Laboratory equipment giant Agilent has signed up with the BioIT Alliance, Microsoft’s cross-industry group that hopes to improve biomedical information exchange. To quote the news release: “The Alliance seeks to enable the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, equipment manufacturing and software industries to share best practices and develop standards for sharing biomedical data,… more...

The New York Times reports that orthopedic surgeons are rethinking complete replacements of the hip. For younger patients, a new technique called “resurfacing” allows the recipient to feel that the joint is truly his or hers. Thanks to new high carbide cobalt-chrome, the device’s developer believes it will last longer… more...

Reuters has a story about radio frequency identification chips, typically abbreivated RFID. The cost of the tracking devices has dropped to ten cents each. A conference on the topic, EPCglobal, is being held in Los Angeles this week. Privacy concerns, typically, are being brushed aside as the worrying of a… more...

Scientist in chief?

Gingrich Gushes On Science

October 17, 2006

The October issue of Discover magazine has a fab interview with a once-prominent Congressman. Newt Gingrich was one of those politicians who seems poised to become The Most Important Guy until, well, he entangled himself in the usual scandals and had to resign. Happens every day, right? No. Gingrich is… more...

Tools from Agilent

$35 Million For NCI Clinical Genomics

October 17, 2006

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) today announced grant recipients for its Cancer Genome Atlas project, including three institutions that are using upstart microarray platforms from Agilent. Instead of tools from Affymetrix, the University of North Carolina, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center will all use technology from Agilent.… more...

Early Warning

Deeper Data Mining

October 16, 2006

A U.S.-Israeli firm, Business Events, claims to be able to perform data mining on all of a large company’s data. News accounts neglect to say how they load all of a large company’s data. But a story online is interesting because the principals behind Business Events got their start in… more...

Just defining the life sciences can be controversial. For one Wall Street analyst, life sciences firms only help with drug discovery and do not participate in it themselves. Citigroup’s Elise Wang says the life sciences are finally poised for growth. Perhaps the cycle is turning again, with once-hot companies warming… more...

We all do it. It makes no sense. It is ridiculous. Sending attachments to and fro, hither and yon. “Did you get my attachment?” “Did you read my document?” “Any thoughts?” “Um, which version of that is live?” This is how some people spend their days. Google has new free… more...

A project to collect African American genes will use Affymetrix technology. In a partnership between Howard University and Boston University, scientists will hunt for genes related to obesity, hypertension and metabolic syndrome. The new study has an unspecified number of patients but is nonetheless fascinating just because the lead investigators… more...

A new report studies benchmarking in clinical trials. Cutting Edge Research says its latest page-turner analyzes a dozen bottlenecks in the process. “Case studies, best practices and tactics for addressing key operational challenges are the foundation of the report’s qualitative information. A dozen of the most common clinical trial workflow… more...