Health-care IT firm Castlight soars 139% after IPO

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"It could be the best or worst of both worlds," said Rich Peterson, director of global markets intelligence at S&P Capital IQ."In terms of valuation, it could be one thing; in terms of potential, it could be another."

Hot Health-Care IPOs

Well over half of the new companies that have gone public in 2014 have been biotech firmsnearly two dozen, according to analysts at IPO research firm Renaissance Capital.

"This period has been the most active, profitable and highest-volume period we've ever seen for biotech in the last 20 years," said Kathleen Smith, chairwoman and co-founder of Renaissance Capital. "This is quite a wide-open window for biotech."

(Read more: Insurers scope out Obamacare enrollees)

Last year was also a strong period for biotech IPO activity, fueled by positive factors that continue to the drive health-care stocks, including a favorable regulatory environment for firms developing drugs for rare diseases and strong merger activity in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors. As a result, the sector has outperformed the overall market.

"You have the S&P 500 health-care index up about 7.8 percent," said Peterson. "In terms of institutions, there's probably a demand for biotech and health-care offerings."

Strong returns have also helped drive interest. On average, the biotech IPOs have gained over 50 percent from their offering prices.

But Smith cautions that like Castlight, many of the firms going public have no earnings, and many retain large insider ownership after their debuts.

"Most of them are getting done because the venture capitalists and investors are buying their shares at the time of the IPO," she said. "Investors are looking at it as a sign of commitment, but that means that the float is low."

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Health-care IT firm Castlight soars 139% after IPO

Don't upload health care data to Google cloud, UK groups say

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Using Googles cloud services to process health care records is a serious violation of the U.K.s data protection act, privacy groups said in a complaint filed with the countrys data protection authority.

U.K. privacy groups medConfidential, Big Brother Watch and the Foundation for Information Policy Research filed the complaint with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) on Thursday, following recent disclosures that the firm PA Consulting had obtained medical data and uploaded it to Googles cloud for analysis.

In 2011, the predecessor to the U.Ks Health & Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) entered into an agreement to share the Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) patient database with PA Consulting, according to the information center.

Hospital Episode Statistics processes over 125 million admitted patient, outpatient and accident and emergency records each year, according to the information center.

Each HES record generally contains a broad range of information about individual patients, such as age group, gender and ethnicity, diagnostic and treatment codes, and information about where the patient was treated and lives. By default HES data also contain the patients postcode and date of birth, which in combination are enough to personally identify about 98 percent of patients, the groups said in the complaint.

The data was pseudonymized and used in an analytics project, PA Consulting said in a news release.

However, to analyze the vast trove of patient data, PA Consulting uploaded the data to Google and processed it via Googles analytics service BigQuery, a cloud service that allows interactive analysis of large data sets. That never should have happened, the groups said in their complaint.

We do not believe that population-scale data sets of patient data should be uploaded to any cloud provider unless certain rigorous conditions have been met, said Phil Booth, coordinator of medConfidential, via email Friday.

Such sensitive data should never be uploaded to a provider outside the jurisdiction of the U.K. and EU Data Protection authorities and EU human rights framework. If such an action isnt unlawful, it should be, he added.

According to PA Consulting, the dataset does not contain information that can be linked to specific individuals and is held securely in the cloud in accordance with conditions specified and approved by HSCIC. Access to the dataset is also tightly controlled and restricted to a project team of up to 12 people, they said.

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Don't upload health care data to Google cloud, UK groups say

Bioscientists Write Languages to Design Synthetic Living Systems

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Newswise Researchers at Virginia Tech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have used a computer-aided design tool to create genetic languages to guide the design of biological systems.

Known as GenoCAD, the open-source software was developed by researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech to help synthetic biologists capture biological rules to engineer organisms that produce useful products or health-care solutions from inexpensive, renewable materials.

GenoCAD helps researchers in the design of protein expression vectors, artificial gene networks, and other genetic constructs, essentially combining engineering approaches with biology.

Synthetic biologists have an increasingly large library of naturally derived and synthetic parts at their disposal to design and build living systems. These parts are the words of a DNA language and the grammar a set of design rules governing the language.

It has to be expressive enough to allow scientists to generate a broad range of constructs, but it has to be focused enough to limit the possibilities of designing faulty constructs.

MITs Oliver Purcell, a postdoctoral associate, and Timothy Lu, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, have developed a language detailed in ACS Synthetic Biology describing how to design a broad range of synthetic transcription factors for animals, plants, and other organisms with cells that contain a nucleus.

Meanwhile, Sakiko Okumoto, an assistant professor of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science at the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Amanda Wilson, a software engineer with the Synthetic Biology Group at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, developed a language describing design rules for expressing genes in the chloroplast of microalgae Their work was published in the Jan. 15 issue of Bioinformatics.

