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There’s nothing like coming out of the Item World holding a shiny new overpowered piece of equipment. Anyone who’s ever played Disgaea is well aware…

LONDON (Reuters) – British buyout house Montagu Private Equity signed a debt restructuring deal late on Tuesday that will see it walk away from British packaging company Linpac, two sources familiar with the process said.

Lenders will take on the business as a going concern, reducing the company’s debt by 320 million pounds ($529.3 million) — 50 percent of its debt burden, the sources said.

The debt for equity deal will close around the end of the year and will include a court-approved scheme of arrangement transaction, one of the sources said.

“Things are moving but nothing is finalised until all parts of the deal are done,” the source said.

The lenders plan to inject 65 million pounds into the company, the two sources said.

Linpac, which makes plastic food packaging for retailers and food manufacturers, ran into trouble last year as a result of rising commodity costs, volatile raw material prices and the decline in sterling.

The agreement will wipe out Montagu’s investment entirely but sees Linpac’s position strengthened as a result of the support from its lenders.

The debt for equity swap has three components, with the first signed on Tuesday, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said.

Montagu and Linpac both declined to comment.

Montagu bought the company from its family owners in 2003 for 860 million pounds, backed by a loan arranged by Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE). The private equity firm recouped around 80 percent of its investment in 2007 through a recapitalisation in 2007, one source said.

By Simon Meads and Tom Freke
(Editing by Mike Nesbit) ($1=.6045 pounds)

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Yeah, we get it. It’s a Rubix Cube that’s supposed to look like the AllSpark of Transformers’ lore. Clever. Hopefully those shinny stickers come off nice and easy so I can solve the damn thing. $13.99 and coming in November. [Entertainment Earth via Gearfuse]

The BlackBerry is no doubt a fierce email machine, but the browser still falls short when compared to webkit browsers found on the iPhone and Palm Pre. RIM is looking to hire a WebKit developer as per this listing on LinkedIn, so it certainly appears that a WebKit browser is in the works.

WebKit browsers tend to offer desktop-like experience on a mobile device, featuring fast and accurate rendering of web pages. If and when a WebKit browser gets released for the BlackBerry, it’s not clear if this will be available on current generation BlackBerry devices or a future, unreleased BlackBerry. In any event, this is certainly good news for those frustrated with the browsing experience on a BlackBerry.

[via Ubergizmo]

Earlier this week, we launched the GreenGov Challenge – a new way for federal employees and military personnel to help green our government. The response thus far has been tremendous, but I know there are many more of you that we still need to hear from.

Energy efficiency is an issue I’m passionate about, and it is a major focus for the Department of Energy. For the next few decades, energy efficiency will be our most effective tool for reducing our carbon emissions, and the best way to reduce energy bills for America’s families. Specific ideas on how to save money and energy are especially welcome.

I know many federal employees share my passion and have great ideas for how to help the government become greener. Many have shared great ideas already on my Facebook page.

The GreenGov Challenge is a way for you to have your ideas heard. Ideas can be submitted through October 31st. We recognize that some of the best ideas on how to save energy may not be new, but they are simply not widely adopted. I want to hear from you what you think are the most cost-effective ways to save energy and money as well as new ideas. The top ideas will be evaluated and put into action shortly thereafter.

I hope you will take a moment to think about the energy saving opportunities around you, to dream up new ways to solve them, and to be a part of making this effort a success. I look forward to reviewing your ideas and tackling this challenge with you.

Steven Chu is Secretary of Energy

MENA Infrastructure is a website that focuses on infrastructural development and construction in the Middle East.

Clay Shirky points us to a column from a few months back by Marcia Angell, which explains why clinical research on drugs isn’t even remotely trustworthy, as it all-too-often seems to involve doctors who have serious conflicts:

Or consider Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg, chair of Stanford’s psychiatry department and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association. Senator Grassley found that Schatzberg controlled more than $6 million worth of stock in Corcept Therapeutics, a company he cofounded that is testing mifepristone–the abortion drug otherwise known as RU-486–as a treatment for psychotic depression. At the same time, Schatzberg was the principal investigator on a National Institute of Mental Health grant that included research on mifepristone for this use and he was coauthor of three papers on the subject.

