A survey of some commercially available kits and reagents which include bioluminescence or chemiluminescence for their operation: Including immunoassays,hybridization, labels,probes, blots and ATP-based rapid microbiology. Products from more than forty companies

This survey was compiled between January and November 1992 from public domain information requested by the author from companies specializing in these products. It includes individual sections giving the name and address of each company together with brief details of their (a) kits used for assay of certain analytes in the routine laboratory and (b) reagents used mainly as research tools. This survey is a companion to a previous survey about 90 commercially available luminometers (Stanley PE. J Biolumin Chemilum 1992; 7: 77–108 and 157–69).     

Commercially available luminometers and imaging devices for low-light level measurements and kits and reagents utilizing bioluminescence or chemiluminescence: Survey update 3

This survey was compiled in February 1994 and includes products not covered in the luminometer survey (Jan 1992: Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1992; 7:77–108 and 7:157–69), kits and reagent survey (Nov 1992: Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1993; 8:51–63), update 1 (June 1993 luminometers, kits and reagents, Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1993; 8:237–40) and update 2 (Dec 1993: luminometers, kits and reagents, Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1994; 9:51–3). Technical details are provided together with company addresses and contact information.     

Commercially available luminometers and imaging devices for low-light level measurements and kits and reagents utilizing bioluminescence or chemiluminescence: Survey update 2

This survey was completed in December 1993 and includes products not covered in the luminometer survey (Jan 1992: Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1992; 7:77–108 and 7:157–69), kits and reagent survey (Nov 1992: Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1993; 8:51–63), update 1 (June 1993, luminometers, kits and reagents, Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1993; 8:237–40). Technical details are provided together with company address and contact information.     

Commercially available luminometers and imaging devices for low-light level measurements and kits and reagents utilizing bioluminescence or chemiluminescence: Survey update 5

This survey was compiled in July 1997 and includes products not covered in the luminometer survey (Jan 1992: Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1992; 7:77–108 and 7:157–69), kits and reagent survey (Nov 1992; Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1993; 8:51–63), update 1 (June 1993: luminometers, kits and reagents, Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1993; 8:237–240) and update 2 (Dec 1993: luminometers, kits and reagents, Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1994; 9:51–3) and update 3 (Feb 1994: luminometers, kits and reagents, Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1994; 9:123–5) and update 4 (June 1996: Stanley PE, J Biolumin Chemilumin 1996; 11:175–91). Technical details are provided together with company address and contact information including email and website where known. Items include: Luminometers, radiometers, low-light imaging, CCD cameras, immunoassays, ATP rapid microbiology, hygiene monitoring, molecular probes, labels, nucleic acid hybridization, reporter genes. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CODON—Software to manual curation of prokaryotic genomes

Genome annotation conceptually consists of inferring and assigning biological information to gene products. Over the years, numerous pipelines and computational tools have been developed aiming to automate this task and assist researchers in gaining knowledge about target genes of study. However, even with these technological advances, manual annotation or manual curation is necessary, where the information attributed to the gene products is verified and enriched. Despite being called the gold standard process for depositing data in a biological database, the task of manual curation requires significant time and effort from researchers who sometimes have to parse through numerous products in various public databases. To assist with this problem, we present CODON, a tool for manual curation of genomic data, capable of performing the prediction and annotation process. This software makes use of a finite state machine in the prediction process and automatically annotates products based on information obtained from the Uniprot database. CODON is equipped with a simple and intuitive graphic interface that assists on manual curation, enabling the user to decide about the analysis based on information as to identity, length of the alignment, and name of the organism in which the product obtained a match. Further, visual analysis of all matches found in the database is possible, impacting significantly in the curation task considering that the user has at his disposal all the information available for a given product. An analysis performed on eleven organisms was used to test the efficiency of this tool by comparing the results of prediction and annotation through CODON to ones from the NCBI and RAST platforms.     

