CAMBRIDGE - Microsoft Corp. is reinventing itself, and it’s looking to One Memorial Drive for a dose of innovation.

That will be the home of Microsoft’s Boston Concept Development Center, a first-of-its-kind research unit that’s assembling dozens of engineers and designers and sniffing out technologies with the aim of incubating new Internet businesses within the company.

The center, more than 3,000 miles from Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., is part of a bid to recapture the software company’s cachet in a new technology era increasingly dominated by competitors such as Google Inc. and Apple Inc.

MORE

Google’s Enterprise Search Finds Life Sciences

By Kevin Davies

In a recent 60 Minutes broadcast about the cost of minting the penny, an MIT student named Jeff Glore calculated that Americans spend an average of 2.4 hours a year fumbling and searching for those annoying 1-cent coins.

Most biomedical researchers would be thrilled if that was all the time they spent on fruitless searches for data, protocols, clinical trial, legal, and regulatory documents. According Jim Golden, SAIC’s CTO Life Sciences, one pharma insider estimates that researchers spend 15 minutes per person per day tracking information. Says Golden, that’s the equivalent of 333 out of 10,000 employees doing nothing but search! The lost productivity and delays in drug development and regulatory submissions potentially tally tens of millions of dollars a year. Read more.

Courtesy BIO-IT World

Source: Government Security News

The Port of Los Angeles, located in San Pedro Bay, is Southern California’s 7,500-acre gateway to international commerce. Throughout 43 miles of waterfront and 27 cargo terminals, almost 190 million metric revenue tons of cargo pass through the terminals annually.

As part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, the Port of Los Angeles, and other ports throughout the country, are receiving money from the federal government to pay for upgrading security, which often includes use of the latest security technologies.

In May, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that the Port Security Grant Program (PSGP) will offer $388.6 million to support sustainable, risk-based efforts to enhance access control and credentialing, protect against Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) and other non-conventional attacks, and to conduct exercises for disaster-response scenarios. The grants are part of a total of $844 million in awards under the Infrastructure Protection Activities (IPA) grant program.

To know more, click here.

Source: Government Security News

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is planning to put up 45 surveillance towers to spot illegal immigrants and upgrade 12 existing ones to create a virtual fence targeting 81 miles of Arizona’s U.S.-Mexican border.

Plans revealed in a draft environmental assessment for the “Tucson West” project — the next phase of the Boeing Co.-led SBInet — shows 57 proposed tower sites throughout Southern Arizona with most, 47, in the border region between Sasabe and Sierra Vista.

To know more, click here.

source: R&D magazine

Mechanical engineering Assistant Professor Adela Ben-Yakar at The Univ. of Texas at Austin has developed a laser “microscalpel” that destroys a single cell while leaving nearby cells intact, which could improve the precision of surgeries for cancer, epilepsy and other diseases.

“You can remove a cell with high precision in 3-D without damaging the cells above and below it,” Ben-Yakar says. “And you can see, with the same precision, what you are doing to guide your microsurgery.”

Femtosecond lasers produce extremely brief, high-energy light pulses that sear a targeted cell so quickly and accurately the lasers’ heat has no time to escape and damage nearby healthy cells. As a result, the medical community envisions the lasers’ use for more accurate destruction of many types of unhealthy material. These include small tumors of the vocal cords, cancer cells left behind after the removal of solid tumors, individual cancer cells scattered throughout brain or other tissue and plaque in arteries.

To know more, click here.

Source: optics.org

A development of Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography allows high-resolution non-contact imaging of the eye that could help glaucoma diagnosis

Deeper imaging

A team at Duke University has shown for the first time that a full-range Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography (FDOCT) system can provide high-speed high-resolution in vivo imaging of the eye’s anterior drainage chamber.

“This provides a tool to improve our understanding of the pathogenesis of narrow angle glaucoma, and may allow new research into open angle glaucoma as well,” Sanjay Asrani of the University’s Medical Centre told optics.org.

To know more, click here.

