Briefs: Agilent, Spirent join CSR in EGPS Forum; Stem Cell Sciences launches iStem
CSR said Agilent Technologies and Spirent Communications are to join it and Motorola in the EGPS Forum, the open industry forum for evaluating and fostering enhanced Global Positioning System (EGPS) technologies. Working with CSR, Agilent and Spirent have created an essential building block of EGPS: a single system that can simulate both GPS and cellular signals. This system provides a development and test platform on which to build EGPS technologies.
CSR and Motorola announced the intention to create the Forum in January this year. Both Agilent and Spirent are world leaders in test and measurement systems and by joining the Forum have taken the first steps with CSR to ensure that the test equipment is in place for designers to easily and quickly design and test EGPS products.
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Stem Cell Sciences plc launched Culticell iSTEM, a novel, serum-free, feeder-free embryonic stem (ES) cell research media product, that maintains cells in their basal, pluripotent state. Culticell iSTEM provides researchers with a purer starting point for investigating the biological potential of ES cells.
The development of Culticell iSTEM was based on pioneering work of Professor Austin Smith, a scientific founder of SCS, and his team at The Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research, University of Cambridge, and which was published in today's issue of Nature (Vol. 453, No.7194).
The jointly AIM and ASX listed company said Prof Smith's research is a major step forward in embryonic stem cell research and elucidates some of the early mechanisms involved in self-renewal and differentiation.
CSO Tim Allsopp (pictured) said: “We have now leveraged this significant advance into our novel media product Culticell iSTEM, which we believe will help provide researchers with a more pure starting point for embryonic stem cell research."
The company’s shares gained 7.5% on the news.
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Augmentra, the Cambridge-based mobile digital mapping and information software company, signed a deal that will put its DataRanger technology into the phone handsets of users from Dublin to Dubrovnik. The contract is with Geolives, a joint venture between STAR-APIC Group, the foremost European supplier of Geographic Information Systems and mapping software, and Geomatic Ingenierie SA, a Swiss GIS specialist, and part of the Ringier AG media and publishing group.
22 May 2008
