You might see more (good) phones and tablets with Intel inside, now that the company has started shipping its new LTE-capable XMM 7160 chip to manufacturers. We say "new," but it's actually been a long time coming -- the company first revealed the radio in early 2012 and officially announced it in ...
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Yivsam Azgad
news@weizmann.ac.il
972-893-43856
Weizmann Institute of Science
One of the obstacles to employing human embryonic stem cells for medical use lies in their very promise: They are born to rapidly differentiate into other cell types. Until now, scientists have not been able to efficiently keep embryonic stem cells in their pristine stem state. The alternative that has been proposed to embryonic stem cells reprogrammed adult cells called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) have similar limitations. Though these can differentiate into many different cell types, they retain signs of "priming," commitment to specific cell lineages. A team at the Weizmann Institute of Science has now taken a large step toward removing that obstacle: They have created iPS cells that are completely "reset" to the earliest possible state and maintained them in that state. Among other things, this research may, in the future, pave the way toward the ability to grow transplant organs to order.
Since they were first created in 2006, iPS cells have been touted as an ethical and practical substitute for embryonic stem cells. They are made by inserting four genes into the genomes of such adult cells as skin cells. This turns back the developmental clock almost all the way but not completely to an embryonic-stem-cell-like state. Dr. Jacob Hanna of the Institute's Molecular Genetics Department and his team, including research students Ohad Gafni and Leehee Weinberger and researchers in the Israel National Center for Personalized Medicine, realized that inserting genes to reset the stem cells was not enough. One also has to put the cells' drive to differentiate on hold.
One hint that this might be possible was the fact that the mouse embryonic stem cells used in many lab experiments are easily preserved in their "naive," unprimed state, and they don't present some of the other problems that human ones do. Hanna and his group realized that if they could understand how the mouse embryonic stem cells manage to refrain from differentiating in the lab, they could apply it to the human versions. Through lab experiments and genetic analysis, they worked out a "treatment" for the iPS cells in the lab dish to damp down the genetic pathway for differentiation.
Next, they injected the treated iPS cells into mouse blastocysts early-stage embryos containing only a few cells. If the team's iPS cells were truly na?ve, as well as viable, they would grow together with the mouse cells. Adding a fluorescent marker to the iPS cells enabled them to trace what happened to those stem cells in the developing embryo. Fluorescent imaging after ten days (they were not grown to term) indeed revealed that the embryos contained both mouse and human tissues.
Hanna: "These cells correspond to the earliest stages of human embryonic stem cells that have been isolated. We managed to freeze what is essentially a very fleeting situation and to produce a new, na?ve, pluripotent state in stem cells." These findings may have many uses in biomedical research, specifically in gene therapy research, as well as genetic engineering. Hanna and his team plan to continue investigating the "humanized" mouse embryos, in which they hope to find ways of directing the development of human tissue into functional organs.
###
Dr. Jacob Hanna's research is supported by Pascal and Ilana Mantoux, France/Israel; the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust; the Sir Charles Clore Research Prize; the Benoziyo Endowment Fund for the Advancement of Science; Erica A. Drake and Robert Drake; the European Research Council; the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung; the Israel Cancer Research Fund; the BIRAX program; and the Israel Science Foundation (regular, BIKURA and I-CORE programs).
The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world's top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. Noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural and exact sciences, the Institute is home to scientists, students, technicians and supporting staff. Institute research efforts include the search for new ways of fighting disease and hunger, examining leading questions in mathematics and computer science, probing the physics of matter and the universe, creating novel materials and developing new strategies for protecting the environment.