Angell notes that this is pretty common:

Indeed, most doctors take money or gifts from drug companies in one way or another. Many are paid consultants, speakers at company-sponsored meetings, ghost-authors of papers written by drug companies or their agents, and ostensible “researchers” whose contribution often consists merely of putting their patients on a drug and transmitting some token information to the company.

And as the relationship between doctors and pharma has gotten deeper and deeper, it means that the results of those all important “clinical trials” — which the pharma supporters always insist are so important — are highly suspect:

Because drug companies insist as a condition of providing funding that they be intimately involved in all aspects of the research they sponsor, they can easily introduce bias in order to make their drugs look better and safer than they are. Before the 1980s, they generally gave faculty investigators total responsibility for the conduct of the work, but now company employees or their agents often design the studies, perform the analysis, write the papers, and decide whether and in what form to publish the results. Sometimes the medical faculty who serve as investigators are little more than hired hands, supplying patients and collecting data according to instructions from the company.

In view of this control and the conflicts of interest that permeate the enterprise, it is not surprising that industry-sponsored trials published in medical journals consistently favor sponsors’ drugs–largely because negative results are not published, positive results are repeatedly published in slightly different forms, and a positive spin is put on even negative results. A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome. It is not unusual for a published paper to shift the focus from the drug’s intended effect to a secondary effect that seems more favorable.

And yet the FTC is more worried about a mommy blogger recommending a book that a publisher sent her for free?

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Remember when The Wall Street Journal said that Dell was working on an Android MID? Well it turns out that it was bang on as today images and a video of a prototype device known as the Streak emerged by way of everyone’s favorite Vietnamese mobile site. Running Android 2.0, the Streak boasts 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, a 5″ WVGA multitouch capacitive display, 5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, Bluetooth, microSD and a 1300 mAh battery. Looking through all of the pictures, we couldn’t help notice what looks to be the spitting image of a front-facing camera for checking ones hair video calling, but then again it could just be the worst ambient light sensor ever. Enough talk. Hit the jump for a ton of pics and a video, because the Streak cries out to be seen.

Tokyo-based home electronics company Lancerlink [JP] has announced the Finemini720 today, a palm-sized LCOS projector. Sized at just 50×150×125mm, the device weighs 800g. It’s equipped with a 25W LED, produces 55 lumens of brightness and produces 1,280×768 resolution images.

The Finemini720 features a 200:1 contrast ratio, supports 1080p and also offers an HDMI interface.

The device will go on sale in Japan in December, but Lancerlink hasn’t announced a price yet. People living outside Japan might want to ask if the Japan Trend Shop or Geek Stuff 4 U can get one for them.

Via AV Watch [JP]

In Q3, Uncle Sam was the green IT king maker. Read the, “Green IT Q3 Wrap-up.”

Yahoo has partnered with WPP’s GroupM Entertainment to help marketers incorporate their brands into original online programming.

The programs will appear across Yahoo’s network of media properties, including news, sports, finance and entertainment.

"Marketers need big, ground-breaking ideas that engage and delight consumers, and this partnership with Yahoo! will enable them to create unique high value relationships," said GroupM Entertainment Worldwide CEO Peter Tortorici, who will administer the partnership for GroupM.

Joanne Bradford,
Yahoo! Senior VP,
N. American Revenue
and Market Development

GroupM and Yahoo will work together with advertisers to develop concepts that map media content with an advertiser’s messaging, and produce the content for each program. Yahoo will promote the branded programs to targeted audiences across its network.

"Yahoo! has a keen understanding of what makes our audience click, and this partnership will help advertisers develop deeper connections with our users," said Joanne Bradford, Yahoo!’s senior vice president, North American revenue and market development.

"Furthermore, Yahoo! can continue to build on its successful portfolio of the Internet’s most-watched original programming by tapping into GroupM’s incredible creative development talent."

Yahoo points to its TechTicker program with Scottrade as the advertiser, as an example of one of its successful campaigns, calling it the most viewed business and investing program online averaging more than 350,000 streams per day.

GroupM unit Mindshare Entertainment, created "In the Motherhood," an original online series for its clients Sprint and Unilever’s Suave that was later picked up by ABC Television and developed into the first prime time comedy to be spun off from a Web series.