Source: HS Daily Wire

• Half-Day Procurement Seminars on Maritime Security Business Opportunities in the:
• U.S.
• Canada
• United Kingdom
• Middle East
• Confirmed and Invited Regional Meetings, including:
• Southern California Area Maritime Security Committee
• Southern California, The Propeller Club
• The Naval Academy Alumni Association
• California Maritime Alumni Association
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection Directors of Field Operations and Port Directors
• The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy Alumni Association
• Joint Terrorism Task Force
• North Central University
• U.S. Maritime Administration/U.S. Naval Post Graduate Academy
• FREE Seminars for attendees held on the expo floor covering the industry’s hottest topics
• FREE Full-Day Seminar for Port and Terminal Facilities Officers (FSOs) By Invitation Only
• Technology Contest and Awards Ceremony aimed to showcase the best technologies at this year’s event with a judging panel headed by Norman Polmar, Chairman, Science and Technology Advisory Committee, Department of Homeland Security
• Comprehensive, High-Level Conference designed to draw decision-makers and high-level industry and government officials – view this year’s preliminary program here
• VIP Networking Reception promoting exhibitor and attendee interaction, featuring a Premium California Wine Tasting and Hors d’ouevres at the planned CBP Land/Sea Demo
• Over 1500 buyers are expected at this year’s event from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Asia, and Europe.

To know more, click here.

Source: Industrial Laser Solutions, June

While the focus of the laser safety community has been dominated by the need to control laser beam hazards, safety professionals are beginning to appreciate the need to similarly address NBH

Safety professionals and organizations confronted by laser related non-beam hazards (NBH)?such as electrical fires, plasma radiation, and explosions?face unique safety and regulatory concerns. The spread of laser technology has increased both the proliferation of NBH incidents and the number of laser users unaware of these hazards.

Laser incident information is available from Rockwell Laser (Cincinnati, OH; www.rli.com), which maintains a Laser Incident Database (LID) containing more than 1300 incidents reported over about 40 years (see Table 1).¹ The LID divides laser incidents into Beam (eye and skin) and Non-Beam (other) and indicates (a) that the numbers of reported NBH incidents in the LID now exceeds the number of reported skin incidents and (b) at present, more than 30% of all incidents can be designated as NBH. The LID also reports that the two lasers most involved with NBH incidents are Nd:YAG and CO₂ (see Table 2). Unfortunately, not all lasers were identified or reported in the LID, which may skew results. Finally, it was reported by Rockwell² that the number of NBH incidents in 1998 was 67, which is about 1/3 of the incidents now being reported ten years later.³ The rise of reported NBH incidents clearly supports the need to be more aware of these hazards.

To know more, click here.

GTC Biotherapeutics Inc. says it has entered into a development and marketing agreement with Ovation Pharmaceuticals Inc. that could be worth up to $275 million for Ovation to develop and market GTC’s anticoagulant and anti-inflammatory product ATryn in the U.S.
Read more of this article

Courtesy of MassHighTech

Mapping Gene Expression for Growth
Juan Medrano, PhD, Charles Farber, PhD, and Mark Springer
Drug Discovery & Development - May 01, 2006

Using an expression quantitative trait loci approach could identify genetic variations affecting growth and obesity in mice, and may have applications in humans.

To better understand how genetic variation regulates growth and obesity, the Medrano lab in the Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, employs a novel approach to the mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) in different mouse models. By defining levels of gene expression as quantitative traits, five researchers in the lab measure the change of gene expression levels among candidate genes, and then map the DNA sequence variation that accounts for these traits as expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs).

Read more here.

Source: HS Daily Wire

Billions of dollars have been invested in — and strict regulations promulgated for — passenger and baggage screening to prevent explosives from being taken on board; very little money has been invested in and no specific mandates imposed regarding airport perimeter security; TSA is changing this — and also takes the next essential step: coordination among the different money bodies involved in airport perimeter security.

(…)

Welch was correct, as evidenced by the fact that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has just launched a new security initiative aimed at further enhancing airport airside and perimeter security. The Airside Vulnerability Reduction Team (AVRT) program will strengthen the coordination of work by TSA, law enforcement, airline, and airport security partners to reduce vulnerabilities to airport airside operations. Airside is defined as the secure side of the airport, to include the tarmac. The new initiative will be headed by Willie Williams who has served as federal security director at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport since the start of TSA operations there in 2002.

To know more, click here.

Source: optics.org

Optical coherence tomography is an emerging medical imaging technology with an ever growing list of applications. Marie Freebody speaks to James Fujimoto to find out more.

James Fujimoto is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and is one of the key players responsible for the invention and development of optical coherence tomography (OCT) in the early 1990s. Fujimoto also has an active commercial side and has co-founded two companies, one of which was acquired by Zeiss and led to the first OCT instrument for clinical ophthalmology. The second company is currently developing intravascular and endoscopic OCT.

To read more, click here.

Source: optics.org

The first system to combine Raman spectroscopy and optical coherence tomography could improve the diagnosis of skin cancers.