Weizmann Institute news releases are posted on the World Wide Web at
http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/, and are also available at http://www.eurekalert.org/
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Yivsam Azgad
news@weizmann.ac.il
972-893-43856
Weizmann Institute of Science
One of the obstacles to employing human embryonic stem cells for medical use lies in their very promise: They are born to rapidly differentiate into other cell types. Until now, scientists have not been able to efficiently keep embryonic stem cells in their pristine stem state. The alternative that has been proposed to embryonic stem cells reprogrammed adult cells called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) have similar limitations. Though these can differentiate into many different cell types, they retain signs of "priming," commitment to specific cell lineages. A team at the Weizmann Institute of Science has now taken a large step toward removing that obstacle: They have created iPS cells that are completely "reset" to the earliest possible state and maintained them in that state. Among other things, this research may, in the future, pave the way toward the ability to grow transplant organs to order.
Since they were first created in 2006, iPS cells have been touted as an ethical and practical substitute for embryonic stem cells. They are made by inserting four genes into the genomes of such adult cells as skin cells. This turns back the developmental clock almost all the way but not completely to an embryonic-stem-cell-like state. Dr. Jacob Hanna of the Institute's Molecular Genetics Department and his team, including research students Ohad Gafni and Leehee Weinberger and researchers in the Israel National Center for Personalized Medicine, realized that inserting genes to reset the stem cells was not enough. One also has to put the cells' drive to differentiate on hold.
One hint that this might be possible was the fact that the mouse embryonic stem cells used in many lab experiments are easily preserved in their "naive," unprimed state, and they don't present some of the other problems that human ones do. Hanna and his group realized that if they could understand how the mouse embryonic stem cells manage to refrain from differentiating in the lab, they could apply it to the human versions. Through lab experiments and genetic analysis, they worked out a "treatment" for the iPS cells in the lab dish to damp down the genetic pathway for differentiation.
Next, they injected the treated iPS cells into mouse blastocysts early-stage embryos containing only a few cells. If the team's iPS cells were truly na?ve, as well as viable, they would grow together with the mouse cells. Adding a fluorescent marker to the iPS cells enabled them to trace what happened to those stem cells in the developing embryo. Fluorescent imaging after ten days (they were not grown to term) indeed revealed that the embryos contained both mouse and human tissues.
Hanna: "These cells correspond to the earliest stages of human embryonic stem cells that have been isolated. We managed to freeze what is essentially a very fleeting situation and to produce a new, na?ve, pluripotent state in stem cells." These findings may have many uses in biomedical research, specifically in gene therapy research, as well as genetic engineering. Hanna and his team plan to continue investigating the "humanized" mouse embryos, in which they hope to find ways of directing the development of human tissue into functional organs.
###
Dr. Jacob Hanna's research is supported by Pascal and Ilana Mantoux, France/Israel; the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust; the Sir Charles Clore Research Prize; the Benoziyo Endowment Fund for the Advancement of Science; Erica A. Drake and Robert Drake; the European Research Council; the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung; the Israel Cancer Research Fund; the BIRAX program; and the Israel Science Foundation (regular, BIKURA and I-CORE programs).
The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world's top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. Noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural and exact sciences, the Institute is home to scientists, students, technicians and supporting staff. Institute research efforts include the search for new ways of fighting disease and hunger, examining leading questions in mathematics and computer science, probing the physics of matter and the universe, creating novel materials and developing new strategies for protecting the environment.
Weizmann Institute news releases are posted on the World Wide Web at
http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/, and are also available at http://www.eurekalert.org/
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Sally Corinaldi
sally.corinaldi@csiro.au
61-352-275-203
CSIRO Australia
A team of international scientists has isolated a very close relative of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) from horseshoe bats in China, confirming them as the origin of the virus responsible for the 2002-3 pandemic.
The SARS-CoV pandemic killed 774 people of the 8094 people infected, a case fatality ratio of almost 10 per cent. With cases diagnosed across the world, the pandemic had an impact on international travel and trade.
The research team, led by Professor Shi Zhengli from Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and including CSIRO and Duke-NUS scientist Professor Linfa Wang, have just had their breakthrough results published in Nature.
