Other News
Texas to Fund Biotech Center
A $50 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund will be used to create a biotechnology institute, Gov. Rick Perry announced Saturday, saying it will bring thousands of jobs to the state. The Texas Institute for Genomic Medicine is a partnership between the Texas A&M University System and Lexicon Genetics.
Lexicon will create a comprehensive knockout mouse embryonic stem cell library for the Institute containing 350,000 cell lines. One copy of the library will be housed in remodeled facilities at IBT in Houston and another copy will be located at a new research and commercialization facility to be built at Texas A&M in College Station. When complete, the new library is expected to be the world’s largest collection of mouse embryonic stem cells that have been engineered for the study of gene function, allowing researchers to identify and study those genes that offer the most promise for future drug development.
The library, constructed using Lexicon’s proprietary mouse gene knockout technology, will enable a researcher to develop a mouse that has a specific gene removed or “knocked-out.” The function of that gene can then be studied by comparing the knockout mouse to a normal mouse.
Approximately 99 percent of human genes have a mouse counterpart, and research using this technology may lead to the development of drugs for a wide variety of human and animal diseases, including diabetes and obesity, infectious disease, cancer and heart disease. Institute researchers will have certain rights to utilize Lexicon’s patented gene targeting technologies. In addition, Lexicon will equip the Institute with the bioinformatics software required for the management and analysis of data relating to the library.
The new facilities in College Station will be built with the remaining $15 million. The money for the grant comes from the $295 million Texas Enterprise Fund, which was created by the Legislature to lure jobs to Texas.
Officials expect the stem cell library to be the world's largest collection of mouse embryonic stem cells engineered to study gene function. Within 10 years, Perry said, the institute will lead to the creation of 5,000 jobs with an average salary of $60,000.
Along with advancing the study of drugs and disease, the knockout mice can be used to study ways to combat bioterrorism attacks.
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NASA'S Shuttle Launch at Least One Week Away
NASA is targeting Tuesday, July 26 as the earliest possible date to launch the Space Shuttle Discovery on the Return to Flight mission (STS-114). The determination was made during Monday's meeting of the Mission Management Team (MMT) at Kennedy.
The MMT reviewed efforts by teams of engineers. The engineers are working through a troubleshooting plan to address an issue with a liquid hydrogen low-level fuel sensor circuit. The sensor circuit failed a routine pre-launch check during the countdown July 13, delaying Discovery’s first launch attempt.
NASA is still working to launch Discovery by the end of the July window that extends to the 31st. A dozen teams, with hundreds of engineers across the country, are expected to complete their battery of tests by Wednesday. While they have not isolated a cause of the sensor circuit failure, they have eliminated a number of possibilities. If the remaining tests are inconclusive, NASA could reload the External Tank with super-cooled propellants to see how the sensor circuit behaves. The tanking could be done as a test or as part of an actual launch countdown.
Commander Eileen Collins and her six Discovery crew mates come out of quarantine today for one day off. They resume quarantine and training later this week.
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Germany Joins the Aurora Exploration Program
Germany joined the Preparatory Phase of the European Space Exploration Program Aurora. It thus becomes the twelfth country participating in the program (with Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), which allows scientists and industrial companies from Germany to participate in the Aurora Program.
This decision has been warmly welcomed by ESA and unanimously endorsed by the eleven other Aurora Participating States at the 18th Aurora Board of Participants meeting held in Paris on July 12, 2005.
The Preparatory Phase of the European Space Exploration Program Aurora started in 2001. It aims at defining a European framework for the exploration of Moon and Mars and to prepare a robust and sustainable European Space Exploration Program. The ExoMars mission, scheduled to be launched in 2011, features a Mars lander and a rover that will carry out exobiology and geophysical analysis of the Martian environment. The mission is being defined and designed during the Preparatory Phase along with the preparation of the European contribution to a possible international Mars sample return mission and other studies and technology developments to prepare for further exploration missions of the Solar system.
