Stem cell research hits snag in Texas
Senate set to consider excluding funds for embryo research
Houston Chronicle - 31-Mar-2009
Texas researchers who thought President Barack Obama’s executive order lifting the restrictions on embryonic stem cell research would finally free them to ramp up work with the cutting-edge science are facing a new obstacle: the state Legislature. Eighteen of the state’s leading scientists signed a letter sent to the Legislature Monday objecting to a provision inserted in the Senate budget bill last week that would ban state funding from supporting research involving the destruction of human embryos. “Such an amendment would be detrimental to Texas,” said the statement. “A ban would halt ongoing research projects and negatively impact the ability of Texas academic health institutions, both public and private, to competitively recruit and retain world-class scientists, professors and students in the biological sciences." See complete article.
Battery alliance to choose state for headquarters within a month
Texas among eight in bidding as national consortium looks to tap into federal stimulus money.
American Statesman - 25-Mar-2009
A group that proposes to build a $1 billion battery development center says it will decide whether to locate its headquarters in Texas or one of seven other states within the next month or so.
The National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Batteries said Tuesday that it had received proposals from eight states — Texas, Kentucky, Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and South Carolina — and expects to narrow the list to a few finalists within several days. Sanford Kane, chairman of the consortium's site selection committee, said the group will move fast to pick finalists, visit those states and then pick a headquarters site. The winning site also would be the location for its proposed battery development and manufacturing plants, which could employ up to 2,500 people in five years. See complete article.
Scientists Tell Texas: Time to Evolve
LIveScience- 24-Mar-2009
Several leading scientists have sent a letter to the Texas State Board of Education urging board members to reject an amendment that attacks one of evolution's key principles, that all life on Earth is descended from a common ancestor. Leading members of the Texas scientific community, in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), urged the state board "to reject amendments to the state's draft science standards that would undermine sound science teaching," according to an AAAS statement released today. See complete article.
UT offering tech scholarships to staff
Austin Business Journal - 23-Mar-09
In a more positive sign of the times, the University of Texas at Austin’s IC2 Institute is offering two scholarships annually to eligible university employees to encourage them to enroll in its master’s program in technology commercialization. “During times of recession, it has been proven many people decide to expand their skills and go back to school,” says Gary Cadenhead, director of the MSTC Program. “These scholarships have been created to make it easier for UT employees to attend an executive graduate program and further the university’s technology commercialization efforts.” See complete article.
Research tunes in on songs of birds
My SA News - 20-Mar-2009
Todd Troyer likes to joke about how he’s made a career of studying birdbrains.
But it’s a serious undertaking for the University of Texas at San Antonio researcher, who is using the short, boisterous mating song of the zebra finch as a bridge to understanding how the brain coordinates the complex tasks of learning, remembering and vocalizing.“I am trying to write the story about how all those things fit together,” Troyer said. Songbirds are one of the few species that learn vocal behavior from adult tutors. Just like human babies, the baby birds need to hear and mimic adults in order to learn their language of song.Of zebra finches, only the males sing; it’s an essential vocal behavior that identifies them to potential mates. If raised without adult males nearby, the youngster never learns a melody; it develops only an instinctive, innate squawking that is not quite a song. Without a male role model, he will never learn the song that is essential for attracting females for breeding. See complete article.
Artificial muscles: steel and rubber wrapped in one
R&D - 20-Mar-09
Researchers at the UT Dallas Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute have demonstrated a fundamentally new type of artificial muscle, which can operate at extreme temperatures where no other artificial muscle can be used—from below the temperature of liquid nitrogen (-196°C) to above the melting point of iron (1538°C). The discovery is reported in the March 20 issue of Science under the title “Giant Stroke, Superelastic Carbon Nanotube Aerogel Muscles.”
Once actuated (or put into motion) in a certain direction, these new artificial muscles can elongate 10 times more than natural muscles and at rates 1,000 times higher than a natural muscle. In another direction, when densified, they can generate thirty times the force of a natural muscle having the same cross-sectional area. While natural muscles can contract at about 20 percent per second, the new artificial muscles can contract at about 30,000 percent per second. See complete article.
UTSA start-up SafeMashups launches Web-based technology
San Antonio Business Journal - 16-Mar-2009
SafeMashups Inc., a local start-up developed through the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Institute for Cyber Security’s incubator program, has released its first commercial technology product.Company officials have launched MashSLL Web Toolkit, a technology officials say is the world’s first application authentication service. SafeMashups’ service relies on SSL cryptography technology that allows browsers and Web applications to mutually authenticate each other before connecting, or “mashing up.” UTSA researchers developed the technology offering to help solve the challenges of managing credentials in authenticating consumer and business-oriented Web applications. See complete article.