Relevance and feasibility of social life cycle assessment from a company perspective

Background, aim, and scope

Methodology development should reflect demands from the intended users: what are the needs of the user group and what is feasible in terms of requirements involving data and work? Mapping these questions of relevance and feasibility is thus a way to facilitate a higher degree of relevance of the developed methodology. For the emerging area of social life cycle assessment (SLCA), several different potential user groups may be identified. This article addresses the issues of relevance and feasibility of SLCA from a company perspective through a series of interviews among potential company users.

Methods and materials

The empirical basis for the survey is a series of eight semi-structured interviews with larger Danish companies, all of which potentially have the capacity and will to use comprehensive social assessment methodologies. SLCA is not yet a well-defined methodology, but still it is possible to outline several potential applications of SLCA and the tasks a company must be able to perform in order to make use of these applications. The interviews focus on the companies’ interest in these potential applications and their ability and willingness to undertake the required work.

Results

Based on these interviews, three hypotheses are developed relating to these companies’ potential use of SLCA, viz.: (1) needs which may be supported by SLCA relate to three different applications, being comparative assertions, use stage assessments, and weighting of social impacts; (2) assessing the full life cycle of a product or service is rarely possible for the companies; and (3) companies see their social responsibility in the product chain as broader than dictated by the product perspective of SLCA. Trends for these three hypotheses developed on the basis of the opinions of the interviewees. Also, factors influencing the generalization of the results to cover other industries are analyzed.

Discussion

Full comparative assertions as known from environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) may be difficult in a company context due to several difficulties in assessing the full life cycle. Furthermore, the comparative assertion may potentially be hampered by differences in how companies typically allocate responsibility along the product chain and how it is done in SLCA, creating a boundary setting issue. These problems do, only in a limited degree, apply for both the use stage assessment and the tool for weighting social issues.

Conclusion

Despite these difficulties, it is concluded that all three applications of SLCA may be possible for the interviewed companies, but it seems the tendency is to demand assessment tools with very limited life cycle perspective, which to some extent deviate from the original thought behind the LCA tools as being holistic decision aid tools.

Perspectives

It is advocated that there is a need to focus more on questions regarding the relevance and feasibility of SLCA from several different perspectives to direct the future methodology development.     

Commercially available luminometers and imaging devices for low-light measurements and kits and reagents utilizing bioluminescence or chemiluminescence: Survey update I

This survey update was compiled in June 1993 and includes products not covered in the luminometer survey (Jan 1992; Stanley, PE. J Biolumin Chemilumin 1992; 7:77–108 and 7:157–69) and kit and reagent survey (Nov 1992; Stanley, PE. J Biolumin Chemilumin 1993; 8:51–63). Some products are new whilst for others details have only recently become available to the author. Technical details are provided together with company address and contact information.     

Fast Carbon Footprinting for Large Product Portfolios

Publicly Available Specification 2050‐2011 (PAS 2050), the Green House Gas Product Protocol (GHGPP) standard and forthcoming guideline 14067 from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have helped to propel carbon footprinting from a subdiscipline of life cycle assessment (LCA) to the mainstream. However, application of carbon footprinting to large portfolios of many distinct products and services is immensely resource intensive. Even if achieved, it often fails to inform company‐wide carbon reduction strategies because footprint data are disjointed or don't cover the whole portfolio. We introduce a novel approach to generate standard‐compliant product carbon footprints (CFs) for companies with large portfolios at a fraction of previously required time and expertise. The approach was developed and validated on an LCA dataset covering 1,137 individual products from a global packaged consumer goods company. Three novel techniques work in concert in a single approach that enables practitioners to calculate thousands of footprints virtually simultaneously: (i) a uniform data structure enables footprinting all products and services by looping the same algorithm; (ii) concurrent uncertainty analysis guides practitioners to gradually improve the accuracy of only those data that materially impact the results; and (iii) a predictive model generates estimated emission factors (EFs) for materials, thereby eliminating the manual mapping of a product or service's inventory to EF databases. These autogenerated EFs enable non‐LCA experts to calculate approximate CFs and alleviate resource constraints for companies embarking on large‐scale product carbon footprinting. We discuss implementation roadmaps for companies, including further road‐testing required to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach for other product portfolios, limitations, and future improvements of the fast footprinting methodology.     

