Monthly Archives: August 2012

Nutrition shines as profits and sales slide at recession-hit DSM

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Royal DSM paid tribute to its nutrition division which held steady as its sales and profits dipped for the second quarter and first half of the financial year, as recessed global economies took their toll on bottom lines.

Despite the, challenging macro-economic environment spoken of by Feike Sijbesma, CEO/Chairman of the DSM Managing Board, the companys nutrition portfolio (which includes animal feed) managed a 21m growth in operating profits year-on-year from 366m in H1 2011, to 387m this year.

For the quarter, operating profits inched up from 193m in Q2 2011, to 195m, but net sales jumped almost 10% from 1637m to 1799m

But across the company the figures were less rosy, with net sales down 2% from 4644m to 4558 for the half and EBITDA profits down 14% (from 693m to 596m).

Polymer intermediates performed particularly poorly with operating profits almost halving from 192m to 99m for the half compared to the previous year. Performance materials dropped from 173m to 156m EBITDA while pharma improved from 12m to 22m.

The company noted the economic slowdown was not restricted to the developed world, with China not immune to the broader economic situation, and increased price competition there.

Profit improvement programme

Responding to the figures, DSM said it was implementing measures that would see 125m in cost savings by 2014, including facility rationalisation, shaving a 1000 staff from its 22,000+ global workforce and better synergies from recent acquisitions including omega-3 players, Ocean Nutrition Canada and Martek BioSciences.

The cross-selling of Martek products through the DSM global sales network resulted in double digit growth of Nutritional Lipids in infant nutrition outside USA, the company said.

It also hoped to pull back a further 25-30m in profit and margin improvements.

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Nutrition shines as profits and sales slide at recession-hit DSM

Monterey police rely more on 'touch DNA' to find suspects

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Armed with a Supreme Court ruling and a DNA profile in 2010, Monterey police obtained the county's first "John Doe" arrest warrant, identifying a commercial burglary suspect whose name and face were unknown.

The effort is about to pay off. Monterey police Lt. Leslie Sonne said the department will soon make an arrest it believes will clear 14 other commercial burglaries from Palo Alto to Beverly Hills where police collected the same DNA profile.

Monterey police Sgt. Bill Clark said the case exemplifies how advances in DNA testing and the availability of warrants based solely on a suspect's genetic profile are changing the way detectives process property crime scenes that used to get only a dusting for fingerprints.

DNA analysis has come a long way since the days when criminalists needed a large blood stain to get a profile. Since 2005, scientists have been able to isolate DNA swabbed from surfaces like windowsills and cellphones that were merely touched by suspects, hence the common reference "touch DNA."

"When we started years and years ago, we needed a blood stain the size of penny to get any results," said Meghan Kinney, a criminalist with the Department of Justice's lab in Watsonville. "Now we don't even need to be able to see it to get a DNA type from it."

And if police can convince a judge that DNA from a crime scene was likely left by the perpetrator, they can get a John Doe warrant for that genetic profile. The significance: The warrant stops the

Objections

No-name warrants have been used in sexual assault cases, where semen often provides an easy DNA profile, since the 1990s. But it was not until January 2010 that the state Supreme Court upheld the practice.

Now, the possibility of "tolling" the legal filing deadline with the simple swipe of a surface has investigators arming themselves with cotton swabs like never before.

The legal tool is not without controversy. The Supreme Court's ruling was split 5-2. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Carlos Moreno said the warrants do not authorize the arrest of any individual and are being used as a mere placeholder to circumvent the statute of limitations until the named perpetrator can be identified and found.