While researchers globally have previously used genetic sequencing to demonstrate that bats are the natural reservoirs of SARS-like CoVs, this is the first time that live virus has been successfully isolated from bats to definitively confirm them as the origin of the virus.
The team successfully isolated a SARS-like CoV, named SL-CoV WIV1, directly from faecal samples of Chinese Horseshoe bats using the world renowned bat virus isolation methodology developed by scientists at CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong.
The results will help governments design more effective prevention strategies for SARS and similar epidemics.
Horseshoe bats are found around the world, including Australia and play an important ecological role. Their role in SARS-CoV transmission highlights the importance of protecting the bat's natural environment so they are not forced into highly populated urban areas in search of food.
###
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Sally Corinaldi
sally.corinaldi@csiro.au
61-352-275-203
CSIRO Australia
A team of international scientists has isolated a very close relative of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) from horseshoe bats in China, confirming them as the origin of the virus responsible for the 2002-3 pandemic.
The SARS-CoV pandemic killed 774 people of the 8094 people infected, a case fatality ratio of almost 10 per cent. With cases diagnosed across the world, the pandemic had an impact on international travel and trade.
The research team, led by Professor Shi Zhengli from Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and including CSIRO and Duke-NUS scientist Professor Linfa Wang, have just had their breakthrough results published in Nature.
While researchers globally have previously used genetic sequencing to demonstrate that bats are the natural reservoirs of SARS-like CoVs, this is the first time that live virus has been successfully isolated from bats to definitively confirm them as the origin of the virus.
The team successfully isolated a SARS-like CoV, named SL-CoV WIV1, directly from faecal samples of Chinese Horseshoe bats using the world renowned bat virus isolation methodology developed by scientists at CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong.
The results will help governments design more effective prevention strategies for SARS and similar epidemics.
Horseshoe bats are found around the world, including Australia and play an important ecological role. Their role in SARS-CoV transmission highlights the importance of protecting the bat's natural environment so they are not forced into highly populated urban areas in search of food.
###
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
A man walks by a discount electronics shop displaying Panasonic products in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Panasonic said its quarterly profit improved to 63.3 billion yen ($644 million) from a 698.6 billion yen loss the year before. Panasonic, like Sony, has benefited from weaker yen. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
A man walks by a discount electronics shop displaying Panasonic products in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Panasonic said its quarterly profit improved to 63.3 billion yen ($644 million) from a 698.6 billion yen loss the year before. Panasonic, like Sony, has benefited from weaker yen. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
A man stands by a huge advertisement board of Panasonic at a train station in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Panasonic said its quarterly profit improved to 63.3 billion yen ($644 million) from a 698.6 billion yen loss the year before. Panasonic, like Sony, has benefited from weaker yen. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
TOKYO (AP) — The "White House Down" flop added to earnings woes at Sony Corp. in the latest quarter, dragging the entertainment and electronics giant to a 19.3 billion yen ($196 million) loss.
The action movie's lackluster box office, especially compared with last year's releases of "21 Jump Street" and "The Amazing Spider Man," contributed to a 17.8 billion yen ($181 million) operating loss for Sony's pictures division, the company said Thursday.
The company slashed its profit forecast for the fiscal year ending in March to 30 billion yen from 50 billion yen, reflecting deep-seated problems in its electronics business, televisions in particular, and the disappointing performance at Sony Pictures.
"White House Down" starred Jamie Foxx as President of the United States and Channing Tatum as a Capitol police officer who ends up as the president's impromptu bodyguard while touring the executive residence with his daughter just as a band of rogue former soldiers and government employees attack. Milder in its violence, it appeared to suffer from comparisons with "Olympus Has Fallen," a slightly earlier release featuring a former North Korean terrorist who takes the president hostage.
Sony's sales for the July-September quarter rose 10.6 percent from a year earlier to 1.78 trillion yen ($18.1 billion), thanks mainly to the favorable impact of the yen's decline against the U.S. dollar. Adjusted for the 20 percent drop in the value of the yen, revenue fell 9 percent.