Corporate preparedness for pandemic influenza: a survey of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in Montgomery County, Maryland

Objectives: We conducted a survey of corporate preparedness for pandemic influenza among biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in Montgomery County, Maryland, to determine the level of preparedness for this industry and geographic region. Methods: The survey, based on the HHS Business Pandemic Influenza Planning Checklist, established whether a company had a preparedness plan specific to pandemic influenza, the contents of its plan, or its reasons for a lack of a plan. Results: A total of 50 companies participated in the survey. Of these, 40 did not have any type of preparedness plan, 3 were drafting plans, 6 had general preparedness plans that could be applied to an influenza pandemic, and only 1 company had a preparedness plan specifically designed to address pandemic influenza. Conclusions: Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in this geographic region are currently not well prepared for pandemic influenza. Public health officials should offer more help, possibly in the form of a model small business preparedness plan, and collaboration between companies should be encouraged to foster sharing of preparedness plans.     

The agro-production chain environmental management in the agricultural production-consumption chain

After promoting environmental certification of companies in a chain perspective (Udo de Haes & De Snoo, 1996) now the agro-production chain is worked out as a case study. The role of the different links in the chain, such as agricultural producers, processing industry, wholesale companies and retailers is discussed. Also the role of consumers and authorities is described. For every company in the chain the advantages of a company based approach will be a better image and a guaranteed-sale and/or supply. In comparison with a product based approach (ecolabelling) the steering forces in the agro-production chain will be the retailers and not the consumers. Because consumers only get information at company level the approach is less dependent on consumers behaviour in the shop.     

Universal,easy access to geotemporal information: FetchClimate

Geotemporal information, information associated with geographical space and time, has always been critical to climate and environmental science. However, this information is certainly not universally or easily accessible. In fact, obtaining and using geotemporal information often comes with a considerable technical overheads, impeding research progress. To address this, we introduce FetchClimate: a cloud service designed to provide easy, universal access to geotemporal information. FetchClimate enables and accelerates the use of geotemporal information by enabling it to be accessed programmatically from a Web service (such as the statistical software R) or non‐programmatically using a Web browser. We intend the service to accelerate the pace of ecological and environmental research by eliminating the technical overheads currently needed to obtain geotemporal information. The software, online manual, and user support are freely available at < http://www.fetchclimate.com >.     

Extraction and visualization of industrial service portfolios by text mining of 10-K annual reports

As more and more manufacturing companies accumulate profits from service provision, the ability to monitor the adoption of the industrial services of other companies grows more important. The purpose of this paper is to propose a data-driven methodology for extraction of the industrial service portfolio from a company’s annual report. In this approach, form 10-K, a special format of annual report regulated by the Security Exchange Commission in United States is utilized as the data source. Because this document type contains rich information on a company’s operating segments, industrial service information is easily retrieved. Given the sheer volume of such documents, however, manual inspection is impractical. In order to resolve this issue, a text-mining algorithm is applied to automatically examine word-usage patterns and to identify the service portfolio. Then, the service portfolio’s relative position in the market is visualized on a positioning map. Due to the multi-dimensionality of the data, self-organizing map (SOM) is used as an alternative visualization scheme. SOM enables easy identification of the major service clusters as well as niche areas in the market; these, in turn, provide valuable information pertinent to service development planning. Also, and not least, policy makers can utilize our methodology to detect the servitization trends of various industries.     

Decision-support tool for assessing biomanufacturing strategies under uncertainty: stainless steel versus disposable equipment for clinical trial material preparation