An imaging system that combines Raman spectroscopy (RS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been unveiled by a group of researchers directed by Anita Mahadevan-Jansen (Vanderbilt University, US) and Ton van Leeuwen (University of Twente, NL). The set-up allows each technique to compensate for the limitations of the other and could aid the optical detection and diagnosis of epithelial cancers, such as skin cancer (Optics Letters 33 1135).

Raman-OCT combination

“This is the first time that stokes RS and OCT have been combined into the same instrument,” researcher Chetan Patil from Vanderbilt University told optics.org. “We have integrated the sampling optics of the two techniques to create an instrument whose performance in each modality is independent and not compromized.”

To know more, click here.

June 17, 2008
By Maureen Martino

Pharmaceuticals may be struggling, but biotech drugs are on fire. According to an IMS Health study, global sales of biotech drugs increased 12.5 percent in 2007 to more than $75 billion; that’s twice as fast as the pharmaceutical market, which increased 6.4 percent in 2007. The growth is the result of several factors, including additional indications for existing products, recent innovations, and the growth of biologic drug sales outside the U.S. Oncology, auto-immune agents, diabetes drugs and vaccines accounted for most of the growth. Last year, 22 biotech products exceeded $1 billion in sales, compared with just six products in 2002.

The forecast isn’t entirely positive, however. Growth was down in 2007 compared to 2006. “Loss of exclusivity and competition from biosimilars, crowded therapy areas with weaker sales growth, payers showing more reluctance to fund innovative drugs without compelling value propositions, and safety concerns for some therapies will all contribute to a more moderate growth environment through 2012,” warned Murray Aitken, the study’s author. “[C]ompanies with biotech products in their portfolios will succeed only if they meet increasingly demanding regulatory standards, deploy effective commercial models that are accompanied by compelling evidence of their products’ value, and develop pricing and market access strategies that ensure that patients have access to the benefits that these new products deliver.”

- see the report for more

Courtesy: FierceBiotech

Maryland Gov. proposes $1.1B biotech funding package
By Maureen Martino

Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick isn’t the only governor pushing biotech investment this week. In a speech at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine yesterday, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley announced plans to invest $1.1 billion in the state’s bioscience industry by the year 2020. Maryland already has a sizable biotech sector with 370 companies calling the state home, as well as the NIH and other research institutions. However, many Maryland-based outfits haven’t been successful getting blockbuster meds onto the market. O’Malley thinks the investment will bolster the state’s activities and shore up its position as one of the leading centers for biotech business.

The details of the plan are as follows:

• Maryland will double its biotech investment tax credit next year and again in the next five years
• $20M will be funneled into stem cell research
• $60 million would go to funding biotech start-ups
• $300 million would be invested into life science facilities
• O’Malley wants to create a Maryland Biotechnology Center to bridge the gap between research and the marketplace
• $188 million would be invested in nanotechnology
• The Maryland Technology Transfer Fund would receive $107 million
• Finally, the Maryland Venture fund would get an additional $152 million

Several years ago Maryland made FierceBiotech’s list of the top five regions targeting economic development.

- read the Washington Post article for more

Related Articles:
MD considers funds for growing nano-biotech field
Maryland hands out $23M for stem cell research
Despite company losses, Maryland CEOs enjoy a payday

Courtesy: Fierce Biotech

Source: optics.org

Researchers move closer to understanding devastating haemoglobin-related blood disorders thanks to a combination of optical tweezers and Raman spectroscopy.

A system that combines optical tweezers with Raman spectroscopy is helping researchers in Italy gain a deeper understanding of blood disorders such as thalassemia. The team hopes that its findings will pave the way for Raman tweezers to be used as a diagnostic tool for other haemoglobin(Hb)-related disorders. (Optics Express 16 7943)

To know more, click here.

HGH dans Photonics.com et Security Info Watch

The security week that was: 06/13/08 @ The Latest SecurityInfoWatch.com

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 13, 2008 — HGH Infrared Systems said its IR Revolution 360 is the industry’s first 360° line-scan panoramic infrared (IR) camera and marks HGH’s entry into the US security and surveillance market.

The IR Revolution 360 is a panoramic infrared camera designed to replace multicamera perimeter security systems that have traditionally required several single or dual-head cameras set to pan, tilt, or zoom within a fixed field of view. The IR Revolution 360 creates 3- to 12-MP panoramic thermal images of a surveillance area at a rate of one full image per second for automatic, real-time intrusion detection and tracking. The camera operates passively, emitting no light, and can detect a human from a distance of 1 to 3 km. Users control the IR Revolution 360 remotely through a point-and-click interface on a Windows operating system, and can deploy the camera in seven to eight minutes via a simple Ethernet connection.