The company's sales of digital cameras and video cameras fell while its television, music and smartphone businesses improved. Sales of its Xperia Z smartphone helped and are expected to remain strong, the company said.
Although sales of televisions and personal computers improved slightly from earlier in the year, they were lower than the same quarter of 2012.
"The electronics business is declining beyond expectations" due to shrinking sales of televisions and other audio-visual equipment, along with slowing growth in major emerging markets such as China, the company said in its presentation.
"Sony expects its business environment to continue to be severe in the second half of the fiscal year," it said.
Sony said it is striving to improve profitability at its troubled television division by focusing on sales of higher cost products such as its 4K LCD TVs.
The company, which has suffered declining fortunes for several years, is also gearing up for the launch of its PlayStation 4 game machine.
But it still faces fierce competition from Apple Inc's iPad and iPhone as well as from powerful South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co.
Sony sank to record losses for the fiscal year ended March 2012, reporting the worst result in the company's six decade history.
Still, its loss for April to September narrowed to 15.8 billion yen ($161 million) from 40 billion yen in the first half of the previous fiscal year.
Rival Panasonic, meanwhile, said its quarterly profit improved to 63.3 billion yen ($644 million) from a 698.6 billion yen loss the year before.
Panasonic, like Sony, has benefited from weaker yen. While its domestic sales fell 4 percent, sales overseas climbed 11 percent. Total revenue of 1.88 trillion yen ($19.1 billion) was up 3 percent from a year earlier after taking a hit from the sale of Sanyo businesses carried out in the current fiscal year.
Panasonic raised its sales forecast to 7.4 trillion yen ($75.3 billion) and doubled its profit forecast for the fiscal year to 100 billion yen ($1 billion).
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-10-31-Japan-Earns-Sony/id-bc6751b9c6eb49a5a6b78c1d9f721663PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Yivsam Azgad
news@weizmann.ac.il
972-893-43856
Weizmann Institute of Science
One of the obstacles to employing human embryonic stem cells for medical use lies in their very promise: They are born to rapidly differentiate into other cell types. Until now, scientists have not been able to efficiently keep embryonic stem cells in their pristine stem state. The alternative that has been proposed to embryonic stem cells reprogrammed adult cells called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) have similar limitations. Though these can differentiate into many different cell types, they retain signs of "priming," commitment to specific cell lineages. A team at the Weizmann Institute of Science has now taken a large step toward removing that obstacle: They have created iPS cells that are completely "reset" to the earliest possible state and maintained them in that state. Among other things, this research may, in the future, pave the way toward the ability to grow transplant organs to order.
Since they were first created in 2006, iPS cells have been touted as an ethical and practical substitute for embryonic stem cells. They are made by inserting four genes into the genomes of such adult cells as skin cells. This turns back the developmental clock almost all the way but not completely to an embryonic-stem-cell-like state. Dr. Jacob Hanna of the Institute's Molecular Genetics Department and his team, including research students Ohad Gafni and Leehee Weinberger and researchers in the Israel National Center for Personalized Medicine, realized that inserting genes to reset the stem cells was not enough. One also has to put the cells' drive to differentiate on hold.
One hint that this might be possible was the fact that the mouse embryonic stem cells used in many lab experiments are easily preserved in their "naive," unprimed state, and they don't present some of the other problems that human ones do. Hanna and his group realized that if they could understand how the mouse embryonic stem cells manage to refrain from differentiating in the lab, they could apply it to the human versions. Through lab experiments and genetic analysis, they worked out a "treatment" for the iPS cells in the lab dish to damp down the genetic pathway for differentiation.
Next, they injected the treated iPS cells into mouse blastocysts early-stage embryos containing only a few cells. If the team's iPS cells were truly na?ve, as well as viable, they would grow together with the mouse cells. Adding a fluorescent marker to the iPS cells enabled them to trace what happened to those stem cells in the developing embryo. Fluorescent imaging after ten days (they were not grown to term) indeed revealed that the embryos contained both mouse and human tissues.