A proposal for the next phase of the European Space Exploration Programme will be submitted for decision by ESA member states at the upcoming ESA Council at Ministerial level in December in Berlin and will feature the ExoMars mission as a major programme element.
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Jakarta Confirms Bird Flu Deaths
Test results have confirmed that three people in Indonesia have died from bird flu, Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari has said.
The victims - a man and his two young daughters - are the country's first human fatalities from the disease. Because they had no known contact with poultry, their cases have raised fears of human-to-human transmission. But the WHO downplayed the concerns, stressing that more investigation was needed.
Since January 2004, more than 50 people are known to have died of the bird flu virus in Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.
Millions of birds have died across Asia in the last few years, many of them culled in an effort to stem the disease.
The Indonesian health minister announced on July 15 that scientists suspected a deadly strain of bird flu had led to the deaths of a 38-year-old man and his two daughters, aged one and nine.
On Wednesday she confirmed this. Ms Supari has said that she is concerned the victims could have contracted the disease via human-to-human transmission, because they are not known to have been in contact with poultry.
But World Health Organization representative Georg Petersen said he was not too concerned yet that the three victims had no known contact with sick birds. He said a more in-depth investigation was needed, adding that in other countries the source of infection was often not known straight away.
More than 300 people who had been in close contact with the family have been placed under medical surveillance.
Indonesia has reported cases of bird flu in poultry in several provinces this year and recently confirmed that a farm worker had tested positive for the virus. But until now there have been no human fatalities from bird flu in the country.
So far humans have only contracted bird flu after coming into contact with infected animals. But the real fear is that the virus might develop into a form which can be transmitted from person to person, raising the possibility of a global pandemic.
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News Corporation to Acquire Intermix Media, Inc.
Representatives of News Corporation announced that the company signed a definitive agreement to acquire Intermix Media, Inc. for approximately US$580 million in cash, or the equivalent of $12 per common share. In a separate transaction, representatives of Intermix announced that the company exercised its option to acquire the 47 percent of MySpace.com that it does not already own. MySpace.com is the leading lifestyle portal for networking online. Both MySpace.com and Intermix’s more than 30 sites will become part of News Corporation’s newly formed Fox Interactive Media unit.
With the addition of MySpace,and Intermix’s network of sites, News Corporation’s U.S. web traffic will nearly double to more than 45 million unique monthly users, putting the company in the top echelon of most trafficked content sites on the Internet today. The Intermix network of sites is the largest multi-category online entertainment network with more than 27 million unique monthly users. Intermix’s group of entertainment, humor, gaming and social networking sites has become the leading network for shareable digital entertainment such as pictures, music and video.
Launched less than two years ago, MySpace.com is the fifth ranked web domain in terms of page views according to comScore Media Metrix. Integrating web profiles, blogs, instant messaging, e-mail, music downloads, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups, chatrooms, and user forums, MySpace.com has created a connected community where users put their lives online. As a result, MySpace.com is a favorite with online advertisers – in June the site served more than 8 percent of all ads on the Internet, putting it in the company of Web giants Yahoo!, Google and AOL. It has also become a key music destination, with more than 350,000 bands and artists – including REM, the Black Eyed Peas and Weezer – having used the site to launch new albums and enable users to sample and share songs.
One of Intermix’s popular web sites is grab.com, a premier gaming and entertainment site that integrates social networking, community features, and viral entertainment. Intermix augments its content properties through its analytical optimization e-commerce division – Alena.
The transaction is expected to close in the 4th quarter of calendar 2005. The transaction is subject to certain customary conditions including approval of the Intermix common and preferred stockholders.
In a related transaction, News Corporation announced that it entered into a voting agreement with VantagePoint Venture Partners, the largest stockholder of Intermix. The agreement provides that VantagePoint will vote its shares, representing approximately 22.4 percent of the outstanding shares of Intermix, in favor of the transaction.
Mr. Rosenblatt and MySpace CEO, Chris DeWolfe will continue in their roles following the completion of the acquisition. Messrs. Rosenblatt and DeWolfe will join Fox Interactive Media, led by Ross Levinsohn.