Every once in a while, an investment model comes along that turns the innovation community on its head. An emerging paradigm called royalty-based financing — applied to early-stage start-ups — may be another, according to Gregory T. Huang of Xconomy Seattle. The concept is simple. Instead of buying equity in a young company, an investor agrees to receive a percentage of the company’s monthly revenues – but the upside is capped at a limit of, say, three to five times his or her investment. Instead of waiting five or 10 years for a start-up to go public or become acquired, an investor can start seeing returns almost immediately. The approach should enable investors to fund a wider range of start-ups than those that typically receive venture backing, Huang says. The downside is that returns are capped, so investors who back the next Google or Amazon will still recoup only five times their investment. For entrepreneurs, the model provides start-up money without giving up an ownership stake in the company.

The concept for royalty-based financing dates back to early mining days, when companies needed financing to dig for oil, natural gas, and minerals. The idea also has been used for government-funded economic development programs. It is getting renewed interest from VCs and angel investors who increasingly need quick returns in a tough climate for exits. Royalty-based venture financing “has the real potential of becoming a major new sector in the private capital market,” says Arthur Fox, the founder of Royalty Capital Management in Lexington, MA, who first used the approach with start-ups in the early 1990s. Fox tried the royalty-based idea as a way to generate compensation from companies he was mentoring, instead of taking some stock. He found that the royalty-based system made start-ups more efficient with his time, and he would get paid every month. He next tried the strategy as an investor. “It changed everything, because the normal criteria in selecting companies as a venture capitalist is a high-growth one,” Fox says. “When you invest in a company, buying stock and equity, you have no way of getting out unless they become significantly large enough to have a liquidity event.” With the royalty-based financing approach, “every month you get a check, and it doesn’t matter if they ever have an IPO or get bought out,” he says.

If you want a home run, you still need a conventional equity-based deal, Huang concedes, and that’s the main objection of most VCs to the royalty-based approach. While the model may broaden their investment options, it goes against the traditional high-risk/high-reward model. But royalty-based financing addresses the dire reality of today’s financial markets, says Thomas Thurston, the founder of Portland, OR-based Growth Science International, a research and consulting firm. “Venture capitalists say, ‘I don’t know if I’m comfortable capping [returns] at 5x,’” Thurston says. “On the other hand, you’re probably not getting 5x right now.” Thurston concludes that “there are enough circumstances where [royalty-based financing] is a good tool,” given the traditional limitations that VCs face. The approach could enable more start-ups to get off the ground and more young companies with revenues to grow, compared with the 2% of businesses that attract VC funding. Although angel investors “will be the ones who do the earliest experimentation and start to prove” the royalty-based model, Thurston thinks some intrepid VCs will try the approach as well. “I think it’ll feel less sexy to a VC,” he says. “But VCs who are innovative will say, ‘Sexy or not, I like getting good returns.’

Source: Xconomy

The new director of the Pentagon’s research arm is visiting university campuses in an effort to rebuild bridges that were damaged under the Bush administration. Regina E. Dugan, who was appointed in July to lead the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has already visited the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; UCLA; Virginia Tech; and Texas A&M. During the Bush administration, DARPA’s guidelines for financing basic research changed markedly, says Peter Harsha, director of governmental affairs for the Computing Research Association, a Washington organization that represents academic institutions. The agency shortened the period of research financing and tied it to one-year “go, no-go” decisions, undercutting longer-term projects. DARPA enforced classification of research or prepublication review on scientific papers, and it established strict U.S. citizenship requirements for some financing. “It sounds like a lot of that is changing now,” Harsha says.

In her conversations with researchers, Dugan has noted the criticism of the shortened time horizon for DARPA financing and acknowledged that increasing classification of research lessened the impact of the agency’s technology on both civilian and military infrastructure. “University-based research is an important component of DARPA’s future activities,” Dugan said in a statement. “It is our goal to strengthen this partnership, enabling some of the best minds to serve with and in the government in the best interests of the nation and the U.S. Department of Defense.” On her visit to the California institutions, Dugan — a mechanical engineer who has conducted fundamental development work in chemical sensing technologies to detect explosives — spoke to small groups of faculty members from different departments in both the sciences and engineering. “She came by Berkeley and had a frank chat about the past and the future, and I’m pretty encouraged,” says David Patterson, a computer scientist at UC-Berkeley. “She seems to genuinely value academic input into the defense research enterprise and really wants to re-engage the research community in the DARPA mission.”

