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NCSU to offer biotechnology-pharmacology focus for MBA program
College of Management
New MBA
Concentration Focuses on Biotechnology, Pharmacology
College of Management
NCSU
To Offer MBA Focused on Biotech, Pharmaceuticals
College of Management
Triangle
rallies relief for Asia
Sastry Pantula, statistics
N.C.
shores not immune to killer wave
Ernest Knowles (emeritus), marine, earth and atmospheric sciences
TV clip:
Christmas shopping and the economy
Michael Walden, agricultural and resource economics
NCSU to offer biotechnology-pharmacology focus for MBA program
Dec. 28, 2004
Triangle Business Journal; Triad Business Journal
By staff report
© Copyright 2004
North Carolina State University plans to offer a new biotechnology-pharmacology concentration within its Master of Business Administration program.
This new concentration will be available for full- and part-time students entering the MBA program in fall 2005.
The curriculum includes the MBA program's regular four-course concentration in one of its traditional areas - entrepreneurship, finance, information technology, marketing, or supply chain management - as well as three additional courses that will provide in-depth coverage of issues faced by the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, including legal and regulatory issues. Full-time MBA students will also complete an internship with a biotechnology or pharmaceutical firm.
The program is part of the College of Management at NCSU.
Dec. 28, 2004
Lincoln Tribune
By staff report
© Copyright 2004
Fast-paced advancement in the life sciences is opening new management career paths in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. The new biotechnology-pharmacology concentration within the Master of Business Administration (MBA) program at North Carolina State University’s College of Management will help prepare individuals for these new career tracks, says Dr. Steve Allen, associate dean for graduate programs at the college.
This new concentration will be available for full- and part-time students entering the MBA program in fall 2005.
“Students who complete this concentration will have in-depth knowledge enabling them to deal with both the scientific and management challenges facing this emerging industry,” Allen says.
The curriculum includes the MBA program’s regular four-course concentration in one of its traditional areas - entrepreneurship, finance, information technology (IT), marketing, or supply chain management - as well as three additional courses that will provide in-depth coverage of issues faced by the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, including legal and regulatory issues. Full-time MBA students will also complete an internship with a biotechnology or pharmaceutical firm.
“This sequence will uniquely prepare our students for managerial careers in finance, marketing, supply chain, IT, or research and development functions, working in either established or start-up biotechnology or pharmaceutical firms,” Allen says.
“NC State’s program is exciting, and reflects in-depth discussions with executives that have taken place in the last year,” says Ray Wolf, PharmD, senior manager at sanofi-aventis, a pharmaceutical company. “Their program is one of the first to integrate key concepts in the pharmaceutical/life sciences area with modern management issues in supply chain management, technology commercialization, brand management, and marketing.”
The new concentration was designed for students with a solid life sciences background, gained either through academic studies or extensive work experience in the field. The college has six other concentrations available in its MBA program: financial, IT, marketing, product innovation, supply chain management, and technology commercialization. The new curriculum was developed in collaboration with the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at NC State, with input from leading companies in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.
“As new industries grow and evolve, new managers need targeted knowledge if they are to become leaders in their field,” Allen says. “Each of our concentrations was designed to provide our MBA students with the knowledge they need to bring real value to their companies.”
Triangle rallies relief for Asia
Dec. 28, 2004
Durham Herald-Sun
By MICHAEL EASTERBROOK
© Copyright 2004
As the death toll from a monstrous tsunami continued to climb in Asia, Indian-Americans in the Triangle prayed for the dead Monday and urged members of the community to donate money to help disaster victims rebuild their lives.
"So many lives were lost in a matter of moments," said Seetha Bashyam, one of about 20 people who gathered Monday evening at Sri Venkateswara Temple in Cary to pray for the victims. "I wish I could be there to help them."
Most of the 400 members of the temple come from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu -- states in southern India devastated by tidal waves that raced across the Bay of Bengal after the earthquake struck on the other side of the bay early Sunday.
Bashyam has lived in the United States for 24 years and has five siblings on the coast of Tamil Nadu. None was hurt.
