in optical fiber-based lasers for the telecommunications and manufacturing industry and has offices or subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Japan. To know more, click here.

Tweeter and woofer deformable mirrors to work together on GPI, p.11

Congratulations on the Amplitude Systemes ad about Tangerine on p.40

CARS microscopy peers deep into microstructures, p.45

Optical clocks set the pace in accurate timekeeping, p.51

Bio Equity Risk Management LLC, a new health care investment firm, announced today that it has launched and opened an office in Boston. The firm specializes in investment solutions pertaining to biotechnology, medical devices and health care IT areas, in all development stages.

The bio investment firm was founded by Nessan Bermingham, managing partner, and is also led by co-managing partner Joseph Siletto.

Bermingham has previously opened a Boston health care investment office when he served as a partner at Omega Funds and helped the firm expand in the U.S. He also worked as a partner at Atlas Venture. Prior to his investment roles, Bermingham served as a biopharma research analyst at UBS Warburg.

Siletto is a former health care investment banking director at Cowen and Co. He also held a principal and co-head role at the Life Sciences Group at SVB Alliant, as well as vice president position in the health care sector of Banc of America Securities.

Bio Equity Risk Management has formed an advisory board that currently includes David Feigal, partner, NDA Partners; Jean-Francois Formela, senior partner, Atlas Venture; Ian Garland, CEO, Vernalis; Arthur Rosenthal, CEO, Cappella Inc.; and Tim Wilson of Apex Life Sciences. To know more, click here.

Mass. seeks to consolidate clean energy resources

Officials for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick's administration urged a legislative panel last week to support their bid to transfer a $25 million-a-year fund for clean energy grants from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to a newly created Clean Energy Center.

The Clean Energy Center, established under a 2008 law to promote green jobs in Massachusetts, would become a "one-stop shop" for clean energy grant-making, research and training, said Patrick's top energy aide, Ian Bowles, testifying before the Legislature's Economic Development Committee. The center was funded at $43 million to start fiscal 2009 but the governor cut it to $33 million during a round of mid-year budget cuts. Bowles said combining the entities would save costs and help Massachusetts capture federal stimulus funds dedicated to clean energy initiatives. Venture capitalists praised the move for helping establish a "cohesive, single point of contact for all clean energy projects." To know more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

Speech-recognition software company Nuance Communications Inc. reports it is teaming up with a bunch of large industry players on an alliance to educate physicians about opportunities in electronic health records (EHR) from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The group, dubbed the EHR Stimulus Alliance, is led by Chicago health records firm Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions Inc., and includes Cisco Systems Inc., Citrix Systems Inc., Dell Inc., Intel Corp., Intuit Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Nuance. Officials say the alliance will deliver hundreds of virtual and physical education programs for as many as 500,000 physicians in cities across the U.S.

Among the education opportunities the alliance will provide will be executive briefings, roundtables, trade show presentations, webcasts and local meetings with alliance experts and medical groups that are already using EHRs. To read more, click here.

Source: R&D MagazineFemtosecond lasers (fs-lasers) are the key to ultra-precision processing. Whether in medicine, electronics, aerospace or solar technology, thin coatings can be removed, fiber-reinforced plastics drilled and ceramic components' surfaces structured using fs-lasers. Wider use of fs-lasers, however, is hampered by the average output which is currently limited to below 100 W on commercial systems.

At the LASER World of Photonics 2009 in Munich the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT will show for the first time the currently most powerful ultra-short-pulse laser module with an output of over 400 watts and pulse durations of less than 1 ps.

Femtosecond (fs) lasers, i.e. lasers with pulse durations of less than one picosecond, have experienced a stormy development on the scientific front since their beginnings 35 years ago. The interaction of fs-laser radiation with material is characterized by the fact that the pulse duration is shorter than most interaction times between atoms or atoms and electrons. Thus, when material is processed, heat conduction, melting, evaporation and plasma formation only take place after the impact of the laser radiation. In contrast to longer nanosecond pulses or continuous wave (cw) lasers, no direct interaction of light and diffusing material takes place, which facilitates high-precision material removal. With fs-lasers it is therefore possible to achieve processing results which cannot be matched by any other method. To read more, click here.