Source: The New York Times

Many tech transfer offices are stuck in reactive mode. They dutifully receive invention disclosures from faculty, assess them for commercial potential, file patents and provisionals, and seek licensees. This reactive strategy, while understandable given staff shortages and time constraints, does not even attempt to address one very critical factor in successful research commercialization efforts: what does the market want? Recognizing this, a growing number of TTOs have moved away from traditional and reactive “market push” strategies toward a more proactive “market pull” approach. They are actively engaging with innovation seekers in corporations and government agencies to determine their most pressing needs — and then feeding that information back to their research labs.

By listening to their markets, and building strong relationships with industry, they are smoothing a path to licensing revenues and assuring that more of their research dollars result in products that companies want and need. The concept isn’t hard to grasp, but execution can be difficult. It involves not only a shift in strategy and thinking, but also delicate negotiations with researchers who may balk at being “dictated to” about their research focus. In addition, it involves tough legwork in building a “listening” process in the form of strong industry relationships.

But the end result can significantly increase your research funding and licensing revenues while cementing long-term corporate partnerships. That’s why our Distance Learning Division has recruited one of the nation’s leaders in market pull strategy, Lina Ramos of Emerging Growth Enterprise, to give you practical strategies on determining the IP and innovation needs of industry and putting your researchers to work on meeting those needs. Shifting Your TTO from Market Push to Market Pull: Finding the White Space, Thursday, November 12th, from 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. EST. For complete details and to register, CLICK HERE.

And don’t miss these other strategy-filled events coming soon:

• October 28, 2009: The New TTO Metrics: Documenting Job Creation, Economic Impact, and Other “Dark Matter” Performance Indicators
• November 11: Home Run Strategies: Finding, Nurturing, and Securing Maximum Revenues from Disruptive University Technologies
• December 8, 2009: Tech Transfer Partnerships: Establishing Effective Legal and Operational Structures for Long-Term Success
• December 16, 2009: 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)

Until Blue Water Satellite, Inc., came along, “nobody had ever sold satellite monitoring of a reservoir to anybody,” says Robert K. Vincent, professor of geology at Bowling Green (OH) State University and co-founder of OhioView, a remote sensing consortium of the state’s 10 largest public research universities. Six months after operations began, though, initial customers had bought into Blue Water enough that the BGSU spinoff could make its first royalty payment to the university. The payment was just $213, but “there will be more, and they will be bigger,” predicts Deanne Snavely, interim vice provost for research and dean of BGSU’s Graduate College. Blue Water is the first spinoff to commercialize IP developed at BGSU — specifically, a patented algorithm developed by Vincent to detect the presence and location of cyanobacteria in drinking water reservoirs. Blooms of the blue-green algae, which present human health risks, are mapped on images from the LANDSAT satellite and targeted for treatment. The patent supporting the technology was awarded in November 2006 to BGSU, which granted an exclusive license to Vincent’s fledgling company. Working through the licensing process took about 18 months, since “every agreement had to be done for the first time,” Snavely says. In the meantime, Blue Water received a $50,000 grant from the Toledo-based Regional Growth Partnership to analyze the company’s potential. Funded through the Ohio Department of Development, the grant was critical to attract investors to the company. “Blue Water wouldn’t have come out of the chute” without RGP and its finance arm, Rocket Ventures, Vincent says.

Blue Water is Rocket Ventures’ “first university-derived startup client company in northwest Ohio to make royalty payments to its parent university based on real earnings from a bona fide paying customer,” according to Greg Knudson, director of Rocket Ventures. A percentage of the university’s royalties goes to the inventors, and the balance goes into the BGSU research budget. The company has fewer than 10 clients, but several are repeat customers, Vincent says. And with some 150 drinking water reservoirs in Ohio, more than 11,000 nationwide, and more overseas — plus recreational lakes that could use the technology — a worldwide market is possible. “I think it has Google-type potential,” says Vincent, who has already turned down one prospective Blue Water buyer.

Source: Bowling Green State University

A battle is brewing between university researchers and the biotech seed industry over the development of genetically modified (GM) crops. In a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this year, 26 public sector entomologists complained that crop developers are curbing their rights to study commercial biotech crops. At a July meeting organized by the American Seed Trade Association in Alexandria, VA, representatives from leading seed companies met with the entomologists and developed a set of principles to conduct such research. However, the seed companies are not obligated to follow the guidelines, and the industry’s reluctance to share its products with scientists is fueling the view that companies have something to hide.