The service at the Cary temple, which used to be a house, was brief. After several minutes of silence for the victims, two robed Hindu priests chanted prayers.
Sury Vulimiri, another member of the temple who lives in Cary, spent hours Sunday trying to contact his parents, who live within miles of the coastline in Andhra Pradesh. Phone lines were busy all day; Vulimiri wasn't able to confirm that they were alive until late that night.
Leaders of the Hindu Society of North Carolina are asking their 900 members to donate any amount of money they can, said Ganga D. Sharma, the society's founder. The society runs a temple in Morrisville that will host a special prayer session for the disaster victims tonight.
"The temple is open to everyone -- Christians, Muslim and Hindus," Sharma said while sitting inside the marble-walled temple near a display of Hindu gods.
Sharma said news of the disaster caught him off guard: "All of a sudden, it was a bomb dropping."
Later this week, leaders of the N.C. Tamil Sangam -- an organization of people who speak Tamil in Southeast Asia -- will send letters to its 200 members requesting money for the victims.
They will give the money to the Federation of Tamils in North America, a Washington-based group that is organizing a relief effort, said Sakthivel Karthikeyan, president of the N.C. Tamil Sangam.
Most members of the group also come from Tamil Nadu. Karthikeyan said he hasn't heard of anyone who has lost loved ones in the tsunami. "It looks like all the Tamils here have their families secure," he said.
Leaders of the BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Morrisville also are asking members to donate money. Most of the 20 families who are members of that temple come from Gujarat, a state in northern India near Pakistan.
Indian-Americans in the Triangle have raised large amounts of money for disaster relief in the past. In 2001, they gave $100,000 to the American Red Cross after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
As North Carolinians prayed and began to raise money for victims, people in India went about their days, skittish that an aftershock would send another wave rolling toward the coastline, said Sastry Pantula, head of the statistics department at N.C. State University, who is visiting India.
Pantula, his wife and 3-year-old daughter went to India this month for a vacation. Pantula -- who comes from India -- also plans to attend a three-day statistics conference that begins Wednesday in Hyderabad.
Speaking by phone from his family's house in Andhra Pradesh, Pantula said the local government is providing food and shelter to people whose homes were destroyed. Shortly after the tsunami hit India's coastline, Pantula went to a nearby beach to look.
He saw little damage. As he stood watching the ocean with hundreds of others, the tide surged in and receded several times, revealing a seabed speckled with rocks and boulders. No one was injured in those surges.
Two days before, Pantula was at a beach in Chennai -- a city in southern India, formerly called Madras, that was pummeled by the tsunami.
"We were glad we weren't there, but sad for the folks who got affected," said Pantula, who lives in Raleigh and was traveling with another Triangle family. "A lot of people died."
N.C. shores not immune to killer wave
Dec. 29, 2004
News & Observer
By CATHERINE CLABBY
© Copyright 2004
North Carolinians rightly fear hurricanes more than tsunamis. The familiar storms repeatedly hurl high winds, storm surge and lethal inland flooding our way.
But while the risk of a deadly tsunami reaching the Outer Banks, say, is tiny, it exists.
"They are rare, but these things can happen on any body of water," said Harry Woodworth, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Philadelphia who collects data on Atlantic Ocean tsunamis.
First the good news: While Atlantic tsunamis devastated spots in Europe and Canada in previous centuries, Woodworth has no evidence of a tsunami slamming into the East Coast since a mild one struck shores from Rhode Island down to New Jersey in the spring of 1964.
Big earthquakes most often cause lethal tsunamis of the sort that struck Asia this week. And the ocean floor off the East Coast is not prone to big earthquakes. The Earth's tectonic plates in this region, in contrast to those along the Pacific Rim, for the most part aren't on collision courses.
But scientists observe potential troubles in the Atlantic Ocean.
* One is the Puerto Rico Trench, a region where the North American plate is sinking under the Caribbean plate. That, one day, could produce quakes that could spawn tsunamis that could reach our shores.