Source: Science Daily

Like tiny Jedi knights, tunable fluidic micro lenses can focus and direct light at will to count cells, evaluate molecules or create on-chip optical tweezers, according to a team of Penn State engineers. They may also provide imaging in medical devices, eliminating the necessity and discomfort of moving the tip of a probe.

Conventional, fixed focal length lenses can focus light at only one distance. The entire lens must move to focus on an object or to change the direction of the light. Attempts at conventional tunable lenses have not been successful for lenses on the chip. Fluidic lenses, however, can change their focal length or direction in less than a second while remaining in the same place and can be fabricated on the chip during manufacture.

"We use water and a calcium chloride solution because they are readily available and safe and their optical properties have been well characterized," said Tony Jun Huang, James Henderson assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics. "There are lots of possibilities about what fluids we can use. Most solutions change their refractive indices if the concentration changes."

He notes that they could use a variety of solutions with water. There are also a number of commercially available "refractive index fluids" which could potentially provide better optical properties and make these Liquid-Gradient Refractive Index (L-GRIN) lenses work even better.

Huang, working with engineering science and mechanics graduate students Sz-Chin Steven Lin, Michael I. Lapsley, Jinjie Shi, and Bala Krishna Juluri and bioengineering graduate student Xiaole Mao, who is the first author on the paper, reported their work in a recent issue of Lab on a Chip.

To know more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

Four years ago, I sat in the Waltham office of a prominent venture capital firm that focuses on high tech and listened to a partner's dire forecast for Massachusetts: "I don't know about the future of this region. We have a net outflow of students from the top universities, the big companies that anchored the tech sector are gone, and the cost of living is too high for young people."

That sentiment had been around for a while, but it was the first time I had heard it articulated so succinctly. Since then, there's been a chorus echoing the same point, and it has come from all corners of the innovation economy. For example, last September I met a partner at another top VC firm, this one focused on medical devices. Of the half dozen or so boards on which he sits, none are in Massachusetts. "I wish I had some local investments," he said, "but there's nothing innovative happening around here."

And just a few weeks ago an investment banker who focuses on biotech told me, "A few years ago the biotech sector felt so exciting, but now the buzz is gone. It feels like the air's gone out of the balloon."

What is going on? With some of the world's top universities, natural beauty and great culture, Massachusetts is in an enviable position. Yet, while the commonwealth still spawns many outstanding startups, it is clear we are losing ground relative to other states. And as innovation declines, more of the top graduates from local universities believe they must leave Boston in order to advance their careers. It is a slow, downward spiral. To know more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

With its famous brain trust, Massachusetts feels it should be the next Silicon Valley for startup tech companies. Brains, though, are only part of the equation, and perhaps not even the most important part.

"After 40 years worth of tech startups in the Bay Area, there is a real ecosystem around taking companies from startup through Fortune 50 status," says Jeff Selman of Nixon Peabody LLP. The Global 100 law firm has 17 offices worldwide, including one in Boston and another in Silicon Valley, where Selman is a partner.

Silicon Valley is more alike in atmosphere to Hollywood than Boston; it is a hyper-focused "industry town" of power players. "If you walk down the street or go to your kid's soccer game, you'll run into people who are in or about the tech economy," says Selman. "There is a mix of people living, breathing, and thinking the same way, for better or worse."

Besides the size of the industry, the valley is different in the way it connects, observes Selman. "You could easily do breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week at networking events. There's a huge network to play off."

True, says tech marketer Tom Lewis of new media marketing consultancy Needlemine, who began his career in Silicon Valley and moved to Pittsfield in western Massachusetts. Lewis marketed for several startups during the dot-com bubble and for Massachusetts startup Atalasoft Inc. in Easthampton. "Throughout Silicon Valley, everyone knows everyone," said Lewis. "People are competitive, and very interested in being the best and being the first."

