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Two distance learning events in December cover two ends of the tech transfer spectrum – establishing and structuring effective partnerships, and then monitoring them effectively on the back end. Tech Transfer Partnerships: Establishing Effective Legal and Operational Structures for Long-Term Success will be held December 8, and Post-License Monitoring and Support: Performance and Revenue Enhancement Strategies (and When All Else Fails How to Pull the Plug and Take Back Your IP) is scheduled for December 16. Click on either title for complete program and faculty information.

Scientists from Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI) in Boca Raton have developed the first technique to produce beaded (nucleated) and non-beaded cultured pearls from the queen conch. Nucleated cultured pearls are produced by inserting a piece of mantle tissue from a donor mollusk and a nucleus, usually a spherical piece of shell, into the body of a recipient mollusk. Non-nucleated pearls are produced by grafting only a piece or pieces of mantle tissue, and no bead is inserted. The proprietary seeding techniques developed at HBOI successfully coaxed pearls that would be extremely rare if they occurred naturally. Ordinarily, it takes opening about 10,000 queen conch to find one conch pearl, and only one in 100 of those finds would be of gem quality, according to the university. The discovery offers a unique opportunity to introduce a new gem to the industry.

For more than 25 years, scientists have attempted to culture pearls from the queen conch (Strombus gigas). In less than two years of research and experimentation, HBOI researchers Hector Acosta-Salmon, PhD, and Megan Davis, PhD, produced more than 200 cultured pearls using two seeding techniques. One was a modification of the conventional technique used to produce cultured pearls in freshwater mussels, and the other was a modification of the conventional technique used in marine pearl oysters. “Perhaps the most significant outcome from our research is that the technique we have developed does not require sacrificing the conch in the process,” Davis says. “The 100% survival rate of queen conch after seeding and the fact that it will produce another pearl after the first pearl is harvested will make this culturing process more efficient and environmentally sustainable for commercial application.”

Source: National Jeweler

The Australian start-up WarraPharm Pty Ltd. will commercialize a suite of anti-cancer reformulations developed by researchers at the University of Wollongong (UOW), Australia. WarraPharm develops proprietary reformulations that seek to reduce the side effects of widely prescribed anti-neoplastic agents. Working with the UOW’s commercialization partner, UniQuest, WarraPharm secured an exclusive license for the IP surrounding its lead reformulation, Fluorodex, and other reformulations. A team led by John Bremner, PhD, emeritus professor at UOW’s School of Chemistry, and Philip Clingan, MBBS, UOW clinical professor and director of medical oncology in the Cancer Care Centre at Wollongong Hospital, developed the technology, which combines 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin — two of the most commonly prescribed anti-cancer agents — into Fluorodex.

In preclinical testing, the reformulation achieved comparable outcomes to current standard-of-care chemotherapies with fewer side effects. “Adverse events associated with colorectal cancer treatment, such as peripheral neuropathy, phlebitis, hand-foot syndrome, and sepsis are particularly unpleasant for patients,” explains WarraPharm researcher Tamantha Stutchbury, PhD. “The latest toxicity and safety data has shown Fluorodex to have a significantly reduced adverse event profile. This suggests treatment outcomes could be improved because patients would be less likely to have to interrupt or discontinue their chemotherapy.” The company expects the Fluorodex formulation to enter clinical trials late next year.

In addition, Houston, TX-based RadiaDyne is using a prostate cancer treatment device developed by UOW researchers to enhance its prostate immobilizer balloon system. The RadiaDyne system, which supports adaptive radiation therapy for prostate cancer patients, incorporates sensors developed by UOW’s Centre for Medical Radiation Physics that detect and measure in real time the radiation exposure immediately adjacent to the rectal wall during a patient’s prostate cancer treatment. “The rectal wall is an area particularly susceptible to radiation exposure,” explains Tony Enright, UniQuest’s manager of innovation and commercialization at UOW. “For patients undergoing adaptive radiation therapy, this advance in the technology means greater protection from potential complications that are known to occur.” RadiaDyne inked an exclusive license with UOW for the technology and expects to launch commercial sales of its updated system in the U.S. within six months, pending approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Source: UniQuest and UniQuest

Last night, Joe Biden made his first appearance on The Daily Show since being elected Vice President of these United States of A, and I have to say I was thoroughly disappointed. The interview lasted 14 minutes and there weren't any of the hilarious gaffes I've come to expect from the Veep. He didn't call Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "a pretty okay guy once you get to know him." He didn't accidentally blurt out missile codes. Hell, it didn't even look like his shoelaces were tied together. What a let down.