Hanna: "These cells correspond to the earliest stages of human embryonic stem cells that have been isolated. We managed to freeze what is essentially a very fleeting situation and to produce a new, na?ve, pluripotent state in stem cells." These findings may have many uses in biomedical research, specifically in gene therapy research, as well as genetic engineering. Hanna and his team plan to continue investigating the "humanized" mouse embryos, in which they hope to find ways of directing the development of human tissue into functional organs.
###
Dr. Jacob Hanna's research is supported by Pascal and Ilana Mantoux, France/Israel; the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust; the Sir Charles Clore Research Prize; the Benoziyo Endowment Fund for the Advancement of Science; Erica A. Drake and Robert Drake; the European Research Council; the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung; the Israel Cancer Research Fund; the BIRAX program; and the Israel Science Foundation (regular, BIKURA and I-CORE programs).
The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world's top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. Noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural and exact sciences, the Institute is home to scientists, students, technicians and supporting staff. Institute research efforts include the search for new ways of fighting disease and hunger, examining leading questions in mathematics and computer science, probing the physics of matter and the universe, creating novel materials and developing new strategies for protecting the environment.
Weizmann Institute news releases are posted on the World Wide Web at
http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/, and are also available at http://www.eurekalert.org/
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Yivsam Azgad
news@weizmann.ac.il
972-893-43856
Weizmann Institute of Science
One of the obstacles to employing human embryonic stem cells for medical use lies in their very promise: They are born to rapidly differentiate into other cell types. Until now, scientists have not been able to efficiently keep embryonic stem cells in their pristine stem state. The alternative that has been proposed to embryonic stem cells reprogrammed adult cells called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) have similar limitations. Though these can differentiate into many different cell types, they retain signs of "priming," commitment to specific cell lineages. A team at the Weizmann Institute of Science has now taken a large step toward removing that obstacle: They have created iPS cells that are completely "reset" to the earliest possible state and maintained them in that state. Among other things, this research may, in the future, pave the way toward the ability to grow transplant organs to order.
Since they were first created in 2006, iPS cells have been touted as an ethical and practical substitute for embryonic stem cells. They are made by inserting four genes into the genomes of such adult cells as skin cells. This turns back the developmental clock almost all the way but not completely to an embryonic-stem-cell-like state. Dr. Jacob Hanna of the Institute's Molecular Genetics Department and his team, including research students Ohad Gafni and Leehee Weinberger and researchers in the Israel National Center for Personalized Medicine, realized that inserting genes to reset the stem cells was not enough. One also has to put the cells' drive to differentiate on hold.
One hint that this might be possible was the fact that the mouse embryonic stem cells used in many lab experiments are easily preserved in their "naive," unprimed state, and they don't present some of the other problems that human ones do. Hanna and his group realized that if they could understand how the mouse embryonic stem cells manage to refrain from differentiating in the lab, they could apply it to the human versions. Through lab experiments and genetic analysis, they worked out a "treatment" for the iPS cells in the lab dish to damp down the genetic pathway for differentiation.
Next, they injected the treated iPS cells into mouse blastocysts early-stage embryos containing only a few cells. If the team's iPS cells were truly na?ve, as well as viable, they would grow together with the mouse cells. Adding a fluorescent marker to the iPS cells enabled them to trace what happened to those stem cells in the developing embryo. Fluorescent imaging after ten days (they were not grown to term) indeed revealed that the embryos contained both mouse and human tissues.
Hanna: "These cells correspond to the earliest stages of human embryonic stem cells that have been isolated. We managed to freeze what is essentially a very fleeting situation and to produce a new, na?ve, pluripotent state in stem cells." These findings may have many uses in biomedical research, specifically in gene therapy research, as well as genetic engineering. Hanna and his team plan to continue investigating the "humanized" mouse embryos, in which they hope to find ways of directing the development of human tissue into functional organs.