"If it radiated north, it could hit some of the North Carolina beaches, like Atlantic Beach, which faces south," said Ernest Knowles, a retired N.C. State University physical oceanography professor.
* Earthquakes alone don't breed tsunamis. Landslides into water release energy that pushes walls of water toward shores too, where they can arrive unannounced.
Scientists see the potential for that at a volcano in the Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco, called Cumbre Vieja. Geologists have observed that the western half of the volcano appears poised to collapse into the ocean when a big enough eruption occurs.
If it does, a huge amount of rock will tumble into the ocean. While some people are skeptical, others think the resulting walls of waves could strike the entire East Coast of the United States.
* If the volcano isn't scary enough, three researchers four years ago found trouble much closer to home. In a paper published in Geology Magazine, they revealed suspicious looking cracks on the sea floor along the continental shelf east of Cape Hatteras.
Trouble is, it's not clear whether the cracks are signs of trouble to come or of a prior event. If an underwater landslide happened, the toll could be comparable to the storm surge created by Hurricane Hazel in 1954, a Category 4 cyclone that created storm surge 18 feet high in spots.
Or a landslide could amount to something less.
"There is no way to say what the consequences could be," said Tyler Clark, chief geologist of the N.C. Geological Survey.
Given all this uncertainty, scientists don't discount the possibility that a tsunami could strike North Carolina. But no one is sounding an alarm, said UNC-Chapel Hill geology professor Jonathan Lees.
"This is not something we should worry about intensely," he said.
NCSU To Offer MBA Focused on Biotech, Pharmaceuticals
Dec. 29, 2004
Local Tech Wire
By staff report
© Copyright 2004
RALEIGH – North Carolina State University is adding a biotechnology and pharmaceutical emphasis as part of its College of Management MBA program.
MBA students can enroll in the new offering next fall.
“Students who complete this concentration will have in-depth knowledge enabling them to deal with both the scientific and management challenges facing this emerging industry,” said Steve Allen, associate dean for graduate programs at the college.
In addition to a core of four courses in entrepreneurship, finance, information technology (IT), marketing, or supply chain management, three courses will be offered in biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, such as legal and regulatory issues. Full-time MBA students will also serve an internship at a biotechnology or pharmaceutical firm.
TV clip: Christmas shopping and the economy
Dec. 27, 2004
WRAL-TV
By staff report
© Copyright 2004
Michael Walden was in a WRAL news story about Christmas shopping and the economy.
Technology Research Advances of 2004
Dec. 29, 2004
Technology Research News
By staff report
© Copyright 2004
Each year sees more researchers at work and more research papers published than the last -- the volume of scientific and technological research has doubled every decade for the past three centuries.
The profusion of technology research in 2004 includes notable advances in biotechnology, communications, computing, engineering, energy, security, nanotechnology, applied physics and the Internet.
Biotechnology
Biotechnology researchers use a wide range of natural forces and clever tools to bend molecules to useful ends.
This includes biomolecular engineering -- manipulating DNA and biological molecules like proteins to carry out computing, to sense other molecules, and to construct materials molecule by molecule. One of the most significant research advances of the year was the development of a DNA device that senses and attacks cancer cells by researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Israel.
Biotechnology tools include microfluidic devices, laser tweezers and sensors used for engineering biological molecules, medical diagnostics, and security. Biotechnology tools advances include a nanowire-based biochip developed by Harvard University researchers that detects single viruses , and a biochip developed by University of Texas researchers that uses water droplets as tiny test tubes.
Communications
This year's communications research saw faster and smaller lasers and light-emitting diodes for generating light pulses, and more efficient and more versatile optical fibers and photonic crystal devices for channeling light. Faster signals and switches translates to higher communications rates.
Photonic crystal research continued to heat up, highlighted by two research teams -- MIT and Kyoto University -- that developed three-dimensional photonic crystal devices that emit as well as channel light. Cornell University researchers used more conventional light-channeling devices to create a silicon switch that allows one light beam to control another.