The interview continues below.

The Daily Show airs Monday through Thursday at 11pm / 10c.

Biomedical engineering and chemistry are two hot spots for innovation at the University of Memphis and its FedEx Institute of Technology. The institute was launched in 2003, and the university’s OTT was established just last year. Since then, Shaye Mandle, an attorney who serves as the institute’s executive director, and Kevin Boggs, PhD, MBA, director of technology transfer and research development, have cast a wide net. Boggs’ office oversees biotech research on the campus, while the institute provides research grants and assistance with patent costs. One of its star researchers is Warren Haggard, PhD, professor and director of the university’s biomedical engineering department. He has been developing a pellet-type delivery system that allows antibiotics to be administered to traumatic wounds at the scene of the injury. Haggard also is developing an antibiotic delivery system using a biodegradable sponge that delivers local antibiotics within a wound and then dissolves. A surgeon can soak the sponge in an antibiotic solution, trim it to fit the wound, and sew up the incision without having to perform follow-up surgery to remove the sponge. Haggard and his team have even devised a method to manipulate the sponge’s degradation time, depending on the amount of antibiotics to be released. “We’ve heard that orthopedic surgeons are clamoring for this,” Boggs says. The OTT is approaching medical device companies about the technology.

Source: Memphis Daily News

Chicago-based IPXtract, an IP development firm, has affiliated with the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette. The university-affiliated business incubation complex is owned and managed by the Purdue Research Foundation and houses more than 157 companies. IPXtract’s business model provides entrepreneurs with marketing, promotion, and other support in exchange for an interest in the companies that are formed, according to Chris Haigh, IPXtract’s president and an alumnus of Purdue University’s College of Engineering. “If we become excited about the venture, the clients don’t have to pay for our hourly work and everyone benefits from the success of the newly formed company,” Haigh says. Because they don’t pay hourly fees, entrepreneurs who work with IPXtract can save money during the invention development and IP protection process. The IPXtract team also is allied with firms that can protect patents should litigation occur.

“IPXtract can help solicit funding that can be used to determine how to make the client’s product and take it to the market while the patent process is progressing,” Haigh says. “Because IPXtract does not make money until our client’s company makes money, we are as motivated as our clients to get products up and running.” Affiliating with the Purdue Research Park enables IPXtract and its clients to interface with Purdue’s engineering department and to tap in-house services for marketing, promotion, and event planning.

Source: Inside Indiana Business

A number of TTOs in the U.S. have gotten their feet wet in the world of social networking, but what Brian McCaul, ICT, director of commercialization & exploitation in the Enterprise & Innovation Office at the University of Leeds (UK), proposed recently is well beyond what any have attempted and perhaps what many have imagined: A new world of tech transfer — or knowledge transfer in common European parlance — in which social networking forms the foundation for a revolution in the way innovation makes its way into the marketplace. McCaul recently set out six propositions to distinguish today’s tech transfer and knowledge transfer (KT) from what he is calling ‘KT 2.0.’ The propositions don’t focus on social networking per se, but rather describe the key differences he sees between the ‘old school’ tech transfer operating style and the TTO/KTO as it should be operated in today’s environment — and in the future:

1. KT used to be about assembling and employing the most able team. KT 2.0 is about assembling the right network.
2. KT used to be primarily about ‘Tech-Push.’ KT 2.0 is about maximizing Market Pull.
3. KT was about driving as much resource into a project as possible, to maximize its likelihood of success. KT 2.0 is about learning to ‘fail early’ and cheaply.
4. KT was primarily about legal, technical/regulatory and commercial matters – in that order. KT 2.0 understands that there are continually new innovation drivers emerging, be that the need for ‘business model innovation’ or ‘design innovation’ or the need to engage ‘user innovation,’ or some other emerging factor.
5. KT was about research excellence in groups or individuals. KT 2.0 is premised on the notion that innovation is a social process, and that the most interesting opportunities are likely to arise from cross-disciplinary collaborations.
6. KT was, primarily, focused on the large VC deal, and avoidance of the ‘living dead’ spinout or ‘small’ license deals. KT 2.0 understands that the funding environment is very different, and even if the ‘IPO model’ and VC investment comes back to full vigor, alternative funding/exit strategies will become an increasingly important part of the mix. (The complete weblog can be found here).

A detailed article on the proposals and the practical aspects of implementing them in TTOs appears in the October issue of Technology Transfer Tactics. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Today, Opera Software has released the beta version of Opera Mobile 10 for Windows Phones, with support for touchscreen- and keypad-driven Windows Mobile 5 (PPC), 6.0, 6.1, and 6.5 devices.

