• Gemini Launch From Nimbus Signals Possibilities for Flash Storage

    Aug 30, 2012, 13:20 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Nimbus Data Systems doesn’t have a life sciences customer on a par with its marquee clients eBay and Lockheed Martin, but chances are good that the rapidly growing performance, endurance and affordability of flash storage -- as featured in Nimbus’ new Gemini system -- will soon be winning over customers
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  • Caltech Scientists Build Computational Model of Sea Urchin Development

    Aug 29, 2012, 11:40 AM by Michael Croft

    Caltech | Biologists at Caltech have built the first predictive computational model for the gene network that controls the early stages of embryonic development in the popular model organism, the sea urchin, confirming that interactions among a few dozen genes suffice to tell an embryo how to start the development of different body parts.

     

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  • CAP Releases Clinical Next-Gen Sequencing Checklist

    Aug 29, 2012, 01:00 AM by Michael Croft
    CAP Today | With more and more clinical labs turning to next-generation sequencing (NGS), the College of American Pathologists has published the United States' first standards for accrediting labs that perform NGS for clinical purposes.
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  • Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing

    Aug 28, 2012, 17:40 PM by Michael Croft
    New York Times | Within a few years, Amazon.com's creative destruction of both traditional book publishing and retailing may be footnotes to the company’s larger and more secretive goal: giving anyone on the planet access to an almost unimaginable amount of computing power.  
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  • John Boyce Previews the Consumer Genetics Conference

    Aug 27, 2012, 13:10 PM by Michael Croft
    CGC | John Boyce, CEO GnuBio and the co-founder of The Consumer Genetics Conference, discusses the history behind this successful show and previews the highlights of the 2012 program, being held October 3-5 in Boston. 
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  • The Unsung Heroes Behind Those Big Genomics Breakthroughs

    Aug 27, 2012, 13:00 PM by Michael Croft
    The Guardian | A core facility is a slightly unusual niche for a career scientist – not an independent researcher, not a lecturer, but more like running a small-to-medium sized biotechnology company that happens to be not-for-profit. 
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  • From Google to Flatiron Health and the Fight Against Cancer

    Aug 24, 2012, 12:50 PM by Michael Croft
    Business Insider | After selling their start-up, Invite Media, to Google for $81 million, Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg have founded a new company, Flatiron Health, aimed at devising ways to help mine clinical data and cure cancer. 
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  • Video: Nancy Kelley on the New York Genome Center

    Aug 23, 2012, 09:50 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Video: Nancy Kelley, founding executive director of the New York Genome Center, speaks on camera with Bio-IT World editor Kevin Davies about the rapid progress and future plans for the new genome center currently under construction in the SoHo district of Manhattan.
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  • Klebsiella Pneumoniae Superbug Killed Six at NIH Clinical Center

    Aug 22, 2012, 15:45 PM by Michael Croft
    Huffington Post | Scientists are reporting how next-generation sequencing identified a deadly antibiotic-resistant 'superbug' that spread alarmingly through the medical center at the NIH, ultimately claiming six lives before the source of infection was confirmed and the microbe eradicated.
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  • deCODE Study Finds Older Dads Pass On More Genetic Mutations

    Aug 22, 2012, 12:55 PM by Michael Croft
    Wall Street Journal | According to the latest publication from Iceland's deCODE Genetics, a sequencing study reveals that older fathers pass on more new genetic mutations to their children than younger fathers, thus increasing their children's risk of autism, schizophrenia and other diseases.
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  • QED: Hopkins Algorithm Ranks the Beauty of Drug Chemistry

    Aug 21, 2012, 08:40 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Companies such as Optibrium are praising the “Quantitative Estimate of Drug-Likeness” (QED) algorithm to rank chemical compounds based on their oral bioavailability, developed by the University of Dundee's Andrew Hopkins and colleagues.
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  • Amazon Web Services Launches Amazon Glacier Archival Storage

    Aug 21, 2012, 07:55 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | How does 1 cent/Gigabyte sound? That's the potential pricepoint of Amazon's new Amazon Glacier archival storage solution designed for data archiving and backup that is already gaining the attention of companies such as Complete Genomics. 
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  • The Biophysics of 3-D Genome Modeling

    Aug 20, 2012, 15:00 PM by Michael Croft
    Wired | Harvard University biophysicist Erez Lieberman Aiden is helping to open new windows into the study of the 3-D topological structure of chromosomes.
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  • Halcyon Molecular Quietly Shuts Down Sequencing Operation

    Aug 20, 2012, 12:50 PM by Michael Croft
    GigaOM | Halcyon Molecular, one of the many companies that was working on next-generation DNA sequencing technologies, has quietly ceased operations due to a shortage of funds, GigaOM reports.
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  • Reproducibility Initiative to Increase the Value of Biomedical Research

    Aug 17, 2012, 13:15 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Science Exchange, the open-access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS), and open data repository figshare, have announced the launch of the Reproductibility Initiative -- a new program to help scientists, institutions and funding agencies validate their critical research findings.
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  • Are Drug Companies Faking an Innovation Crisis? Uh, No.

    Aug 17, 2012, 09:25 AM by Michael Croft
    Discover Magazine | Derek Lowe, a veteran pharmaceutical chemist and blogger, provides a withering rebuttal of a recent commentary in the British Medical Journal that argued that the “widely touted innovation crisis in pharmaceuticals is a myth.”
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  • Thirty Groups Enter CLARITY Clinical Genome Interpretation Challenge

    Aug 16, 2012, 15:25 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Organizers of the CLARITY Challenge at Boston Children’s Hospital are thrilled that 30 academic and commercial organizations have entered the genome interpretation contest, although the entrant list does not include the major US/UK genome centers and consumer genomics firms.  
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  • By George: Researchers Turn Book Into DNA Code

    Aug 16, 2012, 14:35 PM by Michael Croft
    Wall Street Journal | Harvard University researchers led by George Church have encoded the text of Church's forthcoming book Regenesis into DNA and then accurately read back the text, they report in Science magazine. 
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  • Myriad Wins Gene Patent Ruling From U.S. Appeals Court

    Aug 16, 2012, 14:05 PM by Michael Croft
    Reuters | By a vote of 2-to-1, a federal appeals court has upheld its decision to uphold Myriad Genetics' patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast and ovarian cancer genes, after the U.S. Supreme Court told it to take another look at the hotly contested case. 
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  • The Human Microbiome: Me, Myself, Us

    Aug 16, 2012, 13:50 PM by Michael Croft
    The Economist | Looking at human beings not just as individuals but as ecosystems that contain trillions of collaborating and competing microbial species could change the practice of medicine. 
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