The expansion of HGH, which is based in Igny, France, into security and surveillance has meant the appointment of a new US office in Cambridge, Mass., sales and technical support staff — starting with new US Director of Business Development Ron Austin — and a distribution agreement with Walpole, Mass.-based IRCameras.

Pour en lire davantage, cliquer ici.

Boston Business Journal - Boston Business Journal

Acceleron Pharma Inc. is expanding its protein-manufacturing capabilities and will beef up employment to fill a variety of jobs throughout the company.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company, which is developing treatments to modulate the growth of bone and muscle tissue, said Monday that it plans to add as many as 40 additional employees to its 85-person staff through the end of this year.

Acceleron has leased an additional 37,500 square feet of space, which doubles its existing administrative, laboratory and manufacturing space in Cambridge.

The new space is expected to house the company’s second manufacturing facility for Growth and Differentiation Factors-related proteins.

The privately held company expects to launch two midstage human clinical trials later this year for ACE-011, a bone forming agent designed to reverse bone loss in diseases such as cancer.

Two new programs will also reach clinical trials by the end of the year, including a treatment to increase skeletal muscle mass and strength, and a drug to block blood vessel maturation.

Source: Laser Focus World, June 2008

Pour QPC

Enhancements in diode pump efficiencies, wavelengths, and on-chip gratings have dramatically improved laser-system compactness, efficiency, power, and beam quality. To know more, click here.

Dans le Laser Ficus World de juin en page.65.

On y reparle des PhAST/LWF Awards.

Source: Laser focus World June

Sofradir (Veurey-Voroize, France), a developer and manufacturer of cooled infrared detectors, announced that General Electric will become a minority shareholder in Ulis, a subsidiary of Sofradir that makes uncooled IR detectors mainly for commercial applications

Source: Laser Focus World June

Crystal Systems (CSI; Salem, MA) received funding in the amount of $250,000 for its Extreme Intensity Ti:sapphire Amplifier Crystals. The funding is provided by the French Institute De La Lumiere Extreme project. The funding will be used to scale up the heat-exchange process of crystal growth from its current size of 6 in. diameter to 8 in. diameter. “We have designed upgrades to our furnace that will allow us to control the crystal growth variables tighter than we ever thought possible,” said Kurt Schmid, COO. “These upgrades, along with our crystal growth IP, will allow us to produce 200-mm-diameter crystals.”

Source: Laser Focus World June

The forces exerted by tightly focused laser beams can create optical tweezers for the purpose of manipulating small particles (see www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/302490 and 318548). However, the short working distances (less than 200 µm), relatively large physical size (30 mm barrel diameter and 60 mm barrel length), and high cost of the precision microscope lenses used in conventional tweezer designs make it difficult to integrate them into microfluidic chip systems. However, researchers at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) have devised a new optical tweezer that traps particles in a microfabricated Fresnel zone plate, eliminating the need for bulky and expensive microscope lenses.

To know more click here.

Genetically Modified Bugs
May Be Released to Stem Disease

By GAUTAM NAIK
June 12, 2008; Page A10

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid452319854/bctid1601261954

OXFORD, England — In a hot and humid laboratory, an army of genetically altered mosquitoes zip around translucent plastic boxes, feasting on horse blood. Bred by a start-up called Oxitec Ltd., the bugs are on a mission to kill off their brethren with the most potent of weapons: sex.

Thanks to genetic tweaking, all of the male mosquitoes are born sterile. When they mate, the progeny inherit the defect and die at the larval stage. If enough are released into the wild, they could overtake regular males in the battle for females and eventually cause the population to collapse.

A plan, still in its early stages, has been hatched to unleash the newly armed insects 6,500 miles away in Malaysia. Authorities have been desperate to tame the growing scourge of dengue fever, a largely urban disease transmitted via a striped mosquito known as Aedes aegypti. In what would be the first release of an insect genetically programmed to kill other insects, scientists may release millions of genetically modified mosquitoes to crash the wild population of aegypti, and, they hope, stop dengue in its tracks.

But that’s a big hope. Dengue, whose incidence has soared in recent decades, has been nicknamed “break-bone fever”; the flu-like illness causes severe joint and muscle pains. A rarer form kills. The World Health Organization estimates that there are 50 million dengue infections each year and as many as 2.5 billion people are at risk.