The keywords with this release are: speed, simplicity, and compatibility.

Speed: With the current generation of Opera products, speed has been one of the central talking points. Though we at Betanews have found that Opera’s claims of speed boosts tend to be a little hyperbolical in the desktop versions, the company’s mobile products tend to be a different story. Using Opera Turbo compression, the company claims this version will be 50% faster than the previous version of Opera Mobile.

Simplicity: Though navigation in each may vary, all of Opera’s current browsers share some essential design elements: the “Speed Dial” home screen, browser tabs, and the multi-search engine bar. The navigation buttons in Opera Mobile 10 have gotten a bit simpler than they were in 9.7 and now simply represent Back, Forward, Reload, Tabs, and Tools. Tabs have been turned into easily scrollable thumbnails, and the Tools menu accesses in-page search, bookmarks, browsing history, saved pages, and settings as large, easy-to-identify icons.

Compatibility: “Opera Mobile is the most standards-compliant mobile browser available,” the company says. And while all browsers have at least some degree of compatibility trouble, mobile browsers are still extremely limited in the content they can display. Opera Mobile 10, however, uses the same Presto browser engine that desktop Opera 10 uses, so rich applications are more likely to be compatible with your phone. Furthermore, Opera Mobile 10 offers “Mobile View” mode, where Web pages are reformatted into a single column for easier consumption.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

Yay! First Sony’s 3G enabled reader (PRS-900BC) is finally unlocked for readership to open up their wallets and pre-order 7″ Touch enabled reader. First shipments should start in the middle of next month, get your order in, so you could get your mittens on one soon. Pricewise this Reader is a little bit “immoderate” however since you are getting 3G access for free, we will let it slip…

P.S. As of right now, Notify button is there instead of Pre-Order…I am sure it will be changed soon.

Check out the full press release below:

SAN DIEGO – November 18, 2009 Delivering on its promise to give consumers a variety of choices, Sony today announced its newest addition to the Sony Reader Family — the Reader Daily Edition™ — is now available for pre-order on SonyStyle.com. The Reader Daily Edition, a highly-anticipated wireless model with 3G connectivity, will ship next month.

The Reader Daily Edition joins the Reader Pocket Edition™ and Reader Touch Edition™ to round out Sony’s complete family of digital readers. The Reader Daily Edition gives consumers wireless access to Sony’s eBookstore from most of the U.S., via a 3G mobile broadband network. Book lovers will be able to browse, purchase and download books as well as select newspapers and magazines on the go. There are no monthly fees or transaction charges for the basic wireless connectivity and users still have the option to side load personal documents or content from other compatible sites via USB. Sony will announce newspaper and magazine content providers within the next month.

The Reader Daily Edition features a responsive, menu-driven, seven-inch touch screen panel that enables quick, intuitive navigation, page turning, highlighting and note taking with the swipe of a finger or by using the included stylus pen. Users can take handwritten notes with the stylus pen or type with the virtual keyboard. All notes can be exported and printed out for easy reference. The Reader Touch Edition includes an onboard Oxford American English Dictionary that allows you to look up a word by simply tapping on it.

The search landscape is still evolving even if at its usual slow pace. Not too much has changed in October, Google still clearly dominates and has actually picked up a little market share in the last month, but the other two players are bit more dynamic. Yahoo took quite a significant dive, dropping almost 1 percent point, while Microsoft’s Bing continues its upwards crawl gaining a bit more market share.

ComScore released the October numbers for the US “core search” market which takes into account just the five biggest search engines, Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and AOL. The big winner last month, if you can call it that at 9.9 percent market share, was Bing, which proves to be a real success for Microsoft, taking into account the low expectations with which it launched. Microsoft’s search engine got just 8 percent of the searches the month before Bing launched and 9.4 percent in September.

An almost 2 percent rise in market share in five months doesn’t look that impressive, but Microsoft has been trying to make inroads into the search market for years to little success until now. There’s just one downside to the numbers, Bing gained market share at the expense of Yahoo, while Google continues to look unfazed. Yahoo actually saw quite a big drop losing 0.8 percent points in just one mon… (read more)

It seems everyone is talking about cloud computing. Even Dilbert, who discusses cloud computing with the Pointy-Haired Boss in today’s strip (link via Emil Sayegh). Click through for a larger version at Dilbert.com.