Computer chips
Two roads promise to take computer chips past the end of today's silicon technology. One involves new materials and processing techniques and the other heralds entirely new types of chips.
Alternative approaches include efforts to build computer chips from nanotubes and individual molecules. Nanotube and nanowire-based chip research moved this year from the level of transistors and simple logic gates to that of entire chip architectures. Hewlett-Packard Laboratories researchers developed a highly redundant, highly fault-tolerant chip design for their nanowire logic circuits , and researchers at Duke University developed a software program for designing computer chips made from DNA-assembled carbon nanotubes.
Researchers from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and University College London in England looked further into the future to outline a scheme for designing whole logic gates within individual molecules. The scheme is based on the way electrons move around the molecules.
Computer interfaces
Making computers easier to use is a broad, long-term effort that includes improving today's screen-based interfaces and extending computers' sensing ability so they can more naturally interact with humans.
Researchers from Microsoft Research, Microsoft Research Asia, and Tsinghua University in China showed that surfing the Net using a handheld device can be improved by allowing the user to zoom in on relevant content and collapse irrelevant content with single pen strokes.
Researchers at Sony Corporation developed a control knob that the user can reshape to change functions, and are ultimately aiming for an input device that users can mold like clay.
And scientists from the NASA Ames Research Center developed speech recognition technology that allows users to speak silently. The scheme uses throat nerve activity rather than acoustics to glean information about what a person is saying.
It became readily apparent this year that projectors have the potential to change the way we view display technologies. Researchers from Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs developed a combination handheld projector and radio frequency identification tag reader that lights up tagged objects, projects information about them and serves as a computer screen.
And researchers from the University of Cambridge in England and Light Blue Optics Ltd. advanced efforts to build projectors into everything from laptop computers to cell phones using a holographic technology.
Engineering
Engineering research is about devising and improving methods for constructing devices and, ultimately, building better ones.
Advances in engineering research this year include a Massachusetts Institute of Technology process that allows optical fiber to contain tiny metal and semiconductor wires. The method could lead to extremely inexpensive electrical components.
An array of small pressure sensors on a flexible sheet from University of Tokyo researchers promises to lead to smart rugs and robot skin.
And North Carolina State University and University of Utah researchers showed that it was possible to evolve the ability to play Capture the Flag in a simulation using artificial neural networks and then download the smarts into real mobile robots.
Energy
Energy research ranges from finding ways to power microscopic machines to developing renewable energy sources for global consumption. Many research teams are working on solar and hydrogen energy systems, and there have been several significant developments this year.
Scientists from Toin University of Yokohama in Japan built a single, compact device that converts solar energy to electricity and also stores the electricity. This is an improvement from today's combination of solar energy devices that harvest the energy from light and batteries that store the energy. The device is also relatively efficient at harvesting ambient light; it could eventually allow people to recharge cell phones, for instance, using indoor light.
Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers found a way to double a solar cell's potential energy production by using the energy of a single photon to move two electrons rather than just one, and researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineered a single material that is capable of capturing more than 50 percent of the sun's energy from across the solar spectrum.
On the fuel cell front, University of Wisconsin at Madison researchers found a way to use carbon monoxide, a fuel cell waste product that ordinarily degrades cells, to produce more energy. Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Patras in Greece devised a way to extract hydrogen directly from ethanol, which is produced by converting biomass like cornstarch to sugar, then fermenting the sugar.
Information
Information research falls into two categories: data access and retrieval, and data processing and presentation. Data access and retrieval research is focused on making database and Internet searches faster, easier and more accurate. Data processing and presentation research involves turning data into manageable and understandable information.
On the data access and retrieval front, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University researchers developed software that picks up the topic structure of whole documents to generate more accurate automatic summaries.
Researchers from the University of Wales, Robert Gordon University in Scotland, and the University of Manchester in England advanced data processing and presentation with a robot scientist that can devise a theory, come up with experiments to test the theory, carry out the experiments, and interpret the results.
Security
This year brought a pair of security research developments that made it apparent that quantum cryptography, unlike quantum computing, is within a few years of prime time. Quantum cryptography has the potential to provide perfectly secure communications.
