Victory is in the air this week in biotech. Not all news was good — early stage venture capital and U.S. biotech company Tengion have had better weeks — but mostly… victory.

The Gairdner Awards announced its 51st set of winners, highlighting the usual range of amazing advances in molecular biology and honouring local biotech maven Dr. Cal Stiller for “outstanding leadership in medicine and medical science.”

BIOTECanada also announced awards. for companies went to OncoGenex , iCo Therapeutics and CO2 Solution. The presentation will be at the BIO conference in May.

Many companies were victorious in the marketplace . . . [more]

Every year at this time librarians from across North America (and the odd one from other parts of the world) gather together in Crystal City, Arlington, VA for the Computers in Libraries conference. This year almost 1,500 delegates are attending. All aspects of technology in libraries is covered, from the computers that make the catalogue and library records hum all the way to the social media presence of libraries. Focus tends to be on service, so there is a great human element in the discussion, not just bits and bytes.

It is one of my favourite conferences, where I truly . . . [more]

In this talk from O’Reilly Media’s Where 2.0 2010 conference, Walter Scott of DigitalGlobe discusses imagery techniques available today using images from satellites and airplanes. He discusses accuracy and the related manipulation of data sets. Data and imagery previously only available to governments is now becoming more widely available. Now depth maps of the ocean can also be made. Graphic processing units from the gaming industry can be leveraged to provide advanced geospatial-type imagery. Before and after images can now also be more effectively used to accurately track changes in what is happening on the ground. Data available from DigitalGlobal’s . . . [more]

♫ Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light…♫

Lyrics by Francis Scott Key (who was a lawyer), music by John Stafford Smith.

Lawyers today are concerned about metadata and not transmitting same to another lawyer or their own client when they electronically send a document.

Most of us use “Track Changes” in Microsoft Word when working on a document to note the changes/additions/deletions done by others. Once that process is over, the typical next step is to agree to the changes in the document to produce a non-red-lined version ( or ‘clean copy’) as it . . . [more]

Thanks to a good question from a new associate I have done some exploring of mobile access to legislation. The question was, “Is there any way to have a copy of an act that I use all the time available on my Blackberry?”

I can now say, “Yes”, and here is the method:

1. Open your Blackberry (or other smartphone)
2. Go to the mobile Web Browser and enter the URL for Canlii
   I suggest going directly to the URL for the language and jurisdiction of your choice (http://www.canlii.org/en/ab/laws/ for example)
3. Once there, you can search for the act name by

Wow! Yet another indication that social media is becoming woven into all aspects of our daily lives. In the US the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo yesterday that will make it easier for US federal government agencies to communicate with citizens and collect feedback from them by way of the Internet and social media: Social Media, Web-Based Interactive Technologies, and the Paperwork Reduction Act.

To engage the public, Federal agencies now have guidance on expanding their use of social media and web-based interactive technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social networks, as a means of “publishing” solicitations . . . [more]

Almost exactly a year ago, Google held a gathering for “leaders of the IT industry” — the Efficient Data Center Summit — where they explored the steps the company takes to reduce resource use and energy consumption in particular. And although most of what went on is so technical as to be land law to a layman, I thought you might like to learn some of the more intelligible highlights of Google efficiency. After all, in practice or at play, we call on Google daily; and the absence of great clanking noises and bursts of steam when we do, can . . . [more]

We have not heard much about this lately, partly because a summary judgment in 2007 stated that Novell owned the Unix code. A jury confirmed last week that SCO had not acquired the copyright to Unix from Novell in an asset purchase agreement.

The significance of this to the world at large is that Linux was derived from Unix. SCO launched a long standing battle claiming it owned Unix, and thus had rights to certain code within Linux, and thus the right to be compensated for Linux use. 

Apparently, SCO is not yet giving up though – there is some . . . [more]

Sadly, what I recently learned from Times columnist, Richard Susskind, is indeed the case: The Times, TimesOnline and the Sunday Times will begin charging for online access. Presented by the publisher as the advent of something new and better — “timesplus” — the wall will go up around the garden at some near but as yet unidentified time. In the meantime, you’re invited “register for our exclusive preview” and they’ll get in touch when it happens.

The economic plight of newspaper organizations has been in the news for years now, so this attempt to monetize internet access . . . [more]

Here’s a turn-up for the books: there’s a new entry in the Canadian legal search engine market. CanLII notwithstanding, Kent Mewhort, a McGill law student and experienced software engineer, has launched Nomus, a free search engine for Canadian legal decisions.

This is no Google-based amateur effort, but rather a serious tool running with at least one interesting algorithm and one valuable additional feature. I’ve had a small exchange of emails with Mr. Mewhort, and some of the material in this post comes from that.

First the scope: the database is drawn from publicly available, i.e. governmental, sites . . . [more]

This week the biotech world was consumed with questions about genes, and patents, and patents on genes.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet issued a summary judgment ruling (pdf) that Myriad Genetics’ patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes were invalid, as were the patents on Myriad’s tests using those genes. Meh. The commentary (including here at Slaw) has been interesting and the public airing of patent policy is much needed and generally productive; but I don’t think the ruling is that big a deal.

In a case of superior serendipity, last week also marked the ten-year anniversary . . . [more]

The New Scientist carried an article recently on how courts’ use of fingerprints “is on the cusp of a much-needed revolution.” First used to obtain a conviction in Argentina in 1892, fingerprint evidence has long been the paragon of forensic science. Typically, experts will testify that prints taken from a suspect are “a match” with those found at the scene of a crime, offering, however, no “error rate” to accompany their statement, as would be the case if, say, DNA evidence were given. Yet, as the article shows, significant errors are indeed possible.

The problem is not so much one . . . [more]