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Monterey police rely more on 'touch DNA' to find suspects

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About 4.5 Million Funding for Group Leaders at the MPIB

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10.08.2012 - (idw) Max-Planck-Institut fr Biochemie

The European Research Council (ERC) encourages excellent basic research in Europe in order to promote visionary projects and open up new interdisciplinary science areas. Three young group leaders of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) in Martinsried near Munich succeeded in obtaining one of the coveted ERC Starting Grants. Spread over a period of five years, Esben Lorentzen, Andreas Pichlmair and Frank Schnorrer will receive 1.5 million each for their research projects. Due to their scientific achievements until now they were the winners against several thousand competitors. Delivery Service for Cilia Tiny hair-like structures (cilia) are found on the surface of most cells in the body, where they serve to move the cell, process external signals and coordinate the correct arrangement of the inner organs during development of the organism. To do this, cilia have to be supplied with the right building blocks. This is taken over by a complex transport system which is called intraflagellar transport (IFT). Defects in the IFT can lead to severe physical and mental disorders. Together with his research group Structural Biology of Cilia, Esben Lorentzen investigates how the system works. Using X-ray crystallography, the scientists could already decipher the structure of a subunit of the IFT complex, and others shall follow. These results could help avoid mistakes in the composition of the cilia and thus prevent the development of diseases.

Targeting Viruses When viruses enter our body across our mucosa, the immune system reacts promptly. Immune cells recognize the pathogens via signal molecules on the cells surface and initiate the appropriate maneuver. These molecular sensors for viruses are the research focus of Andreas Pichlmair and his research group Innate Immunity. If the viruses are successful and enter the cell, the pathogens take command and make the cellular metabolism work for them. It is still not known in detail how viruses alter the genetic activity and the protein production of the infected cells. To identify modified proteins and elucidate their importance for viral replication, Andreas Pichlmair and his colleagues utilize mass spectrometry among other methods.

Flying Power Packs The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster possesses different kinds of muscles and therefore can perform various behaviors such as crawling, running and, of course, flying. With the help of targeted gene modifications, the scientists in Frank Schnorrers research group Muscle Dynamics investigate how muscles of the fruit fly develop at the right place in the body and how the contractile machinery within the muscles is assembled properly. By performing more than 25,000 flight tests, the scientists identified the essential switch gene Spalt, which enables Drosophila to fly. It initiates the development of the special flight muscles, which can contract 200 times per second. Spalt and its related genes are not only important for the development of the flight muscles in insects, but probably also for the proper functioning of human heart muscles. In the future, Frank Schnorrer wants to understand how flight muscles achieve their special properties through the influence of Spalt.

Contact Dr. Esben Lorentzen Structural Biology of Cilia Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry Am Klopferspitz 18 82152 Martinsried E-Mail: lorentze@biochem.mpg.de http://www.biochem.mpg.de/lorentzen

Dr. Andreas Pichlmair Innate Immunity Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry Am Klopferspitz 18 82152 Martinsried E-Mail: apichl@biochem.mpg.de http://www.biochem.mpg.de/pichlmair

Dr. Frank Schnorrer Muscle Dynamics Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry Am Klopferspitz 18 82152 Martinsried E-Mail: schnorrer@biochem.mpg.de http://www.biochem.mpg.de/schnorrer

Anja Konschak Public Relations Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry Am Klopferspitz 18 82152 Martinsried Tel. +49 89 8578-2824 E-Mail: konschak@biochem.mpg.de http://www.biochem.mpg.de function fbs_click() {u=location.href;t=document.title;window.open('http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(u)+'&t='+encodeURIComponent(t),'sharer','toolbar=0,status=0,width=626,height=436');return false;} html .fb_share_link { padding:2px 0 0 20px; height:16px; background:url(http://www.eugenesis.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/29c1d78260e_icon.gif.gif?6:26981) no-repeat top left; } Share on Facebook Weitere Informationen: http://www.biochem.mpg.de/en/news - New Press Releases of the MPI of Biochemistry http://erc.europa.eu/ - Website of the European Research Council (ERC) Anhang Press Release (PDF)

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About 4.5 Million Funding for Group Leaders at the MPIB

NYPD unveils super computer

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Published: Aug. 9, 2012 at 5:09 PM

NEW YORK, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- The New York City Police Department unveiled a super computer system created to help police better track criminals, officials said.