On April 21, researchers from the University of Vienna in Austria, ARC Seibersdorf Research GmbH in Austria, the University of Munich in Germany, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences transferred a secret encryption key from Vienna City Hall to a Bank Austria Creditanstalt office a few blocks away using an entanglement-based form of quantum cryptography.
And BBN Technologies, Harvard University and Boston University researchers built a six-node quantum cryptography network designed to operate continuously to provide a way to exchange secure keys between BBN, Harvard and Boston University. Previous quantum cryptography systems sported only point-to-point connections.
Nanotechnology
The burgeoning field of nanotechnology -- the quest to build devices and materials from infinitesimal metal and semiconductor particles and even individual molecules -- continued its fast pace this year.
A pair of significant developments each had researchers taking DNA for a walk. Scientists at Duke University and the University of Oxford in England put together a series of DNA stations that can automatically pass a DNA fragment from one to the next. California Institute of Technology researchers improved the gate of a bipedal DNA walker originally designed by researchers at New York University from shuffling, with one leg always trailing the other, to leg-over-leg walking.
Nanotubes continue to be a promising nanotech building block. Researchers from the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) found a relatively simple way to manufacture tall, dense, vertically-aligned stands of pure nanotubes. Nanotubes produced using the method are orderly and pure enough for use in medical implants as well as electronics.
Physics
Physics contributes to technology in many ways. A more detailed knowledge of matter and energy can improve many tasks, from storing data to making better lasers. Tapping the weird effects of quantum phenomena makes for better micromachine designs and has the potential to produce fantastically powerful computers.
The year saw several advances in timekeeping. Researchers from the National Physical Laboratory in England made a prototype atomic clock that divides time into finer slices because it uses high-frequency optical radiation, or lightwaves, rather than the usual microwave radiation. The devices could lead to a more accurate definition of time, which would improve global positioning systems, make space exploration more accurate, and more accurately test the laws of physics.
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), keepers of official U.S. time, developed a tiny atomic clock that promises to bring precision timing down to the level of handheld devices.
Researchers at Stanford University devised a scheme for storing light pulses under ordinary conditions using photonic crystal. The technique could be used to make blazingly fast all-optical computer chips, quantum computers and quantum communications systems.
Quantum computing advances this year include a demonstration of five-photon entanglement by researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Five-photon entanglement could be used to make quantum networks and quantum error correction schemes, which are necessary for practical quantum computers.
Meanwhile, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Atomic Energy Commission in Argentina developed a quantum random number generator that greatly reduces the ordinarily overwhelming complexity of quantum randomness while still producing random results. A quantum random number generator would improve quantum error correction schemes and quantum cryptography.
Data storage
Data storage research involves finding new materials and recording methods that will allow more information to be stored per square centimeter, information to be stored in retrieved more quickly, and storage devices to better withstand forces like heat and radiation. Experimental storage devices include carbon nanotube memory elements, light-sensitive plastic films and stacks of two-dimensional holograms.
Boston University researchers made a minuscule mechanical memory cell from a silicon beam clamped at both ends. The beam is so small that it vibrates millions of times a second, which means that it could switch on and off at speeds comparable to electronic memory chips, but would be able to retain data with the power off and in the presence of radiation.
The Internet
Research about the Internet falls into three categories: Web software, Internet infrastructure, and the overall structure of the Internet. In addition to finding better ways to browse and search the Internet, researchers are examining details of the network's structure to find ways to improve its stability and performance.
Researchers from the University of Michigan developed the Small-World Instant Messaging system (SWIM), which extends instant messaging systems by identifying expertise and routing queries accordingly.
Researchers from Cornell University and the Internet Archive devised a way to measure users' reactions to an item description: a "batting average" of the number of users who go on to download the item divided by the number of users who read the description.
And a researcher from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany showed that it might be possible to suppress cascade failures triggered by attacks on large network nodes by shutting down peripheral nodes, much like a forest fire can be controlled by setting small containment fires.