GLITR Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Your report for Wednesday, October 14, 2009

NanoBio, UM get $9.3 million from NIH for vaccine development
Ann Arbor-based NanoBio Corp. Tuesday announced an award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a Division of The National Institute of Health, to fund vaccine research associated with “Innate Immune Receptors and Adjuvant Discovery.” NanoBio is the principal subcontractor for the $9.3 million contract awarded to the University of Michigan. NanoBio will receive a subcontract of approximately $4.1 million over the research period to support efforts aimed at developing nanoemulsion-based mucosal vaccine adjuvants for a wide variety of antigens. More.

New Michigan Venture Center one-stop shop for investors, inventors
The University of Michigan is among the nation's leaders in creating startup ventures based on university technology. To build on that success, UM technology transfer officials have created the new Michigan Venture Center, a one-stop hub for entrepreneurs, investors and faculty inventors. The center will help faculty inventors create business plans, assess a technology's commercialization potential, deal with intellectual property issues, attract investors, and acquire gap funding to enhance the market appeal of a new technology. "The Michigan Venture Center is a new component in the university's ongoing efforts to make certain that our faculty's innovations have the best opportunity for success," said UM Vice President for Research Stephen Forrest. At the same time, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists outside the university can look to the center for a portfolio of startup-venture concepts with the talent, development funding and resource connections needed for market success. More.

Telecom buy to add 300 Michigan jobs
Birmingham-based Glencoe Capital’s Michigan Opportunities Fund said Tuesday it had the inbound telephone customer service business and certain other assets of Novo 1, in a move that promises to create more than 300 new jobs in Michigan. Formed in 2000 and based in Waukesha, Wis., Novo 1 provides inbound and outbound customer interaction solutions to clients across industries. With revenues of $43 million last year, Novo 1 ranked as the 25th-largest inbound services provider in the domestic US in 2008, according to Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine. Under Glencoe’s ownership, Novo 1 plans to open a customer care and contact center in western Michigan by early 2010 that will employ more than 300 personnel. More.

Ford taps UDM, UM for Sync research
Ford Motor Co. said Tuesday that it has broadened its Advanced Research and Innovation community through open collaboration with University of Michigan and University of Detroit Mercy professors and students on its industry-leading in-vehicle connectivity system, Ford Sync. More.

Economics Dept.: Foreclosures drive up region's real estate sales again
Single family home sales rose 7.1 percent in the Detroit area in September, according to Farmington Hills-based Realcomp II Ltd., which provides online and offline information to the region's real estate professionals. Sales rose from 5,818 in September 2008 to 6,232 in September 2009. But once again, the only reason for the increase was a 30.4 percent surge in foreclosure sales, from 2,336 in September 2008 to 3,045 in September 2009. Non-foreclosure sales grew in two markets -- Macomb and St. Clair counties. Foreclosure sales fell in Detroit. More.

UM shows off innovation at 'Celebrate Invention' event

Looking at today's issue I can understand why you might call this the Ann Arbor IT Report. Let me assure you it's just a coincidence of how today's news happened to happen -- and here's yet another example.

Hundreds of people gathered at the Michigan League ballroom at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for Celebrate Innovation 09, the annual observance of new companies, patents and invention disclosures at UM.

Ken Nisbet, executive director of UM Tech Transfer, said UM celebrated a record number of new inventions -- 350 -- in its 2009 fiscal year. More than 700 UM researchers were involved in the discoveries, also a record. And UM conducted a record $1 billion plus in research for the year.

During his remarks, Nisbet recognized Dr. John Massab, a UM inventor and father of the Flumist nasal spray vaccine.

Stephen R. Forrest, vice president for research at UM, noted the university's research growth in a year when the national economy shrunk by 3.5 percent. And he mentioned the opportunity presented by UM's purchase of the former Pfizer laboratories on the city's northeast side. Forrest said its two million square feet of lab and office space and 175 acres "provides us with a competitive advantage that is unique in the United States and perhaps in the world." He urged UM faculty to use the new space for "broad, interdisciplinary research."

Indeed, Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, UM executive vice president for medical affairs and the new CEO of the UM health system, said the purchase of the Pfizer property helped lure her away from the University of Indiana.

Around the Michigan League ballroom were half a dozen great research ideas. The coolest? Probably an inexpensive, high-tech research buoy built by UM research and S2 Yachts of Holland. It's about $20,000 fully instrumented, less than half the cost of a regular steel buoy. (And given the lack of instrumentation and basic science monitoring of the Great Lakes, a real opportunity.)

But then there was also Flex Dex LLC, the product of UM research into minimally invasive surgery, showing equipment that will give surgeons much more dexterity when using laparoscopic instruments, and as-yet unincorporated research into new leukemia killers and microelectronics. Very cool stuff.

Note: For information on how you can sponsor content in the Blue Box, contact Jeff Lasser at (248) 455-7319 or jeff.lasser@cbsradio.com.

U.S. to get Volvo plug-in diesel hybrid
The diesel-electric plug-in hybrid vehicle Volvo Cars Corp. plans to launch in Europe in 2012 will later be offered in the United States, according to several media reports cited by AutoTech Daily. Volvo Cars of North America CEO Doug Speck also said the company will offer conventional diesel engines in the U.S. Speck didn’t reveal U.S. launch dates for either option. Both alternative powerplants will help the company meet more stringent fuel economy standards that will average 35.5 mpg across the industry by 2016. Speck also indicated that more efficient gasoline engines also will be added to Volvo’s U.S. fleet. More.