The system, called the Domain Awareness System and unveiled Wednesday, was developed jointly by the NYPD and Microsoft Corp., the New York Daily News reported.

"We're not your mom-and-pop police department anymore," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "We are in the next century. We are leading the pack."

Police officers will have access to the city's more than 3,000 street cameras and all of the department's databases through the one system, said NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

"For years, we've been stovepiped as far as databases are concerned," Kelly said. "Now, everything that we have about an incident, an event, an individual comes together on that workbench, so it's one-stop shopping for investigators."

Because the police department played a key role in developing the system, should Microsoft sell it to other cities across the country, the NYPD will get 30 percent of the proceeds, the New York Post reported.

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NYPD unveils super computer

How the DIY Space Capsule Test Could Fail

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In 1 day and 14 hours we will launch our space capsule Tycho Deep Space. I hope you will follow this test live here on Wired.com. Stay tuned!

In space flight, only one thing is certain: no matter the result, it always looks cool!

Space flightor rocketry is a special discipline where all your long hours of work are put to a final test of complete destruction or success. This test is no different. We intend to launch the 500 kg capsule using the Launch Escape System, an 80 kN engine capable of pulling the capsule to a height of approx. 1.4 km, releasing it for drogue and main parachute deployment and finally a splashdown on water.

As the Flight Director I have the privilege of not only controlling the operation at sea but also operating all flight events. So, I may also be the cause of complete failure if I manage to mess up the flight events. The factor of human error is huge in this mission.

LES engine assembled at Space Port Nexoe. Image: Kristian von Bengtson

The flight events are as follows: - LES engine ignition (launch) - LES system separation at apogee, estimated by FIDO or flight visual - Capsule drogue deployment - Capsule drogue release and main chute deployment - Main chute release after splash down - Capsule uprighting system

Nominal flight events. Image: Kristian von Bengtson

All flight events are vital for the result of this operation. And many questions to be answered on launch day.

Trajectory

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NASA Morpheus Lander Crashes During Test Flight

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For a few moments today, NASA forgot about the successful landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars, and focused on the Morpheus lander, which unfortunately caught fire and crashed this morning.

In a tweet, NASA's Kennedy Space Center announced that the prototype experienced a failure during its first free-flight test today, but no one was hurt in the explosion.

The unmanned experimental and "green" device barely left the launch pad around 12:40 p.m. today before experiencing a hardware component failure, and crashing back to the ground, according to NASA officials.

Engineers are looking into the test data, the space center said in a statement, which explained that "failures such as these" were anticipated and are actually part of the development process.

"What we learn from these tests will help us build the best possible system in the future," NASA said.

According to the agency's official Project Morpheus website, the spacecraft is a vertical test bed vehicle that demonstrates a new green propellant propulsion system, as well as autonomous landing and hazard-detection technology.

"The Morpheus Project represents not only a vehicle to advance technologies, but also an opportunity to try out 'lean development' engineering practices," the site said.

Manufactured and assembled at NASA's Johnson Space Center, the Morpheus can carry 1,100 pounds of cargo to the moon, perhaps transporting a humanoid robot, a small rover, or a small laboratory to convert moon dust into oxygen.

In advance of today's test flight, the liquid-oxygen and methane-propelled lander had been tested in a series of tether flights, contributing to the project's overall reported cost of about $7 million in the last two and a half years, according to Space.com.

Previously, the SUV-sized Morpheus sparked a grass fire at the Johnson Space Center in Houston during a 2011 tethered test flight, Space.com reported. No one was hurt.