Just like software engineers need different languages like HTML, SQL, or Java to develop different kinds of software applications, synthetic biologists need languages for different biological applications, said Jean Peccoud, an associate professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, and principal investigator of the GenoCAD project. From its inception, we envisioned GenoCAD as a framework allowing users to capture their expertise of a particular domain in languages that they could use themselves or share with others.

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Bioscientists Write Languages to Design Synthetic Living Systems

Languages written to design synthetic living systems useful for new products, health care

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Researchers at Virginia Tech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have used a computer-aided design tool to create genetic languages to guide the design of biological systems.

Known as GenoCAD, the open-source software was developed by researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech to help synthetic biologists capture biological rules to engineer organisms that produce useful products or health-care solutions from inexpensive, renewable materials.

GenoCAD helps researchers in the design of protein expression vectors, artificial gene networks, and other genetic constructs, essentially combining engineering approaches with biology.

Synthetic biologists have an increasingly large library of naturally derived and synthetic parts at their disposal to design and build living systems. These parts are the words of a DNA language and the "grammar" a set of design rules governing the language.

It has to be expressive enough to allow scientists to generate a broad range of constructs, but it has to be focused enough to limit the possibilities of designing faulty constructs.

MIT's Oliver Purcell, a postdoctoral associate, and Timothy Lu, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, have developed a language detailed in ACS Synthetic Biology describing how to design a broad range of synthetic transcription factors for animals, plants, and other organisms with cells that contain a nucleus.

Meanwhile, Sakiko Okumoto, an assistant professor of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science at the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Amanda Wilson, a software engineer with the Synthetic Biology Group at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, developed a language describing design rules for expressing genes in the chloroplast of microalgae Their work was published in the Jan. 15 issue of Bioinformatics.

"Just like software engineers need different languages like HTML, SQL, or Java to develop different kinds of software applications, synthetic biologists need languages for different biological applications," said Jean Peccoud, an associate professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, and principal investigator of the GenoCAD project. "From its inception, we envisioned GenoCAD as a framework allowing users to capture their expertise of a particular domain in languages that they could use themselves or share with others."

The researchers said encapsulating current knowledge by defining standards will become increasingly important as the number and complexity of components engineered by synthetic biologists increases.

They propose that grammars are a first step toward the standardization of a broad range of synthetic genetic parts that could be combined to develop innovative products.

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Languages written to design synthetic living systems useful for new products, health care

Future of Baltic States, European Union Economic Outlook, Estonia, Latvia – Futurist Speaker – Video

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Future of Baltic States, European Union Economic Outlook, Estonia, Latvia - Futurist Speaker
Clip from a Keynote by Patrick Dixon at Sampo Liidrite Forum on the Estonian economy. How could Estonia work within the Eurozone. Risk management and respond...

By: Patrick Dixon Futurist Keynote Speaker for Industry Conference

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Future of Baltic States, European Union Economic Outlook, Estonia, Latvia - Futurist Speaker - Video

Next Big Thing: Location-Based Marketing / mobile advertising. Future Of Marketing Futurist Speaker – Video

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Next Big Thing: Location-Based Marketing / mobile advertising. Future Of Marketing Futurist Speaker
Location-based mobile marketing is the Next Big Thing - using Big Data to map customers to products. Location Big Data means marketing teams can map consumer...

By: Patrick Dixon Futurist Keynote Speaker for Industry Conference

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Next Big Thing: Location-Based Marketing / mobile advertising. Future Of Marketing Futurist Speaker - Video

Machinedrum Embroiled In Sampling Controversy

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The legalities around sampling are becoming ever more complex.

Earlier this year, Machinedrum confirmed plans for his 'Fenris District' EP - containing material composed for, but never used on, his wonderful 'Vapor City' album.

Lead cut 'Back Seat Ho' was placed online, a blistering piece of footwork inspired futurism. Since then, though, Chicago producer DJ Clent has accused Machinedrum of borrowing segments of his own track 'Back Seat Hoe' without permission.

Accusing the Ninja Tune signing of "remaking the song without consent" DJ Clent has now spoken to Do Androids Dance about the issue.

Asked what he would like the outcome of the discussion to be, Clent said: "either take [it] down or pay me and give me my credit for the concept and vocals."

The vocals on the original aren't sampled, either - DJ Clent claims that they are recordings of his wife and children.

Compare/contrast both tracks below.

(via FACT)

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Machinedrum Embroiled In Sampling Controversy

Freedom from want and fear: Meeting the challenges for Black women and women of color – Video

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Freedom from want and fear: Meeting the challenges for Black women and women of color
Achieving equality has been a historical struggle of Black women and women of color and will remain the greatest challenge preventing the realization of the ...

By: Janvieve Williams

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Freedom from want and fear: Meeting the challenges for Black women and women of color - Video