South Texas researchers working on better tuberculosis vaccine
My SA.com - 12-Mar-2009
A third of the world's population is infected with the tuberculosis bacteria, and the only available vaccine has done little to stop the spread of a disease that kills more than a million people a year. But a new animal study led by scientists from the University of Texas Health Science Center suggests a potential way to stimulate the immune system into mounting a stronger response to the invading bacteria. See complete article.
Bill aims to make UTSA top-level Texas university
San Antonio Express - 12-Mar-2009
Support from state leaders will boost the chances of the University of Texas at San Antonio gaining elite status as a national research university under a plan likely to gain legislative approval this spring.Texas only has three elite Tier 1 universities — the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University and Rice University — compared with nine in California and seven in New York.“One of the reasons we are behind is we've picked a particular university (to join the elite status) and the other regions ganged up and said, ‘No, you're not,' and then we didn't pick anyone,” said House Higher Education Committee Chairman Dan Branch, R-Dallas. Branch and other legislative leaders are pushing a plan to gradually elevate seven additional Texas universities to Tier 1 status. Such national research universities attract considerable federal research grants, first-class faculty and high-achieving students. House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst support the plan. See complete article.
Austin startup reaches for place in green-tech movement ActaCell seeks to build cheap, powerful, safe and durable battery cells.
Austin American Statesman - 9-Mar-2009
ActaCell Inc. wears the bare-bones decor of its front offices like a badge of startup frugality.
The company spent all of $600 on office furniture, said CEO Bill Ott, when it made a deal with a landlord who had confiscated the desks and chairs from another tenant that had skipped out on its rent. The year-old battery technology company spent more on its 1,600-square-foot laboratory, but even there it economized, buying used equipment from other companies and refurbishing it. What emerged is a small-scale battery production lab that looks like a cross between a machine shop, a chemistry lab and an electronics test room. That's where ActaCell has been making and testing advanced battery cells since November. If the company can find a way to build cheap, powerful, safe and durable battery cells, then it could carve out a share of what is expected to be a multibillion- dollar market for supplying the green-tech vehicles known as plug-in hybrids. See complete article.
Nine Dallas-Fort Worth companies receive technology fund awards
Fort Worth Business Press - 6-Mar-2009
Nine companies from the Dallas-Fort Worth area received $15.95 million in investments from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund on March 5. Gov. Rick Perry was on hand at the North Texas Regional Center for the Innovation and Commercialization (NTXRCIC) Tech Success 2009 event in Dallas to announce the investments in nine NTXRCIC portfolio companies. “Today we celebrate the companies that are being created out of our efforts to find great ideas born in university laboratories and invest in their development into products that can ultimately create jobs, turn a profit and keep our state’s economy humming,” Perry said. See complete article.
UT Dallas Announces New Minor in Nanotechnology
AtoZ Nanotechnology - 5-Mar-2009
UT Dallas is introducing a new minor in nanoscience and technology, enabling undergraduates to augment their core studies with a grounding in what's also known as molecular engineering.
Offered for the first time next fall, the minor has already attracted more than two dozen prospective students from an array of majors – including electrical engineering, chemistry, physics and biology – underscoring the multidisciplinary nature of nanotechnology.
All nanotech activities operate at a minuscule scale, but the goals of individual projects range from improved cancer treatment therapies to lighter aircraft materials. “Our objective is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of nanotechnology, including its scope, how it can be performed and what it can produce,” said Yves Chabal, head of the University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and holder of the Texas Instruments Distinguished Chair in Nanoelectronics. See complete article.
Rick Perry: Tech Fund is powerful tool in improving colleges
The Dallas Morning News - 5-Mar-2009
Few things make me more excited about my job than seeing Texans reap the benefits of the incentive programs the state has worked hard to implement for their benefit and increased opportunity. Last night, I had the opportunity to see firsthand the progress made by entrepreneurs of the North Texas Regional Center for Innovation and Commercialization since receiving grants through the state's Emerging Technology Fund to develop and commercialize their groundbreaking technologies. See complete article.
Funding Science, Smartly
Inside HIgher Ed - 4-Mar-2009
Rep. John Culberson's Web site shouts that the country should "just say no to federal spending," and the Texas Republican boasted at a House of Representatives hearing Tuesday that he has a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union because he consistently opposes wasteful government spending. But Culberson makes an exception, he told his colleagues on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related, for spending on scientific research and science education, given the contribution those things make to the country's economic stability and national security. See complete article.
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