Ohio company buys Michigan electric system supplier
Warren, Ohio-based Stoneridge Inc. announced Tuesday that it has signed an agreement to acquire a 51 percent equity interest in Bolton Conductive Systems LLC, an electrical system supplier based in Walled Lake, for initial consideration of $5,865,000 and depending on BCS's performance in 2010, 2011 and 2012, additional consideration payments in 2011, 2012 and 2013. More.

Arbor Networks, Merit Network, UM to offer 2-year study of Web traffic
Arbor Networks, the University of Michigan and Merit Network announced that they will be presenting the findings of the Internet Observatory Report at a national data network operators' convention, NANOG47, in Dearborn next week. The report is believed to be the largest study of global Internet traffic since the start of the commercial Internet in the mid-1990s. The report offers analysis of two years worth of detailed traffic statistics from 110 large and geographically diverse cable operators, international transit backbones, regional networks and content providers. At its peak, the study monitored more than 12 terabits-per-second and a total of more than 256 exabytes of Internet traffic over the two-year life of the study. More.

THE WORLD IN TECH

Kindle on campus: a lighter load, but some still miss paper
It's an experiment that has made back-to-school a little easier on the back: Amazon.com gave more than 200 college students its Kindle e-reading device this fall, loaded with digital versions of their textbooks. But some students are finding they miss the decidedly low-tech conveniences of paper -- highlighting, flagging pages with sticky notes and scribbling in the margins. "I like the aspect of writing something down on paper and having it be so easy and just kind of writing whatever comes to my mind," says Claire Becerra, a freshman at Arizona State University. More.

Microsoft patches 34 security holes, many critical
Microsoft Corp. issued a record number of security patches for its software Tuesday as part of its regular monthly update. The software maker plugged 34 holes and designated most of them "critical," Microsoft's most severe rating. Among them are fixes for Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 and even Windows 7, which doesn't go on sale to consumers until Oct. 22 but has been in use by early testers and software developers. The patches target a wide array of Microsoft software, including the Internet Explorer Web browser, Media Player, Outlook and the Silverlight technology underlying multimedia Web sites. More.

AT&T, Centennial deal gets Justice Department nod, with conditions
AT&T Inc. has reached an agreement with the Justice Department and the Louisiana Attorney General to sell off assets in eight markets in Louisiana and Mississippi in order to proceed with its proposed $944 million acquisition of Centennial Communications Corp. The Federal Communications Commission is continuing to review the wireless merger, which was announced late last year. Under the terms of the deal, Centennial stockholders will receive $8.50 per share in cash. The Justice Department said it is requiring AT&T to divest Centennial assets in southwestern and central Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi in order to preserve competition. In May, AT&T agreed to sell Centennial wireless assets in five of the eight markets to Verizon Wireless for $240 million. More.

Miami firm says it will lay first United States-Cuba fiber
A small Miami-based company said the U.S. government has given it permission to lay the first optical communications fiber from the U.S. to Cuba. That could drastically cut the cost of calling the island nation and make the Internet more accessible to Cubans. Treasury Department officials were unavailable to confirm that TeleCuba Communications Inc. has received approval, which is necessary even though the Obama administration eased long-standing restrictions on telecom links to Cuba in April. TeleCuba said Tuesday that its cable will be operating by the middle of 2011. It still needs permission from the Cuban government. More.

Stocks: Dow hits 2009 closing high on earnings momentum
Investors grew cautious Tuesday after quarterly sales at Johnson & Johnson fell short of expectations and an influential analyst stirred worries that bank shares are overheated. Most stocks posted modest losses, a day after major indexes finished at their best levels in a year. The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 15 points, though the Nasdaq composite index edged higher. Stocks could get a bounce Wednesday from Intel Corp., which posted earnings and sales after the closing bell that topped expectations. The leading chipmaker also said business is improving. The stock rose 4 percent in after-hours trading. The market could also get a lift from comments by CSX Corp. CEO Michael J. Ward, who said the worst of the recession "is likely behind us" as the major rail operator reported quarterly results after the bell. Still looming ahead is the first earnings report from a major bank early Wednesday, JPMorgan Chase & Corp. More. The Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP) rose 0.75 points or 0.1 percent to 2,139.89. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) fell 14.74 points or 0.2 percent to 9,871.06. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index ($SOX) fell 1.01 points or 0.3 percent to 330 points even. The Morgan Stanley High Tech 35 Index (MSH) rose 0.81 points or 0.2 percent to 543.3. The NYSE Arca Pharmaceutical Index (DRG) fell 2.95 points or 1 percent to 289.77. The NYSE Arca Biotech Index (BTK) fell 10.48 points or 1.1 percent to 905.06. Finally, the Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) rose 3 points even or 0.3 percent to 1,073.19.

All contents copyright 2009 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS Radio & Eye logo trademarked and copyright 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. Written and edited by Matt Roush, Technology Editor, WWJ Newsradio 950, Detroit. GLITR may contain material from the Associated Press, CNET, News.com, MarketWatch.com or Reuters, used by permission. For coverage comments or news tips, e-mail Matt Roush at mnroush@cbs.com or call (248) 455-7380. For marketing and advertising queries, or with general questions or concerns, contact Pete Kowalski, WWJ's station manager, at prkowalski@cbs.com. To subscribe, e-mail Matt Roush or Georgeann Herbert at gherbert@cbs.com.

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