The project is causing a buzz of worry. “What’s the consequence on the ecosystem if you wipe out an entire species?” says Gurmit Singh, chairman of the nonprofit Centre for Environment, Technology and Development in Malaysia. “You may solve one problem but create another.”

In April, local newspapers reported that the Malaysian government would soon test-release the bugs on an island near Kuala Lumpur, the capital. After a public outcry, the government insisted the move wasn’t imminent.

Oxitec
The World Health Organization estimates there are 50
million dengue infections a year.

As a form of pest control, sterile male insects have been unleashed plenty of times before. The U.S. used the method to rid itself of a flesh-eating fly called the screw worm by 1966. In Zanzibar, sterile males vanquished the tsetse fly in the mid-1990s. In both cases, the bugs were sterilized with old-fashioned radiation. The technique has never worked too well on mosquitoes.

Fiddling with an insect’s genetic makeup is a more radical idea. Researchers in India and France have created silkworms that were genetically modified to defend against a deadly virus that usually kills them. There are similar early-stage efforts to make GM mosquitoes that don’t transmit malaria.

In the U.S., scientists irradiate and release millions of pink bollworms in order to control populations of the cotton pest. Last summer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture went one step further. Of the 2.4 million creatures released in southern Arizona, half had a genetic modification: an extra piece of DNA that gave them red fluorescent markings on their body, making them easier to identify under a microscope.

Created by Britain’s Oxitec, the transgenic bollworms — they’re really caterpillars that become moths — “behave quite like the untransformed sterile strain,” says Greg Simmons, a USDA entomologist.

Oxitec was spun off from Oxford University in 2002 and is still partly owned by that institution. At its labs on a recent afternoon, a researcher used a thin glass needle to inject liquid DNA into a mosquito embryo. The hope was that the foreign DNA would lodge in a suitable part of the embryo genome.

It’s a laborious process. “We need to do a few thousand injections to get just one success,” says Luke Alphey, co-founder and chief scientist of Oxitec. When it works, the inserted gene produces fluorescent proteins in the larvae that hatch.

The transgenic critters have a more important property: Their offspring are programmed to die in the larval stage if they aren’t fed tetracycline. The antibiotic is part of their feed in the lab. Without access to tetracycline in the wild, any larvae born there can’t survive.

Only female mosquitoes bite humans and animals on whom they feed. (Males don’t bite; they sup on plant juices and sugary saps.) Upon mating, they require proteins from a blood meal to develop their eggs. Consequently, when female mosquitoes smell a person nearby, they are more inclined to mate.

“Humans emit more than 300 odors — that’s how mosquitoes track you down,” says Bart Knols, entomologist at Wageningen University & Research Center in the Netherlands, who is familiar with Oxitec’s research. (Dr. Knols is big on bad smells: In 1996, he published a paper showing that the female malaria mosquito was as attracted to the stink of Limburger cheese as to the odor of human feet.)

Malaysian scientists recently tested Oxitec’s bugs in a specially built four-room house. Research volunteers took turns sitting behind a protective mesh screen, acting as olfactory stimuli for 10 female mosquitoes that had been released into the rooms. Also buzzing around were 10 males from the wild and 10 of Oxitec’s special male bugs. The big question: Would the females go for the genetically engineered sterile males or the wild ones?

After eight hours, the females were separated and allowed to dine on the blood of rats. They were then placed in special containers where they could lay their eggs. If a particular larva that hatched had the fluorescent marker on its body, it was clear that female had mated with an Oxitec mosquito.

After a few dozen such experiments, the results indicated that the females showed no preference for the regular males over their genetically modified rivals. The next possible step is a controlled experiment to measure the technique’s effectiveness in the wild.

There are safety concerns. Geneticists, for example, fret about horizontal gene transfer, whereby the alien DNA from the Oxitec mosquitoes would somehow jump into microbes or other organisms, with unforeseen consequences, such as harming another species. And while the chances are low that random mutations will restore fertility to sterile males, the probability goes up when millions of genetically modified mosquitoes mate in the wild.

Scientists “presume these accidents won’t happen, but there’s no evidence they won’t,” says Joe Cummins, professor emeritus of genetics at Canada’s University of Western Ontario, who recently cowrote an article that criticized the safety aspects of Malaysia’s mosquito project.