###
Dr. Jacob Hanna's research is supported by Pascal and Ilana Mantoux, France/Israel; the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust; the Sir Charles Clore Research Prize; the Benoziyo Endowment Fund for the Advancement of Science; Erica A. Drake and Robert Drake; the European Research Council; the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung; the Israel Cancer Research Fund; the BIRAX program; and the Israel Science Foundation (regular, BIKURA and I-CORE programs).
The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world's top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. Noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural and exact sciences, the Institute is home to scientists, students, technicians and supporting staff. Institute research efforts include the search for new ways of fighting disease and hunger, examining leading questions in mathematics and computer science, probing the physics of matter and the universe, creating novel materials and developing new strategies for protecting the environment.
Weizmann Institute news releases are posted on the World Wide Web at
http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/, and are also available at http://www.eurekalert.org/
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Allison Perry
allison.perry@uky.edu
859-323-2399
University of Kentucky
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 30, 2013) A new study led by the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center Assistant Director for Research Nathan Vanderford cites a combination of factors that prevent academic-based cancer research faculty from ultimately commercializing their work.
According to the Association of University Technology Managers, academic institutions have been collectively generating more than $2 billion in commercialization income over the last several years. Despite this significant commercialization activity, studies have shown that academic institutions face challenges to commercializing their innovations. Identifying and adjusting for these challenges can further boost academic-based research commercialization, thus having significant benefits for universities and consumers.
Published in PLOS ONE, Vanderford's study utilized an electronic survey sent to faculty at the University of Kentucky with questions addressing general barriers inhibiting cancer research commercialization and whether mitigation of the barriers could potentially enhance faculty engagement in commercialization activities.
Through the survey, faculty cited a number of barriers to moving research products into the market, including the expense and time involved, the lack of infrastructure for the process, and the lack of industry partnerships.
Additionally, survey respondents noted that alleviating these factors as well as revising university policies/procedures, risk mitigation, more emphases on commercialization by academia research field, and increased information on how to commercialize could potentially increase commercialization activity. Further statistical analysis indicated that a significant increase in commercialization activity would likely only occur when multiple barriers were mitigated.
"This study suggests that the barriers inhibiting cancer research commercialization at UK are, by in large, no different than the barriers that prevent commercialization at any academic institution," Vanderford said. "I believe we have to understand these challenges and devise ways to overcome them to avoid situations where important innovations sit dormant in universities. It would be a shame for a revolutionarily effective cancer treatment to never make it to patients because the barriers to the commercialization process prevent it from moving outside the walls of academia."
Though the UK study was focused on a single population of researchers, Vanderford notes that his study fits into a much broader international discussion on what role universities should play in commercializing innovation that is derived from academic-based research. The dissenting argument is that universities should focus on the pursuit of general, basic knowledge versus being influenced by real or potential consumer-driven market demands.
###
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Allison Perry
allison.perry@uky.edu
859-323-2399
University of Kentucky
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 30, 2013) A new study led by the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center Assistant Director for Research Nathan Vanderford cites a combination of factors that prevent academic-based cancer research faculty from ultimately commercializing their work.
According to the Association of University Technology Managers, academic institutions have been collectively generating more than $2 billion in commercialization income over the last several years. Despite this significant commercialization activity, studies have shown that academic institutions face challenges to commercializing their innovations. Identifying and adjusting for these challenges can further boost academic-based research commercialization, thus having significant benefits for universities and consumers.
Published in PLOS ONE, Vanderford's study utilized an electronic survey sent to faculty at the University of Kentucky with questions addressing general barriers inhibiting cancer research commercialization and whether mitigation of the barriers could potentially enhance faculty engagement in commercialization activities.
Through the survey, faculty cited a number of barriers to moving research products into the market, including the expense and time involved, the lack of infrastructure for the process, and the lack of industry partnerships.