A third difference is, surprisingly, the college system. The Valley is built around Stanford University. To read more, click here.

Cambridge-based Tokai Pharmaceuticals Inc. has raised $12 million in an equity finance round, according to official documents.

The company, which was founded by Cambridge-based venture capital firm Apple Tree Partners, seeks to in-license and develop endocrine-based drugs to treat diseases such as cancer. Now, according to recent U.S. Securities Exchange & Commission documents, the firm has raised $12 million of a $22 million equity-financing round.(more)

Canadian scientists have completed the full genetic sequencing of the H1N1 swine flu virus, vital to understanding the outbreak and developing a vaccine, officials said Wednesday.

"It gives me great pleasure to be able to announce today that our knowledge of the H1N1 flu virus has taken a great step forward," Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq told a press conference.

Scientists at the Public Health Agency of Canada's microbiology lab in Winnipeg cracked the genetic makeup of samples from Mexico and two Canadian provinces, she said.(more)

Source: R &D Magazine

A crucial tool in the evolution of scientific capability in bioscience, the fluorescence microscope has allowed a generation of scientists to study the properties of proteins inside cells. Yet as human capacity for discovery has zoomed to the nanoscale, fluorescence microscopy has struggled to keep up. Now, a team that includes UGA engineer Peter Kner has developed a microscope that is capable of live imaging at double the resolution of fluorescence microscopy using structured illumination. The research was published in Nature Methods on April 26.

The laws of physics have limited the resolution of fluorescence microscopy, whereby a fluorescent marker is used to distinguish specific proteins, to about 200 nanometers. At this resolution significant detail is lost about the activity within a cell. The increased resolution by structured illumination is an engineering feat that will help scientists learn more about cell behavior and study mechanisms important for human disease. To know more, click here.

We all know what's wrong with New England's venture economy: We're too tight-lipped. Not enough sharing here. Odd then, that Nantucket should be the place to break the stereotype. Stoic Quakers keeping themselves on the island, making venture returns in whaling. Yet at the Nantucket Conference last Thursday through Saturday, the 150 entrepreneurs and investors who gathered there were anything but taciturn.

No one knocked the all-star lineup of speakers and panelists, but you got the feeling most of the entrepreneurs, investors and others would have been happy to spend the entire conference in one long, open-ended powwow. Unlike most cocktail receptions, people seemed interested in helping solve one another's problems.

Matt Lauzon, co-founder of Paragon Lake Inc. and a first-time entrepreneur, put it best, saying that anyone at the conference could have been a panelist. Between panels, conversations broke out on fundraising, right-sizing for a downturn, recruiting and other challenges facing startups. "People were being very open and honest," Lauzon said.

The agenda of sessions embraced investing, selling and advice for CEOs. Two sessions focused on growing sectors in New England: robots and video games. To read more, click here.

Source: Tech brief insider

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) marked a major milestone on its way to becoming the world’s most advanced and capable optical telescope. A key part of the telescope’s adaptive optics (AO) system, which will give TMT the sharpest eye possible on the Universe, was successfully tested and is ready to become actual hardware. The AO component, known as the Tip-Tilt Stage, will work in tandem with a deformable mirror to correct for the blurring of Earth’s atmosphere.

Adaptive optics systems sense atmospheric turbulence in real time. They then adjust the optics of the telescope many hundreds of times each second to erase the distortion caused by light passing through Earth’s atmosphere. The deformable mirror being designed for TMT will be connected to 3,000 actuators that push and pull the mirror’s surface up to 800 times each second. This flowing and rippling of the mirror’s surface reshapes the light waves entering the telescope. Multiple wavefront sensors will ensure the mirror precisely changes shape to counteract the blurring of Earth’s turbulent atmosphere.

