InformationWeek | China bests the US in the most recent Top500 list of the fastest supercomputers in the world. China's Tianhe-1A system in Tianjin achieved 2.57 petaflops per second to earn first place.

Bloomberg | EMC announced yesterday that it had purchased Isilon Systems for $2.25 billion, pushing it deeper into the external-storage market.

Xconomy | Complete Genomics' IPO this week came in lower than they had expected. Originally predicting $12-$14 per share, the initial prices was $9 per share and stock fell 11% the first day of trading, closing at $8.03.

Med Page Today | Findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine pinpoint a gene with multiple mutations that seems to determine patient response to acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

Bio-IT World | Cancer researcher Andy Futreal at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute believes there is plenty of cause for optimism when it comes to sequencing cancer genomes. Speaking at the Frontiers in Cancer Science 2010 meeting in Singapore, Futreal catalogued the cancer advances over the past ten years of genome sequencing, and proposed future directions for the field.

Bio-IT World | DNA Electronics and 454 Life Sciences have entered a partnership to develop a low-cost, high-throughput, long read, high density DNA sequencing system. The technology is expected to build on 454's current pyrosequencing-based platform.

Bio-IT World | Biomatters launched their newest software package yesterday, Geneious Server, to analyze next-generation sequencing data, and it's already found customers in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland.

Bio-IT World | If anyone was capable of distilling the lessons learned in the ten years since the first draft of the Human Genome Project in 2000, it was Broad Institute director Eric Lander in the opening address at the annual American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) convention in Washington, D.C.

Bio-IT World | BRISBANE—At TRX10, Translational Research Excellence, held last month in Brisbane, amid a wide-ranging program covering everything from stem cell models to commercializing academic innovations, translational approaches to cancer and central nervous system disease to trial design, discussion turned to repositories for genetic and clinical data. Researchers encouraged one another to share raw data, analyses, and clinical findings to further research and enable advances in medicine.

Xconomy & Wall Street Journal Blog | Last week Pacific Biosciences raised $200 million through its IPO, a number in the middle of its expected range. The IPO was also good news for Complete Genomics, which released an amended IPO prospectus raising its self valuation to $12 to $14/share.

Boston Herald | Novartis is planning to add 300 new jobs and invest $600 million over the next five years to expand its research campus adjacent to the former Necco candy factory in Cambridge, Mass.

Bio-IT World Expert Commentary | An exciting recent advance in medicine has been the generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells which are derived from somatic cells, rather than embryos, through a process of “de-differentiation.” But the advance raises important intellectual property and patent questions.

Bio-IT World | Following the revelation in The Sunday Times that rock music legend Ozzy Osbourne has had his genome sequenced, Bio-IT World talks to the people at Cofactor Genomics, LIfe Technologies, and Knome who deciphered the Prince of Darkness' DNA.

The Guardian | Researchers have unveiled results from the pilot phase of the 1000 Genome Project, which aims to sequence the genetic code of 2,500 people. It is the most complete inventory yet of the millions of variations between people's DNA.

Reuters | Sam Waksal, former ImClone CEO, has announced that his drug company Kadmon Pharmaceuticals has bought Three Rivers Pharmaceuticals and its treatments for hepatitis C.

PC World | Amazon is offering free access to EC2 starting on Nov 1. The offer includes one year of access to a "micro instance", 750 hours' use per month.

Bio-IT World | Expert Commentary | In the past decade, clinical trial technology has undergone a series of evolutions in its design, capability and deployment. From the early days of remote data capture to full-suite clinical trial management solutions, this evolution is redefining clinical research. Yet despite its dominance, clinical research technology has suffered from significant resistance at the study site level, which can be traced to a deficit in one basic element: user-centered design. 

Technology Review | Three new chips out of China might lead to a Chinese supercomputer that can compete on the international scale. The three newest members of the Godson processor family are a one-gigahertz, eight-core Godson 3B; the most powerful 16-core Godson 3C; and the one-gigahertz Godson 2H.

Bio-IT World | The 2011 Bio-IT World Best Practices competition has released its call for entries. Since 2003, Bio-IT World's Best Practices competition has been recognizing outstanding examples of technology and strategic innovation initiatives across the drug discovery enterprise. The deadline for entry is January 14, 2011, and the early bird deadline is December 19, 2010.