Additionally, survey respondents noted that alleviating these factors as well as revising university policies/procedures, risk mitigation, more emphases on commercialization by academia research field, and increased information on how to commercialize could potentially increase commercialization activity. Further statistical analysis indicated that a significant increase in commercialization activity would likely only occur when multiple barriers were mitigated.
"This study suggests that the barriers inhibiting cancer research commercialization at UK are, by in large, no different than the barriers that prevent commercialization at any academic institution," Vanderford said. "I believe we have to understand these challenges and devise ways to overcome them to avoid situations where important innovations sit dormant in universities. It would be a shame for a revolutionarily effective cancer treatment to never make it to patients because the barriers to the commercialization process prevent it from moving outside the walls of academia."
Though the UK study was focused on a single population of researchers, Vanderford notes that his study fits into a much broader international discussion on what role universities should play in commercializing innovation that is derived from academic-based research. The dissenting argument is that universities should focus on the pursuit of general, basic knowledge versus being influenced by real or potential consumer-driven market demands.
###
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
We might finally have a hint of what Google spent its money on when it acquired Motorola Mobility: a really customizable line of smartphones.
How customizable? Think Legos.
Motorola just announced a new initiative called Project Ara, which the company describes as a "free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones." The concept aims to do for Android hardware what Android has done for the smartphone OS environment: make the phone itself a modular construction where pieces can be added, removed, swapped out, or upgraded at will.
Another project in this same vein, Phonebloks, must have caught Motorola's attention, because it contacted the creator of that concept, Dave Hakkens, and is working with him attract to Project Ara the attention of folks interested in his project.
Project Ara's approach involves two types of components, a basic skeleton (what Motorola calls an "endo," short for "endoskeleton") and modules that snap into the endo. The modules could theoretically be anything from multiple batteries to additional displays or keyboards. It clearly goes far beyond the ho-hum color-and-finish customization that Motorola offered with the Moto X.
Tough to make...
It doesn't take an EE degree to grok the technical challenges involved in making something this deliberately open-ended. The basic idea of having components that snap into a backplane has been a mainstay of computing for decades, but it's going to be very tough sledding indeed to make it work well on the scale needed for a smartphone. It may not be possible to make the resulting product anywhere as thin as the phones most people are accustomed to, if only because thinness also means fragility.
Motorola's outreach for this project is spanning multiple domains. The company is inviting people worldwide to become what it calls "Ara Scouts," folks who can work as a street team for the project and get the word out to people -- including those who don't already have a smartphone "or a phone at all." This implies Motorola is aiming at markets that haven't had smartphone penetration yet and where the "Nokia brick" form factor is still the standard.
Motorola has actually been beating the drum for this project longer than most people realize. Back in March, Motorola adviser Guy Kawasaki posted on Google+ how great it would be if a phone could be customized like a Porsche Exclusive. To a degree, we already do this -- via add-on Bluetooth-connected hardware, cases, and software -- but Motorola's talking about a level of customization that might be intimidating to most users.
... and maybe just as tough to market
Part of the popularity of the iPhone lies in its simplicity. Apple keeps few iterations of the product on the market at any given time, because it knows after a certain point a wider range of choices becomes counterproductive (aka the "paradox of choice"). Project Ara might face major hurdles with regular users for the same reason: Do most people really want to be forced to make that many choices about the construction of their phone?
Maybe not out of the gate. One possible scenario is that users could purchase one of a number of basic pre-assembled Ara models, then enjoy the freedom to customize it later -- and in the long run enjoy more customization and more longevity of the product than most any Apple user.
Project Ara might never displace Apple, the way Android hasn't really displaced Apple but instead consolidated the respective niches for each product family. But Ara would be one heck of an alternative -- and not just to Apple, but to the phone world as we currently know it.
This story, "Motorola's new smartphone: Digital Legos," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.