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NASA Morpheus Lander Crashes During Test Flight

NASA's Morpheus lander in fiery crash at Cape Canaveral

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MIAMI (Reuters) - NASA'S Project Morpheus lander, an experimental vehicle designed with a view toward future U.S. space missions beyond Earth's orbit, crashed and burst into flames at the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida on Thursday. During a so-called autonomous free-flight test, NASA said the vehicle lifted off the ground successfully but "then experienced a hardware component failure ...

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NASA's Morpheus lander in fiery crash at Cape Canaveral

Hy-Power Nano Inc. names Dr. Hadi Mahabadi as Chief Operating Officer

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Former Xerox executive pioneered nanotechnology innovation and commercialization

BRAMPTON, ON, Aug. 9, 2012 /CNW/ - Hy-Power Nano Inc. has named Dr. Hadi Mahabadi as Chief Operating Officer after he became intrigued with the nanotechnology commercialization work taking place at the company.

"I see tremendous potential in the technology under development here, building made-in-Canada solutions with nanotechnology that could address customer needs around the world," says Dr. Mahabadi. "It's exciting to be able to utilize my expertise and contribute to the advancement of this important technology through a small, nimble company with great future potential."

Dr. Mahabadi, an innovation and commercialization leader, recently received an Order of Canada in June 2012 for his internationally recognized innovations in the field of polymer science and his commitment to promoting scientific development in Canada.

Previously, Dr. Mahabadi was Vice President and Director of the Xerox Research Centre of Canada, where he spearheaded many innovations and commercialized technologies. His expertise complements Hy-Power Nano's focus to combine proven ingenuity in the coatings sector, where its parent company operates, with nano-enabled innovation to bring exceptional products to market.

"Dr. Hadi Mahabadi offered tremendous insights when he joined our board in February 2012 and also served as a consultant," says Joseph Grzyb, CEO of Hy-Power Nano Inc. "We quickly realized he could play a more active role in the company by becoming COO. He's a great addition to the Hy-Power Nano team."

Dr. Mahabadi spent 30 years with Xerox, rising to the company's top Canadian research position. He retired from Xerox in Sept 2011 with more than 100 published scientific papers and over 200 US/international patents to his name; having received the Robert F. Reed Technology Medal (the Printing Industries of America's highest honour), two Xerox President Awards (the corporation's highest honour for individual achievement) and the University of Waterloo's Engineering Alumni's Achievement Medal. He is a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada, a Fellow of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Mahabadi also is President of CanWin Consulting Inc, which provides a range of services for innovation to start-up and other small and medium enterprises, such as Hy-Power Nano, in Canada.

About Hy-Power Nano Inc.

Hy-Power Nano Inc. (www.hy-powernano.com) of Brampton, ON, is a subsidiary of Hy-Power Coatings Limited, Southern Ontario's premier coatings service provider with a 45-year track record of innovation and application of industrial coatings. Hy-Power Nano is developing "next generation" nanocoating products that can deliver exceptional solar blocking and thermal insulation benefits. Hy-Power has attracted the interest of a number of commercial partners seeking the use of nano-enabled coatings and paints to enhance the energy efficiency of their products and the growing demand for high quality nano oxides used as transparent conductors to enable touch screen functionality.

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Hy-Power Nano Inc. names Dr. Hadi Mahabadi as Chief Operating Officer

BG Medicine’s net loss widens

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BG Medicine Inc. reported a wider net loss in the second quarter of $6.4 million the Waltham company cited higher costs and it withdrew an application to the Food and Drug Administration for approval for a diagnostic test. The company said it could not meet an Aug. 15 FDA deadline to supply more information about its CardioScore test but plans to resubmit the application for regulatory approval. CardioScore is its lead product candidate a blood test for atherothrombotic cardiovascular disease, commonly known as vulnerable plaque.

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BG Medicine’s net loss widens

Liberty Media and Starz to become separate companies

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Liberty Media Corp., a Centennial-based holding company, announced Wednesday that it will spin off its Starz cable channels into a separate company, immediately stirring questions about the company's future in the Denver area.