Oxitec’s Mr. Alphey is less concerned. “You have to look at this on a case-by-case basis to understand what DNA was inserted and how it was inserted” into a transgenic insect” he says. “We don’t think our strain poses a significant risk.”

Write to Gautam Naik at gautam.naik@wsj.com

Source: optics.org

Ultrafast lasers are more robust and affordable than ever before. That’s the upbeat message from Strategies Unlimited as it publishes its first insight into the ultrafast market.

The ultrafast laser market will reach about $260 million in 2008, with healthy growth expected through to 2012 according to analyst Strategies Unlimited. Jacqueline Hewett speaks to Tom Hausken about applications, technologies and the ever-increasing number of players in the market.

JH: How does the growth you are predicting through to 2012 compare with previous years?

TH: This is the first time that we have focused on ultrafast, so we don’t have specific numbers for years past. But, for the most part, ultrafast lasers have been at the R&D fringe of the laser market for many years. That means it mostly grows with R&D budgets, i.e. relatively slowly. We see growth in the various applications ranging from flat or even declining to as much as 30% AGR through the period.

To read more, click here.

A MA legislative conference committee has put final touches on the state’s $1 billion Life Sciences Initiative (LSI), which is now expected to become law within the next few days. Please click here for further details and for copies of LSI legislative language and a bill summary. The MBC will follow up over the next several weeks and months to help inform members how they may take advantage of LSI programs and benefits.

Courtesy: Mass Biotech Council

Source: Seapower, June 08

Le test se fait sur un sous-marin d’attaque. Le systeme est monte sur un periscope.

To know more, click here.

Aussi, dans Military and Aerospace: Navy to evaluate 360-degree imaging system to enhance submarine situational awareness. The U.S. Navy will test an advanced 360-degree camera system at sea that is designed to enhance situational awareness for submarines with Type 18 periscopes, used on all Seawolf- and Los Angeles-class fast attack submarines. The 360-degree camera is from RemoteReality Corp. in Westborough, Mass. Instead of the traditional submarine surface-viewing operation that takes several minutes to complete a 360-degree scan of surrounding waters, the RemoteReality camera system gives an instant omni-directional view.

Source: University of Toronto website

The University of Toronto (U of T) and IMRA America (IMRA), a world leader in ultrafast fiber lasers, are pleased to announce that IMRA has acquired a license to rights under US Patent # 6,552,301 for a novel method of micromachining with short pulse lasers developed by U of T researchers. This license gives IMRA the right to sublicense this micromachining technology to its customers.

The “Burst ultrafast laser machining method” was invented by two U of T professors — Dr. Robin Marjoribanks of the Department of Physics, Dr. Peter Herman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Anton Oettl, an exchange student from the University of Freiburg, Germany.

The key benefit of the burst-ultrafast laser machining method is its high speed – it is 100 times faster than existing technology – and its ability to delicately process brittle materials. The method expands the range of laser processing and will be especially useful in manufacturing optical-circuits, biochips, microelectronics, and flat panel displays. It is also expected to have broad impact in areas like drug discovery, health and security. To know more, click here.

Source: Photonic Spectra June 08

Powerful Femtosecond Laser induces Electrical Effects during thunderstorms, p.14-15

Growth in Imaging market forcasted, p.26 (compound annual growth rate of 7.8% by 2012)

Precise Positinoal Adjustments with Laser Induced Shock Wave: Focused ultrashort laser pulses can produce shape changes that result in extremely accurate alignment p.58

Zeiss opens headquarters in Noth America, in Peabody, MA p.27

Through a lens, wetly: liquid lebs is gaining steam for miniature optics application, p.86 a 88

Swiss life-science company Lonza this week said it plans to acquire German transfection technologies shop Amaxa for an undisclosed amount in a bid to strengthen its cell discovery business.

Amaxa markets nucleic acid transfection systems and consumables to academia and drug makers. The company’s nucleofection technology is a transfection method that it claims can improve the efficiency of transfection and facilitates the reproducible transfer of DNA, RNA, peptides, proteins, and small molecules into difficult-to-transfect cells, according to Claus-Dietmar Pein, Amaxa’s director of marketing.

Read more here

Lisa LaMotta, 06.05.08, 5:40 PM ET

France’s Ipsen plans to be a force to be reckoned with in the United States pharmaceutical industry, at least someday. The company announced a slew of deals Thursday that will give it a U.S. presence on the cheap.

The deals just keep on coming for U.S. healthcare companies and the terms couldn’t be sweeter for overseas buyers.