Dust off your old pair of Vans and get ready to party like it’s 1995, because Tony Hawk: RIDE has finally been released in North America. Available for the Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, the game’s main attraction lies in its wireless skateboard controller that’s chockful of motion sensors and allows players to more or less feel that they themselves are on a real skateboard and part of the game. The game and skateboard are bundled together for $119.99, a far cry cheaper than your hospital bill will be after playing this game drunk at your office Christmas party.

Read

An anonymous tipster send us in this image of an e-reader running Android OS and explained that it came from a company that has never been in the tablet/e-reader business. Interesting…

I suspect this is some sort of music device for composers/performers because of all the musical notes on the top of the screen and some things we saw in the background of the image. Any guesses as to what this could be?

My suspicion is that someone like Yamaha is creating a control system for their MIDI devices, allowing folks to make music away from the PC.

Hey everybody! Let’s play the “What would you do if you had a million dollars?” game! Unfortunately, due to recent changes in corporation policy and budget cuts, you’ll only have 10,000 USD to play with. And it will have to go towards something music / audio related. Wait, that’s still totally awesome. But don’t tell me what you would do with the cash. Go and tell the guys over at Sennheiser. Their Sound Tour Hookup Challenge can give you and five friends the chance to spend ten thousand bucks on whatever crazy audio scheme you can think of.

Entries so far range from flying to a festival in Europe, having your favorite band play a private party, building a recording studio, etc. But there’s no limit on what you can ask for. The entry mediums are pretty open-ended too. YouTube videos, essays, photo journals. You have until December 23rd to get yours in.

The winner will be picked sometime in January 2010 by a panel of Sennheiser executives based on the following criteria.

• Sennheiser product integration – 40%
• The ability to show appreciation of sound – 25%
• Creativity and overall appeal – 25%
• Entry must show the integration of 5 friends – 10%

But wait! There’s more! You can go and vote for other submissions that you like, entering you in a weekly drawing for a pair of Sennheiser headphones.

As for me, I’d probably buy an analog Neve 88R console. Ten grand should be enough to buy maybe one channel strip.

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have begun to benefit from federal grants supporting high-risk research. But long before such opportunities existed, UCSF formed its own program to encourage faculty and postdoctoral fellows to think boldly. The Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research (PBBR) currently awards about $6 million every year to projects of potentially high impact that are substantially more creative or risky than projects supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other traditional funding mechanisms. Despite its relatively small size, the 13-year-old PBBR, formerly known as the Sandler Program in Basic Science, has generated more than $300 million in subsequent grant funding.

Among recipients is Wendell Lim, PhD, professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology, who is engineering “smart cells” that are programmed to carry out novel therapeutic functions in cancer and regenerative medicine. His lab’s PBBR grant enabled him to advance his research to the point where the NIH started to take notice. The PBBR also opened doors for Allison Doupe, MD, PhD, whose pioneering and somewhat quirky research into songbird learning has revealed clues that may improve the scientific community’s understanding of human brain development and disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s disease. Doupe, a professor of psychiatry and physiology and a member of UCSF’s Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience, found that songbirds — like humans — have specialized areas of the brain devoted to learning. By altering the part of the brain known as the basal ganglia, Doupe and her colleagues effectively eliminated variability in the birds’ songs, which interfered with their ability to learn. Since receiving her PBBR grant, Doupe has also obtained funding from the NIH and several research foundations. Says Keith Yamamoto, PhD, PBBR director and executive vice dean of the UCSF School of Medicine: “The message to our researchers is: We so value the kind of thinking you do, and we want to support it and promote it.”

Source: Science Cafe

Using peptide-based IP licensed from the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston-based biotech start-up FirstString Research is developing and commercializing therapeutics for scar prevention and tissue regeneration. Initially aimed at preventing or reducing scars from surgical wounds, the technology may have wide-ranging applications. The company’s proprietary therapies modulate intercellular communication to significantly reduce the development of scar tissue while improving the body’s ability to produce healthy, functional cells. Its lead compound, ACT I, has shown efficacy in many tissue types, including the skin, spinal cord, and internal organs. The platform technology has numerous potential applications, according to Gautam Ghatnekar, PhD, the company’s president and CEO. The first application as a topical gel to prevent or reduce scarring from surgical wounds is “low hanging fruit,” he says. Based on consistent and positive early results, FirstString has already received regulatory approval in Europe to enter clinical phase testing of the gel. The company also has seen good preclinical data in spinal cord injury and cardiac applications, and its next focus is in the area of macular degeneration. Since its founding in 2005, the four-employee company has raised $4 million in equity funding, according to Ghatnekar.

Source: TechJournal South