This paper presents the application of a decision-support tool, SIMBIOPHARMA, for assessing different manufacturing strategies under uncertainty for the production of biopharmaceuticals. SIMBIOPHARMA captures both the technical and business aspects of biopharmaceutical manufacture within a single tool that permits manufacturing alternatives to be evaluated in terms of cost, time, yield, project throughput, resource utilization, and risk. Its use for risk analysis is demonstrated through a hypothetical case study that uses the Monte Carlo simulation technique to imitate the randomness inherent in manufacturing subject to technical and market uncertainties. The case study addresses whether start-up companies should invest in a stainless steel pilot plant or use disposable equipment for the production of early phase clinical trial material. The effects of fluctuating product demands and titers on the performance of a biopharmaceutical company manufacturing clinical trial material are analyzed. The analysis highlights the impact of different manufacturing options on the range in possible outcomes for the project throughput and cost of goods and the likelihood that these metrics exceed a critical threshold. The simulation studies highlight the benefits of incorporating uncertainties when evaluating manufacturing strategies. Methods of presenting and analyzing information generated by the simulations are suggested. These are used to help determine the ranking of alternatives under different scenarios. The example illustrates the benefits to companies of using such a tool to improve management of their R&D portfolios so as to control the cost of goods.     

Facial recognition — Part 1

Out of all the biometric technologies, the facial recognition sector has received the most attention in recent months. Although the technology is not as accurate as some others, such as fingerprint or iris recognition, it does have unique features that elude other biometric modalities, and that make it an attractive biometric to use in a multitude of scenarios. The first part of this two-part survey looks at the issues surrounding this technology, predicted market sizes and the types of technology on offer. Part two will look in depth at the companies and individual products in this exciting market, as well as listing full contact details for the main players.     

Introduction to the News and Views Article By William Gruen, “Chronophysiology and Ambulatory Monitoring Instrumentation”

The field of human and clinical chronobiology necessitates the reliance of investigators on noninvasive, portable and reliable instrumentation to gather data in a form which is compatible for editing and analysis to yield meaningful endpoints. Until recently, the type of instruments available to human chronobiologists has been quite limited. Too, the first generation instruments, which were initially placed into use by chronobiologists a decade or so ago, were unsatisfactory because of technical problems resulting in data loss. These problems seem to have been solved. The current generation of instruments has proven itself to be dependable. Today, there are several companies throughout the world developing and marketing devices to meet the needs of chronobiologists to gather time-series data from human beings adhering to their usual day-night routine, whether at work or at home. As a service to the readership, the Editors have requested Dr William Gruen of the Ambulatory Monitoring company of New York to provide information about the several instruments which it manufactures and which are in current use, primarily in clinical and field studies in the United States, Europe and Asia. Further information about the described products can be obtained from Ambulatory Monitoring, Inc. itself. Relevant information about the company can be found by consulting the advertisement printed in this issue of the Journal.     

Darwin to DNA, molecules to morphology: the end of classical population genetics and the road ahead.

Molecular reductionism has permeated all of biology and because of successive new technical breakthroughs it has succeeded in unraveling the structural details of genes and genomes. The molecular revolution has reached its reductionist limit, i.e., the study of component parts in isolation, and is ready to come full circle through genomics, proteomics, and gene expression studies back to the phenotype and bring evolutionary biology to confront the Darwinian paradigm, the relationship between gene, organism, and environment. Classical experimental population genetics, dealing with genetic polymorphism and estimation of selection coefficients on a gene-by-gene basis, is coming to an end and a new era of interdisciplinary and interactive biology focusing on dynamic relationships among gene, organism, and environment has begun. In the new population genetics, there will be a shift in focus from single genes to gene networks, from gene-structure to gene-regulation, from additivity to epistasis, and from simple phenotypes to gene-interaction networks and the evolution of complex and modular systems.     

Development of Australian commercial producers of invertebrate biological control agents from 1971 to 2014

The Australian industry producing invertebrate biological control agents (BCAs) commercially was described for the first time through interviews with company owners, citrus pest management researchers and citrus growers. This industry started with citrus pest management in 1971. Over 40 years it expanded from one company and one commercial BCA to peak at nine companies operating from 2002 to 2010. A period of consolidation resulted in five companies producing 36 commercial BCAs in 2014. Annual gross sales were <AU$10 million compared to >AU$400 million spent on insecticides. Barriers to industry growth included high costs of developing new commercial BCAs partly due to regulatory costs associated with importation of new BCAs into Australia, and low adoption of commercial BCAs due to limited access to information and training. The industry responded to these barriers by collaborating with stakeholders to develop new commercial BCAs, and developing an accreditation scheme to build technical capacity and encourage adoption.