To foreign companies, the U.S. is like a penny-candy store with lots of cheap goodies just waiting to be bought, thanks to the sliding dollar, which has lost more than a quarter of its value against the euro and a tenth against the yen in the past five years. This trend has been especially prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry where large foreign companies are plucking ripe little biotechs out of every corner of the United States.

Find more here

With plans to double the number of experimental therapies in its pipeline by 2010, MedImmune is laying plans to hire 800 new staffers by the end of this year, according to a report in the Washington Business Journal. Full Report

Complements of Fierce Biotech

Boston Business Journal - by Mark Hollmer Boston Business Journal

Dr. Thomas Lee, CEO of Partners Community HealthCare, supports more cost transparency.

For the first time ever, Massachusetts will make public what insurers actually pay specific hospitals for some of the most common procedures, from hip surgeries to baby deliveries.

Tongues are wagging about what could be the opening of a Pandora’s Box for the state’s health care industry, once the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost Council launches a Web site highlighting insurance payments for as many as 40 procedures later this summer. The Council, created by the state’s health care reform law, is launching the site as part of its mandate.

Supporters of the idea say the data will help consumers with high health insurance deductibles price shop for the best deals. But legislators and hospitals themselves are thought to be an even bigger audience for the information, in ways that could produce unintended consequences.

With double-digit health care price hikes threatening the state’s long-term goal of mandating health insurance for nearly every resident, some industry insiders see the data as likely to place serious pressure on higher-paid hospitals to justify their pricing to legislators looking for ways to clamp down on costs.

Source: photonics.com

Nikon Instruments and Northwestern University are opening a collaborative core microscopy imaging center that will improve research capabilities at the University while providing Nikon with critical product development feedback.

One of only three such centers in the United States, Northwestern’s Nikon Imaging Center will be equipped with the latest technology in light microscopy imaging systems and will be instrumental in ongoing biomedical research.

To know more click here.

Source: Aerospace and Military

Finmeccanica, S.p.A. and DRS Technologies, Inc., announced earlier this month that they have signed a definitive merger agreement under which Finmeccanica will acquire 100 percent of DRS stock for U.S. $81 per share in cash.

The merger enables Finmeccanica, in Rome, Italy, to consolidate its international role as a key supplier of integrated systems for defense and security, entering the U.S. market as a key player, while allowing DRS, — headquartered in Parsippany, N.J., — to seek new business opportunities in the U.S. and abroad, DRS officials say.

Source: Military and Aerospace

FLIR Systems Inc. has received delivery orders totaling $111.7 million from the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala., for its Star SAFIRE III stabilized multisensor systems. This represents the first delivery orders under a previously announced new contract modification on an existing indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract. The units delivered under these orders will support ongoing U.S. Armed Forces force protection programs.

To know more, click here.

Source: Biooptics World

Plein feu sur l’optique adaptative dans le Bioptics World de ce mois-ci. Outre Imagine Optic et Imagine Eyes, on y parle aussi de Boston Micromachines…

The new Adaptive Optics Toolkit from Boston Micromachines (Cambridge, MA) and Thorlabs (San Jose, CA) is a turnkey solution that allows researchers to integrate adaptive optics into their research systems in hours rather than months. It is priced four times less than components purchased separately from other manufacturers, providing the price point necessary for wide-scale deployment in research and industrial communities.

The Adaptive Optics Toolkit includes Thorlabs’ WFS150C Shack-Hartmann Wavefront Sensor, BMC’s 140 actuator Multi-DM deformable mirror system, and software designed to minimize wavefront distortion. The control software also allows the user to monitor the wavefront corrections and intensity distribution in real time.

Features:

• DM capable of achieving high spatial resolution shapes due to high actuator count and low inter-actuator coupling
• Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor with high resolution CCD camera and high-quality microlens array
• Compact DM driver electronics with built-in high voltage power supply suitable for benchtop or OEM integration
• Real-time, high-precision wavefront measurement and correction

Source: Bioptics World

Bravo Imagine Eyes!

Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic’s Cole Eye Institute are using Imagine Eyes’ crx1 Adaptive Optics Visual Simulator to explore noninvasive techniques for improving the quality of vision in refractive-surgery patients.

During the 2008 annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO; Ft. Lauderdale, FL), Dr. Karolinne Maia Rocha, a member of Dr. Ronald Krueger’s team at the Cleveland Clinic’s Cole Eye Institute, will present results from studies showing that manipulating depth of focus (DOF) significantly improved overall visual acuity in most subjects. This preliminary study was designed to set the stage for upcoming experiments at the Clinic that will focus on developing novel techniques that may help refractive surgeons improve post-operative results, most notably for presbyopic patients.