Though extremely precise, the deformable mirror actuators do not have the range available to correct for the overall image motion that is one important part of the distortion. To correct for this motion (referred to as “tip-tilt”), the mirror itself - which weighs 40 kilograms (88 pounds) - must change its orientation at least 20 times each second. The accuracy of these adjustments must be very precise, corresponding roughly to the angle that a star appears to move across the sky in about one-ten-thousandth of a second.

Read the full story at http://link.abpi.net/1.php?20090504A2

The seminar will provide you with the latest insights and Foreign Direct Investment trends with a focus on “Life science investment in the current economic crisis - where do we go from here?”

1. Future FDI Trends 2009-2011 in Biotechnology, Medical Devices and Pharmaceuticals - Peter Lemagnen, Managing Director of Oxford Intelligence, will look at the potential for attracting investments from the Life Science sector against a backdrop of the current economic down turn.
2. The Impact of the Life Science Cluster - Dr. Shiri M. Breznitz, School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology will discuss her most recent work comparing the Israeli and Finish biotechnology clusters to evaluate the recent phenomenon of cluster specialization, while Patrick Cheenne, CEO Hubtech21 will highlight trends and drivers of corporate location decisions in the life sciences sector as both specialization and globalization stretch the investment scene.

Date: Wednesday 20th of MayPlace: Gordy Room, Wardlaw Center, Georgia Institute of Technology, 117 North Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30332
Time: 07.45-09.00
Registration is at 07.45 followed by the Briefing and a buffet breakfast.

Source: Mass High Tech

Is it coincidence that Microsoft Corp. announced its new health care informatics platform at the same time the news is blaring about the outbreak of a new strain of swine flu?

Probably, but the two events together point out the real need for the rapid adoption of technologies that will help us get to the sort of speedy analysis and personalized medicine that the intersection of computing and biotechnology has been promising now for a decade.

For its part, Microsoft told the world about its Amalga Life Sciences software system, powered by a “next-generation reasoning engine,” at the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo held in Boston this week.

The space is becoming hot, it seems. Dana-Farber recently announced its new Center for Cancer Computational Biology, and the University of Rhode Island established the Institute for Immunology and Informatics. Firms such as Sermo Inc. in Cambridge and Google Inc. have already established footprints in the space.

Perhaps Microsoft is simply tapping into the funds in President Obama’s stimulus plan for more rapid adoption of health care IT technology.

Whatever the motive, the more that can be done to drive this hybrid technology forward — by all vendors — the better off we will all be. To know more, click here.

Source: Laser Focus World

CARS miroscopy peers deep into structure, p.45

A sunny outlook for lasers in solar, p.39

Standard software optimizes terahertz imaging, p.73

To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

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Today, for a VC to continue to invest capital in a startup, a path to profitability must be viable. The most important questions that VCs ask businesses they are investigating today include:

• What is the company’s monthly burn rate?
• How quickly will the startup begin to generate revenue?
• What is the startup’s exit strategy, and how realistic is it?
• Who is a likely suitor to acquire the startup?
• What is the return on investment if the business is sold?

To know more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

As issues surrounding the creation, distribution and conservation of fresh water around the world continue to escalate, technology sectors in New England are coming to the rescue. Industries such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and clean energy — areas in which New England has established a strong reputation — are beginning to spur new water-related innovations that could be the foundation of a water technology business cluster in the region.

A list of the top 50 water technology companies in the world released last week by the Artemis Project, a California-based consultancy and research group focused on water technologies, listed four companies in New England, including Cambridge-based desalination technology developer Oasys Water Inc. and Windsor, Vt.-based water purifier maker Seldon Technologies Inc., which ranked second and third, respectively.

The strong showing by New England companies, some in their earliest stages, suggests a budding cluster in the region. Aside from Oasys and Seldon, stealthy startups 349Q Inc. of Somerville and Electrolytic Ozone Inc. of Cambridge were included on the list. To know more, click here.