Commercial entities have developed nearly all of the GM crops on the U.S. market, and their ownership of the proprietary technology allows them to decide who studies the crops and how. “Industry is completely driving the bus,” says Christian Krupke, an entomologist at Purdue University. Company control starts with a simple grower’s contract. Anyone who buys transgenic seeds must sign a technology stewardship agreement that prevents the buyer from conducting research on the seed or supplying it to a researcher. Thus, scientists can’t simply buy seeds for their studies, and farmers can’t slip them some on the side. “You need permission from industry, and you have to specify what you want to do with the plants,” says Bruce Tabashnik, an entomologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Seed companies can refuse a research request for any reason. Some may be isolated instances; others result from company policies. Even the notion of seeking permission from companies to conduct studies is a deterrent. “There are three strategies that [scientists] take,” says Elson Shields, an entomologist at Cornell University. “Some are just not doing the research. Some are changing their experimental protocols so that they are acceptable to industry, which may or may not be a good thing. And some are just going out and buying the seeds and doing the research in violation of the technology agreements.”

When requesting permission, scientists usually must describe in detail the design of their experiment, which provides companies with a head start in preparing a rebuttal. Once a company and scientist agree on the study design, they still must negotiate the terms of the research agreement. Negotiations often break down because companies want to limit or control publication of the study. “When you are funded by state and federal dollars, you have an obligation that the research you conduct is public and published,” says Beverly Durgan, dean of extension services at the University of Minnesota. “Signing research secrecy agreements is something we really can’t do.” Several major seed companies say they have negotiated multiyear agreements with major universities that give scientists the freedom to conduct and publish most agronomic research without requesting permission for every study. In fact, seed companies frequently pay academics to study precommercial products, similar to consulting arrangements or discovery work carried out for big pharmas. The companies say they have to keep tabs on public sector research to ensure the studies are done with good stewardship practices and in accordance with regulations, since they could be liable if an adverse event occurred with a precommercial product — even under the watch of a public sector scientist. Companies also say they must ensure that products that haven’t received approval for export to certain countries aren’t shipped there. And, since they want to protect their IP, they’re particularly averse to allowing the public sector to breed crops or to characterize the genetic composition of a GM plant, which can cost up to $100 million to develop.

In some instances, university scientists have raised concerns about data submitted to regulatory agencies, but they’ve had no recourse once the crops were commercialized. In 2001, for example, Johnston, IA-based Pioneer HiBred was developing a transgenic corn variety that contained a binary toxin to fend off rootworms. The company asked some university laboratories to test for unintended effects on a lady beetle. The laboratories found that nearly 100% of lady beetles that had been fed the crop died after the eighth day in the life cycle. When the researchers presented their results to Pioneer, the company forbade them to publicize the data. Two years later, Pioneer received regulatory approval for an anti-rootworm corn variety with the same toxin, but the data submitted to the EPA indicated no sign of potential harm to lady beetles. “If there’s a sense that a problem is being swept under the carpet, that only fuels the fear,” Tabashnik says. “It’s better to be open about it. It’s not as if one problem with one variety means the whole technology isn’t useful.”

Source: PuppetGov

Texas State University-San Marcos has partnered with Arizona-based MicroPower Global to develop cutting-edge “green energy” technology. The partnership, facilitated by the Texas Emerging Technology Fund and the Innovate Texas Foundation, will initially see MicroPower carry out its 12-month prototype development plan using the Multifunctional Materials Laboratory at Texas State. The idea is to build on a technology already planned for the 2010 BMW 5 Series, which converts heat into electricity for the car’s air-conditioning and other power systems. MicroPower believes its work in Texas will yield efficiencies that will, in turn, open up new applications, such as heat recovery from jet engines. During the initial phase, MicroPower aims to build its first thermoelectric-chalcogenide based chips, which can convert heat directly into electricity, leading to significant energy savings. The chips’ targeted efficiencies are in excess of 15%, or three times more efficient than conventional material. Working with Texas State, MicroPower’s goal is to drive development toward the world’s first 20% efficient modules, which they say will revolutionize the thermoelectric market. In addition, the clean, green technology is expected to save energy, reduce harmful emissions, and lead to the availability of substantial carbon credits.

Source: San Marcos Daily Record