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Luke Timmerman wrote:

Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) said today it has received an undisclosed milestone payment from its partner, Roche, for starting studies that pave the way for clinical trials of a certain drug candidate. The Roche collaboration, formed in July 2007, provided $331 million in upfront cash and equity, and could be worth more than $1 billion over time, Alnylam has said. Analyst Simos Simeonidis of Rodman & Renshaw, in a note to clients, said the milestone is positive because it shows Roche is making progress in developing RNA interference therapies, and it provides some operating cash to Alnylam without diluting the value of its stock.

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If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to go to a weight maintenance camp, “Nightline” spent most of its January 1st edition looking at an obese mother and son who used a camp to jumpstart their battle against obesity.

Like mother, like son

Collin Robinson, an 11-year-old fifth grader, says he loves double quarter pounders with cheese, and it shows. He’s clinically obese at five foot eight and 249 pounds. Mom Krista, herself 334 pounds, says she knew she had to make a change for both of them, so she spent $7,900 to send them to a two-week long family weight-loss camp in North Carolina.

Wellspring calls the camp a healthy living immersion, rather than a fat camp.

Krista says as a working single mom she doesn’t have time to cook, and constantly eating fast food and unhealthy snacks brought them to this point.

Getting immersed in health

The program calls for taking 10,000 steps a day, and each day at the camp involves a two-mile early morning walk. Other fitness activities help kids get in their 10,000 steps, and family aerobics and other activities help families work out together.

The meals provided at the camp are low in fat, and the goal is to consume no more than 800 calories a day. When “Nightline” checked in the options for lunch were a veggie burger or bison sloppy Joe with a side of beans. Participants can also have an unlimited amount of foods like mushrooms, fruit, nonfat yogurt and low-calorie soups.

They weigh all food to keep a strict count of calories and fat consumed. Collin tried the veggie burger and said he’d actually choose it over a cheeseburger.

Healthy tips for life

Kids also take cooking classes to learn how to make healthy foods themselves like oatmeal and zucchini sticks. Parents get more complicated lessons like baked chicken strips and sweet potato fries.

A field trip to the grocery store helps campers learn how to make healthy substitutions. Collin and Krista find lean meat for burgers and a fat-free brownie mix to satisfy some of their cravings.

Making progress

After a week of activity and healthy eating, Krista lost 10 pounds and Collin dropped 11. The second week Collin lost 5 more and Krista 6 more, a loss of 16 pounds each in two weeks.

Krista said upon leaving the camp that she felt like they would be successful at home, but she was worried about keeping up with it if they slipped back into old routines.

But when they got home, they read the labels and threw out a ton of food they used to enjoy. Five weeks after camp, Collin had lost 27 pounds and said he was now able to do more activities. Krista lost nearly 33 pounds and called her journey “incredible.”

Collin said he enjoys doing yoga on the WiiFit these days, and he’s proud that his mom is more confident and has more energy. Krista says she loves that she hasn’t had a migraine since being at camp.

(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News (REF3076322B7)

“Nightline” shows off family’s weight loss journey

How great would be the impact on the public if every traveler flying in the world found an article on biodiversity in the airline’s magazine? Articles or just advertisements would be an effective way of raising awareness of the biodiversity crisis. With thousands of people travelling every day, a larger audience could be sensitized towards biodiversity.

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Following in the footsteps of LittleBigPlanet, ModNation Racers is the latest PlayStation 3 game to bear the “Play. Create. Share.” moniker. Developed by United Front Games, MNR is to kart racing games what LBP was to platformers. Ars recently spent some time with the game’s beta and discovered a fun title that just may live up to the potential of its tagline.

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A recent patent application uncovered by The Baltimore Sun details a user interface for interacting with three-dimensional objects. The described UI may show the future of interaction on the iPhone or the rumored Apple tablet.

The patent application, filed last year but published early last month, describes a number of multitouch gestures to manipulate objects, including icons, presented in a simulated 3D space. Such gestures could present users with a simplified and intuitive way to interact with increasingly complex mobile devices. “As portable electronic devices become more compact, and the number of functions performed by a given device increase, it has become a significant challenge to design a user interface that allows users to easily interact with a multifunction device,” according the patent application.

Speculation is that the described interface may make its debut on an Apple tablet device expected to be revealed later this month. A former Apple employee recently told The New York Times that the device’s user interaction would be unlike what we have seen so far from the iPhone. “You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet,” the former employee said.

Curiously, unlike a number of other patent applications related to iPhone technology, Apple’s name appears nowhere on the application itself. A Palo Alto-based IP law firm is listed as the contact, while it turns out the three people listed as inventors do in fact work in software engineering at Apple. Searching for the same law firm turned up several other patents related to iPhone interface elements with Apple employees—including SVP of iPhone software Scott Forstall—listed as inventors. Keeping Apple’s name off of the published patent applications may have been an attempt to prevent publicizing of the patent application prior to the unveiling of the technology.