The separation should be completed by the end of the year, creating a new, publicly held company.

"I think in this market, people always like pure plays," said Matt Harrigan, a Denver-based analyst for Wunderlich Securities. "It just makes sense to keep them different and separate."

The separation is meant to accomplish several goals, including greater clarity for investors regarding the business operations of Starz, improving its capital structure, and creating two "currencies" that can be used for acquisitions, said Greg Maffei, president and chief executive of Liberty.

Seeking to quell rumors of a major shift toward Los Angeles, Starz told The Denver Post that the split will not affect its operations at the Denver location.

Maffei also hopes that this move will produce greater liquidity for Liberty Media as it attempts to buy up more stock in the satellite radio broadcaster SiriusXM and the events promoter Live Nation, further increasing ownership in those companies.

Liberty Media expects the spinoff to be tax-free for its stakeholders.

Starz will consist of 100 percent of Starz LLC, about $1.5 billion in debt, and a yet-to-be determined amount of cash.

Chris Albrecht, currently the CEO of Starz LLC, will remain in his position.

"I think they're very committed to Chris Albrecht and what he can do," Harrigan said.

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Liberty Media and Starz to become separate companies

Robert Porter seeking ‘Libertarian’ line in 109th Assembly District

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Porter, an Albany Republican, is now circulating petitions in a bid to get on the Libertarian ticket.

The catch is: There is noLibertarianParty line on the ballot because the party fell just short of the 50,000 votes needed in the 2010 gubernatorial race to secure a spot on the ballot.

As a result, Porter and others seeking to carry the Libertarian flag in November have to get on the ballot via independent nominating petitions, which requires he secure 1,500 signatures three times the number of GOP signatures he would have needed.

The upside is that they need not be members of any specific party, they only need to be registered to vote and have not signed another candidates petition. Hes got until Aug. 21 to file them.

Incidentally, Porter said he attended Guilderland High School with Warren Redlich, the former GuilderlandTown Board member who ran for governor as a Libertarian in 2010 before moving to Florida.

He said he still plans to make the prospect of a legislative pay raise one of his central issues.

I did 21 years in the Marine Corps, and I think if I added up all my raises over those years they wouldnt equal 25 percent, Porter said of chatter that lawmakers will look to bump their pay from $79,000 to $100,000. Its almost criminal to think they should get a pay raise the way the economy is.

If he makes the ballot, Porter will face off against the winner of a six-way Democratic primary as well as Guilderland Republican Ted Danz and Conservative Party member Joseph Sullivan.

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Robert Porter seeking ‘Libertarian’ line in 109th Assembly District

Fitch Rates $159MM Virgin Islands Matching Fund Bonds 'BBB+'; Outlook Stable

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NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Fitch Ratings assigns 'BBB+' ratings to the following revenue bonds of the Virgin Islands Public Finance Authority (VIPFA):

--$136.365 million revenue bonds (Virgin Islands matching fund loan note), series 2012A (Working Capital);

--$22.73 million revenue bonds (Virgin Islands matching fund loan note), series 2012B (Capital Projects).

The bonds are expected to be privately placed with investors with pricing scheduled for Aug. 21 and Aug. 22, 2012. The bonds are expected to close on Aug. 29, 2012.

In addition, Fitch affirms the following VIPFA revenue bond ratings:

--$707.5 million revenue bonds (Virgin Islands matching fund loan note) senior lien at 'BBB+';

--$183.71 million revenue bonds (Virgin Islands matching fund loan note) subordinate lien at 'BBB';

--$250 million subordinated revenue bonds (Virgin Islands matching fund loan note-Diageo project) series 2009A at 'BBB';

--$38.1 million subordinated revenue bonds (Virgin Islands matching fund loan note-Cruzan project) series 2009A at 'BBB'.

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Fitch Rates $159MM Virgin Islands Matching Fund Bonds 'BBB+'; Outlook Stable