Imagine Eyes loaned a crx1 Adaptive Optics Visual Simulator to the Cleveland Clinic in October 2007 to enable Dr. Krueger and his team to investigate the device’s clinical applications in the field of custom wavefront guided refractive surgery.

Source: optics.org

A quantum cascade laser that emits terahertz radiation at room temperature opens up applications in biological imaging and security screening.

Researchers in the US and Switzerland have made the first room-temperature coherent terahertz source based on commercially available semiconductor nanotechnology. The laser could be employed in many scientific and technological applications, such as biological imaging, security screening and materials science.

Until now, quantum cascade laser (QCLs) have only been able to emit terahertz radiation at cryogenic temperatures of less than 200 K. The new QCL device — made by Federico Capasso of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and colleagues from Texas A&M University and ETH Zurich — emits terahertz radiation with several-hundred nanowatts of power at room temperature (Appl. Phys. Lett. 92 201101).

To know more, click here.

Source: optics.org

optics.org speaks to researchers in Japan who have created a femtosecond laser pacemaker.

Researchers in Japan have shown that a train of femtosecond laser pulses can cause heart muscle cells to contract and synchronize to the laser exposure. This optical pacemaker effect could provide crucial insights into abnormal heart rhythms and be combined with anti-fibrillation drugs to understand these effects at the cellular level. (Optics Express 16 8604)

“Calcium regulates the contraction of cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells),” Nicholas Smith from Osaka University told optics.org. “We knew that if we could artificially perturb the calcium levels in the cell, we could control the beating and change its frequency. We used periodic femtosecond laser irradiation to synchronize the cell beat frequency and effectively create a laser pacemaker for the cells.”

To know more, click here.

Source: Laser Focus World

Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) professor Xiaoliang Sunney Xie is one of the founding fathers of single-molecule biophysical chemistry, specifically single-molecule enzymology; much of his research involves the use of lasers and microscopy. For his contributions to high-resolution optical-imaging techniques, Xie will receive the Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis for outstanding research in applied laser technology. The prize will be presented to Xie by jury member Professor Theodor Hänsch at an award ceremony in Ditzingen, Germany on September 15, 2008

To know more click here.

Dijon, France
French Oncology Co. Oncodesign Collects $4.7M

Read also more here
Preclinical oncology services provider Oncodesign SA has raised a $4.7 million new funding round.

http://www.oncodesign.com

Courtesy VentureWire Alert

Source: optics.org

Compte-rendu de CLEO…

In Thursday’s post-deadline session, Liang Dong of fibre laser specialist IMRA showcased a new class of fibre that supports singlemode operation for fiber laser applications requiring high peak powers. According to Dong, the new all-glass fibre will extend the reach of practical ultrafast amplifiers to millijoule pulse energies, and could also lead to continuous-wave fibre lasers and amplifiers in the 10 kW range.

Dong explained that high peak powers requires singlemode operation to be achieved in a fibre with a large effective area. He pointed out that today’s large-mode area fibres are limited to a core diameter of 30 µm, while photonic crystal fibres have been demonstrated with diameters of up to 100 µm.

Those figures make it even more impressive that IMRA has achieved singlemode operation in fibres with core diameters of up to 170 µm. The fibres exploit the company’s “leakage channel fibre” (LCF) design, in which the core of the fibre is formed by six low-index features arranged in a hexagonal grid. Unlike photonic crystal fibre, in LCF the air holes are filled with flourine-doped silica glass, and so it can be cleaved, spliced and handled in the same way as normal optical fibre.

Source:optics.org

An ablation technique that fires nanosecond pulses onto a sample with a layer of water on its surface could aid laser processing of metals.

Ablation profile

Placing a thin layer of water on top of a metal sample results in more efficient processing compared with dry conditions, say a team from the US and South Korea. The researchers found that firing nanosecond laser pulses onto a sample of aluminium with a layer of water on the surface increased material removal rate by up to eight times and caused minimal damage to the peripheral regions (Journal of Applied Physics 103 083101).

“We found that laser-metal processing was enhanced especially at the low ablation threshold thanks to the mechanical impact of water,” Hyun Wook Kang, a researcher from American Medical Systems, US, told optics.org. “The layer of water generated high pressure impact during vaporization as well as removing laser-induced material debris to effectively deliver laser energy.”

To know more, click here.