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In the world of art, the authenticity of a work can make millions of dollars worth of difference. Although it’s possible to detect recent frauds based on objective measures like chemicals in the paints, it often requires subjective judgements to determine the difference between the work of a true master having an off week and the product of one of that master’s students. A paper that will appear in PNAS suggests that a technique borrowed from vision research may help take some of the subjectivity out of this sort of analysis.

The study of artwork through math and statistics is known as “stylometry,” and is a relatively recent development—similar methods have been used to analyze literature for much longer. The new paper uses a technique called sparse coding, in which analysts break down works of art into tiny patches and represent them as a series mathematical functions. By comparing the functions produced with authentic artwork to those from possible imitators, they can produce an objective measure of whether the piece in question is real or fake.

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With the advent of voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology, there has
been a dramatic movement toward IP-only telecommunications,
leaving the twisted pair of yesteryear in the dust. Lower costs, automated directories, centralized monitoring, and ease of call routing are just a few of the advantages that a good VoIP implementation can bring to a workplace. But many businesses have been held back from jumping on the VoIP bandwagon because it can seem daunting or expensive to set up. The reality of VoIP is that some very modest hardware and a suite of free software tools can make for an enterprise-class VoIP system that can serve up to 1,000 office users in a single building.

In this article, we’ll walk through the basics of doing VoIP with Asterisk, an open-source, software private branch exchange (PBX). Note that this isn’t a detailed how-to—it’s more of a overview of the basics of building a VoIP system, with some notes on best practices. After reading this article, you should have a sense of what’s involved in a moderately sized VoIP setup, and of what such a setup can do for your business.

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Actually, not. If we are to be as superficial as we can be, we would say the Magic Iris is the ugliest car in the world. Uglier even than the Nano, if you like. But let’s not judge it by its appearance and give the thing a chance.

As you may have imagined, the Magic Iris was presented in New Delhi, where Indian carmaker Tata took advantage of the home court to showcase its might. And, apparently, for Tata might comes in the smallest of shapes and sizes.

According … (read more)

Robert Buderi wrote:

First came the motto, now comes the logo. Back in October, we brought you the news that Kendall Square (via the Kendall Square Association, of which Xconomy is a member) had adopted a motto: The Future Lives Here.

I wrote then that adopting a motto was only fitting, since “there is arguably no other place on Earth with the concentrated innovation power of Kendall Square.” And I quoted Sarah Gallop, co-director of government and community relations for MIT and chair of the KSA’s Marketing and Promotions Working Group, as saying her group was “deep into logo work now. After that is complete, we’ll focus on finishing the KSA website.”

So here (above—you can click on it for a larger view) is the logo, developed in conjunction with Dave Gilman of Cognito, a Concord, MA-based design firm. As Gallop writes, “The new logo is meant to project an image that represents Kendall Square’s core attributes which include the future, technology, density, accessibility, and the ‘bump factor.’ The literal interpretation of the logo is a zoomed out view of the actual boundaries of Kendall Square, and then represented by all of its distinct people in close proximity to one another. The font is Avenir which literally means ‘future,’ in French.”

Deep, huh? I just plain liked it, and when it came time as a KSA member to circle my top choices, this is one of the three I circled (and my favorite). Blue was an important choice for color, the KSA says, because it symbolizes sky and water and is therefore perceived as trustworthy, dependable, and everlasting. According to Gilman, it “can also be seen to represent hope and future.” (Too bad the nearby Charles River is closer to muddy brown than blue.) As for the color in the rest of the logo, he says: “Silver or Grey represents the future and is strongly seen as futuristic. Grey can be associated with elegance, innovation and the future. Blue paired with grey strengthens this association.” (My editor, Wade, points out that “grey” is an archaic/British spelling, so perhaps if we are talking about the future here in Cambridge, the KSA should be calling it “gray.”).

Now, we are on to step three: the website. Gallop says the revamped KSA site will be ready for unveiling in March.

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Hi, everyone. Just wanted to give you a heads-up that the site may go down for a day or two as I switch over to the new server. When this is all done, things should work faster and smoother, plus I have all sorts of exciting new things to post.

As always, thanks for reading!

Things have been so nuts for me over the past few days, I haven’t even been able to blog my Washington Post Outlook piece from Sunday about the need for better science communication in the wake of the devastating blow dealt by the ClimateGate scandal. The piece has been drawing tons of supportive private emails, as well as lots of online critiques and reactions, and fully 800 plus comments on the Post’s website, many of them from climate deniers.

Anyway, the article starts like this:

The battle over the science of global warming has long been a street fight between mainstream researchers and skeptics. But never have the scientists received such a deep wound as when, in late November, a large trove of e-mails and documents stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia were released onto the Web.

