Life Sciences
This article at Newsday.com talks about the release of the findings of a major study being presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Society of Cardiology. The research [...] followed 29,000 people in 52 countries. It took a decade and 262 scientists to complete the work, which, according to the editor of The Lancet [...]
Similar to my post yesterday on swarming algorithms, Steve Jurvetson, head of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also believes in the wealth of knowledge that we have yet to tap simply by exploring nature’s many inventions. Nice to see he agrees with me!! I’m kidding of course. The area of bio-mimetics has been discussed for quite some [...]
There are a couple of angel forums in Vancouver, places where entrepreneurs can go to pitch their business idea directly to angels (high-net-worth individuals who invest their own money in startups). One of them is the Angel Forum run by Bob Chaworth-Musters, the other is VanTec, the VEF Angel Technology Network, which is coordinated by [...]
It’s Deja vu all over again. Renewable energy seems to be the topic of the day. Some odd combination of forces are driving interest in renewable energies (many of the things that I discussed in my previous posting on bioproducts). The web is cluttered with noise about bioproducts, solar energy, and other non-petroleum based energy [...]
The 2004 Q2 Price Waterhouse Coopers / Venture Economics / Venture Capital Association Moneytree Survey numbers are out. I posted on this in July but hadn’t put in the graphs and haven’t had time until now. I always find quarter-to-quarter comparisons too granular and lacking in context so I have taken the liberty of extracting [...]
Everything old is new again. It’s all about timing. These are only two of a few choice phrases that may describe something that is afoot here in British Columbia. Some major global, national, and provincial forces are in play that are driving the development of a new (to us) association that may be created in [...]
Another article on nano-bio convergence applications is here.
Palo-Alto based Cambrios, Inc. is developing new methods for using biological material to create inorganic metallic semiconductors and nano-wires. Just more evidence of the coming NBIC (Nano, Bio, Info, Cognitive) convergence.
I love Craig Venter for his long view, his burning curiousity, and his adventurous spirit. And probably because he pisses so many people off in the scientific community for being a dilletante. And yet, he has done more for the development of the various *omics (genomics, proteomics) than almost all others to date. This article [...]
Premier Gordon Campbell has publicly stated that he would like to see BC go from being 16th to 10th in terms of being a North American technology centre. That is so Canadian! We need to be more like Singapore (no, not by fining people for chewing gum, although that is seeming like not a bad [...]
I have put these articles into this blog because I am seeing a whole host of news and interesting articles now that I refer to as evolution articles that cover ongoing mutation-based miniature arms-races where both sides are actively developing their skills and each side often holds the upper hand for only a short time [...]
Here is a wonderful article on Laurance Rockefeller, philanthropist, philosopher, mediator, venture capitalist, conservationist. It is inspiring to say the least.
Here are some quotes that Jeff Harrow of The Harrow Group found: “If I were just setting out today to make that drive to the West Coast to start a new business, I would be looking at biotechnology and nanotechnology.” Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com From the May 14, 2004 Nanotech Insider http://www.forbesinc.com/newsletters/nanotech/ – Michael [...]
From one of my favourite newsletters, The Harrow Group Technology Report, comes this article on nanospheres, tiny little bits of material that were used in an amazingly successful cancer killing experiment: As published in pages 171 – 176 of Issue 2 of the June 25 Cancer Letters (an abstract is freely available while the full [...]
If you were having a baby and the test showed that the baby would have Down’s Syndrome, Tay-Sachs, deformed limbs, a cleft plate, deafness, dwarfism, skin disease, or any of a host of other known diseases, would you still have the child?
(Link to the original story in the New York Times. Subscription required but worth it.)
Along with a friend, I recently entered a business plan in the Telus New Ventures BC competition. My plan was about a service where every six months a person would get an updated report on their risk factors as more information was known. I pulled the plan because I do not have the contacts or [...]
I love long-view articles such as this one in Business Week Online. It even contains my favourite types of graphs showing long time-cycle arcs.
Biotech is definitely taking more and more of a percentage of the VC funds that are being placed. This is one more article commenting on that trend and it also makes note of the fact that the placements are in new companies finally rather than in just keeping the existing portfolio companies alive.
Richard Gibbs, one of the most prominent researchers in genomics, predicts that we will go from the research stage to actual useable personalized gene-based treatment within the next three years (by 2007). Following Ray Kurzweil’s double exponential curve on technology growth, it feels like NOTHING is more than three years away.
Either Microsoft is now making a covert move into agribiotech or a Patent Officer fell asleep while assigning this patent for shiny red “Adam’s Apple” trees to Microsoft.
Based on features that keep mysteriously falling out of other releases and also on this article in MacNewsWorld, I predict the following will be key components of OS 10.4 Tiger that will be previewed at the WWDC. Please note that I have absolutely NO access to any internal Apple documents or people and these predictions [...]
The Universe is 14 billion years old and will either either re-collapse into itself, expand into a completely diluted state, or rip apart in its 36th billion year in a runaway expansion so violent that galaxies and planets will be torn asunder in a fraction of a second. How do we manage the polarity inherent [...]