In the ensuing “Climategate” scandal, scientists were accused of withholding information, suppressing dissent, manipulating data and more. But while the controversy has receded, it may have done lasting damage to science’s reputation: Last month, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 40 percent of Americans distrust what scientists say about the environment, a considerable increase from April 2007. Meanwhile, public belief in the science of global warming is in decline.

The central lesson of Climategate is not that climate science is corrupt. The leaked e-mails do nothing to disprove the scientific consensus on global warming. Instead, the controversy highlights that in a world of blogs, cable news and talk radio, scientists are poorly equipped to communicate their knowledge and, especially, to respond when science comes under attack.

A few scientists answered the Climategate charges almost instantly. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, whose e-mails were among those made public, made a number of television and radio appearances. A blog to which Mann contributes, RealClimate.org, also launched a quick response showing that the e-mails had been taken out of context. But they were largely alone. “I haven’t had all that many other scientists helping in that effort,” Mann told me recently.

This isn’t a new problem….

Read here, there’s much more….on science communication strategies, how to fight the evolution war, and so forth. In essence, the piece builds on some of the central arguments of Unscientific America, but strained through the new example of ClimateGate, which is surely the number one reason yet that scientists have got to mobilize in the way that we recommended in the book. Hope you enjoy…

A roundup of economic news from around the Web.

• Natural Unemployment: Writing for voxeu, Roger Farmer provides an interesting video graphic and analysis of the idea of a natural rate of unemployment. “Most policymakers subscribe to the existence of a natural rate of unemployment. This column provides a visual history of unemployment, vacancies, and inflation in the U.S. and says there is no natural rate. It suggests the economy can rest in any equilibrium on the Beveridge curve, as decided by the confidence of households and firms that pins down asset values.”
• Fed and Bubbles: David Leonhardt of the New York Times argues that the Fed’s history spotting bubbles makes it difficult for the central bank to seek more authority. “What’s missing from the debate over financial re-regulation is a serious discussion of how to reduce the odds that the Fed — however much authority it has — will listen to the echo chamber when the next bubble comes along. A simple first step would be for Mr. Bernanke to discuss the Fed’s recent failures, in detail. If he doesn’t volunteer such an accounting, Congress could request one. In the future, a review process like this could become a standard response to a financial crisis. Andrew Lo, an M.I.T. economist, has proposed a financial version of the National Transportation Safety Board — an independent body to issue a fact-finding report after a crash or a bust. If such a board had existed after the savings and loan crisis, notes Paul Romer, the Stanford economist and expert on economic growth, it might have done some good.”
• Stimulus Clouds: On his Fed Watch blog, Tim Duy wonders what will happen to the economy as monetary and fiscal stimulus fades. “The economy is gathering steam. Can’t deny it. But the clear path to sustained recovery remains clouded by government stimulus, both in the US and abroad. Few policymakers are confident that economic activity can stand on its own as stimulus fades, leaving the Fed disinclined to rush for the exits given existing forecasts. Indeed, there is reason to believe based on Taylor Rules that interest rates should be held at the zero bound through 2010 and beyond. But policy mistakes happen. And FOMC worries about the timing of withdrawal could be the basis for such a mistake if near term activity accelerates rapidly and inflation expectations gain. The focus on the Fed may be misplaced; he FOMC is not the only policymaker that might upset the apple cart. The next negative shock might come from abroad.”

Compiled by Phil Izzo

Just months after a stampede of Justin Bieber fans caused a near riot in a Long Island mall, the Canadian teen sensation is returning to suburban New York. (They’d better call in The National Guard!) A charity canned food drive has won students at a local middle school a concert by the “My World” crooner.

On Tuesday, officials at Long Beach Middle School in Lido Beach say The Messiah of the Tween Scene, 15, will perform at the school sometime in February. In November, the Long Island school beat out 149 other New York metropolitan area schools food drive by collecting more than 27,000 pounds of food. The Long Beach campus will be shut down for the school-only event.

In November, police shut down an Bieber album signing event at Long Island’s Roosevelt Field Mall. A crowd of 3,000 young girls and adults began pushing and shoving, sending five people to the hospital with minor injuries.

Luke Timmerman wrote:

Cambridge, MA-based CombinatoRx (NASDAQ: CRXX) said today it has named Mark Corrigan as its new CEO, following the merger with NeuroMed Pharmaceuticals. Corrigan, 52, is the former executive vice president of R&D at Sepracor and a director of CombinatoRx. He will be paid an annual base salary of $450,000, may get a bonus worth half his base salary, and could get restricted stock units worth as much as 3 percent of the company’s market capitalization if CombinatoRx’s lead pain drug wins FDA approval by October 1, according to a regulatory filing. Robert Forrester, the former chief operating officer, is leaving the company, while NeuroMed’s former CEO, Christopher Gallen, will stay as executive vice president of R&D.

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